Continual Edge and the Hollow Bone

Continual Edge and the Hollow Bone

To mark the 20th episode, we came together without a guest. When we began this podcast 10 months ago, it was in response to a nudge we both had to just begin. Each episode has deepened us. We’ve planted seeds together and apart. We have leapt. For the first half of the episode, Becky shares how she and her family are moving to Maine where she suspects her creative energy will root and anchor her to the queasiness of uncertainty. We discuss what it feels like to be unmoored, how Pema Chodron teaches that change is constant, and the queasiness of uncertainty never goes away; only our relationship to it does. Both of us find ourselves unanchored right now, living life on an edge and learning to be there and stay in flow. Spoiler alert, it is destabilizing, difficult, and wonderful. In the second half of the episode, Christina shares candidly that her life is transforming in front of her, how through a series of events over the last six months, she has remembered that she is a healer. Lifelong mysticism and recent art installations in places of healing led her to this place. She notices light and makes art, and now when she touches people, she notices light move through them. This realization is asking her to see the world and her place in it differently. Christina shares how in many ways this shocks her while also feeling like the truest thing she has ever felt. As Terry Tempest Williams says, “what is mysticism but paying attention?” Go deeper into this episode * Watch Pema Chödrön discuss the queasy feeling and using uncertainty as the practice: * Read Christina’s latest substack (and subscribe if you aren’t already!) * Read Liturgies of the Wild by Martin Shaw, which contains the quote about geography as fate * Listen to The Nature Of podcast episode with Terry Tempest Williams: https://atmos.earth/podcast/uncovering-the-holy-ordinary-with-terry-tempest-williams/ [https://atmos.earth/podcast/uncovering-the-holy-ordinary-with-terry-tempest-williams/] * And PLEASE go look at the image of the 3D Universe!!! Every dot of light is an entire galaxy….and this is only an image of a very small segment of the observable Universe!!! https://noirlab.edu/public/images/noirlab2610a/zoomable/ [https://noirlab.edu/public/images/noirlab2610a/zoomable/] Episode Transcript Christina: I am on my way to go see my grandmother. Um, she’s waiting for me. So I’m going, and, um, I just read this message, and I love this. It’s very much how I see the world. Like, I-- It, it, it reminds me too of like I believe that I am God and you are God. And so the eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me. It’s all saying the same beautiful thing where there is no separation and, um... Yeah. It’s like I-- It’s so, it’s so real. I don’t even have anything else to say because it’s just so correct. Becky: Welcome to Noticing: A Podcast About Nothing And Everything At The Same Time. To mark our 20th episode, Christina and I decided that it would be a good time to come back together again without a guest. So in this conversation, we talk about my upcoming move to Maine and what it’s like to live on a continual edge. In the second part of the conversation, Christina talks about some truly transformative things that have been happening in her life. Events that have felt both miraculous and obvious at the same time. To allow for a little more space for my upcoming move, we’re going to be taking a little bit of a break and coming back for the next episode on June 12. And in the meantime, I hope you enjoy We’re back. We’re back together. Christina: I know. It’s just the two of us now. It- we- we’re at episode 20, right? Becky: Episode 20. Christina: It was nice. You know, for a while it was ... Like, we established this together and it felt really good. Mm-hmm. And then it started to feel like maybe we could include some others. And then when we included others, that felt really good, and it still feels really good, but it’s kinda nice we both had the same inkling to just drop in a, a duo. You know? Becky: A du- kinda catch up with life, catch up with ... Um, things have changed a lot. So it’s been 10 months. So 20 episodes, 10 months. Mm. And yeah. Wow. Christina: ... You know, even between episodes I feel like we’ve been making these massive leaps in ourselves and just ... Yeah. I mean, you’re, you’re about to move here. Becky: Yeah, it’s been, like, the most obvious and easy and effortless journey, and also moments of what is happening. It, it’s like, it’s definitely all the feelings. I’ve been reflecting a lot on this lately because I’ve been feeling so ... Untethered is the word that I’ve been using, where I just feel strange, you know? Because there aren’t the rhythms and routines that I had before because we’re in the process of moving. So I’ve just been sitting with this untethered feeling, and I stumbled upon this, interview with Pema Chödrön, and she was talking about getting used to the queasiness. I like this word that she used, the queasiness of uncertainty, and how uncertainty is actually the practice. So yeah, I’ve been really sitting with that, of, of it’s an uncertain time in my life, but it’s also such an uncertain time now. But as she was reminding, reminding me, I re-listened to it last night, uh, that life is always uncertain, that it feels particularly, untethered and uncertain right now, but it’s... That’s not... This is, this is actually the truth of life, is there are no certainties in life. We can, fall into a sense of, control and a sense of something to grasp onto. Hmm. And we certainly try as humans. So I’ve been really feeling like this untethered feeling, this queasiness, is actually what it feels like to be fully alive. Christina: Mm-hmm. It’s really interesting that you bring that up first because, nobody knows this because we don’t usually share it on here, but we always start with a grounding meditation together. And in this grounding meditation this morning, I had this sense that I was a blade of grass in a field of grasses blowing around, and I was thinking like, “Ah. I actually- ... don’t really want to.” Like, I don’t wanna blow. I just... And then I was thinking, like, it’s frustrating to be a human being as a blade of grass because you think there’s so many other things that you need to be doing, and you’re actually not n- not used to, you know, being at the whims of the weather, and that’s what it feels like right now. That’s what I hear you describing. Hmm. That’s what... I talked to a parent yesterday as we were waiting for our kids to be done with tennis lessons. We talked about that. We talked about how it is so uncomfortable to- Mm-hmm ... be unmoored, untethered, unanchored. And yet those are the times in life typically when so much growth happens. Mm-hmm. And, sometimes life will just push you into that feeling, that situation that causes that feeling. Sometimes you will willingly leap, and that is also hard. Um, I’m here too. A lot of people are here right now. And it’s, you know, it’s, it’s everywhere. I mean, you g- you guys, when you were thinking about moving, there was a lot of thinking about it for a lot of time leading up to it, and a lot of, like, testing the waters, coming up here to live for a month, and doing all of this life research or, or that’s maybe how I would describe it, and then you just leapt, right? Mm-hmm. Becky: Yeah. Christina: And I think there’s always that moment of you can’t research your way to perfect clarity. And at some point you just have to decide to do the thing. And when you do the thing, you’re still leaping. Like I’ve been, saying no to a lot of things that I had said yes to for years, two years probably at this point. And, life s- is s- seems to be giving me an, a, a, an out because this series that I’ve worked on since the beginning of my art career that, like, put me on the map, and got me a cushy life as an artist making an income that served me well, which is more than many artists can say, and I’m aware of that. This series I think has found its inevitable ending- Because the glue that I use to install it with, which is the only thing I’ve ever found that works fully, is completely discontinued. It’s like- Oh ... not being made anymore. And so I’ve had... I’ve found all of these side roads. In COVID, it stopped being made in the form that I needed, so I would just buy these huge caulking guns full of it and, and I found these empty tubes that, like, lotion manufacturers probably buy. And I would squee- I would use a caulking gun and, like, squeeze my own tubes and tape them up and label them and, um, I can’t even do that anymore. And- Becky: Mm ... Christina: the woman who helps me, a friend of mine helps me make these individual pieces now, and, she’s moving. So she’s not close to me anymore, and it’s just like, well, shit. Okay, I can’t do this. I have to actually release this safety net. It’s not comfortable. No. It’s been the safety net that has provided me with financial security, ‘cause I can always kind of say like, “Yeah, I can do that. That can, like, fund the new ideas.” I, I feel like I’m someone who has a lot of faith in life- Mm-hmm ... and it’s still uncomfortable. Becky: Yeah, I mean, even Pema Chödrön was talking about, uh, the interviewer was asking her, “Does that feeling ever go away, that queasy feeling?” Mm. And she was like, “ no. ... the things that would give you the queasy feeling in the past tend to not evoke that same queasiness,” to use her language, “but you’re always at an edge, you know?” Yeah. Hopefully, I think life wants us to always be on an edge, always growing, a growth edge. Mm. So when you hit those edges,... that feeling’s never gonna go away, and I... and what she said was, and what I’ve been playing with for years, but just in a different language, is now it’s like when she gets the queasy feeling, it’s, it’s excitement because she knows- Yeah ... she’s touching something that is at her edge and that will lead to growth, and it’s, it really... it just put different language, to what I’ve been playing with and, and really anchoring in for a couple years, which is getting comfortable with discomfort. Like, that is the practice, is not to make it go away, not to avoid it or, or suppress it, but to just get comfortable with that, that discomfort. Um, and it’s not easy. Mm-mm. It’s not easy. Christina: But you even used the term anchoring. You said you’re anchoring- Mm ... in the, the ability to hold the discomfort of being unanchored, basically. Yeah. So it’s, it’s a reframe. And ... I’ve, I’ve practiced this too, and twins were the thing that really, really helped me- Mm-hmm ... practice that. But you know what’s different now is, for me, I’m recognizing, the last couple of weeks in particular, I have done a poor job of protecting my time. So one thing that I have realized can help me, uh, metabolize this, this feeling or be with it, whatever you wanna call it- is, is allowing myself spaciousness in the day. And I have lacked spaciousness in the day- .. for the last couple of weeks, for many reasons, many of them great reasons. Birthday parties. Um, w- there’s like a lot of end of year school stuff that is very loud and takes up a lot of space in the day, and I’m not protected from that. But I find that having some more space in the day allows me to feel less frenetic moving- Mm-hmm from one thing to the next thing to the next thing. Becky: Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I was experiencing. ‘Cause when you’re buying and selling houses, it’s, it’s like there’s this, all this activity in the beginning, and it felt very, um... That was just my focus, you know? So it’s, it’s kinda like the same feeling that you’re talking about with the birthday parties and everything. Like, life was asking for very immediate attention from me. ... And because it was joyous and I was going with that flow, I wasn’t meditating. I wasn’t having even those little moments of, as you call it, protecting your time or just, like, re-anchoring in myself is really what the practice of meditation is, is re-anchoring in my own, inner wells of resiliency and what I noticed is then when we hit that lull period, ‘cause we were insanely privileged that, our house sold right away, and so the, it... the timing was just like all of a sudden we had this lull where there really wasn’t anything to do, and that’s when the untethered feeling really started being uncomfortable- Yeah ... um, because I actually had to sit in it. ... And I noticed that I was reaching for distractions. I was reaching for, um, the pace that life was giving me. Because when life is giving you that pace, you don’t have to sit in discomfort. I didn’t have to sit in the, “Holy shit, I’m moving my entire life to another state, and I have no idea,” like... And I’m leaving a house that I love, um, so I’m not even running from anything, you know? And so it reminded me that even when life is full and busy, Those practices are so important to, yeah, to anchor not in anything outside of myself, but to anchor in myself and anchor in my own, ability to be present. Christina: Yeah. It’s hard. And as a, as a parent with many children, it feels like you’re selling a house every day. It really does. So, so you have to... At least for me, I have had to be super conscious about it. Yeah. And it’s changed, it’s changed my baseline in a way that I, I immediate- I immediately recognize it. Yeah. And, um, yeah. So, like yesterday when I brought Jack to play tennis, instead of doing work, I just laid on the grass and felt- Mm ... the wind on my body. And so even to realize, “No, Christina, do not think of that as 45 minutes that you have to do something.” Yeah. Think of that as 45 minutes that you have to be. Yeah. And it makes a massive difference. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah, yeah. So it’s good. It’s a good reminder, and it’s just like e- everything is always changing balance. Becky: Mm-hmm. And- And I was... As I was re-listening to the last episode with Jenny, and, so many things she said really stuck with me. But when she said, “We are a creature that forgets that it’s alive.” Yes. Yeah. And it’s so true, and, and that’s fine. I think it’s also, like, allowing those waves, allowing the forgetting, and not, not adding on a layer of judgment. And I, I felt myself doing that a little bit. I had just read your latest Substack, which really, hit me. It was beautiful. And I had this, um... I had a lot of things come up. Mm. But one, uh, I mean, just in reaction to the piece, it was beautiful, but then it kind of turned inward a little bit and there was a l- there was the first whispers of judgment. And then grace came in and I was just able to see myself and, and not in that comparison, you know? Because it’s so easy to fall into comparison and, and think, like... I just imagine you, uh, with such focus and such presence, and sometimes I struggle to- I have this image sometimes of myself sitting for hours reading a book and just being really, present and calm, and that’s always a good vision that I’m always working towards, and it’s... I struggle. I mean, even reading, I really struggle with, um... Ooh, I wonder if there’s some, uh, shame present that’s making me less clear and, uh, articulate. I, I struggle with reading. I’m very dyslexic. It’s, it’s an effort. I feel the effort sometimes just to sit and read and stay on the line. Like, to make my eyes stay on that line, it’s a lot of effort. And I started, feeling a little bit of judgment, and then I was able to come back and just be in that untethered feeling and just be in, like, “This is who I am, and this is where I am,” and, how beautiful that the awareness of this untethered feeling came in so quickly. And I do have resources, and I do have practices that I can, I can bring in. Christina: Can I ask what the judgment was? You were judging yourself for something? Becky: Yeah. I think I was judging myself, for distracting, reaching for distractions- Mm-hmm ... ... acting in a way that is out of alignment with some idealized version of myself that I was holding in that moment. Mm-hmm. And the judgment, the self-judgment is quieter. It’s definitely quieter than it’s ever been in my life. Yeah. But it’s still... Those things don’t go... I don’t think they go away. I think our relationship just changes to them. So instead of just believing that judgmental voice and then, m- you know, letting that judgmental voice have the microphone in my mind, I’m now able to have a dialogue with that voice and recognize, like, “I hear you, yeah,” you know? Mm-hmm. It’s... And it’s... And acknowledging that it’s painful. I mean, a... so many of us have visions of ourself or visions of our life that we may never be able to fully actualize. Mm-hmm. And that’s painful, you know? Mm-hmm. Christina: I mean, so that Substack, that essay was about presence, which is what all of them are. And I found those moments in a matter of,... It was like, um, a culmination of moments. One in the evening after the frenzy of putting kids to bed, and, I went outside and everything was right in front of me, and it stops me. It stops me because I’m selling houses all day, right? Every day. Yeah. I’m not a real estate agent, but, you know, you know what I mean. The metaphor pulls. And, um, yeah, I was out there and I was just... I gave myself that time to sit and absorb everything around me, and I literally was singing to the robins. They were making a racket. And, and that’s when I can be the blade of grass willingly- Mm ... because I choose it, and it feels really good. And so then the next morning, there was like rain down the rain chain. I’m, I was noticing these narcissus bulbs that were bowing, and I was thinking, “My God, they just rest because they just have to.” Mm. Then all of these things, you know, throughout the day as things are busy, I will jot these little thoughts down somewhere in like a notebook or on a notes app on my phone or something, wherever I am, whatever I have around me, and they just sit there and wait patiently for me to be able to weave them into words, into essays that I might share. Because that literally fills my body with a physical ache if I can’t let it out. And so this particular essay, I was feeling this frenzy of May-cember, which is a term that parents know, and, um- ... everything happens in May, and, uh, it’s intense. And I recognized that I had not protected my time enough, and then I recognized that I had so many things on my to-do list for the studio to get these commissions out, which is a blessing that I even have that to complain about, right? Mm-hmm. And, um, and, and I just had to completely clear the morning so that I could get that out of my body- Mm ... because that was in my body saying like, “Please pay attention to me.” That is also a meditation for me, is writing down the things I notice. Mm. And, um, so I’m, I’m saying this because, uh, it’s not a constant, it’s not a constant flow and presence and focus. I feel I feel- waves of enlightenment every day And I think I’m supposed to share that in this life, ... even if it makes someone uncomfortable. And I also recognize that waves of enlightenment are just waves. They’re not consistent. Yeah. They’re not, um... Or rather, they are consistent, they’re not constant. Becky: Mm-hmm. Christina: Because you wouldn’t be able to feel them if they were constant. Becky: Yeah. Christina: Like when I was sitting on my back porch listening to the robins and the peepers, I was like, I was having a transcendent experience for about five minutes. And I think transcendent experiences don’t typically flow as often when I’m really busy. Sometimes they do, and they’re a little shocking then. But, the most transcendent things I’ve experienced have been when I am slow. Becky: you’re reminding me a little bit of what, uh, what the judgment was. That feeling that you describe that it was like gnawing at your belly, that it had to come out. Mm-hmm. I feel that all the time. .. I haven’t quite found exactly the right way to let it out consistently. So this is the lesson, right? This was the dialogue. I could have sat in that, and I could have sat in the judgment and, and turned it inward as there’s something wrong with me, or I’m not good enough. Instead, I started to - talk to it. And o- opening up my, aperture of possibility and of looking at my current situation with clear eyes, was like, “Becky, this isn’t the time to, like, get to know your local robins. We’re in a different time.” Like, this was kind of the dialogue. Yeah. And then remembering why we’re doing this move in the first place. Yeah. That life is pulling me towards this move to set up the conditions so that I might have a better outlet. Mm. So I might have m- maybe will be more resourced so that I can touch or express these things that I feel so deeply that are gnawing at my or pulling at my belly and want to get out but don’t know how to get out yet. That’s why I’m moving. So it was like this dialogue to pull myself out of that, this binary thinking of I’m bad or I’m good or I’m, you know, capable- Yeah ... or not, and into a place of the seeds are there. Mm-hmm. You know? And it’s uncomfortable waiting for things to grow, for me. Um... Absolutely it is. For e- Christina: I would think that would be a universal truth, honestly. Um. This is an interesting point that you’re making. You’re reflecting something that’s... Uh, so, so I, I felt a physical relief. I would call that, like, mm, for me it feels like creative energy in my body that, wants to come out, and I have many avenues to release that, and I always have. Uh, and a difficult part for me has been having to focus on a few of them to, to make them really, mm, work or, or I don’t know. I’m just one person with like 365 days in a year and 24 hours a day and three children and, you know, things. So I have to, I had to focus them. Um, but it’s, uh... Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting to hear you say that you have that feeling all the time and you don’t know how to let it out. Becky: Not always. There’s moments, but right now in particular it’s, it feels very trapped in my body. Christina: Mm. Yeah, because then I’m thinking too, like, Like communing with the robin is also enough. Christina: And I’m wondering if I couldn’t express that communion somehow, would it be enough? Becky: Yeah, and that’s... I’m sitting with that a little bit because, I think there is a part of me that deeply feeling allowing the world to move through me in just expressing it in emotion, in emotions, feeling it fully. I was asking myself that too, is this enough? Christina: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Becky: Or can it be enough for now? Christina: Totally. Because, what do you think you will find in Maine? What do you suspect you will find in Maine that will change this reality for you so that the urges will be able to come out? Like, what does moving do that? You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. That’s where... That’s the end question of this, ‘cause I’m thinking... Yeah, I, I, I’ll just leave that question actually for you to think about. Becky: Yeah. I mean, the first thing that came to mind was the ocean. Just I think my whole being is being called to the water and to the ocean, and, it’s one of those things where it’s, it’s not logical. There’s just something about that land that inspires me and helps me feel alive. I was even r- reflecting on, um- It’s windy. It’s, you know, we’re gonna be right by the coast. It’s very windy there. Mm-hmm. Um, and I- wind has always been the one element that made me the most uncomfortable. I have sensitive ears. Oh. It hurts my ears. It messes up my hair. Mm-hmm. You know? These are real things. These are real things, and I, I thought it was very interesting reflecting on why am I going there? ... And it’s an edge. It’s a growth edge. It’s putting my body in the ocean consistently, you know? Mm-hmm. Which nothing makes me feel more alive, but I don’t have consistent access to it here. It’s getting comfortable with the wind, you know? And actually, I’m getting little glimpses of really loving the wind, and it’s... I find that often, where there... when there’s things that I experience some resistance to- Mm-hmm uh, there’s something on the other side. Mm. There’s something big. It’s a growth edge. It’s, it’s, you know, that queasiness that Pema Chödrön was talking about, and on the other side of it is growth, is a new version of me that ... I can’t even tell you what that version is. Mm-hmm. But I feel this pull towards it, and I feel there’s something there. Mm-hmm. I don’t know what it is- Christina: Mm-hmm ... Becky: but I feel something. Christina: Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I think I’m... That’s sort of what I was getting at, is that it was described at the beginning of this part of the conversation as, like, a... that’s where your creative... felt like that’s where, like, your creative energy can, can be released, and I wonder if it will just put you more in touch with, with life. Like, with- Mm-hmm ... um, a friend of mine who, I was talking to her about Maine. She lives here too, and she was like, “Maine is my soul hospital.” And I love that, because there was something that happened for me when I moved here where everything started feeling correct. Like, really correct, and this is where I know I wanna root, and I have rooted, and I’m still rooting. And she mentioned this book that she was reading. And the man who wrote it was talking about how geography is fate. Like, think about that. Geography as fate. If you believe in fate, it could mean that- Where you are destined to go is where you blossom That’s what this has felt like to me. Um, I saw this house online, and it had been there for a while, and I got a feeling, and then we walked into it, and it was a feeling. And ever since then, it’s just been like, “Is this... Am I going to... Like, how could I possibly feel more awake than I already do and alive than I already do?” And it continues to deepen. And then I think about it as, if I think about geography as fate, it’s an interesting thought because I guarantee you I wouldn’t feel like this in LA, you know? Mm-hmm. It’s not where I’m supposed to be. And there is something... There is a particular edge about being here, especially, like, if you’re talking about being uncomfortable in the wind, it’s like... And, and the ocean, and you combine those two, my goodness. Choosing to swim in the ocean all year, you’re met with something new every time. And it’s, it, it’s crazy. You can have freezing cold ocean that hits you in the face as you’re walking into it. Um, yeah, it’ll be really interesting. I’m really excited to see, like, how that happens. What that, what that changes in you or deepens in you. Becky: Yeah. Yeah, and I’m not moving into it with, uh, any expectations, but just a lot of curiosity. Maine does feel like continual edge because- Yes ... the ocean does change every single day, you know? Yeah. And so it’s like meeting that edge, as practice, you know? It’s, it is what Pema Chödrön was talking about of, using the uncertainty as the practice. Getting into the cold ocean every day is uncertainty. You don’t know what the water’s gonna bring that day, and it’s just... It’s like a meditation practice, that it, it- Keeps those muscles from atrophying, you know? Mm-hmm. ‘Cause you’re constantly flexing them every single day. And I’m excited for that. And I’ve also... I think I’m just, you know, I’m a teacher who’s not really teaching right now, and I think there’s, there’s some frustration in that. We, we both are people who are oriented towards it’s not enough to just experience the aliveness of the world. There’s this deep-seated desire to share. Yeah. And that’s, that’s deeply embedded in Buddhist teachings. You don’t achieve enlightenment for yourself. That’s not the goal. The goal is to then come back and liberate. It’s liberation for all. Mm. Um, and so to feel that so deeply, especially in this time where everything feels heightened and urgent, I think it’s just magnifying that feeling of like, let’s go. You know, wanting to, I, deepen any gifts I have and share them urgently. Um, and, if I’m a blade of grass blowing in the wind, ... I don’t control the wind. I can’t control how fast a seed grows. And that’s the discomfort, is to just sit in the frustration and let it teach me, let it point me to, oh, this is really important. It’s really important that I have outlets and not distract myself. It’s, it’s all new. It’s all new. That’s what I’m very grateful... I’m so grateful for a lot of things, but I never want to feel so stagnant or... I just don’t want those muscles of growth, the muscles that you need for growth. And I don’t mean physical muscles, obviously. I, I mean muscles of resiliency and, and, I want my system to stay nimble and, lubricated. Yeah. I want my system to stay lubricated enough so when life calls me towards something big, a big change, that I have the resources, uh, to, inner resources to say yes. And I think a lot about, I, these themes of, like... Um, I think it started when I shared that image with you, uh, of the scientist who did a 3D model of the universe. Mm-hmm. And we looked at that image, and it was so... It looked like fabric. It... I saw fascia. I saw, um- Christina: The interstitium ... Becky: the interstitium in, like, the, in the darkness, in the spaces between. I saw the neural pathways connecting, everything connecting in these webs, you know. When we were talking with Jenny, we were talking about the, the roles we all play in this ecosystem, in the web of life, but even, like, a, a literal web, like, everything being connected. Um, and yeah, you see reflections of that in our body in, like, our fascia gets tight. You lose that lubrication. You lose that elasticity to grow and flex. And, I think there’s an energetic flexibility that’s needed, too, but when you’re not- It’s just like when you sit all day and you’re not moving your body and your fascia gets tight- Mm which makes movement, physical movement harder. I think the same thing happens on the energetic level when we’re not, stretching and growing ourselves in our vulnerability, in our learning new things. Things can get tight and, and then it does make, make it harder. Just like, you know, I’ve been sitting a lot lately and I haven’t been stretching, I haven’t been moving my body, so doing things with my physical body is harder, and some things would be impossible now that I could have done 20 years ago. It’s the same thing on an energetic level. So I’m just feeling so grateful for all of the mental, emotional, energetic exercising that I’ve been doing over the years that makes this possible to uproot our life and move to another state where we don’t know anyone. I’m not moving to your town. I’m, I’m moving to Maine, but not next door to my dear friend. We don’t know anyone there. It’s scary. So building those muscles, having those daily practices of getting into the ocean, g- getting into uncertainty, I think is so important. Mm. So important. Christina: Yeah. Yeah, and there’s not a lot of stuff in your life that would put you into discomfort naturally. Like... even to just, like, beat this tennis lesson to a pulp. Like, if I might see a parent that I don’t really wanna talk to and I have to. Mm-hmm. Or somebody falls down. Like, I’m, I’m more, because, because of kids, I guess, and maybe because of my proximity to other people compared to where you are, I’ve like faced in- faced with life- Mm-hmm unpredictable life more often. Um, and, and so it’s... I think it’s really admirable what you’re doing because you could just stay in your really comfy life where you are there. That has served you so well- so that you can feel brave and ready to, like, do this big new thing. Um, you could totally choose to just keep doing that. But you’re not. You’re choosing to kinda like blow up your life in a really cool way. Becky: Yeah, I think that’s also the important thing is, um, I think sometimes people wait for life to blow up their life. Yeah. And I have no interest in that. Like, I, I, I got the assignment. I know what my work is. I don’t need life... Uh, forcing my hand. Mm-hmm. Um, and maybe that’s why we didn’t have kids, you know? I want it on my terms. Mm-hmm. Life doesn’t wanna be stagnant. Mm-mm. Life isn’t stagnant. There’s nothing stagnant in life. Yep. Um, if you ignore the call of life, the invitation of life to grow, and meet your edge, and be uncomfortable, life might force your hand, and I just personally have no interest in that. I’d rather, I’d rather practice it on my own terms. Mm-hmm. So the awareness, I think, is really, um, helpful and important to recognize. Doesn’t make it easier. Mm-hmm. This quote that I, we have on our fridge that we’ve had for years is, even in the, the most longed-for changes, there is melancholy because you must die to the life that you had in order to have a new life. Mm-hmm. And I feel that all the time. Christina: Mm-hmm. I mean, my 96-year-old grandmother, who’s currently releasing her life- Mm-hmm ... however long it takes, she always says, “Everything changes. Everything changes, so you get to enjoy the things while they’re good, and know that the bad things will change.” Like the things that are uncomfortable will pass. And, um, yeah. The energy of life is in constant creative flow. Mm-hmm. And so you can either resist it or you can take the ride. Becky: But the ride will make you queasy. Christina: Mm-hmm. Becky: And so it’s, yeah, it’s building up that, tolerance- Mm ... for queasiness. Christina: Mm. Becky: So Christina. Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Um- Becky: In the, the times we’ve been talking to others and not catching up, your life has changed. We’ve been talking a lot about the upcoming changes of my life, but- Yeah your life has changed a lot. Christina: Yeah. I am in the s- I am in the throes of change. Mm. Like if I could put a metaphor to it, ‘cause you know I love metaphors. I feel like I am, mm, like in a really nice tube in a thrashing river. Ooh. Is Becky: what Christina: it feels like. Becky: A tube in a thrashing river. Christina: Yeah. Like, “Whoa.” Hopefully, “Ooh. Okay. Shoot.” Or like last night when I was laying down on the grass- Mm ... enjoying my being and not doing, I, uh, saw a crow. It was very windy ‘cause it was right on the coast, and I saw a crow flying through the air. And, um, the crow was like, “Crow, caw.” And it was, like, trying to fly, and crows are quite stubborn, you know? And so it was, like, really trying to assert its flight, and the wind was just like, “Whoa.” And the crow would like, like falter a little bit and then keep flying ‘cause that’s what it’s supposed to do. That’s a little bit how I feel. Um- So I, uh, I alluded to this a couple of episodes ago maybe before we started talking to people, to other people. Right now, something, um, mm, miraculous, transcendent, mystical, deep, and, um, remembered is happening for me. I heard my intuition tell me to slow down a lot. And, like, to be very explicit, I was a full-time artist making six figures every year, which is shocking and amazing. Mm-hmm. And I loved it. And there started to be, like, a little lackluster kind of, um, in sort of doing the same things. So, um, still an artist. Art will never leave me, ever. Um, and the slower I got, the more life deepened. And so, you know, I think I’ve said it on here, like, I, I had this nudge that I couldn’t hear, and so then I decided to maybe go to therapy. And I was like, “Maybe people hear nudges in therapy” Which is... And it was wonderful. I went to IFS therapy, which, was great. And what I learned was what I had suspected, that I don’t have a lot of muck to wade through personally. Um, I have had an illuminated life and wonderful support systems, and so I didn’t have that. And instead, I would meet the universe, like, just there’s no other way I can say it. And what I learned was that I ended up following the nudge to do that so that I could go every other week and practice knowing my inner world and how it was a small version of the outer maybe something. Becky: As above, so below. Christina: Yeah. And I, I would meet, I would meet the universe and, like, my place in it, which had been shown to me in glimmers throughout my life, mostly in college. Um, and I just felt connected to everything. And it was also at the same time that I had this studio where I was watching light move down the walls. And so a friend, of mine has a lot of shamans in her life. And I decided, “Fuck it, I’m just going to talk to one of them and tell them all the most mystical things that have ever happened to me.” ‘Cause, like, a priest didn’t feel correct. I don’t know. I couldn’t find ... I didn’t know. Even in therapy, it was just like, “You’re like the most spiritual person I have here, and I don’t ... We gotta find you someone who also experiences these things that you do.” That was what we would talk about in therapy. It’s like she was like, “I don’t know.” I mean, yeah. ‘ Cause I, I actually asked her, like, “Do, do other people come in here and, and do this? Is this what IFS is?” And she was like, “No, not without drugs. That’s-” Um, so that was helpful information for me. So I talked to this woman who had just, gone through shaman school, and she took me on a journey with her, ‘cause that’s what I was basically doing, was, like, closing my eyes in therapy and going on these shamanic journeys where no one had taught me how to do this, and it was as easy as anything, and it took zero minutes to get there. So yeah, I, I ended up journeying with this, with this woman, and she asked me all these questions like, “How do you know people’s energy?” And I was like, “I just know it. If they have these masks up, I can see right through them, and I love them still, but they’re not there for me.” and she said, you know, “Do you ever hear anything?” And I said, “Yeah, sometimes.” “You have just, like, knowings?” “Yeah.”, “When you close your eyes, does it get stronger?” And I said, “Yes.” So she said, “If you close your eyes, what does my energy look like to you?” And, um, I told her what I saw, and then she said one sentence, one question that completely, like, all of Christina’s life just, like, like dominoes fell and made complete sense. And she said, “Where does the light want to go?” Christina: And when she ... Like, I feel, I feel this in my body when I’m talking about it. Um, when she said that, it all became real. I watched light move through the top of my head and out from my heart into the little Zoom screen. My eyes were closed. We were on Zoom ‘cause she lives not here. And I watched it thread around her body and show me that it was hollowed out in some areas and needed to expand to be whole. So it was like a combination of a knowing and also, like, literally watching this happen with my eyes closed. And, um, and she asked me all of these different guiding questions like, “Is anybody helping you do this?” Which I got a response. And, um, and then she, um- She was basically like, “Well, this is crazy, but you’ve already sort of like crossed whatever threshold many people may need to have to, like, go do this work,” quote-unquote work in the world, I guess. And she said, “I think you’re meant to, um, like, give light healings to people.” And, and when she said that, I, um, I saw something and heard something. I saw a golden river of light extend from my heart in front of me into, like, the great beyond of my life. Mm-hmm. And it was gentle, and it was flowing, and I heard four words. I heard, “You are now. Go.” That was it. That was, like, what the universe had to tell Christina in that moment. Just like- ... “Stop fucking around. Just believe that you can do this.” “You are supported. It seems crazy, but just go.” Like, “Just go.” Mm-hmm. And so since then, that was back in December, mm, yeah, end of November. You’ve experienced this a couple of times, so it’s no secret to you, but I’ve been- Mm-hmm ... I’ve been I had a dream sh- before this conversation even happened with this woman, and in my dream, I touched a friend of mine and took her pain away. So then I started thinking about that dream after she was talking about light healings and, and like, when she told me I was maybe meant to do that, I was like, “You know, that is a thrill that I cannot te-” Like, of course. Of course, I’m supposed to do that. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t need anyone to give me a lesson. It was just a fully embodied, remembered thing. and since then, I, I’ve been holding healing space in my studio with friends, and when I touch people or hold energy above their bodies in my studio, and I go into that deep, mm, consciousness that I went in and practiced in therapy amazing things are happening. Uh, just miraculous things are happening, and they’re all different, and they’re all holy. And it’s a life-changing thing to remember. so it’s str- it’s str- it’s strange to be here. It’s amazing, and it’s also strange to be here because I always sort of looked for other people that were experiencing life the way I was, and I couldn’t really find them, and I think it’s because I, um, maybe I’m supposed to, like, show the way somehow. And in all of these sessions, in all of these energy sessions, it feels like what I get to do is put an absolute divine spotlight on everybody’s center. Which is, like, the greatest gift in the world. Like, it makes my eyes well up with tears to be able to show people their centers. It has nothing to do with me. It’s just- Mm-hmm ... like, I get to create this loving container inside of which the expectation is nothing. Becky: Yeah Christina: other than just to welcome, anything and everything that wants to arrive. Yeah, that would be how my life has changed. I mean, there are so many examples of the miraculousness of this stuff that I don’t have to go into, but, um, it, uh, it has been pretty immediate and immense. And humbling and wonderful, and then strange for someone to say, “Hey, I have a bed, and I’d love your artwork on top of it.” It’s a weird... It’s, it’s a, it’s a new thing for me to hold. It’s a new edge. Becky: Mm-hmm. Hmm. How does it feel sharing it? Christina: Um, um, it feels brave and, um, like something I’m practicing. You know, we’ve had probably 10 conversations since I discovered this. And I knew... I mean, it was so potent to the first two people that I did this for, with, um, that they immediately had, like, a list of people that they wanted to share about it with. And I was reserved in that I realized the potency of this thing and that I don’t immediately want to scrap everything and only do this, you know? Becky: Yeah. Yeah. Christina: I am, um... Yeah, but, but sharing this feels essential to it. I have to. It’s a little uncomfortable because it’s very woo. Um, it’s woo, and I resist it, which is really hilarious because then here I am, like, here I am, like, helping pe- people transform by, um, laying hands on them, which is not something I expected in my life. And still, everyone that I’ve told has said, “Obviously.” “ Becky: Well, as you were speaking and you were, naming, the mysticism that you’re experiencing, I thought back to that podcast that you just shared with me, and what really struck me is she said, um... I can’t remember who it is, but we’ll put it in the show notes. Christina: It’s Terry Tempest Williams on the Atmos podcast. Becky: Okay. Thank you. Um, she says... I can’t remember if it was her or a guest that said, “ what is mysticism if not paying attention?” And it’s- Yep ... it’s so... So I hear the, the braveness, and I understand why it could feel like an edge and why it would, you would need bravery to share it because we have such distorted, um... We hold, as a soc- as this modern society, such distorted views around mysticism and transcendent experiences, and there’s a lot of, um, unfortunately, there’s some not great examples out there- Yes. Yes ... Where the, the mysticism or the healing has been tainted by something else. And I feel you in the, “Yeah, you have to share. You’re meant to share.” Christina: I have to. It’s just, I, I just have to. It’s just who I am. It’s just, um... Becky: And it was a, it’s a gift, right? You’re g- Mm-hmm ... and gifts are meant to be shared. Christina: Absolutely, and I share all of my other gifts willingly without- hesitation. I, um, yeah. So now, you know, making art, writing, singing, and healing. Um, it is something now that I am so conscious of in a world that is filled with suffering right now. Mm-hmm mm-hmm. And we are all aware of it. And so everything I do, um... This gave me an answer to a question, I think- that I had always held. Like, it sort of transformed... I was aware of, of all the things that make me come alive and how willing I am to share them and be open with people. And I became conscious of my way of being as a service to the world. I believe we all... If we all show up authentically, it is the deepest service to each other and the world. So for me to discover this and then feel like I had to hide it was like absolutely not. And healing comes in many forms, right? Like, the very potent forms would be if someone were to lay on my table under this beautiful piece of art that I made in my studio of light for an hour. That is potent. That is a- ... deeply potent place where it feels like our consciousnesses combine, and then I get to reach up into the stream of consciousness, or, like, consciousness with a capital C, or God, and pull down the threads that might serve this individual. Or they might reach them themselves, which is just incredible because the, the space has been opened to do that. And, and so, so there’s that, and then there’s also just, like, my awareness of this in myself, which I, to be clear, believe we all have. Mm-hmm. I just touch it easier. I’m aware of that, and so I bring it into everything I do. I bring it into the conversations with parents at the tennis courts. Mm-hmm. Even though they don’t know, but maybe somewhere deep down they do. I bring it into my writing, the reading of the writing. I bring it into e- everything. Everything. ... I bless the work I make when I send it away now. Mm. There were questions that I had, you know, um, these... There are all these installations, these bigger commissions that helped me pay for this studio, were put in healing spaces. And so even when we had my friend Sam on here and I was talking about how I’m really thinking about how art and healing connect and how objects hold memory, and like am I still connected to these pieces and can I still reach them? And I can. Mm. I feel it. So to be able to feel energy moving from my creative center out- To things that exist in the world that I’ve made, and to, like, send them healing, to sprinkle over people who are coming and going is, like, a really amazing thing. Um, yeah, but it really has ... Woo. It has completely changed my life. Becky: Mm. Mm. Well, as ... I have experienced it now twice. Mm. And it’s profound, and what has, um ... What struck me the most but didn’t surprise me is how little of you there is involved. I think that’s the, um ... That was the most profound for me on a couple levels. First of all, it’s just to receive unconditional love from Source, not from you. Christina: It’s not from me. Becky: It’s not from you. You used the term the hollow bone, that you feel like a hollow bone, and, and being on your table, that’s what I felt, just light. I don’t experience it as light. I experience it as just love, unconditional love, and, and a feeling. Um, so it’s profound to just receive that because so often we don’t. ... Because you are, you are able, Christina, to hold such unconditional love- Mm ... such direct from Source. And you’ve said this before. It’s like you’re just holding people in that light, that feeling, and I think it’s in the holding that gives the, the receiver, gave me the stability to actually receive, because that, that love, that unconditional love from Source, we all have access to it. Every single person has access to it, but You know, as you discovered in therapy , most people have some ... I think your therapist called them callouses or, uh, calcifications- Mm ... that get in the way or, like, can get in the way. Um, and I found it so profound to witness you as Christina- Mm-hmm ... trusting yourself and trusting life so much to allow whatever wanted to come through to come through, and that was really profound to witness. So we, you and I have talked a lot about, um, y- you know, you are meant to serve as a beacon. I think you’ve al- you already said basically those words. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And I see that. I feel that 100%, um, because we need people to show us what’s possible. Yeah. And then I think that the important thing to remember and what I really practice is that you’re showing us what’s possible for all of us. Christina: Yeah. Becky: And I took this to an actual practice recently when I, I went into New York City to kinda say a little goodbye, not goodbye forever, but, um, you know, goodbye to the access. Right now I can just take a train. And I, I, I had connected the dots recently that you, Christina, see the divinity in everyone. You see that part of Source that lives in every single one of us, every... That lives in the robin, that lives in the rain falling down your, your metal chain. You s- naturally see the divinity in everything. Mm-hmm. But I can practice it. It may not come natural to me, but I can practice, and I was practicing that day. I decided, intentionally decided, I am going to practice seeing the divinity in everything today. And going from living in the country where I barely see anyone to New York City, there was a lot of divinity to see. And what I noticed in this practice is how connected to myself I felt. Yeah. I felt, uh, to use your words, Christina, like a relaxed human. I felt relaxed in my body. In moment by moment, anything that I was greeted with, I knew that I could see it as divine. And what that did is reminded me that I am divine, that there is divinity in me, and sometimes I think it’s easier to see it in others than to see it in ourselves, but we can practice. And that’s what you teach me, is, is not that this is something ‘Cause the other thing you said of you- you’ve spent your life looking for others who live like you, and you didn’t find it. And it made me question, is anyone meant to find someone else doing life like them? And in that looking, does it diminish who we are? Because we’re not meant to be like anyone else. Christina: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and I, I believe we’re all meant to be individuals, too, and that’s what makes it so holy. That’s what makes- Mm-hmm. Yeah ... each of us so holy. And, um, I think it was more like... I think it was more just me trying to... It’s sort of like, you know, my therapist just being like, “We need to find someone else who also is experiencing these things.” like, no one was even, no one was, was talking about the things that I was trying to like, kinda like eke into conversations. Yeah. Like, uh, it would never just, no one would really take the bait. And, and so, so yeah, it really just does feel like, um, I mean, we’re all individual, and I feel just so much like, um, like I’m just... I, yeah, the beacon thing. I’m just meant to do that. And also this, it, it reached a peak. I had a f- I turned 40, and, um, there was a book that was organized by a friend of mine where all of these letters from people throughout my life, they wrote in letters, and it’s a book of letters. It’s right on my desk here. And, and it was like 60 different people who told me that my way of being changed them. So to get that, after all of these four months where I’m... Or, or, uh, you know, after like awakening years and then these really hot, potent four months with this, this healing stuff, um, it’s just like, well, holy shit. Yeah. Okay. Like, what do you do when you’re 40 and, like, s- so many people just all have the same message of, of really what you just said, finding the divinity. They didn’t say it like this, but like- Mm-hmm ... “You do that, Christina. You find the divinity in everything.” that reminds me to do that. What a great gift to give people. And, yeah, you know, the fact that I don’t have those blocks, so unconditional love flows through me as the hollow bone because I love myself unconditionally and let that flow. Mm-hmm. There’s nothing stopping it. It feels so good. I get it on the way through, you get it on the table. Mm-hmm. It’s this beautiful, cyclical, reciprocal thing. And oh my goodness, if I thought life was illuminated before, it keeps going. Becky: Yeah. Christina: Like, talking about it, I’m on the brink of tears this whole time, not because I’m afraid of sharing, not because this feels untrue, not because ... I, I don’t know. Not because of anything. I- it’s just the truest, most illuminated thing I have ever experienced. Christina: And if I can help offer a tiny spark of that to other people, I h- I must. Becky: You must, yeah. Christina: It moves me, yeah. Becky: And when you do, you, the universal you, start sharing the most tender, vulnerable parts, the things that feel most true, even if they feel, quote-unquote, “crazy”, you find your people. Christina: Yes. Becky: You find the people. You unlock that- Yeah ... you know, the people who, uh... Yeah, you find your people. And it un- it, it unlocks freedom in other people. Yeah. Because we’re not alone. ... Everyone is in touch with Source, whatever you call that, right? .. But we all have these things that, that maybe we’re afraid to talk about or that, you know, doesn’t fit into conventional wisdom or, or whatever, what you see on TV . So every time you open up and share this, you give other people permission. Christina: Mm-hmm. Becky: And- Mm ... that’s what we need more than anything right now, is people just talking about the honest truth of their experience. We need to look at the world clearly. Yeah. And when, when I look at the world clearly, I see... I mean, I always point to the universe ... And how little we know. Mm-hmm. We’re babies. I am. So why do we dismiss things as woo, even, like, that, like, why do we dismiss when we know so little? We are babies. We should be walking around as if we’re l- learning how to be human for the very first time, ‘cause we kind of are. Christina: Mm-hmm. But like, what I feel is my humanness and my divinity in the same body. Yeah. Fully both. Um, yes. And, and the other thing I will say that’s so remarkable too about, about every single person that’s come onto my table, is that they are witnessed in their most secret places- ... by the universe. Like, by God, by- Mm. You know what I mean? ‘Cause it’s me, right? Like, it’s me funneling whatever it is through. But they feel ... This is so used. They feel seen. Like, they actually feel seen by whatever, by source. One, one friend who had a particularly potent experience, um, I, I had to remind her what the energy of love was, ‘cause she’d actually didn’t, didn’t feel it. Yeah. And in my Christina brain, I was like, “Really?” Like, that’s what I n- Come, I ... Okay, no. She totally knows that, ‘cause like I know it, right? Mm. But it was ... I know. No, I know. You’re rolling your eyes, but I- ... this is important for me to recognize. So like, I needed to get out of the way to realize, ‘cause I was literally hearing in my ears, “Tell her this is what the energy of love feels like.” Um, and then there were lots of beautiful things that happened for her, and then at the end she, she was just sobbing, and she was like, “I have never ... Uh, like, I never went to church. N- I, but I’ve never felt like this, and I felt like I just met God,” was literally- Mm ... the only thing she could say. Yeah. And so I’ve witnessed this in many people, where that’s what their experience is, and it’s kind of like you can’t, you can’t speak it. You feel it. It’s like an- Yeah ... embodied experience- Becky: Yeah ... Christina: of being witnessed through some greater, mm, benevolent s- power source. Power is the wrong word. Benevolent source. It feels, um ... Yeah. Yeah. And then to have been ... To have experienced something like that, then you’re like, “Oh, I, I just felt myself completely. I can’t ignore that.” And so then- Yeah ... you get to go out and feel your own ... Like, the fullness of your being as it’s supposed to be. Mm-hmm. And hopefully live ... Like, choose the most aligned path to serve that beautiful individual self that you are. Becky: Yeah. I’m wondering, ‘cause you’re saying it’s a, a witnessing from Source, like being witnessed by Source, and I wonder if it’s actually them fully witnessing themselves as Source. Christina: Mm. That’s probably a better way to put it. Yeah. I think of it... I guess I think of it as, like, I think it’s both. Mm-hmm. It’s like how you and I hold a mirror to each other. If there’s some- Mm ... unseen benevolence that is witnessing them- ... and showing them themselves in an embodied way- Becky: Yeah ... Christina: you can’t un-know that. You cannot un-feel that. Becky: Yeah. You could forget. Christina: You could forget, and then you could re-remember in different ways. Sure. Becky: Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Yes. But I agree. It’s like you’ve opened a door. Christina: Mm-hmm. Becky: Or you’ve shined a light. You’ve changed something. Christina: Mm-hmm. Becky: And yeah, you could go back asleep and, and forget. And, and if you don’t practice it, I think you will. Mm-hmm. You know? Christina: Yep. Becky: Um, but yeah, it opens a door and, uh, gives you a different perspective. Christina: Yep, and puts you in touch with, like, something you can’t see but you know. Which is what religion has been trying to do forever, all these different- Yeah ... um... Yeah. So I have to get out of the way of that, too. Like, I have to get out of the way of thinking that it has to fit in a certain box. Yeah. Thanks for letting me talk about it. Becky: Thank you for sharing. It’s pretty powerful. It’s... No, it’s very powerful. Yeah. It’s very profound. It’s been very profound to witness and to experience. Um, and it just, like I said, the talking about it gives me permission to, not self-censor, to listen to the things that feel true and share them- Mm ... without reservation. Christina: Mm-hmm. May we all do that. Becky: Mm-hmm. Christina: The music was recorded live as a part of the sound service at 3S Art Space in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in January 2025, where musicians responded to the changing light in the room that reflected and refracted through Christina’s suspended artwork. Andrew Halchak, the composer of this piece, is playing bass clarinet, and Tomas Cruz and Katie Seiler are singing. Becky: Definitely don’t crash. I can look it up my own. And I can’t wait to listen. I’m gonna listen on my drive back home from the park. Um, I could not agree with you more. I am so proud and honored to be having the kind of conversations we’re having. I w- I... So today, I spent all day creating a visual map of all the influences that I know of already in my cosmology and, um, those that I, um, will probably resonate but I haven’t had m- much exposure to. So it’s like a map of my own deepening in-- a map of my unique deepening into my own inner knowing, as paved the way by all the people who’ve come before. And I just am struck by, “This is my life? This is what I get to do?” And it is the work of our time, and yet it’s so fascinating to me that because it doesn’t make money, because it’s not viewed as, quote-unquote, productive, I can still fall into that trap of thinking, like, this isn’t real life or this isn’t valuable and that... But the this that I’m talking about is talking about what is life? What is reality? Why are we here? These are the biggest questions we could possibly be sitting in, and yet it’s fascinating how predominant the programming is to convince us that that’s not a worthwhile endeavor. So yes, I am so proud and honored to be in this space with you and having these conversations and normalizing, normalizing these conversations, normalizing that it’s worthy of our time and attention because what else is, if not this, you know? I love you so. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit noticingpod.substack.com [https://noticingpod.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Bless the Foolish Ideas

In this week’s episode, we speak to Jenny O’Connell, a woman who has always lived in the world with her entire body. She is a writer, naturalist, outdoor guide, ultimate frisbee player, and fierce lover of the world who reminds us to leap. What feels remarkable about this conversation is how many times Jenny had faith in her life and acted accordingly. By radiating from her bright center, Jenny beckons us to reflect on the story of our own lives. What would it feel like to write our life story as we live it? She is an apt guide; her adventure memoir WILDHEART comes out on June 1, 2027 with DK Books at Penguin Random House. Jenny identifies many moments where her life caught her, pulling her like a hook behind her belly button in a new and surprising direction, notably the time when a short conversation with a neighbor’s elderly mother changed the course of her life. Her intuition was strong enough, she says, that thankfully she was always willing to pivot where life asked her to go. Jenny sees this moment as one where she can reignite our collective heart sparks and invite us into our own wildness, which as we discuss in this episode, can take many forms. Jenny shows how stories catalyze something deep within us, and we believe her story of wildness and homecoming will arrive into your hearts as both a catalyst and an invitation. How do we, as women, fill the room with our own power? How do we protect our sovereignty? Dare to let Jenny’s aliveness catalyze something in you. Dare to ask what form wildness takes. This invitation can be as quiet or loud as you need it to be, because after all, as Jenny kindly reminds us, “we are a creature that forgets we’re alive all the time.” For more of Jenny, check out her: Website [https://jenny-oconnell.com/] Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/jenny__oconnell] Jenny is also on Substack! Subscribe below: A few other inspirations from this week’s episode: “Writing a woman’s life” by Katherine Heilbrun “Women who run with the wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estés The John O’Donohue episode of On Being Christina references [https://onbeing.org/programs/john-odonohue-the-inner-landscape-of-beauty/] Episode Transcript Christina: You know what’s cool about just staying with a feeling is, well, like sometimes, first of all, sometimes you have to like figure out where that feeling lives. And then once you get it to just be like, oh yeah, hey, I see you. I see you fear. Hello. I am afraid of this thing. And then, like, I feel so much lighter now that I’ve addressed it. Um, not to say that it’s done, but it was really great to identify like, oh, I think actually this thing is holding me back. And then to, to figure out why and releasing that, you know, like I know that everything changes. Everything changes. So when I think about like, what if I could go reach out into the world to do what I’m meant to do in large or small ways and then to come back and be fully present in this place, um, rather than trying to like squeeze the large and small ways into this place? It’s an interesting thought. Um, and yeah, Jessie Buckley came to mind because I remember seeing like a quick clip of her speaking with the chick who played Alphaba in Wicked in the movie. And that actress was saying like, “I always watch your roles, Jessie, and I feel like worried about you. Are you okay? ‘Cause you throw so much of yourself in them.” And Jessie Buckley’s answer was like, “Yeah, my life is so simple. So I’m able to go and throw my whole self into these roles because I come back to like this really nourishing, simple, grounded place, um, where I build everything back up again. Becky: Welcome to Noticing: A Podcast About Nothing And Everything At The Same Time. In this week’s episode, we speak to Jenny O’Connell, a woman who has always lived in the world with her entire body. She’s a writer, a naturalist, outdoor guide, ultimate Frisbee player, and a fierce lover of the world who reminds us all to leap. What felt remarkable about this conversation is how many times Jenny had faith in her life and acted accordingly. I know it inspired me and I hope it inspires you. I hope you enjoy. Christina: I have the pleasure of introducing a dear friend today. Jenny O’Connell is someone who wrote straight into my Soul and I saw her writing in, in many ways, and I think we started following each other’s newsletters or something, or Instagrams or something. It doesn’t really matter. It was just a very pointed feeling and every time I read something she wrote, I felt this is someone who was cut from the same cloth that I am. And I actually, that’s a very big deal for me to say that because I’ve never met someone that I’ve found. So closely seemed to metabolize the world like I did, and share it with a abandon. Like I feel I must someone who can tap, joy and aliveness in the way that I feel I am able to do, in a world where like I don’t, I don’t see a lot of people doing that. And then one day, I don’t remember who asked who it, it might have been me, we just decided like, can we just go sit on a beach? And it was the end of springtime, so the water was still cold. And I had seen her as someone who sometimes gets in the Cold Sea and and I said, maybe we could just go to the beach and. Just see what happens. And so we did, and it was, I will use your words back at you, Jenny, when you say like, you know, when your life just catches you sometimes being on the beach with Jenny felt like my life was catching me because we immediately went to like a deep thread that we both shared. And meeting a stranger when you can get so immediately real with them is, um pretty uncommon. And since then, uh, we have just, our friendship has deepened and it’s always been supported and incredibly authentic and refreshing to me in this life. And I am thrilled to talk to Jenny today. Becky knows you now as well. And yeah, there’s so much more I could say, but, but just meeting someone who feels like a true kindred spirit in a way, unlike anyone I’d ever met, is what I would call you. Jenny O’Connell. Jenny: Oh, so good to be here. Christina, can you just introduce me for everything I do for now? That was the most heartfelt introduction. Christina: Yeah. Jenny: There’ve been like 40 cold dips since, and I’m so glad about it. Christina: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Um, and actually I was thinking, uh, ‘cause you know, I, I’ve mentioned it here before and probably to you in real life, but, um, I read Mary Oliver. I have her Devotions book, which has a selection of lots of different, pieces, pieces of poetry from different books she’s published throughout her lifetime. And I read it to my daughters before bed. And I have one that I’d love to read because it, it, it was, it reminded me of you. And then we can just go. So here it’s, it’s called The other Kingdoms. Consider the other kingdoms, the trees, for example, with their mellow sounding titles. Oak, Aspen, Willow, or the Snow for which the peoples of the North have dozens of words to describe its different arrivals or the creatures with their thick fur, their shy and wordless gaze, their infallible sense of what their lives are meant to be. Thus, the world grows rich grows wild, and you two grow rich, grow sweetly wild as you two were born to be. Jenny: Hmm. Christina, I can’t believe you picked that one because, that quote, the end of that poem, just those last two lines, are listed as an epigraph in the draft of my book right now that I have, uh, grow sweetly wild. Christina: Mm. I mean, that feels like. I mean, nobody even knows that you have a book. Do you wanna start talking about, I mean, I didn’t tell, I didn’t list, we purposefully don’t list people’s accolades or things. It’s um, yeah. So you’re a writer. Jenny: Um, yeah. Yeah. Well I love that. I love that you just start with the connection and it grows from there. But since you’re my friend, you also know that this is basically all I can talk about right now because I am in the process of finishing it. I have been writing a book for 10 years it’s a adventure memoir, it’s called Wild Heart. And it follows a journey that I took back in 2014, when I met. It was based in a meeting I had with a woman who was a legend in Finnish Lapland. I was, I’m a big zig zacker. I started as a musician. I, studied music in college and then I fell in love with the natural world and just, I’ve always been in love with it. But, when I came out of college, I just kept getting these nudges like, you need to go outside. You need to be outside. You need to be moving your body outside. You need to be connecting to place. And so I did a 180 from my music education career and ended up becoming an outdoor guide. And I moved to San Francisco to this national recreation area just outside the city where I taught, as a naturalist, and started to get into outdoor guiding around California as well. And it was such a strong pull. And when I met, uh, the woman’s name was Petronella, I was 26 years old, and I had been, following this poll from wild places from nature to connect. And I had been really reorienting my sense of the world around that. And I was just starting to wake up to some of the ways that I had been, for lack of a better word, tamed by my society. Ways that I had, been taught to live or to think about what I could expect from my life. And I was craving something wilder and I didn’t know how to do it. I, you know, was looking for examples. And my friend down the hill from where I lived in this coastal village in California, was taking care of her 89-year-old mother who had dementia. And so I just brought over quiche and a bottle of wine one night. And the first thing that her mother said to me, she looked at me and she said, I walked to Lapland and I was 26 and foolish enough to jump, you know? Becky: Yes. Jenny: Um, which like, may I still be, please? Im 39. Um, but I just had this moment. It was something else passed between us, like something more than just conversation. There was like this current of energy. And I immediately just felt it in my gut and I was like, fuck. Like, sorry, can I curse on here? Sorry. Becky: Absolutely. Yes. Jenny: That’s how I felt. It was like so guttural. It was just like, this is for me. I have to do this. I didn’t even know what this was like. I learned that night from the woman whose name is Petronella van der Moer and her daughter that in 1949, right after World War ii, she was Dutch. She had gone to Finland with dreams of being a writer. She wanted to be a writer. And she, , you know, it was a time when Europe had been devastated by World War ii, Finland in particular, because it was caught between these two major world powers and, they were rebuilding after the war. And Petronella sailed into Turku, Finland, and made her way to Helsinki and just started interviewing the famous city elite. Like she just started getting in with these. Hot shots in Helsinki. And then she ran out of money and ditched her hotel bills and fled the police north to Lapland where she, on the way, she met, this man on a bus who was a geologist who was heading into the gold fields where there was a gold rush going on. And so she convinced him to take her with him, and they set off on this 116 kilometer hike into the wilderness, and she ended up later signing on to just live and work with these gold perspectives in the wilderness. And she was there for about a month, and then she was arrested and deported by the secret police who thought she was a spy. Um, she, they ended up finding out about the hotel bills, and she stood trial in Helsinki. She was all over the newspaper and then she was deported and she just disappeared. So they had been searching for her, the gold perspectives who loved her and her friends in Finland had been searching for her for 65 years when I met her. And she had never returned. She had never reached out. She was very mysterious from that point on. her family in the Netherlands was very like, proper and they were horrified by this story. And, and when a reporter showed up at their house in Den Haag in the Netherlands, that was sort of, it Petronella was like, okay, I can’t, I can’t interact anymore. I have to protect my family from this. And so, um anyway, in the absence of information, her legend grew and she became, there are books written about her. There’s a musical named after her. There’s a street named after her. There’s a restaurant named after her. There are two Hills in Lemmenjoki National Park named after her breasts because of bad gold perspective humor. Um, uh, and she is just this sort of folk legend. I didn’t know any of this. All I heard was I walked to Lapland, and I left that night with this idea. It was wild to me because I was 26 when I met her. She was 26 in Finland. She turned 26 there. She wanted to be a writer. I had just fallen in love with creative writing. I had just taken my first writing class and was like all in. I had found this thing that just lit me up and deepened my perception of the world and. And our birthdays were like 11 days apart, plus or minus a lot of years. I don’t know, there were just these weird synchronicities and I was like, this is for me. And so I ended up, quitting my job and one year later I walked and hitchhiked across Finland in Petronella’s footsteps. I set out with this big red backpack from Helsinki and a mission to just retrace her path and hopefully what had struck me about her, you know, in that, back to that context of wildness and what I was missing and what I was searching for was just how powerful and self-possessed she was. At 89 years old, she died three months after I met her. Um, Becky: wow. Jenny: I only met her three times and the next two times she could barely speak. Like I watched her sort of decline, and. She just filled the room with her power. She was a very powerful woman, and so was her daughter. And I was like, what did she find? You know, out of 89 years of life, she chose this story for me. So why and why me? And what did she find in Finland that made it so deeply into her soul and her psyche that she wanted to tell me that on her deathbed? So I, yeah, I walked, north out of Helsinki and between walking and hitchhiking many twists and turns and getting lost along the way, I made my way up to Lemmenjoki National Park where I lived with the modern day gold prospectors who are still up there, for a couple of months. And, it was the journey of my lifetime. And that is the book that I’m writing. Hmm. Christina: I don’t think I actually knew that. You, I don’t think I knew the origin story of having her daughter Be your neighbor. Jenny: Yeah. Yes. Um,. And I should mention too, like, Petronella, she said I walked to Lapland, but she actually did not walk across Finland. It took me until I was like, I’m gonna do that too. And I like got all ready and I got to Finland, but all the books were in finish. And so as people started to slowly translate them for me, I learned that she had like, you know, taken a bus. And, um, so I kind of set out with this parallel but separate quest that was very much based on the feeling I got that first night and sort of the like, foolishness, and joy that you need in order to leap at something like that. And I, yeah, I go back to that self sometimes when I need to be brave and I ask her questions. ‘cause that is a particular kind of, uh, recklessness I guess that I, that has opened up the rest of my life. Hmm. Becky: We’ve had a couple conversations around this time and being in community. I find it so interesting that it was just you being neighborly and like going to your neighbor and bringing over a bottle of wine and, uh, was it a casserole or like something Yeah, yeah. a quiche . Yeah. Um, it unlocked this great adventure for you. And, um, I love the mystery of it. You were asking , why, you know, why did she do this? And, and I was curious, did she ever give you answers or did you just have to live in those questions of, of why? Jenny: That’s a great question. I asked her, why she went and she just looked at me and very slowly she said to tell a story. Becky: Hmm. Jenny: Um, and you know, I will say on this end of it too, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the power of story, about how when we see ourselves in a story or see somebody, that we could be in a story, it can be really catalytic. It can really change the course of our lives. And I think that’s one of the reasons that I gravitate toward writing so hard a story is sort of a, a conversation that keeps living long after you’re gone. Becky: I love this image of thinking of our, our life as a story. And it, it makes me feel into, um, we get to be our own author. Like so often I think, you know, I, I, I’ll speak for myself, I can feel like life is happening to us in this reframe of finding yourself in a story, the story of your own life and like the, the authority to, to write your own story or direct your own movies if you’re drawn to movies. You know, and I’m, uh, I, I wrote down Tame and Wild and, and it even strikes me of like. You know, it’s wild to think I can write my own story, but if you’re tamed, it’s like a different orientation, right? Like tame when you’re tamed. Um, it’s like there’s some authority outside of you taming you when you’re wild. It’s like, no, this is my story, this is my wilderness. Um, and I’m curious, what if you feel comfortable talking about it? Like how did that tame feeling that you were re realizing, how did that show up? Or like how did you start to recognize that in you? Jenny: Hmm. Becky, you’re putting your finger on the heart of my book right now and it’s so exciting to feel you just like holding it like that. Um, yes. So I think many people can relate to this feeling. I believe that we are all born wild. We are all born with this sort of innate sense of self. And for me, as someone who has been socialized as a woman in our culture, it specifically was around the time that, the culture started trying to tame my body. It was like, you know, you have to make yourself smaller than you are. You have to look a certain way, you have to act a certain way. You can’t be too messy or too loud or too much. And you know, I was this wild kid who is so in love with this world and I’ve never lost that love, you know, that is I think what actually called