Ep 8: Becoming Jo
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Jo: Hello, my beautiful soul and welcome back to the podcast. This week I am spilling all of the tea on my quote unquote true identity. And I say true in quotations because what's true when it comes [00:01:00] to someone's identity is subjective in many ways. The way that you see me is different than the way that I see myself and the way that someone else sees me. is different than the way you see me and different than the way that I see myself. And on another level. What was true for me a few years ago is, Entirely different than what's true for me today. And that goes for all of us. We get it in our heads that we are a certain way or we have to be a certain way because that's what's expected of us. That's how other people expect us to be. We forgo wearing certain shades of lipstick or styles of shoes or certain colors because that's just not me, or that's too loud. Or who am I to wear that, or I'm not that kind of person, or what would so-and-so think? We get so in our heads about [00:02:00] everything that goes on around us about how we are perceived. that we oftentimes lose what is true to us in the first place. so this episode is all about becoming Jo, how I chose Jo, what happened, how this all came into fruition. Because my real name is not, Jo, for those of you in my hometown know me as Jaimie Valentine and back during the great divorce of 2020, I did not resonate with my name at all. What Jaimie Valentine meant to me at that time was entirely different than what it meant to me years before I got married, or even now. To me. Jaimie Valentine had become meek and weak. And she made herself small. She made herself fit into these little boxes because all she wanted was to feel loved, and that is not at [00:03:00] all what she got. She was torn down. Every little thing about her reality had been shattered to pieces. I would look in the mirror and I had no idea who I was. I remember a point of time where I would look in the mirror and the person staring back at me looked so foreign. I felt so disconnected from her. My eyes had become sunken with dark circles underneath. They completely lacked luster. It was, they just looked completely flat. I had lost all motivation for life. And saying that now about myself seems so weird because I am so far from that person. I am so far, I've healed so much but there was that time I remember it very clearly, staring in the mirror and admitting to myself that if I stayed in that relationship, if I stayed in that marriage, it was going to be [00:04:00] the death of me. And unless you have been in that kind of situation or experienced that kind of situation for yourself, that might sound a little extreme, but that was my reality at the time. So after I got myself out of this relationship, out of that situation, I didn't know who I was anymore and who I had become was so far from the truth. It felt so uncomfortable. I did not like being in my body. I did not like feeling present. I did not like being where I was. So I decided to change that. Because I had been a mindset coach at this point for about a year, I had all of these amazing tools to help myself. I just needed to use them, so I decided to become my own very best client. . I've stayed that way ever since. what I decided to do was reinvent myself. And in order to do that, because I had such a negative [00:05:00] connotation and attachment to my birth name, I decided to create an alter ego of sorts. Like Beyonce has Sasha Fierce. I decided. To create a new identity for myself. One that felt good to me, one that felt in alignment, one that made me realize and understand who I truly am at my core, because I knew who she was. I knew who I was at my core because I felt her because I had become her at one point in time. I just needed to get back to her and not only get back to her, but to upgrade, because I was now out of this situation that I had been in for years. I was now at a point in my life where I was able to really start living for myself again. I was at a point where I could recreate myself in a way that felt good to me without having to [00:06:00] worry about any backlash or. , what is so and so gonna think? Because I was at a point where I was just like, fuck it. I don't give a shit what anybody else thinks because I've endured all of this bullshit for almost four years of my life, I've tried to become someone that somebody else wanted me to be for four years of my life. I tried so damn hard. to be that person, and it was never good enough. So finally, during the great divorce of 2020, I am determined, right? I am there. I am ready to be my truest self. And that wasn't Jamie Valentine. That's not what I had become. So I listed out, and this is a great idea for you to do if you are feeling a little stuck. and feeling like you are trying to be somebody for everybody else. This is a great exercise for you to do as well. So what I [00:07:00] did was I sat down and I just brain dumped all of the qualities and characteristics that I wanted to embody. What does the best version of me look like, feel like, sound like, walk, like all of the things. Who is that person? I listed out all of those qualities, and one of them, funnily enough was that I didn't drink coffee, right? Next level version of me didn't drink coffee. I made that list in December of 2020 and I put that one thing off, just not drinking coffee. I put that off from December, 2020 until January of 2023. I no longer drink coffee. and I feel really good. I don't know why I didn't do it sooner, but that was just like one thing that I couldn't let go of for some reason. So I listed out all of these qualities, all of these characteristics and habits and all of the things. At the very top, I wrote Meet Jaimie 2.0. And [00:08:00] from Jaimie 2.0 came. , just the first letter of Jaimie and the O of the 2.0. And that's how I got Jo. So this is how Jo was born, jaimie 2.0 just became Jo from there on out and I decided to start showing up in my business as Jo to restart my business as Jo and the reason for that, Was multifaceted the first part of that reason being I was actively going through a divorce and my now ex-husband had made it clear at one point that if I had had a successful business, he