Ep 193: The Cost of Self-Abandonment | Renea L. Moss on Leadership

Guest: Renea L. Moss (Rai Renea): award-winning author, speaker, and performer, and founder of Forge Independent Schools.

Episode Summary

Renea L. Moss spent years pouring into her school, her families, and her staff, and calling it strength. It took a health crisis for her to see that what looked like strength on the outside was self-abandonment underneath, and that her people-pleasing was quietly making her leadership unclear. This conversation traces what changed when she stopped owning what wasn't hers, removed the question mark from her leadership, and let every part of herself into the room.

This episode is for the business owner who keeps softening every direction to keep the peace, and is exhausted enough to wonder whether the business itself is the problem.

Key takeaways:

• Self-Abandonment Dressed as Strength: How serving everyone can look like leadership from the outside while costing you everything on the inside.
• Either/Or Leadership: Why "either they're happy or there are rules" leaves a team confused and nothing getting done.
• Over-Ownership:
• Owning things that aren't yours to own, from whether an employee does their job to whether a stranger approves of your outfit.
• Removing the Question Mark: Direct doesn't mean unkind; it means everyone knows exactly what's being asked.
• The Energy of Not Being You: Why integrating every part of yourself takes less effort than managing everyone else's perceptions.

Guest Bio and Links

Renea L. Moss, also known as Rai Renea, is an award-winning, internationally recognized author, speaker, and performer, and the founder of Forge Independent Schools. She is the author of multiple poetry collections, including Mumblings of a Maniac, as well as The Book of Rebellion and the memoir How a Honeybun Almost Took Me Out. Her latest project, No Apology in My Throat, is a spoken word album that brings her storytelling to life. Through her work, Moss challenges audiences to embrace their voice, own their story, and live without apology.

Website: https://reneasworld.com/
Books: ⁠Mumblings of a Maniac, The Book of Rebellion, and the memoir How a Honeybun Almost Took Me Out. ⁠

Spoken word album: ⁠No Apology in My Throat⁠.

Full Transcript

**Dawn:** Welcome back to the Self-Trust Solution Podcast. I'm your host, Dawn Ledet, the self-trust coach. And today, I'm joined by Renea L. Moss, also known as Rai Renea. Renea is an award-winning author, speaker, performer, and founder of Forge Independent Schools. She's the author of multiple poetry collections and memoirs, and her latest project, No Apology in My Throat, is a spoken word album centered around voice, truth, and unapologetic living. We love that. But what I'm especially honored to explore today is the season where Renea realized that what looked like strength on the outside was actually self-abandonment underneath. After a shocking health crisis and hospital stay, she was forced to confront the cost of living for everyone else while ignoring herself. And what emerged from that reckoning completely changed the way she lives, leads, creates, and loves. Renea, I'm so glad you're here today.

**Renea Moss:** Thank you for having me. I'm already teary-eyed listening to your description of my experience.

**Dawn:** Oh. Well, take us back to that season before the hospital stay. You'll tell us more about that. But from the outside, you were building, you were leading, you were speaking, you were showing up.

**Renea Moss:** Yes.

**Dawn:** But you were showing up for everyone. Tell us what was happening for you.

**Renea Moss:** Yeah, it was. Those exact words, from the outside. And then even from the inside, I guess the pretending. And I don't want to say it was pretending. It was not really fully feeling. I knew something was lacking, and I wasn't truly fulfilled. And don't misinterpret it, I loved what I do. I love serving kids. I love serving. I love for people to be happy. And the routes that I was taking, I was making a lot of people happy. So that should not be dismissed. But the things that I wanted to do, some things that I wanted to say or be, I would not allow myself to fully be that. Because as much as I would verbally say, "This is my life. I'm doing it my way," I was still aware of society and the restraints that society can put on you, and how we like to categorize how someone should look and act in a certain domain of their life. And I have the uncanny ability that I have so many domains, and leaving them by themselves was making me not fulfilled altogether. So yes, I started a school. So yes, I was in this place where I had kids. But my school, to me, was failing, because I had made some decisions because I wanted the employees to feel comfortable and not feel uncomfortable like I felt sometimes. And in my attempt to please them so much, things weren't getting done. It was this pleasing, pleasing. Well, I wanted my parents to be happy, but then the rules would go astray. I wanted the kids to have fun, but then sometimes the limitations were not set that should've been there. And so it was a learning experience for myself within that. And so that's when we came up to this point, the hospitalization.

