Leadership strategist Edna White, creator of the Keeping It Real On Purpose podcast and Wounded to Wonderful newsletter, discusses the culture shock of moving from Alabama to Long Island as a child, her nervous breakdown in her 40s, and her decision to teach English in China. Living in China, she climbed the Great Wall and sampled tarantula and scorpion, returning to New York a changed woman ready to help others.
Leadership strategist Edna White, creator of the Keeping It Real On Purpose podcast and Wounded to Wonderful newsletter, discusses the culture shock of moving from Alabama to Long Island as a child, her nervous breakdown in her 40s, and her decision to teach English in China. Living in China, she climbed the Great Wall and sampled tarantula and scorpion, returning to New York a changed woman ready to help others. She is the founder of Second Chance, Inc. and lives on Long Island in New York.
00:00 Moving Along Introduction to Edna White
03:34 Black Girl Growing Up in Alabama and Long Island
07:31 Leadership
10:19 Finding Your Original Identity
12:10 Embracing Your Emotions
13:40 Meshing Emotions and Leadership
18:07 Edna's Gift of Clairsentience and for Helping Others
19:42 Making the Wrong Mistakes
20:12 The Solitude of Home and Canoeing
21:06 Learning to Meditate
22:23 Teaching and Traveling in China
24:16 Walking the Great Wall of China
27:16 Zip Line Down the Mountain
28:13 Arriving in China
30:17 Culture Shock in China
30:58 Real Chinese Food
33:58 A New Leaf, Writing and Coaching Back in New York
34:10 Eye-Opening Lessons About Communism and Religion in China
36:53 Learning Different Kinds of Meditation in China
37:27 Can We All Be Leaders?
39:51 How to Contact Edna
Contact Edna:
At Edna's website, you can sign up to get more information about her projects:
Podcast: Keeping It Real on Purpose
Newsletter: Wounded to Wonderful
Book (not an affiliate link): The You Project: Uncover the Real You and Create a Better Life
Christi: [00:00:00] Welcome to Moving Along. My guest today is Edna White. Edna is a leadership development speaker and life strategist, and the founder of Second Chance Inc. Where she helps people rebuild their lives after trauma, major life disruption, and identity loss. is the host of keeping it real on purpose, [00:01:00] a podcast documenting human recovery, resilience, and rebuilding through honest conversations with survivors, authors, and professionals. Her newsletter, which I recently discovered is called Wounded to Wonderful, and I have to say that even if you don't think you're wounded, it is wonderful and will make you feel so inspired to take it to the next level. Through her work, Edna focuses on how silence, conditioning, and survival patterns shape behavior, and how individuals can reclaim their original identity, make smart decisions, and move forward with clarity. Edna is also the author of several personal development and self-help. I'd call them self-help books, including [00:02:00] You Project Uncover The Real You and Create a Better Life. This book is brand new. It is just out, and I can't wait to talk with Edna more about that. The You Project basically is a book that guides readers in understanding these are Edna's words.
I know you know that under understanding why they think, react and live the way they do so that they can redesign their direction with intention. And I do think a lot of what I've. Read and listened to from Edna is about intention, and we'll talk more about that. generally, Edna's approach Blends lived experience, practical insight, and grounded strategy, helping her clients, her audiences, her listeners, turn awareness into action and pain [00:03:00] into purposeful change. Welcome Edna.
Edna: Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. Glad to be here.
Christi: can't get over how prolific you are. It's, it seemed like, wow, just the newsletter, the podcast. You have like 272 or 200, almost 280 episodes so far.
Edna: Yeah. Well, it's, it's 270 yesterday.
Christi: Congratulations.
Edna: you. Thank you.
Christi: Edna, you grew up, you were born in Alabama, right? And grew
up there for a little
Edna: Yeah.
Christi: then moved to
New York to Long Island, and I wondered what did and moving mean to you as a child?
