Latest / This Jungian Life Podcast / HAGITUDE: Sharon Blackie on the power of aging

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HAGITUDE: Sharon Blackie on the power of aging · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. We're
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: so excited today to have Dr. Sharon Blackie with us.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Sharon is an award-winning writer, psychologist, and mythologist. Her highly
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: acclaimed books, courses, lectures, and workshops are focused on the
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: development of the mythic imagination and on the relevance of myths,
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  Speaker 2: fairy tales, and folk traditions to the personal, cultural, and
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  Speaker 2: environmental problems we face today, as well as writing five
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  Speaker 2: books of fiction and nonfiction, including the best-selling If Women
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Rose Rooted and her latest, Haggitude. Her writing has appeared
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: in anthologies, collections, and in several international media outlets, among
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: them The Guardian, The Irish Times, and The Scotsman. Her
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: books have been translated to several languages, and she has
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: been interviewed by the BBC, CNN, U.S. Public Radio, and
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  Speaker 2: other broadcasters on her areas of expertise. Her awards include
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  Speaker 2: the Roger Deacon Award and a Creative Scotland Writers Award.
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  Speaker 2: Her next book, Wise Women, Myths and Folklore in the
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  Speaker 2: Celebration of Older Women, will be published by Virago in 2024.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Sharon is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: and has taught and lectured at several academic institutions, Jungian organizations, including...
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  Speaker 2: the Philadelphia Association of Union Analysts, retreat centers, and cultural
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  Speaker 2: festivals around the world. So Sharon, welcome. I enjoyed so
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: much a chance to get to know you several years
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: ago when you came to Philadelphia back when we did
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  Speaker 2: those things more. But it's nice to be with you
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: again virtually this morning. And I'm wondering if we could
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: start off. We're going to be talking today about Sharon's
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  Speaker 2: fabulous most recent book, Haggitude, And would it be possible
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  Speaker 2: to ask you to begin today by just reading a
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  Speaker 2: portion right from the beginning?
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  Speaker 4: Indeed, I'll read you a couple of paragraphs. And just
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  Speaker 4: to say, it's an absolute delight to be with you.
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: And thank you so much for the invitation and the
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: chance to have a conversation about this work. So, Haggitude,
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  Speaker 4: how the journey begins. In the oldest known cosmology of
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  Speaker 4: my native lands, it wasn't a sky-bound old man with
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  Speaker 4: a beard who made and shaped this world. It was
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  Speaker 4: an old woman, a giant old woman, who has been
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  Speaker 4: with us down all the long ages since the beginning
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  Speaker 4: of time. When I was a young lass, the ocean
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  Speaker 4: was a forest full of trees, she says in some
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  Speaker 4: of the stories about her, stories that are still told
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  Speaker 4: today firmly embedded in the oral tradition. This mythology is
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  Speaker 4: from right here. From these islands of Britain and Ireland,
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  Speaker 4: strung out along the farthest western reaches of Europe where
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  Speaker 4: I was born and and where I still live today,
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: in the lands where my feet are firmly planted. Although
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: a lot of attention has been paid to the question
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: of whether ancient European cultures honoured a great mother goddess,
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  Speaker 4: in these islands we were actually honouring a great grandmother.
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  Speaker 4: Her name in the Gaelic languages of Scotland and Ireland
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  Speaker 4: is the Cailach, literally the old woman. There are traces
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  Speaker 4: of other divine old women scattered throughout the rest of
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  Speaker 4: the British Isles and Europe. They're probably the oldest deities
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  Speaker 4: of all. how thoroughly we've been taught to forget. Today,
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  Speaker 4: we don't see these narratives as remnants of ancient belief systems. Rather,
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  Speaker 4: they're presented to us as folk tales intended merely to entertain,
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  Speaker 4: as oddities of primitive history, the vaguely amusing relics of
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  Speaker 4: more superstitious times, or bedtime stories for children.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, those are such a stirring beginning, and it's so
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  Speaker 2: lovely to hear you read it. Thank you.
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  Speaker 4: Thank you.
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  Speaker 3: Sharon, at what age did you realize that the stories
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  Speaker 3: that you had been raised with fairy tales, folk tales
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  Speaker 3: were pointing to something larger and something deeper that was
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  Speaker 3: personally about you?
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  Speaker 4: I would say that that would have been probably in
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  Speaker 4: my late thirties when I was living in America. I
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: lived in America for six years and I began, I
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  Speaker 4: was on my third midlife crisis at this point. And, um,
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  Speaker 4: I began to realize that that was not my place,
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  Speaker 4: that much as I loved America and had always wanted
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: to retire to Montana in some wonderful log cabin, that
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  Speaker 4: just I didn't feel rooted there. And I didn't feel
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  Speaker 4: like the stories of the place were mine. And so
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  Speaker 4: I began to look back at my own stories. And particularly,
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  Speaker 4: I was looking for stories that told me how to
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  Speaker 4: be a woman in today's world. And clearly there are
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  Speaker 4: lots of wonderful Native American stories, but they don't belong
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  Speaker 4: to me. So I started to look back at my
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  Speaker 4: own tradition. And with the slightly greater wisdom of age,
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  Speaker 4: I began to understand as I delve very deeply into them.
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  Speaker 4: I'd always worked with story, but not quite so deeply.
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  Speaker 4: I began to understand that these actually were cosmologies. They
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  Speaker 4: weren't just odd bits of entertainment or odd bits of
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  Speaker 4: this and that, that these represented the worldviews of my
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  Speaker 4: ancestors and women were really important in it. So I
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  Speaker 4: think that's the time where I really began to figure
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  Speaker 4: out that there was something big here that was not
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  Speaker 4: really being explored.
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  Speaker 3: And how did that change your own feeling about yourself?
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  Speaker 3: Having these images of a cosmology that's initiated by the
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  Speaker 3: great grandmother, by the hand, you know, of the mother
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  Speaker 3: of the universe. How did that encourage you to see
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  Speaker 3: yourself and women differently?
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  Speaker 4: It changed everything. I had grown up in a very
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  Speaker 4: poor part of England and my mother was an alcoholic
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: during my childhood and teen years. So I had a
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  Speaker 4: very negative image of women. I loved my mother dearly.
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  Speaker 4: She had many fine qualities, but she was not kind
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  Speaker 4: of a role model for how to be a woman.
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  Speaker 4: And I didn't really have any among my friends and family.
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  Speaker 4: I just couldn't find a good role model. I had
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  Speaker 4: some very feisty old aunts, but that was a little
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  Speaker 4: bit different. I really grew up in my 20s and
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  Speaker 4: 30s without really being very comfortable about being a woman.
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  Speaker 4: I didn't want to be a man, but I just
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  Speaker 4: didn't really know what kind of journey I might take
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  Speaker 4: as a woman that wasn't a hero's journey. Like many
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  Speaker 4: women of my age, I was taking the hero's journey,
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  Speaker 4: even though it's not designed, I don't think, for for
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: a woman's psyche. And so that shifted everything because it
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  Speaker 4: gave me insights into ways of being and particularly in
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  Speaker 4: relation to creativity. You know, so many of these women
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: in our native traditions and European traditions are creatrixes. They're
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: literally creating the world. They're weaving the world into being.
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  Speaker 4: And also perhaps more particularly, in the way that these
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  Speaker 4: very powerful women were so profoundly associated with the land
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  Speaker 4: and with their places. And that really just hit something
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  Speaker 4: in me that I hadn't quite grasped before.
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  Speaker 2: Like the importance of rootedness.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, the importance of place. And I've always said that
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  Speaker 4: as I look back, place has been my biggest teacher.
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  Speaker 4: Not that humans haven't been important, But somehow the places
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  Speaker 4: that I've lived, particularly since I came back from America
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  Speaker 4: when I was around 40, every place I've lived has
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  Speaker 4: taught me something and some way of being that I
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  Speaker 4: really needed to learn at the time. There was a
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  Speaker 4: place that taught me everything I needed to know about
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  Speaker 4: age and endurance. There was a place with a laughing
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  Speaker 4: little river that told me everything I needed to know
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  Speaker 4: about lightening up. And those kind of archetypes of places
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  Speaker 4: in our traditional mythology are very much reflecting the archetypes
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  Speaker 4: of the women in the old stories. And yeah, that
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  Speaker 4: was really, that was profoundly transformative.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I was going to say that I think that
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  Speaker 2: place or nature or the land is a manifestation of
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  Speaker 2: the archetypal feminine. So what you didn't maybe have with
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  Speaker 2: your personal mother for all her many wonderful qualities, you
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  Speaker 2: experienced the archetypal feminine through place.
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  Speaker 4: And I did, yes. And I also, I think for
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: the first time, began to get to grips with the
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: archetype of mother through place because that was an archetype
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  Speaker 4: I wanted nothing to do with. When somebody said mother,
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  Speaker 4: I just couldn't see what that could be that would
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  Speaker 4: be good. And that sense of kind of mother earth,
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  Speaker 4: although it sounds a little obvious and even trite, but
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  Speaker 4: that sense of a mother earth that was nurturing in
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  Speaker 4: a different kind of way in that sense of of
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  Speaker 4: providing everything without controlling, providing everything without asking actually for
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  Speaker 4: anything very much in return, that sense of just being there,
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  Speaker 4: of being abundant. Those were qualities that I wanted to
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  Speaker 4: kind of, you know, to express in myself. I mean,
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  Speaker 4: I'm not a mother, I've never had children, but that
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  Speaker 4: sense of abundance of being able to give to others
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  Speaker 4: in a way that was kind of spontaneous. I didn't
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  Speaker 4: know how to do that. I wanted badly to, but
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  Speaker 4: I didn't know what it would look like. And I
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  Speaker 4: think a lot of these women even though clearly the
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  Speaker 4: stories come from 2000 years ago and they reflect in
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  Speaker 4: their original forms the lives of our ancestors, which are
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  Speaker 4: very different today. Nevertheless, those archetypal qualities, as archetypes do,
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  Speaker 4: I think remain with us and just take different forms
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  Speaker 4: perhaps now.
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  Speaker 3: I think your personal story of archetypal healing is so
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  Speaker 3: wonderfully held and is a great example of something that
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  Speaker 3: Jung has promoted that so many people misunderstand and even
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  Speaker 3: modern clinicians have in some ways abandoned. And the fact
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  Speaker 3: that whether we've had an absent mother or a negative
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  Speaker 3: mother complex or an absent father or a negative father complex,
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  Speaker 3: that even at the center of our ambivalent feelings about
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  Speaker 3: our parents, is a core image, a core force that
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  Speaker 3: is so much more than our lived experience. And if
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  Speaker 3: we can only encounter hints, images, stories that expand the
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  Speaker 3: potential of the archetype, we can grow in ways that
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  Speaker 3: we couldn't have imagined when we were young. Your story
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  Speaker 3: is such a wonderful lived example of how the archetypes
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  Speaker 3: can save us.
