Deidre Beacham 0:00

It was like all of this programming just kicked in and, and suddenly I was subservient and small. All these amazing things I'd done in my life, all the space I had taken up, and in front of this man, I became really small. And I thought, What is this? What, what is this? And he said I wasn't, I wasn't being nice.

Speaker 2 0:26

This is the Your Next Success podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Caroline Sangal, I'm a life first career coach and strategist on a mission to normalize questioning your career we explore how to build a career that truly fuels your life. And you'll hear stories from people who have navigated big career transitions themselves, so you can create a life, first career and become your own version of authentic success.

Speaker 4 0:56

Deidre Beacham is a speaker and coach who helps women stop performing niceness and start owning who they are. She grew up running a program built for everyone else's comfort, and in her 50s she finally saw it clearly. In this conversation, you'll hear how she moved from people-pleasing to real self-ownership. Found her way back to herself and now helps others do the same.

Caroline 1:20

Deidre Beacham, welcome to Your Next Success. I'm so, so excited to be talking with you today.

Deidre Beacham 1:25

Me too you're one of my new favorite people, so yeah, I'm excited

Caroline 1:29

Thanks. we are gonna get to all of the awesome work that you do today, how you help so many people. keynote speaker, coach, author, all of the amazing things. We're gonna get to that, but let's dial it way, way back if we could where were you born? Tell me what was life like for the very youngest little Deidre?

Deidre Beacham 1:47

I was born in Long Island, New York, and, do not remember much of anything there. Um, very shortly after I was born in New York, we moved to Maryland. I remember very little about that. and after that, we moved to Virginia. I remember a little bit about that house in Flint Hill, Virginia. And then my parents decided, "We really, really, really feel like we'd like to act out being hippies." So they moved to a 15-acre property in the mountains, in, in Flint Hill, but in the mountains on the side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and, uh, we raised cows, chickens, horses, pigs. We had dogs. I'd milk the cows, collected eggs from the chickens, rode my horse in the woods. Um, that was, that was my life. Loved my dogs. We had a Saint Bernard, and then we ended up having golden retrievers. And, the farm life very much suited me, very much, mainly because I loved riding. The freedom of riding a horse out in the Blue Ridge, with nobody to tell me what to do or where to go, and it was, it was awesome. It was the ultimate in freedom. Yeah.

Caroline 3:05

Oh, that's

Deidre Beacham 3:06

Yeah, it was cool.

Caroline 3:06

Did you have any brothers or

Deidre Beacham 3:08

I have a younger sister

Caroline 3:09

What did your parents do for work that, likeyou were able to have a farm and all these beautiful animals and all of that, and to, like, move, did the moves coincide with somebody getting different jobs, or they just randomly picked?

Deidre Beacham 3:25

My mom was a real estate agent, and my father worked in construction. And so he actually traveled to DC every day, you know, hour-and-a-half-long commute, and he did that every day for a long time. And then he ended up getting into timeshares. But we all- we stayed in the same place that whole time. growing up on the farm. And, yeah, I don't think anything really coincided with anything. I mean, they moved to Flint. but then they deci- I think it was still they wanted to live rustically, and then they decided, "No, we'd really like to live out our hippie dreams," and so we, we grew up on the farm. So when we moved there, there was no house. There was a barn, and it just had six poles and a roof. And so we lived in the barn for a little while with the, in our tent, and, dug a hole in the, in the yard, and that's where we went to the bathroom. And, we had this little camp seat, you know, that sat over the hole. That was fun. And, yeah, until my dad built the house that I grew up in. And yeah, so.

Caroline 4:29

Wow.

Deidre Beacham 4:30

They wanted to be hippies for a bit, that's for real. Yeah. That's, that was the, the dream.

Caroline 4:37

How old were you when?

Deidre Beacham 4:38

I was...

Caroline 4:38

happened?

Deidre Beacham 4:39

That was all, what? Maybe like f- first, second grade. Yeah.

Caroline 4:45

Wow.

Deidre Beacham 4:45

And then the house was built.

Caroline 4:46

Yeah.

Deidre Beacham 4:47

I grew up there. I was there until through my junior year in high school.

Caroline 4:52

Oh, wow. Okay, so now during this time, you're loving being out in nature, getting to ride, getting to do things people only, like, dream about.

Deidre Beacham 5:00

Yeah.

Caroline 5:00

Like, that was your real life.

Deidre Beacham 5:01

Yeah, that was my life. Yeah.

Caroline 5:03

Ride horses and be with... That's amazing. School-wise, how was that for you? Were there any particular subjects that you liked more than others?

Deidre Beacham 5:13

Wow. I've always loved... This is gonna sound crazy. I always loved,

Caroline 5:18

And did you go to school?

Deidre Beacham 5:18

Yeah.

Caroline 5:19

or th- or

Deidre Beacham 5:19

Oh,

Caroline 5:19

full

Deidre Beacham 5:20

No, we had,

Caroline 5:21

Did they did they hippie extra

Deidre Beacham 5:22

yeah,

Caroline 5:23

or

Deidre Beacham 5:23

No, just regular hippie. Hippies, hippies with a home. so yeah, no, it was a public school. There was one school in the county, and that's the school I went to, Rappahannock, Rappahannock County, Elementary School, and then Rappahannock County High School. For about four years I went to the one private school that was in the area. It was called Wakefield Country Day School, and I went there for four years. I think they had a quota of, you know, they wanted to have a certain number of local people as a part of the school. And, so I'm sure that my parents got a hefty, a hefty, What do you call that when people give y- give you money, when people give you money so you can go to school? Scholarship. Yeah, I'm sure they had a hefty scholarship. I was a straight A student, in elementary school. Woo.

Caroline 6:06

Of

Deidre Beacham 6:07

I know that the scholarship, did not get renewed after eighth grade, which is why I, I ended up going back into the public school.

Caroline 6:14

Interesting. And so s- school-wise, do you remember, like, did you like any particular things more than others, or was it just, like, something you had to do until you could go back and ride your

Deidre Beacham 6:23

horse I loved school. I, when I went to college, I never wanted to leave. I just love learning, always have loved learning. I am a fan of science and English. I was one of those geeks that absolutely geeked out on diagramming sentences. Loved diagramming sentences. Oh my gosh, just made me so happy. Loved to read. I was insatiable. I used to ride my bike, into town, which was not a small feat. It was a good five miles into town up over,

Caroline 7:00

And

Deidre Beacham 7:00

Mountains.