me back in the end. But I was always falling out of trees and skinning my knees and riding my bike and yelling, you know, into the sunset. And like, it was just, I was like, full on living in this world with my entire body. And when I started to learn that that wasn’t acceptable, I started to lose connection to that part of myself. And it, it also coincided, strangely enough, I grew up in this, I grew up in a city in Albany, New York, but I also spent every summer up in the Adirondack Mountains at this cabin that my family has. And kind of at the same time that I was, being disconnected from my body and my own knowing. There were also changes that were happening to the land, like trees were getting cut down. There were bushes that were taken down. There were like. More people started to drive golf carts around, you know, it just became a less wild place as I grew. And so I think I’ve never been able to separate, my own taming with the taming of land because of that. But I’ve seen it in so many bigger scale ways too, in our world right now. And so what really started to bring me back to myself, you know, I’d been, I had been disconnected from my own knowing in a way. ‘cause when you’re disconnected from your body, your body is a deep source of information and wisdom. And like old, old knowledge. And so when I became disconnected from my own knowing, I stopped to what you were saying, feeling like I could direct my life in a certain way or, live in a certain direction. And what. brought me back was actually following that pull to be outside and to, you know, when I started, working as a naturalist in California, I, I started seeing all these other rhythms of life that I had been disconnected from, but I was coming back to and it just started to re-center me around this idea that we are all here and we are all alive and we are all connected, like so much more connected than we think. And that connection to place brought back my connection to body. I was like, I started going for adventures. You know, I became a raft guide and I learned to read rivers and to really like throw my body into those kinds of situations. I would lead trips in. Peru in the Andes, and after my students left, I would just like, take myself on these wild hikes. And really, um, I was pushing my body so hard in wild places because when I did, there was this moment, there would always be this moment where I could touch the Divine again. I like became who I was trying to teach my students how to be Mm. Like somebody who was, I, I would remember my own power and I had forgotten it. We all have it, but I had forgotten it and I had lost touch with it. And so, it was this embodied connection with the natural world and with adventure that brought me back fully. And that’s why I think I was ready to jump when I met Petronella and I learned about that story. Christina: Hmm. So. This. This is really interesting. So we’re here to talk to you obviously, but I’m actually being put into the perspective of Petronella at 89 on her daughter’s. I imagine her on a couch, maybe she was on a bed, but like you just, you just said, we come. You believe we come into this world. Wild. I agree with that. I also think of cycles, life cycles. We come into this world wild. We leave it wild. There’s like a big gap in between and I’m thinking of Petronella and how she was at a point of distilling everything. My, okay. My grandmother is 96 and she talks about how she lives in her memories more than in her physicality now. So like you’re in your. You’re, you’re thinking about things. So I picture you as this 26-year-old brightly little thing coming in with aqui and a bottle of wine as a neighbor. And this woman has distilled her entire existence. Into those two sentences, I walked across Lapland to tell a story, to write a story, right. She had boiled things down into the essence of her wildness that she could hand like a torch to anyone who was willing to take it. And who knows, maybe she said that to every neighbor who popped by or like the mailman. She’s like, listen, I walked across Lapland today. I don’t know, but, but you took it, you took the torch because you saw something in her that you shared, right? And you decided to like do the thing. And it feels like now you get to. You’re not 89. You’re 39, and you get to hold that torch in your center and like pr preach it is the word that I’m coming with, but I don’t, that’s, that has some baggage, but you get to, you get to lead, you know what I mean? Like you get to lead right now so that there’s not a wide gap between a soul entering and leaving a body as wild and wild. Like what if the in-between is like really thick with wildness? Jenny: Mm mm Yeah. And I think it’s, I think it’s important to know this is subtle, but um I was in touch with my own intuition enough. Christina: Yeah. Jenny: To take her seriously. I think it was really easy. And actually a few times my brain would take over and I would. I would be like, well, you know, she has dementia. When people have dementia, they just start, like random memories come up and they just like, maybe that wasn’t actually for me, or maybe that wasn’t important. But, but what really, I mean, this, this is an interesting story. After she died, um, I brought her daughter, we, I met her for lunch. And I brought her this sympathy card that I had found stuffed in the back of all the cards at the grocery store. And it was this picture of the stars and it was this quote from the Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. And it was like, I’m, I don’t know the exact quote, but it was basically like in one of the stars. I will be laughing and one of the stars I will be, . Living and all you need to do when you miss me is look up at the stars at night. I, I’ll look up the actual quote. But that was the gist of it. And I brought this to lunch with her daughter, and we’re sitting there, we’re eating our clam chowder. And her daughter looks at me and she says, you know, mommy was a scientist. Like she didn’t believe in heaven. She used to tell me that when she died, she’d go up and join the stars and she’d be up there and I could look up there and see her. And I was like, oh my God. And I, so I just pushed the card across the table and I said, I think this is for you. And she opened it and she put down her spoon and just looked at me and she said, this is uncanny. You would never have known this, but this was my mother’s favorite quote. This is what she believed. And I just. If there was any doubt in my mind before then. There had been a couple of other interesting signs too, that I was picking up on, but that was one where I was just like, all right, this was not an accident. This is for me. Becky: Oh, so, so my intuition comes to me in feelings, and that just gave me all the feels and, um, we weld my eyes. And I’m curious, ‘cause you’ve been talking, uh, that you said you’ve really, connected to your intuition. And you’ve talked a couple times about this pull. You kept getting this pull and you were following it. What is it, what is your experience of that pull and intuition? Like, how does it speak to you? Jenny: I think, um, the biggest thing for me has been not discounting it. Not pushing it away when I feel it. Often things come to me as gut pulls. Like I feel it in my gut, which is like a, ugh. It’s a little nudge. It’s a little tug. It’s like I used to describe it as a hook behind my belly button that just yanks me forward. It’s not always that obvious. Sometimes it’s more like a, a little nudge. But I think when you get that tug or that, little reminder, there’s the choice to listen to it and there’s the choice to ignore it. And I think that I was in touch enough with myself and connected enough to the world, like to the earth and to my own, inner life that I was able to act on it. I think the harder thing is not actually hearing it, it’s actually acting on it. It’s deciding. Okay, this doesn’t make sense. This doesn’t make money. This is a ridiculous idea. It’s probably really dumb, but I’m gonna do it. And god bless the foolish ideas because I would not have this life that I love so much. Had I not taken that leap before my brain kicked in and cut it, cut it off. Christina: They’re only foolish ideas because of the society we live in. Jenny: Oh, yes. I say foolish with utmost love. Like I, I mean that is a good thing. Christina: Yeah. I’m someone who does, who like lives on foolish ideas. I’m like surfing on a sea of foolish ideas to just be like, where do I go now? And it’s really challenging to, to be that type of person sometimes in. Capitalism. Becky: Yeah. Well that’s what was coming up for me is like, who’s doing the taming? And tho those, that connection to inner authority has been, has attempted to be tamed out of us, especially those who inhabit of a female body, you know? Other ways of knowing, other ways of certainty. Um. And Jenny: that is why I write about wildness like, Becky, we’re so good at distilling things down. Like you wanna come to help me finish my book right now, because that’d be really helpful. Um I write about wildness because each of us has this light in us that when we feed it and when we let it grow, it becomes too unruly to control. And there are systems of disconnection that we live in, or there’s a system that wants us to be disconnected, because others benefit from us being disconnected from our own knowing and our own power. And so I see my body of work and kind of my job here, as relighting those little fires and just reminding people of like, we all have this. We all have it. Um, and. That’s a beautiful way to resist is to just fan that spark and to listen to it and to come back into, uh, a conversation with your life, a conversation with your own knowing and your own power. Becky: Hmm. It’s, I love that you call that out, that it is resistance because it’s all these systems that want to disempower us and, um, yeah. And it’s so joyful to connect back to yourself and so powerful. Jenny: And I think when you do, you, you connect back to much more than yourself too. Right. Real wildness to me is a deep and sometimes messy connection to yourself, to other people, to your community, and to the earth. And if we remember that we are alive and connected, I think we would live a lot differently. I think that, um. We’d, we’d be able to thrive differently. Becky: Yeah. Yeah. I think the closer, I think it’s inevitable though, even if you don’t start off, even if you just start off trying to connect to your own, to use your language wildness or your own inner knowing, I think it’s inevitable that you get to a place of realizing that your true Self is deeply interconnected with every other being, every other, um, relative plant relative, animal relative. Um, and we would live a lot differently. And, and that’s, you know, one of the reasons why these systems don’t want us to connect because then we would, you can’t exploit your relatives if you recognize them as deeply interconnected with, with who you are. Jenny: Yes. Yes. And. Right now we’re watching, for example, the US Forest Service just got quote unquote consolidated, you know, and we’re watching this attack on our public lands and these wild places, and we’re watching, land being parceled and sold off for private profit. And I don’t think that this would be happening if we understood wildness as a value, if we held it, if we realized that actually wild places and wild land is so deeply integrated with our own wild selves and our, like we are all, we are all connected in that way. And I, I think if there was a stronger value placed on wildness in our society, that wouldn’t be happening. We wouldn’t be here. Yeah. Becky: Knowing what’s happening right now and knowing how deeply connected you are to the Earth and this land, how are you holding, like, and also knowing you as like holding so much joy. How do you also hold the grief? ‘cause I imagine there’s so much grief when you love the world as you do. How are you holding it right now in this, this time? Jenny: Hmm. That’s a great question. Um, I think, to be honest, that I still have work to do around feeling my grief all the way. I think that I’m not there yet and it’s probably, I’m probably not gonna be able to fully finish this book until I can. But I, I do think I’m not alone there. You know, there’s so much, coming at us all the time to grieve and I go through cycles with it. Um, it often hits me when my body is in motion somewhere. I’ll be walking or I’ll be biking or I’ll be singing and all of a sudden I’ll be weeping. And, and so I think my body lets me know when it’s time to feel something like that, to feel something that deeply. I definitely root myself in a fierce love for place and for the people in my life and for myself. And so that kind of helps anchor me in those moments. But I will also say that, there are wells of grief that I have not tapped into, and I’m scared to, and I know that I need to go there. And I know that in order to really, truly embody the wildness that I believe I need to hold, I have to sit down with it and, and let it in. And sometimes I do. And sometimes I’m, uh, kind of gliding along, right on top of it being like, not now, not now, not now. Which, you know, I think it, it goes with, um what Christina was saying too about the structure of our lives and how we live in capitalism and. There isn’t time to grieve in my life. Sometimes I just quit my full-time job to finish this book. ‘cause I realized I couldn’t do them both at the same time. I didn’t have the correct amount of emotional bandwidth if I was doing both. And so, you know, I think there will be more space now and there has been more space since. And I think we have a broken relationship to time, in our culture. And grief requires time. Becky: Hmm. Jenny: So I think what I’m trying to do right now, to get at that deeper grief that I know is there, that I need to feel and process is create more time around it. Mm-hmm. Becky: So I wanna hear more , what you just said about, we have a broken relationship to time. But first I just wanna thank you for that answer around grief. I think it’s such an honest answer and I think, you know, grief is not a linear process, so anyone, there is no like, other side of grief. So I think it’s such a beautifully honest answer there’s no right answer here. You know, there’s no right way to hold this incredible amount of grief, that we’re bombarded with on a daily basis. Um, and I’m so curious to know more about how you think our relationship to time is broken. Jenny: Hmm. Well, I, I am generalizing, but I do think that that’s true across our society. Um. I can speak for what I see in society and then I can speak specifically for myself. ‘cause I have sort of a different relationship to time that is also, or has also been broken that I’ve been working on fixing for a long time. I think with the focus, especially in American culture, on productivity and producing and you know, we just have like a keep buying it, keep making it keep, um, sending it out. Like even with content, it’s like never ending, you know, it’s, um you just have to like churn through so much of your life. I think that that culturally is our broken relationship with time. I think that, when we give so much of our lives over to that sort of churn. We miss some of the things that want to deepen us, that want to get in to heal us, to, bring us closer to ourselves. And, so societally that’s what I see. And I’ve always lived, um, kind of on the edges of that. Like as a, as a naturalist, I made I think like $11 an hour. You know, I never had a lot of stability to lose. Mm-hmm. Like I had, I had the privilege of a loving family who was like, we support this go, but they didn’t support me financially. You know, I had to figure it out. But I never, I was actually afraid of taking. A job that had more security attached to it, because I was afraid I would get stuck because I saw people doing that. Mm-hmm. And it terrified me. And so for many years I was a naturalist or a freelance writer. I mean, I am again, now I only have my full-time job for a year and a half. Um but it wasn’t ‘cause of the security. There were other reasons, but, yeah, I, uh, I gave myself more time. I valued my time over the money that I could make or a 401k or other, honestly, other life decisions that I could have made. You know, I also, I’m 39 and I’ve had many loves in my life and many like. Beautiful, committed partnerships. But, I also lived too fast for partnership to really catch me for a while. So there are other things that sort of, it was like a choice that, came with certain sacrifices. But my broken relationship with time happen, it’s, it’s like both what broke it and also I think what is going to heal it. And like it’s something that is really, uh, underneath so much of how I live is my relationship to mortality. In 2009, I think, yeah, early 2009, so I had just graduated from college. I was driving from my college boyfriend’s house in Corning, New York to Albany on this icy interstate called 88 in New York, and my car hit a patch of black ice. I flipped over the median and I rolled three times. And, within moments somebody had pulled over, there were men like helping me out of the car. My car was on its side and so I had to stand on my own window to, to exit the car to get out. And so they pulled me out and it was like freezing rain. And I heard one of them say like, miss the river by this much like, just ahead of me. Um, couple hundred yards down the road there was this river in a ravine. And I came out of that without a scratch and it was my miracle. Like I, I got home that night. My dad came to pick me up. He was driving like 35 the whole way. I was speeding. I was also talking on my phone, like it was a bad, bad, like young look. Um, but I. Uh, I will never forget, there was this, moment where everything slowed down. They talk about this, they talk about the amygdala in your brain, and when you come to a near death experience, it kind of slows the world down. And that’s what they’re talking about. And people’s lives flash before their eyes. Um, my life did not flash before my eyes, but everything did slow down and I could like see the coins falling out of my cup holder. And I had this moment where I didn’t even think about whether I would die. I just felt my life inside me like this, this light, this spark. And I was like, I want that. Christina: Mm-hmm. Jenny: Like, I’m gonna do everything I can to keep that lit. Um, and so that’s a really beautiful thing. It also meant, that when I moved to California and I threw myself into the world, turns out there are so many things you can do. There are so many ways you can spend your time. Um I earned myself the nickname Hurricane Jenny. ‘cause I was like everywhere all at once. Biking in and out of the city and this bike with neon duct tape on the wheels and going to Bluegrass and Speedway Meadows and playing Nerf gun spy wars and like rafting rivers and leading trips. And I, I was so determined to live my life hard, that I then like spun out actually. And I came at the other side of that relationship with time where I like packed so much into my life that I was actually missing some of the depth of it. Christina: Yeah. Jenny: Um, and I was moving too fast and it became more of a reflex instead of a choice. And so. This is, this, the crashes in my book too. It’s like how it starts, because that really felt like an underlying, launch for me. You know, it kind of launched me into this way of being that was like, okay, I have this one life. What am I doing with it? Am I living hard enough? Am I living the way that I would want to? And you know, when you do that for long enough in so many directions, it can also become shallow if you’re looking outside of yourself the whole time for the answers, for depth for what living was. And so that was something that my journey across Finland did for me as well, was like, slow me down. You have a lot of time to think, uh, when you’re walking across a highway, you know, like for miles and miles and miles along a highway. And so I just. I had to slow down. I had to open myself back up to the possibility that I might be feeling grief, that I might be feeling these harder emotions. And I had to let all of that in and really, let it season me like deepen into who I was. And the gold prospectors too, who lived up in Lemmenjoki, they were so comfortable. Well, you know, Finnish people in general have this, reputation for being sort of cold and standoffish or shy, like they won’t approach you. Um, I learned that the only loophole to that is if you have a ukulele on your backpack because, um the people I met loved music and they’d always be like, what’s that? Like, do you, do you play that? But. Both like Finnish culture itself and especially the gold peprospectorshat I lived with who chose this life that is in the wilderness. It is pretty solitary. Like they go up there and they live in these one room wooden cabins in the wilderness, and they dig for gold during the day and they like drink coffee and they make their food and they, you know, they just sort of like live in this rhythm of, um of their own lives up there. And they see each other sometimes, but a lot of them live in solitude. And um when I was up there, I was offered a week in this cabin on the side of a river. It was very hard for me to, like, I pulled every single thing off the shelf and I put it back and I like, you know, just I really. Mm-hmm. Um, I went walking and I sang every night and I learned how to forage for things and I cooked myself dinner and I, you know, I just like kept moving and eventually I slowed down enough to like really see my life and to understand, that I wasn’t sort of this threshold of becoming. Becky: Mm-hmm. Christina: I think, um, all these stories that you’re telling are, are making me think that wildness can look so many different ways. And, we’re having this conversation after speaking of time, like we’re having this conversation. Where for me personally, the last two years, I’ve allowed myself a lot of time and I’ve allowed myself to keep my schedule less busy because I, like you want to just attack the shit outta life and live as fully as possible. And that sometimes can get exhausting, even in its overwhelming, abundant goodness. And so, you know, I’m thinking like when I was living in New York City and I was walking down a beautiful little park and the light on the ground would catch me and I would think, wow, that’s happening all over the place. And it’s very slow. And it’s like, it could be the wallpaper of my existence if I want. So I started leaning into slower time and John O’Donohue talks about slower time. It’s so beautiful. And I, I listened to an episode of On Being and was like brought to. Hysterical crying in the car when he was talking about slowing time down and being present in slow time. And, that for me, being in nature in slow time and receiving my, my own life there has introduced me to my own wildness, which I would call the deepest connection to myself and everything else that I could possibly recognize. And then get to share in its many forms, this podcast included, um, with, with everyone else to remind them. Like, you’re, you are literally writing a, a heart called, or a book called Wild Heart. Right. To like ignite the wildness in all of us. And I, I feel such a kinship to you. ‘cause I feel like I’m doing that in my own way as well. And I wonder what your thoughts are about, how wildness relates to, um, divinity. Jenny: Ooh. Not what I thought you were gonna say. I love that. I love that Christina: I just dropped it or answer the question you thought I was gonna say you could do that too. Jenny: Um, wow. Well, I’ll start with the question I thought you were gonna ask, which was, like how wildness can show up in all these different ways, which I think is related to the actual question you asked. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I read this quote in a book called Writing A Woman’s Life by Catherine Hill. It was like, again, I’m gonna paraphrase here. I might butcher it, but I’ll try. It was extraordinary women are the chief imprisoners of ordinary women, and it was all about how, if somebody gets put up on a pedestal as being extraordinary, like what I did, quitting my life, walking across the country with a backpack, living with these gold perspectives in the wilderness. Um, and a lot of other stuff that happened too, that you’ll just have to read about, um, um, like that could be viewed as extraordinary. I did not see myself as extraordinary. I was just like, this is for me. I have to do it, and I’m listening deeply enough that I will. But I also think that it’s really important to. Recognize wildness in all of its forms and all the places that you can look for it. You don’t have to be grand, you don’t have to walk across the country. Yes. You don’t have to even like, put something out into the world. It can be as simple as you are. Deep noticing. It can be, you know, I think about my ancestors, my grandmothers in particular who came before me, and the constructs that they lived inside of mm-hmm. Which were even more restrictive. Um, I’m guessing, I, I didn’t know either of my grandmothers, but I know that the times that they lived in were either even more restrictive than the times we’re living in now. Um, and. I think about what wildness might have looked like for them. You know, one of my grandmothers on my dad’s side, there’s this story, this family story of, it’s, it’s not even a story, it’s like a character trait. They would talk about how she would ride the back roads of the Adirondacks without, like, she would try to ride it without trying to, without using the break. Uh, she was just kind of, you know, but I think about these little moments that make up a life, like the little ways that you reclaim who you are or that you tap into something that like brings you joy or makes you feel alive. And those are everywhere. And, um so truly there’s nothing extraordinary about reaching for wildness. It is just right there. And, um it’s about noticing it. To your point, Christina, and I think, to get at your divinity question. I think God is in the details. It is in the noticing. It is in the presence. Um, we’re, we are a creature that forgets that we’re alive all the time. Yeah. Becky: Mm-hmm. Jenny: And every time I remember, it’s often when I’ve like experienced mortality or when somebody in my life who I love is sick or, you know, there are always these little moments that sort of bring me back to how short our lives are. Um, I think living in that question and sort of dancing with that, in a way allows us to touch something that is divine or like to bring that divinity into ourselves. I think divinity is presence. Christina: Mm-hmm. I do have, I did know both of my grandmothers also. I love you so much. That question answer was so good. Um, but like I have, I knew both of my grandmothers one recently passed and the other one is 96. And both of them came from, like, I, I know stories of their, of their lives and and both of them were very devout. And both of them would see me letting my kids play naked in the mud at a family party or see me singing in my studio or see me taking a leap of faith into building something risky. And they would say, God is so happy because they’re witnessing my aliveness. Hmm. And I believe what I share your belief, God is presence, God is in the details, all of those things. And I believe that the more of us who stand proudly, loudly, quietly, does not matter in our, creative center, in our presence, in our calling, even if it looks different throughout our lifetimes, that is like a divine expression of our life lived fully. Jenny: Yeah. Yes. I’ve always been, like my whole writing career, I’ve been surprised by how similar the act of writing, when I really get into the flow of it, when I really get going, it, it feels like I’m touching the divine. It feels like there’s something else that I’m just like wrestling with or grappling with or just like. Touching. Like, I just get to be there in that presence. And that’s actually, uh, it surprised me the first few times I felt it, how similar it was to when I was, hiking on a mountain after dark or rafting a rapid with full presence and devotion of just like, we have to get, we have to do this. You know? Um, that what you, what you’re touching is the same. It’s like that, that deep presence and that deep connection. Becky: I mean, we are the only beings that we know of that are born with conscious awareness. Conscious awareness to notice what has been created by God’s source, whatever you like to call it, and then reflect back in our language in conversations like this, the beauty, and I’m not saying this sent, this level of sentient isn’t existence in other beings. We’re the only ones we know about that can talk about, look at what has been created. And I’m looking around my, I live in the country, I’m looking at the mountain. I’m even looking at these invasive ladybug impersonators that are infesting my house. But like, that’s pretty fucking cool that, that God created a being that tricks me into looking like a cuter being. Anyway, it’s like, of course we’re touching divinity, you know, because we’re touching our, what I think is our in purpose in this life is just to notice and be present and reflect back to Source. Look what you created, look what we created. Um. Yeah. Jenny: Another word for that is love. Becky: Yes, yes. Yeah. Because you can’t love anything if you don’t know it’s there. You have to look first, you have to be present with it. Jenny: A naturalist I knew when said love is sustained, devoted attention. Becky: Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. What’s also striking me in these conversations, and probably because it’s very top of mind for me, but as we’ve been talking about time and right, relationship with time, and as we’ve been talking about, um, wildness doesn’t necessarily look like going, going, going, going, going, going, you know, packing in as much life as you can that the cycles that we’re. We’re all pointing to are all feminine. That that time is circular. You know, time is cyclical. Um, I, I keep thinking about yin and yang in, in Tao’s philosophy, in Chinese medicine the yin is the feminine. It’s dark, it’s hidden in the shadows. Even what you, what you talked about of like the, the exceptional women ent trapping the, i, I can’t do quotes, but you know, the essence of what you’re talking about, of like, it’s not just the people climbing Mount Everest who are, who are in touch with their wildness. It’s, it’s people quietly in the shadows, just being with their own life. Um, and yeah, I think of the masculine, it’s, it’s the light, it’s the sun, it’s everything is seen. You know, if you, if. If you don’t capture it on Instagram, it didn’t happen. It has to be in the light. And especially since we’re, you know, three beings in female bodies. I just think what I keep seeing us being pointed towards and orienting towards is a more feminine connection with time and with life. Which is cyclical. There’s a winter, you know, what do you do in winter? Well, maybe that’s a good time to grieve, you know? Um, yeah. And I’m so grateful, especially as I think back to my female lineage. Just, the fact that we could have this conversation and start touching on and noticing, um, we maybe don’t have the right relationship with time right now means things are shifting and they’re coming into consciousness and, you know, things like your book, Christina, your work, my teaching like this, they’re all coming at, opening up possibilities for people to live a different way. Jenny: Hmm. Yes. And I’m, so, I’m always thinking about. The people who came before me that built this, you know, that made this possible. As you were talking, I was actually thinking about the book, women Who Run With the Wolves by Claudia Pinkola Estes, where it’s all about that. It’s about coming into your own cycles and finding your pack. And there are these sort of tenets of being wild. And that’s been a foundational text for my thinking as well. But over the years, through story, through research, through living in these different directions, people have been paving the way to this moment. And I think you’re right where we are at a moment where things are shifting now, but it’s not lost on me how many people had to like throw spaghetti at the wall before me. Mm-hmm. Um, to see what stuck and to like build to this moment. There are so many voices that we stand on and I’m so grateful for them all the time. Becky: And Christina: I think conversations like this build scaffolding for more, you know? Jenny: I hope so. Becky: I think so. I mean, I’m even thinking back to when we were talking, to Lea and talking about like activists in the past and the feminism in the past who it’s easy to look back and think they didn’t go far, far enough, or they didn’t, you know, do enough but they passed the baton. They, they rose so we could stand on their shoulders. Mm-hmm. Jenny: Just like petronella. Mm. She didn’t mean to, I, you know, I am sure she was responding to the need of the moment and sort of the desperation of it. She wasn’t thinking, oh yes, one day this will, like, I’m going against the grain and this will inspire somebody. Um. But she was living close to herself. She was Becky: listening. Well, that’s, that points me to like a, Christina and I have talked so many times about the ripples out of these conversations and the ripples are none of our business. It’s, it’s nice to, you know, when someone reflects back that a conversation touched them, it’s amazing and wonderful and it’s not the point. And we never show up here with that intention and talking about, like, touching that Divinity when we touch that wildness inside and live from that place, it’s not our business to know how it ripples out. But I, I just think there’s a harmony and there’s like a bigger. Web that we are interconnected with. And when we touch that wildness and live from that place of divinity or, or whatever language works for you, that place of knowing inside that aligned place, um, then you’re playing your piece in the ecosystem, right? You’re playing that very necessary, irreplaceable role in the ecosystem of the universe. And, she might have just been like telling us, she, she did her walk. She’s telling a story to you doing her thing, and it’s not her business how it ripples out. But she needed to, to do that because you needed that little piece. You know, she gave you resources or nutrients, for you to live into your own. Wild place and divinity and it’s, I don’t know that that excites me. Just imagining this cosmic web that we’re all connected to and we all play our role. Jenny: Hmm. I’ve been thinking about the nature of legend a lot as I write toward the end of this book. And I think that all it really is, is that legendary people are people who illuminate what feels legendary in us. Like what feels like it has the potential to be legendary. They make the people who read about them or think about them or tell stories about them, feel the legendary nature inside of them. Mm-hmm. And that’s what she did for me. Christina: The music was recorded live as a part of the sound service at 3S Art Space in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in January 2025, where musicians responded to the changing light in the room that reflected and refracted through Christina’s suspended artwork. Andrew Halchak, the composer of this piece, is playing bass clarinet and Tomas Cruz and Katie Siler are singing. Becky: I just had a thought that utterly tickled me. I, I won’t even do progression of thought to try and get you to catch up to how I got to this thought, but there was a lot. But the thought was, you’re the Jessie Buckley to my Chloé Zhao. ‘Cause I’ve been watching, like through this whole award season, I’ve been watching a lot of interviews with both of them. And like you’ve already said you connect with her, you totally have the same energy. But I’ve watched them both like through this experience of making this movie, both of them being just alive and present and, um, touching their own gifts in a deeper way, it like magnified out, um, like their partnership, similar to our partnership, turned it into this like, um, I don’t know, something bigger than themselves, right? Yeah. All I have to say is it tickled me and it made me very grateful for you. Um, and it really is when people, like there’s something about our reciprocity that amplifies out and I think it’s probably less rare in this world than, um, I feel like when people are fully themselves and in touch with their gifts, then they resonate with the people that will amplify their gifts and each other’s gifts. I think that’s just kind of the way the universe works. It’s really fucking cool. I’m really grateful I am finding the people who amplify my gifts and that I get to amplify theirs. Reciprocity. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit noticingpod.substack.com [https://noticingpod.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

How Stories Connect Us

