Allana Pratt, host of Intimate Conversations, joins Tatiana Berindei to delve into the difficult conversation of building empathy for vulnerable connection. Allana has been featured on CBS, TLC & FOX and is the author of four books. Listen in to this essential conversation for anyone who wants more from their relationships.
Hello everyone, welcome to the Sex, Love, and Superpowers podcast show. I am your host, Tatiana Berindei and today I have with me a really beautiful woman, Allana Pratt. We are going to be talking about intimate conversations, building empathy for vulnerable connection. I wanna say that even though I don’t really know this woman, I feel her, and I am so loving her already. And I’m really looking forward to this conversation.
Allana is an intimacy expert. She inspires open hearted living with delicious sass. She has been featured on CBS, TLC, and Fox, and she’s a graduate of Columbia University, and author of four books, the coach to celebrities, and the host of the sexy, empowering show; Intimate Conversations Live. Allana helps thousands who struggle with the fear of rejection. She teaches women that their vulnerability is what makes them sexy, and shows men how to cure their nice guy, and become a noble bad ass.
Her devotion to help her clients create hot, healthy, intimate relationships is rooted in her own journey. She endured a brutal custody battle, yet emerged more courageous, radiant, and loving than ever. Allana’s joy for life is contagious. She savors motherhood, and pole dances for pleasure. She inspires her clients to be unapologetically true to themselves, successfully date, and find lasting, soul shaking love. Welcome to the show Allana, I’m so honored and excited to have you with us today.
Oh the feeling is mutual, I’m already in love with you Tatiana.
Yeah, I’m into it. We could just sit in the juice and love on each other, but I don’t know that our listeners would get much out of that. So let’s do it verbally.
Okay, okay perfect.
Yeah, and I wanna start out, I love this question so much, I can’t take credit for it. Tanya crafted this question from her belief, and understanding, and knowing-ness that we all have superpowers, and I get so giddy that I get to ask all these amazing people this question, and I’m gonna ask you the same. To share with us what are your superpowers?
I’m so grateful to her as well, and to have met her and her little one, and to be here with you. So my superpower, I first found it, I was shopping for furniture. And the owner of the store asked me to go in the back room, he wanted to show me something. And he opened up his wallet, and out he took was this old … Like the edges were frayed, black and white photo of his wife that he met when she was 13. And they had been married for over 50 years. And then he got out the bottle of scotch, and we sat down, and we started drinking and talking about love and connection. And I’m like, “Wait a minute I’m just here buying furniture.”
And this became this trend in my life, that people feel safe to tell me anything. Sometimes things they’ve never even told themselves. And I don’t judge much. I mean, I’m not perfect. But I tend to just see the beauty in the challenge, the exquisite journey that we’re all on through our foibles and wobbly selves. And I just see the exquisite essence that they truly are when they share these vulnerable parts of themselves. And it’s a gift. Whether I’m on an airplane, on a bus, in a furniture store, or on a coaching call with a client, it is this superpower of loving them. And my coaching got so exponentially … The results got so exponential as soon as I gave myself permission to love my clients.
I didn’t need to go, “Well this is session one, and on session one we do dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.” I just fucking love people. And it is a blessing to be this safe cocoon, to take them home to total self love of themselves.
I love it, I feel like I’m talking to such a soul sister right now. This is awesome. This podcasting thing is a lot of fun. And you have your own show too, tell us about it, Intimate Conversations.
Thank you, yes. I started way back with blog talk radio, I did a webisode for awhile; Permission for Pleasure. And then about seven years ago, this idea of being this safe space to have these intimate conversations where my guests not just tell me what their expertise are, but their journey. And people would tell me, Tatiana, things they had never told their own community on Intimate Conversations. And just in the last year, this has been an internet radio show for seven years, I’ve done about 250 episodes. And this last year when I met Tanya I decided I’m going to turn it into a podcast. So now it’s officially a podcast. And you will be one of my delicious guests.
I’m so excited.
But it’s a way to share more of these conversations, giving people permission to be exactly who they are; the good, the bad, the wobbly, the whole thing. And the freedom of expression, and the receptivity that is possible when there’s no blocks in the way to self, or source, or our body.
Beautiful. So tell us a little bit about your own story. You say that this really … Your path, it came through your own experience of this horrible custody battle, and coming through it. Whenever I hear … I really believe that life is our best teacher, and I think we can have all of these letters after our name, but if you haven’t experienced it, if you haven’t lived it, what do those letters really mean? So I love people who lead with their life story in that way, and I would just love to hear a little bit more about what the experience was for you, and how it really landed you in this role.
Thank you. So I’m a small town Canadian girl, from British Columbia, and my uncle Phil drove a big 18 wheeler semi down to LA once a year. And I had been in college for two years doing business, because I didn’t wanna take over my dad’s pharmacy, or be a teacher like my mother. But I got a D in quantitative methods, I was not doing really well. So I quit college, and I hopped on my uncle Phil’s semi to go to LA to be a dancer. I’d been a dancer since I was five; ballet, jazz, tap, I just love the embodiment, the delicious embodiment of source through our bodies.
So there I was, talented enough, and courageous enough, but I didn’t have a Visa. I didn’t have a work Visa. So with $40 left to my name, and a Visa card only to be used to come home, to admit failure, go back to college and work at my dad’s pharmacy, so I was never gonna fucking use that thing. So I had $40, and I finally got a job dancing in a show in Japan, ’cause I couldn’t dance in America, ’cause I didn’t have a Visa. So there I was dancing in this show in Japan, and there’s a long four years of delicious stories I can tell later in the interview about a topless contract, I didn’t know it was gonna be topless, all sorts of wonderful ways to embrace the sacredness of my body.