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  Speaker 2: Indeed.
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  Speaker 4: And I have always thought that stories are the things
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  Speaker 4: that will save us, regardless of whether our lived experience
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  Speaker 4: has been very rich and wonderful or not. Stories for
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: me as a child were not just a form of escapism.
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  Speaker 4: Fairy tales particularly were a way of convincing myself that
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  Speaker 4: in the face of seemingly impossible circumstances, impossible domestic circumstances
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  Speaker 4: that I was living through, with a bit of imagination
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: and the help of a band of hungry mice or
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: a wise old woman in the woods, you know, you
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  Speaker 4: can always find a way through. And that whole sense
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: of stories having at their heart fairy tales, particularly having
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: at their heart transformation, meant that ever since I understood
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  Speaker 4: that as actually quite a young child, you know, that
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  Speaker 4: these are showing me how to change, how to change
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  Speaker 4: my story, how to change my place in the world.
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  Speaker 4: I have always believed that transformation is the most fundamental
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  Speaker 4: value of that I hold you know the necessity for
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: transformation I mean not for the sheer hell of it
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: but transformation right up to the end you don't ever
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: stop growing you don't ever stop becoming.
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  Speaker 2: Which of course is a central tenet of Jung.
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  Speaker 4: Indeed Yeah, indeed. And strangely, I did the classic kind
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: of psychology training. I suppose at 18, I went off
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  Speaker 4: to university and did a psychology degree. And the psychology
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  Speaker 4: department I ended up in was quite behaviorist, very scientific.
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  Speaker 4: And I think when we were looking at the history
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: of psychology, we had half a lecture on Freud And
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: a sentence on Jung. I still have those notes. Literally
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: a sentence on Jung. And then just, you know, laughter
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  Speaker 4: from the lecturer. And it really was quite considerably later
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  Speaker 4: that I actually began to read Jung and realized that
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  Speaker 4: that was what I had been looking for all the time.
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  Speaker 4: You know, that sense of transformative possibility, that sense of
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: archetypal characters. Really, like you're having a real relationship with
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  Speaker 4: them because they are working on you and... interacting with
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  Speaker 4: you and changing your life in ways that kind of
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: like you know real people would so yeah that was
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  Speaker 4: that was a that was a very big thing for
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: me and for my work.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: I want to go back for a second and pick
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: up on something that you mentioned a couple of minutes
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  Speaker 2: ago and my ears perked up because you said that
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  Speaker 2: you were living the hero's journey I think it was
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: when you were in your 30s in the living in
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: the united states if i got that right.
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  Speaker 4: I'd say through all through my 20s and 30s yeah
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: okay until late.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Until late 30s i mean i'm interested in in that
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: if you care to share but i'm also interested in
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: what you said next which is you don't think it's
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: really appropriate for women to take the hero's journey and
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: i've i'm curious how how do you see a woman's
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  Speaker 2: journey as differing from a man's journey and what what
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: is what would the heroine's journey be Well.
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  Speaker 4: If I can come back to that, I do just
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: want to say that I've written recently quite a lot
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  Speaker 4: about what I call, and a couple of other people
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  Speaker 4: before me have called it, so I didn't coin the term,
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: the post-heroic journey, which I think is equally applicable to
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: men and to women. So I'd love to come back
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: to that if we have a moment. But certainly for me,
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: in my 20s and 30s, I was taught that you
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: needed to have A professional, everything needed to be focused
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: around your career. A good job was everything. I was
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: taught to be outwardly focused, to want more of everything,
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: to work myself into the ground because that was how
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: you succeeded and that was how the culture measured success.
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: And I've always seen the hero's journey as very linear,
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: as profoundly individualistic. whereas what I call the post-direct journey
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: is much more, not circular, but spiraling, more focused on
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: community than individual glory, not so much focused on taking
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: more all the time, but living with what is enough.
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: And so I think for me that the hero's journey
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: and the world in which I lived, the corporate world
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: in which I lived, did not value what we might
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: think of as feminine qualities, the classic feminine qualities of creativity,
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: of nurturing, of intuition, of empathy, which of course, as
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: we all know, are possible both in men and women,
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: but they've been thought of as feminine qualities. And so
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: to me, either a heroine's journey or the post-heroic journey
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: requires the melding of those qualities with the also very
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: useful qualities of linearity and rationality and intellect.
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  Speaker 3: So it's not so much that the hero's arc, hero
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: or heroine's arc, in terms of separating from the family,
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: finding a place in the world, gaining your own skills,
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: getting your own money, that that does have a place
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: in the first half of life. But I think we're
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: just saying for both men and women, being stuck in
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: that for the last half or last third or last
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: quarter of one's life can deprive everyone of a richness
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: of a soulfulness that they've earned by getting their survival
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: needs lined up, by giving themselves the opportunity to not
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: have to work 50 hours a week or God knows
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: what else, to be able to contemplate, to be able
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: to become poets and writers like yourself.
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: Indeed. And again, you know, that was one of the
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: things that struck me. so much about Jung's work on
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: the second half of life when I was researching Haggitude,
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: that sense that, okay, so the first half of life,
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: your journey is supposed to be outwardly focused. Maybe, maybe
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: for some, not for everybody, some kind of a hero's
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: journey is sensible and is part of our developmental path.
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: I don't think that for many women, actually, the hero's
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: journey is necessarily a good path. It certainly wasn't for me.
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: But I do think that for everybody in the second
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: half of life, If we are turning inwards, if we
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: are looking to the transcendent function, if we are looking
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: to the numinous, if we are looking to a search
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: for meaning and a spiritual perspective on the world, that
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: is not a hero's journey. A hero's journey is very
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: outward focused. And so we need something that I have
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: been more comfortable calling the post-heroic journey, which is all about,
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: as I see it, finding our callings. going back to
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: James Hillman's work, particularly in The Soul's Code, finding, and
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: in fact, going back much further than that to Plato,
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: who first wrote about this, that sense of identifying what
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: the unique gift is that each of us brings to
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: the world at this time. That, to me, is what
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: the second half of life is really about. We've done
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: all of the experimenting when we were younger. We've played
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: a little bit. We've tried this, perhaps, and we've tried that.
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: But now it's like, okay, what is the essence of
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: of who I am, what is the essence of who
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: I am as a soul, and how does that essence
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: serve my own personal spiritual journey, but also the world
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: in very troubled times.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: And one of the things that I really appreciated about
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: your book was that you say that it's after menopause
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: that women really kind of experience this burning away of
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: all this dross that we don't need to find that essence,
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: to find that thing, That we came into the world
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: to become. So that really rewrites this stage of life
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: as a very different time for women. The caretaking is
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: behind us. The maybe perhaps professional striving in some sense
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: might be behind us. And we can really sink into
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: who were we meant to become? And maybe we can
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: even become that.
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: Indeed. And, you know, in Agatude, I do describe menopause
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: as an alchemical process and consequently as a kind of
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: time between stories. So you have the story of the
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: first half of life and then all of a sudden
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: for women, menopause, that shatters. You know, everything that you
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: thought defined you is slipping away, whether we're talking about youth, beauty,
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: you know, other kind of physical functions, whatever it might be,
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: health often, yes. is slipping away. And yet, the culture
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: doesn't tell us that there is a story at all post-menopause.
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: so but there is this new story waiting to begin
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: and that period between the two stories i think is
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: a profoundly transformative time and i do think of it
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: as an alchemical process where you know if you look
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: at the negrado um particularly and mortification, which is literally
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: burning back to the bones. That is what is happening
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: to us. I mean, physically, as well as psychologically with
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: hot flushes and so on. And that is all about finding,
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: if everything that you once thought you cared about or
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: has defined you is slipping away, what's left? What's left?
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: And how can you take what is left to build
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: the new story that's ahead of you? Because let's face it,
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: for most women, If you look at average life expectancy post-menopause,
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: they're a good three decades ahead of us if we're
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: lucky enough to survive. It's a lot of life to
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: do something with.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: Sharon, if I could swing back to something which I think, Lisa,
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: you had asked earlier, but I had heard in a comment,
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: that while we all understand something about the heroic journey,
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: that your own self-reflection has left you feeling that the
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: heroic journey journey paradigm that you had used, perhaps coming
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: on in your 20s, for instance, had not served you
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: and that you wish you had found a different way
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: of imagining that first half of life? Hindsight being 20-20,
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: of course, and the wisdom we all have with age.
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: What's the story that you wish you had found when
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: you were in your late teens or early 20s that
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: could have set you on the different path Yeah, that's
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: a really.
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: Good question, but I don't think it was for lack
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: of a story. I think when you grow up in
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: an environment where it is very poor, where you have
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: a violent father and where you have an alcoholic mother,
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: then you don't feel ever safe or secure in your childhood.
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: That just is something that you don't recognize. And I
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: think for me, the thing that I wanted more than
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: anything as I left home at 18, after which my
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: mother had stopped drinking, my father was long gone, I
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: needed to feel safe and I needed to feel secure.
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: So I took a path that was a path of
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: safety and security. You know, I went down an academic route,
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: but I couldn't get tenure and it was impossible to
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: buy a house and all the rest of it. So
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: I went into a corporate environment because I felt that
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: I needed to be safe. And I stayed in that
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: corporate environment on and off for about, I would say,
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: about 15 years. And I tried to leave a couple
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: of times, but then circumstances drove me back. And I
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: think I spent a lot of time beating myself up
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: for that, you know, because I had done the classic
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: stepping off the path that leads you to your calling.
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: That wasn't who I was. That wasn't who I was
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: supposed to be. But I didn't know who I was
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: supposed to be. I didn't know what it would look
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: like if I didn't do this job. What would I do?
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: And it was only, as I say, after my third
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: midlife crisis in my late 30s that I finally figured
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: that I was never going to know if I didn't
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: just leave and then see what happened. And at that
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: stage in my life, I thought, OK, you know, I.
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: I recognized that the safety and security had been a
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: stumbling block for me and just decided to go for it,
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: to just leave the job and see what happened. So,
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: you know, this is what happened.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: I'm sitting with the field that so many of us
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: have had, and I share with you, having come from
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: a really turbulent home, how that first quarter or longer
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: of the life is just about getting our feet on
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: the ground. finding some ground, any ground that feels wholesome,
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: finding any environment that we can exhale in. I think
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: it's a worthy task. I think in hindsight, it's sad
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: that we had to use up whatever time we needed
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: just to get a good start again. I suppose it
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: does teach us something that we carry later into life
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: about trauma and about needing to forge a life that
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: we weren't blessed with easily.
