Hi, everyone, it's Sophia.

Welcome to work in progress, high Web smarties.

I know we're all itching for some inspiration and perhaps a reminder that no matter how hard things get, there's always an opportunity for healing, for reinvention, and for creation, and today's guest is a shining example of all of those things.

We are joined today by none other than Amanda Clutes.

You might know her as an incredible former Broadway dancer and radio city rock cat, a fitness entrepreneur, a television host from CBS's The Talk to being a best selling author.

Her memoir Live Your Life, My Story of Loving and Losing Nick Cordero, is centered on her storyory of her life as a new mom and a wife in twenty twenty, losing her partner to COVID in early days, and managing to be such an incredible advocate who took so many of us along, learning how to stay safe, learning how to protect our families and communities, and learning how to protect ourselves.

Her memoir about that time is truly a lifeline for readers that are navigating grief and now, as a single mom to her young son, Elvis, Amanda has really continued to channel her loss into creativity.

She wrote a gorgeous children's book called tell Me Your Dreams as a love letter to memory, connection and hope.

And now she is here in her incredible wellness element with a new supplement line that is honestly solving problems I know, myself and so many of you have been begging to have solved.

She always manages to see a problem and figure out how to fix it, and it's something that I really admire about her as a creative, as a woman and a mom and a friend.

So let's dive in today and talk with Amanda about her journey to realize that healing is not really about moving on.

It's about moving forward and loving every version of you that you're carrying with you.

Let's dive in with Amanda Clutes.

How are you like?

Before we, you know, get.

Dive in to interview things, I just like, I just adore you and I never get to see you, and I'm just so happy I'm seeing you now.

I know, it's so nice to see you too.

I'm good.

I'm really good.

El of a sudden, I have the best summer ever.

We traveled for like over a month together, and yeah, I can't complain.

So feel life is really nice right now.

I'm like good, feeling good about a lot of stuff, and it's just nice to be in that place, you know.

You know, yeah, when you're really in the thick of it and in something that feels so dark like there will never be light again, and then your life feels light.

It's not that I think people can't love their life or be grateful or really be tapped into goodness if they haven't gone through heavy grief.

But there's some there's a different degree of goodness I think after you've processed heavy grief.

Yeah.

Yeah, And it's been like I think, because it's been five years now, five years was a weird mark and we can talk about it if you want to.

But I was with Nick for five years, so now that five years has passed like a weird I don't know, it just it hit.

Me like that, it hit me that timeline.

Okay, well, before we get into all the amazing things happening now and what's what we're doing now and perhaps our spiritual practices now.

I always really like to go backwards with people because your audience knows you your life, your career, sometimes your personal life, as this adult doing great things out in the world.

But I'm always really curious if you could go back in time and spend time with your younger self, if you if you would see yourself in her, like if you could rewind in nineteen ninety two.

Can't Knowhio, what would you say to ten year old you?

You know, I think I do see myself in her.

I had a therapist a couple of years ago, and she was the first person.

That made me do this.

But she said, put your ten year old self in a chair and look at her and talk to her.

And it was the first time that I had to do that.

And at first I thought it was really dumb, and I was like, this is dumb.

Am I doing this?

I don't want to like I you know, it was the whole process, and then I really started to see like the benefits from it, and.

I do.

I do see the little girl that just loves to ride her bike around the neighborhood and get Dairy Queen ice cream cones and go hang out with her friends and just had this like free spirit of adventure and curiosity and dreaming and literally believing I could do whatever I would want to do in life and just dancing every day and loving it.

And yeah, I really do connect with her.

I think the poor little girl has no idea what's coming up for her.

But I'm also, yeah, really proud of all the different versions of myself.

I feel like I've had like nineteen versions of myself.

Oh me too, Yeah, yeah, I think it was, if I'm not mistaken, I think it was Chryl Strad who wrote about how in our lives as women, we almost become nesting dolls.

You carry every version of the woman you were inside yourself, and I just I love that as a metaphor, and I think it is so true because sometimes you'll talk about, you know, the versions of life you've lived, and I think I've watched that bump.

For some people, people be like, no, I don't like that.

It sounds like then what are you saying you didn't know yourself, or like I didn't know myself when I did this, or I was somehow a different person.

And I actually think it's not that you've been trying on versions of yourself that weren't authentic.

It's the journey of life where you lean into something and explore it, and can you love yourself?

Enough can you learn to love yourself enough to listen to whether your inner self says yes or no to that thing and then continue growing around it.

Yeah, And I don't know, I think that's really special that you can sit and say, yeah, I like all the women I've been before, and I care about the younger versions of myself that are in me.

