Well, hello. Welcome to the hallway. I am Mangin. I'm Aline White. And we are so glad that you all are with us today. Hopefully the majority of you have listened to the mini episode and you have an idea of why we're here and what we're doing. And you've decided you want to be on part of this journey with us. So today we are going to do something fun. We are going to get to know me a little bit. My very kind clients or family members that may listen to this will already know about me, but there may be a couple of you out there who do not. So Aline, my co host is going to interview me. So you all will get to know me a little bit. And then in the next episode, I am going to get to interview Aline. So you're not going to know a lot about her yet. I'm going to tell you a little bit about her. And then the rest you'll get to know next time. So Alina's dear friend, she's a co hallway dweller. We have some conversations about that there may be a difference between hallway dwellers and hallway visitors. We'd like to be in the other category, but we are probably dwellers. She and I got introduced when we first moved to Scotland by a lovely woman named Mindy Painter. Thank you, Mindy. So you tried to introduce us when we first got here and we took you up on it two to three years. So we wish we had had more time together, but we were overloaded and thought we didn't need any more friends and it was COVID. And that's why we became friends because we were like, yeah, I understand that. You were like, Oh, you're overloaded and don't know how to make friends anymore either. Cool. Want to hang out pretty much. So Mindy, we are grateful for you. Thank you for introducing us. You did really well. So Aline is going to interview me and I'm going to answer some questions and tell y'all about me. And then in the next episode I'll get to interview her. So are you ready? Yes, I am. Okay. So Berylyn, you currently live in St. Andrews, Scotland. I do. With your husband, Your six year old son. And you also have a pod in your back garden. I do. I would love to hear more about that pod, what it is exactly, and just how you got here in general. So the pod is my new best friend. Yes. I have named her Elfrida. I have a book that I listened to every Christmas about a bunch of people that come to Scotland for Christmas and the main character is adorable and her name is Elfrida Phipps. So I have named the pod Elfrida. The pod came to be because we moved to Scotland, like y'all, we moved both in August of 2020. Didn't we? Yeah. We moved in August of 2020 cause everyone wants to move across the world in the middle of a global pandemic. Right. Yeah, absolutely. But we moved here in the August of 2020 and at that point, our kiddo was a late speaker, so he wasn't really talking a lot. So having a room in the house where my office was, wasn't problematic because he wasn't speaking a lot. But as he found his words and his voice and then speaks all the time, it got a little more difficult. And so over time I kept trying to find You know, space for an office outside of the home. It wasn't working. It wasn't working. It wasn't working. And so I found a company over here called Hully Pods. It's a ship builder who decided that the whole of a ship, if you turn it upside down, makes a really watertight garden pod. And it comes all with its stuff. It's like desk built in, it's electrics built in. They just like drop it into your garden and you hook it up with a caravan hookup. And she's my new best friend. And now I have four feet by seven feet that is just all mine. And that's where I do all my work with clients in the States. So We came here. You asked kind of how we got here. We came here because my husband, I think I've talked about this in the mini episode. I hope I did. Because my husband wanted to get his master's at the university of St. Andrews here. Yeah. And which is what your husband did as well. That's right. And then your husband stayed here to do his doctorate at St. Andrews. Yeah. And Anthony is doing his doctorate at the university of Edinburgh. But we kept trying to move to Edinburgh and it didn't work. We love St. Andrews too much. So St. Andrews for now is home. Yeah, yeah, it's a beautiful place to live, isn't it? Just it's otherworldly. Okay, so if we can back up for a moment you in the pod. Yes, you do work as a psychologist. That's true. And you focus on women. Can you tell me about that? What's the story about how you got to that place? That's a good story, or I think it's a good story. I think it's a good story. So I, I'm going to back up a little bit. I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida born and raised. My parents had the same house from, for me, age three to age 40. And I have a lot of generations there. So it was very much home. Went to Florida state, which is three hours away, got a degree in advertising. Realized I'm, I'm no good at that. Very quickly learned that. And then so I came back, I had moved back in with my parents and I did some different jobs. I worked at a florist, I worked at a art gallery and while I was, while I was working in an art gallery, I worked with a organization called Young Life. And I realized that the teenage girls that I was working with were encountering things much younger than I ever encountered them. And so when we would meet together and talk about things, I felt pretty ill equipped to counsel them