60: Women’s Empowerment Month with Dr. Sonia Wright

In light of Women’s History Month this March, or Women’s Empowerment Month as my guest on the show this week calls it, I wanted to feature a conversation around how our socialization influences what we value in life, and how that impacts our self-concept and what we believe is possible.

Dr. Sonia Wright is returning to the podcast to talk all things self-empowerment. Dr. Sonia is a Master Certified life coach, pediatric radiologist, certified sex counselor, and host of The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™ podcast. We’re exploring how we are benefiting from the women who came before us and fought for what we have today, and how it’s now our time to step up. 

Join us as Dr. Sonia and I discuss what self-empowerment means, and the importance of actively giving ourselves permission as it relates to body acceptance, self-love, and embracing all the parts of us. Dr. Sonia shares all the ways women are unwittingly playing small, and how we can begin to build the intentional habit of giving ourselves permission to feel empowered.

Habits on Purpose with Kristi Angevine, MD | Women's Empowerment Month with Dr. Sonia Wright

In light of Women’s History Month this March, or Women’s Empowerment Month as my guest on the show this week calls it, I wanted to feature a conversation around how our socialization influences what we value in life, and how that impacts our self-concept and what we believe is possible.

Habits on Purpose with Kristi Angevine, MD | Women's Empowerment Month with Dr. Sonia Wright

Dr. Sonia Wright is returning to the podcast to talk all things self-empowerment. Dr. Sonia is a Master Certified life coach, pediatric radiologist, certified sex counselor, and host of The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™ podcast. We’re exploring how we are benefiting from the women who came before us and fought for what we have today, and how it’s now our time to step up.

Join us as Dr. Sonia and I discuss what self-empowerment means, and the importance of actively giving ourselves permission as it relates to body acceptance, self-love, and embracing all the parts of us. Dr. Sonia shares all the ways women are unwittingly playing small, and how we can begin to build the intentional habit of giving ourselves permission to feel empowered.

If you’re wondering how you can apply all the things I share on the podcast, join my Habits on Purpose small group coaching program! It starts in the summer of 2023, so if you’re interested in learning more, click here!

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If you find yourself curious about coaching even if you aren’t a woman physician and you’d like to connect, you can schedule a consult with me to discuss if we’re a good fit for your goals by clicking here!

What you'll learn from this episode:

  • Why Dr. Sonia refers to Women’s History Month as Women’s Empowerment Month. 
  • What self-empowerment means and why it is so important. 
  • How Dr. Sonia gives herself permission to embrace different aspects of herself. 
  • What we miss out on when we’re playing small by trying to conform. 
  • Where Dr. Sonia sees women struggling to give themselves permission.

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

Welcome to Episode #60. This is Kristi Angevine. In today's episode is an interview with Dr. Sonia Wright. Sonia is a Master Certified Life Coach, a pediatric radiologist, a certified sex counselor, and the host of the podcast Midlife Sex Coach for Women™. She's an all-around gorgeous, smart human. This interview is one where you can actually just feel us smiling through the sound waves, you can tell we're having so much fun.

Since March is Women's History Month, I wanted to do an episode featuring a conversation around how socialization influences what we value, and how that impacts our self-concept and what we think is possible for us. Sonia and I discuss self-empowerment and how we as women, benefiting from so much arduous work by the people who came before us, have the opportunity to now consider what we can do to make things better for the next generations.

Our conversation explored what self-empowerment means, and the importance of actively giving yourself permission as it relates to things like body acceptance, instead of shaming our bodies. And as it relates to self-love, and embracing all the different aspects of who you are. When it comes to habits and understanding why we do what we do, what we're discussing is a very intentional habit. I hope as you listen, you can identify things you can relate to, and you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Welcome to Habits On Purpose, a podcast for high-achieving women who want to create lifelong habits that give more than they take. You'll get practical strategies for mindset shifts that will help you finally understand the root causes of why you think, feel, and act as you do. And now, here's your host, Physician, and Master Certified Life Coach, Kristi Angevine.

Kristi: I am super excited. And I know I say that a lot when I have a guest on, but with this particular guest, I'm kind of giddy. Today I have Sonia Wright on the podcast. You’re my first person making a second interview on the podcast. So, it's really cool.

Dr. Sonia: I’m honored. We’re just going to laugh and joke and have a great time. So, I'm pretty happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me back.

