Transcript of Rupi Kaur: “I Struggled With Self-Worth” - How To HEAL Your Mind & Open Your Heart To Love

Because for me, poetry is a form of spirituality. It was never a job or a career.

Did you feel like you were prepared for the pressure or the success that came to you so early?

Absolutely not. Really? No, not at all. I'd sold millions of books, but I had so much imposter syndrome.

Rupy Kaur might just be the most famous poet on the planet. Rupy Kaur.

Literally named writer of the decade.

My very talented friend, Rupy Kaur. What do you feel like was the biggest pain you experienced growing up that have taken you the longest to heal?

Believing that I am somebody who has value and is worthy of being seen and heard. Those experiences that were violent really left me feeling silent and invisible. Performing these pieces on stage was healing in a way I didn't expect it to be. In those moments, I was able to exhale because we were exhaling together. It was like, I'm not alone. These experiences, as you know, you feel so isolated and alone, and it feels like it's only happened to you.

I'm going to ask you to read one poem. Okay. My intention before you open it up is to read the poem that you think will give your younger self the most peace and freedom.

Okay, I know which one to read. It's actually one of the new ones.

Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Roopy Court in the house. So good to see you.

So good to be here.

Welcome back. It's been seven years since you're on the show, and 10 years since Milk and Honey came out, which is really cool. I love this collector's edition and 10-year anniversary of this. I met you right before everything really started to take off. It was taking off, but it was like, exploded after that. You were on tour for years, and it's just been like three New York Times best sellers at the same time. It was just like crazy town. It was crazy town. It was amazing. I was always just applauding and clapping. Every time I see another week in the list and just all the things that you were doing was so inspiring. So congrats. The work that you've done has impacted millions of people around the world in a profound emotional, spiritual, and physical healing type of way. The women on my team love your work, and so many people feel it speaks to them. It resonates with them, the messages, the content, and how you share your poetry. I'm curious. We're just talking off camera, if you could go back 10 years ago and speak to Young Roopy right before, and you have some messages in here, a week before you published, a month before, seven months before.

If you could go back right before you published, Knowing everything that's happened in your life the last 10 years, from the ups and downs, the success, the challenges, the heartbreak, all the different things, what would you share with her about what's to come in the next decade?

I I wouldn't share too much because I feel like if she knew, she might not even self-publish that original edition 10 years ago. It's been 10 years, and I have to say, for me, everything that's happened is still quite unbelievable. Really? I haven't processed it. I would tell her that. I'd be like, You have absolutely no clue what's about to happen, but please through the hardest moments, just believe that you'll be okay.

What would you say are the three biggest lessons you've learned in the last decade about all of it, everything in your life, the success of the work, relationships, friends, Tell me just everything.

I would say one of the biggest lessons is… One that comes up for me is I felt like over the last 10 years, there were many moments where I felt like I had to do everything in a short amount of time. I was in my 20s. I was like, Everything has to happen now. Then I realized, Hold on, I have the rest of my life ahead of me, and so I can take my time. That was one lesson that I can take my time. The other one was, Stop to celebrate the wins. That's something that I never did. Really? Whether it was Getting on the New York Times best seller list the first time, staying on that list for four years. It's crazy. It was just so go, go, go that I didn't really take a moment to be like, Wow, that's amazing. Instead, my mindset was very much like, Okay, cool. Now what? I feel like that was a disservice to me. That's something that I'm working on now moving forward, moving at a slower pace- Really. And really trying to be present.

Because your Instagram, you were putting on content almost daily, it felt like for a while, like poetry back in the day or maybe 70 years ago.

I was sharing, I would say, yeah, around the time of Milk and Honey in the center of the Hours, I was probably sharing two new pieces a week. I was all over the place. I was like, Here's this and here's that and here's this. I think during the Milk and Honey era, it was Seamless, it didn't feel like work. Really? Because I just fell in love with the craft so much, and I fell in love with it because I was performing on stage. I first started performing in 2009, and being up there just made me feel so alive. I was just so taken. I was so swept off my feet by this craft because for the first time, it felt like I was stepping into my voice. I didn't have that as a young girl. I wasn't necessarily living in an environment where my voice was celebrated or valued. Through poetry, I was finding that. It was It was so incredible feeling sitting at my desk and writing, writing, writing until I found the right words. The milk and honey era, it just everything felt easy. It was just flowing. I think it was because I was extremely present.

I was writing from a place of non-judgment, and I wasn't focused on any outcome or result because I had nothing to compare it to. Really? Yeah. I just was like, This is so fun. When I would write a poem that I really liked and it made my stomach turn, it was euphoric. The book was really just a byproduct of this other purpose I feel like I had, which was finding those right words that made my stomach turn, then using those words to connect with people and share with people.

But you were 21 at the time, right?

Yeah, I was 21 when I finished the manuscript and decided, Okay, I'm going to put it out.

That's so young to think about writing a book at 21. Most people don't think that way. Also self-publishing back then was clunky and hard. How did you even have the courage to say, I'm going to write the most vulnerable stuff ever and reveal myself at '21. I'm going to try to figure out this self-publishing world and get this message out to people when everyone could criticize everything I put out there. How did you have that courage to put out that type of work?

When I started performing in 2009, a lot of the pieces I was performing in person were about these topics that were taboo, whether it was sexual assault, domestic violence. The people who were coming to watch me perform, it was such a supportive group. Everyone was very progressive and It was a group of young activists.Cheering for you.Cheering for me, yeah. Then they were like, You should share this work online. You can really connect with the diaspora around the world. Because my original audience was my community, Punjabi 6. Because of them, I started sharing my work on Tumbler. Tumbler was also a very radical, progressive space. Everybody was like, Wow, this is so cool. My readers online were the ones that planted the seed of publishing. I wasn't even thinking about it. They were like, they would send me messages being like, I love this poem. What book is it from? Where can I get your book? I would laugh. There is no book. Yeah. I was like, This is ridiculous that you think there's a book. I was in university, I'm like, Still haven't finished my undergrad. There's no book. But once they planted that seed, I was like, Could there be one?

