Latest / Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck / Interview with Quenby Schuyler | Awakening to Let Go

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Interview with Quenby Schuyler | Awakening to Let Go · Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Hi, I'm Kay Eck, and welcome to my podcast, Alive and Kicking: Stories of Waking Up.
0:17
SPEAKER_02: Welcome back to the podcast, everybody.
0:20
SPEAKER_02: I am delighted to have with me today my friend Quenby Skyler.
0:24
SPEAKER_02: Hi, Quenby.
0:26
SPEAKER_02: Hi.
0:26
SPEAKER_02: How are you?
0:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing well.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing well.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: How are you?
0:31
SPEAKER_02: I'm good.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: I'm good.
0:32
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for asking.
0:33
SPEAKER_02: So I just want to start out by saying that with a little story about you.
0:40
SPEAKER_02: And that is that when we when you kind of came into my awareness, it was a summer when I was going through something really challenging.
0:47
SPEAKER_02: And at the same time, you were on this escapade, I want to call it, to find out whether someone very, very famous was actually your father.
0:57
SPEAKER_02: So you had this really uh that was a lot of fun for me to follow.
1:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:02
SPEAKER_02: Was that fun for you?
1:04
SPEAKER_01: Everybody came along for the ride, including myself.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, so hopefully we'll be able to maybe get into that a little bit.
1:11
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, let's let's start with your childhood because it was a bit um eclectic, I guess you could say.
1:17
SPEAKER_02: Tell us about your childhood.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, my childhood.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: So I um where do you even start?
1:28
SPEAKER_01: I am one of seven in a blended family.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: So my mother was an actress uh in Chicago theater and in Chicago film.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: And um my father was a very high-powered attorney um in the city.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: And um before I was a twinkle in anybody's eye, they both had children and uh separate, they were both married before.
1:58
SPEAKER_01: And uh my father met my mother.
2:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh he was a he was actually uh an investor in a play that she wrote, directed, and starred in called Three Women.
2:09
SPEAKER_01: Now I know there's a book out called Three Women, which I'm not sure if it's congruent to the original play that my mother wrote with two other women.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: So, anyways, my father was an investor in that play at the Goodman uh theater in Chicago, and they met and they fell passionately in love with each other.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: And uh couple years later, I arrived and they joined their lives together along with my half and stepbrothers and sisters, and then there were two more of us uh after me.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: So I have a younger brother and a younger sister, so a blended family of seven.
2:47
SPEAKER_01: And to make matters even more magical and creative and strange, um, they bought a seven-acre farm property in West Chicago, Illinois, with a giant barn, many outbuildings, and so I grew up on a farm with this creative, dynamic mother and this very logical, calm, rhythmic father.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: Um and so in my kind of childhood formation, I gleaned from my father this intellectual mind and my mother this creative mind.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: And growing up, I always thought I was going to become a lawyer or um an English teacher, or I, you know, I didn't I did not know that these two powerhouses created um the conglomeration of the person that I am today, which is basically just a form of pure expression.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: So uh I am a jack of all trades, I would say, because of them and because of my environment growing up outside all the time, family around.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: Um quite a magical childhood for me.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: And now it seems that the past few years through my career, it seems like I keep going back to those roots.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: It's really maybe it's a midlife crisis.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: But I find myself, I'm actually sitting on a farm right now as you're interviewing me.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: So here I am on a beautiful farm property.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: My friend Holly Johnson, who owns Aviana Yoga, has been gracious enough to do this interview here.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I just thought it was a a great environment to discuss what we are about to discuss.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: So this long story short.
4:40
SPEAKER_02: This growing up with all these personalities, and obviously you had some your parents had strong personalities.
4:48
SPEAKER_02: Was it hard for you to like find your sense of self?
4:52
SPEAKER_02: How did you feel like you fit into that family?
4:57
SPEAKER_01: I feel that I fit into my family very well.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: I do not feel that I fit into society very well.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: You know, my mother was the same way.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: She was kind of a dual persona.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: She had this glamorous lifestyle in the city, uh, expressing herself.
5:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, Tennessee Williams held me when I was a baby.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: I was around a lot of big Chicago names.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, she was just a big personality, and then she'd retreat back to the farm and grow her gardens, um, throw these elaborate, beautiful nature parties.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, so she kind of didn't, we were we had a farm plot down kind of in the middle of the suburbs.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: So we were like the different family.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: So I fit into my family very, very well.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't think from a very early age I fit into society very well, especially because I was private school educated.
5:59
SPEAKER_01: So um I learned very early on that we were different than the other families and the other children in my school, and that's been pervasive through up right until today.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: So has that been difficult for you to navigate?
6:19
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: I think anybody, and you know, I don't know if you can ever talk to a human being, they say, I fit in completely my whole life.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: So I think childhood is difficult to navigate no matter what, because what we are portraying on the outside is very different than our essence on the inside.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, and we don't really realize that until we age and mature and realize that we form an identity based upon our external circumstances, that could quite possibly not even be us at all.
6:58
SPEAKER_01: So was it difficult?
6:59
SPEAKER_01: Of course, but I don't think it was any more difficult than any other human being on this planet.
7:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but that that process of like layering on the masks year after year after year after year, and you don't even realize that you're not taking anything off, you're not even trying, you just keep adding it.
7:18
SPEAKER_02: So you get to a certain point, and it's like you almost feel like you're gonna fall over backward from the weight of all those masks.
7:26
SPEAKER_02: It becomes somewhat intolerable.
7:28
SPEAKER_02: Is that your experience?
7:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, your experience as well.
7:34
SPEAKER_01: Excuse me, agreed.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: I think anybody, it's almost like we I I I read, I saw something that Peter Crohn said that it's basically like the game of life is to come here and who can eradicate their fears the fastest, right?
7:52
SPEAKER_01: So we take on all of these different personas, and then we start to at some point, and maybe not everybody, um, but when maybe a conscious moment happens here, a conscious moment happens there, uh a trauma, whatever it is, and you just kind of kind of get shocked back into your real self, and you're like, none of that is me, none of it.
