Restorying the Culture with camille and tanya

In Episode #17, Camille and Tanya share an honest and personal conversation about voice, voicelessness, and the future of Re-Storying the Culture. Tanya is rediscovering her voice following her ex-husband’s passing. At the same time, Camille feels called to her internal self, to mute her voice and listen for a while as new ideas gestate. How can these two close friends resist harmful narratives of Camille “abandoning” Tanya? By leaning into their individual truths, trusting each other, and returning to their original reason for creating the podcast. While Camille internalizes and quiets her voice, Tanya will expand her own voice and the conversation by bringing other people onto the podcast to share diverse perspectives on re-storying the culture. This new approach is centered on the leadership of many, honoring every person in the culture and creating space to share power and nurture new leaders for the future. It truly does take a village.   Episode Transcript [00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubin's story mentor, and Camille Adair, family constellation facilitator. In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories serve our lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness. Moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments, in truth, so many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longing. Each one of us is necessary rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can restoring the culture together. [00:00:51] Hey, everyone, welcome to Restoring the Culture, I'm here with Tanya and looking forward to a conversation on voice or voice, lessness, voice of the voiceless. [00:01:05] And we're we're both out with that. And today, instead of reading a quote, we're going to communicate in a different way. And so if you'll just take a moment with us, we'll do this. This honoring and of sound. And then we'll come back to the podcast. [00:01:53] All right. Well, we're not musicians. That's for damn sure. [00:01:59] I was reading about how words began as sounds and so words sound used to sound like what they meant. [00:02:08] So I was trying to think of words that sounded like what they meant when they were still could inhabit, you know, the right hemisphere of the brain. A feeling right now thinking of the word cushion. I mean, that sounds like what it is cushion. You can feel the khush. But so many words have become just words to describe something rhyme. So they're becoming more objective and less subjective and. And that's part of us becoming less relational or less embodied, less in touch with our sensations. And that leads me to a conversation that Tanya and I just started having. And we're really both sensitive to the changes. In the field and my field, your field, the collective field. And when we started this podcast at the beginning of Kofod, our commitment really was to have honest, transparent conversations between us as friends and to make those public, you know, as an experiment. Is this going to serve? But how refreshing to be able to have conversations like that that have meaning to us instead of thinking, oh, we're gonna have a conversation about a topic. Because we think it's going to have meaning to other people. [00:03:36] And then we manufacture our thoughts based on what we think the outer world wants. Right. This was more about how do we share our inner world instead of manufacturing ourselves. We just share ourselves. And so. Right, one of the things that's starting to shift and change for me is that I feel like I'm being called to this. [00:03:57] I'm going in more internal and into a time of these sounds, these feelings. [00:04:05] And those don't always translate into conversations in the same way. [00:04:10] And so for the last couple days, I've just keep having this feeling about about not backing out altogether of this podcast because I want to support it. But how can I, in terms of the sisterhood, support this mission, support our friendship, support these messages when you add it to it. [00:04:30] And then we started talking about it. And you said after Stephen died, after 19 years, you have your voice back. And after a 19 year stretch for me, which we had never done the math on, you're unbelievable, Turnell. And I feel sort of mute in a good way, like I'm communicating in different ways and something is gestating inside of me. So one of our conversations that we're actually making public because we haven't worked all this out together. But we wanted to share it with you in the spirit of how and why we came together in this podcast is that I may take a step into the quiet under world and I might inhabit more of the voice of the voiceless. [00:05:12] And while Tanya's getting her voice, may be inviting some other people to come in as other other guests, that we've wanted to have diverse voices in here and take this opportunity like it doesn't have to be you or me. And a third voice. It can be me and another voice until things shift and perhaps shift again. Right, exactly. [00:05:35] We don't know. But it's really it's like this is part of that thing of listening to what's in to what's moving and what's wanting to happen next. And and I think it's this thing of being with the unknown. [00:05:51] It's such a powerful guide. I mean, it really is the next phase of leadership. I think totally early emerging. It's emerging somewhat in us. And I think this is really what we've been leading into for a long time. And I think it's actually like it's growing in us now. Right. It's this is leadership to listen. It is leadership to stand in the unknown and to actually not have the answers, but to be guided by what's happening within and around us and to speak to each other fearlessly. [00:06:26] That's right. Because people are so afraid of truth. And certainly back in our own history, yours and mine. Right. We've had times when we needed to have boundaries with each other or change something and we wanted to please each other. I mean, not just with you and I, of course, in our own lives, like this is what we've been conditioned to do. [00:06:47] The people policing versus, oh, I didn't plan on this, but life wants me to go some place. [00:06:56] Slightly different now or I'm being called to do this in service to my own soul and it doesn't quite make sense. And the outer world. Right. [00:07:05] Right. Mine doesn't make sense in the outer world at all. [00:07:09] And I really am so grateful that you hear me and that you understand it for what it is and that it isn't another story. It is this story. And that. It's just as valid for me not to speak as it is for you to speak. Exactly. No, totally. I mean, it's like the truth isn't truly and how we give voice to that truth, whether, you know, I did a checkout today in my constellation training and I had us check in with a sound and check out with a word or a sound. And I found myself humming along Labi. And it took me to such a deep place to look at all these faces of these people I care so much about on my screen and my class. And to be humming this lullaby and to have that be my way that I exit. I think we're so much needing to connect in these deeper ways right now. Right. And I feel like I'm going into some underground preparatory school for something that I don't know about what it is completely. [00:08:13] I mean, and I see that. I see it in myself. [00:08:16] I see. New ways of being are really springing up at almost cut coming from our last conversation. Restring 2020, it's like like we've been stretched around how to connect on screens with people all over the world in an intimate rather than a compromised way. [00:08:39] And so when you talk about humming the lullaby, like we're being called to go deeper with our imagination out to the greater aspects of consciousness. Right. And find that we're actually together, we're actually can stay close. [00:08:57] Even Mahvish, all these shifts happen. We can stay close while you are quiet and I'm speaking. [00:09:04] That's right. That's right. [00:09:06] You know that we can take these different journeys. I think this is what I want to say, because you and I started this podcast and we've we have worked the edges of restoring our friendship for 20, 21 years now. [00:09:21] And our friendship should have been lost many times by conventional or ego standards because we've had different ways of being different ways of acting out or suppressing our own trauma. [00:09:35] Different things with mother issues and female issues. So in in restoring our friendship, which is what I feel is the original intent. [00:09:46] How can I support you in going quiet without making up a story about abandonment or that I can't do it alone or that you don't care as much about me? What I'm saying is the myths we put on top of people's soul truth stops us from doing what we need to do, which is always put that soul truth first and create relationships where we're safe to speak them and allow them and be uncomfortable without the split. You and I talk about the split. There's so many reasons that we find from an ego point of view to go into the split when in reality, if we support each other in following our own souls, what greater possibility of love comes out of that or even creation in the future that we can't even imagine? Right. [00:10:46] I think that's right. And I think that we're doing it. I would say to answer that question, the first one that comes to me that's most obvious as friends is pick up the phone if you're feeling. If any of that starts coming up for you. Just pick up the phone and I'll remind you. I would say the other thing is that it you know, in terms of the lineage of this podcast, it started out as a podcast between two friends. Totally. And all we do is speak the truth. This Calzada ride with Camille and Tanya, right? That's the order that we wrote it in. Camille and Tanya with a small C small T right wrist. And now I'm saying I'm going to do some. [00:11:29] I'm going to just stay for a while, you know. Can you carry restoring the culture and invite other people in? [00:11:35] And then I just say I'll be there in spirit. Remember me? Invite me on some time, call me and say I want to do a podcast about this. You may not be on it. Is there anything that you would add to the conversation? I mean, I'd love to stay close to it totally. [00:11:51] And that is the restoring process, right? [00:11:54] Hey, the toxic old culture we're moving out of is the one that can't hold different needs at different times. [00:12:03] And then what it does and as part of the split is then it puts people into exile. Right. You're either in or you're out for pressure. Right. Those are false dualities. Tim doesn't have to be in or out. It's just the truth that we started this together. And now I'm going to take some time to go into my voice soullessness because something else is growing inside of me that's really important that I listen to. [00:12:29] And you are coming into a time where you're going to be talking and having more conversations of restoring the culture with other people, that it will be in service to restoring the culture. [00:12:39] And if we're both in service to restoring the culture, then we know we're in the right place. No problem. Totally. You're both standing behind restoring the culture as the founders. [00:12:50] That will never change, but it doesn't mean you can't take it and carry it. [00:12:55] And I trust you to do that. [00:12:57] And I'm really grateful that you trust me to go underground for a while and just take something that can't come into words yet. So it will come into words, but I can't speak it until it's ready to be born. [00:13:10] Exactly. Now. Totally. [00:13:12] And what does that look like for you? I'm curious about the how how it would be restored for you between us. [00:13:20] Well, I think just even a deeper commitment to the divine directives that are coming through. It's very clear to me that right now you and I are both so highly aligned with our intuitive selves and our souls that are guiding us to individual purposes, manifested in us in great service in the world and. [00:13:48] And outright honoring that that that is why we're choosing to shift the form that it's not from any old story. It's from the new story of what does it look like to just radically allow ourselves to change any outer stories to serve the soul because the soul is guiding. [00:14:10] So for me, I think it means just following, like honoring the genesis of this is about our relationship and that energetically you're still in the field as a. [00:14:26] I wanted to say fairy godmother because I was looking at you with your red lipstick and I thought, you look like a fairy godmother today. Anyway, you know, it's like you're here and present. [00:14:39] And so it's honoring that presence of who you are. And I think just trusting that directive that what I hear you saying is you're trusting the directive of my soul right now to invite the people I'm most drawn to talking to. [00:14:56] And I sort of have this feeling that in the future, it could end up being a vehicle once again for you to invite in some of the people your most strong to talking. Right. Right. [00:15:05] You know, we can play with what that me can play with it, because now we've so established our voices here and who we are and what we're about, we can play. But for me, the vision is to just keep following the desires of my soul, the dictates of my soul in terms. [00:15:22] And asking other people, bringing in other diverse wisdom from different voices, people of a different gender or people of, you know, maybe who are non binary with their gender, who knows people of different backgrounds, different levels of expertize, both inner and outer diversity. Right. What is their vision of restoring? [00:15:44] Cause to me, where we're building a new culture that's based on our abilities, many different abilities of others who are also drawn to restoring the culture, who see the big sort of systemic issues and have different gifts to bring to the table because it's such a big inquiry. [00:16:08] Right? It's it started out small, but it's so big. [00:16:11] Interesting, because this is reminding me of, you know, I had a couple different midwives for solace. You were the first midwife in the very beginning of my movie. And then my friend Sylvia was a midwife toward the end of the movie. She helped me create a nonprofit. [00:16:32] You know, she really I mean, the last year of that push of editing and, you know, getting it ready to to move out and to be born. Right. Right. You know, I had a midwife in the beginning and a midwife at the end. [00:16:46] And I was thinking about that, you know, that maybe some, you know, in different ways were midwife things, something tons of heart of the story of the podcast of of what's happening here. And that that's a that's a special place. Right. And medicine and midwives don't stick around in the same capacity forever. Right. Right. They change and changes. Yes. And it can be purposeful to be in a place for a time. And and that role can change, right? I mean, it can evolve and it can change. Yeah, that's it. [00:17:17] I guess that is sort of the big takeaway for me is just feeling more comfortable being in the unknown and being willing to go with the change without having to know why. I don't exactly know why, but I'm getting this directive that's pretty loud and I think it has to do with a new time I'm going into at the same time that you're coming into a new time. [00:17:38] It's so fascinating. We hadn't talked about these 19, 20 year cycles, you know, until today, until today in the pot, right before the last podcast. [00:17:47] And and then and we've known each other for a little longer than that. So we have the privilege of the entire 19 years. I mean, I knew Stephen before he was. Yes. Schizophrenic, you know. Yes. Before I got married. Yes. It's really interesting, right, that we have known each other through two big chapters, you know. [00:18:11] Well, huge stories. And it's funny. It's true. When you said. [00:18:15] Yeah, I mean, I remember I mean, playing that role for you with the film and supporting you and coming to some interviews and I think helping facilitate the connection with Grant through and and Dara. [00:18:30] That's exactly right. You know, like those things that have to happen. And then now, OK, we're getting something new here in this form. [00:18:38] And yeah, I think it's I mean, I think it's a great metaphor to use. [00:18:43] Oh, and I was going to say that now when I work with people on their books, I say to. People, there's an illusion. You're going to have one person take you all the way through. But the way I've set it up with my team, I say you really need a story mentor to make sure you've got a story really worth telling. You need a coach, a writing coach who's going to show up every week like the midwife and get you through. Then you're going to need a different person to be that editor because they've really got to have that literary background to be a professional editor and then somebody who's going to help you get it published. So here it is. It's like, you know, same thing in a solo show. It's like you need the director and you know, you need the coach. You need the director. [00:19:23] There's a whole thing, the people backstage and that these one person projects. Right. That's so of this culture to assist in it when it's just really this beautiful circle of souls that always comes together that makes anything significant happen, no matter who's the one that's the quote unquote face of the project. [00:19:46] Well, it reminds me of that saying it takes a village, right? It takes a village to raise a child. [00:19:50] I've been thinking about that in terms of, you know, the depth psychology community. It really takes a village to grow, you know, someone in this kind of a container to do this work. [00:20:06] It takes years and it tears more than one person and it takes time to raise a child. [00:20:13] And in even when I think about like a friendship or a marriage or a business, you know, you have so many false dualities that say it's going to be one person. There are many ways that we get to love and there are many ways that we get to prosperity and there are many ways that we get to feeling fulfilled in friendship, right? Yes. Doesn't have to come through one face. And I remember. [00:20:43] You know, you and I used to talk about a couple years ago, we started talking about the new face of leadership and we were seeing a sea of faces right there, that that is the new face of leadership is the money. So it's kind of taking me full circle to that metaphor of it takes a village. [00:20:58] And when we know it takes a village, our only job is to listen so that we know when and where our right places in terms of serving the mission as a village person. Yeah. [00:21:09] I love that as a villager. Truly, again. And that's the thing, too, about I'm reading an amazing book right