Should there be one? That's when I started thinking about putting one together. I approach a creative writing professor at the school I was at and I asked her. I was like, I have a book of poetry. By the time I decided that I was going to publish the book, the book was done being written. It was finished. I mean, I had hundreds of poems. It was a matter of putting them together and deciding what was going to make it into the final manuscript. My professor looked at me and was like, Poetry? Nobody publishes that. Let's just be honest. There's no market for it. She gave me some advice that I think made sense from her perspective because she was right. It was and is really difficult as a young poet to get published. She was like, You should submit your pieces to anthologies, journals, literary magazines, that thing. I was like, Okay, cool. She told me to order this book that gave you the addresses of all the places you could submit. I started submitting, and very quickly, I was like, This isn't going to work for me because I am submitting writing these individual pieces to these outlets that don't necessarily embody any of the topics that I'm writing about.

I felt like I was doing a disservice to my work because Milk and Honey, although it's about 200 I heard poems from cover to cover, it also, for me, feels like one continuous poem. So this idea of taking these pieces apart and throwing them around and hoping they'll land, I was like, Well, of course, it's not going to work. That's not how it needs to be done. This is how it needs to be done. I asked her, that same professor, I was like, Well, what do you think about self-publishing? And she said, Absolutely not. Really? Yeah. She was like, Nobody in the industry will respect you because you've bypassed the gatekeeper, so that's not a good idea. Then I remember thinking, I don't even... Who is this industry? I'm so far removed from these gatekeepers. I grew up in Brampton, Malta, cities that are a majority people of color, working class immigrants, everybody I knew, drove a truck, worked in a factory or labor job. I had no even access point to this industry of publishing and literature. But what I had was a community on tumbler and Instagram of young people, young women who felt so seen by these words.

I felt so seen by the words and all I wanted was to share with them. For me, self-publishing just made sense. Then I ended up putting it out there in 2014. I was still in school. I thought that, hopefully, I don't know, 100, 200 people would buy it. I had my LSAT prep books. I was going to go be a lawyer. Then it all just happened, I guess.

How quickly did it happen for you where you were like, Oh, this is more than a few hundred copies sold by some friends and family. They keep selling every week. What was that like?

Initially, I didn't have an understanding about what were good book numbers. So the self-published edition came out in November And by April 2015, I believe I had sold or online on my website, sold about 18,000 copies. Wow, it's really good. Which I didn't think was good. Really? Yeah, because the only numbers I knew were music numbers and album sales, which would be like so and so went platinum. Multiplata, millions. Yeah. I was like, 19,000? Oh, my God. I should go be a lawyer because this whole thing is not working for me. Also, At that point, I wasn't thinking this is going to be my career. It was my hobby, my passion. I was like, Wow, I'm just lucky to connect, and I got to graduate and go do the next thing. But then in April 2015, I published a photo online of a young woman on her period. It's in that book. That really also brought a lot of people to my work. I was really into photography. That's one. Yeah, that's the one. In a way, that picture changed my life. Really? It brought... I mean, it was such a viral moment that hundreds and thousands of people found my work.

I was scared because I was like, Oh, no. Do these people think that this is what I do? I'm not I was going to take photos of myself on my period, although I love this series. But I write poems, and luckily, they stayed for the poetry. Wow. I was very happy about that. Then a publisher came along and they were like, We want to publish the book. We went back and forth. Eventually, I ended up signing a deal with Andrews McNeill Publishing, and our edition with them came out the fall of 2015. At that point, still, it was Very slow burn. I graduated in 2015. I went off to India to take a few months off. We didn't do any media, any press for the book. I went offline because at this point, I was posting and sharing stuff online since 2012, and I was tired. I was like, Peace. The book is out. My job here is done. I told the publisher, I was like, You know I also perform, right? I think that's my superpower. I love being on stage, and it's where I connect with people. They were initially confused because they'd not seen that before.

I kept pushing for them to book me live events. They agreed to do one in San Francisco in 2016. Now we're in like, yeah, a year and a half.

A year and a half after the book came out, originally, right?

A year and a half after, yeah. That's when I realized things were changing because we were driving up to that event, and I was in the passenger seat of the car, and I remember looking to my right, and I saw this lineup of people, and I was like, Wait a minute.

Those are for me?

I thought that, and then I was like, Wow, you're so cocky. Relax. How could you even think that's for you? Then I looked at the map and I was like, See, it's not for me because the bookstore is blocks away. I was like, Okay, we're good. Anyways, we're at a red light. These two pedestrians are walking by. They look in the car. They're waving to me, and they have this look on their face like they know me. I just assumed that they thought that I was somebody that they knew, and so I didn't want to leave them hanging. So I just waved back. Anyways, light turns green. We keep driving. I look over and that lineup of people is an ending. It keeps going and going and going until we arrive at the bookstore and I just freeze. I was like, Oh, no. What's happening? I remember my friend dropped me off. I go in and the woman working at the bookstore is red in the face, is freaking out, and she's like, I don't know what we're going to do. Because you don't have enough books. There's not enough books. She's like, There's a line of people cutting through the neighborhood.

This has never happened before. I remember I held her and I was like, It's okay. I was like, I'm going to do two shows, and I'm going to do two signings, and I'm not going to leave until every book is signed. We'll be fine. Then she exhaled and that's what we did. After that moment, it never slowed down. It didn't slow down at all. Yeah. I would say a year and a half after is when things began to get wild and crazy. It was all word of mouth because no press. I wasn't posting on socials, but it was women sharing this book with other women, mothers, daughters, sisters to friends. It's a book that I wrote, but I truly feel like Honestly, it doesn't even belong to me anymore. Really? Because there's so many people who've touched it along the way. It's our book. That's why in the new edition, I've invited other women to annotate and share their reflections as well, because it didn't feel right for the 10-year edition just to have my reflection.

This is fascinating. You're 23, 24 around this time, right? Roughly. Did you feel like you were prepared for the pressure or the success or the Fame or the audiences that came to you so early?

Absolutely not.

Really?

No, not at all. Because at that point, I still wouldn't refuse to call myself an author. It wasn't until Book 3 that I accepted that I was an author.

But you're a multiple New York Times best seller at that point.