would have tried to take part of that business or claim part of it in the divorce. . So I wanted to operate under a pseudonym so that he wouldn't know that I had it. We were separated actively going through this divorce, and it was all me. There was no part of this business that was his, so I [00:09:00] just wanted to make sure that itwas nice and on the down low as far as my friends and family and anybody that he knew was concerned for the safety and wellbeing of my business. So Jo came into play for that reason, and she also helped me. I'm talking about me as if I'm different person, but. She came into play so that I could fully step into me without worrying about my business being taken from me without worrying about what other people were going to say. And then Fenyx came about. Fenyx is the part of my name that is very spiritual in nature. And if you're just hearing this, Fenyx is not spelled like Phoenix, Arizona, or Phoenix like the animal. Phoenix is F E N y X. Phoenix had been coming into my awareness like the the [00:10:00] bird with the death and rebirth and transformation multiple times. It's like it was everywhere and it was just coming to me over and over and over again, and I was trying to figure out how to incorporate Phoenix into my business. I felt like Phoenix Academy or Phoenix Coaching, or the Phoenix Method was a little bit cliche. And then one day in the shower is when it hit me, right? Everything hits me in the shower. So I'm in the shower washing my hair, and all of a sudden just had this thought, Jo Phoenix, and I was like, , that's great, but I don't wanna spell it like Phoenix, like the bird. I don't want to spell it like that. I don't want there to be a whole lot of confusion, or misconstrue it in the name. I didn't want it be to be taken in a way that it wasn't meant to be taken. So I was brainstorming with one of my friends and he sent me back a couple of different ways that he thought we could spell it,[00:11:00] and one of them was the way that I spell it now, F E N Y X. I was looking at it and I was like, I, I really like that. I feel really drawn to that. So I put it in Google Translate just to see if it meant anything in any other language. And it turns out F E N Y feny is Hungarian for light. And it was like all of the stars aligned and everything was just like it fell into place and I was like, this is it, Jo Fenyx, f e n y x. That is who I am. and thus Jo Fenyx was born. So I refer to Jo Fenyx now as my spiritual name. And in the spiritual community, a spiritual name is not uncommon. So I don't feel like Jo Fenyx is something that I'm striving for anymore. She just is me. And now that I have had time to heal and had time to. really work on [00:12:00] myself and on my identity, and on my inner being. I feel a lot more at peace and resonate with my name Jaimie Valentine. So if you hear me referred to as Jaimie or as Jo, either one. Works. If you are in my life, like in real life and you still want to call me Jaimie, by all means to call me Jaimie. If you would rather call me Jo, that's perfect. I go by both. My Starbucks app says Jo, my husband calls me Jaimie. You know, it is what it is at this point. It's not this alter ego anymore. It has truly been integrated and embodied so that Jo is me, she's not a separate part of me. Jo and Jaimie are the same. And it's really funny because I recently started playing the Sims. On mobile again, I used to love the sim so much, so the first sim that I created was Jo. And then in the mobile game, you reach a [00:13:00] certain level and you have to create a roommate. So what did I do? I created Jaimie it's really funny because Jo looks a lot more like me in real life than Jaimie does. Jaimie has purple hair and it's just, it's funny to me. and over their, couch. Right now they have like a family portrait with the both of them in it, and I was joking to my husband, I was like, look, it's both of me in one photo. Anyway, that is how Jo came to be. I just wanted to be fully transparent that Jo and Jaimie are both me. So if you see my coaching certifications, my legal name is on my coaching certs. If you look at my Yoga teacher certification, my legal name and my spiritual name are both on that certification. So that is how I became Jo. If you have any questions about my process of becoming [00:14:00] Jo, of doing identity work, please feel free to reach out, message me on Instagram TikTok or any of the social media platforms, really email me. It doesn't matter. Whatever feels best for you to get into contact with me is perfect. So that is it for this episode on how Jo came to be if you miss the last New Moon visioning party in my free membership community, I'll leave a link down below so that you can join that community and be able to access the New Moon in April. It's April 19th. 2023, we will be having another visioning party. These will be taking place in that community every month from here on out. And I'm so excited because those new moon parties are absolutely free for my free membership community. I do have a paid membership community [00:15:00] in the works, and of course that will have more resources, more classes, more opportunity to be coached and to get help in any area of your life that you are seeking. Expansion or seeking clarity, sometimes clarity is that pivotal, pivotal thing that we need, right? So stay tuned for the membership. I'll leave a link in the show notes so that you can hop on the wait list so that you can get all of the information for when that membership is ready to launch. You will have access to not only the New Moon visioning parties, but the full Moon releasing parties. You will have access to monthly q and as you will have access to monthly hot seat coaching calls. You will have access to a whole course module on creating your own spiritual practice in a way that feels good to you, even if it looks different from everybody else's. And of [00:16:00] course you will have first access to any new materials that I put out. Any new classes or meditations, you will have first access as a member. So I'll leave a link to the wait list in the show notes, click on that, get on the wait list so that you will be first to know, and I will see you in the next episode.
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