Latest / The Uplifters / Motherhood in Midlife
Transcript
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- 1:13SPEAKER_01: It's
- 1:13SPEAKER_01: Jointhetribe.com T-R-Y-B.com Hey Uplifters, welcome back.
- 1:21I'm Aransas Savas and I've spent 20 years at the intersection
- 1:25of behavior change
- 1:26SPEAKER_01: research and coaching,
- 1:28SPEAKER_01: helping midlife women do big,
- 1:31SPEAKER_01: brave things.
- 1:33SPEAKER_01: Today's a very special episode to celebrate Mother's Day.
- 1:38SPEAKER_01: Just hearing those two words might stir something in you.
- 1:41SPEAKER_01: And I get it.
- 1:42SPEAKER_01: I'm a mom of two girls who was raised in turn by my mother,
- 1:47SPEAKER_01: my aunt,
- 1:47SPEAKER_01: and my grandmother who adopted me when I was six.
- 1:52SPEAKER_01: We lost her a year ago.
- 1:53SPEAKER_01: So Mother's Day this year feels complicated for me and maybe for you too.
- 2:00SPEAKER_01: For some people,
- 2:01SPEAKER_01: it's a day of pure joy,
- 2:02SPEAKER_01: but for some,
- 2:03SPEAKER_01: it can carry any number of flavors of grief.
- 2:08This week I'm going to share a few stories from our most recent
- 2:11Uplifters Live.
- 2:12You'll hear very different stories of motherhood and all its
- 2:17messy,
- 2:18weighty complexity.
- 2:20SPEAKER_01: So whether you're a mother,
- 2:22SPEAKER_01: a grandmother,
- 2:23SPEAKER_01: an aunt,
- 2:24SPEAKER_01: a mentor,
- 2:25SPEAKER_01: or just a woman who has been shaped by the women around you,
- 2:29SPEAKER_01: this episode is for you,
- 2:31SPEAKER_01: friends.
- 2:32Because Mother's Day is at its best a celebration of the way we
- 2:38women lift each other up.
- 2:40SPEAKER_01: We'll close out with a short sound bath from Shayla Martin,
- 2:43SPEAKER_01: a little Mother's Day gift just for you.
- 2:46SPEAKER_01: The first voice you'll hear is Ruthie Ackerman.
- 2:49SPEAKER_01: Ruthie is the founder of the Ignite Writers Collective.
- 2:52SPEAKER_01: She's a memoirist and a journalist whose work has appeared in Vogue,
- 2:57SPEAKER_01: New York Times,
- 2:58SPEAKER_01: The Atlantic,
- 2:59SPEAKER_01: and so many more places.
- 3:00SPEAKER_01: The author of the memoir, The Mother Code.
- 3:04SPEAKER_01: Growing up,
- 3:05SPEAKER_01: I looked around me at the women in my own family,
- 3:08SPEAKER_01: the 1950s mothers on TV giving Brady Bunch vibes,
- 3:13SPEAKER_01: and the writers I loved like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath,
- 3:17SPEAKER_01: who both took their own lives and asked myself,
- 3:21SPEAKER_01: why would anyone want to become a mom?
- 3:25SPEAKER_01: It looked deranged, demeaning, diminishing in fact.
- 3:30SPEAKER_01: So why were so many women willingly choosing that path?
- 3:34SPEAKER_01: What I didn't see were the outlaw mothers,
- 3:38SPEAKER_01: the revolutionary mothers,
- 3:40SPEAKER_01: the mothers forging their own path for their lives and their children's.
- 3:45SPEAKER_01: Where were those mothers?
- 3:48SPEAKER_01: It was only in researching my memoir,
- 3:50SPEAKER_01: The Mother Code,
- 3:51that I stumbled upon the anthology Revolutionary Mothering and
- 3:56read Loretta J.
- 3:57SPEAKER_01: Ross's words about moving from mothering as biological destiny to
- 4:03To mothering as a liberating practice that can thwart runaway
- 4:07capitalism.