Caroline 7:01

Like,

Deidre Beacham 7:02

And, I would ride into town and spend the day with the librarian. Librarian loved me, and she would take me to different part... When she realized that I was, like, reading all the highest, most intense books I could in the bottom, you know, she's like, "Let me, let me take you upstairs." Oh, I felt like such a big girl. The we're going upstairs. I, I've never been allowed upstairs. You know, it's like the adult area to be. And, and she introduced me to J.R.R. Tolkien,

Caroline 7:28

Oh,

Deidre Beacham 7:29

Ivanhoe, and yeah, just so many things. She, she introduced me to so, so many things. And, yeah, I was a, a voracious, voracious reader. Yeah. And writer. I used to write constantly. I still write, but I used to write constantly and, win awards and all kinds of things. Yeah, loved, love English

Caroline 7:51

were there people that lived nearby? Like, did you have friends or is it just mainly, like, your family

Deidre Beacham 7:55

So the closest, my closest friend I had, her name was Anita, and she lived I don't even know how many miles away. But yeah, I would spend about... I, I'd spend a couple hours riding my bike to her house, and then we'd hang out and play and, and then I'd get on my bike and come home. most of the time my parents had no clue where I was. That's just the way it was back then. They, they never knew who I was. It was... where I was, at any one time. I'd just say, "Hey, I'm going to Anita's," and "Okay, bye." And I'd just disappear for the day, or I'd go for a ride on the horse and, and just disappear. And, one of my favorite things to do was to ride my horse into the woods, and I'd have no clue where I was. I mean, there was no way I could get back home. And I would just ride and ride and ride and ride and ride, and then eventually I'd be like, "All right, let's go home." And the horse always knew the way home, so I could go wherever I wanted to, and it was, it was a lot of fun. Yeah.

Caroline 8:56

Now, the parent in me and the, a- anxious person in me is like, "OMG, you rode your bike on mountain roads for, like, five miles on twists and turns with, like..." It's... Some of those roads, cars can barely go on, and, like, I'm sure cars had to pass you sometimes.

Deidre Beacham 9:14

So it was one school in the county, aside from the private school, that didn't really count because most of the people came from other places, other states to go to that school. So the county had one school, and my graduating class was, like, 70 kids. So we're not talking, like, a whole lot of people driving down any of these roads. It's more so now because it's become a tourist town. The very wealthy have homes out there, and, it's where, if you've ever heard of, I think it's the only five-star, restaurant on the East Coast, which is The Inn at Little Washington. Anyway, so it's busy now, but, when I was growing up, there was hardly anybody on the road. And you knew everybody. Anytime somebody passed, you know, it was like, "Hey, I know you."

Caroline 10:03

That's cool. Now, what happened your junior year that you, I guess you moved?

Deidre Beacham 10:10

Yeah, my parents moved and, I got a, what is it called? It's been so long. I think it's called the Carnegie Program. So, by the time I finished my junior year in high school, because of the private school, because the private school had prepared me so much, the only thing I had to take for my senior year was English. And, so I applied for this special thing, And I was able to go to college for my senior year in high school. So I went to college, and then when I finished college, I graduated from high school. Actually, before I finished college, I graduated from high school. I still had two weeks left in college. It was crazy. I had to go to my teachers and go, "Am I passing so I can go graduate from high school?" Yeah, it was really weird.

Caroline 11:01

So now, was college... I guess what I forgot to ask you, from, like, your early age vantage point, did you think about, what it meant to be a successful adult or what that looked like? Or was there any particular vision you thought you were chasing?

Deidre Beacham 11:21

I mean, you're talking about dreams of, you know, I wanna be a fireman. When I was a kid, I wanted to... My very first dream was to be a vet. I wanted to be a vet desperately. I wanted to be a vet. I loved, loved, loved animals, and fortunate, you know, being on a farm, it was, it was awesome. And then my mom did, a ride. I think it was a 25-mile competitive ride, and we were, my dad and my sister and I, we were the crew, and, at some point on the trail, she fell off the horse. The horse got spooked, and she fell off the horse. The saddle went underneath, and so the stirrups were hitting the horse. Horse got so spooked that she fell off of a mountainside and ended up in a, a ravine. It's called, well, the Rappahannock River. She was- ended up in the Rappahannock River, and the Rappahannock River is just full of shale. And by the time they found her, she was just standing in the water, but by the time they found her, I mean, she was, her legs were destroyed, and, uh, when they pulled her out, that was when I decided I couldn't be a vet. I saw that at a very young age, and, I can still see it in my mind's eye, what her legs looked like, and I thought, "Oh, my gosh, I can't be a vet. If this is the kind of thing you see, I, I, I, I can't do that. I can't. I have too much compassion and love for animals," and I couldn't move past that to see the good I could do in being a vet. It was just too traumatic. So then I thought, "You know what I really wanna do? I wanna be a comedian. I wanna be a comedian."

Caroline 13:02

Awesome.

Deidre Beacham 13:02

When I started,

Caroline 13:03

That's

Deidre Beacham 13:03

I wanna be a comedian. I wanna make people laugh. That's what I wanna do, wanna make people laugh." And, and then I realized I'm really scared of being in front of people, so that wasn't gonna work. So after that, I just had no idea what I was gonna do. I just knew that I loved school, and by the time I got to college, I was just like, "Is there a way to get paid to just stay in school and learn? I don't know."

Caroline 13:26

I loved it, too. I was like, man, I... And because, see, school, it gives you a syllabus. It tells you, "Here's what you need to do to get an A." It's structured, and you

Deidre Beacham 13:35

And you can do deep dives. Oh my gosh, I loved doing research papers. Give me a research paper to do. Oh my gosh, love that. And the etymology of words, oh, how fun is that?

Caroline 13:50

That's... Did you ever take like Latin or anything?

Deidre Beacham 13:53

Yes.

Caroline 13:53

How deep dive did you...

Deidre Beacham 13:54

I did.

Caroline 13:55

did

Deidre Beacham 13:56

take Latin

Caroline 13:56

Where did you take

Deidre Beacham 13:57

in the, private school that I was in. I, I took Latin. Yeah. And I took way too many years of French. Yeah. Can't, can't speak it, but I can understand it sometimes if you speak really slow.

Caroline 14:11

when they were teaching us languages, it was way different than how they do it now. Now they go to, like, spoken language, like, from the get-go. But back in, like,

Deidre Beacham 14:20

Aye

Caroline 14:20

you're not gonna speak that, but it was, like, just, like, conjugation of, like,

Deidre Beacham 14:23

Amo, amas, amat, amatis, amamus, amant. Yeah.

Caroline 14:27

Exactly. All right, so college just became something that you were going to do? was it a conscious choice or just, like, the next level up and that's what you could do, and you're like, "Yeah, let me go get it done," or how'd you pick a major? Like, how'd all that go down?

Deidre Beacham 14:41

Well my initial major was psychology and so much of that was really now in looking back, it was really just trying to figure myself out. And, I really think so many people that go into psychology are trying to do just that.

Caroline 14:55

I have heard that.

Deidre Beacham 14:56

They-

Caroline 14:57

I have heard that from probably five people that I have talked with in the last year, some of them on my podcast. Some sort of thing of, "I went into psychology so I could figure out, like, was happening with me, how I was screwed up, how I could not be screwed up, why I was

Deidre Beacham 15:14

Yeah, and

Caroline 15:15

Of

Deidre Beacham 15:15

don't know that I was as conscious as that about the choice. Um, it just made the most sense. You know, they're like, "Hey, pick a major." I'm like, And so psychology ended up... 'Cause I, I thought, "Well, that's really interesting to learn about how people work," because when I was a kid, I always felt like I was different than other kids. I always felt different and, and, you know, it was weird. I felt weird. And I used to I can't believe I'm telling you this, I used to practice in front of the mirror, right? I'm like, because people would always tell me, you know, like, "You, you look scowling," or, "You're this way," or, "Why do you have that... Why are you making your face like that?" I'm like, "What, what am I doing with my face?" And so I would sit and I'd, I'd practice expressions in the mirror and, and at one point I was like, "Am I some, like, some kind of alien and I've just ended up in this body as a person, and so now I'm trying... I have to learn how to make my face make expressions?" And yeah, so I, I used to do that. You know, how do I look? What does, what does it look... What does my face look like? And so I think psychology was just, like, a natural thing. It was like, well, I'm... 'Cause I'm really curious about people. But in the end I really think I learned a lot about myself. But I, I went into it to learn about human behavior, 'cause I didn't understand it.