8:16
SPEAKER_01: It was all just forms that I took on to make myself to make a quen be that wasn't a quenbi at all.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: But deep down that essence follows you everywhere, but that's a point that you have to get to on your own, and everybody's journey is different.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: So not fitting in, having this dynamic act actress mother, and this very, very brilliant father, um, and then going to a Christian school that kind of threw at you how you needed to be, how you needed to behave.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: Um, I knew that like I didn't fit that.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: I didn't grow up in the McMansion, and my parents didn't drive the same, like, same, same, same, same, same.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: Everything was different, different, different, different, different.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: And there came a point in my life where I thought I was like the poor kid, like the kid that didn't, you know, like all these families had almost like a cookie-cutter lifestyle.
9:21
SPEAKER_01: Here we are on seven acres with horses and goats and chickens and beautiful gardens and all of these things.
9:28
SPEAKER_01: And I thought that that was bad.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: And what was really good was you know, the two-car garage, the mom and dad, the activities, um, the the the church, like the the everyday routine.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: And then I kind of considered my childhood to be like I was the weird one, and I am the weird one, but I like it now.
9:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:52
SPEAKER_02: So on back on the farm, did your what kind of um how did your parents approach spirituality?
9:59
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you went to a Christian school, was that just a convenience or um we're not religious at all.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: And if you asked my mom what her church is, she would say, My church is the church of the road.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: And what she would mean by that is she was um very well practiced.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: She's a very one trait that I've inherited from her is she's a runner, not a not a runner-jogger.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: But if I need to exit a situation, I will disappear and you won't find me.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: So she would go on these long six, seven mile hikes or walks every morning.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: And uh we wake up in the morning and be like, Where's mom?
10:38
SPEAKER_01: And then we'd see that her walkman, because at the time there was, you know, the walkman, the walkman was gone.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: So we knew mom took off with her like Gloria Gaynor or Rod Stewart tapes or whatever.
10:49
SPEAKER_01: She was Native American flute.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: I mean, she was all over the place, music, and would go on these long walks to process whatever her own um maybe pain and creativity.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, she never shared too much about that processing, but we knew that that was her form of meditation.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: And so she would say, My church is the church of the road.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: And uh my father, I think would I would say he was agnostic um up until the end of his life passing.
11:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, but so no, they weren't religious.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: So that was the other thing.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: We didn't go to church, we didn't pray before uh you know meals.
11:28
SPEAKER_01: Um we my mom was very, very accepting of all communities of people, so there was a huge kind of divide between a really incredible education that I received versus the education I was receiving at home.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: Totally different.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and to fit in as a young adolescent and a child, because you want to fit in with your peers, I kind of started to adopt those, you know, that philosophy, those mentalities, and thought that what my parents were doing was bad or wrong, and now it's like total flip, total flip.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: So uh, like I said, you put on all the masks, then you take them all off.
12:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:17
SPEAKER_02: How was that?
12:18
SPEAKER_02: How like I know your mother was really passionate and devoted to her career.
12:24
SPEAKER_02: How did she balance the career and motherhood in terms of raising you guys?
12:30
SPEAKER_00: Nannies.
12:33
SPEAKER_01: We were raised by nannies.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: Okay, like so I have two children, right?
12:40
SPEAKER_01: And I I've never been the mother to get on the floor and play like Lincoln Logs or Legos with my kids.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: I didn't grow up that way.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: We grew up with imagination, uh, going outside, swimming, going on trips with the nannies, of course.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: Um, but when but she was so nurturing in her creative self, in her creative form.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: So um, you knew you could go to mom to be inspired and loved and hugged, but mom wasn't taking us like to the zoo or get, you know, she was just this elusive figure.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't call her absent at all.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: Um, but she definitely employed people to take care of her gaggle of children while she worked on her career and while she worked on her own, I think, mental and spiritual health on that farm.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: So nannies.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: Nice.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: And I'm still I'm still actually really, really close with uh the woman that stayed with us the longest over, I think about 15 years.
13:50
SPEAKER_01: She basically raised my younger sister, and I would call her my second mother.
13:55
SPEAKER_01: So that's amazing.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they were not hand, they were not hands-on at all.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: We were kind of like the wildlings.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, which is fun.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: She left that lifestyle.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: So she had been married to a city worker.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, she had she had kind of your cookie-cutter marriage when she met my father.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, and she was so creative, and then her career was just going up and up and up, and so that divide between living that cookie cutter cutter lifestyle for her, um, she found my father super dynamic, super uh engaged in her work and her art.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: And so they formed their bond, and it was just almost like two powerhouses again, meeting each other, and we were the byproduct of that.
14:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:52
SPEAKER_02: So then what happened after um, you know, you high school?
14:57
SPEAKER_02: Um, did you go to college?
14:59
SPEAKER_01: What was uh yes, so I went to a private Christian high school as well, again, kind of the outsider.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: Um I did I guess also by not really having like super hands-on parents, I would spend my summers of high school at uh uh camps learning outdoor activities, and then I became a counselor myself at the camp.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: So I started to really get into nature um and working with the outer world and just the beauty of nature, and so um that kind of piqued my interest in doing environmental studies and going away to a school in a beautiful setting.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: I mean, my whole life has been littered with living in beautiful settings.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: I guess if you trace my pattern, it's always been that way, right?
15:46
SPEAKER_01: So um I decided to go.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: I actually had a full scholarship to a private Christian college in Santa Barbara, and I went to visit that with my mom.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: And of course, she decides to take me to the Beverly Hills Hotel to stay there while I go visit the um the college, right?
16:04
SPEAKER_01: And so we're eating dinner next to like Rod Stewart and Sharon Stone and doing the whole like mom glam thing, and then I go to um this, I go interview it at the college that I was interviewing at.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: I get accepted, and I went to like what like stay overnight just to kind of get the feeling for it, and it was that same mentality of high school, which was just a little bit too narrow in my thinking, and um so I said, Okay, well, that's great, full full ride.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: We flew back home, and then my father took me to Boulder, Colorado.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: I was also accepted there.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: I go to Boulder with my dad, we stay in like a super eight motel, and I go stay the night, you know, do this the pre-freshman sleepover, and it's like hippies and nature and like mountains and freedom.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: And so I came home, and even though I had the full ride to the uh to the Christian college in California, I'm like, I'm going to Boulder, I'm going to Boulder.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: So that was the beginning of the end.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: The beginning of the beginning.
17:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:17
SPEAKER_02: So tell us what happened.
17:18
SPEAKER_02: How did your life unfold in Boulder?
