Latest / 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project / Who Gave You the Key to Become Yourself? | Kira Buckley
Transcript
- Paige Williams: Welcome to 100 Stories, the Narrative Intelligence Project. I'm Paige Williams. I'm talking with 100 thinkers, creators, researchers, leaders, and people shaped by profound change as I explore the field of narrative intelligence. At the center is one question. How malleable are the stories we live by? What does it take to change one? What I learn will help shape the field and the foundational book that I'm writing about it. This is 100 Stories. And let me tell you, today you are in for a treat. This one is personal for me and we just drop right in. So here we go. I owe so much to you and to meeting you. Kira Buckley: I'm sitting with the initial invite and I said, okay, let me see if I can place my tears strategically in this conversation. Paige Williams: Today we're speaking with Buckley. Kira is an alchemist, a word alchemist, and an ancestral genius, I would call you, and a Kira Buckley: Yeah. Paige Williams: healer in words, in rest, creating space for healing, and also an herbalist, an author, and it goes on and on. Kira Buckley: in this current season I'm in a place of witnessing as doula as ceremonialist as teacher but also forever student. particularly as doula, more than just mamas and babies, but that cycle of death and birth, of being unalived in various stages of our lives and and coming back. and just in rites of passage. and living and and and being human and divine at the same time. Paige Williams: I'll give a little background if you don't mind about our story. Kira Buckley: Absolutely. Yes. Paige Williams: So, we met each other at a threshold, a threshold in my life, and walked into your space. And you didn't even, I don't even know if you knew my name besides Paige. Didn't know anything about me. And just started telling me my story. And I was... On the way to meet you, It was my 44th or fifth birthday. And she said, I'm gonna give you a present. Kira Buckley: Yeah. Paige Williams: I'm gonna take you to meet my healer. And I said, what's a healer? Yep. And so I walked in and met you and was just like, because to be in your presence is just such a gift and it's a big experience. And I sat down and I was so nervous and I didn't know what to expect. And you just started being you and reading and. just knew my story without me even telling you, without you knowing who I am, who I was on the outside. And then come to find out we were both from Jackson, Mississippi, or have roots in Jackson. And that felt really special. Kira Buckley: Yeah, yes. Yeah. Paige Williams: And it really started me on a journey of healing and my life completely changed from that moment. And... You sharing what you saw about my narrative and my potential helped me to imagine a future and a future self of myself where I said, yes, that's the woman I want to be. And I've been. fulfilling that sense. So thank you. Kira Buckley: You have. I've been watching as well. from your lens and thank you for bringing that back to me we do have common ground in Jackson Mississippi jee sh I was I was just there this past summer and speaking of narratives ever unfolding I got another layer which I I believe that's it's a part of the journey. my granny girl may infuse herself in and out of our conversation because I can hear her now, So thank you for bringing that origin story back for me. A lot Paige Williams: Yeah. Kira Buckley: of some some details I didn't know the conversation before arriving, Paige Williams: I Kira Buckley: which I like. I will always tell beloveds, don't tell them anything. Whoever you are bringing, don't tell them nothing. Paige Williams: You Kira Buckley: I I like a clean slate. I like people to come in confused and nervous and and then we see. We get we get to unravel and unfurl together. Yeah, and that's what we did. Thank you. Paige Williams: Yeah. Will you tell me about the work that has most shaped how you see yourself in the world? Kira Buckley: my work encompasses a lot of inheritance, ancestral remembrance. divination what it means to be divine and embody that to be in the divine divination discernment This work around what I mentioned in in the origin story of being a doula, not just a woman servant, but being in service to humanity. And it started with myself. how I do everything, how I do la myself. And this started with the origins of my grandmother's teaching and being born into a family part heavy religious dogma and and and that dynamic, but also part Afro Caribbean and and Creole tradition of priesthood, and living by the land and understanding the cycles of the body and and how we mirror the world. And so I've I've always had a a dynamic lens, a a multi-lens of earth and body and human and and divine. And I would say the the origins of of birth work. and again, not just catching babies and not just supporting mothers, but rites of passage, following my grandmother. to do footbath and bless homes, at eight years old. keeping journals where I would have to track my dreams. so not just the the school work but also the spiritual work and have them side by side, and studying numbers and the stars and and also