In this podcast, Camille and Tanya speak about their ever-evolving relationships to leadership, especially at this moment of personal and global transformation through crisis. 

 

Some of the topics they cover include:

• Knowing when to go low, when to go high
• Leading by being
• Shifting from the guru to the guide paradigm
• The inquiry, "can we take others farther than we have gone ourselves?"
• Women, boundaries, and leadership
• The role of failure in leadership
• The sacred vow of leadership and what it demands of us
• What it means to truly collaborate and why it's critical for emerging leadership paradigms 

 

 

Episode transcript

 

[00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubins Steam Story mentor and Camille Adair, family Constellation facilitator. In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories serve our lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness. Moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments. And true. So many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longings. Each one of us is necessary and rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can read story the culture together. 

 

[00:00:50] OK. Welcome to Restoring the culture. Today we are talking about restoring leadership. This is Camille. I'm here with my friend Tanya. And I'm going to start out with a quote. 

 

[00:01:04] And this is from Clarissa Pinkel. Estas? Sorry. I'm going to start again. Welcome to Restoring Leadership. I'm going to begin by reading a quote by Clarissa Pinkel estus from Women Who Run With the Wolves. This is Chapter 1. I must reveal to you that I am not one of the divine who march into the desert and return gravid with wisdom. I've traveled many cook fires and spread angel bait round every sleeping place. But more often than getting the wisdom I've gotten in delicate episodes of the Calli and amoebic dysentery, such as the fate of a middle class mystic with delicate intestines. 

 

[00:02:03] It might seem like a strange quote for leadership, but today Tanya and I are going to talk about how leadership is changing for us. And so I'd love to hear from you after hearing that quote for the first time. 

 

[00:02:19] Yeah, well, it reminds me of my what it took me to immediately was my first one woman show Honeymoon in India, where I went to India with all these sort of like ideas of a colonized person, that it was going to be very glamorous somehow. And I was going to get enlightened on the banks of the Ganga River. 

 

[00:02:42] And instead I got dysentery and parasites, you know, and I almost died. Do you know how to train? You know, that was somehow out in the middle of nowhere. 

 

[00:02:53] And that was the awakening. The awakening was the discomfort. The awakening was having to confront my privilege, my perspective as an American white woman with ideas of fantasies of enlightenment versus the hard, hard work, the discomfort on inner and outer levels to, I think, become ourselves. And that's what it took me to immediately. And when I think of leadership, I'm I feel mostly that it's about how do we become ourselves or how do I become myself? Because unless I do that, I don't really have anything to offer. Everything else is artifice to me. So I love her. I love that book. I love that quote. She always just goes right to the heart of of truth to me. Yeah. So that's what I would say. What made you choose that quote? 

 

[00:03:50] Oh, I think I think part of it has to do with where we're at right now with the pandemic and how as a leader, I'm feeling. Like, I'm sort of groveling around in my own shadow stuff in the midst of birthing something new, and that feels like there's no avoiding that and somewhere in there is a gift. And I also can look back at times when I've been asked to step into leadership. And little did I know that, you know, leadership, especially in health care, has pedestal energy. So there can be some inflationary stuff that comes with that. A lot of expectation and a lot of projection from other people who have are still, you know, working out stuff with parents or they're working out stuff with authority figures and really. Well, how I think not just in health care, but sort of in. The culture that I think we're working at restoring. It's really a setup because true leadership really is about authenticity and that's inner work. And most leadership training programs teach you how to step up on the pedestal. They're not about how do you go in and work with your own material and face your own shadow and learn to basically be at the bottom. Right. You push other people up from the bottom. It's the inverted pyramid. 

 

[00:05:30] I couldn't agree more. I've been in. I think about that. Sure. You're coming from the perspective of health care, from our particular industry, from a to particular paradigm. And I think in Western culture, we're addicted to giving our power away. Getting back to my show, Honeymoon in India that I did years ago. 

 

[00:05:53] That was for me a bottom around giving my power away in the guru paradigm. 

 

[00:05:59] And I realized after following certain gurus, including American ones that wouldn't call themselves gurus, that. That my job and my work was to pull all that power out of projection back into myself and stop looking for the perfect mommy or perfect daddy, which is what I think happens when. Right. This sort of guru culture, putting people on a pedestal plays out. 

 

[00:06:28] And I've put people on a pedestal and had the experience of being wildly disappointed in them, because that happens. And I've also had the experience of people putting me on a pedestal, which is the most dangerous place. And my work, because then you're going to fall to the bottom when you've been put up. And my work as a leader, whether I'm working with people on their stories, their writing, being doing my work as a theater director, working with people on business has been from the beginning to navigate that and and support people in in taking their own energetic back. 

 

[00:07:06] So I'm a guide, not a guru. 

 

[00:07:08] And I think that distinction is big because a lot of people want to be gurus, but there's a falseness to it, isn't there? There's a. And who wants to pull other people's energy away? What is that feeding in them? To me, it's a. 

 

[00:07:25] It happens as leaders. It's going to happen like we're gonna have to experience that. I don't think it's a pure path. There's no like just ascending to understanding this. But from life experiences, like I've had to look at my ego, what part of me wanted to either take somebodies power and let them elevate me in some way because it felt good to me, felt validated into my ego or give away my power so I wouldn't have to do the hard work. But the movement of my soul for me has really been down, down, down on the ground. 

 

[00:07:59] So I think the old, you know, old style leadership really kind of had this myth that you have to be something other than yourself if you're going to be successful in leadership. And I think. I think the leadership that is birthing right now and the world is the call to be more like yourself, to be as authentic as you can be and to step into your own humanity. And that truly is what all of us are hungry for and what we're hungry for from each other, because old style leadership puts up barriers to human intimacy and connection. And the new style of leadership really is all about coming into can human connection, interdependence, doing things together. You and I have talked about the two by two and about, you know, how the lone-wolf model of leadership doesn't work anymore. I've seen that play out so much in in hierarchical leadership models, in organizations. And and I think one of the things I've seen that play into that can be really harmful is something that I call founder's syndrome, that people have a really hard time passing on their wisdom, passing on passing the baton to the next generation. And as a as a previous hospice nurse, I've always linked the need for succession planning in an organization or in one's leadership role to the fear of death. Because if we can't come to terms with the fact that one day we're going to die and how are we going to leave our legacy and our work to keep it as alive as we can. If that seems appropriate for sustainability, you know, I think that that that I've found that to be a challenge for many people. And and I think so leadership, real true leadership is far from being a career pursuit. It really is a spiritual pursuit. It's some of the deepest it's some of the deepest work we can engage in in terms of the cycles of birth and death and our place in all of that. 

 

[00:10:18] I so agree on and as you and I have both been on that path and seen each other and support each other, witnessed each other, all these things over the course of this thing, that it's it's a thing where it demands everything. 

 

[00:10:32] And I remember making a vow to the guru twenty nine years ago. I want to say where I said at a party at ESTA in Estes Park, Colorado, at a little retreat center. Five hundred people. And in front of the guru, I said, I want to marry the truth with no possibility of divorce. She said, be careful. That's a dangerous vow. It's interesting to me because at the time I thought that vow meant right. The devotion somehow to the guru, some kind of like this illusion I had fantasy of awakening. 

 

[00:11:06] But it's been this this thing that strips everything. Right. Like, take me down. 

 

[00:11:15] They like I said earlier, you'd like to such humility, right. 

 

[00:11:19] To really no escape, no emotional bypass, no financial bypass, no intellectual bypass, like all the way down. 

 

[00:11:31] And then who am I there? I think only in going low to I find out what I made of what the ego wanted, wants the bypass. Right. And to kind of go high, I think for me anyway, that's been my path of leadership. 

 

[00:11:49] Not in each one of us I think are tested in a way that has to rub up against the fragmentation in our soul, the trauma, familial, ancestral, conditioned, whatever it is. Right. It has to rub up against those hard places that we don't want to go. 

 

[00:12:10] So I'm curious to know I mean, I'd love to have this conversation where we both speak to because, you know, we're old enough, right? We're in our 50s. We're in our mid 50s. 

 

[00:12:21] And so we've had enough life experience to experience leadership, both from what informs the kind of leader we want to be and how we've probably both been the kind of leader that we don't want to be. Can you talk a little bit about a time when you were a leader where you learned about leadership by making mistakes? 

 

[00:12:47] I think the biggest mistake that I've made or been most vulnerable to make has been not having good boundaries from the start around expectations, because it's it's that thing where for me learning. 

 

[00:13:06] To love myself as a leader, to. And to just love and respect myself means laying out very clear boundaries around what people are going to get from me and what they're not. Because when what they are not isn't laid out ahead of time, all the projections you were talking about can come on to us as leaders. Now, I've been a self-employed person for 30 years, so I've been a theater artist and a writing facilitator and all of these things that I've done. Story. Story. Leader. Story. Coach. A story worker really around on my own as an entrepreneur. And I didn't have any business background, so I was always highly gifted in terms of getting people results like in the story work itself. But where it got messy was I didn't have sacred structures around me and I didn't really understand how to create them and have the boundaries of a business, not toxic business, but just like healthy business structures, the sacred masculine. And then it was much trickier and people would project more on me or like expect that if they had this amazing transformational experience with me, that meant they were automatically my friend. 

 

[00:14:32] And that's been really probably the trickiest spot for me in leadership and where people have gotten disappointed in me. It was less about the work they did with me that than they felt that intimacy that happened in the work spilled over into friendship or social life. 

 

[00:14:49] And so that kind of a marshmallow was something that happened in my family with me and my mom. So that happened in female relationships with some of my clients who didn't leave gracefully. I should say, or were angry or disappointed that I because what would happen is I would try to give that to them. And that was my failing and my codependency until I couldn't. And then I just sort of be done. 

 

[00:15:20] Okay. We're done. You know, and that so that's a way that I've had to confront, really the mother daughter split in my family. 

 

[00:15:29] And the way it played out, it B was to allow people to project on me. And that wasn't their fault. Right, because we're all just walking around trying to heal and get our needs met. 

 

[00:15:40] So I had to. 

 

[00:15:43] So I had to step way, way, way, way back and do a lot of inner work and stop committing to big projects with people until I could realign my boundaries. And from that, create a new kind of offering and way with working with people. So I think that's been the trickiest thing for me and my leadership and not feeling guilty for not being able to give more than I can. Right. That's part of my own and tinner internalized conditioning I've had to shift and release. 

 

[00:16:18] So what about you? 

 

[00:16:20] Well, I think I could speak to the mistakes I made. Working as a leader in organizations and then mistakes that I've made, working in my own business. You know, as a as a teacher and a healer. And I would say that the first one, because I worked, you know, at one point I think I managed 60 people and I was overseeing two different offices. And there were some pretty significant values differences. Between myself and sort of how the company was being run, although I wasn't real aware of that for a long time and I was fairly naive about how systems work at that point. So I think in a way, I mean, it was all kind of beautiful because there was a lot of permission, a lot of trust and there was also a lot of messiness. So I kind of look at that as being like one of those classroom situations for me where I learned a lot in it and in some of those ways were really great. And then some of those ways were really hard. So I think I've learned, though, about, you know, to to to have a sense of. To be really clear about one's values are really informs how you enter into agreements with other people. And I think agreements and bound boundaries are really important as a leader. I also think that. That I've had a tendency because I'm so specialized in my work to have dual relationships and oftentimes specialty communities can be sort of incestuous. You're right. In the beginning it feels like it's almost romantic, right? Like I finally found my tribe and exactlythe so, so satisfying and and it feels so good. Like when you feel like you have something valuable to offer and it's what people have been like waiting for. And I think that's also really can be super tricky. And so for me, I've been really learning about how to navigate those waters and how to be a responsible teacher and healer, how to separate out teaching and healing so they don't believe together how to have my own supervision, how to differentiate myself and to be able to discern, you know, where my places and how much of myself to bring in certain situations. So that's all. And, you know, that's really hard stuff to teach somebody. It really has been for me, like the school of Life, you know, getting in there. I've been really fortunate to. I would say my strength around all the messiness of that learning curve has been my ability to apologize. To talk about the elephant in the room, to have creative dissonance. To have to be able to hold uncomfortable conversations and deal with conflict. But that it's also not easy. You know, like that takes a lot of energy. So, yeah. That's been a lot of my learning in the last few years as a leader. And I think the other part of that is. You know, being a woman, being a nurse, being the oldest child, you know, who, you know, has some fairly significant codependent tendencies where maybe I haven't spoken up soon enough. Like if I had spoken up and really known, you know, trusted myself in the beginning, that maybe I would have been able to speak to something before, you know, things sort of developed in a bigger way or an issue sort of had progressed into deeper waters. So, yeah, I think speaking up early on is something that I'm learning about. And I think as women, you know, I mean, it's it's interesting. You know, we don't always need to talk about, you know, the differences between us as leaders. But I do think for women as leaders, I think finding our voice and finding our power in ways that we're not replicating male leadership models is a trick. 

 

[00:20:43] It is a trick and not replicating male lead or ship models, but allowing ourselves as much voice and as much space. As often men do, and I think that's been my strength as you talked about yours, I was like, well, what's think as good as a goodbye? That's a goodbye. 

 

[00:21:04] But. You know, and it can be off putting and it doesn't usually off put men, as a matter of fact, other than you, all my closest friends are male, which I find interesting. 

 

[00:21:16] Men have no problem with my power, my boldness, my audacity. As a matter of fact, they often want to partner with it, work with it. And though I've had fewer male clients, they've been some of my most appreciative and gone further because I think they meet me in my power and they love it. 

 

[00:21:33] There's no sense of threatend. It's more like a. So I think my my boldness is it's a powerful part of sacred masculine. And we've talked about this cause as I'm a woman, but energetically I think I carry a lot of the male to you. And I have talked about this or maybe both the masculine and feminine. I feel it inside almost like not a split, but a 50/50, almost percent integration of how I lead. 

 

[00:22:02] And I do think the sacred masculine is beautiful. But I think one thing I my strength has been modeling the ability to speak. What we've been taught should be silenced or that we've been taught as women is unspeakable, though with men, it's totally allowed. 

 

[00:22:20] Now, some women, you know, are very triggered by me around that and others have been wildly empowered. 

 

[00:22:27] So, you know, I think everything in all of us can be held as a deficit or a gift. 

 

[00:22:36] And for me, so much about leadership is how do I compose things and restructure things in myself so that they can be more and more of a gift, not a deficit. 

 

[00:22:45] And the acknowledgement that we're not going to please everyone, any of us, not everyone's going to like any of us. And that that can really be okay and that the the deeper embrace is on the inside. Right. 

 

[00:23:01] One of the things that you and I have talked about that I feel pretty excited about is, you know, sort of honing in on some of these concepts, not only concepts, but experiences. And from the experiences, we've identified some pretty specific principles. And as we're going through this big changing time with the pandemic and so many businesses are losing their footing or going out of business or having to restructure. And we talk about restoring leadership in business and what that's one of the things I'm pretty excited about participating in, because I think all these opportunities to really speak to, how do we humanize leadership, how do we bring sustainability practices to leadership? 

 

[00:23:47] I think that we're coming into a time where a lot of what you and I have been working on will be increasingly welcomed in in larger organizations. 

 

[00:23:58] And it's the lot of the larger organizations that have so much impact on human lives. 

 

[00:24:05] Oh, yes, totally. 

 

[00:24:07] Yeah. I'm excited about it, too. 

 

[00:24:09] And, you know, I come out of the artistic and creative world, but also the entrepreneurial world and have been part of some cohorts and whatnot. 

 

[00:24:18] And I'm really seeing how things are shifting. People and leaders who seem to be doing well. Right, like through this. Number one, have the willingness to ride the wave of the mystery into the unknown. Are talking behind the scenes about tracking their own emotions, going wildly all over the map, up and down, as you and I have been talking about. 

 

[00:24:40] But the embrace of that, but that there's this more. What I'm seeing, too, is, you know, we have so much weight at the top in our culture, so much greed, so much, you know, overtaking manipulation, corruption, all of this. And even in entrepreneurial circles, I've been had some discomfort around some of the rates people charge simply because they can. I've been looking at my own way of pricing and structuring and knowing that I want to have models that are more egalitarian, that conserve the many. And I feel like the big places right now where there could be a great opening or inside organizations that serve the many an insert. And even with entrepreneurs to shift from serving just like the one or the one or fewer at a high, high rate, the work right now is to find ways to be in service of the many. And I do feel like there's this beautiful, more egalitarian thing. 

 

[00:25:46] I see it as a circle, a circle rather than the top down moving from patriarchy to matriarchy. And you know that that thing of all of us in the circle finding our places and all of us in the circle having opportunities. And it's one thing I know from my work as an entrepreneur, we all have opportunities for people doing. 

 

[00:26:06] No, I'll have to take advantage of the opportunities are there because they haven't been taught. 

 

[00:26:11] And then these super elite programs, once again, whether you're looking at an MBA from a high Ivy League school or you're looking at a high ticket entrepreneurial thing that only the few can access. I feel like there's a breaking open now around inviting more and more people into the circle and restoring structures from hierarchies right to two circles. 

 

[00:26:39] Yeah, I. It reminds me of when I was a manager in hospice, I used to send people out in pairs and I remember thinking, I know I'm paying two people, but I can tell that the like the alchemical shift that's going to happen when two people go out and market my two people. And it wasn't you know, it wasn't all the time. Not every nurse went out in pairs when they would see patients, but oftentimes I would send two people out so that it would be like a social worker and a nurse or a chaplain and a and a social worker. And they would go out together and there would be incredible things that would happen not only in the delivery of care and leadership from that standpoint, but how the community responded to them when they actually saw them together. It was as if the community would light up as seeing more than one person from an organization show up. In. In order to talk about the care of a dying person and how they could be of service. Right. And you and I have had a lot of conversations about coal leadership. And I think we'll definitely be doing more specific podcasts on this in the future and we're wrapping up here in the next couple minutes. But is there anything that you'd like to say about this idea of co leadership as part of a new paradigm? 

 

[00:28:01] Well, I love the the word to just use alchemical. It's alchemy when two or more are gathered. Right, with some purpose. 

 

[00:28:12] It's not one plus one equals two. It's two. And then that third thing that is created this much bigger really quantum thing. And how on leaders, when we allow ourselves to share power the way you and I have practiced doing for 20 years together and in other circumstances, and we find a way to do it where the greater the sum is greater than its parts. But it's also it's lighter on us. So it's a lighter leadership. I think when we think of leadership, we can think of a weight, a heaviness. Oh, my gosh, it's all on me. This heavy thing. I'm going to make this happy thing happen. But that, too, together, you and I have experienced this, including producing some huge projects together, together. It's all lighter and there's an ease to it that lets allows things. So just I think it's untapped in the sharing of power. 

 

[00:29:06] And I I love that you some people out like that on pairs and like what is sort of more celebratory and like this thing. And again, not one person is carrying all the weight of any given situation an outcome. 

 

[00:29:22] It reminds me of that, that vision I had of the lotus flower that turns into this this Taurus where the outer leaves fall away and turn under and they've become recycled into the big the middle of the flower that then continues to open up and reveal something mysterious at its core. And that in a way, this kind of shared leadership model is like that. There's some kind of a creativity that is much greater than its parts. And I look forward to talking more about this in the future. 

 

[00:29:59] Thank you. 

 

[00:30:04] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture. If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on i-Tunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community destorying the culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we read story. Our own lives. See you next time. 

 

In this episode of Re-Storying the Culture, Camille and Tanya speak of Re-Storying "Calling."

Some of the topics they cover include:

• Tracking your calling back to early childhood
• What's love got to do with it? What have you always loved, and what clues does that hold to your calling?
• How to discover or re-discover your connection to your calling.
• What's the difference between calling and purpose?
• What does monetizing have to do with calling?
• Uncovering your calling.
• Embracing calling beyond form.

 

Episode transcript

 

[00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubins Steam Story mentor and Camille Adair, family Constellation facilitator. In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories serve our lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness, moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments in truth. So many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longings. 

 

[00:00:38] Each one of us is necessary in rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can restoring the culture together. 

 

[00:00:52] Hello. And this is Tanya Taylor Rubenstein welcoming you back to another episode of Restoring the Culture. I'm here with my dear friend Camille Adair. And today, we're going to be talking about restoring your calling core purpose. So a quote I'd like to share with you to begin is from Randy Pausch, who was the author of The Last Lecture. 

 

[00:01:21] The key question to keep asking is, are you spending your time on the right things? Because time is all you have. 

 

[00:01:32] And I wanted to share that quote today because I love Randy Pausch. And if you don't know who he is. 

 

[00:01:42] He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. 

 

[00:01:45] And one of the reasons I remember that is because I went there to their theater department for a while. 