Kristi: Of course, it's kind of my excuse to be able to get 20-30 minutes of undivided time with you. Because I'm, as you know, eager for that. Because I just adore you. So, for the people who know you, but you want to remind them of who you are, and the people who don't know you, can you just introduce yourself?

Dr. Sonia: Sure. I am Dr. Sonia Wright. I am The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™. I am a medical doctor, a pediatric radiologist. I am a sexual counselor, and I am a Master Certified Life Coach. I have worked in a sex toy store, so I kind of put all those together and I do sex coaching.

Kristi: I really want to know the statistics on how many pediatric radiologists have anything in common with you, in terms of your coaching and sex counseling. I think you've got to be the only person on the planet. Maybe there's one more, I don't know.

Dr. Sonia: There might be one or two more, right? It's kind of funny when there's this intersection of my radiology life and my sex coaching life. People are like, “Oh, I heard that there's a sex coach out there. And she's a pediatric radiologist,” they're like, “Wait, I think my husband just hired her.” Like, it's something like that happens. And then it's like the worlds collided into one. But most of the time, they're pretty separate. Most people that know me in one field don't necessarily know me doing the other work.

Kristi: Yeah. I have a similar, as you know, sort of big separation between clinical work. Often, in my personal life, a lot of my friends who are not coaches, they're not in my coaching world. And when they do sort of intersect, there's always something really interesting.

So, we talked a little bit, before we started, about what we're going to want to focus on. This podcast is coming out, for those who are listening in real time, it's coming out during March. Which is, Women's History Month. And you refer to it as Women's Empowerment Month, which of course you do, because of the work you do. I would love for you just to tell me a little bit more about why you call it Women's Empowerment Month.

Dr. Sonia: Well, I mean, it's always good to look back at history. I think that that's important. I think of history as the foundation, and then the question becomes, what are you going to do? These women came before you to give you access and a path and the ability to go forward. And so, take that and then go with it. And what are you going to do? How are you going to empower yourself, right?

Because if we're looking at the 1970s, when we couldn't even have a checking account in our own name, we couldn't buy a house in our own name, these women fought hard for our independence. And so, we don't take that for granted. We continue and we go forward so that the next generation has it easier and can do things that we couldn't necessarily do.

So, for me, I love the concept of empowerment, and it's self-empowerment. At some point, you have to get up and go. You can't wait for other people to give you permission, or to tell you it's okay to lead. That's what a lot of the grassroots kind of efforts and movements that have been out there. So yes, I definitely think of that.

I think of Our Bodies, Ourselves and how that whole movement and what an impact and a difference that it made in my life growing up and becoming a young woman in the 80s. But if they had not come before me… And now, these women are in their 70s and 80s, and they're still going, they're doing amazing things.

But it's now time for us, right? It's time for us. They're still continuing to do the work, but it is time for us and for the next generations to step up and do what needs to be done. So yes, I consider it empowerment. We've got the foundation with the history, and then what are we going to do with it?

Kristi: Right. That's the perfect question because when you think of all the advances that have been made by all the people who've worked tirelessly before us, in previous generations, to help with things like voting, inequality, working on gender pay gap. When we think about that, if that is the foundation, then what are we going to do with it?

What comes to mind as we are talking about it, is that there's this next level of women's empowerment that has to do with self-empowerment. And that has to do with giving ourselves permission in a way that just wasn't possible 300 years ago, 200 years ago.

Can you talk about exactly when you're thinking about self-empowerment, you're thinking about permission giving, what does that exactly mean?

Dr. Sonia: It means at some point, as women, we have to give ourselves the green light, we have to go ahead. We can't sit there expecting to please everybody else and for somebody else to give us the green light to go forward and do what we need to do in life. And so, it's self-empowerment and self-permission.

It's looking at our lives and saying, “Okay, what is it that I want to change for myself or for my children, specifically, my daughters? What do I not like?” I have a 10-year-old daughter and I see her struggling because she's the tallest girl in her class and she's pretty muscular. And society has a concept as to what a woman's body should look like.

It's like daggers to my heart to see this beautiful, beautiful, young woman, she's becoming a young woman, looking at her body and evaluating her body and thinking that there's something wrong with her body, because it doesn't fit into a size two. When she's just gorgeous, in so many ways.