plants. And so all of this infused over into what it means to be of service and stand at the threshold with humans who are birthing and also being unalived simultaneously. death death is is a beginning. And grief is a gift and and an initiating catalyst and babies. planned or unplanned, come with invitations to deepen our our knowings to ourselves. I hope so. Paige Williams: love it. Will you share a threshold moment from your life that shaped or changed you and what you were doing? Kira Buckley: Paige, I have so many. I have Paige Williams: I know there's many. I know. Kira Buckley: so many. This is a story I have not shared aloud publicly. So I feel honored to be able to share this as a gift for the both of us. I went to seminary between the years of 2007, 2009. I went to school to study God. mind you, I was already ordained. I was ordained at twenty one and I the background, my my godparents who were also my pastors at the time were against me going and and didn't see the point in it. Like you're already ordained. Why do you need to study anymore about the origins of of God in the Bible? But something about that time was a pivotal threshold for me. I showed up married, I left divorced. This marriage and the theological studies, the separation and the eventual departure from the religious identity that I had grown up in organized, rearranged, deconstructed, but in a sense really organized the past that I'm on now. And so in brief I'll just a little bit of story medicine coming out of this marriage and going into a separation at the time, it was I I didn't feel safe. and it became evident outwardly, showing up in class and kind of contracting. There was a woman unbeknownst to me who was paying attention and and this is where I say, narrative stories are not just about us but also those who are witnessing us on the path, And so I didn't know that she had been watching me and my mannerisms and the way that I was holding myself. I remember she followed me or I was already standing in the back of the classroom at one of the computers. I see her come in and we just, you know, she's a classmate. We would greet each other, but she's not like my girl at the time. But she comes straight back instead of going to her seat to the right of me. She comes straight back towards me and she puts a key on the desk. And she says, This will give you access to my apartment. Whenever you need it, come. immediately for one like who sent you? So there was this interrogation happening at at one point and but also complete surrender because I really needed that key and I really needed somewhere to go. and I just I cried. And I immediately got up and I took the key and I went back to my place and I packed up as much as I could. and I went straight to her place. And that began the journey of pulling away from the institution that I was born into, but also this institution of a partnership that was not serving me. So while I'm going to seminary school to deconstruct and and to dive into the study of God, I really got a firsthand crash course into the study of myself, and how to receive. that key which has stayed with me. We we like memorialized it. I remember I just saw her in Kingston, upstate New York, a year ago for a retreat and She brought me a copy of the key. And oof, feeling that in real time. that key from a woman who has been one of my best friends since 2007 is a physical manifestation of of me re-authoring my own narrative story. And so that was she walked me through a threshold and she had no idea, didn't ask questions, didn't ask for no tea, did not ask for any details, did not, you know, what's happening, what is he doing, what is he not doing. It was just I see you and I want to give you access to shift from wherever you are to s to wherever you need to be. Pivotal. Yeah, very pivotal. Paige Williams: And then what happened as a result? Kira Buckley: take the key but also take it as access to give myself permission to leave a marriage, to leave the church, the church that didn't want me to go to seminary to begin with, to transition out of pastoral care. and chaplaincy and just completely dive into my body. I began right after seminary, I began sessions with an acupuncturist at the time. I had no idea this would lead me to wanting to go to acupuncture school. but the transition out of this path of pulling away from the expectations of a tradition, a family, of a story that wasn't mine to begin with. So then I I had space. I had room to now figure out well what's happening in my body. what's going on with patterns that I really didn't pay attention to. But now that I have space and time and I have room to really sit and and be with myself. so I was diving into some some habits and some origins of why I do the things that I do. and also understanding during this time my divinity and humanity were fighting each other and and there was a real moment of like grief and in consoling myself with alcohol. with opioids, with being in pain and depending on prescription meds, and a a lot of wine at the time, a lot of shots, this became now my my path to reconciling, pulling away from these institutions and and still trying to figure out what am I actually accessing within myself. I just started