Caroline 16:42

And how old were you when this, like, the mirror exercises.

Deidre Beacham 16:46

I was young.

Caroline 16:46

And how did you even come up with that?

Deidre Beacham 16:48

I didn't understand 'cause people were like,

Caroline 16:49

Just trying to get your,

Deidre Beacham 16:50

Why are you making your face like that?" I'm like, "My, making my face like what?" I, I didn't understand. I didn't, just did not understand at all. And so I looked in my, at my face in the mirror a lot just trying to figure out what, what kind of face am I making? And I would just practice and, and try and figure out what I'm doing. And so, so that I could be the good girl, so I could be the nice girl, so I could so I could fit into all the things that I was being told I needed to fit into. And, and it wasn't natural. And so, yeah, I guess I had resting bitch face at a very young age.

Caroline 17:26

I mean, you can't help who you're dealing with.

Deidre Beacham 17:28

And so I learned how to not have,

Caroline 17:30

you gotta ask, like, what's happening on your... Like, you know, there's two sides to a story.

Deidre Beacham 17:34

Yeah.

Caroline 17:35

So they're asking you what's up with you, but you're like, "And what made you say that All right, so you start college before you graduate high school, then you graduate high school, then you're still in college, and then what? And, and yeah, did you stay at the same place?

Deidre Beacham 17:51

Yeah, so my first year in college was actually at, Northern Virginia Community College because they had that Carnegie program. And so after I finished my freshman year, which was actually at community college, I transferred to George Mason University, and I went to George Mason for, I don't know, a year. I think a, a year. And my, And I was still living at my home at the time, and I didn't wanna be there anymore. I did not want to be there anymore. And I moved to Connecticut, which is where one of my aunts lived. She lived in Kent, Connecticut. Gorgeous little town, covered bridges, I mean, right out of storybooks. And I went to school at WestConn, so I went to Western Connecticut State University. I drove to Danbury and went to school there. Still had psychology as my major. And then after I'd been there for one semester, my car blew up, for real. And, so,

Caroline 18:53

How does that happen?

Deidre Beacham 18:54

I'm not sure.

Caroline 18:55

Blow up is a diff- it's not like my car died. It's not like my car stopped working.

Deidre Beacham 18:59

Yeah. It blew up, fire, everything. Yeah, so I, I don't remember... I, I really... There's so many things that, bad stuff I just kind of, like, block, and so I know it happened,

Caroline 19:11

Oh, I get it.

Deidre Beacham 19:12

I don't remember the ucky, yucky details.

Caroline 19:15

Wow

Deidre Beacham 19:17

I came back to Virginia and, I went, I think I went back to Mason. That sounds right. I went back to Mason. And, And yeah, my, at that point my mom left my dad, and so I lived with my dad, for a little bit, and then I, fell in love and moved to Florida.

Caroline 19:43

had you finished school?

Deidre Beacham 19:45

No, no, When I went, got down to Florida, I applied to go to florida Central University, FCU. I applied to go to FCU.

Caroline 19:55

There we go.

Deidre Beacham 19:55

And, for one reason or another it didn't work out. Ended up moving my, my boyfriend, and at that point we had become, he had become my fiancé. We moved to North Carolina, to Hickory, North Carolina. And then from there I moved to... I left him and I moved to San Diego, I changed my major to computer science.

Caroline 20:21

Interesting.

Deidre Beacham 20:22

Yeah

Caroline 20:22

like w- were you also working? Did you choose any sort of like jobs to do or how did that, how did that all work out?

Deidre Beacham 20:30

in high school I worked at McDonald's, and when I went to Connecticut, I worked at Stosh's Ice Cream and Sweet Shop, and that was really yummy. It was... They got the best ice cream. It was handmade in the back. It was awesome, and he made all these sweets, and that's where I learned that people use different words for different things in different parts of the country, and that was fascinating to me. So I remember the first time somebody came in and was like, "Yeah, I'll get a scoop of," uh, whatever the ice cream was, "and, and some jimmies." I'm like, "What the fuck is a jimmie?"

Caroline 21:05

Yeah.

Deidre Beacham 21:06

Black spri- chocolate sprinkles.

Caroline 21:08

Oh,

Deidre Beacham 21:09

Yeah.

Caroline 21:10

Poor

Deidre Beacham 21:10

Isn't that that crazy? Yeah. Um, when I moved back, I went back to work for McDonald's again, and, after that I worked for Giant Foods. While I was at Mason, I worked at Giant Foods, and that was a good job. That was... I enjoyed that job. It was good pay. Yeah, and they worked around my college schedule, so it was, it was great.

Caroline 21:31

That's nice. And then what was the draw to San Diego?

Deidre Beacham 21:37

You know, beach blanket bingo. Um,

Caroline 21:44

Okay. I'm loving this conversation, by the way. Like, I am fascinated by people's stories and their answers, and but this is like, I am here for it. Tell me, Deidre, about Beach Blanket

Deidre Beacham 21:59

So when I,

Caroline 22:00

and how a East Coast girl who rode horses in the mountains had gone down to Florida, just like so casually these things come out, and then San Diego, you are now switching from psychology to computer science, and somehow there's Beach Blanket Bingo. Do

Deidre Beacham 22:18

Yeah. So when I was, when I was growing up on the farm, my great-grandmother was living with us, Jessie Hug. Horrible woman. And she,

Caroline 22:29

Her name is Hug though. Did she hug?

Deidre Beacham 22:31

Yeah, I don't recall any warm hugs from her, no.

Caroline 22:36

Okay.

Deidre Beacham 22:37

Makes a lot of things in my family make sense that that was the patriarch of the family. But yeah, horrible person. But she, she did have fascinating stories. I recognized at one point, I can't remember why, I was still very young, but I recognized at one point that she had value in stories, because of the time that she had lived in. I mean, she was born in 1898. She, you know, lived through the Great Depression, and she was living in New York. And so I asked... I remember when I was a kid asking her questions. This is relevant to the Beach Blanket Bingo at some point. Um, but we were, you know, I was asking her questions about the Great Depression and being alive during the Great Depression, and she was talking about, you know, walking down the street one day and somebody just jumped out of a, jumped out of a, you know, I don't know, 30 story tall building and plummeted to his death in front of her. She talked about what a terrible time it was and, it was, fascinating just listening to all the stories. But she would watch Lawrence Welk, and she would watch, these old movies during the day, and she would watch, things like Beach Blanket Bingo. I've always just loved that.

Caroline 23:46

Oh, is that a movie?

Deidre Beacham 23:46

It is, it's a movie.

Caroline 23:47

like there's some sort...