17:21
SPEAKER_01: So um I went out to Boulder and uh I remember them dropping me off and feeling this total sense of separation when they left.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: It was just so foreign, so big, so unknown to me.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: I didn't have that Christian culture to cling on to and just like slip right into what I knew.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh I was an environmental studies major to begin with, and then uh quickly after taking some English courses, decided to switch over to an English major and found myself doing a lot of creative writing, um a lot of uh like poetry slams and downtown boulder with all types of people, and I also found myself in nature, so you were never bored, right?
18:11
SPEAKER_01: You're going to do your studies, and then after that, you're hiking, you're climbing, you're swimming, all different cultures, all different religious beliefs.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh it just really opened my eyes to the world for the very first time that no longer was I no longer was different not okay.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: Different was okay, and I was accepted and um I had I had kind of something to offer that people wanted, which were my which was my creativity.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: And so that's uh that's the adventure that was kind of the beginning of fostering my own creativity that uh began very early on at the farm.
18:55
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: So what happened next?
18:58
SPEAKER_01: So here's where we go, right?
19:00
SPEAKER_01: So here we go.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: So um as I'm enjoying my time in Colorado, um my mother and father divorced.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: Um infidelity, yada yada yada.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: Um there's a big divorce that happens, right?
19:21
SPEAKER_01: And so my access to being able to stay in Boulder financially and attend school drops because my father was helping me to you know pay my rent.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, I lived with five girls, all of that, the money ran out.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, he got disbarred as a lawyer uh for something that he did, and um they divorced, and so I had to take whatever job I could to stay because there was no way in hell I was going home, none at all.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: So I took a job at an organic cafe um right on the hill in Colorado, or in um like the university area, and I started to work there as like the coffee girl, and then they needed more work, so I started to learn how to cook.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: And this organic cafe was a place where all the food that you and I are eating today that was hip and coming up and happening before like organic became big and vegan and gluten-free.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: Like Boulder had it before we had it, so I learned how to cook differently early, and I kept working my way up through that cafe, and I ended up man managing it and staying there for about four more years.
20:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, I was gosh, I mean, I was 19 and running a restaurant in Boulder, Colorado.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: And so uh to avoid coming home to face the great divorce.
20:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, I was just gonna ask you um if your if your parents' divorce was challenging for you because of how it affected you, your your current life, or because of the heartbreak of the family breaking apart?
21:04
SPEAKER_01: I was old enough where I just again I think taking after my mother and being a runner, I didn't want to go back.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: I was old enough.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: It it affected my younger brother and sister tremendously, still to this day.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: Um they struggle, they struggle, but for me, I think working at all those summer camps and doing kind of learning how to be independent early um just kept me from wanting to go back and face it and just forge ahead with my life.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: So I just forged ahead and I fell in love with the mountains.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: I fell in love with my creativity, I was learning how to become a chef, I was writing, I was hiking, I didn't want to go home.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: So, did it break my heart?
21:53
SPEAKER_01: No, no, not until I came back and saw the wreckage, but that was later.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: So um I tried.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: To stay out there as long as I could, and I actually ended up moving deeper into the mountains to Crested View, Colorado, which is on the other side of Aspen.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, because I fell in love with the outdoors and snowboarding and uh being in nature so much, I moved there and I actually moved into an organic farm from a newspaper ad that I found because there was not social media, yada yada yada.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: And this woman who was in her mid-50s, um, her parents actually perished after a plane crash.
22:32
SPEAKER_01: She received an inheritance, went to Nepal, studied sustainable agriculture, and started a high mountain non-for-profit organic farm in Crested View, Colorado.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: And I answered an ad in the paper looking for a roommate, and that's where I found myself living.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: So now I'm learning about organic living, I'm learning about organic farming.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: I look out of the bathtub in a solar-powered house and I would see mountains, right?
22:58
SPEAKER_01: So my life kind of kept flourishing the longer I stayed away from the Midwest.
23:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: And um it wasn't until maybe about a year and a half after I was in Crass to Feed.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: I worked three jobs to stay there.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: So again, I'm developing these cooking skills, not on purpose, but because of survival.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: I worked at an organic bakery in the morning and then a coffee shop in the afternoon, and then I would take two hours and I would go hiking or snowboarding, and then I worked at a bar at night that paid for my snowboarding pass and also food, food, food.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm learning to cook this whole time just to stay alive, right?
23:38
SPEAKER_01: Just to keep paying my bills.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't until my mom kind of started reaching out to me with her problems, with the divorce, with her financial problems that I thought I have to move back and I have to help her.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: So um I ended up the guilt, maybe, and um knowing that I had two youngers that were still in high school that were struggling, packed up my stuff and I drove home and I moved in with her.
24:02
SPEAKER_02: Wow, that must have been a hard decision to make.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: I think it was this, I think it was out of pity, right?
24:18
SPEAKER_01: I felt so sorry for her.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: Her life had gone from and she was still acting, so she would get parts and things like that, and that would sustain her for a while.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, you're getting parts, and maybe once or twice a year, you're getting paid for that, and then nothing, and she didn't do anything else.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: She had no other that she was an actress, so she had no really other life skills.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: So uh I went back, moved in with her.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: I got a job at a bar as a cocktail waitress, and I just started helping her pay the bills, watch her be a single parent.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: And uh my father at that point went MIA.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: Nobody could find him, and again, no internet, like no Facebook, no way to find him.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: And um that was the dark, that was that was the beginning of a long dark time.
25:03
SPEAKER_02: When you say that's a that was a long dark period, did you did you know it as a dark period as you were entering it?
25:09
SPEAKER_02: What was your feeling about it?
25:14
SPEAKER_01: No, it was all survival.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: Again, I was 22 at that, 22 maybe at that point.
25:23
SPEAKER_01: I can't reach back to that too far and would be able to tell you how I felt about everything.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, I do know that I began to quickly throw myself into the dating world, and within a year, two years, I was living, I moved out of my mother's house and ended up living with my my ex-husband, my my former ex-husband, moving in, dating him for a couple years and getting married.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think it was just if you ask me about that time, I it's super blurry.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm sure it weighed a weighed a lot on me.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I was in survival mode myself.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: Which I've been in for yeah.
