I got kicked off a train in the middle of the Oregon wilderness for vaping.

As I was being escorted off, Liz gave me her number and told me if I couldn’t catch another train, she would come back to pick me up and drive me the rest of the way to Olympia herself.

We had only just met.

I’ve always had the most incredible conversations with strangers and loved ones alike. Real ones. The kind that don’t happen when there’s a mic in the room and a list of questions on the table. So I started recording them and just capturing what was already happening, and asking permission after.

This is that series. “Meeting People Where They Are”

Liz was on her way home from visiting her daughters. One about to walk at graduation. One already taking college classes for veterinary school while still in high school. She talked about her husband, who used to train hop with her, and who died being hit by a train. She talked about how he still shows up as a bird that talks to them, warns them, watches over them.

We talked about grief and the kids who become strong so nobody else has to be. Sobriety, ADHD, the medication spiral that starts at five years old and doesn’t stop. Brainspotting. What it means to finally not need alcohol to come out of your shell.

Halfway through our conversation it hit me that this was too beautiful not to capture, and that Liz might just be the perfect person to launch this series with. So I quietly hit record. I asked her after if I could share it with you here.

She said yes.

Liz, thank you. For your openness, your warmth, your willingness to go deep with a stranger on a train, and for trusting me and everyone listening with the things you carry. You embody exactly what this series is about.

The audio isn’t perfect. We weren’t in a studio. That’s the point ~

P.S. You may be wondering if I ever got that woman a ticket to Mexico. I recorded the intro outside Portland Union Station with four minutes before my train, and a stranger came up asking for help getting to Mexico. I wish I could have. I didn’t have time, and she didn’t have a phone for me to send her anything to. I think about her and hope she found her way ~

P.P.S. You’ll notice the wind kept cutting through the intro audio. I thought about re-recording it indoors, but honestly? It felt wrong to. I was outside on a train platform, four minutes to spare, cigarette in hand, trying to get this down before I missed my train. The wind was there. It stays. This series was always meant to be raw and real, and sometimes raw and real is a little bit windy ~

P.P.P.S. The whole point of recording people without telling them first was so they wouldn’t feel shy or perform for the mic. The irony is that this was my first time doing it, and knowing I was recording had me feeling a little awkward and strange at the start. It showed up as a nervous laugh and probably as jumping in a little too much early on ~ interrupting before she fully landed, finishing thoughts before they were finished. A nervous tick of someone who knew they were being observed, even if only by themselves. As the conversation found its rhythm though, so did I. I eased back into just being present with her, and that’s when it really opened up. That’s the thing about real conversations ~ They find their own rhythm eventually, if you let them ~

P.P.P.P.S. There’s a moment in this conversation I’ve been sitting with since listening back. Liz shares some guilt around her daughter stepping up to help hold things together after losing her husband, and I touched on it briefly by mentioning my own mom, who raised five of us largely alone and had to give up so much of herself to do so. What I wish I had expanded on in that moment is this ~ it’s not just okay to need people during the hardest seasons of your life. It’s human. My mom needed her village too. My eldest siblings helped raise us younger ones, and that kind of collective holding of each other is something I think we’ve been taught to feel shame around when really it’s one of the most beautiful expressions of love there is. We were never meant to do the hard things alone. And the children who step up during those times ~ yes, they often do grow up faster than they should have to. That’s real, and it deserves to be honored. And at the same time, what they’re learning in those moments about love, about showing up, about what it means to hold someone through the worst of it ~ that stays with them too. I just wanted to name that ~ for Liz, for her daughter, and for anyone else who has ever needed someone to step in and hold things for a while. That’s not weakness. That’s just life, doing what it does ~

P.P.P.P.S. There’s a moment in this conversation I’ve been sitting with since listening back. Liz shares some guilt around her daughter stepping up to help hold things together after losing her husband, and I touched on it briefly by mentioning my own mom, who raised five of us largely alone and had to give up so much of herself to do so. What I wish I had expanded on in that moment is this ~ it’s not just okay to need people during the hardest seasons of your life. It’s human. My mom needed her village too. My eldest siblings helped raise us younger ones, and that kind of collective holding of each other is something I think we’ve been taught to feel shame around when really it’s one of the most beautiful expressions of love there is. We were never meant to do the hard things alone. And the children who step up during those times ~ yes, they often do grow up faster than they should have to. That’s real, and it deserves to be honored. And at the same time, what they’re learning in those moments about love, about showing up, about what it means to hold someone through the worst of it ~ that stays with them too. I just wanted to name that ~ for Liz, for her daughter, and for anyone else who has ever needed someone to step in and hold things for a while. That’s not weakness. That’s just life, doing what it does ~

xx Hannah

TIME STAMPS:

0:00 | intro to the intro ~ what this series is about

6:27 | portland union station | five minutes and a cigarette

11:40 | the conversation with Liz begins ~

This one wasn’t recorded for public consumption.

It was recorded for me, today on May 13th 2026, and moments after stepping through my front door from a powerful brainspotting session I had with my therapist Joanna Poague. I pressed record before I’d even fully processed what had just happened.