**Dawn:** Were you thinking, and I can see this sometimes, and I'm curious if you see this in that space and that time, were you thinking that it was kind of all or nothing? Either they're happy or they have rules. Either I make other people happy or I make myself happy. Like, there wasn't an "and," a both/and there.

**Renea Moss:** Exactly. It felt like, oh, if I disappoint them or I set a rule that upsets them, then something's wrong. It's like you have to be this way, or if for five minutes you're not that way or they're not pleased, then what have you done wrong, and it's your fault. They make you feel like you are the problem. And I remember when I started taking back my time. Because I had parents that would call me at 6:00 in the morning and 9:00 at night. And I felt like, hey, they feel so comfortable to call me. But no. They were intruding on my time, because they had all day to do it. And then when I started creating those barriers, like, "Hey, no. These are the hours. No, I'm not going to call you back," then it was like, "What's wrong with her? It's not the same." And it's not the same because I was allowing you to walk all over me.

**Dawn:** You had shared that underneath everything was this quiet belief that your needs maybe mattered less than everyone else's.

**Renea Moss:** Yeah, it did. I kind of felt that way. I was so used to showing up for others, and it's not even second nature, it's first nature for me. If you're in my space and you're around me, I just can't help but want to help, because I think there are so many miserable people in this world that if I can help your world be happier and make it easier, I wanted to help. But then it got to a point that it was being taken advantage of, or people just expecting that I should come second to their needs, to please them, to help them.

**Dawn:** Well, it sounds like they were following suit. You were putting them ahead of yourself, and so they put themselves ahead of you also.

**Renea Moss:** Exactly. Correct. And that's why I don't blame them. It's not accusing them. It's me saying I allowed it, because that's how I presented myself.

**Dawn:** So what was the moment where you just knew this had to change?

**Renea Moss:** Well, it was even a little bit before I became ill. When I started setting boundaries, I was getting sick. I was always tired. I was always sick. I rarely got to do anything. I had some employees that just weren't good employees, and I didn't let them go when I should've let them go. And then when I did, it was like, oh, well, this and that and this and that. And I'm like, no. It's crazy, because I just heard an interview with Kevin Hart, and I so felt him. I was like, oh my goodness, that's it. They were talking about how he had this company and he downsized, and everybody's jumping on him for downsizing his company for it to be better. And he was like, Netflix is downsizing. No one's talking about it. So and so is downsizing. No one's talking about it. But it seems like for us, especially small businesses, it becomes so close that they feel they can judge your every move, as if you're not really the owner and the boss. "Oh, they're not here today. Where are they?" I own the place. I need to go places. I need to do things. Why are you judging me like an employee that should be at the job doing their work? And that fear, if I made a mistake. But you know what? And it may sound crazy and funny, but remember when Elon Musk bought Twitter, and it became X? There were all these bills, and Elon Musk said, "These buildings have to go. These buildings have to go." And this is no reflection of how I feel about the man. I'm talking about some of the business decisions. I want to make that clear. And it's literally he was going bankrupt, and you didn't hear about it too much, because it was like, that's business, right? It happens. And then I said to myself, "If companies like Amazon, Elon Musk, all these billion-dollar companies, every day have fires they have to put out, and they've been around for years, why am I judging myself so hard for the fires of my own?"

**Dawn:** Kind of put it into perspective for yourself.

**Renea Moss:** Yeah. They do it all the time. Every day they have fires, and they're working. They're producing. They're making money. They're providing goods. Something goes wrong, you don't see them saying, "We're shutting down today. It's over." And I was like, you know what? We're not shutting down. We're going to move through the fire and learn from it and keep going. And I think that was such a moment for me, as I started studying businesses bigger than myself and realizing there's a fire every day, personally and in business oftentimes, right? So me stopping, it's like, why am I stopping?