Edna: I think it meant for me, I, I know I was shocked by it because, you know, I lived with my grandparents. They had [00:04:00] their own business. So they, they had a farm, they had chickens. So that was not their business. They had their own home. It was a different lifestyle than here. I could play with chickens I had like that type of life and I was the only child, young child anyway. And so I had a lot of attention. And when I came here it was like I had to grow up. 'cause I was the oldest in the family. My mom had to work, so I had to kinda be like the lead for all of things as I got older. So moving meant drastic change, There is a type of culture shock that happens because, you know, I came here, I'm a young Black girl, and the, place I went to was majority Italian and Jewish. and there were no Blacks. They were, I mean, they were Black people there, but they were African Black. So that's even different.
Coming there with braids, people asking, what is that in your hair? what is that? You know, and I'm telling them. And it was like, we never heard of that. I didn't know what it was [00:05:00] when I was younger, you know, when I was seven, I didn't have no idea what it was, but it was culture shock.
I was like, I don't wanna go back, you know, I don't wanna go back, you know, my mom, of course, she didn't know either, so she just knew that she had to do this. So I think moving for me was, was very shocking at that age.
Christi: Would you say that your focus on trauma and hard things and culture shock is, is that part of your motivation in helping people understand or learn self-esteem and confidence?
Edna: Yeah, sure. Sure. My experiences we'll get to it, but my book, the You Project is all about the experiences. We learn the lessons, but do we, apply them. That's what it's really about. 'cause we can learn a lesson, but when we don't apply it, it doesn't heal.
It doesn't get it better. You, you learn, you learn the lesson. Yeah. I learned that. Yeah. 'cause learning is, repetition application is living it practically. Living it out.
Christi: what [00:06:00] lesson did you take from the culture shock of moving from Alabama to Long Island?
Edna: So I, think what, what, what did I learn? That's a great question I have resilience, but it was, you know, very difficult and how to transition as a child. I don't think I could, could have done that. Well, I just, I just moved through it and then it kind of affected me later on.
As, I mean, when I was like 12, 15 in those areas, I didn't wanna be there. I, I was miserable, but I didn't know it was the after effect of being here, you know? I was little so it, it went somewhere. So I was miserable and not until I was about 15 that I realized, oh, I really didn't wanna be here. I did not wanna be here.
I wanted to enjoy the freedom of, of life, you know, where I was what, where I thought it was freedom, just being a kid. 'cause I wasn't, I wasn't able to be a kid. Down there. I was,
Christi: Did you go back and visit?
Edna: I go back, [00:07:00] yes. well, my great grandparents when I was down there, she just, we had moved back and she, she passed away.
And my, my great grandfather later on passed away. But IWI go back to see my aunts, my uncles we're, you know, we're very close. We talk at least, two times a month. and it's good. We talk like two, three hours, you know, so it's good. I go back for like, you know, reunions and birthdays, things like that,
Christi: When you were a kid, did you go in the summer to visit?
Edna: No,
Christi: You were really stuck there in Long Island.
Edna: Yeah. No, we didn't go back.
Christi: It seems like, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, that a big part of your adult life is focused on leadership, and I wondered again, who were. The leaders in your life that you respected, that you saw.
Edna: That's a really good question. When I wrote my, one of my books called The Big Ask that was a time in my life that I was asking myself, who am I, what am I doing? Where am I going? How you know? And I didn't have answers for myself, [00:08:00] so I decided to write the questions down.
That just started popping for me, and one of them was this question, who was the biggest leader for you? And. For the life of me. I was writing people down. I was like, yeah, they, no, they didn't, you know, I was writing down maybe my pastor. I was like, no, you know? And then I wrote like a bunch of people who, you know, in my life as, as, as leaders.
As leaders. And I, and as I meditated on that more, that question more, I started striking people off. And then lo and behold during meditation, one day my great-grandparents just came up and I was like, what's that about? And my great-grandparents, my great-grandfather was once removed from gen.
So his parents were, were slaves.
Christi: Right.
Edna: His parents were slaves. But the beautiful thing about it is what I didn't see as a kid, he had his own business. He didn't work for anybody. He had his own farm, own land. Own house. He was an [00:09:00] entrepreneur, he was owned his own home. And then I remember getting on his shoulders as a child and it would be an evening and we'd go and, you know, make sure everything was good.
He would take me down through the fields and I'd see other, you know, people had already done the work during the day. And I was like, why are they there? And I, I remember asking, what are they doing? And he says, oh, those are our neighbors. They're getting food for their families. He would actually let people come that were in the neighborhood and be able to gather what was left after he did his daily business, which was so cool.
