Ep #140: Soul Bursting with Coach Donna Jennings

You are listening to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™ Podcast episode 140.

Welcome to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™ Podcast, the only show that combines a fun personality, medical knowledge, sexual counseling, and life coaching together. To create unique sex coaching that helps busy women awaken their libidos, address intimacy issues, and learn how to express their sexuality for the rest of their days. Here is your host, certified life coach and sexual counselor, Dr. Sonia Wright.

Hello, hello, hello, hello Diamonds, it’s Dr. Sonia and I am here today with one of my team members, one of my favorite people and sometimes we call each other sisters from another mister. But basically we are here because I want my Diamonds to know each member of my team. You actually know Coach Donna already. And you know she’s a little bit of a spitfire and a little bit of a free spirit and she says what’s on her mind. And I cannot filter it. So what you’re going to get is live.

But we’re going to be talking about soul bursting and I want you to meet her. You know about her because if you listened to the prior empowering conversations that we did a series on last year then you met Coach Donna previously. And I just want all my Diamonds and everybody that’s in Lit Clit Club or joining Lit Clit Club to know my members of Lit Clit Club, the coaching team. So this is Coach Donna. And I asked her specifically what soul bursting means to her and this is the response that she gave.

And then we’re going to talk more about soul bursting and we’re going to talk about what are her strengths as a coach, what is it that she provides to the Lit Clit team. Okay, so soul bursting comes in moments of feeling fully alive, so full I think I just might pop because the amount of goodness and joy is more than I can contain. Feeling and being right with myself, others and the world, physically I skip and leap to keep up with my high flying spirit self. I hear people speak of flow and wonder if my soul burst moments often flow with a turbo boost.

That would be how I would describe Donna so that fits very much in alignment. And for the people that are coming in and don’t know as much about the soul bursting, that is what we want to facilitate to help you on your soul bursting journey. I kind of think of the soul bursting as the equivalent of orgasms in the bedroom and soul bursting outside of the bedroom in your life just in general. And every one of my team members, we’re all coaches as well.

And we are committed to being there for you and coaching you and tapping into and helping you tap into your soul bursting experiences in The Lit Clit Club and life in general as well as your comfort level around your own sexuality and sexual intimacy in general. So she says, “I now employ a daily practice that sows seeds of alignment, mini bursts if you will, filled by allowing, being, awareness and introspection.” Donna, Coach Donna, so good to have you here.

So for the people in The Lit Clit Club and the people that are on my podcast and the people on my YouTube station, can you just introduce yourself?

Donna: Absolutely.

Sonia: Who you are, what you do and then we’re going to go from there with our conversation.

Donna: Yeah. Well, who I am and what I do. So I’m a lover of people and discovery and wisdom and insight. Professionally I have been educator and a healthcare provider as a physician assistant for now almost a decade and a half. And coaching, I don’t know, I think, maybe big to say it saved my life, maybe saved my marriage, but it really turned my life around. It took my life off of autopilot and that was, can you believe it now, almost five years ago?

And probably I think that five years ago when I became a coach and it was a year and a half or so before that where I learned about coaching. And that’s when my life began to turn around and then it just really resonated. And it’s something I wanted to offer people because as you can see in the trajectory of my life as an educator I wanted to help people have a better life and learn and discover and it was a way out because education was a way out of poverty and just kind of feeling stuck and not having anywhere to go for me.

And then medicine is a way to literally heal and help people heal. And then you bring coaching into that and now I’m helping people heal from the inside out. And I just feel like there’s a completeness to that. And for me it feels like a personal completeness as far as what I want to offer the world.

Sonia: Yeah. I love that because it aligns so much with my story as well. I came from poverty and education was my way out. I got my scholarship to college and I was able to go off and make a difference. And it also made me [inaudible], I always wanted to give that to people that didn’t have opportunities and to help in whatever way to make more opportunities for people. And as well as your path, you’re a physician assistant, I’m a physician. So I went on to get the training in medicine to heal that way.

And I think that as doctors, physician assistants, whomever in the healthcare field we recognize that there is a component of the mind that makes all the difference. We can give medication to the body. We can diagnose, we can do all of that but there is a component of the mind and if the mind is in alignment with healing so much can be done. And so I think that’s how we kind of go on the journey on the path to the coaching side of things as well. Because we realize that it’s not just about the body but it is about the mind, the spirit, the soul as well.