as like an adult, even though I was 22, which now I'm like, sure, 22 didn't know much, thought I knew everything. Babies. Yeah. Mm hmm. And so. I started becoming interested in psychology and realized I wanted to go back to school. And at that point it was to help teenage girls, which makes sense because the age group I was in. So I went back, my parents live in Jacksonville, there's a university there called the university of North Florida. And I went back and got a second bachelor's in psychology because my mother and all of her wisdom was like, maybe don't try to go to grad school for something you don't know a lot about yet. Thank God for moms, very wise of her. So she had, she suggested that. And so I could live with them and go back to school. And also she had me shadow a family friend who was a psychologist. And so once I got into classes and was shadowing that psychologist, I was like, Oh, I really do love this. Yeah. And it was funny. My childhood friends, one in particular, Liza Furman. I said to her one time I was, you know, we were doing something and I was like, I've decided to go back to school and become a psychologist. And she was like, no, at that point I was like a counselor because I didn't know I was going to get my doctorate yet. And she was like, Oh, that makes sense. That totally makes sense. That's exactly what you should do. Could you have told me before I had to get a second bachelors? So like people that knew me are like, Oh yeah, absolutely. And I was like, I, I did not know this about myself. Thank you all for telling me before we wasted a bunch of money. But so that's what, how it started is I got a second bachelors at the University of North Florida shadowed a psychologist and then went back to grad school. Really to focus on how do I help teenage girls who are exposed to so many things I wasn't exposed to that young. Yeah. And I applied to a bunch of places. I got into Boston college and moved up there and about halfway through the year at Boston college, I realized I wanted to focus on women. It wasn't just teenage girls. I wanted to focus on women and grow with that throughout the lifetime and be able to really help women. become who they are created to be. So I was only in Boston a year at Boston college. I transferred from Boston college to Regent university in Virginia beach. And I was very grateful that all of my credits transferred. And so I just was getting my doctorate at, at Virginia beach and all of my papers, all of my, my dissertation, everything that I did ended up being focused on women. Cause I was like, I know what I want to do. I know who I want to focus on. So I'm going to research and study this as much as I can. Yeah. Just see that love. Carrying you through. It was like you fell in love. You saw something. You were like, I love these girls. I love women. And that has carried you, you know, into your work. That's really cool. And that it built slowly. I think that was really kind too. Cause I've often said like, if I had known when I started that I was going to get a doctorate, I don't think I would have done it. It would have been too, for me, who didn't really love school, too overwhelming. And if I had known when I went in, it was going to be women as opposed to teenage girls. I think it would have been overwhelming. So there was some kindness to, to the, Like, okay, I'm in it. I'm doing it. I love it. Oh, I think it's going to be women. Oh, I think I need to get a doctorate because the doctorate thing came about because I realized what I, what I wanted to do then was I wanted to open an overall wellness center for women in Jacksonville, Florida, close to my family, a one stop shop where women's mental, physical, emotional, relational, spiritual, familial, Kind of needs could get met. Yeah, because I think we've moved away so much from communities that I wanted to create a community of women Who were supporting each other and moving toward healing and health. Yeah So that's kind of how it all evolved and why I need, I was like, if I'm going to do that, I'm going to need a doctorate. And so that's why I transferred to region. Yeah. So it kind of grew. And as it grew, I was like, Oh this, Oh this. And the, it felt more, I talk a lot about like an infinity pool entrance. I feel like that's so much kinder than like dropping me in the, in the deep end. I think that that's what it felt like. It felt like, Oh, this is the next thing. Oh, this is the next thing. Oh, this is the next next thing. But if I had started out there, it would have been too overwhelming. Yeah, absolutely. That's really cool. The process. And also at each step of the process, you were then ready and you were then. Grown that much more and yeah, it's almost like lifting weights. It's like, oh, I can lift the next way. Yes. Mm hmm Because I've already done that one before it. Mm hmm. Yeah That's really wonderful. Okay, so you talk about this Dream of a center for women's wellness. Mm hmm, and then you went into You opened your own practice and Now you are also a coaching, working as a coach and fulfilling that dream by doing retreats for women. Can you talk about that? Yeah. So let me back up a little bit to private practice. So I worked at a postdoc, I worked at a university which was really helpful. That's what I did my internship in as well. You learn a lot about systems when you work in a university, so that was