Latest / Soul Salon with Ayandastood / This ONE THING keeps you PUSHING LOVE AWAY — the fix will SHOCK you | Nonny Maphoka Mbathane

Transcript

This ONE THING keeps you PUSHING LOVE AWAY — the fix will SHOCK you | Nonny Maphoka Mbathane · Soul Salon with Ayandastood

• 0:00
  What are some fears that you have had to overcome or the greatest fear or limiting belief?
• 0:04
  I lived with people who honestly did the best that they could with what they had.
• 0:09
  You know, when I say what they had, I mean, emotionally, capacity-wise, but it wasn't enough.
• 0:16
  I never felt like I could relax as a child, just the hypervigilance of knowing I can't just be a child, have tension.
• 0:24
  So you start abandoning yourself for the purpose of temporary belonging.
• 0:31
  Today's something that unlocks within my spirit to hear you say it that way.
• 0:35
  Do you think that your soul chose that situation?
• 0:38
  The way I'm going to respond now cannot be disproportionate.
• 0:44
  What does the soul actually mean to you?
• 0:46
  For me, the soul is...
• 0:54
  We'd love to start by asking you to introduce yourself in your own words.
• 1:03
  I know that's actually so much more challenging for us, multi-passionate, multi-dimensional souls,
• 1:08
  but we would love to hear anything you feel called to share about yourself.
• 1:11
  I'm Noni Mopakam Bhattani.
• 1:13
  I prefer being called Noni Mopakam Bhattani, my full name.
• 1:17
  But about who I am, I am a spirit, having a human experience.
• 1:23
  I know that I'm here to evolve, I know I'm here to heal.
• 1:27
  I'm also here to have pleasure and softness.
• 1:30
  I think it's always interesting when you talk about who, who are you?
• 1:34
  And many things, you know, and many things and nothing.
• 1:38
  I think, yeah, that's how I actually would like to answer that question.
• 1:43
  Many things and nothing.
• 1:45
  I love that so much. I think we can all relate to struggling to put language around how infinite we are,
• 1:54
  how we are all things and no things, everything and nothing.
• 1:57
  And I love how you've described that reclamation of what you like to be called and your own names.
• 2:03
  And it's a gift to hear you express that you are here to evolve, you are here to heal,
• 2:08
  but also experience pleasure.
• 2:10
  It's so important that we have come here to enjoy, to save and so it's beautiful to hear you say that.
• 2:17
  I think in all of our journeys, there's something that makes our soul feel very alive
• 2:22
  and then there are the fears that block us from stepping into that.
• 2:25
  So my first question is, what makes your spirit your soul, your essence feel deeply alive and enlivened?
• 2:32
  So many things.
• 2:35
  There's so many things.
• 2:38
  I think more than anything what makes my soul feel alive is knowing that I'm an expression of infinite possibilities.
• 2:46
  I think like knowing that even when it's hard, even when it's ugly at my seat and knowing that I have infinite possibilities.
• 2:58
  And it doesn't have to be these grand things.
• 3:01
  The infinite possibility could be from this really hard moment of friend calls and have a better moment.
• 3:08
  So I think that's what brings my soul alive.
• 3:11
  Just knowing that this is transient, everything is transient, everything is so.
• 3:18
  But then other things that give my soul so much love is nature, pleasure and softness and people.
• 3:28
  I love people and it's very hard for me to give up on people.
• 3:33
  But humans are so fascinating.
• 3:36
  They really do keep my soul alive.
• 3:39
  Silence keeps my soul alive.
• 3:42
  There are many things like we said, we're so complex.
• 3:46
  A lot of things bring my soul alive.
• 3:49
  But more than anything is knowing that I'm an expression of infinite possibilities and everyone around me is to even when it's hard to see that and others.
• 3:59
  It's so grounding to hear you say that at the same time.
• 4:03
  It's like opening something in me but also grounding me in a beautiful paradox.
• 4:08
  So it's a delicious expression to say that I'm like the knowing that I am an expression of infinite possibilities.
• 4:17
  What that allows in terms of redefining ourselves, taking up space in a way that we were maybe not conditioned or taught we could.
• 4:24
  I think that ability to constantly redefine, which is something we'll talk about later on the conversation and rebirth.
• 4:31
  Give birth to new versions and possibilities knowing that that is our essence is infinite possibility.
• 4:36
  I love how you've expressed that.
• 4:38
  And then also all that you create or do that brings you life.
• 4:42
  This fascination you have for humans.
• 4:44
  I share that with you.
• 4:45
  Ooh, so fascinating.
• 4:47
  And when you overcome the ego story of why someone did something and you actually just ask and you stay curious.
• 4:53
  It's wild like how fascinating the depths of each of us, how fascinating that is.
• 4:58
  Another question I want to ask related to these things that allow your soul to feel so alive is what does the soul actually mean to you.
• 5:05
  You know, it's also another thing very difficult to put into language and maybe even undermines the concept by trying but still I'm curious what you think.
• 5:14
  No, I mean, language is with like expensive and restrictive.
• 5:19
  For me, the soul is, it's like the soft but also intense echoes of what has happened to you, for you and who you are.
• 5:34
  I think that the soul, there's so much emotion in it because it's about what has happened.
• 5:43
  And whether we see it as something that has happened for us or to us, you know, but also who we are, you know, because the world can make you forget that.
• 5:53
  Life can make you forget that.
• 5:55
  I think the soul is like the place where you get to reckon with what's happened.
• 6:00
  Then also have an option to remember who you are.
• 6:04
  So I know that that's the way that I see it and the way that I'm trying, the way that I see the soul in my own life because I think it's hard for me to abandon the things that have happened to me because they are part of me, but I'm the bad.
• 6:19
  But also knowing like, oh, I'm more than these things, more than these experiences, right?
• 6:25
  I think for me, the soul is like, it's both echoes of those things that have happened for you and to you.
• 6:34
  Yeah.
• 6:36
  Wow. That really moved something in me. First of all, that was so poetic.
• 6:40
  The idea of a soft and intense echo of what has happened to you.
• 6:45
  I've never heard the soul describe that way. That is so, it's like soul stirring.
• 6:50
  There's something that unlocks within my spirit to hear you say it that way.
• 6:54
  What do you mean by that? Like echoes of what has happened, but also there was some, I'm like, ooh, can you take us, keep us there.
• 7:01
  There's something unfolding there that I have not heard revealed in the way you're revealing it.
• 7:06
  For me, it's that, I guess I give context, you know, I'd worked so hard to, I felt that I shouldn't resolve the things that happened to me,
• 7:20
  but rather eradicate them out of me so I can be the thing I want to be, right?
• 7:25
  But not seeing those things as a part of the thing of who I am.
• 7:30
  So I think that I think to give, like, as I'm an educator, so please educate.
• 7:37
  I love analogies.
• 7:39
  I think the way I could explain it is like, you know, when you're having this really hard emotional experience
• 7:54
  and it pulls other things that may have a similar emotional experience.
• 8:02
  And then now it's like, when I think of the soul, I think of like when I'm having that experience and it brings up those things,
• 8:12
  it's about me remembering that the way I'm going to respond now cannot be disproportionate in the sense of like,
• 8:22
  I'm responding even for the times where I didn't have the confidence to respond or the confidence to take care of myself.
• 8:29
  And in this moment, if I feel like it's been, if the ability to take care of myself has been compromised,
• 8:35
  and I remember I've had this experience many other times, if I respond in a way that's always trying to make up for all those other times,
• 8:44
  I'm responding disproportionately to what's actually really happening, is to just remind myself that in that experience,
• 8:54
  I am both experiencing what has happened to me, but knowing that this moment is fleeting, right?
• 9:03
  This moment is fleeting, this moment is hard, but it's fleeting, you know?
• 9:07
  So I think, in essence, what I'm trying to say is, when I say the soul is what happens to us and for us,
• 9:15
  sometimes when you're in the thick of it, it's so hard to figure out into, is this happening for me or to me, you know?
• 9:22
  And then also, how do I get out of that?
• 9:25
  How do I then, I don't want to say, I'll compromise, but how do I get my head out of the water to breathe again, you know?
• 9:35
  Knowing that I have that ability within me, I think it's the soul recognizing that I have both the ability to experience and both the ability to get myself up.
• 9:45
  I can do both those things, right?
• 9:48
  And that my soul is really what's helping me, right? The lived experience is the things that have happened,
• 9:55
  but also knowing that I'm capable of, I've seen myself ascend from this situation before, I've seen myself ascend from this situation before.
• 10:05
  So I think that that's what I mean by that. And I'm processing with you in real time, it just came to me in real time.
• 10:11
  So that's what I mean when I say what has happened to you and who you are.
• 10:19
  Because it's not always easy to discern those voices or to know like, is this me or is this the pain, is this me or the disappointment, is this the me or the spawners?
• 10:29
  It's hard sometimes, you know? So I think the soul reminds you, it helps you, it guides you.
• 10:37
  Because who you are isn't interested in your spawners and you know, it's not.
• 10:43
  We make that stuff out, but it's not interested in that, I think.
• 10:49
  Wow. So here for the mysticism in what you're saying, it's not something that you instantly grasp, it's like this smoke.
• 10:59
  And I'm like, we're trying to reach for the beauty of this very esoteric profound wisdom that you're sharing.
• 11:08
  What you said about how like the soul pulls forward or pulls forth moments or memories or remembrances of how we've responded in the past.
• 11:17
  And then asks of us to like rise. I'm of course also processing this with you in real time.
• 11:23
  But when there's something that came through for me as you were saying that, which is like these painful moments, the way we respond is often the invitation to the soul.
• 11:33
  Like you're expressing where there's that reclamation or there's that possibility of responding from our highest expression.
• 11:40
  But as I say that, I feel like I'm still not fully like I'm, I'm like floating with what you are saying, but it's not the full relationship.
• 11:50
  I'm really interested in this idea of when I respond, I'm responding for all the past versions of me.
• 11:56
  Are you saying that as in I'm triggered and I'm over responding or as in I'm honoring all that I've learned in how I then choose to respond?
• 12:06
  I think it's about honoring all that you have experience and deciding and deciding how then you want to respond in this moment.
• 12:15
  When I say disproportionately, I mean, it's like if you were in a relationship and was horrible and someone else and they nice.
• 12:22
  And then maybe that new person does a slight little thing that kind of reminds you of the ways in which maybe the other person was very selfish and self absorbed.
• 12:32
  And you respond as if that's how they are.
• 12:36
  It's that idea of like I can use that information to inform me if I see that selfish trait in this present partner.
• 12:47
  It can inform me to say address it now and address it from a place of curiosity rather than a place of judgment.
• 12:54
  I cannot assume that this person is like the other person.
• 12:59
  So I think in essence what I'm saying is like for me the soul, the way we're trying to find the flesh or find the thing in the smoke that we're trying to hold is that the soul for me is always teaching me to live forward and backwards.
• 13:17
  Does that make sense to to live but always in like a forward backward motion?
• 13:25
  Because the forward can be seen as maybe my actions, my decisions, the backwards could be my wisdom, my loved experiences, what spirit has to have for me, what my ancestors have to teach me.
• 13:40
  But knowing that I'm many people in one so it's not like it's this linear thing.
• 13:48
  So I think even if we haven't really found the flesh in what we're trying to understand about what I said, that's like the beauty of it.
• 13:57
  Exactly.
• 13:58
  That forward and backward motion all the time.
• 14:00
  Oh my word.
• 14:02
  Oh, I have chills.
• 14:03
  Oh my goodness.
• 14:05
  The poetry of that, the finding the flesh, even those words, it sounds like the most wonderful.
• 14:12
  Oh, like what a gorgeous relationship, dance with language you are.
• 14:18
  You have it's standing to listen to and then also like holding that paradox of the backward forward motion.
• 14:25
  I think when we are speaking in this way where it is, I don't even want to use the word challenge where finding the flesh is a process.
• 14:31
  I think we are speaking about the soul because it isn't something that is easily tangible, easily graspable.
• 14:39
  And so I love just sitting with this idea of this forward, backward motion because it's also ancestral like who I'm responding as you say.
• 14:48
  It's my past versions and it's all my everywhere.
• 14:51
  I'm responding with all of us, you know, and then I am getting to choose as you say, okay, what is actually present?
• 14:58
  What is here?
• 15:00
  How can I approach it with curiosity and not project my past experiences with it?
• 15:05
  And also I carry my past experiences at the same time.
• 15:08
  So it's not rejecting the past, like you said earlier, we don't need to reject anything or use the word like extract or negate any part of you.
• 15:16
  It's bringing all of that with us.
• 15:19
  Wow, what a gift.
• 15:20
  Thank you for expressing it this way.
• 15:21
  I'm sure we'll continue to dance with this conversation.
• 15:25
  I think that in this, the flesh of the soul and the reclamation that is invited in a society like ours, there's often fears we sit with in terms of really honoring our own soul, our own aliveness and expression.
• 15:41
  So I'm very curious as you've done this forward, backward motion, as you've listened to the echoes of self, what are some fears that you have had to overcome or the greatest fear or limiting belief?
• 15:52
  It's been so many.
• 15:54
  It's like way to begin.
• 15:58
  Too many years.
• 16:00
  I would say one that I know for sure is like the anchor to the many other ones is not feeling like I quite belong.
• 16:14
  I think we always talk about like, oh, I don't feel like I belong.
