Speaker 1: The world teaches you not to be present with yourself,
Speaker 1: and I think healing is just the idea of being
Speaker 1: present and understanding that you're worth being present with. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking
Speaker 1: our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf m thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Fiah Roschen, an Australian
Speaker 1: Canadian writer whose work frequently covers her identity as a
Speaker 1: queer South Asian Muslim woman, as well as self care
Speaker 1: and pop culture. Her new book is called Who Is Wellness?
Speaker 1: For an examination of wellness culture and who it leaves behind. Hi, Faria,
Speaker 1: how are you? I'm good? How are you good? Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. We're going to be discussing your latest book,
Speaker 1: which is called Who Is Wellness? For an examination of
Speaker 1: wellness culture and who it leaves behind. But before we
Speaker 1: do that, let's start, like we always do, with the Parable.
Speaker 1: In the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their
Speaker 1: grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always a battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks
Speaker 1: up at their grandparents, says, well, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what does that parable
Speaker 1: mean to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. When I first read the Parable, firstly,
Speaker 1: I'm very happy that you started with that, because I
Speaker 1: think it's a beautiful way to start a conversation. And
Speaker 1: for me, what I've taken away from that parable and
Speaker 1: my own life is that I have tried very hard
Speaker 1: to feed the part of me that is good, and
Speaker 1: the part of me that is kind, and the part
Speaker 1: of me that is compassionate. And I do think that
Speaker 1: where we are in this world right now, there is
Speaker 1: a reflection of the other form that's being the greed
Speaker 1: and the anger and the hatred, and so I think
Speaker 1: my work is really contending with that dissonance and that
Speaker 1: void that's been created by I think lovelessness. Really. So
Speaker 1: let's start with a little bit of your story so
Speaker 1: that kind of listeners understand where you're coming from. Because
Speaker 1: a lot of the book is you talking about your
Speaker 1: healing from severe childhood trauma. You have to spend a
Speaker 1: ton of time on it, but just share a little
Speaker 1: bit about what got you to the point that you
Speaker 1: needed to embark on such a healing journey and get
Speaker 1: so focused on wellness. I would say that the main
Speaker 1: thing for me was that in my later twenties, I
Speaker 1: realized that there's like a two parter in this story,
Speaker 1: like my entire life. I grew up under a lot
Speaker 1: of violence, and my mother was mentally ill and attempted
Speaker 1: to kill us, attempted suicide. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: like extreme devastation and negligence. And for most of my
Speaker 1: life I kind of existed in this half self, hybrid
Speaker 1: self is self that wasn't fully there or present and
Speaker 1: was in a performance of self. And it was really
Speaker 1: only until my later twenties when I realized that I
Speaker 1: was a child sexual abuse survivor and that that was
Speaker 1: very much something that had shaped my entire life, even
Speaker 1: if I didn't have language for it. So I kind
Speaker 1: of embarked on this kind of reclamation of a self
Speaker 1: and of a past that I didn't have words for
Speaker 1: when I was going through it. But I definitely think
Speaker 1: that it's shadowed absolutely everything about my life, everything about
Speaker 1: my personality, everything about my work has been shadowed by
Speaker 1: this reality. That is the case for people who have
Speaker 1: been through trauma or adverse childhood events, is that it
Speaker 1: does shadow us. Although I think that's true across the board,
Speaker 1: right past shadows all of us. And you talk about
Speaker 1: this so well in the book. I don't don't have
Speaker 1: the line, but you know how we're this collection of
Speaker 1: everything that has sort of happened until now in ourselves,
Speaker 1: you know, and we're all this way. But some people
Speaker 1: it's just clear from the trauma they've suffered, their journey
Speaker 1: seems to be a lot harder. I do think that, like,
Speaker 1: as you said, you know, so many of us, if
Speaker 1: not all of us, have this kind of tapestry, these
Speaker 1: familial lines, these ancestral lines, these traumas that maybe you know,
Speaker 1: we haven't directly even faced, but our ancestors have, and
Speaker 1: so we store it in our body. So there's like
Speaker 1: so many layers of this. And for me, I think
Speaker 1: it was a compounded reality of not just my own trauma,
Speaker 1: but my mother's trauma and my family trauma, my ancestral
Speaker 1: trauma that really sort of like I think, it was
Speaker 1: all located in my body, Like I very much started
Speaker 1: to understand that I carried that and that there was
Speaker 1: a legacy of that in my own physicality, in my
Speaker 1: own being. And I understand why one would deny that,
Speaker 1: why one wouldn't want to face that, because it's so overwhelming.
Speaker 1: I denied it for twenty nine years, and it was really,
Speaker 1: I think a choice of wanting to live more fully
Speaker 1: and more holistically and wanting to actually be with all
Speaker 1: of it, not just the good parts or what I
Speaker 1: think are the good parts, really wanting to remember my
Speaker 1: life and and in that remembrance also like understanding. Maybe
Speaker 1: there are parts that I don't want to remember, but
Speaker 1: the parts that you know are coming to me I
Speaker 1: think have such beauty and their travesty. It's a beautiful
Speaker 1: turn of phrase there. I like it. But you know,
Speaker 1: like I've grown so much for my my life. It's
Speaker 1: it's interesting to be at this stage having put this
Speaker 1: work out that's so vulnerable and quite ugly, and then
Speaker 1: to actually I think I feel a bit of like
Speaker 1: a sense of relief that people now know that there
Speaker 1: are people now that have access to this book, you know,
Speaker 1: people like me that didn't have anyone and that maybe
Speaker 1: didn't really understand what was going on. I want this
Speaker 1: book to be a roadmap. And so yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: quite amazing to sort of sit with my own words
Speaker 1: sometimes and be like, wow, I survived all of that,
Speaker 1: and that's pretty wild. Yeah, yeah, and you did survive
Speaker 1: an awful lot. And you talk also about something you
Speaker 1: refer to as the matrix, right, which is that not
Speaker 1: only do each of us have our own individual life
Speaker 1: history and you know what degree of trauma or again
Speaker 1: I like the word adverse childhood effects because that's you know,
Speaker 1: there's a study that sort of measures that, and I
Speaker 1: think it really gives us a sense that, like, you
Speaker 1: can be damaged in lots of different ways as a child,
Speaker 1: So we all bring that to the table. But then
Speaker 1: you also talk about there are other factors that we've
Speaker 1: into what we need to do to heal, if you
Speaker 1: want to share a little bit about that. There's so
Speaker 1: many things we need to do to heal. But I
Speaker 1: but I do think one of the first and maybe
Speaker 1: most integral parts of healing is actually looking at the thing.