Yeah. I'd sold millions of books, but I had so much imposter syndrome. Really? So much because in my mind, I was like, This is weird. This is a book that I made in my living room while in college, living with my best friends, cutting up the poems and putting them in order on the floor and being like, Let me make the book cover and design this and do that. I was doing all the marketing materials. My friends were artists in their own right, photographers, singers. My friend who's a singer was like, We should record a book trailer for you. I know a girl. The girl would come with a video camera, and then the singer would be like, I'm going to take this poem, I'm going to sing it, and that's going to be the musical track behind it. It was a community effort. It just felt like such a homemade project that it was confusing then to see it out there in the world and be received in this big way.

You thought it was like a little arts and crafts type of thing. Totally. It was a hobby. I was just going to put together a scrapbook and put it out for a few people and then millions of people later. When did it start to feel like work and less like fun, hobby art?

Book 2.

Really?

Yeah. Why? I began to write Book 2. Well, I was already writing it, but I began to mindfully write it. The fall of 2016, I signed my Book 2 contract. I feel like the moment I signed that contract, the pressure just set in, and it was like, that's what things got challenged.

Because it was like real money behind it, too. There was a big advance. There was more pressure. There was excitement around it, right?

And there was something to measure up to. It was like if now milk and honey had set a bar. It's not that anybody else said anything to me. I felt that If the follow-up didn't do as well, then I didn't deserve to be here. Wow. Yeah, exactly that. I didn't deserve to be here. I had no idea how I even did it the first time. How was I going to do it again? That was really the challenge for me. As great of an experience as it was to write Milk and Honey, The Sun and Her flowers, my second book was that challenging. Really? Yeah. But I'm so glad that… I think At the time, it was so challenging and painful. But in hindsight, I'm so glad that I had the deadline and the pressure because I think if I didn't have the deadline and the pressure, who knows if I'd ever- Finish it. Finish it, yeah, exactly.

Now, the thing that is interesting to me is you have this community of friends, women, or whatever it is when you're 19, 20, and you're doing your live poetry at these small little events in Canada. A lot of support, cheering you on and celebrating you when you're being vulnerable, sharing these intimate stories from childhood or past or breakups and family dynamics and traumas that you experienced. But then when it gets out there to millions of people online, is everyone so supportive about the types of content you're sharing around vulnerabilities, traumas, past pain, hurts? Was everyone as supportive or was there more hate and pushback?

I would say that in terms of the topics I was covering and the themes everyone was supportive. The people that weren't actually have never read my work, and they're just like, What is going on? She isn't... Whatever people do say. But I've never felt any pushback from the topics I cover, other than, of course, Milk and Honey being one of the most banned books in America because of the themes that I'm covering, sexual assault and trauma, which is unfortunate. I mean, so many young people have told me that they, too, realized they were being sexual assaulted when they read Milk and Honey. Now this book is banned across so many schools and states in America. That's the only place where I feel like there's been pushback around the themes. But other than that, I feel like, thankfully, it's always been received. Wow.

How did you How do you feel about putting this stuff out there, though, when it's such vulnerable things that you've experienced? Eleven years ago, I opened up about being sexually abused as a young boy for the first time. For 25 years, I held on to it. It was like a poison that was inside of my veins daily. It was causing me to react and respond in poor ways a lot of the time when I felt triggered. Because it was almost like if I ever felt under attack, whether it was true or not, if I felt it, it felt like I was being abused. I didn't want to go back to that place. Then it would remind me of the anger that I felt from being sexually abused as a boy.

Every time that would happen, even if it was just like nothing was really happening, but if I psychologically felt like I was being sexually abused.

For many years, I would try to be successful, try to get bigger, faster, stronger to defend myself. I lacked the emotional intelligence to communicate effectively and create boundaries. But 11 years ago, when I opened up about it, I was terrified to share this story. But I knew that I needed to do it. I needed to let it out. For whatever reason, I had a platform at that time that I felt called a responsibility to share my platform. Even though I thought, Speaking up about this, I'm going to lose everything. That's what I thought. I thought, Everyone's going to unfollow me. I'm going to have no business. My life is over.

Yeah, I can relate.

But at least I'll be free. You know what I mean? And at least people actually know who I am. Or what I've been through, and they can either accept it or not. It was terrifying to talk about it. How did you get the courage to talk about a lot of these traumas that you'd experienced and also not let it retrigger you? I know you talk about there's a poem here, you're talking about being in therapy, and where you just rattle off all the traumas, essentially, that you've had just like a grocery list. I can relate to that, too, because you talk about it so much that you get to a point where, Okay, I'm processing it. But how did you learn how to not let these things trigger you by putting them out there and just continue to have the courage to share these things?

It started first sharing with the women and girls in my life. I was in middle school talking about it with the girls around me. Then it went to on stage events where I felt safe. I think I think the fact that I've shared it with millions of... If I had known that these many people would have had access to it, I don't think I would have done it. That was an accident. But also for me, for some reason, performing these pieces on stage was healing in a way. I didn't expect it to be. But like you, I also experienced when Milk and Honey came out, it felt like I let go of all this weight I was holding on to. It just left my body Of course, it didn't. It's something that continues to live inside of you, but at least I wasn't holding on to it on my own anymore. Then when I'm performing it and I'm in community with my audiences and they're connecting with it, I feel like in those moments, I was able to exhale because we were exhaling together. It was like, Oh, I'm not alone. Because these experiences, as you know, you feel so isolated isolated and alone, and it feels like it's only happened to you.

Then when you're sharing it, you're looking around and so many people have gone through it. For some reason, knock on wood, it's been quite a healing experience for me to be on stage and connecting with people through it. Again, though, I think that throughout the years, finding the language to recognize triggers and set boundaries in my personal life to take care myself has been a learning journey as well. Really? Yeah.

What do you feel was the biggest pain or pains you experienced growing up that have taken you the longest to heal?

I would say Believing that I am somebody who has value and is worthy of being seen and heard. Really? Yeah. That's probably been the most hardest thing to work through.

What created that belief in you?

I think just I was- Was there a number of instances or moments, or was it just an overall tone and family dynamics, or was there a few things that really triggered you? Yeah, I would say it was a mix of family dynamics. I cover some of the experiences that have happened to me in chapter one of the book, and those experiences that were violent really left me feeling silent and invisible. It's taken a lot of work, and I'm not even done doing the work, to be like, I am worthy of being listened to. I do have value. That's something that I'm really actually embodying, like confidence and celebrating myself in just the last few years.