 

[00:01:50] And when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer as a fairly young man with three young children and diagnosed a terminal diagnosis, he he did a live lecture at Carnegie Mellon. That was just supposed to be for his students. And it went on and somebody videotaped it and it went viral on the Internet probably 10 or 12 years ago. And then he wrote that book and I thought it was so beautiful. 

 

[00:02:25] And it just so profound, so simple. But basically asking ourselves, you know, what are we spending our time on? 

 

[00:02:35] What we're spending our time on is the way we're spending our lives and embodying our purpose and our calling or not. 

 

[00:02:47] Yes. So, Camille, I'd love for you to jump in and beautiful. 

 

[00:02:51] Yeah. Yeah. Such a touching, such a touching quote. And, um, I guess, you know, what, it where it takes me is that I start to start that I start to think about purpose and calling. And you know, that they're sort of like different ways that we can think about that in terms of career, in terms of. But I guess, you know, I'm actually just sort of processing this as I'm hearing the quote. And it takes me to where I I went with my work when I was working in hospice as a nurse. And then I went into management and I was managing a lot of people. And I was really struggling with the lack of sustainability in the health care culture. So I started working on organizational development and an organizational health through this idea of systemic relational health. And I started studying emotional intelligence and became certified as an assessor and was teaching emotional intelligence to health care professionals primarily and leaders. And and one of the things that that you do in building your own emotional intelligence, which is a set of skills, is that you basically identify what your you know, what you're your purposes are, what you know, in one organization, six seconds that I trained with. They call it your noble goal. And and I think that that that requires a certain level of self-awareness and a certain level of identifying what your values are. So I guess where that takes me is when I think of calling and purposes, that's as we grow and evolve and change on and and know ourselves. So does our our calling and our purpose will kind of evolve and change. I think with that, as I noticed, mine has. How about you? You have your purpose. I mean, you're your link to story. Work has been so consistent for so long. I'd love to hear about that. 

 

[00:05:04] Yeah. Are you sure? And one of the reasons I love that quote from Randy, I think and I was just I watched his last lecture over and over. 

 

[00:05:13] It was very meaningful to me. He talks a lot about child like Wonder. 

 

[00:05:18] And he created a whole career around that. 

 

[00:05:23] And I often have had, for whatever reasons, a lot of my coaching clients, a lot of my story clients coming to me over the years and people I've worked with on their stories who will sort of even off to the sick side say, and sometimes they're in their 40s or 50s, 60s, 70s. I never found my purpose. 

 

[00:05:44] And the question I always ask them is, why did you'd love to do when you were very young? What are the first things you remember? Because there's often a clue there. And for me, I can honestly say, you know, sort of the the. And I remember this well. My mom said to me that as soon as I could put two words together, I was putting it, stringing them together and writing poetry and would do, you know, push it under her door. Little poems with three or four probably misspelled words. And I remember that I was proud. It was before I even went to kindergarten and she was a school teacher. So she taught me to read and write very early. And I remember just being fascinated by. Yeah. Bye bye. Bye bye, star. 

 

[00:06:31] Re reading my stories, I would read over and over and over, I'd fall in love with a story like Charlotte's Web and Weidner Summer, my mother said I read it like 20 times because I couldn't bear it when Charlotte died. But if I started reading this story over, she was alive again. 

 

[00:06:53] And I think I connected some kind of magic to that. 

 

[00:06:58] Our stories keep us alive. There was something young in me and then I became an actor. But it was when I met my mentor, the late Spalding Gray. 

 

[00:07:10] When I was 20 in Boston, my acting professor took my class to see him. 

 

[00:07:18] And for those who don't know, Spalding was a very became a very well-known monologue. US, though, not a household name to everybody. 

 

[00:07:26] And I met him at 20 and he was onstage sharing about his life. And he was sharing stories that could be considered taboo in in our kind of culture. About his mom suicide, about his quest for the moment, in a moment about his sexuality, about his struggle with depression. 

 

[00:07:49] And I walked out of the theater at 20 and I felt liberated and I thought, I'm going to do that. I didn't want to be behind the artifice of characters. I didn't know that until I met Spalding. But I felt alive and awakened. And he gave me permission. 

 

[00:08:08] And I've pretty much spent my career giving myself permission to speak. 

 

[00:08:15] Authentic story and help other people do that, and it's really true, it's like my outer career. Whenever I stick with stories one way or another, it always works and always had. And whenever I move away from story and think I should do something else, whether that's I think I should, you know, get a real job. And for a while I became a P, you know, work for a PR agency, had nonprofit jobs when I was younger. Number one. I'm miserable. But number two, my life falls apart. So it's interesting because for me, sticking with story is not only my barometer, but when I stick with story, my life just unfolds the way it feels like it's supposed to. 

 

[00:09:04] So it's really. I know I'm very fortunate that my purpose presented so young and that it's like my North Star that I always can return to. 

 

[00:09:16] Mm hmm. 

 

[00:09:18] So beautiful, it makes so much sense, I felt like you were, you know, like Hansel and Gretel walking through the forest and leaving breadcrumbs for me to follow what was really I just had this complete reverie. And your story is gorgeous. Thank you. Yeah. Not sure about the Hansel and Gretel. 

 

[00:09:36] I love the image I had. Totally. No. 

 

[00:09:39] And those experiences, for me, it was our marriage, right? It is you, the inner part of your inner marriage. 

 

[00:09:45] Is your relationship to story and how that's playing out inside of you. And I mean inside of you and how that manifests outside in the world. 

 

[00:09:54] Yes. And it continues to deepen. Right. In this podcast. My favorite part is when we share stories. And you know what? I know there's a spiritual component in story work, too, that feels like at this age in my life, in my 50s. The part that I most expl interested in exploring that distort that intersection between spirit and storytelling, something that intersects in in my work with you, in our work together. But when people aren't sure their purpose, just getting back to what you said about Hansel and Gretel, I think bread crumbs are an important thing because I think the world can put heavy pressure on us around. Do you have your big purpose? So I think the inquiry is what is as close to me as my own breath. You know what's always been there for me? It may not look like a vocation or even a vocation that the world. 

 

[00:10:54] But it's in there and it's it's a great inquiry to go back to childhood because often our deepest gifts are so natural to us that we don't always recognize them. 

 

[00:11:08] I think that's really true, yeah. They're so close. They're some 30, so part of who we are that we don't see them as something that we would bring to the world through us. 

 

[00:11:20] Exactly. And I see that happens with women a lot. 

 

[00:11:25] And I think about all the clients I've worked with over so many decades. And, yes, something that can be that they take for granted, because in our culture, we don't always value our gifts or our gifts or have been called soft skills sometimes. Right. If they don't align with a degree or something that can be monetized or a monetized in an obvious way, they can be minimized and there can be a real unique brilliance that a person starts to marginalize to themselves. That is actually a gift and an offering to others and may be a bigger gift in the world that than people are able to recognize. 

 

[00:12:10] Yeah. 

 

[00:12:12] Oh, boy. I'm just this is going to have to be edited out because I just really lost. I was just onto something. 

 

[00:12:19] Oh, I know. 

 

[00:12:22] So I think one of the things that we confuse is calling with how we make money. Yes. Right. And I think that that it's a tricky dance, because we all want to do we all want to, you know, do what we love in our work and we'd love to make money that way. 

 

[00:12:42] But the getting there is not typically a straight line for most people. And I think what I'd love to do is I you know, you talked about you're sort of calling and we thought about through story and breadcrumbs and you took it back to childhood and what do people love? And that really makes me think about mine. 

 

[00:13:03] I haven't thought about it in that way. 

 

[00:13:06] But, you know, when I was growing up, both of my parents are therapists. And so we would have you know, they'd call a family meeting. And, you know, for kids, I'm the oldest of four and everyone would just be like, oh, no, not the family meeting as my daughters did. They hated the family meetings. Right. Everyone felt like, you know, something was going to be revealed that was going to be hard, you know. Right. Or that people would be asked to share something that they didn't want to share. But I always at the thought of a family meeting, I couldn't get in there fast. I was the one listening to the adults. So I realized I had my whole life I've been really drawn to process. I've really been drawn to depth and intimacy and truth. And I think part of when I was a kid, like listening to adults talk is that what I was listening for was truth. I wanted to know. Yeah. And that's, I think, been a through line in my life. 

 

[00:14:08] You know, when I was a hospice nurse, you know that, you know, the process of dying and the process of being a human being and being the humanity in the relationship. So it's really for me about connection and relationship and the process of that that that informed all of my death and dying work. And then it went into my, you know, emotional intelligence work and mindfulness work. And obviously in the Constellation work, I mean, that's very relational. And I think, you know, for me, the other words that come to mind are it's it's as if I'm drawn to process. And what can come about from in relationships through process, in the mystery that is has to do with inspiration, truth and revelation, and that that is transformative and that that often is unconscious and held in the mystery. So it's a lot of words to try and describe something about myself that's drawn to the process of relationship and the transformative power of that, I think. And finding truth, which is never one thing. Right. 

 

[00:15:17] So for me, that's also part of, you know, restoring the culture around this is that a calling is not a set point, a calling. Like when I've when I think of calling, I think for me how I would read story that is that it's not something I'm pursuing. It's actually something that has called me. Yes. 

 

[00:15:40] Like saying you're it. Yeah, totally. Right. 

 

[00:15:44] And it and I can feel it coming, but I don't know what it is for a long time. But I feel like there's something else out there. And then when I'm called, it's like I slip in and it's all just effortless. And then I'm like, oh, my God, this is it. Like, how did I get here? Sort of like, how did I go to nursing school? That was a big, huge question mark. Right. Because I that was like never really. On my radar until it was. Same thing with, you know, moving into hospice work and constellation work. That was a total calling. That called me. 

 

[00:16:19] I wasn't looking for that. And the same thing with the union work. You know? 

 

[00:16:24] Here I am, 54 and graduate school so that I can fulfill this thing because I'm being called into this union container. I don't know where it's going to take me, but I feel committed to show a full as fully as I can so that I can be in this journey with myself and respond to this call. So it's really interesting. How do we Restoril? Because I'm starting to think like we can misinterpret, like calling us something that's comes through our will. 

 

[00:16:53] But I actually think there's something bigger at work, a bigger maybe also a bigger part of ourselves. But there there is there's more magic to it than we realize. 

 

[00:17:06] I think well, I totally agree. 

 

[00:17:08] And one thing I want to share that has been super important for me is to trust that intuitive voice that you're talking about, the way you just kind of slip in and it's effortless. 

 

[00:17:23] But there's something to that about trusting. And I know that I've had some, you know, projects that I've done, like when I did the cancer monologue project, that was very much part of my calling and purpose. 

 

[00:17:38] But A, it came in a dream and B, it didn't make any sense. And I followed it anyway. And I want to say that an a business program I was in. I have been in. It was like it. It showed up. And on one level, it didn't make sense. But there was a draw right from the inside out. To me, there's something that when something's about my calling. It's not about my ego. I'm not just making a mental decision. It comes. And I think these things drop in for most people, especially for paths and people who are highly sensitive and open and creative. But I think when people are struggling for a long time, it may seem like that those messages haven't arrived. But I would say, have they arrived? And you haven't trusted yourself? Because I also know times in my life when the that calling has come and I've ignored it or I've marginalized something that wanted to come through because just because I wasn't in a space where I was trusting. 

 

[00:18:50] So I just wanted to say that for me, it it arrives and it and it will come from a place. 

 

[00:18:57] And when I do trust it, this is about the radical faith piece. It's almost like a different part of my calling. Them purpose is revealed. And it could never be something that I could just quote unquote, figure out. 

 

[00:19:11] Mm hmm. Mm hmm. 

 

[00:19:13] I mean, what do you think about that and the way intuition plays in with calling? 

 

[00:19:18] I think yeah, it was very well said. And that's how it's been for me, is that it's something that comes from the inside. And it doesn't make sense. It's not my colleagues have never made sense. Right. I mean, going back to graduate school when I could be. Now, I thought with that one for a long time, because my constellation business has been really thriving and I've been teaching and I could easily take my skill set and run a really successful business with it. And so I struggled with that, like, am I always just chasing the next thing? And as I see it now, though, in terms of my own personal growth, it's really taken me to a much deeper place. 

 

[00:19:55] That was a. So I would think about that like a soul calling, you know. 

 

[00:20:00] And so for me, like that feels a little different than purpose because you're you're still calling maybe your purpose. But if when I just hear the word purpose, I get heady and I go into my thinking mind about it. And it's like it's something to be figured out. And I don't think a calling is something to be figured out. I think a calling is something we live into. 

 

[00:20:21] And the beautifully set out. Beautifully put. Yeah. And Ted, I like you distinguishing them in that way because I kind of think of them as the same thing. 

 

[00:20:31] But you're right. And purpose may very much have to do with how our calling is utilized in a more worldly way. Right. To serve others or consider even to make a living. Do you know the Japanese concept icky guy? Mm hmm. I've heard of it. I mean, it's a beautiful thing. And people can look it up and it's like it's a it's force circles and it's looking at the central point in the middle where they intersect. And it's what you're good at, what you love, what the world needs and what you can make. Money Act, and I think that may be more applicable to aligning with purpose rather than calling. But of course, what we love and what we're good at so often arises from calling. But that also puts out the inquiry. What does the world need? So how can we serve with our gifts, but also in terms of vocation? What can we make money at? And I do think the calling may or may not be able to fulfill that. Right. But like a purpose. Yeah. And the arts. 

 

[00:21:42] I'm glad you reminded me of the icky guy because we actually who use that I brba Dossey, nurse friend of mine and mentor introduced me to that and has and brings that into her work with other nurses. 

 

[00:21:56] It is a great tool. 

 

[00:21:57] It's like it's like, you know, several that like sets event diagrams laid over each rightest. 

 

[00:22:04] Great. And yeah, I think I think that's right. I mean, when I think about making this personal to me, I think about, you know, my tagline is re learning human connection. 

 

[00:22:15] And I think since I've been in the union program, it's I'm becoming clear that my work has to do with the split, that what I'm drawn to is I'm actually drawn to how do we mend the splits inside of us and how do we and then and how those splits inside of us get projected in the world around us and that we live in such a fragmented world. And part of that may be that we are also carrying these internal splits and how do we mend that? 

 

[00:22:49] And then, you know, so if I were to differentiate that as my calling, that's like my my soul's calling to my professional life. 

 

[00:22:59] Yeah. It's manifesting in in this graduate program and continuation of my my training programs and client work and. 

 

[00:23:09] And, you know, my desire to even, you know, do work with systems more because I see systems as holding so much power. 

 

[00:23:19] I love working with individuals. 

 

[00:23:22] And I also think that systems are like a little worlds unto themselves. 

 

[00:23:26] And if you can bring some of these these like laws, these natural laws that guide and principles that that guide reconciliation and balance and harmony so that people can all live into their calling. 

 

[00:23:44] Right. In a healthy state and a healthy human system, all people will be living into their gifts and purpose. 

 

[00:23:50] Well, and that's something we're really looking at. Now, right now, in the midst of the pandemic. Right. In terms of restoring the culture and and seeing the parts of the entire system that have been toxic and broken. And how were we going to shift the split collectively so that we're not going back and recreating the old culture and rather moving with the energy of this pause and what it's teaching us. And I'd love to hear what you want to say about that, because I know it's bubbling up for everyone. You and I were talking about it this morning on a phone call. But the way I'd love to hear what you're thinking in terms of sort of the global system, some of the. Yeah. The collective systems that are not only failing us, but we're seeing the human impact and the impact to the earth. 

 

[00:24:55] Well, I guess, you know, the first place I go with that is a simple exercise, which is the minute you find yourself looking at the other liberal, looking at conservative, conservative, looking at liberal, somebody who thinks we should approach the Corona virus, you know, from complete isolation, lockdown, quarantine to somebody who believes in herd immunity. Right. I mean, wherever you have an issue, you're going to have an opposite. And so if you start to find yourself getting really roughed up inside and thinking about that other who represents that issue and you start feeling like you are really right, you're convinced your way is right. 

 

[00:25:43] I think be very, very careful. Because to me, that's an indication of of identity, an identification with the split, and the split is its own energy. And I think we are becoming seduced by the split. And it's not we confuse it for vitality because it makes us feel powerful and we have confused opinion and belief for relationship. 

 

[00:26:13] And then despite. Right. In a sense, they're a waste of time. Yeah. Which comes from our direct experience forced our mind. 

 

[00:26:20] And it doesn't mean that we we don't have, you know, an opinion or an orientation to something. But it means that if we start to just always think that our way is the right way and we stop being curious about the other or we start demonizing, I really believe that's the goal of this world. It's actually more related to greed than we might realize. You know what I keep thinking about that greed is is sort of the foundation for so much of what hurts us in the world. 

 

[00:26:52] And and I think that what I'm looking at here with the split is something that's resonant with greed. And it may not seem connected, but if if everyone is so sure that they're right. And the other one is wrong. 

 

[00:27:09] Oh, we're screwed, man. 

 

[00:27:13] Well, I mean, I guess I think in terms of the Constellation work you do, right, there's a premise and I think it's a hard pill to swallow. 

 

[00:27:22] Like when I listen to you, I kind of go, yeah, I kind of agree and I kind of down. But I do agree with the idea that everyone has the right to be long and it's a hard pill to swallow in a world where there's so much perpetration and where there's so much pain caused by certain toxic systems and people running with that. Right. Whether that's white supremacy or whether that's patriarchy. And yes, we're all carried along and damaged by patriarchy. The men and women. But I wonder about like looking at the perpetrator and the victim and everybody's right to belong. And maybe if you could talk a little bit more about that, because I sometimes do feel a kick back around. Well, this is the difference between judging versus discernment when some people or systems are clearly doing more harm outwardly to individuals or the environment than others. So how would you address that? 

 

[00:28:34] Well, I think if you were to be in relationship with that. Then you would be curious to know what's underneath it, what's underneath the perpetration, what's underneath that thing that is causing more harm than good, and our human inclination is to push away everything that feels dangerous and uncomfortable to us. 

 

[00:28:57] But the truth of the matter is, is that we live in a closed system. So if we talk about systems, global systems, we could talk about the planet Earth. 

 

[00:29:05] Every time you throw something into the garbage, that thing doesn't disappear. It goes into a landfill or goes into, you know, you're putting it in the compost. Everything is recycled. Even sustainability, which I've always been drawn to, sustainability itself is always changing because we're always evolving and changing. So we always want to find one right answer. That is the the recipes. But we are dynamic, evolving beings, constant dating around each other. And sometimes it gets messy. And the truth of the matter is, humans hurt each other just. Absolutely. Just like, you know, suffering is part of the human condition, having pain and physical pain and emotional pain. It's part of having a body and a heart and a nervous system, you know. And I think I'm not saying we should run into the belly of the beast or throw ourselves in harm's way. That's not what I'm saying at all. But what I'm saying is that we have lost our ability to have creative dissonance, which is a phrase that I've learned from him, from someone who's important helping me in my life right now in my training. 

 

[00:30:14] And this idea of creative dissonance is really. 

 

[00:30:19] I'll tell you a little bit based in a dream I had recently that is still with me. I had a dream early on in the pandemic where I was given the answer to how to deal with the Corona virus. And that answer was that I could. I literally had a high pitched tone that I was singing through my right bundle of vocal chords. And I could even put my fingers like, you know, on my throat and feel where that was. And I was singing and kind of this high tone. And then on the left side of my throat, I put my fingers there and I could feel myself singing in a low tone. And there's a way in which if you sing in a high tone and you sing in a low tone, you can do. You can actually do that at the same time. And it creates an undertone that's like this that we think of like when we hear, you know, certain monks singing, my lord. 

 

[00:31:20] That's what I was gonna say. A lot of that. Monks chanting and Tibetan monks chanting. 

 

[00:31:26] Also, it takes me to my ancestral roots, which is, you know, when Swedish women call to the animals, they do that very same thing. They mix a high note and alone. And there's another bass note underneath it that creates some kind of a harmonic convergence. Now, this this this person who I've been talking to about this is actually an expert in music. And he was saying, you know. 

 

[00:31:59] That's real harmony, that's that's what makes music really brilliant and interesting, is when you bring in dissonant notes and they create something that is completely different than themselves as dissonant notes. 

 

[00:32:16] Right. They're just and totally each other. And that's what creates the best music that we have on planet Earth. And so why wouldn't it be the same thing with human beings? We've just really lost our way to do that. And again, there's a huge paradox here, because I'm not saying, you know, throw yourself at the perpetrator or indulge yourself as the victim. 