So I would say after all, examination would be my great-grandparents. My great-grandmother would, didn't go to church but was very spiritual. I can't explain it. Very spiritual. And I don't even believe she read because all I remember is her opening the book and just like putting her hands on it.
So I [00:10:00] don't remember her even reading, you know what I mean? So I would say those were my two biggest influences that I subconsciously didn't even know. And I always had that entrepreneurial spirit about me that, you know, just get out there and do it, move forward kind of thing. And I got it from them.
Christi: You talk about finding original identity and what, what is that?
Edna: So you hear about authenticity, right? A lot. And through my search with this book, the, the Big Ask, and then actually getting to the You Project, I was always asking the question, you know, if we're authentic, what are we, you know, what's authentic? What is authentic? Is it, is it original? What is authentic?
But it's the space between authentic. Is it the space between getting to your original self? So I always [00:11:00] reflect back to remember all of your, raw emotions, all of your resilience, strength, faith, all of that was at this very tender age of five to about to nine. Right. that's the, times when everything was raw.
you, you were figuring things out, but when you were emotional, you were emotional. It was when you knew you could do something, you could do something. You didn't want your mom to help, you didn't want your dad. I could do it. I could do it. That's your original place of how you deal with emotions.
If you are expressive, you express it. You know, like, you make a face, you make a face. Who cares? As adults, we don't think that way. Oh, if we make a face, people are gonna be upset. If we tell the truth, people are gonna be upset. I'm talking about that original space where we really had faith that what we were doing and saying and feeling were the right things, and it's okay to, to express them.
As adults, we don't do that. [00:12:00] We have to always get a check. Is that good? Can we tell the truth here? Will it be accepted? We're always making those checks, going through those checks.
Christi: Isn't that about tact though,
Edna: I think tact is a learned skill according to where you are. But I'm talking about embracing your emotions because we don't, we don't embrace our emotions. We put them aside. If we, we are upset about something, we'll go to work and try to squish it down and then remain quiet the full day instead of saying, Hey, I need to take a break 'cause I'm upset today.
it may not be feasible for everybody, but learning how to take a break. I'm even saying to your supervisor, Hey, I am not doing good today. I'm feeling very emotional. We don't share that. We just think we have to take it on the chin and go in. And then that causes so many other problems like holding things in.
Emotions. Emotions are nothing, but energy. Bumping around inside of you and then holding things in. Cause a whole lot of other body [00:13:00] problems, because I truly believe you know, if you hold something in, it's gonna find a place to settle and it's gonna either settle there and give you some dis-ease or settle and then it comes out in the wrong time where you do have to use tact, but it's kind of too late.
It's kind of too late because you're, you're acting out already, you know? So, the original spot for me is originally accepting that these emotions exist for a reason. They're to be expressed and acknowledged and taken, and utilized. How do we utilize them? We cry when we need to.
Christi: How do you counsel your clients on using that emotional self-awareness and spirituality and the kind of, the squishy stuff in it fit with the leadership up?
Edna: I'll give you an example. I had a supervisor who I know had so many problems going [00:14:00] on. You cannot, I always tell my clients, you cannot separate your home life from your work life. It's impossible because that's you. It's completely, you, we learn how to, what we call code and we disassociate when we go to work, we try to maintain ourselves. Maybe we had a house fire, but we have to go to work and we have to deal with that. And then the things that happen in the interim, maybe somebody got, one of your children got burned and you're trying to go to work and you contain yourself.
And we call that coding, right? And we separate ourselves, we disassociate Well, if you do that too long, it becomes the normal 'cause you practice. When you practice something, you learn it and you get, it becomes a skill. So you do it too often and then all the real things about you get squished down. So what I say to my clients, and usually I can just pick it up. One of my clients [00:15:00] who was a reiki master and she had all these other certifications.
And I said, well, when are you going to stop wearing that mask? She just like, what do you mean? I was like, you can learn all of that stuff, but until you apply it to yourself and I mean deeply apply it and do the inner work, the work, it doesn't matter how many degrees you get, you're still going. Something weird is gonna happen after a while.
