Analiza: Hi, I'm Analiza Quiroz Wolf, proud Asian American mama of two kiddos. I went from being a Burned Out Mama to being a Boss Mama, being a boss at work, home, and play. I'm on a mission to help more women be Boss Mamas. If you want to thrive at work without sacrificing family or self care, you are in the right place.

For detailed show notes go to analizawolf.com/podcast and be sure to subscribe because I send out the best secrets I learned from my guests to my email subscribers. Now let's get into today's show.

How does a Boss Mama who's shy get the courage to speak her truth and tell the whole world her deepest, darkest secrets. Today we're talking with Korean American, Judy Lee. Judy made a huge career change. She started as a university researcher and realized it wasn't her calling. So she moved into a real passion of photography. Her goal wasn't just to take photos, but to help women uncover their true selves and their beauty both inside and out. Her business is a reflection of Judy's own journey, Judy spent most of her life struggling with the feeling of not enough beliefs of being shy. She also struggled for many years with infertility and finally adopted two boys. Her second son cried and cried, and Judy developed an emotional armor to cope. Judy shares how it was her own willingness to be vulnerable and shed that armor to speak up. That's how she came to know and love her true self. I can't wait for you to meet this Boss Mama.

Hi, Judy. It's wonderful to have you. I'm excited about learning more about your journey. And so I want to kick it off duty with a quote that I saw on your website. And the quote says, changing your life begins with changing how you see yourself. So why did you pick that quote? What's that about? Judy?

Judy: First of all, thank you so much for having me, I am so excited to talk to you. And I appreciate your time. I'm just sitting here giggling. Listening to you with that quote, changing your life starts with changing how you see yourself. I think a lot of us chase things throughout our lives in pursuit of that elusive happiness that we're all looking for. And we always look outside of ourselves. And so I don't know if you want to leave that. But I followed the traditional path of getting that great education, getting a great job buying the perfect house and the perfect car and all the little checkboxes we all check off in order to be happy. And I did all of that and found myself really feeling empty. And it wasn't until I really started looking inward and looking at myself and seeing like, what is it inside that I'm really looking for. And that really isn't about changing your life circumstances. It's about changing how you see yourself and changing how you see your life. Because let's face it, 99% of the world's population of humanity, we struggle with feeling like we're not enough. And we struggle with accepting ourselves as we are. We struggle with loving ourselves. Especially as women, we struggle with all of that stuff. And so if you really think about what it is that I'm really after, it's not happiness, it's like that inner peace. And that can only happen when you learn to see yourself as a complex human being with light to dark and everything in between, which is something that I say all the time, but it's so true. And the more that we accept that we're human, and that we're complex, and that we're flawed, the more inner peace you have. And with that inner peace comes joy,

Analiza: Judy, listening to you, I feel more at peace, like I can feel my shoulders come down and feel like ooh, yes, I have many aspects of myself, and not all of them are all bright and sunny. And it's okay, I'm okay. And it's normal. That's actually what makes us human and unique. So thank you for sharing that. And I actually want to bring that quote, I'm going to assume that you started with a super profound, like, a really profound idea. I want to go back to childhood and young Judy, and I imagine this has been a journey. So take me back there and what was going on in young Judy's mind about what life is about before the quote, with your being Korean American talk about that and being raised by your parents.