Speaker 1: And that means in a holistic, in a communal sense,
Speaker 1: that means looking at the legacies of trauma that haunt
Speaker 1: this nation, that haunt multiple lands that have been colonized,
Speaker 1: and those kinds of realities, you know, like even just
Speaker 1: sort of my own ancestral past and partition in the
Speaker 1: liberation War. What I wanted to write in the book,
Speaker 1: and what I'm glad that you pointed out, is that
Speaker 1: so many of us have these histories, and genocide is
Speaker 1: one thing, and like you know, bad parenting is another thing,
Speaker 1: and they do affect us in really really haunting ways,
Speaker 1: I guess, and how it's important, I think for all
Speaker 1: of us to kind of start to engage with those
Speaker 1: kinds of realities. And I think that we are a
Speaker 1: society that has placed God with capitalism, and we think
Speaker 1: that buying things and accruing things and I guess essentially
Speaker 1: just replacing or filling that void that we feel that's
Speaker 1: so dark and lonely, instead of actually factoring in what's
Speaker 1: going on there. Maybe it's also a response to sort
Speaker 1: of the social realities that people don't know what to
Speaker 1: do about. I think collectively we feel very distraught, you know,
Speaker 1: like even if you do face your history, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: what do you do about it? Then? I understand that
Speaker 1: a lot of us are sort of like, well where
Speaker 1: are we? And I think that that's sort of an
Speaker 1: overwhelming part about being human and being in that space
Speaker 1: of yeah, we are in the unknown. And that's why
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember this, but I start
Speaker 1: the book with this Joanna Macy quote about the Bardo
Speaker 1: and how into ben Buddhism. You know, the Bardo is
Speaker 1: a very it's a liminal state, yeah us, but it
Speaker 1: is a state of immense shift and change and possibility.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's where we're at right now.
Speaker 1: If if I wanted to sort of skew and shift
Speaker 1: the lens. I think that darkness is terrifying, but it's
Speaker 1: so beautiful to go in and jump and and see
Speaker 1: what's there, and see what's in those dark waters, and
Speaker 1: and make friends with what comes. I'm excited about us
Speaker 1: as society and us as individuals doing that work, being
Speaker 1: able to tend to those shadow parts. Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: a line near the book. I love you say we
Speaker 1: need to return to a time when we were invested
Speaker 1: in ourselves as people, when it mattered if you were
Speaker 1: a good person. If that time in history has never happened,
Speaker 1: which I sort of tend to believe, why aren't we
Speaker 1: all actively jumping towards that possibility. Is it just are
Speaker 1: unevolved and unchallenged nature holding us back? Or is it
Speaker 1: something more like our collective traumas. I think that's such
Speaker 1: a beautiful way of thinking about it. But I do
Speaker 1: think to some degree what you're talking about there, and
Speaker 1: you reference it in a variety of different ways in
Speaker 1: the book, But it's really about being willing to look
Speaker 1: right back at ourselves and go am I a good person?
Speaker 1: And that is not an easy question to answer. You know,
Speaker 1: what is our responsibility to a world that always has
Speaker 1: had up till now essentially infinite suffering, right for all
Speaker 1: intents and purposes, It's infinite. And what is the response
Speaker 1: to that as a person? You know, how much is
Speaker 1: enough to be a good person? Is such a deep
Speaker 1: and profound but to me important question. And we're talking
Speaker 1: about existential life questions. And I think that there is
Speaker 1: a tendency and maybe it's just like the sheer want
Speaker 1: or shere will of the human mind to want to
Speaker 1: comprehend things like that, like Okay, we've got it, we
Speaker 1: figured it out. Okay, life, um. And I think the
Speaker 1: journey of life, you know, for me and yes, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm thirty two. I'm still quite young. But I
Speaker 1: have experienced like a lot, and I think that that
Speaker 1: has that sort of like profound abject loneliness darkness has
Speaker 1: made me realize and also seeing it with my mom understanding,
Speaker 1: you know, generationally that kind of trauma, I see how
Speaker 1: actually simple it is to surrender and to understand that
Speaker 1: being alive is that journey of self discovery, of questioning,
Speaker 1: of challenging, of asking every day, am I a good person?
Speaker 1: I don't know if it makes sense to arrive at
Speaker 1: an answer. You know, I don't. I think that's besides
Speaker 1: the point. It should be besides the point, because every
Speaker 1: day you're going to be a different version of yourself,
Speaker 1: and the hope is that every day that you're alive,
Speaker 1: you can show up as a more clearer, fairer, kinder
Speaker 1: version of yourself. I've got to read something that you
Speaker 1: wrote about this, because I love it, and you're writing
Speaker 1: is so beautiful. You say, true healing means that at
Speaker 1: some point you're willing to die cyclically only to be
Speaker 1: resurrected as your truest self. It's an understanding. The journey
Speaker 1: doesn't end. You don't just one day find enlightenment, much
Speaker 1: like how you don't just arrive at happiness. It's not
Speaker 1: a destination as much as is a state of being
Speaker 1: that needs consistency as well as a desire to adapt
Speaker 1: to become again and again and again. The state of
Speaker 1: unraveling is the nexus point for change. That's just so
Speaker 1: well said. Yeah, I mean I really I think feel it,
Speaker 1: I live it. It is a reality for me that
Speaker 1: that very thing and that sort of awakening and remembrance
Speaker 1: of I guess the beauty of being alive, which means
Speaker 1: that you know, if you're not feeling good about your life,
Speaker 1: like really understanding what are those things that are holding
Speaker 1: you back? And I think for me, being in the
Speaker 1: natural world, going into the natural world, really just being
Speaker 1: alive with nature shows me how lucky we are to
Speaker 1: be on this planet and how every day should be
Speaker 1: carried with such reverence. You moved between the personal and
Speaker 1: the collective a lot in this book, and one of
Speaker 1: the general critiques you have of the modern wellness movement
Speaker 1: is a little bit like what you just said, which
Speaker 1: is that I'm paraphrasing for you, but we treat it
Speaker 1: as a thing that we can get. That like many
Speaker 1: things in capitalism, it's a product that we can buy
Speaker 1: and then we're going to have it. We're going to arrive,
Speaker 1: We're going to be enlightened, we're going to be healed.