When I look at that, I'm like women's empowerment has to be around body positivity and love and things like that. For myself, at 4’11”, I'm the opposite. I’m, not quite 4’11”, little round brown girl, right? But it's what we have to do for ourselves and for our children and the next generation. And not waiting.

Because the industry that’s saying you need to be a size two is always going to say that, because they want you not to like your body so that you'll buy the products, right? The self-empowerment is around my own stuff, but also my daughter’s. You have a daughter as well, so you understand this concept that we empower ourselves.

We say, “No, I am beautiful. The social media or whatever, cannot tell me that I'm not. They will not tell my daughter. They will not take over my daughter's body and tell her that it's not an amazing body, strong and healthy and gorgeous in every way. No, that will not happen.” So, this is going to require that we give ourselves permission to do the work for ourselves and for the next generation, as opposed to waiting for social media or whomever to switch their…

It is changing. It is. There are different types of bodies that we're seeing modeled. And so, I appreciate that. But there is this pervasive sense that there's only one type of body that's a good enough body. And you know, it's really interesting. I was just coaching, I have an online group, and I was coaching some women in their 70s about their body. They're not happy about their body. And I was like, “When the fuck do we get to be happy about our body?” Excuse my language.

Kristi: I just want to point out, that's one of the most powerful questions ever: When do we get to be happy about our bodies? Who says? What criteria needs to be met? But go ahead. I just wanted to highlight that very important question.

Dr. Sonia: It's so many generations, right? But then I think back to 200 or 300 years ago, or even 50, 60 years ago; it may be closer to 100. There was not all this media out there. There wasn't all this advertisement out there. It was like, do you have a strong, healthy body? Can you work on a farm? Do you have a strong mind? Can you do the work? It was not about your body had to be a certain shape or different weight. It was, are you strong and healthy, right?

And so, things have shifted. We put a value on something that doesn't necessarily need to have a value. And then, we are spending a great deal of time and effort trying to get to this ideal size or proportion or something like that, which is a lot of wasted energy.

What is it that we're not, fairly, I have some ideas about this. But what is it that we're not focusing on? Like, when we're spending all of our time either starving ourselves or trying to fit into these clothes with waist trainers or whatever it is, what is it that we're not focusing on?

Kristi: Can we pause and say that for everybody listening, that's a really powerful idea. When a lot of your energy and your thoughts and your actions are going towards those things, what's off your radar? What aren't you able to reflect on? What important things in the world, in your mind, are you missing?

Dr. Sonia: Exactly, exactly. If we would sit for a moment and realize how amazing our bodies are. And just say, “I'm giving up all this bullshit. I'm no longer talking to my body in this certain way. This is the body that I have. And this is a fine body.” Imagine how much space would be opened up in your mind, in your life? Right?

Kristi: Oh my gosh. Absolutely. There are two things that come up, and they're both in sort of separate directions. So, I'm going to try to keep my mind to be able to focus on both of them. But the first thing that crosses my mind, is I'm imagining somebody who's listening to this, who's with us to this point.

They're like, “Okay, yes, there's all this social messaging. A lot of thin-centric, fat-phobic, certain body things that are put on pedestals. Even if there are changes being made. And I'm with you. I want to accept myself.”

And then, all of a sudden, they hear you say, “My body's amazing. What if I just stopped putting all this time and energy…” I'm imagining somebody going, “Well, then I'm just going to be complacent. Then I'm not going to try anything. Then I'm not going to want to work hard. I'm not going to want to do things. I'm just going to be, not just content, but just almost hypnotized and asleep.” What do you say to the person who takes it that route?

Dr. Sonia: Yeah, I say, imagine what you could accomplish in life coming from a place of loving yourself. Versus all the thoughts that are in your mind that are about things you don't like about yourself, right? Imagine if we were able to clear all that space out, and you actually showed up in this world from a place of self-love and having your own back. Imagine what you would do in this world, right?

Well, we have this concept that if we're not hating our body, if we're not fighting with ourselves, if we're not criticizing ourselves, then we won't have anything to do. That's on you. There's a lot that you can do in this world if you're coming from a place of self-love. If you choose, “If I'm not criticizing myself, then there's nothing in life,” I think you're missing out on the purpose of life.

Kristi: I think it's the irony, “That the way that I will get better is I will shame myself in some way or criticize and be hard on myself.” And quite possibly, because people have come by it honestly, “If I was really hard on myself with it, I would stay up and push through and study more and work harder.” And to a certain degree, it may have worked in some settings for that season of life well enough to not even question it.