So she calls me up one day and it was something very simple. She said, I had to fire my VA. I said, what, what happened? She added this color and I didn't want this color on there. And I started screaming. So I'm going, wait, what? So I was like, wait, you screamed about that? And I said, now that's unresolved things that are going on you, because you could have spoke about it.
I said one color, so it's good. She, could you show it to me? Because I thought maybe it was all over the place, you know? All right. [00:16:00] I was like, you didn't want this flower and you couldn't express that, so you had to scream at her and fire her. So she says, yeah, I, she's gotta do what I said. I said, mm. I said, are you sure?
That's, that's not about her, but it's about you. And she looked at me, I said, you have to come back to your original self and really heal and take some radical self-care, because that is, you know what we call petty? That's petty. You could have spoke about that instead of screamed about it. I said, but I want you to take time and do some radical self-care.
Really think about what you're doing. And so she, she is like, yeah, yeah, she, yeah, ya me? I said, okay. I didn't say anything more. About a month later, she, you know, we had stopped our classes, but a month later she calls me up and she goes, I'm in the hospital. Said, wait, what? Like, how did that happen? You know?
And she's telling me that she says, I have to listen to [00:17:00] you now I have to do some radical self-care because I had a stroke. She said it was a mini one, but I had one. I said, Hmm. I said, yeah, I, I, I told you that you can't hold, you can't hold emotions down too long. They start acting up. Like I said, it's energy, emotions.
It's energy in motion. And they, just because you try to hold it together doesn't mean it's not moving around,
Christi: Wow.
Edna: When it's hurting you to not be yourself. And it if takes the very energy out of you is like, when I, when I talk to my clients and they're getting their pajamas on, they're showering, getting their pajamas on directly after work.
Tells me that that job is tiring you. It's making you too tired. It's taking a lot out of you and you're not being yourself. And that's what they always tell me is that, you know, and that's a, that's one good one is that you could sleep, but you don't get enough [00:18:00] rest. It's not you sleeping, it's you using up energy to be something that you're not. You are out of alignment.
Christi: When did you know that you had this gift for helping people figure this stuff out?
Edna: I'm gonna tell you, I knew this, I knew that I had, I like a clairsentient kind of ability when I was nine. And I said something to my mom and I had saw this woman. I looked at this woman and something just like flashed. About her and I, I saw that she had a black eye, but she didn't have a black eye.
When I was looking at it, I saw that she had a black eye. And so I said, said to my mom that man's going to her. Somebody's gonna hit her, and she's got a black eye. And she goes, you don't have no black eye now. And she just go in the room, you know, 'cause who is out with everybody? I said, okay. I was like, but something's gonna happen to her.
This is what I told my mom. Not even a day later, she comes over the lady's crying. She's got a black eye. And my mother just looked at me. How did you know? I, I don't [00:19:00] know. I mean, I, I didn't know, right? So I was scared to always use it. I used to, I used to see things with people and feel things very, very feeling their energy.
And I would kind of shy away from it. So I stopped utilizing it for a long time in my, teens. I started, really coming back to myself in my late thirties, forties and fifties. But I knew that I had, it, always knew I had it. How to navigate it in life that's the part had to be learned not to look at everybody as a test subject, you know, and like, kind of use it when it's supposed to be used, not on a regular basis, like all day. 'Cause you, do drain yourself, So it's like learning that part. But I knew for a while
Christi: What drew you back in your thirties, forties, and fifties?
Edna: Making the wrong mistakes, choosing to be around the wrong people, dating the wrong people being involved with the wrong people, getting the red flags, not paying attention to them [00:20:00] and continuing. So in my forties I started to feel like I was having a nervous breakdown because I was around bad energy all the time, all the time.
Edna: And not being able to get it off of me, you know? 'cause I can actually absorb other people's energy and I know something's going on and name it. But I, I didn't know how to stop it from happening to me. I almost had a nervous breakdown. So I had to stay alone for a while. And I say not alone, but in solitude for a while.
And learning how to, to control that
Christi: Wow. Did you go on a retreat or do some spiritual kind of thing or just stay at home?