• 16:18
  I feel like I belong, but I always felt like I don't quite belong.
• 16:24
  And it's a precurious place to be in it, because it's as if I've programmed myself in my mind about when do I stop belonging.
• 16:36
  Because it's like I feel like I belong, but I don't quite belong.
• 16:39
  And that has to do with the usual, my upbringing, the messages I received around connection and honesty, and is it safe to be honest?
• 16:53
  Yeah, so I think the overall limiting belief is feeling like I'm not worthy of being chosen just to be chosen.
• 17:04
  Like I don't have to petition for it.
• 17:06
  I think that's the biggest one.
• 17:09
  Having to learn that.
• 17:11
  Yeah.
• 17:13
  Well, yeah.
• 17:15
  I love the careful way you're expressing this way.
• 17:18
  I feel like I belong. It's a very nuanced thing, but not quite belonging.
• 17:22
  But there's something off.
• 17:26
  There's something they're going to see and then realize actually I don't belong.
• 17:31
  Or there's something they're going to experience in me and then say actually.
• 17:38
  So that has been formed by so many things about how I grew up.
• 17:45
  And when we're having emotional experiences, any kind of emotional experience, particularly ones that are difficult,
• 17:53
  we have to make up stories not to make sense to us, because it's scary to not know what the story is.
• 18:00
  I feel confused, but why am I confused?
• 18:03
  You know, I feel afraid. Why am I afraid?
• 18:06
  I feel the fear of being alone. Why?
• 18:09
  Why do you feel that?
• 18:12
  So I think it's like the limiting belief of not quite belonging or feeling like they're something about me that's inherently wrong.
• 18:24
  Something in something about me, inherently awful.
• 18:27
  And therefore I have to make up stories in my mind to make that belief true.
• 18:38
  So yeah, there's some of the limiting beliefs that I've had to overcome.
• 18:45
  But I really think at the core of it is that.
• 18:48
  Yeah, it's a withiness thing.
• 18:50
  Am I wanted here? Do people want me here?
• 18:54
  So yeah.
• 18:57
  I can always expand more about my childhood.
• 19:00
  We would love that.
• 19:02
  I think we can all deeply resonate with what you're saying about am I on the verge of being discarded?
• 19:07
  Am I disposable?
• 19:09
  Am I wanted?
• 19:11
  And what are the conditions of that wanting?
• 19:13
  Because I've been taught it can only be conditional.
• 19:15
  There's something I have.
• 19:17
  I hold that once you find it, you're going to abandon me or you are going to reject me.
• 19:23
  I'm always sort of walking on egg shells.
• 19:25
  And I also love what you said that in the darkness and uncertainty of what's going on,
• 19:30
  we reach for a story.
• 19:31
  It's almost like a banister or like a thing when you're walking down the stairs.
• 19:34
  We need the story to cling to because there's nothing else.
• 19:38
  And so if you feel cold, we would love to.
• 19:40
  If you feel that's what your spirit calls you forth to do.
• 19:43
  We'd love to hear what created within you.
• 19:46
  That story because I think a lot of people will feel very seen and do feel very seen by that perspective.
• 19:51
  I think therapy has taught me that sharing your story needs to be in a way that doesn't disempower you.
• 20:04
  So I'm going to share the story in that way in a way that makes me feel less there.
• 20:11
  So when I talk about the limiting beliefs of not quite fitting or not quite belonging or feeling...
• 20:18
  Like you said, disposable or feeling like, yeah, there's just something that's going to happen.
• 20:23
  I said this ecology.
• 20:25
  In social work, they call it joy for boating.
• 20:28
  It's like you dress through his tragedy because we know how to manage anger.
• 20:34
  We know how to manage pain, not to manage sadness, disappointment.
• 20:39
  But when we're happy, when we're in joy, it feels like reckless.
• 20:44
  So we joy for boat.
• 20:47
  We recognize like, oh, this is amazing.
• 20:51
  This is a good time.
• 20:53
  But then we start, we start dress rehearsing tragedy so that we can counter the euphoria of the joy and the pleasure.
• 21:03
  So I think I mentioned joy for boating because growing up...
• 21:09
  I lived with a lot of families because my parents had transitioned.
• 21:14
  My mom had four.
• 21:16
  We're not four, about to turn five, like the same week of my birthday.
• 21:19
  And my father had seven.
• 21:22
  So this belief of like, you know, I'm not quite enough.
• 21:28
  It's not, you know, there's something wrong about me.
• 21:31
  It's me and herically wrong about me.
• 21:33
  It's like, again, the stories we make up to make sense of it.
• 21:36
  Like, as a 10-year-old, how do I make sense of not having parents?
• 21:41
  You know what I mean?
• 21:43
  Like, I don't understand how that happens.
• 21:48
  And I lived with people who honestly did the best that they could with what they had.
• 21:55
  You know, and I say what they had, I mean, emotionally, capacity wise.
• 22:01
  But it wasn't enough.
• 22:03
  You know, I can hold those multiple choices.
• 22:05
  It wasn't.
• 22:07
  And it's the movement of different families.
• 22:14
  You know, I lived with different families.
• 22:16
  And a lot of the times, I would just be told like, okay, you're moving.
• 22:21
  Like, tomorrow, you're moving, you're going to go.
• 22:25
  Which I understand when adults are making these decisions.
• 22:27
  They're thinking like, okay, we've had our discussions.
• 22:30
  We're making the right decision for the child.
• 22:32
  So I'm making a generous assumption, right?
• 22:35
  Because I may not even have those conversations.
• 22:38
  And some of those people have transitioned.
• 22:40
  And I will never have those conversations with them, right?
• 22:43
  So with that, I, you know, I used to make up stories about them.
• 22:48
  Must be something I've done in my future to deserve this.
• 22:51
  To rationalize how my cousins have both parents or at least one, right?
• 22:59
  So those limiting beliefs, I think, started there.
• 23:02
  You know, feeling like there's something awful about me, right?
• 23:07
  Because I never felt like I could relax as a child.
• 23:11
  You know, just the hyper vigilance of knowing that like,
• 23:15
  I can't just be a child, have tantrums.
• 23:19
  You know, like you're living someone's house and they can tell you to leave.
• 23:23
  You know what I mean?
• 23:25
  So you start abandoning yourself for the purpose of temporary belonging.
• 23:31
  You know, the truth is dangerous.
• 23:36
  And when I say the truth, it doesn't even have to come out of my mouth.
• 23:39
  If I'm unhappy about something, that's me living in my truth.
• 23:43
  But it's not safe in an environment that doesn't really see you as a child,
• 23:50
  but kind of sees you as a person we have in the house that we have to take care of.
• 23:56
  Right?
• 23:58
  So those limiting beliefs kind of came from there.
• 24:02
  I feel, you know, and I could be wrong, you know, I could be wrong.
• 24:06
  And living in an environment where there are other children as well.
• 24:12
  And being like, wait, like, I'm not having the same emotional or performative experience
• 24:25
  of what a young person should be having with these adults.
• 24:31
  In the same way I'm seeing these other people, these other children who are my age,
• 24:35
  or on my age, I have those experiences.
• 24:38
  So I was like, well, if they don't, if I'm not having that sort of parent-child relationship with them
• 24:46
  and they can do it with their own kids, then there's something clearly wrong with me, right?
• 24:54
  So I think, yeah, it stems from like all of those experiences of not quite fitting in.
• 25:02
  Being the child who's like, oh, who's this person living with you guys,
• 25:06
  or like just kind of being the person who's there, you know?
• 25:11
  And feeling that I need to petition in order to be loved here.
• 25:17
  You know, do everything, be reliable, don't give problems, help, clean.
• 25:24
  Whatever you want me to do, whatever you need me to do to make your life easy, I will do that.
• 25:30
  Because if that's going to buy me some love, some care, then it's something that I will have to do.
• 25:40
  So I think from those years I started building this idea of like hypervigilance, you know?
• 25:49
  And that, yeah, that took a lot of unlearning.
• 25:53
  And yeah, and I think that at the core, my childhood has definitely been the biggest contributor of my limiting beliefs.
• 26:05
  But also it gave me beautiful things, you know?
• 26:09
  I don't feel like this anywhere I can go and not figure it out.
• 26:13
  And I love that about me.
• 26:15
  You know, it may not have been a nice thing for me to figure it out, but I can relate with anyone.
• 26:21
  You know, it could be some top person or some guy or girl on the street.
• 26:31
  You know, to me, people are people.
• 26:35
  It's giving me many things, it's giving me compassion, it's giving me kindness.
• 26:40
  It's giving me the ability to see when someone is going through a hard time to see all of them, not some of them.
• 26:48
  And not see the parts that will make me feel comfortable in how I want to help them.
• 26:54
  To even see the parts that are uncomfortable, because I always just wanted to be seen.
• 27:00
  That's seen in the sense of like a person, not here to do or give anything.
• 27:07
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:12
  Wow, wow, wow, I think we can all take a second to breathe with the power of that story and the way you expressed it.
• 27:22
  Wow, wow.
• 27:26
  That was so generous, the way to everyone involved to yourself, the way you started with you want to tell a story in a way that empowers you and that honors you and all the people involved.
• 27:39
  And then starting us off with just imagining you at four, five, seven, and just sending so much love to that younger version, you know, that younger self within you that you carry with you each day.
• 27:49
  And wow, I mean, there was such a, hmm, like just something deeply moved within me as you were saying that in the sense that that journey of going from such a early,
• 28:08
  really unanchoring, you know, in your life and the conditional acceptance that you described, how you described petitioning for care as you moved homes and these adults making decisions on your behalf.
• 28:20
  And also the compassionate way you express that like the generous assumptions you make of them is, wow, I mean to be able to have lived and received also the gifts and beauty of this experience, the way that you're able to relate to people.
• 28:37
  But how listening to you say that it all ties together makes so much sense that you would feel this conditional belonging or like I'm always it's not safe to be truthful.
• 28:46
  That was such a powerful way you describe that like I can't honor that I'm having a bad day or I'm sad or I'm this I must always perform.
• 28:54
  And even that may not be enough and the dehumanization of that, you know, that because it's not human to not be able to carry and feel all those things.
• 29:02
  So we just saying so much like wow, I mean all of you listening to you speak because there's also such a way that with language and intimacy with language, you clearly have I'm sure across the languages you speak like such a resonance there with how you how stories move through you.
• 29:18
  So it's a gift to each of us. I feel like we're all so nourished by what you shared and also receiving so much wisdom from the light you've also received from that experience.
• 29:32
  Wow. So thank you for sharing that it's so helpful.
• 29:35
  Thank you. Wow. So beautiful.
• 29:38
  Do you believe in sort of like a soul destiny like do you think that your soul chose that situation or yeah I'm curious how you make sense of it.
• 29:52
  That's so funny.
• 29:59
  Yeah, I chose my period and I believe that and I'm open to the possibility of being well and I'm okay with that, you know, but I believe I chose my parents.
• 30:14
  Source spirit, you know, choose who do you want to go and I raise my hand.
• 30:27
  I mean the joke in my mind is just about to ask.
• 30:32
  Because you know, like creates a standing man just being like so I have this dude who's short.
• 30:43
  His name is Danny.
• 30:45
  You know what I mean.
• 30:47
  He's going to marry my teacher.
• 30:50
  He's going to marry up a high, you know, okay, there's my parents names and you know, making up three girls and I just lost because I feel like I just see the create
• 31:02
  just standing there with like a keyboard.
• 31:05
  So auction.
• 31:10
  And yeah, the creator says, you know, at four they will, you know, you'll lose your mother and five father will be gone.
• 31:22
  Your grand will be gone.
• 31:24
  I've, you know, the mom's side completely everyone has passed on and which is wild because we're young.
• 31:32
  But that they say, yeah, you're going to come and it's going to be a very tumultuous, nomadic life, you know.
• 31:39
  And I say, yes, big meat.
• 31:43
  I'll do that.
• 31:45
  So I do.
• 31:46
  I do feel like I chose my parents and they chose me and I came through them.
• 31:53
  I didn't lose them.
• 31:57
  And I'm having the experience that I need to be having.
• 32:01
  And yeah, I do believe that.
• 32:05
  I've reconciled it in that way.
• 32:08
  You asked about reconciling.
• 32:10
  I reconciled it in that way for a very long time, very long time.
• 32:14
  Just talking about my parents took me out for a very long time.
• 32:21
  Because also holding on to the possibility of them being alive was the only way for me to hold on to them.
• 32:32
  Is that what I thought was the only way for me to hold on to them?
• 32:36
  Yeah, but now through therapy.
• 32:41
  Therapy, I started for myself before I actually went to see a therapist.
• 32:47
  Friendships, you know, I always say relationships have been the area of my deepest warning at the area of my most profound healing.
• 32:56
  You know what I mean?
• 32:57
  Yes.
• 32:58
  My friends, oh my God, those people take me out anytime.
• 33:02
  Oh my God.
• 33:04
  But I think it's been through community community and when I say community, even family that are like my friends, you know.
• 33:14
  I'm not negating my family.
• 33:15
  It's to say like the people that I felt held by, seen by, they've really helped me to let go of wanting to hold on to my parents in that only form.
• 33:32
  And I've opened my eyes to the many forms that I could have my parents stand around and my grandmother who's like everything to me.
• 33:38
  I'm a tonal grandmother who raised me.
• 33:41
  So yeah, so I think I've reconciled it in that way knowing that I chose this experience and not necessarily I chose this experience.