So, that's that connection between, “Oh, I shame myself. Say mean things to myself. Hate myself. And therefore, my actions are I work harder.” When really, it was just a linkage that was made, not actually a causation. And so, when you just let that go, then, from a place of self-love, oh, my gosh, you're not actually blocking yourself from anything ever.

Dr. Sonia: It might have worked in your 20s and 30s. Usually, when you get into your 40s, your life is pretty complex, you've got a lot going on. And you get to decide that that's where you want to use that energy. You get worn down, you kind of get tired. So, the message might have worked in your 20s and 30s. But having the same message in your 40s, 50s, and beyond, may not lead to the same results.

It's like hearing somebody insulting you for 40 years straight. At some point, you're going to get worn down and just not even try, right?

Kristi: Yes. I love that idea of, if you can take your own self-talk, and you can personify it in another person. And be like, “If this is what somebody on the street… If this is what one of my friends, family members, one of my kids was… If they were saying the things that I'm saying to me, how would I respond to that? Okay, then I can decide what I'm going to say to me.”

This is me and Sonia, giving everybody who's listening, explicit permission to love your body, as it is in this exact moment. Not tomorrow, after you've gotten on the scale, and you've done some exercise. But right in this moment, exactly as it is.

Dr. Sonia: Yeah. Yes, love your body, but it's even so much more than that, right? I know a lot of your listeners may have anxiety and be thinking about thoughts…; love your brain. I have a lot of anxiety, and you get to the point where you're not fighting against your brain all the time by telling yourself it should be a different way, it should think different thoughts. Just be like, “Yeah, that's kind of my brain. And what else do I want to do in life?”

You get to love all of you. And just as you love your body, you get to love your quirky nature, you get to love… I have a neurodivergent brain and I have spent a lot of time hiding that. Now, I'm just embracing it. Now, I'm like, “Yeah, I've got ADHD. And that makes me pretty fabulous, honestly.”

The thing that you hide the most is actually the thing that makes you uniquely you, right? And so, if you just show it to the world, it really doesn't matter. We think it's the worst thing and so shameful, and then you realize, most of time, people already knew it anyway, for one. And then two, it doesn't really matter that much.

So much time and energy that we spend in shame or hiding in some way, if we would just shift that perspective, there's so much more that we can do in this world, and the world needs us to do, for ourselves and other women.

Kristi: Exactly. That's what I was just thinking. When we do free ourselves up from all that chatter that's making us wrong, or where we need to shrink, or we need to hide, or we need to do something. It really does limit what we are able to do. And in a way, it's sort of the biggest slap in the face to all the people who went before us, who worked so very hard to get us to the point where we do have this luxury.

I love that you brought up loving your brain and loving your emotions, because one of the things that's been present on my mind, as you can imagine, is that there have been so many times that I have come to you, I have texted you, and I have been in the middle of having some anxiety or having some big emotions. And you have implicitly, basically, given me permission to meet myself where I was.

It's so impactful when we can meet ourselves right where we are, and just give ourselves permission to feel whatever we're feeling. You haven't said it explicitly, “Hey, Kristi, I’m going to give you permission to be right with your anxiety and your freakout.” But implicitly, you've been, “It's okay to be here. Totally fine to be here. What if you were just here? What if you didn’t need to fix this?”

So, I just want to sort of point out, that's sort of revealing behind the curtain a little bit with Sonia’s and my friendship, but it shows for the listeners that you can do this for yourself. But you can also see it modeled in other people, and then model it for other people in ways that are just super impactful. That's my way of saying, thank you, for doing that for me.

What are ways you have been giving yourself permission? We talked about body, we talked about brain and emotion, are there other things that crossed your mind?

Dr. Sonia: I laugh because I am a super drama filled person, not in terms of drama like where I'm going to go out and cause chaos in the world. But drama as in, “Haaaa, it’s the end of world.” And so, I’ve given myself permission not to be… I have lived my life in the logical side of my brain. And I’ve given myself more permission to be the theatrical drama side. It's okay, as well, right?

So, before, I'd be like, “This is foolishness, Sonia. Settle yourself down.” That expression, settle yourself down, is one I heard my entire life. From the time I was a little child, my mother would always be like, settle yourself down. Not that I'm blaming moms. But it's just a reflection that this personality, this person, has been this way her whole life, right? I like to talk in the third person sometimes.