Edna: girl. No, my home is a whole retreat. What I do love is going canoeing. So I would go and go into canoe and have a little Yorkie that I take with me, put his little thing on and, and so we would go out on the canoe and just sit. [00:21:00] And that was my solitude time and I created space for myself within my home as well.
Christi: Is that when you learned to meditate.
Edna: I learned to meditate in my forties because of the nervous breakdown.
Christi: So the nervous breakdown really happened. wasn't like it. There's the edge, and I can see it coming if I don't take it easy. No, no,
Edna: No, no, I was, I was gone. I was, I was gone. I was crying. It just started as a crying thing. Just kept crying and crying and crying. And then going to the hospital, going to the doctors. I've always had a therapist and she said, finally, you need to get regulated. I don't know what it is. And then luckily the doctor that I did see, she was right on tune.
She goes you're a clair, huh? She goes, you're picking up other people's energy.
And that's, she introduced me to meditation. And I was able, right after that I was able to go. To China where I really delved [00:22:00] into it. I really got into it. And I,
Christi: I,
Edna: yeah, I moved there for about nine months and I, I was teaching English as a second language and it was a great place to start.
'cause I just started the meditation I really gravitated to, to it there. So it was a great experience and I grew exponentially, spiritually there.
Christi: Wow. Where were you in China?
Edna: I was in a northern province in Shandong Province the little town was called Jinan
Christi: I think there's a lot of American companies set up shop up there, don't they?
Edna: Yeah. I was one of the, towns that had had a manufacturer of Ford Hyundai. They were in my town. Then you have the fabrics and all of that. Textile towns, I was in the middle of the, all of those areas so we could travel to all of them.
I think we covered like 16 provinces while I was there.
Christi: How long were you there for?
Edna: Nine months,
Christi: did you have a friend or a [00:23:00] program or?
Edna: no, I wanted to go. My, my best friend's daughter, who I call my daughter she had went during school, college and she said she went for a month and she loved it and she was learning Chinese. And I said, I really would like to go. She goes, give me your resume, you know, this is what you do with it. I said, really?
So gave her my resume. Then I started putting my resume out and, I wanted to teach English as a second language. And so I got like six offers and then I got into a great agency. I worked four days a week. I was no, three days a week and I was off four.
So I was able to travel before, right tra and then, and teach three days a week. And you know be a teacher. And it was amazing. We could travel. We, we get the experience of working with the families in the schools. And it was a really great great experience. You know, me and my Chinese friends were hanging out and it was just like, wonderful.
Just so great. And then I had some American co-teachers there as well. I got to share some of my things that, from [00:24:00] America that I learned teaching my children in Sunday school, I was able to bring that energy there. So it was nice. Very nice.
Christi: Wow. And did you travel you went to 16 provinces. Did you travel elsewhere in the area, or, I mean, China's a big country.
Edna: Yeah. Yeah, we went to Beijing. I walked the Wall. I did the walk. Yeah. I walked the Wall. And it was beautiful. It took a long time. And, you know, it was so funny. I'm, I was think I was the third. I was, someone was older than me, two older people. And then I was the third oldest in the group of all, it was like 16 teachers, 16 to 22, something like that.
And so the young people, they were like, oh, we're going up this hill. They were like rushing, like, and I wanted to absorb everything. So I'm the last one in the, you know, I'm by myself. I'm, I'm got the backpack on. I wanna like look at everything and absorb everything. Right. So when you're moving along, make sure you take your time telling the young people this.
And they're rushing, oh, we're gonna get up there to, you know, so [00:25:00] I'm walking by myself, they're going along wherever. And so I, I end up walking, 'cause we walked on the part where Mongolia is, where it separates Mongolia and all of that. they have a couple of guides that, you know, kind of like walking around.
So I decided to pay him and follow him with the other group. And we I'm listening to him, blah, blah, blah, and having a great time. By the time I get to the Mongolian side, they're all ahead, already ahead of me. So we're having like this amazing time. I'm, I'm by myself. I am. And I meet this older woman. She was Chinese and she was 93. So she's walking tiny steps now. She's in the place where I am. Right. It took her all day. Okay. And I think her daughter was with her and her daughter spoke English. 'cause she was talking to me and I said, 93. She goes, yeah, she wanted to come here to see it before she passes, So I said, okay, that's really nice. But I said, she's 93 and she just got, [00:26:00] got here. Now I'm behind her. Okay. So I'm behind her. So I'm like, wow. So it just gave me an incentive. Even more age does not matter. When you're wanna do something, you wanna move, you know, do things. Now, it's not an easy to hike.
