Scattered Tribe

In today's episode, we investigate how often we over privilege vulnerability, and how personas are stuck with a bad rep. We examine how important personas are as well as the magic they hold as we start to peek at the face that wears these mask.

By exploring how our personas allow us to operate in the world (and the myriad of rules that culture, communities, and families all have for us), we get to see how important it is to protect our vulnerability from those who won't respect it, and share it with those who will.

For more Scattered Tribe, follow us at: (FB & Insta), and subscribe to the weekly insights newsletter, www.scatteredtribe.com/connect

HOSTED BY: Jenn Fredette

In today's episode, we dive into a subject that can get pretty uncomfortable for a lot of us: family. More specifically, we examined the ways in which family teaches us the first rules of relationship.

By examining how our earliest relationships were formed, we learn about how what we needed as children doesn't mysteriously go away. Attachment theory teaches us so much about what we are drawn to in the here and now.

Ready to go deeper?

* Low intensity: check out the evidence based quiz Jenn mentioned* Medium intensity: look at the patterns in your current relationships and start considering how your attachment style might be playing out (you can read more about attachment here and here* High intensity: start getting serious about working with someone who can reflect and help you have a new kind of experience in relationship. You can read more about how therapy works here and how to find a killer therapist here.

For more Scattered Tribe, follow us at: (FB & Insta), and subscribe to the weekly insights newsletter, www.scatteredtribe.com/connect

HOSTED BY: Jenn Fredette

In today's episode, we explore how the communities we belong to—both those we choose and those that were chosen for us—impact how we make sense of the world and our place in it. Specifically, we dove into how music can shape us as belonging vs. being an outsider in a variety of settings. What we listen to tells a story about us, and often shapes who we’ve been and who we want to be.

By examining what the music we're drawn to says something about us, we are able to look at how community influences our story. Music is how we connect–to ourselves, and more significantly this week, how we connect to others.

We shift gears a little this week, and Jenn somewhat awkwardly interviews herself, examining the following questions.

* What does your music say about you?* What themes do you notice come up again and again?* What stereotypes/personas of your musical communities do you find yourself leaning into? resisting?* How has music helped you connect? Kept you on the outside?

Now it's your turn! Journal, voice-memo, make Spotify playlists, awkwardly interview yourself too, and examine your music impacts you and your place in the community.

Don't forget to subscribe! Next week, we're getting to what is often at the heart of the story for most of us: family and all the profoundly profane ways they can lift you up and fuck you up.

Ready to go deeper?

* You can check out a playlist of some of the songs Jenn mentioned (and plenty of others) here.* You too can buy the grand rebellion Frank Sinatra CD (and no, there isn't any digital analogue as far as we can tell).* And don't forget to reach out on social media (Instagram & Facebook) or via email to share how you answered the questions above!

For more Scattered Tribe, follow us at: (FB & Insta), and subscribe to the weekly insights newsletter, www.scatteredtribe.com/connect

HOSTED BY: Jenn Fredette

In today's episode, we explore how a seemingly passé concept of sin, masquerades under everyone's new favorite buzzword “perfection.” We dive into how monoliths (even one's we disavow) still shape our lives in significant, and sometimes heartbreaking ways.

To back that train up a bit though, we're still exploring how we form and understand our own story by looking at how external factors influence us. This week, we examine culture impacts our story, next week we'll explore how smaller subsets of culture aka community influences our story, and then in two weeks, we'll go deep (fingers crossed we survive) and we'll consider how our close kin (read: family of origin, family of choosing, and close friends) shape our the skeleton of our story in ways that it can be bone-achingly painful to wake up too.

But today, we gotta admit that it's kind of ridiculous to think we can discuss the entire impact of culture on our story. Talking about culture is a crazy huge endeavor (like, literally, it's 98% of what all humanities departments think, write, and present about). In order to give us a taste of how culture influences us in unseen ways, we break it down:

* Culture is composed of specific monoliths, uniform and seemingly unfeeling when you glance at them from the outside, but their bursting with life and lots of mess when you're in them.* Religion, a kind of monolith, comes in many different flavors and shapes, but all are focused on understanding if there is something beyond us (a person, spirit, river, or amorphous monster) and what relationship with that divine thing/person/idea we ought to have. * Religion then introduces a specific concept: “sin” to mediate between us and the divine other. And even when we reject religion, many of the concepts it introduces still exist in subtle ways. Sin becomes rebranded.

Don't forget to subscribe because next week Jenn will dive into how boy bands have profound truths to teach us about what it means to be in community (and how awkward and painful it can be to try to fit in when what we really want is to belong).

Ready to go deeper?

* Jenn struggled (valiently) to remember the term ozone layer.* If you're wanting to freak yourself out, then you can read more about how the insects are dying off here.* You can dive deeper into reading about perfectionism and shame by checking out some of Jenn's favorite resources. We'd suggest starting first with Brene Brown's immense brilliance; hang out and check out John Bradshaw's classic Healing the Shame that Binds You. If you love learning, but know you need to buckle down and actually start applying all of this stuff, then check out Jon Acuff's Finish for some practical advice of how to move through shit when you're stuck in the perfectionistic rut. For those of you who dig clinical stuff, Jenn particularly loves Hewitt, Flett, and Mikail's Perfectioni...

