Super Model & Actress - Joan Severance - Manifest Your Mate
Joan Severance Photo One

What do you do when you are a super model who has graced the covers of every notable fashion magazine for decades and who is also a film and television actress? You have been the face that launched campaigns for Versace, Armani and Chanel. You were asked to endorse Maybelline, Clairol, L’Oréal and Revlon and you have had a career in which you were in demand as a model for top designers worldwide. Well if you are Joan Severance you are confident enough to let your thick hair stay gray and you write a book called Manifest Your Mate. Severance also acts as a personal coach providing guidance to others in the area of manifesting their mate, as well as other areas of their lives. There may be those who are somewhat dubious about how someone so beautiful and accomplished could possibly understand their plight of attracting Mr. Right to their lives, so we posed just that question to Joan Severance when we chatted with her recently.

“First I would say to them, they are incorrect in making the assumption that I can attract any man that I want.  They are incorrect and they don’t know my life and I can’t (attract any man that I want). You can’t just go and get exactly what you want, because of your looks or your status. That’s not it. They can make assumptions and I can say the assumptions that they make are probably not only about me, but those assumptions are against themselves.

The book and the content of the book (as well as) the method in the book really have nothing to do with me or with looks. The method is known to work.  It is not about how you look, but it is about understanding the power that is within each of us, which is not an exterior power. It lies within every single person, no matter who you are or what you look like, what your job is or your opportunities or lack thereof.

It’s that power that connects you and it is the belief and understanding what those words actually mean. What those words mean to me is I truly believe that if I ask I’m going to get whatever it is. I am not asking the other person and it has nothing to do with that man that is actually speaking. It is putting on a canvass everything that could be the man that you are seeking. Don’t narrow it down to one, because there are probably thousands that are going to meet everybody’s criteria worldwide. You are going to have opportunities come into your life to meet these people, as long as you get out of your house, because you won’t meet them in your house. Number two you have to be open to dating. Open means having an open mind, remove your past baggage. Don’t bring your luggage to the date. Look at things differently than you have in the past.

Joan Severance Photo ThreeLet’s say you need money in your life. Abundance is something that a lot of us could use. It is the same thing. Instead of saying I need abundance. I need this and I need, because in needs you have a lack. If the universal language is I need equals lack then you are asking for lack and you will get more of it. If the universal language is I have abundance or I have whatever equals whatever you say then abundance comes back at you. In Manifest Your Mate when you are creating this thing it is always positive and it is always in the future and it is always as if you have it now or you are going to have it by a certain date. That is where the thinking has to shift in individual people who might assume something about somebody who they don’t even know.

When I work with people, some would say I would never go to a venue like that, because I would never meet my guy at a place like that. My response is you may think you won’t meet your guy there and if you are putting it out that you won’t, because you just stated it to the universe then you won’t and you won’t go to that event, because you already know. Here is another way to think of it, what if you go to your event and you don’t meet your guy there, but you meet someone else there who invites you to another thing and that is where you meet your guy. You would have never met that person if you didn’t go to that venue. Because of your predetermined knowledge or assumed knowledge, you don’t get the opportunity. You have got to get out of your own way on this path and that is removing blocks from your past that you are carrying forward or assumptions that are not true.”

As you read through Manifest Your Mate what becomes clear right away is this is a journey of self-discovery. The author, Joan Severance shares her thoughts, but it is also a workbook and journal that the reader must apply to their own lives.

Joan Severance expands on that thought, “Manifest Your Mate is a guide system to keep womenon track who are seeking a man and to keep them within the boundaries that they set themselves and giving them a place to look at when they become confused or pitter patter over somebody that they know obviously is not the person that they have written down in the book. They can look back at the journal, their own words, their own thoughts and their own feelings and the boundaries that they have set within it as a guidance system. It is like a big sister, they have already asked, but it is something they have written down themselves.”

What served as the inspiration for Joan Severance to write this book? She says that she wrote Manifest Your Mate, because she has a number of “beautiful, kind and generous,” friends who are women and who are single, some of them divorced. Some women she says complain about not being able to meet the right guy.

