EPISODE 79 · JUL 17, 2022 · 1H 14M
Jeremie Lotemo Breaking Patterns & Safety in Relationships
EPISODE 79 · JEREMIE LOTEMO
Breaking Patterns & Safety in Relationships
Jeremie Lotemo was born in Congo during the Rwandan genocide, raised by elderly white strangers in Portland, moved again to Virginia, then again to Atlanta — a childhood of complete cultural displacement that forced him to shape-shift into whatever form made him digestible. By 17 the mask felt tight. By 23 he was working in advertising campaigns and seeing firsthand how easily people's unconscious could be puppeteered — which made him ask: who's pulling the strings on me?
What followed was a year-long radical detox from music, media, books, anything that gave him someone else's voice instead of his own. From there he began writing a new story — one aligned with who he actually is beneath the performance. This conversation moves through masculine wounding, the circumcision trauma no one names, the mother wound that dictates every relationship with the feminine afterward, and what it actually means to provide masculine containment when you've learned to see a woman as she really is — untamable, vast, a pearl that needs a shell to exist in but cannot be owned.
- Birth trauma & cultural displacement Jeremie was born in Congo during the Rwandan genocide — two civil wars before age five, then moved to Portland raised by elderly white strangers, then Virginia, then Atlanta. Complete alienation at each stage. He can't remember anything before seven. The environment he was born into — hostile, violent, death, mistrust, betrayal — shaped everything beneath conscious awareness.
- Masking & shape-shifting Jeremie spent his entire childhood and adolescence shape-shifting into whatever form made him digestible. Popular kid, liked by girls, mimicking mannerisms and interests to fit in. The suit felt tight by 17. Senior year he took it off and realized he had no idea who he actually was underneath the performance.
- Propaganda, advertising & the unconscious puppeteer Working in marketing campaigns targeting ideal audiences, Jeremie saw firsthand how easily people's decisions with money, time, and attention could be dictated. He then turned the lens inward: who's pulling the strings on me? Where are my own choices just absorbed programming from culture, family, media?
- Finding your own voice through radical fasting Jeremie fasted from food, music, books, media for a year. Every book he read was someone else's voice taking over his imagination. He needed to clear the noise and hear his own voice again — the intelligence animals use to give birth without a gynecologist. The temptation to consume other people's insights was intense. But through it he learned his compass: when he's confused, he's absorbing someone else's voice instead of his own.
- Intention as legacy — leaving every place better than you found it Jeremie realized he carries this principle into every Airbnb, every kitchen, every conversation: leave it better than I found it. People are places. If someone is a city, did I leave them better? That small intention expanded into his work, his relationship, his entire life. It brings layers of awareness: how am I speaking, what energy am I giving off, what am I contributing?
- Safety as biological necessity Safety isn't a concept — it's a nervous system requirement. When safety is absent, all creative energy goes to self-protection instead of connection. Intimacy is capped. Jeremie developed perfectionism because his childhood home had no safety for mistakes. Three realms of safety: emotional, physical, commitment. When those are present, the best versions of ourselves get permission to breathe.
- Circumcision & the masculine wound no one names The cultural trauma men experience that dictates how they view women but is never spoken about. The fight response chained up before it can be expressed. The unconscious hatred of the feminine because the mother didn't protect you in that moment. The collective desensitization to the pain because it's normalized. Yerasimos: this impacts everyone — society, the women in our lives — not just us.
- Stabilizing the charge — the mother wound & reconciling rage The first relationship with the feminine shapes everything: how to speak to a woman, how to love a woman, where the limitations are. Unreconciled rage, sadness, lack of protection duplicates later in life as you try to reconcile what couldn't be reconciled as a child. Stabilizing means neutralizing the charge so you have a conscious relationship with your triggers — widening the gap between stimulus and response.
- Engaging the divine feminine to understand masculinity Jeremie built a relationship with Kali Ma — fierce love holding him through the darkest parts he couldn't accept about himself. Through engaging that energy he glimpsed what the feminine really is: wild, untamable, vast. That revealed his own fear of her magnitude. And from there he learned what it actually means to provide and protect. You can't know your role until you see her beyond her humanness.
- The pearl & the shell — masculine containment Women want to be claimed, but beneath the distorted versions there's a purity to it. Teal Swan's frame: a woman is a pearl, but that pearl needs a shell to exist in. The shell contains without restricting — allows the pearl to be free, to grow, to remain beautiful. Without that shell, it cannot express itself. Jeremie found his power in being that container.
- Discernment — not everyone is worth your containment Not every woman can meet you there. You can see her essence — you're a pearl, girl — but she's showing up covered in layers of unaddressed trauma. Respecting your own love and energy means discerning who is actually capable of going to that depth with you. Self-respect as masculine baseline.
- Keys to a healthy relationship Commitment — unwavering willingness to face whatever comes up, no matter how long it takes. Playfulness — balancing the seriousness of deep healing work with the ability to just laugh and exhale. Compatibility — not sameness, but aligned values with different expressions. You bring something I can't reach on my own; I bring something you can't reach on yours. That refines and expands both.
- The binary of control & healing vs. living Even in healing there can be control — I have to fix this, you need to do that, we need to process this right now. At some point: can we put the healing work down and just live? We're doing better than most of our friends. Let's just chill and watch some anime. The duality of play and seriousness applied to the healing process itself.
Standout
Quotes
"My whole life I had been masking. Whatever environment I was in, I would shape-shift into the form that I needed to be — digestible, appeaseable, light, popular. I would assume the form of the kid that the girls liked. And somehow I would mimic their mannerisms, mimic how they dressed, mimic what they were into. And I didn't realize until I was 17, 18 that this suit actually felt tight."
Jeremie Lotemo
"My whole life I had been consuming everyone else's voices. I realized animals give birth all the time. There's no gynecologist in nature. There's no doula, but they just know. There's a mind here, an intelligence here that is actually ingrained into me that can point me to a deeper blueprint for myself."
Jeremie Lotemo
"I took an extreme approach to clearing out the voices by detoxing from music, from media, from books for about a year. It was very difficult. The temptations to consume other people's insights was very tempting. But through that, I found my own voice. And from there I've been using that voice as my compass."
Jeremie Lotemo
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of the country."
Yerasimos (quoting Edward Bernays)
"Even for myself, like coming to this place, I know not everyone is deserving of that containment. Not everyone is worth that level of attention, time, and energy. And that's a level of respecting my own self — respecting my own love, respecting my own energy and time and knowing that it's precious."
Jeremie Lotemo
"Safety isn't just a concept in relationships. It's a biological necessity. When that level of safety isn't there, on a nervous system level we're constantly perceiving threats. All of our creative energy that could be spent connecting with the person is actually going to protecting ourselves."
Jeremie Lotemo
"For me, it was important to actually explore what that divine feminine energy was. What does that love feel like? What does it feel to be in the arms of what would be seen as a divine mother? I then learned what it really means to provide and protect — because I didn't really know what I would be providing and protecting for unless I really went to the depths of what she is."
Jeremie Lotemo
"A woman is essentially a pearl, but that pearl needs a shell to exist in. That shell contains it but allows that pearl to be free, to be open, to grow and to remain beautiful. But without that shell, it cannot be the pearl. It can't express itself in the way that it wants to express itself."
Jeremie Lotemo
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