• 33:52
  I don't want to do that.
• 33:53
  I chose my parents and the experience that happened is the experience that is happening and knowing that they were with me all the time now, you know.
• 34:07
  I feel like my mom might be even laughing at me right now.
• 34:11
  Yes.
• 34:13
  And even though they passed on so long, you know, I held on to a lot of things like, I don't know if my parents voice the sound like, I don't know what this one like.
• 34:24
  I don't know what quick thing they did.
• 34:26
  I don't know if they were loud when they walked into the house, I don't have any memories of my childhood.
• 34:35
  And it's still something with the different healing modalities that I'm exploring, trying to go back, you know, recollect those memories and those experiences.
• 34:47
  So thematically they can move through my body and not, you know, took me when I least expected.
• 34:57
  And yeah, I'm just knowing that they were with me all the time.
• 35:04
  Yeah, all the time.
• 35:05
  I don't know those things.
• 35:06
  And I was saying like little things like I've never saved mom on my phone.
• 35:10
  You know, those are really like small things and maybe other people wouldn't be thinking about it.
• 35:14
  And like, oh, you can save your aunt as mom.
• 35:17
  It's like, it's not the same if I don't have that type of relationship with that aunt.
• 35:22
  Do you know what I mean?
• 35:23
  Yes.
• 35:24
  It's not the same.
• 35:25
  There's a lot of things like that, but just knowing that like my parents are with me all the time.
• 35:30
  Yeah.
• 35:32
  And the same way I picked up my hand and I said, sure, I'll go be one of these people's child.
• 35:41
  I refuse to believe that then they just left me to figure it out of my own vices.
• 35:47
  I don't think that they do that.
• 35:49
  And I don't believe in a in a in a creates and a spirit and a source.
• 35:54
  I will do that too.
• 35:55
  So yeah.
• 35:56
  Wow.
• 35:57
  It's taken a lot of work and we'll still do, but yeah.
• 36:03
  Well, I'm carried all the time, all the time.
• 36:10
  That is, oh, wow.
• 36:12
  There's so much richness and resonance in how you brought that to life, how you brought that to language.
• 36:18
  And you're putting down so many things.
• 36:20
  Please, please, will give me that I won't be picking all of them up because there's just so many jams in what you're sharing.
• 36:25
  And I think that that certainty, even where you started with a laughter just came.
• 36:30
  It was, that was the soul.
• 36:32
  It just responded.
• 36:33
  It came forth.
• 36:34
  It was maybe your mom laughing through you with you as well.
• 36:38
  And the way that you have made, I don't even like the word sense, but you have brought into integrity.
• 36:48
  You know, and into understanding what has been your happening, what you have.
• 36:54
  I love how you said, I didn't, I came, you said I came through them, not, not from them.
• 37:01
  Yes.
• 37:02
  And that they loved you so much that they said our love is so strong that like we put, I'm just receiving this, but that, you know, our love is so strong for you.
• 37:15
  That yes, our yours in the physical form with you will not be as long as you will have hoped.
• 37:20
  But our love can carry you, you know, like it's carrying you.
• 37:23
  Our love is so strong that our physical form is not what is required for us to express it to you and through you.
• 37:29
  And also what you said about how like it used to be such a challenge to just speak about your parents without choking up.
• 37:37
  And how much healing and honoring you must have done to be in a place where you can talk about them, talk about life and all you've lived in this way.
• 37:48
  It's like such, it's also such proof that healed people, healed people.
• 37:51
  I know listening to you say this, a lot of people who've had early experiences of grief and of quote unquote loss as we described in our language, but transitioning and feeling really seen and held by your words.
• 38:03
  So we thank you for the work you've done because it allows us to experience this through your language like you are a portal that people can like view and experience and receive and feel seen through you.
• 38:16
  And just as you haven't felt seen in certain moments of your life, you then become someone who allows people to see to feel seen, which is so powerful.
• 38:25
  And also what you said about family and chosen family and friendship, it's such a gift that what you didn't have in childhood is that feeling of I'm safe.
• 38:33
  Yeah, I belong here. You have formed even though it comes with of course insecurities and doubts that you formed forms of friendship with family and with friends that are nourishing and feel really like they hold you.
• 38:45
  And the poetry of finding a former belonging that opened you up to the belief that your parents are still with you. I mean, wow.
• 38:52
  Oh, wow, shout out to your friends.
• 38:57
  Oh, my goodness.
• 39:00
  Wow. Oh, my word.
• 39:03
  Wow.
• 39:07
  As you're speaking about this, I do feel like we are so not good at holding people through the eternal aspect of grief.
• 39:19
  And I'm just curious, like, what do you wish more people knew about what it is like to have these early experiences of death?
• 39:27
  Yeah.
• 39:28
  That carry with you, you know, because I've heard, yeah, actually let me stop there.
• 39:31
  What do you wish that people asked more, said more, didn't say, didn't do?
• 39:40
  I want to hear what you've heard people say.
• 39:44
  I'll park it in my head.
• 39:48
  I want to first say that grief happens to all of us.
• 39:58
  Grief, I think also because of the words and the ways in which we see it displayed for us is usually around like death, you know, like lost death, you know, transition.
• 40:12
  The grief happens all the time.
• 40:14
  I'm grieving now.
• 40:16
  A life I used to have.
• 40:18
  I'm grieving.
• 40:23
  How?
• 40:26
  I wouldn't say how my family saw me, but I'm grieving.
• 40:31
  I'm grieving some of the connections that I know that now I either compromised or have to change or will be more uncomfortable for the people after just who I have become.
• 40:44
  So I want to say that grief comes in so many different ways, but I know we're talking about the grief or our transition and experiencing it at a very young age or what that does to you.
• 40:55
  I don't know what it does to many people.
• 40:57
  I know what it did to me.
• 41:01
  It made me feel and safe.
• 41:07
  Because grief feels like the rug literally has been pulled right under you.
• 41:13
  And as a child because no one set me down and told me these people are gone.
• 41:21
  You look around, you're like, okay, these people have that person.
• 41:25
  Like maybe some people don't have this parent thing, you know.
• 41:35
  But I'll tell you a little story.
• 41:37
  Funny enough, my grandmother, my maternal grandmother.
• 41:43
  I'd asked her around like, maybe I was like 12-ish and I said to her, why didn't like, why didn't you tell me that my parents had passed away?
• 41:56
  Well, and she said, I did.
• 42:00
  We did tell you.
• 42:02
  Because as a child growing up, I never wondered where they were.
• 42:07
  There was just kind of this acceptance of like, they're not here.
• 42:12
  There's no need for you to ask.
• 42:15
  They're not here and that's what's supposed to be happening.
• 42:19
  And I never can understand why I never asked.
• 42:22
  And my grandmother said, no, we did tell you.
• 42:25
  You know, and she's lying to me in my culture or in our culture that when a parent passes on and the child's very young, we tell them while they're sleeping.
• 42:36
  So she said, I sat there and I told you what happened, what's going to happen now, what's what we're going to do with you, what are we going to do with you?
• 42:45
  So she said, we told you everything.
• 42:48
  That reconciled, that knowing that I had, that I never questioned.
• 42:53
  I was curious, but it wasn't this thing of like, where are my parents?
• 43:01
  And she said, yeah, we told you, you know, so I'm really grateful for that conversation and that experience because grief to a child.
• 43:17
  Man, it just, it makes you not see the world generously.
• 43:26
  It does not, it does not end, it makes you, for me, it made me feel, it made me grow up very quickly.
• 43:41
  Because you feel like you have to parent yourself.
• 43:45
  You don't call it parenting when you're in child.
• 43:48
  As an adult, I know I'm constantly repairing, repairing myself, right?
• 43:53
  But it just creates the sense of like you're no wilderness.
• 43:58
  Like you're with people, but you're in the wilderness.
• 44:00
  I think honestly, the best way to describe it for me, I was always around people, but I never felt like they were there.
• 44:07
  You know, so I think that's what grief does to a child.
• 44:10
  It makes you feel so isolated.
• 44:16
  Yeah, it makes you feel isolated.
• 44:18
  Because there's also a lot of things you can't reconcile.
• 44:22
  Because we don't, we don't do grief.
• 44:30
  How could I say it?
• 44:33
  We kind of see it as like breathing.
• 44:37
  Like we don't think about breathing.
• 44:39
  You just breathe.
• 44:40
  I think because grief, how I've seen it approached, is this like, it's just this thing that's happening, let's just let them breathe.
• 44:51
  But grief requires a lot more than that.
• 44:54
  It's such a thing that requires a lot of repair.
• 44:58
  Yeah, and you need care to repair.
• 45:03
  You need it, you know.
• 45:05
  And for me, grief has a child to make me feel like there was no care.
• 45:13
  And that it was my fault.
• 45:15
  You know, it was my fault because why did other kids have that access to that care?
• 45:21
  Yeah, I was taken care of, of course.
• 45:26
  But my emotional, mental, spiritual needs were not, were not cared for.
• 45:35
  So then that's why then like as an adult, you know, I've been, I've been tricking.
• 45:42
  I've been tricking at this healing stuff.
• 45:46
  Yeah, so grief does that.
• 45:51
  Yeah.
• 45:52
  And you want to feel seen because it makes you feel isolated.
• 45:56
  Oh, yeah.
• 45:57
  So if you're in an environment as a child where the, where the loss isn't spoken about, where you're not asked how you feel about it,
• 46:06
  where you're not given the room to process outwardly what's going inside.
• 46:16
  It's very hard.
• 46:17
  Yeah.
• 46:18
  It's very, very hard.
• 46:19
  It teaches you, it teaches you habits that are very, very self sabotaging.
• 46:27
  Yeah, it teaches you to, it teaches you to abandon yourself a lot.
• 46:31
  I abandon myself a lot because grief makes you feel out of control.
• 46:39
  So you want to be in control.
• 46:42
  Yeah.
• 46:43
  So you hold, you control the things you can control and you abandon the things that actually need you.
• 46:50
  Yeah.
• 46:51
  So I would say that as a child, maybe that's what I needed.
• 46:55
  I just needed a little bit more care.
• 46:57
  Honestly, that's all I needed.
• 46:58
  I just needed a little bit more softness, softness and care.
• 47:04
  Not your child, your resilient, you'll get through it.
• 47:07
  Exactly.
• 47:08
  Yeah.
• 47:09
  But I also know that the people around me, the degree to which they were letting me process my grief
• 47:18
  was the degree to which they could access their own grief.
• 47:21
  Yeah.
• 47:23
  And I know now, you know, that it is a loving of me to expect someone to give me something
• 47:29
  that they're either incapable of giving me or unwilling to give me.
• 47:32
  I don't need to figure out which one it is because I'm still not getting it, right?
• 47:37
  But just recognizing like it's not fair to punish them.
• 47:41
  But that's what I would have liked.
• 47:43
  Yeah.
• 47:44
  Yeah.
• 47:45
  That is so profound.
• 47:54
  The rug being pulled from under you that you described is exact image I had as well of
• 48:03
  moving homes constantly.
• 48:04
  So this rug constantly, constantly never being able to feel secure in something.
• 48:09
  And then what you said about being in the wilderness, that was such a powerful image where
• 48:14
  you're like there, but you're not in the same social world that your reality is completely
• 48:19
  different from everyone.
• 48:20
  You're different.
• 48:21
  Yeah.
• 48:22
  Yeah.
• 48:23
  You just feel like, what are the people you're talking about?
• 48:27
  Yeah.
• 48:28
  You know, just feel otherd.
• 48:30
  Yeah.
• 48:31
  Even at school, if kids found out that I lost my parents, they'd just be like.
• 48:38
  How?
• 48:39
  Like they just feel like you don't look like it.
• 48:41
  And they're kids.
• 48:42
  I mean, they're right.
• 48:43
  They're just being honest.
• 48:44
  And I'm like, but what does it look like?
• 48:47
  But it was just always like, oh, you wouldn't say, you know, and not that there's anything
• 48:54
  special about me for having that experience.
• 48:59
  I think it's more of like, I just wish I had, yeah, I think I just wish I had a lot
• 49:04
  more care.
• 49:05
  That's why in my adult life, care is so important to me.
• 49:10
  And I've had to learn that that safety is an inside game, because I was trying to find
• 49:17
  safety everywhere outside and it was, it just, it didn't even last.
• 49:22
  It wasn't sustainable, you know, safety is an inside game.
• 49:26
  But care for me is like at the center of everything I am because I need it for myself.
• 49:34
  And I, I relate with people through that, you know, because we need it.
• 49:43
  Yes.
• 49:44
  We deserve it.
• 49:45
  Yes.
• 49:46
  And it's so caring to your younger self to say, I needed a form of care I was not given.
• 49:50
  I needed it.
• 49:51
  And I don't judge.
• 49:52
  I have worked to understand and hold with compassion.
• 49:57
  Why the people around me could not care in the way that I needed or deserved because
• 50:01
  again, like as you said, they can only care for me to the extent that they care for themselves
• 50:05
  or know how to give care, but that I deserve more care.
• 50:08
  And now I've become the care that I always needed.
• 50:12
  And I like to think also in like this collective body way, where now you have become part of
• 50:18
  the care system of the collective body.
• 50:20
  And there was, there's like an intelligence to healing that nature has that I think as
• 50:26
  humans that we either alchemize these pains or, you know, you mentioned resistance to
• 50:32
  the word alchemize, but we find a way to feel pain and then become the healing.
