About Taye Bela Corby · The Living Laboratory

Hi, I'm Taye, and welcome to The Living Laboratory.

I want to start our time together with a story about, of all things, droppings on my balcony.

For weeks I would wake up, walk out to my bedroom balcony and find a mess.

Every single morning I was convinced I had a rat problem.

So I did what anyone would do when we have a problem.

I tried to fix it.

I scrubbed the floor with vinegar.

I used bleach.

I tried every home remedy I could find.

Nothing worked.

The mess came back every morning.

So I called the professionals.

I called pest control.

A technician came out, looked around and said, yep, you've got rats.

He set traps.

He put out bait.

He did the whole song and dance.

Six weeks went by and guess what?

The mess was still there.

Finally, a second technician came out.

He walked onto the balcony, looked at the floor, and then he did something the first guy did not do.

He looked up.

He said, Taye, those aren't rat droppings, those are bat droppings.

He pointed to the eaves on the roof and said, the bats are roosting right above you.

You don't need traps.

You just need to change the environment.

Put a bright light out there and by tomorrow they'll be gone.

I tell you this story because for forty years I have seen people, including my Self, do the exact same thing in their relationships.

We look at the mess, the conflict, the distance, the exhaustion, and we diagnose it as a rat.

We think the problem is them, so we try to fix it on the floor.

We nag, we explain, we defend, and we wonder why we're so tired.

But in my laboratory, I've learned that very often you are treating a rat when you actually have a bat.

The problem isn't the mess on the floor.

It's what's happening in the unseen rafters of your own energy system.

When I help you use tools like the Gene Keys or EFT, we aren't scrubbing the floor.

We are looking up.

We are turning on the light of your own awareness.

If you are tired of scrubbing the floor, you are in the right place.

I'm Taye Bela Corby.

Welcome to this work.

Daniel Linder, my babes.

We have been partners for over forty years.

When I felt the pull to stand alone in my own voice, not only with him, with everyone, I found my Self lost at the bottom of the ocean without a flashlight.

I had a beautiful fantasy about love, and it was costing me my Self.

This is how I came home, and why I know that deepening Self-care is Relationship Medicine.

For three years I listened to Daniel talk about writing The Miracle of Connection, the birth and life of an intimate relationship.

I never read the manuscript.

I wanted to be fresh, enthusiastic, one of his first real readers.

My fantasy was already ignited.

His book was going to bring in the new me, our new chapter together.

I was ready.

The book was alive in my hands, and I went looking for my Self.

In the acknowledgements, the principles, the practices, the case studies.

In my fantasy, I was the platform from which everything sprung.

I know how that sounds.

I wasn't in there.

There was no mention of me in the dedication.

I asked him about it, and nothing changed.

His choice was right for him.

My hurt was real for me.

And I found my Self asking, is there a path for both of us to be right?

The last page stopped me.

Having a relationship with my Self as primary, knowing my Self first, I recognized this work, not from study, but from decades of living it.

I wanted to add my voice, stand alongside of him.

That was my testimonial.

My creativity breathing into the world for the first time.

He watched the video, then made faces, told me seven minutes was too long.

He couldn't use it.

And there it was.

The pattern.

I felt rejected.

I felt like a martyr.

I wanted to retaliate.

I didn't know all of that then.

Mortified, I walked away.

I could hardly breathe.

For all these years, he's never seen me.

I can't be with this man.

My cup was empty.

The terror of being alone, truly alone, hit my body like a wall.

Not acknowledged in the book.

Not received from my heart in the testimonial.

Two enormous weights landing in the same body at the same time.

This is what unloveable feels like from the inside.

Not a word.

A physical fact.

I had to meet it by my Self.

And so began three years of working inside the pain.

This is the moment I was never taught to see.

A choice point, smack in the midst of emotional distress.

I refused to let it stay.

I will stay with my Self.

No matter how unloved I feel, no matter how long it takes, I will not leave my Self flat.

And I knew, once I chose to go in, there was no going back.

Today, I have my Self back.

I have my babes back.

And nothing is as it was.

There has been loss.

There has been grief.

Maybe we're both more because of it.

A fantasy has no mistakes.

An imagined vision is constantly being crafted.

I believe when each one of us has the ability to take care of our own needs, we make space for each of us to exist fully within the context of our sacred bond.

My core stability anchored.

That's what made it possible.

Three years later, I revisited my testimonial.

And my words were still true.

I was becoming my own permission slip, fueled by the honesty of my own expression.

I posted it on my website, offered it to Daniel again, this time in writing, no neediness attached.

That action was medicine enough.

I felt nourished from inside my Self.

It is my voice I am claiming, my expression, my authenticity, my full-fledged capacity to be in a real relationship.

You can count on me to be open, honest, and to represent my Self accurately.

As my truth deepens, what came before it will crumble, and a new representation of my Self will be delivered as clearly as I possibly can.

Until the next.