Episode 4: Trust the Process

After the weight of Episode Three, Justin Nordine shifts the energy — but not the depth. This episode is warmer, more personal, and rooted in something Justin knows better than almost anything else: the tattoo process.

For eighteen years, Justin has asked his clients to do something most people find genuinely uncomfortable. Submit their story. Sit in a consultation. Share what they want to carry on their skin for the rest of their life. And then — let go. No previews. No sketches. No control over the outcome. They don't see the design until they walk through the door on appointment day.

What sounds like a creative process is actually something much bigger. It's a practice in trust. And the fear that shows up in the days leading up to that reveal? That's the real conversation this episode is about.

Justin pulls back the curtain on his full submission process — rooted in the themes of Awaken, Transform, and Heal — and uses it as a lens to explore how fear operates in all of us. Not just in the tattoo chair, but in our relationships, our families, and in a world that currently feels louder and more uncertain than ever.

He gets honest about his own journey — including a raw moment in therapy after his suicide attempt where he told his therapist the one thing he wanted most was to fall in love with himself. He shares the personal reality of what it looks like to stop living for other people's approval, including navigating judgment from others about his own family — and what it took to stop carrying that fear as his own.

This episode makes a clear distinction between fear that is protecting you and fear that is just running the show. And it offers something quieter and more grounded as an alternative — not confidence, not certainty, but love. Real love. The kind that starts inside, that doesn't ask for anyone's permission, and that makes trust possible even when the outcome is unknown.

The world is full of things to grip right now. Epstein files. Economic instability. The possibility of war. And closer to home — the bills, the kids, the health scares, the life that doesn't look like you planned. Justin isn't asking you to let go of all of it.

He's just asking you to notice where your hand is clenched.

Because the most meaningful work — in the tattoo studio and in life — happens in the space between what we think we want and what we actually need. And that space only opens when we're willing to trust the process.