So I love how you say that and it does make it clear that we’re sisters from another mister, because we do…

Donna: Yes, ma’am.

Sonia: And also our journeys collided in September of 2018 and you’re right, it’s almost been five years because we were in the same, it was a week of coaching, coach training intensive, coach training week. And then we were there together for a week and then we went home. And we continued to stay together and we would talk every Sunday morning. I still have it on my calendar, talk to Donna. And we kind of grew our coaching practices together in parallel as we did the work.

And it’s interesting how years later we came back together in terms of alignment with doing the work around sexuality, women’s sexuality specific. And you have a focus where you’ve always liked to coach women and around midlife in whatever area that you’re focusing on as well. Would you say that?

Donna: Yeah. No, I would. I would say that tends to be the type of individual that I feel like my message speaks most to, that they’re ready to receive that and it kind of sits with them better and they’re ready to make a transition. I say, I help women make peace with their past so they can create an extraordinary future. And I think that’s kind of been, again, my story. We do say we are our first client. And every sense we were in that cohort together.

I loved so much, there’s this room full of hundreds of people and we get to be in a group of 14 and had no idea, 13 or 14 of us, no idea of each other. And here we get to sit still today, great friends and experiencing this, this path in life. And I just loved how that intersected. And we continue to make that impact in women’s lives to support them in ways where they get to have a voice, they get to be heard. They get to maybe come to terms for the first time with realizing they’ve always believed something and never really questioned that.

And so now they get to decide if they want to keep believing and keep living that life. And for me my life was on autopilot and I wasn’t really questioning anything and that was taking me a particular direction. And since I began to question and hold myself accountable, that’s where things have really made a massive turn and what I think is a difference.

Sonia: Now, you need a lot of courage and faith in order to start asking the questions, in order to look at your life and say, “Is this the path that I want to go down or do I want to be intentional about this?” And sometimes it’s so scary because even before you get to that point where you’re like, “Do I want to go down this path?” You have to admit that you’re not necessarily happy on this path. And that scares a lot of people to just do that. Can you talk about that?

What does it take to be okay with the discomfort before you make the changes in your life, but to get to that point where you recognize that it’s not the way you want it to be?

Donna: Yeah. Because that is so true and I get so used to that having been there, that you’ve pointed out, I appreciate you’re kind of bringing some light back to that point of what I am accustomed to actually is, it’s in my past but it’s maybe a crossroad for somebody right now. I had a fabulous job, made great money, very respectable. And so from all of the poverty mindset and all of the finding something in the world that’s respectable to do. And being married and having a great house and having everything from the outside in, a great life.

And I actually from the inside out had a great life, my discomfort was, my discomfort, my dissatisfaction, I have kept inside. And it was all kind of bottled up inside and it might spill over. It would spill over into blaming but I might overwork. I mean work is a place I really proved myself and I’ve worked since I was 15. And so I’ve got to tell you, the one identity I knew that I owned and never questioned was I knew how to work. And so examining things in my frustration, one of the key things was I was blaming everything around me.

And so to question that. And sometimes we can sit, even silently in our lives for longer under this thought that I should be happy. Look at my life. Look what I’ve created, other people, this is their dream and they’ll never have this. So why am I complaining or even thinking that this is not enough. And you either forge forward under that judgment and forge forward anyway or come to terms with you know what, why can’t I just keep creating? Why can’t I just keep growing? And that’s kind of more of where I was at. Okay, I keep growing.

Coming to terms that I’m not stagnant and that that was something unique about me and why my life is maybe not like everybody else’s or why I seem, I don’t think I seem dissatisfied. But people might think I wasn’t satisfied with my life because I would keep what I call progressing, they might call hopping from one thing to the next. And I think of it as more collecting and growing a new layer and a new layer. You didn’t hop from being a physician to being a sexual counselor. You combined all of it. And you’ve just been adding on new layers.

And what’s fun is at the same time you’re adding on layers of what you’re capable of doing and have to offer, you’re peeling back layers to discover who you truly are.

Sonia: That’s so true, 100%, I definitely agree with that. It is a journey that we go on so I definitely appreciate that and when you talk about your journey. I think that that’s important. And I like what you’re saying, it’s kind of like you choose not to settle, it’s really your life is good but it’s not exactly what you want. And so you choose not to settle. You choose to allow the possibility of it being different. And I think that this is something that we all have to go through to get to our soul bursting. We have to recognize where we are right now is not necessarily where we want to be.