26:07
SPEAKER_02: Did you did you think yeah, did you think that the um the kind of the crisis of living at home kind of pushed you into an early marriage because you know, 23, 24, that's pretty pretty young to be getting married.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: I think also the person that I met at this time, this is what's interesting.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: I've never processed it this way.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: Of course, of course, it's you that's making me process it this way.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, I've never thought about it in this perspective until now.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: The person I met was extremely cookie-cutter.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: So they were completely different than the life that I kind of escaped and and embraced, and it's almost like they came from a good family.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: They um had the dinners with the sweaters around the the collar shirts, and it was a sense of normalcy and stability that I didn't know before, and I actually moved to um an area that that that was quite acceptable and still is to this day, and so um I think I went right back to well, that's safe, that's safe, and so I said yes to that marriage, um almost to kind of be adopted into a more secure type of family, and uh I did that for 10 years.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, I remember when we had my son, which was in 2007, I remember trying to go to like the mommy groups and like the play date groups, and still feel like that feeling of not fitting, it all came right back.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: So I escaped it for a while in Boulder.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: I was wild, I was myself.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I look today more like that girl than I did, you know, when I was married with a young child.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: I think I even did the haircuts and the outfits, and um so I tried to fit that mold for a really long time, and again, it it did whatever the higher self is or the or the inner self, uh, the universe itself um took me down that road a little ways and then decided break.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: So life has been like that.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: It's like here you go, walk the road, see if you really like it, see if this is really what you want.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: And then at some point it's like, no, you're still not you.
28:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:49
SPEAKER_02: Well, I actually I was just gonna ask you.
28:51
SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm wondering if going into a situation where you feel like you don't fit, or the sensation is that you don't fit, is that truly that you don't fit, or that you're not presenting who you really are that is the source of the discomfort?
29:09
SPEAKER_02: I think not presenting who I really am.
29:12
SPEAKER_02: Because yeah, because I mean everybody does have that that uh feeling of not fitting in.
29:19
SPEAKER_02: And yet, if you were to be yourself, like usually in a situation like that, you don't you don't care, you know, like if you fit in or not, if you're if you're really being yourself, you just like, oh this isn't my crew, I'm gonna move over here, you know.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
29:36
SPEAKER_01: I think so that pressure obviously came from childhood, right?
29:40
SPEAKER_01: Or from grade school.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: This is what you do, this is who you are, this is how you live your life, and so I like would dabble in it, dabble out, dabble in it, dabble out.
29:52
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I okay, I mean, I would say I've played that game and put on so many hats and so many layers and so many masks up until four months ago.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: So you're not talking to a pro here, you know, you aren't talking to somebody who said, I've I've arrived at self-realization or self-accualization.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: You're talking to somebody that four months ago ended up getting bitch slapped by the universe and is on this podcast with you.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, we could drag that story out of Quenby trying to fit and and and and never feeling like she fit and doing things to show she fit, but she still wanted to express that lasted for what?
30:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if I was married at 22, 23 and I'm almost 40 now, that's almost 20 years of playing the game.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my husband was an alcoholic.
30:50
SPEAKER_01: So, um, which I would we I would try to hide, or you know, if we were out too late or out too long, I kind of try to shuffle him away, make sure, make sure nobody like knew.
31:01
SPEAKER_01: Like I was always embarrassed.
31:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so on the morning of my son's fourth birthday, I got a phone call from the um Batavia police, and he had been arrested for a DUI.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: Uh he almost drove off a bridge.
31:21
SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna be raw and real with this interview.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can edit out whatever you want to.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I had a birthday party scheduled for my son, and I get this call, and I'm like, great, I mean, you can't cut that out.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: So um I ended up uh filing for divorce um from that and uh and eliminating that um piece of my life at that time, and this is a story of redemption too, which is actually really cool, but um and how people how all of our journeys bring us back to self perhaps if if we're willing.
32:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, so I became a single mom and I uh started working as a private chef downtown for high-end families, and I repeat patterns, right?
32:14
SPEAKER_01: I hired a nanny, so I was making enough money to hire a nanny for my son.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: So all of a sudden I didn't see my son, I drop him off at school, and I would come home from working in Chicago with these families at like um you know nine or ten at night, and so uh thankfully to this beautiful nanny, um he she raised my my son, and um I ended up a couple years later meeting my second partner, so then I met somebody else, same thing, super stable, super, very stable, very steady eddy, very um non-emotional and um Virgo, just very organized, and I pursued that relationship, and then uh then the big fall came.
33:07
SPEAKER_02: So before I get into that, I just want to ask you whether you know you had a sense of yourself as being instable at the time.
33:17
SPEAKER_02: Like, did you did you were there moments in your life or an overriding sense of like absolutely needing an anchor or you were going to lose it, or was it just sort of unconscious or subconscious that you were making these choices?
33:33
SPEAKER_01: I think I became a codependent for sure.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: Um I think I needed an anchor, yes.
33:41
SPEAKER_01: So could we trace that back to childhood and like not really having one?
33:45
SPEAKER_01: Maybe, um, but I definitely became a codependent, or always had have been an and and didn't know it.
33:54
SPEAKER_01: Um I was not sure of myself and world beating while this was all happening.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: There was definitely a falling away and a falling apart of my own self that I wasn't really uh sure that I knew what to do with at the time.
34:08
SPEAKER_01: But if a partner came into my life that offered stability, um it was very easy to glom onto that and kind of feel like there was a safe harbor in all of this insecurity and instability.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: And was it?
34:26
SPEAKER_01: Of course it wasn't.
34:30
SPEAKER_01: But I'm saying that again from this place where you are your only safe harbor, you know, and so if you would have asked me that in the situation, I would have said, yes, they they they make me happy, they make me feel safe, they make me feel good.
34:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, I I didn't, I wasn't, and I'm still not self-actualized, but I'm definitely more self-aware that um it felt like a safe harbor for sure, but it was just kind of another band-aid.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, like it was like a buoy to cling on to when I really should have been swimming on my own, right?
35:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so and it's almost like God or the universe kept dropping little buoys for me to hang out with until I was ready to finally let go and just swim.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: If you want to put it that way.
35:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:25
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've also encountered quite a few storms.
35:28
SPEAKER_02: So um tell us about what neck what happened next.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, I'm steady eddy, stable, um, very kind person.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we decided not to get married because we had both been married before, and uh we moved in together, and I found out that I was pregnant and with um with my little girl.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: And I, if we rewind back, after I had my son Cooper, I actually went septic after I had my son, so I nearly lost my life having my son in 2007.