**Dawn:** So you mentioned that you were feeling tired, like there were some physical things happening during all of this. Were you attributing it to this kind of overworking, over-ownership? I talk about over-ownership a lot, where you're owning things that aren't yours to own. Like whether someone's being a good employee or not.

**Renea Moss:** Yeah, it was. I thought I was just stressed out, and I just figured it was a moment of stress. And it's crazy, before the real big moment, I had a small moment that kind of woke me up. I happened to be on the phone, in fact, with one of my parents. She and I are friends to this day. She calls me for her son's football schedule at college. And she knew I hadn't been feeling well, and she was like, "What's going on?" And I shared with her that I had woken up very, very ill. There was an outer show of what was going on, and I shared it with her, and she was like, "I'm not getting off this phone till you go to the ER." Because I thought I was going to go to sleep it off, and she was like, "I'm not doing it. You're going to go." And I remember that was the precursor to the big event. But this event kept me in the hospital for three hours. When I got there, my blood pressure was two-something over one-something, and they immediately admitted me to the hospital for three days, and they said they didn't know why I didn't stroke out. I had woken up with a bleeding nose, and I was like, "Oh, whatever," and I dismissed it, but she wouldn't let me dismiss it, and I'm probably alive from that moment because of her.

**Dawn:** Wow. And then you get out of the hospital and...?

**Renea Moss:** And I try, and I fail, and I'm okay to admit my failures. I try to say, "Okay, I'm going to maintain," but I still hadn't gotten rid of the problems that I should have. Like I said, I knew there were some employees I needed to let go. I'm still being empathetic. I'm still trying to understand. I'm still trying to say, "People make mistakes. They can learn." And so when I took time away, a lot of stuff happened with my business. And then I was like, "See, I can't step away, because this is what happens." And I went back into that mode, and I was traveling with my son, just doing so much, until I was in Greece and I really got sick in Greece with my son. One day I just couldn't leave the hotel. We came back. A week later, I'm driving up to Atlanta with my mom and my son, and I was really not feeling well. And my cousin told me to go to Publix and get my pressure taken. The machine told me to go to the ER. I can laugh about it, but it's really not funny. But guess what? I still didn't go to the ER, because I kind of knew they were going to keep me, and I was like, "I don't want to be in a hospital in Atlanta." I just knew they were going to keep me. So two days later, we drove back, and she looked me in the face. She said, "The minute you get in town, drop them off and go to the ER." I did, and of course they admitted me, because my pressure at that time was higher than it was the previous time. But while I was there, I found out I had Type 2 diabetes. Once I learned more about diabetes, I realized a lot of the symptoms I was having were because of that, and I probably had been living with it for over a year and a half. My A1C was 15 plus. I didn't know what that was until later, and I found out that was off the charts. You're considered diabetic at seven, and I'm at 15 plus. And my sugar was 399, which is usually a diabetic coma. I see your facial expression. So between that and the high blood pressure, they said I should've had a heart attack, and I should've been in a diabetic coma. I had this ER doctor before they admitted me, and you know they don't have time, they rush through. But he sat there with me for, like, 30 minutes, and he asked me what I was doing, and we were talking. And he said, "Okay, if you don't want to live for yourself, then how about living for those people that you help?" It struck me, the fact that he said, "If I can't get you to do right for yourself..." And that was the moment that I said, "If I looked back on my life, have I done everything that I wanted to do the way I wanted to do it?" My creative, my expression, my speaking. And I was like, "No."

