The Phenomenon of Being Born, the Power of Self-Care, and Letting Go of Judgment
Beverly Medley hosts a solo hour of All The Way Live, reflecting on the wonder of being born, the toll anger and poor diet take on the body, and her own decades-long journey from junk food and people-pleasing toward stillness, self-reflection, and letting go of judgment.
A Meditation on Being Born
Beverly Medley opens the broadcast expressing gratitude for everything in her life before reading out the call-in number, 888-627-6008, and inviting listeners to join her. She spends the opening minutes marveling at what she calls the phenomena of being born, noting that science understands only part of the process. She recalls having conceived and raised two children and describes pregnancy and birth as evidence that people are not originally "from here," but are instead having a temporary experience on the planet. She explains that when a woman is in decent condition, nature allows conception and birth to unfold largely on its own, with modern medical assistance layered on top by a society that expects it. Beverly lingers on the uniqueness of the human body, telling listeners that no one's eyeballs, fingernails, hair, or skin can ever be replicated, and that recognizing this rarity is the starting point for the hour's larger message about self-care.
The Body You Cannot Replace
Beverly builds on the idea that nothing about a person's body can be duplicated, comparing modern medicine's ability to set a broken bone or fit a new eye lens with its inability to regrow original tissue. She says self-care is a dimension that society does not really promote, and that recognizing this truth changes how a person treats their body. She grows reflective describing painful memories of watching family members and people close to her deteriorate from preventable causes, including relatives in her ex-husband's family who suffered from conditions she believes came from not understanding who they were. She says that making changes in her own life let her sidestep problems she was heading toward herself. Beverly frames calm, presence, and kindness as the core lessons of what she calls her own experiment, insisting that restraint from certain behaviors makes a person emotionally stronger rather than passive, a point she says she only came to trust after living through the opposite.
Blood, Anger, and the Body's Warnings
Beverly turns to physical health, describing having watched people close to her lose legs and toes to amputation and young men become impotent because of poor blood flow. She argues that thick, sluggish blood traces back to diet, stress, and especially anger, tying the common phrase about someone's "blood boiling" to a literal buildup of heat in the body. She recalls that learning to meditate let her notice these reactive patterns as they happened and step out of what she calls nonsense behavior before it took hold. Beverly rejects the idea that suffering and decline are simply normal parts of aging, arguing instead that the body wears out from years of abuse many people never reconsider. She briefly praises the GPS as a genuine technological wonder, noting she recently learned its inventor was a Black woman, before returning to her main point that the body eventually stores what it cannot recognize and turns it inflammatory.
Learning Not to Judge
Beverly recalls being the sickest of her parents' five children and says her path eventually turned toward health for reasons she still cannot fully explain, unlike siblings whose journeys led elsewhere. She describes cleaning herself up in a manner she compares to how recovering alcoholics describe getting clean, and says the clarity that followed let her finally see what she calls one of her biggest lessons: not judging people or repeating things she does not actually know to be true. She admits she has done exactly that herself, speaking about people without real knowledge of their lives, and reminds listeners that words carry power. Quoting "judge not, lest ye be judged," she argues that most opinions people hold about others were never truly their own, but inherited from family or upbringing. She stresses that everybody carries a story nobody else can see, which is why she urges listeners to pause and reflect on their own behavior rather than assuming they understand anyone else's.
From People Pleaser to Speaking Up
Beverly traces her own self-realization back to childhood, remembering herself as a confident young student who loved reading and felt like she knew everything, until she was repeatedly told she thought too highly of herself. She says she responded by becoming a people pleaser, downplaying her own knowledge to avoid seeming arrogant, a survival habit she carried into adulthood and into her marriage. Cleaning up her diet and her mindset, she says, eventually forced her to speak up and stand up for herself, including with her own mother, something she insists she never did disrespectfully. She recalls abandoning foods like six glazed doughnuts washed down with Mountain Dew and other fast food she once ate without a second thought, saying the shift let her see with what she calls an inner or third eye beyond her two physical eyes. She warns listeners against jumping to conclusions from appearances alone, insisting that everyone eventually receives exactly what they deserve without anyone needing to intervene.
Stillness, Grandmother Minnie, and Gratitude
Beverly closes the hour describing two systems every person moves through, an ecological-spiritual one and a mundane daily one, and says stillness is how a person receives clearer guidance between them. She describes the particular quiet moments when even birdsong pauses, and urges listeners to seek that energy instead of constant noise and stimulants like coffee, which she says only mask a body that has not learned to generate its own energy. She recalls first changing her eating habits in the late 1970s, disliking the unfamiliar natural food at first but noticing she felt calmer almost immediately. She credits her paternal grandmother, Minnie, with managing what the family once simply called "the sugar" through diet alone, eating boiled chicken, green vegetables, and especially string beans, which Beverly later learned contain natural insulin. Beverly closes by calling herself, and everyone listening, a phenomenon worth caring for, thanking her audience for being part of her day before the show's closing theme plays.