Judy: Yeah. So I was born in Korea, and our family emigrated to America when I was six. So I basically grew up in America. And with that comes, like so many things, right? This idea of being raised by parents who are trying to raise you as if you're in Korea, and then having the American culture that you're absorbing and like, actually growing up in, and having that conflict, that was a huge thing for me. But on a more personal level, when there was a lot of conflict in my household, there was a lot of trauma in my household. And when I was young, my parents got divorced. And for those of you who aren't Asian American, like you don't know how, like incredibly shameful that was great in American households, and especially in the Korean American community. We're like such a tight knit community, and we're very religious. And it was like all this, like, shame that came with that. And my parents were so ashamed of a big thing that happened to us that they told me I wasn't allowed to talk about it. And little Judy, interpreted that as your voice doesn't matter. And so I just shrank. I stopped speaking, I was very quiet, I stopped saying anything. And it almost created like this tornado effect, like inside of me where all of these feelings were coming up, and I couldn't express anything. Could you imagine telling your child you're going through this traumatic event, but you can't speak about it. You're not allowed to say anything or mention you have to pretend it's not happening. And so I internalized all of that. And struggled I became a perfectionist, I mean, crippling perfection, I was so obsessed with whatever they thought of me layer that on, with patriarchy layered that on with racism, feeling like I was other like, I always grew up wanting to be white. And thinking I wasn't enough just from that perspective. And if you think about what that feels like, it's this feeling like we don't belong to ourselves. We don't belong in our body. I was always like an alien. Like I was born in the wrong body. Why couldn't I have been born, in a white family where there would be no conflict, love the things that I was going through. And like I mentioned before, did that list of checking off all the boxes of things that I thought would make me happy and went through all of that got married to a white husband, of course, and I got my master's degree, I was working at a university, I had a very successful life from the outside. I had the house, I had the fancy car, everything I had, everything I ever wanted. And yet, I felt so unhappy. I was so empty inside, but it's like, I didn't even recognize that. And so fast forward, my husband and I tried to start a family and we experienced some pregnancy loss. And we were on this, like, 10 year infertility journey, went through a lot of IBS, nothing but sick. And finally, we ended up adopting my son and it filled me with so much joy, I became a stay at home mom, I felt like this was it, I feel so fulfilled, right? Because I had always dreamed of becoming a mother. And finally, here it was. And so we're like, okay, let's adopt another child, because I always imagined we'd have a big family. And so we adopted a second son, and the adoption process. So I adopted from Korea, and it's very tumultuous, it's very unpredictable. So that alone was like a journey, a deep, dark journey, which I didn't, I kept getting all these life lessons, and I wasn't learning anything. So that was a deep, dark journey. And then I adopted my second son and actually waited for another boy that we had been assigned. And we had been following along for two years. And the birth mother changed her mind right before he got his immigration permit to leave the country. And so we were fast track to the son that I have now. And he came at 20 months, which if you think about developmentally where that is, and he came home, and he screamed and cried because it took three years for him to stop doing that. for about six months, he wanted nothing to do with me, he fully rejected me. And it sent me into like the darkest, deepest places where I saw like the ugliest things about myself, because being around his trauma, and having a child that was so vocal and open about expressing himself, which is so funny, because today, he's still very emotionally intelligent. He loves talking about his feelings that forced me to deal with like all the feelings that were coming up for me, like all the unresolved trauma, and all the things I had been suppressing my whole life, had finally like, I couldn't run away from it. And I just, I saw the worst of myself, I saw myself and thought about it. If you're a mother, the thing that you struggle most with is being a mother and failing your children. And here I was, I adopted this child. I went through all of this work to adopt this child. And I was like, this was a mistake. I hate him. Why did I mess up my family? Everything was so fine. Before he came along, I blamed him. And so as you can imagine, the way I showed up, I was a terrible mother, every time he starts screaming, again, I'd be like, go to your room, I don't want anything to do with you. When he started to bond with me after he had rejected me for six months, I remember one time walking to school walkie my older son to school, and he would kind of reach out to hold my hand and I would just kind of walk faster, so I didn't have to hold it. It was just in so much pain. Anyway, he started kindergarten, finally, right, he stopped crying, we started healing just in that respect, because we didn't have the constant crying and screaming. And a good friend of mine said to me, and this was when I had started doing family photography, just by accident, taking pictures of my kids, and then my friends would ask me, but it was something that I didn't really do much of. And I would always be so afraid to put myself out there. And a friend of mine said to me, is this the hobby, this photography you're doing? Is it a hobby? Or is it? Is it a business? And I was like, Okay, I'm gonna take it seriously and run it as a business. And I went to this lighting class, I went to this conference, and I went to this lighting class. And there was this woman photographer there named Sue Brice, who was speaking and I had no idea who she was. So I texted that same friend, and she's like, you have to go see her. So I went and sat and saw her and I was in a darkened room, and she was sharing all of these amazing portraits of women that she was doing. And something just stirred deep inside of me, I don't know what it was, I can't even explain it. But I just knew deep down and like the deepest core of me that this was what I was meant to do. And I pursued it. I had never done anything like that before studio photography, and I did it. And I was like, Oh my gosh, like I asked my friend to pose for me, just so I couldn't see if I could even handle it. And they would see their pictures and cry. And I said, there's something here. And I wasn't successful, like I was like, Okay, this is supposed to happen, I just know in my gut, and it wasn't happening. And I really realized that it was because there were too many fears getting in the way. And so I went ahead and faced all of my fears all at once. And that started with one speaking like, because of this deathly fear of speaking to me, I associated speaking with danger. And I took a speaking class called women's be something in my gut said, start sharing all of these shame and secrets you've been carrying around your whole life. So I just started a newsletter. And I was like, why am I starting a newsletter for my photography business and talking about my childhood trauma, I don't know. But I'm gonna do it. Instead of sharing that. I just started putting myself out there, I started inviting girlfriends who we had the relationship where you see each other all the time, but you don't get into those deep dive, personal conversations of like, let's have coffee, and I want to talk about all the things, I started doing all the things at once. And with each thing that I wrote about each interaction, I had, each everything, it's almost like I was taken up the layers and layers and layers of armor that I had been walking around with. And that's where you find us today, where I just really had to face myself and release all of this trauma. It was a very quick process for me, because I just did everything all at once.