Speaker 1: I can do it in a weekend or a month
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, but I'm gonna get it, and
Speaker 1: then this is going to be over right. And and
Speaker 1: one of your critiques is like, that's not either the
Speaker 1: spiritual or the healing journey. That's not how it works.
Speaker 1: And you know, my experience is when we present it
Speaker 1: that way to people. It's damaging because what I think
Speaker 1: happens is if we think we should be healed after
Speaker 1: a weekend workshop and we're not, we internalize that we
Speaker 1: are the problem, not the fact that the promise made
Speaker 1: was a little too grandiose. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: something that you talked about looking in the mirror, right,
Speaker 1: I've got programs I sell that are about transformation, and
Speaker 1: what's a reasonable way to market that that's fair and honest.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm often like, you know, my saying could
Speaker 1: be like I'm going to teach you how to not
Speaker 1: make things worse in your life, and I'm like, nobody's
Speaker 1: going to buy that. But if you can do that,
Speaker 1: that's a really good skill, you know. So I wrestle
Speaker 1: with this piece as a white man all in the
Speaker 1: wellness industry, right, Like, there's a lot in your book
Speaker 1: that causes me to have to look in the mirror,
Speaker 1: which I've I've been doing, you know, I've been asking
Speaker 1: these questions and I don't know if that was a
Speaker 1: statement or a question there. I feel like there was
Speaker 1: a question early on, and then I just kept talking. No,
Speaker 1: I'm glad. I'm really happy to hear that I think
Speaker 1: that we can go back to the question, but I
Speaker 1: will say discomfort is undervalued. You know. I think that
Speaker 1: we deny those parts because we've been marketed too, and
Speaker 1: we've been sold this idea of the life that we deserve,
Speaker 1: and when we don't get that life, we're like, hang
Speaker 1: on a second, there's something wrong, and we feel entitled
Speaker 1: to the life that we were sold, and of course
Speaker 1: we do. And I think that that is the nefarious
Speaker 1: nous of market capitalism, Like it really sells you, you know,
Speaker 1: like you deserve a good life and you can have
Speaker 1: a good life, and that means you can be cured
Speaker 1: and like eat all of the fucking candy that you
Speaker 1: want for the rest of your life. And it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like maybe you doesn't have a heimken
Speaker 1: and you're that beautiful and you're you're on the beach, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, like who doesn't want that, you know? And
Speaker 1: I think also we're facing a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: want to do the work, and I think that that's
Speaker 1: a tough part of society that we have to accept,
Speaker 1: Like not everybody has the possibility or the attention or
Speaker 1: the dedication to do the work. So how do we
Speaker 1: navigate that collectively. Yeah, and it's easy to sort of
Speaker 1: look at that and want to sort of blame that
Speaker 1: person for not wanting to do the work. But as
Speaker 1: we said earlier, we're all a collection of our experiences
Speaker 1: and the forces that are acting upon us. You know,
Speaker 1: there are often reasons that people aren't able to do
Speaker 1: quote unquote the work. Like if you're a say, for example,
Speaker 1: a single mother who works two jobs, you know, has
Speaker 1: two kids, it's kind of difficult to engage in deep
Speaker 1: trauma work where you do all that right. And so
Speaker 1: you know, those are questions that I don't begin to
Speaker 1: know how to solve, but they're real. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think I definitely contended with that a lot while I
Speaker 1: was writing the book. And my hope is that obviously
Speaker 1: nothing is a cure all or like a one stop shop,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to taking care of yourself, especially
Speaker 1: when it comes to like really looking at those deep
Speaker 1: seated wounds in some of us, in many of us,
Speaker 1: if not all of us. But I also hope that
Speaker 1: the book gives a sort of introduction to many different
Speaker 1: things that might help and sort of help you guide
Speaker 1: through that work with yourself to just sort of have
Speaker 1: a template to see what does it look like? Because
Speaker 1: I think for me, because I've been in these worlds
Speaker 1: for so long, a lot of questions that I've been getting,
Speaker 1: you know, for the last decade, is like, well where
Speaker 1: do I even start? And you know, like those questions
Speaker 1: are ones that I've heard a lot. And I hope
Speaker 1: that the book sort of presents itself as an explanation
Speaker 1: in a beginning for something that then you can take
Speaker 1: on and hopefully it is not going to impede on
Speaker 1: your life so much. But I think that something I
Speaker 1: had to shift in my own life was like and
Speaker 1: this was very much through my work with my therapist.
Speaker 1: You know, like I have a chronic illness, and so
Speaker 1: for most of my life like kind of denied it,
Speaker 1: and then as I've gotten older, it's actually gotten worse.