 

[00:32:37] No, I'm saying that we've got we have a set of skills that we've lost that indigenous cultures knew how to access in their relationship to the earth and their relationship to their bodies and their relationship with each other. And they had ways of helping to maintain systemic relational health. And we've really lost that. And part of our losing that has to do with we are not able to deal with discomfort, dissonance. And therefore, we don't have resonance. We will never have resonance until we can incorporate dissonance. 

 

[00:33:15] I agree. And I learn a lot from you. And I have my own sort of process with this. But I want to share a story about doing a constellation with you because I feel very, very, very charged personally. And I want to share this because I'm sure some of our listeners do, particularly as a somebody who has identified with people who have been harmed. I mean, I feel very angry about what's happened to indigenous people in this country. I feel very allied with black activists as a white woman. 

 

[00:33:54] But, you know, I understand that the the voices have been marginalized, their culture, they're at risk for everything more in this culture, which is really capitalism run amok based on patriarchy and white supremacy. You know, the deep, deep cultural ills. And I have a lot of ya just allegiance with people who have been marginalized. And I think we could all be marginalized, though, in different ways. That's a different conversation. I think spirituality and people who are intuitive and imparts and psychic's have been marginalized in Western culture. There's levels of it. Right. And we're reclaiming some of that on this. But I do want to share that. It was fascinating to me that I did a constellation with you not that long ago in a group. And what came through was one of my ancestors who was a perpetrator that I did not know about who had led in Massachusetts. One of the, you know, great like well-known killings of a lot of native people there, and that there is even a statue of him in a square in Springfield, Mass. And that I did not know about him until I did a constellation with you. And I represented the voice of a lot of native women who had been killed in New Mexico in that constellation that took me on a rabbit down a rabbit hole where I did an Internet search and found out about this part of my family tree that I didn't even know about, which is kind of the crazy and magical part of doing family constellations. It's quantum work and it's amazing how it can get validated. But somehow that made some sense to me that when that story had been in the shadows of my family to the point that 10 generations down, I didn't even know about it until I did the work with you and then found it, which was incredible that somehow it's the thing you've talked about before, that we each have our own history, that we're each spiritually sovereign, that we each have our family history, that we are trying to reconcile things that are multi-layered and multidimensional. 

 

[00:36:31] And often we don't know what's moving our anger or our rage or our kick back to something. 

 

[00:36:38] But I just wanted to share that, because I think since then I've been hanging with more complexity on myself is the word. And yeah, so I wanted to share that because my natural. 

 

[00:36:58] Response in terms of polarizing with myself. 

 

[00:37:04] Has to do with, you know, ways people have very genuinely been marginalized. 

 

[00:37:09] But owning my own particular family peace that was there and healing something and that maybe gives me more spaciousness in general towards the complexity of each of us. Right. We are such layered beings. 

 

[00:37:27] And while we are and I I really appreciate you bringing that your own story into that, because I know sometimes when I speak about things, it can seem really theoretical and it can be really hard to relate to on that level. So I think it's really important to ground that because, of course, I mean, I have my own political opinions. I have my own causes that I get fired up about. I mean, it's none. So but I do think that. I do think that, you know, when I guess this is where we're running out of time here, but I'd like to share something that I shared with a friend recently, another health care clinician, and we've been working together. He's also a Constellation facilitator and we've been working on, you know, as to Constellation facilitators, how are those principles manifesting in our own lives? 

 

[00:38:24] And then I found myself saying. Love. We'll call everything to itself. That is unlike itself. 

 

[00:38:40] It's it's there's a bigger energy that everything is part of the system. And so we can have opinions and we can fight for our causes. But if we start to buy into the split, then we move away from love and then we'll get called back into it. And and that's not going to be an easy return. No, no. 

 

[00:39:01] Totally. It reminds me of one of my dear, somebody who is so dear. And he passed from Lou Gehrig's disease. He was my daughter's preschool teacher and his name was Robbie. I'm still friends with his wife, Martha. Incredible, incredible people. 

 

[00:39:15] And he was like out there in his like the 60s hippie, you know, tie dye t shirt. A very, very loving being and certainly very radical and sort of on the left, but very loving, very wise and astrologer. And, you know, I remember coming in after George Bush's second election and every parent at the school, you know, a little liberal conclave, progressive conclave in Santa Fe, we were all like so feeling really shattered. And he said something to me that really stayed with me. He said, oh, he said, George Bush. You know, he I wouldn't want to play his role, but he's doing a great service to us. I said, what do you mean, Robby? 

 

[00:40:02] And he was just smiling very joyfully. He said, you know, he's playing the role to show us all who we are. 

 

[00:40:08] He's playing the role of the shadow. He's he's willing to take on all those projections. And I thought about that in the, you know. Right. 

 

[00:40:18] The collective, the shadow work, the things we don't want to see and how somebody who we see as a quote unquote, monster carries our projections. How much is about them? How much is about ourselves. And, of course, in politics, what collective consciousness do we choose to elect? 

 

[00:40:41] And I also think about Alice Miller's work, whose, you know, the Germans psychotherapist who has written such amazing books like, You Know, For Your Own Good and her book of, you know, megalomaniacs, narcissists, monsters throughout time, who I would you know, we would label monsters. 

 

[00:41:02] And of course, what does she reveal is the not only the abuse that they have suffered as children. And I'm talking ones who go on and do great, great harm collectively. 

 

[00:41:16] But the fact that they weren't seen and they weren't witnessed. 

 

[00:41:21] So the whole system around them, not only was there usually great abuse, but the system around them co cooperated with the abuse, enabled the beat, the abuse and how when children are abused. But there's somebody loving who bears witness to them usually changes the course of destiny in terms of how perpetration, part of how perpetration evolves. So there's there's so much in all of this, isn't there? Like it's like the ego wants there to be an easy answer. Good, bad black/white. And it doesn't in any way justify harm on others. Right. Or the responsibility there. But it opens up the bigger questions. I think we're talking about. 

 

[00:42:09] Well, it does. And it and I'm glad you said that the part about the the answers in the black and white thinking, because that takes us back to Ian McGilchrist work and his incredible book, The Master and his Emissary. And he's talking about how we're moving into a time of left hemisphere dominance, which is, you know, because we have the printed word. Our brains have changed because of so many different things. And and and so we're becoming more focused in being goal oriented, in wanting to have the answers. And it's much less relational. And I think that's part of, you know, me fighting my good fight is about helping, wanting us to become more balanced in the right hemisphere of our brain, which is where art and creativity and poetry and relationship and feeling come from. And and and to have a relationship between the right and the left, which is the corpus callosum and how how do we work with that bridging? Because we need both just as we need both. Everywhere we go. And I guess I would like to end this. We're out of time. I just. And then I think you're going to give a couple writing prompts. 

 

[00:43:14] But just to say how many people could enter into a conversation where they talk about their own shadow. 

 

[00:43:27] That's interesting to me. Means what I'm doing my for crackdowns correctly and I'm spending that's been years on onlooking. 

 

[00:43:35] My own shadow, that's what this is all about, you know, and that's really been the thrust of my story work. What are the things we consider unspeakable? Let's speak them. Let's bring them out. Because if that darkness is an address and we don't share it together and it doesn't ever come into the light, that's where it does harm. As soon as we share the stories, there's a liberation that happens emotionally and spiritually around those things we're holding. Which is why intimacy. Right. Is so connected to expression. 

 

[00:44:10] Thank you so much. What a great podcast. You want to give some writing prompt? 

 

[00:44:13] Yeah, well I yeah, I'll end on this. 

 

[00:44:16] So I'm in the restoring process that I do with people and Camille and I often do ah. Each bring a different skill set to the restoring process. But one of the tools I've developed over the years I call wisdom writing. 

 

[00:44:31] So I will if you want to do a little writing, you can use this for anything. 

 

[00:44:36] You can use this in terms of purpose and calling that we started talking about or the way the conversation moved towards right shadow and dissonance and maybe some hard polarize places and ourselves. But what you want to do really, it's a three step process and it's great if you add a fourth step of sharing it with somebody and just asking them to listen to you and just say thank you, not to get advice so much, just to be witnessed in it. But even if you're doing it alone. Very powerful. So the first thing I say is just let's go back to purpose. And if any question you have around like anything that sort of bothers you or you feel unsettled about in terms of your purpose in calling and just writing that at the top of a page and this is to be done handwritten, not on the computer, it uses a different part of neuro with neuroscience that uses a different part of the brain where you can access more information. 

 

[00:45:34] So just right at the top of the page, like, you know, for example, I want to know how to deepen my my service work in the world to make a bigger impact at this time. 

 

[00:45:48] Just an example. So anything like that you're thinking about around purposeand service that isn't resolved just right at the top of this stage. 

 

[00:45:56] Step two, just want you to close your eyes and invite in your inner wisdom. And as opposed to journaling or even a free right, you don't just write on a topic. You it's an inquiry. 

 

[00:46:14] It's an inquiry of your connection to your highest self, your intuition, the Crohn God doesn't matter what you call it, and just say, you know, what do I need to know? 

 

[00:46:29] To shift this issue energetically and then you just want to right, and just. 

 

[00:46:37] I always say to people, just allow yourself to be surprised. A different voice may come through and that than what you usually access when when you write because you've asked a question. So be open to hear the answer. It's kind of like meditation on the page. Keep your hand moving right without stopping to judge. Don't worry about spelling, grammar, punctuation, any of those things and do it as a timed writing. So set your your timer for, you know, 15 minutes to start and let yourself go and really just stay open to see what comes. And the last part of the exercise is. 

 

[00:47:16] Number three, what actions can I take at this time to help me move forward in terms of a resolution? 

 

[00:47:28] And you can honestly and then again set the timer for 15 minutes and see what wants to come in terms of specific actions. So the answer to question number two is more about the energetic, the consciousness. Any insights and a shifts in your identity or creative ideas that want to come in terms of how you can meet the problem and set. And number three is really about any direct actions you may want to take. And then if you're able to share both the your story and the restoring that happens around it with somebody, ask them to just listen to you that what you're seeking is just to be witnessed rather than to be given any advice, because it's really just about being witnessed by another human being in the wisdom that is bubbling up from within. 

 

[00:48:23] Thank you, friend. 

 

[00:48:25] Mm hmm. Thank you, Camille. Always so wonderful to talk. And yeah. And share this with everyone who's out there listening. 

 

[00:48:36] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture. If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on i-Tunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community, Restoring the Culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we read story. Our own lives. See you next time. 

 

In this episode of Restorying the Culture, Camille and Tanya explore the topic of Restorying Friendship.

In their most intimate talk to date, the two decades long friends open up about deeper truths and obstacles that so often run through female friendship and how they have navigated them. In this talk they share around their own experiences on:

• The myth of the "BFF."
• Confronting hard truths around how the culture separates us from each other.
• Transforming codependency to vulnerability in female friendships.
• Committing to friendships with the same passion we commit to marriages/romantic partnerships.
• What makes it worth the commitment?
• The dance of dissonance and healing
• Why two women visibly sharing power is radical and rare

 

Episode transcript

 

[00:00:02] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubins Steam Story mentor and Camille Adair, family Constellation facilitator. In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories survive lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness, moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments in truth. So many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longing. Each one of us is necessary in rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can restoring the culture together. 

 

[00:00:50] Hi, welcome to Restoring the culture with Camille and Tanya. And today we'll be talking about restoring friendship from our two decades plus friendship with each other. And I'd like to start this episode with a quote from David White. Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another's eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn without tolerance and mercy. All friendships die. 

 

[00:01:35] Welcome and I. I'd love to know what you think about that, Tanya. 

 

[00:01:39] Oh, well, that's such a profound quote I said ahead. There's so much there. There's so much there. 

 

[00:01:48] I mean, what comes up for me is, one, the deep truth of a right to have to forgive each other over and over in small ways and big ways. And what also comes up for me is what conditions create the motivation or the inspiration to do that. Like for myself, when has it been worth it for me to really make that big a commitment? 

 

[00:02:19] Right. Because that's a tremendous commitment. It's a spiritual commitment. 

 

[00:02:23] It's a. 

 

[00:02:26] It's like a marriage commitment to you to have that kind of commitment in a friendship. 

 

[00:02:33] And how do we get there and sharing about our stories, how have I gotten there? How have you gotten there? There's just so much there, isn't there? 

 

[00:02:42] Well, there is. And one thing I keep thinking about is that it takes a certain kind of for me anyway to do that. An internal condition of my own sovereignty to be able to hold that kind of space for another person living. In other words, I have to feel a certain amount of wholeness within myself so that I can pull back projections and I can have tolerance and mercy and and not pathologize or not allow a friend to make mistakes or have their own kind of their own stuff. 

 

[00:03:17] And I think that's you know, I've been thinking a lot about this in terms of for me in my own life, friendships that I have with men and women. And it's not just in my life, but I've heard other women talk about this, too, that I think women have a tendency to, too. Go really deep and bond and relationship, but I think we have a harder time often allowing for space and sovereignty between each other. And that and that can kind of get in the way. You know, that it's it's actually one of the wounds of of Howard where. I think what we're trying to do in bringing the feminine and developing the feminine more is bringing in also those internal sovereignty boundaries that allow us. 

 

[00:04:11] To be okay with someone else. 

 

[00:04:16] Even when we're not okay. Or when they're not OK that we know where we stop and where another one starts. 

 

[00:04:22] Right. And obviously, yeah, the codependency or the enmeshment model. And when there's not a space to speak in to disagreement or dissonance, where it's not a big enough container, I think that's one huge issue that blows up female friendships. But I'm also thinking about this morning I saw something that and Doyle wrote on Instagram about also in patriarchy, how we've been conditioned to turn on each other rather than turn on the toxic conditions. So I think that happens a lot in female friendships. Right. You and I have talked so much about this competitiveness. Is it okay for me to be big in you, to be but big? 

 

[00:05:16] Is it okay for me to really genuinely celebrate your wins without feeling threatened about my own? There's so much to navigate. 

 

[00:05:29] Well, there isn't that. And everything you're saying really is like the sort of the sign of a mature adult who owns their own space in life. In their life. Right. And sometimes I kind of feel like. 

 

[00:05:45] We have been wounded so much, I think, in our lives and our friendships that there's maybe a part of us that stops growing in that way and kind of has the tendency to go into this like this uber boundary place of protection, which is understandable because sometimes the wounding between women actually can can really be trauma inducing. And then we carry that for our lives. Like, I sometimes feel like even older women still carry some of that energy of like, oh, this is my BSF. It's like we can be seduced into the old hallmark model of what it means to have a girlfriend told lies that it's like some superficial feel good thing when it couldn't be further from the truth. If you're really in it as to whole people, it's completely rewarding. But it takes it takes work and it also calls us into our authenticity and into being able to hold suffering with another person. 

 

[00:06:47] Yeah. And to learn to do that when most of us anyway. And this is cultural as well as personal carry so many wounds from our own mothers as most of our mothers carried wounds from our grandmothers. And I think for me and I and I really do want us to get personal about our friendship to share, because it I think it's easy for people to project on us and go, wow, look at them. They have this amazing long term relationship. 

 

[00:07:16] Like, I'd like to know the real back story of Oprah and Gail's long term relationship, because I think you and I have had as many ups. 

 

[00:07:24] We've had a lot of ups and downs and spaces in between, a lot of different manifestations and coming in carrying the wounding of our mothers and then hoping to have, I think, A A B, Afaf. Right. Who's a, quote unquote, perfect mother or substitutes for the mother we didn't have or the sister we didn't have or that what our past wounds. 

 

[00:07:49] It's a lot to navigate. And I'd love to care from you. 

 

[00:07:53] I don't know if I've ever asked you this. I mean, we've never even really had this exact conversation before. And then I'm happy to share what it's been like for me. What is it been like? What have been the the hardest parts, maybe in the best parts of navigating are very depth based, complex friendship for the last 20 years. 

 

[00:08:23] Thanks for asking. 

 

[00:08:30] You can tell that we don't script these parts. 

 

[00:08:39] So you think I know the value. 

 

[00:08:45] You have a tendency to go for the jugular. And I have to admit, I kind of admire that about you. I mean, I feel like with you I know where I stand. 

 

[00:08:55] You know, and that's one thing I I admire for better, for worse. 

 

[00:08:58] And sometimes knowing where I have stood in your life has been painful. 

 

[00:09:06] I think you and I also even though there's a lot that people might look at us and think that we're so much alike, there's a lot of ways in which we're different. And I think that's difficult for women to navigate. I think you and I have had a lot of opposition stuff come up. And how do we hold the tension of opposites? You know, we've had this conversation before, which is that, you know, you have had a tendency, you know, you're I mean, you're an introvert, but you're very extroverted. 

 

[00:09:33] I think in the way that you deal with situations. Right. And I think I enter I've been I've had a tendency to internalize a lot of things and try and and navigate in a maybe in a quieter way. But from a from an observational standpoint. And I think that's been hard for us in the past. You know, I think I mean, you and I had a I remember when we had a break almost 20 years ago for a while and it was actually very calm in the beginning. 

 

[00:10:11] But we just sort of said it was like, I want to do this and this is what I need. And you said, well, that's not okay with me. And I said, OK, but I need to hold onto what I need. And you said and I need to hold onto what I need. 

 

[00:10:22] And we kind of walked us profit for a while. 

 

[00:10:25] And that was that was painful. And there was some stuff that happened around that that was, I'm sure, hard for both of us. 

 

[00:10:32] But I think the thing I want to emphasize is that there are very few people, not that our friendship hasn't been honestly one of the most challenging for me at times as a marriage could be wrong. 

 

[00:10:46] It has been, yeah. But it's like you keep coming back and being willing to stay in the game. And I think that to me is what's so profound about our friendship. It's not that you and I have this, that we don't have a lot of complexity and that we haven't had dissonance and that we haven't judged each other and that we haven't heard each other. But like you are willing to step in when many other people wouldn't be willing to step in and say, hey, let's go another round. And I think that's where you and I match up. Yeah. I I'm always someone who's like, you want to stay in. And that's why I have so many long term friendships. Yeah. Because I am if somebody is willing to be relational with me and lean into the opposition, I'll stay in a relationship. 

 

[00:11:36] Yeah. Totally. You will. And I will, too. I do. I think that, you know, and that's the thing that we don't control in a friendship, a deep friendship, a real intimate friendship or in a marriage. Sometimes I think the reason people go their separate ways is more than anything. Somebody is just not willing or able for whatever reason to stay in it. And of course, sometimes it's not appropriate to stay in it. So. So what makes it appropriate for us to make the choice to stay at it? That's almost like opening up a whole other inquiry, isn't it? 

 

[00:12:18] It is. Well, I mean, for me, it's it's somebody who's been willing to like on their part in a dynamic where I think you and I both have done. I mean, we've opened up really hurts, hurt places and and and. You know, and for me, the reason I was willing and able to step back in it and have another round is like, I mean, you really owned your part in it. 

 

[00:12:45] And and I feel like, you know, I don't know if you feel like I owned my last one or not. 

 

[00:12:54] I don't. You could speak to that. Yeah, I could. 

 

[00:12:57] I mean, the can I speak to the last round? Because I think it was the hardest, the most profound. And it brought me the closest to you. And I just want to sort of say, from my point of view, I grew up as an only child without siblings. 

 

[00:13:14] And I think I think that in and of itself can make it hard to being an only child to learn to share and share power and be intimate with a peer. 

 

[00:13:29] Cause you're in a relationship. I was always in relationship with adults. 

 

[00:13:35] And I just want to say there's something historical about that that I don't even quite understand. I just know it's come into play. And also, I was a very lonely child and and longing for intimacy I didn't get. So I think I come in with a lot of those heavy relation, heavy expectations on female friendships. And I have wanted that sort of old school BSF. 

 

[00:14:02] And and yet I now I get it more that there's a myth to that. 

 

[00:14:08] And the more I've embraced sort of the myths of like the illusion, it's like Prince Chuck, what Prince Charming is to man BSF SA to female friendship. 

 

[00:14:18] Right. That's right. It's a lie. 

 

[00:14:21] So the myth of friendship getting past the myth and the facade of who we should be to each other versus allowing who and what we really are like found was my own internal process. I think you got battered by me a bit because of that projection. I had it with another two other friends who, you know, are no longer friends of mine, but they were willing to step more into the role. And in the end, I didn't want the role. I wanted the authenticity. And I also, you know, and that's what you provided. So when we had a split, which was only like a year ago and went our separate ways for a while. I mean, I feel like I was it was sort of like when an addict has to hit bottom. I was kind of in a different relationship with a different friend. And I mean, this sounds like lovers and it's not. But it felt passionate like that. It felt like I had to choose between you and this other woman. And what she was sort of offering me the illusion. And there you were like that. I I really do feel like the sister you've always been to me on. 

 

[00:15:41] There is a sisterhood between us and a depth. And when I came out of that kind of bottoming out with the illusion of that, you said something that really, really changed my entire way of relating to you. And it changed my feeling about you. 