Analiza: Wow, Judy, thank you so much for sharing and for modeling for us what it's like to just stand in your story and your truth and be your authentic self, all sides, both the light and the dark. I can tell you love yourself, even as you share that you arrived here because of that journey. And that you each of those, we'll call it breakdowns have led to this breakthrough. So first, thank you. I'm going to do some follow up questions, because I want to take some of these really beautiful gems so that I can learn and we can all our audience can learn too. So let's go back to this moment of this is not it. Like I'm sad. And I want to do something different, though. It's with your family and also with your career. How did you like trust? Because you could have kept going right? You could have kept you at a university. I mean, that's a very hard position to get. It took many, many years. Imagine your parents right there. They're seeing you as an achiever for all the work that you've done. You're like a golden child. So how did you take action to actually one recognize it's time to take action and then to actually take action? I mean, that's what I talked about.

Judy: Here's the thing. I wasn't the golden child because I was actually in a doctorate program and I decided grad school was not for me. I just finished my master's and it wasn't good enough for my father. And those of us who are Asian or x Anybody, right? We're all just looking for love validation and for our parents to truly see us and accept us. And I was never good enough for my father. And I know that that has nothing to do with me. Now I know it has to do with him. And, he came, I found out much later that he came from a really abusive household where his mother literally beat him and verbally abused him. And I'm grateful that I wasn't abused. It’s amazing when I look at my father, like, Oh my gosh, like you didn't abuse us, like, that's huge, just in one generation. So I never got that I never got that feeling of validation. And then on top of that, my father is extremely religious. And there's nothing inherently wrong with a religion, but the kind of religion he practiced was a religion that was about hatred and exclusion. And it was just I just knew it wasn't right for me. When I went to college, I was so interested in religion, because of the way I was brought up that I started taking a lot of religious studies classes, and I was like, Oh, wait a minute, there's more than one way like, there's this whole world. And it actually made me feel like I don't want to just follow one thing. And so I never had that approval. I was looking outside myself. So I remember like, so I grew up in New York, I moved to California to go to grad school. And that wasn't good enough, right from my father. And I started working, and I just was so unhappy with my life. I was like, What can I change? And so my husband and I, we didn't like Southern California wasn't a good fit for us. So we're like, let's move. So we moved to Seattle. So that was it. I tried, again, to look on the outside to see Well, can I change on the outside?'' And the thing is, it's like I came to Seattle. And then it was like, even harder, because I didn't have any friends, I did some consulting, I continued to do consulting for the work I was doing. And then I was like, I'm gonna take some time off. And I was in this really long period of malaise of feeling like, I'm so worthless, because I'm not doing anything and I'm not making money. Every time I would talk to my father, he would just say, well, you failed me as a daughter, and why didn't you get your know, your doctor Ed and, and I was trying to become a mother, I think there's a part of me that's going to fill that emptiness. I knew I've always wanted to be a mother, but it was trying to fill that with my children by having kids. And so I was dealing with all of this stuff. And I just wanted to share that a lot of us find ourselves in this malaise and feeling like we're so worthless, and there's a period but, I look back now. And I needed that, like, I needed that to kind of, I don't even know if I can verbalize it. But I needed that period of malaise to really figure out what it was that I wanted, because we keep doing and doing and doing whatever that doing means to you. It means different things for all of us. But we keep doing and doing to look. And the thing that I've really discovered is that we have our answers inside of us, and even the work that I do, as a court of transformative portrait photographer, like it's this belief that the woman that I'm serving surely knows the answers. I'm not trying to give her answers. I'm just trying to give her space to feel like she can be herself unapologetically and show me her light and dark and everything in between. and feel seen. I don't know if that answers your question. But it's kind of like a long, roundabout way.