“What I heard in all of their remarks was (negativity) and it was all about what they didn’t want in a mate. What they didn’t like, what they didn’t want, what they weren’t getting. Then I went wow that is all so negative. Why don’t you switch that around and put out what you want in a mate. Why don’t you put out (there) what you want in a mate. I would ask that of every single girlfriend that I have and it would stop them in their tracks, because they really weren’t sure. They knew what they didn’t want, but they didn’t know what they did want. I said, ahh this is the problem. How can you go shopping and get what you want, if you don’t have what you want on your list things to get? That is why I started writing the book, to look at a different way to find Mr. Right instead of waiting for Mr. Right to audition for the role of Mr. Right and then you the woman finding some sort of fault, because you are only focusing on negative things. I am turning the negative into the positive and focusing on the positive only and then see what you attract into your life,” explains Severance.

She goes on to say, “The law of attraction is a wonderful law. You will receive exactly what you put out, so with your thoughts and actions if you are putting out negative thoughts, like uggh I don’t want a guy like that or I don’t want a guy like this you are going to get that exact guy. If it is negative you are going to get it back, just the same as you put it out or if it is positive you are going to get it back just the same as you put it out.  It is like hitting a tennis ball against the wall, the ball is going to come right back at you.”

In a world of dating sites, lifestyle coaches, social media and many more ways available for people to facilitate meeting others why would Manifest Your Mate, make a difference we wondered?

“I think there is a massive consciousness on this planet that is changing, so that makes this the perfect timing for a book like this and there is a paradigm that is shifting. I have seen that happening over the years. Can we have these paradigm shifts within each individual? I think we can.

Number one you have to not bring your past to the future with anything. It is really hard to do, because we are conditioned people. We have been conditioned all of our lives to study things from the past in history and science, make it solid and bring it forward and it doesn’t ever change. That is also incorrect. History is written from someone’s point of view, from the book that you read and whose opinion as to what you are going to know and who you studied, in which school system (you are in) and in which country.

Relationships need to be looked at differently. Women are now working where women didn’t have to work before. Now every woman has to work whether it is to provide with the man in her life and the kids moving forward or as a single woman. With women working it is changing the dynamic in a male and female relationship. There is a paradigm that is shifting. Men are afraid of women and they are afraid to be men. They don’t know how to be a man. They are afraid to say things and they are afraid to do things, because they have been slapped down by women or by society or by the media. Now it is becoming this battle between men and women. I am not saying this as a general statement. It is not every single man, but men are really lost and women are really lost as well. They have had to walk into a man’s workplace and wear the pants all of the time and they don’t know how to go back to being feminine,” observes Severance.

Manifest Your Mate is not like most books, because as Joan Severance says you do not have to read the chapters in order, from first to last. She also says that as the reader works through the book they may find that an ex-husband, ex-boyfriend or ex-lover shows up in their thought process.

“They have had friends try to fix them up and they have been invited to more venues and places by friends. It is just amazing the things that I have seen happen by the responses that I have received. I know it works the minute you shift and it is really the minute that you do it. It is not a long process to get there.  It is just shifting. You are driving down this street in the traffic and if you take that right turn boom there is no traffic. It is just a decision to go in another direction and instantly you have a different path,” she says. 

Hmm does the Manifest Your Mate method work for Joan Severance?

“It did. I started writing this book a long time ago and then I met my mate and I stopped writing it for almost fourteen years. Then something happened with that situation. That situation ended, but that was my mate for that long period of time.  When I had time to get back into it and I was in one place long enough to actually sit down and to write again, I realized that I had manifested my last husband into my life. I just left out a few key components. I wasn’t strict on my boundaries and because I wasn’t strict on my boundaries I was now in an arena in this relationship where I was let’s see, let’s see, let’s see and let’s give it a chance. That is why I think boundaries are very important in relationships to not waste time. There are core things in each of us and we know that we won’t let someone walk over that boundary. Those core things are where I think we make a strict barrier become a rubber barrier. We let it stretch out a little bit and then it snaps back, because it is such a core boundary that we cannot exceed it or remove it. These are the boundaries that I am talking about in this book.