- 4:09SPEAKER_01: Mothering as a way to thwart capitalism?
- 4:12SPEAKER_01: I'd never even thought of that.
- 4:17I'd always believed that the decision to not have children was
- 4:21a radical act in a
- 4:22SPEAKER_01: society that tried to force all women to become mothers.
- 4:27SPEAKER_01: But was there a way for mothering to be a radical act too?
- 4:33History books are full of women who took on the mantle of
- 4:36motherhood as a challenge
- 4:38SPEAKER_01: and a charge.
- 4:40From the 70s to the 90s,
- 4:42Black feminists framed motherhood as a refusal to the violence.
- 4:47These women understood that they didn't have to let the
- 4:50politics of a sexist,
- 4:52SPEAKER_01: racist,
- 4:52SPEAKER_01: ableist,
- 4:53capitalist society determine their most personal decision
- 4:58whether or not to mother.
- 5:00SPEAKER_01: These women understood that they could parent differently,
- 5:03SPEAKER_01: that they didn't need to emulate or duplicate the images of motherhood.
- 5:07SPEAKER_01: They'd been force-fed their whole lives.
- 5:11SPEAKER_01: This is Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
- 5:12What would it mean to take the word mother less as a gendered
- 5:17identity and more as
- 5:18SPEAKER_01: a possible action,
- 5:20SPEAKER_01: a technology of transformation?
- 5:23SPEAKER_01: I jumped out of my chair when I read that.
- 5:26SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, yes, that's the kind of motherhood I want.
- 5:30So how did my image of what motherhood had to be get so far
- 5:35from my desired reality?
- 5:38SPEAKER_01: And then it hit me.
- 5:40The version of motherhood I and all of us have been sold is the
- 5:45version of
- 5:45SPEAKER_01: motherhood that sees mothering in work,
- 5:48SPEAKER_01: mothering in writing,
- 5:50SPEAKER_01: Mothering and self-actualization as incompatible.
- 5:54SPEAKER_01: Who does that benefit?
- 5:57My journalist training from my early days at Forbes kicked in
- 6:01and whispered,
- 6:02follow the money.
- 6:05SPEAKER_01: I put my head in my hands.
- 6:07SPEAKER_01: It was all so obvious.
- 6:09How did it take me so many decades to realize it despite all my
- 6:13women's studies
- 6:14SPEAKER_01: classes in college?
- 6:16The Patriarchy That's who benefits from the tall tale that
- 6:21motherhood means self-sacrifice.
- 6:24If women believe that mothering means giving up everything else
- 6:28in their lives,
- 6:29SPEAKER_01: that that would leave the money and the power and the status to the men.
- 6:33SPEAKER_01: Duh.
- 6:36SPEAKER_01: What if it's simply not true?
- 6:39SPEAKER_01: What if,
- 6:39as black feminists and scores of other mothers of all colors
- 6:43and walks of life have
- 6:44SPEAKER_01: shown us,
- 6:45SPEAKER_01: we can mother differently?
- 6:48What if there's not one way to mother and we've been duped into
- 6:51believing that
- 6:51motherhood needs to be all-encompassing to the suffocation of
- 6:55all else in a woman's
- 6:57SPEAKER_01: life?
- 6:58SPEAKER_01: Outlaw motherhood was all around me,
- 7:00SPEAKER_01: in books and the lived examples of women both known and unknown.
- 7:05SPEAKER_01: Yet I rarely heard those voices.
- 7:07SPEAKER_01: I rarely heard those who said, look over here.
- 7:11SPEAKER_01: There's a way to do this whole life and motherhood thing differently.
- 7:15SPEAKER_01: Instead, what I heard was that there was something wrong with me.
- 7:23SPEAKER_01: I'd missed the boat.
- 7:24SPEAKER_01: I'd gotten off track.
- 7:26SPEAKER_01: I'd not focused on the right things.
- 7:29SPEAKER_01: Not been strategic enough.
- 7:30SPEAKER_01: Not been nurturing enough.