It's not, it's walking upstairs that have no rails. There is no rails.
Christi: Did you have a walking stick?
Edna: Yes. And you, no, you you, yes. Some people had what? No, I didn't have that. So I didn't, I didn't know what to expect. Expect. Right. I had no idea what to expect. There's no rails. Even if you are looking over the mountain, there's nothing to stop you.
There's nothing. Okay. And we're walking. And so I'm, diligent about walking. I'm walking. Finally get to the part where the Mongolians are and, and I'm asking about where the holes, they were sticking guns through the holes. I didn't even know that. I was like, wow, that's really crazy. So I get to the end and I say, you know what I'm gonna do?[00:27:00]
So everybody's like, okay, now we gotta go back down. Everybody's standing there, all my co-teachers. And they was like, wow, we gotta go back down before the bus comes. So I was walking, I said, oh, zip line. We're not taking that. And I said, I am.
Christi: Good for.
Edna: I get on the zip line, right? They're like, you're not getting on there, are you?
I said, I'm getting on the zip line. I got on the zip line and zip line all the way back down the mountain. What a great experience. So much fun. And I get down there and I was like, yeah. Didn't have to walk down. But I had a great experience and they were like, they were all, not all of them are younger than me, right?
All of them younger than me. And they were like, yeah, we, we weren't doing that. No, we not doing that.
Christi: Meanwhile, you
Edna: But it was
Christi: down.
they had to
Edna: Yes. And we got to, we got home before then 'cause they were waiting for the bus and we went on our own bus and we were gone. We went out to have [00:28:00] Peking Duck. It was like, it was just a great meal. it was two other people that went with me.
They came down with me and so we went to another part and we just had, we gotta have some Peking duck tonight. And it's so delicious by the way. It was a great experience.
Christi: Did you feel like a changed person when you got back?
Edna: I did, when I first got there. Now this is such an experience, I didn't know that time changed, right? So I left on a Wednesday and I got to China on a Tuesday.
Christi: The Dateline.
Edna: So I was like freaking, because now I go through customs, I'm good and everything. I'm freaking because it's really Tuesday. And so I'm going, I don't have a reservation.
I don't know what to do. So customs did let me, 'cause I was, I didn't know what to do. I I had a phone, I had my tablet. So I did get in touch with somebody my, the supervisor there and he says, don't worry.
Just listened to me. I was freaking, I was crying. [00:29:00] I was like this is Tuesday's, not Wednesday, you know? And I'm like crying. I'm in another country. I gotta do, I have to sleep in the airport, you know, this whole big thing. And he's, don't worry, don't worry. A few hours later, maybe four or five hours later someone was calling my name and holding up a paper and, and he is like, your name is Edna.
He says, show me id. So when I did, he says the school has reserved a hotel for you and they'll come pick you up tomorrow. And I was like, thank you. Because I didn't wanna sleep in the airport, He was from South Carolina. He actually lives there now. He's married. He's like got this whole big school going on and he's doing great. And he's like, sister I want you to lay down. I went to sleep, girl, and I slept a whole 24 hours,
I didn't wake up. Now mind you, I get there and it's bamboo beds. Like, it's like, it's not soft bamboo. It's the hard one. So I said, I don't even care. My God don't even care.
I [00:30:00] didn't even know how to sleep on it. I slept and I was like, wow, I really slept on it.
I get up and the realization didn't hit me right until I get up and look out the window and I was like, I am here by myself. If anything happens to me and I start crying,
Christi: Oh no.
Edna: Start crying, and I'm crying. I'm like, oh my God. Now I have a roommate. And she, she hears me and I was like, do you realize I'm here by myself? She goes, so am I. I okay, but I'm here by myself. There's no feeling, no nothing. She goes, I know the feeling. She goes, I did the same thing. I said, oh, she says, yeah, I did the same thing. So it'll pass. My supervisor comes over and he goes, did she cry like you did? I, I said, I'm still crying. Don't worry about it. I'm, I, I'm realizing all this stuff. So he had to show me around. And he was really nice because the food is a shock, okay.