36:10
SPEAKER_01: Um, and it took me a year to kind of heal from that.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: So I was a high-risk pregnancy, and I was very timid about even going forward with the pregnancy.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, but something in me told me that I should and I needed to.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: And so I saw high-risk doctors and they said lightning doesn't strike twice.
36:34
SPEAKER_01: Okay, lightning strikes all the fucking time.
36:41
SPEAKER_01: So anytime anybody says lightning doesn't strike twice, I look for lightning and I'm like, I run.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna hit me, right?
36:49
SPEAKER_01: So um I go forward with this beautiful pregnancy, totally healthy, wonderful, like cute pregnant lady clothes, and I'm working as a chef still.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: And um so and and she's born via C via C-section, high-risk C-section.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: And um nine days later, uh back at home, we are expecting company to come, everyone wants to come and see the baby.
37:18
SPEAKER_01: I'm back at home, I'm feeding her by the window in my pretty pink robe.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: I still remember the robe that I was wearing, and I'm looking out the window, and it's summer breezes in June, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, something doesn't feel right in my brain.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: Like the trees start to do like a Scooby-doo hologram, and they're not just swaying now, they're like hallucinating, they're moving around.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: And I remember running to my partner at the time saying, Something doesn't feel right, something is wrong.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, I'm not feeling very good.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: My whole body kind of started to just feel like it was gonna like on fire.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Oh, you're just tired, you need something to eat, you know, let's get you something to eat.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: I think I tried to eat a Snickers bar or something, it didn't work, and I'm like, No, something is really, really wrong.
38:11
SPEAKER_01: And so he said, Well, let's just get you the I'll just take you to the hospital.
38:16
SPEAKER_01: So he drove me to the hospital and he dropped me off at the at the front door.
38:23
SPEAKER_01: Like abandonment, abandonment, abandonment, codependent, codependent, codependent.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: So dropped me off at the front door.
38:30
SPEAKER_01: I walk into the hospital, and the nurses take my blood pressure, and it's 191 over like 112.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: And the nurses are saying, Calm down, you're just a new mother, you're just anxious, you know.
38:44
SPEAKER_01: This is very common for new mothers to be this anxious, and they wheel me back into a room, and there's a bunch of nurses around me, and I start to see spots and spots and spots, and I start.
38:59
SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, when you start seeing those things, and you're not on any hallucinogenics, you I started to scream.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: It's terror, right?
39:11
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you did I'm going blind, so spots and spots and spots, and then all of a sudden I'm dead blind, and I'm screaming.
39:21
SPEAKER_01: Help, help, I can't see.
39:23
SPEAKER_01: Somebody hold my hand.
39:24
SPEAKER_01: They're like, ma'am, we're working as hard as we can to try to figure out what's wrong.
39:28
SPEAKER_01: We're waiting on the doctor, ma'am.
39:30
SPEAKER_01: We don't know, and no one would hold my hand, so there was nobody to reach for.
39:35
SPEAKER_01: They didn't know what was happening to me.
39:36
SPEAKER_01: They probably thought I was a crazy lady, and all of a sudden they run me through the CT machine CAT scan, and I'm alone.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm alone.
39:48
SPEAKER_01: And the doctor comes out very quickly and says, Your brain is bleeding, you've had a spontaneous brain bleed.
39:55
SPEAKER_01: We are calling transport right now to transfer you to a stroke center uh at a different hospital, and they should be here shortly.
40:04
SPEAKER_01: And I'm alone.
40:06
SPEAKER_01: You're conscious, but you're conscious, conscious and blind.
40:10
SPEAKER_01: So I remember getting in the ambulance, and that was the first time somebody held my hand, the paramedic, and he starts asking me questions like, What's the date today?
40:20
SPEAKER_01: and I think I could answer that, and then who's the president of the United States, and I think I could answer that, and then they started asking me more questions, and I wanted to say what the answer was, but what was coming out of my mouth was something completely different.
40:35
SPEAKER_01: So I was having a full-on stroke, and um they I remember at that time my partner finally showed back up at the second hospital, and they handed them a bunch of papers because the procedure they were going to put me through could quite possibly end my life.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: And I remember going in for the procedure, and I could hear a gaggle of neurologists speaking above me, and I said, Am I going to die?
41:02
SPEAKER_01: And I heard one neurologist say, Everybody dies, Quendi.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, man, you know, I get left at the hospital, and now I've got this neurosurgeon that's like, where's the compassion?
41:16
SPEAKER_01: Where's like the humanity?
41:18
SPEAKER_01: So everybody, like I feel like it's just this cosmic joke of the universe saying, Buck up, Quendi, like you be there for you, right?
41:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, so I remember the procedure when they finally said what um they were going to intubate me.
41:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I remember at that moment um letting go and saying, if this is it, this is it.
41:43
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't sad, I wasn't afraid, I just let go.
41:50
SPEAKER_01: And then I woke up in the ICU, blind.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: So now I'm blind in the in what was the ICU, and I didn't know it was the ICU, and I can hear the voice of my father, and I can hear the voice of my partner, and I can hear the voice of a few other people.
42:07
SPEAKER_01: So everybody had showed up and they were waiting.
42:09
SPEAKER_01: And I woke up and and I remember being blind in that moment, but being so happy that I was just alive.
42:17
SPEAKER_01: And I thought I was gonna be blind the rest of my life, and so um uh day by day I was monitored by one of the top, thank God, one of the top neurosurgeons in the state was on call that day.
42:34
SPEAKER_01: And he would come in and sit next to me and hold my hand and talk to me, and they debated whether or not they were gonna do a brain surgery or not, but they wanted to see if the swelling in my brain would go down, and eventually it started to go down, and eventually my vision returned very, very slowly.
42:50
SPEAKER_01: So, like day three, I could see like the number one on the clock above me, day four or five.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: I could see two and three.
42:57
SPEAKER_01: So we measured what I could see by what I could see on the clock.
43:00
SPEAKER_01: I'll never forget that.
43:02
SPEAKER_01: And um, I couldn't see my daughter, she wasn't allowed in the ICU, so I had a nine-year-old baby that I couldn't see, and um just hopeless, it's just a whole hopeless feeling.