I fell in love with a tall, dark, and handsome multi-millionaire Wall Street guy, moved back to New York City with him, started going to Columbia, started hiding in the closet to meditate ’cause he thought that was weird. We moved out to LA, and I found more of my people, and I had the courage to leave the multi-millionaire lifestyle and start over, only to discover my mom got cancer. And my sister had somebody to marry, my dad was remarried, and I just basically chose anybody with a checkbook and a pulse and some sperm, ’cause I just needed to have a child to replace my mom and my relationship. Not a very enlightened choice, I know that, but at the time the best choice I could make.
So within a year my mom had died, and I was a single, motherless mom. I was divorced. He was not a kind man, quite the opposite. But I didn’t make a choice with an open heart, I made a choice with a very afraid heart of lack. And frankly, just used him to make the pain inside go away. So that level of betrayal got mirrored back to me to own my decision, and it turned into pretty much a 12 year custody battle where he tried to take our son away from me. And I had had some luck financially, and investing in the S and P 500, and some different properties. So I had this million dollar house, and a quarter of a million in the bank, and I basically lost it all. Went into a quarter of a million debt, couldn’t even keep up with my bills, wasn’t even aware that I wasn’t paying my car payments, and my truck was repossessed. It was so humbling, so scary. And I never knew people lied. Like when you put your hand on the Bible, you’re supposed to tell the truth. Oh no, no, no.
So there was all of these … I was so blindsided, so shocked, so like, “Are you fucking kidding me?” On the stand, the lies that would come at me. And then because I work in intimacy, and I don’t have a PhD, ’cause I believe in coaching not in traditional therapy, that’s what I believe is more effective, as you said earlier Tatiana, about not so much the letters behind the name but our real life experience. So they convinced the court that I was a high-level narcissist telling people what to do without any PhD, and I talked about intimacy, so I was probably a prostitute. And the reason that I was in court, and he was trying to take our son away is that my son said he wanted to kill himself. That mommy and daddy fight all the time, and I wanna kill myself. And the only thing I tried … I mean, I tried non-violent communication, hiring gurus to go to India and chant for me, I tried everything to get along with this guy, but I’d never let him win, look good, defeat me.
So I thought if I gave him a little more custody, maybe like 70, 30, maybe that would be enough for him to stop coming after me, and then our son wouldn’t wanna kill himself. So I led with that, and that’s what they used against me, that I didn’t care about being a mother, I didn’t care about my son. And it was humiliating, terrifying, and in the end he won. So I have 30% custody of my son. And then to top it off recently … So that was about three years ago … Recently with that having more time with him, I don’t know if you wanna call it brainwashing or just more of the journey, but my son has turned against me, and he won’t talk to me, and he’s living full-time with his dad.
So after all that I’ve gone through, the scariest thing of all, my son is turning against me has occurred. And to keep my heart open in the face of that, and trust, kind of like the Chinese Bamboo that it takes like four years and you don’t think the damn thing is growing, and then on poof, on the fifth year it grows like 80 feet. Just to trust that in the unseen, me keeping my heart open, but also having a firm, loving, mothering, parenting way that it’s not okay to treat me like your dad is treating me.
It’s not okay to disrespect women, let alone humans, and to … Yeah. To just love him in the unknown. I write a little journal to him every so often, and to trust one day he’ll return better for the journey. And then to go, “Okay universe, what would you like me to do in my no custody?” I don’t have any custody right now, and I’m living on the top of a mountain. I went away from LA, and got myself a sanctuary to heal. And all of this creative life Tatiana, is coming through me. I didn’t know who I was not being emailed 11 times a day with threats. It’s quite lovely, really. And I don’t have to drive carpool, I don’t have to go to baseball practice, I don’t need to do laundry. It’s just me, God, my community, my heart, my vulnerability, my self love, and oh so much forgiveness.
So many layers of I’m not a good mother, I did it wrong, I failed, do much forgiveness. And I just write about it. My community, I’m not their perfect guru by any stretch of the imagination, I am certainly masterful where I have gifts, and I’m very transparent with my process, and my vulnerability. So it’s a very safe place to be together, and grow and evolve on the planet. So maybe that’s a bit of a longer answer than you were looking for, but that’s how I got here.
I love it. And thank you, thank you for sharing that. Every time I feel so humbled and honored when people open themselves to really share intimate details of their life experience on a podcast show. Sometimes I find myself just asking, “Wow how can I steward these really precious stories in a good way and take good care of them?” So thank you, I feel really honored that you shared to that level of depth with me, and with our listeners. And I know from this experience that you have a lot to share about building empathy and vulnerable connection, which is the theme of this. We do have to take a quick break, and when we get back from the break we’re gonna dive into that in a lot of depth. And I can’t wait to hear the juice, and the lessons that have come out of this experience for you. And how you work with people in that way.
But before we go on break, would you tell our listeners where they can find out more about you? Where they can hear your show?
Thank you. Just go to my website, AllanaPratt.com, and all the information is there.
Wonderful, so we’ve been talking with Allana Pratt about intimate conversations, building empathy for vulnerable connection. And more when we get back after the break, stay tuned.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
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