Episode 004: Coming Home to Yourself with Jesse Bax

Full episode, chapters and transcript: https://delbedelpodcast.com/ep/004

Jesse Bax was fifteen in Missouri when she noticed she cared more about what other people thought of her than what she thought of herself. On December 28, 2014, she looked in a mirror and said "I hate you," and made herself a promise: never again. She built the body, the business and the big-tech career that were supposed to keep that promise. Six years later, in the fittest shape of her life, the mirror said the same thing.

In this episode of Del be Del, I sit down with Jesse for a conversation about what happened after that second mirror: the decision to go inward instead of outward, the healer years, leaving Google, and a June evening when she and her partner rated "I'd move to Bali" on a scale of one to ten and both said eleven.

Bali is where she says she knew exactly who she was. It is also where an invitation arrived, and where a voice at a waterfall overruled the part of her that said something doesn't feel right here: "you have to go." She went to the Netherlands, into a community where every day felt like Christmas. We talk about how that works from the inside: the circling that never lets you feel complete, the alone time that was frowned upon, the parents at home who cried themselves to sleep hoping she was still alive. And about the morning a third mirror said "again, I hate you," and the escape she describes as perfectly orchestrated.

Jesse draws the line between a community and a cult without a single accusation, and she is clear about where she thinks this one landed. She is equally clear that it can happen to anyone.

Then the crumble: "rubble that turned into ashes," and the sentence that follows it, "I get to build again." Bali the second time was not different, she says. She was. We talk about Vipassana, about victimhood and the difference between intensity and depth, about rebuilding a life and a business from a thousand followers, and about what "I am my home" means when home is wherever she chooses to be.

We end with a fourth mirror, the one in the room with us, and what she says to it now. Her last line stayed with me for days.

Find Jesse:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamjessebax

Del be Del means "heart to heart" in Persian. This podcast is about honest, heartfelt conversations — the stories we live but rarely tell, and the conversations we don't have often enough.

If something in this conversation stayed with you, I'd love to hear about it. Leave a comment and tell me what resonated, who you'd like to hear from, or what you would have asked if you were sitting in this room. And if you'd like more conversations like this one, subscribe on YouTube or follow Del be Del on Spotify and Apple Podcasts — it's the best way to make sure the next conversation finds you.

Until next time — take care of your heart, and the hearts around you.

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