Really? Really? Yeah. So did you feel like you had confidence after the first couple of books came out?

My confidence probably got worse. Really?

Yeah. You're number one New York Times best seller. You're on the list for four years. You're making millions of dollars. You're selling out arenas.

Did nothing.

How did it do? Nothing.

I don't know. I just feel like... I don't know. I wish it was different. I didn't allow myself to really My philosophy was, if I don't let these words, these amazing things people say about me, if I don't let those in, then I won't let all the negative things in either. I just have to stay grounded and focus because that's just how I have to work through it. Also, it's because things are moving so fast. There wasn't a moment to pause and be like, Wow, this is really unique and cool what's happening. It doesn't happen very often. But now, looking back, now my life is moving I feel more in control of it. Now I'm able to be like, Wow, I am doing good, and I can celebrate that.

Let's do a hypothetical scale. On a scale from 1-10, when either Milk and Honey or the next book is on the New York Times best seller list for months in a row, on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most confident and feeling the most valued and loved, whether it's self-love or loved others, one being like, I have zero confidence, zero self-love and self-respect. I don't believe it all. Where were you on that scale most of the time?

During that- This whole run, you had this few years, book 1 and 2, being out and being so successful, where were you on that scale of like, I have confidence and self-love for myself? I would say that I was on the lower end.

Like 2, 3, 4?

I would say, yeah, 2, Really? But I would say now I'm at an 8, 9, 10. That's good. I think that goes to show that numbers and metrics are not what give or bring confidence. I mean, yeah, I could go online and see, Okay, this week it's at number one. It's just pixels on a screen to me. All the nice comments that people leave, all the things. It doesn't actually feel like it's impacting your real world and the things that you're going through with your family and your friends and your relationships. I think because I wasn't prioritizing my personal life in the same way it's that I used to and doing things that brought me joy, which was really just connecting with people, the people in my life. I was on the road all of the time. It took me a few years to find the right balance. I think beat myself up for feeling like a two, three, four. But in hindsight, I'm so glad that I have had those experiences because I think that's also inevitable. The journey is always like this. Now I've learned lessons from that, and those lessons are what have now brought me to a 8, 9, 10.

Wow.

I think this is really important for whoever's listening, specifically women listening who maybe don't feel valued or confident or feel like they're an imposter for whatever reason. I think this is a really important thing, and I want to ask you another question about it. When did you start to feel like you were able to transition from a 2, 3, 4 to 8, 9, 10 in self-confidence, self-love category?

I would say around... I mean, there were different moments. I feel like my third book, Homebody, was a much better writing experience. It's where I began to trust my voice a a little bit more. It's where I began to find a process of writing that was working for me. Then when I hit the road in 2022 for a year, I hit the road to do a world tour, that really awakened the confidence in me because we did 68 shows across five continents, and you're on stage every other night in front of thousands of people. When I'm on stage, Even when I was a two, three, four, as a two, three, four off stage, I could walk on stage and feel like a tendon. The stage just had this power and has this power to transform me. I feel like I see the stage as a living, breathing organism that can take a person and make them larger than life. Being on that world tour after COVID, reconnecting with people from around the world, really allowed me to exhale and realize, Okay, the hard moments are worth it because what I love and what my purpose is, is not necessarily to sell millions of books and be a number one New York Times bestseller.

That clearly didn't work or stick with me. My purpose has always been, I feel like, to connect and share with people. It's why I started to do what I do. Being on stage on that tour, connecting and sharing. During my shows, a lot of people don't realize there is There's so much feedback back and forth. There's constant banter. The audience is yelling and shouting things out. That really helped me realize, Okay, I am saying something that is worth listening to.

How do you make your world your stage?

That's what I'm trying to do now.

So it's not just when you're on stage, but it's day-to-day moments.

Exactly.

What advice would you give to women then who maybe feel like they're a two, three, four in confidence or deserving of their value of self-love? Maybe they're trying to people-please, maybe they're trying to be a workaholic to prove something, and they're trying to create more results, but it's not fulfilling the desire of, I'm valued, I'm loved, I'm worthy. Exactly. What advice would you give to women struggling with that? How can they shift to start to feel that they are loved and deserving to be very worthy?

I I remember when I was writing my third book, Homebody, I was beating myself up so much. Then at a certain point, I got annoyed of myself beating myself up. I just sat there and I was like, Okay, so what am I getting out of hating myself? I'm hating myself as if if I hate hard enough, something's going to change and everything's just going to get better. It clearly isn't. I can keep on doing it or I can find another way to live my life. For For me, it was just like, I just was one day that blunt with myself and I was like, enough of this now. I need to find another way. Then I think what it went back to was just connecting and writing about the things that felt most honest to me and writing the things that made me feel alive. When I'm creating is when I'm most connected to myself. When I'm not creating is when my confidence starts to go down to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. But in those moments of creating and when I'm in complete flow and I'm in my purpose, naturally, I feel like the confidence is just it bubbles up.

Maybe finding the thing that brings you to that flow state But you were doing that for years in your early 20s, right?

You were creating and you were making stuff happen, but you were like, I'm still not valued or deserving of love.

Before Milk and Honey, I felt like the confidence was definitely there. I would say that I was just so connected with myself because the creating felt so magical. It was actually when I did self-publish and all of the pressure came is when I lost that because I would wake up and be like, Maybe that's all I have in me. Really? Maybe I'm never going to write anything worth reading again. I remember speaking to other women, other authors and people, and I realized everybody goes through that, and it's just a matter of not giving up and just getting through and learning also to not personalize every emotion I felt. That was a big one because I would feel like everybody feels waves of anxiety or self-doubt or any type of emotion. I would personalize it so much, and so I had to really learn to be like, Okay, this is an emotion that's moving through me. It is not the truth. I'm just going to sit here, I'm not going to react, I'm going to let it pass. That was also really helpful. The journey has been all over the place. I always say that I feel like I'm the woman of my dreams when I'm on stage.