• 50:40
  All we do the opposite.
• 50:41
  And we just perpetuate the pain and become a source of the same trauma that we faced.
• 50:45
  And so it's incredible to witness people who are on their own healing journey and then
• 50:49
  sharing that with others.
• 50:51
  And then also I just the childhood feeling of like, why do other people have one of these
• 50:55
  and not me and also just craving that sit down in that conversation?
• 51:02
  How are you feeling?
• 51:03
  How is, you know, that you could now hold your younger self through, but that so many
• 51:07
  adults in our life, you know, also have just experienced so many traumas that they have
• 51:12
  just, you know, that's just not how we face trauma.
• 51:16
  We just like, you know, pray so and don't keep going whatever the language is.
• 51:21
  And so it's, it's, I keep saying this, but it feels like such a generosity, the way
• 51:25
  that you, I think it's very challenging and this is what artists do.
• 51:30
  We give language to experiences that are very hard to put language around and that many
• 51:35
  versions of you peep, versions of people listening to this wouldn't have had whatever,
• 51:43
  the courage, the resources, the patients like all that to get to a place where you can
• 51:48
  express it in this way.
• 51:49
  And so that generosity of, okay, like you may not have words for this, but I lend you mine.
• 51:53
  And I trust this is my experience, but I know so many people are going to feel like so
• 51:57
  seen by your words.
• 51:59
  And also that something is opening in them that maybe they have, as you said, just close
• 52:07
  themselves off to or shut down within themselves.
• 52:10
  So I really do thank you for just the generosity of the language you've come to on this.
• 52:15
  I mean, all of it, it's really so gorgeous and generous and it's like a key that opens
• 52:22
  all of these doors within the soul, within the spirit.
• 52:25
  I'm very curious because you've mentioned that on this journey, you've sat with many
• 52:30
  different forms of healing modalities and one of those is your relationship to your ancestors.
• 52:36
  And I'm very curious to learn how you have created that connection and how you have created
• 52:43
  this like pellets of healing form, this is your psychology and this and this and anything
• 52:48
  you care to share around what your healing team of ideas, of tools of, I mean, there's
• 52:57
  so much there, but I'm just so fascinated to hear that.
• 52:59
  And specifically, you know, what healing has looked like to you in terms of honoring your
• 53:03
  ancestors and how you show up in that way.
• 53:09
  Thank you for just saying before we proceed, come on.
• 53:17
  I think the wilderness, the gift that it's given me is the ability to talk to myself.
• 53:25
  I think like when you talk about like my relationship to language, it's because I've seen a lot
• 53:30
  of time talking to myself, you know.
• 53:35
  So I wanted to say like in the wilderness, the beauty of it was that, but in terms of the
• 53:43
  healing modalities, I love them because I just think because it's such a complex human
• 53:48
  beings, am I get bored?
• 53:50
  I can't do the same thing forever and it's like so many day, you know.
• 53:57
  And because again, there's so many people in me, so they need different things.
• 54:04
  So yes, in terms of my rituals and practices, they look different depending on what I want,
• 54:11
  depending on what I need, depending on what I need to release, depending on what the
• 54:15
  intention is.
• 54:17
  And these practices and rituals, both being an observer of family, teaching me and also
• 54:25
  deciding and listening to what I need, right?
• 54:30
  And knowing that I am, I am my home at the end of the day, moving around has taught me
• 54:36
  that.
• 54:37
  Knowing that I am my own home, I am my home, I'm the first home, because I'd put so much
• 54:43
  on the structural part of it and feeling unsafe and unsettled and destabilized every time
• 54:50
  I moved, but shifting that and knowing that I am the home gives me a lot of sovereignty
• 54:58
  for myself, you know.
• 54:59
  So even in my practices, knowing that even as a person who's moved around a lot, that
• 55:07
  one my ancestors walk with me, in me through me and that these practices that I do, these
• 55:13
  rituals that I do, I can do them by an actual ritual, like burn my sage or burn my imbebo,
• 55:21
  my candles depending on what I feel like burning in terms of colors, you know, that matters
• 55:26
  to me or knowing like when I talk to my grandmother, my grandmother raised me and if I could
• 55:33
  just be a tense of my grandmother, I'd be happy, like that woman has, well in that back
• 55:39
  has made me an incredible human being and I'm eternally indebted to her, you know.
• 55:45
  So I know what she likes because I loved her, because she transitioned, so I know I'm
• 55:51
  going to make that tea that she likes, it's like jockity, you know, so I'll do things
• 55:57
  like that where I'm like, I need to talk to you, it's hard, like this is what I'm experiencing
• 56:02
  is hard or like life's hard or like, you know, it could be whatever that's going on or
• 56:08
  like thank you, you know, that thing I've been praying for and asking, not really praying
• 56:17
  because it's tough word for me, but it's more coming to council to talk about the things
• 56:23
  that I've brought to you, the desires that you've placed into my hearts, to go and thank
• 56:30
  and say it came through and show me how to use this in a way that honors you guys.
• 56:38
  So my rituals and practices vary depending on what I feel and feel cool too, but they
• 56:46
  with me all the time, I talk to my people all the time, even now as I'm sitting up to
• 56:52
  them, you know, so for me, it's not this because performativity was such a beautiful skill
• 57:02
  that I had acquired and one now that I'm like, anytime I don't, anytime I can actually
• 57:09
  be myself, I will always do that.
• 57:15
  So my spirituality and my connection and honoring my ancestors is not always in the act of
• 57:22
  doing something, sometimes I'm just like sitting and listening and sometimes I'm asking questions
• 57:30
  and getting answers at the same time, I write a lot, I journal a lot, so sometimes if
• 57:37
  I don't have the words, I just journal and you know.
• 57:41
  So for me, the ways in which I honor my ancestors and connect with them varies.
• 57:46
  My spirituality is not original, it's everything, everything, it's me sitting here, it's everything,
• 57:54
  yeah, so and the different healing modalities, you know, that I love therapy because I love
• 58:04
  the talk, so, you know, I process a lot in communication, but I also am mindful as someone
• 58:14
  who studies our quality and someone who's lived through therapy that because I'm a
• 58:20
  word person, because I want to make sense of the things that are happening to me and
• 58:27
  around me, I don't have to understand them, just make sense of them, I don't understand
• 58:32
  everything and I'm okay with that, that's what I needed done is then everything that I don't,
• 58:39
  that even in even in even in those methods of therapy, of cognitive, cognitive behavioral
• 58:53
  therapy which is speaking, it works for me, but I have to be mindful that I don't love in my head,
• 59:00
  that I drop into my body, because remember, as a child, feeling was not safe,
• 59:08
  so I can be very cerebral, and it's beautiful because academically it's like wonderful,
• 59:16
  you know, and I love academics, I love learning, I love learning, I love learning, I'm
• 59:24
  good, and I love it, and I'm a curious person, and I like to critically push myself with
• 59:29
  thoughts and thinking, so I have to remember to drop into my body, remember that it's safe,
• 59:34
  to drop into my body, so I'm exploring somatics, I really have to feel my stuff out,
• 59:44
  so some of the somatic practices are like little techniques I do, I pause, if I need to pause,
• 59:50
  I announce if I need to pause, if I'm having an emotional experience, and I'm sitting in front
• 59:56
  of my laptop, I will stop what I'm doing, and honor the emotional experience for what it is,
• 1:00:02
  and that's not always easy, you know, because we live in a world with, like you're going to add
• 1:00:07
  I'll get it together, like, you know, you'll deal with your stuff after you've done the task,
• 1:00:13
  and I'm like, what if I drop off that done the task, but I'm like, I don't get to experience,
• 1:00:20
  the emotion, you know, so giving myself the opportunity to honor my emotion,
• 1:00:25
  to say when I don't like something, to outwardly say to the next person, I don't like that,
• 1:00:31
  that for me feels like repair to me, really does, because it lets me love people while
• 1:00:41
  and it gives me enough evidence to know that as I heal and I remember who I am,
• 1:00:53
  I will, I'm not in the business, I love Bernie Brown, I feel like she, I keep saying like she's
• 1:01:01
  like my little fairy godmother, she doesn't know, but I know that she's going to meet me one day,
• 1:01:05
  and I'm going to say girl, you don't know, yes, you don't know what you've done for me, yes,
• 1:01:10
  but how she says, you know, I, I will no longer, I no longer negotiate myself with others,
• 1:01:17
  I can negotiate a contract, I can negotiate an idea, but I will not negotiate myself,
• 1:01:22
  because once I do that, 11 11 on the clock, I may belong to you, but then I no longer belong to
• 1:01:30
  myself, and that's a betrayal, I'm not willing to do those old words, they bait them,
• 1:01:36
  and for me, these healing modalities have done that, reminded me to, to not negotiate myself,
• 1:01:44
  it's hard, I sometimes fall on the track, but yeah, so different healing modalities,
• 1:01:49
  mathematics, therapy, my sister rituals, my feet on the ground, I'm not wearing shoes,
• 1:01:57
  now as you can see, I prefer not having shoes on, yeah, sometimes it doesn't have to be that
• 1:02:04
  series, yeah, sometimes it's playing my playlist, and just having a good time, yeah, sometimes it's
• 1:02:14
  just joy, yeah, and being immersed in it, not because I have money, or I have an event I'm going
• 1:02:23
  to like being in joy in the space that I'm in, yeah, because I just think of my grand, and how
• 1:02:29
  much you worked, and I'm like, rest for me is a healing modality, joy is a healing modality,
• 1:02:39
  so it doesn't always have to be that serious and cerebral and processing, and you know, it doesn't,
• 1:02:45
  yeah, so my healing modalities are forever changing, because I'm forever changing, yeah,
• 1:02:53
  wow, you are such an abundance, I'm like, there's so much you can teach, you are teaching,
• 1:02:59
  we can receive and are receiving so much from you as you say this, it's so clear that
• 1:03:05
  you are just full of gyms and insights and nuance and texture and color and flavor, and I love
• 1:03:14
  this holistic view of spirituality that you're giving, that it's in everything, it's how you move,
• 1:03:19
  it's in conversations you're having with ancestors, with yourself, with how you treat yourself,
• 1:03:24
  I love how you say I am my home, I am my first home, and there's such a beauty to that, and to the
• 1:03:35
  idea of refusing to abandon yourself, how you just, I also love Brené Brown, and how you just
• 1:03:41
  shared that you will not, you know, in the past you have abandoned yourself in order to survive,
• 1:03:47
  in order to receive conditional approval and care, and now you know that you are in a position
• 1:03:54
  where that is no longer something you're available for, and something that I also wanted to reflect,
• 1:03:59
  can I share a reflection? So I love how you said, you know, we can over-intellectualize, and because
• 1:04:04
  it wasn't safe to hold feelings in your body, you have to be careful of, yes, you love therapy,
• 1:04:09
  you love talking, you have to be careful of using that as sort of a form of avoidance, I think
• 1:04:15
  more than only make sense through language, you make art through language, like you have a gift,
• 1:04:22
  I think we can also miss that there is an embodied aspect of words, and for me that's poetry,
• 1:04:29
  and you have such, you probably know this about yourself, but just listening to you speak,
• 1:04:33
  there's a poetic way you express that does drop me into my body, like when you say find the
• 1:04:39
  flesh, or when you say, you know, the way that you've just expressed all these, I am my first home,
• 1:04:45
  it's like I drop in to my body, it's not an intellect, it's like, so I think there's also such,
• 1:04:50
  there is an artistry, there's something beyond making sense, like making sense is like this,
• 1:04:55
  it's true, it does happen, but it's also that making beauty, like you adorn the world through language,
• 1:05:00
  that's how I experience you, you know, like a painter would, or like artist of any kind would,
• 1:05:06
  and I'm sure you are multiple forms of artistry, like with your photographs, but I think that's
• 1:05:11
  a thing that we do for the world, or that you can do for the world, and maybe because this world
• 1:05:19
  has a very complex and relationship with beauty, I feel like there's the beauty of the spirit
• 1:05:26
  that some people offer, and I just want to amplify, I'm sure you know this within yourself,
• 1:05:30
  but amplify the part of you that already knows this, to say that you do something exceptionally
• 1:05:36
  beautiful through your making beauty, making sense, you know, you make sense beautifully,
• 1:05:41
  you make art and language with how you experience life, and there's something kind of like in nature,
• 1:05:49
  how there are certain animals that like chew foods, and then it changes the form so that it's maybe
• 1:05:54
  more digestible or more beautiful to another animal, I feel like you do that for us, so we thank you.