And it could be inside or outside the bedroom, our life is not necessarily [inaudible], and I think if you love your life even more, if you love your relationships, if you love what you have, it’s okay to want even more. It’s okay to be like, I love this and I love it enough that I’m going to fight to make it what I really want it to be. Versus some people might say, “This is good enough, and I don’t want to lose it.” And maybe that’s the difference, it’s the scarcity thinking, if I change something then I might lose it, I might make it worse.

Or the prosperity thinking where it’s I can make it better. This is great and it can even be better. And I could get to that soul bursting life that I’m looking for. So how do you lead your clients to the soul bursting? I know that you have some unique skills and training as a coach. How do you lead your clients to that soul bursting?

Donna: Thank you. I want to just add one more piece and that is I also had to come to terms that nothing was wrong with people who did not want more like I wanted more.

Sonia: 100%.

Donna: That’s their soul bursting, right?

Sonia: Yeah, they’re fine. And it doesn’t mean that because you want more and they don’t necessarily want more that there’s something wrong with them. And I had to say that I had to go to that place too. I can remember one time one of my friends telling me that not everybody wants to continue to improve themself constantly and I was like, “But why not? Why wouldn’t you?”

Donna: Right, yeah, totally.

Sonia: I don’t understand that, I’m like, “But why are you on this Earth?” But there’s lots of different reasons that people choose how to experience their life, right?

Donna: Yeah. And I cannot realize this but I think I discovered this or experienced this, I was about maybe 12, maybe 13. But in the apartment complex I lived in, I went to visit our next door neighbor, Miss Rhoda, and she was definitely old enough to be my mother but probably even a little older than that. And so we’re chatting and one day I just kind of am talking about observations I’ve made and questioning things and exploring stuff. And she was like, “When did you learn to think like that?”

And I thought, well, I don’t know. I just always have. And that was a product, that moment was a product of just introspection and kind of taking it all in and analyzing and processing even younger. And so learning to allow me to be me. And allow others to be them and we’re both better, neither, there’s not a better choice. They are them and I am me and that’s it. And so their life isn’t less and my life isn’t more. My life’s just mine to go create and make it what I want it to be and fulfill what I think is more of my calling and what’s in me that wants to get out.

Sonia: Not everybody is on the soul bursting journey and not everybody has to be on the soul bursting journey.

Donna: And their soul bursting might totally look different. They may be completely content and this is something that comes to mind. One of my first jobs after high school but before college when some events were taking place and I worked in a factory. And I worked in a factory beside other people who worked in a factory who had been in that factory for a very long time, in a very big city where there is a lot of other things to do. But they were steady and they were consistent and they were productive. They loved their home.

They had their garden, they enjoyed sitting out on their porch and hanging out with family. And none of that is wrong or less than. There was just something inside me that wanted to explore more and go beyond the horizon so to speak. And kind of move out of this town and any limitations here. And I just had to come to terms that that was just in me that wanted to get out and go and let that be in me and let it not be in them.

And there certainly was a period of time in my life, especially younger when I judged that. But I judged that to break free from that in the process of allowing me to be me. And then as a process of accepting me to be me, I could let them be who they are. And so I don’t know, we’ve really spiraled around here to confuse anything for people. And then now I’m sitting on Miss Rhoda’s couch and she’s looking at me saying, “So when did you learn to think like that?” I said, “I don’t know, I just always have.” And sometimes people’s heads are still spinning when I’m done. So yeah, anyway, I don’t know, how’s your head?

Sonia: My head is fine because one, I’m used to you and how your brain works. And two, mine works kind of similarly. So I’m always like, I just grab a hold of the reins and I’m there for the ride. That’s what she said.

Donna: Innuendoes, one in there.

Sonia: Okay. So, Donna, tell me about your coaching, what is it that you love to do?

Donna: Okay. I love helping women see how, particularly because when they come, they’re frustrated with their life as it is or with results as it is for either what it is or what it isn’t. And there’s something they want to change. And one of the things I love about the coaching I do is helping them move forward to achieve what they want to achieve while letting go of blaming themselves and judging themselves for inadequacies, how they don’t measure up, how they shouldn’t be something different, they shouldn’t have done it differently.