I like that too.

And I think what I love to do is like look back, like retrospect, you know, like I love looking back at my life and being like, you know, oh wow, that was interesting or how that affected me.

I think of it as lately, like my life is chapters.

Like I feel like I just have these different chapters of my life, and I do feel like I'm in now a different chapter, or or I feel like I'm on the precipice of a new chapter.

Like if you ever felt within yourself where you're like, yes, they're changing and like and it's good, and I just have to like I'm almost on board because I know it's coming, but I'm kind of holding onto dear life, but also like, okay, I feel it and I know I want it and I know it's there.

I just like I just have to like be brave enough to turn the page to jump into that next chapter.

Yes.

Absolutely, It's like it's like when you're driving somewhere you've never been and you can tell that you're only five miles from there based on your GPS, but you still have no idea where you are.

Yeah, you know, you can feel it getting close to the destination, but you don't know what it's going to look like yet, and it's so surreal to be in that place.

Yeah, it is.

It's crazy.

I have a question and it may seem unrelated, but just talking about your younger self and the younger youse and the change coming, I'm so curious about this because I grew up and only and you're one of five kids, and I know you're really close to your family.

Do you think that change, you know, impending shifts, those things that you can feel.

Do you think because you have such a close relationship with your siblings, you have maybe a little more practice at that, because not only are you going through those life moments, but your siblings are so at least you know, you're not like totally on a path alone or insane.

Yeah, that's an interesting question.

I you know what's funny though, is just to like oppose that a little bit.

So close to my siblings and my mom and dad, we really are each other's best friends.

But we all live in different cities.

The closest siblings my brother in San Francisco, Yana.

My youngest sister lives in Paris, so we are literally all over the place.

And I just said.

In my mom and dad because I was home in Ohio spending a week with them, and I was like, you guys, because again we were talking about like just change in life and stuff.

And I said to them, I was like, you guys have to like really just at this point in my life, support and trust me.

I said, because we're at a point with our family that we all see each other maybe once or twice a year, like when we're all together, and I said, you know, all come home to Ohio maybe once or twice a year Christmas and a summer, you know maybe, but it just always depends, right, And I said, like, you aren't.

Around me every day.

You don't know what my life is every day, and so I have to like it's just different than when we were younger and we saw it because we weren't all married or we didn't all have kids, and it was easy to just like, you know, go and now different it's like, oh, it's not my Christmas, or it's not my Thanksgiving, or no, we can't travel, or mom has knee surgery so.

She can't travel.

So it's like it's it's I think we're at a part right now where.

I think life is changing and for me especially, and I actually am asking for my family just to support and trust me, because you're not going to actually know or understand fully where I am in life totally.

It's hard for a family to do that when you're so close.

Yeah, of course, but I think you're right.

The intrinsic knowledge you have about your people when you're around them, you observe so much, it's impossible to get that same deep knowing when you're in separate places because you have to explain everything.

Yeah, you have to tell people the story of your day or your week, and it's hard.

It's like, it's actually one of the things that as much as I love, you know, being a creative and doing the things we all get to do in our work, my greatest morning from that comes from the fact that I'm always somewhere else to my most important people and my family.

I'm always the absent person.

And yeah, I'll jump on a plane for a Saturday to make sure i can be you know, at somebody's baby shower and then get on the red eye and go right back so I can go to work or you know, I'll do whatever I can.

Yeah, but man, it does like smart when you just miss that close proximity.

For sure, You're right, the everyday things just change.

Yeah, and it's hard, you know, you try to relate to Like I try to understand and relate to my sisters and my brother's life as much as possible, and I think they try to relate to mine.

But it's like it's just it's impossible.

Right.

Like my sister's in Houston.

She's a stay at home mom.

She has three kids, and she lives out of her car, driving her kids everywhere she goes.

And it's like it's it's so hard.

To relate, you know, for her to relate to me, a single mom who is you know, a widow and you know, living the life I'm living, So like it's possible to relate.

That's why I think like this new idea of like.

Support and trust totally, we just have to support address each other totally.

And now for our sponsors.

Do you think that sort of support system when you were young, when you all did get to be together and it was like easier to be in the jumble, did that help you with the confidence to get out and pursue this crazy dream because you know, I know you wanted to be a roquette.

The jumping into that world of performance and dance and Broadway, in the auditions and the rehearsals.

I mean, it's so big and so hard.

So how did you decide to go for it?

And what was it like, you know, moving and getting into this whole new pace and whole new way of life for you.

Yeah, no, so true.

I mean the support I had from my family doing that.