now called Sand Talk on Indigenous Leadership. [00:21:20] And it's the circle, right? It is the talking circle. [00:21:24] It's everybody being honored. It's indigenous wisdom from every corner called the Earth. [00:21:31] It's Pande Cultural. [00:21:33] And yeah, it's just making me think how if we're in right relationship and we talk about matriarchal circles, it's there. There's always we're just villagers. And that that's the new leadership where we're villagers. [00:21:48] And what's our right place at any given time. And then allowing that to shift. And one thing, can I just share one thing that came up like about American like power? [00:21:59] We were such we're grabbers of power and then we try to hold on to the power. [00:22:04] You know, last night and and this isn't to discredit at all the amazing contributions and the culture of Justice Ginsburg, who died yesterday, two days ago. [00:22:15] But she had an opportunity when Obama was in office to retire and have him replace her. And she stayed. [00:22:25] And and now, you know, there's this whole disruptive thing about on the wrong side gets to replace her. Well, all of us. And this goes so beyond red and blue, as you and I have talked about. [00:22:36] This is about power. And when we hold on to power, we and I see this in myself. [00:22:43] I understand it. I'm out of my space as a villager. And when I'm also reluctant to step into my power, I may be out of my places. A village or in the divine sense. Right. I see us almost like divine chess pieces not being manipulated, but rather being led in and out of different roles in the circle in Western culture is like hold on to that power forever. [00:23:07] You know, it's like it's a power grab and you know, and that's so much about the split in our culture rather than we can share. [00:23:15] And also, sometimes it's time to mentor younger people and to power other people into power. [00:23:21] Well, that's really where it's up for me. It's whether it's chronological age or it's going to be a new experience for some of us. Right. Right. That it's something is showing up for them. [00:23:32] And I think. That's I mean, it really is I feel like my. I feel like I've been turned inside out like I'm going to be somebodies teacher on some level, I feel like then I share their karma. [00:23:47] It's a big deal. Yes. To step in to train someone or teach them this isn't little stuff. Right. These are on some level like soul contracts that come in. And it is it's a big deal if you're really listening and you're really honoring, you know, the potential for what can grow inside of that kind of relationship. Not to say that there are boundaries and clear beginnings and endings and graduations because those things are really important. [00:24:13] But I do think that. We're just so much more connected than we recognize. And I think somehow maybe we're waking up to more of our connectedness, and that's a beautiful thing, which means we're really here to serve each other. [00:24:30] Period. Period. I don't care what the power structure is. Yeah. We're here to serve each other. And if we get off that track, we're going to suffer. [00:24:39] Period. Exactly. No. And it feels so important to me to just say, if we're being called to teacher lead in any way, you damn well better have trusted peers and allies as well as elders are self on this side or the other side of the veil. It's really important we turn to regularly to stay in our integrity because there are so many ways we can take missteps around our power. [00:25:09] Because that's right. How we've been conditioned, Frank. [00:25:12] That's right. And I think in a way, you know, it takes me back to my hospice days like this is all death and dying work, you know. Yeah. I mean, it's like we should all be in a process of succession planning. Yeah, for sure. I'll be 55 on my next birthday, but I can't tell you. I'm thinking every day I think about, you know, my my own process of succession planning as part of my dying process. [00:25:36] And, you know, that time setting up have been setting up my new business plan with the woman I've been mentoring for seven years. [00:25:43] Like bringing her in closer and bringing her in with other teachers on my team and older people and also honoring her own wisdom as a millennial. [00:25:54] But like, you know, we're having these conversations that I'm having these conversations with everyone on my team. That and even changing the name of my business from Taryn Taylor Rubenstein to sematic writing, because I want sematic writing to go on beyond me. [00:26:10] So. Right. [00:26:11] You know, and we you and I have talked about that with our potential work together, perhaps in the future, like how if we're not thinking in a systems way that can be in the greater service, we're missing huge opportunities and actually missing our part of real power, of being able to lead people in to sustainable practices that can deepen and deepen and deepen over time, whether we're here or not. [00:26:44] That's exactly right. And then then it's I find when I when I am in that place, it's such a great relief. Like the seduction tells us, there's not going to be enough. So we have to hold on to what's ours and be known when you let go of that. That's where the relief as you just it's like then it's like you just want to push other people up. That's really our greatest way of being. My God service and being as being known is to become somebody else's root system. Like, how do we become nourishment for the root so that these plants keep growing in this human world or in the, you know, the human ocean? [00:27:20] It's so I mean, I even see it in my business. I've been trying to play roles that aren't mine because it's not just my business. Right. [00:27:28] It's such a relief when I bring in other people to take that over. And it makes me bigger, not smaller. But noticing, you know, the fear from the ego around delegation, around spreading money around whatever, but like really standing behind myself allows for. [00:27:46] The spaciousness of others certain. [00:27:50] I want to kind of end my part with sharing a little story about succession planning and how surprising it can be because we don't always see the fruits of our of our service and our love. [00:28:03] Right. And I when I first started teaching in Nashville, there was a young woman who took one year of training for me. And it was before I put the whole program together and knew that I, you know, my way would be, you know, three different levels in order to really serve people. [00:28:17] And it was OK because that was a work in progress, it was evolutionary. But she. So this was three years ago. She recently had a baby who I think now is about four months old, and she sent me the most incredible video of her in the shower with her daughter, and she's holding her cat, her iPhone up. [00:28:39] And while she's making a little video of her baby girl, she's saying all these healing words to her like, you are my daughter. I am your mother. I see you. You belong. And the baby literally was like the look on her face every time this young woman would speak. This baby looked like she was like in this rapture, Jolie. It was just the most incredible thing. And I thought. I never in a million years would have guessed that that Constellation training would become such an integral part of how this young woman would become a mother. We did constellations while she was pregnant. We did a constellation before she conceived for this baby. Amazing. MIA So like I just thought, oh, wow. What is the ripple effect? We don't know. But it's such it's such a testament to saying true staying true to what our calling is, even if that calling takes us underground for a while as mine is doing. Right. Yeah. [00:29:51] And even if that calling manifests in the world in the last year of our life. [00:29:56] Exactly. You know, I had a I had an amazing acting teacher, Bill Hickey, when I was young in New York. And he was just always this sort of outsider character, you know? And oh, my God, he was incredible. So he would always talk about every story is a love story. You know, he was that guy I've told you about, you know. [00:30:15] And he was like 70 years old. [00:30:17] And he was like it just looked like he was always just going to be this amazing marginal teacher who every now and then got a role, a small character role on or off Broadway. [00:30:29] But, you know, and then at that at like 70 years old, he just he got put in a film and was nominated for an Oscar. He didn't win. But I remember watching him. You know, he had a shock of gray hair and his bow tie was like askew cause he was kind of just one of those. He almost looked like a homeless person, you know, dripping in his tuxedo like 90 pounds. I cried when I saw him. [00:30:53] But then from that opportunity, he worked as an actor constantly in film and movies for the rest of his life. And he never became a household word. But I always thought there he was like from 70 to 80. And after all those years of being so devoted to his craft and his students and his love of acting and his mastery, bam, you know, there it happened. [00:31:20] But even if he'd hadn't, he would've been on Bank Street teaching the classes, coming late to class, eat drinking because his whiskey out of his thermos. Right. [00:31:30] Because goes house, you wouldn't have been any less secure when you can as one person and so on. And it's a contributor. That's right. Right. [00:31:37] So it's like the devotion to our souls journey. [00:31:41] And if we ever waver from it to just come back, come back, come back, and the deepening deepening is going to take us where we go, no matter what happens at the outside in the world. Right. [00:31:54] You know, you look a great like Van Gogh who didn't sell a painting in his lifetime. And 100 years later, you walk into the Louver, his he's still present. Why are you laughing? [00:32:09] Oh, he's awake. You know. Well, I'm glad we'll still be laughing together. [00:32:16] I may not laugh for a while on this podcast, but I want to say it's really been an honor and a privilege to be a part of this. And. And I leave it with you. [00:32:29] I'll take it from you, Camille. And you win. And we'll just say in terms of the outer story, always to be continued to continue and to you and to yeah. [00:32:40] To all our listeners. Just know I'll be bringing on some amazing people in this during your inquiry. [00:32:47] In the meantime and I want to just give a special thank you shout out to Grant Taylor, my dear friend, and and the person who's been editing these podcasts for now. And he is a friend of both of ours. And he's another 19, 20 year relationship and a totally f part creative partner. [00:33:08] Well, wait. That was when we met him through. [00:33:10] And a Darah. Exactly right. A year ago. So much gratitude to Gray. [00:33:15] I know. I know. All right. Big love. [00:33:24] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture. If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on iTunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community. Restoring the culture. You can support our podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we reach story our own lives. See you next time.

In Episode #16, Camille and Tanya explore opportunities for silver linings in the many challenges we are all facing this year by radically re-storying 2020.   Tanya shares a deeply personal story of her ex-husband’s 19-year struggle with mental illness and recent suicide. Stephen’s death is tragic, but it has also provided a needed release for his family and loved ones, who felt like they had lost him years ago.   From mental illness to concentration camp memoirs to activism, over-identifying with the victim or the perpetrator can cause us to lose ourselves in our trauma. When we are out of our power, we cannot help or support each other.   In the short term, 2020 may seem like the year from hell, but in the long term it may lead to needed clarity. Tanya and Camille each share what they have lost and gained this year and how the challenges of 2020 have led them to reclaim their wholeness.   “When the worst happens...there is still the opportunity for incredible blessing through connection. That's what can't be taken: our connection with ourselves and with each other.” -Tanya Taylor Rubinstein   Episode Transcript [00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubinstein Story mentor, and Camille Adair, family constellation facilitator. [00:00:11] In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories servi lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness, moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments. In truth, so many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longing. [00:00:38] Each one of us is necessary rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can restoring the culture together. [00:00:52] Hey, everybody, this is Tonya. And welcome back to another episode of Restoring the Culture with my dear friend Camille Adair and me. And today we are going to talk about radically restoring 20/20 and what that means to us. [00:01:11] And Camille's going to start with a little passage from Victor Frankel's man's search for meaning. [00:01:19] But in robbing the prison of its reality there lay a certain danger. [00:01:26] It became easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive of camp life opportunities, which really did exist. [00:01:39] Leaves me speechless, right? [00:01:42] Amazing. Yeah, this speak by leaving us speechless. Sort of not unlike this year. Right. [00:01:49] There's a lot of speechlessness. And I think I mean, to think if you could find a silver lining. [00:01:56] And living in a concentration camp, surely we can find silver linings. For 20/20 with. [00:02:08] The pandemic. With massive fires, with many deaths from the pandemic. [00:02:17] With social isolation and the wave of depression that's resulting from that increased suicides. Right. [00:02:27] I mean, we can pay the the dark picture, but what's underneath it that's wanting to get our attention? I'd love to know your thoughts on that. Mm hmm. [00:02:38] Well, thanks for asking. It's such a huge. [00:02:42] Such a huge topic that we're biting off here. [00:02:46] And I just want to say to our listeners, as always, there's no dogma here. [00:02:51] There's no agenda here. [00:02:55] We just let you all in on our personal exploration, which is what Camille and I have been doing and our friendship for 20 years. So, I mean, it's it's a humbling thing. It's interesting that you chose Victor Frankl, because I have been moved to. [00:03:12] I've been rereading Elie Wiesel's night and day, also concentration camp memoirs. I'm thinking about the children at the border and concentration camps and also reading about the forced sterilization of people of color, women of color in Georgia. And you know just what's happening in this moment. Right. So I just want to first acknowledge this moment, September 20th, 2020, a couple days after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. That being in the news also. Right. Right after Rosh Hashana. Right after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. So and in the midst of it all were 40, I think 45 or 46 days from the U.S. presidential election. So so why are we both being called to return to Holocaust stories now? [00:04:06] It's like. Well, I think about Steven. Yeah. If we read story, what's going on personally, right? I mean, that takes me to the personal. [00:04:15] Well, it's very interesting. So Stephen was my is my was my daughter's father, and he committed suicide. [00:04:24] This in the last three weeks ago today. [00:04:30] And he had schizoaffective disorder. [00:04:33] He was. Jewish. [00:04:38] From L.A., sort of the nice Jewish boy stereotype or a trope or whatever, but he really was that very, very brilliant and. [00:04:51] His family had Holocaust drama on his father's side. I think this is what I want to say about all of it. What I want to come back to when you asked me that question. OK. There's trauma. We are a traumatized society where traumatized culture, we're traumatized species. And I think about like the Peter Levine work about in our animal self and our nervous systems, how animals have been attending to their trauma and had because of our mindset and because of things we talk about patriarchy, white supremacy and on and on colonization, all the things that have kept us in boxes and how those things traumatize us individually and collectively. So how do we seek liberation? [00:05:44] In the camps while holding space to get out of the camps. How do rats, how do we open to liberation in the prison of our trauma? Wow. Walking our way out of that trauma to the best of our ability. [00:06:02] I guess I'm curious to know in what way have you been released from a concentration camp since Stephen died? [00:06:10] Such a great question. Well. The love was liberated. The mental illness and his trauma. [00:06:22] Played into my own trauma when I lost my daughter's father and it was in a very traumatic so circumstance and what it did was it triggered my trauma and I started getting panic attacks. I stopped performing my own. One woman shows I became afraid to speak about my life publicly onstage when that had been my art form before. And I became terrified that something would happen to my daughter. It felt life or death to me. [00:06:57] When I saw what happened to Schizophrenic's, what I saw, there was no Stephen unknown in his eyes. [00:07:05] And he was trying to strangle me on my daughter's fourth birthday. And it was that was not who he was in any shape or form. You know, I said to you earlier. He was the least racist. Most feminists that I knew about in the best sense of the word, the least homophobic, white, cis straight man I ever met. He was truly committed to social justice. [00:07:29] He had been an anti-apartheid advocate when when he was in Berkeley as a young man. And he was just so about justice and about love. But when I lost him and this is the help mental illness, when you're on the other side of it and of course, for the person is we lose the ability to access. [00:07:51] But what happened was that trauma cut off my voice. [00:07:55] And like I was saying to you, as soon as he died, there was total grief. I smashed my finger really hard that night and had to go to the emergency room the night before. He jumped that night, that same night. And I smash my grandmother's wedding ring that I always wore the diamonds into my finger and it was bleeding and had to be cut off by the doctor. And a few hours later he'd jumped and there was some kind of cosmic connection. But and I screamed when when that finger was hurt, I screamed like this, this hellacious scream that I only remember screaming twice before and once had to do with his suicide attempt before. [00:08:44] Oh, wow. So. I think we're all cosmically connected. I know it, I know it in my being. I. [00:08:55] I