Deidre Beacham 23:48

Beach Blanket Bingo is a movie, and I remember watching it, and she used to watch all kinds of movies with Doris Day, and, but anyway. And, and I remember just being fascinated with, you know, the, these growing... You know, people were on surfboards, and there was sun and, and palm trees, and I just never seen anything like it. And my, my mom had, you know, again, from earlier, she had divorced my father, and she had Oh, she had, uh, one really horrible relationship and then she jumped into another horrible relationship who she's with now, and she is, uh, she had moved out to s- La Jolla with him. And so I thought, "Well, I'll go out and visit my mom and check out San Diego." I'd always wanted to check it out. Went out there and I was out for... I guess it was on my second day, I took a drive up to Laguna, which is absolutely stunning, and I drove up the coastline, the PCH, and I got up to Laguna and sat on the side of a cliff watching the water crash into the shore. And I was overcome or overwhelmed with this knowing that I had to move there. Not this is a nice desire or this would be a cool place to be, but you have to move here. So I went home and I thought, "This is a really weird thing," and I sold a whole bunch of stuff, moved into this house, in Hickory, North Carolina. I moved into this house with a friend of mine, Scott, and it had no heat, no stove. It did have a fridge, and so I learned how to cook everything on a grill. And,

Caroline 25:43

But did you have a real bathroom?

Deidre Beacham 25:45

Yeah, it was a real bathroom. Yeah, it was a real bathroom. Yeah, real bathroom, yeah.

Caroline 25:48

You're on one hand you're like, "Hey, I

Deidre Beacham 25:50

I could do that.

Caroline 25:52

It's not a barn with six poles.

Deidre Beacham 25:54

Yeah.

Caroline 25:54

this.

Deidre Beacham 25:54

That was when I learned what a ceramic heater was, and so I bought my first ceramic heater, because that heated the room that it was in. And, uh, first time I ever took a shower with icicles on the walls. Uh, it got that cold in the house. And, but yeah, saved up enough money to move out to California. And, Yeah, and so I moved out there, and it was, that was an interesting, interesting trip.

Caroline 26:21

Okay, so then you go to San Diego and then you start going to school there, but like were you now an out-of-state resident or how,

Deidre Beacham 26:30

I waited until I'd been there for a year so I'd get in-state residency for school.

Caroline 26:35

Okay.

Deidre Beacham 26:35

And, uh, and yeah, so I went to, San Diego State University. And, and then I and then I joined the cult, unbeknownst to me that it was a cult, but I, I went... So h- how that happened, let me just, let me just share how that happened because that's kind of a weird thing.

Caroline 26:52

Do

Deidre Beacham 26:52

Yeah.

Caroline 26:53

And did you finish, college? Like, did you get a degree?

Deidre Beacham 26:56

No, Although I've taken at least six years of, of college.

Caroline 27:00

Absolutely.

Deidre Beacham 27:01

At least six full years.

Caroline 27:03

So, all right, so do tell the, this, and then I joined a cult.

Deidre Beacham 27:07

Yeah. So it's kind of weird how it happened, which it should be. It should be weird that you join a cult, and the way you join it should be weird. But,

Caroline 27:15

And did you knowingly join?

Deidre Beacham 27:16

So, I had made a friend. I was working for Century Furniture, a Hickory, you know, it used to be the furniture manufacturing capital. And High Point is where they sell the furniture. This was in Hickory. And, my boss, who I just adored, ended up getting breast cancer, and so she had six lumps in one breast and seven in the other, and I was just devastated. "Oh my gosh, this, this woman's gonna die now," and I just adored her. And, I went out one night praying to a God I didn't believe in, 'cause I, I didn't believe in God and I didn't believe in... I just thought the Bible is just a bunch of rules for people that don't know how to live their life who need a rule book. And that it was just a way to control society.

Caroline 28:07

When you were growing up, did your parents have any sort of religious...

Deidre Beacham 28:11

No, but, but we lived, we lived in the little house in Flint Hill. We lived next to a gas station, which was next to a church, and so I used to walk over to the church on Sundays to go to Sunday school. But I, I didn't like it, so I stopped.

Caroline 28:28

Okay.

Deidre Beacham 28:29

But yeah, so I was praying to the God I didn't believe in. I'm like, "If you're real, like, make her better. Really, just, just make her better." And if, I mean, fuck, like two days later she went and got a- another opinion. Turns out it's just some fibrous thing. She's fine. She's not gonna die.

Caroline 28:47

Ah.

Deidre Beacham 28:48

I was mad. I was so mad because I'm like, Well, maybe it's true then. I- I'm like, "Okay, so I'll go, I'll go, I'll go and I'll find a church, but I'm not going if you're not there." I mean, if you're real, I mean, I need to see you there, right? I need to see you." And so, like, the first few I checked out, they were horrible, just horrible churches, and, you know, just piousness and ugh. So, then, I, I had been dating this guy, Lance, I was dating this guy, and, nice guy, and then I went over to his house one day, and I found out, oh, wow, Lance, you and your family are bigots, and I wasn't gonna do that anymore. So we broke up

Caroline 29:37

How did that come out? Like just conversation, just the things that,

Deidre Beacham 29:40

Oh, it was just so obvious. I mean, just some of the things they were saying. Uh, I probably heard the N-word at some point. I, I don't remember. Again, I block this stuff out. I just remember it

Caroline 29:49

Right.

Deidre Beacham 29:50

Remember that I was horrified and that

Caroline 29:54

Yeah.

Deidre Beacham 29:55

I could not be with this person. I just wasn't raised that way. And, so we broke up. Anyway, it had been months and he contacts me and wants to know, if I wanna go to church with him. What? No. And, and then one day he was like, "Hey, so what you doing tonight?" See, and it was really easy to say no to him for church on Sunday because I was a scuba diver, so Sunday you could get scuba diving equipment really, really cheap. That was like half-price rentals, and so I was going scuba diving on Sundays. I was not going to church. So,

Caroline 30:30

And you picked this up, because of the, like from being there, or had you ever scuba dove,

Deidre Beacham 30:35

When I was growing up on the farm, we'd go to this, South Wales. It was the name of a swimming pool. It was called South Wales. And I actually was in a, inner tube once with a bunch of people, and the inner tube flipped over, and I got stuck under the water. My legs were up in the tube, and the, like the, the w- I could see air. The air was right there, and, and I couldn't get my head, and I almost drowned. And, so I was terrified to put my head under the water, absolutely terrified. But the idea of scuba diving was fascinating to me. So I would go out in La Jolla, I would go out to the shores, and I'd swim out, and I would force myself, hyperventilating, just hyperventilating, and I would force myself to go under the water, and I'd immediately pop back up 'cause I was so scared. But I eventually was able to get to the point where I was like, "Okay, I could probably do this scuba diving test." Because the scuba diving test, I took PADI, P-A-D-I. I took PADI scuba diving, and the last test that you take, at least in San Diego, is they take you down, like a good 30 feet down, and then you get in a circle, and then you don't know when it's gonna happen, but somebody walks behind you and rips your mask off. Um, and you have to figure out, you know, so your nose is exposed. You still have your regulator in your mouth. They don't take everything away. You know, but I had, still had my regulator in my mouth, but my nose is exposed, your eyes are exposed, and then they hand you your mask, and you have to put your mask back on, empty all the water out of your mask, and then you pass, and you have to do all that without panicking.