I was the first of five kids to not go to regular college four year degree and move to New York City.

You know.

My brother and my sisters all went to Ohio colleges and they were studying you know, marketing or business or literature, you know, And I was.

Like, I want to dance.

And I have to say, my choir director, my choir teacher in high school.

My parents were so they were on board, but they were like not really on board.

My dad was still convinced that I should go to this performing on Dayton, Ohio and get a four year degree.

And we sat down with my choir teacher and he was like, I know she can do this.

You got to, you know, believe in her.

And it was that that my It was only then, sorry that my mom and dad were like, okay.

We will.

You can go to New York, go to this two year conservatory.

And I remember my dad being like that two years equals what I spent on your siblings four years of college.

So after those two years, Amanda like, if something doesn't happen, like you're on your own where your siblings had two more years of college.

And I was like, okay, I could do it, don't worry.

And I mean, Sophia, I still can't believe that my mom and dad drove me to New York and dropped me off in New York City at eighteen years old.

Like if Elvis asked me to do that, I'd be like hell now, or I'm going to like it's like not happening.

But yeah, they just they just believed in me.

And I mean still to this day, you know they'll say an audition like, how'd your interview go?

And I'm like, audition, this is so cute, but like, but they've always supported me, and they were always at everything from high school you know, practices and performances to Broadway shows and rocket shows.

I mean they've always there.

So yeah, that support I think definitely helped me think that I could do it, where like, you know, the stats to be on Broadway are insane, and at that point it was a dancer.

I really wasn't even a singer.

I could sing, but I couldn't sing.

I learned how to sing in college and then kind of as I was performing on Broadway, learned how to really sing.

So I really went into it with just being like I can dance.

I didn't even do drama in high school.

So yeah, I mean it doesn't make sense, you know what I mean, you think out rounded in thinking I could just go on be on Broadway, but I really was just a dancer.

But it's amazing, and I think the I think that's sort of youthful freedom to pursue your dreams, just to be like this is gonna work.

I'm gonna make it work.

I mean, god, imagine if it could be bottled and sold.

You know, it's so cool.

What was it like to be on that Rocket stage for the first time.

It's like, it's such an iconic thing.

It fills me with such wonder and this feeling of nostalgia because I remember going like with my mom and my grandpa to see the Rockets when I was little at Radio City.

It's like so iconic.

Do you still get a little a little nostalgia for it?

Oh, one hundred percent.

I try to take Elvis every year, and this is the one hundred years celebration of the Rocket legacy.

So they're doing like a big thing, but I'll never forget it.

We my first season was two thousand and three.

The opening costume was this it's still to this day probably one of my favorite costumes I've ever worn.

Velvet green, long sleeves, fur on the cuffs, a big fur hat, fur around like the and a big holly thing right here.

It was gorgeous.

You were all lined up backstage and you come flapping the tap move a flap and we came two by two flapping out of the Rockefeller Christmas Tree set and my whole family was there and the first step was jump kick bevel so like my first move as a Radio City rocket, like was just like a jump kick, right, and I was dead center because I was center girl, because I'm the tallest and rockets, the tallest girls are in the center and then the shortest girls are out to the side.

It gives the illusion.

And I'll never forget it.

I was so nervous because they just, you know, drew perfection in you, and when you're a rookie, they just make you know you're a rookie.

At least at that time.

You know, I don't know, it's probably different now, but in that era, it was definitely a hierarchy and you knew that you were one of the new pies.

But yeah, it was amazing.

It was so amazing.

Never forget love that.

Yeah, And I love that you guys go together when you when you come out this way and you go to Broadway musicals.

Now, Like what goes through your mind?

You know, you you have this whole other career now and when you come back, what is that like?

And I see shows a lot, like I try to take Elvis to see shows here in LA and on Broadway.

It's I'm always like, how did I do this?

Like it's so it's so much.

Like eight shows a week and you start your work day at eight pm and you know you're dancing till eleven, and then you come back the next day and you do two shows, and it's like and it's such a it's such a drill, and it's constant competition and never feeling settled, and you never know if you have a job the next day.

When I think.

About how I did that for sixteen years, I'm very proud of myself, but I'm also like, how did I.

How did I do that?

But I'm also I'm so glad I did it, and I'm so glad that I did it at the age I did it, And I think Broadway teaches you everything in life, especially resilience and belief in yourself.

So I'm very proud of it, but I'm also just like, oh my god, how did I do that?

Have you done Broadway?

I can't.

I haven't done Broadway.

I did a show on the West End.

Okay, and it it was so incredible.

I had the time of my life and I will never forget.