 

[00:16:01] And you might not even know this, but we were sitting in and we were sitting in a little cafe in Santa Fe, close to our house in the very back of the restaurant, having dinner and talking about all of this. 

 

[00:16:15] And what you said to me was you said, no matter if we never do business together again, no matter if we never, like, make any money together. 

 

[00:16:28] Because part of our relationship has all also been partnering professionally and we've had to navigate dual roles. You said no matter what, if nothing ever happens again, I just want you to know I love you and I pick our friendship first. And for me, that completely, you know, I started sobbing. 

 

[00:16:50] I think at least into at least I sobbed inside. 

 

[00:16:53] Maybe you just saw a tear to run down my cheek. But for me, women have always wanted things from me in my life. 

 

[00:17:04] And I'm a man of Hester. I definitely tried with somebody who I I do. I make magic carpet. I can own that. I make opportunities happen for people. 

 

[00:17:15] But there's something about my own childhood having to jump through hoops, perform, make sure people got goodies that I brought with my step. 

 

[00:17:25] There was a sense for me of always proving myself and not being loved, unconditionally being loved. Friendships for what I can do for people. And you were so sincere and so earnest that I think it took me about 19 years and our friendship to feel loved by you. 

 

[00:17:49] And and in that moment I felt loved and everything else went away. 

 

[00:17:53] And I was completely committed to you and our friendship like I let go of all that had blocked me from really having intimacy with you. 

 

[00:18:07] Wow, thank you for sharing that, I'm so touched. And also just amazed at your year, the courage and for where you're willing to go with your vulnerability and transparency, which is partly why this friendship really works for me, because I'm someone who is so drawn to the truth. 

 

[00:18:26] And the truth is not off. It's not always pleasant. And and I I just. Yeah, I love being able to go to these places with you. And I'm so grateful that you were able to articulate that and that we're making progress on a blow in my mind. 

 

[00:18:45] The difference between you and me, because, like, I don't even feel anything about making that public, but you push me behind the scenes. I think at ways that are deep and profound and that's where my discomfort is. It's in the private and in the intimate spaces. And would you say that sometimes I push you maybe in the public spaces? 

 

[00:19:09] Would I say it? I would say that's an understatement. I feel like flying out into the into the atmosphere. 

 

[00:19:22] But it's good. 

 

[00:19:22] You know, I was talking with a mutual friend earlier today about this podcast, and I was telling him that, you know, I have so much happening in my inner world. And, you know, and the things that I'm learning and pursuing and developing and engaging in that are also fruitful for me. And the harder part for me is to take things out into the world, even though I've done that a lot through documentary filmmaking, but I've always done it as the person behind the camera or the interviewer. Grant's been behind the camera, but I've been the one across and doing the interview and really tending the content and knowing that that movie, that message lives inside of me. And that's going to come out in this very intimate, specific way, which is why, you know, when we did all of the editing we did on our our movies, it was like the editing process was just this incredible experience for me because it was so specific, the message needed to be so specific. 

 

[00:20:27] But that's a different way of putting yourself out there because you're putting someone else's wisdom out there in a way. Right. And even when I had my first podcast, you know, I mean, my podcast, it was in 30 countries and it was on death and dying. And it was called a lifelong practice. And it was in the early, early podcast days. It was on i-Tunes. And but I was still interviewing other people as the experts. And so for me, the big way that you're calling me out is not that I'm an expert, but that I am being public in who Camille is and what Camille thinks, not just about. How interested I am in other people, but how can I be interested in myself? And that's really a good thing for me. 

 

[00:21:15] Yeah. I mean, I think it's so of this moment, isn't it? Like we're still in the pandemic. We're still under quarantine. You know, we're doing this podcast in New Mexico. And I like look around and I'm like, look, look at the X so-called experts around us. 

 

[00:21:35] The so called like nobody freaking knows. And like being with the mystery, it doesn't mean we don't have expertise in our areas. It just means to me on some profound level. 

 

[00:21:48] The guru ages over, and I remember when my grandfather died, I was 14 years old and he had been the director of finance at NIH National Institute of Health. So when he got diagnosed with a brain tumor, he was taken, you know, into their very best program. The experimental program. And my grandfather, who was the person I admired the most in the world. You know, he'd gotten his p._h._d at Columbia. He had all these big jobs all over the world and Lebanon and Pakistan. 

 

[00:22:29] And then in the D.C. area, he he put his faith. 

 

[00:22:34] In doctors and in education and my family puts a lot of education up, a lot of faith in graduate degrees. And I didn't even finish college. I job dropped out of acting school three different times. 

 

[00:22:50] But there was something for me that it was a disillusionment because he died at NIH and he died a very painful death. 

 

[00:23:00] And and I walked in his room one day when he was just wailing. And then he he died, hooked up to all of those machines in a coma. And he came out briefly and was just begging to be unplugged. 

 

[00:23:16] And what happened for me in that disillusionment at that young age was I went, OK, my are the experts. We these these are the best doctors, the best medical stuff available in the country. 

 

[00:23:33] All these p_h_d_, an M.D. My grandfather's made this choice and he has a p_h_d_. 

 

[00:23:39] And, you know, all of those quote unquote things that we mark as authority in our culture. 

 

[00:23:46] And and he died and he didn't have a good death. And there was a kind of shattering around inside of me, around what's an expert. 

 

[00:23:58] And I think it pushed me even deeper onto a kind of path, which is my nature to question everything. 

 

[00:24:07] So when you talk about that, I go to me, the greatest gift you can give is Camille. And I trust like you and your life experience on such a deep level and feel like people get so, so much from that. Not that there's not a place for talking about expertise or systemic change or anything in any kind of systems. 

 

[00:24:29] But to me, at this moment, there's something radical about us just being who we are and letting people letting that be an offering. What? And it may resonate and it may not for people, but to me, what comes out of your soul is so inspiring. When you're just you. 

 

[00:24:49] And I love that. And I imagine that others hearing you love that, too. 

 

[00:24:55] Oh, thank you. Yeah. I mean, it's I think a lot of this goes back to ancestral stuff for me. I think that this is an ancestral imprint. You know, then the thing about I've talked I think before about God to log on, which is this, you know, Scandinavian phrase, that means basically don't think you're special and don't stand out. And and there were really important reasons why that became embedded in the culture. And for those of us who, you know, have, you know, lived in this country for several generations, we still carry that, which to me is just sort of a testament to how much we carry the past with us and within us. And it's asking to be healed through us. 

 

[00:25:37] So for me, when I step out and I've you know, on the one hand, I feel like it can almost kill me because of those old imprints, even though, of course, it won't. But I'm also I'm healing the past forward. I'm not just I'm not just re patterning something for myself. 

 

[00:26:01] But it goes back and then it's carried forward into the future. And that feels like, you know, it's important for us, I think. 

 

[00:26:09] And that goes back to sort of what we said earlier on about friendship, which is are we going to be willing to face, you know, these things that are so difficult, that have such a huge payoff in terms of the growth that comes through relationship. 

 

[00:26:30] And I mean, to me, that's the ultimate blessing here, right? It's really intimate relationships where we work past these fears, because what you're talking about, you feel like it's almost going to kill you opening up sometimes to me, it feels that way in a friendship in our relationship or in other relationships, too, really. It's like terrifying that we long for it to totally be seen. 

 

[00:26:59] And I think that requires a forgiveness and a mercy on ourselves. Going back to David Whyte's original quote, a mercy on each other. Yes. 

 

[00:27:08] But I sometimes think the harder thing is to be forgiving and have mercy on ourselves enough to show who we are imperfectly. 

 

[00:27:20] Well, I think and women have a hard time cutting each other's slack, you know, and that goes back to my grade, the grade school days. And I think it carries through. And I've been I've been thinking, knowing this podcast was coming up, I've been thinking a lot about. Shippen and I've been kind of tracking this this this theme I'm noticing between the people in my life. 

 

[00:27:42] Who are interested in what I'm doing and invested in who I am through my actions versus the people who are interested in my process. 

 

[00:27:58] And I think and that's been a big a big way that I've been sort of differentiating between what I feel like I'm growing into, which is sovereignty for me means we don't cling to any relationship that we see the other person as their own whole person with their own family system and their own ancestors. So we don't become enmeshed in that way. Right. And then we get to stay sovereign. So if they do something that may be disappointing to us, it's not personal. But I find it fascinating that if somebody doesn't agree with like a choice or a deeply personal, you know, direction that you're going in your life, that people instead of. 

 

[00:28:44] Saying like, I hear a lot of this kind of thing, which is like, so you did this, huh? 

 

[00:28:49] And it feels very unreal. Right. It does. 

 

[00:28:52] Or what's going on with this? And they only want to hear the upper story. They don't want to hear the story beneath the story, which is what is that about for you? Because then that's what where the intimacy is. Right. It's really understanding somebodies process, because we would be surprised right and left if we could hear the story under the story, which is I have no idea why you made this choice, but. And I may or may it's not even my business to agree or disagree with your choice. That's when I get outside of my own medicine, totally when I start judging other people than I know I'm out of my medicine. I start criticizing other people. I'm out of my medicine. But when I can become curious and say, wow, I am so I am so curious about what went into that that decision for you, what was the process in it for you? What what what are you learning by doing that? That's really how to me, how to go deeper in any kind of relationship, whether it's a, you know, like a a life partner, whether. And I'm working on that with my children, my adult children. Not so easy. 

 

[00:29:58] Like me. I am sitting with my adult daughter. Absolutely. To not judge their choices except quit and to give space for a different story to reveal for them, because I definitely agree that judgment is such a barometer to me that I'm out of myself and another and in it, it relates to control and fear, doesn't it? 

 

[00:30:20] Thinking that we need to also get in there in control and fear. There's something about that judgment that is like for me anyway. I don't think something's going to be okay. And here comes my codependency conditioning that I have to change it or fix it or pull way back from that person. 

 

[00:30:39] Whereas like this loving titration is is really to me and friendship, giving people the opportunity to have their own process. And I think you and I have practiced that with each other doing that over time. Right. 

 

[00:30:57] I think we really have because you and I are quite different in the kinds of people we we have, you know, married than in relationship with, you know, the kinds of people that other are their friends. 

 

[00:31:09] Right. Your friends and my friends, you know, wouldn't necessarily be friends all the time. It's interesting because our friend and I are twins and yeah, we are. 

 

[00:31:19] And yet our clients cross so far, like so many of our clients cross over, but not necessarily are personal friends, so. 

 

[00:31:27] Right. And just that thing that everybody represents a different part of us. And because we're different. There's nothing wrong at all. It means we have other friends and people in our lives that reflect different aspects of ourselves that we don't share with each other. But we have this incredible intersection that we do. And to me, accepting that no one person, including a partner or lover or husband, a spouse and a close friend is going to fill all of those needs. To me, that's been the liberation and to love and to get out of judgment, thinking that somebody should or that I should have a commentary on your process. If it looks different from mine. 

 

[00:32:10] And again, like my wiring, all the stuff that's underneath that's informing that decision. It's coming from a completely different source in my ancestry than yours is. And even beneath that, there's something we all share in common. So there is also a lot of paradox in friendship. Right. That were part of a human family. And so sometimes we do feel like sisters or we feel like, you know, we've we've done this before or we feel that we're walking something out that's really important in our lives or in the world. 

 

[00:32:41] And it has those. And so it can feel that way. And also, you and I have had moments where we have recognized how like radically different our growing up. 

 

[00:32:53] Oh, my gosh. Like we talked about in the last podcast. Absolutely. 

 

[00:32:57] So all of those things in form. I think it's interesting, though, I want to share this story with people who are listening that for 20 years we have walked around wherever we've gone together, Santa Fe. You know, being in San Diego, Dallas, we did shows down there. We did some professional event. People will ask us if we're sisters. And it's not that we physically look so much alike. You know, if people see us, especially in person, there's we're about the same height. We're blond. Our faces really don't look alike. 

 

[00:33:29] But there is something energetically that has been bigger than us, because people would ask me that about you even when we weren't together or even if we were. It's like one of our two sort of splits in our relationship where we really were in kind of a break for each other and to me there's just something about that that speaks to the mystery, though, of a kind of soul sister like friendship. 

 

[00:34:01] But that isn't about the projection, but is rather the deeper invitation we've had. 

 

[00:34:07] Yeah, I think there's probably some kind of a resonance that builds between people over time, that it is like the third thing in a relationship, that it's an energetic and and I'm sure that, you know, you have that in different relationships in your life. Right. Every significant relationship is going to alkermes and transform us in certain ways. And there's a third that comes out of it. Yeah, I think for you and I, the third has often been interpreted by other people as us being related. That's true. It's been really especially in the last five years. 

 

[00:34:40] Yeah, it's kind of crazy sometimes. 

 

[00:34:43] Yeah, it happens very frequently. Yeah. 

 

[00:34:48] Yeah. 

 

[00:34:48] So I'd love to share a little a little exercise about something I I do with clients and it's a practice I do for myself that that supports what I consider to be relational sovereignty, which, you know, for me when I think about friendship in terms of relational sovereignty, I think of, you know, someone who's gonna hold with you in the mystery and they don't have to make your life their line. Right. But it's like we're interdependent and yet. We're walking out our own lives and working on this transformative process. That's not always very conscious toward this movement, toward wholeness. 

 

[00:35:34] Yeah, and I think that can be the shadow of friendship. Right. And I guess encouraging you to share this, but we've both experienced it with that enmeshment takes over and then neither person is sovereign. And for a while it can feel all sort of cozy the way any addictive thing can feel. Right. Kind of fun and cozy. And then it blows up. 

 

[00:35:56] That backfires on us. It can't. It's not sustainable anymore than that kind of enmeshment that sometimes happens in a new love. And there's an illusion to it. Right. But what you're talking about, that sovereignty. And getting back to the original quote by David White. You know, the mercy and forgiveness. And I think the it's a spiritual practice to learn to be friends. 

 

[00:36:21] Such a spiritual practice. And one one constellation principle I'd like to share is that we don't have the right. 

 

[00:36:29] To take someone else's fate away from them. 

 

[00:36:33] And I think sometimes in friendship we do that because we haven't been taught how to be with suffering and we become so uncomfortable with a close friend who's having a hard time that instead of being able to get closer and to practice compassion with them and really hold space for them and be intimate and close, we end up pulling away because it's almost like we're afraid we're going to catch it right. And we don't know how to hold for someone else to have pain because it triggers our pain in ways that we haven't dealt with. So this exercise is one that you can do for friends, you can do for lovers and partners and spouses, you can do it for other family members, even really works well for people you work with. But right now, let's think about it with a friend. 

 

[00:37:22] So you basically imagine your friends standing in front of you and you can do this as you close your eyes and you imagine their parents behind them. Regardless of what their relationship with their parents is. And then you imagine their grandparents behind them. And then you bring in the grandparents and you bring in all the ancestors, and then you can even invite in the energy of their homeland, where they where did their ancestors come from? And you see that friend in front of you. With. Their unique. System. 

 

[00:38:07] And then you realize that you have that same thing behind you and you feel what it feels like to have your parents behind you. Your grandparents and great grandparents in order going all the way back to homeland, as far back as you want to go. And then you feel what it feels like to look at your friend. 

 

[00:38:27] With their lineage behind them and your lineage behind you. 

 

[00:38:35] And it changes. It can change everything. And then you can even without saying it out loud. But like as in a little meditation, you can say, I see you. 

 

[00:38:45] With your family and I see you with your ancestors. And then you can imagine your friend saying it back to you and something can be made right in that process. Well, then we don't have to like buy into the splits that happen in friendships. We get to just see our friend is a unique person who's connected to us in important ways, but they don't have to be us and we don't have to save them. And anyway, I just that's been helpful for me. 

 

[00:39:20] Yeah, it's a beautiful process. It's a beautiful process. 

 

[00:39:25] So are we going to go on and now record our next fit, our next podcast? 

 

[00:39:31] Yes, we are. Yes, we are. 

 

[00:39:36] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture. If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on i-Tunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community, Restoring the Culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we read story. Our own lives. See you next time. 

 

In Episode #5, Camille and Tanya explore the role of community, both familial and extended and how it shapes our identities.

Close friends for two decades, these friends explore their starkly contrasting experiences around community (or lack thereof that impacted them well into adulthood. 

From Farmers Markets to Local theater events, they wonder how a deeper community can and will unfold in the current climate of isolation as we have all been called to "stay at home."

Their conversation drifts from Camille's famous literary neighbor in Portland, Oregon to Tanya's first acting class in the D.C. area, to the 12 Steps inclusiveness and how these things all weave together to create individual and collective experiences of community.

On building community: "I think more and more of us are called to walk back and forth on that bridge between perceived inside and perceived outside." -Camille Adair

 

Episode transcript

 

[00:00:01] Welcome to episode number five of Restoring the Culture. This is Tanya and I'm here with Camille today, and we're going to be speaking about restoring community and Camille's gonna start us off with the quote. 

 

[00:00:16] This quote is from a book called Blue Moon over Thurmon Street by Ursula Gwinn. And the quote is by a man named Homer Medica, who she has a photograph of. 

 

[00:00:29] In this book, everybody that I grew up with has moved away, not out of town, across town, mostly, but moved away. 

 

[00:00:42] So beautiful and we were just talking about being in our homes during this time. You know, whether you're listening to this and we're all still in quarantine all over the world or we've moved out of it. We're recording this podcast about ten, twelve days in here in New Mexico. Something like that, since most of us have started started to self-quarantine. And then the governor gave an order later earlier this week. And Camille and I were talking about community in a time when we're all in isolation. But yet community is springing up. And it let us go back to talking about how we grew up a little bit. We didn't go too far in the conversation. But Camille, can you tell us about this quote and about your relationship with the author? And like growing up in that I can talk a little bit about because we have such good contract sticks start, right? 

 

[00:01:34] Sure. I was I lived next door to Ursula Gwin when I was growing up. Not for a long time, but for a couple of years. And I used to play with her son and I would put my mom's blue eyeshadow on and I would go over and hop around in the backyard. And I remember she would look at me and say, you're such a pretty bunny. So I have such fond memories of her and that time. And living on Thurman's Street in Portland, Oregon, in a house that was four stories and had an intercom system. And basically we have like four families living there. So my family, we had one floor and then another family had another floor. And it was really such a different time. And it makes me think about. Community. You know what it was like being born in the mid 60s, and for me, growing up in a counterculture family and what community was like for me growing up in contrast to what it was like for you growing up. 

 

[00:02:42] Well, let me ask you this before I get into my story a little bit. What was community like for you growing up? Like, who were the players? What did it feel like? How did you experience community like in your family and in your town? In Portland, in your city? 

 

[00:02:58] My mom had really good friends. So I remember there was like a feeling of a lot of fun and activity. And I had very young parents. There was a lot of social activism at the time going on. I mean, I remember a lot of the unrest during Watergate and my mom was involved in like social marches and things like that. I also was a latchkey kid, and so I spent a lot of time by myself. And, you know, I made friends with a bus driver in Portland. And so I instead of being home by myself, at the end of the day, oftentimes I would get on the time at bus in Portland and I would do his whole route with him. And no one knew where I was. Were you phones? I was like in the second and, you know, I would get off. And there was this show called The Ramblin Rod Show in Portland. And I would get off and I would just wander in because they had birthday parties. Right. Were they people would reserve and you would get on the Ramblin Rod show and so they would do cartoons. But like on the you know, in between cartoons, the Sky Ramblin Rod would interview kids in the audience. And I remember a couple of times wandering in there and saying and just saying, can I be on the show? And I think they felt sorry for me. So they would let me on the show or I would get off the bus driver would have him let me off. And Fred Meyers and I remember remember those some small balls, like a cartoon that was like a milk carton. And I would do that. I mean, whoppers. They were whoppers. You're right. And I remember sitting on this like brick wall and people watching and eating walkers. And that was a different time. Nobody knew where I was. It was like in a way, the world was my community. And I think, you know, we're the last of that generation that had that kind of freedom. So there was a lot of freedom, not a lot of boundaries, not a lot of container. And then when my family moved to a rural town in Oregon, then the community changed. And it was very much a tight knit people sharing, you know, produce from their gardens. And the counterculture families really bonded together. You know, and in this town, you were either like from a logging family or farming family or you were from a counterculture family. So that definitely created a lot of identity in its own way in this tiny little town. I want to hear. Oh, I know. I mean, I I've heard your stories about what it was like for you walking in and having a maid and being able to let your coat slip off and. 

 

[00:05:44] Well, I mean, yeah, we couldn't have grown up in more different families, a family. Just to give her an idea. Talking about Watergate and all, one of my first very clear conversations that I remember with my grandmother was she walked in the room and she was crying. 