It's not the end of the world if I'm not in my logical self. If I'm just enjoying life in my drama filled. It's so funny because my daughter takes after me. She has this thing, where she would be like, “Ohhh-haa,” and drop down and kind of roll around on the ground for a little while. And it's just like, yeah, go ahead, roll around. And then when you're ready, please get out. We've got stuff to do.

It's kind of that. It's not the end of the world to be emotional, or drama, or whatever. You get to have fun with it. You don't have to be perfect in any way. You get to like all different aspects of yourself, right? Obviously, intelligence and logic and stuff like that are things that are valued in the world that we have been in, around medicine.

And so, it did not allow for this other side of me that's quirky and funny and just a goofball. But when you allow all those things, and you embrace all of you, I think that is the highest standard of empowerment; just allowing yourself to be you.

Kristi: What crosses my mind, as you're talking about this is, because I'm always thinking what are the rules that we have learned or inherited? What are the messages? And then, how does that translate into our beliefs about ourselves in the world, in terms of our habituated thought patterns? What's crossing my mind now, is the intentional habit that you're describing so beautifully.

It’s the habit of always evaluating what you've heard growing up, what you hear from society currently, and what you have heard. And just questioning if it's useful to you, or if there's a modification you want. And in that, if you have the habit of just allowing yourself to be yourself, then all of a sudden, it's like you take the fences down and the shackles down, that are so easy to impose, and not even notice.

Dr. Sonia: And even more than that, the energy that you spent holding yourself small in this world, you no longer have to use that energy. And it can be used for something that really matters to you. Like making a difference in your life or somebody else's life. Because you're no longer holding yourself back, and you're no longer playing small and trying to conform.

Kristi: A lot of the people that you coach and a lot of my clients… You and I, probably in our past lives, were running around living on fumes. Our cup wasn't full. We were doing as much as we possibly could do without having those restorative moments of rest, where we could go, “Ahh.”

When you get older, and you start evaluating very carefully, where am I putting my precious time and energy? If it's just leaking out the bottom of your cup, to these things that you've mentioned, it's “easy” to put a stop to. I mean, it is simple to put a stop to. But, what's possible when you do? That's what's so inspiring is, what's possible when you stop the energy leak?

Dr. Sonia: Yeah, and you realize the secret is that you can just give yourself permission.

Kristi: Exactly. Where’s the do-dum-dum-dum? Playing the drums, you know? And Sonia has spoken. So, what do you see in your clients or in yourself that gets in the way of that very simple and powerful statement of, “You just get to give yourself permission”?

Dr. Sonia: Something I coach on a lot with my clients as a sex coach, is women given themselves permission to ask for what they want in the bedroom. There are all these concepts of how women should be a good woman or how she should be in the bedroom, or how she should basically take what she gets, that type of thing, and just appreciate what it is.

Or she can't ask for something that's going to take too long, in terms of foreplay. Her sexuality should reflect her partner's sexuality, and focus on really pleasing the partner.

I spend a lot of time coaching women around; you get to ask for what you want. What is blocking you? What is the obstacle that's stopping you? And very often, their mind is like, “I'm taking too long. They're doing enough,” their partner is doing enough, “So, that should be good enough.”

They also think that they're taking 20, 30 minutes. And sometimes honestly, I will make them get out a clock, or look at the clock, before they start with foreplay and when they're ready to move on to something else, and see, actually how long it took then. They might be thinking that it took them 30 minutes, when in all actuality, it's five or something like that.

It comes down to we don't think that we have the right to ask for what we need. But it's impacting us, it's impacting our partners, it's impacting our intimacy.

You talked about wage gaps and gender gaps and stuff like that, there is a pleasure gap that goes along gender lines, very much so. This is something that needs to be dealt with, as well. We need to give ourselves permission, in the bedroom, to be who we want to be, and to show up and get the pleasure that we want to.

Kristi: Oh my gosh, what a huge obstacle, “I don't have the right to the same pleasure. And therefore, I'm going to be super worried if it's five minutes, or if it's 30 minutes.” But when you have permission to have equal pleasure, then a lot of those obstacles just fall away.

Dr. Sonia: Yeah, and if you educate yourself. If we're spending all this time wondering why we're not having pleasure, but our vulva is not being stimulated, our clitoris is not being stimulated, because we are taught that men have penises and women have vaginas, which is not analogous. It's, the clitoris is analogous to the penis. That is what we need to focus on.