That said I have also manifested other things with this principle and instantly. In the book some of them are recounted. I don’t take my words lightly when I say things, because I do know when you get more and more on this path of understanding and how this works and doing the work, manifesting things becomes instantaneous. You have to really understand the power of your thoughts and your words when you start this book. A lot of people have told me I thought this and then it happened.  Whatever you think, whatever you ask for and whatever you state, will affect change in your life,” Severance says. Joan Severance Photo Four

Shifting subjects we wanted to ask Joan Severance about a video that she did for Vogue recently and also about a skin condition that she has called vitiligo, because she has lived her life in such a way and with a great sense of accomplishment, both personally and professionally that she serves as an inspiration to women. In the Vogue video Joan Severance provides beauty tips, but she starts with her skin stripped down to the raw, before beginning to apply any makeup.

“I started wearing makeup in high school when I was sixteen. I would get up two hours early and apply full makeup, waterproof makeup mind you, because I lived in Houston, which is very hot and sticky. I did that every day, before I went to school and then I did that every day that I had to leave the house. I did that every day until I went to Paris to become a model. I even did that on the plane flying over there. I was fully made up and I had full hair. You can imagine how silly I must have looked. I got off the plane and when I arrived at the agency they made me go wash my hair (and told me) not to do anything to my hair,” she says

They also told the young model not to wear any makeup when she went to the “go-sees,” a time when the model would meet with the client or photographer for a potential job. No makeup at all was allowed at those times.

She continues, “I had a paradigm shift and after three years of looking at myself with this full made up mask on my face I had to instantly not have it until I got to the set. I had to present myself to these strangers in this foreign land as me, the real me. I did it and everybody was accepting of me. I didn’t have a problem with it. It was very convenient not to wear makeup. I saved myself a lot of time. I don’t wear makeup unless I am working. It was a big step for me to not have all of that makeup on (in the video), because I watched all of the videos and I think there was only one young girl, maybe twenty-five years old who didn’t have any makeup on either when they were doing all of these things. Almost everyone had a full face and they applied it over or took some of it off or reapplied.

If women really want to talk about being equal with men, the first thing that you have to do is to look at men, do they wear makeup? Do they color their hair? Do they worry about the same things about their looks that you do about your looks? Absolutely not! To be equal with a man, stop coloring your hair and have the freedom and it is freeing to not have to go every two weeks to get your hair colored or processed with whatever method you choose. Number two, get up and don’t wear makeup. Don’t cover yourself up. Present yourself to that man and to the world, as you are, because eventually they are going to know that, eventually if you hook up with these men they are going to see you without makeup. To me it is a strange thing to almost bribe and demand of your women that they hide who they really are. It is not so much enhancing anymore and some of the makeup is enhancing, but some of it is hiding.

One of the reasons that I did the Vogue video and started with no makeup is precisely what I just said, we shouldn’t have to hide ourselves and we shouldn’t have to feel any lesser of ourselves whether we have makeup on or not. The second part of that was the vitiligo condition that I have, because people with this condition do hide themselves. They hide the condition and they cover it all of the time primarily, because it helps people to look at them. The darker your skin the more obvious it is and like anything that we don’t see as normal or as often in our lives the first few times that you are encountering someone with this condition you might be embarrassed, because you don’t know how to react or how to talk to the person with vitiligo. (Some people) think that it is like talking to an alien all of a sudden instead of another human being.

I just wanted to put it out there, because all of my family and friends and close people and people with whom I have worked over the years have known about this. Publically people didn’t and mostly it is not associated with people of lighter skin color. Now you can say that people of lighter skin color also have this condition and have the same issues with it in their lives. It is how they look at it and how they are viewed. It is how comfortable they feel with it and what they do with it publically and privately. It is another point that I want to get out there when it comes to makeup. I think makeup is fine if you are trying to camouflage something like that or a scar or something that you don’t feel comfortable with. If you don’t have that there is really no reason to wear makeup.”

Joan Severance is taking things a step further in creating a better understanding and awareness of vitiligo, she is writing her second book and this one deals with that subject.  