I've really separated these two women, the woman I'm on stage and the other woman who's sitting in front of you right now who's not on stage. I always say, This woman, the woman on stage, she's just so confident and she just believes in herself and the things that she says. But when I'm off stage, is when the doubt comes in. The goal for me, or what I've been working on in this past year, is bringing these two women together because there's no reason that this woman on stage can't be the everyday.

That's poetry right there. That's what I'm trying to do. I like it. I'm interacting with your poetry right now. I like this. Most people don't even have a stage where they can step into being an alter ego, confident person, almost, also. They don't have that, right? They're always anxious.

Yeah.

They're never feeling enough. Do you have an alter ego when you're on stage?

I don't think it's my alter ego. What is it? I think it's just my biggest, brightest self. Let's go.

I like that.

I just feel like me. I feel like when I'm off stage, if anything, I'm feeding into the version of me that as a young girl, people told me that I was not enough, not smart enough, not this or not that. Because as a young girl, that's what I heard and that's then what I practice being, it's hard to change those habits. But the stage gave me this ability to always be the girl I felt I was inside, the one that I felt like the people around me weren't ready to receive when I was younger. But the stage gave me so much room for that. It was my world. Nobody was on the stage with me. Those people who said that I wasn't enough and didn't deserve to have a voice and use my voice, those people were not on stage with me. The stage was mine, and I was going to use it however way I'd like it or whichever way I'd like it. I feel like that's the beautiful thing about the stage and why performing, which was my first love when it comes to poetry, I mean, that performing is where my work starts and it ends, which a lot of people don't know, but that's why I always say, Anytime I'm touring, people come watch me perform because it's It's a totally different frequency compared to just being at home and reading the book on your own.

Yeah. So owning your voice or having a lack of voice seems like it was a theme throughout your childhood. If you could speak to parents who have young kids, and they're watching or listening right now, what advice would you have for parents? You're not a parent yet, but if you could speak to parents from a child perspective of you being, whether it was culturally or your parents or I don't know who it was, but if it was like, what is the environment that parents can create to instill their kids owning their voice without being chaotic all day long, but owning their voice and growing up to believe that they matter?

I don't know if I have the right answer here because- But what did you need to hear growing up? I feel like what I needed was, when I was using my voice, not being chastised constantly for it.

Can you give an example?

Hard for me to come up with one, but it's My family is my life. They're my greatest support system. I think that my parents are so loving and they've given me so many gifts. But every child is different. I'm one of four siblings, and each of us has needed something different, maybe a different style of parenting. I think I maybe needed a little bit more affection than I received. I think giving children the space to experiment and use their voice and make that environment safe for them and trusting that they'll be okay. And that only when we are given an environment or put in environment where we are allowed to use our voice and we practice using our voice and we're not told to be quiet or we're not chastised for it, we can then grow into the competence of using our voice as grownups and adults.

Yeah. Wow. Something we were talking about off camera is the process of... A lot of your work is based on sadness and pain. It's creating from a place of sadness and pain. I've had many musicians and artists on the show who have also created from that place, and they've gotten, I guess, either famous or had success with their work from sadness or darkness or pain. Do you think it's possible to create art from a place of love and joy and be as successful as creating art from a place of pain and sadness?

I believe that it is possible to create from a place of love and joy. Can it be as successful I don't know, but I don't care because I'd rather be happy and joyful than be sad. That's where I'm at. You're right. Like, Milk and Honey was me processing some very tough situations. I wrote to heal. My writing was my therapy. But the joy that I'm feeling today and the happiness and the peace that I feel, I would not give it up for the world. I'm happy to share also that I'm feeling joy and I'm feeling happiness, and I'm also in a state of flow with my writing. It's flowing through me the way that Milk and Honey flow through me for this next book that hopefully will come out soon. But I feel like With every project, it's different, but I'm in a place where I'm truly so happy, and I can feel that that joy is helping birth the project, a book of poetry that I am so excited about in ways that I was excited about Milk and Honey.

Wow. How did you create an environment of peace, joy, and love within you to be able to allow this to flow out of you?

I just began to tell myself the truth. Which is what? Which is I feel like for a long time, over the past 10 years, I consistently did things that didn't necessarily bring me joy. A lot of that was just like, if somebody was like, Oh, this opportunity is really good, or, Go do this, or, Go do that, I would put aside something that I really enjoyed doing to go chase that opportunity because it was good for my career. That was not really feeding my soul. I was moving at such a quick pace that I wasn't really able to take life in. I think the thing that's brought me joy is presence. I really didn't have a lot of that post milk and honey because life changed so quickly that I lost it for a moment. But being My present has allowed me to now get back to a place where I'm finally writing again without judgment and without focus on the end result or the outcome. When I am writing, I get up in the morning, I go to a cafe, I start writing. In the past few years, if I was writing, and as I was writing, I was judging the work.

In the middle of the sentence. In the middle, I was like, This is shit. Really? This is not going to make it to the book. Just, okay, move on, flip. Then now, and that made writing difficult because then when you're doing that, that inner child, that inner voice is like, Well, you're really mean, so I'm just going to hide, and I'm not going to come out. Then you experience writer's block. Then you're just like, Oh, my God, why isn't this working? There was just so much resistance. But I would say that present and focusing on the things that bring me joy and living life is where the poetry comes from. Now when I'm writing, I let it flow out of me without any judgment. The moment that it starts to not feel good and I get to a place where I'm like, Oh, there's some friction, I stop. I'm not forcing myself to sit there for 5 to 8 hours a day and write the way I force myself to do that with the sun and her flowers. I'm like, Listen, if I can get an hour in, if I can get two hours in, it's good enough for me.

Then after I leave the cafe, I go home and I might spend a few hours editing if the flow is coming and it's happening. Because for me, poetry is a form of spirituality. It was never a job or a career. I think when all the big metrics came, it was like, Oh, my God, this is my job. This is my career. I did begin to stop treating it like a form of spirituality. Now, after 10 years, come full circle to that moment where I'm like, Okay, no, this is a form of spirituality. It's where I'm most connected to myself. So why would I ever bring judgment into that space?

What does spirituality mean to you?

Connection with the self. When I'm connected to myself, I'm deeply connected to nature and the universe. It's just presence, it's breath, it's slowing down, it's laughter, it's conversations, it's love. It's these things that I have learned to just value and prioritize so much more my life.

