Lisa Marie Rankin [00:00:00]:

In this episode of the God of School podcast, I had the absolute joy of sitting down with Tara Stotenborough, a living, breathing reminder that it's never too late to begin again. Tara launched her own publicity firm at 49, began writing romance novels at six to seven, and enrolled in Ayurveda school at the young age of 80. She beautifully embodies both the curiosity of the maiden and the wisdom of the crone, approaching each chapter of life with openness, playfulness, and a sense of possibility. If you've ever felt like your dreams had an expiration date, Tara is here to show you otherwise. Let's dive in. Welcome to The Goddess School podcast, where eastern wisdom meets western mysticism. I'm your host, Lisa Marie Rankine, author, teacher, and Ayurvedic wellness coach here to help you reclaim your feminine superpowers, and I am so glad you're here. Listen.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:00:57]:

Women are magical. They are intuitive, creative, wise, and magnetic. However, in today's fast paced world, these gifts often get buried under a more masculine way of life. Together, we'll awaken those powers. In each episode, I'll take you through sacred teachings like Ayurveda, shadow work, and the mysteries of archetypes and rituals so you can live with more clarity, synchronicity, and joy in all realms of life, like relationships, health, money, and more. So let's dive in so you can make the most of your one mythic life. The veil is parting. Let's begin.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:01:39]:

Hello, beautiful listeners, and welcome back to The Goddess School podcast. Today, I am very excited for our guest. Her name is Tara Stoutenborough. Did I say that right, Tara?

Tara Stoutenborough [00:01:53]:

Yes, you did. But that's a killer. Letters. Yes.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:01:57]:

Okay. Excellent. And I met Tara right when I started my business, she was actually one of my very first student goddesses in my very first program. And I truly just feel so honored. So blessed to have gotten to know this amazing woman who is just, you know, truly embodies like maiden mother crone archetypes all together all at once all the time. So Tara, thank you so much for joining me today.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:02:27]:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted, delighted to be here.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:02:31]:

Fantastic. So Tara, one of the reasons, I mean, there's so many reasons that I wanted to have you on is because I just love your curiosity and your willingness to follow your bliss, follow your ideas. And I'm going to give a little high level of your story, but then I would love for you to dive in. And, you know, I know that when you started working, you were one of the only women in a pretty much predominantly male field. You have your own PR publicist business, and you're a romance writer. And you also recently joined IAB beta school in the last couple of years. So it's really like such a full spectrum and you just jump in to, you know, all of these endeavors. It appears to me like, oh, this sounds interesting.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:03:24]:

I'll figure it out. And I feel like that's the energy that we would all love to embody. So would you mind just maybe sharing a little bit just about your journey and then we can kind of dive into, like, the courage, the creativity it takes just to kind of pivot and to embark on the things that let you up?

Tara Stoutenborough [00:03:46]:

Sure. I would, I'd be hardy to do that. Maybe we should start by, by telling people that on my next birthday, I'll be 83. So when I decided to join the Ayurveda school and I called Lisa Marie about, should I or shouldn't I join Ayurveda school. I was 80. So, yeah, that's that's why I'm a little bit of an unusual student in Lisa Marie's group, but I just adore being a part of it. Yes. I have done a lot of things in my life and I have done them by what I affectionately refer to as walking through the open doors.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:04:22]:

I guess it partly has to do with the fact that I'm not real good at setting goals. I was thinking about it a little bit because you had said, you know, maybe we'll talk about something like this. So I'll go way back because I'm 83. I was born in the nineteen forties. I was born during World War two. I was an army brat, so I moved all the time. I was born in Georgia. I moved to Washington, DC to live with my grandparents while my father was overseas for years and years.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:04:55]:

He was a military officer, So I never had that that rooting, that community, that sense of wider family, if you will. My grandparents were there, but my grandfather died very early, that sort of thing. So I didn't really have a big body of of ancestors or people in my family that I could rely on. I just had my parents and my parents were nuts. They were not, the world's most stable humans. They had a lot of interesting things about them, but I had one of those childhoods that you consider kind of difficult, very difficult, actually. So the only thing I knew, I I got to go to college, which was very fortunate because it actually was not a slam dunk. My grandmother sent me to college and I went away from home, which was, as they say, a difficult home to college when I was 16.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:05:51]:

Youngest freshman in in my freshman class in college at American University in Washington, DC. And my freshman year, I lived with my grandmother. She put me through my freshman year. And then my, there was some money set aside that I got to go, which is interesting because I never ever thought that I wouldn't get to go. And I think about that now. And I was like, why was I so sure it wasn't like we had much money. Both of my parents were alcoholics, so they tended to drink up the money, but I would just never doubt it for one moment that I would get to go to college. And I did.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:06:27]:

So I went to college, I studied communications, but I studied communications with an emphasis on theater. And I, studied that through my, my whole four years Graduated at 20, but during my senior year in college, I started going to New York and pounding pavements and doing some of that. And that was a very disillusioning experience in the 1960s. I graduated from college in 1963, just before JFK was assassinated. This was not what you would call one of the world's great times for women's opportunities and especially in entertainment. It was the proverbial casting couch situation pretty much. And for a 20 year old girl, it was, it was hard. It was, it was a rough road to try and navigate.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:07:19]:

And I didn't like it while I liked the theater part. I didn't really love that part at all. So I wasn't sure if it's gonna be able to make it. And I decided, okay, maybe this is so I'd applied to graduate school. I'd been accepted all that. But during my senior year in college, a woman, interestingly enough, who owned a small business that provided people for trade shows when to go in Pretty girls is basically what it was. She mostly used what were then called stewardesses, what are now called flight attendants. In those days, all stewardesses were young.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:07:57]:

They had to retire at a certain age. Yeah. Can you imagine? But that was, that was the case. In the 1960s stewardesses could not work past a certain age. So they were all young. And so she would employ these, these young women. Most of whom were quite attractive to go out and trade shows and hand out literature. But every now and then her clients would ask for somebody to do a little, trade show performance.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:08:25]:

They did, and it was the heyday of trade shows. Huge everywhere, like all over The United States, but especially in the East, which is where I live. So, an advertising agency needed somebody to perform in this little three act play they had created for a national confectioners association. I didn't know what a trade show was. I knew nothing about business. My father was a military officer. My mother was a housewife, and I didn't know the first thing about business. And I went to do the show dressed as a rabbit, not as a Playboy type rabbit, but more as a kind of a pink bunny kind of, kind of rabbit.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:09:04]:

And we celebrating the holidays that use candy. And so I performed in this little show for a long weekend. It was like Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So I was not in classes at the time and they really liked me. And so they started asking me if they came to Washington because I was still in school, if I would continue to work for them. And the woman had started to, like, if she had something come up that worked in my schedule, she would, she would employ me. So when I decided I didn't want to go to New York, she said, Tara, if you'll travel, I will keep you busy. And I think I can keep you busy enough where at least you're not going to starve.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:09:49]:

So I said, I'll do it. So I packed my bags at the age of not yet quite 21 and started traveling. And I look back on it now, and this was one of those open doors. Right. So it was like, okay, I barely knew what I was getting myself into. She would, you know, pay for my travel. And that was it. She paid for the travel and she paid me for the, for the job, if you will.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:10:17]:

But there was no guarantee. There was absolutely no guarantee. My official address was my parents' house in Pennsylvania, you know, but I was everywhere else. So I would go to New York and I would walk up to the New York Coliseum and knock on the door and a guard would have to let me in and I would go inside and it would be thousands of people. And all of them were men. They were the teamsters and the men who were in the booths and the men who were the salespeople and me. And I would walk inside and go to my client's booth and say, I'm here to work. But then the jobs were not necessarily the world's most interesting thing.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:11:03]:

You know, you're standing on the corners smiling and looking pretty and handing out literature. That was kind of boring. So I started making it interesting. First, I would see how much literature I could hand out, but that wasn't working out too well because I was running out of literature. Then I would go into the booth and I would learn how the equipment worked or how the demonstration worked that they were doing. And then I would go in. And if somebody came into the booth and there wasn't a salesman available, I would go do the demonstration. And then I would hand them off to the salesperson.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:11:41]:

At the end of the day, I had a lot of jobs because of that, for getting a salesperson for the price of a girl standing, handing out literature. Right. And then a lot of the time I would also do pitches, you know, so you would stand up in front of a group of people and tell them about this new computer system or this new vehicle or whatever it was, you know, because of course I had all this experience in acting and pretty soon I was way busier than I could ever have imagined. I mean, I was on, it was not unusual to be on five or six planes a week. I think the largest number was 11 because what would happen is they would send me scripts to learn and they were so bad. I would learn the script and then I would deliver the script. And it was very clear out looking at the people that nobody would respond. So I was like, I gotta be able to do something to make these people more responsive, you know? So I started asking them questions.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:12:44]:

What do you think about this? And what do you do in this situation, sir, or madam, or whatever. I started rewriting the scripts and pretty soon my little company, my, the lady's company was offering script writing as a service. And then I would write the scripts and then somebody else in many cases would deliver them. I would go out to the city, do the directing, make sure everything was running smoothly, leave and go to another city. So I had just promoted myself from person standing in the booth, handing out literature to a creative director. I didn't understand it at the time I realized I was teaching myself marketing. Yeah. That was the beginning of literally my career.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:13:31]:

Now I should probably preface that by saying I've always been a good writer. It was simply something I came with. I barely ever took a writing class. I could just always write. And I had a very, very good job. I ended up, you know, having a nice apartment in Washington, DC and having made myself a job. I worked doing that for a number of years. I met a man from California who I married and, and I moved to Washington.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:14:02]:

I moved from Washington to California, three thousand miles away from my job. And so that was kind of the end of that job. And I needed to invent another job because I suddenly found myself as a housewife. And that was really, really not a fun thing for me. I was not a good housewife. I didn't do well in that situation when my husband came home one day and he didn't notice that I had scrubbed the floor, I thought Tara, you're in deep trouble. I think I better go get something to do. And I became a freelance writer.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:14:37]:

And I started writing for the Santa Clara County Office of Education, which is the office of education owned the television station that my husband worked for. So I started writing for them. And once again, I'd had a thriving business going. And then, you know, this was still the 1970s. So where your husband went, you went to. And so we moved to Southern California because he had a job opportunity in Southern California. And once again, I left my job, you know, it was in Southern California. I started out doing some freelance writing there, but then a woman that, that needed, she needed someone to come into her advertising agency and write as a copywriter.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:15:20]:

I applied and got the job. But interestingly enough, I don't know if you noticed, but every person I worked for was female.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:15:30]:

That is very interesting. And I think I remember you saying that before in enlivened and yeah, that is so interesting.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:15:39]:

I've been working since I was 20 years old and I've never worked actually been employed by a male employer. Wow. Every single employer I've ever had, including myself, you understand?

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:15:53]:

Yeah. And when did you start your business?

Tara Stoutenborough [00:15:56]:

Well, okay. So from that opportunity that I got with that advertising agency, I realized, of course, by this time, I've kind of started two businesses because my original business was not at all what I was hired to do. And then I became a freelance writer, which I had never intended to do. So both of those businesses were were kind of unexpected businesses, if you will. And then when I went to work for the advertising agency, I learned a ton. I mean, a ton, because I really, I mean, while I had worked sort of in a marketing business, I'm doing trade shows. I'd never been in an advertising agency before. And the woman who owned that company was a re a really remarkable person.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:16:42]:

And she had been one of the first major marketing people and advertising people who was female in the greater Los Angeles area. And she taught me a lot, but likewise, she had never done PR at all. I added PR to her business just by learning it. And we specialized in technology with only female business anywhere near Southern California who was female, to do technology. That's all we did was high-tech. So I, you know, worked on the very first floppy disk drive for whatever reason. And I've I never have really known that this, but I've always been very, very good at learning technology and learning technical things. And I'm interested in them.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:17:27]:

You know, they're, they're fascinating. And I like the people who do them. I've always liked engineers. So it that kind of progressed. I eventually left her, although I worked for her for many years, left her to become a freelance writer again. And by this time, I had long since divorced my first husband. I was only married to him for four and a half years. And it was at that point that I got into yoga, that I became a yoga teacher in my spare time.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:17:51]:

I was working all day and teaching classes at night. And I wasn't a a yoga teacher for myself. I was a yoga teacher at the yoga center where I studied. And it was before way before the Heyday incidentally of yoga. I learned yoga when I was 23, then who had lived in India, yoga postures. And then I thought we started studying that was in the very early 1970s. So most people didn't even know what yoga was yet. I started studying yoga and I met the man that I love to them in the love of my life.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:18:28]:

If you will doing yoga, He's an architect and I've been married to him for forty four years.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:18:34]:

Wow. That's amazing.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:18:35]:

Anyway, so this, that was all going on simultaneous at the same time that I was learning advertising and marketing and all of this kind of thing. I became a freelance writer, went to work for an agency, not full time, but as a consultant. That was where I met my business partner. And it was not actually until 1991 that I started my own marketing agency specializing in high-tech and medical. So I was, yeah, Tara, if

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:19:06]:

you don't mind me asking when you started that?

Tara Stoutenborough [00:19:08]:

'49.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:19:10]:

Okay. And I did, I asked because I think sometimes people get the impression that like, if I don't have things figured out by '30, '30 '5, then, or like I need to stick with whatever it is that I have at 30, 30 five. And what I love about your journey is that it's kind of always blossoming and that there are no set timeframes.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:19:31]:

Right. I mean, at, at 49, interestingly enough, there's a, there's a mystical significance to the age of 49 is like when you kind of start your life over again, when you've gone through all the various astrological, you know, signs, and then you come back to where you were when you were born. I always thought that it was kind of interesting. It was kind of significant that I was that I was 49 when I started the company, and I still work in that company today. It still exists. We're very small now. At one time we were, we were quite a big agency. We still specialize in high-tech medical industrial.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:20:09]:

So I, I did that for many years that that was, and we were quite successful at it. People always said you should write a book, you know, because that's what it was. You know, I was a writer. I was creative director and they were like, you should write fiction. I said, I'm in PR. I've been writing fiction for years. So, one day, literally I just sat up in bed and thought, Hey, I should write a book. And I had been reading romance and I thought maybe I'll write a romance novel.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:20:39]:

So I decided to do it and I was at the time, I think it was 68.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:20:46]:

That is just so amazing. So inspiring. I just love that.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:20:50]:

You have a bunch of novels, don't you? I do. I, I, I, I was 67 or 68, somewhere in there when I decided I would write a romance novel and I have written 65 romance novels. It's Actually, it's not quite fair to call them all novels. There's a few that are novellas, but most of them are full length novels. And at least they they are considered full length novels in the romance genre. They would not be considered full length novels in the romances genre. You understand where the Those

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:21:21]:

are all

Tara Stoutenborough [00:21:22]:

the epic. Words of thousands of words. You know? But, yeah, in romance, you you don't want a a novel to be a whole lot longer than, like, sixty, seventy, 80 thousand words. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll put in a whole bunch. And then on my eightieth birthday, I decided to retire because I think it was Ray Bradbury said, if you are a writer, you have homework every night of your life. And it's true.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:21:47]:

It's not something you ever put down. You think about it. It's always in your head. If it haunts you, you dream about it. You wake up thinking about it. You can't go to sleep because you're worried about, I mean, it's one of those kinds of things. And I decided I love it. I love writing, but I don't think I wanna do it anymore.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:22:07]:

And it wasn't never my full time job. You understand while I was writing seriously, which I was writing seriously, I had cut back in my company to three full days a week. So I was working in the company three days a week and writing four days a week. I suppose it's more correct to say it was writing seven days a week because I would work and then I would write. But then the other days of the week I would write all day. So it was not unusual for me to work. Oh, I don't know, twelve or fifteen hours a day. Sometimes every day.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:22:45]:

I didn't think that much about it, but it was a lot more. It was, it was fun, but it was, it was hard. That was why when I, it was a big deal when I decided to retire at 80. And then two weeks later, I called you and asked you if you thought I should join Shakti school, Ira Veda school. So I did that two weeks later after I retired. And I've just completed the second year of Ira Veda school, which is the last year.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:23:14]:

Congratulations. It's interesting. I never heard that I didn't hear Ray Bradbury said that, but even like with my substack and blog, and I also want to start dipping my toes into fiction, I do feel like there's always something that I'm thinking about or, oh, I have to capture that idea. And it is hard to turn off or sometimes be present with others because it's like, well, I couldn't be writing right now because it never ends. So I totally understand that because that's something that I'm actually even trying to work with right now. It's like,

Tara Stoutenborough [00:23:46]:

my husband said that there were always characters running around the house. There's always somebody who was like, you know, in that house with us, you know? Yeah. But you can imagine. So that's why right now I'm like, I'm still working, but my schedule is way, way lighter, especially now that I've finished school. I'm like, okay, what's next? I'm at that point where I'm like, okay, maybe something's going to turn up or maybe I'm just supposed to do jigsaw puzzles for the rest of my life. I don't know. I don't know yet. I'm not sure.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:24:20]:

Well, I'm excited to see what comes next, whatever direction it goes in. Very confident that it will just be very beautiful and inspiring. One thing that I would love to dig in and like, maybe we'll even just go to the romance novels, but it might be applicable as well to like the business that you started at 49 and maybe Ayurveda school because I work with a lot of women and they have ideas, but there's always blocks or hesitations or I'm going to do it later or I'm not a good enough writer or I've never, people are already doing that. And I don't get that sense that that has ever been like your belief system. It's like, let's start writing books. I'm going to open a business. What do you think contributes to like that, that confidence or just willing to dive into the unknown?

Tara Stoutenborough [00:25:07]:

It's interesting because despite the fact that I had this kind of weird childhood, I always, always, always felt lucky. I've always somehow had a certain confidence in a benevolent universe that no matter how weird my life might've looked, the universe was not out to get me. You know, it, it was on my side. If I took a breath and sat back for a minute, that door would open. Okay. And a great man once said, this was one of my teachers, that about which you are certain, do immediately. That about which you are uncertain, put off as long as possible. But what he was talking about, I think, is is your own intuition.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:25:49]:

If you're doing all that, you know, if you're like, I'm not good enough, I can't do this, blah, blah, blah. If all this stuff is coming up, if all of this uncertainty is constantly churning, then you're not plugged into your intuition. You don't know that it's going to work, but if you can finally kind of let go of that a little bit and just take a deep breath and go, okay, the universe really is on my side. I really can do better or do whatever is next. And if you try to let go of your pictures of what that has to be, then I think you can walk through that door with a certain level of confidence. That's not to say you're not scared. Actually, when I started my business, when I I had two business partners when we first started, both women, we each took a chunk of our individual life savings. I was the oldest by fifteen years, but still we all, you know, plugged in a certain amount of money that we had in the bank, if you will.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:26:50]:

But when we ran out of that money, we were done. So we figured we had about three months to actually get things going and have a business underway. And so, yeah, we had to be, we had to be really confident that the universe was on our side, but we didn't go into it stupid. We had people who loved us. We had done a lot of really good work. We had a lot of wonderful clients that we had worked with, who would always said, if you guys ever decide to start your own thing, call us, you know? And so we did that, you know, that was what we did. And we worked very hard. We got that business going in three months and we started paying ourselves and that was it.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:27:35]:

You know, the books was an easier thing because of course I had a job and I had a husband who had a job, you know, so all of those things, it was just a bit of a, it was for fun. Although I never thought of it as being a hobby. I always thought of it as being a job.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:27:52]:

Interesting. So tell me more about that. So you were like, I'm going to write romance novels, but your thought of it as a job. But even though you didn't need the money per se, what, like, was it like work or like, what was the motivation behind it? I guess