But we're wondering why we're not… Somebody described, it would be like a person that's a penis owner was getting their leg tickled instead of actually getting their penis stimulated. And in that same concept, somebody's stimulating our vagina, but our pleasure zone is actually in our clitoris, and nobody's spending any time with that.

Kristi: And nobody would shame that person and be like, “Well, it's okay to ask for them to stimulate your penis. I mean, not your leg. If the leg’s not your thing, it's okay.

Dr. Sonia: Yeah, but not for women, right? Because we're taught that our focus should be on the vagina. Well, that's somebody's focus, but it's not our focus. It would make sense in this patriarchal world, that the focus would be on the vagina. But that's not where our pleasure zone is. I mean, it's not bad, it feels good. But 85% of women will need clitoral stimulation.

We need to empower ourselves through education, so that we can ask for what we want. And also, empower the next generation so that they know and understand their body.

Kristi: Oh my gosh. Sonia, what's really tickling me right now, is I'm thinking about how, for me, this podcast, it definitely represents all of my passions. And when I talk to you, I get to bring extra ones in that aren't ordinarily here. Which reminds me of all my OB-GYN work and talking with patients about sexuality and their body empowerment.

And so, I'm just smiling because I'm thinking many people don't hear that part of me coming out, and they don't hear this. And I love that we get to do a little sex ed for all the listeners who are here, as they're thinking about mindset and all this stuff, too. It's so good.

Dr. Sonia: You know what I thought that’s kind of funny? Is that I know you as a coach, and not the gynecologist, right? And so, I sometimes forget that’s part of your world, too. It’s so funny how we remake ourselves and become the person that we want to. We were talking about this at the beginning, these two sides don't necessarily cross. “Oh, right. That's true, Kristi is a GYN.” Because I remember when we were part of a tribe. There's actually, was there four or five of us all together?

We connect and we communicate, and we text back all the time. But one thing that I loved about Kristi is that when she was doing her GYN work and she'd be on call, she would always be butt dialing us, like at weird times. We're like, “Oh, she's on-call today.”

Kristi: Oh my gosh, yeah. Because I just always put my phone in my back pocket, and I would have maybe just been messaging you, I'd put it in my back pocket and would just call. And I would have no idea, until later.

Dr. Sonia: I miss those midnight calls. I really do.

Kristi: I can do it for you. I can set it up. That's so good. As we're kind of heading towards wrapping up, when we're thinking about giving ourselves permission, is there anything that you think that we've missed that you would really want to pass on to listeners?

Dr. Sonia: That is a good question. I'm focused on this new program that I'm doing right now.

Kristi: Perfect, tell me. I want to hear all about it. I was going to ask you anyway, so this is great.

Dr. Sonia: It just reminds me of women being able to discuss whatever is going on in their lives. And being able to openly have a conversation about whatever they need to have a conversation. Instead of keeping things in shameful, dark places, right?

And so, what I'm working on right now, is a coaching program for the coaches so that they can be comfortable with their own sexuality, and with coaching their clients around sex and sexuality, no matter what kind of coach you are. Because it comes up, people may have issues or something, but it may not be something where they necessarily need to go specifically see a sex coach. There might be some basic type of thing that they just want to talk to.

Or you might be a relationship coach, and your client’s not mentioning the fact that they haven't had sex in years; proof that they don't want to tell you, right? In terms of what we do, it's like, we don't have to stay in a place of shame. We can identify those places of shame, and then empower ourselves around those places of shame.

There's a whole movement with body positivity and empowerment and fat and things like that, we get to, whatever it is, we get to put the light on that area of shame and embrace it and make it part of ourselves. So, this is the important work that needs to be done. That we don't have to stay in a place of shame.

Shame is what oppresses us and keeps us down. We don't have to… When we put the light on it, and we say, “Hey, this is okay. I'm going to incorporate it in part of my life. I'm going to look at it. I'm going to get the assistance if I need assistance on this.” When we bring it to the light, that's when we get that empowerment, and we can make our lives better.

Kristi: How amazing that, now, people who are already doing coaching in so many different areas and so many different niches, can now add this to their expertise and their comfort level. So, I just love it. On that note, can you tell people how they can find more out about this new project?