think the support from the other side of the veil is greater than it's ever been teaching us, showing me personally that the connection and the love is always there. [00:09:07] All the ancestral work, both you and I have done all the personal healing work. I like to come to that the love is always there and that we can move back and forth the Brit across the bridge. And I love what Victus Franco says and Elie Wiesel to a different story. [00:09:23] But this thing of the opportunity of the present moment, even in the worst of circumstances, to me that's radical radical resilience. So how in 2020, you know, the year people are calling the hell a year. [00:09:40] How can we restore it to see the incredible opportunities to be in service to each other, to love each other more at this time? [00:09:52] Well, it's interesting. As I hear you talk, one of the ways that I wonder about. This restoring for you and for me, I met Stephen. Fortunately knew him before his mental illness. Yeah. You know, set sat in. One of the things that strikes me is that you refer to him as the father of your daughter. He was your husband. And I remember that hit me when you told me that he died, that he suicided. [00:10:25] I remember at 4:00, as sad as I was for your daughter, I was sad for you because you lost a husband who you divorced only because of his mental his untreated mental illness. You didn't divorce Steven. You divorced his mental illness. [00:10:47] It's a very interesting thing you are saying. [00:10:52] And because I was thinking yesterday, I mean, I wrote something up and I said, I don't have a problem. [00:11:02] With white people, I have a problem with whiteness. I don't have a problem. [00:11:08] I never did with Stephen. I have the problem with mental illness. [00:11:11] If we can separate out the toxicity, whether it's individual or cultural, and of course, it's not just toxicity that sounds so harsh. [00:11:21] It's a byproduct of trauma. All of it. [00:11:24] Well, and because of that, every race has that trauma, which absolutely watching that makes it really hard and how we language all of this. Right. [00:11:35] It's why I'm reading this book right now, my grandmother's hands. [00:11:38] And it's about racialized trauma and the pathways to mending our hearts and bodies. And it talks about the different things we need to do if we're in white bodies versus black bodies because it's all DNA memory from our own clusters. [00:11:53] And that's different. It takes on a different tone and tenor. [00:11:59] That's right. That makes a lot of sense to me. [00:12:02] You know, just like schizophrenia takes on a different tenor than somebody who loses somebody to drug addiction or somebody who loses somebody to cancer. There's all there's a loss and all those things. But there's a different human story right attached to it, which is why, once again, the thing you and I talk about the as above so below path. [00:12:25] But yes. And Steven was my husband. He was my best friend for sure. We shared values in a profound way, which was the only reason I agreed to have a child with him. I wasn't sure I wanted a child. I wasn't one of those women that always knew they'd have a child. It was his idea. And I was 32 when I got pregnant and. [00:12:53] The love once again is released and I feel him helping me. You were the one that said to me it's like after 19 years of losing him to mental illness. [00:13:04] I got the FA. I got the other parent back. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. You have him back? [00:13:11] I have him back as the other parent. And I do want to say that was always more our natural relationship was friendship and co parent. [00:13:20] It wasn't some big love affair on either side. There was love, but we felt familial immediately when we met. We felt so deeply familial. And in many ways I'd say, yeah, definitely like co parents and best friends. And so that's the honest energy of us. And I can own the honest energy of us because I think we spent a lot of time. We had problems besides his schizophrenia. That was what took us down. [00:13:52] But there was definitely a trying to make our relationship a big love affair, and it wasn't. [00:14:01] And so there's something to about like that was conflict in our relationship that had nothing to do with his mental illness. [00:14:06] We were great co parents and best friends. And we have a beautiful daughter together, a beautiful, brilliant daughter. [00:14:17] So I wonder, what is the relationship? I mean, I'm not saying there's an answer to this, because the most profound wisdom is I think at these in these days is held in the unknown. But I guess I want to skirt the edges of an inquiry which is feeling into the relationship between covered and Stevens, the timing of Stevens death. [00:14:40] Well, then I want to hear from you. The relationship between Kofod and everything that's changed in your life because, yes, like, well, people are saying 20-20 right is the worst year, the year from hell. And I would say through the Ecos lens. [00:14:57] That's the truth. [00:14:59] I mean, from the souls lands and from the long stories lands, because that's what we're here for, right? The long story, my friend and teacher, right now, produ taffin talks all the time about the long story of the soul and all the threads past, present, future, quantum time, no matter what's going on in the body now. [00:15:23] So in the long story, I feel like 2020 is a blessing. I could never say it will be a blessing that my daughter's father was in that much pain and that he had to end his life, felt he had to end his life that way. [00:15:41] But the the liberation that I feel personally and that that knowing he is also free of that suffering, there's like I feel like there's an outbreath. [00:15:53] And I was talking with his mother about it like that we're all taking an outbreath cause and eat and, you know, like we know how the story ends now. And there's something holding with that that's so hard. I think it's a metaphor for this time. [00:16:07] The tension part of what the tension of those 19 years did teach me was holding with the tension, not knowing the ending of the story. And it's hard to hold with that tension. [00:16:22] And then the story changed, right? It didn't really. And it changed. [00:16:28] Yeah, well, it reminds me of the living dead. I mean, I think it's that way with people, you know, who have Alzheimer's or dementia. [00:16:35] Yes. Yes. People with with severe mental illness, untreated mental illness. [00:16:41] People with, you know, late stage substance abuse addiction. I think it's like the person left a long time ago. And so what you are left with is this body that is acting things out in certain ways and a voice that may still sound like them. And, of course, their soul is still there in some way. [00:17:01] But the relationship that we had was interrupted. [00:17:08] Exactly. And and they become unavailable for a long time for the relationship. And it's actually in the release of the body that the love, the availability comes back. So for me, in terms of 20/20. Right, so many deaths. [00:17:24] And I think we're seeing like. The death culture we live in, the extreme materialism, the extreme pressure on us all to do something. Be something the. My God, the struggles, you know, and where it's taken us at this moment in humanity around the big issues and that the intimacy issues. So I don't know. But I just know you have for me that there's a clarity. [00:17:59] And I have my voice back in a way, and I feel him supporting me. And so what happens? Like Victor Frankl in the camps. What happens when the worst happens? And there is still this opportunity. For incredible blessing through connection, right? That's what can't be taken if we have connection with ourselves and with each other. [00:18:26] I think that's been the silver lining for me, even though the process has been hard, very hard at times, is that it's forced me inward, right? It's like I was traveling a lot. I had a lot of ways in which I was had developed really sophisticated coping mechanisms for some things that were difficult for me to face. [00:18:46] And. [00:18:48] And we all do that. Right. I mean, it's not a bad thing. That's like kind of some part of human brilliance is that we we find our ways. Right. [00:18:56] And and then to be someone who loves to travel and loves to engage with a lot of people. [00:19:02] And then here I am. And my you know, I mean, what is it? [00:19:06] It's like maybe 14 by 14 foot office where I spend most of my time. And so it has definitely driven me inside of myself. [00:19:18] And. [00:19:20] I have to be careful, right, that I don't get lost. [00:19:23] But I also feel like, you know, we've been moving into such a different direction in our culture. Right. [00:19:31] We've been doing this inflationary move for so long around, get bigger, get louder, be more visible. Right. And I feel like something's happened for me where I'm going into this reverse place and I'm finally I'm fine. And it's happening organically. It's not been something I've contemplated. It just is happening because of the circumstances. But it's become so deep for me that it's like I'm going. [00:20:00] I'm going into almost like a gestational phase. And I think it's really good. I mean, I think that that's really the blessing of it. Right. [00:20:09] It's and it's amazing. And you and I talked about it's almost like we're like the sliding doors because I realize her to me really went small and small for me. Doesn't necessarily look like small for somebody else. Like somebody could look at me and say, that's not small, that's big. But for me, I contained for 19 years and it was a big deal when I stopped performing and felt a lot of fear about what had always come naturally to me and what I'd been trained in as an actor. [00:20:40] And I know that right now, as you're going in, my call is to show up with my team now in the world and to lean all the way and with my voice and what I learned and what I've integrated. And all of a sudden there's a congruency in my voice that hasn't been there before. There was like fragmented. [00:21:02] I had parts of myself, but I actually feel that I have my whole self back. Maybe for the first time since I was a young child. [00:21:14] You know, it's interesting when I think about because you said you lost your voice when Steven's mental illness came as to play, right? Yeah. [00:21:20] And I think that there are many ways which in which the soul can become entangled. And it's not just past and future can be in the present. [00:21:29] But it almost makes me wonder if part of you. [00:21:34] Was occupying a space with Steven. And that that's part of where your voice went, was sort of in accompanying him in a way where he was at. Like, could there have been almost some kind of an entanglement in the present moment? That isn't about time, but it is about space and conditions, right? [00:21:53] Yes, there totally was. And you're so intuitive to ask that question, because what I got. And I haven't said to anybody out loud was when he tried to strangle me because his schizophrenia had kicked in. He was looking in my eyes and tried to strangle me and kill me on my daughter's fourth birthday. Somebody had to stop driving by and pull them off. And from my point of view, there was no conflict. Then I looked in his eyes that I went, Oh, Steven's gone mad. There's no Steven there. Nobody. He didn't have his diagnosis shed. Nobody believed me. But I knew there was something that was. I'm a cop, cautious with my words here, because it's not going to sound maybe politically correct, but there was an energy in him that was very. [00:22:47] Evil. It looks like a demon to me. And I met its gaze cause it was a Steven, I met this energies gaze and. The night Stephen died, when I set my finger was smashed and I yelled. There was that energy came out of me in the scream. [00:23:14] And it scared my scared my current husband. And I felt it come through my eyes. [00:23:20] And I looked up, said like Steven looked at me and I was like some part of me. I swallowed part of the energy perhaps for him. And it was suppressing me. [00:23:35] I mean, it was wild. And then when I when I heard about his death, I knew immediately the energy that had come out of me the night before that. [00:23:44] Like in quantum time before he jumped, I was released from that energy. [00:23:50] It makes a lot of sense and, you know, it's interesting because in one of the traditions I work in schizophrenia because of schizophrenia is an identification with both the victim and the perpetrator. [00:24:04] Well, Steven told me getting back to the Holocaust, I had a very, very strong belief and a past life memory that I was put to death in the camps as a Jewish pope, Polish woman. Steven had a very strong belief that he was a guard, a Nazi guard in the camps. [00:24:24] Really? Well, what's really interesting, when we think back on Victor Frankl, he that's well, that was his sanity. Was that. [00:24:32] He didn't identify with the perpetrators. He also didn't identify with the victims. He stayed, Victor. [00:24:41] So, like, how do we remain who we are amidst all of the turmoil is happening in the world and stay ourselves when we when we identify with the victim or the perpetrator. [00:24:54] It's like we don't even recognize that we literally have stepped in to some kind of like a toxic field. [00:25:04] Perdita would call it a puddle. [00:25:07] She calls it like we step in the puddle of our issue and our ancestral issue, perhaps. And certainly for me. [00:25:15] That has happened with particularly my activist self, like Around Black Lives Matter. And my relationship to really decolonizing myself and whiteness. But there was a point when I over identified with black women's pain. And then when we when I realized when I did that I was out of my power. I was actually out of even being useful to them. And it was I was re traumatizing myself. I also wasn't in deep relationship then. And you could always tell. I could always tell on social media, like white women who are just sort of like I just want to say kissing ass to black women. [00:25:54] And they're they're out of their power. They just think, now I've got to give all my power away. [00:26:00] I can't. And when the reality is it's not an intimate relationship unless we can actually address these things and talk about them. Right. So there's so many ways, so many puddles. [00:26:13] We can step in and be outside of our integrity, around the power we do carry. And being honest about it because of our overidentification with the victim or the perpetrator. And I do think in our culture we celebrate overidentification with victimhood. It's really hard to support ourselves in each other and standing actually and owning our full power. Right. And you and I have talked about the self victim. [00:26:39] Identifying with the victim leads to entitlement and then we become the perpetrator. Right. I mean, it really is. They really are on the same continuum. Yes. They're not separate continuums. They're completely related. [00:26:51] It's a different paradigm. And they we move back and forth between victim, perpetrator and inner victim, outer victim, inner perpetrator out of victim. Right. It's a different paradigm to say I'm here. I'm here with my ancestors. I'm here. I'm right. Relationships are willing to become right. [00:27:08] Relationship with everybody. Right. I mean, and it's messy. I do want to say it's not a linear process in my experience. Right. [00:27:17] Right. [00:27:19] So what else do you want to say about 2020, 20-20, like, what is your what is your wisdom? Like, if you had to distill it of like what you've gotten so far from this year and perhaps your hope moving forward, I think. [00:27:37] One of the things that's happened for me is that I've given myself permission to really have more limitation, like in awe. [00:27:50] It's almost like the pathway to me for me to unfold in my fullness is by saying, knowing when to say no and knowing when to say yes, that there is no price like the price of leaving part of myself behind is not negotiable now. That's become a reason. And that's a real shift inside of me. That is, it's changing me. And I would also say that I've. [00:28:17] I feel like I have cut I've come into contact with the intelligence of love and not just the love between people, but the intelligence of love. And I really feel like for me, that's. [00:28:36] It's not only the gift, it's like I'm waking up to something that I've always known. Mm hmm. So what Cobbett, what the pandemic and what all of this has done for me in getting more in touch with myself is it's actually more of a remembering than a learning something new. Right. It's detaching from all the distractions that kept me, you know, spending more time on the level of persona than the level of soul. Yeah, totally. [00:29:05] How about you? [00:29:09] I think this time has really awakened me to embodying. [00:29:16] Myself and has confronted my own spiritual bypass, my desire to spiritual bypass or do emotional bypass and really land more in my body land and become more human. [00:29:35] I feel like like containment is my medicine because I've been able to express myself throughout my life despite saying I lost part of my voice. [00:29:48] That's true. And I've still been able to express more than contain. So everything is about simplicity, structure. And that's to me, the sacred masculine I'm bringing in to the relationship with the divine feminine. I'm feel. [00:30:07] Much more whole from coming through this year. [00:30:10] And and great fall like for the expiated lessons of this year, because I know we have to learn now as a species, not individually only, but as a species in quantum time, because there is no time with everything that's happening in the big cosmic narratives. And my hope going forward is, you know, one of the things I've been saying to my clients is how are we going to write news stories of the culture? [00:30:40] I think it's now about getting smaller, not bigger. And why smaller? I mean, more intimate. [00:30:48] I do, too. Hundred percent sharing our deepest, most intimate stories and making the unspeakable, unspeakable. And moving past shame. Right. That's how we're going to. Those are the news stories said the old stories. They're also the news stories going deeper in that connection. [00:31:09] Sounds like we're moving, huh? Things are moving and shifting and. As always, it's a privilege to be here. I feel. [00:31:20] Yeah, this one feels important. That's all I'll say. Mm hmm. [00:31:24] Thanks, everybody, for listening. Yeah. Thanks, everyone, for being with us. [00:31:33] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture. If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on iTunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community. Restoring the culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we reach story. Our own lives. See you next time.