• 1:06:01
  Thank you so much. I've never, I, I don't even say, you probably know these things about you,
• 1:06:06
  and like I think sometimes we, we live in our bodies and we live our lives that we don't,
• 1:06:12
  we really see ourselves from an observant point of view, I appreciate you telling me that,
• 1:06:19
  because I'm just like living my life and just trying to figure it out, you know, and I think
• 1:06:26
  it gives an encouragement that I, I'm not, I'm not seeing the work I'm doing, I'm living the work,
• 1:06:33
  I'm embodying the work, that's always been very important to me, to not, to not preach it, but to,
• 1:06:39
  to embody it and live it, yeah. Now we can feel that from you, that like resonance of
• 1:06:45
  the spirit, the body, the mind, the soul, all like embodying an alignment with this truth,
• 1:06:51
  or this way that you channel and experience spirit, spirituality, connection, something I really
• 1:06:56
  care about is, you know, the way in many conversations in, I guess like the podcasting space, whatever,
• 1:07:03
  the way that spirituality is formed, it's like, it's very, it erases a lot of, especially like
• 1:07:09
  different indigenous African traditions, African traditions and cultures, and it's often like,
• 1:07:15
  oh, in the West, they say this, and in the East, they say that, and there's a erasure of this entire
• 1:07:19
  continent, and also of the Asia of South America, and like just many different indigenous forms of
• 1:07:25
  thought and thinking and experiencing, and earlier you said you have a complicated relationship with
• 1:07:29
  the word prayer, and I'm fascinated by how you bring together and how anything that you can share
• 1:07:35
  as like a channel for, you know, no one speaks for an entire culture or an entire language, or,
• 1:07:40
  but I think a lot of people listening to this may never have heard of some of the, of the concepts
• 1:07:45
  that you are bringing forth, you know, in your spirituality and your connection to your culture,
• 1:07:50
  your languages, and so we were just love to learn anything you feel called to share, anything
• 1:07:54
  that we can receive, or just witness you, just talking about, since it's a gift to listen to you
• 1:08:00
  talk in terms of your culture, in terms of your specific spiritual inheritance, you know, and how
• 1:08:07
  you bring that forth. The relationship to prayer, the word prayer for me, I think because also in real
• 1:08:15
  time, like I say, spirituality, I think for me, because spirituality to me is creative,
• 1:08:24
  it allows me that room to know that these things can change form, I guess prayer for me is like
• 1:08:36
  it seems like petitioning, and the relationship that I have, or the one that I want to
• 1:08:44
  always have, with source and my ancestors, and my guides, you know, I also feel like my ancestors
• 1:08:51
  are only my family, you know, the ancestors have nothing to do with my bloodline,
• 1:08:56
  whom I know have chosen me, walk with me, or guide me, you know, so I
• 1:09:02
  spirituality is so expensive, it's not this, it's not this boxed thing. Yes. Because we also talk
• 1:09:11
  about indigenous practices and knowledge systems, and knowing that you know what works for me,
• 1:09:16
  what works for you will be different because these are personal, creative, expensive experiences
• 1:09:22
  that are personal to you. Yes. So for me, both my family and my own explorations and my
• 1:09:33
  openness have given me different tools, you know, my mom is so I've said so I'm I, you know, which is
• 1:09:46
  since she said so I'm not so so tall, you know, coming from the free state,
• 1:09:49
  listen to area, which is like a country within South Africa. And my father is Klasa, and I'm
• 1:09:59
  really happy that also my name is two or both. No one comes from my my father's side,
• 1:10:06
  and it's the grandmother on my father's side, and my book is also a grandmother on my mother's
• 1:10:13
  side. Okay. And I'm happy that my parents gave me both, you know, gave me both from those sides.
• 1:10:23
  So not only from my family, observations in terms of our practices and rituals have I drawn
• 1:10:33
  from, but also from my names, you know, my polka means polka means morning dew, that's what polka
• 1:10:44
  means dew, morning dew, but then I went on and thought about like names are so important because
• 1:10:53
  of you and I who love language know that it matters. It makes you feel different when there's
• 1:11:01
  K in language. And my polka comes from Bafu King, which are the people who come from Lusoto,
• 1:11:13
  and when they came from Lusoto and migrated into South Africa in the free state,
• 1:11:18
  and they just started saying Bafu King, Bafu King. And then so my name also means mother of those who
• 1:11:28
  live on the icy mountain, right? Like I've always had, you know, so my name is even when you look
• 1:11:34
  at like the English interpretations of what my polka is, it's connectedness, that's what my polka is,
• 1:11:41
  right? So even within my own spiritual practices, it's been informed by the name that my parents
• 1:11:51
  gave me, so they gave me the tools before. I just didn't know that they were living in me,
• 1:11:57
  you know what I mean? And through that, because also wanting to know about who I am was also scary,
• 1:12:07
  because the fact that I'd already lost my pay, I'm like, what was, do I need like, let me just
• 1:12:16
  forge forward and forget this, just forge forward, you know. But going back, again, moving backwards
• 1:12:23
  and forwards all the time has informed those practices and those rituals that I do, you know. So
• 1:12:31
  I know that I, moving away from prayer was around that, I don't feel like I'm petitioning,
• 1:12:39
  I feel like I'm embodying. So I'm not asking and believing, I'm asking and knowing, you know,
• 1:12:52
  wrong. I, there's this incredible teacher that I love, her name is Dr. Dr. Canisila Lichville
• 1:13:00
  Chabalala, and she made this analogy and she said, you know, when you sit on a chair, you don't,
• 1:13:06
  you don't question, is this chair gonna hold me? I walked in here and I said, and I didn't ask you
• 1:13:12
  and say like, oh yeah, do you think this chair is gonna keep me up? I said, because I knew it's a
• 1:13:18
  chair, the chair is made to keep me up. So even in my relationship with my ancestors, it's like,
• 1:13:23
  even as I speak, as I speak to them and I ask, and when I ask, I don't mean like, for things, I mean like
• 1:13:31
  help me to walk lighter in the world. That's one thing I always ask for, you know. And knowing that
• 1:13:40
  I don't have to sit there and beg and grovel and pray and petition. I ask and I know that it's
• 1:13:48
  gonna happen. How, when those are details of nothing to do with me, right? So it's about like knowing
• 1:13:56
  that this relationship isn't about petitioning. This relationship is about reciprocity and communication.
• 1:14:08
  There are things I need to do that are my responsibility and the things that my guys need to do that
• 1:14:13
  are not my responsibility. Right. And I think once I started learning like, okay, you've done your part.
• 1:14:21
  Once you go and you're begging, you're negotiating, now you feel like the manifestation of the thing
• 1:14:28
  is out of your control. You've done your part. Leave the part that needs to be done by source and the
• 1:14:36
  rest to be done by source and the rest. So I think I'm now trying to backtrack to what we're saying
• 1:14:44
  that these, that's my answer to regards to prayer because of what the word means to me.
• 1:14:56
  But I also feel like it's like it's getting people can, people can do whatever they want to do to
• 1:15:00
  make themselves feel better. I think for me more than anything is that I want to,
• 1:15:11
  I stay away from that word because I don't feel like it, it makes me feel like an active participant
• 1:15:18
  in my manifestation. The co-creator. Yeah. Perfect. A co-creator. It doesn't, it doesn't make me feel that way.
• 1:15:25
  Yeah. So, but I don't have an issue with the word itself. Yeah. It's the relationship that I have
• 1:15:32
  with the word. And I'm just like, no, I don't think I want to petition. And sometimes I do because
• 1:15:37
  I'm like, I'm tired. This is hard. But I'm like, I have enough evidence that you've always shown up
• 1:15:50
  for me. Always. I've always had that evidence, you know. I like to say, you know, even as I'm
• 1:15:56
  floating because I feel like as a person who's always moved around and I think I've prioritized
• 1:16:03
  healing and making sense of things over worldly things, you know, like climbing a corporate ladder,
• 1:16:12
  acquiring things and so it came at a cost. But one that I would do at any time
• 1:16:19
  because I don't know if I would enjoy those things if I hadn't done this work. And those things
• 1:16:25
  you can always get. I can always acquire things, you know. So I think I've loved my life unconventionally
• 1:16:35
  in that way. But yeah, I was trying to see if there was anything that's coming up for me, but
• 1:16:42
  more than anything, it's that I'm a co-creator and I matter. It's a co-creation. You know, I'm the
• 1:16:52
  most manifesto of my life. And even when things aren't going well, I don't do anything wrong.
• 1:16:58
  That's what I have to tell myself because there's a child that always equated,
• 1:17:02
  failure and resistance to things happening for me as a byproduct of some inadequacies within me.
• 1:17:11
  You know, so now knowing that, you know, even as I'm floating in the wind, trying to find landing,
• 1:17:18
  you know, God and my ancestors are the wind. I am always carried.
• 1:17:24
  You know, and it took me a long time to get there. Yeah.
• 1:17:29
  Yeah. So I think for me, yeah.
• 1:17:33
  When I sit with those words, even as I'm floating, trying to find landing,
• 1:17:39
  God and the ancestors are my other wind. So I'm always carried.
• 1:17:44
  Being carried doesn't have to look like a house, a secure job,
• 1:17:51
  you know, a secure relationship. It doesn't. Yeah.
• 1:17:59
  And the profoundness of that and then the mountain, the morning dew,
• 1:18:05
  it's just, you can't make this shit up. Oh, my word.
• 1:18:11
  I am eternally grateful for my parents giving me that name. Yeah.
• 1:18:15
  And I actually was in Guatua, visiting Mapuka's land. How was that? Oh, I went.
• 1:18:22
  I went in October and then I went again for three weeks in December and pretty much
• 1:18:32
  more than three weeks. But yeah, so it's, I don't know. I don't know. I think I'm still grappling
• 1:18:39
  with the words. Yeah, I felt held, seen.
• 1:18:51
  Yeah. And to hear things that people say about Mapuka in Guatua,
• 1:18:59
  that each other is, it's like, oh, wow. You know, she, under nursery school,
• 1:19:07
  she took care of almost so many kids with in the area. Super funny,
• 1:19:19
  chatty, just, and my uncle, who's Mapuka's son, like 70 years ago,
• 1:19:26
  my uncle, my mother, so Uncle Toby, so he has just, yeah, he says a lot about
• 1:19:33
  Mapuka, his mother, and he says like, you are my mom. Like, you are really my mom. Like, you know,
• 1:19:39
  so it's, yeah, it's beautiful to see your answers to show up for you in that way, to like, you know,
• 1:19:48
  I've always loved children. I've always understood them. I've always connected them at, like,
• 1:19:55
  family things. I'm not with the adults. I'm with the youth. Even though the youth pick like
• 1:20:01
  I'm at the age, but knowing these things about Mapuka then makes sense. I'm like, okay. She gave me
• 1:20:10
  that love of children and the connection of children and that connection to care. You know,
• 1:20:16
  these things about me are not, because I think even as a woman, we see having innate
• 1:20:25
  nature for care as a general, as an invisible thing, sometimes a crutch, sometimes
• 1:20:35
  something you don't want to have. But for me, it's like, that's my superpower. My ability to
• 1:20:41
  deeply feel, my ability to connect with young people, my ability to play, because I need that.
• 1:20:50
  I don't play much as a child, so I need that, right? So they give me a lot of things, you know,
• 1:20:55
  so it's nice to just go home. I'm nice as such a low vibrational word, but it's like,
• 1:21:02
  it's amazing to see how my spiritual practices, my spirituality, my ways of healing, my ways of
• 1:21:11
  caring for myself, isn't things that I've only orchestrated by myself. I've been people who are
• 1:21:18
  doing it before me, who have created those blueprints for me that I don't know how and why I connect
• 1:21:28
  with people and children. And I don't need to know why, because she started the path for us.
• 1:21:34
  You know, I'm just continuing. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah.
• 1:21:43
  Wow. It's so divine. Listening to you express how you went home and you felt this feeling
• 1:21:51
  see and you felt the sense of belonging. You felt the sense of being held. And it ties back
• 1:21:56
  because it's so interesting that we grow up petitioning to receive things that were our
• 1:22:03
  birthright already that we already had. So in just being and existing, you were held, you were
• 1:22:10
  cared for. There was something higher holding you. And it's beautiful that you've found and
• 1:22:15
  reconnected with that inheritance. And it sounds like you just have such a, we think about
• 1:22:20
  inheritance in such a limited way in this material world that you have a spiritual inheritance.
• 1:22:24
  You have a deep ancestral inheritance. You have an emotional inheritance like this care you have
• 1:22:30
  that is of course beautifully mirrored in this like in this ancestral like figure and and
• 1:22:36
  commute force in the community. And reclaiming that sensitivity, that ability to feel and into it
• 1:22:43
  and care is such a superpower. And just because our society can negate societies in general can
• 1:22:51
  downplay, minimise the value that care brings to the world. But it is the ultimate, you know,
• 1:22:57
  it's the ultimate energy and force. Revolutionary. Yes. Say more. Yeah, really it's case
• 1:23:03
  revolutionary. Yeah, we need it. We all do. All of us. Because no one is an intervene. Even my friends
• 1:23:12
  who from the ways we romanticise upbringing, because we do we romanticise the relationships we
• 1:23:23
  think we should have as our parents, exercise our family should be we do. And there's nothing wrong
• 1:23:28
  with that, right? But even with my friends that have have those lives and maybe have access
• 1:23:34
  emotionally to some support that I don't have or that I want. Maybe that I don't not that I don't
• 1:23:41
  have, but that I would have wanted from parental figures. They also go through pain, they struggle,
• 1:23:48
  and they end up valid. So I think knowing that pain evades no one, no one, you know, but care is
• 1:24:03
  vital. Yeah, because pain will evade no one, you need to be able to find a place to breathe,
• 1:24:12
  or just like have a moment. Yeah, it's our birthright, we have the right to that. Yeah, we really do.
• 1:24:20
  Well, it's the hardest thing to do is to do the work that we're talking about. It's
• 1:24:30
  learning what's yours, what's not yours, what's your voice, what's someone else's voice.
• 1:24:35
  So in the hardest thing you're going to do while you are moving here in the physical form,
• 1:24:44
  you have to have care. It's the hardest thing you'll ever do. So you deserve care. Yeah.