Caroline 32:19

How do you empty water out of your mask?

Deidre Beacham 32:20

Yeah, so what you do is you lift the mask,

Caroline 32:23

Cause you're in the water.

Deidre Beacham 32:24

And you lift the mask slightly and you blow into the mask.

Caroline 32:32

With what? With?

Deidre Beacham 32:33

Yeah.

Caroline 32:34

Or,

Deidre Beacham 32:34

So you're breathing, so you're breathing in through your... you have to teach yourself how to breathe in through your mouth, through the regulator, and then blow out your nose.

Caroline 32:43

And you have to displace all,

Deidre Beacham 32:45

And eventually, you

Caroline 32:46

Wow.

Deidre Beacham 32:47

Just comes down, and then eventually you just have this little tiny bit of water, and you seal your mask, and you pass.

Caroline 32:56

Okay.

Deidre Beacham 32:56

So that's, yeah, so that's why I was scuba diving on Sundays. Uh, so one day he called me up, and he's like, "Hey, so what you doing tonight?" And it was a Wednesday. I thought, well, that's safe. I'm like, "Nah, nothing." He's like, "Hey, why don't you come to church with me?" Okay. He got me and he's like, "I'll come pick you up." I'm like, "No, I will drive. I will, I will follow you. You're not, you're not picking me up." And, When I got there, I just, so many... They were so happy. I mean, it was just like, like weirdly happy people. Weirdly happy people. But I'll tell you what took all of the weirdness away, 'cause again, remember I told God that I had to see Him. And this man, who was a bigot. This guy named Ish yells to him, "Lance." "Ish." And they come together and hug. And I was like,

Caroline 33:58

What's here? What's this?

Deidre Beacham 34:00

I think I just saw God.

Caroline 34:07

Wait, God was ish?

Deidre Beacham 34:10

'Cause he's a Black man. He was a very, very dark, dark, dark man from Trinidad. Very, very dark man. And Lance hugged him like he was his best friend in the whole wide world, and it was real. It was real. This bigoted man hugged this very dark man, and it was real. And I was sold. I was like, "I, I need to learn more about this church evidently." Um, yeah. I didn't know they had just been just been on 20/20. In-

Caroline 34:43

Like we're talking a real cult.

Deidre Beacham 34:44

Investigated on 20/20. Yeah, it's a real thing, yeah. They were being investigated for their indications of being a cult, the control of the members, and the subjugation of women.

Caroline 34:59

Interesting. And so you unknowingly are just going. Now you think you see God because this guy you had dated that you decided not to date 'cause his family was bigots just hugged a very dark-skinned man, and they're all really happy. And you're like, "I don't know, but I think I want what they've got.

Deidre Beacham 35:18

Yeah.

Caroline 35:18

There's a song that's in the, that, like, I don't know, in some of the hymnals, and it's be like, "And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love." Yeah, right? And like, it- so it's kinda like I- sometimes I'm thinking like, "Ooh, I don't know that, like, okay, outwardly in public, I still don't know that, like, anybody would know what I believe based on my love. I'm not sure." But it always kinda like just this fascination of like, wow, how could I get to be like that, that somebody would want what I had or have? Or how could I be so joyful in the midst of stuff? But yet, here you go and you experience an entire room full of really joyful people, and you're not sure what they have, but it seems, like, very intriguing.

Deidre Beacham 36:06

Very intriguing.

Caroline 36:06

You didn't know it was a cult, so how... So, but you just keep going, then you find you're in a cult, then how do you leave a cult? Like, what?

Deidre Beacham 36:15

Yeah, that's where I met my husband, so yeah. I,

Caroline 36:18

So this, this guy wasn't your husband, but he led you to your husband? Lance?

Deidre Beacham 36:23

Nope.

Caroline 36:23

Right?

Deidre Beacham 37:04

So I ended up meeting Sean, in that church and, Yeah. Yeah, I was there. I was part of that church for about eight years.

Caroline 37:16

Wow.

Deidre Beacham 37:17

It affected a big part of me. Yeah

Caroline 37:22

Then how did you or when did you realize something's not right here or that you didn't wanna be part, and was it just you realizing that or you and Sean realizing, like, "We gotta get out of here"?

Deidre Beacham 37:36

No, Sean really never said anything about getting out of there. But they did, they had a, what they called a reconstruction, and that's because the cult leader, Kip McKean, he ended up either being forced out or I think he was forced out, from leadership, and when that happened, it was like a domino effect, of people going, "Well, yeah, I'm not happy about this shit either, and I'm not happy about this, and I don't like how you guys do this." And so they had what they called a, a reconstruction, and it basically where everybody, went back through Bible studies, and there were confessions. It was just a whole thing, and at the same time that that was all happening, Sean and I had decided that we wanted to move to North Carolina, and we'd been talking about it for a while, moving. I missed the East Coast. I missed it desperately. I missed the seasons. San Diego is boringly beautiful. It really is just boringly beautiful. Yeah, I'm not sure what they, what they pay the, why they pay the weather people. I mean, it's like, "Hey, welcome to San Diego. It's gonna be a beautiful mid-70s today and tomorrow and the next day after that. Have a great day." I'm not sure why they paid them. I j- I just don't know. It was, it was gorgeous all the time. It just hardly ever rained at all. All the water's imported. Water's very expensive there because there is no water. And, yeah, so like here, you, you go down the grocery aisle, and it's like sodas. There's sodas here, and you might have this little water section. We had the whole row, both sides, water. And out in front... It was a real th- there's no water in San Diego, so out in, in front of the stores, And the water is so horrible 'cause they have to treat it so much, and, like-

Caroline 39:24

Yeah, because it's, like, close to Mex- So for those, for those of you at home, here's what I learned 'cause I went and visited San Diego, and, number one, there's a little island, out,

Deidre Beacham 39:34

Coronado.

Caroline 39:34

Not far from San Diego, w- Coronado, where Navy SEALs train. And, um, but apparently the water is so close to Mexico and they just dump their sewage into the water that now all the water in the ocean by San Diego is just basically sewage water. And even these Navy SEALs who are trying to defend us and be really great, they end up getting, like, horrible sicknesses from training in that water.

Deidre Beacham 39:58

Yeah. I used to dive in,

Caroline 40:00

Interesting.

Deidre Beacham 40:03

I wanted to move to North Carolina. We had already visited and found out we kinda, we really liked the area around Cary and Apex. And, and then we were thinking about selling our house, and then one night, it was about 10 o'clock at night, we're sitting on the couch, and we hear pew, pew And I looked at him, I said, "Is that a gun?" Should we be on the floor? And then the shooting stops and we hear slamming doors and a car peel out. That was the road out in front of our house. And then I'm getting up to call the police and we see helicopter lights, and there's helicopter lights and there... And then the police come and knock on our door, and when I open up the door, there's another cop, and he's doing this with his flashlight on the side of the house. And he's asking me what we heard, and I told him what we heard. And I said, "Excuse me." I said, "But what is he doing?" And he says, "He's looking for bullet holes, ma'am." That was the side where my son slept. And I just thought, I can't do this.

Caroline 41:25

Is, this. is like Cary or Apex? Or where is this??