Before I went, I got all excited because you know, I'm used to like network TV hours, I'm used to being at work sixteen hours a day, seventeen hours a day sometimes like by the time I've left my home and then gotten back, and I was like eight shows a week.

I mean, the show's two and a half hours.

I'm going to have all the time in the world.

I'm to have my whole day to myself.

There's gonna be a day off a week, Like this is so incredible.

I can't wait and I will never forget.

I randomly was at a thing right before I left for London with Brian Cranston and after Breaking Bad, he did LBJ on Broadway and then he did Network Fabulous in both shows of course, and I was like, oh, I'm so geeked, and what advice do you have for me?

Like, I'm really nervous, but I'm really excited.

I love theater.

And he said, well, what are your plans while you're there?

And I kind of talked about like, oh, well, you know, I have lists every Monday, I'm going to go to a new art exhibition and I'm going to and he goes, oh, kid, I hate to tell you, you're not He said, Sophia, You're just not.

You are going to be the most exhausted you have ever been.

You're going to sleep all day because it's going to take you hours when you get home at night for the adrenaline and the cortissoul to pass through your body.

You're not going to be in You're not going to be sleeping by twelve thirty.

You're going to be asleep at three or four in the morning, and you're going to go to work the next day.

And on Monday, he said, when when are your two show days?

And I said, oh, Saturday and Sunday.

And he goes, so you're doing a five show weekend.

He said, Monday, You're going to be a corpse.

And I was like, oh, oh, I just never considered the difference in the kind of hours.

Yeah, and I loved it and I can't wait to do it again.

And I hope to do it, you know, in New York when the right show comes up.

But yeah, you surely crap.

Yeah, it's such a different skill set.

And it's so funny because he's so right, like Monday is complete rest massage and that's about it.

I mean, especially, I did three national tours and now is almost even worse because you're on the road.

Yeah, you're on the road.

You're in a hotel traveling.

It's like it's so hard and you can't really understand it unless you're in it.

Because even you said, it's like you think it's like this glamorous, but you never have a weekend, you never have a night, you never have a holiday.

It's really really tough.

Funny because you know, doing Broadway first and then going more over to like film and TV.

I remember when I did my Christmas movie and we like shot the first scene.

It hit me that I was like, oh, I can forget those lines, like I don't have to Yeah.

I was like, I don't ever have to do that again.

And they're like, no, I'm so trained to do the same thing every day and the same.

Lines and having to remember.

I was like, oh, I can just delete that, and they're like, hmm, tomorrow's scene two oh one.

I'm like oh yeah, like and I was like, this is amazing film.

But I'm like, oh my god, I never have to have that fight scene again.

I don't don't have to do it eight times a week.

What do you do it for that day?

And then you've done?

Yeah.

I was like, I love film.

It's just so funny how you get used to one thing and then you transfer over and then yeah, started off with film and.

Then went to Broadway.

It would be a whole different, Like I mean, I have to do this all the time, like, yeah, it's so funny.

Oh it's crazy.

And and when you talk about.

You know, I mean even just the what a cool thing that you got to start vocal training in college and then really open up as a singer because you were working on Broadway.

Was you know, when I.

Think about obviously the last couple of years, it seemed like an outsider, like music was such an important part of your life and career, of Nick's life and career, and then became something so important to the two of you together.

Was was this sort of early overlap in your working worlds when you guys were like getting to know each other.

Were you just like, oh my god, this man and his music.

Yes, but it was it was it was like a twofold.

So when we started dating, I was ending my first marriage, so we had to like we were very like secret about our relationships.

So after the show we were doing bullets over Broadway, we would each go home and then we would skype.

For my gosh.

Five in the morning.

And Nick would just play me music over Skype.

But it was a twofold because there were some things like he would play me some of his original stuff.

You know, that moment of being a girl where you're like, you've seen the Barbie movie, right, like the guy is playing music and you're like and then you're just say.

Like I get it, I adore you and I get it, you know.

And so it was like part part part, you know.

But that is very much the dynamic of Nick and I and Nick's music, and you know, he he was constantly making music and a lot of it never had lyrics, and then stop lyrics, and then some had jumbled lyrics, and then and then all of a sudden, he would you know, be doing a show and they'd all have lyrics.

And one song sounded like rock and roll, the next song sounded like a country song, the next song sounded like Broadway like, and then the next one sounded like Frank Sinatra, like he was.

All over the place.

And so it just now it makes me laugh.

It used to frustrate me, but now it just makes me laugh because it's just very much him.

He just he did.

He loved music.

I yet to meet anyone that knew more about music than Nick Cordero.