Edna: When you're moving, the [00:31:00] food is a shock.
Christi: Even for a New Yorker.
Edna: Yes. Okay. So I'm believing that New York Chinese food is China, Chinese food. That's not the case.
Christi: What was it like?
Edna: They use so many spices that are like natural, like from flowers and stuff, which I didn't even know that. But it's different because fried rice is just what it sounds like.
Fried rice. You put it in the oil and fry, it, it's no peas and rice, you know, peas and vegetables. That's, it's like, oh no, that's American. And I was like, okay.
So everything is whole there, like whole, like they respect it. Like, so if you want chicken, you pick the chicken from where you want it and you get it cooked. It's alive and before you eat it. And if you want lamb, they have a big lamb roast and it's in the middle of your table and you're eating the lamb off the leg while it's cooking, you know, it's cooking in front of you.
So it's a lot of that. They do indulge in like [00:32:00] delicacies, like roosters feet, duck feet, things like that. Yeah. No, that's not for me. You know, and hot sauce and stuff, that's that stuff. Not for, no, I don't like the grizzly. That's not for me. No. But I did, you know try a tarantula.
Christi: Really
Edna: Yeah. Mm-hmm. I, I tried one, so every, of course, all the young kids were like squeamish they wanted to go to this delicacy store and I said, why would you wanna come here and not try anything? It doesn't make any sense. So I was like, okay, so I guess the elder has to do this thing,
so.
Christi: the elder.
Edna: The elder. So I tried the honey bees and I tried those. They were crunchy tastes like popcorn. I tried cooked grubs that tastes like popcorn, but you know, the grubs like the juice.
Christi: Yeah.
Edna: But they were, they were cooked and they were, and they would just pop in your mouth like popcorn. I tried the ants and they were in syrup or, or maybe honey, they were in, [00:33:00] in honey. I wouldn't try the cockroaches, none of that. No. But then I saw the tarantula on the stick. I said, I gotta try that, I gotta try that.
And it tastes like black licorice. I'm not a fan of black licorice, but I was like, it's, it's super crunchy. And like the, the little tentacles got my teeth.
Christi: it was a whole tarantula
Edna: I didn't eat it at all time. I took piece at a time, not the whole thing. so I took the legs, ate the legs, and the legs kind of got stuck in my teeth.
But it tastes like black licorice.
The bigger part tastes like, like, and it's cooked.
Christi: That is very
Edna: Yeah.
Christi: of you.
Edna: Yeah. I know that's, they said you're very brave. And then I also tried the scorpion which was was, it was kind of like a olive, I had a olive taste to it,
Christi: A little briny.
Edna: so I was brave. I was like, yeah. They was like, oh. And they call me Miss cna Did Miss Edna did it?
I was like, yeah, you are the young ones that wanna come here and don't wanna do anything. You just wanna look at things. If I'm gonna go somewhere, I'm gonna enjoy it.
Christi: When you got back, I mean, is that [00:34:00] when you really started writing and really started with the coaching
Edna: I did, I think that really opened me up because I was coming also out of religion
Christi: right.
Edna: I had,
Edna: I had literally left the, the church as a whole.
And I thought this would be a good, great time. And when I did go, it was very eye-opening because I met. Some Chinese who were Muslim, I met some Christians who were Chinese. and I was like, wait, you all are not one, like one religion. So, you know, coming from here, as I was explained it, and I should have looked it up for myself, they were communists.
Right. So they never explained to me what that was. So I automatically, my brain, instead of looking it up, thought it was religion.
Christi: Mao, Right.
Edna: Right. I thought it was a religion. It's communism is a caste system. A payment system. A governmental payment system.
So they don't get paid every [00:35:00] week or every two weeks. They get paid by the month.
Christi: Uhhuh. Okay.
Edna: the way they get paid and all of that matters. Like we can freely have internet going in and out. They don't have that. They don't let anything out about China and they don't let anything in about other countries unless you buy A VPN or something like that.