Speaker 1: So there's a part of me that is I get
Speaker 1: very inflamed by food, certain kinds of food. So I've
Speaker 1: had to be just like very restrictive since I was
Speaker 1: like ten, And my idea of a good life is
Speaker 1: always like, Okay, I want to eat all this dessert
Speaker 1: and like, you know, just like be allowed to just
Speaker 1: like drink a ton of alcohol whatever you know, like
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think there's a part of me
Speaker 1: that wants to be a libertine, you know, like just
Speaker 1: indulge over indulge, and my body has never allowed me
Speaker 1: to do that. And just recently, actually my therapist asked
Speaker 1: me in the last couple of years, she was she
Speaker 1: just kept asking me actually, like why is it that
Speaker 1: you crave the things that are bad for you? Why
Speaker 1: can't you crave or why aren't you craving rather? And
Speaker 1: what's going on there? Why aren't you craving the things
Speaker 1: that will actually help you? And I think societally we're
Speaker 1: also I think dealing with that, like why is it
Speaker 1: that we don't want what's good for us? And why
Speaker 1: are we also again like with junk food, just with
Speaker 1: the ways in which I think like Americans eat and
Speaker 1: like the globalized sort of food culture of you know,
Speaker 1: these giant corporations, you know, being like yes, like eat
Speaker 1: this two dollar hamburger. You know, this has had sort
Speaker 1: of an extremely detrimental impact on our well being. Even
Speaker 1: just farming, like just simply farming in America and all
Speaker 1: of the layers of violence that happen in food and
Speaker 1: food justice or the lack of food justice, especially if
Speaker 1: you're a black or Indigenous person. You know, so there's
Speaker 1: so many limitations. But for me and what I hope
Speaker 1: through what I do is like showing people it's actually
Speaker 1: not only worthwhile, it's going to give you your life
Speaker 1: if you follow the path of healing. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: food such an interesting one because to your point, if
Speaker 1: we want to talk about how these different layers act
Speaker 1: upon us, food is a great example, right, Like you've
Speaker 1: got your familial history with food, right, Like for many people,
Speaker 1: their family teaches them food is comfort, so you've got that.
Speaker 1: We know, food is often used as a way of
Speaker 1: escaping or avoiding, So if you've got trauma, you're looking
Speaker 1: for some way out, food is one. We've got a
Speaker 1: marketing and advertising system that is constantly putting the worst
Speaker 1: kinds of foods in front of us, and like you said,
Speaker 1: we've got a food system that is sort of fundamentally broken.
Speaker 1: Like I walk into a gas station which is also
Speaker 1: a convenient store, and I look around and there is
Speaker 1: often literally nothing in there that I will eat. And
Speaker 1: I want to be clear, there's plenty of things in
Speaker 1: there that I in a bad moment, will eat and
Speaker 1: would eat right, But if I look at what my
Speaker 1: sort of dietary goals are, there's nothing, not like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's only a few things, it's often nothing. So again,
Speaker 1: if we look at food, we can see all these
Speaker 1: different layers that we are sort of working with and against. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean class class in America, I think is one
Speaker 1: of the most like riveting and dangerous realities. And we
Speaker 1: don't talk about it, and we don't talk about how
Speaker 1: ghetto wise so much of America is, and how these
Speaker 1: food ghettos and and the ways these food deserts and
Speaker 1: the way that we, like I guess, not only harm
Speaker 1: people that are of different class brackets and oftentimes you know,
Speaker 1: lower class brackets, and how we underprivileged them just by
Speaker 1: you know, allowing them to have access to clean running water.
Speaker 1: If we're thinking about Flint, if we're thinking about you know,
Speaker 1: all of the indigenous communities throughout North America that live
Speaker 1: in reservations that don't even have like electricity or even
Speaker 1: access to their ancestral meat, like buffalo. You know, the
Speaker 1: ways in which like buffalo farming has just been completely obliterated,
Speaker 1: and that was really important engine of American colonization of
Speaker 1: this land, just completely severing people from their actual natural
Speaker 1: food resource. And we're I think, just like finally kind
Speaker 1: of like understanding the impact that that, like hundreds of
Speaker 1: years has had on us. Yeah. I was recently in Europe.
Speaker 1: Not that Europe has everything figured out or solved by
Speaker 1: any stretch of the imagination, but I was just struck
Speaker 1: by the difference in the food system, even from America.
Speaker 1: It just was a different sort of animal overall. Again,
Speaker 1: not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but the
Speaker 1: difference was very stark to me. But it's more accessible.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not about money, it's not about class,
Speaker 1: like everybody deserves to have indulgence. And I think a
Speaker 1: country like France that I have a lot of issues with,
Speaker 1: obviously there are things that are class based, but I
Speaker 1: think food in a lot of ways in European countries
Speaker 1: and a lot of countries outside of America honestly understand
Speaker 1: and value how important it is to feed people well,
Speaker 1: and how if you feed people well, that is going
Speaker 1: to have incredible effects on them as people in your country,
Speaker 1: existing in this nation. You know, it's like it's for
Speaker 1: the good of the people. And I think, to go
Speaker 1: back to the parable, actually I think America has chosen
Speaker 1: to feed all of the other parts and not to
Speaker 1: feed the parts that are good, not to feed the
Speaker 1: parts that are deserving. I say this a lot in
Speaker 1: the book, but if America was to become the nation
Speaker 1: that it says it is, it would change the world.
Speaker 1: It literally would, but it chooses not to. It chooses
Speaker 1: not to be that. Yeah, you know that's challenging as
Speaker 1: an American because that statement, like America chooses, makes it
Speaker 1: sound like there's one America, and it feels to me
Speaker 1: very much like there's two America's right now, which is
Speaker 1: something I wrestle with. You know, many America's. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, there are many, but there does seem to
Speaker 1: be one vision that goes one direction and one vision
Speaker 1: that goes a very different direction. And within those there's
Speaker 1: a lot of difference. But you know, I've thought about
Speaker 1: coming back from Europe. I was part of me was
Speaker 1: really like I don't want to live here anymore, you know,
Speaker 1: like I don't want to live in a place that
Speaker 1: feels like it shares none of my values. But then
Speaker 1: there's another part of me that's like, well, but shouldn't
Speaker 1: you stay in your home and try and change it.
Speaker 1: And you know, so again sort of those looking in
Speaker 1: the mirror conversations, I'm like, I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: the right answer, you know, I don't know the right answer.
Speaker 1: I'm a non American willingly living in America, critiquing America.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that they were where. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: in a very interesting time, and I do think that
Speaker 1: maybe there isn't an answer either. But I definitely stay
Speaker 1: here because I understand that changing America would change the world.