All of these things that are coping mechanisms that now are just handcuffing them from being able to live. And so I love seeing the transformation where the negative emotions, the negative self-talk crawls away and they make this transition from what I don’t want. And then they’re eventually able to answer what they do want and identify what they do want. And then we move towards that and whether that’s in intimacy or whether that’s in career or whether that’s in self-love.

The course for my clients is generally the same, releasing the hold that negative limiting beliefs, your negative ways of thinking, release the hold that has. And then they realize they can begin to create. They’ve been living on autopilot, not questioning, just being. They don’t remember when they learned to believe those things. But now they want something more  and different and now we get to question those things. And what peels away, what falls away from that as they emerge into the person that they, I think the person they were born to be, more and more fully emerge into her.

Sonia: And so how does your coaching do that?

Donna: So my coaching does that, there’s so many tools but I have a structure that I process a program that I take them through. We have two options, one is we can work together over a period of six months, it includes a deep, deep dive intensive and then we follow-up over six months. And that’s really deep diving into them. If they want to compress time and get things dealt with we can release a lot of stuff. And then in the process I am there as they begin to relate to the world without the old conditioning and the beliefs and reacting the way they always reacted.

Or we can just do it piece by piece for people who are just slightly a little over at a time or maybe just have one thing they want to work on then we can do that one-on-one over a period of time, maybe not so deep and not so intense. So it’s just two types of clients, some are ready, like, “No, let’s hit it, let’s get it and let’s go.” And I am there to support as they make the transition and learn to walk. And others, we walk and transition at the same time.

Sonia: So what kind of coaching do you do in The Lit Clit Club? Because that’s more like a monthly membership program and then you’re going to be doing sessions in there. So what are you going to be focusing on?

Donna: Got it, yeah.

Sonia: You’re a sex coach but you’re also a dream coach too.

Donna: Yes. And so within that, we’re going to be talking about really relating to your yes, authentic self, letting her emerge and what it’s like to show up as your authentic self. And that can be such a catchphrase but when you’re uniquely you, when you’re genuinely you, when you start expressing what you want and recognizing you get to decide. I’m helping you walk in that journey when it comes to intimacy, sexual health, sexual wellness in that realm.

And your thoughts around that. What do you think is going to happen if you suddenly start having choices, if you start exerting those choices, saying what you want and how to have those conversations? I think that the power, we talk about people claiming their power and I did have a client once who was like, “I hear people say that I have no idea what they’re talking about.” For me and as a coach, how I interpret that is that when you assert your power to choose, that is when you are taking your power back.

And so recognizing that you have the opportunity to choose and then having the courage to assert that, you get to want and you get to speak out. So that’s the way I’m going to be a support as far as in the area of intimacy, but then also being more of the person you were born to be and embracing her and letting her emerge.

Sonia: Yeah, definitely, you’re in charge of my Diamonds’ journey to their authentic self, where they get to define their authentic self. And I love that. I love doing this interview because definitely we’re both sex coaches but we’re also what I would call dream makers or we help people figure out how to create that life of their dreams. And so we are sex coaches, we’re life coaches, we don’t say it’s one or the other, we do both and we love doing both.

And within The Lit Clit Club that’s something that is so important to us. And I always talk about empowering women inside and outside the bedroom. Very often women come to us because they’re having issues in the bedroom. And so we start there. We start with whatever they give us, whatever they want to work on. And then we check and see, “Well, how is your overall life going?”

Donna: Because we know it’s connected. We know that our sex life doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Sonia: It does not. It does not. How you show up in the bedroom is usually how you show up in life in general. And if you’re not able to ask for what your needs are, if you’re focused on pleasing other people in the bedroom, the odds are that you’re also doing that outside of the bedroom. So we give you the tools to speak up and represent yourself in the bedroom. And then we find naturally that women start using those same tools outside of the bedroom. But in The Lit Clit Club it’s kind of fun because we coach on intimacy, we always have sex coach [inaudible].

But we also coach on creating that life of your dreams just in general and so that’s where you’ve got both of the dream coaches talking right now. I’ll be interviewing some other coaches on my team and some of those coaches are relationship coaches and trauma coaches, and body [inaudible] coaches and body image coaching as well as sex coaching as well. So there’s different aspects of what is available for my Diamonds. Okay, alright, anything else that you would like to add, Donna?

Donna: Well, it’s such an open ended question.

