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I always say anytime we're having a show, whoever's supposed to be in the room will be in the room. And that means [music] that at this moment, whether we realize it or not, this was a divine appointment for all of us. [music] In order to trust the journey of what's going to happen here tonight, I need you to understand that the [music] person that you held hands with, it wasn't a coincidence. These are your purpose partners. That as I am in [music] a moment in time where I am purposely doing and reacting and responding and living in a place [music] and time that I know I'm supposed to be at. The person standing next to me is my partner in that. Father God, I just want to invite you to Father God's confirm your shots and then I can see the lighting. So this is what we agreed upon as far as what it look like during the show. I'm glad to be here. Anything else people [music]
So, a few years ago was the last funeral that I attended. And I go to this funeral dressed in completely black. My heart is heavy. And at this funeral in particular, there was a lot of grief. There was a lot of sadness, but I had a lot of anger. And I was more angry than I was sad because it was a funeral that didn't have to happen. >> Have you ever buried some people, places, and things behind stuff that could have been prevented? >> And so I was at the funeral of someone that I love dearly and I was having to release them against my own will. Now, the funeral of the person that I was at, they were alive and well, y'all. To this day, they on Instagram right now. So, how do you attend the funeral of somebody who's alive? How do I attend the funeral of people I just saw yesterday? Because when it we talk about funerals and releasing, many times what we don't acknowledge are the deaths that we have of people, places, and things that I love greatly, even though these people are still walking around. The funeral I'm talking about is a very close friend of mine that I realized I had to release them and let them go, even though my heart wasn't ready yet. And so I stood at this funeral. If you were in LA, we talked about funerals. And I have mental funerals of people that I have to let go. Because I love them so great. I have to have some type of closure. And closure does not come from what other people give you. It comes from the closure that you create with yourself. And so when I have to release people that are still living, I got to have a funeral. Okay? We got paw bearers. I got flowers. Somebody read the eulogy. We have a funeral. Okay. Stand up there and say, "You know what? The most important part about funerals, going off on one of my tangents, what makes the funeral stick? Cuz who's in the middle of releasing somebody right now? Who's releasing somebody you don't want to release?" Yeah. The funeral is not when you acknowledge what the person was or the relationship was. It's not always acknowledging what hurt you or what went bad. To have a proper burial of something, I have to acknowledge why I loved it in the first place. My funerals are not filled with anger and resentment. My anger was about we it didn't have to be this way. But do I control other people? No. So, I stood at that grave and I thank them for everything that they were for me. >> Thank you for the good times that we did have. Thank you for the laughter. Thank you for the fun. Thank you for supporting me in a season that I needed somebody because you were who I leaned on. I have to thank them for everything that they were because that's why I love them. And then I have to grieve everything that will never be. You won't be on tour with me. You won't be on the yacht. I have a I have a a mental picture of a yacht. It's a It's a It's a vision that I have. One day I'm going to be on a yacht with all my people. It It won't be this weekend cuz it's rain outside. But I have to release them from all of the plans that I made for us that aren't going to happen so that I can truly bury what that relationship was. And so when you come out of that funeral, the first phase you go through is kind of this ghost phase. And the ghost phase is where you feel completely detached. And this is where you'll hear people say things like, "No new friends, flights over feelings. I'm unbothered. No, you're detached. In the ghost phase is where I see that people will hide behind distraction, detachment, and disillusionment instead of going into healing. So, because I got hurt, I will now remove myself from anything that could possibly hurt me. And so, I don't want to create new friendships. I don't want to let new people in. I don't want to find a new church family. I don't want to go and do these things and be around other people where I could possibly get dropped again. And then we say that we're in a season of isolation because God want me there or you're avoiding all of the hard emotions that comes with learning how to trust again. In the ghost phase, we have to be radically honest with ourselves. Am I truly healing in this season or have I created barriers to my healing? And for me, I just went busy. I get real busy. When I'm hurt, I'm busy. I'm like, "Hey, I got to work a lot." Right? Because the more that I work, the less time I have to do what? >> Think or feel. Right? So many of you are stuck in cycles of being a workaholic and you'll hide it behind. I'm just really committed to what I do. I love my job. That's why I work 80 hours a week. But the truth is that when I'm at home, the silence is so loud. I don't know how to sit there and be comfortable. The truth is is sitting in my own emotions drives me up a wall and I would rather be focused on something else.