“It is about my life, loves and lessons with this condition called vitiligo. It has tons of my personal stories and personal life and lots of research about the condition, my thoughts about it and my thoughts about the different types of treatments that are out there, which are few. The book will have interviews with people from all over the world who have this condition and all different ages, ethnicities, men, women, young, old, parents of those people as well, the lovers of those people. It presents all viewpoints of it, plus alternate treatments that I am actually doing in my research and letting people know whether it worked or not. Has it shifted something? How much does it cost? Some of these treatments you can’t do unless you stay at home for six months with stuff slathered on your body.

It was while Joan Severance was participating in a treatment with people from all over the world that she had numerous people encourage her to write the book and they told her that she could be a spokesperson for people with vitiligo.

“I didn’t know how to do that at all or why I would. I have never made this condition a major focus. It is just like anyone else you get on with your life and you do it. By writing the book it is really making me focus on it and I have to tell you that every single day (she repeats this for emphasis) I see or I meet someone with this condition. That is blowing me away. I was told that this is only 2% of the population that has this, but I think it is only 2% that is reported. I instantly go up to them and I say hey we have something in common.

This condition is not covered under insurance. The only treatment in America that exists is through a dermatologist only (using a lightbox) and maybe sometimes you can do this at college through their dermatology studies. They (insurance companies) call it a cosmetic condition. Why would the body all of a sudden in certain areas for absolutely no reason that anyone could find out stop producing its number one protector, which is melanin. If you don’t have melanin your skin will burn right off of your body under the sun. I just don’t understand how they can call that a cosmetic condition. It is not even on the outside of their skin, it is in deep at the hypodermis level where the melanin is made and where the melanocytes live. I just don’t understand that. We have to take action in getting that reversed first, so that insurance can cover these treatments. Hopefully they will be able to give people the lightbox or allow them to have a lightbox in their homes, so it is not so inconvenient. That is my mission here,” she says.

Joan Severance also has her own line of haircare products and she took a few moments to talk about them, “They are fabulous (you can hear the excitement in her voice). This stuff is so fabulous I can’t stop touching my hair. I have a lot of hair and I have had a lot of hair all of my life. I am not complaining and a lot of women who read that will probably go (she changes her voice) oh and she has a lot of hair. In the eighties it was great, boom, bam hair, hair, but right now it’s this sleek sort of straight look that is in and I cannot accomplish with all of this hair on my head.  With my new hair shampoo and conditioner I can actually do it now with a straightening iron. I can get my hair pretty close to my head. I don’t even need the conditioner, because the shampoo doesn’t have much detergent in it where most shampoos have a lot of detergent in them and what it does when that detergent hits your hair. A hair shaft is really funny. It is like shingles on a roof. It is not smooth, it is rough. Then you take the detergent and it makes the shingles on the roof like they have been parched by the sun for twenty years. It opens up and pulls open every shingle and therefore you need the conditioner and that is why you have shampoo and conditioner. This shampoo (her line) is so luscious that I don’t need conditioner. The hair shaft doesn’t get all frazzled, because it has so little detergent in it. It just makes your hair so great. I just love it. Everyone loves the product. I am not going to just slap my name on something, because I can slap my name on something. I use this product, have used this product and it is all that I use.  I don’t use anything else and I don’t need anything else. I don’t even need hair treatments. Sometimes on the weekend you will treat your hair in olive oil and I know guys don’t do this, but women do.  The hairsprays and the styling sprays dry your hair out so bad.  

You can wash your hair with olive oil and then the vinegar can go and you just put it on your scalp. Apple cider vinegar will probably be a little less stringent. People will do a baking soda and there are all sorts of natural remedies that you can do. I don’t wash my hair every day and I suggest to my customers that they don’t wash their hair every day, unless they really need to. If you are out there sweating in the fields, yes wash your hair or just rinse through it and let your natural oil come out. You need to keep your hair follicles open and not constricted. As we age the lack of collagens doesn’t support the skin structure, so our hair texture might get finer and getting finer it might get curlier and wavier or those little follicles might just stop altogether and you start to lose your hair. Stress will do that.  Anyone who has been under stress knows that your hair can just fall out overnight. The first thing to do is to find out what is causing that stress. If it is nutritional it is one thing. With you hair it can also be the products that you are using. If your scalp isn’t clean those follicles can get clogged. Shampoos with parabens in them, which is a waxy substance, can clog your pores and you don’t want to do that. Conditioners have a lot of parabens in them, but mine doesn’t.”