He would wake.

Listening to BBC podcasts.

He would read Rolling Stones cover to cover.

I remember.

One of my favorite stories he early early dating years.

I'm in his apartment in Washington Heights and he's like, Babe, there's this girl and she's making music in her bedroom with her brother and they are going to be huge.

And I was like, oh, okay, and he was like, she's like sixteen years old or like fourteen years old, and they I'm telling you now, they're gonna be huge.

And I was like okay, and he was like, her name's Billie Eilish, and I was like okay.

And years later, what's so beautiful.

About this story is years later, during Nick's battle with COVID, Phineas writes me a song, and after Nick passes away, he DMS me and I don't see it, and my realtor friend, who's his real litter friend, is like, I think Phineas O'Connell sent you a DM and I was like, okay.

So I looked at my DMS.

There it was I wrote your song.

I've been following your story and I was like, what I listened to this song.

It is the most beautiful song I've ever heard, and it's like very cold play.

Ask which I love, and I write him back.

Immediately We become instant friends.

He ends up singing me this song live many times in his concept It's like and I if I could.

I ended up telling him, I'm like, you don't understand.

Nick told me about you guys when we first started writing, like he clocked you guys in your bedroom in Echo Park or Highway.

I was like, and the how the world works?

You've written a song now about He would roll over in his grave, like if he knew that you wrote me a song like it just that's life.

Though it's so beautiful, you know what I mean?

Yeah, it's beautiful.

And now a word from our sponsors that I really enjoy and I think you will too.

What a wild experience it must have been.

I mean, both of you, you know, with your gorgeous careers in your own rights.

You know, you were both known people.

But then his COVID battle it I remember, you know, we have so many friends in common.

We hadn't met yet at the time, but I remember hearing what you guys were going through, and suddenly it seemed like every single person I knew anywhere was like, do you know what's going on with this Nick and Amanda couple in La And I mean, you were so generous, with so much pain, you had every right not to take time out of your day to try to help other people.

But while you guys were going through this battle of his sickness, you you tried to tell so many people you know, you you became, at least for me as again someone who didn't know you personally yet such a guidepost, like a beacon, because you just told the truth and everyone was so scared and people didn't know what was happening, and it was so hard to know where we were going to get any sort of information.

And then you know, you had all this disinformation happening, people claiming, you know, oh, don't worry, it's like the flu.

No it's not, and you were like, let me tell you what's happening to my husband, Like, let me explain what this does to someone's body.

It it struck me as being.

Oh, I'm gonna get emotional.

Sorry.

It struck me that you took something so.

Tragic and chose to give to other people like it was such a profound active service to watch in a time when like everyone should have been serving you.

You know, I'm like you you should have had someone like make you a meal train and you were like trying to tell people how to get vaccinated.

Yeah, that chains thanks to tell Geller.

Actually she set up that meal chain.

Yeah.

Anyway, sorry, I thank you, that's it.

Thank You're just a gem of a human.

And I I know you've.

You've talked about it and shared about it, and you don't have to repeat anything you.

Don't want to.

But I just I guess I wonder, like, looking back on five years, what, how do you kind of process that journey?

You know the fact that.

We were all so isolated and yet you were having this incredibly intimate moment with so many people.

I don't know.

I just I guess I wonder, like how it I don't want to say how it feels to you now that's a stupid word, but you know how how it settles?

I guess, m h.

I It's like the oddest thing, to be honest, like it I've processed it so many times, and yet I as like I have never processed it.

And what was I I was watching something the other day I think I was watching a movie and something will just trigger something, and then like I can't even focus because I'm like back in that world.

And then when I think about it, I'm like so completely like I can't believe that happened, that I get kind of like pulled away, and then I try to process it again in that respect, and then sometimes I feel like I've processed it so much that it's not near to me anymore, and then I feel bad that you am moving away from it, and then I feel guilty about that.

And then the times where I'm too close to it and I feel guilty about being holding on to it, I think that's just trauma, though, I think, yeah, which is why I think it's so important to understand that healing is such a journey and it never stops because and you have to keep treating it, because it's going to process so many times in so many different ways, because keep growing and I keep living, and I have done that keeps growing and keeps living, so.

Our lives are moving forward.

So it's impossible not to love and attach myself to that time in my life.

But also I have to learn how to separate myself from that time in my life.

Both feel wrong.

So it's very it's it's a very hard it's a very hard thing to process.

And and I think that's when like any kind of anniversary, be at our wedding anniversary or Knick's birthday, or Elvis's birthday or his death anniversary or my birthday, are very very hard because it's just a remembrance of time, and any time you can clock that time is I think, just also a trigger.