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, certainly about resilience, of course. But what is interesting
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: is I've grown older and I've delved more into that
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: concept of calling. I have actually come to believe that
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: there is no wrong path. Clearly, I think most of
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: us at some point in our lives, unless we're very
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: focused or very lucky, take steps off the path that
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: is aligned with our ultimate calling. But what is interesting
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: for me, if I look back at those years spent
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: in a corporate environment, is that I gained so many
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: skills that I am now putting to good use. And
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: it's not that I wouldn't like not to have spent
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: all of those years in it, but I can't really
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: regret it because it's made me the person that is
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: able to write the books that I write. And I
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: think it's important for all of us. who are inclined
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: to beat ourselves up for what we think of as
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: incorrect choices, um, that we actually look at, we step
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: back and we look at the big picture and, and,
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: and the, the nature of the journey. I don't believe
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: very much in destinations. I believe very heavily in, in
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: journeying on.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: The right way to wholeness is full of fateful detours. Absolutely.
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: So said.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, um, you were talking about transformation. I
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: love your idea that fairy tales are ultimately about transformation.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: That feels right to me. And then you had mentioned
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: going through three midlife crises by the time you were 40.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: And then in the book, you write really beautifully about
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: the image of the snakeskin and sort of shedding and
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: transforming and changing. And that really comes across strongly in
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: the book that it's about that your life has been
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: about transformation, that life is about transformation. And I can
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: certainly relate to that. I mean, I think, you know,
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: one of the lovely things that I've discovered painfully in
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: the past few years is that, you know, even after
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: analytic training and plenty of decades here on earth, I
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: can still really surprise myself, you know, that there's more.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: There's more that I don't know, and that can change. Well,
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: it can be painful, but it's also somehow really reassuring.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: And I'm just wondering, in your opinion, Sharon, do we
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: just keep on transforming right up until the final transformation?
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Do we ever get a rest?
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: Is it a restful thing not to transform? I don't
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: think I'd find it very restful. I think I'd be fidgety.
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: But I think so, yes. I think some transformations are
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: incredibly turbulent and bring with them massive life changes. I
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: don't think transformation has to be about that. As I
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: see it today, I'm 62 and And I've just made
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: a major move again after a series of moves back
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: to the north of England where I was born to
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: kind of come to terms with all of that young stuff.
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: And I don't see another big upheaval like that in
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: my future. I actively will resist it. I don't want it.
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: I don't want to change my job anymore. You know,
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: I'm very happy in the work that I do, but
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: I expect my transformations to be more internal. and transformations
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: of meaning transformations of relationship for sure i think we
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: always must you know keep doing that um and so
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: yeah i do expect that i think elderhood you know
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: there is a sense even when women accept or men
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: do accept the idea that in the second half of
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: life is a different journey that okay you get 60
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: and it's like okay yeah something's changed right that's it
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: now You know, I'm going to be like that for
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: the next 20 years.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: Come on.
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: I mean, you know, that never happens, does it? It
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: just doesn't happen. So I think preparing ourselves for transformation
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: and seeing it as a positive in spite of the
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: pain that almost inevitably comes with it is just a
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: really good attitude to approach life with.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: You know, you raise a good point. I mean, I
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: can certainly, I had sort of external world transformations early,
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: you know, changing careers or, you know, becoming a mother
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: or whatever. But my recent ones, you know, sort of
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: since menopause have had to do with how I thought
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: about myself or what I knew about myself, you know.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: And I sort of like, oh, I thought I knew
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: who I was. Well, you know, I've done lots of
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: analysis and, you know, it's like, no, you don't know
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: everything yet. You know, Jung said you can't empty out
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: the unconscious.
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: And you're still becoming. I mean, you know, you might
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: know who you were, but who you are now and
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: who you're going to grow into is still an unfolding adventure,
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: isn't it?
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So Sharon, let's talk a little bit about the
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: archetype of the hag, that being so central to the
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: current book. And you've written about many different things over
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: the years. But the archetype of the hag, the stories
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: of the hag have become so important. In your book,
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: you mentioned that they've been important to you as a
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: way of imagining and claiming aspects of your own feminine soul,
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: but also feeling that The hag has a role in
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: the cultural crisis right now, that she could have a
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: role in the world. So perhaps you can introduce us
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: to the archetype of the hag and perhaps talk about
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: her in one of the tales through which you met her.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: Yes. So what is interesting about the women who we
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: can think of as hags in European myth and folklore
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: is that they are not ever defined as by their
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: relationship to anybody else. They're not ever defined by anybody else.
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: They're not someone's mother, grandmother, wife. daughter. They might be,
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: but that's by the by. They are in those stories
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: precisely for who they are. They are entirely sufficient unto themselves.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: They don't need anybody else to tell them who to
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: be or who to become. And that really characterizes them all.
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: And I think again, as we move into the second
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: half of our lives, women particularly, I think, I know
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: it's also true for men, but women particularly have by
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: then already struggled to know who to be in a
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: culture that doesn't value us quite as much still today,
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: in spite of everything. And it's only going to get worse.
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: And what I loved about the hags is that they
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: didn't need anyone to say that it's okay to be that.
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: They just were that, you know, whether you liked it
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: or not, whether it was comfortable or not, they played
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: a critical part in the story and that's what they
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: were for. So you find many challenging and wonderful hags.
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: One of the hags that I love very dearly is
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: an archetype which I conceive of as being related in
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: many ways to the trickster archetype as a profound disruptor.
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: And kind of a subset of the trickster archetype is
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: the truth teller. And we have a lot of old
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: women in European folklore who are truth tellers. So the
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: classic example of that would be in the Grail legends
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: where Parzival, as it usually is, or Galahad, whoever it
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: might be, is feeling very pleased with himself, having become
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: a knight, sitting around with the knights of King Arthur's court,
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: all very fine. And then out of the woods rides
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: this ridiculous-looking character called Kundry, in one of the versions
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: of it, who is the grail messenger. She is she
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: bears the message of the grail. She rides out of
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: the wood and she tells Parzival all of the ways
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: in which he has been a complete shambles, all of
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: the ways in which he is failing, all of the
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: ways in which he has no compassion, no heart, no morality.
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: And then she rides back into the woods again and
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: leaves him completely shattered, but shattered in a way that
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: makes him stand up and look around him and look
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: at himself so that he goes on his journey. He
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: spends some time with a hermit. He's not just all
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: about swashbuckling, fighting battles, blah, blah. He is actually looking
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: into himself and into his heart. And when he eventually
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: asks the grail question, which he omitted to ask first
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: time around and so attains the grail, Kundry is the
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: first one to ride back out of the woods and
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: tell him what a really good job he's done. But
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: that sense of the truth teller, the woman who just says,
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: it's not very popular, it's not what you want to hear,
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: but doesn't do it for the sake of it. She's
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: not telling the truth just because she's had a bad day.
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: She's not just coming out with the truth because she
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: feels a need to tell her truth. It's none of
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: that kind of nonsense that we sometimes find today. She
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: is telling the truth when it is necessary, when it
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: is required for him to move on, for the story
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: to progress. And I think that that is a quality
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: of old women that we have lost today. We do
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: have a lot of truth-telling that is often rage-fueled, you know,
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: or fueled by other problems that people have. But that
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: sense of a kind of righteous truth-telling, a little bit
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: like righteous wrath, is so much there in the stories.
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: And I like that very, very much. You have dangerous
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: old women like Baba Yaga from the Slavic traditions, you know,
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: who are testing the young people to the point of death.
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: This high-stakes game is... With Baba Yaga, if you go
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: looking for fire or for light, you have to pass
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: the test. And if you don't, you'll get put in
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: her big man-sized oven and you'll be eaten. The stakes
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: are high. It's not good enough just to try a
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: little bit. You've got to try with everything that you are.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: So these old women who understand what is required to
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: make someone grow, to make the story move on, to
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: make the point of the story, the ending of the story.
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: I hate that word, but I can't think of a
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: better one right now. The best that it can possibly be,
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: the fullest, the most itself. That's the old woman that
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: I really love.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: When you were describing Kundry and her particular role with Parzival,
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: I was thinking about the way we conceptualize the dream maker,
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: that the eye of the dream maker is looking at
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: what we're not doing, looking at the way in which
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: we are failing our potential and finds its own symbolic
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: way to communicate that to us over and over and
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: over again, day after night after night. So she's wonderfully
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: depicted in that tale as a psychic function of the self.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: And that she rides out from nature itself, almost as
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: an extension of nature, offering this compensatory mirror. And of course,
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: when that happens at the right time, it's both shattering
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: and liberating. and it frees us of all of the
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: misguided efforts that we've thought were so important or, or
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: we're convinced are going to bring us to the pinnacle.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Right. It punctures our inflation.
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: Yes, indeed.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: And it's a real confrontation with shadow that if we
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: can have that, it is, it's very painful, but, but
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: then we do ride forward with a different attitude.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: Yes. I mean, that, that, that trickster is a mirror,
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: isn't it? I mean, it is an archetype. It's, It's
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: a disruptor, but it's a disruptor that holds a mirror
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: up to the culture or up to the self. It's disruption.
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: Generally speaking, in most of the stories, not for the
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: sake of disruption. It is disruption because something needs to shift.
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: Something has been stagnant. Something is dead. And yeah, I
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: think that's a very, very powerful archetype. And it's often
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: said that tricksters are mostly male. Do you know they're not, actually?
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: If you look at trickster as disruptor rather than trickster
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: as joker, which I do see trickster and joker as
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: actually different archetypes. But trickster is disruptive. There are women
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: all over the place doing trickster stuff in that context.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: Del McNeely has a wonderful book, Mercury Rising, on the
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: female trickster.
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: I don't know that one. I must make a note.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: It makes perfect sense.
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: And just in the context of what you were saying,
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: just about dreams and given the function of your dream
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: school and so on, there is another wonderful old woman
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: in the Scottish tradition, from the Isle of Skye, who
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: unusually is seen with a husband, an old woman, clearly
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: a divine old woman. Normally the Kaliuk, who I spoke
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: about when you asked me to read the first part
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: of the book, is a very solitary old woman up
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: in the mountains. In this particular story, she has a husband.
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: And to cut a long story short, a young girl
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: gets lost in the mountains one day when fog comes down.
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: She's picking blueberries. She is led up the mountain by
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: a herd of deer And she comes to a cave
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: inside which there is an old woman and an old man.
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: And they are the dream makers. They make the dreams
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: of the world. So the old man, they sit and
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: look in a pool and they see what's happening in
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: the world reflected in the water of the pool. The
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: old woman makes cheese out of the milk of the deer,
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: gives it to the old man who literally makes the
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: cheese into dreams. And then he stands at the face
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: of the cave. And a black, you know, ravens and
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: crows come and take the dreams that are kind of
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: bad dreams or nightmares. And then a dove comes and
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: takes the other dreams and it's all very pretty. But
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: this is the only story that I have ever come
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: across about actual dream makers. It's just such a lovely idea.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: And I love that the dreams are born of fermentation, right?