- 7:32SPEAKER_01: Not been selfless enough.
- 7:34Now I understand that the choice to rewrite the rules we are
- 7:38blindly expected to
- 7:40SPEAKER_01: follow on our paths is and has always been in our hands.
- 7:46SPEAKER_01: The mother I want to be is an outlaw mother,
- 7:49a mother who believes her self-fulfillment enables her
- 7:54children's happiness.
- 7:56I want to be a mother who mothers in contradiction to the
- 8:00prescriptive ideals of society.
- 8:03SPEAKER_01: I want to be a mother who creates her own mother code,
- 8:06SPEAKER_01: a code that's about consciousness,
- 8:08SPEAKER_01: that's open to change,
- 8:09SPEAKER_01: that isn't on autopilot,
- 8:11SPEAKER_01: written in stone from on high.
- 8:13I want to be a mother who believes that there are so many ways
- 8:16to have a worthy and
- 8:17SPEAKER_01: beautiful life,
- 8:18SPEAKER_01: both with and without children.
- 8:21SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
- 8:22SPEAKER_01: Now we'll hear from Katie Horwich,
- 8:24SPEAKER_01: a nationally recognized author,
- 8:27SPEAKER_01: speaker,
- 8:28SPEAKER_01: mindset coach,
- 8:29SPEAKER_01: media correspondent,
- 8:30SPEAKER_01: and self-talk activist.
- 8:33SPEAKER_01: She's the founder of Want,
- 8:35SPEAKER_01: Women Against Negative Talk,
- 8:38SPEAKER_01: and the author of Want Yourself,
- 8:40SPEAKER_01: Shift Your Self-Talk and Unearth the Strength in Who You Are All Along.
- 8:46SPEAKER_02: I have a dog.
- 8:47SPEAKER_02: Her name is Frankie.
- 8:49SPEAKER_02: She's a cavapoo.
- 8:51Usually the conversation pivots to,
- 8:53okay,
- 8:53so you have a dog,
- 8:54but what about kids?
- 8:56SPEAKER_02: And I say, no, I've got a fur baby.
- 8:59SPEAKER_02: I'm a millennial with a fur baby.
- 9:01SPEAKER_02: Sometimes I get the cock of the head, raised eyebrow.
- 9:05SPEAKER_02: I say, why not?
- 9:07SPEAKER_02: People have been talking to me or know me.
- 9:08SPEAKER_02: They say, you'd be a great mom.
- 9:10SPEAKER_02: I'm not someone who always wanted children.
- 9:15SPEAKER_02: I also didn't not want children.
- 9:18SPEAKER_02: When I was in elementary school, we did the egg baby experiment.
- 9:22SPEAKER_02: My baby, Nancy, had a play date with my friend Catherine's baby, Helen.
- 9:26SPEAKER_02: Helen did not come out of the play date unscathed.
- 9:30SPEAKER_02: She was a bit scrambled.
- 9:33SPEAKER_02: You know, brainstorming about what you want to name your kids.
- 9:36SPEAKER_02: As I grew older and I started to make plans for my life personally,
- 9:39SPEAKER_02: professionally,
- 9:40SPEAKER_02: career-wise,
- 9:42SPEAKER_02: I always would be like,
- 9:43SPEAKER_02: oh wait,
- 9:44SPEAKER_02: kids,
- 9:45SPEAKER_02: I've got to add that into the mix.
- 9:47SPEAKER_02: Not as a desire, as an afterthought.
- 9:51SPEAKER_02: What I realized along the way is that my addition was an assumption that
- 10:00SPEAKER_02: that I figured that I needed to make into a reality.
- 10:04SPEAKER_02: It was an inherited assumption from people before me.
- 10:06It made me wonder what other inherited assumptions am I
- 10:12carrying around that I
- 10:13SPEAKER_02: don't even realize that I'm carrying.
- 10:16SPEAKER_02: I am a words person.
- 10:17SPEAKER_02: I obsess over words and not just what they mean,
- 10:22SPEAKER_02: but where they come from and what we do with them out in the world.