**Dawn:** So what shifted for you then?

**Renea Moss:** I looked back on a lot of things. First of all, that he took the time. And I understood his words saying, "Well, if you won't do it for yourself, do it for them," but I know in essence he was saying, "Why aren't you doing it for yourself?" And I looked at everything that I was doing, everything that was supposed to make me happy and fulfilled, and I realized my creative had been calling me for a while, because I had stopped writing, stopped performing, stopped doing this, because I'm like, "Oh, I own a business now. I have to cut this out for them to accept me in this world." And no, I don't. And if they can't accept me, then they're not allowed to be in my world. Honestly, that was a triggering moment. I'm like, "I'm going to do it my way. I'm going to dress how I want. I'm going to talk how I want. If I'm not killing anyone, spiritually or physically, if I'm just living my life and spreading my joy, then no one can take that anymore." And it's not them taking it from me, it's me allowing them to take it, giving them my joy, letting them destroy my peace. And I was like, "No." And that's how my first book came, How a Honeybun Almost Took Me Out.

**Dawn:** I love it.

**Renea Moss:** And that was the beginning of me saying, "You know what? Taking control of myself, my life, my body," and then letting people know this is me, and if you can't accept this, then I'm okay with it. You don't have to be around me. But I'm going to be here doing what I need to do.

**Dawn:** Have you found that people don't accept it?

**Renea Moss:** Some people don't. I'm a speech and debate coach, and I was at nationals. I'm the co-chair of the Black Caucus for the National Speech and Debate Association, and we were in a room, and the room was packed, and it was such a great meeting. We were talking about things, we were making moves. Everybody was happy except for, I guess, this one person. And after the meeting, everybody else was talking about how great it was, re-energized, the stuff we were going to do for the caucus, and she comes up. I felt the energy, and I just knew it was going to be bad. But I'm still smiling. And she pulls me down, hugs me, and she's like, "You're too sexy for this environment." And me still being polite and trying to protect her feelings, I said, "Well, I appreciate your comment, but I don't think so." And she should have left it at that, but no, she persisted, because she wanted to get her way. She said, "No, because I'm just trying to help you out." I said, "Help me out for what? We had a beautiful meeting." And she's like, "Well, in my years of..." And I was like, "Well, first of all, people think I'm younger than I am." And I said, "In my experience, it doesn't matter how I look. If they're going to judge me, they're going to do it. I've been in pants, three-piece suits, covered up, and people have still looked at me a certain way. They're going to judge me if they're going to judge me." And the crazy thing is I wasn't even dressed that crazy. I had on a jumpsuit.

**Dawn:** Exactly. I would've been like, "What's too sexy? And when did I cross the threshold?"

**Renea Moss:** And then it was bad, because we got interrupted and it didn't finish, and I'm glad it didn't. But then, because I didn't acquiesce to how she felt... And I did say to her, "Well, I'm sorry that you feel that way." But she was like, "Well, I don't want the kids to look up to you." I said, "But they are. They are, and I want them to know that they can be comfortable in their own skin." And she proceeds to start talking to mostly men and saying, "Don't you think that was inappropriate? Don't you think she's a little bit too sexy?" Whereas the other people are saying, "Hey," they called me Highlighter, because, as you see, I have the pink on today, the orange. So yeah, it happens.

**Dawn:** Is that more common, or is that more of the exception?

**Renea Moss:** I'll say it's 80/20. I deal with it, and it's crazy, because I deal with it from both sides of the sexes, right? You want to say it's just the women, or just the men. It's both, and they both have their own reasoning for it.

**Dawn:** I think what's important is that exact phrase right there. They have their own reasoning, and that's not for you to own, right? The reason I asked what the percentage is, whether it's the norm or the exception, is I think it's important to note that regardless, even if it were 50/50, you being fully you is worth it. And the connections you do make with the people that do get it, that celebrate you and your full expression of yourself, are the people you want to be around anyway.

**Renea Moss:** Exactly. And it was coming into myself and understanding that, and not allowing that. Yes, I got mad when I found out how she handled it, but what I did was just dress even better the next day. One of the coaches, he was like, "I saw you on camera." And I was like, "Yep."

