Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

We begin this week with Hollie Holden's poem about the ways we perform in order to belong, and the counterpoint of an unconditional love by which we might welcome ourselves and others. We explore the ways that a deeper belonging with one another arises from encountering ourselves and others with a kind of grace and attention to the sacred and inherent value of every person. The conversation asks us to do the complex and often difficult work of building cultures where genuineness is welcome, where we can fall apart and still be seen, and where we extend to one another the precious, unwavering love that knows us as inherently whole even when - especially when - we disagree.

This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn explore living with depth, attentiveness and care. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.

Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction and Reflections
03:14 Learning and Community with Us
06:09 Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
09:09 Wonder and Awareness
17:08 Adapting Our Minds to the World
29:24 Parenting and Wonder

Our source for this week:

Just the way you are 

It seems to me that, as we grow, 
Our masks get more and more clever. 
We try each one out, wondering - will they love me like this?
Will they love me if I’m insightful 
and sparkly 
and helpful 
and Zen 
and kind 
and deep 
and clever 
and shiny 
and loyal 
and strong?

Will they love me if I take on their pain? if I carry the whole family? if I hide my needs and use my resilience to keep everyone else centered?

I try on all these masks and - even when they feel good to wear and everyone does seem to love me like this and this and this - 
A question keeps rising to the surface like a forgotten whale who has never left me.

And she wants to know who I am when nobody’s around.
She loves my pajamas and the softness of my tummy and the way I talk to myself when I’m choosing what to wear.
She loves me when I’m grumpy in the morning and when I doubt myself and when I remember to ask for help – and when I forget.
She loves me in a way that makes the masks less and less interesting and less and less necessary.
And she only ever asks me one question - this whale who’s never left me:
Can you soften more today into the Love that loves you just the way you are?

Hollie Holden
July 2026

Photo by Jonathan Hsu on Unsplash

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Join Us Live in 2026

Turning Towards Life Live Season 4, from March 2027
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live

Learn Coaching with Thirdspace

Foundations of Integral Development Coaching
Our two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.

You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching

You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching

And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course


Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

We are invited into Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's philosophy of wonder and radical amazement. It's a call to break free from habitual thinking and approach life with fresh curiosity. We explore together what it is to take nothing for granted and to practice 'maladjustment' to what we already know and feel sure about. And through all of that we invite ourselves, and you, into deepened care for all that surrounds us all.

This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn explore living with depth, attentiveness and care. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.

Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction and Reflections
03:14 Learning and Community with Us
06:09 Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
09:09 Wonder and Awareness
17:08 Adapting Our Minds to the World
29:24 Parenting and Wonder

Our source for this week:

The greatest hindrance to knowledge is our adjustment to conventional notions, to mental clichés. Wonder or radical amazement, the state of maladjustment to words and notions, is, therefore, a prerequisite for an authentic awareness of that which is. Standing eye to eye with being, we realize that we are able to look at the world with two faculties-the first we try to explain or to adapt the world to our concepts, through the second we seek to adapt our minds to the world…

Wonder is a state of mind in which we do not look at reality through the latticework of our memorized knowledge; in which nothing is taken for granted. Spiritually we cannot live by merely reiterating borrowed or inherited knowledge. Inquire of your soul what does it know, what does it take for granted. It will tell you only nothing is taken for granted; each thing is a surprise, being is unbelievable. We are amazed at seeing anything at all; amazed not only at particular values and things but at the unexpectedness of being as such, at the fact that there is being at all.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Photo by Anuj Yadav on Unsplash

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Join Us Live in 2026

Turning Towards Life Live Season 4, from March 2027
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live

Learn Coaching with Thirdspace

Foundations of Integral Development Coaching
Our two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.

You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching

You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching

And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course


Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

We begin our 10th year of Turning Towards Life with a poem about the capacity of our own hearts to meet the newness of each day, and the love and grief of living. We explore how we can find a way to know our own vastness, capacity and the inherent dignity and sacredness of being a person, and see it in one another... as an antidote and alternative to a world that seems to ask us to be afraid of one another rather than see one another for the precious, irreplaceable life that we each are.