 

[00:06:00] And I said, what's wrong, nanny? And she said, I'm so upset for Mrs. Nixon. This is so unfair. 

 

[00:06:09] This is just terrible what they're doing to Mr. President and Mrs. Nixon. 

 

[00:06:15] I mean, my grandmother would choose the she was the president of the Ladies Republican Club of Maryland for like decades. And then the rest of the time, she and my grandfather lived in Beirut, Lebanon. 

 

[00:06:28] And. And so that was one thing that was interesting. And they were very politically conservative. And, you know, and I was an only child. And we lived on, oh, 80 or 90 acres out in Maryland outside of d._c. But I had my freedom was in the woods and my animals were my community. I was an only child. I rarely got to see other children. So I was very afraid of them. I was very shy. And like when I hear your adventures on the bus, I'm just so envious. 

 

[00:07:02] I'm like, I'm like, God, you could just get on. And like, you know, I create sort of your own adventures and experiences and community. And my the way I reacted was, well, I know I became an artist because of my early childhood. I became a writer. I would write poems all the time. I would write short stories. I got a lot of validation of my family from that. And yes, in Beirut, my my family had, you know, all Americans were kind of treated like royalty abroad back then, especially in certain cultures. And so they were in Beirut. And before that, they lived in Pakistan, in Karachi. That's when my mom so, you know, graduated high school. 

 

[00:07:46] But. It was sort of America through that lens, though. White supremacy and hierarchy. And and there's a lot of shadow in that world. Right. There's a lot of price one pays in these sort of with the global elite. 

 

[00:08:11] And my family wound up being like at the top of that food chain. 

 

[00:08:16] You know, we're connected with, you know, and very involved with diplomats and and and and the top politicians in any country in various countries. 

 

[00:08:31] And my my sense of community as a child who's being very alone and isolated. 

 

[00:08:37] And it's easy on you because I was, too. So we have such different stories. 

 

[00:08:41] But I was very lonely as a kid in spite of yourself inside of myself. Totally. So, I mean, I that's why I think I fell in love with acting when I was 14, my first acting class, because it was my first sense of a real community where I fit in, I fit in. And of course, as we've talked about here, theater is a form of healing and it's shamanic. And the people who thrive in it are parks. And there is this total overlap. So interesting. Yeah, we both felt isolated. And I've certainly heard a lot of stories over the years of people with very big families and. All right. That the child who is often the empath, also the one who's the disruptor in any family system, no matter how that looks, but challenges authority, challenges the way things are, is moving, as you would say in Constellation work, the family story further. We're often lonely, right, because we're marginalized. So then there's a longing. There was such sexual longing for me as an adult to make community. And I did you know, I made community in the acting world in New York. I made community with friends from that time who are still my dear friends coming to Santa Fe. I had a longing to create family of my own make community. What about I mean, what about you in all of that? And like, what is your relationship to community now? And as we were. Could be called to go deeper locally in our communities while expanding out into the world globaly. How do you think part of the restoring peace comes in, in your own life and in what you're examining right now and about that loneliness piece, too, or that isolation? How do we come back inside? 

 

[00:10:30] I think it takes me to what I talk about so much that I feel my work is, which is working with the split. And I've often thought about that in a way I was born in. My parents divorced when I was five or six. You know, my mom, you know, was very liberal. My father's very conservative. And so I I grew up going between two households that couldn't have been more different in a way. And so I do think that that's really informed how I. It's interesting, as I hear you say that I actually think the way you're building community is more intimate than mine. I like the way you build community is is really up close and personal in the way that you support people in sharing their stories. And it's very relational. And while I talk a lot about being relational, I think mine ends up being a little more global inside myself. Like I track the splits. I want to constantly be finding commonality. I talk a lot about holding the tension of opposites and how do we kind of move toward center, which is a little more sort of theoretical in a way that also it's I do apply it to my life. 

 

[00:11:47] But I guess as as I'm reflecting on that, there's still a little bit of some loneliness in that as I'm hearing myself say it and. 

 

[00:11:57] Yeah, I mean, in the last podcast we talked about nursing and medicine, I often think about that with Split the American people and how things can be that everything can become politicized. And then there's a split. And I get really frustrated with that, which has to do with my own complexes and my own material in terms of how I grew up, you know, feeling like I was from a family who was counterculture. And I had this tremendous radar about wanting to sort of find a way to fit in or be sort of normal and how that's translated into how I was even chosen partners and what kinds of friends I had. And it's really it's just interesting to kind of reflect on all of that, because really I think those early experiences really do speak to how we form community. 

 

[00:12:48] And I think in a way I do minelife life now at the age of fifty four has sort of prepared me for what's going on in the world in a way, because I know how to work with splits. 

 

[00:13:05] I think about just the crisis that we're in right now and how a community now how are we community in isolation. So if you and I both had inner isolation as children, how did we build community? And now here we are doing that again for very different reasons. 

 

[00:13:21] We're building community in isolation, really, and finding the ways that we lean into our humanity and mirror each other or sometimes like to. It's so valuable to me to look at my intimate relationships and especially with you and ways we do it, because it makes it helps me track patterns. You're talking about tracking splits and I'm always internally tracking story patterns and like I'm always tracking story structure internally. Like, how is the story playing out? And it's interesting to me because because of your outsider status as a child, you wanted to find your way in and you had the giftedness to find your way into systems. I was marginalized as a child, I think, because I had ADHD. You know, I I was tested very high, but had learning disabilities and struggles in school and systems, I think, because, yeah, there was a kind of insider's point of view in terms of patriarchy. Right. We were the inside people and I saw the shadow on the inside. And so I wanted to bust out of every system. And that's the shaft of my life. And now at fifty five, the integration is finding systems that work, creating new structures that work. And we talk a lot about the divine feminine and one of my own sort of a hause of my own business life. And moving my work out into the world at all is how it's the sacred masculine to me, the sacred masculine structure that is a relationship to divine feminine, the sacred masculine as opposed to the toxic masculine holds the feminine. And then there's this integration, right. So the coming together, you call it healing the split. 

 

[00:15:11] I often call it integration or of course, in unity in terms of your in your depth space union thing, you know, the inter-marriage. 

 

[00:15:20] So how do we after are the trauma and and and the split and experiencing either a busting out of this or need to be in it because both are survival strategies. 

 

[00:15:36] Right. On some level. How? Well, why don't you talk a little bit, if you will, about your movement, either professionally or personally to heal that split. 

 

[00:15:47] And where are you standing around that in terms of building a new kind of community that the world has never perhaps seen or is seeing now or living into? And then I mean, I'm happy to share about how I've been building community globaly also, because I think it's interesting the different ways around the insider outsider stuff. Right. And some of us I think more and more of us are called to walk back and forth on that bridge between the perceived insider and the perceived outsider. Right. 

 

[00:16:17] That there's a healing when the two are bridged and people are less polarized. 

 

[00:16:25] Well, I think that yeah, it sounds funny when you say insider outsider, because where I heard that was literally insider and that's where I wanted to go was inside that that. I do think that that's what that's for me, partly how I'm working with the split as healing my internal splits. And and and so what that looks like, it's almost holding my own feet to the fire. And so staying with relationships that can be challenging, staying with relation and letting them. Form so relationships don't have to stay the same. They don't have to. The roles can even change, but not allowing myself to to throw people away. And I think that that's become a value for me. It's almost become like a spiritual practice. And it was not easy. And I think the tricky part for me is walking that really narrow edge because I can so easily fall into codependence. So like, when is that codependents and when is it me being really skilled at working with my own inter-marriage? So that on the one hand, I know that there is no other whether there's no such thing as another, there's no such thing as a throwaway. And we also live in a in a world of duality. And so we do see what's in opposition to us and how can we hold that and lean into it and work with the tension of opposites, because that really is how we work on the inter-marriage within ourselves. And and that helps us to pull back our projections. It helps us not to be in denial. It helps us to go through our own internal transformative processes in terms of how that works for me and community. I think it takes me back to this paradoxical place that sometimes that can be lonely. 

 

[00:18:21] And I wonder how much loneliness and and in a way suffering provide a little bit of grist for the mill. 

 

[00:18:33] For us, it's like the pebble in the shoe, it's the thing that keeps us awake. It's the thing. It may be in a way, it's a little bit of the loneliness that that that causes some kind of an outward movement that keeps us alive and that in some way. I mean, I think there is so much paradox in that. And and it feels like what I'm saying feels sort of depressing. But I think I'm not wanting for some reason in this particular conversation because I know we need each other so much. We are interdependent beings. It is so critical that we know that we're interconnected and that we don't do this alone. 

 

[00:19:12] And you and I have talked about that in your phrase, which I love. Is that the time of the lone wolf is over. And you're absolutely right. Like we talk about the message that I got years ago about the two by two and that you and I are trying to consciously do this. This shared leadership model together about how do we walk this out two by two. Because if we do that, it will be greater so much greater than if we do it alone. And that means having creative dissonance and facing things that might stretch us in ways that are really uncomfortable and inhabit comfortable conversations for the sake. 

 

[00:19:44] So nature. You know, I think that. Yeah. And that it's Mehdi's rabbit and that we can be. So why have we been conditioned to be so afraid of dissonance? Because of course you put two people together. We have very different life experiences, different triggers, even if we have a lot of shared value, shared beliefs and deeply shared things. Any authentic relationship. Right. Is going to have some dissidents. We've been conditioned to be so afraid of that, of meeting it honestly, without just blowing it up or cutting and running. Right. 

 

[00:20:21] And that's what we're conditioned to to to do, because it's that goes back to the podcast on grief that we did. When Stephen we talked about Stephen Vine's quote about the more we move away from grief, the more pain we feel. It's the same thing here. I think with community we are in a time of literal isolation with the pandemic. And we are also at a time where people are literally dying from isolation and loneliness. I mean, as a nurse, I can tell you it's totally up in our conversations, you know, about public health. It's a public health concern. And I think what I guess I want to say to that, like kind of wrapping up the conversation about how we restore a community is somewhere there's got to be the integration of the inter-marriage on the slide before we can really have the community on the outside. And I think we have been taken so far away from doing the work within going within to ourselves that it makes it really hard to have community on the outside. 

 

[00:21:24] It really does. And I'm thinking about our community here in Santa Fe. And it's an amazing place. But there's a shadow here and community and a lot of people come to me and speak about the shadow. I feel like I've been embroiled in certain situations in the shadow. But here's the thing. We're much more comfortable with our community, right? So we have music on the plaza and people go and participate. We have an amazing farmer's market. But where I find the dissonances, those same people who can be engaged in these beautiful community building activities is not that there's anything wrong with that. They're great. It's just it only hits on one level and people then walk home and are by themselves. And there's like the emotional intimacy still hasn't happened. You might say hi to 30 people there. And that's wonderful. 

 

[00:22:17] That's a community that has your back. And it's very much going back to the old ways. But what you're talking about here is the emotional community or what I'll say is and I know it's why people love solo shows and memoirs and all the story work I've done over the years. People are come to it because they're dying for intimacy. It's like, please just tell me the truth. Mirror me back to me. And then after the show, they just want to stand there and tell all their own stories. Right. So to me, restoring community is built on the great things that are happening. Community models, town squares, getting green, building things that we talk about a lot when we're talking about restrike community. 

 

[00:22:54] But then how do we take it further? How do we move that? Part of the inquiry is to a place where everybody's story belongs. Everybody gets to be heard. 

 

[00:23:03] You know, people have places to come and be with the deeper issues and nobody's exiled. 

 

[00:23:12] You know, it's really interesting because I I've experienced your work enough. You know, a lot. Enough to know that those are some of the most rich community bonding experiences that I've experienced. And I actually have put us both up on a pedestal. I also just want to say that, like in the Constellation work, I feel some. Very similar where something is transcended. And it's no longer those those community constellation workshops you bypass the superficial kind of community get into a much, much deeper you know, as I talk about the river beneath the river, the slow river. 

 

[00:23:51] And when you tap into that together, whether it's through your story work or through family, constellation work and doing ancestral and lineage healing, it's a deeper experience of community. 

 

[00:24:02] And I think that's what we're missing, just as we're missing out on the deeper experience of being in community really with ourselves on the inside, being in community with intimacy, whether it's about integrate, work with healing or being there, and both require that we let go of all ego would be very transparent about who we are and where we come from in our shadow issues, as well as celebrating each other and our joy. But what we're I think we're tapping into something really essential for based on our own experience. 

 

[00:24:33] Restoring the culture means building out the wonderful community pieces there, but taking it deeper, more circles, more, more coming together around the place where we're just longing to be seen. 

 

[00:24:49] And I would add and I think that's absolutely right and I would add to that, that we honor the other, because if we're gonna really talk about diversity, diversity can can be like lip service. And if you're really wanting diversity, it means you honored people on the other side of the aisle that you don't see the other as the other guy. I know that they're part of they have just as much right to belong in their communities. We all do. And it's walking it's walking that out because that requires the relationship. 

 

[00:25:20] It really does. And one of the best models, I must say, I have seen for that are the Twelve Steps and I've been part of 12-Step programs. It honors diversity. Everyone has the right to belong and they get to share. You don't have to agree. And that's actually written in district steps and traditions. There's a really safe container there where you can get wildly diverse people and nobody has to feel that they're giving up their own sovereignty or soul or that by accepting doesn't necessarily mean agreeing, but it's an acceptance. 

 

[00:25:54] Right. 

 

[00:25:54] Well, and I think that that takes away the judgment. And judgment is one of the things that undermines safety, the safety of intimacy in in two people. The judgment undermines the safety of self-criticism, undermines the intimacy we have with ourselves. And then judgment projected outside of ourselves in the community creates a lack of of a safe and community container. And then people aren't coming together and connecting. So I think that's right. I mean, I'd love to sort of say that as our end note for restoring community is it's you know, without judgment, we have a chance. 

 

[00:26:32] Beautiful, Camille, perfect place to end. 

 

This week, speaking from their homes in Santa Fe as the pandemic continues to ravage life all over earth, Camille and Tanya plunge into the multi-layered sensation of this moment, namely, grief. 

How do we meet it, befriend it, re-story it into something of value and importance? 

Throughout time, as humans we have been overwhelmed and terrified of feeling grief. It manifests through us and touches every aspect of our lives.

In this conversation while speaking of mentors and healers on this topic, including Stephen Levine, Camille and Tanya speak about how they have been learning to meet, rather than avoid, the topic and all that accompanies it.

Sharings on:

• How to let go of our personal dreams at this time in the collective
• The price we pay for ignoring our "unattended sorrow"
• Teachings and inspiration from poets and wisdom teachers including Stephen Levine, David Whyte and Peter Levine. 
• Moving from isolation in grief and into community
• Camille speaks on what it means to be able to process grief in health care systems and how un-met grief is related to burn out in doctors and nurses.
• Being re-triggered in former loss each time we experience new loss and how to honor and integrate it. 
• Tanya tells a story of a hospital stay related to anticipatory grieving in this pandemic.
• Grief as a zen bell..."wake up, wake up, wake up"

 

Episode Transcript

 

[00:00:02] Hi, welcome to podcast. Number four today, Tanya and I are going to be talking about restoring grief and to begin, I'm going to read a quote from Stephen Maligns book called Unattended Sorrow. 

 

[00:00:15] If we listen for unattended sorrow, as we might for a cry from a crib in the next room, we can hear it calling to us to have mercy on ourselves and move it forward with a heart full examination of our lingering disappointment and distress. Instead of turning our back on it, when we turn away from our sorrows, we intensify our pain and close off parts of ourselves. 

 

[00:00:46] And. I love that so much. 

 

[00:00:50] Yeah, I mean, I loved and Stephen, of course, is like Stephen Vine just such has been such a voice for a long time. When I was in New York City and I was twenty seven right before I came to Santa Fe. That was really the first big spiritual book I ever got. Was his book Healing into Life and Death. At the time, it was in the middle of the AIDS crisis and I don't remember if somebody gave me that book. And I was I felt young to have that book about mortality and death and dying. And it was, you know, just just he just everything he always talks about, it's so profound in that concept of unintended sorrow is so heartbreaking and so poetic at once to me when I think we all have. 

 

[00:01:41] A certain amount of unintended sorrow. Just living in Western culture. Because, you know, we're not supported in facing our suffering and facing grief. You know, we are you know, we're sort of conditioned to bypass a lot of that. And instead of going deeper into our humanity. 

 

[00:02:00] And so, you know, it reminds me of something David White says, that when you have a big event in your life, that there's that you're you're moving toward a big event like the loss of a job, a death, an illness, a divorce. Like what we're facing now globaly with this pandemic. You know, he said we hit those walls with this tremendous velocity and then everything kind of like has to fall apart because we have not kept up with our lives. And I think that for me, this idea of unattended sorrow is one of the ways that we're not keeping up with our lives. And so when it hits, it is such a shock to the system. 

 

[00:02:45] Totally. I mean, a complete shock to the system. And, you know, and and there's something to I mean, I just noticed that of myself. I was having a conversation with my husband today because something like hits, right? And then have all of the unattended sorrows of the past come out. We were talking because, you know, every time he meets grief or or things falling away because things are out of control, he goes back to when he lost his daughter, who was eleven years old, from cancer. But there's this whole recycling almost. But I'm also thinking about grief and from our conversation and how projection. It's like this at the unattended star almost to me, it's like get out a projection. It's almost like the Zen bell is in it. Like when it comes on fast and hard like this. 

 

[00:03:43] Let go, let go, let go, let go, let go. 

 

[00:03:46] You know, we were going to build didn't let us show where we're talking about it six weeks ago. You know, he was up for possibly a role in any New York City theater production, implosive. You know, and his two films had come out and now all those film festivals are canceled in an artist a mile and started the way my business was going. And these things align. And then it's like here it is, the Zen step, right. And when the Zen stick comes that our projections or our human desires to control it come like like up like a force unto me. Somehow what they're they're carrying or covering, I should say maybe they're covering it are the unattended sorrows. And then the way in are our day to day life. We're trying not to feel all of that and we're trying to just stay on the course of these these these big are big life, you know, parks, or so we think. But then this other force is like a tsunami in some way. 

 

[00:04:48] Does that make sense? It makes a lot of sense. I mean, to me see, I'm feeling that. On the one hand, you know this we are talking about velocity and kind of even the noises you made in the crashing and the image of a tsunami and how much power there is behind that and simultaneously how Greece brings us down. And so to me, it's this sort of the juxtaposition behind the power and how Greece slows us down, whether we like it or not. And I've been noticing that in myself, which is partly why we decided to talk about restoring Greek today because of what's going on in the world. And you and I are so fortunate to be seeing clients on zoom in to be where we are and to be relatively safe. And I and and yet I feel like because I'm and I'm sensitive like many, most people are and all people are natural. It really is is that I get tired. I think I was telling you, like I'm getting really worn out by like two in the afternoon. I want to go calling dad. My rhythms are off. I've been getting up in the morning and just making myself walk at least two and a half to former, whether it's windy or cold or whatever. And just really forcing my that just is like a non-negotiable now, my physical health. But I think I'm still really feeling this collective grief. So there's this thing that, you know, grief is personal, but it's also collective. And I. It takes me to the image of, you know, the Aspen Forest, how the Aspen trees look like individual trees. But they're actually one organism connected by a common root system underground. And I think we've maybe used that metaphor before in the podcast. But I think when I think about collective grief, like we're our root systems are connected and we're feeling these things and it's really with me for some reason today, I guess I'm really feeling well. 

 

[00:06:50] There's something to even about. Yeah, I'm I'm noticing that I'm hitting a kind of wall energetically and self-care is just non negotiable. Drinking water, taking walks, taking vitamins, being really vigilant about what I'm eating, all of it. And of course, we're being called to boost our immune systems. Take care of ourselves. But it's a deeper thing. And I you know what you said about collective grief for me my entire life, I've kind of been unkind of somebody who receives a lot of information about it event at the front end, which, of course, you know, know this. But our listeners don't. At the very beginning of this event, I was in the hospital overnight and never have been in my life. 

 

[00:07:38] But several times in my life, I've had this experience of kind of because you and I are both impacts that I know many of our listeners are impacts, you know, sensitives healers. 