To remove yourself out of the ghosting phase. What we have to do is sit in stillness hear every groan as I call it. I call it I always say there's a weeping woman that lives inside of me and anytime I have to lose something that weeping woman gets real loud and she's grieving what she lost. And I learned that I have to let her weep. And sitting in that weeping and witnessing the weeping is how I learned to comfort myself through my own losses. But it also allows me to reach an end with the weeping. I remember after after that friendship, I was on a plane and I was going to go speak somewhere and I was so sad because this was a friend that would normally travel with me when I would have to go somewhere. And I was on the plane. I'm wearing a black hoodie, black sweats. And I was so sad. And I remember my spirit said, "Brittney, you got to stop dressing like you're grieving." And I was like, "But I am grieving. I am sad." But my weeping season had ended. And this is where we get into the second phase of healing after the funeral is when you give yourself permission to come alive again. There is life after the death. What we have to remind ourselves is that when I have buried a person, place or thing and in that season, not only did I lose a friend, but I lost a vision, I lost a business, I lost a whole bunch of stuff that I loved and invested a lot in, including parts of myself, my own identity. And so, we think that when we bury something that we fell in the grave with it, but we didn't. You have to give yourself permission to breathe again. You have to give yourself permission to keep li living even though I released something that I thought I couldn't live without. Cuz ain't it funny? I tell myself all the time, remember when you said you couldn't live without it? Look at you living cute, too. Because when we're hurt, we make agreements with our pain that aren't based in reality. I'll never love again. I will never fall in love the way I love Jimmy and Jessica. I will never love somebody the way I love them. Yes, you will. You absolutely will. But you have to give yourself permission. With permission, it looks a lot like giving yourself permission to challenge the stories that you have created around who you think you have to be in this season. In that season, I had the challenge that it's possible for me to be in a winning season where things are working well for me and going well and my career is booming and I lost people in places and things that I love. Giving myself permission means that two things can be true at one time. I can be grieving or even sad about the funeral that I had and still hopeful about what's coming next. What I have learned is that in bouncing back from what I've lost and b bouncing back from seasons of funerals is that I have to be not only just hopeful but expectant that there's so much more waiting on you. When I have to release people now that I love, the first thought that I have is, yes, you're losing them, but there are people that you haven't even met yet that can't wait to love you. There are people that you you don't even know their name yet and you're their answered prayer. There are friendships that you haven't even had yet that can't wait to go with you on this journey of building whatever it is you're building. So, I can't be so closed off because of what hurt me that I miss the fact that there's some good things waiting for me just as much tonight. It is my goal. It is my job. It is my objective to put you guys in a place where you're ready to let love in again.
Now, the part that I had to wrap my head around was that love was available to me in all forms, not just romance. Because when I say let love in, they like, girl, I'm sick of Jimmy, John, Joseph, James, all of them. Who has said there's pee in the pool? Raise your hands. has already known and it can feel that way sometimes. It believe me. But the most powerful thing I learned about love is that love is not wrapped up in a person. I am love. Many of the relationships I had, I always talk about even the relationship in that book. The reason why I remember being so in love with him like head over heels. Like this was in my early 20s. Y'all forgive me, but I was delusional. And I remember telling him like, "Oh my god, I love you so much. I love you so much." But I would literally see him as if there was like this glow around him. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I just love him so much." And that's how I would see him. Like there was a glow around him. And this was someone who wasn't meeting any needs. This was someone who was not being honest or faithful or even behaved like a friend to me. So how is it that I could see him as this glorious being with this glow around him and he was not meeting the mark? You know why? Because it was my love that generated the glow and then I projected it onto him. >> He never had the juice. I did. >> [applause] >> So I say that to say, how much of your own love have you placed and projected onto other people and then you treated them like they deserved it? When I learned that it was my own love that I realized, so that means number one, if it's mine, I have access to it. If it's mine, it means that I'm not waiting on it. If it's mine, it means that I don't need another person to come and give me anything so that I feel loved. [applause] >> So, when I asked you guys, when was the last time you felt truly loved? It should have been this morning. >> When you got up out the bed and you looked in the mirror and you saw the person that you wake up to every day, how did you not feel truly loved? There's a lot of people who walk around in this world and they don't know that the love you're looking for, you already got it. >> But it's the validation that we get from other people that makes us feel like we have it. I have it already. And if you would like to share some of yours with me, thank you. I'm I'm appreciative of it. But make no mistake that I'm not dependent on it. I had to learn that love is in the joy that I have. just about simple things in life. I get excited when I get a good parking spot. I do. Don't let me get all green lights. That is love. When the sun comes out and I'm like, that is love. When things unexpectedly go in my favor, that's love. When I'm at the gym and I work out and my muscles start hurting and I really want to like quit because I'm the person who would quit and I push through it and I say that's love. I love you so much that I will push you through the hard parts of life. I love you so much that I know that how strong you are and I know you won't break. I love you so much that I will not allow you depend on things outside of you to make you feel any type of way. The love you're looking for you already have.