In Episode #15, Camille and Tanya discuss the relationship between love, desire, money, and business. They reclaim the playful, fun, attractive energy of money that comes from a space of abundance rather than scarcity. When our business model is based on love and our work is aligned with our personal purpose and values, we are not just financially stable, but abundant and thriving. Despite what our culture tells us, we do not have to do business alone. We can decolonize business by supporting others and allowing them to support us. Tanya and Camille share recent revelations (which came to them on the same day!) about re-storying their businesses as circular/communal rather than linear/hierarchical, effectively rewriting their business models as love stories. “When I let myself and my desires lead in the world, I allow myself to be seen in a way where money comes back to me to serve the mission and the purpose.” -Tanya Taylor Rubinstein   Episode Transcript [00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubins Steele Story mentor, and Camille Adair, family constellation facilitator. [00:00:11] In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories servi lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness, moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments. In true, so many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longings. [00:00:38] Each one of us is necessary and rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can read story the culture together. [00:00:51] Welcome to Restoring the Culture today. Tonya and I are going to be talking about restoring business, and I'm going to start with a quote by Lynn Twist, who wrote the book, The Soul of Money. [00:01:04] There are no haves and have nots. We are all haves and our assets are diverse in the alchemy of collaboration. [00:01:13] We become equal partners. We create wholeness and sufficiency for everyone. [00:01:21] I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, Tanya. Well, thanks for this topic today. [00:01:26] I mean, yeah, it's amazing to me that it's taken us so long to get here since I think this is, what, our 14th or 15th podcasts. And yet our lives in many ways have been consumed by our business because it's the container, right, for each of our callings. Purpose, you know, passion. I love Lynne Twist's quote. [00:01:50] I met her many years ago at Bioneers, and I know she's been at you, Pyaar, here in Santa Fe. I mean, I love that because. [00:02:00] I think on a deep spiritual level, there's a sense of we are all haves are worth. It's not based on money. Our worth is is. [00:02:13] Valued beyond being qualified or quantified in any way. But I love this piece of that in the spirit of collaboration. When each of us is in our right place and when we're able as leaders to facilitate others as well as ourselves into our right place, the incredible magic and alchemy, empowerment, sharing of resources, redistribution of resources that can happen from that place. [00:02:48] And what a beautiful way of talking about equity and inclusion. [00:02:55] And I would add to that love, because I've had a recent recognition and a very deep recognition about myself, that really it's as if I'm married. You know, we talk about being married to our work and that there's such a negative connotation to that. Your terms of being a workaholic? That's not what I'm talking about. But when your purpose and why you're here, it comes through in a business container. That's a sacred thing. And I feel a lot of love entering into my work and the people that I work with. It's almost like there is an alchemical element that love brings in when you mix love. And I know this is gonna sound strange, but I've been thinking about this for a long time. Something about the energy of love and the energy of money. Because money is currency like electricity. It's relational. And, you know, I've been talking about hot pink money and I've written about it. And there is a very feminine quality to money that and as currency as exchange that has been co-opted and made dirty. Right. [00:04:09] We think of dirty money and all the things, but that's very overlapping call. [00:04:13] Totally. And I think what we're talking about with restoring business is when business is it's also personal, like absolutely separate from each other. [00:04:27] I mean, I couldn't agree more. And I've never resonated with being a workaholic. I work a lot. I might want to work more or more like I might spend my whole life working. [00:04:38] And there's nothing wrong with me. You know, I don't. I don't. [00:04:42] And I really I mean, because I have such a deep calling passion. I'm excited. I wake up in the morning at five thirty in the morning. Sometimes I'm awake at 3:00 in the morning because I have a vision to bring story to the world, to serve, to serve more and more people in sharing their stories, because I'm so in love with the process of stories. But also, you know, that excites me more than going to Hawaii or going to Italy. Not that those things aren't wonderful once in a while, but I feel so blessed because my passion resides inside of me. And I know we share this. [00:05:17] And when I think about money, too, and when money arrives for me as a beautiful support of resource, for me to support others, for me to support my life, my daughter's life, my husband's life, creative projects, social justice, things that I'm passionate about, being able to also just enjoy taking my friends like you out to dinner or to or when we do do a little getaway. All those things I've come to think of money as attach money comes to me and my business. And yes, they're linked from love. And also very specifically from desire. The more I let myself have what I desire. Meaning connections with people. Meaning sexuality. Meaning food. Meaning speaking exactly the way I want to without editing myself when I let myself and my desires lead in the world. I allow myself to be seen in a way where, you know, money just comes back to me to serve the mission and the purpose. So there's a whole relational thing when I'm shut down and not in touch with my desires or trying to tamp myself down or not or big. Not giving myself support, having enough team, having enough other collaborators. That's when the money channel shuts off. And it's also when I get depressed or get feel isolated or cut off from a part of myself. I think I just want to say that this. [00:07:03] We're not talking about amount of money because there are only our people in the world who who really are suffering because they don't have enough of this currency. And what I want to say is I don't want to do any kind of like a spiritual bypass by not recognizing that. But what I want to. I totally agree with you. And I want to say that it's I think what you're saying is like money is relational. There is a currency. It's energetic. It's it's energetic. And I will never forget when I was I had led a constellation. And this was several years ago and it was in my house and it was something happened that's never happened before, which was because it's usually like with a lot of healing gatherings and modalities, it's often women that show up. Well. I was facilitating and it was all men. There wasn't one. I was the only woman. And somebody wanted to do a constellation about their business. And so we ended up bringing money in and we were short on representatives and on occasion, the facilitator will step in to represent something. So I did that. And when I became money, it was so incredible to just feel what it felt like to be money, because I simply was pure relation. I was relational. I was going to whoever could see me value you, who could see me, who could value me, who wanted to be in relationship with me. I felt almost a little bit seductive. [00:08:38] Not not sexual, but I felt like it. Like you're saying, there was an element of desire there. Like there was this kind of like free flowing, abundant feeling. And I wanted to play and I wanted to play with as many people who wanted to play with me. Like, the more the merrier it was. [00:08:57] I just love that totally. And I don't mean it at all. Anything I was saying is bypassed. [00:09:03] For me it's more about like when I shut off my power or we shut off our channels of power. I think it's it's just something we're not available. Right. And it's totally relationship relational. As you said, it's available to other people and we're in a collapse or or or money or opportunity. I think it's actually all relational. So where are my out with myself in relationship to this? And then how do I allow these things to flow in to support my purpose and vision in my business? And what structures do I use for that? Because I think that's the diff. They are not the opposite. But the the companion piece is then with what structures are we allowing these energies to play? Well, and I know we want to go there in this conversation, but what you just said is reminding me of a couple things. [00:10:01] First of all, that money is connected to. The same shocker that sexuality and creativity are. It takes me back to what you were saying about being in your power. And I think that's being grounded in that root chakra area of personal power. And when we're disconnected from our personal power, it's like the money, the creativity, the sexuality. It's like the valve is shut down prior to turn down. And you and I have had over the years, because we've seen it both in in both of our work in different ways. But it's been such a common thread between us is how much people who have a trust fund have been cut off from personal power. We see it so many times. You see it in and in people's writing and their process. And I see it so much in Constellation work. [00:11:00] Yeah. And even in relationship to money, I feel that. I mean, it's a disservice I. It's so interesting, too, because they also have to deal with the dual projection of everybody thinks they have it like made because they have a trust fund. [00:11:15] So there's resentment that was often projected on that person. But if you think about it, there is a sense of and I'm not talking about I mean, of course, it's a tremendous privilege to have some kind of family trust or with no right inheritance, but to have a trust fund that. In some ways, it's a message of I can't trust you to be in your own power and take care of yourself. It's a message from the family that you're going to always need to be helped. And so I find women in particular a few times, men who have this. There's a sense of. I'm not powerful. I'm not strong. I can't make my own money or this wouldn't. It's a whole trip around money, right, where supposedly it's from a place of privilege. And yet from that privilege comes a weakening of the individual's access to their own full body strength rather than a support. Of course, there's times when this is not the case. Of course, there are times when people take it and go start an amazing venture business. But so often it's more in my experience, it squashes the voice or there's a sense of confusion. And I'd love to hear what the field to show about this. [00:12:38] What I've seen in the Constellation work and the knowing field is that the family soul gets disrupted because people become confused between the money that was left and their lineage. They think that the money is their lineage and the money will never be their ancestral lineage. But there's confusion about it. And what I've seen happen is that when that is clarified or acknowledged and the orders of love are put in in their right order in the field, the people, the ancestors are so relieved that they're actually being taken as the ancestors, as the lineage connected and lineage instead of connected in money. So, Carla, money is energy, but it isn't soul. [00:13:30] It's not soul. And that's then we get confused. Well, and in Western culture and in patriarchal systems or any oppressive system, what is God? God is money. That is not the soul. God does not God. God is money. Right. So the confusion because of then the projection on money, that rather being a beautiful divine resource to support our lives and the lives of all on the planet, that it is something that needs to be hoarded, that it needs to be clung to, that is scarce to get. So we get it. We must hang on to rather that and that energy you were talking about, which was it wanted to have fun, it wanted to be wanted and it was available and relational with all who were available to it. [00:14:16] And I mean and I think that brings me back to the because sexuality is not just what we think it is, right. We've done some weird things with sexuality. I mean, it can be it can be sensuality. It can be playful. It can be fuller. A little flirtatious. Right. Sexuality is about being alive. [00:14:34] And so sexuality can be expressed in so many different ways that line up with creativity and line up with and support that currency of of money. [00:14:47] And it does come from the same place that we don't always recognize that. I think it can come in so many forms. I remember a long time ago I was performing in a play. I was in my late 20s and I was in a committed, monogamous relationship with my daughter's father. And I became very attracted to my costar in the show. [00:15:10] And I was kind of flirting around with wanting to have, I don't know, kiss him. [00:15:16] I don't know. I didn't really want to leave my partner, but there was a thing there and we clearly both felt it. [00:15:22] And I was able to speak with my daughter's dad about it, who I was in relationship with. And he said something very wise to me because he was a wise person. Yeah, he was a wise pend. [00:15:34] He said to me, he said, well, you know, is it possible that you just have such a powerful, creative connection with Joe that the energetic is just so much excitement and you can really fully channel that brilliance into the role? And as soon as he said that, I went Bingo! And it was like all that energy I wanted to project on him. Like sexual, I have total affair. It's going to be a thing between me and my guy. He was able to actually help me reframe that. And I've been doing that reframe ever since. So sometimes when I'm attracted to somebody or outside of my partnership, I'll ask myself, am I interested really in a romantic connection with this person or is this is about a creative connection? Is this about a playful connection? Is this are two inner children want to hang out together? And over the years that has served me really well. But sometimes it is it's like this well of energy and then that perhaps we have more of a choice than we think we do. How to focus it? [00:16:42] Well, and we don't have leaders. We're not taught most of us growing up the how to handle those energies. [00:16:50] Yeah. And we're afraid of them. And we think they're just going to take us over, ruin our business. We're going to have these dramas and we see it happens all the time in leadership and politics, in organizations and in families with children and teenagers. [00:17:04] Right. I mean, we really get it in adolescence when our hormones are going. [00:17:07] And really, there's no there are no wisdom leaders to, like, teach us how to to think about and work with those powerful energies which which, you know, really I mean, it takes me back to kind of like the. [00:17:24] The relationship between love and shame, because when all of that can be allowed to belong, right, it can rest in this field of love where everything has its place. And then we get to have access to our full humanity. Shame is, I feel like shame and trauma are so connected that our shame based culture has really traumatized us. I think we actually and that takes me to kind of what what I've been working on in the field of mental health and Kofod is that I actually think there's there's so much shame in splitting happening right now rather than people coming together and feeling a sense of love and solidarity in the face of the challenges that we're facing and that there are all these diverse ways of relating to it, but that in the end, it's something that we share. We're all human and we're all vulnerable. We're all going to think about it a little bit differently, but that we have taken our trauma, our collective trauma, and it's driving us into these places of shame, creating bigger division. And when that happens, it's like we almost shut down the alchemical process. And I want to go back to the original quote when all those elements can be there. That's when the alchemical process can start to heat up and cook. But we have been taught to to shut those things down because we don't know what that is. We don't know how to handle it. We don't know. [00:18:52] Well, it's a big energy to be willing to lean into and let it run through your body, too. Right. [00:18:57] We shut those big energies down all the time instead of knowing that they're natural and normal and that they aren't us. [00:19:05] Right. They're running through us. And I just it's really sad. I'm starting to think about, you know, Paul Zak's work, the neuro economist about and I've talked about him on this podcast before and his work with trust and and close bonded, intimate relationships. Right. That oxytocin is produced in safe, intimate connection and that that oxytocin is what produces trust and that the the countries that have the highest levels of trust are the most economically sound. So it takes us full circle almost. We can track it spiritually. We can track it from a neuro biological standpoint and economically. [00:19:50] And it ties into economics. So it actually takes me back to that place of money as part of nature. [00:19:56] And it is relational in relationship with everything. [00:20:00] And nature is is relational. Everything has its place in its process. But we're so afraid of our own nature that we've shut it down. [00:20:10] And and I do believe that we are having, like, unprecedented collective trauma and I think unprecedented collective liberation, both because at the same time, I feel I mean, I'm definitely in touch with people every day who are liberating, who are really breaking free right now from old stories. It's that radical energy and the collective it is to me. What's what's been breaking out of the box and the fact that we've gotten our backs so up against the wall here in America in particular, like our backs are so up against the wall. Something's got to break. And it's a liberatory energy that is breaking through. Doesn't. We don't know what that's going to look like or how it's going to play out, but. [00:21:01] Well, let's talk about how it's playing out for us, because we you and I both are having some profound liberation. And, yes, in this time of isolation. Right. We've been driven inside and that's creating its own alchemical, you know, process. [00:21:18] And it is and and we're deepening certain relationships. So we're in isolation, but not in isolation, very much in relationship with each other and others in our sphere. [00:21:27] Exactly. So, yeah, I mean, you and I have both had recent sort of breakthroughs around our business models. I mean, really literally. And within 48 hours or the same day. [00:21:38] The same day, actually, it was the same day. It was this Monday. It was. That's incredible. Why did you talk about what your says being what is moving into an I can do the same. That we can sort of compare notes? [00:21:51] Well, I you know, I, I have a training program in systemic family constellation therapy or constellation work. And that's work that started in Germany and has, you know, some roots in South Africa and was brought to Santa Fe by the person who taught me. And I took it to Nashville. And I've been invited to to bring it to New Orleans. And so I have been teaching and training and leading workshops for four years and. Blossoming like this. It's the time, this is the time for this work, and it hit me because it's blossoming in such a beautiful way. And I thought I started having this. It was almost like a dream, like a daydream. It was actually not even that. [00:22:41] It felt like a love story. Like if I just really call it what it is, felt like a love story. And I don't know how a business model can be a love story, but mine is. So the people I've been working with who are in my training group, some of them have been with me for four years and three of them are just getting ready to graduate. So they feel like family to me and they're people that I trust. And we've gone through a lot together. I've grown, they've grown. We've