Analiza: I want to pull out just how those periods of breakdown and the repeat patterns that you're seeing over and over and you're using the same strategy to counter which was external validation or external changes? What can I change outside? And without Milly's and hard times when making those changes didn't work, you wouldn't have gotten to the point where you now realize Actually, it's, it's not the external, and it's actually the internal. So thank God for those breakdowns, because you wouldn't be you. And I'm curious, Judy, when you went through the process of realizing it is you internally that you want to face that you want to face like, what was your process? Did you read a book? Did you walk around? I mean, what was that? Because many of you know that journey in many ways.

Judy: You know what. I don't know if you've ever heard of this adage, that when you're ready, the teachers will come, huh? Right. Have you ever heard of that? It's like reading when you're ready to learn, your teachers will arrive. And when I go back to that experience of sitting in that darkened room and seeing that woman photographer and just knowing deep in my gut that this is what I was supposed to do. There was that, like, knowing that I just trusted and I have to tell you when I wrote my first newsletter issue, which was admitting how I felt about my son that I just adopted, right? Think about that. Like I'm just telling the world I'm a shitty mother, basically. And that's the thing. We're Most as mothers' right to fail as a mother, to put that out there, it felt. I mean, literally, it felt like I was, I mean, not literally figuratively, it felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff. And I was getting ready to jump by pressing the stand on my computer. And it was dark, and I didn't know what it was. And the thing about being a perfectionist, and using that as a coping strategy is that I always had to have all the answers. And I can't describe it as anything other than a leap of faith. And once I did that, and believe me, it was so scary, it was almost like killing off the old version of myself, who was very guarded and secretive and perfect, on the outside, but no one could tell there was anything going on with me. I mean, during that time I posted like, you get those like, highlight, like memory, things. Like, all the pictures look like we were a perfect family. I was like, Oh my god, this is not what was coming. But it was that leap of faith. And once I decided to do that, it was like, everything just fell on my lap. I mentioned to a girlfriend, I had coffee with a girlfriend, and I hadn't seen in a while and I said, Oh, I want to take some sort of speaking class, right? I didn't know what I was looking for. And she was like, Oh, I have a friend who just started a woman's big circle. Anybody can become a leader. And I'm a woman speaker leader now, who started a woman's big circle. I want to check it out. And I just knew I had to do it. I just started having those coffees with my friends, inviting them and saying, like, hey, let's have real conversations. And they were like, have you heard about this app called headspace? You know, the meditation apps. I started meditating. I was like, okay, and another friend was like, have you heard of this woman named Brene Brown? And I was like, what's that? Right? And she's all about perfectionism and vulnerability. And it was like, everything just fell into my lap. And it's one, I think the first thing is deciding, deciding things. Yes. saying yes to you, whatever that means to you. Just making the decision. And what happens is, when you make that decision, you start opening yourself up. It's like, it's not an AB thing that didn't exist. Before I started, unify started that journey. They were always there. I just was closed off to it. It never just even occurred to me. And once I said, Yes, everything just kind of fell into my lap. And I just said yes to everything, even though like, for example, the women's week program, I went to check it out. And it was the most uncomfortable, awful experience that I ever had in my life. I was literally shaking and sweating. And like, tears were coming out of my eyes, like it was so uncomfortable. But I said yes to it.