 

[00:07:53] A lot of coaches, facilitators, health care workers as well as artists tend to be writers. That's right. So we're almost like the canary in a coal mine thing. We're feeling it before it even happens. So for me, I ended up in the hospital and I realized because I was having live racing heart stuff and wanted to do the EKG and all that. But ultimately for me, the way out. What I realized has happened is I was feeling this what's happening? It made me collapse actually, before it even happened. And you and I, of course, all up talk a lot about point in time. And and the people are had different people based on our sort of nervous systems and our energetic spiritual systems. Grief is hitting us all in different levels of waves. So it's almost to me like collectively, some of us are feeling it more intensely at different times, almost like. And talking about going back to the root system of the Aspen's. I think we're we're all not only crossing assessing individual grief, but collective grief and that this is the grief of a love, a way of life. And even if there were toxic elements have been many, many toxic elements in this way of life. There's no spiritual bypass away from our human meeting, the feelings. And as the comfort of that way of life is stripped away. And it's a thing even I remember years ago when I was going through a divorce, the minister who married my former husband and I. He said something that really touched me related to this. He said, I know you're not just reading the individual. You're grieving a dream. 

 

[00:09:44] And right now, globaly. We're grieving, right? 

 

[00:09:50] The dream only collective dream. You know, it's interesting when you're in the hospital, you know, I I went and I was with you for a short time in the E.R. and it was sort of it was the beginning of the lockdown time for the virus, for the virus. So it was a scary time. And one day and I had a migraine headache. I wasn't feeling well. I had really bad allergies. It was just this was almost like there was this perfect storm. Right. Totally. One thing I didn't share with you. Speaking of grief, I realized it. It didn't hit me for a few days after that. What I realized just, you know, I worked in an emergency department and the room you were in may not have been the exact one, but it was in the same cluster little area where I actually was with the 12 year old boy who died when Camille. And so, I mean, that was one of the most significant experiences of my life. I had to too much to go into in this podcast and just to say. I had some really difficult times working in that emergency department as a new nurse, and it was all right there with me when we were there. And to be there with you when you and I are are so close and you were having the sort of the scary events that you were having. And then to have it be right in that same place. Right. I was 20 years ago at a very traumatic time with this 12 year old boy who was at that time just a year older than my daughter. 

 

[00:11:26] And. 

 

[00:11:29] Just incredible. You know how, again, your life can sort of come together, and then there was the. 

 

[00:11:33] Then there was the feeling of what it was like being in the hospital at that time during the covered 19 lockdown. I mean, it was really surreal. 

 

[00:11:46] It was very surreal. And it's so wild. We're sharing this now for the first time. Not even we didn't do it with each other because it was in the same bank that my daughter almost died before she was diagnosed with asthma and had the whole breathing respiratory thing, which, of course, as a mother. She's 22 and lives in Chicago has been a big fear. And one of the few covered patients in Santa Fe at that time was wheeled out of one of those rooms. And by. And so one thing I discovered, though, as I was in the hospital alone that night, I thought, well, isn't this interesting? Because we're heading into this dark, dark time. And there was some kind of spiritual kind of thing for me. And it sounds like for you to be like, OK, like we're having to meet our shadows again. We're circling around back towards grief. We're circling back toward some old trauma, some old fear. And then in this moment, you know, the distress and the new thing, too. And sometimes I do feel as a story worker and tracking patterns of stories with people. That we are brought right? It's the layers of the onion tube were brought back around with that story to meet it now new in this moment. And how are we going to be even more available? How are we going to be more intimate with this grief or with this revisiting? You know, I don't know what you do with that. Exactly. But like for me, it was something actually like the day after all, I left the hospital. 

 

[00:13:29] I just felt joyful in the midst of all this because, of course, we know there is this relationship between grief and joy. 

 

[00:13:38] When I met that grief and fear and I was there and I was scared and there was re triggering, but there was this exuberance that I felt and also a real connection. I would say on a spiritual level or soul level. I've just come another to another level of being prepared to step up in service at this time. 

 

[00:14:00] You know, I think what it brings up for me is what it's like for the nurses and physicians, myself included, who are not working right now at the bedside. And it's, of course, like we have this privilege of being in the profession and supporting in different ways, but not taking the same risks that our colleagues are taking. And it really makes me want to cry because it reminds me of a.. It's like it's it's such a paradox, you know? That what is the book Waking the Tiger? Stephen Labi Not Stephen the line. I'm just having my little midlife brain moment. But anyway, waking the tiger, his last name is Levine. 

 

[00:14:43] I think Peter Levine. Peter Levine I was combining Steve on the line with Peter will be. Yeah, but we got it together. 

 

[00:14:52] We figured it out. So you write the story in that book about these kids that are buried under some kind of like a mudslide or landslide in a bus. And what they found is that the kids who were active in digging their way out were the ones who actually fared the best in terms of long term trauma, because it was because they worked it out. 

 

[00:15:16] And I think when you get out in the body to thimbles, do moving through the trauma, not just a frozen response. Right. 

 

[00:15:24] Right. And I do think that, you know, I think that for those of us who are not able to go help at this time, I think there's a little bit of that frustration of the freeze, too. 

 

[00:15:35] Like, I mean, I could just sit here. I guess that's what's coming up for me right now. Makes me want to cry. But just the feeling that I'm feeling about it for nurses and physicians, especially because a lot of the allied staff were doing telehealth. But the people who who work with the body, who have to be there, you know, mostly nurses and physicians and support staff like, you know, a physician's assistant assistants, nurse practitioners, certified nursing assistants, you know. I I I just I guess I just have a lot of grief coming up about that, and it really brings up for me this, you know, project I've been working on for a long time that is now starting to sort of gain some momentum, which is taking a look at the systemic issues of health care. And one of the things I identified because I in my work, I look at splits like everything has the right to belong in a certain order to each other, in order for there to be systemic help and organizational health. 

 

[00:16:40] And one of the things I discovered is just how nurses and physicians really are in a way systemically pitted against one another. 

 

[00:16:50] And and, you know, the nursing and medicine, they don't get along on Capitol Hill and they don't get along in a lot of leadership positions. Now, a lot of nurses and physicians get along. You know, when they're there working at the bedside. But there are still these dynamics. And I just it just recommits me to this movement of finding ways for nurses and physicians to align, because if we could do that, we could transform health care. There are almost a million physicians and there are four million nurses. And if we could come together and work together, we would be five million strong in this country. But we can't seem to like how are we ever going to have change if we can't bring. You know, some some collaborative peace making and understanding to our two tribes. That feels really, really important to me. And I've talked with actually more physicians even than nurses about this. I feel like speaking of restoring and getting some of the story beneath the story as a nurse for where physicians are and have been out with that, that's deepened my awareness and understanding and and help me grow my empathy. And I'm I'm just really excited about bringing these two things together. So that's of interesting Segway. I wasn't expecting to go there in this conversation of grief, but don't you think, too. 

 

[00:18:16] OK. So thinking about the patriarchy that we talk about so much and it's deep. The way that it is so deeply embedded in each one of us, regardless of gender. But in a patriarchy, there's always a hierarchy. There's there's. It's not viewed as a different valuable role. It's, you know, the way we marginalize the feminine. And again, not about gender. The way we we the way to be. We glorify the intellect. We marginalize the deeper gut wisdom, body wisdom, hands on soul mate wisdom in the moment. I mean, and where the nursing profession, you know, the root system with the the healers and the midwives and the women who have always been there for birth and for death and for the tending. And then once again, the glorification of science, of Western medicine, and not to also dishonor all the gifts of that. But when will we? It's very much like a marriage to me in a marriage where both people aren't honored equally for their contributions. But you know, the split again. So. So in terms of the shift that's happening now, how do you even see that? Supporting that and the grief for everybody when there's a split in any system and the grief and the fallout then. And the child in a family system, on the on the patient and on the innocence in the system that aren't even playing the dominant rules. What do you think about that? 

 

[00:19:56] Well, I think that's absolutely right. And I think the thing we have to be really careful about is that we don't make this too complicated. I did a had a retreat through the Oslo symposia, which is now the equal project with just with the board members and. And it was such an amazing thing, we rented a house in Albuquerque and we cooked together and we had talking circles and we did some basic basic emotional intelligence kind of sharing exercises. 

 

[00:20:34] And it was basic, basic, but it literally we all left there feeling completely rejuvenated. And there was one physician, a surgeon, who said, if I can do something like this, I think maybe I can stay in medicine. He was thinking about moving to another country and leaving medicine altogether. I mean, it had that much of an impact. And so it literally my vision for this really is that there would there would be these retreats where nurses and physicians come together outside of the system and they share with each other and they cook together and they, you know, talk about their families and they talk about their experiences. And this is the kind of healing that we need. 

 

[00:21:14] It's this this human contact that we don't get in these really fast paced, you know, these systems where, you know, nurses and physicians both end up spending oftentimes more time looking at a screen than they do at the patients. 

 

[00:21:33] And that is all of our lives. No, it isn't a cut. But this is the issue. Right. I mean, there's one thing we're all global, global and all. But where are we with our depth based work, our deep facilitation or artistry? And in the case of doctors and nurses. Like you said, interfacing, being with the humans that we're serving. 

 

[00:21:56] Because if we don't, it causes moral distress. 

 

[00:21:59] And if we have moral distress, that takes us back around to grief. Moral distress at its foundation is a loss. It's the grief for the loss of a way being connected to doing what what we came into the profession to do. And for many, many nurses and physicians, they feel that's been taken away from them. 

 

[00:22:17] And there's so much grief around that. And really no languaging or no ways to to to approach it or to come together around it. And I put you know, the Dalai Lama says and many other people, Gerta and a lot of other people have said this. And I think it's really fascinating that love is understanding and understanding is love. And to me, that's what happens in these kinds of intimate retreat settings. You start to develop an understanding. I mean, I remember this same physician said something to me one time because he's a surgeon and this was something I didn't realize. But surgeons actually sometimes are are considered not even a physician. They're higher on the hierarchy chain. They're considered higher than a physician. So he said, you know, we're put up on a pedestal. And he said and once extracted from us on that pedestal. Like, it's like basically the price we pay for that is so deep. And so it really is it's this real side of the hierarchy hurts everyone. Dehumanization hurts everyone. And we were all walking around in grief. This is just one lens. This is just one sector of life that is up for us right now because of the pandemic. 

 

[00:23:33] We're totally. It's huge. It's huge. And it's I think also there's an awakeness, though. Part it to me, the restoring is the gratitude, the appreciation, the we have everyday heroes in our midst who are willing to be here for us and to end to end at the cost of that profession, whatever role in it. Like you were talking about in the beginning with the twelve year old boy is a lot of grief. And I've been with you and talk to you when you left hospice bedsides of many beloved patients who have died. I remember, you know, conversations and stories over the years. I've certainly been at my own bedsides of just people in my life who have died. But one of the things that to me is so huge to us. Coming back to this culture once again, we're meant we're set up to deal with grief and isolation when what it's all about. It's not even just like you said. Yes, formal retreats. But to me, story circles right the way we come together, you and I. The intimacy and our friendship every day. But the and that we go that we allow ourselves to go really deep with the conditioning, isn't there? In many families still and certainly not in many cultures and many systems. But it's like to me, this is what we need. You know, I just always am making this this this with my hands. The circles, the circles, the circles, because the circles of the feminine. They're that medicine to the hierarchy. Cause when we get together in circles. Right. It takes us back to our egalitarian roots. It takes us back to our tribal roots. Are indigenous roots in a circle. Everybody belongs in a circle. Everybody's voice. You know, again, indigenous cultures, the talking sticks that everyone matters. And it just feels to me that there's so much going back to Stephen's words in the beginning of this piece, unattended sorrow. When our voices are run over, when there's no place for our voices. Like I work with so many women and men, maybe they're 40 years old or maybe they're 50, 60 in their 70s, 80s. I've worked with elders, as you know, working with them, writing that need to give voice to. And it's like to just say, this is my story. Somebody see, I'm here. This is somebody able to acknowledge that I existed and I mattered and I matter. And, you know, the basic needs around being just seen and heard and valued and how the systems in this culture are set up not to value or to make people feel valued, but that somehow, like the medicine or the circles we talk about all the times we're circles we create. And I'm just thinking about your thoughts on how people can just create that sense of circle or that sense of retreat like in their day to day life if they're feeling, you know, far away to you. 

 

[00:26:42] How do you create these impromptu sense of circle and community to be some of the medicine for the isolation of grief? 

 

[00:26:53] I think doing exactly what we're doing here. 

 

[00:26:57] It's really like leaning in. And the words that keep coming up for me are it's like permission based that we give ourselves permission to have our humanity factored into the equation. So that doesn't mean that we collapse, but it does mean, you know, one thing, you know, compassion when you know, when you are met with compassion, that it's like medicine. 

 

[00:27:19] Right. I mean, I feel that with you when you and I talk and we talk about how you had today was heart day or I'm really struggling. It's like that kind of connection. It's the medicine for grief. It's not doing it alone. It's having an understanding that. The grief changes the brain. So for us actually to to not have the same kinds of expectations for ourselves. Of productivity. Linear thinking of tasks. You know that it's in a way it's. It's interrupting. Life is normal. Grief interrupts life as we know it. Like whether we like it or not. And it actually I think that the hidden opportunity there is it gives us a doorway into vulnerability, connection, creativity in ways that we're not used to. And it's like Stephen said, if we avoid it, we increase the pain. So I think it's being permission based about it with ourselves, with each other, having a lot of understanding and compassion and and and knowing that, you know, grief is a process. It is something we go through like Earth and like death. It has movement. It has stages. It is circular in itself. It's not linear. So you don't go through like the Kubler-Ross stages. That was like in that time, that was a breakthrough. And now we know that the stages of grief, they they move and they're more fluid. 

 

[00:28:47] Absolutely. I mean, the next my life experience. Right. That's life experience. It's fluid. And that we circle back around. It made me that same grief like you did 20 years later. Like, you know, and I remember just I think, what are the worst? Or I shouldn't say worse. I should say most intense experiences of grief in my life was when my ex husband, Chloe, was a little my daughter was a little girl. Well, he had a schizophrenic break, as you know. And and we were going through a divorce, like I went after this phone call with him when I really knew that we were never going back. And I think about hero's journey and heroine's journey, strict structure. Right. Because of the heroine's journey, the descent like perception aid in terms of mythic structure into the underworld. I mean, the descent is the opening to a greater life. And I remember my little daughter there with her, a little saggy diapers of me, just like having to get a micro grilled cheese sandwich. But inside of myself, I was literally picking myself up off the floor after just like being hysterical and devastated, but not picking myself up off the floor. But what I knew was that I was no longer in the world as it was before. And Inge and Joseph Campbell talks about this. And Maureen Murdoch and anybody who studies Stephen Jenkins said, you know, all these amazing story people, some storytellers and story workers. There is a descent into the underworld that is necessary. And to me, it's a slow read. It's a surrender to the not even well to the grief and just the emotion, but the surrender to the fact that we've gone into a non ordinary world, a non ordinary state of consciousness. And we're not going back once, once on the journey. There is no going back or there is no story, there's no transformation. And at a certain point in the journey, every, you know, book, hero's journey, structure, heroine's journey one. And when one is on the road or in the case of heroin, heroine's journey in the underworld. There's there's some point where to me, like the grief shifts and transforms and one is simply on the journey is sort of being even carried on the journey. And to me, I think of how rather than avoiding the grief or numbing the grief or the fear of the grief, that doesn't really let us feel it's actually in the feeling that we're carried across the River Styx, that we're carried to the other side, that we're carried somewhere, and that we're walking in this in this new world. It's a transformational process and grief is such a part of it. But also just remembering that the joy and creativity that came out of my life after that time was some of the most profound stuff I've made. I did all these big worldly projects. These things happen. I had a book come out. I got to be on stages all across the country. But the bigger thing was my creative creativity got activated and kicked into high gear. Right after that time that I'll always think back on in my life like, wow, I was just in a cauldron of grief. 

 

[00:32:11] We're just about out of time. But I'd like to just just, you know, kind of add to this. I love everything that you're saying in it. And it reminds me of the word or the toss when the Latin word for bereavement. And I actually made a documentary, a short teaching documentary on grief. And the name of that documentary is or guitars and or guitars is where the word orb comes from. And so it is like an or were. So what that says to me is it is another world, like you said. It's also gestational like the womb. And so when we're in grief, we're actually being held like in this form, like container. And something's transforming. Something is changing. Where something is dying, we're dying with it and something else is going to emerge. And just to have some patience and understanding that this is a normal process, I guess that would be my. The way I talk about restoring and grief. And I'm so grateful to be restoring it with you because you've been one of the people in my life who's had the kind of depths and soul and compassion to meet me and my grief. And I'm so grateful for that. 

 

[00:33:21] It is such a blessing. It's such a blessing. We have each other and just. Yeah, I love what you just said. Camille, love for people to just leaving our podcast today, understanding for anyone listening if you're feeling so overwhelmed in it. Not number one. What Camille said that it's a normal process and two, that it's a journey and you're not because you're feeling grief. It doesn't mean you're going to be feeling it forever. And this is where are our practice of faith or practice. Even if we can't access faith to just keep breathing and keep walking comes at. Right. Just keep breathing and walking because it is going to shift. It is an actual process like a laboring on raw. 

 

[00:34:04] I'm with you. Yeah. And it doesn't always feel like sad. It can feel like pissed off. It can feel like blame. It can feel like a lot of different can feel like denial. It can feel like so many different things. And just to have patients with all that. Totally. Oh, man. 

 

[00:34:19] Welcome to All Too Big to be continued in our next blog, Jestina. 

What does it mean to be a healer?

What is a healing process?

What does it mean to view life through a healing or artistic lens and do the two always intersect?

These are some of the topics that Camille and Tanya explore in this episode of Re-Storying the Culture. 

They also delve into professional experiences to share their perspectives on why some stories are helpful, and why other stories harm or re-traumatize. 

From a cultural lens, Camille speaks of certain pressures or obsessions that those of us in Western Culture often experience around telling a personal narrative or experiencing a personal  healing. She offers thoughts around how to hold this in a gentler manner and re-story the energetic by calling in our connection to a much bigger familial story. 

Tanya speaks of cultural movements through the lens of storytelling and the end of the era of the guru.

Camille shares on her own experience with a life threatening illness, and her work as a hospice nurse to humanize health care and mental healthcare. 

Tanya speaks of writing mentor, Natalie Goldberg and what it's like to go deeper and deeper in writing practice to access underground stories.

 

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• Learn more about Tanya and Camille:
  • www.camilleadair.com
  • www.storyleaderglobal.com
• Support the podcast by donating to Living bridges: https://living-bridges.org/donate/

 

 

Episode Transcript

 

[00:00:01] Hi, welcome to Episode 3 with Tanya and Camille Restoring the culture. Today, we're going to be talking about how we restoring healing. And I'd like to share with you a quote first by Diane Wolke Steen and Samuel Kramer in the book Inanna Queen of Heaven and Earth. Life must be properly nourished and cared for before it can take root and begin to be differentiated. And we'll start by asking you, Tanya, how are you restoring healing in your work? 

 

[00:00:45] Thank you, Camille. You know, it's funny because I never thought when I was starting out in any way that healing, first of all, was not something that interested me. Which is amazing because my whole career and life and work now, I feel is defined as a story worker, as a writing coach, solo performance coach, helping people extract their stories. My work has evolved into something completely of a healing nature. 

 

[00:01:16] And for many years, I didn't even want to come out of the closet about that. I thought it would somehow diminish my credibility as a quote unquote, real artist. What I've learned is that real art is is ultimately about transfer formation. As a matter of fact, there are two kinds of stories that I've identified. And one is a toxic story, actually, and people don't think of storytelling can be toxic. But I'll explain in a moment. And one is a healing story, a transformational story. It's also the highest form of artistry to me is to go to the transcendent. 

 

[00:01:52] So one thing I learned, as I have learned as a somebody who works with people so deeply on their personal narratives around one person shows and memoirs is the shadow of this kind of story. Work is self-indulgence from the ego. Or actually getting more attach to the victim's story or the story. Yet mostly the victim's story and the trauma story and reinforcing it by telling the story over and over and over. And interestingly, I had one client who was really an amazing client, but I start and very talented comedian, improvisational actor, but he was doing very deep trauma story. And what I started to realize was that rather than the story moving to a place of transcendence for him, he was getting really attached to doing it over and over and over and over. And I and I saw he was retaught traumatizing himself. And he was also getting validation from the audience as a victim. So this is real tricky. Knew what shadow stuff and many story workers and writing coaches, they and people at work with people in their books like I do. 

 

[00:03:14] But I know a lot of people in the literary world, other other story coaches, writing coaches, they don't quite know how to work with us. 

 

[00:03:21] And I mean, I've been working with this for a long time, but it's like behind the scenes, we all know it, but it's hard to identify it because it can be hard to verbalize it and help people move past it, because there's almost like the sacred thing around story where it's untouchable. 

 

[00:03:39] But the reality is, it's all about a framework in which stories helps. 