certainly grown together. And and I just thought, you know, they can all go out and start their own businesses and they can become, you know, however they want to apply the work and maybe some of them will end up becoming trainers. And that's all fine. But there is a fundamental gap that I see in healing work where there can be this element of competition that comes in and people aren't they don't play fair or friendly. [00:23:33] There's a lot of envy and jealousy. And I started thinking, how could love go to that place? Right. And I so we did actually Constellation work around it. And I was expressing to them this my dream, which is my love story for my businesses that have become like a co-op or any sort of employee stock option plan, which is that you you become part of the owner of the company as you put time in and you work in it. So you're invested in it. And the decisions are made by the group. Right. And it was so incredible for me when I was able to voice this, because all of a sudden I realized, you know, one of my you know, you've talked about the zone of genius. And that came up for me when I was managing a hospice where I you know, when I took this hospice over, there were nine patients. And in 18 months, we had 73 patients without marketing. And it was all because it was so inclusive. And I worked as a nurse and an advocate on a business level. And I loved them and I loved the patients. But it wasn't about competing with other organizations. It was about how can this be sustainable and holistic in a way where if I really look at the staff and I'm their advocate, they're going to go out and they're gonna do this incredible work. And that's what happened. It was word of mouth, right? I mean, I had nurses knocking on the door begging to work there because I negotiated caseload Max's, you know, and so that they actually, you know, weren't killing themselves, serving dying people. [00:25:10] I mean, yes, my gosh. Totally. [00:25:13] You know, but it was one of the best experiences of my life. I was good at it. And all of a sudden now I'm in this place where I'm like, oh, wow, if I actually had a team and we could work together through love in that way of deep service. [00:25:29] And we really share. I just feel like I. That part of me. [00:25:36] I can feel it coming back. And it's interesting that it doesn't come back in my solo business. I don't have a lot of juice to, like, be famous or to be the best constellation facilitator or to be known for something. Right. But that is what drives me. What drives me is to apply the Constellation work to business and actually do it differently, that we actually become the work we do. [00:26:01] We do. We're not just offering the work. We become the workload. So I'd love to hear yours. Your story about how it and your epiphany on the same day. [00:26:11] I was crazy, but amazing. Well, I took. I mean, what I love that you said is how could a business model be a love story? I want to say, how can it not be? Maybe this is the restoring. I think it is restoring. Restoring is the business model is the love story. So, as you know well, I partnered with different people on projects. I was a solo entrepreneur for years with one business assistant. And now I have this team. But it's really a family business. It's a chosen family business, you know. And that will be what I would call my team. It's we're multigenerational. We're diverse. We're male and female. We are where somebody on the team who is almost 30 years younger than me, who I'm also mentoring. But and she offers so much. And you hope the person who's running my operations and stepping into that role, but also we're not doing something super binary where he's just that because he's also a gifted therapist, you know, and comes out of both a business background and a social work background. So he'll be doing some facilitating with groups as well. [00:27:30] You know, we met on Match.com 12 years ago when we were both going through a divorce, remember, and navigated a dear friendship where now he, you know, lives in Nashville. [00:27:41] And so for me, I've just always had a vision of people in circles, on stages all over the world sharing their stories. And now the stages are online and on circles on Zoome and they will again be on stages around the world are circles of people on groups. But to me, story is the most powerful, most accessible and underutilized art form. And we're literally human animals wired for story and it changes everything. So for me to make this process accessible on a really large level and the way it could really impact in the way that's always been my vision. I've had to surrender to being deeply held, which underneath I realize I have always desired. So I embedded myself, have my desire of being held and helped by others and letting others who know how to create structure for me create that. And that's something I remember hearing from a marketing guru person years ago, money, love, structure. So I'm not a structure person except when it comes to story, you know. But this is a business structure where I'm surrendering and letting others around me hold me but build structures that hold me and can hold our students and clients. And all of this. And, you know, it's a it's a place for me to actually actualize not only my vision, but my values of diversity and equity and inclusion age wise, you know, race wise, gender wise. And my team now has somebody, you know, in the Philippines, my my team is is grown. So now I have invited in more black coaches, you know. So it's me a my way to live my values. And that's my love stories. And we're set up to be much more profitable than we could have ever been alone. We just had our first launch, you know, as a team, you know. And it was I don't know, I'm not good at math, but what we brought in 10 days is what would be equivalent to what I'd normally bring in three months myself and an assistant and sort of the do it yourself model. So and that's the part about getting financially not just stable but abundant and thriving, I think, by standing in our right place. We talk a lot about that in Constellation work and even in the story work. What is our right place? Where? Everybody is moving and flowing with what they love and what they desire, and the desire is to do well and do the work from a high quality place because it aligns with what they love and what their gifts are versus the sort of work around. So that's what's bubbling up, you know, for me. And I'm just so grateful. And it's been a long, hard road and walk to get here because these business models we're speaking of aren't so accessible, at least in the circle of healers and artists that I know. [00:31:05] Well, I was I, you know, was involved with a score and I had a square mentor for, I think four years and an attorney, you know you know, the CEO of a hospital. You know, he was a much more traditional business person. They both had great hearts. Yeah. These models weren't part of how they teach people to be in business. And, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about humility, about how we serve as leaders, that to be a true leader, you're actually kind of serving from the bottom up, right? It's this thing if you push people up, because when you push them up year, like, we then become the tree trunk. And as we get closer to dying, we move into the roots of the tree. And then we get to have all those branches out there, not only in our family lineage, but also in our business lineage. And I mean, my vision for myself is really that. We can train people in their own neighborhoods to do this work, that this is grassroots. That there are people all over the world. Yes. Trained really well, not just a weekend or a little six month training program. [00:32:19] But this is like a true mentorship program, right, where you you learn a new it's like learning a new language. It doesn't happen overnight. [00:32:29] No, of course not. No depth based worked. [00:32:31] It doesn't. But to for people to be able to take it in their own neighborhoods and communities, that's really my vision. I love that. And because so many people are like, oh, I'm I'm the expert in this. And I go in and I work with and I'm just realizing as we're talking, that I think in a way and I'm not even conscious of it, but I think my soul is so driven to do this because it's my way of decolonizing business. [00:32:58] Yeah, totally. I use that phrase today was. So did you. Yes. I said the word decolonizing business where decolonizing are stories about maintenace. [00:33:07] Yeah, I think we really are. Because when we colonized business, we want to be the expert. We want to be the. Yes. I've known. We want to take it over and it's lonely. [00:33:16] I mean, it's lonely and it isn't sustainable. It it is in it. And it feeds the ego. [00:33:22] And I always found it lonely. I didn't want it. But also sometimes from a scarcity place, we don't know there's an option because there are good options. It was like I never even thought I'd run a business. And yet here I am. Here you are, you know, running our own businesses. But this is the feminine thing to the circles of people supporting circles of people. And again, that's the indigenous sway circles, supporting circles, supporting circles of Cuba. [00:33:48] Right. And I did a constellation with my group for the training and sort of, you know, the some of the lineage of the training. And one of the things that came up was that we were creating a circle lineage, not a line leny, a tribe. And when we when the Constellation ended up in a circle, that's when everyone was happy and in their own place. Otherwise, there was competition in the lineage that meant there was competition. Of course there was. Yeah. Like, I want to be the one in for this. This one representing this thing wanted to be the one in front. Didn't want the the new one to be in front of them. Right. And that happens in families. [00:34:24] So there's a split between mothers and daughters, fathers and so. Well. [00:34:28] And all chi. Yeah. I mean in so many different ways we can be out of the sister wound, out of alignment, out of order. [00:34:37] So this is really exciting that we're actually able to walk out these. It's like really being able to have a love story based on spiritual truths that we're learning as we go with other people, creating a new way of being. And we sure need a I need it. Right. I mean, I'm just speaking for myself. I'm so ready. Oh, my God. [00:35:01] Beyond ready. It's been such a it's hard to do it alone. [00:35:05] Hard work and there's a rope, but there's a relief. And just the knowledge. There's no doing any of this solo. No, there's not. No. And that was days ago. I was sort of the lie in the conditioning anyway. [00:35:17] And in a way, that's one of the gifts of the pandemic. Like we're sort of being driven inward and downward. Right. To kind of whether we like it or not. And it's not cognitive and a lot of it isn't conscious. We're being driven to some deeper places than we're used to operating from. And it can be really uncomfortable. But beautiful things are blossoming out of it. So. About out of time, but what a great conversation this has been and love it. And there's going to be more. No doubt. Thanks, Camille. Thanks, Tanya. [00:35:51] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture. If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on iTunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community. Restoring the culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we reach story. Our own lives. See you next time.  

In episode #14, Tanya interviews Camille about her decades of work in exploring the consciousness of love. Camille has embodied many roles in her career - as a hospice nurse, a filmmaker, mindfulness and emotional intelligence leader and Family Constellation facilitator, but at the heart of it all is the ability to be truly present with what is. Camille shares her path of being called into various career expressions leading into experiences of emotional intimacy, and what it really means to be with another person, to be transformed by love. Their conversation goes into the true meaning of presence in the face of life and death, moving into our vulnerability, and the impact of family, societal and ancestral systems in our healing. On love: “We do it all out of love. It can either be blind love or enlightened love. Blind love means we're doing things unconsciously. When you do this work, you can transition those elements of blind love in your system, in your life, into enlightened love. And when you do that, you understand, and then you really belong. And so does everyone else and everything else. You actually become a force of love in your own system. ” Camille Adair   Episode Transcript [00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubinstein Story mentor, and Camille Adair, family constellation facilitator. In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories serve our lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness, moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments. In truth, so many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longing. Each one of us is necessary rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can restoring the culture together. [00:00:53] Hi, everybody, this is Tonya Taylor Rubenstein here with my dear friend Camille Adair. And we are here on restoring the culture today. And I'm so excited about this episode because I get to interview Camille. [00:01:10] About the evolution of her work. Her work in the world. [00:01:18] As so many things, an ancestral family, constellation, facilitator, nurse. [00:01:28] Camille, I'm going to let you talk about all the things you've done. Emotional intelligence work. It's it's so complex and so multilayered. But I'm so excited because I benefited from your work might. My daughter has benefited from your work. My husband has benefited from your work. [00:01:45] My clients all over the world, writing books in shows have benefited from your work. So it it means so much to me. You and who you are and your work in the world to me is inseparable from your heart and your soul as a person. [00:02:06] So I'm super psyched to talk to you today. [00:02:09] My thank you so much. That's that's such a very beautiful welcome into the conversation. And you've definitely been on this path with me for for quite a number of years. So when I think about my work in the world, I immediately go back to the years I spent working with dying people in hospice. And I've thought about their contribution to the work I do now. And and I think I was really exposed to different states of consciousness when I was with the dying and that. Wired. Something in me that led me to sort of these other modalities that I've incorporated into my work. But when I go back to it, there is it really is about a state of being. So it's you know, we can talk about all these things, emotional intelligence and mindfulness and constellation work. But I think that for me, underneath all of that, there's a fundamental state of consciousness. That is different than mind awareness. That is a profound dropping into something deeper, that is beyond words that I am tethered to that no matter what what I do. [00:03:32] So I do think that they were in a way, I was their hospice nurse and they were my teachers. [00:03:38] They were my train hers for the total of the work that I'd be doing in this life. And I have because I started in my mid thirties, I was so young. [00:03:46] Can we talk about that a little bit? For those who don't know, I I just jotted this down because you were very young. And I know that once you told me, if I'm remembering correctly, that when you began to train as a nurse, you were called to either hospice work or pediatrics like babies. Right. What is that? I want it. [00:04:09] Yeah, it was. Yeah. I wanted to either, you know, be there for birth or be there for death. I knew that. [00:04:14] Yeah. So can you talk about just that Genesis and the call and you, you are considered young, you were considered quite young to go into hospice work. [00:04:24] I was and I yeah. So I, I remember being a nursing student and I did some you know, I had mandatory clinical hours in the Labor Labor and delivery department at the local hospital. And I've known quite a number of midwives in my time and considered being a midwife when I was having my own babies, you know, over 30 years ago. And. But I just I just sort of knew, like, no, this isn't quite the place. The energy is very similar. But I felt really called to be with dying people. [00:05:03] I think part of that is that there's so much celebration around birth. Right. I mean, it's such a happy time. And it's not that I didn't want to be around happy times, but I think on some soul level, something I can't even really articulate. There was a part of me that needed to go to the deepest taboo subject in our culture, which is death, and get close to it. Because I just I think intuitively knew there was so much wisdom and so much about living that we were cut off from. [00:05:39] If I could go into those depths and into those shadow places and be there with those people. And I did it got to the point actually where. [00:05:50] It was almost a sort of a form of burnout, at one point I was more comfortable being with dying people than I was being with people who were oriented to being alive. Because it felt more real, it felt more genuine. You know, people who are dying are taking stock of the most important things in their lives. And it's a process of synthesis and review and deep contemplation. And. [00:06:16] And that really spoke to, I think, the truth of who I am. [00:06:20] And so at some point I had to take a break because I just I needed to get myself back into feeling excited about a future for myself. [00:06:30] I really just sort of the future dropped away and I was really living in the moment with these people. [00:06:36] And then you made a film about death and dying, too. I do. Solace, which is an amazing documentary. If people haven't watched that, I encourage them to look it up since they can see it online. But you had some amazing luminaries and there. Right, Steve and I try a la vine style of action that are Barbra and Larry Dossey. [00:06:56] Can you talk about really, you know, what that film did for you personally? Because the work is out there and stands alone. But what did it do for you? And how did what you learned from those people, not just the luminaries, but the hospice patients you were following? [00:07:18] How did that walk you into the next part of your own evolution? [00:07:23] I think the fact that I trusted the call, you know, I was not a documentary filmmaker. I was I was seeing a patient of my abiquiu. And I remember feeling literally feeling like a camera on my shoulder was almost this old fashioned feel of a camera, you know, and. And I just I knew I was supposed to make a documentary film because I wanted to show some of the things, the beautiful things I was seeing that people didn't get a chance to see, sort of like bringing death out of the closet. I think because I trusted that voice and because I did the hard work of all that it took to make that movie and then to make eleven additional teaching videos that followed that. I had an experience early on in that first, you know, I would say the first couple of years it felt like I was pushing this big boulder uphill. And then at one point it was literally like there was a river for a reversal of energy. The momentum changed. [00:08:24] And all of a sudden, it was like all of this support just started coming in from the most unexpected places. And it literally felt like something. Just as I was getting tired, something started pushing me from behind. And then I had an amazing dream where I was given a gift and a dream. And I was told by a voice, this great voice that said, this is your gift for making solace. [00:08:48] You get one tossed about this one. Yeah, I did. I did the Tadcaster Yosfiah podcast. I asked you a question based. That's right. [00:08:55] But just that it was it felt like such a profound thing that I think it gave me permission to walk into even deeper waters if there could be deeper waters than death. I think that prepared me. [00:09:11] What were the deeper waters? [00:09:13] Well, I think. I think facing our own I think, you know, the next part of it was facing, you know, you know, the reality of what it means to be alive, I think is actually sometimes a harder