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: Because that is so right on about some of these
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: the products that the unconscious gives us like that.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: So would you mind telling us the story, that incredible
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: story that you tell in the book about the Kaliak's bed? Oh, yeah.
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: When I was living in Scotland and spent four years
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, my
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: husband and I had kind of run away there to
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: escape civilization, which clearly was going to hell in a handbasket.
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: We didn't really know what to do. We just figured
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: this out quite late in our lives. And so we thought, oh, gosh,
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: we better go away from it and see what happens.
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: And we ended up on this very remote island in
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: a very remote part of the very remote island with
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: very few people around. And I had no one really
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: to talk to except for my husband, which was very wonderful. But,
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: you know, there's a limit. And so I began to
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: talk to the land. And I began to talk to
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: the land because in that particular place was story after
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: story of the Kaliach, of the old woman that created
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: and shaped the land in Gaelic mythology. So there were
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: place names. They were mountains that looked like a reclining
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: figure of a woman, you know, that were named after
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: the Kaliuk. And so I saw all of this and
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: I began to see shapes in rocks myself and in
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: landscape formations. And because I had nobody else to talk
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: to when I was walking the dogs every morning, I'd
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: talk to the rocks and I'd talk to the Kaliuk.
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: And I really felt as if that was a really
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: profoundly transformative time in my relationship with the land because
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: it's the first time that I really believed that these
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: archetypes are actually alive in the land. They're imminent in
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: the land. And if we pay attention, we can enter
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: into relationship with them. So there was a place down
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: by the shoreline, which was kind of hidden and nobody
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: ever went. And you could see the silhouette of an
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: old woman in one of the cliff faces if you
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: stood at the right angle. And the stories do say
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: that the Kaliukh stands and looks out to sea, waiting
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: for the return of her husband, Mananan Maklia. And that
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: was a difficult time for me. So I used to
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: stand next to this Kaliukh sometimes, and she taught me
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: all I needed to know about endurance and waiting. But
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: around the corner, there was this remarkable rock former which
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: basically looked like a sofa. So there were three walls
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: of cliff. And then there was something that was the
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: size of a single bed, like a mattress. And I
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: slept there every now and again when it got too
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: light in the summer and I was desperate to see
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: the stars. And then we moved away. And again, to
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: cut a long story short, my husband went back when
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: we finally sold our house on the island to pick
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: up some things that he had left there. And I
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: said to him, oh, go back to that place. Go
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: back to the rocky place and just say hello for me.
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: And I had called this sofa the Kaliuk's bed because
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: it was right next door to this silhouetted Kaliuk. So
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: he went back and it had gone. It had vanished.
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: The huge, thick stone mattress, which was made of Lewisian
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: gneiss which is the second oldest and one of the
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: hardest rocks on the planet it is as if somebody
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: had just taken that mattress out and you know believe
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: me it was sandwiched it was well wedged in there
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: and it wasn't there anymore and it was quite a
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: way up from the sea you know you could conceive
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: of the fact that maybe a storm had come in
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: and the waves had lifted up but gosh i mean
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: this was a huge thing and you know i know
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: that sounds a little bit woo-woo to some people it's
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: like are you really saying that because you left you
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: know Callio's bed kind of vanished. But I do believe
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: in reciprocity in relationship with the land. So I was
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: all tied up with how much I had left behind
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: me when I moved away from Lewis because I loved
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: that land with all my heart. I was focused on
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: my own grieving, but then I suddenly thought, well, gosh,
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: what if the land grieves for us when we go?
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: Because it had been a very intense relationship. And I
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: think many traditional cultures do have that sense of reciprocity.
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: You know, people like Robin Wall Kimmerer talk about it
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: all the time. But I don't think we in the
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: West are generally used to thinking about it in that way.
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: We think that we have a relationship with a crow,
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: you know, or we have a relationship with a rock.
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: But what am I in a crow's mythology? I know
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: what a crow is in mind, but you know, what
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: does a crow see when a crow looks at me?
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: What do I want a crow to see? That whole
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: sense of just flipping the mirror a little bit. But yeah,
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: that was a very big That was a very big
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: moment in my relationship with place.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think we understand that in terms
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: of Jung's idea of synchronicity and just the bedrock belief
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: that somehow we're mysteriously connected with the rest of the cosmos. Indeed.
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: And certainly, as he revised his concepts of archetypes accordingly
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: later in life, and then looking at Much of the
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: post-Jungian thought from people like Hillman, which picks up really
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: on some ancient traditions such as the Sufi tradition that
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: hold that archetypes are not aspects of the human psyche,
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: that they have an independent existence. So the ancient Sufis
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: would have argued that the archetypes, stories, synchronicities emerge from
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: what has been termed the mundus imaginalis, the imaginal world
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: which occupies a place between the physical world and the
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: world of the intellect. that they live there. And that
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: is a very similar concept to the old British and
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: Celtic notions of the other world. The other world in
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: our traditions is not the land of the dead. It
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: is a place where archetypal animals live, where archetypal deities live.
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: It is a place that you can slip into if
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: you're either very lucky or unlucky, depending on the shape
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: of what follows. And that sense that it is entangled.
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: The other world is entangled with this world in our tradition.
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: You know, it's not a different place. It's just like
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: slipping through a veil. And that's very much like this
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: ancient Sufi idea of the mundus imaginalis. So I do
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: tend to think of, of the physical world overlaid with this,
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: you know, this other world full of archetypes. And if
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: we are receptive and if we are in profound enough relationship, we, we,
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: We can see it that way. That to me is
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: what I call the mythic imagination. It's kind of an
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: overlay on the physical. So the physical is really important.
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: It's important to know what a crow is. It's important
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: to know the habitat, what it eats, its behavior. But
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: also a crow is something mythical. A crow is the
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: Morrigan goddess, a very profound and powerful goddess in Irish mythology.
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: But it can only be that if you know what
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: a crow is, if you've accepted the physical. So it's
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: that entanglement of that really, I think, is at the
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: heart of our ancestral perspective on all of this and
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: seems very much to make sense to me today from
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: my own experience.
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: As Jung's understanding of the archetypes continued to grow and
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: his eventual encounters with them during his creative illness, they say,
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: there was both the fascination with these archetypal figures, but
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: also the danger of them. Because human beings are of
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: a different order, that the human archetype has its own
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: archetypal underpinning, but the archetype of the crow, the archetype
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: of Baba Yaga, the archetype of Poseidon, these are all,
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: in some sense, smaller versions than the human potential, but
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: by that virtue, infinitely more powerful in the limitation of
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: the archetype. So as you approach the archetype of the
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: hag to learn, to be an apprentice, so to speak,
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: how does a woman honor what the hag teaches her
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: and also avoid being possessed by her in a way
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: that the archetype limits her or captures her in something
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: that might ultimately be less than human or different than human?
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: That's a really interesting question that I will admit I
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: have not thought about. Thinking about it on my feet,
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: I see all of these archetypes as simply in a
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: way as different faces, as kind of reflecting facets of
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: us back at ourselves, but never reflecting the whole. Because
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: I think you're absolutely right. I don't think it's possible
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: or desirable for a human to become Kaliuk because that
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: is one archetypal way of being in the world. In
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: order to be human, you've got to have all of
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: the other stuff that's added in, the multiplicity. I think
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: it's important. I do talk to a lot of women
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: about this, particularly who have a kind of spirituality that
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: is associated with particular female deities in our particular traditions,
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: that that is not all there is to be and
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: to choose one particular facet over all of the others
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: can be indeed very, very limiting. So I think, and
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: yet there is a transformative power that makes you want
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: to submit yourself to that archetype. But for me, it's
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: been different archetypes at different times of my life. You
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: embroil yourself in one and then you let it go
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: because you've, I want to say outgrown it, but I
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: don't mean that in a kind of, you know, I'm
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: older than you kind of way. I just mean it's
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: time to move on to express a different facet of
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: your being. So, no, that is a very important point.
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: I think that for Jung, as he really understood the
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: power of these forces, he was most concerned that their
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: representations had fallen out of a culture. That if we
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: stop talking about the goddesses, if we start talking about
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: the life of trees and the life of the ocean,
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: it doesn't mean that that life doesn't exist, it just
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: means it's invisible to us and is still acting, and
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: in some ways, acting in ways that interfere with the
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: individual development because we don't have a right relationship to them,
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: which is often reverential and respectful because we understand how
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: powerful these forces are. We might seek their boons. We
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: may seek to learn from them, but we also understand
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: know where they belong rather than rummaging around in our organs,
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: making us unwell, rummaging around in the collective unconscious, springing
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: up as bizarre political ideologies and strange charismatic leaders.
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: Yes. I think in a sense, you give power to
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: what you believe in, in the sense that the archetypes
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: I suspect reflect that. us back just as you know
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: reflect we reflect them back at themselves just as they
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: reflect us back at ourselves because if you accept this
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: notion of archetypes having an independent existence in whatever place
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: you might then they too have their own journey of
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: becoming they're growing they're transforming they're changing and i think
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: one of the pities about contemporary culture when it looks
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: back at old stories and old archetypes is that it
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: sees them as static Yes. You know, we see this
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: all the time in, in, in certain pagan traditions, at
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: least in this part of the world where, you know,
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: they might say, for example, honor the goddess, the old
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: Irish goddess, Bridget. Well, apart from the fact that we
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: don't actually know very much about her, she would have
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: been that 2000 years ago in a very different culture
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: in a very different times. And as we've grown 2000
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: years older, lost some knowledge that's very valuable, gained other
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: knowledge that's very valuable as the culture has transformed as
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: the things that, kind of beset us are changing, then
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: we need to anticipate the possibility that an archetype might change.
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: So I think a lot of the kind of negative
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: power of an archetype is this idea that we don't
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: really understand them and we want to capture them and
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: define them and confine them and we won't let them grow.
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: And I think that's when a relationship becomes toxic, just
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: as it would between two human's where you have one,
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: you see somebody as they were 20 years ago. Mothers
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: do it all the time. I'm constantly hearing it from
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: my friends. I know you. No, you don't. You knew
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: me when I was 18. Then I left home and
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: I've become lots of different things. It's kind of, I
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: don't want to trivialize it, but to me, it's that.
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: And I think that is certainly one of the great
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: dangers in archetypes. So in putting these archetypes out there
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: in haggartude, I am by no means suggesting that we
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: can find them and define them. We need to bring
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: them right up to date. What is the trickster archetype now?
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: What does that look like? And so in the book,
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: I tried to give some contemporary examples as well because
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: we can't be those people anymore. We've changed.