Analiza: Hmm. I want to go back, I can picture you sweaty and doing this, like best training ever for you. Which is hilarious. I wouldn't talk through your mention of the trusting because there's also this eight edge leap, and the net will appear when you're at the edge. Or even if you're an athlete, right and you're running and there's a hurdle, you can't just half assed, that hurdle, you've got to really commit and leap. And you'll make it over and believe that. So I want to use that because there's so much trust in the world aligned, like life aligned with your trust. But you had to trust and decide and commit. And I want to talk through that because that's hard. As women, we're not conditioned to trust ourselves, especially. So can you talk through trust? And what did that mean for you? Like, how did you go from this mindset from ring raised and patriarchy and your parents and your guides, saying these not nice things to you about not being enough? And then trusting actually, the person in the mirror had the answers? What I mean, can you because that's the part I think that's tough for our audience, women in general, how goes one, can you step through it? So decide? And then what does it mean to trust?

Judy: I think that a lot of us believe that in order to make these leaps, whatever that leap is, for you, that the trust comes first. And that's not how it works. You have to just say yes, and keep doing it and doin it and doin it and it's just gonna be scary. You're never going to feel ready. And I hate I hate the word fearless. Which means the absence of fear. If you really think about what bravery is, right, fearless woman that's like such a thing that you see all over the place. And I'm like, No, you're brave because you feel the fear and do it anyway. And if you think about it, like for example, I'm going to bring up this idea of like the speaking when I learned that it wasn't safe for me to speak my, my body, my body learned it wasn't safe, right? Your body has memory. When you drive somewhere and you don't even remember, like taking turns and stuff because you're you have muscle memory, right? My body told me wasn't safe to speak. So every time I would want to say something, I would just start sweating. And like my face would get red and my heart would beat really fast. And it was like Danger, danger, danger stop, I stopped myself from speaking it. If I did my talking like this, where you couldn't even hear what I was saying. And you could tell I didn't trust my own voice. And your body has memory. And so that's not something that you're just going to get over. That's something that you have to spend like years and years and years training. And to this day, I am a woman speak leader, I teach other women how to trust their voice, I still, if I have to get up and speak in front of people, I still get the same exact body reaction, my body had the same reaction, because it's such a deep muscle memory, of not being able to trust. But the difference between now and then is that body memory is just a reminder that I once felt like my voice didn't matter. And now it does. And my body's just remembering that and it's just it's something that I've learned to harness, it's not an easy answer, like you just have to keep practicing and and our women speak practice to the group that I lead, I really say this is a practice of trusting your voice like that some of the women have a lot of trauma around their voice, they'll get up and start crying, like every talk they give like, and there's tears are coming down, and they don't know what to say. And it's just a process. And that gets a little bit less, a little bit less, a little bit less every time they take, they show up the next time and give another talk. And so it's a process. And I think that we think it's like a quick and easy thing. And it's not, it's recognizing that the trust will happen eventually. You just have to keep doing it. You just have to keep showing up. You just have to keep saying yes to you. Because at the end of the day, why are you doing it to me and why means everything. Why? Because you know what? I hit such a low point after my second adoption. Like there's nowhere else for me to go like I wanted to die. I used to fantasize about getting cancer, oh, gosh, if I could get cancer, I could, I'll get sick and I'll just wither away. I used to fantasize about dying. So that's the thing. What's the alternative? Right? What's scarier staying stuck. And staying in this malaise of not liking yourself and struggling and suffering all the time, or taking that one little leap, right. And for me, I took a big leap right away, but it doesn't, you can take tiny, tiny little leaps, right little steps, baby steps, you take that big picture and you break it down to a little smaller, break it down to a little smaller to a little smaller. So you're making one tiny little change today. Right? Sit somewhere else, like our families, we all have our spots around the dining table, sit in a different seat, see how that feels right? Start with baby steps, just change something. Analiza: I love that because it doesn't have to be like jumping off a cliff. Yeah. Trust yourself, the net will appear.

Judy: Yeah, it's not like that.