Deidre Beacham 41:26

Diego. No, this is San Diego.

Caroline 41:28

Oh, San Diego. Okay.

Deidre Beacham 41:30

No, this is San Diego, and so that was when we decided, all right, we're putting the house up now. Let's, let's go. Let's go. And then we ended up in, Apex, North Carolina. Yeah. So that's how that happened.

Caroline 41:45

Wow, that's fascinating. Okay. And what were you doing for work these days?

Deidre Beacham 41:50

At that point, when I moved here, where I ended up was working for a produce acquisition and distribution company called L&M Companies, and I was in the AP department.

Caroline 42:07

And then what happened?

Deidre Beacham 42:09

I was put in charge of the, there was one, there was one business, and we had satellite offices, and I was working at headquarters, and one of the satellite offices was, down in New Mexico. And, they were considered the black sheep of the company. And they're like, "Deidre, you take 'em." And so I took over, and they were very suspicious of me. You know, "Who are you? Who are you?" And I was trying to figure out why, why were they the black sheep? What was going on? Well, I built up a relationship with them, found out that the reason there was so much animosity between them and the headquarters was because nobody ever took the time or bothered to learn how to say their names. And, all of them, English was a second language, and they just would not pronounce their names correctly, and they just decided, "Well, I'm just gonna call you Jackie," or, "I'm just gonna call you Sue," instead of saying their real names. And, so all I did was learn their names and say them properly, and I learned some Spanish. I didn't know any Spanish before then, and I, I, I learned some Spanish so I could speak to them. And I found out that, the salesperson there was doing some things that are very illegal. Actually illegal, like internationally illegal. So I went to the boss and told him about that, and, it, I, they weren't gonna do anything. And I got very disenfranchised by this, and I did what any very eagerly English writer would do, and I, I started writing an underground newspaper. I do not recommend this. I do not recommend writing an inter- an underground newspaper in your corporation that you work for. And I did. It was very funny. Um, they had a, they had their own newsletter that,

Caroline 44:06

Did you publish this or you just wrote it?

Deidre Beacham 44:08

I wrote it and I distributed it. I had my own distribution channel. And, um, so they had their own p- uh, their own, it was called, um, what was it called? Something Grapes. Anyway, I can't remember, and so I called mine Sour Grapes. It was all, like my boss was one of the people it got distributed to. I mean, she just thought it was hilarious, and it was very funny, and I just told little stories about things that was going, that were going on in the office. It entertained me very, very much until the day that I got called into HR. And, yeah, HR was there with my boss, and she was just like, "You can't..." And I didn't tell on her. I didn't tell her. It was, "You've been, you've been one of my..." You know, I didn't, you know. I was just like, "Oh, okay. This is the end of that." So lost my job, but that's how I got into sales. I ended up getting a, I thought-

Caroline 45:04

The sour grapes turned into juice?

Deidre Beacham 45:07

yeah. And so I, I ended up working for a company that, did cold calls. So they cold called for companies. So big companies would, with outside sales teams, would hire us to make phone calls into companies and qualify leads, and then we'd hand off the leads to the sales reps. And so that's what I did. I made cold calls. I was a cold caller.

Caroline 45:30

and cold calling was okay even though you had to like, 'cause you had this like people try to say like, "What are you doing with your face?" when you're little, and then there was this kind of like a little bit of a view of like you're not necessarily trying to be out in front of people, but yet cold calling is just a

Deidre Beacham 45:44

It's just a phone call.

Caroline 45:47

That alleviated some of the being out,

Deidre Beacham 45:51

It did.

Caroline 45:52

Did.

Deidre Beacham 45:52

It did. it was very educational. Bec- I was very good at it. And then I thought, well... 'Cause I'm never satisfied. I, I just have to, like, learn more, do more. And so I went to my boss and I'm like, "This is a great service. It- we do a great job. I'd like to sell it. I'd like to sell it." And she says, "Well, why don't you g- get some sales training?" "Sure." And so I went and I got some sales training, and then I realized, So I went on my first, my first big sales call. I'd done a bunch of different little sales, and then I ended up getting, through LinkedIn, I ended up getting an interview with, or a sales, sales talk conversation with one of the VPs with Bowe Bell+ Howell. And, I walked in. I thought I was just meeting with the VP. Just the VP. No problem. And I've got my sales presentation, I'm all set, and he's like, "Hey, we're gonna go and meet in this other room." I went, "Okay." So I walk in and there's, like, 15 people sitting around this table. I was so scared. Like immediately I was just like shaking and it was horrible. And, somehow I ended up getting that contract. I don't know how because I don't remember the presentation, but evidently I did well enough. I ended up with that deal. And I thought, "I need to learn how to be up in front of people." So I joined Toastmasters to try and get over my fear and, and then I went from that to, "Hey, how about if... I wonder if I could produce my own radio show." So I ended up getting a radio show with, WCOM in Chapel Hill, Carrboro And I had my own show called, Three Steps Forward, and I interviewed people. Every week I interviewed somebody from North Carolina and somebody from around the world. And I did that for a year and that was fascinating. Taught me a lot about, how everybody is just a person. There's nothing...

Caroline 47:59

Yeah.

Deidre Beacham 48:00

You know, these people that I sat and admired and, and thought were untouchable, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, it's just a person. It's, it's just a person." We're all just people. You know, I was interviewing people that were on TV and, and, you know, they were brought, being brought in as, as experts on different programs, and I was interviewing them. And so it was fun. I enjoyed that. But it really taught me a lot and got me up in front of people, and then I became a speaker.

Caroline 48:26

How did you get the radio show?

Deidre Beacham 48:29

So it's, it's just, it's community radio. So I just went in and I proposed what I wanted to do, and they said, "Sure. Come in for training." And my training was, I walked in and I walked- and the guy that was leaving's like, "Okay, you're coming on next." I'm like, "Yeah, but I need training." And he's like, "Oh, well, this is on, this is off, this is this." And then he walked out, that was my training. So it was definitely, training by fire. But yeah. And so I had that show and that was fun. First couple days were hard, but then it was a lot of fun.

Caroline 49:06

Okay, and then you got into speaking and then what happened?

Deidre Beacham 49:11

I spoke, in a lot of different places. I ended up, starting my own company. Before that, because I had gotten this big contract, I went back to the person who had trained me and I said, "You're awesome." Because I lost the job after I got that big contract, and my boss was like, "Oh, don't bring any more big contracts in, 'cause I'm gonna have to get a bigger building." And I don't want that." So I went back to the sales guy, and I was like, "You're really good, and what you teach is really good." And I loved the fact that it was ethical sales and, no manipulation, no tricks, no gimmicks, and I loved that, and I thought that was really cool. And I said, "Look, I'd like to work with you." And he's like, "Well, I'm not hiring." And I said, "Well, how about if I work for you for free for a month? I'll work for you for free, and then you can decide whether you want me to stay or not." So I ended up working with him for several years. I learned a lot. I ended up developing a program for teaching sales using video. And my business partner, he was like, "You know, YouTube's a fad." So I was like, "Eh, I don't think it is. So I'm gonna put this together and start teaching it." And then we came up with a deal that whatever programs I created, I could take my intellectual property with me as long as I left a copy for him to sell. So, which was fine with me. I was just happy to have my intellectual property. And so after, after a while, I thought, "I wanna do this all by myself." And so that was when I got out on my own, and I started my own company, and I started a company called The BuzzBuilder.