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: When you were talking about the evolution of the archetype,
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: I was remembering the first time early in the training
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: where I was really discovering von Fromm's work on fairy
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: tales and the way she was presenting fairy tales as
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: originals artifacts of events that had happened in the collective unconscious,
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: that archetypes were fighting and breeding and some dying, and
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: that the implications of the collective unconscious reshaping itself as
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: the archetypes continued to have their independent life was so
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: extraordinary and so stunning, just remarkable. And the challenge, I think,
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: of holding fairy tales, for instance, as these observations of
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: the archetypal world and then trying to find a way
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: to personalize them, having a foot in both worlds, what
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: a challenge that can be to hold that middle space.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: And I want to say that's one of the things
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: I just loved about Haggitude is that you tell the
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: old stories and But, you know, the writing is so
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: lively and fresh and personal. And there's so much of
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: you in there and people that you know and have
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: worked with that it really comes to life not as
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: an ancient artifact, but as something that is alive in
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: your life, alive in the lives of other women that
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: you know. And so you can really feel that juicy
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: process of change and transformation in those archetypes in your writing, Sharon.
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: Oh, well, that's lovely. Thank you so much. I think
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: in some ways, these archetypes have vanished from human consciousness,
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: or at least we've lost track of them. And it's
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: time that we brought them back again. And I am
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: very much a fan of what Jung said about cultural mythology,
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: about what he said about the cultural myth failing us.
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: And when the cultural myth fails us, the myth-making, we
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: fall out of myth in a sense. That was another Jungian, D.
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: Stevenson Bond, I think, who coined that particular phrase, but
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: we fall out of myth. But then Jung said the
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: myth-making capacity belongs with the individual. And to me, it
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: belongs with the individual finding a relationship with those old
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: archetypes whose time has come again and bringing them back
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: into consciousness so that we kind of restore the lost
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: connection with them. And for older women who do not
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: have any place in this culture, there is no story
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: for us in this culture that is positive. The story
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: is one of decline and managed decline, you know, so
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: that we are managed to stay out of the way
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: and to be silent and not to bother people. That's
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: the only story we have here. So we absolutely have
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: to bring new stories or in fact, old stories, old
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: stories transformed back into consciousness today. Otherwise, all of this
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: life that we have post-menopause will be for nothing. So
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, stories, as you well know, and
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: as I knew during the years when I finally left
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: corporate life and I practiced as a psychologist for a
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: good many years and focused very much on narrative therapy.
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: Stories capture the imagination and help people to see ways
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: out of an impossible situation or different roles to play
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: in an impossible situation and they have that power in
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: our you know not just for people who are dealing
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: with mental health crises or with other profound problems in
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: their lives but just on a day-to-day basis as we
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: as we try to figure out who we can best
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: be in this.
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: World your comment reminds me so much of a favorite
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: quote by gk chesterton um That always tickles me in
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: the back of my mind. Fairy tales do not tell
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. Yeah, I really do think that there is very
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: little that you can't learn from a fairy tale. I
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: really think that bringing story back into the world in
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: the way that it used to be held is really
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: important to me. So not just in books, but stories
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: being told again, trying to bring. And so the next
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: book that I'm working on is a collection of the
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: stories that are in Haggitude and more. With a colleague,
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: I've done a really big delve into European folklore and
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: mythology and have quite a big collection of different old
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: women characters. And what we really want to do more
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: than anything, as well as collecting them into a book
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: that people can read, is have people tell them again,
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: you know, tell them to their kids, tell them to
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: each other, talk about them. When I lived in Ireland,
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: that was kind of what you do. Do you know,
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: if somebody came for a cup of tea or for
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: a meal in the evening or whatever, it was kind
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: of almost like the price of your dinner that you
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: told a story or you sang a song or you
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: read a poem or something. That kind of Cayley culture
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: that still goes on in the Irish speaking parts of
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: the country. And just to have those stories able to,
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: to trip off our tongues again. Because the more they're told,
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: the more real they become, and the more real that
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: way of being in the world becomes, and the more
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: you activate the archetype in the collective unconscious.
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: Well, I'd love it if you could tell us a
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: little bit about the haggitude, like who's it for, or
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: maybe what are you hearing about it? Who's responding to it?
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: What are they saying?
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: Well, it was... precisely for women who don't know what
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: to be now that they have lost all of the
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: things that defined them. And given that our culture does
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: seem still to value women for fertility and attractiveness to
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: whoever you want to be attractive to, when that begins
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: to go, we have no other role. And so what
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: I was trying to do was to inspire older women
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: in these quite long years of the to find something
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: to be that is meaningful, that is authentic. And so
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: in Haggitude, I talked very much about what I called
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: the inner hag. So this idea that each of us
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: has an inner hag, which reflects our calling, which reflects
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: the essence of who we are and will be different
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: from woman to woman. So one woman might find that
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: her inner hag is a trickster or a truth teller character,
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: Another woman might find that her inner hag is the
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: fairy godmother or a kind of mentoring kind of character.
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: Another might find that her inner hag is the channel
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: of the Furies who were the face of righteous wrath
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: in the Greek tradition. So really, it was aimed at
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: all women who are just looking for something to be
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: and something to care about in the second half of
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: their lives. What's curious about it, which I didn't Well,
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: I would say I didn't expect it, but I'm not
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: entirely sure, is that it's also appealing to several younger
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: women as well. And I think that is so important
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: because it's all very well for women who've got to
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: 50 or whatever to say, okay, who am I now?
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: But in the world today, 20-year-olds don't even know who
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: to be in the next 10 years, let alone by
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: the time they get to 80. And I think really
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: in a world that is so beset by such awful
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: challenges where people are just wondering what life is for,
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: whether the planet will still be able to accommodate it
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: by the time they get to 80 that sense that
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: there is something worth living for you know beyond the
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: next 20 years or whatever that there is something still
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: to be there is something to do there is something
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: to give i think is really important for young people
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: otherwise you know they just run the risk of falling
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: into an endless pit of despair and nihilism and uh
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: That's not what we need.
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: And one of the things that I think we've touched
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: on just a little bit so far today, but it's
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: certainly in your book too, and something that I'm very
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: aware of is the way that the culture, there's something
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: about the way that old women are thought of and
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: treated that makes it very difficult for young women to
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: have relationships with older women. And I run women's fairy
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: tale retreats, actually. And one of the things that's been so,
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: so powerful is to see the generations meet, generations, women
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: from different generations meet and mentor. and enjoy each other
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: and learn from each other at my last retreat we
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: sat around the room according to age and I think
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: the youngest person there was 21 and the oldest person
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: there the oldest woman was 71 So there was this
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: 50-year age span among the participants. It was very moving.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: You know, the way that our cultures kind of bias
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: against age means that women are often seen as invisible,
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: as you talk about in the book, as they get older,
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: and especially invisible to younger women. who probably don't want
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: to think that they're going to wind up looking like
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: us one day. But it really robs younger women of
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: a resource when they can't be in connection with older women.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: Yes. And, and of course, until very recently, there would
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: have been those connections within families as well as within communities,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: but in a fragmented world where, you know, families are
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: fragmented and nobody stays in the same place anymore. Those,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: those are, That ability to bring the generations together hardly exists.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: You know, I can't think of very many situations here
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: in my world where that would happen spontaneously if you
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: didn't have a family, you know, with lots of generations
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: available to you. But also it is the problem in
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: the way that older people have become what the culture
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: is trying to make them into very often. You know,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: we do see that. We see many older people just
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: kind of losing, losing the will to transform still, losing
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: the will to be engaged because the culture has told
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: them they must retire for heaven's sake, you know, retire
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: from what? I mean, I don't, you know, I know
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: it means retiring from a job and a profession, but
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: it seems to mean more than that, that you just
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: kind of like almost check out. And I see that
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: a lot in older people. I see also a whole
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: bunch of very wise older people who would have a
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: lot to offer if there were opportunities for them to
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: do so. So partly it is because we have become
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: what the culture is trying to make us into. And
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: that's what we really, really need. We need to set
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: a fire, a light in the hearts of older women
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: to just think that, no, this could be great. And
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: nobody is going to do it for us. The story
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: changes with us, one person at a time, one in
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: a hag at a time, And it can be so inspiring.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: So I think we, you know, a lot of the
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: women that, so I have had a year long program
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: built around Tagetuda kind of course, which is just coming
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: to an end. And we've had over a thousand people
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: enrolled in it. And a lot of those women are
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: really seriously looking at ways now of going back out
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: into their community and finding ways to change things, to
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: bring people together. And, you know, that's all that you,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: To me, that's all that you can ever do. You
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: sow the seeds of change and transformation. You tell the
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: stories that capture people's imagination, and then they're off. That's
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: kind of what you need. So more and more of
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: these stories, I think, are really, really important.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: So leaning a little bit more into what obstructs women
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: from rediscovering that more ancient wellspring, Because it's archetypal, in
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: a sense it is in the ground of each woman,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: of each person. One obstruction is that the culture, in
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: a sense, hypnotizes women to forget or to lose track
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: of this other world, their dreams, the way that one
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: can listen to nature. What are some of the other
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: transformations that an older woman may need to go through
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: before they can lay claim or acknowledge even that there
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: is other worlds, that the archetypal realms are true, that
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: the thin places exist.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: Well, I'd say there are two things that are profoundly important.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: One is aligning oneself more deeply with an embodied existence.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: When we get older, the body begins to fail and
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: a lot of people and bits start to fail and
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: it's not quite so pretty to look at and therefore
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: a lot of women as they get older seem to
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: to move away from that sense of being an embodied
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: physical person because it's just like you know they don't
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: want to look at this and i think what i've
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: seen an interesting phenomenon um actually bizarrely on social media
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: over the past few years where people are putting up
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: images of very wrinkled old women with bright shining eyes
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: and even younger women are saying that's beautiful and i
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: think it's i think That sense of, you know, so
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: I had a life-threatening illness a couple of years ago.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: I was diagnosed with lymphoma. And it was in the
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: middle or at the beginning, actually, of the pandemic and lockdown.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: And it took a long while for it to be diagnosed.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: And if it hadn't been diagnosed then, I would have
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: been dead within four months. It was very aggressive, very treatable, happily,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: because of the aggressiveness. But that sense of all of
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: a sudden looking at my body and thinking, oh, my God,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: all of the things that you have got me through
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: you know, all of the things. I mean, the body
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: is literally a soulmate, you know, it's not a backdrop.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: It is a soulmate and we are our bodies. And
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: that whole sense of that was something that I didn't