This week, we speak with Christina’s friend and old boss, Sam Wedelich who navigates the world as a children’s book illustrator, storyteller, and self-proclaimed deep feeler. Sam takes us on a journey through her creative life full of unfinished drawings, toys, and stupid mental health walks. She holds the weight of the world and delivers it in both serious and light-hearted ways, connecting with children through shared experiences and comedy. As a writer, Sam reminds us that we tap universality through specifics, and she uses details from her own story to reach her readers and everyone she touches. She welcomes us to live in a world of curiosity. “It’s easy to keep hope when you are around children a lot,” Sam says. She has published several books and is working on more (details of which she candidly shares with us in this conversation), laughing as she describes how she gets into kid mode to begin writing or drawing. This conversation is both buoyant and real, just like Sam. We left feeling connected to ourselves, each other, and humanity through Sam’s willingness to shed light on what unifies us because, as she lovingly says, “we are all the ages we ever were.” We highly recommend checking out Sam’s website [https://samwedelich.com/] where you will find her illustrations and books, as well as some amazing free (and extremely fun) resources. Sam has also curated a list of a few titles she read recently and loved or which would be a great place to start for the uninitiated. Young Graphic Novels: * First Cat in Space (4 books in series) by Mac Barnett and Shawn Harris (This one is great for DogMan fans) * Reggie Kid Penguin by Jen De Oliveira * Gnome and Rat by Lauren Stohler * Cabin Head and Tree Head by Scott Campbell Middle Grade Graphic Novels: * Fresh Start by Gale Galligan * Speechless by Aron Nels Steinke * Wildfire by Breena Bard * Uprooted by Ruth Chan * Huda F Are You? Huda Fahmy * Family Style by Thien Pham Episode Transcript Christina: I am receiving my own life and it’s making me fall into a puddle of tears almost every other hour. It’s a privilege to be so awake and I’m going to make myself some Indian food in the microwave. Ow. I love you. Don’t worry I have been MIA mostly just because I’m letting all of it wash over me. Whew. It’s really, really wonderful. Becky: Welcome to Noticing: The Podcast About Nothing And Everything At The Same Time. This week we’re talking with Children’s book Illustrator, storyteller and self-proclaimed deep feeler, Sam Wedelich. In this conversation, Sam takes us on a journey through her creative life, full of unfinished drawings, toys, and stupid mental health walks. Sam welcomes us into a world of curiosity and reminds us that it’s easy to keep hope when you’re around children. So I hope you enjoy. Christina: Okay. Okay. Today we have Sam Wedelich on. She and I worked together in New York City. Um, so Sam was technically my boss. She and I worked for free people in New York City and we both built displays. And my memory of Sam was me being on like a 20 foot ladder in the middle of Rockefeller Centers free people store. And her being like to the right looks great um, but I always felt like I always got very excited when Sam and I were the ones that would have to go to New Jersey in a van. And we’d rent a van and go out to these little stores and, help them put their displays up. And I always got excited because I felt like the van was this very protective place where all of the professionalism that I saw Sam have to like box herself in and be like, Christina’s boss. So she couldn’t let things over the line of boss um, it would fall away and we would have these really amazing and deeper conversations. And then there would have to be like the professionalism, Sam, when we were in among her bosses. But I got this glimpse of this incredibly deep and soulful person who, when we were in the van, I would find out lots of amazing things. Like how she loves to sing soul music like I do. Mm-hmm. I think your birthday is coming up too, right? We both have birthdays right around now. And, um, just this fiery, deep, soulful, thoughtful, reverent human being that I loved getting to know. So then I, um, moved out of the city, started working on building my own installations, she moved outta the city and we’ve, we’ve kept in touch. Sam is a children’s book illustrator, an amazing illustrator who always was drawing at work all the time anyway, um, but, but now is like really thriving in this, and I’m sure we’ll talk about that today. And I moved up to Maine. Um, she’s still outside of New York City now, but, it’s been really special to watch you, Sam, deepen yourself into the things that I saw inklings of, and like whispers of things maybe you would wanna spend more time doing. And I’m doing the same thing up here. And every once in a while we’ll have a quick catch up. And it always feels really great and like an expanded version of the van. That’s my, that’s my little intro to Sam. I’m really happy you’re here. Sam: Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. That’s really funny. I remember those two. I think I know what you’re talking about. I don’t know that I thought about that holding that line, but I did care about making sure that everything felt like, I don’t know, proper and correct, I guess. Becky: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Becky: I mean, when you were speaking, I was like, I know that feeling of like, you get into these corporate spaces and it’s, it’s not even a spoken thing, it’s so interesting when we get in spaces how. I don’t know. And I don’t, I’m not assuming that’s your experience, but that’s what it rang true for me. Sam: That’s fair. I think there’s a certain amount of code switching that happens maybe organically in that. Um, also to, to put it into more context, it was a team, right? Like I managed a team of artists. So I think I was also just being really careful to never appear to have favorites. Like, like a mom is trying to be like, I love all of you equally. Christina: Yeah. I think you did a good job of that. And, and then I loved getting, um, I loved getting the, the deeper Sam when you felt like there was space for that. Sam: Oh gosh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I’m a pretty open person. It’s also about my sense of safety too, like , in places like this or in places where I feel safe or invited or comfortable, I’m pretty open book. But I’m the opposite of that. If I don’t feel that way Mm. Like I’m a total wallflower. Um, and I would, I’m much more comfortable just watching and taking things in. So I it’s kind of an on off switch a little bit. Becky: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Sam: Yeah. Becky: I know that feeling for sure of like, yeah, feeling out where do I feel safe to be fully myself and, and when do I not, I think it’s an intelligent strategy. Christina: Sure. Yeah. I was always trying to find the places, because I’ve always felt very safe to be myself, and then all of a sudden I was put into a more corporate setting and I was like, what? People can’t just, what, they can’t just be fully themselves. I don’t know what to do. Mm-hmm. And it really confounded me. So I found safety and. Those van moments. Yeah. Sam: Makes me happy. Christina: Mm-hmm. Becky: So, Sam, this is the first time I’m meeting you, but I, you know, we, we don’t do, we intentionally don’t do research on this podcast ‘cause we wanna just show up and see what’s alive. But I could not help looking at your artwork and then I was drawn in, so I am so curious. I mean, I have so many questions, but first of all, I, I’m curious how that transition happened of like, moving from like how does one start writing children’s books and getting in that world? Sam: So there are so many versions of how people do that. Like most things, like a lot of it is timing, and a little bit of luck. But I think all of that always. Is dependent upon having done the work, right? Like having readied yourself and, and shown up for yourself,, and to whatever is inside of you. So I was always drawing, um, and writing things since I was a small person. And I was one of those kids, which it’s funny ‘cause I’m now dealing with this with my own child. I was a, a margin doodler, right? Like to, to much to the frustration of my teachers. And I would get thumped on the back of the head in church constantly for drawing. But it’s how I listen and it’s how I process information and I’m always kind of moving my hand, and translating things that way. I just, without going too far into it, I never thought of it as a job, for a lot of reasons. And, but I, I made a hard turn in college to go to art school, and. Then when my husband, I got married young. I’m from Texas originally, so it didn’t seem young to us at the time, but then to the rest of the world, getting married at 23 is young. And Russ, uh, got into a grad school program, in Miami and we were, had only ever lived in Houston area. And so I needed a job and I did for the first time, I couldn’t just use my network to get random art gigs, which is what I had been doing with my art degree at that point. And so I went, I got a job doing window display for anthropology. Mm-hmm. And that sort of started my corporate journey. And it was fine, you know, like it paid the bills. It got us through grad school, and then he got a job in New Jersey, so we moved to the Northeast and I just kept doing it. Took a year off and tried to make a go of it with my own illustration, and was doing pretty well. And then, you know, kind of got offered the golden handcuffs to come back mm-hmm. To one of the sister brands, to free people. And I, I mean, the health insurance and the stability at that time in life was hard to say no to. So I didn’t, but I kept drawing on the side. I couldn’t do as many craft fairs or, or shows like I had been doing. But I don’t know, I think it was always a secret dream. And then life happened, right? And so we started a family and I had, my first kid and kept doing the job, but started to feel the strain, right? Like climbing ladders and being at stores at five in the morning or pulling overnighters started to feel harder. And then we wanted to have another one. And when I was pregnant with my second. I thought, I think I’m done with this job. Like I can’t be traveling this much. I’m missing everything. And it was sort of just a really personal moment. And so my husband and I started talking about how we could reconfigure our life to live just on his salary, and I could take time with the kids, while they were young and maybe see if I could spin up my own art career again. So I did. And, but that whole time I was drawing, I and I started posting cartoons, about motherhood and stuff when, when my youngest was born, and a woman I had made a connection with randomly online, through, it was like an online platform that wanted to disrupt publishing. It didn’t work. Uh, but we had gotten connected through that and we’d stayed in touch and. In the course of that time, she had switched from being an editor to a literary agent, and she was like, Hey, do you wanna like tell stories like you’re doing this anyway? And I was like, yeah, sure, whatever. Like thinking it will be a long time. Like my, I have a baby right now, but like, by the time anything happens, you know, they’ll be in school and then I, that’s when I wanna be doing this, so sure. Let’s get this going. And then it turned out that an editor really loved my stuff and asked me to work on stories. And my son was two, I think, at the time. So I said, yeah, and it was a little chaotic. And then everything happened during the pandemic and everything got more chaotic and I don’t know, it’s just kept going. So in some ways, very accidentally and in other ways was always sort of ready in case it could happen. Christina: Hmm. Becky: Yeah. Christina: I see a lot of the things that you draw, um when you draw, it feels to me like you are illustrating your own inner world in the context of everyone’s universal experience. Sam: Hmm. My agent and I talk a lot about that. Uh, and it’s something that writers, I think, know pretty intuitively, that, that there’s universality in specifics, right? Mm-hmm. Like that. The more, true a story I tell about my authentic experience, the more close to the core truth I share. Christina: Yeah. Sam: The more universal it becomes. And it’s actually something I share when I go and talk to students at schools. Like I love doing author visits, and I talk to ‘em about why stories matter, right? Because it’s this weird thing that we do. Like we tell stories. And have for a long time. And obviously stories can be dangerous, like there can be propaganda, you know, but, you sort of ask why do humans do this? And I think it’s because it connects us. Like when you tell a very specific story about something that happened to you or even a made up story, there’s always enough of you in it, enough of your lived experience that gets into it, baked in there, that it. It creates empathy connections, right. Between you and other people. So this, the thing I always tell students when I’m talking to them at schools is like, I start with something very like broad where I’m like, I’m from Texas. Like, okay, you’re not, you’re probably not from Texas. I mostly talk to people in New Jersey and New York and Pennsylvania. Right. Or Connecticut. Mm-hmm. Like you’re not from Texas. Maybe you know someone from Texas, but we’re not connected yet. And then I say, you know, when I was growing up in Texas, my mom is from Germany and so English was not her first language. German was, so she spoke English poorly, uh, with a pretty thick accent. And when I was growing up, kids made fun of her and they made fun of me and they made up stupid names that they called me. And it made me feel separate. I’m kind of othered. And then I tell the kids like, if you know that feeling like now we’re connected, right? And you can always feel a little shift in the room when it happens. Um wow. And I know they know. And it’s like this is the power of storytelling. It doesn’t have to be a hard thing like that. It can be a funny thing. It can be a silly thing. It can be a joyful thing. But it’s because of that specific vulnerable feeling, getting shared that it creates this connection. And I think you can, yeah, you can do it with visual art too. Christina: You do both, right? Don’t you? You draw and write. Yeah. Is that,, you know, I’ve got kids. I, we read a lot of children’s books. I think I actually have one of the not color corrected copies of the first book you did, which was very special that you sent that to me. And we read it and it’s my daughter Lucy’s, she always. This is my favorite book and we read it and I’m very expressive like you are when you read it, and it’s a really nice time. But a lot of the books that we have, it’s written by one person, illustrated by another. Sam: Yeah. So I’ve done both. And it’s funny, like not having maybe prepared or, gone through whatever, a more traditional journey into children’s publishing is. I didn’t know all the things that people know about those roles, uh, going into it. So I kind of had to learn as I go. But yeah, people take it very seriously, right? Like it’s a really, experimental new and fascinating form of literature, this children’s literature category. And. So normally, yeah, there’s somebody you sell, you write a story and you sell it to a house. If you’re doing traditional publishing, and then the team there, there’s an editor and an art director, they will match an illustrator to the project. Right? And so that’s something that from the outside, a lot of people don’t understand, or a lot of people who write a story think they need to find an illustrator. And it’s sort of like a matchmaking thing that publishing houses really enjoy doing. And they are not interested in you taking that away from them. Uh, no. I, I mean, sometimes projects come, you know, with people attached, but I think a lot of times, it’s fun for people to try to put things together. Uh, they can be separate, right? Like someone can be just a words person, and they’re playing with language and they’re playing with a rhythm. You know, A lot of children’s books, texts are poetry. A lot of them are rhyming, and then some of them are more traditional story format. And then, and then the visual art can do a lot of things, right. You’re telling a whole separate story. Right? And a lot of times the people reading the book, your audience is usually an adult who is sort of understanding everything and a child who can only understand the pictures until they hear the words. And so as the visual side of the storytelling, you’re really sort of trying to hold space for both of the people, interacting, and giving enough information, or intentionally withholding information or intentionally counteracting the narrative. All with the desire to give the child. As much agency or care as possible. I write funny books, so I’m always trying to let the kid be in the driver’s seat if possible. So like the story that you mentioned, my, my very first book, I have what’s called an unreliable narrator. Right? And kids love an unreliable narrator because it puts them in control, right? Yeah. They know the character of the story is about to be set up for some sort of mistake or failure. And it’s so funny to them because that’s usually their experience, right? Everyone else in the world knows or seems to know mm-hmm. Everything about how the world works, and they don’t, they keep messing up all the time, or living in that uncertainty. And so it’s very fun for a child to be like, ha ha, ha ha, like, I’m in on the secret and you’re gonna mess up, but you think you’re so brave, but you’re not. You’re not at all I can tell already. And that’s such an exciting thing to give a child, so, Becky: We talk, we started talk these conversations talking about like, you know, the world is on fire, what can we do? And I think about. Everyone finding what they’re good at and what brings them joy and how to then seed to more loving and equitable world. And when I, the little bit that I was looking on your website, I like found , your PDFs of, of like, one was like about mindfulness and it’s, I’m, I could imagine a parent finding that and needing those tools just as much as their kid. And so it is bringing this, this message to both the parent and child and I just get so excited about reorienting our society around what do kids need and like giving them these messages so early on and having brilliant storytellers like you focusing on kids. And it, it just, that gives me a lot of hope and like what, what we can seed into a, a better future. It really excites me. Sam: Yeah. I mean I think it’s, it’s easy to keep hope when you spend time with children a lot. Becky: Mm-hmm. Sam: And to like, you don’t have to have children. You were a child, you know? Mm-hmm. And I think part of what probably feels nice about looking at children’s books is you’re honoring that part of you that is still there. We are all the ages that we ever were. And I am still very much a child, which is why I do this work. And Yeah. And I wanna be really clear, like, I care about both people reading the book, but I’m, I want to center children, in the stories I’m telling, and make sure they feel seen and heard, and to the extent that the adults are reminded of what it is to be childlike mm-hmm. And to tap into that. That’s what I’m inviting them into. Um, and I’m using humor to do it a lot because I think comedy is a, a really interesting device to soften folks. Becky: Hmm. Have you always been oriented towards comedy? Sam: I think so. I, ah, that’s a good question. Uh, yeah, I think so. I think, I think, I always liked funny stuff. I mean, I, I can be fairly earnest to, I’m pretty deep feel. But I, yeah, I think I always had some sort of inclination or leaning toward jokes. Christina: I mean, even the way that you talk about how when you go do these author visits and the way that you find a common ground with your captive audience, these children, is to tell them something that was difficult. That to me speaks to your deep feeling ness because you’re relating to them on something very real and tender. So like you set the groundwork with something real and painful maybe. And then you lift it with comedy. Mm-hmm. So you do both. You’re not just, I’ve always seen you in this way. Someone who does both. ‘cause you can, you are a very deep feeling and you can be very serious. Sam: Mm-hmm. Christina: But there’s such a lightness to you as well. So even like in the PDF, if people go to your website and see your PDFs, I think there’s even like an anxiety spiral or like you’re literally drawing. Didn’t you draw someone holding their anxiety in their hands? Sam: Oh, yeah, yeah, Christina: yeah, yeah. So it’s funny because it’s hard. Sam: Uh, yeah, it is. Yeah, I, I, that’s true. I have, I have melancholy tendencies for sure. And maybe humor is a part of how I deal with it, and try to, balance it. I don’t know exactly. You would think after all the years of therapy I’ve done, I would have some clarity on that, but I don’t. Um, but yeah, kids are amazing, because they’re ready to talk real, like they know. You don’t have like, it, it’s the adults that scare me usually. There’s so much more rigidity there, it’s so much more certainty. Yeah. And I find that very frustrating and challenging, and I think it’s part of why the world right now feels very weary to me, because there is so much certainty all around, and people very, very sure, you know, of all the things. And I just live in a world of curiosity. I’m not saying I’m not sure about like things, but, i, I like to talk about the real stuff and, I feel very lucky to get to do the work that I do. Mm-hmm. And to think about the thing, like right now I’m, I’m trying to do a bigger thing than I’ve ever done, which is scary. But Good. And hopefully I can pull it off. Um, Christina: do you wanna talk about it? Sam: Um, I’ve always wanted to make a graphic novel. And so picture books are short, right? Like standard picture book links are 32, 40, 48 pages. It’s a quirk of how books are bound, that it’s always eight page increments. And, and the way that I write, like Christina, if I laugh at this, like I talk too much and I’m, I over say everything. And so it happens in my writing too, that I make very complicated stories and then spend forever peeling them back to get them to like the right essence to be a picture book. And so in some senses I’m like, this will be great. Like this will be easier because I already am too complicated. But shifting to a graphic novel, it’s a lot more story to carry. Characters are older. You need more plot, you need more, um devices, more things going on. But I’m excited to try it. I’m, I’m looking at like my, I have a Post-it note, I’m at the Post-it note stage of it. Which is, if any author, people listen, they’ll know this. But, you know, a lot of people work with the Post-It notes where we’re trying to map out things that we know need to happen in the story. But it’s easier on Post-it notes ‘cause they have to move around a lot. Mm-hmm. Like, I, I don’t, I have like, pieces of it and I don’t exactly know how it all fits together. It feels very gestational. Um, like I’m trying to lift this thing out. Christina: I love it. Yeah. Is a, a graphic novel’s like Dog Man, right? Like, is is it like Comicy? Sam: Great question. So Dog Man is a young, graphic novel. Yeah. I am trying to write something that would be more middle grade. Mm-hmm. So I’m trying to think. I have so many friends that make graphic novel. I should have had a stack ready to share. I can send them after. Um, I have a reference library I’m kind of glancing at. But the problem with the graphic novel section of my reference library is that my children take them all. So most of them are actually no longer in my library. They’re in other parts of the house. It’s a huge genre right now. It’s blown up. It’s, it’s really big and it’s actually maybe something that outside of my immediate community isn’t really known. There’s a lot of big feelings about how much graphic novels have taken a bite out of children’s literature. And. I think most of us making books are just happy for kids to find books that they wanna read. Becky: Mm-hmm. Like Sam: period. Um, but Becky: Can I clarify the big feelings? Is it, is it like children are gearing more towards graphic novels and that disrupts them reading like chapter books? Is that what I am intuiting. Okay. Okay. Sam: Mm-hmm. Becky: I see. Sam: And that, that’s somehow a problem. Becky: Yeah. Sam: Um, and I sort of like leaving space for all the options. I, so that there’s early data, and people are trying to study it, you know, graphic novels, they carry on. The thing that picture books do, which is combining visual language with text, they can be really helpful for kids with dyslexia or kids with other. You know, different styles of learning, because of the visual language that’s present can be such an aid. But we’re also starting to see or be curious about whether or not it helps everyone in their reading comprehension or language acquisition to have exposure to these things. And at the same time, like it’s fine to encourage kids to read other styles of books. I just think calling any books good or bad starts to get a little weird. It is a very different type of storytelling. In some ways it’s similar to the things I’ve already been doing and in other ways, it’s more like storyboarding a movie in a book form. Yeah. So it’s more complex. And the story I’m telling is, someone in like a junior high school age, so a little more coming of age. Becky: Yeah. I actually think that what you said right before that is important about like, you know, labeling any type of book, good or bad, it lit me up. This is like a core, um, philosophy in my life of the way that, that we put things in boxes of good and bad. First of all, it’s limiting because everyone does learn differently. I’m dyslexic. I really had challenges growing up and I think about, how we desperately need new stories right now and new ways to tell stories and, I wanted to call it out because I do think, the more we, we talk about these things of. I think it’s easy to get sucked into a debate of it’s this or that. And the more we can, pause and tease out and speak clearly about, well, there’s another option. What if I step out of this? This is good or this is bad. What if we have both? You know, what if we make space for both? So that’s what I really heard in, in what you were saying. And I, I find it fascinating that these conversations are happening, even in writing for young adults. You know, that a discussion of, you know, not this or that, but Yes. And, you know, and giving people options and, I don’t know. It makes my heart so happy to know that there’s thoughtful, intelligent, amazing storytellers like you that are bringing more options and, yeah. It’s exciting to me. Sam: Yeah. I mean, it’s That’s right, that’s right. It’s, um, me personally, like I am interested in always like, complexifying, it’s not even a word, but like, I, I don’t like when things are, you know, made to seem very black and white. Becky: Mm-hmm. Um, Sam: and I think that speaks a little bit to the rigidity or certainty that I, that I was mentioning earlier. I wanna stay curious a little longer, right? Like, and, and push a little more into that space in between the things. We have a huge problem in our country right now with book banning, right? Um mm-hmm. And, and people wanting to decide what books are good and bad, for children, and. I think stories are so, so important and I think that a lot of people believe and probably do have very strong feelings that they are trying to serve children in the things that they’re pushing for. Christina: Yeah. Sam: And I think it would be better if people could start from that place and remember that as they talk about these things, even as I acknowledge that sometimes the viewpoints are never gonna line up, they’re just too diametrically opposed. They’re coming from defining the universe literally upside down from one another. And I, I don’t know how to reconcile that, but I think the aspect of maintaining a sense of community and a shared desire for the welfare support and love of children would be a better place to operate from. Than demonizing people who hold different viewpoints. But it’s hard. It, that’s a hard thing. It’s a hard thing. Even as I’m saying it, I’m sort of like, Ooh, is that right? You know? Christina: Mm-hmm. Sam: I don’t, me personally, my personal feeling is we need all the stories. We need all the stories for the reason, you know, that, that there is so much universal truth in people’s specific stories. And I think it’s very tiresome for me, and I think it’s even more tiresome for children to keep being handed the same story that was popular in the 1950s. It doesn’t feel the same. The pacing of the stories is different. I mean, my daughter is 13 and, for fun, you know, tried to read little women and it was hard for her. Mm. And we talked about it. She was like, it’s taking forever for anything to happen. And I was like, of course. Because at the time this story was written, nothing happened. You, you didn’t have television. You didn’t have. All these forms of entertainment that have sped up our attention span, and our desire for pace, right? Like you wanted a story to last you hours, you wanted opera because that was how you were gonna go and socialize. You wanted it to take four hours with an intermission. That was great. And now our brains are like, whatever, 30 seconds swipe, 30 seconds, swipe. You know, it, it’s very different world we live in. And so I don’t, I’m not saying get rid of those things. I think it’s important to have our history and to understand what literature was doing for the people at that time. And yet I don’t think anyone, when little women came out. We’re desperately trying to read, you know, Beowulf, you know, something equally old for them going like, that’s real literature, this stuff. I just think that we’re, we lose sight sometimes of what’s important and the stories that people are writing now. The new stories are so great because the people that are writing them are people who are closer to the world that the kids are living in. And they’re have, they’re speaking to the things that they see. The artists are always trying to shine the light on the things. That’s kind of just what you do. Um, so yeah, I think, I think it’s good to find the new stories, that speak to people and make people feel less alone in the world, right? Mm-hmm. Like we need those stories that center all these other ways of being so that people don’t feel alone. Because the truth is there’s almost always someone who’s going through or has gone through the things that you’re struggling with. And if the only context you find a sense of community is through a story. Maybe that’s the thing that gets you to the next, the next moment, and that’s everything. So, Becky: Hmm. Christina: Beautiful. Becky: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Christina: It’s so nice. I, I am in this, I’m in a little class, like a little prototype class about story specifically cosmology of our times and like what, what cosmology means. Like the story of us here, the cosmology of like the United States, where we are right now is very different from the cosmology of like, some small country in Africa or something. Mm-hmm. Different places, even different places on like small tribes that live on opposite sides of a mountain would have different cosmologies. And so we’re, I’m, it’s really interesting. I wasn’t even expecting this conversation to take me here, but I’m in this class and all of these things that are happening in my life are weaving in and out of what I’m learning. And it’s so interesting to hear you talking about, what I hear is you feeling, a real, like you feel the responsibility of what you are doing. And I think that’s really beautiful to hear, because you are offering new story, new, new cosmology to, to this time now. Right? And we even in this class, we even talk about things that we maybe just, take for granted the cosmology in the stories that we tell ourselves Here. We are trying to think of, we were trying to come up with lists of just stories that we tell ourselves. Like one example that’s coming to mind is money is power. Like, do we believe that? Do we choose to believe it? Do we not choose to believe it? God is good. Do we choose to believe it? All of these little things that you might find. And it’s, it’s been so interesting to think about that and then to talk to you as an author that’s literally writing to the generations that are being seeded now. And, and hearing you speak with such clarity and, and like reverence for what you’re doing. And also passion and curiosity. And I mean, one of the things we could, we are curious people too. So like we bring curious people into conversations because we’re all coming at curiosity for the world from different angles. Yeah. And, and also I feel a kinship with what you’re saying with artists. Our job is to filter this world through us. Mm-hmm. And it’s filtering through me differently than it’s filtering through you. And that’s the beauty of all of it. Sam: Totally. It, it’s interesting, like, uh, I’ll point out one other thing about the specific work of, of writing for children, which is that I can talk about all these things and I feel all these things and, and I mean, you know what I’m saying? And that’s a part of it, but when I’m actually doing the work of the writing for the children, I am my child’s self. Mm-hmm. Like I am not, I can’t let that part of my brain into the process of writing stories for children. And not, not that I dislike stories that are like what I will say in a second, which is there are so many stories that are very moralistic, just right off the bat. Like they are a lesson or they are a thing and there is a place for those. I’m just personally not interested in writing them. I want those things to be really baked into the story, and feel super duper organic, and natural within the context of the story, feeling true to a kid. And the only way I found to do that successfully is to find my child’s sense and right from that place. And thankfully, like I am still that person very deeply, so it’s fine. But yeah, like my, the book I had that came out in November is called A Quick Trip to the Store and it’s about a mom and daughter who go grocery shopping ‘cause they’re out of bananas. But neither one of them wants to go to the store because the, the mom says that shopping with children is difficult. And the daughter says, well, she doesn’t like shopping. ‘cause shopping with moms is difficult. And there’s like all these little comics of them arguing about what that she can get from the store. She wants the, the thing that has a free toy in it, or she wants the cereal with the extra sugar. And mom’s just a total grump about it. , and that’s sort of the premise that leads them on this wild caper through the grocery store., and it feels authentic, right? Because I’m telling a true story about what it’s like to be both an adult and a child in an environment where nobody’s getting what they want, right? Like there’s, there’s no win-win here. There is only lose lose. So we might as well have some fun. Mm-hmm. Becky: What I’m hearing and so far from you and what I love, and please correct me if I’m sensing the wrong thing, but it feels like a reorientation, uh, towards the child. And I’ve, I’ve been obsessed with this lately thinking about the difference between patriarchy and matriarchy. Patriarchy being this hierarchy with basically children at the bottom. ‘cause they’re useless. And matriarchy is a circle with the children in the center because they hold the future because they hold, they hold evolution, you know, because they are the next. So it’s a, a centering around children to focus on them. And that’s what I’m hearing in, in your, in your writing and how you speak about it, is we don’t need to tell the kids what to do. It would actually be more beneficial to center them. Learn from them, learn how we can maintain that connection to our own inner child. Because child, like, even in like the tarot deck of the fool, you know, it’s the beginning of the major Arcana and it’s all about like being willing to be the fool. Because that’s when you learn, you know, being willing to give up those certainties. Because when you give up those certainties, that’s when you learn something new. Or we’ve talked about Christina before about, um, emptiness. You know, emptying out the old ways of knowing so that you can actually step into something new. And I love that the way you’re talking about this. Sam: That’s right. That seems right. I think I, I, I don’t have any issues with that. That seems right. I thi it made me think, about awe. Mm. Like, um, like that feeling of awe and how. That always feels very different to me than anything else. And it feels deeply rooted in childhood. And I’m not specifically sure why, if, if I was taking an initial stab at it, I think it would be, because when I feel that feeling, I’m feeling like I’m a part of something larger. Which makes me feel small, but not in a bad way. In, in, mm-hmm. In the way I hope, or I think I did feel as a child, very held, and very connected,, but just sort of in awe. And I, and I love that and I, I think, I think the best children’s books, whether they’re funny or serious, can tap into that somehow. Becky: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that feeling of smallness. ‘cause when you are young, the, your physical environment, you do feel so small. And I think, you know, we grow into adults and we can fall into this hubris that we are the biggest things, the most important things, and we forget to look up, you know, and, and Christina, you talked about cosmology. All you have to do is look to the cosmos and have that feeling of smallness again. Or start tapping into deep time to like realize our youngness, you know, but it’s easy to lose touch with that as an adult. And, um, yeah. I appreciate any invitation into awe. I, I agree with you. It’s, it’s like an indescribable feeling and I, I think it does feel young and it does feel small in the best way. Christina: Sam, how do your ideas come to you and like, how do you prepare? Um maybe this is two questions. How do your ideas come to you? And then how do you prepare? Like, do you have any ritual or anything that prepares you to get into your child mind for writing? Sam: Mm. That’s a good one. Um, I might answering backwards. Preparation of kid mode involves doing kid stuff. Mm-hmm. Um I gotta feel silly. So it’s dancing around or singing. It’s following my kid energy, which is very destructive, inattentive style. So sometimes it’s like. Go into the thrift store and touching all the stuff. It’s like I collect rocks. Let myself have funny things. So like I have toys all over the place, in my office. Mm-hmm. Um, because seeing those reminds me of being a kid. I have a picture. Oh, I can show you that., I have a picture of me as a kid that I look at in my space. It’s dusty. ‘cause I’m really bad at cleaning. Even just Christina: moving the picture. I heard a bell. Sam: That was one for free people bells. Oh my God. I have still like a tiny one from like a holiday display leftover. I don’t know. I love that. That just came into this Becky: hang. Yeah. In the picture. What are you doing together? Are you making something? Sam: That’s my grandmother. It’s some kind of little dog, uh, with a battery operated thing. It was like the eighties. Right. So it, it barked I think if you pushed a button. Cool. But I’m just giggling.. And I love that. I love, I have a complicated origin story, and so for me to have a photograph of like, me laughing as a child is really meaningful. And like, you know, to remind myself that I had, that I had those moments. Mm-hmm. But, so that’s, that’s how I activate that part of myself. Oh. I like to get in the garden. And sometimes I have to move my body because I get very moody. And um, that’s a good way to get some dopamine. So I gotta go for stupid mental health walks. I don’t remember who, like, popularized that. It was like a meme for a while. Sam: Going for my stupid mental health walk. And I was like, oh, yes. Very relate. Yes. That’s me too. Um, so I do that and then, um, how I get ideas, I don’t know. That’s just, who knows. Stuff pops in my head all the time. And so I carry a notebook. I have ink, and, um, watercolors and pens, and I carry, I’m never without them. Like my, I was in Disneyland line drawing. Like I just, you never know. I, I just have to be open, like, I’m like a sponge. And then things pop in my head some, the book I’m working on now, it popped in my head. I saw a picture of a kid. Oh, I can, I’ll show you. This is a rough draft, so it’s not cute yet. But, this, this kid, do you see this little head? This popped in my head. All right. That, that there’s this kid and he can barely see over the top of the table and it’s like there’s something, there’s something he wants on the table. Um, and he’s just barely there. And I think it was like, there was just something immediately hilarious. It was sort of like this wordless comedy with so much like power before anything has entered in. Like you immediately know like something’s gonna happen here. And I love, again, I think that that always feels like a huge clue moment for me, because that’s gonna be funny to a kid who can’t read any of the words they already know. That kid is shark circling something, you know, we found something good. Um, and also because, and there it’s