Speaker 1: You know, if if things were to really effectively change here,
Speaker 1: it would have a ripple effect on the world because
Speaker 1: American culture and Americanism has completely dominated us in many ways,
Speaker 1: and how we exist and how we interact as a
Speaker 1: global society. Yeah, it's so interesting, how Reese it. That
Speaker 1: is too broadly speaking, right, I mean, that's really post
Speaker 1: World War two that that happened, which is just not
Speaker 1: that long ago. You know. Your book, as I said,
Speaker 1: goes back and forth between the collective and the personal.
Speaker 1: So we've been on the collective from it. I want
Speaker 1: to I want to hop back over to the personal
Speaker 1: a little bit. You write early on I've always found
Speaker 1: the pursuit of ascension a most honorable quality like rising
Speaker 1: right or achieving more or doing more. And you say,
Speaker 1: I also found that that's a trauma response. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask a question though, because it's also a
Speaker 1: spiritual longing and calling right to ascend, to become a
Speaker 1: better person, to become closer to God or whatever enlightenment
Speaker 1: or whatever term you want to use. And I'm wondering
Speaker 1: how you think in your own life, as a person
Speaker 1: who is deeply committed to your own spiritual development and
Speaker 1: your own spiritual growth, and somebody who's a trauma survivor
Speaker 1: and recovering from that, how you think about this desire
Speaker 1: to sort of get better or to ascend. How you
Speaker 1: tell the difference for yourself between those two, you know,
Speaker 1: trauma and spiritual calling slash longing. Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I've pivoted my desire for sort
Speaker 1: of material ascension, an ascension on sort of like a
Speaker 1: more professional sense, and sublimated all of that into a
Speaker 1: spiritual ascension. And you know, I'm very, very open and
Speaker 1: devoted to my love of God and my extremely deep connection.
Speaker 1: That is potentially the reason I'm alive and understanding, you know,
Speaker 1: especially not having a family in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: not having the family structure and not having a mother,
Speaker 1: not having sort of that reliance meant that I had
Speaker 1: to find that in different ways, and God became sort
Speaker 1: of the vehicle for me to understand my own journey,
Speaker 1: my own path, my own past. And I think the
Speaker 1: way that I differentiate between them now, well, I guess
Speaker 1: I don't really feel that kind of pressure anymore. But
Speaker 1: I once, or at least for I think, a considerable
Speaker 1: amount of my life, I felt as if if I
Speaker 1: wasn't a better version of myself every day, every year,
Speaker 1: every month, every minute that I was regressing, and that
Speaker 1: I would be very punishing, like self punishing and very
Speaker 1: critical when I would screw up or you know, lie,
Speaker 1: you know, when I did something that I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's not good, Like I would be very punishing with myself.
Speaker 1: And I had to understand that the language that I
Speaker 1: was using, that sort of self criticality was entirely my parents,
Speaker 1: Like I had adopted the way that they talked to
Speaker 1: me and developed, you know, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of us probably have this too, like a voice that
Speaker 1: just watched always and judged, and so you know, I
Speaker 1: would just always roll my eyes up myself and just
Speaker 1: always feel just like very like like annoyed and you know, frustrated.
Speaker 1: And I think that it was only when I started
Speaker 1: to realize that that wasn't me, that had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with me. That was something that I felt as
Speaker 1: if it was like almost a constant creation that was
Speaker 1: there to sort of surveil me into being a good person,
Speaker 1: like make me afraid. And I think that that's probably
Speaker 1: also tied to like that's how I was fed religion.
Speaker 1: That's how I was fed faith in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways by my mom and by my extended family, not
Speaker 1: so much my dad, but you know, you should be
Speaker 1: afraid of God and that like God is fearful, and
Speaker 1: I had to unlearn those things. I had to unlearn
Speaker 1: and understand that God is loving and that God is compassionate,
Speaker 1: and that those are the qualities that I want to
Speaker 1: focus on in God and in myself. And moving with
Speaker 1: that kind of love, I think has been one of
Speaker 1: the biggest moments of grace that I've shown myself and others,
Speaker 1: because I've chosen to shift in what I prioritize and
Speaker 1: understanding that my spiritual ascension, which isn't something that I
Speaker 1: can document or put on Instagram or like write about
Speaker 1: necessarily maybe right about you know, like eventually but or
Speaker 1: like you know, processing, but it's not something that I
Speaker 1: can sell. It's something that's private and personal and it
Speaker 1: is about that longing and that means that it's consistent
Speaker 1: and it's every day, and it's something that I have
Speaker 1: to tend to rather than like hold myself against. I
Speaker 1: think the word love is a beautiful way of sort
Speaker 1: of thinking about it. There is a pivot point there,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think it's challenging because as somebody
Speaker 1: who's been pretty focused on my own spiritual development, there
Speaker 1: is an element in it for me of discipline zen
Speaker 1: as the tradition I've practiced in most recent years, and
Speaker 1: to show up for meditation and for all that even
Speaker 1: when I'm not feeling it, you know. So there's an
Speaker 1: element of that in it, but that can't be the
Speaker 1: whole element. One of the things I do when I
Speaker 1: start to meditate is I always try and ask myself,
Speaker 1: like why am I doing this? And there is often
Speaker 1: a broad why, you know, like which is very much
Speaker 1: in my case, you know. The phrase I would use
Speaker 1: would be to realize my true nature So there's that,
Speaker 1: but then there's oftentimes a smaller thing because I want
Speaker 1: to be a better partner today, or because I want
Speaker 1: to be kinder to day, or because I want more
Speaker 1: peace in my mind. And then there are days where,
Speaker 1: honestly when the truth, the best I can do is like,
Speaker 1: because I've made a commitment to do it, That's why
Speaker 1: I'm here, you know, I hope it's not that very often,
Speaker 1: but so I've always found trying to get that balance right.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things I work a lot
Speaker 1: with people, and it's how do we hold ourselves sort
Speaker 1: of accountable to our values without being mean or hard
Speaker 1: on ourselves. My experience of a good life is we
Speaker 1: want both those things right. This is something that in
Speaker 1: terms of accountability, and I talked about this in the
Speaker 1: book as well, and sort of about transformative justice that
Speaker 1: goes hand in hand. I think with accountability and like
Speaker 1: accountability culture, we live in the time of cancel culture.