**Dawn:** And I think that's a good point too. I want to talk about how you've mentioned protecting your energy without losing compassion. It doesn't mean that we have to people-please, like make her feel better about her discomfort with your sexiness, but we also don't have to feel good about it. You can be mad about it and not own her discomfort.

**Renea Moss:** Exactly. Because sometimes we think, "Okay, if I'm mad about it, then I've got to..." No, we don't have to. When I got mad about it, I dealt with it through the proper procedures. I felt comfortable with who I was. It didn't stop me. It just said, "No, you're not going to treat others like this. And the reason you continue to do it is because no one speaks up, and I'm going to speak up. If I have to wear the scarlet A to do it, it will be done, so you don't do other people like this, and you'll realize it's not okay." I wrote one of the tracks on my album, it's called Beauty Ain't the Apology. I wrote it after that incident. And there's a line about, "While I'm sashaying, you're caught up in the wrong things. While I'm creating speakers and building these rooms full of people with leaders, you're too worried about the skirt or the way I walk." I'm not going to apologize for the way I look. And if you have to start bullying people to agree with you, at that point you're arguing for your pride and ego, not an actual belief or standing that's going to make a difference in the world.

**Dawn:** Most definitely. So this is really a beautiful example of you moving from self-abandonment to self-freedom, and choosing yourself. Tell me, how did your leadership change once you started choosing yourself?

**Renea Moss:** It's improved a lot. I had to let people go. And sometimes that's the hardest thing. We invest in people. And whether it's my employees or even, like you say, personal, you also can be a leader in your personal life, in the people around you and what you accept from them and what you don't accept from them. And so in business, listen, I would sometimes dislike some things and be like, "Okay, how can I say this and not hurt any feelings?" And now it's like, "No, I don't like this." It's not rude, it's just straightforward. So my leadership now doesn't create a question mark. It's direct. It's still gentle, but it's, "No, I don't like that." And I'm not going to be afraid to say I don't like this. "I paid for it. I want you to do this. This is how I asked you to do it. Can you do it like that for me?" So I'm more direct, and like I said, there's no question mark. And I think on my side, because I was wishy-washy with the directions and not wanting to deliver it a certain way, it caused confusion, and it caused an allowance of, what can I get away with? Well, no, this is what's going to happen. This is how it's going to be. So it changed that energy for me. It's okay to be a little bit dominant, because I have to make sure this company runs right. I have to make sure my life runs right. So allowing these certain energies because I'm afraid of them being upset? No.

**Dawn:** That's such a good point, because it doesn't have to mean being ugly or disrespectful. It's just being direct and removing the question mark, which is clearer for everyone involved, and it moves the project, the business, forward, which is where impact is created.

**Renea Moss:** And honestly, because of everything that went on with my business during my illness, and my role I wanted to expand, I just kind of shut down and was unsure. I was thinking about closing down my school. I stopped taking students. And last year, I really was praying to God. I'm like, "Am I going to shut this down?" And I kind of was. I kind of, not really, said it to the parents. I'm like, "Oh, yeah, you're going here. You're going here," setting them up to go somewhere else. And then one of the parents was like, "No, I don't know if I'm ready." And so I decided, okay, I'll stay one more year. That was what I said in my head. And then, in the middle of my mind, I was like, "I'm going to shut this down at the end of this year." And I had these parents come to me by word of mouth, and I said, "Well, I don't know." And they said, "Okay, let us know, because we heard good things about you." And I was like, "Well, let me think about it. Give me a month." And I said, you know what? Now is the time I can take the true leadership, how I've adapted, and I have months now to prepare for next year. So maybe I will do it. Because during that time, that's when I was releasing my book of poetry, and I was getting released. And that release, my poetry and my album, was a release for me, and I think that helped me make the decision. I can continue with this school, because now I have the right mindset. Now I have the leadership skills, like we said, to remove the question mark, to be direct, to demand what I need to demand from my employees, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I have to let it go. I can't allow it to continue. The same thing with the new set of parents that will come in. Hey, these are the rules. This is what's going to happen. This is how we're going to do it. And I was like, okay, so I can do that, and I can find somebody to run the school the way I would like it to be run, and still pursue my dreams, still perform, still do workshops, still travel. And that's the key. Before, it was one or the other, like we talked about earlier. Now I'm able to do it all. Because why can't I do it all? I don't believe in what they say, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Well, why have cake if you can't eat it? And who wants to stare at cake? I don't understand that.