So I don't know, I think it's.

It's it's I don't know if I'll ever not be healing from that.

And I also think that, hey, you know, it's just it's just life.

It's a part of my life.

It's a scar that is in me, that will always be in me.

And there's a lot of beautiful parts about that scar, and there's a lot of really hard parts about that scar.

Yeah, I still can't believe it happened.

Like I mean, there's so many times where I cannot believe that happened.

And it's like talk about that little girl.

I look back on that chunk of my life, that COVID part of my life, and all even like I have, you know, Instagram saves everything, so like there's times where something will pop up and then I'll see something.

It's like, I don't even recognize that version of myself.

Like it's such a fight or flight moment in life.

And I think that you talked about my honesty and thank you so much for everything you said.

I think that in our lives when you're going through like severe trauma or life and death situations, it's just all the bullshit is removed.

You're just being honest.

There's nothing else to talk about.

Is just it's just pure honesty and truth.

That's it, Like that nothing matters other than that when death is on the table.

So I think that was just a version of myself that came out because nothing else mattered right to the world.

I mean, we were all worried about death at that moment in our lives.

You know, you got COVID that means you could die possibly.

Yeah, it was just such a weird time in our world and life.

Yeah, And you know, I think what you just said reminds me.

I heard you say something recently that I thought was so beautiful that you haven't had a fight with anyone since Mack past, because what's the point in fighting with anybody?

And it almost feels like that's one of those everything's whittled death to just what's necessary things that you took from that journey.

And again, just as an observer, you know, I've watched you write a memoir that has also been so incredibly honest, Find joy again, like get back into your dance, which I imagine is so healing for you.

You know, doing Dancing with the Stars, we were all like so geeked and excited.

You know, You've you've shared really beautiful stories with your audience on the talk.

It's really interesting to watch you share the honest truth and also really courageously.

I would say, find your joy again.

I just wonder about in this place where you're so tender and you also have no bulsh left, I would imagine it actually takes some like ferocious courage to claim your joy in public out loud.

Yeah, it does.

You're absolutely right, it really does.

Because I think in a beautiful way, the world got to know me and my story, but also in a very hard way.

It's like they're still attached to that story.

And I'm very grateful for it.

And I have a beautiful community of people that support me that I know and that I don't know.

At the same time, yeah, like, I'm also a forty three year old woman that has a lot of life to live, and it would want me to live that life as beautiful and big and as full as possible.

I know that I would want the same thing for him if the roles are reversed, And yeah, I do.

I have a gorgeous son, And like, I'm gonna still like I'm not perfect.

I'm gonna make mistakes, I'm gonna do silly things, I'm gonna do smart things.

But yeah, I think you're right.

People do get attached to who they think you should be or what they think you should do.

And you know, it's also like, well, no one actually lives my life except for me and I and I'm I am proud of how I'm living my life.

So yeah, we'll be back in just a minute after a few words from our favorite sponsors.

You are a generative person.

You know, even when you think about every every step of your career, you know, dance to Broadway to moving up through that world to you know, film and TV and the show and the and the writing.

I mean, it's like you you continue to gather creative inspiration forms of expression, and to me goes that says to me like, oh, that my friend is like a very entrepreneurial person like you are.

You always want to learn something and then learn another thing.

And I feel like when I saw the announcement that you were expanding into wellness, you know again as a dancer, as a mom, and creating supplements, I was like, I'm obsessed with that for her, you know, like it just felt it felt like the next right thing for you to get your hands on something completely brand new and completely your own and completely creative.

Where do you think the idea came from?

I mean, does it go way back to early days of career or does it also track to the fact that a public health crisis was so incredibly personal for you and your family, and health has become wealth essentially.

Yeah, well, definitely health is so wealth, you know.

It's I've always loved creating things.

My first creation was my jump rope with my fitness company, and then I created a fitness Oh my god, I created this matt that I sold for a while, and then I created a CBD muscle relief pain cream.

I love creating products that I believe.

Will be beneficial and helpful to people, and so cut to you know, this chapter.

In my life, I do many things.

One of them is I'm an influencer, so I, you know, get paid to influence products or things or whatever.

And the amount of supplements I have influenced over the years I can imagine.

And some of them I love, and some of them, you know, I don't like.

And a lot of them.

Though, are you know, extremely expensive pills or powders that I would try and then sit on my counter and I would get over them, you know, because like how many pills can we take?

And I think that powder tasted good, but now I think it tastes like grass.

And I.