This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn explore living with depth, attentiveness and care. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.

Episode Overview
00:00 Celebrating a Decade of Connection
02:54 The Gift of Each New Day
06:00 Limitlessness of the Heart
12:04 Understanding Our Completeness
18:07 On Connection and Community

Our source for this week:

Today is a new day.

Every morning the sun rises. 
There is always another train that comes if I stand on the platform. 
Another breath arrives without me even asking it to. 

My children wake with the kind of enthusiasm that only newness can bring. 
So they’re all the evidence I need. 
That it’s given, the new day. 

And what is a life other than a collection of many, many new days. 
And then I start to think about if the days were few. 
And maybe they are. 

We never know. So each day is new. 
Each day is precious. 
Each one belongs to us. 

And my goodness how we forget this. 
How asleep we can be to the gift of the day. The hour. The minute that’s given. 

All my stories getting in the way of receiving life. 
Getting in the way of remembering. 
Protecting myself maybe from that feeling that we really don’t know. 

Our days are indeed numbered. 
So what shall we do ? 
Love. Step forth. Have faith ?

Someone said ‘my heart is full, but oh wait a second, there’s room for more’. 
And in that moment, I realised that the fullness of a heart is not even possible. 

They are massive, vast, huge, crazy with bigness. 
Even if we tried to fill them up we can’t. 
There is no end to them, that’s why. 

And so grief can’t break us, because our hearts have no edges. 
What holds us back from feeling it all is a mistaken understanding that there’s a limit. 
But there isn’t. 

So with hearts that have no boundaries, we can love and love and love, 
and grieve and grieve and grieve. 
And our joy has no end either. 

So here we are. What shall we do ? 

Cups of tea make sense, having a cuddle, writing a poem, 
letting the sunlight dance on my warm skin and feel the rain soaking through my trousers. 

Lizzie Winn
1st October 2026

Photo by simon on Unsplash
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Join Us Live in 2026

Turning Towards Life Live Season 4, from March 2027
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live

Learn Coaching with Thirdspace

Foundations of Integral Development Coaching
Our two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.

You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching

You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching

And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course


Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

We celebrate nine years of Turning Towards Life with a conversation about the relationship between life's everyday demands and a deeper, more stable presence that we can rely upon. We explore how remembering what lies beneath can help us to meet life's complexity as active participants, grounded in something mountainous and enduring that holds us no matter how turbulent our circumstances become.

This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn explore living with depth, attentiveness and care. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.

Episode Overview
00:00 Celebrating Nine Years of Turning Towards Life
02:52 The Essence of Conversation and Connection
06:11 Exploring Mary Oliver's Poem
11:30 The Mountainousness of Life
17:24 Finding Joy Amidst the Drama
23:36 Slowing Down
29:28 Closing Reflections

The Poet Dreams of the Mountain by Mary Oliver

Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountains, slowly, taking
The rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
Under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
That we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
And peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.”

Mary Oliver
Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

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Join Us Live in 2026

Turning Towards Life Live Season 4, from March 2027
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live

Learn Coaching with Thirdspace

Foundations of Integral Development Coaching
Our two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.

You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching

You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching

And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course


Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

An episode about the deep wellsprings of aliveness within each of us that we might remember in ourselves and one another as we face crisis, uncertainty, or simply as we navigate ordinary moments in our lives. How our presence matters: to ourselves, to each other, and to life itself, and how this is the very ground from which we grow into the people we're becoming.

This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn explore living with depth, attentiveness and care. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.

Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction
02:46 The Story of Today's Source
06:05 She Is Fireweed
08:59 What's Fireweed?
12:08 Circles
14:59 Roots
17:54 Aliveness
20:59 Storytelling
24:04 Interconnectedness
26:52 Hope
30:04 Conclusion

She is Fireweed

I ask her what makes her indestructible, 
She says it’s her roots. 