 

[00:03:44] And some years ago, I knew that I had to do something about this myself so that I could find a way to language with my clients what to do if I as their facilitator, which really means holding spaces, a healer for them to move through the story without looping, looping, looping on the trauma story to the point that it became their identification. Now the other type of story in the story in my work that I'm always working to move people towards is the story where they're actually telling the story not for the sake of the story itself, but to release an identity, to release trauma, to release. And suddenly as their own perspective, where they've gotten locked in on a story to live in, to the mystery, to oh open to the unknown, to live into a more expansive story for themselves. And when they do that, they're actually modeling that to the reader, to the audience, to who whoever they're serving them with their story. Because when we do tell a story, I feel. Yeah. A lot of my work is about the responsibility of telling stories and how they're helped because stories can retraumatize. And it doesn't mean there's not a place for the big breaking open. 

 

[00:05:09] But how is one how one is presenting it right, especially as a work of art, as a solo show, as a whatever. And one story brings us closer. And when actually locks people either more into egoic identity or even pushes people away from them, that's also a danger when somebody stuck in a victim story or what can be read as self-indulgent. They're doing it to achieve more intimacy. But what happens instead is they push others away. 

 

[00:05:37] Well, you know, as I was listening to you talk, I was. 

 

[00:05:42] Taken immediately to the number of clients that we've shared and how we've talked about how our work together is is going beneath the story, right? It's about finding the story under the story, and that's where the healing and transformation take place. And it actually is taking me back to the quote I shared that has to do with that. Life must be properly nourished and cared for before it can take root and begin to be differentiated. So there's a paradox here where oftentimes I think the stories that we tell are not healing stories, because in order to differentiate, we have to tap into our root system and a lot of stories take us away from our root system. So I guess what I'd like to say is that. 

 

[00:06:32] In my work, I find sometimes an over identification with the concept of healing. And a lack of connection and nurturing to the life that was passed on to us through our lineage and that it's the. 

 

[00:06:49] It's the it's the going low and going slow. 

 

[00:06:53] That helps us to reconnect to where we came from, that I think helps us sort of release. 

 

[00:06:59] Even sometimes what I would think of is like the panic ground around our story and our healing. Right. Like that somehow that we're not okay just as we are or that we're not able to be vulnerable enough to to to have the people behind us who passed life on to us parents, grandparents and ancestors. 

 

[00:07:23] Like with all that it costs them. 

 

[00:07:26] And with all that it cost us for life to be passed on. And so I've developed something called systemic relational help. That's a framework that it's really not new. It's my it's language that I'm ascribing to concepts are very old. So I think I think that Spiderweb, you know, in any system is like a web. You touch one part of that system itself by all other parts of the system. So really our work is looking at the relationships between the things in the Web and and really understanding that we are relational beings, that we are we are organisms that are part of a greater organism. And how do we come into greater conscious awareness around the things that drive us in life, the things that influence us? And I think, you know, it's about for me, healing now has more to do with consciousness than anything else. And then I and I go and that actually takes me plenty how we come full circle. Right. So takes me back 20 years to when I started working in hospice as a nurse and making documentary films around Death and Dying. And and and I remember having one of those big aha moments when I realized that some of the most significant healing I was experiencing was the healing of dying people. And just to see the health and wellness are on a continuum, but they don't define who we are as people, that healing can happen. In any bodily condition and that it's not just about the body, right? Healing is multidimensional. And and I think the more conscious we become of ourselves as multidimensional beings, the more we can see that the body is is a part of that. But it isn't the whole story. 

 

[00:09:26] How have you restoring healing in yourself? 

 

[00:09:32] Well, one thing I wanted to say as a story worker is, and including myself as a story worker, as a performing artist, as a writer and ways I've worked with story as well as healing and how they've interrelated in my own life. But one thing, just going back a minute, I wanted to say all stories. 

 

[00:09:55] In my experience, must be welcome like that, there's a sense of belonging around stories. And then it's appropriate developmental. Lee And I could say this in my own experience with truth of like really leaning into being an intimate storyteller, like my mentor, the late Spalding Gray, who I always honor in my work because I wouldn't have had a path or modeling without my early 19 year old reading of him and seeing his work and meeting him close with a college professor. 

 

[00:10:25] But anyway, so there were times because I didn't want to my earlier stuff to sound a little judgmental. There is a time when it's almost appropriate for us to acknowledge our victim story, right. It's very important to develop, mentally move like through these different layers of story. I needed to do that. There was a time I just needed to speak out. And most people do rage or anger. If there's been a perpetration in our families, there's been a trauma in our own lives, our disappointment, our fragility, our fear of meeting lives. But when we get in lockdown with them is the problem. So I want to say that the expression of them is never the problem and develop mentally. We move individually and culturally like the metoo movement I see as a very important turning moment in the story for a certain kind of women's rage that I certainly relate to to come out. But it's not the end of the story. That's when it gets tricky. When we think these movements or even our own stories are the end of things. I think about story work as like enlightenment. It's not a finite process. When I was young, I thought, oh, enlightenment was static, awakening was static consciousness. There was an end point in one time. And, you know, we're given these sort of guru stories. Right? We get there. Part of my own story has been to let go of that role model. Understanding that authority on the outside is is simply another illusion in many ways to me, each person to me. 

 

[00:12:00] We have the ability to awaken inside ourselves and we have the ability to work with story inside of ourselves. And the key. Right. 

 

[00:12:10] And the trick is not getting attached, allowing one and expressing and continuing to move to go deeper, deeper, deeper, to sink deeper into our relationship with our stories are bigger stories. And that's been so the movement of my soul over the. To use a constellation phrase over the last let's see, third twenty five years since I did my first one woman show and I had such a passion for that. And I always say to people, to my clients and people working with purpose to move toward your passion, your desire. I had such a heart's desire to do that show and it opened up everything for me. And yet the key has been to do another show and another show. And then monologues move into my role as a mentor and coach and continue to morph not only in my professional life, but in my personal relationship to story moving from doing a certain kind of therapeutic work aligned with that, to doing more Quantum what I would call work with the quantum field, with the ancestral work with you, with shamanic practices that I've I've I've imbued by my work with others in those fields. So it's like the story work of one's life, right. My tapestry of my story work has been to deepen and deepen and deepen it, open the circle of belonging rather than shut down in a moment in my life. And that is the danger of a single story of a single moment, an attachment to it, that the bigger story work is the opening, the circle for ourselves, for our lives, for the world of stories, and less than I want to say on that. For me, a lot of the personal work has been to let go of any idea of taboo or any idea of unspeakable if we're human and it's happened. It's essential as part of our development with that in the restring to be able to speak it and be heard in it. There's no story to Tabu or to. Marginalized to have a place in this. The phrase that has come to me for decades is the global circs story circle. And that's what I've been working to create a place of these circles expanding and what they can hold. And it's been my own path to to hold to to just speak my life very intimately and transparently. Day to day, not just in formal settings of being on onstage or writing a post on Facebook or something. But being willing to be intimate with my personal story in the moment has been my healing. And you, Camille. Let's turn this on you in terms of your work, particularly with Constellation work, as well as systems work and your death and dying work, like what has been your personal journey and understanding on that journey and insights on that journey? What is your lean in to healing and restoring your concept of healing over these last many decades? I've known you for the last two. 

 

[00:15:26] Well, you know, it's funny, like I knew exactly where I was going to come into this conversation, but just having you ask the question, I think took me a little bit deeper. And what came up for me is sort of this awareness that I have now that the path to wholeness. 

 

[00:15:42] Is is to is to be allowing of where we're broken. 

 

[00:15:49] And so for me, healing is in the way that you talk about story. For me, healing as a nurse and as somebody who's moving into the field of of humanizing mental health care and union psychology, I think. 

 

[00:16:08] Yeah, I think that it is it is all about belonging, like you and I are saying the same things and we're applying it in different ways. But in terms of kind of my healing story. 

 

[00:16:19] I think I had to. 

 

[00:16:23] Experience where I was different and unique. Before I could in my family system, even before I could come back to being part of the family, which speaks to. There are all of these different developmental stages that we go through. Right. And so I've come back to feeling very much a part of my family system. But I had to feel like sort of an ugly duckling or sort of an odd one out for a while in order for me to sort of feel comfortable with being that and being connected. And I and I agree with you. I think part of lineage work in every way is naming, not only naming our parents and our ancestors, but naming our teachers. And so I'd like to acknowledge Helen Newman, who was my teacher and family constellation work and to Bert Hellinger and and many of the others. We're going to sit here. Who influenced the work and the Zulu tribe in whatever ways they contributed to this work? 

 

[00:17:25] I want to acknowledge that and how that was really a big part of my healing after becoming a nurse. I would say that. Trusting my intuition has been part of my healing. I had a.. 

 

[00:17:39] I was given a diagnosis of a life threatening illness. And it was came on the heels of experiencing some extreme burnout and deep, deep chronic stress. Working as a hospice manager managed. I think at one point I was in charge of equal between two different offices in a a system that was very dysfunctional with a lot of heart and a lot of soul, but a lot of of it are relational kinds of dysfunction. And it took a toll on me. And and I just I was given instruction on how to handle this this potential, this this potentially life threatening illness. And I just knew intuitively that wasn't the right way for me. And so I didn't see a health care provider, clinician, physician, nurse practitioner for two years. I pretty much just rested and did the work that I could do that was not harmful to me for that two year period. And I think that that was what it was like, a restoration of something that needed to happen. And when I came out of it, then I went back into the system and I went to see a specialist who had been recommended to me. And when I went and saw the specialist teachers, he said, oh, you don't have that. So that was interesting that I didn't have it all along, but I was told I had it. And it took me into I mean, I literally got to the place where I was. 

 

[00:19:13] I was doing my death and dying work after being a hospice nurse and making documentary films on death and dying and then being a hospital manager and coming up with my own, the things that you are sort of where erosive of my own healing, which were a lot of my unseen patterns about being a rescuer, about, you know, being a caregiver and over caring and not taking care of myself in the ways I needed to and how that has played out really in every relationship in my life. And so that's been a lot of my own healing work. And. 

 

[00:19:55] So, yeah, I really have to say, I love, love, love what you said about belonging and about and I do think I can see that with you, that you're like a master of being able to hold any story from any person, wherever it like you meet people where they're at. Like that's one of the things that the teaching and in hospice work and it's stayed with me and my work is that we meet people where they're at. And when we can release judgment, I mean, I think judgment is one of the biggest enemies of healing. 

 

[00:20:30] Well, one of the things that comes immediately to mind that is about our relationship to each other. Both of our work in the world, but and also our personal lives as. Restoring culture to a more healing place to me, I believe, will start with circles of humans all over the world. 

 

[00:20:55] You know, I've had this vision like it's one of those subtle things in my mind's eye for 20 years since I started doing the work. And I would say it over and over. I see people in small circles, on stages all over the world sharing their stories. And since then, I mean, you and I created some of that work together. But I see this I see this going global. It's the small circles. 

 

[00:21:17] You know, I know I'm part of a beautiful online group. My friend Perdita Finn runs and her husband, Clark's friend, The Way of the Rose about the divine feminine and praying the rosary. And I'm not Catholic. I'm spiritual, but not in any framework. But I just want to say, people are coming along. We're seeing this is a movement. I have my own group. You and I are having a Facebook group. It like goes now beyond just stages. Right. But no matter where we are, the small circles of women I think about and just people. 

 

[00:21:51] I have a history in 12-Step programs, which is essentially a global story circle and the monologue work of people sharing around topic coming together, not just related to addiction or codependency or any other pathology, but just to or process, which is very, very valuable. But we've brought together groups of people around cancer, hospice, hospice, caregivers. What are the most meaningful things work I have ever experienced in my life was when we got to work with the Palestinian and Israeli and Arab Israeli girls who were brought all the way to New Mexico just so they could get in a circle together because that was it safe or possible where they lived. So they had to come thousands of miles to come on a circle together. And I remember we put them up on stage together sharing their stories. And here they were, three different groups. And this, of course, relates to global peace. It's like three different groups who came with all this fear of each other, see othering of each other, their families, of others, each other. There's individual and collective trauma and they're up on stage. Right. You remember that crying. And we'd gotten the meet red roses. And they were up there with their roses crying, holding hands after being in the circle, sharing their stories in front of about four or five hundred people together at the old sweetie center and then at the temple to holding hands, taking their vows, crying. 

 

[00:23:19] They were one, and they were bound by stories. They each had the opportunity to be heard in their stories. And then they were there hearing each other's ancestral stories. They were there hearing each other's multi-generational stories bearing witness. Each one of them got a voice. And I for my life experience, the whole thing is bring two people together in collaboration, in stories to deeply listen and be heard. We witness them by the audience because something magical happens then, right? There's a bridge of compassion and awakening, breaking open in each person who's not only sharing, but of witnessing and bearing witness to these stories. So for me, you know, restoring the culture means, you know, restoring our healing work means listening deeply, being taking the risk to be intimate, sharing stories and letting the stories move through, move through us into bigger and bigger circles of story. So that was what first came up, is this is the time of the circles of wisdom and stories coming together. Tell me from you what first came up. Because I know there's so many ways into this in terms of restoring the culture around healing. 

 

[00:24:41] I think for me, restoring the culture, it's side by side. You and I have so many parallels, right. Like you have your. And minds right next to it. And there's their cousins or their sisters or their one. But they have different expressions. Right. And I think for me, Reese, restoring. Healing in the culture has to do with intimacy and connection. And I think there's also the voice of the voiceless. You know, the feminine isn't always told in the in the story of the voice in language, because that's the left hemisphere of the brain and the relational half of the brain. I mean, of course, they're connected. It's not just right, left, right. They they have a relationship, fortunately. And then I think. I see circles of holding like you see circles of stories, I see us being able to heal with each other through close contact, through like restoring, restoring our human nervous systems and through resonance, close resonance with each other and through close resonance with the sensitive, highly sensitive relational fields that surround us and really learning how to tune in. And just to say that when I talk about mother, father and generational stuff, I also know that some people have stories that make that just feel completely unsafe and are out of bounds. And I get that and I totally embrace that and honor it. And I just want to say that there are ways to heal mother and father wounds without it being your mother and father. There are ways for us to get mother energy and to heal with one another through our nervous systems by us. As my friend says, lending his nervous system. I love that phrase. And and I just want to say that I feel like like healing is about coming closer or not moving further away. And holding center, I think learning how to hold center in these turbulent times, times of change and times of dissonance and crisis, it's like can we lean in where it's a bit uncomfortable instead of pulling away and and making the tension of offensive in our lives so taut that we become isolated and not just from others. That isolation happens inside, that we we actually reinforce the internal splits within us. And I think we're really being called right now to soften whether that softening through a dying practice, which doesn't mean you're necessarily dying, it means that you you understand that one day you will die. And it's, you know, like Stephen Levine's book, A Year to Live. If we all acted like we all sync up with the fact that we had the year to live, how would life change for us? You know, those are questions. 

 

[00:27:40] Those are really helpful practices that even though they're called dying practices, they really are living practices. Those are the practices that reinforce living. And for me, healing is about coming into these human lives before we die. Before we die. Are we allowed to be fully human and fully connected as a human being before we die? So that means we're not always ident so overly identified with the world outside of us that we don't get to come into our vulnerability. Are we able to not disappear by persons and just identify with archetypes outside of ourselves and be led around in ways that we're not conscious of that take us out of our humanity? 

 

[00:28:22] All of these things about how can we become human before we die? That's for me. That's the ultimate healing. Tanya, are you going to give some writing prompts now? 

 

[00:28:34] Yes, I was actually just thank you for that. It was wonderful. 

 

[00:28:38] And one of the things Camille and I are just sort of playing with and things may change and morph a little is we're just starting this and are but committed to showing up on these podcasts for a time being. We're playing around with ideas of really supporting you because we're really both facilitators as well as as mentors and speakers and writers and all the things we do to to have an interactive process where we're we're actually offering a writing. 

 

[00:29:12] And you may or perhaps want. And Camille, we'll be doing meditations as well and we'll decide if we're doing it every week or one of each every every week. We're going to try both today. But for you to start a journal perhaps around restoring your life here and you can in the journal you're invited to do the weekly prompts or writing Cordle's to to begin to read, story your own and through the writing, see what wants to bubble up your own story, your own wisdom, your own healing. So we're going to start that today in this one. So related to your own healing. 

 

[00:29:59] And I want to honor another one of my mentors and teachers, Natalie Goldberg, who wrote rap Writing Down the Bones is here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and actually worked with some of the young women with us on that exact project with the Palestinian and Israeli Arab, Israeli young women I was speaking of and came in and helped us facilitate. 

 

[00:30:18] But Natalie has written many, many amazing books, some writing, and her classic is Writing Down the Bones. So the way I work with people when you're journaling or free writing is through Natalie's sort of lens and guidelines, which is, you know, you may already do this, but it's important because do not do this on a computer because it actually uses a different part of the brain. 

 

[00:30:43] This is getting really rooted with your intimate self, your writing voice. They just pen and paper. So the premise of free right is to just basically do a timed writing and keep your hand moving no matter what. OK, so I'm going to give you two props, actually. One is a topic and the other one is going to be a kind of an inquiry. And if you want to time it and just keep your hand moving for five minutes to start, that's great. If you want to do 20 minutes, you just decide. But the timer is important because it keeps you safe by yourself in a container. So because this really is an exercise of letting yourself go deep, but then safely bringing yourself out. So the first prompt that you may want to write on if this speaks to you is what story? 

 

[00:31:38] Is getting my attention now. What story is getting my attention now? 

 

[00:31:46] And you can just right on that. And another one is. 

 

[00:31:51] And it actually is combining the last two podcasts. This one and the one before. My body, my body and just letting yourself go there five minutes or 20 minutes. Those as the two topics when an inquiry and one just to free ride on story that wants to reveal itself. 

 

[00:32:13] And Camille. Are you going to close this out now with a meditation? 

 

[00:32:16] Sure. So, again, this is going to be really brief, but it's something that you can take with you. And what I'd like you to do is close your eyes. 

 

[00:32:26] And I'd like you to focus and find the place of least resistance within your body and rest there. 

 

[00:32:35] And allow the natural breath to move in and out of your body. Just notice how we don't have to think about our breath. It happens even when we sleep. Like the tides of the ocean and the waves that move in and out. And I'd like you to imagine a river that flows at the pace of your life. And beneath this river is the slow river. The river beneath the river that I use in my work. And this river moves at the pace of your saw. And I'd like you to just stand next to this river beneath the river. And to really allow your body and your nervous system to feel that pace. And when we sink ourselves up with the river beneath the river, we sink ourselves with the naturalness of our being. And with nature herself, we find that everything that needs to happen happens. 

 

[00:33:53] There's plenty of time. 

 

[00:33:59] Because here we come into ourselves in a way where we are inside our. Medicine. And just allow yourself to do this when you feel yourself speeding up or feeling anxious and worried. Bring yourself to the river beneath the river. 

 

[00:34:22] Thank you. 

 

[00:34:26] No dispute. Well, thank you, everybody, for sharing with us this week and just acknowledging, my dear friend Camille or her beauty and wisdom here. It's such an honor to be in conversation with you, Camille. 

 

[00:34:38] Thank you. I feel exactly the same way. 

 

[00:34:41] I love everybody so much. Love. And you'll be OK. Yeah. 

 

Camille and Tanya speak on the topic of Re-Storying the Body from their homes in the first weeks of the quarantine in the U.S. In this episode they speak of the virus, and what it's triggering individually and collectively in relationship to our bodies and to the body of the earth. 

 

Topics and explorations in this episode include: 

• Vulnerability and The Body
• How we identify (or not) as a Body
• The Body as a Tuning fork
• The Stories We Carry in our bodies.
• The body as an instrument, presence in the body
• Ancestral trauma and grief in relationship to our bodies.
• Breaking through shame to embrace our own sexual nature.

 

• Subscribe to the podcast
• Join our Facebook Community Restorying the Culture: https://www.facebook.com/groups/restoryingtheculture
• Learn more about Tanya and Camille:
  • www.camilleadair.com
  • www.storyleaderglobal.com
• Support the podcast by donating to Living bridges: https://living-bridges.org/donate/

 

 

Episode Transcript

 

[00:00:00] Meal is great to jump in and share. 

 

[00:00:02] Ah, oh, that relates to our topic this week. 

 

[00:00:06] Hey, everyone. So this some this quote on restoring the body was from humming the blues. I cast English. 

 

[00:00:16] You're not a trophy. Not some kind of ornament, a decoration for the sky. You're a priest. You're the healer. You're the wild God who turns her ear toward heaven. Who digs her feet into the earth. Who whispers in the wind? 

 

[00:00:40] That quote felt really appropriate for where we're at in the world right now, just so we're here to to honor the body, to honor the body during a time when when things related to the body feel very fragile. And also to talk about how we can reach story the body as part of restoring culture. So we're going to start out with Tonya actually talking about where she sees people, her clients and people that she's been working with for decades. 