really diving into nutrition, when I saw this acupuncturist and she put me on a strict regimen of, you know, my dieta, my herbs and and I've really switching my medicine and and choosing my poison, as my children would say, herbs, depending on how we put them together, can be just as as as poisonous as the alcohol that I once desired. the appetite to want something different. I needed the space in the room to be able to access that. So every time the the path shifts, the narrative opens up a little bit more. and then, you know, going into my sobriety, which is what brought me deeper into my gifts. And and so that I could stop running. and stop defending and standing on my soapbox and I'm not coming back to church and I'm not getting married again. more so into what is being asked of me as I'm pulling away from religion and deeper into my family pathology of spirituality, my stories. Paige Williams: and now it's almost 20 years after that. The key. Kira Buckley: Oof. Paige Williams: 20 years since that moment. Leaving seminary. The God of your childhood versus the God of you now in your practice. Talk Kira Buckley: Yeah. Paige Williams: about how that narrative shifted. with the concept of God. Kira Buckley: There is no separation. Paige Williams: Mm. Kira Buckley: the God of my childhood, I would tell this story, not the seminary story, but the story of waking up one day and realizing that my relationship with God wasn't actually my God. It was my grandmother's God and and my mother's God. But the reason I'd had to relinquish control and like fall into the chaos of of the journey is so that I could get access to my God, my understanding of what this divine omnipotent omnipresence is. Journeying twenty years later, I'd I sit in a very different, audacious, sovereign seat, knowing that not separate from God. how dare I say I am? I am. And beyond the you know the the aesthetic of Goddess. I'm a lover of words the the etymology of God is is is to be a goddess is God is. God is me. God is within me I I am as within so without, as above, so below. So the journey of Kira coming from childhood to seminary to womanhood to motherhood to I mean my my mom would say I'm I'm in elder training right now. being the eldest, the first daughter, the eldest grandchild of 28. Paige Williams: You Kira Buckley: This summer reconciled within myself that there's there's a bit of sovereignty that I sit with now. Not a bit. There's a lot of sovereignty and audacity that I sit with now in my relationship with what it means to be in practice in veneration, in adoration, in devotion. in in a lived embodiment in my understanding of God. Divine presence is also mine. Omnipotence is also mine. My humanity keeps me finite in the duality of where I am now, but my divinity is not separate from what I'm able to access. I'm able to access it as a vessel, as a conduit, because I because of my understanding that I'm not separate. Just the physical manifestation of that on earth right now. So, my my God, myself, has become technology, has become intelligence, has become Yeah, somatic lived practice. That's that's my best one. Paige Williams: How is your family with accepting all of you? How are they doing? Kira Buckley: I think they're making it. Paige Williams: Asking for a friend, Kira. Kira Buckley: they're they're doing their best. this became evident too, you know, I hadn't been to Mississippi I I dropped in December twenty twenty five, only because I I was coming through Atlanta. and I said I can't be in Atlanta and not just go up the highway six hours to Jackson. that was my first time seeing my granny girl in probably over five years. So I didn't know that would be my last. physically Paige Williams: Mmm. Kira Buckley: seeing her too. So I saw her December twenty to twenty five. I was there two days, jumped on the highway, get get to New Orleans. I gotta get back across the water to Costa Rica. And then six months later, ten days after my birthday, she takes her transition. I got a firsthand reminder going back to the land in New Orleans and Mississippi that my my freedom to live and be and have my being the way that I do i is not lost on me that a part of my origin is also witnessing those who don't live and think as I do. And don't care to. you know, they may side-eye, they may have some questions, they may like, okay, and there she is. in the flesh, she's here. there's curiosity, there's wonder, there's anxiety, but what keeps me like centered is knowing that it's not mine. I'm just here to be witnessing. I'm witnessing you, you're witnessing me. We're tied together by blood origin, but also it's not my business to be concerned about how you are navigating my sovereignty. I think they're okay. Paige Williams: What do we inherit from our ancestors that we never were directly taught? Kira Buckley: Audacity. Origin. Relating. recognizing patterns. I'm sort of naming things by experience. Not what I'm reading but what I know. that comes with inheritance from ancestral lineages. we don't just get their trauma, we also get their gifts. We also get their genius. we also get their fears. my background in in integrative medicine and in Chinese medicine would tell me the waters within my kidneys are also the waters