thing for us to face than death to be truly alive. Right. [00:09:31] Means to face yourself, means to be open to feeling your feelings, means to to get to some kind of a state of consciousness, really, where you see that you are not just your thoughts and your feelings. [00:09:44] And I think getting to that place can be sort of you can go into some existential realms that are easy places to be. Right. And and I went there and I mean, I've always said, you know, especially the last few years, if I can just live as a human woman before I die, that will be the miracle. Death isn't the miracle. Living in our living is our human selves and being able to love and be loved. That's the miracle I think you and I. [00:10:17] That's such a part of what we share in our friendship. Because I think we both have that same shared quest. And lately I've been saying enlightenment doesn't mean much to me these days without embodiment. That's right. Out and real met without its right feet connected to the dirt, walking, feeling our bodies. It's our frailty, right? Our vulnerability. [00:10:44] Exactly. All of that. I mean, that's really what we're here to do. And yet we have found all kinds of ways to avoid that. [00:10:53] Can you talk about what aliveness looks like specifically for you these days? What what are your upper limits around? What are you still wanting to move into to have a sense of your full aliveness? What's that progression been and where is it going? [00:11:11] I think for me, the aliveness really has to do with being. Being with my own experience and and to allow my heart, its full expression, to allow my body, its full expression, what I'm finding as I do that more and more is that the results of that are completely unexpected and still in some ways unknown. [00:11:39] Right. It's sort of like, you know, you use you do something or you have an experience of something. [00:11:45] And then all of a sudden there's a ripple effect and you're like, oh, there's that ripple effect. And so, you know, there are ripple effects and there's just no way for us to track all the ripple effects. I think I think if if I could look at, you know, the tag line on my Web site is re learning human connection, I actually think. My why I'm here. And the big through line for all of this is that technology is love is our greatest technology. We have this incredible human nervous system that is our wiring and the technology of our bodies and our, you know, our gut and heart intelligence and all of this that are like the vehicle for how we have this interplay with love. And I think love is the next frontier, it's the new frontier, I think it's what we're we're gonna become explorers of love. And I do believe that that is. [00:12:44] How we're going to move into sort of the next phase of life on Earth. [00:12:51] I think it's our call. [00:12:54] And I think I'm just starting to get to know love. I think love is a huge energy and I think I'm learning about what it means to be in a state of love with love and to be changed by love because it is not easy to be changed by love. And so we can ask ourselves, what are we being changed by? Are we being changed by fear? Are we being changed by greed or power? Are we being changed by love? I think being changed by love can be terrifying. [00:13:29] Right. Those other things are the things that, you know, the the leaders and models of the world right now. [00:13:35] That's where that's what they were taught. They didn't know differently. That's what they were taught. That's the legacy that was passed on to them. [00:13:43] And it feels like annihilation to the ego. That's very hard to latch to that sense of being the leader and means that one has to really keep that ego sort of puffed up and intact. [00:13:57] That's the old paradigm, right? Vulnerable and transparent as love asks us to be. It's a different face of leadership, right? [00:14:06] It is a different face, and even when I go back to like the work I did with hospice patients, it was then that I started to learn how to build a field of love. [00:14:16] I learned that from them. And I'm continuing on that journey still. And I think that's what I'm learned here, to learn and to teach and to practice is how to build a force field of love as our greatest technology and our greatest catalyst forward. And I think I'm I'm doing that more and more. You know, I have people that are coming, you know, in2 do work with me who have been practicing certain things. [00:14:50] And so I don't feel at all like a lone wolf in this. I feel like I have some incredible colleagues and partners. And you're one of them. And you know about how how it is that we not only talk about this stuff and talk about it in terms of like a work offering, but how are we living it? [00:15:07] And I've spent quite a bit of time in personal practice building this this field, because as a nurse, I actually believe this is the new paradigm of mental health. [00:15:20] You know, when we talk about mental health, what we really hear is mental illness, right? That's right. We don't really have any kind of. [00:15:32] You know, a territory that we're used to exploring under the umbrella of mental health in the same way that we do spiritual health or physical health, mental health just makes us really think really mostly about mental illness. Right. You work with mental health. You do that because there's mental illness. And I I believe that a lot of mental illness is a result of not living into us, into who we are as a species. [00:16:00] I think we have forgotten how we're wired. I think we've forgotten what we're made for and what makes us well. [00:16:09] And so, you know, when I talk about building a force field of love, it would be easy for that to sound like it's way far afield. [00:16:18] I actually feel like we're going to be seeing mainstream research moving in this direction. [00:16:24] I see it everywhere right now. [00:16:27] And just in every form, like you said, so many of us are in this field doing this work and it's like, oh, yes, radical love in this form, too. Oh, yes. Radical love outside this form. Oh, yes. Radical love in activism. Oh, yes. Radical love in my own sematic killing. Radical love, you know, in whatever in the forms and no forms. Now so that's so different to me that it's like love is coming on some level out of the closet in a deeper way or not. It just feels right. Put into the forms of a socially acceptable to feel this wild love when you have a baby. Wild love when you fall in love with a romantic partner. That usually then changes when the shadow comes up. But this is like love in all forms. What's the what's the shift to the commitment of. [00:17:23] Radical, deep, abiding love and all form and no form when the commitment is to the field of love first. [00:17:31] Well, and I think I think we have our work cut out for us because I think most people. In their live lives as human. Animals and human beings and spiritual beings. Most people have not experienced. [00:17:54] A full expression of love, and I think there's so much wounding and hiding around that that we're not even aware of. And it's almost like we need to be rewired. And so a lot of the practices that I do are really tending to my own system. And how can I prepare my system to really start to work with other people? Because most people have such barriers to intimacy that when you like if I were to talk about love and leadership or love in or as part of organizational health, that is such a stretch. And even if somebody wanted me to come in, it no longer works anymore. [00:18:34] Unless people are willing and able to do the work. The hard work is facing their intimacy issues. And most people have such big intimacy issues because we don't know how and we don't know how to do it and feel safe. And there are ways of, you know, we went through the nineteen sixties and early 70s when, you know, sort of like that was the the time of free love. [00:18:58] And I would say that that was a movement towards something, but it also really traumatized death. A lot of people. Right. And it sort of gave free love, you know, because if you think about just those two terms. Right. Free and free. And it wasn't always law and it wasn't love. Exactly. So now maybe what I'm talking about is truly free. Love is what I think I am leaning into. [00:19:24] Well, and that the free love. Right. That has some kind of safety of containment. [00:19:30] It has completely safety. All about that. Absolutely. [00:19:35] And I think, you know, and a lot of people have abused intimacy in a lot of people have abused love and anger and power. And so I think for us to be able to face up to those shadow places, it's such a great liberation. I can say from personal experience, it's literally like new universes have opened up to me, inside of me and around me in terms of what's possible, in terms of my own consciousness. [00:20:08] Camille, could you talk about specific practices when you're talking about this? Sure. Talk about rewiring the nervous system, because I do want to get to your ancestral family constellation. Yeah, so amazing. But I think that might be helpful for our listeners to hear, like, what are your practices then and now and how are they evolving? [00:20:30] So I started out about. I don't know, over a decade ago, learning about a mindfulness practice and so that and I before that, I trained to be an emotional intelligence assessor. [00:20:45] I've now sort of put those two things together and combined them with some of what I offer in my family constellation training into this sort of model of systemic relational health. [00:20:57] So it's looking at systems, whether the system is. The individual person or their family or their community or their work environment. We can work with all different kinds of systems and looking at the influences of relational health and how to work with those things that are outside of conscious awareness. [00:21:17] So I would say it was the mindfulness and emotional intelligence after the death and dying work that really started to bring in this ability to be in the body with my emotions to, you know, to take a look at these states of overwhelm that I was experiencing as a nurse and get beneath it and try and find really what's the root feeling here? [00:21:39] What's motivating me and what's motivating my thoughts and my thinking. Because so often, I mean, I when I'm on social media or I'm even just out in the world, I'm blown away at how people talk about their thoughts, but they don't talk about their feelings. [00:21:55] And I think that that's because it's a way. It's it's a way for us to avoid our vulnerability is like how how how skilled are we in our thinking? [00:22:05] Right. But really, what we're being called to do is to talk about the feeling behind that. Right. Because that's where we have shared our shared humanity. That's where we can engage compassion for ourselves and for others. [00:22:17] But when we're just talking about our ideas and our opinions and our beliefs, you know, we basically are in this like, ultra polarized place in the world right now that I think takes us away from our humanity without the emotional and the body and peace. Right. What's going on in the body? So part of my practices has been for a long time. [00:22:42] The Shenzen Young has a method that I learned from his previous partner, Shelly Young, and she's a very skilled therapist. [00:22:54] And she teach. She has in her psychotherapy practice, she really uses a lot of the MDR coupled with this mindfulness practice. And you basically label through your senses, Sieff here feel on the inside and on the outside. [00:23:09] So that's how does this how does. You know, the fabric feel on my body? You know, what is the temperature of the air on my face? What are the thoughts going through my head? What's going on in my belly? You know, what's the feeling that's coming up? You know, when I have that thought, you know what if something tastes like. Smell like. [00:23:31] So it's really using the senses as a way of labeling. And there's been a lot of research now with this technique that when you do this practice of labeling you actually it sounds reductionistic. [00:23:44] But actually what happens is the opposite is that you become actually more of your full quantum being because of that, because you actually see by being able to label those things, you get more in touch with your witness self and you get to see that all of those things are a condition of having a body and a mind and a heart and all of these things that they're passing, they're constantly changing and passing in the practices to have no judgment. And when you do that practice long enough without judging it, it's it's almost like. [00:24:17] You know, you really you really enter into the domain of your true self by being able to inhabit that place, there's freedom there and freedom and again, in some sacred containment. [00:24:30] That's exactly right. That's right. [00:24:33] And as somebody who has struggled so much with ADHD, my freedom comes and containment. If it's all out there and it's just expression. Right. Or it's all given the same weight without being able to feel some agency and and containment around those things, it's just overwhelmed. [00:24:54] And there's so much quantum liberation. Yes. Right. And being able to just use those kind of simple tools. And they're so powerful. [00:25:04] They're so powerful. I mean, they really change the brain. They also bring us into the present moment. So it's also a practice of learning how to focus and learning how. [00:25:15] I heard a term that I liked from a friend years ago, and she called it free attention and she said so few people have free attention. And I thought, that's really true. I mean, how many people really know how to listen? Like, that's a sign of having free attention, being able to be really present for yourself or another person. And people pick up on that. That is not a small thing we know when we're in the presence of someone whose system can meet our system. I think it's one of the biggest gifts that we ever have. So the second part of my practice is the emotional intelligence work. And it's really difficult starting out in teaching this. It's really hard for people to think of a certain feeling where to identify how they feel. Oftentimes we get sort of flooded with this overwhelm or feeling busy. But we can't drop downs. [00:26:06] We use a lot of metaphors to try and get bring in an image of where someone is right now based on something. And then from there, we start linking it up to feeling words. And that can become part of positive psychology, because if you can then identify how you feel. Well, it calms the amygdala in the brain. So just the naming of how we feel doesn't matter how it is, right? It can be completely. You could be blissed out or too stressed out. It's the brain doesn't judge that. [00:26:38] It's just that when you don't know how you feel. [00:26:41] We you know, we end up having the amygdala is triggered and we stay and fight or flight. [00:26:47] So you called the amygdala. You calm the brain. You call the nervous system. And that's actually just a tool. That's a practice. And and then a more recent practice is being called. Co presence sing by some people. I think that it may. I haven't done any of Stephen Busby's trainings or work, but the people that I have done practice with have I think that some of it may have origins there, but it's also very much like my constellation work. And so I've been kind of referring to it as like. It's almost like a co constellation practice, and you can either be with another person right now and spend more time on Zoome than in person. But it's really powerful and zoom. And just looking at another person and holding presence with them and reporting what's happening in your body. And sometimes you can go for long stretches without saying anything. You can talk about what's happening emotionally. You can talk about. You can talk about whatever you want. But the practice is really to hold that and what will start to happen when you because there's a lot of research around this idea of CO. [00:28:04] Right. When we're with another our our nervous system, it's another nervous system. [00:28:09] Things happen that don't happen when we're alone. And it's very healing. [00:28:15] And so I'm sort of in my own incubator with a group of people right now. And we're working on this. And there's a lot of cross pollination in terms of some of the people that are in my practice group. [00:28:29] You know, there are people that are leaders internationally in IFRS. [00:28:37] There's another, you know, another colleague and friend of mine who's a constellation facilitator. So we're sort of like bringing these threads together and saying, oh, isn't it interesting? [00:28:49] We found this species that really knows that there is something about the intelligence of love that is the next thing. And and how do we how do we walk this out together? Because what we've found is that it's so disorienting. And again, what is going to change you are if you let love change you. It's not an easy thing. Rumi knew that, right. All you have to do is go back and read Rumi and it's like, oh, that's the process of transformation in the alchemical bath. [00:29:23] They talk about that, right? [00:29:25] You come into the inner marriage. We have the inner marriage by individuation. But there is a different kind of intermarriage. [00:29:32] And that happens when you do the practice with another or more than two people in terms of how it deepens. I think the alchemical process, that's what happens in analysis. [00:29:45] Right? You have the analyst and the analysis sound. And, you know, Carl Jung has all those, you know, Drew, on those pictures of alchemy about when you're in the alchemical bath together, you are both changed. [00:29:57] So this is the new paradigm. This is the new model is that it's not practitioner and client to any longer. [00:30:03] It's that you come in together and you're both changed, you know, and that that upsets our power dynamics quite a bit. Isn't it wonderful? It's wonderful. [00:30:15] I mean, this is now what we're being called to you. And I talk about this all the time. And as you've been talking the last several months about the present saying work you've been doing, it has reminded me a lot of early acting theater work I did with one teacher in particular who understood had done a lot of spiritual work himself. And a lot of I've been trained years ago out at the White Institute as a past life regression therapist. What not. But he was on to something very cosmic because he believed theater could be used as an awakening process. And we were doing something in Group Weekly that was the presence saying practice and we changed partners. And of course, it's also rooted in Tantra. [00:30:59] That's right. There are there definitely is a contract there. There are definitely elements of Tantra. And here again, how to do that and that it's not sexual. No. [00:31:08] Though it was about intimacy. That way it gets twisted. Not that it can't be taken in that direction, but that it was about changing partners, not in a sexual way, in about getting used to intimacy. [00:31:20] A, we were being called to bring that into our theater work and into our solo performance work. [00:31:26] So I you know, I love and everything we're talking about. Power dynamics are being up ended now as we're all here bringing our gifts together in these collaborative threads and totally new ways. [00:31:42] Exactly. It's pretty exciting. And it's also a big mystery, like we don't know. [00:31:49] Now, this is a big paradigm. The new all of the new emerging paradigms that it's so much of a mystery. We're living in two. I do want to before we. And have you at least for a few moments. Because to be your ancestral constellation, work is so uniquely powerful. And I've worked with other facilitators. This comes out of, you know, Burt Helen Jr's work, the the German facilitator who created this methodology. I know he was inspired by it from the Zulu tribe and work he'd done. [00:32:25] But I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the core essence of this work and perhaps why it's so relevant. I would say honestly to everyone, yeah, you're right. It is in the world today doing ancestral work. Why is it so relevant, so important? And anything you want to say about what you've discovered, about how and why it works? [00:32:56] I think the thing that's most relevant for me just really