- 10:27SPEAKER_02: There's like a lot of talk about innovation right now.
- 10:31When I think of innovation,
- 10:34I think of the prefix in and then the second word,
- 10:38novate.
- 10:39SPEAKER_02: So I wanted to know, looking into this, like,
- 10:42SPEAKER_02: Where did this word come from?
- 10:44SPEAKER_02: What does it actually mean?
- 10:46SPEAKER_02: I found something really interesting.
- 10:48SPEAKER_02: When you look up the word innovate in the dictionary,
- 10:53SPEAKER_02: it says,
- 10:53SPEAKER_02: you know,
- 10:54SPEAKER_02: to create something new.
- 10:55SPEAKER_02: But if you take the root word,
- 10:57SPEAKER_02: novate,
- 10:59SPEAKER_02: you look it up,
- 11:00it's actually a legal term that means to replace an old
- 11:04contract with a new one.
- 11:08SPEAKER_02: So what are we doing when we are innovating in our businesses?
- 11:13in our families,
- 11:15in our lives,
- 11:16we are replacing old contracts with new ones.
- 11:20SPEAKER_02: It goes back to the inherited assumptions.
- 11:22How many inherited contracts have we signed without even
- 11:26realizing that we've signed them?
- 11:29And in order to dissect that,
- 11:30like what old contracts are we carrying around?
- 11:33SPEAKER_02: We have to understand how we got there, right?
- 11:36SPEAKER_02: How these contracts are written.
- 11:38SPEAKER_02: I have spent the last almost 20 years studying self-talk.
- 11:42Self-Talk is the internal narrative that we've got going on
- 11:4624-7 that tells us who
- 11:49SPEAKER_02: we are and who we are supposed to be out there in the world.
- 11:53SPEAKER_02: How do we write these contracts?
- 11:56They come from the internal contracts that we've unconsciously
- 12:00agreed to These
- 12:01contracts are written through the brain being your brain We
- 12:06have a negativity bias
- 12:08from way back in the evolutionary days when we needed to look
- 12:12for danger in order
- 12:13SPEAKER_02: to keep ourselves safe
- 12:15There's also the psychological ways that we write the contracts
- 12:19through belief formation.
- 12:20There's a study that I am fascinated by out of the University
- 12:24of Waterloo that says
- 12:27SPEAKER_02: that we only believe things,
- 12:30SPEAKER_02: we only create beliefs if that seed of belief exists to begin with.
- 12:35SPEAKER_02: So you don't have to believe everything,
- 12:37SPEAKER_02: but if there's a seed,
- 12:38SPEAKER_02: then you water it and water it and water it grows.
- 12:41And then,
- 12:41of course,
- 12:42we build those beliefs and those contracts through the words
- 12:45that we use.
- 12:46SPEAKER_02: Words that can feel emotionally heavy, that can build pressure.
- 12:51SPEAKER_02: I should do this.
- 12:53SPEAKER_02: I have to do this.
- 12:55SPEAKER_02: I'm so far behind.
- 12:57SPEAKER_02: I'll never make it.
- 13:00We all have the power to rewrite those contracts that we have
- 13:04in our lives.
- 13:05We can rewrite those contracts through the words that we use by
- 13:09looking for the
- 13:10seeds of belief that already exist and through modeling that
- 13:16out in the world.
- 13:17Because modeling that out in the world,
- 13:18it's not just about creating your life.
- 13:21SPEAKER_02: It's about setting an example for what someone else is able to do.
- 13:25SPEAKER_02: Building a business, building a family, building a life.
- 13:28SPEAKER_02: and Building Possibility.
- 13:31SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
- 13:32Next,
- 13:33you'll hear from Sarah Gormley,
- 13:34who had the kind of career that looks amazing on paper.
- 13:38SPEAKER_01: She worked at IMAX and Martha Stewart and Adobe and Forbes.
- 13:43SPEAKER_01: She was named one of 2015's 40 Women to Watch over 40.