**Dawn:** You can't have your cake and eat it too. But why would you have cake if you can't eat it?

**Renea Moss:** Of course I can. That's the answer to that. Yes, of course I can.

**Dawn:** I love that you literally moved from an either/or, all-or-nothing mindset to embracing the "and" of your life. And it started with yourself, with accepting yourself and standing up for yourself and seeing yourself as someone who matters as much as anyone else. I love it.

**Renea Moss:** I say now, "Look what happens when I started betting on myself." And it's beautiful. I'm so happy. I just can't explain how happy I am. And life ain't perfect. The joy that I have is not from life being perfect. It's from me being happy with me. And Rai Renea evolved, because it was Renea L. Moss, or it was Rai the performer, right? And it was always split. Don't cross over. If you're an educator, they don't want to hear you. No. And now it's Rai Renea. It's all of me together. It's Rai, it's Renea, it's Rai Renea. And even when things are going wrong, I used to be in a meltdown. Now, I may get a little down, but it's the joy, it's betting on myself.

**Dawn:** It's the gift of self-trust. It's why this work exists. It's why I'm out here. That's why we're here talking about this. When we don't have it, and when we're living that either/or life, the all or nothing, when we're putting everything ahead of ourselves, thinking that that's the only way to keep going, it's so much energy to not be you. I really want everyone to hear that. It's draining. It is so disempowering. It takes a lot of effort. And so of course joy is easier when you are totally accepting of your amazing self. And that's the invitation. It's so much less work. You lay down all the pretense. You lay down all the burden of carrying other people's thoughts and feelings. You lay it all down, and it frees your hands up.

**Renea Moss:** Yes, that's exactly what it is. Oh my goodness, I love that. Because that's what it is. It does take a lot of work to not fully be true to yourself and say, "I want to do this, but, but." It's the strain, the stress. No. This is what I'm going to do.

**Dawn:** We end up trying to manage other people's perceptions and their expectations, and that's a no-win. That's never going to happen.

**Renea Moss:** It will never, never, never. And I like to say it's a three-arc for me. I started with the book, the Honeybun book. And that was the defiance. I'm defying this medical issue. I'm defying what society believes. It was defiance. And then the book, The Book of Rebellion. And I'm like, no. Here I am. And I broke it up into chapters like the Bible, the beginning, the flood, because that's what I went through. It was, okay, something's going to happen, the flood of everything. And I believe in the same way we say the water on the earth is to cleanse the earth. Sometimes we've got to cry. We've been taught so many things in life, but has anybody ever taught you how to cry? And we need that cleansing. We're so busy trying to hold on, be strong, and never appear weak that we're just holding on too much, and then it starts weighing us down. A good cry is a good cry.

**Dawn:** I think some people are afraid to let it go. I know I spent a lot of time holding back tears in my life. I identify with this so much, I have to tell you. Through my own faith journey, through a lot of this work that I've done, my body of work on self-trust. When I let them flow, they didn't stop. They still haven't stopped, I'll be honest. So you're not wrong if you're worried about that. But it's so beautiful. You realize it's not something to hold back. It's a release. It's a power in itself. And I'm joking about them never stopping. I just no longer try to force-stop them in those moments.

**Renea Moss:** You allow it.

**Dawn:** Instead of this effort, talk about effort, this effort to hold it back and not express yourself and not have that release. It's hard work, as opposed to just letting it flow.

**Renea Moss:** Back to the album, I have a track called Permission Slip to Ugly Cry. And it's talking about giving myself permission to cry. Not the pretty cry and the one tear. Just the mean, snotty-nose, running-down, ugly...