funny, like sometimes I don’t know that I have like a personal attachment to an idea. And then as I was working this, this story has existed in multiple forms because that happens. Um it didn’t work the first iteration set to blow it up and put it back together again in a new form, and now it’s gonna be a book, which is great. Um but I remembered while I was working on it that I, I snuck candy out of the Halloween bowl when I was little and got busted and got in trouble. But I think it was a me memory. Like I think I remembered seeing the candy bowl on the table and knowing that I wasn’t supposed to take the candy out of there. And I don’t know. It is funny. That’s just funny. So I needed to see what I could do with it. So there we are. Christina: It’s so good. That’s like, that’s like you, you know, like you’re saying, the truer that you can get, the more universal it is. That’s like you reaching into some deep part of Sam and pulling out this memory and being like, that is so true. From when I was like five. Sam: Yeah. I don’t know how it happens. It’s weird, but I, I just try to stay open. I, I talked to, I got invited by another illustrator friend to talk, she teaches college to talk to her students, and I was like, oh, I don’t know if this is a good idea, but, okay. And so the only thing I could come up with though, as like, um, like a metaphor for how I think about, storytelling, and I do refer back to it, so it’s holding up so far, is it’s a little bit like surfing you have to be in good shape to be good at surfing, right? Like you have to have some upper body strength. And you have to have some practice time. Like you need to spend time understanding the mechanics. But when you’re actually going out to catch your wave, like you gotta sit there and watch the water, right? And not every wave is for you. Sometimes the wave is for your friend, you know, they’re in a better position where they’re, they’re sitting on their board watching the water too. Um, and then, you know, you’re happy for them. Hopefully you’re cheering them on as they ride that in. And then when your wave comes, you have an opportunity to ride that and hopefully you do. And if you fall off, you get to try again because the waves are coming constantly. They’re not stopping. The ocean doesn’t stop producing waves. And so it helps with the sense, uh, to, to like push back against the sense of scarcity. ‘cause I think that that is not good with creativity. Like trying to generate stories with fear doesn’t usually work well. So that’s kind of how I think about the idea process. ‘ cause I do get frustrated sometimes. It takes a long time to write. Writing is hard. The, the visual part can be easy and feel very magical, but the writing part is, is hard. And I think most writers, if they’re honest, will, will say that it can hurt. It takes a long time before it starts to click. It sucks, Christina: but, Sam: but it’s so amazing when it finally clicks. It’s what makes you keep coming back to it. Yeah. It feels magical when it finally works. So you’re like, alright, I guess I’ll do that again. Becky: Do you feel like it start, does it ever start with a, a feeling Because what, what was coming up as you were saying that is like, worlds are so limiting. So I imagine, you know, that is the true mastery of writing is to try to find the right combination to express this feeling. And if the feelings are big within you, I imagine it’s even trickier. Sam: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think that I’m always trying to, uh, there’s something playing in, in my mind or in my being, right, either a piece of an experience or an imagined experience that’s overlaid onto something that really happened to me or to someone in my circle that I love. And I want you to feel it. I want you to feel that. And so in order for you to feel that, I have to set up all the things around it that will help you to feel it. And so I have to set up all, I feel like I’m just telling myself how to write my graphic novel. Okay, this is good. Um Christina: yes, you’re welcome. Sam: Becky’s good for this Christina: stuff. What? Yeah. Sam: Yeah, yeah. Right. Well, you were saying the same thing too. Like, oh, look at all the things that are weaving into the thing I’m thinking about. That’s we’re pattern seeking, right? Like that’s the thing. Mm-hmm. So, um, yeah, I think in this story I’m trying to create right now, like I want you to feel the feeling of. Discovering your voice and how to take up your space as a more quiet person. But a person who has deep opinions, right? Mm-hmm. Which is a person personality type that I don’t see a lot in the space, which is why I’m interested in trying to have a story for that type of character. You have a lot of, people who are loud who need to learn how to listen to others. You have a lot of people who are, you know, super anxious and just need to feel validated or safe. But it’s a strange personality type that is somebody who appears to be very quiet but is like, actually has big boss energy. And um, I have a few people like that in my life. And I love them deeply. And so I would love to tell a story that honors that. And so I need to set up all the pieces around the feelings, I guess. Yeah, I do. I have to set up all the circumstances so that you could feel what it feels like to feel those things. And then how all the situations act upon that reality. In a way that you can relate to, even if that isn’t your personality. Something weird happens though, and I think there’s, I don’t have a reference for it, but I know I’ve seen it. They’ve done brain scans. Like when you’re reading a story, you experience the things that are happening to the characters in the story as if they’re happening to you. Like if we scan your brain, you know, if they’re jumping and doing something dangerous, your brain lights up as if you’re doing the things. I think that’s kind of fascinating. Becky: Yeah. The brain doesn’t know the difference between real, as in you can touch it and real as in you’re imagining it and story, but it has to be really vivid for the brain to really register it the same. But that’s what’s, that’s the power of story is it does make it so real that it, it sucks you in. It’s beautiful. Christina: I’ve been thinking a lot about art, in all of its forms and how it has the ability to heal a lot. My work has brought, has been brought into places of literal healing recently and then it’s made me think, ‘cause I’m living with a curious mind. It’s made me think, does this work have memory? Like does it remember being with me for a long time when I made it? Can it heal? Like is my connection to this work still alive? Two separate questions. Am I connected to it still so that I might send it healing? And does it already hold memory so that it may do its own work? And I think about. So I believe yes and yes, first of all. And it’s a powerful thought and I think about what you are doing and, um, I even, even in you saying you have some friends that you want to speak to in this young adult novel, I also see you speaking to yourself too, always. Um, yeah, always. So, um, do you have thoughts? Like, does that thought, can you relate? Can you relate to me, Sam? Sam: Yeah. Art Christina: and healing. Yeah. Sam: Yeah. I think it’s interesting. I think, I think it’s an easier yes for writers, um, ‘cause I think writers have always have talked about this for a long time, right? That like, you make a work, it could be a novel or a children’s book or any type of writing poetry and, and your choices. The choices that you made to put those specific things on those pages then go and they’re in the hands of someone else and that person’s having a relationship with those choices. Like Yes, of course. You, I have connections with children all over the place that I don’t even know I’m having as they read the books that I make. I try not to think about it too much ‘cause it comfort freaks me out. Yeah. But I, I know, or I say a lot like there’s a point in the bookmaking process where I send the book out into the world to go live its life. Right? Like, it feels that way to me and that’s the way that I deal with that. And I hope that it has the power to heal. And I hope that all stories do. And I think art, I think your intention stays with it. A. I think there’s probably some kind of physics we don’t understand that would help us explain that. And that’s a thing I’m tinkering with in this story too, which is, you know, the way that, um, you know, strings vibrate and sound vibrates and different frequencies, the same string can do different things. And, and sort of all the ways we show up in the world, right? And these different things happen and how it makes you appear or sound right. And I, I don’t know, there’s some kind of connection there. I I mean, I, why not? Becky: Yeah. Now I can’t wait to read your graphic novel. You’re, you’re speaking my language. I mean, I even think of like the, the research that they’ve done, I think primarily in Japan around water crystals and the effect that intention has on the, the composition of the water crystals and, you know. We are made of mostly water. So yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head that it’s probably some physics we don’t understand yet, but that doesn’t make it not true. And I think intention, um, I think intention does transcend space and time and, and ripples out in ways we’ll never, maybe, never fully understand. But, um, yeah, it’s beautiful. I like thinking of these ripples going out into the world and all the connections. Sam: Well, I’ll say, you know, knowing your work, Christina, like, it’s always been like you are always such a joyful person and I know that’s always been a huge part of the work. You, I don’t, I’m not surprised you feel that that way and that you have those experiences and that awareness and sense. Like I think that’s been true for you always. Um, and it’s a part of what draws people to your work. I remember. Talking about, like, I don’t know if it was art school or after, you know, the conversations about how so much of people making art, it seemed like it needed to be heavy. Mm-hmm. Or serious. And you sort of exploring what it meant to push back against that and be true to the work you wanted to make, which was sort of defiantly joyful. Christina: Defiantly joyful is very true. Yeah. In art school, I had, one particular friend who had a very difficult upbringing, and she, she was like, Watka, why is your work not painful? It has to be, it must be painful to be real. And I was like, ah, it would be fake. I can’t do it. It’s not me. And it wasn’t like my professors in art school. I think historically art was supposed to come out of pain. Um, I didn’t get that necessarily from my, mentors and teachers in art school. I think because they saw me and saw, you know, maybe they would be coaching someone else, like, use your pain to make the art. Maybe that’s where like the deepest work is for you. It’s just not my experience. So yeah, I’ve had to really, I’ve had to really accept that and, and lean into to the joy. Because that’s what, that’s like, that’s how consciousness flows through me as me. It’s not I’m, I don’t have a well of deep trauma or pain or anxious noodly insides that I need to untangle outward. I am meant to be so bright and like not hide that. That’s my role. I’m about to be 40, tomorrow’s my birthday, and I am like, as clear as day that my, the days of me wondering where the hurt is are not really anymore good. Yeah. ‘cause it wasn’t, I didn’t have to go find it. I, it was, I tried for a while, like maybe there is some, I don’t know, maybe there should be more problems. So now I’m, I’m conscious of the healing properties in the work that I make, which is, which is coming because I’m finally just not looking, instead of looking for hurt that should be in here somewhere. I’m actually looking for like how I can put that energy towards real proper forward motion, you know? Sam: Well, I, it’s. It’s a beacon for people who don’t have a lived memory of what it looks like, right? Like I do have the messy background, right? And I’m building something super different in my family Now. I don’t have the muscle memory for it, but I, I know it when I see it out, right? I go, oh, there it is. It is possible, right? And for you to be authentic to the delightful life that you’ve lived is a beacon for the people who are looking for proof that it’s possible. Like it’s very validating. It’s like, oh look, you can be healthy and loving and kind, and you can raise a family that way. And they can turn around and do the same thing with their children. Goodness can come and flow generationally just like trauma can. It’s just very rare in the world we live in. Um, or I feel like it is. So it’s really, really lovely that you share that. Christina: Thank you. Sam: Happy early birthday. Christina: Oh my God, thank you. The music was recorded live as a part of the Sound Service at 3S Art Space in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in January, 2025, where musicians responded to the changing light in the room that reflected and refracted through Christina’s suspended artwork. Andrew Halchak, the composer of this piece is playing bass clarinet and Tomas Cruz and Katie Seiler are singing. Becky: Also I was at the gas station getting gas obviously, and you know, my eyes were just wandering and all of a sudden I look up at like the overhang of the gas pumps and there is this reflection of the puddle on the ground and it’s just these beautiful dance of ripples and I wish I had taken a video of it, but it was just like the Universe reminding me that everything I’m doing is rippling out and I can just trust and everything is aligning exactly the way it’s supposed to be. It was very, a very obvious example of the power of noticing. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit noticingpod.substack.com [https://noticingpod.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Scaffolding For Community

As a part of our “the world is on fire what can I do?” series, we bring in Lea Urguby, Becky’s friend of decades and someone who has, in large and small ways, changed Becky’s life. Lea brings a humility and a sociologist’s brain to this conversation and speaks about her lifelong activism with groundedness and a deep desire to be a harbinger of actionable change. She speaks with compassionate urgency about how we must build the scaffolding for community, highlighting that “we are only as strong as our interpersonal relationships.” She reminds us that community takes practice, even offering tangible steps we can take everyday like waving at a neighbor. As someone who grew up with a mother who is very much awake to the world, Lea’s formative experiences included laying her 8 year old body down in communion with her favorite frog habitat upon learning it may be in jeopardy. Lea gracefully delivers a refreshing, long view of a world on fire. She reminds us that there are so many ways to show up as a community member— from noticing the pattern of breath in the person standing in line behind you to donating funds to a far away issue that you believe in —it all matters. Nothing is too small. Our longest episode yet, we cover a lot of ground. From the ways art reconnects us by buoying us to joy to how hyper local organizing work is the most sustainable, this conversation is rooted in action and an understanding that we are not separate from one another. Finding our connection, Lea notes, is the greatest catalyst for change. Here are this week’s invitations to explore this conversation further: * Check out Lea’s consulting website [https://www.leastjane.com/] * Listen to Dean Spade’s podcast Love in a F*cked Up World, especially the episode with Andrea Ritchie [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/andrea-ritchie/id1819407403?i=1000750460275] * Listen to the NPR podcast Throughline [https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510333/throughline] - pretty much any episode is likely to shift your perspective on how we got to this moment * Explore the work of Prentis Hemphill [https://prentishemphill.com/] * And if you haven’t read Parable of the Sower, consider yourself officially invited. Really just read all of Octavia E. Butler [https://www.octaviabutler.com/]. Episode Transcript Christina: So I was thinking about our conversation with Lea and um, one of my favorite notes that I keep on my phone is people I meet with dogs and I put their name and their dog’s name so that when I’m in the woods and I see the dog, I’m like, oh, shoot. And I open up my notes app and I look for the person. I’m like, oh, great. That’s Lisa with Buck or whoever. And it, um, it just reminds me of like, you know, her note of making a note of the person’s name, who serves you, your coffee at your local store. Um, yeah, it’s great. It’s a, it’s one extra step, but it works really well. Also, Lisa’s a jeweler. She’s a real person. I’m not just using a fake example. Becky: Welcome to Noticing: A Podcast About Nothing And Everything At The Same Time. This week we’re joined by my dear friend Lea, who was the first person who I thought of when we started this conversation around “the world is on fire what can I do?” Lea is someone who grew up with an activist mother, and we talk about her roots. Literally laying her 8-year-old body down in front of an excavator to save her favorite frog habitat. This episode is jam packed full of wisdom as we explore together what it means to set up scaffolding around community and how to show up as a community member. We explored so many ways. It all matters and nothing is too small. I hope you enjoy. So today we are joined by my dear friend Lea, who, so on this podcast, if you haven’t been listening, when we have guests, we like to introduce each other not from like, here’s your cv, here’s the bio, but like, here is how my heart sees you. So how are you perceived by someone who loves you? Lea was actually the first person that popped into my mind when we started having these conversations around this moment and how we can each stretch ourselves a little bit, to show up in an authentic way, but in a more engaged way for this moment because Lea has been doing this work of movement and like we the conversations we’ve been having before from my perspective, have been kind of feeling into how to do something new. And not that this moment isn’t new, isn’t new for you Lea. ‘cause it’s new for everyone. But you’ve been doing this work for so long that I was very interested to talk, um, talk to you. So Lea is, I’m remember distinctly when I met Lea, I had moved to San Diego. I was about 25 and I was, canvassing for Environment California. So I was one of those, well-meaning big hearted, but annoying people who stands outside of the grocery store and is trying to basically guilt you into giving money. Um, and I remember, uh, almost the exact words that Lea said, which if you, my memory is not a lot of things stick like this, but this stuck. She was basically like, you know, that they’re just, that organization’s just raising money so they can keep raising money. And it just stopped me in my track. And there was, I’ve reflected about this, about like, what was that that stopped me in my tracks and it was just the facts. But in this loving like. There I didn’t feel an ounce of judgment for what I was doing. I felt like this loving invitation to think about the world differently. Um, and that is like the core, when I think of Lea, that’s what I think of. And so I probably quit this the next day and was like, I’m out. And basically, became like a little puppy following Lea around. ‘cause at the same time she was, opening her, uh, to call. So it was called the Rubber Rose. And to call it a, erotic or sex shop is like selling it short. It was an art gallery. It was a, um, you know, sex positive, queer positive place to learn and grow and be in community. And I was just, that was the first of many times my perspective. My worldview was exploded open, by Lea and, um. Yeah, the, the shop is no longer there, but her work obviously continues in many ways in her engagement in community, in her pursuits of academia. Before she popped on, we saw an image of her gorgeous, wonderful daughter who she took to school with her in college, which I always love. Um, and is now bringing her talents to, classrooms and also to businesses and organizations who are interested in aligning their business with, sustainability, equity justice. And, um, what we always talk about is seeding a more, loving, equitable and sustainable world. Lea is now doing that through consulting with businesses who might not have her deep well of expertise, and I’m really excited to watch that grow and progress and, yeah, very excited to have you here today. Because like I already, already me mentioned you have such a different perspective of this moment that I definitely do. And yet just like every moment they’re unprecedented. You are in a different space personally. So I’ll open this dialogue with kind of the core of what we’re trying to get at is how is this moment living in you and what, yeah. I’ll just stop there. Lea: Hmm. Um, well first thanks for all those memories. Um, that’s a fun little, a little memory lane. I love that you remember like our first meeting, sorry, environment, California or whoever it was. Greenpeace or, Yeah, I mean, I think that this moment is living in me in a very different way than moments that have come before that have felt, you know, just as urgent, as a parent. Um, my kiddo is turning seven in a couple months and so these last seven years have really been for me, like attempting to do a really intentional pivot so that I can continue to show up in the world in the ways that I have in the past, but in a way that feels, With, with a couple extra layers of protection around me and my family. Um, and so I, I’m just sort of sitting with the duality of what that often means. And so, um, since becoming a parent, I oftentimes feel the urgency almost more intensely. And yet, because of the work that I have done in the past and typically have done in the past, the restraint kind of comes just as quickly after. And so it’s like a really interesting tension for me. And I think that that tension is existing for a lot of folks that I grew up in the activist space, I guess. Mm-hmm. With, um, as were many of us, um, have chosen parenthood over the last 20 years and many of us are aging and, the ways that we’re moving is very different than the ways that we would’ve used to have moved. And so, what I find interesting about that is that the feeling that I am feeling is likely very similar to the one that people who are almost maybe new to movement work or new to sort of seeing this. Sort of the layers peel back in front of them that they might also be experiencing something very similar. So I think it’s interesting that it sort of like brings me back full circle to sort of like entryway into movement work. Mm-hmm. Um, because I think that the tension, I think that that tension exists within a lot of folks. They feel an urgency and they feel an uncertainty about where there places in it and how to move and how to move safely. Um, yeah. And so, yeah, I think I’ll stop there for a second. Just that’s sort of how it’s landing in my body. Becky: Yeah. Lea: Um, yeah, just kind of layers of, layers of conflict and sort of conflicting emotions and feelings. Becky: Yeah. Lea: Yeah. Christina: I am curious what the literal difference, like, can you, can you kind of parse out what the actual difference of, maybe I’m hearing that you’re, you’re putting some more protections around your life and your family life. Um, what does that look like in like, the literal commitment that you have in the day to day, and how are you showing up in a way that feels right for you right now in these activist spaces? Because all I’ve heard from Becky is just like, we gotta get Lea on here. She’s like, she’s the person, she’s the person that, that guides all of my activist impulses. Gosh. And she’s just, oh my gosh. Like, tried and true. So it’s Lea: true. Christina: What is that? Uh, yeah, I’m curious what Lea: that looks like. Yeah, no, that’s Christina: like, for you, Lea: I think that’s a great question. That’s, that’s probably really important. Um, and I guess, yeah, now that I’m thinking about how I’ll answer that, I suppose maybe the ways that I move now or maybe even possibly a little bit more, you know, wild for folks who are maybe entering into movement. Um, so in my early activist days, 20, 26 years ago is when I kinda landed in San Diego and really found like a ho, like a activist family home. Um, I grew up in a a very open, and I would say fairly radical household with, with me and my mom. Um, my mom is, you know, just like a very classic old school hippie. There’s so many things she has done in her life that she was able to inform me even in little ways through my childhood. I grew up in the Bay Area and, um, we landed in, in Marin after my parents separated. And we ended up in like a, this low income housing condo project that they were like starting to build. So we were one of the first layers of houses or whatever. And of course like the next layers were coming and there was like this marsh behind my house. So I’m like eight years old and like laying in front of the bulldozer, they’re like protecting my, my frogs and like all of my like tadpoles that were in there. Right. And so like, and my mom is like, you know, burning sage like around me. Like she has like some, like some like, you know, native elders that she’s in community with, that they do work around this, marshland and they’re like drumming out, you know, to the sunrise or something, you know. So I’m. Upbringing that has sort of situated me well for movement work, I guess. Um, but so, you know, as an adult I land in San Diego, um, as a young adult, I should barely 18. Um, and really found a home for, for what I felt I was impassionate like passionate about at that time. And it’s funny, I, I think it’s important to preface like the hippie upbringing, because I sort of fell deeply in with really incredible anarchist circles. And at the time, early two thousands, there was really like a lot of these conversations within our circles that, like each previous movement, had really sort of like failed the urgency of the time. And so we had this idea that like the hippies kind of just, they went, they went off and they like built these alternative communities and they just kind of like grew up into yuppies and like owned houses and, you know, the woods and in the hills. And they really didn’t like change structurally the way that, um, the world moved. And as anarchists, we were blocking streets. We were setting dumpsters on fire. We were, um, I was part of different black block organizations and so we were doing banner drops off of buildings. We were, we had friends that were like rock climbers. And so, um. You know, I think at the time that I was meeting Becky, I had, I had some really strong opinions about what nonprofits did. Um, mm-hmm. And I, I was really deeply, um, like in that space of talking about like this nonprofit industrial complex that if we continue to fund these nonprofits, um, that are, you know, this small percentage is going to actually solving these issues, these larger percentages are going to pay, you know, paychecks and whatever else in structural organization. and I was just like deeply in, um, in, in radical direct action. Um, so a lot of, I had a lot of friends actually that had come down to San Diego. We were doing a lot of work around, the militarization of the border in early 2000, 2001, 2002. Um, the war in Iraq was gearing up and starting in 2003, whereas we were doing a lot of anti-war action. Then. I had a lot of friends who had come down from the Pacific Northwest, and they had been in, in 1999, there was what was called like the Battle of Seattle, and it was against the World Trade Organization, and it was this sort of like huge sort of moment for like anarchist action. So those, those were the people, those were my folks. We were shutting down the five freeway. We were traveling to Sacramento for biotech conventions and planning actions. I was arrest, I, we have different terms within, direct action and rapid response work, which is like arrestable or non arrestable. Um, and so I was often open to being arrested. Not because I was like excited about being arrested, but also because a lot of my work that I was doing was surrounding aspects of, like white heteronormative privilege. Um, I carry a lot of privilege with me when I move into spaces and I understand that I’m gonna be treated differently based on what action I might, carry out versus somebody else in a different position, in different body. And so, yeah, so those were a lot of the spaces that I was in. So I’m, to say that I’m moving very differently. It’s like an understatement. Um, but I mean, it was interesting in, in 2020 when, the movement for Black Lives was really taking off. And we were, you know, it was, I feel it was such, the combination of all the things we were, a lot of us were home. The COVID Pandemic really highlighted a lot of those, inequities. There was a moment that I was like sitting in, my room upstairs, and I can see, I can see the Coronado Bridge from like my window. And the five freeway was being shut down by activists. And they had rushed in on all of the, on-ramps, and they were shutting down the Corona Bridge and they were shutting down the freeway. And I was, um, my role was to sit at home on my computer and monitor various, like police channels. So I’m like sitting there nursing my, um, you know, one and a half year old, um, monitoring police chats and then, you know, sending messages to the people who were on the ground. And I’m like, it was just a full circle moment, the fact that I could actually see them from my house. And I just, I could feel, I could feel the conflict in my body. I could feel the tension in my body, and it had to be like a constant reminder of like, this work is important. Becky: Mm-hmm. Lea: This work is important and I, you know, I look down at my kid and this work is important. Um, yeah. Yeah. Becky: Mm-hmm. Lea: When I was opening the Rubber Rose, it was, I opened in 2006 and it was through a lot of conversations from folks in the early two thousands, you know, having that commentary like, oh, the hippies did nothing. And then really realizing that. We are only as strong as our interpersonal relationships. And so the conceptualizing and the creation of a feminist sex shop that would be a space for exploration of relation to one another was really from this idea of like, oh, maybe we are just supposed to think about how, how we are in relationship, how we have sex with each other, how we form alliances with one each other. How we open up and close off relationships in different ways. Um, and so I do often talk about that. It was funny sort of opening the rubber rose was like a, a, a nod back to Oh, okay. My mother’s generation. I, I I see, I see some work that was done there. You know? And, um, and it was really about how do you know how are we in relation with one another? Um, because even in a few short years of doing that really intense direct action work, I was already able to see so many relationships that had been shattered. Becky: Mm-hmm. Lea: Through the way that we hurt when we’re hurt. Mm-hmm. Um, through the way that we kind of pick apart things that could be collaborative, um, when we’re coming from a harmed space, how we inflict harm on one another when we’re carrying all of our baggage with us, as we all do. Becky: Mm-hmm. Lea: Yeah. Becky: This has been a thread that’s really been, alive in me lately. So we were texting recently about the podcast from Dean Spade Love in a Fucked Up World I feel like what Dean is, is doing is bringing that awareness to our movement work is about our relationships. Lea: That’s right. Becky: But rooted in the movement space. And I’ve been reflecting on, that’s kind of a central thesis of my work is about our relationships and how we can strengthen our relationship with ourselves and, and our community members and our family so that we can join movement work. So I feel like when I listened to, to Dean and when I listened to you speak right then, it feels like a lots of people are coming to the same awareness from different, perspectives, and we need all those perspectives, and like we’ve been talking so much about community, like we need to be in local community, and I’ve been really reflecting on I don’t know how to naturally be in community. It’s like, we say it as like, it’s this thing that everyone knows how to do. And that hasn’t been my experience, you know? And so like you’re, I’m hearing you speak about movement spaces where harm can be caused, you know, if the internal work isn’t, I, I’m putting, I’m not, these weren’t your words, but this is what I sensed. It’s like mm-hmm. If we’re in movement spaces or if we’re in communities and not doing the relational work of understanding our triggers, understanding the harm that we bring, the biases we bring, um, then the community that we create is just gonna be replicating harm. So, um, yeah. It’s been a really, a live thread for me lately. It’s like how to be in community and recognizing, I can’t be the only one out of billions of people on this planet who don’t know how to be in community and have to learn those skills. Lea: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know. Prentis Hemphill talks about this a lot as well, where we can only practice community in community. We can only practice relating in relationship, and yet how do we get to those places of beginning that? And I think that, as the way that we interact with one another changes and it changes more and more rapidly, we have to figure out what those new ways of connecting can look like. I mean, I think that like through spaces of social media, there can be a feeling of disconnection for some people or an uncertain way, of moving, is this the right way to reach out or is this how, how do I respond? Or whatever else. And so there’s definitely, I feel a push towards, you know, community IRL. Mm-hmm. Like actually seeing people in real life. Um, and also, you know, the complications of the COVID-19 pandemic really also is like an isolating factor as well. And so I, I feel. That we are all relearning ways of building community from where we are. So some people are building it in those online spaces. Some people are really trying to find those connections through those social spaces. Some people are really trying to get back out and get into community with people, and there is no roadmap of how to do it because it’s something that we have been doing as humans for a very long time. And then all of a sudden there has been sort of this disconnect. Mm-hmm. Where now we’re staring at screens and we’re staring at computers and we’re not, we’re not sure how to do the relating thing. So often we talk about, or we hear people talk about, and we also talk about like, oh yeah, exactly what you’re saying. We need to build community. We need to find the ways that we need to connect. And I’m just gonna share like, some tangible things because I think that that’s always what’s missed. But it’s like you can say hello to your neighbor when you are walking to your car. Like you can ask and try and remember the person’s name who makes you coffee. If you go to a coffee shop often you can say hi to the bus driver if it’s your same driver every single time. You can make like these small, tiny, little connections. Because once we start making those little ones, we get braver and each time we make a new connection, it’s a little bit more bravery and it’s a little bit more sturdy on our feet when we say hi to the next person. So maybe you can practice waving it to your neighbor every time you go to the car. And, you know, maybe in six months you can say, Hey, I made this soup and I made entirely too much because I just kept trying to adjust the flavor. And do you, you know, a long rambling introduction of, would you like some, can I share my food with you? You know? And then the next time you see them they say, oh, I shared it with this person. You know, and then, and then slowly those connections come back and I think it’s, we forget that that’s how we do it. Becky: I mean, I’m thinking of you. Yeah, yeah. I’m, I’m thinking of Christina this whole time. ‘cause you show me this, like, we were talking a couple episodes about, you know, sharing a flower with the delivery driver who brings your groceries when, when it comes. So I’ve learned this through watching you, Christina and others. Tarra’s actually pretty good at this. And I recognize and honor it is hard sometimes. It’s simple as a wave, but we’ve gotten so disconnected when I see my neighbor. We have, I live in the country, so we don’t have a TI don’t have a ton of activity around me, but our neighbor across the street. I have, I feel activation in my body just seeing him there. Like with the anticipation I’m of, I’m gonna have this in, uh, have to have an interaction and you know why that’s for my therapist. But, you know, it’s, it’s the, you called that, you called that up beautifully. It’s like one little thing. Okay. Start waving. So, which I do now, you know, and then we bring soup, which we do now, but it, you do have to build slow and there’s nothing wrong with Lea: that. Yeah. You have to build it. Becky: Yeah. Lea: Yeah. And there’s nothing wrong with the scaffolding of it, because I think that, and I think that we have to say that out loud and remind people that there’s nothing wrong with the building of it because we, we live in a world that is increasingly more and more, actually, I won’t say it that way. We are aware of more and more ways that we are unsafe. Mm-hmm. Because I think that the world has always been very unsafe. And I think that sometimes we talk about it in this way, that it has becoming more and more unsafe. And this is just like my, my socio sociology brain. Um, we are actually like significantly a less dangerous world than we have been in centuries past. Um, like we don’t have like daily beheadings in different places, you know, like all over the entire world. Like we just have it in some places now. It’s, you know, the charts are like trending towards. Less violent. Um, but we are hyper aware of the violence and we are hyper aware of the ways that, that humans harm each other, in such a way that, that having a stranger come to you and start speaking to you, or having you as a stranger, going and speaking to another person feels incredibly unsafe. Mm-hmm. And that’s fine. And so the scaffolding is so important. And also like, just to speak to the thing that you’re saying, you know, when you’re in a more isolated space, sometimes that is your safe space. And so sometimes those scaffoldings are in online communities or they’re in, you know, phone conversations or, or book clubs or places for, you know, I always love to remind people that there is different inroads to the ways that we build community. You can be an anonymous user on a Reddit thread and like, that’s so important. You know, Christina: I was born in 1986 and my dad, I remember, so I have, um, an almost 9-year-old and twins who are almost six. So my kids like split your kids’ age. Oh. And um, and I remember talking to my dad