- 13:48SPEAKER_01: And she spent most of those years absolutely miserable.
- 13:54SPEAKER_01: She started therapy at 40, moved back to Ohio,
- 13:58Said goodbye to her mother Fell in love Opened an art gallery
- 14:04And wrote a memoir
- 14:05called The Order of Things She's also going to give you my name
- 14:08in her talk For
- 14:09SPEAKER_01: that voice in your head That tells you you can't do things Alright,
- 14:13I won't spoil it Here's Sarah Hi everybody This is amazing And
- 14:19I'm going to cry
- 14:19SPEAKER_00: Because I'm a crier That's me,
- 14:22SPEAKER_00: the crier I'm just thrilled to be here And I'm going to try to
- 14:28SPEAKER_00: Give you something to take home with you.
- 14:30I think the topic on the agenda says that it's about improving
- 14:34your relationship with yourself.
- 14:36SPEAKER_00: Not that any of you need it, but don't we all?
- 14:38So I did all of those big jobs,
- 14:41big companies,
- 14:43and what nobody knew,
- 14:45even me,
- 14:47Was that I was struggling and suffering in intense pain most of
- 14:53my career from
- 14:54SPEAKER_00: childhood through about age 40 when I started therapy.
- 14:58SPEAKER_00: Everything looked great on the outside and I was a gal who was like,
- 15:04SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be smart,
- 15:06successful and skinny because that's what the world wants and
- 15:08by God I did it.
- 15:10And I was so frustrated because,
- 15:12like,
- 15:12I still felt like shit about myself.
- 15:14I'm like,
- 15:14I mean,
- 15:14I saw my feet and pouted,
- 15:16like,
- 15:16I'm doing all the fucking things,
- 15:18right?
- 15:19SPEAKER_00: And I felt like shit about myself.
- 15:21And it increased the more successful I became until I started
- 15:26therapy at age 40.
- 15:28SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk a little bit about therapy.
- 15:30SPEAKER_00: And then,
- 15:30SPEAKER_00: like,
- 15:31SPEAKER_00: in what seemed like a short amount of time but wasn't,
- 15:34SPEAKER_00: I now live in Columbus,
- 15:35SPEAKER_00: Ohio,
- 15:35SPEAKER_00: not far from the farm where I grew up.
- 15:38I'm madly in love with a wonderful man after not having any
- 15:41romantic relationship of any kind.
- 15:44And I own an art gallery and I wrote a motherfucking book
- 15:47that's really good.
- 15:48It's like the coolest thing I've ever done and I can't believe
- 15:52this is my life.
- 15:54SPEAKER_00: Okay, another caveat.
- 15:56SPEAKER_00: I don't really like motivational speakers because for most of my life,
- 15:59SPEAKER_00: the motivational speakers made me feel worse about myself.
- 16:02SPEAKER_00: Who has heard Brene Brown speak about daring greatly?
- 16:07So picture me 2016 I'm a big shot at Adobe and at Adobe they
- 16:12just pay Brene a
- 16:13million dollars to come and talk to the female executives and
- 16:16she is telling us to
- 16:17get in the arena and I'm like okay I gotta get in the arena
- 16:20Brene is saying I gotta
- 16:22SPEAKER_00: dare greatly I gotta be vulnerable I gotta get in the arena I'm like oh
- 16:26SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh my god, my dad just died.
- 16:29SPEAKER_00: I'm about to get fired.
- 16:30SPEAKER_00: I've been single my whole life.
- 16:32SPEAKER_00: I can't get in the arena.
- 16:33SPEAKER_00: I don't even know what that means.
- 16:35SPEAKER_00: And I went home and cried myself to sleep for the bottle of Cabernet.
- 16:38SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I don't want to talk about getting in the arena.
- 16:40SPEAKER_00: I want to say something useful.
- 16:43SPEAKER_00: So, I love a good Venn diagram.
- 16:45SPEAKER_00: So, I was asked to speak to a group of college seniors.