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: have until I grew older and it began slowly to fail.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: And then you realize how important it is. So I
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: would say that is a hugely important thing, that sense
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: of that looking at the body, being with the body,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 4: accepting the fact that it's going to go into decline,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: which leads me to the second point, which is to
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: have conversations about death, because that brush with death or
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: what I talked about in Haggitude is that walk through
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: the valley of the shadow of death, because I didn't,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: I wasn't led there in the end, changed everything for
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: me and enabled me to really befriend death. And that
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: sounds perhaps a little bit weird, but you know, in
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: the work that I do, working with stories, I kind
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: of archetypalize, if that's a verb, everything. So I personify everything.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: So if I think about death and befriending death, death
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: becomes an old woman who happens to be a character
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: in one of the stories I tell in Haggitude. And
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: death has to be somebody that I can imagine having
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: a relationship with. And that ability to accept really genuinely
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: that we, us, not our mother or our partner or
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 4: anybody or a friend, or a family member who might've
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: died because that's very raw and very real, but it's
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: not as real as when you know that you personally
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: are at death's door. That really, that I think we
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: cannot live fully. And I'm far from the first person
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: to express this idea. If we do not have the
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: ability to walk hand in hand with death, knowing that
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 4: one of these days she's going to say, okay, over
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: here now. Hmm. And we can't, it's a little bit
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: like menopause. It's a little bit like old age. It's
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: another one of those conversations that our culture deals with
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: very badly. Whereas in other traditional cultures, you know, it is,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 4: of course, it's part of life. So I think that
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: those two things, which are clearly related, that real sense
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: of embodied existence and the fact that that embodied existence
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: is going to end and living every day in the
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: knowledge of that makes, does make every day more alive.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: There's no question about it.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is something I'd love to talk about
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: on the podcast just as a whole episode, but I've
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: worked with a few people who have sort of persistent
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: death anxiety that really interferes with lots of things. And
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: the antidote always is to lean into that and just, yeah,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: I'm going to die. And then the kind of crippling
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: anxiety resolves and the person feels more alive.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: Yes, but I think that a lot of our focus,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: a lot of the cultural mythology that we are living
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: by and that is crippling both us and the planet
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: comes out of that fear of death. You can't ever
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: grow older in a meaningful way if you're frightened of
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: the end of the journey. We have this kind of
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: cultural eternal youth syndrome going on. where we are just
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 4: not looking at it. We don't want to look at it.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 4: We don't want to see it as a culture. And
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 4: so we're constantly focused on more, more, more, because we
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: think that's all there is to grow into. We're constantly
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: focused on the individual because keeping ourselves alive at all
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 4: costs is what preoccupies us. And I think once you
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 4: have really genuinely faced the reality of death as, yeah,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 4: another transformation, certainly in my belief system, as opposed to
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 4: an absolute end, then all of that shifts. You begin
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 4: to want different things. Your values shift a little bit.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 4: You certainly don't do things that you don't want to do. Clearly,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: we all have to end a living, but if there's
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 4: a way of cutting out that stuff, it is profoundly transformative,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 4: and death is the ultimate transformation. Certainly, again, in our
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 4: native cultures from where many of these stories spring. Life
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: was a spiral. It wasn't a linear hero's journey. It
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 4: was a spiraling journey. post-heroine's journey. Death, rebirth, death, rebirth.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: On it went. There was no sense of an ending.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: When I worked as a medical social worker before I
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: was an analyst, I worked in a level four burn
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: trauma unit. So we treated the cases that were flown
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: in from other hospitals, very severe cases. So it introduced
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: me in a very acute way to death, especially shocking death,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: unexpected death. And then as I continued my analytic work
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: and broadened my understanding in a number of ways, I
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: continued to reflect on how my analysis and how I
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: myself was still trying to hold this spectrum of experiences.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: And I came to see how afraid we all are
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: of decrepitude, which is its own category. And in many ways,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: less afraid of death. Having seen numerous people come down
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: to the end of an agonizing process, and to pray
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: to be released, to pray to the death mother to
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: just gather them in her arms and take them from
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: this wracked body. How important that is, seeing my own
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: mother come to that place. There is such a grace,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: such a relief. But facing decrepitude, that's more complicated. And
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: I think so much of our resistance is trying to
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: fight that declining quality of life. And many people will
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: often say, I'd love to just be really, really vital
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: and then just one day don't wake up. Just bypass
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: all the decrepitude and then just somebody flips the switch
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: and we're free out into the cosmos. But facing that
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: loss of capacity.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: Well, and pain and suffering too.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: Pain and suffering, absolutely.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: The loss of dignity.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: I'm 61 and I'm at this point where if I
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: sleep too long, my body hurts from just laying down
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: so long. I was 14. I was like, I could
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: sleep for 18 hours if you let me. And now
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: my body is like. yelling at me, scolding me to
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: get out of bed because it's miserable from not moving after,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: you know, seven hours or six hours. Uh, so ultimately
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: it's signals, um, of change and accommodation.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 4: And I guess really, you know, how you approach that
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: and it's easy to say, well, it isn't easy to
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 4: say because, you know, we've all, I'm sure had our
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 4: periods of, um, painful disorders and illnesses, whether we're old
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 4: or not. So we kind of perhaps know what it
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: looks like or what it feels like, but it depends
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 4: very much on what you think this existence is for,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 4: doesn't it? And so I do say, you know, I
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: do subscribe to the old platonic perspective on the world. Um, strangers,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: perhaps that seems, seems that, you know, we choose to
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: come into a physical form with all of that implies,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: you know, Plato and, um, And certainly Plotinus would have
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 4: had the concept that we don't only do that. We
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 4: choose to come to a particular place at a particular
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 4: time to be born to particular parents because we have
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: something to learn and something to offer. You know, the
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 4: two aspects of calling something for us, for our soul's journey,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 4: something to give to the world. And it's just part
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: of physical existence. And, you know, I do not think,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: I mean, for sure, none of us really want to
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 4: embrace it, but that's the journey, isn't it? That is
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 4: the journey. You get the good stuff and you get
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 4: the bad stuff. And I think you have to go
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 4: through those phases if you are going to get the
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 4: most out of this physical incarnation, tough as it sounds.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: That's a conversation stopper.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: It's a Kairos moment. There's so much in it. As
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: I was reading your book, I was also deeply moved
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: to remember the many wise women that have protected me,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: guided me, helped me across my life since I was
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: about nine years old. I became a paperboy in the
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: neighborhood and the determination that I had to befriend every
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: mother in the neighborhood and how strange that was to them.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: Of course, I was looking for something that I couldn't
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: have at home, but how wise, how welcoming, how... Delicately,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: the women in the neighborhood saw me and helped in
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: subtle ways to kind of keep me going. And then
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: later in life, as an adult man, having women in
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: their 90s, wise women in their 90s and in other realms,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: who were able to listen with such ruthlessness and give.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: Just the right piece of wisdom, just at the right time,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: with no sense of violence or no sense of anger,
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: just understanding that if I could see something just a
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: little differently, that a whole piece would dissolve and have
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: an opportunity to recoagulate, to reform. And the art of that,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: the art of that unsentimental listening and the offering of
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: the tiny new piece has always been something that I
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: just have such enormous respect for and awe.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: And I think, you know, the point there that I
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: pick out of that is their ability to see the
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: pattern and to know what piece needs to shift and,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: you know, Look at the fates in Greek mythology. They
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: were old women, except for the male artists who liked
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: to paint them as beautiful young women in all the texts.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 4: They were old women because it is only old women
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 4: that could see that picture. And that was their job.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: They were weaving that tapestry which held the world in balance.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: And they knew that if this piece fell out of place,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 4: the whole cosmos would be out of balance. And they
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 4: knew how to put it back again. That was always
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 4: the job of old women. You know, the Norns in
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 4: Scandinavian mythology have some similar kind of function. And that
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 4: is interesting, isn't it? And of course, those stories of
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 4: the fates were arguably pre-patriarchy. We have to believe that
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: such a thing existed. It was certainly pre-Olympian, pre-the Olympian
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 4: deities who were profoundly patriarchal. The fates were much older
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 4: than them. And many other examples of older women, such
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: as the Furies, in Greek mythology were very much older
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 4: than the kind of Olympian system. So yes, that ability
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 4: to see the picture. Fairy tales too are full of
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 4: old women who spin and weave.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: And who are, like you're both saying, kind of can see,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: I want to say with a sort of spirit of generosity,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: that it's not about what serves them. It's being able
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: to see the whole picture, Joseph, in your case, these
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: women who guided you. not pursuing their own agenda, but
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: just taking in the whole picture and offering you the
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: needed piece. So it's a kind of almost kind of
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: cosmological perspective.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 4: Indeed. And I think if you do have the opportunity
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: to actually listen to older people, that's pretty much all
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: they want to do, particularly as they approach the end
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 4: of their lives, is to just offer them anybody who
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 4: will listen, really, that wisdom and that perspective which they
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 4: have gained in whatever ways, large or small, through the
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 4: course of their lives. There is a really strong urge
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 4: in most of the older people that I have spoken
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: to or worked with, you know, coming with any belief
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 4: system from any class to just leave something behind to
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 4: want to pass it on. And we have to find
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 4: ways of allowing older people to do that. There are
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 4: a number of projects that I've come across both in
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 4: the States and in this part of the world, which
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 4: are kind of collecting, you know, that wisdom, allowing old
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 4: people to tell their stories, recording it, if you like.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 4: And of course, that's where a lot of the folk
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 4: tales that we now know came from, you know, from
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 4: folklore collectors, particularly in Ireland and Britain, bicycling around the
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 4: country with tape recorders, collecting not just stories, but bits
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: of kind of folk wisdom that are associated with them.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: Sharon, I wanted to introduce a new topic for us
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: to talk a bit about. In the first third or
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: half of your book, you're very honest and disclosing about
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: the role of rage and anger in deconstructing your assumptions,
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: deconstructing your relationship to certain professions, and deconstructing your relationship
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: to certain people. So perhaps we could talk a little
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: bit about that arc of feminine rage, its purpose, and
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 3: when does it soften to allow other aspects of the
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: personality to emerge.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 4: Well, I think that presupposes that rage is constant. And
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 4: I don't know that it is, or at least I
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: do know that for most of us, it is well suppressed. Certainly,
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 4: like so many women, I grew up in an environment
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 4: where I was not allowed to be angry. I certainly
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 4: wasn't allowed to be angry because if I was angry,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 4: I was like my father who was very violent. So
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 4: that's how it worked for me. And Also, apart from
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 4: kind of individual circumstances which suppress anger, I think the
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 4: culture as a whole clearly does not find women's rage pretty.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 4: And if it doesn't find women pretty, it doesn't much
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 4: like women. So from all angles, really, we have had
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 4: this ability to express anger more helpfully and in a
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 4: functional way, we've had that suppressed. And I think, unfortunately,
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 4: by the time we get to menopause, most of us
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 4: have not learned how to do that, have not been
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 4: allowed to do that. And so you get to this
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 4: stage in your life where everything seems to be falling apart.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 4: Your body is falling apart. Your mind is falling apart.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 4: Your relationships might be falling apart. And We have that
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 4: dissolution that we spoke about when we were talking about