super helpful. And then I went to a community organization at the YMCA had a counseling center in Nashville called Restore Ministries because after I did my internship, I moved to Nashville and So I worked at a university, went and worked with Restore Ministries and then really felt like it was time in 2013 to go into private practice. And I had a friend, Ashley, who had done that before me. And so I was able to talk to her about a lot of stuff. And so went into private practice in 2013. And then in 2020, everyone had to go online because the whole world shut down. So when that happened, my clients in Tennessee, We're like, Hey, can we do this when you move abroad? And I was like, yeah, we can. So then when I moved over here, I was exposed more to coaching and started feeling like I wanted to do some coaching as well. And so I started doing coaching. I do coaching with some people abroad, some people in different states in the United States and then kept my therapy clients in Tennessee. And the other thing that was happening simultaneously with that is, I don't know if this happens for everyone. I, I, I, I like to think, I think cause I like to feel special that it happened more with me, but that may not be true, but thank you. But I fell in love with Scotland. And the trees here and the North sea and the wind and the sun and the clouds and the blue sky and the rain, oh man, the way things grow, the way the seasons happen, that I was falling so much in love with Scotland and still working with clients and a lot of times when they would run into seasons where they were stuck or. overwhelmed or needed a respite. All I kept thinking is I wish I could just get you on the coast of Scotland for a week. And then I thought, well, I could, I could probably do that. So started doing retreats. I've done two now. I hope to be able to do a lot more. We can talk more about retreats. We may have one that just focuses on retreats, but The, the main thing about retreats that I think is the most amazing part, which may have been part of what you were getting at, is my dissertation was on the overall wellness center for women. That's what I'd researched. It's what I wrote about. It's what I studied. And so I wanted to create this place, like I talked about that women could come to, but then I got out of grad school and was like, I don't think I want to manage people, right? That is a thing. I have other skill sets, other giftings that may not be one of them. Cause I've realized in, you know, managing that many people, you need a very specific skill. Yeah, absolutely. And it's different than the skillset you need to sit in pain with someone for an extended period of time. Very different. So I thought that dream died. I was like, well, I thought I was going to open this thing and now I'm not going to open it. And then as retreat started coming about and I was doing my work over here, I was like, the retreats are a week long version of the women's wellness. Yes. Wow. That's just, how does that feel? It feels really kind to, to feel like something has died, something you, I spent a lot of time, heart effort on and then to watch the, you know, it's like winter, right? Yeah. Like it was under there all the time and then it started blooming and I was like, I didn't know you were still there. It didn't go to waste. It didn't go to waste. And when it came about, like, I love this so much to get to give women the experience of grounding in the majesty of the creation of Scotland. and give them a chance to engage with their bodies and food and community and allow it all to come up and just let it be in the moment and move with it and move through it and just allow it to all be what it is. It is just like the hardest, most gorgeous thing ever. And if I don't want to stop doing individual work, I love that too, but I would love to get to a point where I get to do both kind of in equal parts. Yeah. And I don't know what's going to happen when I have somebody come over who's not very kind. Sure. You know, like, so far, like, it's been pretty great. But, you know, one day it's going to be, I'm going to be like, I didn't like that trip at all. Because it's human and whatever. Yeah. But all in all, I just want to be able to bring more women to Scotland. Because what I've noticed, especially about this group that just came in the beginning of May, is it, what I hoped would happen, happened. They absorbed it and then they took it home with them and it's altering how they live now. Wow. So that's a bit of a side, but I love it a whole bunch. And so that's kind of how it came about is I was like, I want to do retreats. I want to keep coaching. I want to keep doing therapy and I want to do retreats. So I'm hoping that'll continue and who knows how long we'll be here. So. Wow. That's beautiful. And I will say for the record that. We all love it here because it's beautiful and you do tend to kind of fall in love with the place. But Marilyn, you have a special love, you have a special relationship with this place, I think. And I think this place has a special relationship with you, really. I appreciate that. I think one of the things when I came. And we were here, you know, like y'all, we came in lockdowns happened that that first year of living here was a lot locked down. Yeah. Luckily we live in a place that has so much outdoor space that we were still able to be outside and, but I just remember standing on West Sands, which is a beach here in San Andrews. If you've ever seen chariots of fire, I was like coming to me, come and do it. You ever seen chariots of fire? It's the beach that they run on. I just remember standing there and thinking, this is the weirdest sensation, but this is what home feels like. And I have other places where people feel like home and home feel is like Jacksonville is home. Nashville is home. But for my soul to come to a place and go. This is what home feels like. It's very interesting. I don't, I don't have a box for that. It just kind of exists. Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful to hear. So you get to combine. Your two loves, sorry, your, you get to combine your two loves for women, for Scotland, this place that feels like home and you get to bring them together and just this love fest in your life. Yeah. That is wonderful. Wow. One of the things I've said as the, you know, this. You know, came to be and was like, this is what you're going to do with your life. This is your vocation or one of your vacations or a really big one. I've always said like, no matter when I was born in history, I think I was going to be in a place of helping women become themselves, helping women heal. And just in this place in time, this is what it looks like. That's beautiful. Well done. All right. So, wow. This is wonderful. So you talk in this mini episode that you've done prior to this, and you explain about. The idea of how the podcast came about the hallway and kind of where that was born. What are you hoping that this offers to women and men based on the context of what you've shared? Yeah, I have to give Eileen credit for this because when we, so once we got to know each other, this podcast thing for me had been brewing for like a year, which is hilarious. Cause I said, I'd never do a podcast. I also said I'd never date a man who wears skinny jeans and that's all my husband wears. So. I need to stop saying I'll never, but when we started talking, we have a certain chemistry in our conversations that felt unique to me. And so I said to Allie and I was like, Hey, we've known each other three months. Do you want to do? And I was like, yeah, which is why we get along so well. Al, Allie's like I want to do this thing. I'm like, we should totally do that. And then Marilyn's like, I want to do this thing. Allie's like, we should totally do that. So hopefully we should totally do this. But Allie said, Hey, men might listen to it too. Because I get so focused on women because that's what my deal is. Right. And so I'm very grateful to you that you said, Hey, maybe, maybe include men. You know what? Can I, this is an aside, we can edit this out if, if we want, or we can keep it. But I just think it's funny because there's so much in length and language out there. Just the norm is to be like, for, you know, men, Or women, there's sort of a tagline. You always have to sort of let's include women or women. And with us, it's truly the opposite. It's like, you know, women or men, men, men, you can come, you can, you can do anything to men. We might make you fill out an application. Just sort of kidding. But so you asked me kind of like what I'm hoping for with men and with women. For me, I'm hoping that we can share our stories. There are so many lovely podcasts out there that talk about things related to the hallway, liminal space that we're not the first. On the block there. I mean, I think this is a well established country, but I just was like, what if we just shared our stories and bear bore witness to each other's pain. And sometimes someone's story will hit me differently than it'll hit you. Right. And so I feel like the more stories we tell, the more people will get an understanding and experience of the whole way, feel seen, feel heard. feel known, feel included. So like a community of people that are like, yeah, I do know the hallway, whether you're a dweller or a visitor. And I, I felt that way, or that happened to me, or I hadn't even thought of that. Or my heart goes out to you because I didn't have to encounter that. And that sounds really hard. Or the way you do that was really helpful. I hadn't thought next time that's going to really help me. I just feel like for me, the more I know somebody's story, 95 percent of the time, the more I have kindness and empathy and patience for that person. Yeah. And so if we can give space for people to do that, that would be great. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm also hoping for resources, you know, like I read this book or, Hey, there's this coach or this therapist or this other podcast, or I went on this great retreat in Scotland. You should try that. We're living it. Yeah, true. And then like, what is it like to care for yourself in the hallway? What is it like to, even though you're maybe more depleted, what it's like to still want to care for others in the hallway? Yeah. Also everybody kind of defines, I think the hallway a little bit differently and the people that have asked if they could come on, not asked, I, I sent out an email, it was like, does anybody want to come on and be interviewed? And they were like, Hey, yeah, maybe me. I've sent out like a couple of questions to them. And the first one is give me your like personal definition of the hallway and everybody defines it a little differently. Yeah. And