• 1:24:52
  It's stunning also how some people walk through society as embodiments of care
• 1:24:58
  and offer so much to all of us nourishment. It's almost like fruits and foods and ways of nourishing
• 1:25:05
  the collective like heart and soul that people like you who, as you say, you care deeply about care
• 1:25:10
  and so people around you experience that care through you. And it's such a form of vitality,
• 1:25:16
  like you're saying, it's so life giving and so necessary. And some people I feel like in this life
• 1:25:22
  they come as like these stewards of care and these stewards of creating the conditions for
• 1:25:27
  each of us to thrive, which is care. We need to feel cared for, we need to feel like we matter and
• 1:25:32
  we belong to the human, to the human story, you know, just by our essence. So it's wonderful
• 1:25:38
  hearing you say that and something that also came through as I love how you said that spirituality
• 1:25:42
  is creative. This was earlier, but that's such a powerful statement because it just invites each
• 1:25:49
  of us to think, Oh, in what ways can I really metabolize and receive that? Like, wow, yes,
• 1:25:54
  spirituality is creative. It gets to be ever evolving. It gets to be experimental, playful,
• 1:25:59
  pleasurable or whatever I seek for it to be. So that's something that I also wanted to just share.
• 1:26:04
  And then what you're saying now that we all experience pain as part of the human experience,
• 1:26:10
  as part of the experience of life itself is that we carry pain, we feel pain, we will cause pain
• 1:26:15
  and there's how to handle that that we have and we do and we shall hurt and be a source of pain
• 1:26:21
  in people's lives. That is what it is to relate is to be in this dance and wow, but we get to do it
• 1:26:28
  with this level of insight, consciousness, awareness that can be so beautiful and how we show up
• 1:26:36
  our relationships. And that is also a form of spirituality, relating and how we relate is such a
• 1:26:42
  rich ground for like spirit, spirit to exist if we allow to.
• 1:26:49
  You take a second.
• 1:27:12
  Hmm.
• 1:27:23
  Something that's moving through me as you express is
• 1:27:29
  the faith and trust you spoke about. You mentioned this idea of the chair and you know,
• 1:27:42
  trusting that you don't sit on this chair and think to yourself, oh, will I be held? You trust
• 1:27:47
  that you are held. That is such an incredibly like visceral way to receive that message. So
• 1:27:52
  that was a beautiful analogy and how have you you sound like you're you're moving and as you
• 1:27:58
  said, it's a struggle to move with faith and move with trust and trust. What is my work? What is
• 1:28:03
  my ancestors and spirit guides and spirit teams work and I've always been carried. How can I lean
• 1:28:08
  into that trust? How have you really cultivated and dropped into that faith that you are held,
• 1:28:14
  that you are carried and how might someone who is listening to us or watch this if they are in a
• 1:28:20
  moment of their life where they do not feel trust. They feel the absence of trust. They feel
• 1:28:24
  the absence of faith. They feel that vigilance or they feel that fear around what might happen or
• 1:28:29
  when will something happen. What would you say to them? Hmm. Let me sit with that. Hmm.
• 1:28:50
  What's coming to me is like, and maybe I'm saying it to myself, but no, I think you know,
• 1:28:57
  I may be saying it to someone else too. At the core of it, it's believing you have done nothing
• 1:29:03
  wrong. You know, I think a lot of us feel like some of the pain, especially the deepest ones that
• 1:29:13
  you're not allowed to collapse in, when I say collapse, it's like surrendering to something
• 1:29:31
  bigger to hold you in that moment, not the journal, but in this moment, you need to
• 1:29:37
  honor the human experience, that we can feel implicit in some way to it. So therefore,
• 1:29:50
  the degree to which we can honor the emotion has to be limited because I must also punish myself
• 1:30:01
  or participating in creating thisness, rather than seeing it as life. It's happening. You know,
• 1:30:11
  systems are we have to live in systems. We inhabit bodies that systems interact
• 1:30:18
  different ways with the bodies that we inhabit. So kind of also seeing like these things on your
• 1:30:24
  fault. I think more than anything, for me, that was the switch, realizing that I didn't do
• 1:30:32
  anything wrong. And when I say, I little mapoca, that child did nothing wrong, you know.
• 1:30:40
  So we're not going to punish her by making her take on things that had nothing to do with her,
• 1:30:51
  you know. So when you ask this idea of like knowing that you are carried, for me honestly was
• 1:31:03
  many, many times of breaking down, many, many times of feeling like, what's the point,
• 1:31:12
  right? You know, when this is end, you know, like what's the point, you know, because
• 1:31:17
  those strong big feelings I've had very early, because of the virtue of what happened, you know.
• 1:31:25
  So I would say, I can't tell you how you get to the knowing. I know that I couldn't sustain any more
• 1:31:36
  pain in believing the other way. So I had to believe them. I had to go the knowing way.
• 1:31:44
  I had, I don't know if that makes sense. It's like, I had the stories were done.
• 1:31:52
  It was, there was no, I could no longer do this the same way. I had to try another way.
• 1:31:59
  Yeah. So I don't think it was this thing where I was like, okay, we have to know that we were
• 1:32:05
  carried. The other option wasn't working. The other option was working and it was painful.
• 1:32:15
  And once I told myself that I didn't do anything wrong, no one didn't do anything wrong,
• 1:32:22
  that little child did not do anything wrong. I was able to see what's a lot more reverence
• 1:32:28
  and knowing that even when I looked around and wondered why I couldn't get that, you know,
• 1:32:36
  why does that child get that and I don't get that? Why does that young teen get to experience that
• 1:32:41
  and I don't? Why, whatever those things were, I just got to the point where I was like,
• 1:32:50
  Britney also says this. Mama, Britney. Yes. If you go through the world looking for evidence
• 1:32:59
  that you don't belong, that there's something wrong with you, you'll find it.
• 1:33:03
  You'll find it. And that self-deprecating internal chatter was harming me and it was
• 1:33:12
  leading into the relationships that I cared about. Yeah. So I had to, I had to believe in, I had to
• 1:33:19
  try another way and I don't, and I asked again, actually, I don't know what other way there is,
• 1:33:31
  but show me, show me, lead me, you know, and yeah, well, and the thing that came was you didn't do
• 1:33:42
  anything wrong. And once that, it just unlocked many other things because then it felt like
• 1:33:49
  I gave myself permission to live with and beyond the things that have happened to me,
• 1:34:00
  to not pitch a tent next to my pain, to not
• 1:34:05
  want, and come identity in these things. To know that there also like,
• 1:34:11
  what's some things about me and what's some experiences and my upbringing had beautiful things
• 1:34:19
  in them as well. Yeah. So I think it was that really, it was just like, I couldn't sustain
• 1:34:24
  anymore. I couldn't, I couldn't sustain the way that I was sustaining myself. I couldn't,
• 1:34:29
  I had to try another way. And the other way was like, it's my birthright to be, you know,
• 1:34:34
  yeah, just like the cheese and the stars and, you know, those, I have a right to be here. And
• 1:34:39
  therefore, why do I need to hope the chair keeps me up? And I know the chair is meant to keep me up.
• 1:34:47
  I don't hope that the earth keeps me on the ground. Yes. Just walk. I'm not afraid to go to bed
• 1:34:53
  because I'm afraid I may not be live tomorrow. I sleep knowing I'm going to wake up tomorrow.
• 1:34:59
  So I wanted to see how could I do that in a way that I'm not thinking about my well-being.
• 1:35:07
  I am living my well-being. Does that make sense? I don't think about breathing. It just happens.
• 1:35:12
  I just breathe. And I was curious about like, just like the cheese that's there, snow, rain,
• 1:35:23
  leaves, no leaves. Unbothered. Just standing there. But still thrives. You know, the creases not
• 1:35:33
  taking anything away from it. Still grows. Doesn't stint the growth of the tree.
• 1:35:38
  Because like, well, if that can experience that, and I am that too, why can't I access that?
• 1:35:45
  And I think it just released me of having to punish myself or having to do, you know,
• 1:35:52
  a firm that thought of I deserve this experience as a child because I probably did some,
• 1:35:57
  I'm going to do something as an adult that's going to affirm what a horrible human being I am
• 1:36:03
  and that I deserve this. Wow. You know, so it really was about changing that that and saying,
• 1:36:08
  this isn't working. And the people in my life who wanted to love me couldn't.
• 1:36:14
  Because I couldn't believe that story. I couldn't believe that my friend would love me.
• 1:36:19
  Just to love me. I couldn't believe that my friend would want me to come to our house
• 1:36:24
  for Thanksgiving because she loves me. Not for anything else. You know, not for anything else.
• 1:36:33
  And not believing that people in my life and they told me they care for me and they love me.
• 1:36:42
  Not truly believing it. And I was like, I don't know. I don't want to look like this.
• 1:36:48
  Yeah. And then realizing that I had to forgive myself for believing that I was the reason why
• 1:36:57
  my life was that difficult or the grief or whatever. Wow. So I would say, you don't do anything wrong.
• 1:37:06
  Yeah, you don't do anything wrong. And we open to the possibility that the way you are viewing life
• 1:37:13
  now may have worked for you. But if you are at a crossroads, it's a message to say,
• 1:37:22
  you're at the fork of the road and you need to decide. And even if that decision is wrong,
• 1:37:29
  here's another fork of the road. And you'll make another decision. You know, that I'm a choice
• 1:37:34
  away from another choice. I'm not going to hold myself hostage of my choices. Yeah.
• 1:37:42
  I don't know. I give up on the choice away. Incredible. Yes. Yes. I want to go there next. That's
• 1:37:47
  incredible. Sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off at the end. Wow. Starting us there with that
• 1:37:54
  worthiness and that remembrance that we didn't do anything wrong with it. You didn't do anything wrong.