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 4: the alchemy of menopause. And it just all comes pouring out.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 4: It's just like the boundaries are broken down. The barriers
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 4: to expression of that anger are lost. And unfortunately, very
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 4: often it doesn't then come out in healthy ways because
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 4: we haven't learned to express it in a healthy way.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 4: And again, I think that's why I do spend a
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 4: bit of time in the book talking about the archetype
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 4: of the furious because they weren't angry for the sake
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 4: of being angry. They were angry at things that needed
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 4: somebody to be angry about and that needed putting back
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 4: into balance. And you could only put the world back
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 4: into balance if you had expressed what was wrong with
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 4: it fully. And once women have got through menopause, if
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: they have learned that this anger can be transformed... into
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 4: something useful, then they do very well. But if they
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 4: haven't learned that during menopause, then you get a lot
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: of very angry older women who just don't even know
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 4: why they're angry because they haven't had anybody to explain
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 4: to them what's happening in their bodies. I mean, most
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 4: women still know so little about what happens to their
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 4: bodies in menopause, what happens to their minds in menopause.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 4: So I think it's a really Very much depends on
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 4: the individual, but I suspect that for pretty much all
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 4: of us, we have a very strong suppression of anger
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 4: in the early part of our lives.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I was thinking before, at some point
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: before in our discussion, talking about the truth teller and
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: the way that anger helps us become the truth teller,
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: or it can I mean, it can also distort things,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: but it can break through a kind of compulsion to
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: be nice or that compulsion to be kind. You know,
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of stuff out there in the culture
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: telling particularly girls, be kind and, you know, suppress that rage.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: but when we, when it comes up and we can
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: lean into it, then it, it kind of melts away
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: that false veneer and we can know our own truth. Yeah.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: And, you know, I, I think it's so profoundly important.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 4: And I, I do think that once, certainly for me,
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 4: once I got through the raging years of menopause, and
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: I have to say, you know, for all my training,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 4: I did not really even recognize it at the time.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 4: Hindsight really is a very wonderful thing. Um, So when
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 4: we have passed through menopause, if we learn to kind
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 4: of harness that anger for useful things, what I find
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 4: and what a number of my friends of the same
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 4: age find is that allows you to become outspoken in
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: ways that really are helpful so that you will not
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 4: let people talk down to you. For example, you know,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 4: that you are able then to express that to, I
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 4: want to say, put them in their place, but that
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 4: sounds unpleasant. I don't necessarily mean that without being an idiot,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 4: just in a way that is firm, that is confident,
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 4: that comes from a sense of who you are. And
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 4: that is the best consequence, I think, of harnessing and transforming,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 4: alchemizing menopausal rage. It just turns us into people that
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 4: will not be doormats anymore. And that's a really good thing.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: It's kind of a claiming of authority.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 4: Yes, that's lovely. That's much more That's a better way
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 4: of putting it, yeah.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: I think what I'm hearing, which is so important, that
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 3: when we're in a state of distress, one way to
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: cope with that is simply to discharge it so that
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: we can stay grounded enough to take care of whatever
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: our responsibilities are. And there's innumerable ways that people will
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: discharge anger or discharge any number of things, anxiety. And
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: that can become atmospheric stress. It can be displaced in
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 3: all kinds of ways where people feel confused that they're
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: the recipient of it. But as you said, with introspection,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 3: when the anger becomes focused, when there's a more surgical
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: clarity about what is the place that's irritating, what is
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 3: the place that's chaining me up, locking me up, and
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: to be able to, like a magnifying glass, really put
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 3: it where it's going to make a difference for that individual,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: then it becomes such an incredible tool of transformation. I
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 3: can understand that.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a wonderful book. And I can't remember which
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 4: one it is now, but I talk about it in Haggitude.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 4: I think an American writer talking about all of the
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 4: ways in which women's anger has fueled really important change
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 4: in culture, from the Me Too movement to Black Lives Matter,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 4: just all kinds of different in of that what otherwise
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 4: would probably be undifferentiated rage into changing something.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: And it brings up that distinction between aggression and self-assertion.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: That aggression has its aim to do harm and self-assertion,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 3: I think, in the highest expression has to do with
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: improving the context, improving the system, one is sitting in
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: or subject to or observing so that it actually functions better,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: functions more thoughtfully, does less harm, provides more good for
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: the greatest number of people. And the energy that it
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: takes to shift a system can sometimes be enormous because
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: many of the bureaucracies we live in are these monolithic
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: structures that require an enormous amount of applied heat. to
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 3: move the gear even a little bit so that it's
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: more humane, more balanced, more fair.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 4: Indeed, and also looking at ways of expressing it. I mean, again,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 4: I write about this in Hagitude, but one of the
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 4: most wonderful groups I came across when I was researching
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: the book, who I never heard of them before, is
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 4: the Raging Grannies, who began in Canada, I think, on nuclear,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 4: protesting against nuclear submarines, if I remember it rightly. but
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 4: they used humor and satire and ridicule to create change.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 4: So what made them furious, they managed to transform that
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 4: overtly and into street performances where they would wear ridiculous
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 4: clothes and they would literally perform in the middle of
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 4: streets to make their point. And that to me was
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 4: absolutely perfect example of the ability to kind of transmute
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 4: Don't transmute that energy so that, you know, you still
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 4: have a strong emotion there. You've got the satire and
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 4: you've got the ridicule. You haven't put a lid on it,
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 4: but you've just allowed it to show a different face.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: It's a wonderful example of trickster energy.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 4: Yes, and that. Yeah, indeed.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: Well, we've so enjoyed this chance to have this conversation.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: I'm just left with the sense that there's a lot
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: more for us to talk about. But I love the intersection, Sharon,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: of Jung and your particular work and the way you
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: work with mythology. And it's just very, very rich to
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: be in conversation. So thank you so much for coming.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 4: Ditto. I really appreciated your perspectives on it as well.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 4: I'm going away with lots of food for thought. So
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 4: thank you so much.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: It's wonderful in your work to feel how alive these
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 3: worlds are and how you bring them to life. as
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 3: people rest into the world that you weave for them.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 3: It's an enormous contribution.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 4: Oh, thank you. That's very kind.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: So let's transition into working with the dream. And before
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: we jump into that, I'd like to remind our listeners
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: that we have an online learning platform that we've designed
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: with you in mind. That we've created a 12-month program,
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: a module each month, that introduces you to the various
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 3: lenses that we use as we scan a dream for meaning.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: This is based on Jung's incredible insight and his vast
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 3: amount of experience working with people's dreams in order to
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: decipher and integrate the deep medicine and guidance that we
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: receive each night. So we hope that you'll go over
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: to our website, thisjungianlife.com, click on Dream School, take a look,
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: and then ask the dream maker in you, is this
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 3: a path?
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: Today's dreamer is a 63-year-old woman who has for the
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: last year been traveling around Europe, volunteering on organic farms
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: and helping friends with home projects. So while she's doing that,
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: she's also working on a series of poems about her travels.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: And she imagines that she'll be doing this nomadic life
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: for quite a while. And I just want to say,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: I just love that. I mean, it's not just exactly
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: what Sharon was just talking about, about sort of transformation
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: and new life and new discoveries in our hagdom. So
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: here's the dream. The dreamer titled the dream, Losing the Girl.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 2: I found myself in a cavernous room, a baby fostering
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: and adoption facility with babies waiting like young chicks contained
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: into very large plastic containers. The sides weren't high so
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: they could see out and could have gotten out, but
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: they were packed in tight and seemed content to sit
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: and wait. I looked over the babies to select one.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: I wanted to avoid the crying baby stage, so I
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: asked the caretaker, a middle-aged woman used to the tough
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: work of looking after all these babies, which was their
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: oldest baby. She extracted a girl out of the center
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: of the first container, telling me that they'd had this
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: one for a long time. So I took this girl,
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: who was not a baby but closer to a teenager,
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: on a fostering basis. Next scene. We had gone from
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: the facility into the city and shopped at a takeaway
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: so I could buy her a meal, some sort of
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: relatively healthy salad, though the takeaway did not look like
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: a healthy choice. It was just what was available. While
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: I was paying at the counter, I assumed the girl
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: was waiting behind me. I didn't understand the currency, so
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: I offered money to the guy behind the counter to
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: choose from. He took some of it and then gave
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: me back a load of coins from various different currencies
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: that I, again, didn't know the value of. I decided
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: just to accept this exchange because I didn't know how
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: to sort what I had been given. However, when I
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: turned around with the salad, the girl was gone. I
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: became frantic as I tried to find her. I had
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: agreed to fostering with a caretaker woman, so I was
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: supposed to return the girl to the facility. In my
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: desperation to find the girl, I began crying out into
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: the crowded mall, help me, help me. I rushed into
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: a business which looked like a drop-off daycare, explained the
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: situation to a woman staff member asking her to help
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: me find the girl. She seemed like she might be
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: able to help, but really she had her own domain,
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: the daycare she was in charge of. And what I
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: was beginning to realize, even more so after I woke up,
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: was that the girl had slipped away by her own choice.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: I wasn't scared she had been abducted. No, just panicked
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: that she had wandered away from me in an independent
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: move with no discussion. This left me feeling like a
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: bumbling idiot, quite rattled because it reflected badly on my
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: ability to take care of someone in my charge and
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: wondering why I had taken this work on in the
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: first place. So she notes, I was and remain a
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: very devoted mother. My children are fully grown now, so
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: last year I sold my home and have been doing
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: volunteer farm work in Europe for the past year, while
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: also working on a series of poems, all of which
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 2: has been a very rich experience, which I have enjoyed.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: I have just signed up for Dream School, after a
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: series of dreams that I need to get back to school,
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: followed by this intense dream that I want to fully understand.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: And she says the main feelings were wanting to avoid
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: choosing an infantile demanding baby, then confused by the foreign
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: currency and distraught that I lost the girl in my care.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: And she notes a few associations, babies and children. I
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: very much associate with the creative nurturing mother archetype money.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: My general sense about money is that I have my
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: own currencies exchange on what I value. I like living
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: simply and volunteering, so minimal monetary exchanges. Loss, or is
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: it loss of control? I'm a pretty organized and capable person.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: Who doesn't lose things? But this dream girl isn't a thing.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: She had two legs to walk away. This is a
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: kind of a meaty dream, I think.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 3: Yes, it is very meaty. And part of what I'm
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 3: responding to is that so many of the images are
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 3: beautifully defined and have so much feeling valence in them.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 3: So much happens. I guess I'm drawn to just start
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 3: in the beginning with the setting and just riff.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: Me too.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 3: And how do we hold that? So she's in a
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 3: cavernous room, a facility that both fosters and adopts out babies, which, uh,
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 3: I guess it's presented in a way that's almost commercialized,
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: you know, they're in plastic containers, much like young chicks
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 3: packed tight, sitting and waiting.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: So one of the things, I mean, I think I'm
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: kind of with you. It's like where to start. Let's
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: start right there. And one of the things that strikes
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: me about this dream is that the end, the very
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: last sentence of the dream sort of picks up right
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 2: back at the beginning, which is like, what is she
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: doing there? Why? Like, Sometimes it's really interesting to be
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: curious about a dream prequel. How did she wind up
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: in this cavernous place where she's looking to foster a child?