Do you have a relationship with God or the universe? Or do you have a... Do you have a creator?

I definitely have a relationship with the universe. It's like as a sick person, this God is a universal energy. It's a universal energy that's in me, it's in you, it's in nature, it's in all of us. I definitely have a relationship with that. Also, my community has given me so much resilience and strength in moments that I've wanted to give up. My community has to survive multiple genocides. Our history is full of examples of people rising to fight the oppressor and do really hard things. In my life, When I'm having a difficult time and I want to give up, I can just look at my community and find endless examples of courage and resilience. I've constantly tapped into that for the last 10 years to give me strength and keep going because I'm like, Oh, my God, if we could survive that, this is easy. I can do it. I can write a poem. Yeah, exactly. I can write a book.

Do you ever hear a voice that's not yours speaking to you?

What do you mean?

Do ever hear a voice inside of you that's a higher power, a higher self, a higher version of you, God, the universe, spiritual, angel? I would say-Do you hear anything guiding you?

I wouldn't say a voice that is in mine, but I would say that there's a voice sometimes I hear in my belly that is like that woman on stage who is guiding me. It's like a gut instinct type of thing, and it doesn't happen a lot. But I feel like there are... That inner voice is always speaking. It's a matter of, are we tuned into listening to it or not? I write a lot about that in the third book, Homebody. I was really working on listening to my inner voice and have a lot of pieces about inner voice and going inward and blocking out the noise. Because I feel like we always know what we need. It's a matter of, are we listening to it or not? Yeah, that's how I've- But I also heard you say that the inner voice was very judgmental of your period times.

So are there two different inner voices, like a critic. Oh, my God.

I feel like there's so many inner voices. They're confusing my whole life all the time.

But how do we tap into the higher power of our greater self, our spiritual self, our all-knowing self, our non-judgmental self, versus tapping into the power of our critic?

I think it's a practice. How many reps of listening to that non-judgmental voice can you get in? I just got for a while there, there were just so many moments where I chose to believe the voice of self-doubt, and I let that voice have so much air time that the more air time it had, the more it became my reality. This other higher power, I was just shutting out, not giving it the air time it deserved. What's made the difference now is just getting those reps in and believing that and choosing to believe that that is the truth. Now when the inner critic comes in, I've gotten enough reps in of using this amazing voice that believes in myself that this one can be a lot louder than the inner critic, and the inner critic eventually eventually just gives up and just decides to, All right, call it.

How do we teach that? How would you teach a friend that? If you got a girlfriend who's like, They're so smart and talented and beautiful, and you see something inside of them that they're unable to see. Every time they look in the mirror, they're just like, I'm ugly. I'm not good enough. No one loves me. I get heartbroken all the time. I suck. How can we teach that, or how could you share that with someone else on how they can start to listen to their spirit self over their critic self more?

I'm not sure, but... Because people sometimes ask me that question. I'm like, I don't know, but... You're like, I'm still figuring it out. Yeah. Also, I'm Also, I've gone through enough things to realize I'm at 8, 9, 10, confident right now, but life might happen and knock me off my feet. I might go through an experience that suddenly that voice of self-doubt is back, and I'm back at a 2, 4, 5. But the next time that happens, one thing I'm going to know for sure is that it's possible to work back to a 10, and that, I think, will make all the difference. But also, I think what has helped, what my readers tell me at the end of shows or when I meet them on the streets is they say that when they found my work or they read my work, it's when they feel most connected to themselves and they feel like they found a voice and they've started writing. I think that's a way to silence that inner critic and learn to love yourself and believe yourself. That's why creativity is such a beautiful thing. I use creativity to fall in love with myself and believe in myself.

I think that a lot of my readers are doing the same thing.

Wow, that's beautiful. Milk and Honey is 10 years old. Again, if you guys don't have the new edition, make sure pick up a copy of this. Really inspiring stuff. It's got a lot of annotations from other inspirational celebrities and talented individuals who've shared their thoughts. You reflect on everything at the end as well, which seems like you're starting to celebrate it at the end, which is good because you're doing that more of all the stuff you've done. But we went back and thought about, Okay, right before you started this, if you could speak to that younger version of yourself, But if you could go in the future 10 years and think of 40, 41-year-old you, 10 years in the future. If we could imagine, if we can go through a creative expression for a moment, if you could just imagine the next 10 years from this moment, this conversation, and then 10 years, we'd do another conversation, right? It's 20-year anniversary of this. If you can imagine your life of everything that's about to happen. Relationships, whether you have a family or not, the work you do, the community you're part of, everything you do to create and things that happen in your life.

If you could go, hypothetically, if you could go 10 years in the future and imagine you are that person, and you are sitting in front of yourself, and you're going to give advice to your current you. Ten years in the future, what do you think is the wisdom that you would need to hear now from everything you're about to experience in the next decade that future you needs to tell you?

Create work you believe in and don't rush it for anybody or anything. That's one for sure. My best work comes from being connected to a life source, which is love and laughter and family and friends. Center that and value that, and the rest will figure itself out. That's the advice that I'd want to give to myself.

Any relationship advice you think your future self would give you? Because, again, your readers and your followers have seen you go through challenges and relationships from childhood to now, based on your work. Is there anything that your higher-conscious, tenured self would tell you?

My next book is all about that. I think like, Milk and Honey was It's raw, it's intense, the experiences that you go through and the emotions you feel as a young teenager. And this next book, Book 5, that I'm working on is the difficulties that come up with relationships, more serious relationships as in adulthood. And that's the book I'm writing right now. I am being very intentional with being honest, and I'm really hoping that in 10 years, I can look back at book 5, the one that will come out, hopefully in the next few years, and there'll be a lot of lessons there for myself. That's What I'm just processing right now is what relationship is right for me, how to tell when a relationship isn't right, when it's time to leave, how to leave, how to process the guilt of leaving.

Of hurting someone.

Exactly. There's a whole world that I feel like I'm diving into that I'm excited to share with people of my generation. I think a lot of I'm not married, but I have lots of friends who are married and maybe not in the best marriages or people who are in long-term relationships. They're like, Well, leaving seems hard, so I might as well just say to make this work. I feel like these are topics that I'm excited to dig into in a poetic way and explore. That's my next thing.