Dr. Sonia: Yeah, sure. I'm going to share with you the link, and it'll be in your show notes. So, that's the quickest place. You can also find it on my website. And also, the link is going to be able to sign you up, with an email link. And so, we will be sending out all the information.

We start at the end of March. It's only a 12-week program. That's what I love, is that you're not a certified sex coach, but you can coach around, especially specifically, female sexual intimacy. Because we really need to get that discussion out there and everybody feel comfortable around that.

We're relatively comfortable around… I hate to make this female/male, it's not binary too, it's like everybody. We're comfortable around certain gender, a certain gender, usually the male gender being a sexual being, but not necessarily around women being sexual individuals and non-binary people. So, we need to like be able to focus and coach on all of that and just bring it to light if anything's going on.

Kristi: For the non-coaches out there, who just want to learn more, who want to hear about your podcast, want go to your website, where can they find you?

Dr. Sonia: The best and the easiest way is, Sonia@soniawrightmd.com, that's my email. Or you can just www.SoniaWrightMD.com, that is my website. And in June, I'm going to be launching a membership. And so, there's other opportunities as well. There's lots of fun things that are happening over the next six months.

Kristi: Okay, so everybody listening, if you don't already follow Sonia, and if you haven't gotten on her newsletter and all the things, go find her. And for all the coaches out there, you absolutely… You're going to have too many people to serve, Sonia. You're going to have to do a couple rounds of this. But please, everybody go check it out. It's going to be a great way for all of us to help our clients on a deeper level.

As you know, I love talking with you. I just want to see if there's any last thing that you want to leave the listeners, in terms of last comments, before we wrap it up?

Dr. Sonia: I think I've said everything. I just enjoy being on this podcast. I just love to spend time talking with you and picking your brain and seeing things. I’m going to have you on my podcast, and I get to sit back and be like, “Hey, drop all the pearls, all the words of wisdom, please just let it rain.” Thank you so much.

Kristi: Oh my gosh, thank you for being here. That's how I feel about you. And I love that you get to be my first person to do two visits. That’s so great. Thank you so much, Sonia.

Dr. Sonia: Thank you.

Kristi: Sonia and I had so much fun in this conversation, on this interview, that we decided to record a part two for her podcast, where she interviews me. We liked it so much that we decided that we would share it on both of our podcasts. You'll be able to listen to that part two conversation here, in the future.

If you find yourself listening, and you notice that you're intrigued, and you're wondering how you can apply all the things that I talk about in the podcast, with some help, there are a few ways that we can work together. Number one, I have a Habits on Purpose for Physicians Small Group Coaching Program, and that program will start later in the summer of 2023.

If you're interested in learning more about that, you can go to HabitsOnPurpose.com/HOPPwaitlist. That’s H-OP-P – there’s two Ps, H-O-P-P waitlist. You can sign up to the waitlist, get the information about when enrollment starts, what all the details are, and how you can put yourself into the most supportive community of other likeminded physicians who are working on understanding their unintentional habits and creating deliberate ones.

If you're interested in a private coaching experience, I do individual coaching. I do private coaching packages that are for physicians and non-physicians, men, and women alike. You can get more information about that, and we can connect and talk about if we're a good fit, when you go to HabitsOnPurpose.com/consult.

Then, if you've heard me talk about Internal Family Systems, and you found yourself really intrigued, but you don't know if you're quite ready for doing a longer-term coaching package, I have just the thing. I am doing Internal Family Systems informed coaching sessions that are single, one-off sessions. You can sign up for just one session, dip your toe into that experience, learn about Internal Family Systems, and explore your system, by going to HabitsOnPurpose.com/IFSsession.

We will link all of these in the show notes, but I like to keep things super simple so everything I do is HabitsOnPurpose.com/ and then the thing you're interested in. So, the Habits on Purpose for Physicians Group is HOPPwaitlist. Private coaching is /consult. And Internal Family Systems one-off sessions is /IFSsession. I can't wait to see you next week.

If you want to learn more about how to better understand your patterns, stop feeling reactionary, and get back into the proverbial driver’s seat with your habits, you’ll want to join my email list, which you can find linked in the show notes. Or, if you go to HabitsOnPurpose.com, you’ll find it right there.

Thanks for listening to Habits On Purpose. If you want more information on Kristi Angevine or the resources from the podcast, visit HabitsOnPurpose.com. Tune in next week for another episode.

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