Hey friend!

On today's episode, we explored:

* How to recognize what your dominant story is (and what the hell a dominant narrative is);* By really examining the elements that compose that story, while also…* Appreciating the unconscious genius that wants to tell you that that’s the only story that exists.

Often we become so identified with our own story (or set of stories) that we tell, that we lose sight of how being human is so much more complicated than just one or a dozen stories can convey. BUT, digging deep into what the dominant narratives we tell ourselves and tell about ourselves, allows us to tug on the threads of what more exists within us.

In each story we tell, there are the conscious elements (the who, when, where, the drama that spices it up, and the frame that contains it all); the unconscious elements (the POV, the tone, the rhythm of your unique voice and the mood that you evoke in others); as well as how we begin to integrate the two together (which literary critics like to call discovering the theme–that golden nugget that puts it all in context and often leads to epiphanies).

Next week, we’re going to start to look at what the landscape of our stories are—we’re going to examine how we have been taught, in several interlocking frameworks, how to make meaning.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, in order to grow, you gotta find ways to apply this shit.

I want to encourage you to dig into who the major elements of your story are and play with what would change if those things changed, like:

* Examine Your Setting: Take a different route to work, sleep on a different side of the bed, eat at a place you never thought you’d eat at, buy your groceries at a store you never go too.* Get Friendly With Your Life's Characters: Get curious about the people you do know, and those you don’t. Ask questions, allow yourself to meet someone new.* Lean into Conflict: Spend a day holding an opposing view to one of your most deeply cherished values. If you’re a liberal Democrat, try leaning in to imagining what it’s like to be a conservative Republican. If you’re an optimist, trying being the most pessimistic person ever. Buy a book, read an article, watch a YouTube video, as you imagine being someone vividly different from you. Even the rabbit hunters amongst us occasionally broke bread with our neighborhood Bunnies.

For more Scattered Tribe, follow us at: (FB & Insta), and subscribe to the weekly insights newsletter, www.scatteredtribe.com/connect

HOSTED BY: Jenn Fredette

Hey dude!

In today's episode, we focus on what a story is, and how we tell the stories of our lives communicates way more, if we know how to hear the unspoken layers. More specifically, we talked about:

*

How story is a container, that holds all sorts of fragments of truth and shards of the ‘who I want to be and just am not.'

*

If story is the container, then there are definitely different kinds of containers that hold not just our stories, but who we know ourselves to be. These are like Russian nesting dolls, the smallest having the least space to hold things other than itself, but also in many ways feeling the most solid, and real.

These include personal narratives, myths, and archetypes:

*

Personal narratives are the ways in which we frame our stories that aren't nearly as dramatic/fun/adventurous as we wish they had been. They are where we begin to move from ‘this happened and then that happened' to ‘and when this happened, it meant…and then when that happened, I felt, you felt, we felt…this.' Personal narratives give us a small measure of control because when we tell the story, we begin to own the story.

*

Myths take that control to the next level. The story begins to evolve, we tell it in ways that while still true, might become less factual. Myth longs to be more than what actually is. It wants to proclaim that “I am so goddamn important that I will obscure myself completely from this story that who I tell you I am is only a tiny, insignificant piece.”

*

Myth and story both seek to contain the narrative, to control it, so we can communicate to others who we are (even when we don't necessarily know who we are, or even who we want to be). Archetype is too large to control. It holds more than we could ever imagine, and it can be held in our mind with a single symbol. No other words are necessary.

In order to grow, you have to apply this shit. You could..

*

Pay close attention to your same ol', same old. What books do you find yourself returning to again and again? Shows that you’ve binged more times than you can count? What routines sooth you? Drive you nuts?

*

What phrases do you hear yourself using over and over again? What might they mean (don’t stop at just one meaning, mind map that shit, and explore as many possibilities as you can ring out, and then try for two or three more).

*

Get curious about how these frames/themes/stories ground you, and if you’re a brave badass, consider how even your most beloved stories of self may be imprisoning you.

For more Scattered Tribe, follow us at: (FB & Insta), and subscribe to the weekly insights newsletter, www.scatteredtribe.com/connect

HOSTED BY: Jenn Fredette

Hey dude!

In this very first episode, Jenn rambles some about the power of prosciutto and asking random strangers in grocery stores how they're doing, before diving deeper into the vision for Scattered Tribe and the plan of exploration for this year.

Over the next thirteen episodes, we're going to dive deep into story–what it is, how it shows up in our lives, and how we learn to tell our story in a way that is not only authentic, but also leaves us a ton of time to grow.

Ready to go deeper?

* You can read more about Sophia:

* Gnosticism, Christianity, and Sophia (Dept of Religious Studies at Kenyon College)

* The Gnostic Goddess, Female Power, and the Fallen Sophia (by Max Dashu)

* The Thunder, Perfect Mind (discovered in the Nag Hammadi library, translated by George W. MacRae)

* Check out the delicious pizza recipe Jenn was rambling about in the top of the hour.

For more Scattered Tribe, follow us at: (FB & Insta), and subscribe to the weekly insights newsletter, www.scatteredtribe.com/weekly

HOSTED BY: Jenn Fredette