- 16:49SPEAKER_00: I'm a lot older.
- 16:50SPEAKER_00: They expect that I know things.
- 16:52The talk that I gave was how to build a meaningful life,
- 16:56not just a resume.
- 16:57SPEAKER_00: And they looked at me big, wide-eyed, so grateful.
- 17:01SPEAKER_00: And I talked about what is your passion,
- 17:03SPEAKER_00: figuring out what you think fills you up,
- 17:06SPEAKER_00: the thing that you dream about doing.
- 17:07SPEAKER_00: We've all heard that.
- 17:09Also practicality that was for their parents you got to pay
- 17:11some bills right like
- 17:13you can't all just quit your jobs and like go pursue your
- 17:16passion you got to pay
- 17:17rent and what i said to them was start paying attention to your
- 17:22emotional health
- 17:23now pay attention to what drives you and why you are doing the
- 17:28things you are doing
- 17:29and why you are not doing certain things because my thesis is
- 17:35that what is most
- 17:36SPEAKER_00: important in your personal
- 17:39professional relationship well-being is not the passion and the
- 17:44practicality.
- 17:46It's personal awareness,
- 17:47knowing why you're doing the things you're doing.
- 17:52What I didn't know when I was doing all of those big things was
- 17:57that if I thought
- 17:58SPEAKER_00: if I was successful enough,
- 17:59SPEAKER_00: I would start feeling better about myself.
- 18:02SPEAKER_00: That's what was driving me.
- 18:04I didn't give a shit about IMAX Films,
- 18:06really,
- 18:06although I loved the company.
- 18:07SPEAKER_00: I kept just seeking a promotion.
- 18:09SPEAKER_00: I kept seeking big salaries because I thought if I got the thing,
- 18:14SPEAKER_00: the external thing,
- 18:15SPEAKER_00: I would finally feel better about myself.
- 18:19So fast forward to after Adobe I come back to Ohio My mom's
- 18:24dying of cancer I
- 18:26started therapy at age 40 Because I realized I was crying
- 18:29myself to sleep at night
- 18:30And even though everyone thought my life was great I felt like
- 18:32shit about myself
- 18:33SPEAKER_00: And I decided I wasn't going to do that for 40 more years
- 18:36SPEAKER_00: So I had started the therapy,
- 18:38SPEAKER_00: and therapist David,
- 18:40SPEAKER_00: he's in the book,
- 18:40SPEAKER_00: and I like to give you a gift called trickle-down therapy.
- 18:44SPEAKER_00: I won't tell you how much money I have spent on therapy,
- 18:47but in the book there are four or five chapters of specific
- 18:49scenes with these
- 18:50SPEAKER_00: little nuggets.
- 18:51SPEAKER_00: So in one of the sessions in the first five, six months,
- 18:56SPEAKER_00: you know I kept saying to David I have this voice in my head I call it
- 18:59self-loathing the voice that says you can't do it you're not
- 19:03smart enough you're
- 19:04not going to figure it out you're not going to get yes you're
- 19:07just going to keep
- 19:07getting no's we all have the voice at least I had a really big
- 19:11dose of the voice
- 19:12and therapist David said to me well Sarah we're going to have
- 19:17to name the voice
- 19:18okay and I am not a very woo-woo person as I have confessed and
- 19:23I was like
- 19:24SPEAKER_00: Name the voice?
- 19:25SPEAKER_00: What the fuck?
- 19:26SPEAKER_00: Am I going to name it like Fleetwood Mac?
- 19:28SPEAKER_00: What am I going to name the voice?
- 19:29SPEAKER_00: And he said to me, no, Sarah, I want you to think of someone.
- 19:34SPEAKER_00: So I'm asking, close your eyes.
- 19:37SPEAKER_00: Think of somebody from your life,
- 19:39SPEAKER_00: a real person,
- 19:40SPEAKER_00: present or past,
- 19:42SPEAKER_00: who has either said or done something ugly to you.
- 19:45SPEAKER_00: Negative, right?
