What Happened At The Doctor's

I sat in the doctor’s office waiting to get my varicose veins zapped. 

Notebook open, pen in hand, I was listening to a course about entrepreneurial expertise and had to answer the inevitable “why” question. Why do I coach? What’s my mission?

In that moment this is what I jotted down: 

“I empower women to hear, trust and share their unique gifts because the world needs them now more than ever.”

Minutes later, the door flung open, and my name was called. I unplugged my earbuds, put away my notebook and followed the doctor into his office. 

I had been to this doctor a few times already and knew he was chatty.

I took off my pants, laid down on my back, and he started asking me what I do for a living, what my husband does, etc. 

I gave him the same info as during my last two appointments, then for flair, mentioned that in addition to my husband’s job, he was very passionate about tennis. 

“Passionate about tennis? Why isn’t your husband passionate about you?” the doctor quipped. 

I laughed, uncomfortably.  

And then out of the blue he added. “If you want him to be passionate about you you’ll need to lose this,” and he gestured to the little bulge of skin sticking out between my panties and my t-shirt and pinched my belly between his fingers. 

My heart stopped. My pulse quickened. I looked down and felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. “Did he just say what I think he said?” “Is that my belly?” “Yes, that’s my belly.” “What’s it doing here?” 

As he injected chemicals into my legs, he continued on with his unsolicited commentary. “You need to wear sexier underwear,” he said, flicking the waistband of my panties disapprovingly, “you should do butt and ab exercises,” and “don’t forget to wax and get your nails done.” 

He concluded, triumphantly, that this protocol would ensure that “at the end of the day, your husband desires you more than his tennis.”

I kept silent throughout most of this rant, thinking to myself, “This can’t be happening!” “Is this a joke?” “Does he know we’re in 2022?” “I’m a women's empowerment coach, this garbage won’t work on me.”

But it wasn’t a joke. And even though I am a women’s empowerment coach who has the solid support of family, friends, a therapist, a coach and a battalion of personal development tools, I found myself ugly crying on the phone to my husband as soon as I got out of that office.

The doctor’s words hit a nerve. They ignited millennia of self-doubting, shaming feelings and thoughts about a woman’s body that I thought I was immune to. 

They made me feel self-conscious, ashamed, embarrassed, exposed and weak. 

They made me doubt my inherent beauty. My femininity. 

His words, despite their almost comically Mad Men sexism, were an overt attempt to convince me that there was something terrible wrong with me that needed fixing.


That my full-time job as a woman was to keep my body pleasing and desirable, and that I was failing at that job. 

And, as a result of my shortcomings, I should use my precious resources— my time, my energy, my money, my thoughts, my actions—not on my own choices, relationships, convictions, or aspirations, but on the impossible task of living up to an unachievable ideal of feminine perfection! 

No, doctor, I’m not buying your sexist, patriarchal bullshit. 

Even though I wish I had jumped off the table screaming profanities into his smug face, months later, << Test First Name >>, I appreciate the experience the way it did go down. 

It’s helped me have some really honest, powerful, and healing conversations, like my heart-to-heart with Lili Barbery Coulon on her podcast Pleine Présence (which you’re invited to listen to if you speak French). 

But the true gift of this experience is the heightened urgency and clarity I feel today around my mission as a coach. More than ever I feel like my place is to help women release the grip of limiting beliefs and feelings in order to step into their full professional potential, whatever that means for them. 

It’s the only way we can reverse course and dismantle a system that continues to subjugate a woman’s self-value, agency and dignity in order to strip her of her precious power. 

If that mission speaks to you, I'd be thrilled to chat with you during a free discovery call. 


PS. In case you missed my intimate chat in French with Lili Barbery Coulon on her podcast Pleine Présence, you can listen to it over here.  

5 must-listen podcast interviews that rocked my 2020

In 2020, the world came to me through the podcast portal. I was already a podcast fan, but starting in March during the first lockdown in France I slowly and steadily began racking up the "edutainment" to a solid 100/hrs per month. 

When I look through my archive of listened-to shows, I fly back in time to the exact moment my brain shifted a belief, gave me a new perspective on the future, or shined a mega-light on a part of reality I was trying to avoid.  

I don't know if that happens with everyone (maybe it happens with you, but there's just something about listening to podcasts that stamps ideas into my mind. 

So in honor of this wild year of discoveries and learnings, here is my list of the five most thought-shaping podcast interviews of the year (including a self-promo plug). 