when I was pregnant with my son, who’s the one who’s almost nine. And I said, were you also totally freaked out about bringing a kid, like bringing me into the world in 1986? And he was like, yeah, it was a scary time. Yeah. Yeah. And so I don’t know if I’ve said this on this podcast or not. I feel like I’ve said it to Becky before in real life, but, um, it’s always, there’s always that feeling. Um, mm-hmm. And I also just like, I don’t self-identify as an activist like you do. So this is such a cool conversation for me to hear. And you’d probably tell me all these different ways that I am an activist, but I, you know, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t self identify as that. And, what you’re saying about being like, the way that we seed the world we want to live in, and you speak about this so beautifully, is, is the same fabric that I’m weaving beneath my feet too. And so when you’re saying, here’s how we actually make community is by actually meeting each other in real life, if we feel safe to do so, and, and. I’m pointing these same things out to people in my world too. Like, don’t be afraid to ask someone for a stick of butter. Don’t be afraid to walk up and do these things. And Becky’s right, every time if we get a grocery delivery, sometimes here, if we don’t have the bandwidth to like actually go to a store, I will, actually cut a flower from the garden and make sure that I do it before these people leave. And I always walk up and I say, this is for you. And it’s, it’s, it’s like, what this is for me. You’re, you’re looking at me and I’m like, yes, thank you. You really helped my day and this I want you to have. Um, yeah. And you know, I would also be like, my name’s Christina. Here are my kids. I really love my life. Like what do you have to tell me? But I, but like, Lea: yes, yes, Christina: I get that they now have to go and like meet some other people who will think that their wallpaper. But it’s so important to meet a human with your own humanity as often as you possibly can. Absolutely. I’m so happy you’re here. It, it just makes me so, um, I mean, I knew that like, whoever Becky is like enthusiastically wanting to have a conversation is, is a wonderful human being. But, but hearing you speak about your experience and the, the groundedness I feel from you and the clarity that I feel from you, and also, just like the, like the, the sweeping fairness and understanding with which you approach your life is, really something to hear. Thank you. I’m glad you’re showing up in the world the way that you are. And I see the posters behind you and I see that this is like a lifelong calling. Um, and I also love picturing you as the 8-year-old laying in front of a bulldozer and a marsh because there’s a part of me that is that too. Like I see myself in you in that. Um, but it’s so clear that you were born into a situation that like served your calling too, because you could have chosen another path and it’s, you have not. Lea: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Thank you for those reflections. Like truly Thank you for those reflections. I was thinking about, um. And if I get this wrong, tell me, you make art. Yeah. You make beautiful art, right? You were, yes. Um, and often your art is in public spaces more, or you’ve a chance to do more. Okay. Christina: Yeah. Lea: I wanted to weave this piece in because as we were talking about it, it was just, it kind of ke keeps nudging at me. I have a lot of, um conversations like this with another friend of mine who’s an incredible artist. Um, I’ll just say she’s an artist. She’s, she doesn’t make physical art, but she creates spaces and, music and, and all of that. Um, and she often feels really, really lost, in the ways that the world is sort of just like throwing, tossing us all sort of adrift in these boats. Um, and I just, I keep reminding her what I keep hearing over and over again about how art is, is something that is so necessary to reground us and to re bring us back into, um, moments of joy and, and sort of snap us back into this moment. Um. In her case, she creates like soundscapes and, and music, compilations. And so people can really, and people say this to her, they, they fall deeply into her mixes and just like for a time are sort of buoyed right by that. And I think about your pieces that I’ve seen and in public spaces, that that also is that connection, right? You are passing by and somebody else is glancing at the work. And as you pass by, you’re also seeing this work. You know, and just saying to the other person, isn’t it incredible how the light comes through that piece? Christina: Yes. Lea: Like, isn’t it incredible? And the other person, the team goes, I was just marveling at it. And then, and then, you know, you get to say like, so excited that the sun is out today. And, and you know, I hear it’s gonna rain tomorrow and like, ah, this is so beautiful. I can’t believe this work is here. Right? Mm-hmm. And so, especially public art, especially like the ways that we get to interact with things that suddenly like snap us into that joy for a moment, that get to buoys those, facilitate the connections and those facilitate the building of community. And then maybe somebody else comes and says, oh, let’s meet at the fountain next to where, the, the copper pieces are, or something like that, or whatever, right? And then all of a sudden it’s now a meeting place and then it’s a, and, and just that’s the scaffolding too. And I just, I wanted to bring that in because I kind of just kept. Nudging at me in a way. So, yeah. Yep. Christina: You nailed it. That’s totally it. I mean, even this particular piece that you’re referring to with like the water that goes behind these bronze pieces in a public place, I went to photograph it or something after it was done and like the fences were all off. And, when I was there, there was an art school student in a photography class with who I’m pretty sure was her boyfriend, and they were taking photos of the way that the light moved on this work. And I sat there and I watched her see, wow, this is actually making me a little emotional, but I watched her see this work that was a culmination of so much of my time and love for the world and energy and willingness to share myself fully. And she was wondering in awe about it for a photography class in art school. And I stopped after enjoying this. Like, I, I enjoyed it as an audience member. And I walked up to her and I said, I have been where you have been and I cannot believe that you are photographing my work right now for your. Photography class, like this is such a full circle moment for me, and I want you to know that where you’re standing is so close to me still. Lea: Yeah. Christina: And this is so special. And, um, I wasn’t like, I did not have tears in my eyes. I just had like this incredible joy for her in sharing this experience with myself 15 years ago. That’s right. And it was incredibly powerful. And that piece is literally called noticing, which the whole Lea: 0.0, it’s so good. Yes. It’s the whole point. It’s, Christina: it’s the whole point. Lea: And that is the whole point. I mean, I know that obviously you named your podcast that as well. And it is the whole point. It is seen and to be seen. I totally got emotional listening to it because I think that that’s such like a powerful moment. And I also had this thought while you were saying the closeness, to be having a conversation with her and saying, you were so close to where I am. I am so close to where you are. And I think that when we talk about organizing and when we talk about activism and things like that. And this, again, I, I love that you brought in the, the, your, your job with the canvassing company because I think that this is often the disconnect that happens. That we are often very removed from the thing that we think that we’re doing organizing work for, or that we’re doing charity for. And that removal creates a disconnect that allows us to think that we are not close. And so when you start to move closer and you start to do the work in your community and you start to, actually, and this was just recently on Dean, Dean Spade was just talking about this, I think it was in the episode with Andrea Richie, who is a phenomenal organizer, activist, lawyer, phenomenal writer. They were talking about really the hyper localization of doing organizing work. there are always people starving near you. There are always people unhoused near you. You may be the person who needs assistance near you. Right? And so when we come closer, we can see that, you know. What’s that phrase? Like, barely by the grace of God, I, you know, I mm-hmm. Go, I, or whatever that phrase is or whatever. Like, there is only a slight deviation that I am here and you are here. Christina: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Lea: And so when, for me, that’s what I feel is so important about doing, organizing locally and saying hello to your neighbor and saying hi to the rest because the closeness is, is often so much more important. And the work feels so much more grounded, and I think it ends up being more sustainable because we see, you know, oh, one medical emergency, I would be where you are. Christina: Mm-hmm. Lea: Right? Um, oh, one extra little gift would’ve gotten you where I am. Would one little extra piece that helps me would’ve gotten me to where they are up there, right? Mm-hmm. Um, whereas when we have these things where we’re, we’re sort of tossing our funds or our money to this thing that feels far off or whatever, it ends up not being as sustainable, because there is a separation and we have this superiority about, oh, well I’m, you know, I’m not that, it’s so funny, the dean, Dean Spade says this too, in that podcast, he was like, not to say don’t send money to things that are happening in far off places, because if you don’t, you know, whatever. But like, but like things like, you know, these larger nonprofits that are sort of vaguely supporting these things far away, right? There is still direct, mutual aid projects that you can do with people far away, that are making direct impacts. And I think that’s important. whether it’s in connection, whether it’s in witnessing art, whether it’s in witnessing each other, whether it’s in noticing how the light moves, whether it’s in noticing that there’s a person that needs support that’s standing next to you. Mm-hmm. Noticing the breathing of the person in line behind you and turning and asking if you’re okay. You know? Yes. The ways that, yeah, the ways that, that we, we can show up for each other and have to just be reminded that the bravery is there to do it, and also that the bravery is there to be witnessed in doing it. Yes. Like, I’ve had a really hard few years and I still go out and I’m trying to find ways out into, you know, community, not necessarily organizing or activism, but like, community art events or, you know. Being with other humans, listening to music or whatever else. And I have moments where people are like, how are you? And I just am like, oh, I’m gonna start crying. I’m having a hard time. And then I often like, have cried a lot and these last couple years, you know? And so the bravery that it takes to actually answer truthfully or to answer, you know, with, with a real, like thoughtful responses. I’m having a really hard time and this is why. And having somebody meet you with, oh, I I I’ve been where you’re mm-hmm. The closeness again, Becky: it’s really striking me as you say that like, this piece of the bravery is so important because when you were talking about, the, the person that’s starving in our community, the, the unhoused person and how close we are to them, I think that can also be a source of activation, right? That’s a, that’s a real source of, of, and by activation, I mean however that shows up in your body, but it could be fear, it could be whatever. And, I intuit that. A lot of time. That’s what keeps us from engaging in those spaces because what you’re talking about, even answering that question of how are you doing, answering it honestly when you’re not doing so well is uncomfortable. And that takes Yeah. Bravery. And it takes, a level of tolerance within your own system to stay with the discomfort. And that’s the internal work that I encourage people to do, is to notice the activation and, and I’m speaking for myself. I feel it. Yeah. If I pass someone who’s, I think this is why I did need to live in the country to protect my safe space a little bit, to just, I have a very sensitive system. And when I am encountered with someone who’s unhoused, it hits me very deeply. I don’t think it hits me as fear. I think it hits me as interconnection Lea: yeah. Becky: And I notice if I don’t have the capacity to actually feel that and be with that, it makes me wanna turn away. Mm-hmm. And it makes me not want to say, Hey, do you need anything? We are social creatures. We want to be in community, we want to be in relation, and it’s challenging. The, the thing that that has stuck with me recently is Chani Nicholas was talking about community and she was like, community’s annoying. Like, we’re all annoying humans, you know? Lea: Yeah. Becky: And being in community means being with people who annoy you and knowing that you are annoying them, and that’s community and that’s uncomfortable. So we have to get comfortable with discomfort. Lea: There was just like a couple things that, that came up in different ways. One is the avoidance of the thing that feels really hard seeing somebody that’s unhoused. Seeing somebody that’s struggling with mental health, seeing somebody that’s hungry. And I immediately thought of the ways that we keep childbirth secret so that people will continue to like, have babies. Because if you knew or if you were in the room, supposedly you would never do it. Right? And I think that there is like a tool of capitalism here that is like, don’t interact with this person who’s unhoused, because then you’ll see that capitalism is only existing on a thread. That, that phrase, you are much closer to being homeless than you are to being, you know, a millionaire. Or I think the phrase is like a billionaire, but it’s, it’s actually like a millionaire. Like you were much closer to being homeless than, than having two months of rent in your pocket. And I think that the, the work of capitalism has almost done the work of like keeping childbirth secret. That same thing of like, don’t tell them how hard it is or else they won’t keep having babies. Don’t tell them that, you know, their position in this capitalist rent society is so tenuous that they could almost end up there. They’ll figure out a different way to do it, right? And so it’s like when you invite the world into understanding what it means to birth children into this world, you actually do start to think of a different way to exist in this world, you start to think about the ways that the systems would actually need to be different in order for us to actually be, cared for properly, to move in this world as mothers and as children. And that we would actually, ideally change the way that the world functions because the way that the world treats children is just horrific. Mm-hmm. Right? Um, and so I think that capitalism functions in all of those arenas to keep us siloed in order to not find the connection, because in finding the connection is the catalyst for the change. Mm-hmm. Becky: Mm-hmm. Lea: Right? Becky: Yeah. Lea: And I’ve heard this said a lot of times there’s activism and, you know, somebody standing on the corner, the sign that’s, you know, you’re doing activism, but then there’s organizing. And organizing is a concerted effort to connect with one another is to create change. Right. Um, Alicia Garza talks about this in, her book, the Purpose of Power. And so, organizing is that intention. It is the thing that if we. Connected with the person on the corner, we would see that there are threads that can weave us together that can make some system stronger. If we connect with the midwives in our community who are supporting the birthing people in our communities, we would start to see that there are threads that can stitch us together that will support the community as a whole and lift us. Right? That is organizing work. And when it’s done incredibly hyper locally, it has such impact that it then does that thing where, you know, as a parent you’re like, fill your own cup so that you can pour into others or whatever else, right? Like you are filling the cup of your community so that that community can rise together. So that the work that you can do then if you choose to push out into the community next to yours, into another space that you now have tools, oh, this worked here. What’s working in your city? Right. Um, like I think on the, on the topic of like houselessness, there’s, in Houston, I think it was, there was a, they did this really intentional housing first initiative where they just got people into housing. There was no, you know, you have to fill out these, you have to be sober, you have to do these doctor’s appointments, you have to do this, whatever else. And they just got people into houses. And I remember listening to this interview, with a person that went through the program and he was talking about how he was going and meeting the social worker and he was getting on the list, um, to get housing. And then he was like, all right, you’re all set. When we find a place, I’ll let you know. And he was like, okay. Like, you know, I, I, I think my mailbox expired, whatever. And she was like, well, you, you hang out a lot on 16th and Broadway, right? And he was like, yeah, yeah, I’m usually there, you know? And she was like, yeah, I’ve seen that’s, that’s why I, why I found you remember when we first met? And she’s like, I’ll come find you. Christina: Mm-hmm. Lea: And he was like, okay. You know, and it took some time, I think it was like a month or two later, he said in the interview, and she found him because she, as a social worker in this program had done the work to notice Yes. The people on the street and know that that was that one person and this is this other person. And that’s, you know, Sierra and that’s, you know, Monty, and that’s Michael and over there is Brenda, blah, blah, blah. And she had done the work and so she knew where he would be staying, right? And then he gets housed and so that sort of hyperlocal noticing, right? Then that can be transferred, oh, what they’re doing in Houston might work in la Oh, but we have this different way that we’re doing this. Maybe we can bring these things together. And so then that’s when our organizing, when we’re doing it on a really local level and we’re making those connections, can then have those webs that sort of spread out a little bit further. And then this is a total pivot, but the last thing I was thinking about when you said that you wanted to move out into the country. Becky: Mm-hmm. Lea: Um, I don’t know if either of you have read Parable of the Sewer, but there’s. The main character, has a condition where she feels very deeply, like to the point where she is debilitating. Like if she watches somebody be hurt, she experiences the pain. And so, it’s like a post-apocalyptic era and people have been shot and she’s seen them, or they’ve been killed or whatever else, and she literally will be knocked out by the pain and she’ll be unable to walk, unable to do anything. And I think that for people who feel incredibly deeply, like such as yourself, Becky, there is a need to do a level of removing so that the work that you do is possible. Yeah. So like in the book, right, Olamina, um, if she sees that something bad is about to happen, she’ll turn her whole body and she’ll move into a different space and she’ll, and she’ll run. And then oftentimes, like she has other people who know that she can’t witness the thing, and then they will run to protect her so that she can then protect these children that they need to continue to usher along the road and get to a safe place, right? And so there’s ways that we have to pivot and move and, right, like I was saying at the opening of this, I had to figure out ways to pivot and move so that I could continue to do work in a way that felt safe, that wouldn’t inflict any more harm on myself or on my child or on my family unit in any way. Becky: Mm-hmm. Lea: And I think it’s important. We talk about capacity? Yes. When we’re talking about organizing and activism, because I think when we’re be honest with our levels of capacity, we can actually move more confidently and with more bravery in the spaces that we know we might be able to affect change. Becky: Mm-hmm. Lea: Yeah. Becky: Thank you for saying that. And also for seeing me, I’m always very grateful to be seen. And uh, it’s interesting, I literally just finished Parable of the Sower. I did the audiobook, which I highly recommend. The narrator’s amazing. And I had started it a couple years ago but then kind of stopped ‘cause it was feeling a little too, the apocalyptic side of it was feeling a little close to home. Yeah. Lea: A friend. And it supposedly takes place in 2020, Becky: like now. Yeah. It’s like 20, 27 ish. Yeah. But a friend of mine was like, no, no, keep going, keep going. And, and I, I did. And it, it is incredible. And it, um, it is true. We have to resource ourselves and recognize that we’re all different. We all have different capacities, we all have different, backgrounds and traumas and triggers and, and like I agree. I, we moved to the country right before COVID just ‘cause, you know, that’s how it worked out. And if I had. My system couldn’t have taken it being in the city. But having this safety of like my safe space in nature allowed me to do incredible work internally to resource myself. It allowed me to expand my awareness of the world in ways that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I didn’t feel so physically safe. Like mm-hmm. To understand and dive into, like you said it already, Lea, that the, it’s not necessarily that the world is more violent, it’s our access to the awareness of it that’s new. And because I was so resourced, I was able to go and look, you know, not from a That’s right. And find my, not from a i, I always wanna distinguish, doom scrolling on in. I don’t even like that phrase. Like, getting fed from an algorithm has its purpose and it’s a tool. Getting the Daily News, has a purpose in it. It’s a tool, but what I found is that wasn’t giving me the wisdom that I really needed. So I turned to, like podcasts like Throughline is incredible. Like giving me the history of, of this moment, you know, reading James Baldwin, like going into really trying to understand, um, what I hadn’t been seeing this whole time, but not from a place of reactivity I have found, the more I do this work, if we’re in those reactive. Trying to keep up with the news, you know, trying to just like consume. I feel like that is a reactive perspective, and usually because we’re trying to fix it or push it away, because really taking it in, and this might not be universal, maybe it was just my experience, right? Um, but for me it was like I had to step back and get regulated and then really understand like, let me really understand the history of this country and how we got here. Um, and I’m always filling in gaps and I’m always learning, but I, what I, what’s really striking me is I had to feel safe, physically safe to do that work because it’s so destabilizing. If you haven’t grown up laying in front of bulldozers when you’re eight and you were taught a certain version of the world, it’s so destabilizing to go into these spaces and, and learn something new. So finding your resourcing and finding safety is so important. Lea: And can I, and I just wanna just affirm that the destabilizing, it’s not just, it’s not just that, oh, I’m gonna see something and it’s gonna hurt my feelings. Becky: Mm-hmm. Lea: The destabilizing is that it disallows us from acting. It dis allowss us from continuing to connect. And so a lot of times for folks. If people are not doing that inner work to be resourced within themselves, if they are being confronted with sort of the horrors of the world for like, some of the first times, um, our, you know, innate thinking is I need to shut down and protect. Mm-hmm. And so we, we go inward more and more in a way to protect our systems and we don’t then open back up. And so the resourcing that you’re speaking to is important because the next step in that is to then open up again and then to step out. Becky: Yeah. Lea: Because if we, if we stay in that destabilization space, we do not do the next step of reaching out. Becky: Yeah. Lea: For a lot of people, some people can be in a space of this is, this is awful. I’m feeling totally activated and triggered and destabilized, and I’m gonna pack a bunch of lunches and I’m gonna go give them to people around me or whatever else. Right? Yeah. But not a lot of people can move and continue to then go out and resource others from a space of destabilization. And so I just wanna name that. Mm-hmm. I think that sometimes there’s this, there’s a, there’s a culture of self care. Becky: Yeah. Lea: That has taught us. You know, in these last, like decade or so that like, oh, there’s a lot going on. We need to regulate our system. And it’s like, okay, sure. Yes. And there’s a next step after the re system is regulated, you go out and you do the things that need to be done in order to make the thing that so destabilized you, not continue to happen to somebody else again. Becky: Mm-hmm. Lea: Right? Um, and so we’ve, we’ve, I feel like we’ve gotten to a space where we can like bubble bath away our like emotional trauma response to seeing, you know, children murdered by, you know, forces across the world, right? Mm-hmm. Becky: Yeah. Lea: Um, Becky: I I, I love it. Thank you for naming this. Yeah. Yeah. I, because I live in, I, I feel like we are being asked to hold multiple truths at once, right now, so much because, um, and I feel this, this is why you’re always the angel devil on my shoulder when I’m doing any of my work because, uh, I, I know I’m like, I am very squarely in, I want to help individuals resource themselves, regulate their nervous system, develop presence. So that they can come back out into the world. And it’s, it’s so nuance. Even the conversation around shutting out uh, Instagram or shutting out the, you know, um, it’s very nuanced because you could take that and somewhat if I said, protect your system, you know, don’t get on Instagram. You could, someone could take that as I’m telling you, go put your head in the sand, you know, don’t pay attention. And that’s absolutely not what I’m saying. And what a lot of people are saying, it’s both true, that you are being invited into, if you want to, seed a more, equitable loving and sustainable world, you’re being invited into regulate your nervous system because then you will be moving from a place of clarity so you know what your right action is. And this moment is inviting all of us into action’s. This is not the time to bubble bath the world away because bubble bathing, people in comfort who have bubble bath their the world away for quite a long time is why the world is getting so loud, you know? Lea: That’s right. Yeah. Christina: I’m curious about something, and I don’t know, like if you feel comfortable speaking about this, but, um, you have a child, how did becoming a parent, how did that, like how did, how did you experience the shift from the before and after of being a parent in an activist space? Like, did it change anything for you? I know, I know you said you have more protections around, but was there anything, I mean, like I’m speaking as someone who knows what it feels like to not be a parent and then be one and all of the things that you have to figure out, in yourself once that happens and all of the demands, especially, um, as someone in a female body, all of the demands of what are asked of us in that moment. Um, did that, did that shift anything for you? And did you have to, um, did you have to sort of bubble up a little bit in that? Or were, are you just so steeped in this that you were like, Nope, I’m gonna rock on, Lea: I think it’s, it’s, it’s been a little bit of both. I have had the privilege of having a lot of young people in my life. I am I’m the youngest, so I, my dad had, has three other daughters, who are all older than me. And so I have a pretty big crew of nibbling, that I’ve gotten to be around for a long time. Um, and who sort of like witnessed me, you know, my, my youngest nibbling is a senior in high school and the oldest, now has a three-year-old, you know, so, mm-hmm. Um, I think that I got a lot of practice talking about what I do, and being vocal and being open. And sometimes the work that I do in the world, like surrounding, being present with queer identity and being, outspoken about, uh, you know, dismantling systems of white supremacy and things like that have, paved the way for, you know, my nephew who’s a white man, to marry a black woman, for them to have a biracial child and for me to continue to hold space within my predominantly white family, for, you know, my, my now niece by marriage, I dunno what you call that, but she’s, I’m. Love her so much, you know, um, to know that she’s safe with me and will be, I will, I will use my voice in rooms that she’s not in to protect her space. Right? It’s given, my youngest the ability to show up, in a changing gender space, right? To say for a while that they’re identifying under a different name, that they’re identifying under a different gender. And for me to, be the person, you know, the auntie that’s in the room that will say boldly what maybe their, at their 14-year-old self or 15-year-old self don’t really have the bravery to say, right? So I think that, I think that my nibblings have prepared me in a lot of ways to have a child. But because of that I oftentimes question the age appropriateness of some of my conversations. You know, we live in a predominantly Latinx neighborhood, and you know, there’s a lot of stickers that say like, fuck ice, or, you know, ya, BAA or whatever. And my kid has, um, lovingly adopted the F word since like age three. Um, and, um. You know, I’ve had to have a lot of conversations with her about it, but she, you know, she’ll like read the signs and she, you know, she’s like, fuck ice. You know, it’s like, what’s ice? And I’m like, oh, it’s, it’s an acronym. It stands for immigration control enforcement, whatever. And, um, you know, and we get to have really, I think my proximity to where I am. We also have a lot of really important conversations. Her really close friend was, detained when she came back. Um, you know, and they put this poor 8-year-old in an immigration room, separated her from her older brothers that she went on a trip. She went, they went on a trip, to go see family. And her parents couldn’t go because they are undocumented, but she was born here. She has her paperwork, and Sure. You know, some people will say, oh, well, they were probably making sure that, you know, there is work that border control does to make sure that young girls aren’t being trafficked or whatever else. And it’s like, these are clearly her siblings, they all look alike. Um, you know, and they forced information out of her. They said, where do you live and what’s your address and what’s your parents’ names and what’s your phone number? And here’s this 8-year-old sitting alone in this room. You know, her mom was telling me when she got back, and I was just like in tears thinking about it, you know? Yeah. And, and you know, we were speaking in Spanish and so Nava could only kind of understand like a couple different things. But she was like, what happened? And you know, and so I talked to her about it because here’s this experience that her friend is gonna have. I’m not gonna let her friend experience this on her own. Christina: Yeah. Lea: Right. And so to an extent there is like a proximity privilege. I dunno if I need to say, say it well to say it like that, but there’s proximity opportunities for us to continue and to talk about that, that exists there. Um, but it does feel, I, I do oftentimes like have to think about and pause, or explain my actions a little bit differently. So, like as an example, and this is like about age appropriateness, just as far as like conceptualizing. Um, but, uh, when during the election cycle, my mom was talking about Kamala Harris and like my ex-wife was talking about her and you know, everybody was talking about, you know, we could have our first woman president, yada, yada, yada, all this other stuff. And leading up to the election, I don’t know if either of you heard of it, and I feel like it came out entirely too late, but it would’ve been a really, an amazing strategy. But there’s a strategy called Vote Swap. Did either of you hear about this? No. It was this idea that if you’re like in a solidly blue, so within the work of electoral politics, the work never really ends in order to attempt to break the two party system. Right? So even in a highly important election year, like Kamala Harris versus Trump, right? As the Democratic nominee and the Republican nominee, there is still the work of third party systems that are attempting to continue to break the two party system. Christina: Mm-hmm. Lea: Right? So like working Families Party was doing a lot of work leading up to it. Um, there was a lot of people, talking about that there’s, you know, there’s people on the peace and freedom party, there’s people in the Green Party, there’s like, and there was all this language around like, no, we just have to, we have to barrel behind the Democratic nominee because that’s gonna have the most impact. Otherwise we’re gonna split our vote and it’s gonna be diluted. Right? There’s a concept of vote swapping, so you’re in a solidly red state and you are like a radical activist and there’s no way that you would vote for the cop Kamala Harris. The Democratic Party nominee, like you’re over here trying to vote for, um, you know, uh, a third party candidate that really holds your values or whatever else, right? If somebody in a solidly blue state will commit to you that they’re gonna vote for your third party candidate of your choice Becky: mm-hmm. Lea: In your red state, you’ll commit to voting for the, the democratic candidate. Even though that doesn’t align with your values, you know, somewhere somebody is getting a vote. Because for third party politics, it’s really just about a threshold of needing to get above like a 4% mark in order for funding then to allow that third party system to even get in the running in a way that has any major impact. Right. Okay. So there’s this whole strategy. Um, so I did a vote swap and I, well I did a vote swap ‘cause I thought it was brilliant, but also I voted third party consistently. I only once have voted for the Democratic nominee, and it was when Hillary was running and I was like angrily voting for her, but realizing the importance of it. Right. And it, had there been something like this vote swap concept, I would’ve probably done it then. Um, but I voted for the, the Democratic socialist candidates, which were, um, Claudia and Haina. Mm-hmm. Um, out of New York and spacing. I’m like, were the, that was their names, right? I’m like, I was trying to remember their slogan. Um, anyway, election day comes and goes and Nava saw my I vote sticker and she goes, oh. Did you vote for Kamala Harris? And I was like, oh shit, I didn’t talk about this. And I was like, I could in this moment lie and just be like, yep, fingers crossed. Like, you know, she’s gonna be our next president. I was feeling really hopeful. Anyway, in that moment, I think a lot of us were. Mm-hmm. And I was like, no, I’m not gonna lie. And I was like, well, actually I did this other strategy. There’s a lot of different people that are running. I voted for these other two women. Our state in California, we have something called the Electoral Process. And I’m like going into it, right? She’s at the time, like five, all she hears is You voted for Trump. Becky: Ooh. Lea: And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no. She’s like, but you, did you not want Kamala Harris to win? And I was like, no, I do want her to win. Then why didn’t you vote for her? And I’m like, because I was trying to use this strategy so that like, maybe next time there’s another election, we don’t just have this like choice of like, you know, somebody who’s gonna build more prisons anyway and whatever else. And not to say that it was like, I, I’m not necessarily like the, you’re a choice of two evils person, but I, I, Kamala Harris would’ve been a wonderful and phenomenal president. And I wish that she was our president and she should have been. But I would’ve continued my activist work to continue to like, right? Like for a lot of us in more radical spaces, like it’s about choosing the fighter. We can fight. Like Kamala Harris would’ve been the fighter that we could have fought against, right? So like, we would’ve fought to get her in office, but that we could then fight to hold her accountable to do X, y, z aspects of changes. Whereas like having Trump as a president isn’t even a fight that you can fight. There’s like, not even an entry point, right? Becky: Yeah. Lea: Anyway, so I don’t know if that’s a very long-winded state way of saying like, sometimes, like, and she still, she’s like, my mom didn’t vote for Kaha, she wanted Trump, you know? And I’m like, well, Becky: what’s striking me is as you’re telling this about your child. I’m like, that’s probably the level of nuance that most adults can, can, like most adults can’t hold that nuance. Lea: People were so upset at me. Yeah. They’re like, what? And I’m like, California still went blue. Like even if I didn’t vote, Becky: yeah. Lea: He would’ve won Ca California, you know? Becky: But we’ve been so conditioned with this, like blue and red left and right, and, and, and the more we, that’s the like. Dysregulation getting captured by these systems that want to keep us in, in opposition, when life is so much more nuanced, like we’re being called into nuance. And, and that’s where like bringing it back to, well, what can I do in this moment? Get hyperlocal and like Yeah. Have nuanced conversations with your neighbor. This is my new mantra. Like, I wanna be in community with people who love me and those who don’t, people who agree with me and those who don’t. And that means I’m necessarily going, probably gonna get triggered, you know? Right. Like, Lea: yeah. Becky: I mean, but how are we ever gonna shift something if I can’t have a conversation with someone? Uh, like we have to have broad conversations and can I have a conversation with a neighbor who fundamentally believes that my queerness will end in me going to hell ca can I have that conversation? Well, if I’m resourced, I can. And then what might come of that? You know what, either way I’m safe. I’m not going to hell. I can’t go somewhere. I don’t believe in. Lea: Right. Right. I mean, there’s that. And also, I mean, I do, I do think that, um, yeah, I think once, once we are coming from a resource space, we can make those decisions for ourself. And also, you know, Adrian Marie Brown talks about this, that she talks about our layers of. Of relation. And so she talks about, for example, that there is a very larg

Sparks!