We focused on something I’ve been carrying my whole life without fully naming it: being a parentified child. The youngest daughter who learned early that her job was to tend to everyone else. Who brought that pattern into her friendships, her partnerships, her family dynamics, and only recently started to recognize it for what it is.

What came up during the session surprised me. Anger first, then laughter, then something quieter and more complicated. Compassion for my mother that I hadn’t been able to fully access before. Recognition of where the pattern lives in my body, my chest, my jaw, my hips, my left foot rooted to the earth while my right stayed light. Faces morphing into elders I’d never met but somehow recognized. And somewhere in the middle of it all, a clearer vision of the woman I’m actively choosing to become.

The healing has been so undeniable that even my chiropractor, someone I hadn’t seen in four months, noticed the energetic shift the moment I walked in on Monday. I shared with him what brainspotting has done for me, and mentioned that I’d even considered training to become a practitioner myself. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized that brainspotting is a tool I’ll continue to use and recommend wholeheartedly to others, while astrology is the gift I’m here to share.

My therapist gave me permission to potentially turn these session documentations into a book someday. This is me starting to build that archive.

I’m sharing it here in case it helps someone feel less alone in their own process, or opens a door to a modality they haven’t considered yet.

If you’re curious about brainspotting, I see Joanna Poague, based in Ashland, Oregon and also available via Zoom. She has changed my life.

p.s. sorry about my dryer banging in the background... I had just gotten home from my session and pressed record before I even thought about ambient noise. felt too real not to share anyway. 🤍

Raw audio. Unedited. Real.

p.p.s. if you’re interested in my grandma’s journals from her missionary trips compiled into a book, find it here: It’s All Part Of The Adventure ~ rightly titled as one of the statements my grandma would constantly remind us of ;)

p.p.p.s I remembered so much more from the session after recording. While listening, bear in mind that each dynamic mentioned is far more nuanced than you hear. There’s always duality in all things. Some “hardships”, yes, but beauty too. That’s life. && the many topics I briefly touched on here definitely deserve to be fully explored in the future.

But again, this wasn’t intended to be publicly shared with people who do not know the nuances within, as I do. This was recorded as a documentation for my future self to look back on when/if I ever decide to write a book about my experience with brainspotting and the immense healing it brought me, around many, many topics in life. This is a brief look into one of those topics.

I share because many people have asked me what brainspotting looks + feels like. I share it in hopes that it provides you with a look at what brainspotting sessions can be… from the initial trigger to the bodily sensations and realizations that surface, leading to a release on both subconscious and physical levels, && a reframing of that trigger… Though each session is vastly different, here’s a taste ;)

I woke up feeling inspired and decided to follow that impulse.

this started as me putting more energy into my Substack… and turned into recording this.. unplanned, on my phone, just letting it move through me.

the nervous energy you’ll hear at the beginning isn’t from the morning.. it’s from hitting record.

—

in this first recording, I move through:

• deciding to start a podcast in real time

• the astrology of the podcast’s inception chart

• how I work with intuition, psychology, and pattern recognition together

• my background navigating religion, trauma, and finding my own framework for meaning

• why I’m choosing to share more openly now

this is less of a polished episode and more of a threshold moment.

—

a few notes:

this was recorded on my phone without realizing my headphones weren’t connected, so the audio shifts as I move around (pacing to move energy ahah).

I also said venus is exalted in taurus.. she’s actually at home there.

and the moon in capricorn is in detriment (not fall), which I caught mid-thought and left in.

leaving all of it in intentionally.

—

if you’re into astrology:

I’m including the natal chart of this podcast + its synastry with my chart in the accompanying post.

the chart itself:

Noetic Landscapes Podcast Inception Natal Chart

• jupiter exactly conjunct the ascendant in cancer → growth through emotional resonance and presence

• midheaven in pisces conjunct mercury → this is a voice, a transmission

• north node in pisces in the 9th → sharing lived understanding, not fixed belief

• a heavily activated 10th house → this wants to become something public over time

and the synastry is where it gets personal:

Noetic Landscapes Podcast Inception Chart synastry with Hannah Waller (me), founder of Noetic Landscapes.

• the ascendant falling into my 11th house → this grows through community, audience, and shared resonance

• its midheaven, mercury, and mars activating my pisces sun in the 7th → my identity is expressed through this voice, especially in relational space

• its north node aligning with my descendant → this is experienced through others, through mirroring, through connection

• vertex activation in sagittarius aligning with my ic + pluto in the 4th → this reaches into something deeply rooted and transformational

this doesn’t feel separate from me ~ it feels relational.

—

thank you to the teachers who have shaped how I think and feel into this work:

Lacy Phillips | Founder of To Be Magnetic (first found in 2016)

Desiree Pais | Founder of Benshen Co. (started her course in 2019)

Joanna Poague | Brainspotting Therapist (started with in October 2024)

—

referenced writing:

1. Listening Past the Resistance

2. What does the hidden clutter in our homes correspond to within ourselves?

—

this is the beginning.

not polished

not perfect just honest