Caroline 50:52

Okay, so then what happened?

Deidre Beacham 50:56

Oh my gosh, having your own business, you just grow so much, and I grew a ton. And in my growing and in all the networking I did, I mean, I spoke at all the chambers, um, um, and I, I spoke at community colleges, and I ended up speaking to the National Association of Professional Organizers up in Cleveland, Ohio.

Caroline 51:21

Oh,

Deidre Beacham 51:21

So I was doing a lot of speaking and, growing, and my husband wasn't growing and didn't understand how I was growing and how... And I felt like, I felt very much like one day I was trying to picture it in my head, and I felt very much like I had been a bird in a cage for a really long time, and now the cage door was open and I had been flying around. And I felt like every time I flew, that my husband would just grab me and clip one of my wings, and, and that's how it felt, and it was really discouraging and frustrating. And so yeah, so at, 18 years, I was on my way to go get a, a card for our 18th wedding anniversary, and I remember thinking, "18 years I don't think I can do this for another 18 In fact, I know I can't." And it was such a sinking feeling because I come from a divorced family. My parents were divorced. My grandmother had been divorced. Everybody I knew was divorced. And I didn't want that to be my story. And I realized in that moment that it was probably gonna be my story. I went home and I told my husband that we needed couples therapy, and he's like, "No, we're smart. We can figure this out." And, our divorce was finalized the day after our 20th wedding anniversary But by then I was in love with my wife.

Caroline 53:07

I'm,

Deidre Beacham 53:08

This is a crazy story.

Caroline 53:09

I'm loving it.

Deidre Beacham 53:10

My life is a crazy story.

Caroline 53:13

But

Deidre Beacham 53:15

Mm.

Caroline 53:15

I think it's an awesome

Deidre Beacham 53:16

Mm.

Caroline 53:17

that you're, like, your, your life is full of, bits of twists and turns that have helped you to become the awesome person,

Deidre Beacham 53:24

Oh, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I, I love the direction that my life is in now. I've always enjoyed the direction. I haven't necessarily enjoyed parts of the ride, but i've always been excited about the next thing. What is the next thing?

Caroline 53:39

So somewhere along the way you realize there's this, like, this nice girl conditioning.

Deidre Beacham 53:45

Mm.

Caroline 53:45

Had been part of the story that you had been playing or allowing people to see for quite some time. And in your growth and your own ability to, like, fly freely without your wings being clipped, you realize, you know what? I'm gonna let that go.

Deidre Beacham 54:03

Yeah, It wasn't, it wasn't until So my, my wife and I got married. We moved down to Florida. We were living in Palm Bay, Florida, and when I was down in Palm Bay, Florida, I ended up going through menopause. And if you haven't been through menopause, and if you haven't been through menopause, for anybody listening, it makes you feel like you're losing your damn mind. And I was talking, I was telling an older friend of mine who had gone through menopause, I was like, "Oh my gosh, I feel like I was moving my mind- my mind." She's like, "That's because you were. Didn't you know? Didn't anybody tell you?" No, nobody told me that that's what happens when you go through menopause. I, I didn't know that. And so o- on top of that, my mask fell off. I didn't know at the time I was neurodivergent. I didn't know. I didn't know that when you go through menopause, your mask falls off. It just blows up and into pieces, and you don't know, I didn't know how to operate without my mask. I didn't know how to put it back together. I didn't know how to put it back on. And I was an emotional mess. My nervous system was shot, and, I didn't know what to do. And so I started reaching for things that I never thought I'd reach for because I had been through therapy. I mean, I'd been through so much therapy, so many therapists, and I've had some interesting names for therapists, right? I had Dr. Worm, Dr. Hurts, and my, my therapist right now is Dr. Pain. So I, you can't make this shit up, right? You can't. You can't make this shit up. So anyway, So I've been through a lot of therapy. I had read so many self-help books, again, voracious reader. Through so many self-help books. I'd been through coaches, and yet still here I was falling apart, and my brain telling me, "You know, you're stupid," or, "You..." You know, "What's wrong with you?" And, and my mental brain going, "Well, no, I... You're really smart. You know you're smart. Why are you thinking these things?" And I, I couldn't change the thoughts that I was hearing even though I'd had all these years of therapy, and it was... And so I started reaching for something I never would have before, which was Woo. I thought, "Well, nothing else has worked, so I'm gonna do Woo." Again, a god I didn't believe in. So Woo was my new god.

Caroline 56:23

Yeah.

Deidre Beacham 56:24

I mean, I learned about somatics. I learned about how you can reprogr- program your brain, and I thought, "Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna program it to things I want it to say." And so I worked with a hypnotherapist, and I worked with her, and I said, "You know, I, I wanna think different things." And so she created a hypnotherapy tape for me. I learned about Solfeggio frequencies and, about how you can... They actually align up with chakras and, and then can align up with different things that you wanna work on in yourself and that you can utilize the frequencies to help things to be activated more quickly. And it changed my life. But the, the nice girl thing came right after that. I was in my early 50s and I was talking to my stepfather, who's a, I believe very strongly is a narcissist. And he said something to me, and immediately everything inside, it was like programming. It was like all of this programming just kicked in and, and suddenly I was subservient and small. All these amazing things I'd done in my life, all the space I had taken up, and in front of this man, I became really small. And I thought, "What is this? What, what is this?" And he said I wasn't, I wasn't being nice. And there was, there was a part of me that just felt so crushed by that because I had grown up always being one of the nicest women in the room. And that moment, it did something to me and I thought, "There's gotta be... That's, that's not right because I am a, I am a very... I'm a really kind person. I'm a very, very kind... I'm a thoughtful person. I, I'm very, very thoughtful, and I, I'm, I'm very empathetic, and here's this person telling me that I'm not nice and what a horrible person I am and what a horrible example I am." And I realized that there was subconsciously I believed him. That subconsciously I was still under that needing to be nice for other people, that I needed that badge. And that was when I thought, "Wow, I've gotta make a delineation between being nice and being kind, and I don't need to be nice." Because nice is... Nice to me at that point, kinda like the good girl. There are some people that grew up, you know, "Oh, you're such a good girl." Well, for me, it was nice. And so, you know, that whole nice thing was, to me, it's all about outside validation. You know, you're validating that I'm nice. I can only be nice because you're telling me that. So, but kind, to me was a switch. Instead of focusing outward, instead focusing on, "Okay, I love me. I love me more than the validation you're gonna give me. I love me. I protect me, so here are my boundaries, and my boundaries are for me to enforce, not for you. That's, that's not your problem until I tell you that's my boundary, and then if you cross it, we're gonna have a problem." So it really put me in a different place, where I was getting validation from myself rather than validation from outside, and that was when I came up with the acronym for NICE and KIND. So NICE is not in conscious existence, 'cause then you're just running by the program that you've had, and it just matched up with my life. You know, I'd... In the, in my 50s realizing I was still being run by a program, That was in my head. And so KIND is keeping integrity and necessary defiance. So when I have my own boundary and I've told you my boundary and you step over it, well, then there's... You're going to experience necessary defiance

Caroline 1:00:37

Hmm.