Sonia: I know and it was so scary to ask you that because you never know what’s coming from Donna. This is a level of love and trust.

Donna: And trust, I just love this work, Sonia. I just love this work. I find it so incredibly empowering and I’m so delighted and honored because women live in silence around this. They don’t think there’s anyone else to have conversations with about this. And this kind of thing is revolutionary, what you’re creating, what we get to do together is creating a movement where women do find their voice. Women realize they’re not alone. They get to redefine what their sexual wellness and their experience looks like for them and that they have a choice around that.

So it definitely is not your grandmother’s, yeah, I probably shouldn’t have even brought up the word ‘grandmother’. We just all lost, it just went down the toilet there but anyway, but I just think about how times have changed and are changing. And this experience is changing the times as well.

Sonia: And I have to say that there is going to be women in The Lit Clit Club that are grandmothers and we are redefining what it is to be a grandmother. We’re redefining what it is to be every stage in a woman’s life. We are working on the empowerment, whoever and whatever and wherever you are, whatever stage you’re in, in your life. And just know that this is the place for you and yeah, that we get to define our lives for ourselves. So alright, Coach Donna, thank you so much.

Donna: I just want to clarify, when I say that, it’s not your grandmother, my grandmother would be 111 if she was still alive. And much of what she experienced and the era that she’s grown up in is what we are dealing with living out, the influence of the patriarchy and our sexual experience being based on what is expected driven more by what has been defined by men and for men, anyway so yeah.

Sonia: Alright, everybody. So, Donna, how can they reach you?

Donna: Oh my goodness, okay, well, thank you. You can reach me on Facebook. I’m on Instagram, Donna Jennings Coaching. Also at support@donnajenningscoaching.com. And there are more avenues being designed even as we speak.

Sonia: Yes, definitely. And you can always reach her inside of The Lit Clit Club. Alright, Diamonds, I love you so much, so good to be here. Dr. Sonia and Coach Donna, we’re out, tons of love.

Hey, Diamonds, have you heard the amazing news? Dr. Sonia, that would be me and my team have created a sex coaching and life coaching monthly membership program called The Lit Clit Club. Yes, you heard it here first. The Lit Clit Club was made just for you for all of my Diamonds. It’s a safe place where women can come to create the life that they want. It’s a place where you get to talk openly about you sexual concerns and be heard. There’s no judgment here, no reprimand, no labels, just acceptance, knowledge, freedom, love.

It’s a place where you get to ask all the questions you’ve ever wanted to ask about sex. You get to dream big and create your life your way, inside and outside of the bedroom. So come to the club for the sexual intimacy coaching and stay for the empowerment and the freedom. Do you have questions about libido, menopause, perimenopause, sexual health, relationships, sexual orientation, pleasure equality, orgasms, religion and intimacy? Wow, I need to take a breath because I’m not finished with this list yet.

Maybe you have questions on toys, BDSM, non-monogamy, self-love, healing from trauma, maybe embodiment and positive body image. Wait, one more breath, perhaps you’re focused on creating the life of your dreams, journeying to your authentic self. Just stop people pleasing and me please instead. We have the answers and the coaching just for you. So click on the link below to find out more. We start June 1^st, 2023. And did you hear that May is Founding Member Month for all of my loyal Diamonds that have been with me on the sex coaching journey over the years? I want to say thank you.

So in the month of May 2023 you get to be a founding member. At the founding member price of only $67 a month as long as you have continuous membership. That $67 a month is a substantial savings off the regular fee of $97 a month. Or you could sign up for one year. So you could sign up for 12 months and that is only $670 instead of $970. So you get $300 off that. I want you with me. All of my Diamonds, I want you with me as a founding member.

This membership is for you. The Lit Clit Club is your place, your safe haven where you get to come and interact with me, get the coaching that you want, interact with my team. I have an amazing team and you’re going to be meeting them over the month of May and June but you also get to jump in and just click on the link below to find out all about The Lit Clit Club. So join The Lit Clit Club and rewrite your sexual story. Heck, you get to rework your entire life and make it exactly what you want.

So you get a new ooh in the bedroom and you get a new you outside the bedroom. Lit Clit Club is for you. We want you there. We are dedicated to doing this work with you and we’re going to have a hell of a lot of fun. So come join us, can’t wait to see you inside the club. Love you, Diamonds.