put in those those simple Potente terms is that it gives us a different way of understanding, cause and effect. [00:33:10] I think we've been misled about cause and effect, and I think that we are caught in the trap of cause and effect that keeps us from being empowered. And when we when we can understand the principles that guide. [00:33:27] Constellation work, and we understand that what has happened in the past can be carried forward into future generations and it can be motivating us in ways that we have absolutely no idea that it really is. Again, that's happening out of love. [00:33:46] Any disturbance that manifests as addiction, that manifests as, you know, mental health issues, challenges, mental illness issues around money, issues, around power, issues around intimacy. [00:34:04] All of those things we are a walking, talking, breathing manifestation of the ancestors who came before us. [00:34:12] And so the more we can get back in touch with them and the more we can learn from the knowing field what it is that's being asked of us. That's really when we start to wake up to who we really are and what we're here to do. And that's not something that you're going to see in someone's resume. [00:34:32] Right. [00:34:33] That's that's not a business plan or a vision statement that really is being willing to step into these sessions that reveal things to us. And I think once we do that, we start to understand the principles. We actually see that. [00:34:54] There is also a way for us to start living our lives as future ancestors by those principles so that we don't damage sort of like carry the damage further, right. [00:35:05] That it's like so critical to understand. [00:35:08] And there's like a reckoning that actually requires a certain amount of weighted. [00:35:16] Beingness and witnessing like there's reckoning. And I don't think we're good at reckoning in our culture. I think we're really good at spiritual bypass. I think we're really good at seeing glamor and not beauty. And there's so much beauty in the knowing field. And when we look at our family systems and we can start to see why. [00:35:37] Why? Out of love. [00:35:39] We have called attention to so many things that have been ignored, that so many things that just need to be seen. They just need to be seen and acknowledged so that everything can belong because in family constellation work, the guiding principle is that everything has the right to belong in a system. [00:35:59] It's just so beautiful and so true. Yeah. On their site. And to call back this thing that Ryan exiled in the living and the dead inside of us and the family systems. It changes everything. It changes everything. What is. [00:36:16] And we do it out of love. We do it all out of love. It can either be blind love or enlightened love. Blind love means we're doing things unconsciously. Yeah. When you do this work, you can transition those elements of blind love in your system, in your life into enlightened love. And when you do that, you understand. Then you really belong. And so does everyone else and everything else. And you actually become a force of love in your own system. [00:36:47] Love will call everything to itself. Everything like it's so. Absolutely everything. Everything. It's the great attractor. Yeah. So if we hear the word love and have any any kind of a misconception that it has anything to do with a hallmark expression, we couldn't be more wrong. Exactly. Everything. Everything. [00:37:07] The deepest shadows, the Greivis Pains and those that we are most have been most pained by, offended by that at all, ultimately is looking for being witnessed, seen and a and that there is possibility of a resolution. To me, that's the miracle of constellation work. And I feel like we could spend it entire, you know, podcast on sharing miraculous stories about what happens when we do this work. [00:37:40] And maybe we should just share your stories, have a story swap that based on. [00:37:45] I'd be fun because on miracles and on speaking with the dead and what happens, I'd love to share some stories about retrieving some of my ancestors. And you have amazing stories, but that it is so radical to truly show up and love. And one thing I wanted to share, as in this time when we've had these conversations about, you know, racial justice and all these things that are showing up, there's this incredible book called My Grandmother's Hands, and it's about. It's our ancestral retrieval. Each of us that will change systemic racism. And when white people haven't done theirs, it's it's encouraging us all to do them white, black, whatever race or whatever. That from that point, we resolve things in a so mattick expression in our bodies from calling back all these fragmented places. So, I mean, it's so huge, the possibility to me and to me, it's coming more to the forefront in terms of yes. And is in individuals and family systems, but also in terms of these big picture collective issues that work that are all arising now. And I said so one of the things I love about you and your work and the intention of who you are, because to me, you know, you embody the medicine of this time in this work. [00:39:18] Thank you so much. That's really touched my heart when you just said that. Thank you. It's an honor. It's really an honor. And I've had I've had amazing teachers and I have amazing ancestors. And I have stuff in my ancestral past also that, you know, that isn't easy. And yet I was made for this because I came from them. Yeah. So in this unique expression as Camille, it isn't just because of me. It is. I mean, sometimes I have this feeling of I do this this this technique called lineage weaving. [00:39:56] And I remember going back on my father's line and it was number five in Ireland. And I remember when I got to him, it was like four was really solid. [00:40:06] In Ireland, you know, I had my back. It it held the male line very well. But five almost pushed me out of my chair. [00:40:16] There was so much support, so much enthusiasm, so much for removing Edward G. And so, yeah, it's we are a collection of the past. [00:40:27] And that's and that's our restoring. Right. Especially in Western culture where we've become so narcissistic, even in our wounds. This is all my problem. I'm just a terrible trauma Tisza alcoholic. I'm a terrible victim. We're not just this one organism. We're now dead to everything. And that there are actually ways to retrieve in a somatic way, on a soul level, on an emotional level, on an embodied level, these different layers. It's like excavation. Right. And then the retrieval. [00:41:02] And I think, you know, it really lends itself to what we need in these times, which is more conscious, aging and conscious dying. And I had I did a a session with someone recently, and I remember saying because there was this sense that our ancestors were like out here right up in the ether's or kind of above. And they said, what would it be like to imagine your ancestors below ground as the roots of a tree pulling up the nourishment through the soil? Right. Because, I mean, the bones of our ancestors are buried underground. [00:41:35] Well, not all that dirt underneath our feet. It's the desert. We're walking on the dark while they're supporting us. [00:41:43] Right. And what is it like that root system then can pull the nutrients up into the trunk and each one of us is a trunk, you know, and in this in this person's situation, you know, it was like, imagine, you know, what if your two children were the two parent big branches of your tree. And then everything in your trunk coming up through the roots was going out to them and then their children are the leaves catching the light right there, the photosynthesis, and doesn't begin to hold them back down, even to you in the ancestors. So there's a two way feedback loop that is real. I've been experiencing this, you know, for many, many years. [00:42:22] What a what a sweet way to spend the morning with you. Thank you. [00:42:27] Thank you for coming on and sharing it. I really mean it. We need to do some story swaps in our next session. Great sessions sharing because I'm like, we need to share miraculous stories because we're so, not so special. [00:42:42] No, we're not. We're two women being willing to be human. But the specialness comes from the commitment. Not that it's inaccessible to everyone. [00:42:54] It is. Well, it's our birthright and it is. [00:42:56] So thank you for sharing about some of your amazing work today. Thank you for asking the questions. [00:43:01] And with me, big to be continued and to all our listeners. Thanks for being here, as always with us, with your presence. [00:43:13] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture. [00:43:20] If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on iTunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community. Restoring the culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we reach story. Our own lives. See you next time.  

In episode #13, Camille interviews Tanya about her decades of work as a story mentor. Tanya shares her shame and terror at sharing her personal stories publicly and how she broke through that at 31 years old with her first solo show. Their conversation goes into the true meaning of sharing one’s story, the value in the process for the teller and the listener, and how getting into the specifics of our lives (and not spiritually bypassing them) allows for deep liberation. Listen in to hear Tanya’s journey of helping herself and others step into an inner diversity, expansiveness and lack of agenda that allows for truly groundbreaking material to come through. On breaking through the fear: “When I performed my first solo show I felt like I was going to die of shame. When I didn’t die, something broke open, was liberated in me. And it never shut back down.” - Tanya Taylor Rubinstein Episode Transcript [00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubins story mentor, and Camille Adair, family constellation facilitator. In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories servi lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness, moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments. In true, so many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longings. [00:00:37] Each one of us is necessary and rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can read story the culture together. [00:00:51] Hi, welcome to Restoring the Culture. This is Camille and Tanya. And today we're going to be. I'm actually going to be interviewing Tanya on her decades long work with story. And in our next podcast, she'll be interviewing me. And just want to let everyone know that we're going to be moving the podcast to twice a month from weekly to twice a month, so that we can just put more time and energy and intention into the content. We'll also be inviting guests in to join us. And so we're really excited about the evolution of how this podcast is going. So, Tanya, I'm so excited to talk with you about your story work. I have been really fortunate to have done some work with you and to watch you grow and evolve over the last 20 years or so. [00:01:41] And so I love to have you start off by talking a little bit about what the story work you've shared on the podcast before about your mentor, Spalding Gray. But it's sort of like what was what was the story like for you when you started doing story work in the beginning? Can you just sort of, like, capture that? [00:02:02] Because I'd love to hear like, how did how was it then and how has the work evolved as you have evolved? [00:02:10] I love that. And thanks for the opportunity. [00:02:12] I'm grateful that we're doing this and that I get to share with our listeners really my devotion to story and next week that we'll be getting into your deep, long devotion. So it's a great question. [00:02:28] So I would say it was abject terror for me when I began doing my story work. I was. I remember being maybe 24 years old in New York City and I met Spalding, but I was not liberated in my voice. [00:02:48] My voice was very much tethered. I was terrified to be seen, though I longed for it so much. And I was so lonely, lonely person, a lonely child. I think, you know, the first constellation I ever did, my biggest inquiry was why am I why have I been so lonely my whole life? So it was a pivotal question. So I had that ambiguity and I found this was so many of my students and people I've worked with. [00:03:17] It's is this thing inside where we long to connect and be seen and be intimate, insure stories and be untethered in our voice. And yet. It's terrifying. So this really came up for me. I mean, it took me about 10 years or nine years after meeting Spalding to finally perform my first solo show. [00:03:42] When I came to Santa Fe. I did Natalie Goldberg's writing process. She'd just come out with writing down the bones and Julia Cameron's artist's way and those things really helped. But. So I was practicing sharing stories. These little tiny baby steps. Like, I'd shut share one little free, right? That was a paragraph long with, like, my friend Karen and our artists were writing group. I was just terribly blocked by so much shame and so much silencing and so much like just trauma from the way I grew up. And I, I had this it was like a Cohen inside me. Like, how can I speak? Because I had spoken out as a child. And then by the time I was an adolescent, I'd become very shut down. And then more trauma occurred and I became more and more shut down. [00:04:36] So I never shared anything real, really with people or intimate or vulnerable that I remember writing my journal at that age. I so long. To be able one day to share some of these thoughts in my journal with one other person. But I would be so ashamed and I imagined that I would not be accepted and loved if I shared what was in my journal. So. [00:05:05] That feeling in me was also probably the impetus and drive and why I was so blown away by Spalding Gray and why I was so blown away by authentic storytelling. And he was that portal. So when I was 31, I finally was getting up on stage. I tried like five other times. I mean, I'd been an actor and hid behind other roles, not hit, but perform behind other roles. But my own story, I had scheduled I had a script, I had the director, I had the theater. [00:05:37] And I'll never forget the terror that came over me about a few weeks before. And I wanted to cancel so badly. [00:05:47] My ex-husband, I was just on the staircase sobbing. I cannot do this. And I wasn't anyone who'd experienced stage fright as an actor. It wasn't that it was abject terror of exposing my personal, intimate story. [00:06:02] And I remember feeling so much fear on opening night and opening night was like traumatic for me, but not because the people didn't respond beautifully and love it, because it literally took everything I had to get up there and. [00:06:24] Move past my shame, my condition, shame and trauma, family trauma, patriarch, kochan, trauma for sure, feeling defective. My whole life feeling very broken. And to speak. [00:06:41] And expose myself. I mean, I got standing ovations, I got, you know, a great review. I got a not so great review. It was sold out. We extended the run. But the second weekend was the real test for me because I just got a great review in the Santa Fe reporter. So a bunch of people I didn't know came to see the show. [00:07:00] And this man, I remember maybe three or four of them in the front row. They were just sitting with their arms crossed. [00:07:07] And they probably I was probably projecting them like I felt like they look we're looking at me like prove something to me. [00:07:15] And. [00:07:18] From the first weekend, people had laughed at this particular part in the opening 10 minutes and they didn't laugh and I thought they looked stern and I felt very judged. And what happened was I had this shame attack like I've never had in my entire life on stage alone in a solo show performing in front of 150 people in a sold out theater. And the soles of my feet started burning this heat and the heat came all up my body and I could feel it moving all the way through my face. I know my face was bright red, my chest. And I had this moment even after being a professional actor and being trained that way, where I was literally to stop the show. This thought went through my head. Stop the show. Give them all their money back. Apologize. Just get off the stage. So that was the level of terror. And I kept going through this through the shame attack, probably only because I had so many years of acting training. But it's a moment I've helped many of my clients with. To that moment of there is no way I can have this a lacerating self exposure. You know, I will hold me that moment. I felt like I was going to die of the shame. And when I didn't die, something broke open in me, was liberated. And it never shut back down. [00:08:42] I think it's so interesting. The you know, when we you talk about if someone if one other person could just hear my story and you talk about talked about being a lonely child and we're dealing now with sound like actual not I mean, we're dealing with the isolation of the pandemic, but loneliness is becoming a health risk. I mean, it's increasing right. In our culture. And and I just find that there's this really interesting intersection between shame, loneliness, voice and that the human need to share. It reminds me of Peter Lyons work that he talks about in Waking the Tiger. And he uses this example of, you know, right before an earthquake. They've done these studies in L.A. where goldfish can sense that an earthquake is coming before it's detected. And so one of the ways that they can tell that an earthquake is going to happen is when they see goldfish school, they come close, close, close together. And that's how they survive this. This, you know, potential trauma is that they come close together. And I wonder how much of this speaks to the part of us that's a human animal that longs to come closer together. And I remember doing my show at the Lensink when we did that, when we did the caregiver monologues. And I remember you and I used to talk about these bridges of feeling bridges of compassion being built when people would be onstage and they would share their story. And that because we get to the point where there's only one story. That's right. I mean, my friend Michael Stillwater talks about the one great song, you know, that he can he's traveled the world and he does all of this work with the song that it's, you know, eventually comes back to this one song. Do you feel the same thing about story that in when you're working with clients and over the years that you've done that, that you feel that there's like an undercurrent of one story? [00:10:54] That's a great question. Thank you. Because I. And it's a complex answer. I think I have I think years ago I would have just said yes. [00:11:03] But to me in some ways. So to me, the one story is the masculine. Now, the one story is the unified field. It's the it's the sun. [00:11:16] But to be more interested in the individual story, the individuation, because to me, that's the feminine, it's the humanity, it's the each precious voice matters. Each lived experience is seen and witnessed and heard. And in in us coming together in this deeply individuated way when we stand in our unique experience are our unique human experience. I believe it strengthens the community and the tribe. And I believe it's so much about this this human collective experience of being together on Earth. And to me, the one voice. Yes. To me, that's the divine that runs under everything. But it. [00:12:08] But but I think spiritual bypass happens when I'm looking at everything going on right now, right around the issues coming up around racism as a queer. But I mean, I feel this way. But no, I, I, I totally know what you're saying. [00:12:25] I'm just saying write me the story. Work is the really the human work. But yes, of course we're all connected in the one great story. But I think I've become more interested in the specific expression of each story. [00:12:39] So it sounds like you're in like your work is about the process, right. It's not that the final necessarily the final story. [00:12:46] Yes, that's right. That's absolutely true. As a matter of fact. I realize even though I've worked with so many people to finish their books, their solo shows, their business work on their business and get that that story out there about, you know, to leave their place