Speaker 1: We live in sort of this obsession with carce reality
Speaker 1: and the obsession which is sort of I guess, like
Speaker 1: pretending as if like people are disposable and if they
Speaker 1: make one mistake then they're, you know, off, They're out
Speaker 1: and I actually think something that is really exciting about
Speaker 1: utopic envisioning, which is something that I think I hold
Speaker 1: very dear to my heart and something that sort of
Speaker 1: is like a load star for me. You know. It's
Speaker 1: like idea of what does utopia look like? You know,
Speaker 1: if we were to evolve, all of us, if if
Speaker 1: everything was to just come true, you know about like
Speaker 1: us changing as a society, then what would that look like?
Speaker 1: And I think that we have to begin to understand
Speaker 1: and make space for messiness and for chaos and for
Speaker 1: the realities of just like people make mistakes. People everyone,
Speaker 1: absolutely everyone makes mistakes, and some people might have a
Speaker 1: different opinion than you, and hopefully those things are not
Speaker 1: about harm, you know, like racism, like not big things,
Speaker 1: but like, you know, I think that we also are
Speaker 1: at this moment in time where it is so black
Speaker 1: and white and people are just so on one side
Speaker 1: or the other. There's so much finger pointing, there's such
Speaker 1: I think a disassociation of self and actually, like what
Speaker 1: does it mean to be human? These are not human
Speaker 1: conversations and they're just performative, they're so gassed up. And
Speaker 1: if we actually were able to sort of look each
Speaker 1: other in the eye and talk about these things and
Speaker 1: talk about how valuable it is to make space for
Speaker 1: our complexities, which means like we're gonna, you know, we're
Speaker 1: going to do things that we're not proud of, or
Speaker 1: there's things that we're not proud of, but the hope
Speaker 1: is to continue to move towards a place of heartful,
Speaker 1: heartfeltness and love and love. I mean, it's so cheesing,
Speaker 1: so corny, but like I have been thinking a lot
Speaker 1: about just like the anger that I have and this
Speaker 1: sort of frustration that I have when I see, you know,
Speaker 1: people that are violent towards women, and you know, even
Speaker 1: and just like everything that's happening with Roe v. Wade,
Speaker 1: it's hard not to feel immense anger. And then the
Speaker 1: reality is is that as simple as and and sort
Speaker 1: of as coiny as it sounds, so many people that
Speaker 1: make laws in this world don't love people. They just
Speaker 1: don't love themselves and they don't love people. And that
Speaker 1: just has to be something that we consider, that we
Speaker 1: understand that we can see clearly like wow, there are
Speaker 1: so many people in this country and this planet, on
Speaker 1: this planet that are hurting and that's just the reality.
Speaker 1: And so how can we start to see the hurt
Speaker 1: instead of or not instead of because I think the
Speaker 1: other things. Seeing the reality is also really important, but
Speaker 1: also seeing the hurt. It's really difficult to see people
Speaker 1: behave in ways that to our eyes seem to be
Speaker 1: clearly harmful to others. And what is the response to that?
Speaker 1: What is the response of a person who's trying to
Speaker 1: hold themselves to a high standard of moral conduct, you know,
Speaker 1: and a high standard of understanding? What is the response?
Speaker 1: You know? In Buddhism, we talk about the three poisons, right, Greed, hatred,
Speaker 1: and delusion, right, and those are human qualities. Those show
Speaker 1: up in all of us. Now, in some it seems
Speaker 1: like it's showing up more. And like you said, there's
Speaker 1: something about a willingness to say like, Okay, that's not
Speaker 1: who I want to be, you know, like I'm going
Speaker 1: to actively work against those things. But I do think
Speaker 1: actively working against them does mean really thinking about how
Speaker 1: do we relate to the people that we would quote
Speaker 1: unquote call our enemy. And again I use that word
Speaker 1: because it's not a word I would normally use, but
Speaker 1: I think in religious context it's a phrase that's used often. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, how do you relate to your enemy. There's
Speaker 1: so much to it. There's so much complexity. And I
Speaker 1: love what you said about human conversation because that is
Speaker 1: what I mostly feel really is missing, you know, how
Speaker 1: we have a conversation about the really difficult things in
Speaker 1: life and be able to allow ourselves to make mistakes
Speaker 1: and evolve and change and make space I think for
Speaker 1: that human nous, you know, like if what you said
Speaker 1: was it greed or the three poisons greed, hatred, and delusion, hatred, greed, delusion,
Speaker 1: you know, if these are natural parts of the human being,
Speaker 1: the human nous, the human reality, the human experience. Something
Speaker 1: that again my therapist really helped me with was coming
Speaker 1: in and saying like, I want to be a better
Speaker 1: version of myself. And I think, like two years into
Speaker 1: us working with one another, she was like, okay, so
Speaker 1: I have sort of a rephrase. What if instead of
Speaker 1: you stop saying you want to be a better version
Speaker 1: of yourself and you said you want to be a
Speaker 1: more whole version of yourself? What would that look like? Yes?
Speaker 1: And I was just like what And she's like, your
Speaker 1: anger is allowed, your hurt is allowed, your messin is allowed,
Speaker 1: every part of you is allowed. In this version of
Speaker 1: your self. And I think that this obsession with perfectionism
Speaker 1: and material ascension doesn't necessarily mean about like money, but
Speaker 1: just like sort of materiality and like the ascension of
Speaker 1: like on a material plane, you know. I think that
Speaker 1: that was something that I felt like would give me meaning,
Speaker 1: Like if I like strive for that kind of perfection
Speaker 1: and like get better and better and better and like
Speaker 1: be this perfect version of myself always and like the
Speaker 1: perfect friend, the perfect daughter. And it's like, well, where
Speaker 1: does that leave room for me to be tired, be lazy.
Speaker 1: I want to smoke weed and not talk to anybody,
Speaker 1: not pick up phone calls, be really bad at texting.