43:15
SPEAKER_01: Horrible, horrible.
43:16
SPEAKER_01: Plus, you're on all kinds of medicine, so yeah.
43:19
SPEAKER_02: I thought it was horrific.
43:22
SPEAKER_02: One of the interesting dichotomies of having something serious like that happen to you, something life-threatening, at least this was my experience, because I had two life-threatening experiences, and um you you have sort of this unusual simultaneously simultaneous gratitude for being alive, and at the same time, the trauma of something so awful happening to you, and they're coexisting side by side, and it's such an odd sensation.
43:54
SPEAKER_02: It's like comp to me, it was completely disorienting.
43:58
SPEAKER_02: You don't know how to recognize.
44:01
SPEAKER_02: No.
44:02
SPEAKER_01: There's no way to reconcile it.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:05
SPEAKER_02: I mean, so what what did the stroke leave you with?
44:11
SPEAKER_02: What was the legacy of the stroke?
44:17
SPEAKER_01: The stroke changed.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: It was almost like it was a longer process than the actual event itself.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: It was the year following and rehabilitating and healing.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: The stroke was like the stop.
44:39
SPEAKER_01: It was like I was headed towards a wall.
44:41
SPEAKER_01: I was moving towards this life that I thought I was having.
44:46
SPEAKER_01: And the stroke was like a giant, it was like a giant, you know, I can only think of a cleaver because I'm a chef, right?
44:52
SPEAKER_01: It was like a giant life cleaver that went boom.
44:56
SPEAKER_01: This isn't how you're gonna live your life anymore.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know it at the time.
45:01
SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of friends of mine and and and acquaintances of mine will be like, you have to stop letting that stroke define you.
45:09
SPEAKER_01: And what's so interesting is the stroke defines me because who I was prior and who I am now are two completely different people.
45:20
SPEAKER_01: So I'm ever thankful for it.
45:23
SPEAKER_01: Had it not happened, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you today.
45:28
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't, I don't know where I'd be, but I I wouldn't.
45:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, I wouldn't know you.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't be in this beautiful farm area right now.
45:38
SPEAKER_01: I would have tried to stay living on a trajectory that I had been going towards my whole life, besides my little break and boulder of fitting into some kind of norm.
45:50
SPEAKER_01: And through healing and through using different healing modalities during my rehabilitation, I met a community.
45:58
SPEAKER_01: I started eating differently, I started cooking differently, and who I was as a person began to stir.
46:07
SPEAKER_01: It didn't change yet, but it began to stir.
46:11
SPEAKER_01: And then life became these past five years have become a process of shedding that self and damn, I don't want to let her go.
46:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, because who am I without all of those things before?
46:27
SPEAKER_01: You know, and so these past five years have been a very long process, and it's been a not a linear healing process of trying to figure out and and uncover the girl beneath all of that.
46:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:45
SPEAKER_02: So can you describe your reluctance to let go of those masks or persona?
46:52
SPEAKER_02: What was how was that feeling and what was motivating that?
46:58
SPEAKER_01: It was easier, it was it's easier to let go of those constructs in good company.
47:06
SPEAKER_01: So I met a lot of people, such as yourself or other people in the community that accepted me for being wounded, uh hurt, um, on the way to healing.
47:18
SPEAKER_01: Um but as a budding business owner, so a kind of Hughes Kitchen was born out of this travesty and tragedy, there was also this feeling of, oh great, well, now I'm I'm a business owner and I have to kind of portray a certain level of professionalism that might not allow room for my rebellion, my rebellion against my old self.
47:48
SPEAKER_01: So I sat there and I still sit there uh from time to time.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: Um but it's almost like a battle for Quendy's life, the real me, right?
48:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, does that make sense?
48:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
48:05
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
48:07
SPEAKER_01: Um and the funny thing about this is that it's it's almost like the universe is doing it for me.
48:19
SPEAKER_01: You know, every time my ego gets involved, something happens and that cleaver comes back and cuts it off.
48:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're the type of person who needs like apparently really dramatic cleavers.
48:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, don't.
48:36
SPEAKER_02: Some people don't need that, but some people really do.
48:39
SPEAKER_01: Right.
48:39
SPEAKER_02: I don't get it.
48:40
SPEAKER_02: You don't necessarily you don't necessarily see it that way when it's happening.
48:45
SPEAKER_01: Everything has been surrounded with so much love in those moments.
48:49
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I and I don't know where I got the tenacity or the or the stubbornness to not let go of what doesn't serve me.
48:57
SPEAKER_01: Because if I again this is such a I am so new to this healing, um, and coming into awareness that I'm not my body, I'm not my brain, I am bigger than that.
49:14
SPEAKER_01: So this that's all very new.
49:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, where was I going with that?
49:17
SPEAKER_01: I think it's just been very hard for me to let go of my physical, my physical self and all of my constructs that I had about what I thought my life should be like.
49:28
SPEAKER_01: And time is running out.
49:30
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm almost 40.
49:35
SPEAKER_02: I'm just gonna laugh about that one.
49:37
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
49:38
SPEAKER_01: Who could who could who could I be?
49:41
SPEAKER_01: Who could you be?
49:42
SPEAKER_01: Who could somebody listening or watching this podcast be if we were just like dropping the stam?
49:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:49
SPEAKER_02: Right.
49:50
SPEAKER_02: I I totally feel that myself.
49:52
SPEAKER_02: Like, of course, I'm much older than you, but I um I just I just feel like I don't have time.
49:58
SPEAKER_02: I just don't have time for it anymore.
50:00
SPEAKER_02: Like, I need to like I have things I want to accomplish, and the the other the stuff that's not in line with that just has to go.
50:08
SPEAKER_02: It's just gotta go.
50:09
SPEAKER_02: I just don't have time for it.
50:10
SPEAKER_02: So as you were going through your life and your life is handing you all these big look at me moments that you cannot avoid.
50:20
SPEAKER_02: Did you see that as a spiritual path, or when did your life become a spiritual path?
50:26
SPEAKER_01: I knew it was a spiritual path um after the stroke.
50:32
SPEAKER_01: Uh after that.
50:33
SPEAKER_01: How did you then?
50:34
SPEAKER_01: Because there was a moment in the hospital where um I had just had an EEG, and so that means they they attach all of these wires to your head to monitor you for seizures.