Analiza: I do want to say there's just like so much here, but I want to try to map it out. Because I'm a concrete systems thinker. I don't know how you think. I like to think about how your mindset changed from taking these messages and acting accordingly without a lot of thought about who you really want it to be. And instead, you became aware of how you thought and how you want to feel and starting to shift like how am I going to how do what what do I believe about myself, I just hear from you just how much there became self acceptance on all aspects of yourself and then deciding so there's like a master of mindset and then a decision that I am going to do this. And then as you went further along and little steps, little steps there became this, trust that started to happen. And people started talking to you all these different resources came your way. You got this professional development that came your way at the perfect time and now your leader women speak. So it is a process and we don't have to be like shoot men, Judy transformed. How am I going to do that tomorrow? It's actually a choice each moment, what choice Are you going to make, but first decide, right? decide that you're worthy of it, commit to it, and then trust So I love that and making it smaller. We're talking with women and I'm curious about other tips or strategies you would share with women about how they can make this happen for them that you haven't covered yet.

Judy: I'd like to mention that it's so important for us to have some sort of practice where we get an opportunity to connect to our bodies. And the reason why I say that is because a lot of us women don't feel safe in our bodies. We don't feel like we belong to our bodies because we've been told our whole lives, layers and layers and layers of things right? You don't have the right body, you don't have the right face, you don't know, I'm not right. racial ethnic group, right? We get all these messages that our body doesn't belong to us. It belongs to society and society gets to dictate what your body's supposed to look like, just even like what kind of clothes you're allowed to wear for your body type, all these like rules that we're given about how we're supposed to live in our bodies, you have to be this size, this shape this BMI index. I mean, God, it's unbelievable if you really sit and think about what we're told we're allowed to do. So I would say, find a practice that helps you feel safe in your body. And that could be anything. So for me, one of the things that fell on my lap was yoga. And so that was like a thing. Last time I took yoga was in college, it was like 20 years ago, or something like that. And I found yoga and it just gave me a chance to kind of like being in my body. Because if you think about it, how often are you in your body? If you were raised, especially with trauma, you've learned that it's not safe to be in your body, which is why whenever we get that, that if something's triggering us, or we're anxious or scared, or something, we're like, it's not safe to be in here, run over a runaway distract and do something else. And it could be yoga, it could be dancing, it could be some sort of exercise, if that's something that helps you to connect to your body. But I think that that's such an important thing. I call myself an embodiment photographer, because when I photograph women, they're like, Well, how do you get women who are deathly scared of being photographed, to really like, you look at their pictures, and they they're really present in their body, there's so much expression and they take up space in their photos. And I'm like, this is an embodiment practice, I get them to pause and just really drop in connection to their bodies. Because if you think about where self acceptance comes from, it's this rejection that we're only allowed to have certain feelings. We're only allowed to feel certain things. And acceptance is not about feeling good. It's not self love isn't about feeling good. Self love is about feeling everything. And that means being with yourself. When you don't feel good being with yourself when you feel like shit. Excuse my language, being with yourself when you're sad, being with yourself when you're angry. I mean, God, so many of us women have so much anger, like dwell deep inside of us, right from so many experiences. But yeah, find an embodiment practice. I think that's a really important thing. And it could be a fun way to also explore being in your body. You can take a hula hoop class. I mean, who knows there's so many different things you can do.

Analiza: Judy, I'm sitting with this idea of being in your body and trusting your body and listening to your body, and the body keeps score, like there's so much that our body has and sometimes that history that we have, like you said, will be in flight or fight mode with a small thing that happens that we don't even notice that it happens when you get triggered. So how can we start to check in with our body and listen to our body and trust and feel all the feelings? And if we don't feel often they'll get stuck right? Like I find that I'll be angry about something I even know I was angry about but I'll feel myself cringe and it'll stay with me until I release it so I absolutely love the idea of embodiment. I love running every day in the morning. It's part of my practice that helps me feel good. Not about calories it's about just like this really practice of feeling good and in my body.

Judy: Well, I wanted to mention too like so many of us are women are taught that if we have some sort of embodiment practice like exercise, it's about getting into shape or having the making sure you have the acceptable body or whatever, right all these things that we do and it's like, it's not about that it's about that chance to connect to yourself right that moment where you're just you I think so many of us if I asked you who are you? Oh, I'm a mom, I'm this and that, the list of things that go on. The thing is, I am a complete sentence, right? Like that idea that just being us is enough like that inherent worth. That's it. That's like the answer. You don't have to do all the other stuff just, I'm a photographer. I don't know if I'll be doing this 10 years from now. I feel like it's my purpose and calling but that's what it's, that's what's true today. And I feel like we're always seeking the final answer. Like, if I find what I want to do next in my career, it has to be the endpoint, it has to be what I do for the rest of my life. And I think we get lost in things like the destination, the achievement, the goal. And it's not about that, it's about taking that journey, taking those steps to get from one place to another. To me that transition in between spaces, is what I really live for. And it's like, you know what destination is and death. It's your journey from today to death. That's the final goal, right? As we're all gonna die now.