Speaker 1: I'm really really blunt. I say things to people's faces,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I get myself into trouble. You know,
Speaker 1: there's all of these parts of who I am that
Speaker 1: should be allowed to be alive and to be a
Speaker 1: part of the conversation. I don't want to hide those
Speaker 1: parts of me anymore. Like I want to be a
Speaker 1: real version of myself. And I think that like doing
Speaker 1: this work has really helped me understand that it's okay
Speaker 1: if people can't accept me. If I'm like showing up
Speaker 1: as my full self because that's not going to change
Speaker 1: the way that I show up. I'm going to bring
Speaker 1: everything to the table, and I'm gonna and and and
Speaker 1: hope for the best, you know, hope that I hope
Speaker 1: that people respond and that people understand. But if they don't,
Speaker 1: it's okay, because I think that being authentic is a
Speaker 1: very valuable pursuit. Indeed, but where there's so much in
Speaker 1: what you said there that we could dive into. I
Speaker 1: love that reframing from better person to whole person. I
Speaker 1: think that's really true, you know, and authenticity is a
Speaker 1: really interesting idea because I think it's good to be
Speaker 1: who we are, and what's really difficult about that sometimes
Speaker 1: is who we are? Like who are we? That question?
Speaker 1: What feels authentic is very often very damaged, you know.
Speaker 1: As a recovering heroin Attic, I relate with like that
Speaker 1: felt really authentic to me. There was a whole thing
Speaker 1: there that felt authentic and real, and yet it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Actually I shouldn't say it wasn't because it was. But
Speaker 1: it's not where I wanted to stay. It's not the
Speaker 1: person I wanted to be, you know. It was very
Speaker 1: destructive and so I think this is such an interesting
Speaker 1: question and kind of what we've been sort of batting
Speaker 1: back and forth that I think about all the time,
Speaker 1: which is, Yeah, we want to encourage the best parts
Speaker 1: of ourselves, but we also want to allow ourselves to
Speaker 1: be okay as we are. And how do you balance
Speaker 1: those two things is something that you know, I think
Speaker 1: is another one of those very complex questions that takes
Speaker 1: a lot of discernment. It takes a lot of discernment,
Speaker 1: but I also think that it's just really meaningful to
Speaker 1: bring those parts of oneself, like the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: you have this history of addiction, and what does that
Speaker 1: say about where you were and who you are? I
Speaker 1: mean to me, now, I'm curious about what happened to
Speaker 1: you in your childhood, you know, and like what brought
Speaker 1: you to that state of like, I know, self destruction.
Speaker 1: I know what that looks like. I've experienced it myself,
Speaker 1: and I've done it in different ways. And I think
Speaker 1: that like, when you choose that kind of drug, it's
Speaker 1: like it says a lot about how you feel about
Speaker 1: yourself and how you feel about the world. And I
Speaker 1: think that's really compelling to talk about. Yeah, and listeners
Speaker 1: know it's something I have talked about, you know, a
Speaker 1: fair amount. And I think the question of you know
Speaker 1: what happened to me to get me to that point
Speaker 1: is it's hard to figure out. I don't have a
Speaker 1: good clear answer, right. There's a few things that go
Speaker 1: into it. One is I remember almost nothing of being
Speaker 1: a child. Now I've heard that that can be a
Speaker 1: trauma response, right, that people who are traumatized don't remember anything.
Speaker 1: I also spent a good number of years of my
Speaker 1: life obliterating every brain cell I possibly had, So I've
Speaker 1: been on antidepressants, which are known to mess with memory.
Speaker 1: So the reality is I don't know whether there is
Speaker 1: a capital t AMA event in there somewhere or not,
Speaker 1: the lower case T trauma. You talk about carrying what
Speaker 1: your parents carry, right, I think in your novel that
Speaker 1: you quoted the character saying your parents were thoroughly self loathing.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if I would go that far
Speaker 1: with my parents, but I would say they were thoroughly depressed, unhappy, angry,
Speaker 1: and they were carrying what they had been passed down
Speaker 1: from their parents. And I know that I was a
Speaker 1: a sensitive child who I think needed to be held
Speaker 1: and parented in a certain way and just wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: just wasn't. And how much of that is nature versus nurture? Right?
Speaker 1: Like I can look through my family and be like, well,
Speaker 1: there's alcoholics there. There are lots of depression in there.
Speaker 1: So the dots all sort of connect, you know. Again,
Speaker 1: whether there's a capital T trauma, I don't know because
Speaker 1: I don't remember much, but I can see how I
Speaker 1: got to the point I did, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think for me, I've often said that drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 1: I think I had done a really good job of
Speaker 1: trying to stamp every emotion and feeling down, and I
Speaker 1: think I had done it fairly well. But the result
Speaker 1: of that was I felt dead, And so all my
Speaker 1: life I was into crime because it made me feel alive.
Speaker 1: You know, drugs and alcohol. They weren't my disconnection. They
Speaker 1: were actually my connection, you know, they were the way
Speaker 1: I felt alive. So that's a short version of me
Speaker 1: recounting kind of why I think, you know, I ended
Speaker 1: up at that point. What's your sign I'm a Gemini?
Speaker 1: Do you know any of your other placements? I wonder
Speaker 1: if you have twelve? I do not know my partner
Speaker 1: might know that she's done a chart on me at
Speaker 1: one point in the past, I think, but I don't remember.
Speaker 1: You'll have to send it to me. All right, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm curious. Yeah, So we're nearing the end of our time.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about a term you have that you used
Speaker 1: near the end of the book that I really like.
Speaker 1: It's called sacred reciprocity. Share a little bit about what
Speaker 1: that means to you. Well, Um, sacred reciprose City is
Speaker 1: something that I learned from two people. An Iahwaska teacher
Speaker 1: that I was working with for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and also a Indigenous elder named Robin Wall Kimmer, who
Speaker 1: has a book called Braiding Sweet Grass. It's an incredible book,
Speaker 1: and she's also written an essay about this called The
Speaker 1: Service Berry. But it is very much like Native thinking
Speaker 1: in terminology and something that I think across cultures, indigenous
Speaker 1: cultures in the world, there is this belief and I
Speaker 1: think in a lot of ways I was raised with this,
Speaker 1: but an understanding of the gift of anything, So the
Speaker 1: gift of time, the gift of love, the gift of
Speaker 1: you know, literal gifts. You know how important and sacred
Speaker 1: it is I think that something that was really hard
Speaker 1: for me when I came to America was how much
Speaker 1: this is just like a small example, but like to
Speaker 1: go back to food, you know, like if you have
Speaker 1: a plate of food and you have like six people around,
Speaker 1: who's going to actually think about, Okay, there's six people.