of my ancestors. And it's fitting that they're on my back. That our kidneys are behind us, right? That support. The water that supports you. My grandmother had that water. And I was in her. And that's the water that I'm also carrying that my grandchildren will have from me. so you think about what travels through water, what water represents. What is this element which I think is one of the the most powerful element water being a gateway between this world and the next. We inherit an intelligence that defies human understanding. Paige Williams: Yeah Kira Buckley: It it defies understanding because at some point it is not enough to understand. But now we have to go into feeling, into being, into the the soma, into the body, into embodiment. that leaves us in this bewilderment at times because we feel like we're supposed to understand everything and everybody's supposed to understand us. Spirituality is not to be understood, it is to be honored and lived and practiced. Paige Williams: What does our body know before our mind does? Kira Buckley: A hell no and Paige Williams: Hmm... Kira Buckley: a absolute yes. Paige Williams: Yes. Kira Buckley: a full body no and a delicious absolutely I want that it's as simple as that. The body knows yes or no. The mind creates the stories, the Rolodex, the you know, all the things. But the body knows what's mine, what's not mine. What's a uh-huh and a uh-uh, what hurts, what feels safe, what is not my ministry, my cup of tea, what's not my that that I would rather not have that. I don't wanna swallow that. what I crave my desire. The body knows. It knows truth. Yeah. Paige Williams: How do we tune into that more? Kira Buckley: The how I believe comes in a practice of integrity to self. I honestly Paige the the transition from leaving the states first by myself. I was taking long extended trips, working and leaving my children. and then after a couple of years I invited them to come with me. And they said, Heck yes, we're going with you. We're already unschooled, let's let's world school together. in this journey I discovered an invitation Where spirit was asking me to let people be wrong about me. To not get lost in the story and the narratives. I will neither confirm nor deny. I'm I'm gonna forge ahead in the d integrity of who I am as a woman, as a being, as a mother. So I think the how comes in integrity. we care a lot and and there's no fault in caring, but there is a place in life where you have to honor the selfishness that comes out of self-care. Two can be true. Both exist. In order for me to take care of myself, I have to say no. And somebody's feelings are gonna be hurt in that no. So there the there it is again, the audaciousness that comes with can I really just be honest with myself? And if I can practice the honesty for myself, then I can start to hear a little bit more clearer, like the real yes and the real no, because I don't deny myself the honesty, even in the most intimate of of relationships, of mother child, of of partnerships, of lovers. Can I tell them the truth because I can tell myself the truth? I don't really like that. I don't really want that. I don't have the capacity for that. and then silence and stillness. I know a lot of fear comes around pausing and not moving. And part of it is a cultural mandate that was placed upon us that to be successful is to always be producing, to be in production of something. but a lot of the way clarity, abundance, and resources flow is in the stillness and quietness, like a river. It's it's on the surface, it's very calm. B below the surface, unstoppable, ever moving. So I I will start there in the how is tell yourself the truth and and not being afraid of hurting someone's feelings and letting people be wrong about you as long as you are right about you. Yeah. Paige Williams: We talk about intuition, how to trust it, how to know it, when to act from it. Kira Buckley: I love intuition. I've started teaching I call them starseeds. five to fifteen years old, I teach littles. I teach the the mamas and the adults too, but three years ago I shifted my practice to honing in on the babies. And we start with emotional intelligence because this is very pivotal in intuition to intuit. And the way that I break down intuition is intimacy. That's intimacy, right? Intimacy it's comes from the same root of intuition, intimacy and intuition. There is an invitation to go inward because the medicine starts from the inside. And before I start looking for signs of manifestation, I start listening for evidence within myself. how do and I ask myself questions and this is a practice in real time. Whoever's listening, do it right now. Ask yourself in silence, how do I know when I'm mad? What does my body do when I am like really in my sacred rage? What does that feel like? How do I know when I actually enjoy something? When I'm in pleasure? When I'm I'm I want something. It's not just an impulsive urge, but this is a this is a divine desire. How do I know? There's an inquiry that happens with just being able to ask The body questions because intuition is not an outside gift that drops from the clouds, it happens inside of this vessel. Your organs speak to you. Every place, my granny girl would