If I'm just curious, is this your writing here? It is.

Okay.

On this poem on page 99, there's an annotation that you share reflecting on. You say, Who else is addicted to that feeling of falling in love? You get at the start of relationships, I live for it. I swear, the number of times I've almost ruined a good thing just so I could get back out there and experience that thrill again is problematic. Where do you think that comes from? That feeling of that rush, the addictive feeling of this newness or this experience, and then it's either it gets boring or old or it's just not the same feeling. Where do you think that comes from and where are you now?

I always talk about it with my friends. Initial falling in love stage is so much fun. I think it's because I haven't found the right person. I believe that when I do find that person, I won't really be focused on trying to get back out there and experiencing that falling in love. Also what I'm searching for or what I hope exists is freedom within a relationship. We talked a little about that offline is I have this limiting belief that I'm working on, which is that, Oh, long-term relationships are suffocating. I probably can't... You're trapped. Yes, you're trapped. They're suffocating, so I probably will never be able to survive one. Now what I'm working on bringing in to my state of mind is like, no, in the right relationship, I can be with someone and still be free.

Amen to that. My whole upbringing was around feeling trapped because my parents had a model of they were both trapped. Yes. They were both miserable. It was chaotic in my childhood, in my home. I begged my parents to send me away at 13 because I just couldn't be around the energy. I knew they each loved me, but they didn't love each other. It was traumatic in many ways. Just the screaming, the fighting, the slamming, the uncertainty of it all, the chaos of it all daily. I didn't know what was going to happen. As a child, you feel very unsafe if your home is unsafe. For me, I would get into relationships and feel trapped and felt like I had to people please constantly. I had to change who I was to make the other person happy. Then I was just unhappy and trapped. I didn't have the courage or the tools to exit the relationship because I was afraid to be alone. It was like whatever it was. It's just like, I was afraid to hurt someone.

Hurt someone. That was the big one for me. That was really what it was.

But then when I was alone, I was like, I'm free. It's like, Peace. I'm free. Yeah, it's amazing. I can be myself again. The thing that I've learned through just the healing journey is, I was telling you about with Martha offline, I was just like, when we started dating, I told her Upfront, I was like, I'm going to tell you the truth about everything, but you're probably going to run away because you're not going to like it. Because every other person I would tell the truth about, they would get pissed off or angry, upset. So I would start pulling back the truth because I didn't want people to be upset with me, which is limited a little bit, right? I was like, I'm going to tell you everything the truth, and you're probably not going to like it. She was like, I've always been with guys who never told me the truth. The stuff that most women didn't want to hear from my past, she was like, Okay, I accept that. That's your truth. Okay, cool. I was like, Really? You're not going to get mad or scream at me. The more I just said, This is 100% who I am, you can take it or leave it.

The more she accepted me, the more safe I felt. It took time because some women can be, I'm I think your guise can be tricky, too, and say, Yeah, I accept it about you, then change later. But I think the more you step and do, I'm 100% going to be who I am. I'm also going to take responsibility for my actions and things like that, but I'm going step into who I am in this relationship. If you can feel the other person accepts you, then you're setting yourself up for, I think, a harmonious relationship, if things align and everything else. That's the one thing I said to Martha. I said, There's only one thing that will make me upset in this relationship before we got committed, she'll say the same thing. I said, The only thing that will make me upset, you can do anything, and I will accept you. I will get upset at you. I will get mad at you. I'll never yell at you. Nothing. You could ask her today, I've never been upset of her for anything because I chose to accept who she was, her life path, her decisions, her career.

She's an actress. She kisses guys on screen. I chose to accept that and not change her. I said, The only thing that I will not accept is if you get angry at me for no reason, if you get upset at me for telling you the truth, if you are against something of me being who I am, and you try to change me. I I was like, That's not going to work. You can have a conversation with me about something you don't like. You can be disappointed or upset, but you can't get angry at me without having a conversation first. You can't react at me first. You have to calmly have a conversation with me.

Because then it triggers that unsafe space. Exactly.

I was like, I'm going to run away. It's not going to work. You can be upset, you can be angry, but you have to communicate it calmly. Exactly. Can't scream at me. None of this stuff. That's beautiful. She does that. She's calm when she's upset, and she talks to me, and we work it out.

It feels like you found once you stepped into who you are, you also attracted the person who also stepped into who they are. Yes. You met somebody where you were at, which is so beautiful.

But it took years. It took years of making painful decisions that were painful in relationships and sadness and all these different things. Then me doing the healing journey, which is always going to be a journey forever. Right. But it sounds like you're doing the same thing for you.

Yeah. It's so amazing to hear you say all these things because I feel like I'm right behind you in doing the thing.

I was 10 years ago. I was doing what you're doing. It took me a long time to figure this out.

Yeah. That's amazing. I'm so happy for you, and it's so happy to hear also. It's possible.

It's what I meant to say because I feel trapped in this suffocating. I'm telling you, it is possible if you keep doing the healing journey. If you look at your heart and you really take care of it. I'll tell you one more quick story because I know we got to wrap up here soon. I was in intensive therapy for, I don't know, six or seven months, and I was going almost every weekend because I was feeling this pain in my heart. I don't know if you've ever had physical pain in your chest, a sharp pain. It's a numbing pain consistently in relationships at different times. When I felt trapped, I'd feel this pain.

Yes, I felt that.

You did? Yeah. I remember I I was like, I will do whatever it takes to let go this pain, but I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I'm trying all these things. I met a coach and therapist where I was like, I will be here every weekend if I need to be. I was doing four, five, six-hour sessions on Saturday sometimes because I wanted freedom. I wanted peace and freedom, and I didn't have it in the relationship. I didn't have the tools on how to communicate and how to get out and create boundaries and all these different things. There was one day, three and a years ago, that I was having this conversation and all the healing, the journey and the integration, it all integrated. I was able to literally heal my heart where it felt this pain explode in a rush throughout my body. It's really hard to explain. It was like complete freedom and peace that I never felt in my life. I've had that peace in my heart for the last three and a half years. It hasn't come back. I'm so I'm grateful for that because I didn't think it was possible, but consistently showing up for self and healing the inner child inside of me and creating weird ceremonies where I'm like, hugging myself as a child and integrating that childlike self and saying, I have you as an adult.