- 19:47SPEAKER_00: Do you have your name?
- 19:48SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is my gift to you.
- 19:49SPEAKER_00: If you don't have the name,
- 19:52SPEAKER_00: Everybody yells Scott Kennedy.
- 19:54SPEAKER_00: Scott Kennedy!
- 19:57SPEAKER_00: That is my name.
- 19:58SPEAKER_00: Scott Kennedy was a bully on the second grade playground.
- 20:04And in my six months of therapy with therapist David,
- 20:08I named Scott Kennedy.
- 20:09I talked to Scott Kennedy every day in my head because the goal
- 20:13is not to ignore
- 20:15SPEAKER_00: the negative voice,
- 20:16SPEAKER_00: right?
- 20:17SPEAKER_00: The goal is to acknowledge it exists,
- 20:20SPEAKER_00: hear it out for a little bit,
- 20:22SPEAKER_00: understand where it's coming from,
- 20:24SPEAKER_00: but say,
- 20:24SPEAKER_00: not today,
- 20:25SPEAKER_00: Scott Kennedy.
- 20:26SPEAKER_00: I'm getting up on stage.
- 20:28SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm getting in the arena.
- 20:30SPEAKER_00: You don't get me today.
- 20:33SPEAKER_00: So I want you to go home and out into the world,
- 20:36SPEAKER_00: into your very busy,
- 20:38SPEAKER_00: awesome,
- 20:39SPEAKER_00: impressive,
- 20:40SPEAKER_00: wonderful lives that are not perfect,
- 20:43SPEAKER_00: that are not easy.
- 20:45SPEAKER_00: But don't let Scott Kennedy bring you down because he's a bully.
- 20:51SPEAKER_00: He's wrong.
- 20:52SPEAKER_00: And you tell him to fuck straight off.
- 20:55SPEAKER_01: God, I love that woman.
- 20:57I don't know if that really had that much to do with Mother's
- 20:58Day except that it
- 21:00was Sarah turning the great loss of her own beloved mother into
- 21:06a memoir that has
- 21:08meant so much to me and so many other readers and I just
- 21:12thought it was really good
- 21:13advice and since you can't all be at Uplifters Live with us it
- 21:17felt like I mean we
- 21:19SPEAKER_01: all needed to hear it anyway.
- 21:21SPEAKER_01: Next up is another little Mother's Day gift to you.
- 21:23SPEAKER_01: I'm going to hand you over to Shayla Martin.
- 21:25Shayla is a breast cancer survivor,
- 21:28a somatic healing coach,
- 21:30and a sound healer.
- 21:31SPEAKER_01: Her work began with healing her own mother wound.
- 21:36SPEAKER_01: Wherever this day finds you,
- 21:38whether you just need five minutes of quiet or five minutes of
- 21:42someone else taking
- 21:44SPEAKER_01: care of you for once,
- 21:46SPEAKER_01: happy Mother's Day Uplifters.
- 21:49SPEAKER_03: Hi, I'm Shayla.
- 21:50SPEAKER_03: Good morning.
- 21:51SPEAKER_03: Thank you for having me.
- 21:53SPEAKER_03: What a beautiful time we're going to have together today.
- 21:56SPEAKER_03: So for most of my life, life felt good.
- 22:00SPEAKER_03: I was enjoying a lot of my lived experiences.
- 22:03SPEAKER_03: I was happy.
- 22:05SPEAKER_03: And then when I was 39, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
- 22:10And it was going through breast cancer that ripped the band-aid
- 22:13off of a wound that
- 22:15SPEAKER_03: I buried deeply as a little girl.
- 22:18SPEAKER_03: The wound of never having a mother.
- 22:20SPEAKER_03: because she opted out.
- 22:23SPEAKER_03: If cancer ripped the band-aid off,
- 22:25therapy and plant medicine shattered what had been protecting
- 22:29the sadness I had
- 22:31SPEAKER_03: never allowed myself to feel.
- 22:34SPEAKER_03: Healing my mother wound was really hard work.