**Dawn:** Sobbing.

**Renea Moss:** Yeah, sobbing. We don't do that a lot, right? But when we let it go, for that moment we're just down, but afterwards, it's like, "Okay. I feel kind of better now." Like a whole weight is lifted.

**Dawn:** So I love that you brought that up, because I do want to talk about it. Your spoken word album, the title alone says so much. What does No Apology in My Throat represent for you?

**Renea Moss:** It represents that I'm not apologizing for being me. So if you're looking for it, you can't find it in my voice. You won't find it in my throat, coming up to say it to you. I am not apologizing for me. So if you're looking here, you're not going to find an apology. No Apology in My Throat means I will not apologize for who I am. It's not that I'm trying to hold back an apology. I don't want to apologize for who I am anymore. Will not. My voice is my voice.

**Dawn:** I hope your next album is called You're Welcome.

**Renea Moss:** I like that. I like that. You're welcome for being me.

**Dawn:** It's so good. It's a message everyone needs to hear. So I'd love for someone listening who maybe feels exhausted or depleted or disconnected, but keeps telling themselves to push through, keeps putting everyone ahead of them, what would you want them to know?

**Renea Moss:** If the world will not end because of you taking a break, take the break. If catastrophe will not occur if you decide to push it till tomorrow, push it till tomorrow. Because what happens is when we push ourselves today, we don't turn out the product we want anyway. We look back on it and say, "That's not what we wanted to do," but we're stressing ourselves out. The most beautiful times have been when, oh, I really need to do this, but my body is telling me no. And that's one of the things I've learned. That it's okay to listen to my body, and it's okay to say no, and it's okay to just lay down and do nothing.

**Dawn:** Rest is restorative. We've treated rest as this problem, this thing to escape. Even the feeling of boredom, we feel like we have to claw our way out of. My goal is to be so good at feeling bored.

**Renea Moss:** No, I'm good. My mom, she's such a sweetheart. I call her Starbucks, because she has to go to Starbucks. She's retired, and she's there almost every day. The day she doesn't go there, you would think she's the most depressed thing around my house, right? And I understand it, because it's the people, interacting. But me, when I'm home, I'm in my room, leave me alone. Because I've had to think all day, and pour, and pour, and pour. So when I'm home, I don't want to think. I don't want to do anything. And I'm okay. Sometimes I'm still on a computer, double duty. But there are days that I binge, I close my computer. I don't even have my email attached to my phone. And people are like, "What?" I said, "Because what happens is I'll see those emails." So when somebody says, "I sent you an email," I let them know, well, when I get to a computer, I'll check it, or if I need to check it on my phone. But to have those emails constantly pop up 24/7? No. I'll get to it when I get to it. The world's not going to die. We went years without emails popping up on our phones, and still the world kept moving. And that's my first disconnect. I don't have emails connected to my phone, because I'm not going to give that 24/7 access.

**Dawn:** So how are you now? Tell us about your health. What's going on for you now?

**Renea Moss:** So my health is good. I still have good days and bad days, because I do things I shouldn't. But my A1C dropped down to six-point-something. I'm managing my blood pressure. I'm taking time to enjoy myself. My son and I had missed a trip because of something when I was sick, and I was like, just... was it November or December? We flew up for a two-day trip, one overnight, to New York to watch this play that we wanted to watch. Before, I'd be like, "No, I've got this to do." No, it was just fun. We walked New York streets. We went to go see Six the musical. It was absolutely amazing. No, they didn't give me a plug for that. It's just an amazing musical, especially when it comes to women's power. Those are the things. I'm learning to take those days for myself. I'm learning to enjoy those things, things that I used to do. I used to take myself to dinner and the movies. And notice I said take myself. I never say by myself, because my thing is, if I can't enjoy my company, how do I expect anyone else to? So I'm doing those things for me. And I still do things for other people, but with limitations.

**Dawn:** Just not at the expense of you.

**Renea Moss:** Exactly. That's the thing.

**Dawn:** So tell us about the work now. Are you keeping the school open? What's going on with your creative projects? What are you most excited about right now?