So, the challenge has always been finding love in more than just my romantic life, but how do I find love in my friendships? How do I find it with my family members? How do I find it in people that I ain't even I don't even know them. They're strangers. If someone held the door open for me, if someone looked at me and gave me a headnod and acknowledged my existence, that's where we find love at. So, how are we waiting on what we already have? Tonight we're going to have some hard conversations, but I think the most important thing that I need you guys to know is that I'm going to challenge a lot of the stories that you have told yourself about what you have access to, about who you are, and about how you think you have to show up in your world. One of the most rebellious things I ever did was I stopped caring about pe about how people perceived how I showed up in the world. Any middle middle children in the room? >> Yeah, we are hard-headed. >> Hard-headed for no reason. Okay. [laughter] But we resourceful. I love what one of the things I love about me is how I will challenge any labels. If y'all give me a label, I'mma challenge it on purpose. Just so you know, like when they be like, "Oh my god, she's a preacher." I will cuss right now. Right now. Don't put me in that box. I'll be cussing, [laughter] okay? And I'll be aggravated. You ever be driving, you know, on the highway? And I I had to have a a moment with myself this week cuz I realized, Britney, why why do you get so agitated when people press their brakes on the highway? Because where you going? Don't be driving. I said, "You got to work on that." Right? So, when people say, "Oh my god, she's such an angel." No, no, I'm not at all working on it, okay? I'm working on my salvation just like everybody else. But what I always loved about myself is that I was always willing to push the labels that people attached to me, which made me successful because when people said, "Oh, Britney, you're the strong one." No, I'm not. When people say, "Oh, well, Britney, you're the one we can lean on." No, I'm not. You're the one we count on. You should find some more people to count on. Right. Because in my early 20s, I learned I was living up to so many expectations of people who wouldn't I couldn't even call them if I was in a crisis. So, I had to challenge Britney, exactly who are you trying to please? That led me down a very hard road of disappointing a lot of people. And I found that in those disappointments, first of all, I found who actually was there for me versus what I did. So tonight, my job is to make you uncomfortable in a good way. My job is to [laughter] p push you past your limits.
But in order to do that, [music] I always say even in therapy, first of all, if you came here with a friend and you don't know who I am, I'm sorry. Hi, my name is Britney Noel. I always forget to introduce myself. [music] I'm a licensed therapist out of Houston, Texas. [applause] I've been practicing for over 10 years. I have worked in almost every hospital in the city of Houston in crisis. I have worked on [music] um cancer wards and MD Anderson. I've worked on PTSD wards at the VA. There is nothing that you guys can bring to me tonight that will shock me. There [music] is nothing that you can bring to me tonight that I will be that any that myself, my team or anyone in this room is going to judge you for. I always say the best training I ever got was sitting in [music] hospital rooms when people were at the last days of their life and I'm listening to their stories and I'm listening to what they [music] regret. I'm listening to what they wish they would have done. I'm helping [music] them plan their funerals and plan their legacies. And the question always came to me, Britney, how are you going to live your life so that when it's your turn to be in this bed? You don't have regrets about what you wish you could have been or could have did. I am adamant that I am going to live my life in a way that honors me [music] even if it makes people uncomfortable. And by making that commitment to myself, it created a ripple effect where now [music] other people can see me and say, "Well, how can I get a little more free like that? How can I get a little more bold like that?" I don't think that anything that I do is revolutionary. I I struggle with that. Me and my therapist [music] work on it cuz I say, "I'm just Britney." and she reminds [music] me frequently. She says, "Brittney, it's not that you're just Britney. You're a demonstration. I'm honored to demonstrate [music] what living a life based on who you want to be and not who you think you have to be looks [music] like. Not that it's easy, but I lean into [music] the hard things. So tonight, I need your [music] permission to go on this journey. I need your permission to push you into some hard conversations tonight. So, there is no show that I do where I don't ask for permission. So, with that, I ask [music] you guys, do you trust me with [music] your hearts tonight? I heard some ambivalence in the room. I don't think that was all of y'all. Do you trust me with your [music] hearts tonight? >> Do you [music] trust that if things get a little overwhelming that you can handle it? >> Yes. [music] >> Do you trust that you see it and you're in a community that can handle your truth? >> Yes. >> All right. So, seat [music] belt strapped in. Okay. Turn to your partner and say, "I'm in it to win it. Turn to your other neighbor. Say, "I'm in it to win it." In it to win it.