Just got to the point where as a mom, and as a single mom and somebody that's just trying to find things in the day to make me feel like a whole human being and that I can keep moving in life, I just felt like there was a need for a supplement company that allowed a woman or a man or anyone to be able to take five minutes put a powder and water, have it taste great, have it be affordable, have it be accessible, and have them feel good about what they just did.

And yeah, so I created proper there it is.

It's so cutie.

I got my box.

Oh god, I've brought it anywhere from the kitchen.

But the point of it is is that I truly believe I'm not the same person every day.

I don't need the same supplement every day.

Some days I'm feeling under the weather, so I want to boost my immunity.

Some days I'm not eating great, so I want to have my greens.

Some days I'm super anxious and I need a power that'll call my anxiety.

So I created five powders, and then we just launched our Daily Glow, which is the six powder, so that you can it's like it's your fun, like.

What do I need today?

And mix some and you can use two or three of them in a day whatever you need.

But it's all about They're twenty eight dollars, which is so affordable, available at Target, Amazon and on our website.

But like, they not only are affordable, but they taste so good that it's like you you don't even mind getting all the greens in your day because it's like a bright green apple and it's so refreshing.

So it was more so just that Sophia just being like at a point in my life that where I've I've influenced a lot of things.

Mom, I'm just doing things in my day to try to make me feel better.

I do love health, I do love wellness.

I'm obsessed with longevity.

So it's yeah, just giving.

I always think about, because I'm from Ohio, I always think about, like Linda in Ohio, what does Linda in Ohio need?

Yes, you know, she doesn't live in New York City or LA.

She's not getting NAD injections, she's not sitting under red lamps.

She's going to Target and.

She's trying to find one thing that will help her feel better in her day.

And so that's why I created Brockberd.

I love it and what I think is so I mean for me, as you know, your friend and a recipient.

Of the line.

What I love.

About what you're talking about is the simplicity of it.

I will never forget After a show that I'd worked on, my sweet writer had went on this like old Twitter thread.

We've we've created this series together that was supposed to be about like foreign adversarial espionage in the NSSA, And it turned out that when we made it, some things had shifted in our landscape and suddenly that seemed like American reality.

And yeah, the network was like, we're not going to become targets of the most powerful people in the country.

So this show's not going to go on the air.

We laugh about it now, but we were very sad.

And the backstory matters because my sweet writer was like, here's what I'm going to talk about, the amazing people who put this show together.

And he went on this like.

Gorgeous thread rampage on Twitter and was talking about like our collaboration and our writing, and he goes, and You've never slept better or felt better than when you work with this woman because she carries around a bag with thirty five potions and things and bottles and whatever, and she makes you take all your vitamins every day.

And it turned into like a little bit of a thing for a while with people being like what's in the pack and like what are the thirty five things you take?

And I hit a point where I just was like I.

Can't do this, Like I yes, I feel better when I make sure I'm getting everything I need and I'm getting the vitamins and minerals I need, But I don't have it in me to figure out what to take with what food so it doesn't make me nauseous, and to figure out how to carry all this shit around with me all the time, Like at least when I go to set, I have like a little read and this is an hour after you yeah, and it's like what And you know when I go to set, I wheel around a little bag like a grandma like a trolley, so I can do it.

But in my life I don't have time for this.

And when I got your line, I was like, oh, I have time for this, And I love that I can say this is most of everything I need and if I want a combo, I can double down on this.

I can, you know, to your point, energy and greens and whatever it is.

And it just feels like somebody solved a problem that I know I have.

I didn't know how to solve.

So on behalf of myself and everyone nodding along to this conversation, thank you.

Well.

I think that it's important that in wellness we don't make ourselves feel guilty.

Like good fitness too, Like, don't feel guilty if today you can only do five or ten minutes, that's not tomorrow.

You know, don't feel guilty if you didn't.

Don't.

I don't ever want anybody to look at my supplement line Proper on your countertop and walk by and feel guilty.

I want you to feel inspired.

So I hate when pills just look at me.

I call it my supplement graveyard, yes, where I'm like, I know I should take them, but it's four pills and it's like I already took three weeks, like I.

Just can't do it, and so you.

Feel guilty about not doing something good for yourself.

And I just never want that to be the case.

And so Proper isn't about like you have to take your daily greens on a daily baby.

Sure you can, but you can also just take it when you need it so that you feel good about that choice at that moment on that day.

I love that so much.

When you think about, you know, all of these projects you've brought into the world, they're all things that it strikes me that you mother, you know, you create something and you get it ready to release out to people.

And I think.

Raising kids is kind of like that, you know.