**Renea Moss:** I'm most excited about this album. I'm excited about the school. Yes, I'm keeping the school. We're actually moving into a new location, and I'm very excited about that. We're in the middle of hiring some new teachers. I actually have an open house coming up. I just see so many amazing things, going back to how I originally started. So that is amazing. But this project, I'm just excited about it. Everyone doesn't have to get every track on it. Someone asked me where I get inspiration, how I relate to people. I was like, "Because I'm not trying to be relatable. I'm just being honest." And this honesty has freed me, where I can just dive into every track that I put on there, and a lot of people are relating to it. Because a lot of people have these feelings that they've been holding in, thinking, oh, I shouldn't have them. No. And so the album hit number two on Apple iTunes for top spoken word album worldwide. That was very exciting to me. And one of my... well, all of them are my favorite. One of them, called Unmute Me, hit number 14 as a single. I released it before the full album, and it's just like, let my voice shine. Don't hold me back anymore. Don't try to keep me small because me being me is too much for you. And that hit number 14. We're doing videos, and I'm just excited because it's starting to get airplay. I'm excited because I did this for me, but I shared it for the world, and the world is listening. And the world thinks it's important, too. Previously, when I released stuff, I just created a product. It's stuff that I believe in. I love those tracks. But when I started betting on myself and investing in this and doing the marketing... Because you can write, you can do this podcast all day long, right? But if nobody knows about it... It goes back to that old saying, if a tree falls in the woods and nobody's there to hear it, does it really fall? So I can release stuff, but now I'm really investing in myself and marketing, and people are loving what they hear. So I'm working on that.

**Dawn:** And what I hope no one misses, especially you, is that when you were trying to please everyone, you had a lot of people not pleased. And now that you're trying to please yourself, you actually are pleasing both yourself and so many people who needed you to give yourself permission to be fully you.

**Renea Moss:** Most definitely. Most definitely. And that's amazing.

**Dawn:** We all need to know that. We serve no one by being a disservice to ourselves, but we open up the capacity to do so much more when we embrace who we fully are, completely, and then share it. So tell us where people can find this beautiful album and engage with your work, connect with you. Tell us all the things.

**Renea Moss:** Okay. So on social media, RaiRenea, R-A-I R-E-N-E-A. Except I think on Facebook I may be Renea L. Moss. But RaiRenea, you'll find that for social media, for TikTok, for Instagram, on YouTube. And I have a website, Renea's World, www.reneasworld.com. You'll find out about my coaching, my workshops, my music, my album, my books, everything there. The album is on all streaming. You can find it on Amazon, Spotify, iTunes, Apple, everywhere. And my books you can find on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and you can also find them on my website in my store. The only thing you can't buy in the store right now is the actual streaming download album.

**Dawn:** Awesome. Well, we're going to have all of that in the show notes, so everyone definitely go check that out. Renea, this conversation is such a powerful reminder that self-trust isn't just about believing in yourself. Sometimes it's about listening and choosing yourself, right? And I think what stands out most is this idea that choosing yourself is not selfish. It's what allows you to actually show up fully for the people and work you care about most, and that's what's creating the impact. People are seeing themselves in your work now that you are choosing. So thank you so much for being here and sharing this with us.

**Renea Moss:** All right. Thank you so much for having me. It's been amazing.

**Dawn:** If today's conversation stirred something in you, I want you to take one next step before you close this episode. Besides going to reneasworld.com, I want you to take the self-trust identity map. Before strategy, before motivation, before more effort, you need to know where your identity is operating from, because that is what determines everything that follows. It's free, it takes three minutes, and it will give you a precise read on where you're operating from right now and exactly where to focus next. The link is in the show notes. And if you're a coach or expert who already knows what's in the way, if you're done operating from almost there and ready to claim the authority that actually moves your business forward, Claimed is my six-month private coaching container for exactly that. And that link is in the show notes as well. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss what's coming. These stories are just getting started. I'll see you next time.

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