I ask her what her roots are like, 
She says that they go so deep, 
so dark, so close to the earth’s core. 

I ask her how her roots got so deep, 
She says that while the sun shone 
she received so much light 
it went all the way down to her toes. 

I ask her how she received so fully, 
She says that her pink opened itself to 
joyful expression with every sunrise. 

I ask her how her pink got so vibrant, 
She says that she saw the blue of 
the sky and did her best to match it, to join in. 

I asked her why the sky helped her vibrancy, 
She says that the big sky blue connects her to life, clear seeing and aliveness as she looks at it. 

I ask her about being so full of life, 
She says all the ways I connected myself to life help me when fire comes to scorch the surface of the earth. 

I ask her about the scorching surface, 
She says that fires are part of nature itself, 
And that deep roots are what it takes to 
preserve life while the fires bring the skyline to seemingly nothing.

I ask her about the nothingness, 
She says it’s never nothingness, there’s always Life beneath, ready to spring back when the conditions are ripe. 

I ask her about regeneration, 
She says that’s what she’s made of. 

I ask her what she’s made of, 
She says she’s actually love and that
She works just like love does. 

Ever present, ready to expand, ready to breathe life back in. 
Trustworthy, life filled, joyful and shining. 

Lizzie Winn

Photo by Herbert Grambihler on Unsplash

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Join Us Live in 2026

Turning Towards Life Live Season 4, from March 2027
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live

Learn Coaching with Thirdspace

Foundations of Integral Development Coaching
Our two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.

You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching

You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching

And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course


Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

In a time when despair and apocalyptic thinking dominate public discourse, what does it mean to remember our capacity for imagination, astonishment and wonder? Can we find alternatives to the pull toward cynicism and fear and learn to astonish others and ourselves into a state of genuine aliveness? An invitation to step forward with courage to remember that we are far earlier in the human story than we think.

This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn explore living with depth, attentiveness and care. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.

Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
03:00 The Power of Unplanned Conversations
06:22 Exploring the Source: Astonishment
12:00 Falling Apart and Becoming Whole
19:43 Astonishment in Our Lives
27:10 Responding to the World
34:55 Conclusion

Our source for this week:

On the mountain tonight the full moon
faces the full sun. Now could be the moment
when we fall apart or we become whole.
Our time seems to be up—I think I even hear it stopping.
Then why have we kept up the singing for so long?
Because that’s the sort of determined creature we are.
Before us, our first task is to astonish,
and then, harder by far, to be astonished.

From ‘Astonishment’ by Galway Kinnell

Photo by Jorge Gardner on Unsplash

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Join Us Live in 2026

Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from 16 September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live

Learn Coaching with Thirdspace

Foundations of Integral Development Coaching
Our two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.

You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching

You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching

And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course


Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

How genuine relationship requires us to release our need for the ones we love to remain unchanged, and grief and love as two inseparable dimensions of the same human experience.

This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn explore living with depth, attentiveness and care. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.

Episode Overview
00:00 The Nature of Love
04:38 Growth and Fluidity
08:30 Friendship Dynamics, Seasonal Changes
12:48 Acceptance in Relationships
15:37 The Challenge of Accepting Change
18:32 Navigating Grief
28:40 Letting Go
32:04 The Interplay of Grief and Love

Our source for this week:

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Photo by Hrvoje_Photography on Unsplash
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Join Us Live in 2026

Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from 16 September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live

Learn Coaching with Thirdspace

Foundations of Integral Development Coaching
Our two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.

You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching

You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching

And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course


Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

This episode celebrates the life and work of Wendell Berry, the  poet and farmer who died this week. Berry's brief  poem "The Real Work,"  invites us to recognise that when we no longer know what to do or which way to go, we may have arrived at our genuine calling. A conversation for all of us navigating confusion, loss, or disorientation, and wondering about how we might bring ourselves when we no longer know the way.

This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn explore living with depth, attentiveness and care. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.

Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction to Wendell Berry's Legacy
03:06 Surface and Depth
05:58 The Real Work
08:47 Finding Meaning in the Impeded Stream
14:05 Others and Navigating Life's Challenges
14:53 The Beauty of Not Knowing: A Personal Reflection
17:37 The Song of Life in Chaos
21:00 On Connection
23:18 Responding to Life's Challenges Together
26:55 The Transformative Nature of Uncertainty
29:53 What is the Real Work?

Our source for this week:

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Wendell Berry (1934-2026)

Photo by Jeffrey Hamilton on Unsplash

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Join Us Live in 2026

Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from 16 September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live

Learn Coaching with Thirdspace

Foundations of Integral Development Coaching
Our two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.

You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching

You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching

And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course

Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

A conversation about meeting one another's 'falling apart', the cultural pressure to stay buttoned up, the fertile potential hidden inside our moments of undoing, and what it means to be a person who can welcome and hold space for another's becoming rather than trying to put the lid back on. How genuine care for another might involve staying faithful to the life inside them, which is something deeper than their current circumstances, their current identity, or the version of them we first fell in love with.

This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.

Episode Overview
00:00 Welcome
02:56 Exploring Total Breakdown by Chelan Harkin
05:52 Embracing Undoing
09:05 Cultural Norms and Fears
12:09 Keeping It Together vs. Falling Apart
15:03 Finding Safe Spaces for Breaking Apart
18:04 Context and Timing in Personal Growth
20:56 Creating Relational Safety for Vulnerability
24:01 The Moral Responsibility in Relationships
27:13 The Power of Seeing Each Other's Life
30:06 Conclusion and Invitation to Engage

Our source for this week:

Total Breakdown

June 2026 (Vol. XXXIX, No. 6)

"She's having a total breakdown,"
one put together
and very self-satisfied seed
with no cracks in it
whispered to another
about a third seed who had begun
to germinate.

"She's completely falling apart—
her life is a mess!"

They gazed superiorly
at the smooth, intact facade
of their shells
so perfectly upholding
expectations of the status quo.
Clearly, compared to that wild,
sprouting seed
disrupting the peace,
they were doing something right...right?

But now and then,
they secretly looked up
with longing at the tall-stemmed,
bravely opened flower
wondering if there might be
more to themselves.

Chelan Harkin, from WILD GRACE: POEMS
poetrycooperative.org/chelan-harkin

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

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Join Us Live in 2026

Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from 16 September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live

Learn Coaching with Thirdspace

Foundations of Integral Development Coaching
Our two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin from Turning Towards Life. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.

You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching

You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching

And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course

A meditation on loss, presence, and what we learn from the people in our lives. Lizzie and Justin consider what each person might be teaching us, not just through their words, but through their presence. We explore how to see beyond the surface presentation of other people and wonder "what gifts and qualities is this person showing me? How are they sweeping the path for me?" And we consider what it is to extend this practice beyond those we grieve for to all our relationships, as both an act of love and as a practice for cultivating a more connected, compassionate world around each of us.

This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.

Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
03:12 Exploring the Poem: A Bunch of Consolation
05:59 Reflections on Loss and Learning
08:46 The Nature of Love and Relationships
12:11 The Importance of Reflection and Eulogy Writing
14:59 Seeing Beyond Surface Relationships
17:55 Curiosity and Learning from Others
21:09 Honoring the Living and the Dead
24:06 Activism through Connection
27:15 Closing Thoughts and Invitations

Our source for this week:

A Bunch of Consolation

You think they’ll always be there,
(the ones who always have been).
They showed you the way,
not their way
but how to find your own
(and what to say),
sweeping the path of leaves
or snow

but then the leaves, they go,
before you were ready
(how could you ever be ready?)
to wonder, wondering,
what have you learned exactly?
To love, to speak up, to hold steady.
Hold steady.

Maura Dooley

Photo by Reza Madani on Unsplash

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Join Us Live in 2026

Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live

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Foundations of Integral Development Coaching
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You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching

You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching

And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course