Analiza: It is true. We don't want to rush to that destination. I love being about the journey and enjoying the journey. And if we don't have enough space, then where can we pause and actually look around and be here now because all we have is now. So Judy, with that, I have some fun lightning round questions. Okay, and our conversation. Here we go. Chocolate or Vanilla.

Judy: Vanilla. I don't think it's boring. I think it's no less complex.

Analiza: Cooking or takeout

Judy: Takeout. Oh my gosh, I don't like cooking at all. I think it was the patriarchal father who always told me he used to tell me to learn to cook or no one's gonna marry, or refuse to learn.

Analiza: Climb a mountain or jump from a plane?

Judy: I love hiking. So that's a given. I would have to say jump from a plane because I definitely have a fear of heights. And I do want to do it eventually.

Analiza: Have you ever worn socks with sandals?

Judy: Heck, no. But if someone wants to do it, I don't judge.

Analiza: How would you rate your karaoke skills on a scale of 1 to 10 being Mariah Carey?

Judy: One, actually, no, that's not that bad. I can hold the tune. I just don't enjoy the address of the five.

Analiza: Recent books you read?

Judy: I am currently reading Minor Feelings by Kathy Park about the Asian American experience with racism and prejudice. So it's been interesting.

Analiza: What is your favorite way to practice self care?

Judy: My favorite way to practice self care is to put space in my schedule. I am not a go from one thing to another. I never put things back to back. I think the most valuable thing I can give somebody is my attention and time. And I think that's what someone else can give me. And that's what I value most of everything. And so I always make sure if I've got something like, let's say I have like a photoshoot, which is very energy intensive for me, because I really go out of my way to show up, I make sure like, there's nothing else happening that week. And that's all I'm focusing on. So space in my schedule.

Analiza: What's a good professional development you've done?

Judy: Woman speak. I think we women are so disconnected from our voices and learning to trust your voice and to speak in a way where you're really connected to who you are, makes you so powerful in so many ways. Because a lot of times we see speaking as a performative practice, and it's not it's a way for us to tap into that body wisdom and speak from a really deep place.

Analiza: And what's your definition of a Boss Mama?

Judy: How do you know that when you told me you were gonna ask me that one? And I didn't really put much thought into it? I don't know. Because I don't like to define myself as like, they're the expert photographers. There's a term called mom talk. It's supposed to be meant to be derogatory, but I'm like, screw you. But I think us mothers, we put so much emphasis on being a mother because motherhood, if you think about how society sees that is, by definition, a losing of self is about a self sacrifice, though. I just say I'm boss, I'm just boss.

Analiza: And where can we find you?

Judy: You can find me online. My website is Judyleephotography.com. And I also have an Instagram presence @Judyleephotography.

Analiza: And then do you have a final ask, recommendations or any parting thoughts for our audience?

Judy: I would assume that most of the women who are listening to this podcast are in pursuit of something you're on some sort of journey of better self betterment, self discovery. And I think that a lot of us tend to see that as an opportunity to fix ourselves to fix all the things we don't like about ourselves, to all the things that are wrong with us and trying to fix that. And I invite anyone who is on that journey, to recognize that you're not a project to fix your person to love.

Analiza: That's a mic drop, Judy. So thank you so much for your stories, your vulnerability for modeling for us, what it means to speak, speak from you speak from a love of yourself, because that gives me permission and us permission to also speak and also love ourselves. So thank you. Thank you, Judy, for our time today.

Judy: Thank you.

Analiza: Thank you so much for carving out time today to hear today's podcast. Three things before you go. First, if you found it helpful, please leave a five star review. Second, please share with someone else you can share the link and posts on Facebook and say check it out. Lastly, I want to thank you for being a listener and you didn't go to get a free self care bonus called Juice your Joy at an analiza.wolf/freebonus. Thank you so much.