Speaker 1: Everybody needs to get an equal and fair share. How
Speaker 1: do we do this? Often I was encountering that people
Speaker 1: would take more and like not really consider oh, this
Speaker 1: is like a group meal that we're all eating. And
Speaker 1: so those kinds of dynamics, I think say a lot
Speaker 1: about what we feel we are owed and what we
Speaker 1: feel we are entitled to. And I think that that
Speaker 1: also comes from lack. And you know, it's not just
Speaker 1: again like something that we just have to be like
Speaker 1: that's you're wrong. It's understanding that comes from lack, and
Speaker 1: it comes from a place of like it'd be easy
Speaker 1: to be like your selfish, but I think, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like a place of just like I am so scarce,
Speaker 1: I actually need to take more and not considering like,
Speaker 1: oh maybe other people need that as well. And I
Speaker 1: think that sacred reciprocity and understanding that fairness is really
Speaker 1: important and that everybody deserves a slice of the cake.
Speaker 1: Everybody can have a slice of the cake. That's also
Speaker 1: the shift. It's not that there's only ten slices. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: if there's only ten slices, let's make more slices for
Speaker 1: other people, and like, let's find a way to actually
Speaker 1: commune honestly with this thing. And because we have money,
Speaker 1: we pretend everything is finite and limited, but in nature
Speaker 1: it's very different. You know. It's like, oh, of course,
Speaker 1: like you know, things are are expensable, but if you
Speaker 1: are working with that, then it's never gonna be gone.
Speaker 1: If you are considering it energetically and considering I'm going
Speaker 1: to meet something halfway, then you can have a more
Speaker 1: balanced something that like is sustainable, just genuinely sustainable. And
Speaker 1: I think in terms of ecology and climate, you know,
Speaker 1: that's really where we have to shift. We are taking
Speaker 1: everything from the earth believing there's no consequences, but there's
Speaker 1: such vast consequences that we're experiencing now, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, heat rising. It's like I wonder why,
Speaker 1: I wonder why that, you know, we're in a pandemic.
Speaker 1: Even there's a lot of fact there is going into
Speaker 1: this and so to me, sacred reciprocity is just simply
Speaker 1: understanding that all humans deserve things and are deserving of
Speaker 1: consideration and love, and that changing the way that we
Speaker 1: take and interact with people and really sort of re
Speaker 1: establishing a more more fair model that understands like, take
Speaker 1: only as much as you give that there is something
Speaker 1: extremely beautiful in that. So that's what sacred reciprocity means
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, take only as much as you give.
Speaker 1: I think that's a beautiful idea and one that is
Speaker 1: you know, thinking about, you know, in our own lives, like, okay,
Speaker 1: how do we know that? And that leads me to
Speaker 1: another question I kind of wanted to ask you. With
Speaker 1: somebody who's had to heal a lot of trauma, that
Speaker 1: takes a lot of interior time and work and focus,
Speaker 1: and you know, your spiritual practice, part of it takes
Speaker 1: an interior time and focus, And I wonder how you
Speaker 1: think about is there a point at which I turned
Speaker 1: too much internal towards myself and less giving to the world,
Speaker 1: or you know, is it all the same If I'm
Speaker 1: healing myself, am I healing the world? But how do
Speaker 1: you think about that? I think it starts with healing yourself.
Speaker 1: I think it always has to start with healing yourself.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people look the world and
Speaker 1: they're like, let me heal this, and then they get
Speaker 1: overwhelmed and they stop. But if you heal yourself, that
Speaker 1: is going to have effects on your family, your friends,
Speaker 1: the people around you, you know, the people that you
Speaker 1: buy coffee from. Like, it's going to affect all of
Speaker 1: your relationships and your connections with humans, with plants, with wildlife,
Speaker 1: with you know, animals, Like it's going to change everything.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think self love and love is
Speaker 1: really the place to begin a journey of healing. I
Speaker 1: don't think that you can actually have healing otherwise it's paradoxical.
Speaker 1: You have to start at that place that we're not
Speaker 1: allowed to sort of be present in, which is ourselves.
Speaker 1: You know, so much of the world teaches you not
Speaker 1: to be present with yourself, and I think healing is
Speaker 1: just the idea of being present and understanding that you're
Speaker 1: worth being present with. And for me, that was a
Speaker 1: really big thing. I also, you know, not in the
Speaker 1: same ways, but have relied a lot on drugs and
Speaker 1: alcohol and smoke a lot of weed, and at a
Speaker 1: certain point in my life, my therapist was just like,
Speaker 1: why don't you want to be with yourself? What's going
Speaker 1: on here? Like why do you always want to disappear
Speaker 1: from yourself? And I think just realizing that there is
Speaker 1: just such beauty and just being present with yourself with
Speaker 1: your friends in an interview on a podcast, It's like
Speaker 1: that affects you, That changes you. Having that kind of
Speaker 1: connection with anyone changes you. So to me, I think
Speaker 1: everything is a moment of teaching and awakening, and so
Speaker 1: I'm always excited for that kind of connection, you know, like,
Speaker 1: no matter where I get it, well, that is a
Speaker 1: beautiful place, I think. To wrap up with that idea,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on. It has been
Speaker 1: such a pleasure to talk with you and get to
Speaker 1: know you and get to dive into your work. We'll
Speaker 1: have links in the show notes where people can find
Speaker 1: all your information. You've got a newsletter that's really good,
Speaker 1: you've got this latest book, you've got a novel, you've
Speaker 1: got poetry. So we'll point people towards all your stuff.
Speaker 1: So again, thank you so much, Thank you so much.
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