 

[00:01:12] How? How? 

 

[00:01:15] What is their relationship to the body in terms of story? 

 

[00:01:21] Thanks so much, Camille. And first, I just want to acknowledge that incredibly powerful quote that you shared. And I also want to acknowledge that it's March 22nd, 2020, and we are in about a week into for most people, some a little more, some a little less here in the US in to be asked to quarantine self-quarantine. Certain cities in the US have the state stay in place thing happening. 

 

[00:01:51] So I want to acknowledge we're in quite a moment with the body and in terms of the work, I've done so for really about the past two decades, starting with my own work as a solo performer, but then moving on and building space as a story worker with such a diversity of people. 

 

[00:02:09] I've worked with veterans. I've worked with over 100 people who've experienced cancer in their bodies as well as their beloveds, people with HIV AIDS. I've worked with marginalized voices. I've worked with prostitutes, gay, lesbian and transgender people. So I really Palestinian and Israelis with you on peace monologues many, many years ago. We did these incredible shows helping people open up their stories. And what I want to say in terms of the relationship to the body to me. 

 

[00:02:47] OK. Couple of things. 

 

[00:02:49] The the the issues that create the most suffering on the planet related to the body. I think if I look at if I can pull it back in a few different lenses. One is believing that one only is the body because one has not opened up to the experience of the soul, the deeper knowing of the soul and has been indoctrinated through religion, through you know, we know the whole other thing. We're always talking about patriarchy, educational systems, family systems. And I also want to acknowledge that it's trauma. And my experience with people, grief and trauma, unprocessed grief from trauma primarily that blocks the ability to a right connect with that greater sense of identity that we're soul, not just the body, that there's something deeper going on here in a field bigger than what we experience in the physical. So there's a lot about that. But also the grief and trauma lock people. Which is why it's so important to sign the words, to speak, to write through the stories, including writing through the grief, trauma, marginalized identities and painful experiences. Because when those things are unspoken and there's a sense of this is to tap to be spoken or this goes against my religion, to speak it or it goes against my family to speak it. That continues to keep people locked in to a relationship with their body. That is very frightening and very I think leads to a lot of other behaviors that don't serve, including addiction, including I mean, it can go in a lot of different directions. Right. So the biggest thing that I want to say is that trauma and grief and process locks the ability to tell the deeper stories and shift the identification in terms of yes. On the body. And that I'm a I'm as that poem said, I'm a priest in the body and the wildness in the body. 

 

[00:04:57] I'm the infinite. I'm connected to the infinite in the body. 

 

[00:05:02] And the body is not in contradiction to it. Actually, the body is the vessel to get there. And the stories are the vessel to get our so. Now, Camille, I can turn the question around to you in your work with ancestral healing, you have such an amazing background. You've been a clinician. You were formerly a hospice nurse. You've done so much work, including as a documentary filmmaker around Death and Dying. And you're you. You're my wonderful friend and you're you. And you're such a full being in person. Like what? What's your weigh in with this topic of, you know, the the aspect of the relationship to the body and those you've worked with in yourself? But primarily, let's say, those you've worked with through the years where where there's a calling for the topic for the identity to be restarted. 

 

[00:06:05] Well, I think a lot of what I've learned in working with people over the years, both people who are dying and people as a family, constellation, facilitator and teacher, I would say that if I start thinking about the dying first, you know, when people know that the physical body is is the temporary shell, they start to identify oftentimes with a deeper part of themselves. Right. I mean, that's the that's really the invitation at the time of death. And hopefully we do it before then. That was a lot of my work is how to bring the wisdom of what dying people go through that actually allows them to be more alive at the end of their lives. How do we bring that to the living? And that's relevant these times right now with the scare of the Corona virus, the real, very real threat to our human lives. And so I think, you know, there's a liberation that comes from that when people on the one hand. They they get in touch with that part of them that is greater than than just the physical body, and at the same time there can be a real tenderness and a real surrender to this body has been the beloved vehicle that's taken me through this lifetime. And having a deeper appreciation of it and also just how it's you know, it's very humbling that when we experience pain, you know, oftentimes we forget about how difficult it can be to be in a body. Right now. Everyone's. Obviously, we're all trying to avoid exposure to the virus. Right. I also have seen so many people at the end of life who can't wait to leave. They literally one of the most common things that hospice people will say is, I can't wait. When am I when can I go home? And that's and that's not a product of dementia. That really is a way you start to feel like you're almost there, but you're still in this audience. The heaviness of body and pain bodies are to almost weigh the soul down. And so I guess that. Then really leads me to my constellation work and what it's been like for the last 12 to 15 years to really be able to grow myself in that framework and in mind, it's changed my work. And so it's as. When you're in a constellation, as you know, Tanya, because you're such an incredibly highly sensitive constellation representative in your own right, that when you step into the knowing field in that way, your body becomes like a tuning fork for the soul beyond space and time. And so the body is an instrument. And I have been really working with more and more as this this this body has this incredible circuitry. We have you know, we have the the the intelligence of the microbiome in the gut. You know, we have the heart intelligence that has more receptors in the brain. Right. We're so used to relying on the brain, but we're realizing that we have more than just one intelligence and we're learning how to use that. 

 

[00:09:20] I have there's a physician, retired physician met with periodically to to do work with in terms of because we're both family constellation facilitators. And he has this wonderful process because lending his nervous system. And so it's he's taken what he has learned as a family constellation, representative and facilitator. And he actually brings that sort of into daily life with people in a presence in a way that's very healing. And so I think we're just now sort of skimming the surface for what's available in terms of healing and in terms of empathy through the body. We know that the brain has mirror neurons. 

 

[00:10:05] So I would say that we can actually be in service to the soul through the sacred instrument of the body. And I think that's the big, big shift of moving into a more feminine way of relating to one another in the body. 

 

[00:10:26] So I guess now what I'd love to hear from you, Tanya. 

 

[00:10:31] Because you're actually somebody who I feel like has you. You have such a big soul and a big spirit and you have found ways that I've seen really express that in the body and really inspiring to me. I think, you know, you have kind of you've had a radical path on many levels. And I would include the body in that way. And I just wonder then how do you re story your own body in terms of terms of restoring the culture? 

 

[00:11:04] Thank you for that. And I loved what you said. The body is a tuning fork and you're coming through the healers perception background. 

 

[00:11:13] Then I started as an actor and every actor knows this bar and I stumbled into my acting abilities. I guess it was always in me, but when it started, manifesting was right after my grandfather's death. And literally on the day he died, I was 14 years old and I'd been interested in acting before. It was the day of my first acting class and my mom said, should I count? So, you know, grandpa died in the night and I was reading this book. 

 

[00:11:47] Part of my soul was just like, no, I want to go. And then I was handed a monologue. Basically, I went outside of my body. I channeled all my own grief, loss, pain into this character. And I didn't remember anything. I went outside and I saw something greater, came through me. And all I remember was coming through. When the spotlight goes off, my first monologue with tears in my eyes and my classmates, maybe 10 other teen teen age people standing on their feet giving me a standing ovation. I didn't know what had happened, but at most actors can have a story like this. Usually it's a Genesis story when they. Really new acting. Was it because what we're doing as artists and musicians do this to performing artists of all kind. Dancers. Speaking of the audience, the embodiment. When we were at when we were really with our give. We're stepping out of the way in the body to allow the soul to use us as an instrument. And when you see great, great actors like Meryl Streep, for example, or somebody who's, you know, what's happening is an outcome of process, what's happening? See, there's an interest there. My work has been so much about the intersection of art and performing artists and as well as writers at expressing the stories through the body. What happens is with when it when it really happens is a Dow chemical and it's transcendent for the performer and the audience. And so a shift in consciousness, a healing a soul retrieval takes place for the performer. And their gift is that the the audience's experience it in some way to a solution. My own path has been reconciling and trying to really find my place in my body, which has always been super connected to the soul. The forms it's wanted to come through have shifted throughout time. There was a time when I didn't want to act anymore, but I wanted to use that energy for storytelling and something. I want to just get back to that. You said to me many years ago it was very influential to me and the way I continued to work with artists and and healers and and performing artists writers to help them get their stories out there, whether they're professionals or not to me. Everybody has the right to tell their story. That's something. When we were doing hospice monologues together, which was a collaboration many years ago that you and I did with. Caregivers and hospice professional people who just lost loved ones sharing their stories was something you said to me about that there had been some kind of research at the time that those who could tell their stories before they died had had an easier death, a more peaceful death. And to me, that comes back to the audy, because just like we don't the body doesn't deserve to be objectified. I think even in spiritual circles, it doesn't need to be marginalized. The body and the storytelling and being able to tell our stories to our bodies and really honor our unique human experience, not from a place of ego, but from a place of. This is me. I murdered. I live. This is my story. 

 

[00:15:28] And the way we humans make meaning of that, that could allow for a different kind of transition. It can also allow for a legacy and for teaching that can. 

 

[00:15:39] Be here in service after the body. This is no longer here. And so to me, that's. This is like this is some of the stuff that for me has been about restoring my relationship to the body. And I live so in the field of stories. And what I see through stories is the beauty of every person that the over identification with the body doesn't allow to be seen sometimes in the culture. So restoring to me is through our bodies, these sacred vessels. Every story is beautiful and the person becomes more in touch with their beauty. So from your point of view, what's what's been part of your relationship to yourself, your body, your own work, that that has shifted, that it's been about restoring how you hold body from the way the conditioning it all starts to where you're at. 

 

[00:16:33] I think I've been very impacted personally by the collective story of being a woman in a body, my relationship to beauty, my relationship to shame, my relationship to hiding. You know, sort of like how our vulnerability makes itself so apparent through the body. 

 

[00:16:54] I think that that's something that I've been working with my whole life. 

 

[00:17:00] But I I do know that there is some way in which the physical body holds the stories of our lives. And I also know from my family Constellation work that the physical body holds the story of the generations. So it's not just the story of this one life we carried the story of our ancestors in our bodies. And so the more we can tell the stories of our lives, we can talk about our memories and the more we get in touch with our ancestry, even if you don't have details and that there are extra exercises that I teach and lead my clients through and ways in which even if you don't know anything about where you come from in terms of your your ancestral lineage, there are ways to get in touch with that. And when you feel that in your body, there is a release that is freeing because on the one hand, you become freed from the thing that was holding you in silence. You also get free to build on all the resilience of all the generations that actually allowed each one of us to have life. All the hard work that we talk about generational trauma, and we very seldom talk about generational resilience. 

 

[00:18:16] But there's been a huge amount of resilience for, you know, my ancestors who left Sweden, likely because, you know, because of hardship and very cold temperatures. And, you know, I had ancestors who came over from Ireland around the potato famine. 

 

[00:18:33] And, you know, it's I mean, we think about all the people let through to pass life on. And there's a tremendous amount of resilience and there's also a tremendous amount of trauma. So I think it's really beautiful because now we have information, knowledge and tools for how to kind of work with that, the woven structure between trauma and resilience and that and how that has gone down inside of us. 

 

[00:18:59] I have had a real interest in learning more about female sexuality because I do believe that in a way there's there's been research that women are really cut off from their sexuality so that in some in some ways we have been cut off from the waist down. And and and that keeps us living a kind of half life. 

 

[00:19:19] So part of for me, this process of embodiment, this process of being more connected to Mother Earth has to do with also being more connected to like, you know, sexuality as our birthright. And that could be probably a whole other podcast. But just to say that I think sexuality is one of the beautiful aspects to being in body. 

 

[00:19:44] And I want to just say one more thing, and that has to do with this deep healing that I've been experiencing in the Constellation work, where when I'm it happens. It can have been virtually as well. 

 

[00:19:57] I work with people on zoo that when I've been in big groups, I oftentimes will have women sit down on the floor in a maternal line and they lean back into each other and hold each other and we can go back six, seven generations. And what starts to happen for these women when I do this process of re weaving and sometimes I even bring in mothers milk and I move the mother's milk through the line because you can see where the mother's milk was actually interrupted in the female line and then the sweetness of life has been interrupted. And so to be able to actually use our physical bodies in service of other people. It also is in service of ourselves that there is something this intersection about working with the body on behalf of the soul. 

 

[00:20:44] It is such a great tool and I think we're just waking up to that opportunity. 

 

[00:20:53] I love that cameo. And yeah. Very provocative. And it made me want to share a little bit about my own story in terms of both sexuality and the mother's milk. So, you know, and there is there's. And I love what you say. And it's been so much in my healing process to work with you and ancestral work and being my own kind of relationship to a soul retrieval around my mother and my grandmother and my great grandmother and my great grandfather, including even though he was the sexual abuse perpetrator of lines in the family. 

 

[00:21:34] It's like starting to end not with spiritual bypass. 

 

[00:21:38] I'm not suggesting that at all. Wherever people are at in their process, it's very important to work through whatever the fear, the anger or the sense of betrayal, all of that. It's the trauma and grief. But then what opens up is like this greater story. And to me, when we're tight trading our personal stories with the bigger story with our families and then taking that out into the community, the collective, the Cosmo's, we are multidimensional beings. And it's another way we've been marginalized as like. And even like me, it's like, well, I literally had to have had therapies that have kind of made it seem like all my traumas, my trauma. And I'm just going to have to be in that trauma for the rest of my life. We want to validate the anger. We want to make that person a devil or a monster rather than really going deep in us. And it's really about the deaths, because on a certain level, we can say some people that objectify them as monsters. That's why we have these relationships of objectifying both men and women for very different reasons. And that's part of the cut off from our real sense of power in the body, connection to the earth, connections to our lineage. I knew what I was saying. So when I was born, my grandmother said to my mom, my mom had an impulse to want to breastfeed me. And this was in 1964. And my mom, we lived in a family home for generations. And, you know, all that came along with that. Some of it was opinions from the elders that may or may not have served. But my mom's impulse was to breastfeed me and my grandmother, my nanny, who I love. She passed on about eleven years ago and I feel very connected to her and foster her these days. But she said to my mom, you wouldn't want to do that because people would think we didn't have the money to buy formula. Right. And this is a common story I've heard as a story worker. There was some version of that shame. You know, we do we know like in terms of a picture of the body of the world in Africa. You know, nicely and, you know, corporations shaming women with very little money. You know, all of that. And so when I breastfed my daughter Chloe, till she was I breastfed her until she wanted to stop, which was around three years old. And I just surrendered my body to my daughter's desire and to her need and to her want more than just the need. It came at a certain point she could live without the breast milk. But it was a wanted desire and it was a huge surrender. It was the biggest surrender of my life with my body and the sense of letting my bra breasts be stretched out. And like all the things you were talking about. But what was very interesting to me is after that time period, I came into my body. I got in my body in some ways for the first time in life. And that's how my daughter, you know, that was like this reciprocal relationship that I felt more on my body, one when I actually births her. But that was part of birthing myself into my body and then the breastfeeding and not to at all shame anybody or say this is the path for everybody. I just personally, though, that is that breaking the the the thing of some generations being cut off from the actual breast, not from the mother, from the early connection to the mother and how that restored something in me. And interestingly, right. Of you know, a few years after that, I had been in relationships with men for my whole life and I had my first sexual relationship in my late thirties with a woman. And it was the first time I felt pleasure sexually. And it was because I was cut off from in my head. And I'm not I don't identify as a lesbian, nor do I need to identify as straight. I've had experiences with men and with women. And I'm currently married to a transgender person, female to male. What I want to say was I was fluid and I was longing to have something returned to me that I didn't even know I wanted because it was so out of my thoughts about myself and my body and what I should have that I wouldn't have even known that that unknown could bring me such pleasure. It it brought me into a journey that began in my late thirties. And I really feel that the most sexual pleasure I've had, as well as connection to my body, has been through about 38 to now at 55 and not totally linearly. There were times when I did not feel that and but had landed in my sexual wholeness in some relationship, in how I mothered and being in my body and the way I surrendered to serve my daughter and not in that serve the way we are conditioned to serve men and remove ourselves for pleasure. It was just a big surprise, and it came from a return to my feminine. And there was something that healed in my maternal legacy for sure. 

 

[00:27:00] Beautiful, I love. The courage you bring is sharing. I really want to say I appreciate so much about you and I want to go back to something that you said in the very beginning. 

 

[00:27:14] And then we're going to we'll wrap up the show. 

 

[00:27:17] But when you talked about the sexual perpetrator, your family, your grandfather and your great grandfather and how that was something that you were even taking deeper and I just want to say that is so politically incorrect and it's so courageous to say that from a family Constellation's standpoint. What I want to just contribute to that is it takes so much courage to go to the point of disruption to one's line. And you find that. And I can guarantee you what I always find as a facilitator is that at that point of disruption, where we find a perpetrator, there's always a big story for the person that includes suffering and where the lineage was broken for them. So it's not about blame. It's not about it's not even about forgiveness. It's about going in and reordering the system, bringing help to a system that has been disturbed, where something has been missing and something needs to be seen and acknowledged. And it's just such deep work. And I admire the degree to which you've been willing to do that and your own healing. And it's something that you and I have been walking out together as friends for many years in our families, but also in our friendship. 

 

[00:28:37] Like, you know, the all those things that apply to a system, a family system, apply to a friendship, apply to a job, apply to a community. 

 

[00:28:46] So to be able to learn these principles is a big part of, I think, how you and I are restoring the culture by restoring. I would say that I have looked a lot around sexuality and sexual health, and I've seen the wounding in both men and women around sexual shame around rolls around how the brain has been wired through visualization such as pornography. I think that that's a big thing in our culture. And it actually connects us from the body and it and it reinforces objectification, which makes us lonely. And I think for me, intimacy has become really a big part of my work when I talk about re learning human connection. That's really the work of intimacy. That is my that's really the tagline of all of my work is how do we work with the split? Both the internal split and the splits outside of ourselves. 

 

[00:29:45] And I think I'll just share the story I had of I was receiving a massage and I was in another city for work and it was a massage therapist who has a really broad set of skills in terms of healing. And then I remember he put his hands on my stomach and massage therapist. Doug usually massage the abdomen anymore like the body. You know, we've like I used to be a massage therapist, so I know how it's changed and I know how more boundary it is. 

 

[00:30:22] And we compartmentalize the safe areas and the not so safe areas. And the draping has even changed. And I remember he might my bare abdomen was exposed and I remember he just looked at my belly and he just said, this is where you held life. And he was so loving and so honoring of my female vessel as a woman in her 50s who's who's given birth, that I literally started crying. And I cried and cried and cried. And and he held that was so some tenderness. And I'll never forget that. So I just also want to say that. Love. 

 

[00:31:05] Bringing love and respect to the body. 

 

[00:31:10] It has tremendous healing potential. And we oftentimes know sensuality. 

 

[00:31:17] Yeah. I mean, I couldn't agree more. Camille and like this whole restoring the body of our individual bodies is restoring the world to me. Like everything micro is macro. And I think about Eve Ensler is amazing play that she wrote after she had a very in cancer when she really was shifting her relationship radically and making some big connections. And it's called the body of the world. And she was speaking about like the women in the Congo. Went gone through some unbelievable abuse. I mean, the depth of the abuse of the rapes and this sexual abuse, it's seen as a metaphor in her own body. But she was connecting the micro macro. And I want to say and again, never is bypassed, but by the way, to reef story that my family story about the sexual perpetrator, my family took over 20 years of me addressing it. And he did come to me and meditations as a little boy weeping and weeping, weeping. And I couldn't turn away from this little boy. I had to bring that little boy in my heart. And I could see, although I may never know the details, the bigger story there. Right. So and it took a lot of work and it involved killing my mother wound. And I won't get too far into that. But the micro is the macro. If there's anything we're learning in this moment. Right. With the Corona virus, we are a global body as well as the individual body. We are one in we're being taught that in a very real way. And all our stories and responses impact everything. So this is a time, you know, to. Honor our body. Take care of our body. Pleasure our body. Restore our relationship, like you said, the softness, being gentle with ourselves and the body. Because how else are we gonna learn how to restore our relationships with others and with the Mother Earth herself? So it's a big time, isn't it? Yeah. And so just sending everybody so much love and tenderness. And we are walking out news stories together. We are being called to walk into the unknown and into the mystery. And I was just sharing with Camille this morning. I woke up knowing that after hearing about this for so many years, feeling good in myself, the divine feminine or the feminine feminine essence, however you frame that, the new feminine that's been emerging on the planet. It is. It's not like that will be driving less in the future. It is here. And the divine feminine includes the sacred masculine. Really important to say the masculine. It's not the time for us to turn around and objectify or ostracize or cast out the masculine. It's bringing in a new way of being feminine. Has a place just like any real story circle or ancestral circle for everyone and everything. So we're being asked to create new noli ways of being container's. So just something everybody so much love.