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: And she asks herself that at the end. Why am
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: I doing this?
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 3: If I hold that and we do the if-then piece,
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 3: that the dream maker has placed her in this baby
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 3: facility and she's observing them. And then as she's looking
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 3: over the babies, there's an impulse to select one. So
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 3: it very well may be that the dream maker is
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 3: at first putting her in a context and seeing what
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 3: the ego, how the ego will respond to this, has
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 3: not intrinsically forced the ego to react in any particular way,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 3: but the impulse is to select one because they're at offer. Yeah.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: Or, yeah, it's like, where, where is that impulse coming from?
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: You know, because it does, you're right, it feels sort
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: of like, well, I guess this is what you do.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: So just to continue sort of riffing on that point,
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: the scene of the baby fostering facility is replicated a
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: few scenes later with the drop off daycare. Now, those
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: are different things. but they both have to do with
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: kind of like temporary care of children. So there's some
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: theme here. And even this idea about, well, I don't
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: want the crying baby stage. That's, you know, okay, that's
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: if you're going to foster a child and you don't
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: want the crying baby stage, well, children cry. You know,
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: it's sort of like, okay, so you want the sort
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: of the easier job, You're going to do this, but
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: you're going to do it in a way that demands
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: less of you. So there's something about the casual way
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: she takes on the fostering. There's something about the multiple
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: references in the dream to the kind of transient quality
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: of the caretaking, that it's fostering, that it's drop-off daycare.
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: And then something about how she really wants to sort
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: of in some ways take the easiest job That makes
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: me wonder if the dream isn't commentating on a, perhaps
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: like an ambivalent commitment to her own creative process, perhaps.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 3: Exactly. I was, I was there with you. There's some
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 3: dramatization of how the dream ego attaches to outer objects.
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 3: How does she hold outer objects in the occupation of,
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 3: She talks about being a traveler. She's all over Europe.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 3: She's volunteering here and there, helping friends, and that she
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: loves this nomadic life, traveling lightly. And that also suggests
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 3: that one is holding the relationship to these environments and
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 3: people somewhat lightly. Since, oh, well, I'm here, ah, well,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 3: there's a box of babies. I've shown up in the farm.
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 3: There's some things to do. I can play a role.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 3: I can contribute this. I can do a bit of
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 3: something for a while. I think also if she were
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 3: to choose a really young baby, there's a sense that
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 3: it'd be unlikely that she could finish that up quickly
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 3: and then move on to the next bit. So by
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 3: choosing the older child, and she's not adopting but just
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 3: fostering in the dream, just providing a meal, just a
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 3: bit of salad, a walk around the town, and then imagining,
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 3: we don't know how old the child is, that if
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 3: she is fledged, if she's got enough energy to kind
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 3: of go off on her own, much like a bird
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 3: that's fledging, that that's a sign that things are in
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 3: right order. So this image of traveling lightly through the
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 3: inner and the outer world and that she is holding
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 3: her inner objects with that same distance, perhaps.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: There's also maybe a little bit of a theme about exchange.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: So in the first scene, you know, this kind of
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: fostering thing, it really feels, as you pointed out earlier,
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: almost like a commodification or commercialization or something. And it's like, yeah,
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: I'll take that one. You know, I don't want to
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: say it's an unsatisfying exchange, but there's something very casual
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: about it. And then in the next scene, there's this
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: exchange at the takeaway. And that is a kind of
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: it's like, well, this is the best thing they've got,
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: but it's not very good. kind of quality to it.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know if there's a similarity there. And even
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: the exchange, there's a kind of exchange with the daycare provider,
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: you know, that it's like, can you help me? Well, no,
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: you really can't. So I don't, I don't know, maybe
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: that's a bit of a stretch, but it feels like
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: there might be this kind of sequence of these exchanges
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: that are, um, uh, maybe missing heart in some way
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: or in some ways, um, pro forma or something.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 3: As you were saying that I found myself looking at
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 3: the one moment of intense emotion, which is when she
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 3: realizes the girl has disappeared and she's crying out, help me,
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 3: help me. And she's rushing.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 3: Looking, looking for aid. So in a sense, that seems
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 3: to be at least the emotional climax of the dream
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 3: theater performance. So there is something about how she holds
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 3: responsibility and afterwards how she resolves it. There's a moment
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 3: that this is a teenage child. The system has expected
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 3: her to be a caregiver, a caretaker. So she has
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 3: a momentary alarm. She has an experience of being a
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 3: devoted mother. So there's a feeling that, gosh, if one
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 3: of your children just walked off, Without you knowing, you
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 3: would want to find out what was going on. And
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 3: then what comes in to defend against the panic is
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 3: this assumption of autonomy and power in the other. And
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 3: as a mom, Lisa, I can imagine that if your
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 3: teenage girl or boy suddenly disappeared in a crowd, how
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 3: horrifying that would be.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 3: And I could imagine on one level you would hope
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 3: that they would be autonomous enough to find a phone
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 3: to know to call you to find their way. There's
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 3: another part that would be deeply worried about if they
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 3: would be injured in one way or another.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I found myself wondering how old this is. I
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: think she says something like it's almost a teenager. So
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking is this kid like 11 or 12 or
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: something like that, which is this really kind of tender,
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: luminal time. And I also wonder, what the dreamer was
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: like at that age or what was happening in the
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: tumor's life, you know, 11 or 12 years ago, whatever
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: that number might be, you know, here's, here's what I'm
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 2: beginning to think now is, um, I'm struck by the
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 2: fact that the dreamers, other recent dreams have been urging
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: her to go back to school. And I'm, I'm wondering
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: if this is a dream that's imaging and inappropriately casual and,
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: commitment to her self-growth. It could be, I mean, I
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 2: can imagine doing this incredible thing, which sounds fabulous, sort
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: of selling your house and moving around. That would be
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: such a time of wonderful growth, just the experiences and
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: the people that you meet and the way that you
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: would be challenged. But it is kind of focused in
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: some ways on outer world experiences. And I wonder if
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: She's being asked to attend more to the inner world
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: in terms of overseeing her self-growth. And she says, you know,
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: a couple phrases that jumped out at me. There were
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: these currencies I didn't know the value of. And I
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 2: decided just to accept this exchange because I didn't know
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: how to sort what I had been given. To me,
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: that feels like a really important sentence. And is there
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: a way that in her peripatetic lifestyle now, she's just
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: kind of decided to accept this exchange because she's not
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: really sure of the value of whatever it was that
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: she had. So, I mean, I'm just speculating here because
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 3: I think you've landed on it because if we think
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 3: of the young babies lined up in these containers, they
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 3: represent this enormous amount of potential. All these things that
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 3: could be born inside of her thank goodness they're alive,
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 3: that there's an archetypal process that is tending them in
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 3: a kind of latency, that the ego needs to select
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 3: some potential so that it can mature and can mature
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 3: in a way that's in relationship to the ego. I
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 3: think you're right on it when she says, well, I'd
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 3: like to develop something in myself, but I don't want
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 3: it to be too costly. I don't want to have
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 3: to put so much energy So let me choose a potential,
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 3: perhaps it's not that far away, that wouldn't require a
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 3: massive re-education process, which is certainly fine, you know. But still,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 3: there's something casual about it. And that when the potential
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 3: slips out of her hands, it just seems okay.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: She's distraught, but there is a voice that says, well,
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: maybe that's just how it is. Joseph, I really like
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: where you're going and going back to the beginning and
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: talking about all those babies, all that potential new life.
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 2: And that made me think of this very important figure
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: in the dream of the caretaker woman. Because she says,
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 2: you know, at the end of the dream, if I recall,
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: one of the things she's really upset about is, I'm
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: supposed to bring this kid back. Like, oh, maybe the
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 2: kid can take care of herself. It's almost like she's
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: less distraught about the kid. And more distraught about the
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: fact that she has to answer to the caretaker woman.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: So the caretaker woman is this important image in the psyche,
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: almost a little bit of what we were talking about
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 2: with Sharon, right? Like the kind of archetypal feminine. And
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 2: it's interesting because the dreamer capitalized those terms in the
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 2: dream text. So that this is a sort of a
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 2: manifestation of the archetype who's going to hold her to account.
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: Did you squander your potential for new life? And, you know,
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 2: you took this girl, but you're not even, you know,
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: you're trying to do okay by her, but she didn't
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: even really feed her that well. You let her slip away.
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 2: You left all these other babies on the table. You
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: didn't understand the value of the exchange.
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 3: I think you've landed on it. It's a relationship to
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 3: certain potentials. And I think the last sentence might be
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 3: the medicine of the dream, the subtle confrontation. or the
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 3: dream ego is saying to herself, this left me feeling
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 3: like a bumbling idiot rattled. It reflects badly on my
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 3: ability to take care of someone in my charge, but
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 3: I might say my ability to take care of a
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 3: talent inside myself, a capacity, a new way to grow
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 3: and wondering why I had taken this work on in
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 3: the first place. So I'm wondering if there's also a
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 3: fear of failure. as can often happen, particularly if we've
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 3: had a history of being excited or being drawn into
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 3: taking a potential on, but actually not evaluating, can I
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 3: carry this to its conclusion? Do I understand how to
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 3: become a writer, a painter, change careers in a number
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 3: of different ways? It reminds me of a decision that
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 3: I made for myself, because as a feeling type, I
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 3: can get Temporarily excited about something. And so when the
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 3: thousand good ideas pop up in my head now, and
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 3: I'm moving through my 60s, I think of them as
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 3: eggs all sitting in a nest. And I have a
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 3: deal with my own unconscious mind that if you don't
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 3: constellate enough energy around any one of those things to
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 3: take me to the conclusion, I don't want to do it.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 3: I don't want to be left high and dry because
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 3: the unconscious has abandoned me or that my ego is
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 3: the only thing that was ever interested in it.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 2: That's great.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 3: So she's also questioning that. Should she have really taken
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 3: the baby or did she just get swept up in
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 3: doing something because she's in the atmosphere of the caretaker
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 3: inside of herself?
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 2: That's interesting.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 3: But really, had I thought about it, this particular task, responsibility,
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 3: it probably wasn't something that I had enough internal support around. Mm-hmm.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: Well, we look forward to seeing this dreamer in dream school.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 3: We do.
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:49:24
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• 1:49:30
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• 1:49:35
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• 1:49:37
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  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.