This week, we are joined by the dynamic and joyful spark of a human Kate Garmey who, as a self-proclaimed Chief Play Officer, claims one of her keywords as FROLIC. She seems to have already lived a million lives. On paper, she is a comedian, writer, community-builder, mother, and weaver of stories. This raw conversation beautifully encapsulates the way Kate’s life (like so many of us right now) has led to a distinct moment of upheaval and rebirth. Maybe we call it a homecoming. Whatever it is, Kate notices that JOY is the persistent reorienting force for her; so much so, she calls it a “state of being.” We discuss joy as resilience, how fear and grief can enter the body and how essential it is to learn to let them out. We question the difference between joy and happiness and how privilege plays into it all. Kate is a standout example of someone who consciously chooses the inner path despite living in a world that is so externally-focused. She was quite literally gutted, a testament to the age old statement that “the body keeps the score,” but we’ll let Kate take you down that road….as she says, “that’s what we call a ‘hook’ in the business.” We recommend checking out The Joyfire Project [https://www.joyfireproject.com/] and listening to the incomparable Adrienne Maree Brown [https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVd6HEjkR4d/?igsh=MXdwdWxxbnlvajNqbw%3D%3D] creating joyful songs while making tea. If you want to learn more about Christina and Becky’s work outside of this podcast, check out our websites and Substacks. Thank you for being here! christinawatka.com [https://www.christinawatka.com/] beckydecicco.com [https://www.beckydecicco.com/] Episode Transcript Christina: This is so great. It’s so beautiful. Um, it’s, yeah. Isn’t it just like so freeing that we can just flow? And I also love that, um, that Kate also identified how nourishing it is to have you be this grounding presence with the meditation at the beginning. Um, it’s so lovely. Uh. And it’s you. It’s you like singing your song, you know? I love it so much. Okay. I love you. I, it’s starting to snow. It’s like so beautiful, but like a little bit of beautiful falling, gentle snow that is covering my hair. But other than that, it’s just lovely and it’s not gonna accumulate. I just feel like I’m walking through Narnia or something. Um, life is so, so magical. I just, I feel so, um, awake. Becky: Welcome to Noticing: A Podcast About Nothing And Everything At The Same Time. You are in for a treat. This week we are joined by the dynamic and joyful spark of a human being. Kate Garmey. Who as a self-proclaimed Chief Play Officer, claims one of her favorite keywords as frolic. In this raw conversation, we talk about a lot of things. We talk about homecoming. We talk about guts, both metaphorical and literal. We talk about joy as resistance, and we question the difference between joy and happiness. And we laughed a lot. So I really hope you enjoy. Christina: It is Christina and I’m wearing eyeliner because today feels like a party because we have, we have um, our good friend Kate Garmey here, and Becky tasks me with introductions for people. So, um, I don’t prepare at all ‘cause I like to really throw from the hip. And Kate Garmey is someone that I have known now for probably lifetimes, certainly in the flesh one year, maybe a little more than a year. Um I walked into a dinner party of, I’ll say a generation of above me, women identifying writers. Kate was in there and I walked in and I was just like, who is this? Who is this? Like Sparky magnetic, bright, um. Uh, tenacious, bold human being standing in front of me that I’ve never met before. Proceeded to then talk to her and basically only her all night long. And, then left. And I think you’ll have to correct me after I say this, Kate, but like, let me finish my spiel about you. But I think that I sent you an email or you sent No, I think you sent me an email saying like, we both live in the same town I can’t even believe that. That’s so exciting. And then I just proceeded to write one of the most authentic and bold and real messages and was like, this is just the beginning for us. ‘cause they just knew it. So I find Kate to be just this completely, sparky, Sparky’s the best word I can come up with, human being. The more that I find out about you, Kate, the more that I’m interested to find out more because you seem to have just like. So much in you and in your life that you’ve experienced. And you’ll be like, oh, when I was backpacking through Spain and I met this Catholic nun, could I tell you that story? And I’m like, oh my God. So she holds Kate Garmey holds multitudes. And I I’m so excited to have her on here. She’s also one of the funniest people I know. And yeah, that would be my Lucy goosey intro to this beautiful human being that I’m seeing on my screen now. Kate: Well, that is a beautiful introduction. Thank you so much, Christina. This love story is quite reciprocal because Yes, I remember our first meet and greet too. And uh, I believe I sent the first email, and it’s true. Your response was so, something I’ve never received before. There’s the before times. And I think I was really sensitive going into that dinner, to be honest, because I’ve just had moved back to Maine, you know, having left a city and my identity, the quick identifiers of a career, a thing I was doing and building. So I was in a really raw space and that was what was even more incredible to me, to meet you at that time and have you respond to it. ‘cause I didn’t have the keywords. I didn’t know how to describe myself at that time. So I think that’s an absolutely beautiful introduction. I’m very grateful to have someone who sees me like this and in my life as a friend. And I think, . Sparky. Let’s do it. Let’s, I love it. You, I, so it’s all I can doy, it’s all I can do not to do some jazz hands right now. Are you feeling that too? Are you feeling that? I’m so goofy and so out there , and, in many ways, like a little, like part golden retriever, you know, like, come on with a lot of energy. It’s genuine, but sometimes you just don’t want me to drool on your lap. Like, you know, it’s like, it’s, it’s good and it’s kind of got its own limitations. It’s not for everyone. We’ll put it that way. Hmm. But I, I love that Christina saw it even deeper into me, maybe to a place I didn’t quite see for myself. And I think it’s really interesting and not nothing that this introduction does not say where I’ve worked or what I’ve done or where I’ve studied or any of those things because I’m in a very intentional remaking phase of my life. It doesn’t mean those things are gone, they’re just not the things I lead with. And it means a lot that I am here now having a conversation that I’ve drawn in and starts from that place. And I think that a big piece of what this year since I’ve known Christina has been, was of first I was white knuckling, like the release of some of those pieces of my ego. That is a really hard, that’s a tight grasp. Christina: Mm-hmm. Kate: Um. But it does allow for room to fill up with different things and certainly different people. And I am just so grateful. Becky, I’ve only recently gotten to know you, but this is again, just a beginning. I listened to you. Obviously you’re pretty big time in my world. Um, but I am very grateful, to have such genuine and brilliant people in my life, who are so supportive and so interesting. So yeah, when you said, let’s chat, I’m here for it. What are we talking about? Let’s go. Becky: I have a, so I have a calling if, if that’s okay. Yeah. If no one has a strong preference. But when you were talking about the, the relationship with the CV version of you. It flashed me back so quickly to when I first moved to New York City and yes, the first question everyone asked me was, what do you do? You know, what do you do? What do you do? And it was really uncomfortable for me when I first moved there. But after, almost a decade living there, I kind of conformed myself to that worldview. So it really struck a chord with me when you said that about, leaving this identity of what you did and what you did is, so like, I’ve only scratched the surface and I’m mind blown. Like you’re kind of in this, from my perspective, what I’ve seen is you’re, you’re moving out of that way of being and into a new way of being. And I’m really curious to the extent that you feel comfortable talking about that, like how that lived in you. And, and the reason I, I kind of wanna start here is because we’ve talked a lot about you know, how are we meeting this moment? And as I think about what this moment is. It’s not about this moment, it’s about systems that haven’t been sustainable or supporting a large portion of the population are starting to crumble. And so I’m curious, like to me it speaks to those systems and paradigms crumbling within you. Mm-hmm. And what is that lived experience? Kate: I think that’s a really thoughtful framing and question. And I think, I think it’s something I’m still in the process of living through some. Mm-hmm. I’m still trying to understand. I think I feel less fear about what’s happening, and I would say that. Christina, when you said what we’re doing here is trying to figure out how we individually meet the moment. There’s been sort of a convergence here for me, which is, really having to get to my essence first. Very reluctantly. This was against my, against my will to certain not that sounds very dramatic, but I am dramatic. So that’s appropriate. I just mean I didn’t intend to do a hard stop on working. I have paused my life. To give some context to what you’re saying, Becky. Mm-hmm. Um, pause my working life to support and fill in important needs within my family. So my working life is working to, um, you know, in the home, but it relates to a whole lot of things and caregiving and supporting. Just the needs of, of what’s at hand. It’s very immediate. It isn’t as clear. It’s very important work. It’s not as clear as you see a CV building. This is what my next promotion is. Well, maybe I’ll get to leave the role of Chief Poop Officer. Wouldn’t that be sweet? But I don’t think anyone’s hiring. So I’m in this role for a long time. Um, but I’m just saying that there’s, a piece of me that, you know, I’ve always said, oh gosh, like this is not a good look for me not working. I have a very active mind. Maybe that’s a beautiful little euphemism or something. Um, way of framing it is going a million miles a minute, this little ticker tape in my head. And I connect and collect ideas. I mean, my, my, it’s, it’s my pulse. My, like, my love language is ideation, right? So when I am outside of a place to plug that in. That’s a lot of activity in my head. And if it’s not directed, where’s that gonna go? And so I had some real struggles with like, feeling a worth. ‘cause I associate that with income, I associate with the investments I’ve made in my own education and the things that I’ve built. And so there’s a real, I I knew this was the call. I knew that I was supposed to do this at this moment. But it was a really difficult transition. And then to, to Christina’s point, and probably not by accident, she mentioned the time we met, I was very timid going to that because I didn’t have the way into that party to say who I am. But then it forces an even harder question, which is like, well then who am I? Like what the, that, whoa. Do not entertain that alone without, um, uh, yeah, that took, that required. I, I, I mean, you can also channel through a question like that by binge, binge watching like The Pit or something like that. And just, just, I’m not gonna watch, I’m not going there. Mm-hmm. And I, I, I have a lot of ways to keep busy and things, but I think the combination of that plus silence, I came to a town my, like a smaller place, less distraction, less of the social community I had left behind. And so I kind of like these conditions were ripe for me to not only be faced with a question, but have the opportunity to listen and look at the answer. Mm-hmm. And that was a really hard time. But gosh, am I grateful that I, I stuck with it, because I think it has helped me understand and look at a response that gives me a lot more confidence. And I, and now I know how to see it, I recognize it and other people too, and I don’t blame them one second for it. And I know what a comfort it is, and I know how scary it is to think of letting go of that. But I think the second part of this that’s about me internally and sort of the shift I’ve been experiencing, but I think there’s another piece of this, which is, how do you show up or how do you, you know, what can you offer? And I do believe that if you can tap into the, to the essence, to the pieces of you that are most intrinsically anchored and rooted there and the, and the pieces that, that fuel you, all these things are important. I think there’s so many important ways that people are trying to do something and the worst thing we could do is not try. And I think that there’s such paralysis about, am I doing enough? And the answer is do something. And that’s where it starts. And that is very important. And I think that one of the things that people might get hung up on is, is what I have to offer enough. This is a question that ties so closely to this question about identity and ego and how are we associating who has something to give and who doesn’t? And is there really a space and a place for things that might fall out of what we look at as conventional or, useful. And I’ve spent in corporate and entrepreneurship and the environments with which I naturally gravitate, many of which are very male dominated places. If it’s adventure sports or comedy or tech. I’m always the salmon swimming upstream. If I had an inspirational poster behind my desk, it’s a bunch of fricking salmon trying to breathe. And I would say there’s a better vision one could have for herself. I would say don’t start there. You know, I think maybe we could dream a little bigger. And now I’m like, what does it look like to go with a flow? Like really? And if I really tap into that, this is a very Kate answer. We are going down, we are opening rabbit holes. I’m taking you down tributaries. We’re mixing metaphors. We’re just gonna do all of that here. But the point is, what is the point, Kate? Is there one? There is, there’s an easier way. And when you tap into who you are or get closer to looking, like, turning over that rock, then it becomes a lot easier to understand where your current is. And that allows you to give more with less energy in a way that doesn’t strip you of yours and can kind of help move things forward. And that’s, that’s, that’s what I’m starting to understand about how I might be able to plug in, in this moment. Mm-hmm. I didn’t give you an answer of what that is yet though. Mm-hmm. But I’m thinking about it. Becky: Yeah. I think it’s almost better that you don’t have an answer, you know? Mm-hmm. Like showing what it looks like to be in process, because so many of us are in process and, it’s the antithesis of the CV version of society. Where you can be, you know, put into a couple bullet points Kate: yeah. And I, I would say, just to build on that idea, nothing puts you in a box faster than having a child. Woo. I get to be a mom and I love it. Do not get me wrong. I’ve always wanted this job. I really have. And I can say that with like, wholeheartedly, that’s the thing that I, that I am, I’ve known, but that no one told me that , that is what you become, like, that’s how people expect to see you. And I think the combination of not having those CV points and then your access points are the mom groups that you’re associated with or funnel to is a, it could be a double whammy in particular for women. Um, and, I found myself in that, in that. So it’s even, I know Christina’s eyes just went, whoop. Christina: Yeah. Um, I relate to this and also I, I think for you, one of the things I kept here, like while you were talking, I was thinking, you have chosen the path inward. I’ve watched you do this, I’ve watched you choose the path inward. So you’re saying you left the city, Chicago and now, and then you came to a small town where you grew up and everything got quiet and then it was like, oh shit. I have the choice to now reckon with myself, meaning meet myself in quiet. Which is really scary. And Kate, a lot of people choose not to do that. Yeah. They just choose to like fill their lives with lots of other things. But what you have done and why I’m so excited to talk to you right now. You have chosen the path inward and you’ve chosen to let your kids teach you something about yourself. You’ve chosen to allow them to mirror back to you things that maybe you would like to work on. I know this because I chose this path to Kate: mm-hmm. Christina: Mm-hmm. And I just, I just wanna highlight that to you, that, while you may not have a really bulky CV right now, who cares? Because what you are doing is you’re turning inward, which is having a deeper relationship with yourself. And I cannot wait to watch how many other people follow your lead, because you do it with such integrity and spark. Mm-hmm. And a sense of lightness and buoyancy and humor. So you make it possible and I know it’s not an easy path, but it is, I believe it is the most worthwhile path, you know? Yeah, Becky: something you said that really struck me, it almost sounded like kind of a throwaway comment, but it really like made me stand up is you said, who like, no one should do this alone. And I, I just wanted to like pause on that for a second and tease it out, because you’re absolutely right and this keeps coming up so much into my conscious awareness is. These systems that are crumbling want us to, they’re, it’s very individualists, right? It’s like that’s what we’re taught. But we’re metabolizing. Sure you’re metabolizing your own story and your own lineage, and you’re metabolizing the systems around you that have constructed, that are that’s the water and the air that you’ve been living in. And that to me is not, I think it’s a mistake for people to think this is all mine to metabolize. And I think in our culture, it’s very much like you go to therapy. Well, therapy is wonderful. I love therapy. You go one-on-one therapy. You know, you, you journal. I love journaling. It’s one-on-one. And I think there’s. It’s really striking me, especially lately and especially being, it’s like yelling at me, being in this community, this, this small intimate group that Christina has gathered that we’re both in. It’s, it’s like the neon sign that I see in every waking moment is like, this work is meant to be done together. Kate: Hell yes. I dunno what else to say, uh, that. That, uh, I appreciate you calling that out. Also, do you wanna talk about therapy? ‘cause I know a lot about it. It’s, um, Becky: I love therapy. We can talk Kate: about therapy. It’s like a core strength of mine. Do you know how good I am at talking? Do you know how great it is when I get to be the reliable narrator to what’s in my brain? Um, I mean that, I’m joking and I’m saying it tongue in cheek, but I think what you’re getting, I mean, if you’re good at talking and you’ve been told a bunch of stories and you really believe them is so true. The ones that, that live inside of you, that what comes out is already coming out through a, a such a filtered lens that the accounta you. But there’s, there’s so much to say. I think it is very helpful. I’ve been engaged in lots of different, therapy. But I think I, I’ve. This idea of what we hold in our bodies, we’re supposed, we tell hold in our minds is, is very interesting to me at this stage in the game, particularly if we’re really good, smooth talkers. And when you say that, it’s meant to be held in community or that there’s an opportunity for that to be shared, I think that’s exactly it. And having the right people around you, as you break down some of these beliefs about yourself to help hold them and see them, reflect them back, talk you through it. There’s a grieving process that goes through Yes. You go through when you, when you have to, say goodbye to some stories that you’ve been told or that you know about yourself, and those are very familiar and they feel like part of you and it does make you question a lot of things. Mm-hmm. Um, and as you’re, as you’re thinking through your own version and your own experience. And your reality, right? Mm-hmm. Becky: Mm-hmm. That word, grief, like that you’re bringing in grief is so such important work and we’re meant to be held in our grief. Like it’s totally destabilizing, you know, you’re becoming a totally different version of yourself. So many of us are reckoning with a reality of the country and the world that we were not taught. So it’s, it’s like destabilizing all of our beliefs about reality. So it’s too much to hold. It’s too much for one person to hold. And yet I always come back to Rumi of the, you know, the crack is where the light comes in. You know, we’re being cracked open, but who’s there to hold us, you know, if we’re falling on the floor, we need people to hold us so that we don’t, so that we crack open without cracking completely apart. Kate: Mm-hmm. Christina: Yeah. We crack open in someone’s hands. Becky: Hmm. Kate: Yeah, I think it, that, that destabilizing factor that you just brought up, Becky, like that really, that really resonates because when you’re internally kind of, that crack exists, you’re starting to let in a new source of, like a new just version of yourself, right? Mm-hmm. Um, and then the world around you seems to be changing overnight. It’s, you know, not this level. What’s happening in our country and what’s happening in, in the world right now is immense grief and fear. And there’s a lot that is not new about it. But the, the scale with which we’re experiencing it, the frequency and the feeling that some people, when you’re watching this, the, the fire hose of, of, of stories, the idea that you have community to lean on, to plug in with, to sit with, to, remind each other that we are still here. That we are alive and that we. Still have our humanity. You could see it when you look at someone else in the way in which you’re interacting with them. It’s this feet on the ground. Where do we go? What do we do? Let alone the i, you know, sharing. But the holding that part that you referenced really resonates for me. Christina: I’m interested in if, in Kate, you talking about, the way that information lands in your body and not your brain, because I, I think a lot of people are meeting this moment, in many different ways, but I see a lot of people, feeling their way through it versus thinking their way through it. So I’m wondering if, you can speak a little bit to how you have turned to the knowledge that your body holds. And the messaging that your body shares with you versus the way your mind can talk it out. Kate: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a important distinction and maybe why I was talking about like, at a certain point, therapy is great until you’re crippled with pain. Christina: That’s what I mean. Kate: And you find yourself in the er, yeah. That’s what we call a hook in the business. An er. What? Tell me more. Happy to. Okay. So, um, I have been there a lot of times, for different things, but the biggest recurring issue for me happened after COVID, and like so many intense moment of stress, two babies under two. In the city experiencing all that we all experienced in different ways, but I didn’t understand how deeply that was lodging. This is not a COVID related illness I’m referencing. It’s just that brought on by the intensity of the, like the rate at which. I would have to start experiencing and did new forms of fear and grief simultaneously, that I didn’t have a way out for. I was truly, when we talk about there’s difference between going inward and then being locked in your house, two different things, not the same. Uh, and I didn’t have the, you know, none of us did, but the, the same infrastructure in place and the fast forward, this, this became a condition uh, diverticulitis. The Itis as we call it in my family. It’s not fun. Do not recommend zero stars, but it is a gastro issue that can relate in. You have to go to the, uh, hospital because they have to do a scan and then you get on medication. There’s really, really strong antibiotics and try and fight off this infection so you don’t get a perforation and an emergency surgery. So I figured out how to do this dance with this disease for a long enough time, like five years or so. And then the abouts in the recent history since Christina’s known me, have come, started coming on so fast and furious that I didn’t have a lot of lead time to manage them. And the point is that this November, which happened to be around the same, you know, in the midst of a lot of this kind of healing I’ve been trying to do, it sort of mandated a, a pretty massive abdominal surgery to remove, part of my colon. So I had a surgery for that. And then I started thinking, huh, could this be related to stress? And, um you know. Uh, certainly I believe in western medicine. I’m so glad that this happened. But the mind body connection is very, very strong and is particularly strong in me, in lots of different ways. I have strong basal vagal response. I have great stories of workplace dinners where I’ve fallen down the stairs in Chica. I’m so dramatic. I told you you’re gonna get some because I, I was at a work dinner. This is so great. And it, and then I went and the bathroom was upstairs. So I go upstairs and I’m coming down. I, whoa, this is kind of a woozy feeling and I didn’t even drink it wasn’t that. And the next thing I know, tumble, tumble, tumble loudest sound they’ve ever heard in the restaurant. And I am splat out at the bottom of the stairs and my boss has to call. 9 1 1. Good. Taken away from the work dinner in an ambulance. And the only part I can remember is there was a very cute EMTI was single at this time, and I puked on his shoes yeah, it didn’t go great. But my point is, there was a point to that, which is just I, that was one time I went to the ER for, for issues related to stress. Oh my god, I love you so much. So I’ve worn, I’ve worn heart monitors for that stuff. I have done all sorts of tests. And then I think that, um, I think that this is really the first time in my life that I’m trying to like, look at this stuff more holistically about what am I, how are my thoughts feeding into what my body, experiences. Yeah. And. And how, how am I thinking about letting go of the things that I’m holding? And I think that that is in my body, and I also think that it is with the world around us in the news, how are we finding a way for us to really metabolize it? That does not mean ignore it. That does not mean let it bounce off of you to protect yourself. To let it in, but also to let it out. And I think that’s, that, that feedback loop has been a little broken for me. It goes in it, I just haven’t had a way to really let it out. Christina: And so you’ve literally had like a part of you removed Kate: Yes. Christina: And diverticulitis, I will say too, ‘cause I learned about it through you. And maybe the one time I Googled, you’re usually my Googling friend. We, we jokingly call you, Hermione. I think you coined that yourself actually. You’re like the Hermione of the group. But, but I looked it up and it’s usually something that happens to like much older folks or, Kate: yeah. I don’t fit the profile. Christina: You really don’t fit the profile. But it’s really cool to see you. Experiencing something like that. Enough times like the universe, this is what I believe. It comes back around. If you don’t get the message the first time, it’s like, oh wait, it’s just gonna get worse. Mm-hmm. We’re gonna come back around. Yeah. Oh, you didn’t hear us that time. So here you go. You gotta get it removed now. Yeah. And then instead of just deciding, well, it’s removed so that issue is gone. Kate: Yes, Christina: you are, you’re doing, you even referenced like all these modes of healing that you’re, you’re seeking therapy being one of them and stuff, but it’s, it’s really cool because you’re, you, I think you’re learning, I see you learning that. It just, like Becky said, it’s not just yours to hold. I, I see you as someone who is, is like a cycle breaker. And there are a lot of people right now in souls and bodies that are cycle breakers. That, if you think of it that way. They like chose to come here now in this pressure cooker of a time because they’re able to do it. And I see you as this Sparky Spark Mc Sparkers sin, who’s ready to do it? Kate: We’re gonna change my LinkedIn immediately. There’s the title we’ve been looking for, Sparky Spark Mc Sparkers Sin When you introduce me Next time. Thank you. I love it. I’m also like, let’s have, you know, I didn’t expect to use the word colectomy on this podcast and I’m wondering if people are going to now you can’t really stop thinking about colon, which is a really gross thing that I should never have brought up. And now I understand why Kate Middleton always talks about like abdominal surgery. That would’ve sounded much better in in post we can say abdominal surgery. Just kidding. It is what it is, but I just mean it’s raw. It’s real. It’s kind of gross. But I also was gutted. It was gutted this year. Gutted. Literally everything, everything that’s going on around me converged at the same time in the world. And I think that when you talk about a targeted moment, what goes around and really look at it, maybe the, the pieces were in place, there’s a lot of privilege I feel. And having time, like time is a luxury. So many people are so busy, one foot in front of the other surviving, and I feel lucky and aware of the fact that I have this moment in time where things have come together, that I have time, I have time to look at this, I’m doing the other things. But I’m quite aware that, that alone is a gift and it’s a waste if I don’t use it. And I feel an obligation to do it. Uh, and maybe there’s something in there that I can not only understand how I can best plug in better. Or, uh, a a but, and also help other people. I really feel a, a need to do that, to help them tap in as well to what it is they have to offer and believe that they do. Christina: Hmm. I I would also remind you that there is something inside of you in a deep place that you probably didn’t acknowledge, that knew that you needed, like you have time and you have resources and community because you moved yourself. To that place. Mm-hmm. Kate: Yes. Christina: That was, Kate: I joke that I was like, you know, my move to Maine was the only five year plan. I successfully executed. Like I knew that vision board strong. I lo, I mean, Chicago’s an amazing city, all the love in the world. And I think there’s so many great places, but I, for me, coming back to where I am and where I wanted to have my kids grow up and the, access to nature and family was such a strong gravitational pull. I couldn’t, I thought about it all the time. It was such a known thing in my body. And moving here I thought was gonna be at the cost of social and friends and things. But I was okay with that because I knew it was right. And much to my delight, I was wrong about that in the best way possible. I’ve made wonderful connections with people who are really, they’ve chosen the place. And they chose a place where it’s easier to feel in many ways, a city, as we talked about, Becky, it can condition you to be a certain way. Mm-hmm. And wear a certain type of armor and show up and know the words and do the thing that’s gonna get to the next thing and move at a pace. And I think that, you know, there is a benefit in many ways too, to being in a slower place where people are you can be a little bit, maybe more intentional, but really making that choice to live in a place they feel most alive in. Becky: Mm-hmm. That’s the, that is the essential point is where do you feel most alive? It’s not that, you know, Maine is better than Chicago or better than New York City. It’s, it’s recognizing that pull within you and separating from the where should I live? You know, oh, I should live in a city because I’ll get better jobs but really honoring that pull within you, that is your right place, Kate: that’s, uh, really, important distinction that, how personal it is. Mm-hmm. Like, it’s different for everybody. Mm-hmm. It’s just, it was