You're safe. You're home now. Being that parent to my younger self was one of the greatest gifts I ever gave to my younger self. It set me free. Yes. Whatever journey you're on right now, which sounds like you've been doing similar stuff, keep doing it. Keep doing it. Even when you're like, I don't want to go to this session or do this work, or I'm tired of this, or why can't I just feel it and can't it be easy?

Keep going. I'm trying to remember that I feel good right now. I always keep referencing the 8, 9, 10 confidence because I've been doing the work, because I'm doing the therapy and I'm being consistent with it. To not stop it when I'm at 8, 9, 10, in fact, to make it It's like a continuous practice at that point.

It doesn't mean you need to be every day or every week, but be consistent with it.

Exactly.

I'm so happy for you. We met, what, seven years ago?

Yeah. Seven years ago. I feel like a different person in the best of ways.

You're doing amazing things. I want people to get the book, Milk and Honey. I've got two final questions for you, and then we'll wrap it up. I want you guys to get the 10th anniversary collector's edition. It's really inspiring. It's 200-ish poems, correct? 200 plus?

No, it's more now. I wanted it to feel like a director's cut of the original with my thoughts in it. I didn't want to just change the cover. Of course, I did. That was also one of the most funnest parts with one of the The biggest challenge is trying to figure out how to take a cover that solidified in people's minds for the last 10 years and change it in a way that doesn't disrespect the reader who loves that original cover so much. That original is black and white. For me, when I thought about the last 10 years and being at where I'm at now, this place of celebration, this place of joy, it was only natural to infuse the 10-year edition with these colors that represent joy for me. Because I realized all the challenges that I was experiencing when writing Milk and Honey, I've overcome them, as have the readers who fell in love with Milk and Honey. They have survived so much over the past 10 years, and that's something to celebrate. I wrote an introduction. I did the annotations. I've included diary entries. One of my favorite things is a new chapter I added, The Remembering, which is full of, I think it's about 40 new poems.

Okay, cool. Yeah, it's beautiful. I love all of it. It's amazing. Thank you. I'm going to ask you to read one poem. Okay. I don't know if you know exactly where it will be, but my intention before you open it up is to read the poem when you're at your lowest moment and to read the poem that you think will give your younger self the most peace and freedom that she really needs to have.

Okay, I know which one to read. It's actually one of the new ones. Okay. There are seasons we shine, we glow certain months. Then there are seasons a cold knocks us to our knees, and we wonder why life hurts so much. It takes wisdom to stay down. It takes guts to decompose, to wither, to cry out all our color. And then, when we've reached the end of our end, once everything past is shed, the dirt will raise us little by little. The earth will feed us until our spines thicken. And like the spring before, we will rise, faces full of color, hearts of joy. We will stand, soaking in the heat of summer in no time, forgetting that the winter ever came. That's so fun, right? One, two. It's like a reminder that it will get better. Yeah.

Is there one more, too?

Yeah. Let me see.

For those that maybe are new to you, maybe this is their first time hearing about you, I don't know if that's possible, but you also do all the drawings yourself, too, which is so cool.

Yeah, I love doing... Visual arts was my first form of expression. I started as a young kid. Then when I found poetry, I stopped drawing and painting altogether. But then including these little drawings in the poetry was a way for me to bring my love for drawing back. That's cool. This is one that I think is one that a lot of my readers love. It's on page 197. I want to apologize to all the women I've called pretty before I've called them intelligent or brave. I'm sorry I made it sound as though something as simple as what you're born with is the most you have to be proud of when your spirit has crushed mountains. From now on, I'll say things like, You are resilient, or, You are extraordinary, not because I don't think you're pretty, but because I know that you are so much more than that.

Amen. Let's go now. I like that. That's Great. Thank you. I want to acknowledge you, Ruby, for your resiliency and for your journey of showing up, being vulnerable with yourself, with your community, your intimate community, but also your community of the world. I want to acknowledge you for Going on the healing journey and starting to love yourself the way you deserve to be loved and starting to believe that you're worthy and that your voice matters. Thank you. I hope you're feeling that for yourself, and I just want to acknowledge you for that journey you're on.

Thank you. That means so much, especially coming from you. I feel like you put so much love and joy out into the world, and it's such an honor to be in conversation with you and to feel inspired. It's not all the time that I get to sit down and a conversation like this just feels so easy and feels like I'm being fed. So thank you for creating a space for so many of us. Of course. To talk about healing and talk about the hard things.I appreciate you.Of course.

Before I ask the Final question, where can we get the book? Can we see you on tour soon? How can we support you with what you're up to right now?

You can get the book anywhere books are sold. I am on tour for the next two months. I'll be going across America, the UK. Usually, when I'm on tour, I'm performing, but this is the first time I'm exclusively doing a book signing tour. Come get your book signed. All right.

You're not performing?

I'm not performing this time.

Just a Books, book signing, photos, and stuff like that.

Exactly. That's cool. We'll do a performance tour again with the next book.

Are you going to be active on social media? I see you doing less consistently. You take a month off sometimes. I know.

I'm so bad.

You went hard for 10 years. I'm tired. I don't know.

I love to even speak to you offline about it. Sure. I feel like I've been doing it for so long. I've been on Tumbler since 2011, on Instagram since 2012. How much longer can I keep doing it? But I know that it's important. What tour forces me to put myself out there. A lot of people don't also realize that I'm still camera-shy, even though I stand up in front of people and I'm performing and doing all the things, talking to a camera is still a little bit odd to me. But you know what? I'm getting better at it. Once I hit the road, I start tour on Sunday. I'm going to get back out there and just be talking to all my people. I'm scared.

It's good. Okay, perfect. Well, we can follow you on social media and the website. Where can I get the link for the tour? Where's that at?

It is on my website, roopycore. Com. You can go on my TikTok or my Instagram, and it'll be the link in bio.

First link there. Okay, cool. Final question for you, Roopy. What is your definition of greatness?

My definition of greatness at this moment is finding the strength to do the things that make you feel alive, because those things are not always easy to do. But I believe that when we do those things that make us feel alive, we can be great.

Rupi, thanks for being here. I appreciate you. Thank you. Amazing. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple podcast. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcast as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.