Joan Severance’s modeling career has spanned decades, something that is a rarity and when asked about the reasons for that longevity, it caused her to reflect thoughtfully.

“I think I have the ability to sell products, which is the real core issue why people hire you. In my later years of modeling I have had fun looking at it from a whole different perspective. I was good at it and I think that is another reason that I get jobs still. I am good at making the clothes look great. I am good at whatever it is that needs to be done. I am good at focusing in on whatever it is that you are selling here and let’s make sure it is sold correctly with my image. I think in my later years, because of the silver thing and the whole gray hair thing and they are really trying to bring older women in. It is a very small niche market. Very few women my age have let their hair go gray. It is much easier for me to make my face match my hair when my hair is like this than it is to make my face match my hair when I choose to color my hair and I look old. You would think someone with that hair would look younger. My choice to let my hair go gray was based on not wanting to go through all of the surgical procedures to make the two go together. This way they naturally go together as intended and the other way when I see it, it looks a bit plastic to me when I know the woman’s age.  A lot of people have hired me, just because I did that and I made that choice, which is funny,” she says.

Joan Severance has a Bachelor of Natural Health degree and she explains what led her to pursue that, “I decided to do that when my father was having complications with type 2 diabetes. I dove in to help him learn to help himself. In that process I got this degree. I learned so much about all of the modalities of healing, of which western medicine is the youngest. The power of plants western medicine knows, because most pharmaceuticals are derived from plants and nature, fruit and things like that. They are directly derived. They just change the molecules, so they can patent things. By changing the molecules your body might not know what that substance is. Your body would definitely know what a natural substance is and it has all of the requirements and ammunition to fight off anything that you might ingest that you shouldn’t ingest. Anyone who has been out in the forest and eaten something poisonous quickly knows that you will be vomiting it out as quickly as you put it in.

Type 2 diabetes is reversible. You don’t have to get on the insulin, there are other ways. I am not going to use the C word of cure, because you can’t use that word anymore. However, people have completely reversed their diabetes without using insulin or any other pharmaceuticals. That is what I was trying to help my father with and for him to understand, the hows and the whys of what was going on internally with him, before he decided to get on the insulin, which would stop any production that you might have still happening of insulin. People are going to go down their own path and they are going to do it their way. They are going to do what they are trained to believe. Sometimes it is just laziness, it is easier to take a pill or it is easier to just inject yourself than to change a diet and exercise.”

Joan Severance shares her approaching to coaching individuals, “I think because all of us come from where we are and if we don’t have a support system to surround us to see things differently and we choose to want a different path or to have different results I think it is a great idea for people to reach out to a personal coach who has a different point of view. They are not in your rut, so they can actually see it from above and out of the rut place. They don’t need to rely entirely on a personal coach. Like a therapist, I don’t think that it should be a ten year relationship. Hopefully, you don’t need that. You (may need) coaching now and then if you get stuck in a rut, but what I see most people wanting to do with coaches or personal coaches is to just be a dumping board or a dumping bucket for their issues and not really taking the coaching and learning from it and moving forward and away from the coach. When I work with people it is for a limited amount of time, because I think the responsibility lies not with the coach, but on the person taking the coaching and for them to listen and to learn.”

Joan Severance has enjoyed a career in the world of glamour and beauty and fashion and yet she is as down to earth as pumpkin pie and ice cream. She is articulate, intelligent, creative and entrepreneurial. She is also leaving her imprint on this world in a positive way and serving as a great role model for women.

Joan Severance’s book Manifest Your Mate is available through Amazon and other online book sellers. You can also purchase her phraseology game txTylz through Amazon or here.

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This interview by Joe Montague  published June 25, 2017 is protected by copyright © and is the property of Riveting Riffs Magazine All Rights Reserved.  All photos are the the property of  Joan Severance , unless otherwise noted and all  are protected by copyright © All Rights Reserved. This interview may not be reproduced in print or on the internet or through any other means without the written permission of Riveting Riffs Magazine, All Rights Reserved