50:49
SPEAKER_01: And this beautiful nurse, and I don't know her name, I swear she might not even have been real.
50:57
SPEAKER_01: You know, I have very long, long hair, right?
51:00
SPEAKER_01: And very thick hair, and they have to put all this glue and clay into your hair.
51:06
SPEAKER_01: And I remember her removing the wires and then slowly tilting my head back into a basin and washing off the glue very tenderly, and in that moment, that very small moment, all I could feel was a sense of ethereal, spiritual, universal love like I've never felt before.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: So here's this girl going to Christian school.
51:35
SPEAKER_01: Full goosebumps, full body goosebumps.
51:39
SPEAKER_01: Here is, you know, Christian school, seeing, memorizing Bible verses, you know, knowing that Jesus loves me, God loves me.
51:49
SPEAKER_01: Um it wasn't ever, that wasn't the God I felt at that point.
51:57
SPEAKER_01: This was per all pervasive, illuminating, pure love, and being held.
52:06
SPEAKER_01: And I knew that that was a moment, it was a moment of grace.
52:13
SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of as I was, I think I always wanted to kind of capture it again, right?
52:17
SPEAKER_01: By going to yoga, by doing all the things that I was doing.
52:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, and there have been a few more moments like that, and some have been actually much more recently, since I've decided to kind of surrender.
52:31
SPEAKER_01: Because I just kept holding on to myself, kept holding on to this physical body, not wanting to leave this physical world.
52:38
SPEAKER_01: What's gonna happen to my children?
52:40
SPEAKER_01: What's gonna happen?
52:40
SPEAKER_01: You know, the less that I have decided to like believe that this is all that there is, the more moments of that grace have I felt.
52:50
SPEAKER_01: So the spiritual journey started there, but I had to get slapped a whole bunch more times before I just decided to surrender.
53:00
SPEAKER_01: And now I live and I wake up and I surrender.
53:07
SPEAKER_01: And um so how has that shifted things for you?
53:13
SPEAKER_01: I can't control anything, I can't control anything, and the more that I try to control it like I used to, the more slaps I'm gonna get.
53:27
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to get slapped anymore.
53:30
SPEAKER_01: And that's not to say I could walk out of here and like not get in a car accident or who knows what the universe has in store for me, you know.
53:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, but basically, um it's just knowing and knowing that there is um something that is working in and for my favor if I just stop trying to manipulate and control it.
53:54
SPEAKER_01: At the moment of grace in the hospital, I couldn't manipulate or control, somebody else had to care for me.
54:02
SPEAKER_01: And I guess that's how I feel right now with the spiritual realm is just not and not not from that very strict Bible terms, but not my will, but thy will.
54:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
54:15
SPEAKER_01: The bigger, the bigger thing.
54:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so yeah.
54:20
SPEAKER_02: That's uh the way that you describe that makes me feel like the you could define awakening as like a refinement of your ability to listen to the the cues that the universe is laying down, the breadcrumbs that it's laying down for you.
54:40
SPEAKER_02: Right.
54:41
SPEAKER_02: When you when you don't listen, you need big claps, big slaps, yeah, yeah.
54:49
SPEAKER_02: Beautiful, that's such a beautiful, you know, sort of almost musical way of thinking of it.
54:54
SPEAKER_02: It's just like a refinement, refinement, refinement.
54:57
SPEAKER_02: Right.
54:58
SPEAKER_01: Like last night I was really, really worried about something, um, an opportunity that I have, right?
55:05
SPEAKER_01: And I thought the opportunity, I got a little bit insecure.
55:09
SPEAKER_01: I thought I was gonna lose this opportunity, and I got in my own head about it.
55:15
SPEAKER_01: And the minute I just decided it doesn't matter, everything is okay, everything is working.
55:23
SPEAKER_01: It was just a little, I was laying in bed, it wasn't a big deal.
55:26
SPEAKER_01: I just decided, fine, like what am I gonna do?
55:29
SPEAKER_01: Try to call, manipulate, control, and I was like, you know what?
55:33
SPEAKER_01: No.
55:34
SPEAKER_01: And about like three minutes later, I got a phone call, and it was like, okay, we're going ahead with this opportunity.
55:40
SPEAKER_01: So it was like the moment I let go was the moment that the things come in, instead of me trying to control it all all the time, right?
55:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, to me, that is the piece that passeth all understanding, excuse me, because you you know, we're so used to um managing, like you said, trying to manage every aspect of our lives, and the letting go, although it's scary, it is um also such a relief.
56:10
SPEAKER_02: It's like Jesus take the wheel, you know.
56:14
SPEAKER_01: It's like yeah, yeah, yeah.
56:16
SPEAKER_01: And to really realize at the bottom of this all everything is fine anyway.
56:27
SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, because we are not, we are not this.
56:33
SPEAKER_01: This is just like our meat sack shell to allow us to experience this beautiful realm and to connect with other people, but it in on a soul level, all of this is for our good and and and and and to play and to understand and to grow.
56:53
SPEAKER_01: Um, so when you kind of get beyond that, you you realize I'm not controlling this show anyway.
57:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, you know, so uh I I mean, but that just happened very recently that I I just decided to surrender to that.
57:11
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, there are so many books on letting go, and you know, people talking about letting go, but it really is just this like stepping away, like almost just getting out of your body, getting out of your head, and watching what what happens, and it's magic, it's magic.
57:37
SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of hard to that's beautiful.
57:42
SPEAKER_02: Well, how do you feel about moving on to our lightning round?
57:45
SPEAKER_02: Okay, light lightning round, yes.
57:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, switch gears.
57:49
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I don't know what lightning round is, but in hold if it strikes twice, let's do it.
57:55
SPEAKER_02: Okay, all right.
57:57
SPEAKER_02: Um, how would you describe your relationship with the unseen world?
58:04
SPEAKER_01: These are so good.
58:06
SPEAKER_01: Do I have to go I have to go fast?
58:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
58:10
SPEAKER_03: Like lightning.
58:13
SPEAKER_01: That I live there.
58:19
SPEAKER_02: Wow, that's huge.
58:20
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
58:21
SPEAKER_02: That's so good.
58:23
SPEAKER_01: I I that's where I that's where Quenby is.