Tara Stoutenborough [00:28:08]:

it was, first of all, I think, I mean, you can do things for yourself. I've done a lot of stuff. I just did for fun. You know, I learned to paint for fun, mixed media collage for fun. Right? It'd be I I never worked hard enough at it to get really good at it, but I I was, you know, I was good enough to make presents for friends and, you know, things like that. Those were just for fun. But writing is my job. It's always my job.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:28:34]:

You see? And so people would say to me, you should write a book. And and my whole reaction to it was always, that sounds like a lot of work for no money. You know? Mhmm. Hate to write. So writing was a job just in my brain to start with. And if I was going to do this, it was like, I wanted to be good enough to get those books published, to actually see the evidence of success, because it wasn't a hobby. It was something I didn't have to make a lot of money my first year. And that was really important.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:29:10]:

I think, especially when you want to do something like write a book, etcetera, you've got to have some investment of time and energy and learning because I didn't know how to write fiction. I knew how to write everything else, but I didn't know how to write fiction. So I needed some serious study. I'll tell you the funniest story about, about my first book. So I wrote my very first book and I only knew one publisher who was the publisher of the author that I loved so much. And I sent my book out to them and, you know, holding my breath. I was like, oh my God. And of course it takes a long time, especially the first time you you do that.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:29:49]:

So I started writing another book in the same series. I got a reply back, and it was like, oh, wow. But they were like, you certainly have talent and blah blah. But this kind of problem and this kind of problem with the book, and we need, you know, a stronger point of view and blah blah blah. And I'm like, oh, yeah. Well, I can understand that. So I emailed them back and I said, thank you so much for looking at my book. I really appreciate it, and I will certainly work on all of these things that you've talked about, and maybe we can work together someday.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:30:21]:

And I got an email back so fast and they said, no, no, you don't understand. This is what is called a revise and resubmit. We are telling you, if you make these changes, we will publish your book. And I was like, woah. So that was a whole different ballgame.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:30:42]:

Oh, that's so exciting. That must have been so yeah. To have your first book.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:30:47]:

That was before self publishing. There was there was no self publishing. So if you couldn't get published by a publisher, you were out of luck, but it was the beginning of the small publishing phenomenon Mhmm. That really changed publishing and then eventually left, led on to self publishing.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:31:04]:

Great. Oh, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about, and I know we're probably nearing time is that, you know, you mentioned you're going on your 80 birthday and for folks, I know many of my listeners are in enlivened as you are my divine feminine mystery school. So some are, some are familiar with you, but Tara just exudes like so much, so much wisdom, crone energy, as I'm sure people can hear just from this conversation, but also so much maiden energy. Like there's just like a light of like enthusiasm and creativity and optimism that is just so magnetizing. And I don't believe that I've ever seen somebody that could kind of hold both like the maiden and the crone almost seemingly in equal amounts. And, you know, and it's just, it's just so, so beautiful to see like somebody so enriched in wisdom and just from life experiences, well earned wisdom, and yet still wanna play and create and have optimism.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:32:07]:

The word you used is the appropriate word. The word is enthusiasm. I remember a man that I worked with many years ago. He would always say everything is worth doing with enthusiasm, but it was when I learned that enthusiasm comes from the root to mean in God, right, To be in Theos. And I think that's it. I think it has to do with just being at least plugged into this confidence in a benign and benevolent, in my case, the divine feminine universe that is constantly unfolding. The word Shakti, which is the idea of the feminine energy of the universe, the energy that literally creates the universe, if you will, is a constantly unfolding thing. And so there's always something new.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:33:01]:

There's, there's always something different. Every moment is, is, is a brand new experience. Every moment is the totality of the universe. If you will, why miss it? Don't miss it. And, plug in, don't expect too much quit expecting yourself to be perfect. You know, just enjoy who you are at any given moment. And not to say that I don't, I'm not hard on myself. Of course I am.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:33:26]:

I have been and can be, but, enjoy.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:33:31]:

I love that. And I think that is like a beautiful place to start ending. And, you know, one of the things that I always have been talking about a lot lately, I'm sure you've heard me and just my listeners is about, you know, how do we actually show up for our lives and become the heroine, the active co creators, like at least let's just go all in on our lives. And, you know, when I listened to your story, I mean, I just think you're such a beautiful example of like, yeah, let's just show up and see what we can create.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:34:01]:

Yeah. See what doors open. Yeah. You know, there's an idea and it's a, it's a fairly radical idea and that the idea is radical responsibility. The idea that we do in fact create our own lives. I guess in some ways, the existentialists were kind of plugged into that as well. The idea that existence precedes essence and that we create ourselves. I do kind of believe that.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:34:23]:

I believe that we create ourselves as a part of God. We create ourselves that we decide why we're coming to this planet and that we are imbued with what we need to do, whatever we need to do. And just lighten up and get on with it. See, see what's next. You, you can undo as well as do. You're making a decision is not eternity. It is not the last thing. Everything changes all the time.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:34:53]:

And so make a decision. If it's the wrong one, undo it and make another decision. Just move forward.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:35:03]:

That's such beautiful guidance too, because I think people can get caught up on, you know, what if this is the wrong thing?

Tara Stoutenborough [00:35:10]:

If it's the wrong

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:35:11]:

thing, what if it is then you'll do something it might be, but we don't know until we actually do it. Right.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:35:18]:

My husband loves to tell us for it. We lived in Southern California for a while, and we lived in this house that had a, had a 48 that had a huge, huge high ceiling. And we decided to buy an enormous Christmas tree. And we bought this Christmas tree. It took three guys to set this darn Christmas tree up, and it took three guys to get it out too. I had a million ornaments. I had to buy more. We decorated this tree.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:35:45]:

I had to go up the staircase to decorate the whole thing. It took hours to decorate the thing. Putting on the lights was a little mini nightmare, but it was it was the most gorgeous tree you ever saw. The next year, we were like, okay. What day are we gonna go out and get the tree? What day do they open? What time shall we get there? My husband and I go out, go to the the Christmas tree farm, and we walk in and we look around and they have beautiful trees, and we find this gorgeous tree. And we're both standing in front of this tree. And he said, so what do you think? Is this the one? And I was like, you know what? I'm not sure I wanna do a tree this year. And he said, you don't? Okay.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:36:27]:

And I said, let's go to the movies. That changed your mind.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:36:31]:

Yeah. And that's beautiful. You can you can you can change your mind. You can do one thing and you can start it somewhere else. And I think that's such an important thing to give people permission to just try experiment. Oh, I love that with the Christmas tree. Yeah. I thought you were going to tell me that you ended up saying, why don't we just get a tiny one?

Tara Stoutenborough [00:36:50]:

Well, I mean, we, we did have a Christmas tree, but nothing we had done before. We, we put up the other ornaments in the house, but that was all.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:36:59]:

Yeah.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:36:59]:

That year we had a tree again.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:37:01]:

Oh, I love that. Movies. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Tara, for joining me today and for sharing all of your beautiful wisdom in your light. And it's just been such a pleasure as always to talk with you.

Tara Stoutenborough [00:37:14]:

My pleasure. I had such a good time.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:37:18]:

Thanks for tuning in to the God of School podcast. I hope today's episode inspired you to reclaim your feminine magic. Now don't forget to subscribe to the show. And if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave us a review on Apple. If you wanna dive deeper into divine feminine archetypes and reconnect with your power, check out my book, The Goddess Solution. It's packed with ancient goddess wisdom for the modern woman. You can find the book on Amazon, and the link is in the show notes. And if you are ready to embrace these practices alongside a global sisterhood, I invite you to join my Divine Feminine Mystery School, Enlivened.

Lisa Marie Rankin [00:37:53]:

It's a supportive space to embody these teachings with a fantastic community of like minded women. You'll find the link in the show notes. Remember, the goddess isn't a deity outside of you. She's an aspect of your highest self, and you are the goddess. Until next time, my friend.