- 22:38SPEAKER_03: A lot of parts of it hurt because healing hurts.
- 22:44SPEAKER_03: But as I started to heal, I also started to feel lighter.
- 22:49SPEAKER_03: I felt freedom that I never knew existed.
- 22:53SPEAKER_03: The mask that I had been wearing started to melt away.
- 22:59SPEAKER_03: And for the first time, I felt hold.
- 23:04SPEAKER_03: And if I thought life was good before,
- 23:08SPEAKER_03: life became extremely vibrant in every single aspect possible.
- 23:13SPEAKER_03: I felt more authentic.
- 23:17SPEAKER_03: Now, I help individuals and teams,
- 23:20SPEAKER_03: Connect with their authenticity through feeling.
- 23:25Connecting with people seeking authenticity is where I ask to
- 23:29be uplifted.
- 23:31One of the things I had to learn on my journey is that we
- 23:35cannot think our way back
- 23:37SPEAKER_03: to ourselves,
- 23:39SPEAKER_03: but we can feel our way back.
- 23:44And sound vibrations is one of the ways that helps create space
- 23:49for feeling.
- 23:51As we move into the sound healing,
- 23:54I invite you to hold the word authenticity in your heart.
- 24:01SPEAKER_03: To hold authenticity in your heart.
- 24:04SPEAKER_03: But at the same time, I have a question for you.
- 24:09SPEAKER_03: Is there something you have not allowed yourself to feel?
- 24:14SPEAKER_03: I'm going to say that one more time.
- 24:16SPEAKER_03: Is there something you have not allowed yourself to feel?
- 24:23Maybe it's anger Fear Sadness Maybe it's connection Maybe it's
- 24:34joy Sometimes the
- 24:38very thing we avoid feeling is the thing that creates the
- 24:42distance between who we
- 24:44SPEAKER_03: are and who we are meant to be As the sound begins,
- 24:51SPEAKER_03: you don't have to figure out anything right now
- 24:55Simply allow the vibrations to move through you and go wherever
- 25:01they are needed,
- 25:03SPEAKER_03: creating space,
- 25:05SPEAKER_03: creating openness,
- 25:08SPEAKER_03: perhaps even creating a small doorway back to your own authenticity.
- 25:15SPEAKER_03: Let's take a collective inhale together through our nose.
- 25:19SPEAKER_03: Inhale.
- 25:22SPEAKER_03: And as you exhale, I invite you to close your eyes.
- 25:55SPEAKER_00: The Uplift
- 30:31SPEAKER_00: The Uplift
- 31:09SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to The Uplifters Podcast.
- 31:13SPEAKER_01: If you're getting a boost from these episodes,
- 31:15please share them with the uplifters in your life and then join
- 31:20us in conversation
- 31:22SPEAKER_01: over at theuplifterspodcast.com.
- 31:25SPEAKER_01: Head over to Spotify,
- 31:27SPEAKER_01: Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and like,
- 31:31SPEAKER_01: follow and rate our show.
- 31:33It'll really help us connect with more uplifters and it'll
- 31:37ensure you never miss
- 31:39SPEAKER_01: one of these beautiful stories.
- 31:43SPEAKER_02: Big love.
- 31:44SPEAKER_02: Painted water sunshine with rosemary and tongue.
- 31:50SPEAKER_02: Dwelling,
- 31:50not perplexing Though you find it vexing Toss a star and hover
- 31:56Be your own best
- 31:57lover Relish in a new prime Plant a tree in springtime Dance
- 32:03with idle hindsight
- 32:05SPEAKER_02: Bring the sun to twilight Lift you up Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Lift you up
- 32:15SPEAKER_02: Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
- 32:18SPEAKER_02: Lift you up Lift you up Lift you up Lift you up Do do do Do do do do
- 32:50It's that little thing you did with your voice Right in the
- 32:56pre-chorus I was like
- 33:00SPEAKER_01: Mommy stop crying Mommy stop crying you're disturbing the peace