58:28
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I I'm there too, and and um I feel like you and I are up sitting on a picnic bench in the unseen world looking at us, saying, Isn't that cute?
58:41
SPEAKER_01: They're doing we're doing an interview together.
58:43
SPEAKER_01: I was just gonna say, isn't that cute?
58:45
SPEAKER_02: Don't think they're special.
58:49
SPEAKER_02: And they are okay.
58:50
SPEAKER_02: Number two, on a scale of one to ten, how good a driver are you?
58:56
SPEAKER_02: Like a three.
59:00
SPEAKER_02: That's not good.
59:01
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
59:02
SPEAKER_02: Um, number three, if you could travel back in time, what period would you visit?
59:08
SPEAKER_02: Atlantis.
59:11
SPEAKER_02: Nice, me too.
59:12
SPEAKER_02: Take me with you.
59:14
SPEAKER_02: The beginning, the beginning part.
59:17
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
59:18
SPEAKER_02: Um, number four, what was your favorite Halloween costume?
59:22
SPEAKER_01: Frasta from Shera.
59:24
SPEAKER_01: Remember?
59:25
SPEAKER_01: No.
59:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh He-Man and She-Ra.
59:29
SPEAKER_01: My generator, like they'll remember.
59:31
SPEAKER_01: Uh Shea was like the female He-Man version, and she had this girl Frasta, that was her like friend that could turn everything into ice.
59:37
SPEAKER_01: So it was like the the original frozen.
59:40
SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.
59:41
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, that's so funny.
59:43
SPEAKER_01: Beautiful, ornate, like blue wings and blue.
59:47
SPEAKER_01: My grandma made it definitely.
59:49
SPEAKER_01: I think it was for like three years in a row.
59:53
SPEAKER_02: Nice.
59:54
SPEAKER_02: Okay, final question: how do you feel about socks and sandals?
59:58
SPEAKER_02: I hate socks and I'll wear sandals, but I prefer to be barefoot.
1:00:03
SPEAKER_02: Yes, I have the same feeling about socks, except when I really need them and then I love them.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_01: Like if I'm really sad and I want to get cozy on the couch, maybe I'll put on a pair of socks, but you'll mostly find me in sandals or barefoot.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, me too.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_02: Um, okay, so to have you uh brought a question for me today.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_02: Let me think.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_01: After this interview and after um knowing me in different um incarnations in just this current life, if you were wanted to tell me one thing from your wise self to my wise self, what would you say?
1:00:50
SPEAKER_02: Well, I think I mentioned to you that um your path has been such an incredible thing for me to witness because um for a while it seemed like you were really in a loop of patterned thinking about life that um was really, really, really hard for you to break out of.
1:01:20
SPEAKER_02: And um, it's easy for all of us to be in those loops because you don't know you're in the damn loop, you're just in the loop, right?
1:01:27
SPEAKER_02: And um so to witness you come through that, I just feel like there is and and your growth has been since that breaking out has been so rapid and so big that I mean it's you're like, what could I possibly say that you don't already know?
1:01:51
SPEAKER_02: You you already know it all, you're just right there.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_02: And I I sh I'll probably be asking you questions in an in another month about how you did this and how you did that, and what do you think about this?
1:02:03
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, I mean there's there's no wisdom that I could impart to you that you don't already know for sure, for sure.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_03: Hmm.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that.
1:02:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_01: Okay, what's your favorite thing to cook?
1:02:18
SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_02: So I am just crazy about, I have like a repertoire of like five vegan dishes that I just love, and I don't eat vegan all the time, but those tend to be my go-to so if I'm cooking for myself.
1:02:33
SPEAKER_02: I I never cooked meat for myself.
1:02:36
SPEAKER_02: Um, but I have this um, I also can't eat dairy and I cannot eat nuts.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_02: So I have a sunflower seed pesto that is like it's to die for.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_02: It is absolutely to die for, and um that's probably my go-to.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:02:56
SPEAKER_01: I'll never forget when you brought me that falafel.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_01: That was actually another.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_02: I think about you every time I have that falafel now.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_01: I think about you every time I have that falafel.
1:03:04
SPEAKER_01: It was a moment of grace.
1:03:06
SPEAKER_01: There was a definitely an exchange and a moment of grace.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_01: And if this stays on the podcast, what I would want to tell anybody that listens to it, one thing I just really quickly want to say is we're talking about letting go and we're talking about surrender, and somebody's like, I don't know how to do that because for the longest time people will be like, just let go, just let go, just let go.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_01: For me, what surrender just started to look like was right in the morning when I woke up before I did anything.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people reach for their phones, a lot of people aren't waking up alone either.
1:03:40
SPEAKER_01: I wake up alone, right?
1:03:42
SPEAKER_01: I like them so I roll over on my side and I feel the weight of my body on that mattress, and I like sink into the fact that I'm alive and I'm laying on the mattress, and then I kind of just say, I let go.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_01: And in my head, I'm just like, whatever this day brings, I let go, and then when my feet hit the floor, it's not a it's not a meditation, it's so simple because I for the longest time like you just gotta let go, you just gotta let go.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, I just started doing this.
1:04:17
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I'll get on my knees and pray, sometimes I will pray and be like, I let go today, and I have noticed such a shift in my perspective, my friendships, my opportunities, just by that small exercise, not a long ass meditation, not a asana asana, not changing diet, but to just feel you as a human laying somewhere, knowing that there's so much more beyond this physical body.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_02: And if you just let it go, my life has changed drastically in five months.
1:04:56
SPEAKER_02: See, you've already taught me something.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna try that tomorrow.
1:04:59
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna just feel your body on a mattress and be like, I'm not even here.
1:05:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm not even here, I'm I'm there.
1:05:08
SPEAKER_01: I just get to enjoy this for a little while.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_02: Oh well, Quembi, thank you so much for um being with me today.
1:05:16
SPEAKER_02: I've really enjoyed the conversation.
1:05:18
SPEAKER_02: It's been awesome.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I just want to say like there's a lot about you that we didn't get to talk about because you're a beautiful writer and you're an amazing chef, and we'll put all the details about how to reach you and to take advantage of your beautiful food in the notes so that people can track you down.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_02: Very good.
1:05:38
SPEAKER_02: So thank you, Quendy.
1:05:39
SPEAKER_02: Yes, thank you very much.
1:05:43
SPEAKER_02: Appreciate it.