say, wherever there's a hole in the body, there is a pathway of information coming through. And all I have to do is ask questions and and inquire. You ask a question in and not looking for the human audible yes, it might come sometimes. Depends on where you are. Don't don't be alarmed if it does. But oftentimes if I ask my heart a question or my stomach and you start to feel this contracting and cramping, you start to feel a little bit more pressure. You start to feel hot or cold. You start to feel tingling. Someone walks into a room. And this person immediately opens your whole body. You sit back, you smile. Someone else walks into a room and you start to fold. You start to grab certain parts of your body. You start to contract. You start guarding. All of that is intuitive information. But where is it coming from? The body. I believe every being on this earth is intuitive. Everybody. And not in a sense of you need to start booking sessions and giving readings and having a a list of clientele. But I believe our intuition is an ancestral technology of something we inherit that comes through the waters. that is given to us as cheat codes on how to be human, how to do life. Trust your intuition. Activate it. Be curious about it. Yeah. Paige Williams: Beautiful. When you hear the term narrative intelligence, what do you think it means? What does it mean to you? What does it mean for us? For the collective. Kira Buckley: When I saw this invitation, Paige Williams: Mm-hmm. Kira Buckley: and you know, I I as I said I'm a lover of words, but I said, Paige, what a love language. You put these two words together and it absolutely just starts sending off signals within my body. I believe I've been doing work in both, in in ancestral intelligence, or now what we are wrapped up in AI, but I I I snatched the narrative back from AI and said this is my ancestral, ancestral intelligence. but then you put narrative in front of that as the storyteller that I am and that that I love to to to write and to share. I hear responsibility. I hear recognizing origin but also the invitation of of walking with the story and how it takes shape. I hear in interpretation and participation. It's not enough to know a story. because Because that intelligent part of it is I have a divine responsibility to use this narrative as a as technology. There's a genius that comes with the story. there's a responsibility that comes with me knowing a story, being given a story, retelling a story, right? there's an awareness in that every time the story is told it there's also movement that goes with it. Not just breath and you're telling it, but but like the story is gonna continue unfolding. The story I'm telling you about my origins and and the threshold of the key given to me in seminary, my daughter will tell someone that story when I'm no longer here. It will take on a different shape and breath and movement. based on her intelligence of my narrative. So I I feel the responsibility of narrative intelligence in whatever the background and whatever the family pathology, the invitation g being given to us is to there's a sense of pride and authority to really embody it, to live in it, to be in practice of it. I think ev I'm gonna bring everything back to embodiment. The praxis to be in practice of narrative intelligence. I think that's what you have given us. what you have given me, just in in these two words, is is a beautiful invitation to participate in the shape and the movement of stories. of an archive. That's also something that I heard very loudly. an a living archive. Paige Williams: You do such a beautiful job in your work of teaching us about grief and gratitude. Kira Buckley: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Paige Williams: Because the stories can hook us. Kira Buckley: Absolutely. Paige Williams: especially grieving stories. Kira Buckley: Yeah. Paige Williams: And I love the balance that you bring to life and your teachings Kira Buckley: Harmonizes. I like to say. Harmonizes. Paige Williams: Harmonize. Harmonize. Kira Buckley: And I I I'm strategically saying harmonize because balance, sometimes it we get stuck in trying to have equal parts of things. It's not the reality of life. Not even in relationship. Everything is not fifty fifty. But if we can Paige Williams: Mmm. Kira Buckley: harmonize, if we can harmonize, which which is what sound, frequency, vibration, tunes on the piano, it's not equal notes. There's notes up here and notes down here, and it's not given an equal measure of a thing. But it is catching and synchronizing and harmonizing the narrative. That I have been in the last seven years, honestly. Maybe another time I'll I'll share another threshold about my father and brother transitioning, leaving this earth within nine months of each other, which is what prompted me to meet you in LA. this year, my children's father in January, my grandmother in June, another initiation of grief, right? Grief has always been a narrative catalyst for me. and and the transparency and vulnerability that I find myself every time it comes up is shifting how I sit with harmonizing. Do I still love my life? Can I still find pleasure in living and also grieve Not what I lost, not the absence of