• 1:37:59
  It must have felt like such a rebirth for you to realize that and allow the healing power of those
• 1:38:05
  words to really affect you and affect how you experience life. So it really moved something
• 1:38:12
  within me and feels so like so potent for you to the way you express that and the way that you
• 1:38:21
  are tying it back to the echoes of the soul because it's like, I've responded this way so many times
• 1:38:28
  and it's only going to pull me backward. What does forwards look like now? You know, it's like the
• 1:38:32
  it's similar to this backward forward dance of how am I going to respond? And
• 1:38:37
  there's something very soulful about the way you chose to allow yourself to be born into a new
• 1:38:44
  story because I think each time we change stories, it's like what you said earlier about how
• 1:38:49
  grief exists in multiple realms of life. So does birth and death and thank goodness for that. You
• 1:38:54
  know that we can always a part of us and not even, I mean, there is of course the grief to it,
• 1:38:59
  but there's the beauty to, okay, this part of me is no longer serving me. This part of me is
• 1:39:05
  asking to be shared to be released and what I'm being brought into life with or through what is
• 1:39:12
  being invited to be born is this eternal worthiness is this idea I'm standing as the tree ready to
• 1:39:18
  receive and worthy of receiving this love without doubting it worthy of receiving the support without
• 1:39:24
  questioning it. So it's it's it's incredibly like paradigm shifting what can happen in a single
• 1:39:32
  lifetime because you've healed it's like you've healed so many lifetimes in this moment and so
• 1:39:37
  I do want to end you you not in but go to where you just went where there's the divine word that you
• 1:39:43
  say you have a love affair with and again to just highlight different indigenous cultures
• 1:39:49
  understanding traditions. I'd love for you to introduce us to this word you have tattooed
• 1:39:54
  beautifully on your divine vessel and your body. So what is this word and what can we receive from
• 1:39:59
  it what do you receive from it? And you know for a long time I always both come out
• 1:40:10
  and just thank you that's it you know okay come out good things got it you know and but I loved it
• 1:40:17
  I just loved the word but actually come out means when you when you do something for me
• 1:40:26
  for example you give me a glass of water I want to make it that simple you pass me a glass of water
• 1:40:31
  and I say come out go I am there I'm saying now go home so tomorrow continue this kind act don't let
• 1:40:40
  this kind act end with me so thank you closes the loop you've given me I'm done I'm
• 1:40:49
  open says continue and again and again this good deed you've done for me do it for the other
• 1:40:57
  and I will do for the next because you've gifted me wow it didn't cost me anything
• 1:41:03
  hmm come out good means that means and tomorrow and again and again and again continue to give
• 1:41:12
  that kind act oh wow so that's what Tomaku is oh my goodness and because it's a word that
• 1:41:22
  is a connector you know when I pray well not pray but when people pray or when I'm doing my
• 1:41:35
  my rituals or when I'm connecting the first thing I say if I'm going to do it in my father's
• 1:41:41
  language in my father's tongue I would say Tomaku Tomata you know thank you in in laments to my guess but
• 1:41:52
  I'm basically saying before I even utter a request before I tell you how my day is
• 1:42:01
  I am here to commune I'm here to connect and maybe please be here every other time I come to
• 1:42:10
  connect again and again and again and again please hear me when I speak to you you know so
• 1:42:18
  it's a connector you know when I'm speaking you know you say Tomaku Tomata Tomaku
• 1:42:27
  you saying my ancestors again and again keep coming keep coming keep coming so I put it right there
• 1:42:35
  because it's right there by your throat chakra to remind me that it's a connector Mappoka again
• 1:42:48
  I was just thinking that exact connection I didn't even know that after like a couple of years
• 1:42:54
  of a kind of like sitting on the word I was like oh the link oh my gosh so I put it there to also
• 1:43:02
  remind me that my words create worlds and to be very mindful of my words yeah because they connect
• 1:43:12
  connect me to the things I want things I'm calling to the experiences I want some experiences
• 1:43:18
  coming on my fault the experiences but yeah that's my relationship to this word and why I put it
• 1:43:26
  there and to remember to remember that well my ancestors source every every you will live in my
• 1:43:34
  throat forever that we've spoken we've shared we've connected yeah to to say Tomaku it was also
• 1:43:40
  continue yeah oh wow yeah oh my word we're also lucky that you are the person for anyone who didn't know
• 1:43:47
  it Tomaku oh my goodness oh wow and the way that that that connection that it connects you to
• 1:43:54
  therefore all good deeds that have been done in your lineage you are tied to are you have created
• 1:43:59
  you and just as we are co-creators we have been co-created and it's so wonderful to keep close to
• 1:44:06
  you and to your expression which is clearly so that throat chakra is open it's open because also
• 1:44:13
  we're talking about you know book honesty being not a place of safety so it's it's it's it's it's
• 1:44:25
  learning constantly to trust my voice because I can then trust myself oh yeah yes yes learning
• 1:44:33
  constantly to trust my voice because I can then trust myself I think we can all relate to that like
• 1:44:38
  wanting to trust our voices more and struggling at times and also that that self and the voice
• 1:44:45
  are so in like whether you speak early or like your voice metaphorically your expression your dance
• 1:44:51
  your movement how you express consciousness in the world oh my goodness what a gift and that is
• 1:44:59
  a closer word okay wonderful if for anyone in grooney language yeah wow so how can people
• 1:45:10
  who want to introduce the divine power of Tomaku into their life how can they how can they do that
• 1:45:19
  for themselves yes know that you are sovereign oh you know and I know sovereigns like what does that mean
• 1:45:29
  like as you can see my memory is really good so like whenever I remember quote I remember it like
• 1:45:37
  like I know like you know I guess yeah as an educator yes I have to remember my students writing
• 1:45:45
  you just you just have to remember a lot more kids well the flames but it's amazing um
• 1:45:54
  the thing I was going to say with regards to people having Kamaku in their own lives
• 1:45:59
  is my therapist when I say to you know you keep talking about this repairing thing like how do I do
• 1:46:07
  I don't I don't know what it's supposed to look like so why you ask it's just like it's supposed
• 1:46:12
  to look what do you want it to look like and I say to her what is um repair it to yourself me
• 1:46:22
  um and he was Angela Boyd and she said it is having unconditional positive regard for yourself
• 1:46:30
  oh um write that down everyone I'm gonna write that down okay unconditional positive regard for
• 1:46:37
  yourself I'm conditional positive regard for yourself and what that means is again making generous
• 1:46:45
  assumptions and make generous thoughts and conversations with and by myself with for myself you know
• 1:46:54
  um so having Kamaku in your life honestly is that having generous you know having unconditional
• 1:47:02
  um positive regard for yourself you know um and continue to do it and you don't have to do it
• 1:47:10
  perfectly it can happen for me honestly started in really small ways when I need the bathroom
• 1:47:19
  I ask for the bathroom I don't wait for a conversation to end before I need to go use the
• 1:47:22
  bathroom I don't do that if I'm doing that right now thank you for saying that
• 1:47:29
  yes oh like really like I'm hungry but I'm not saying anything because no one has brought up
• 1:47:35
  that we need to eat mmm I think knowing that what I mean matters yeah that's your Kamaku
• 1:47:47
  warm so tomorrow again and again find ways to center your sovereignty your dignity your it can
• 1:47:57
  be in the smallest ways you know um like the bathroom one or it could be um oh my gosh so many
• 1:48:07
  things um you may have a course schedule does a friend and now you don't feel like it
• 1:48:17
  love them well enough for them to process that without you preempting what do you think they're
• 1:48:23
  going to say and how and the who and the what and the one that's not having positive regard for
• 1:48:29
  your friend and then two not for you you know even in those ways the same friend I don't have
• 1:48:33
  capacity my friends know I always say capacity don't have capacity I don't which is true I don't
• 1:48:38
  have capacity right now um can we move it I don't know when even just that honest act of saying I
• 1:48:45
  don't know when I will feel like talking mmm I don't feel like talking now and I love you but uh
• 1:48:51
  you know I need this those little thing those things that we think are so little oh my gosh big big
• 1:49:00
  because the world gets hard and if we harden we break we have to soften you know and thank you
• 1:49:11
  Ibn Hinesh um and also herod that she mentioned that when the world's hard when life gets hard
• 1:49:18
  she's learned to soften because hardening further causes more damage yeah she then causes more
• 1:49:25
  work for repair yes you know yes so I guess yeah make choices that honor you
• 1:49:37
  even if you're going to be alone yeah you're your longest commitment no one's ever going to be with you
• 1:49:42
  longer than you might as well honor yourself even if it means you're by yourself
• 1:49:47
  hmm because you're not by yourself hmm but I understand that in the world that we live it's hard
• 1:49:56
  hmm yeah hmm I am my first home your longest commitment wow something really like
• 1:50:05
  opened in my heart when you said the positive self-regard unconditional positive self-regard thing
• 1:50:12
  and it's so incredible because I've heard those words but like there's they landed from you
• 1:50:18
  in a different way that also allowed something to open within me and how I treat myself so I
• 1:50:24
  thank you for that because very often as someone you know you're an educator it's like our own
• 1:50:29
  words and then it's also the it's the vibration we bring to other people's words that also then
• 1:50:33
  lands differently yeah yeah and I think something that like I really honor about the lineage and like
• 1:50:40
  the gifts that I feel like we have been given and I feel this in I think ingest our our
• 1:50:47
  lineages in general is the gift of speech you know the power of artists and the power of storytelling
• 1:50:53
  and the power of of language in our own languages and then also how we bring that to other languages
• 1:50:58
  and so it's receiving from you obviously such a powerful like speaking energy which I then see
• 1:51:05
  all your ancestors who've spoken and who've who've connected and healed and supported each other
• 1:51:12
  through language and I think the resilience of our people is also connected to the resilience of
• 1:51:18
  our connection to speaking you know at speaking to each other and speaking words of power singing
• 1:51:24
  the voice you know very connected to the voice and so I feel like you said you know everyone
• 1:51:29
  is with me I feel that this gift you have of speaking it's just I mean it's so divine and I feel
• 1:51:36
  it's so inherited and and you've obviously made it your own in your own ways and brought it to
• 1:51:42
  new spaces and places but I'm feeling them in the room with you like having gifted you this power
• 1:51:48
  of speaking and then also you inviting yourself like sovereign it's it's a co-creation the sovereignty
• 1:51:54
  of stepping into that voice and stepping into that just that lineage that unfolding of Tamaku and
• 1:52:04
  of now that you're offering it into into hearts that might not have found it without you so we thank
• 1:52:09
  you for that before we go to our closing ritual I would love to ask you about you know we mentioned
• 1:52:14
  how birth and death and grief are all parts of life yeah and I'm so fascinated by how we continue
• 1:52:20
  get continually get to rebirth ourselves and rebirth possibilities and give birth to different
• 1:52:26
  beliefs and identities and also to life and something that you are stepping into it looks like
• 1:52:31
  is do-lushhip yes and so I'm so curious what drew you to that work what is it for anyone who doesn't
• 1:52:36
  know what that is and how do you make sense of make beauty of the birthing process I myself
• 1:52:46
  going through a birthing process you know I am starting all over again I was living abroad and now
• 1:52:53
  I've come back home to Johannesburg and I'm doing I'm I'm myself experiencing a bus you know
• 1:53:02
  of of why I'm not and saving years is a significant time to leave and come back you know you
• 1:53:09
  leaving your I left and I was like 27ish and I'm going to be 35 this year's you know it's
• 1:53:16
  different different different times so it's interesting you're asking me this because it's like
• 1:53:20
  I'm having my own you know I'm not a I haven't birthed my own kids but I'm birthing myself
• 1:53:26
  and also doing my do-la work so a do-la basically is also the term that I'm using because I'm doing
• 1:53:36
  my certification it's definitely a term I might drop and use more of an indigenous word to explain
• 1:53:43
  what it is you know it's a sort of a word same with it's you know a one who helps those to bring
• 1:53:49
  something out right but do-la is informational emotional and physical support for any individual
• 1:54:00
  who's going through a reproductive experience across the spectrum so whether it be before conception
• 1:54:10
  conception birth death saragacy adoption so my my training is a full spectrum training where I
• 1:54:20
  would be providing support to we call them birthing people because we know that mothering
• 1:54:27
  and birthing isn't necessarily tied to gender yeah so for me that's important to be able to
• 1:54:33
  support all people of all spectrums to bring life in the ways that they want to and some
• 1:54:44
  mentioned saragacy and adoption but also to provide support for for bereavement in in birth
• 1:54:54
  and one thing we say in birth work is that grief work is birth work because even if you have the
• 1:55:03
  baby you have to grieve the person you would grieve your body you have to grieve the changes in your
• 1:55:10
  schedule there's another person you are accountable for accountable to you know when they grow up they
• 1:55:18
  can be like and so you did not exactly yes so birth work is grief work and maybe this is why I've
• 1:55:29
  been called to it you know I've understood grief intimately very very very long time yeah so yeah
• 1:55:35
  yeah birth work is grief work and I'm so excited to finish my certification it is being a lot of work
• 1:55:42
  well but I cannot wait for my certification and to further bring indigenous practices into birth
• 1:55:54
  work because that's what I want that's that's the purpose of me doing this you know again that
• 1:55:59
  void and backward movement because going to going into archives and having conversations with
• 1:56:09
  elders and having conversations with anyone really about indigenous birthing practices is
• 1:56:18
  for me too you know what do we do for grief you know I studied psychology I mean I've lived
• 1:56:25
  a little few lives I worked in corporate when I was in South Africa I worked as an industrial
• 1:56:30
  relations consultant so I was in like HR label or you know again people love people right but it
• 1:56:38
  wasn't sustainable for me to like manage people's distrust oh yes because that's really what you
• 1:56:46
  doing you're just managing people's distrust in the workplace and I decided to go back to school
• 1:56:52
  and studied again and I got my undergrad at Rutgers University in Jersey in psychology and gender
• 1:57:01
  studies with a minor in childhood studies and I'm also very aware of the ways in which the need
• 1:57:08
  for me to do work that is tied to indigenous knowledge practices and systems is to
• 1:57:16
  ensure that even as I have these privileges of the education that I've received
• 1:57:23
  to not perpetuate harm in myself first and foremost and in others who look like me and in general
• 1:57:34
  you know I think sometimes we can look at indigenous practices from just a racial,
• 1:57:40
  ethnical space but it's more than that it's my doula training that I'm doing now focuses a lot
• 1:57:48
  on trauma informed care and that is for everyone every race you know every gender because we live
• 1:57:57
  across various intersectionalities you know I know that I hold a certain level of privilege but I
• 1:58:04
  also know I hold a certain lot of disadvantages and those are multiple treats that can coexist
• 1:58:12
  so I'm really excited to do this work because it's not only for me but for it's not only for other
• 1:58:20
  people but for me I love I love birth work I love grief work and it's so important because again
• 1:58:33
  it goes back to care yeah it affirms what's coming out of me in the journey care keeps being
• 1:58:42
  the center of it all yeah so yeah so I'm very very excited to fully you know eventually fully
• 1:58:51
  practice but yeah indigenous practices are important because I really want to know
• 1:58:58
  how we you know birthing is such a it should be such a sovereign thing right but it's not
• 1:59:05