I had a conversation on the show a few months ago, what an insane thing I'm about to say.

It was Michelle Obama, and she talked about how her mom's best advice was that she was raising adults, not raising babies.

Like, yeah, you raise your babies, but you want them to be adults when they go out into the world.

And I guess I wonder you know now, I'm at the stage where everyone in my life has littles and it's so much fun to be surrounded by kids all the time.

And yours is six, and like he's still a.

Baby, but he's on his way to adulthood, right, Like what do you see in him?

Are there things in the same way that you can look back at your ten year old self and see yourself in her.

Are there things you can see in him now by six where you go, oh, that's how you're going to be when you're fifteen, Or oh, I see something about you that you'll take out into the world as an adult man someday.

Yeah, yes, Like perfect example, is this happened I don't know about a month ago, but he still sleeps with me, and we climb into bed and.

I had had I had just like had a night.

I was I was sad.

So we got into bed and I said to Elvis.

I was like, I was like, Elvis, I'm really sorry.

I was like, Mommy was on her phone a lot tonight and I was like, I'm sorry about that, buddy.

I was like, I I feel like I didn't spend any time with you tonight.

And I was like, I just I miss dad.

And he goes he lifts up his arm and he goes, come here, mom, and like asked me to like come in and cuddle like I do to him.

Yeah, I entertained the thought, and I like got under his little arm and like put my head gently on his chest, his little chest and he's so tall and skinny right now that he's like, you know, just bones and so like I gently laid down.

He was like, mom, you're heavy.

And I was like adult and he's like, you're like a ten cop fleet and I was like okay, right, and then I was like and he like but he.

Was trying to like console like he knew that I was sad, and he knew that I needed like a hug and love.

And so then I pulled his arm away and I was like, get in here.

I was like, you'll be bigger than me one day, and you can you can hug me then and then he's so sweet hot.

But like, I think it's those things where I just I hopefully am seeing like who he will be at fifteen kind of man he'll be, you know at twenty five.

Yeah, a partner.

So I just, yeah, I treasure that little kid.

He's a good little boy.

Oh it's so so sweet.

Well, when you think about.

All these things, you know, all the all the things you hold, your family and your work and your company.

And you know, your.

Navigation of the sort of ends of the spectrum of all of this experience as you look forward, because you've done so much, what feels like it's ahead, what feels like you're work in progress out on the horizon.

Yeah, well, you know, like you said before, I love creating.

So I have like I have, I'm very much it's and I think it's from Broadway, never feeling like completely stable, you know, it's an actor performing, you know, And so I kind of cast a net of like ten different things, and I kind of have them all like burning, so that if one goes out, I still have nine, and then if one like starts really getting hot, then like I can kind of fine tune the others so you know, I'm really excited about Proper and all the fun things that we have in store for that, and there's a lot coming down the pipeline.

So that's like my entrepreneurial business side.

I get to travel a lot for fitness and teach, and I love teaching fitness so much because I love what fitness community is, and I love helping people, and I love challenging people, and I love helping people understand that fitness can be fun and filled with joy and filled with gratitude instead of yes please yeah, instead of you know, pushing hard and hurting your body and all that stuff.

So I love I love all of the things on the horizon for just teaching and connecting with people all over the world with that.

And then yeah, my you know, creative brain is always you know, trying to do more movies and TV shows and hosting and all that stuff.

So there's fun things pipeline with that.

I don't know, I just feel like we're in a day and age where and I feel like you probably related to this too, is like I feel very lucky that I get to do a lot of things, and there's times where I feel lost, and there's times where I feel like I can't do this and I don't know what I'm thinking, And then there's times where I'm like, I.

Can absolutely do this.

I can Yeah, who's going to tell me no?

You know?

And if they tell me no, one day, they'll tell me yes, So like we'll just keep pushing and it's fun, so that like keeps me going.

So I don't know.

I just love all the different things.

And I am equally passionate about all of them.

If you see me teaching a fitness class or you see me like acting in the show or hosting a red carpet, like, I'm equally passionate about all.

Of those things.

Yeah, I love them all equally.

I don't want to choose, like I just I want to do them all.

I love that I will never forget, you know.

Really early in my career being told like you have to pick a lane.

Yeah, and I remember thinking, why am I supposed to reduce the subjects that I'm interested in the things I find fascinating?

Why shrink that?

And I think we're really lucky that through our adulthood, the ability for people to be multi hyphenets really feels like it's shifted.

Yeah, I'm happy we're here.

I think so too.

Yeah.

I think still needs some shifting, but we're getting there.

Yeah, we're on our way.

Yeah, definitely