But they monitor all of that. So it's more of their system, how they control things there. It wasn't a religion. It wasn't a religion. They was like, no, we they're more on the Buddhist part. you know, and it's not that they don't believe in God. My Chinese friends got me real straight on that.
I was in Confucius castle, and so I went to his. his birthplace and they had the, all the information. So I said, this looks similar to Jesus Christ. And my friend looked at me like, like I was stupid. I said, why are you looking at me like that?
And she, I says, is he Jesus? What am I confused with? So, and she goes, do you think that the Westerners are the only ones that have a messiah that told them something [00:36:00] to enlighten their lives? This is what my friend told me. This is my friend. So guess what? I started doing crying. I sat down and I started crying.
You mean to tell me, you mean to tell me Jesus Christ was not the whole world's savior? They was like, no, there's many Messiahs that came to different lands that brought a message of good news Theirs just necessarily didn't have to be Jesus. I was, so, first of all, I was embarrassed, felt stupid, and I was like, I should have known that.
And she goes, yeah, we, we know about God. We just don't use him like the Westerners do. We do things that we are supposed to do. We don't call him on him for things that we should be doing. I was so embarrassed when she said that to me. I said, you're right. You are so right. And that was my first lesson.
Christi: Wow.
Edna: That was my first spiritual lesson. And I started meditating after that. [00:37:00] And it wasn't even about they taught me different way, modalities, like walking, meditation sitting meditations standing meditations focused meditations. Guided meditations incline sound meditations. So there was so many meditations that, that you can, that you know, are available to you.
You just gotta get the one that kind of rings true to you. But that's where I started.
Christi: It does seem to me that your work is very practical. It is very kind of focused on the step by step
Edna: right.
Christi: Did you study psychology at some point?
Edna: I did, I, I went to school for psychology. When I was getting my bachelor's. I was a counselor, a certified counselor back in the day, prac. I'm a practical person.
If you were to explain something to me, I wanna know how that applies to me in real life. Like, that's great. You said it [00:38:00] like, how do I, what does it look like when I use it? So it's like, you know, you gimme a toothbrush, but tell me how to use it.
Christi: Fair enough, fair enough.
Edna: Right.
Christi: Do you, I mean, can we all be leaders? I mean, some of us have to follow mm-hmm.
Edna: I'm gonna say that all of us can be leaders in our own lives. We have to be that first, and then we can follow and follow means just to be able to join in a good mission. So we all have that ability to be followers because we first, first of all, we're not leaders in our own lives because we would, we automatically know what's right and wrong. Forget about any religion. We already, we know my daughter, I remember I was telling her something, she was maybe two telling her something and I said, don't do something.
I told her she was two, don't do that. She [00:39:00] smacked me, right? And she's on my lap. And she looked at me and she, I said, oh, you know, right from wrong. She knew that she wasn't supposed to smack me
Christi: Whoa.
Edna: and she knew it.
Christi: Yeah.
Edna: And right away, now I didn't even touch her. She just started crying. But see, we know right from wrong.
That's in us. So if we become the leads in our own life. We will follow, but with intuition, you know, with a good navigation of what's right and what's wrong, and that it does something for the humanity altogether, or community altogether. So we won't, you know, we can be followers, but we can also, if we lead in our own lives, we're still leading, but we're following a direction for purpose. A specific purpose.
Christi: So, if people wanna get in touch with you or get on your mailing list, how do they contact you?
Edna: Just reach out to me at [00:40:00] ednawhite.com. Everything's there. You'll find the podcast, you'll find all the books, you'll find information on how to get in touch with me. If you want coaching sessions, you'll have it all there.
Christi: Right, and probably you are gonna put together a, retreat of some sort, so
Edna: I am. It'll be out October, the first week in October.
Christi: So people could get on the mailing list and get more information. And your newsletter too, or is that only available through LinkedIn.
Edna: if you contact me through that website and you check the box to say you wanna be in on updated information, you'll get the information every time something happens.
Christi: That's really great.
Edna: this was very enlightening and you actually made me real feel real light, so me helping you spreading the light is really, it's, it's a, a blessing here, so I really like it.
Christi: thank
Edna: It was very enjoyable. Thank you.
Christi: Very
much for being here. [00:41:00]