I think that's helpful too. Yeah. It is. It's like art. Like we all need to see it a little bit differently. Yeah. Yeah. And that'll help it evolve to the ways that we talk about it, you know, cause no person can know everything. So the more people we have that are helping us, the more we will be able to say, Oh, that's really helpful. Or that deepens that for me. Also I want some practical ways. Yeah. Like I have a beautiful, wonderful cousin named Adelaide. And she and her mom have all these practical things they do when people are in seasons of the hallway. One of them is when someone is having a funeral for a family member and they know that the family is really taxed, that they will drop by, I think I'm remembering this correctly. They will drop by like Tupperware toilet rolls and paper towels. Because they know that they're going to have a lot more people at their house, all that food dropped by and it gives them like the ability to. To Cut up and give food, you know in Tupperware to other people or put it in their freezer It means they won't run out of toilet rolls when people are visiting. They won't run out of paper towels I would never have thought of that. Yeah, and so just little practical things like that of like, oh, I never would have thought of that That's so beautiful. I think that'd be really helpful, too. Oh, yeah, absolutely It's a shared perspective of the And I think that's, what's beautiful about bringing people together, bringing women's stories together and sharing in a, a place of vulnerability, because really, when you talk about the hallway space, it is a space of like, I don't know what's going on. Well, you know, and I think anybody would say somewhat related to that. I don't know what's going on. It feels vulnerable and to share. in a shared vulnerability was what really caught my heart. I thought, yeah, that's so needed. I need that. Everybody needs that. You know you don't feel so alone. Like you said, you just feel like I'm a part of this conversation and this story and hearing other people's stories is always the beautiful thing because Everybody picks out something different that really lands with them, you know, and resonates or whatever it helps to, you know, do different, really life giving things in them. So, yeah. I think the last thing will probably kind of, there are going to be lots more, but I think that the like other thing is I do want to talk about like, are some people hallway dwellers and some people hallway visitors? Yeah. And what does that look like in understanding? how we approach community and relationships. Yeah, that's an interest, a concept I kind of want to explore as we go throughout. Absolutely. I think that's really interesting question. Yeah. I would love to. And because I've only been what I think is a hallway dweller, I don't really know what it's like to be the other kind. Yeah. So I need some information. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The thing that we kind of want to note here, or we talked about earlier, so I'm going to note it here is we don't have any belief that we know what we're talking about. Yeah. Correct. In terms of a, like, we know everything way. We know our experiences. We've both done quite a bit of work. Yeah. We. I think are able to sit in this place in a really beautiful way. And that's why we're coming together to do this thing. and we're here to learn. We're here to talk. We're here to grow. Mm-Hmm. And I think you and I have both sat with a lot of people Yeah. And heard their stories. I mean, as you'll hear more about my background and, and as your background as well. And I think the more you sit with people, the more it's, it's sort of the same thing. The more you learn, the more you realize how big the chasm is of what you don't know and what you need to learn. Mm-Hmm. and have yet to go. And that's. It's all the more reason why I think you and I share that, you know, really fascination with we want to learn more. I will say too, though, one of the things that makes us a good partnership is you're such a deep researcher. Like you really are a lifelong learner. Yeah. It's like in your DNA. Right. Yeah. You're right. And so that's so true about you. For me, I get to a point where I'm like, I know enough, I'm going to move on to the next thing. So I think the. Partnership of you and I, that's one of the things that's so beautiful is like, you'll say things that I'm like, I did not know that. And so it's so helpful to have differences between you and I too. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Plus, I like that about you because sometimes it means I don't have to research everything. Well, you're the doctor, so. I wouldn't get too hung up on that. I'm realizing more and more. No, I'm not going to. It is a beautiful, wonderful thing that I did. And lots of people have really beautiful gifts that don't need a letters after their name. All right. Thank you for interviewing me. Yes. Thank you for letting me. Well, all right, we will close up today's episode. If you have any questions, you can always put it on my Instagram or email them in and we'll answer them in the next episodes as we get those. Yes, absolutely. So feel free to send in questions, but for now, I hope that's enough info about me. And in the next episode, we're going to get to know Aline. so much for joining us. We're really grateful. Yeah. Bye bye.