so clear to me that this is where I was meant to be and for that exact reason. Christina: Hmm. Kate: Mm-hmm. Christina: So, Kate, I hear you saying that like you, all of the things that have been going on with you are helping you reframe the uplifting of stories of others. I think that’s what you just, you just articulated a little bit before, so this feels like a really natural way to kind of like bridge into, okay, your guts got taken out and you’re with your family in Maine. So where do you find yourself now? And I know you’re still on this healing journey. It’s a never ending beautiful journey that we all are so lucky to experience as we evolve in our time here. So that never goes away and that will continue for you and for me and for all of us. But how is, how has that work that you’ve been doing, that self-reflection, how has that sort of looped you back to the things that really stuck from your quote unquote professional career or the things that you love to do? Mm. I know you’re a writer. You do comedy, you do these things. So how has the more self-reflective and self-realized and and deeper listening part played into how you are showing up now? Kate: Mm-hmm. Christina: End of question. Kate: There’s so many parts. Can I remember it all? I really tried. that ticker of tape of mine was going, so I’m gonna do my best and if I’ve missed some, do who cares? Lemme know. Christina: Take the baby, whatever. Kate: Yeah. Um, I do think, I think you get to a certain point of doing something and you, you know who you are. You say, I’m this kind of person. It’s actually kind of awesome to, in that way, stop and then check in and be like, am I that person? And see what emerges. I, I’d be like, one of my key words is frolic. Like I Great word. Right. Frolic. Fun to say, but also really feels genuine to who I am, like playful. but this idea of being at home and being the chief play officer has really brought that to the surface. Like, this is it. I’m orienting towards game and finding the game and playing and all of those things are still really there. And the things that I was doing before when I was working, for money, I just, was, you know, a lot of coaching, assisting other people in helping to fan their flame, help fed them. Reconnect to themselves through this, their own leadership stories or their own sense of humor, or their own way of seeing the world, their unique view of it, and giving them the nudge to go forward in that direction. And I was doing that with executives. I was, kind of doing that individually helping organizations and leaders. I was doing teaching and like these kinds of things and academic institutions like helping to spark ideas and get people, spark creativity. And I hadn’t really, when you take time away like that, through thread, that idea of all these different things, I’ve had lots of different iterations of me, lots of different things that I’ve done in, in my decades of experimentations. But that is a real consistent piece of this. And so I, I think I’m following your question when I say like, yeah, I, it helped me hone in on the, on the truth of the theme, that that is really core to who I am and what I wanna do and what energizes me. And that part hasn’t gone away. It’s found a new, it’s like naturally, like if you stop water in one place, it’s gonna find its way, another way. Yeah. Like, this is what’s happening for me and it’s showing up in a different area, but it’s the same idea. It’s the same sort of like, you know, does that Christina: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kate: Address the question. I Christina: Yes, it does. I think, I think too, I was thinking like sometimes when you have some real, deep awakening of self. Like self with a capital S Self, Soul, Self. The other stuff that was more artificial to you falls away because it’s asking to let go, to be let go. And so I’m wondering where you are, and maybe you don’t know, but like what still sticks from wherever you were before this awakening of self? Like what I hear you talking about story. I know writing is sort of just ‘cause I know you mm-hmm. Writing is really, still sticking. Like what feels like it’s in that like core of Kate. That then like reaches forward into the great beyond, Kate: reaches forward into the great beyond. Becky: I feel like what I’m hearing in that question, Christina is and correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s like there’s not like a fake self before and a real self now, but it’s like, what are the through lines and, and maybe even how are you holding those old, older parts of you in a new way and finding new ways to, to still have that. ‘cause it’s not like you would, you wouldn’t be that successful and have such a robust CV if you were doing things that were so out of alignment. But, so it’s not about like the, the what you were doing, but maybe doing it in different environments or doing it with a, with new boundaries or new, attention to self. Is, is that kind of Kate: Oh, okay. Becky: Know what I mean? So it’s not like the corporate version of you is inauthentic and you wanna throw that out with the bath water I don’t know. That’s, that’s kind of the essence of what I was hearing in the question. Christina, correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s, I guess it sparked my own as, you know, my own awakening. It feels like a return. It’s not a, a transformation into someone different. It’s, it’s really like connecting the dots of my life in this much more excited and illuminated way. Whereas now, like I was talking to Tarra last night and getting really excited about some of the skills that I had in that corporate life where maybe it, it wasn’t the fullest version of myself, but. There were sparks, you know, and it now, it’s almost like there’s a flashlight going through my life and finding these moments of it’s almost like picking up little pieces of me and bringing them all back into a new, more whole version of me. But it’s not creating something new. It’s like collecting pieces of the past. That’s the, that’s kind of what I was hearing in your question, but, um, yeah, pick up wherever, whatever resonates. Kate. Kate: I mean, I love listening to you. I’m not sure. I, I, maybe it’s because I’m so in it. This is beautiful picking up pieces of the past. Yes. I love that. So, and, and also, are you asking me like who I am? Becky: No. But so that que even that question, right? Who am I? I just, this is the, you know, queer non-binary part of me that’s like, I don’t, are these boxes helpful? You know, like the, even these questions of who am I? Do I need to put that in a, in a category, in a box? Kate: Yeah. Well that’s what I was hoping we could avoid for panic attack purposes. I’m joking, but I just, because that’s so that’s, that’s a hard, but that’s not the nature of both of those questions that sort of, you asked about a through thread that reaches back and reaches forward, to where I wanna be and where I wanna go. And I think that there is a lightness to it. I think that I have always been good at the reframe, not in a way that’s delusional or avoidant of the reality, but in anchoring towards levity. And I think that that has been a through thread in my work in design, design thinking. How can you look at this challenge and reframe it and use those constraints to your advantage? Like how does that help you get even more creative and dig in? And I’ve been looking at creativity through this process and the ways in which I would’ve been telling someone else to go about looking at this and how do you play, how do you still find joy and how do you still move forward in and despite the circumstances? And I think that this idea of tapping into and finding joy in myself in others, and connecting, in a very playful way, has, has certainly been absolutely there from the beginning it’s been stripped down to a little bit more of a pure form of it. I mean, I’m truly like taking my kids on magic and mystery walks and so I get to actually experience that piece of it pretty fully, this idea that I want to be of service, and help and, plug in, in community. Becky: We’ve now said joy so many times. Yes. And, and I really, I wanna pull that out. And this was a side text conversation before this, this talk about very loosely about the difference between joy and happiness and, and just being around you has probably started to, plant seeds in my big beautiful neurodivergent brain and looking, so I’ve naturally been like seeing patterns of joy and, and holding this question of like, what is joy? And can you have joy without happiness? Can you have joy with sorrow? What is the full expression of joy, look and feel like? And yesterday I was watching, parts of this SAG awards and there was this, this musical performance that was kind of inspired by the movie sinners. And the joy was just emanating and, um. I’ve always found this like when you look to the most, the darkest places, and I do tend to look in the darkest places, it’s kind of my nature. Every time I do, once I’m able to feel and metabolize and alchemize the darkness and the sorrow, I always find this deep well of joy, of like overflowing, exuberant, gotta sing it, gotta dance it joy. And I feel that in you and in this time of becoming and of being literally physically being gutted, I always find and feel joy from you and I. And, it’s been a gift to me in the short time I’ve known you. And, yeah. So I’ll open the door to Joy and I know there’s plenty more that both of you have to say about it. Kate: Yeah, I, um, I, I guess it feels like a very natural orientation. Like it is not, it, it feels authentic and I can say it’s authentic because I’ve been up against, like we all are, in this world right now. There’s, there’s a lot to, to, to call it, into question and to, and to deplete a sense of joy or to put it away, as not appropriate for, not now. But it keeps popping back up, right? It’s just, it is, uh, very. Becky: When is joy ever not appropriate? Kate: Great, great question. I don’t know. Ask hr. Um, I once got in trouble for wearing too much neon green. I was called into HR before for my first job. I was 22. It was, yeah, I was, I had a very joyful closet. So I think there are dimmers that are out there, right? There’s people orientations towards dimming and igniting, and I am just full on in the ignition category of, trying to be around people who spark that and who, and who can see it as, as an important state of being. Christina: You just so consciously reorient yourself that to it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I, I do it too. Yeah, Kate: absolutely. Christina: It’s something that flows so naturally and abundantly out of you, Kate, that I mean there’s no you without joy Becky: and the fact that you called it a state of being, you know, it’s not an emotion that, that you feel that moves through you. It’s a state of being, which is something that we can consciously choose as you always, this is your language, Christina, of like reorient towards that state of being as a practice. Kate: Yeah. I I also think, so much of, I, I, we talk about the difference between, or you referenced the difference between happiness and joy, and I do think those are different. And I do think of joy as more. More visceral, like a, a spark that connects you back to your body. It’s a, it’s a feeling like you talked about, but what I loved about your description, Becky, is it even the deepest moments of grief, the joy is connected to that. It’s part of the release and that goes back to what we said about living and letting things through your body, the fullness of it. And for me, I’m learning how to let things not stay in my body. Joy is a beautiful release, but it’s also part of the, regeneration. Like it’s a regenerative force for me. I keep going back and forth with the sensitivity I feel. With the privilege of my situation and the how that bumps up against this particular moment. I don’t think I’ve given enough to that aspect of it because I feel like so much of my story is maybe a deepening into myself, but afforded through privilege and that, that I’m not in fear and on the front lines in the same way as many Americans are and people in the world right now. And so there’s almost a feeling of a, a, an extra responsibility, right? I am in both a position to show up and a position to use my voice on behalf of those that aren’t able to use their voice right now. Don’t feel safe to do this right now. And that is real. That is very real. And. I think that there’s a part of us that, and me in particular, that can feel in conflict with knowing where our gifts are and still question whether they’re appropriate for this moment. And for someone like me who identifies very closely with joy, that does not, that feels so in many ways, incongruent. Incongruent. That’s a tricky word. I challenge you to say it. Mm-hmm. I’m not even gonna try again. But the point is, it’s at many ways seemingly at odds with the gravity of what we are up against, the intensity, the urgency, that taking space or taking time to like actually focus on this could be misconstrued very quickly or But I would say that, that that’s perhaps why it’s worth looking into a little bit, and that there is a misunderstanding around that potentially. And that the way that I talk about joy. Is really, is joy as, resilience, as tapping into, it’s like joy as a precious natural resource that we are all contain, that should be protected and conserved. And, and that it fuels us, right? Because it allows us, if you can tap into the things that give you joy, if you’re aware of how to replenish, if you’re aware of what you have to offer, you have so much more to give the connections. It can, it can sustain you, it can fuel resistance, it can, it can buoy you in times that are so dark, but most importantly, it connects you back to yourself. So you remember you’re here, you remember your humanity, which is so essential as we look at our responsibilities, our opportunities, and our place within all of this. And the parts of this we own. The parts of this we can show up for. But I think there’s this moment calling for community for us to come together to not do this alone, to be given back something. It’s not, it’s something we already have, but space and time to have it and hold it and share it and feel it in one another’s presence. It’s such a deepening and we are experiencing such extreme loneliness or separation from ourselves, from our bodies, from our spirit, as much as we are community. And I think of joy as is truly an accelerant. A a fuel, a spark that is regenerative. It is essential, and it’s part of the human condition if we remember it. And I am amazed continuously at the power that it has to bring people into a better proximity with themselves and position to remember their capabilities. And so I believe that while it may seem like this is an extraneous piece to showing up to this moment, how powerful it could be to create something that allows us to feel everything that we’re feeling to acknowledge these feelings exist, to acknowledge the heaviness of the moment, but to have a celebration that we let it out and that we can maybe consciously create that. Certainly remember that when it’s happening around us, that this is actually extremely important. Becky: I, uh, I love you and I love everything that you just said, and I’m so grateful for you saying it. And exactly what you’re sharing is one of the reasons I even wanted to start having these conversations. The image that was coming to mind so strongly that we’ve talked about before, so I’m not surprised I had this image of bare soil. Christina: Mm. Becky: You know, we have talked about this metaphor of the garden cause what you were talking about and describing is like getting to the root. Of what this moment is showing us. Mm-hmm. this moment, didn’t start with the election, the last presidential election. This, this moment didn’t start. Like where do you start? Even when we’re talking about this moment, where did it start? Christina: Mm-hmm. Becky: And what you’re talking about, and what I feel in my body when I listen to you talk is getting to the root of why this moment exists in the first place. And when you talk about turning towards community, and And we all have our different roles, right? So for me. What I feel when I feel into what is getting to the root look like for me, it’s, it’s very much been unearthing and pulling threads at what was here before, and really getting to the place of what has been happening in the systems, of power on this earth that has let this moment even be a reality. It’s been pulling the threads and decolonizing my, my mind, so I can see this world clearly, and that’s my role in creating this new garden. Right? But that doesn’t have to be everyone’s, everyone’s role. But this work of getting to the root of what was here before. So that what we build next is not just a replication of harm. It’s not just a replication of what came before I understand the, what I think I’m hearing is the feeling of some guilt. You know, that you do have the privilege. I feel it. So maybe I’m just projecting the guilt of like, I have this access to joy and there’s so many people who are being directly impacted. And I mean, before we got on this call, I was feeling on my shoulders and in my body the weight of this world right now. And it’s so easy for me. What I have learned in myself is when I am feeling that, and for me, it shows up as the doom scrolling on Instagram, the looking at the same in, you know, it’s not even information, it’s, you know, it’s, um, Christina: yeah. Propaganda. Becky: Yeah. Or just like, it’s rage and it’s righteous rage. The posts are important. The speaking out is important. All of those little things are important. I just notice in myself when I’m feeling that it’s like, oh, I’m in fix it mode. Kate: Mm. Becky: I, I am now taking on in my body the problems of the entire world and I am trying to fix it. Why am I trying to fix it? I’m trying to fix it so it will go away so I don’t have to feel. Because it’s too big. Right. And I just know for me that when I start noticing those patterns come up, and then I feel the guilt of I’m not doing, it’s not even, I feel the guilt of I’m not doing enough. Why am I feeling this guilt? Because it’s my problem to solve. I have to solve it all. And those things aren’t true. But that’s how I feel. So for me, my practice is to get real, real small and just feel like one tiny bit of it. But feel it fully. Yeah. And just like we’ve been talking about, feel it fully and then let it come out. Let it come out in a generative conversation about this moment. Kate: Yeah. I, I think it is. I very attractive to go numb. For a lot of people right now because it is so much pain. If you’re taking in the news feed, your, your scroll is like, I think it’s really important. We don’t, so what does that look like? Becky: Well I think there’s a difference between taking in the feed, like even that language. Yeah. Like we’re taking in what we’re being fed by who. Kate: Yes. Becky: That’s not understanding. Like we don’t develop understanding Kate: for sure. And I’m not even talking at this point about the informational overload so much as I am the sensory switch off, the emotional switch off that we run. Look, we’re in a world of ai. It’s here, we’re doing all the things. But I think this showing up and allowing ourselves the feelings connects us to our humanity. It’s so essential right now that we don’t lose that piece or outsource or scroll over it. I think the more that we’re in being on our phones in general, like is it’s an untrustworthy resource to say the least as we talk about the information we’re obtaining. It could be what we, you know. A genre formerly known as journalism or, you know, social media. Right. And so what I’m trying to make the distinction is not necessarily joy as a privilege, I, I would also say that I distinguish between joy and happiness to a degree. They could be correlated, you know, they, but they’re not necessarily mutually inclusive happiness feels to me more ephemeral. It’s influenced by a lot of external factors and it might be about receiving. Mm-hmm. Like, and we are often talking about happiness. That’s, to me, like influencing Instagram. And like that is like who’s happy on social media. And I do think that there often looks like that’s at anchored in quite a bit societal, socioeconomic or privilege, like depending on, you know, the lens with which you’re viewing this, but I, I’m talking about joy as more of a a deeper subtler or exuberant and loud. It depends on, on which version of this state that’s very inward and it is more reciprocal than it is receiving, and it is connected to more basic elements of ourselves, our environment, and our humanity. And that is intrinsic in all of us. Our access points to it vary. Some people under the greatest odds have deep wells of it and ability to dip in and some, despite what the appearance of what they have, it might be very hard for them to access that really true sense of what it is. But I believe we all have the capacity to cultivate it and to tap into it as a resource. And I’m very interested in creating more opportunities to surface it and to coach people into finding it I also think of it as resistance, right? Mm-hmm. That you have a light, you have this inside of you, and it cannot be extinguished unless you allow it to. And, and that’s powerful. Mm-hmm. You know, that’s powerful. Becky: Yeah. It, what comes across to me is joy is connected to just being alive and the joy of, it’s the feeling of aliveness and it isn’t impacted by external. Like that is like your, you can access that. What was coming up when I was pointing to the performance around the movie Sinners, which if you don’t know the movie Sinners, you probably missed why I even brought that up. But it was about, after World War I and the Deep South and its centers around, it’s a vampire movie, but it centers around this one night of just exuberant dance and joy. When I start looking into, the, the darker parts of the reality of the past, I look to, you know, the times of, enslavement, chattel slavery and Jim Crow and like those dark places. And I find so much joy. Christina: Hmm. Becky: I find like this. Full expression of joy. Like you were talking earlier about letting it go through and it being the grief, the sadness, the, the pain of seeing the world as it is when you, when you don. Feel it fully. And it’s not an the, it is whatever level you are capable of feeling and still feeling safe. You have to feel safe to feel these feelings. So, you know, my capacity may be huge to feel large swaths of grief and pain, someone else, because of their life circumstances, because of the way they’re designed. It may be much smaller. But I think the point is to just whatever access you’re able to feel, feel it fully, feel it fully, and let it move through you. And that’s where you access joy. Because I really think that joy and suffering are both. Just truths of life, you know? I mean, I come from a Buddhist lens where life is, suffering is the first noble truth in Buddhism. Well, I, I think on the other side of that, even if Buddhism doesn’t name it explicitly, although Thích Nhất Hạnh definitely does, is joy is the other side of that same coin. So if you restrict one, you restrict the other. Christina: Yes. I’m very captivated by this conversation you were having. This is getting at such a deep place of this question of joy. And what I’m hearing in what you’re saying, Kate, is that you feel like you would like to have your efforts be in service of joy. Kate: Yes. Christina: So that is a beautiful, we, we went all around and you got an answer to that question. Joy is the through line of your life. So there’s your elevator pitch, should you need it one day. Kate: Thank you. Thank you. You hired, Becky: put that on your LinkedIn, Kate: you’re hired. Yeah. Hi. Christina: Yes. Sparky Mc Sparkers in the, the service of joy. The joy bringer, the service. Yeah. Kate: Well, yeah, Christina: I mean I just, um, that’s what I heard in you and I love this idea of joy and suffering being on two sides of a coin. And what I keep thinking, ‘cause this is why we are having this conversation in so many different iterations with people because we all feel that crippling guilt of the privilege of feeling joyful. And I, for one, have an abundance of joy. Always have, my needs are met. I acknowledge that and I refuse to let the guilt of the privilege of that thing steer my path, because what I want to do, you said it yourself, Kate, that your thoughts matter, like how you think of things. You said this at the very beginning of our conversation. If I let that take up too much space in my thoughts, then I’m actually, I believe I’m continuing the life. I’m, I’m continuing what I see as, a sad result where not everyone has access to joy. So what I love in these conversations is that we get to choose how we think about things and speak about things. And I want to seed a world where joy is the baseline because everyone has their needs met. And you know, if we’re using this garden, we keep talking about the garden a lot. And what seeds are we planting in this bare soil? What do we want to take root? And for me, joy is like the ground beneath our feet. I want it to be the ground beneath everybody’s feet. And I live into that question of what that looks like every minute of every day because I know what it feels like to feel joyful so often from a really rooted place. And for me, joy bears creativity and that is a place that I find a home. And I want a lot of people to find a home in too. You know, Becky: The more I sit with. Get comfortable in this space of privilege, of my own privilege and, you know, listening to other people speak of privilege. The more I see the importance of the acknowledgement, that is really importance, the awareness of it, which clearly you have, Kate, I definitely have. I know Christina has. And then beyond that, I think it can get in the way, you know, because once you have awareness that some people are born with privilege and some aren’t, and no one had a choice in what they were born into, I think anything beyond that and continuing to recognize the way we have privilege, right? It’s not like that awareness stops, but just I’m thinking of like the, the, the privilege of joy, even to take that. Like if I were to sit in that stance, who am I to? Like how am I determining that someone else doesn’t have access to joy? You know, is that me thinking like, because I have money and time, I have more access to joy. I know plenty of billionaires I guaranteed aren’t feeling joy, you know? Kate: Oh yeah. No, that’s, that’s the distinction. I think it’s super important to make. I, joy is very different and I don’t feel as though any one person has more of it than another. And that actually feels like a human equalizer. But it’s up to us to cultivate and mm-hmm. We can have as much of it as we choose, but alright. There’s some exceptions to that in terms of the life circumstances that constrain it. Mm-hmm. But it’s there. Yeah. Becky: What the other thing that was popping up is, it’s silly, but we’ll put it in the show notes. Adrienne Maree Brown yesterday posted this little song, short little song that she made up while she was, boiling her hot water. And I probably listened to it 20 times. And one of the lines was, we’re all colonized. And it’s like, it was, it was kind of this joyful, you know, like we’re all colonized. Like we, we have privilege. Yes. As white people, as affluent people, we have so many privileges and I recognize that. And, I’m just a human trying to live a human life and be in community and the systems of oppression oppress us all. And the, I think when we can get to that place, that’s what I mean where I think privilege, if you live in it too long, can, can fester the feelings of guilt and shame and they’re informative, but if you don’t process them and move through you, they can get stuck and they can keep us separate because then you’re in a category of I am a privileged person and you are a not privileged person. And that just keeps us separate. It’s one more keeps box. Kate: Yeah. I, yes, I agree. It’s hard. And then I, yeah. Yeah, Becky: but you have to feel like the, you have to feel those, those feelings of guilt are that I feel all the time. It’s not like, oh, I’m done with guilt. I felt it this morning. You know? And then you have to have a practice, I think, and now I’m getting a little too preachy, but you, you have to have a practice of knowing how to feel whatever amount of, of, of that feeling in that moment so it can move through. Kate: I feel as though that there’s someone in this conver, so this is new topic, um related, but I feel as though there’s someone in this conversation who’s not here yet. And that’s Jenny. And I say this because, I feel very lucky to be oriented around people and find them. You, Becky, definitely Christina, who’s just up the street from me. So close to their relationship with, with joy and and I think one of the joy through nature, through art, through music, through community connection, through like. You know, little moments. And in meeting Jenny, like that sparks flu like right away. And you’re gonna have the chance to talk to her on this podcast if you haven’t already. But, this question, like you asked about a relationship to Joy and Christina, you talked about how deeply you live into it. And I think I am remembering my relationship to Joy as a through thread. I think that I put it away and I had a more, maybe polished a little bit more of a veneer or as we say in the kid craft world, modge podge, over it. And that just means like I was doing standup comedy, I was doing sketch comedy, I was doing things that are funny and joyful, but it’s a little bit different, right? It’s a little bit different. It’s definitely performative. It’s quite literally performative. I. I think my relationship to the true sense of joy and the spark is, is reemerging. But however, I’ve always collected these people in my life, it’s not an accident. And I’m so grateful. I say I have the best friends in the whole, like just a great wacky crew around the country, who also express their joy in like such genuine ways that are very different. Um, and they’re wonderful people. And I kind of sparked this question for me about like, I think I’m, yes, joy is my through threat. I wouldn’t say I always have a consistent relationship to it. I’m growing into it and I want it and I’m building it. But I’ve always been a joy anthropologist and I’m really interested in the question of joy and where it’s found and how it’s accessed. And maybe this is that researcher part of my brain too, Christina, we referenced, but. What sparks it in me is different than you. But I am interested in all of this as a phenomenon, as a part of our own humanity. But the power of it, I think, is something that deserves a little bit more talking space, like a little bit more space to both talk about, to recognize and then more ritualized spaces to feel and, celebrate that feeling. And so I brought up Jenny a little bit because this is, she’s thinking about this question with me and that is very much where we are planting a seed, not sure where it goes, not sure exactly what it is, but responding to a moment where we feel it’s necessary, where this is a time for community and, and for, . Remembering our own aliveness, remembering who we are, finding places to refuel. And so we’ve started something called the Joy Fire Project, and that is sort of the next iteration of this, of experimentations around joy and invitations around joy to a place to start as I, as we consider and continue to explore what this might become. Christina: . It’s so great. I’m sure at some point we’ll have both of you on at the same time to talk about what Joy Fire is blossoming into. And I love that you’re just, you’re just living into the question of like, what does joy look like in all of these different people? And, I really respect the fact that you’re just starting. Kate: Mm-hmm. Yeah, just starting. Christina: Just, yeah, you have the right idea and you’re just beginning with that idea, or right or wrong, it’s not even, you have the right idea. You have an idea that lands in your bodies and hearts and spirits so fully that you just get to plant it in the ground and grow it i