Deidre Beacham 1:00:38

It's necessary for me to protect myself and to keep my boundaries in place and intact because I love myself more than I need your validation. So that's where that came from. It came very late, but I think it took all of those things to happen for it to happen because I'd been in a patriarchal marriage, a religious marriage, because I had been in a controlled religion, because I grew up with a family that was all about following the rules and you know, children shouldn't be heard. And very much I needed the straight A's, and I needed the validation. I craved it. I absolutely craved it. And, but I was trained that way

Caroline 1:01:24

And so then you have this revelation realization, you know what? I'm actually good. I am good to my core and I don't care what you think about me. That's your business.

Deidre Beacham 1:01:33

Yeah.

Caroline 1:01:34

I'm not gonna go pretend to try to do something for you to say I'm nice or you to say I'm fitting in. You remove the mask now you have this message and then you, now that's one of the things that you help people with and share in one of the messages from stages. But like tell a little bit more like and how did this into the ways you help people now?

Deidre Beacham 1:01:58

I realized as I was going through it that perfectionism, self-sabotage, and imposter syndrome all stemmed from needing outside validation. And, that was when I thought, "Wow, really, if you really look at it, it's a matter of helping women to understand the nice girl training that they've had." And if they understand the nice girl training they've had, and then utilize these methodologies to move away from that, and to stop being run by routines, and instead have sovereignty and ownership of who they are, and recognition that they don't need to be inside of these systems to be successful, the systems of thinking. I realized it was all tied together, and so I thought, "Well, I don't help people with self-sabotage. I help them with nice girl training," which fixes self-sabotage, which fixes, you know, perfectionism. 'Cause that's all perfectionism is, right? You're trying to get it perfect because you need it to be perfect for someone else so that you can get that validation back. So then I thought, "Wow, I wanna, I wanna teach this all the time, rather than just behind my camera," 'cause I was a videographer at the time. And I thought, I wanna teach this- I think this needs to be taught everywhere. I think this is something women need to be aware of. Now, and there's a lot of women that are aware. There's a lot of women that don't, that, that have moved past this at that point. But for somebody who has had some of the issues and gone through some of the things that I've gone through Oh, and then coming out. Oh my gosh, coming out of the closet and then losing, I mean, just instantly within 24 hours, losing 300 people, 300 connections on Facebook. Having that kind of rejection and judgment placed upon you for what? For being me? Yeah, that was, that was hard. So it's, it's something I feel very strongly that for whatever reason I've been put in this place to have gone through all of those things: a high-control religion, a high-control, family, narcissism, a high-control marriage, and then coming out of the closet. All of those things were very big things to go through, and so for whatever reason I've had those experiences, so why not? It just feels like, feels very much like this is something I am called to do, to be able to get that message out to people, and help women to overcome stuff that was just incredibly difficult for me.

Caroline 1:04:43

Hmm. So how do people find you? How do they work with you now? If this is something that's resonated with some people listening, how can they learn more and work with you?

Deidre Beacham 1:04:54

So my website is Deidrebeacham.com, and I have a workshop that I do once a month. It's called Visible Now. That is available on that website. I also have something that I call the Nice Girl Index, where you can go in and you can take a self-assessment, and at the end of it, it'll not only tell you a little bit more about yourself and where you stand in your healing journey out of niceness, and not into meanness, but into kindness, right? And I'm creating a group right now. I've, I've been doing a lot of one-on-one, and my... I remember going through it at the time and being very frustrated that I couldn't afford the help I wanted. And so I am currently actually actively pursuing a job that will help me to pay my bills and then have a group that I can do at a lower cost, 'cause I wouldn't have to rely on it to, for me to, have a living. And, and yeah. So I'm starting a group,

Caroline 1:06:01

That's beautiful.

Deidre Beacham 1:06:01

Thank you.

Caroline 1:06:02

And now from this vantage point, how do you define authentic success for you?

Deidre Beacham 1:06:09

Oh, for me? Wow. Well, I think, I think that the ability for me to be myself and have this conversation with you and not have another voice inside of my head going, "Okay, can you say that right thing? Is that the thing you're supposed to be saying? Is it, did you just, did you just curse? Did you curse three times? How many times did you curse on this? Is... What are people thinking about you?" To not have that voice is so beautiful. To be able to just sit here and be authentically myself and not be concerned about whether some people are gonna like me or not. I know some people aren't gonna like me. I'm okay with that. But the more authentic I can be, and that's what I strive for, is to be as authentic as possible to whatever comes to me, that that's what I'm speaking out, that I'm not filtering and, hyper-fixating on, "Am I saying it perfectly?" The more I can do that, the more I can reach the people I'm supposed to reach. And so that to me is authentic success, is authentically being myself. Because the more I can do that, the more I can be earnest and honest about the shit storm I've lived through, that I'll be able to... Something in my story will trigger with somebody and go, "Oh my gosh, she's the person I've been looking for. And it's not because I've done some sales pitch, but because they want that. They want that same thing, to not have that voice that's always judging, to not have that voice that's always saying, "Well, you have to do things this way or that way." And again, not to be a radical rogue, right? But, but truly healing, and when I say that, I'm talking about radical self-acceptance, radical self-love, radical forgiveness, radical self-forgiveness. And in those things, you can get to a place where you not only love yourself so deeply that you protect yourself, but you also get to a point where you can see things in other people that you didn't realize before and, and love people. Like, I love my stepfather. He doesn't understand that. I love my stepfather. I don't wanna be near him. But I can still love him and appreciate who he is and the fact that he doesn't understand himself, and that he doesn't see himself the way I see him. But I can still love and appreciate him for who he is. He takes wonderful care of my mom. He takes fabulous care of my mom, and I don't need to be in his presence to love and appreciate him, because if I am in his presence, I'm not going to love and appreciate him.

Caroline 1:08:53

Hmm. I am just so in awe of your beautiful story. Thank you so

Deidre Beacham 1:08:59

much. Thank you.

Caroline 1:09:00

More about your journey, about your definition of authentic success, and for you just kind of living into who you are and sharing your beauty and your gifts in the world. I'm fortunate that we've, uh, gotten to know each other.

Deidre Beacham 1:09:12

I know. I love it. I love it.

Caroline 1:09:15

I'm, just excited to see and cheer you on, in this new phase and continuing to share your message with the world. But thank you for being on the podcast and

Deidre Beacham 1:09:24

Thank you. I feel very honored. I'm honored to have met you. I, you know, like I told you, one of my new favorite best people and, um, it was very entertaining. This was the most interesting podcast I've been on and some very interesting questions. I had a lot of fun,

Caroline 1:09:40

Thank you.

Deidre Beacham 1:09:40

Yeah.

Caroline 1:09:41

I get people are like, "I've never been asked that question." I'm just following my curiosity, 'cause I'm genuinely fascinated with how people, like, what people have gone through and how people have gotten to today, and then what? And then what's next? Like, I'm just literally, fascinated, but thank you so, so much.

Deidre Beacham 1:09:59

Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1:10:01

Thanks for listening to Your Next Success with Dr. Caroline Sangal. Remember, authentic success is yours to define and includes aligning your career to support the life you want.