possession of the people that meant something to me, but in the release. Releasing, which is a totally different is now seven years ago I was sitting in a totally different place and just decided well I'm gonna just shave my head and move to and get out of this place. So I move my body so that the grief can also move, and that is the invitation is is to not become stagnant, but harmony, absolutely, grief, gratitude, pleasure, joy, sorrow, it it all acts it it asked of us to just find ways to harmonize it and see if you can harmonize the narrative around it. Paige Williams: Thank you for that language. It's really important and it's gonna be important for this work of narrative intelligence because I think a lot about. capacity to change our stories but maybe some stories don't need changing and so it's not about balance it's about harmony. Kira Buckley: Hmm. Paige Williams: I like it. Kira Buckley: I like it. I love it. Paige Williams: I love it. Kira Buckley: You know what I was gonna say? there's a fullness in this conversation that I feel it's giving me, but I I I feel also giving the invitation to those who are listening and and sharing containers with you, giving us permission to interrogate stories that we've been living inside. Interrogation, disrupting, inquiring, like really unraveling the archive. There's a freedom in that too. Paige Williams: We went from a fullness to an unraveling to freedom. Kira Buckley: I love that. Paige Williams: Anything else you feel compelled to share? Kira Buckley: What a delicious. Fullness, unraveling, freedom. in the the conversation of narrative my prayer I always like to to begin and end with a may I, may you, may we but there is a prayer that I have that we continue to be curious about what our bodies are communicating, where our loyalties come from. about what we might be protecting simply because it's familiar. And this is a part of unraveling the origin stories in our narratives. This is to be intelligent about the narratives. I I also My prayer is that we begin to recognize that a different life requires different practices. And I guarantee wherever the stories came from, wherever the narrative began, the life that held that narrative and the life that is telling retelling it now is totally different. And it's allowed to be. Different relationships with with other people, different relationships with places we call home. I I don't have any narratives from Costa Rica prior to now, but now my daughters will. Because of a decision I made to pivot the the f the family, the lineage back here. Now also learning I do have roots here. There is origins in Panama and Limón and in Cahuita, Costa Rica, but no one ever shared that narrative with me until I arrived. So yeah, movement. Move move with the stories is what I would like to leave us with. Paige Williams: Beautiful. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today. Kira Buckley: Absolutely. Thank you for the invitation and the permission and the container. And for you. Yes. Paige Williams: My pleasure. If you have listened to other episodes, that this one feels different. And this conversation for me is sacred and it's personal. Kira came into my life at a threshold moment. I walked into a room with her years ago with very little understanding of what was about to happen. I didn't even know the term healer and what it meant. And I walked out having seen something about myself in my life that I could not unsee. My life changed. And today, Kira told me the story of a woman who once saw her struggling and placed a key on the table. And that changed her life. No interrogation, there was no demand for explanation, just access, just permission. Here's a key. Come when you need it. And sitting here all these years later, I realized Kira was that for me. She handed me a key and imagined. And saw a life beyond my wildest dreams, but what I secretly wanted deep inside that led me to this work here with you today. Years later, I even wrote a book called The Twelve Creative Keys. And there are moments when the architecture of your own life becomes visible to you in a way it wasn't before. And that time with Kira and now is one of those moments for me. I don't necessarily have an explanation for all of it. Some things are understood through language, some are felt in the body, some arrive through another human, some belong to ancestry, intuition, spirit, mystery, God, whatever you want to call it, whatever language we have for what exceeds our ability to fully explain and name the human experience and the spiritual experience of being human. This project is an inquiry into the stories through which we understand our lives. In this conversation reminded me that there are places where story touches something sacred. So today I'm not going to leave you with an intellectual question. I want to leave you with this. Who has been a key in your life? And if a door is opening for you right now, are you willing, are you audacious enough to cross that threshold? Do you have the courage to walk through it? Thank you, Kira, for providing a key in my life and for sharing with us. This one is holy for me. If you loved this episode, please follow us and share it with a friend. It really helps us.