April 20, 2020: "The Daily" The Next Year (or Two) of the Pandemic 

Michael Barbaro of the "The Daily" podcast was my "most-listened-to" person of the year. I just love this guy. He has this way of paraphrasing his guests' answers, offering their words back to them in concise little packages, that reminds me a lot of coaching. He's got a fantastic ear for detail that he uses to help his listeners grasp complex concepts by breaking them down into digestible bites, even when he's interviewing experts about some hard-to-swallow subjects, like basically everything he reported on this year! Of all of the episodes Barbaro did in 2020, my "favorite," was with the science and health reporter for The New York Times, Donald G. McNeil Jr. Back in April, McNeil gave a pretty bleak, but ultimately realistic portrait of our lives with Covid-19 for the next couple of years and introduced the concept of the "hammer and the dance." When I heard the episode, I was like, "Ok, this thing isn't going away for a while and we're going to have to learn to live with it."

June 30, 2020: "Unlocking Us" Brené Brown with Ibram X. Kendi on How to Be an Antiracist

Brené Brown's warm Texan drawl and one-of-a-kind laugh are hard to resist, but it's the way she questions her guests through the prism of her extensive research on shame, courage and vulnerability that makes her podcast "On Becoming" my go-to destination for knee-slapping HOLY SHIT conversations. Of all of the fantastic episodes she did last year, the most memorable and transformative for me was her interview with professor Ibram X. Kendi, the New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist. After listening to their conversation in which Brown applied her shame lens to Kendi's teaching, I had a dozen uncomfortable aha-moments which led me to order his book and devour it over the next few weeks. Honestly, this conversation is gold. 

September 14, 2020: "The Happiness Lab" Happiness Lessons of The Ancients: Aristotle

"The Happiness Lab" is a fantastic podcast hosted by Yale professor Dr Laurie Santos, creator of the most successful course in the school's history: The Science of Well-Being. In this show she invites experts from different fields to debunk common myths about what makes us happy and offer alternative ways to achieving that esteemed state. This episode totally blew my mind because she invited her friend and colleague, Yale professor Tamar Gendler, an expert on Ancient Greece, to talk about Aristotle's amazing, and totally relevant well-being concepts from two thousand years ago. She opens with this kick-ass statement: "The idea that the most interesting answer to the question you're trying to ask would be given by someone living on earth with you right now is a real mistake. Sometimes the most interesting answer is something that someone gave two thousand years ago, or on a completely different continent, or in a completely different context." 

November 18, 2020: The Stories that Empower Us: A Conversation with Tara Brach and Elizabeth Lesser, Author of “Cassandra Speaks”

Tara Brach is a mentor to me even though she doesn't know it. Her book Radical Acceptance completely changed the way that I think about uncomfortable emotions and our resistance to them. I recommend her book to literally every person I coach and listen to her podcast, which is mostly live talks and meditations, regularly. That's why it was such a treat to hear her switch things up and interview one of her peers, co-founder of the Omega institute and author, Elizabeth Lesser. The conversation between these two brilliant women was so playful and insightful and you could tell they each adore one another. The two discussed Lesser's new book called Cassandra Speaks, which looks into how myths and popular stories have shaped the way we perceive women, even though they've mostly been written by men! Lesser advocates for women to redefine those roles and perceptions by writing and sharing their stories more. After listening to this episode, I immediately ordered her book and then decided to begin a series of interviews on Instagram with my clients so that they can share their transformation journeys, projects and epiphanies with others.


December 23, 2020: "The New Paris Podcast" On changes and transformations with Zeva Bellel

What an honor to wrap up a year of intense podcast listening by being featured on one of my absolutely favorite shows: "The New Paris Podcast" by Lindsey Tramuta. Lindsey and I met years ago when I was blogging about hidden Parisian addresses and she was just starting out as a travel and culture writer in Paris. She now has two fantastic books about Paris under her belt, The New Paris and The New Parisienne: The Women & Ideas Shaping Paris, as well as a brilliant podcast with an eclectic line-up of Paris-based guests. I was delighted to be invited onto her show to discuss my own journey coming to Paris, the chaotic early days of my career in France, the twists and turns that lead me to coaching, and French and American cultural differences in regards to career transformation.

If you have any podcast episodes that completely rocked your world in 2020 send me the links.

Sending you lots of love.

xxx
Zeva


PS.When you have a good 40-minutes free, I'd love for you to check in and listen to my conversation with Lindsey Tramuta on her podcast"The New Paris"and let me know what comes up for you.

PPS. Thanks for being on the other side of this screen this year. I'll see you next week with an announcement about a fun vision board workshop I'm co-hosting in January. Until then, have a fantastic holiday!