  because now it's about we can afford it how can they afford it can you afford care virtue of
• 1:59:12
  the world that we live in our families have to look far from one another so I have to buy community now
• 1:59:22
  and I mean not to buy it but you know you need to buy support systems like you have to pay for them
• 1:59:27
  so I have no idea what my ancestors and source and the universe and the cheese and the
• 1:59:34
  birds and everything have for me in terms of this path but I trust that I'm meant to be going in
• 1:59:42
  this way yeah that's what a doula basically does or form of care emotional physical and informational
• 1:59:51
  care non-biased non-judgmental as much as I can being very aware of my own biases in my own triggers
• 2:00:00
  it's such a beautiful I need to call it work it's just ministry maybe yeah I don't know I haven't
• 2:00:10
  found the way yet you are finding your way in the wilderness through language and all the things
• 2:00:16
  it's oh wow that is so wonderful that this calling on your heart it also ties for me to the
• 2:00:22
  sovereignty idea if you do what is true as to you you will be of higher service like you are so
• 2:00:27
  excited to do this work and imagine all the people I feel like who are like calling you for through
• 2:00:32
  you doing this work because no one will be able to hold them especially with honoring indigenous
• 2:00:37
  knowledge practices as you mentioned in the way that you feel called to and so I really feel like
• 2:00:42
  it's like your calling and it's also because just as we're connected to the past we're connected to
• 2:00:47
  what is coming and the birthing of that you're connecting to the worlds you are birthing through
• 2:00:52
  this work and the people who want to be held by someone like you and then the people who want
• 2:00:57
  to be educated by someone like you and so like just as we're connected to all that has that has been
• 2:01:03
  it's also the the the idea of Ramaghu like that you are connecting and others are calling you
• 2:01:10
  for through your good deeds around how they will then be touched by your work and by as you say by
• 2:01:15
  your holding by your reclamation and returning us to these these deep forms of now we've given
• 2:01:21
  both for that's the only reason we're here we have the the knowledge within our our families
• 2:01:27
  our cultures to return to so I just feel like everyone is so blessed that you are honoring the
• 2:01:34
  calling and you're doing so in such an inclusive way when it comes to as you say gender culture
• 2:01:39
  race all of the different intersections of identities and I think there's something so beautiful
• 2:01:45
  I don't know who said this I know it's a rapper but the idea of like they tried to bury us they
• 2:01:50
  didn't know we were seeds I think that is so stunning you know it's so stunning and you think of
• 2:01:57
  just the life giving work you are doing to support people through birth work is grief work is
• 2:02:02
  both worth birth work that was so wonderfully expressed so you are so in touch with these paradoxes
• 2:02:07
  of life this holistic understanding of life that we don't get one without the other they're all
• 2:02:12
  interconnected wow people are I feel just the sense that the people you educate are so lucky that
• 2:02:18
  they I feel so much faith in like I feel so held by reality to know you are out there educating
• 2:02:23
  people and now to know you are going to be supporting people at this very vulnerable transition state
• 2:02:29
  where just as they are giving birth like a new self is being born you know so I'm so excited for
• 2:02:35
  you I love hearing that you're excited because I do think when you are a care driven person you
• 2:02:40
  know that has been this thread through what you've shared is that you are an embodiment of care
• 2:02:44
  that can also come from a place where you don't feel you get to care for what is true to you
• 2:02:50
  and so you're like tending to yourself and in a way that tends to the world and that is such a
• 2:02:54
  beautiful thing to see you know and to witness and it's wow you are a very just expansive and
• 2:03:01
  expanding person I think we all feel how much we how much of a privilege it is to receive you
• 2:03:08
  and experience the world through your eyes you know just for these couple of hours
• 2:03:13
  I feel so nourished by your perspective and your stories and the generosity and vulnerability
• 2:03:19
  you've brought to this conversation so I'm just I'm in awe before we get to our closing ritual
• 2:03:25
  for the soul salon I'd love to ask if there's anything that I didn't ask as as you are speaking
• 2:03:31
  I'm like there's so much you've said where I'm like oh my word I didn't I didn't reflect on
• 2:03:34
  this night and I'm like this there was it's like a feast of beautiful ideas and perspectives and
• 2:03:40
  the joy for boating and there's so many things where I'm like you didn't mention this but
• 2:03:44
  unconditional positive self-regard one thing I do want to say that you shared that was so powerful
• 2:03:52
  when you expressed that your grandmother said oh we did tell you and that was an idea of this
• 2:03:56
  indigenous knowledge systems that in our culture this is how we tell a child that was so I'll
• 2:04:01
  never forget that moment thank you for sharing that because it was an example of these indigenous
• 2:04:06
  knowledge systems and practices that you are rooting in and rooted in bio bio existence you know
• 2:04:12
  as a tree you've inherited roots that connect you to all of life and so that was really a
• 2:04:18
  profound moment and so there's it's not a natural transition to that but I just wanted to say
• 2:04:22
  that really stuck with me before we close is there anything or we have our closing a little ritual
• 2:04:33
  is there anything that you just feel cold to say or share or anything that you know we want to
• 2:04:38
  feel heard in conversation and then some things get dropped or aren't unmet and it can feel like
• 2:04:43
  no but you didn't see me so in the in the deep desire to have you feel seen and held
• 2:04:49
  is there anything that you wish had been addressed or like that you want to be witnessed in this
• 2:04:54
  moment maybe because of like our conversation outside of the place of my life for a man starting
• 2:05:05
  again 35 and the ways in which the world can make it's like that such a negligence
• 2:05:15
  get your life together do something commit commit something you know I admire people who can
• 2:05:22
  stay in employment for 1250 I mean it's very admirable you know and and I think if I'd like a
• 2:05:30
  child that's who I would love that like I would love a teacher who stays for years in your case
• 2:05:35
  my child's right to be in consistency and staying in the same place and I think like I mentioned
• 2:05:43
  earlier that I feel like I've done things a lot the opposite way where I kind of prioritise
• 2:05:49
  me and my well-being and really being courageous even though I know when people are looking at me
• 2:05:57
  on the outside are like this one is just doing a thing and it's like I think what what I feel like
• 2:06:06
  I had never got to share but I would love someone to know okay is you know restarting starting
• 2:06:15
  your life over and over again is such a sign of courage because you are willing to be open to
• 2:06:25
  the possibility that they need to be a pivot or they need to be a change and of course outside
• 2:06:31
  doesn't look great because then you have a lot of times of uncertainty you need support
• 2:06:38
  you know um but more than anything I think like I just I don't want people to not I don't want
• 2:06:44
  people to be afraid to start um do it please do it it's hard and I know I've been able to do it
• 2:06:52
  because I've had incredible support systems that I didn't even know where they until I threw myself
• 2:06:59
  in the pool and said let me figure it out but then I was carried again right so it would be just
• 2:07:06
  be sad to live your life and not have trusted that the same person who's giving you success in one
• 2:07:13
  version is the same person who can give you success as you continue to restart and restart and restart
• 2:07:19
  but you are your longest commitment and you have the right to figure the start many times you know
• 2:07:24
  yeah yeah um well thank you for taking us there we have an eternal right to start over you are
• 2:07:31
  starting over as you said at 34 and you'll start over at 44 and you'll start over we don't you know
• 2:07:37
  we're in an eternal dance and especially the world we are in now that is going to be the new normal
• 2:07:41
  the new sort of what we expect from each other what we expect from reality because things are
• 2:07:46
  changing so quickly and we have more options to say yes to you know so I think what you said that
• 2:07:52
  it's a deep act of courage is so resonant and I love that we can all take this as a sign someone
• 2:07:58
  we needed to hear that a part of us needed to hear that where can I invite myself to start over
• 2:08:03
  what is something that a voice has been screaming at me or even this not even scream a voice has
• 2:08:08
  been asking me please this is a direction we want to go in can we trust no matter what people say
• 2:08:13
  no matter how we're judged we get to start over so thank you for sharing that and I really
• 2:08:18
  judge yourself asking for help you need support and that's also something I really had to
• 2:08:25
  reckon with because I mean where do you expect me to get the support yeah huh do I mean like
• 2:08:35
  we where am I supposed to get it yes and also don't don't don't it's an act of courage yes
• 2:08:42
  you know yeah oh wow thank you for encouraging us giving us courage being our courage so to close
• 2:08:47
  this beautiful time together which has been so nourishing I'm going to invite six quick questions
• 2:08:52
  that you can just on send one or two sentences yes exactly okay wonderful okay so one illusion that
• 2:08:59
  I have let go of is but there's something wrong with me hmm hmm hmm something that I find sacred
• 2:09:09
  that the world treats as ordinary is the people in front of me every time are the most important
• 2:09:17
  person yeah to just be to not see people and moments as just part of life to see them as gifts
• 2:09:26
  yeah yeah if you were to ask me now it's the most important thing being most important thing to me
• 2:09:31
  it would be you because you are the person in front of me right now oh I love that presence
• 2:09:37
  and when you started presence oh wow that is such a generous way to move through the world if we
• 2:09:41
  could all see each other that way as the most important thing wow we'd live in a different world
• 2:09:46
  I love that so much the most sacred part of my life right now is
• 2:09:55
  um Maya Angelos says when she was giving advice to her son about friendships or something
• 2:10:01
  was that she told her son son you must always keep there must always be a part of you
• 2:10:06
  that you keep pristine that you don't allow people to to fold up wow to to mess up
• 2:10:14
  hmm so ask your question again hmm the most sacred part of my life right now is
• 2:10:22
  to keep the most intimate delicate parts of me pristine because when you start all over it's very
• 2:10:30
  you feel vulnerable you feel it's painful it's hard because it's it's humbling yes um
• 2:10:39
  and it's important to keep those parts pristine so you don't get bulldozed or if you're
• 2:10:49
  tracked yeah thank you for also advocating for the importance of that message that you wanted to
• 2:10:56
  share that with us you know that you came here and you that's something you felt really
• 2:10:59
  cool to is there's a deep intimacy that you have right now with reburthing yourself
• 2:11:06
  and stepping into that and the vulnerability of that and I love the idea of keeping that integrity
• 2:11:11
  that safe place that pristine place within you that can't be tarnished by the world
• 2:11:16
  hmm it's like a cocoon it's stunning we need it um wow okay if there's one thing that you take as
• 2:11:23
  the listener from this conversation I hope that it is you are an expression of infinite possibility
• 2:11:33
  hmm I love that full circle hmm and then finally if my inner child walked through the door
• 2:11:41
  if my inner child walked through that door I would say to her them a mark
• 2:11:49
  that's it mm-hmm keep going again and again being kind and being nice I always felt as a kid like
• 2:11:58
  made me weird and you know it's been nice of a power yeah so clear from everything you've shared
• 2:12:07
  that thread of deep care has been there and so well what a gift I'd love to close by just
• 2:12:14
  reflecting on how you were feeling before this started and how you are feeling now and just say
• 2:12:18
  that I'm so grateful this has been a dream come true for me in the sense of interviewing someone
• 2:12:25
  with deep wisdom someone who I feel like I could just keep asking you questions and questions and
• 2:12:29
  I'm gonna be thinking about things you said for a long time and you know you have made my dream come
• 2:12:38
  true in this conversation in terms of the kinds of conversations that I want to be having and you
• 2:12:43
  are such a generous thinker and and speaker and poet with life itself and teacher and so people
• 2:12:51
  I just feel very lucky to be in your presence and to have learned from your story and witnessed you
• 2:12:56
  and I'm so excited that this gets to be something that people receive you know in their life so I
• 2:13:01
  just want to thank you and you have touched this space and you have changed it so like all that we
• 2:13:06
  touch we change you know that we change changes us Octavia Butler so and also all your quotes and
• 2:13:13
  gems we thank you we thank you so yeah thank you so much for being here and how you feeling thank you
• 2:13:19
  I feel seen and expectant that
• 2:13:30
  I'm being birthed and midwifed into a different season of my life and
• 2:13:54
  it's like I have to not that I have to but every time every day every when I have the hard times I
• 2:14:07
  don't want it was even this morning just I just feel like
• 2:14:13
  anything anything is possible I feel that way that's how I feel
• 2:14:22
  hmm oh yeah we are an expression of infinite possibility oh my poor God thank you so much for being
• 2:14:30
  with us thank you for being in the soul salon I'm so glad that you feel seen and it's been a true
• 2:14:36
  generosity to each of our spirits that we have got to see you yeah that we have got to witness
• 2:14:42
  just a small part of your perspective and story we are all better for it we are all richer for it
• 2:14:48
  in the deepest sense the sense of the spirit we thank you and where can we tap into your world your
• 2:14:54
  work how can people stay in touch with you I'm so excited because I think a lot of the times you
• 2:15:00
  know we always see people once they've got into the other side and when I say yes to this call
• 2:15:06
  is like you could read just enough to show up in the building in the midst so I'm excited as I
• 2:15:14
  evolve as people follow you know whoever gets to observe and witness it but on Instagram I am
• 2:15:20
  Mapoca Noni at Mapoca Noni MAPH people is we get the age because it's a silent age MAPH
• 2:15:29
  O.K.A Noni's N-O-N-N-Y I only have Instagram social media is a hard world for me but
• 2:15:39
  figuring it out and yeah so you can find me Instagram DMs chat I'm building community because really
• 2:15:47
  I'm starting again yeah so yeah beautiful beautiful thank you so much I think oh we're all excited
• 2:15:55
  to tap in and I love what you said we get to be witnessed as we you know not when we have
• 2:16:02
  and that is actually a gift to allow ourselves to be seen creating building transforming like in
• 2:16:08
  the cocoon allowing people to have glimpses of that but keeping certain parts of it pristine like
• 2:16:13
  you shared from my angelium thank you so much we will follow you we will have the link below thank
• 2:16:19
  you so much soul siblings for listening for being with us on this divine journey I feel so deeply
• 2:16:25
  honored to have had this conversation and I know that it will continue to move with me and move
• 2:16:30
  through me thank you thank you so much everyone and we'll see you soon my darling my love my soul
• 2:16:42
  sibling thank you for stepping into the soul salon if you are still hearing or watching this
• 2:16:47
  we are soul siblings we are resonating on the same frequency and so something you may struggle
• 2:16:53
  with that I struggle with is the fear of being seen you know that visibility is involved in you
• 2:16:59
  living your creative purpose and being in your power serving the collective through your gifts
• 2:17:04
  through your magic through your medicine in order to do that you know you need to be more seen
• 2:17:10
  than you are allowing yourself to be right now I have a gift just for you hard made for us on this
• 2:17:17
  frequency and it is a free ebook called the soulful visibility guide that is soulful visibility like
• 2:17:24
  we don't just want to be seen we want to be felt we want to be heard we want to move and be moved
• 2:17:30
  so I do have a free gift for you and all you need to do is go to my website iunderstood.com
• 2:17:36
  and there you will be able to input your email address and receive this directly to your inbox
• 2:17:42
  this is such a juicy and delicious guide and I change the free offering every few months
• 2:17:48
  so you know get it while you can all the links are in the show notes so thank you so much
• 2:17:53
  I love you and I will see you on the next sole session okay I love you bye