in the world. But I realize underneath is for me, it's all about listening to the broken pieces, the parts that have been left behind, the parts that have been stolen or borrowed, whether by the family system or or the culture or the person, shame or sense of self-worth. So my process is about finding homeless and the brokenness, I would say in the shards and the fragments. And it's kind of messy work and it's kind of a it's the soul retrieval work. Those are the stories I'm interested in. And as I go, I've gone deeper and deeper. Yeah. In my life, my story process, that's where I've landed. And I feel very, very. Not just comfortable like I feel when I'm in my right place there with those stories. [00:13:59] I think that's where our work really merges. And there's a lot of synchronicity between the work that you do and the work that I do. My gosh. Totally. Total synergy, right? Yeah. I guess I'm curious, like, when you look back at sort of the early years of doing story work. Is there anything that you don't do anymore that you did then that you're like, oh, yes. [00:14:26] Yeah, totally. I mean, well, it's funny because it's like what gets validated in the world versus what is the deepest integrity in ourselves. So in the world, I got a lot of kudos for a lot of the early work I did with people, but there was like the cancer monologues. [00:14:46] I think when we work with the Palestinian and Israeli girls, I was very controlling and I was very controlling around what story I thought people should tell versus supporting them in what they both essentially needed to say. And it can be tricky work. I mean, there's real things. There's real things you want to look at in terms of tracking a story that's compelling for an audience to listen to or read or to read. But then there's also honoring the process of what needs to be spoken. So I walk a razor's edge with that, but I really used to go in with more of an agenda. Over time, I've let go of the agenda and I'm noticing. I mean, I was just on a call with four different women who were all my memoir clients on Friday. And I thought, my God, they are writing the stories of the new culture and it's coming through them because I hold a much bigger kind of unflinching space now without agenda. [00:15:57] And how is that connected to. You being in your own story at this time in your life. I guess it's two questions, you being in your own story, which is what I'm hearing. I'm standing at the center of your own story. And and also, how is that affected your the loneliness? How has the love, the loneliness that you experienced then how has that changed? [00:16:22] Thank you. That's a great question, too. Well, I just wrote a Facebook post yesterday because it's gay pride and I wrote a post about not coming out till I was forty nine years old. And I'm fifty six tomorrow, as you know. So even not fully coming out to myself. I think that I was always doing soul retrieval work with others so I could do it for myself. Ultimately, I don't think if I wouldn't have gone in to there was such an insatiable curiosity and me, there were so many things that were taboo to be spoken about in my family, my culture, the way I grew up that were very cold. It was not a warm culture. It was cold and it was judgmental and it was right and wrong. And I think my story work. I kept choosing groups of people to work with. And then I started getting clients who I was so curious about how other people live their lives. And I was so afraid of things like cancer and HIV AIDS. Then I did all that work with those people and I learned that there was humanity there and there was love there. [00:17:31] And I learned there was love there in the face of a father's suicide. I learned there was love in the face of being a trans person. I learned that in the telling of the story and that liberation, what really got liberated was love. And including hospice monologues, right, the liberation was love. [00:17:50] So all of that work was to get to a place where I could be liberated, not just around my sexuality, but around my identity and my place in the world, which was not who I was raised to be on any level, and not just again about the sexuality, but the sense of queerness beingness, not a binary thinker, didn't fit into binary education systems, all kinds of things. [00:18:14] And to love my story now is to love my fate. It's to love my. It's to be in this body and love my life. [00:18:28] And that has softened me. And it's brought bigger stories that have been laid at my feet, mostly now by my students and clients. But yeah. And and it's made me fearless. It's so funny. So that young woman, 31 years old when I did Honeymoon in India, was so terrified to be seen. It was so easy for me to write a Facebook post. I just sat down and wrote kind of a long, intimate post about how long it came to was coming out and about being married to a transgender man and my confusion about my sexuality and marriage and divorce and very divorcing straight men and then having affairs with women. Some people will consider that extreme, you know, vulnerability and or transparency. Like, why would you go there? Well, all that came back to me was so much love. And that's what I've learned now. And I don't feel any shame when I speak about most things now. I am in. I'm not that ambiguity about being visible. It's not that there aren't threads of it that are still there. But I don't have to walk through a minefield of shame and terror. No. To access my voice. What we were just talking about voice my story. And so that the the the way I am able to hold space for others now is much more effortless. Not only do I not have an agenda. It's a much bigger, deeper, broader space. And and it supports them and their excavation and retrieval more quickly. And it's even amazing around structure because we can be very heavy handed. A Western culture right around this is the structure. And I always had such hard times with structure. And and so I worked extra hard for my clients to always give them a structure, give them a framework, give them options. And what's evolving now is in that bigger space, more organic structures are coming up for all their books and and the what my business clients to around story. There's a it's kind of like they're finding their organic structures and those can be individual, too. So I'm learning that frameworks, while necessary to move the progression of a story along, can also be non binary. They don't just have to be hero's journey or heroine's journey or transformational arc or hit all those marks. [00:20:58] They too can be fragments and shards, and sometimes they are very much a heroine's journey. It depends how my client's brains work. And the thing is to not judge the way any particular story wants to express. So there's more inner and outer diversity now in story form, as I've accepted my own inner diversity, which was something I didn't have access to 25 years ago. [00:21:25] Well, and that's what I'm hearing is going back to the question about loneliness. Is that it sounds like you are companion ing yourself now that through your story, work and work with shame that you have become your own companion. And then it takes me to so many of our conversations about what really is true leadership. [00:21:47] And I think true leadership happens when we do the deep work of becoming our own companion. Right. And that is a that's the authentic expression that like no one can teach us. And it is about self acceptance and self compassion and self-love so that we can also, like, share that with others. And and as I'm listening to you, I'm I'm also experiencing how much you've become a leader of who you are in your life and with others. And that that really is leadership. Right. Leadership really is about becoming the authentic. Version of yourself. And and being able to accept yourself fully so that you can bring that out into the world, because otherwise what we're doing when we follow leaders, it's like we're following the recipe. [00:22:39] We're following the the half life, that half life, the half life. And that never ends well. It doesn't take us onto a path of wholeness. I'm going through some of that right now where I'm seeing leaders that for all of their brilliance and all of their hard work, there's still a half life ness about it. [00:22:58] Because because there's been a buy in to this culture that really doesn't want us to come from love. [00:23:08] Doda really still needs to come from doubt and punishment and shame in its own way in order to have some kind of rite of passage. Right. That that and I'm not saying suffering isn't part of the human process, but I think what I've seen you do with your stories is to flip that also upside down on its head so that you allow for the love to become the leadership model as opposed to, you know, with a hierarchical leadership model of approval, disapproval, which is judgment. And it does. [00:23:40] I mean, I think judgment it's it's so the foundation for so much that that keeps us bound in our own stories. Right. [00:23:50] That leads to shame. But I I guess what I'd love to do now is I'd like for us to kind of like move forward. And I'd like to talk about, like, what you're doing now and where you see yourself going with your story work because you're now working with people, with entrepreneurs. I mean, you've really it's shifted right, from taking these themes of like the Israeli-Palestinian monologues and cancer monologues and and the the caregiver hospice monologues. And, you know, you've done work with with veterans. And, you know, you I mean, you've really worked with some really incredible populations. And now you're it seems like you're really focusing on it's like an almost feels to me like an empowerment process for that. For restoring the culture. Right. [00:24:39] Yeah. It's I mean, I'm I feel like I'm restoring everything you hate. So, you know, I'm I'm working with entrepreneurs. Yes. And I'm working with. I'm working with. I mean, my clients now are so diverse. Right. And just thinking I have one woman who's the head of a huge international organization who will likely have a very high profile book. [00:25:01] I have one woman in Europe who is who is a, you know, an escort who works with, you know, politicians. They're taboo stories. [00:25:13] I still I still fall in two different worlds. And people find me. People find me. I believe to. Be accepted in their brokenness and turn the shards into their wholeness, because that's what I've done. [00:25:31] Do you ever find that people are are so married to the brokenness that they can't they can't go with you on that arc of transformation? Yes. [00:25:42] And less and less, because I'm able to lean into the love of them. And in that holding space of really deep love, whether they're shame's coming up or they're starkness or they're projecting on me a little bit, it just doesn't stick to me the way it used to. So I don't take it personally. So a lot of movement is happening, although every now and then people self select out of the container energetically or vibrationally. They just can't hold with the love and they have to go away. It's to confront give back to the ego. And I understand that. I've been there. I've been there where I've just been like it's been to confront to my ego. [00:26:23] But yeah, what I'm thinking about as we talk about leadership and I've been working with some of my entrepreneurs, some of these women in these very matriarchal women's circle, and they love working with you and they love working with my marketing person. I work with them on their stories. But I've been talking about I hate the word branding. Like to brand ourselves so worst. We've decided to call it UN branding on branding storytelling. And right now, I think what I'm referring to leadership. It's like unleashed or ship. It's like unschooling. I don't want to do anything to do with the way leadership or branding has been or even storytelling, frankly, even writing a book. It's like the process is an on learning. It is not. And it is an unlearning so that people can be liberated. In a deep sense of authenticity and step into it, because everything's been tainted by toxic capitalism and by branding and by white supremacy and all of these things that are non indigenous. You were just talking about indigenous leadership and organizations, how it's been taken out. Non-Indigenous to our nature. So when UN process an unlearning to me is where it's at. [00:27:42] So that the stories that want to be freed, that want to be liberated, that the stories that want to lead, that come through me. The stories that want to serve. Others that come through me. So that process is about this radical untethering. Yeah, I saw I see my work going towards UN leadership and UN sort of even with the non binary stories. Right. Looking at structures like telling a story of potency and power. [00:28:19] Well, because the truth is bigger than than, you know, like when we we use a word like leadership. Right. Truth is so much bigger than that. So much so. And it's inclusive. And I didn't. I remember when I was in 2008 when my when Salis Wisdom of the Dying, my film was, you know, came out at and in Santa Fe premiered. And I followed that with a talk that I gave. And there were a bunch of nurses and hospice nurses in the audience. And I remember I I started talking then and I had a title to a talk that was called a nursing home back in 2008, because really to be with dying people, you had to learn how to a nurse because you so much writing present and being and being full enough in yourself that you can hold space for the fullness of someone's death. Right. And that you're not going to rush in and and try and fix something or you're not going to be all about the doing right. Which is so much about happens in nursing and medicine, is that it's all about the intervention. And this is the opposite. Right. [00:29:21] Not that you don't ever, you know, like a skill set. If you're working on a book, you know, you've got to know how to slightly write a chapter or what your themes are, you know, where you're moving. [00:29:31] But frankly, there's some skill sets that come into any practice and a deep practice, particularly those with some kind of outcome. But I love that you did on nursing and death to really surrender to the story that wants to come through is more of a dying process at times than a birthing. [00:29:49] I think that's absolutely right. So in a way, restoring the culture is also understory in the culture and it's restoring the UN culture. [00:29:59] I love that. That's it. Rest for a while, restoring the young culture inside ourselves. That's right. That's right. And then it translates right to the whole world around us. [00:30:10] Well, and as we talk about really the word like the word culture, you know, when I think about it takes me then to the microbiome in the gut. You know, that's that's our true inculturation. Right. The culture that that affects how we think and feel. You know, that is also. [00:30:29] The majority of our immune system. And it's what we talked about before the podcast. [00:30:36] And this work that I'll be talking about on the next podcast, which is how do we move that knowledge from the microbiome down, not up, where we always want to go up into the head. How do we move it down to our feet and connect with the wisdom of the earth and the voice of the voiceless? And I think that's maybe in another. This is a good place probably for us to wrap up. But here's where our work is once again coming together, which is finding the the voice of the voiceless in the story. Yes. You know, and the end that we're restoring, which is which is a process of UN storing, UN culturing. And anyway, it's just I'm so excited for you with your work and I'm grateful to be involved in it and grateful for your friendship. And I'm just want to wish you such a happy birthday. [00:31:27] Thank you, Kimia. And so grateful to be on this life journey with you. For so many years. Me too. So grateful. [00:31:36] And so much learning. And the great thing. Right. Like you're talking about the UN storing the and the storing and going deeper and deeper. The beauty of it is to know it's endless and it always has something new to teach us about ourselves and about this. You know, it's just unraveling the mystery. [00:31:55] Yeah, well. [00:31:56] Well, thank you for taking the time. Thank you. Speak about story with me today. I look forward to our next two hour. Me too. Okay. Bye bye. [00:32:08] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture. [00:32:15] If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on iTunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community. Restoring the culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we reach story. Our own lives. See you next time.

In Episode #12, Camille and Tanya discuss how the digital culture is at times, troubling our relationships as coaches, facilitators, and even friends. From racially charged spaces and discussions online, to people prying for gossip in a small town, they explore how we can truly create intimacy online and when it’s better to pick up the phone or meet face to face. Tanya shares an inspiring story about an online exchange that brought tears to her eyes and Camille her concern about trying to do business via text and the cries for intimacy she sees between the zero’s and 1’s. “One of the skills of the new leadership paradigm is helping people become more relational, lean in and understand that some of these compensations are really a reach for intimacy.” - Camille Adair Episode Transcript [00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubinstein Story mentor, and Camille Adair, family constellation facilitator. [00:00:11] In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories serve our lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness, moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments in true. So many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longing. Each one of us is necessary rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can restoring the culture together. [00:00:52] Hi, this is Camille. Welcome to Restoring the Culture Today. Tanya and I will be talking about restoring the digital culture. And I'd like to start off with a quote from the book Every day, A Boon to Living Better Together The African Way. [00:01:10] And the last name of the author is spelled N, G, O, M, A and E. A boon to refutes the notion that a person can ever be self-made because we are all interconnected. We should not be fooled by the myth of the self-made individual as no one exists in true isolation. [00:01:35] And this quote seems so fitting for I think it is a myth that when we have an online presence and as we are moving more and more to digital communication one on one and in groups and relying on social media emails, texting and even phone calls, that it's we don't we're not having the in-person experiences as much as we were before. So as someone who spent so much time building and on digital business online, what do you and what are your thoughts about this, Tanya? [00:02:17] Well, first of all, thanks for suggesting this topic today. [00:02:20] You were inspired around this, and I think nothing could be tight, more timely. We're still in the age of Kofod as we're recording this in early June 2020. And. [00:02:35] And right now, you know, people are in the streets. Black lives matters. You know, the whole culture is in an enormous moment of change. [00:02:46] And I have been online pretty seriously for 10 years. [00:02:53] I was an early adopter with a Web site 20 years ago, 19, actually. [00:03:00] But really started selling online about 11 years ago and have gone deep, deep, deep dives into all the social media. And I was attracted to it immediately because what I saw in it was the possibility of what has come to exist, to build a be in touch with a global web of people. So first of all, I so love the piece about community and that none of us are self-made. And the illusion that someone is self-made can really be perpetuated and kind of in a very exploitative way online. It's a kind of. I think about, you know, the guru paradigm and the guru paradigm and this this image of the self-made individual online is actually, I think, something that is shifting and breaking apart at this time. So if we were in like early childhood online for the last tower over many years, feels to me like we're moving into some kind of an adolescence, some kind of a shift or I don't even want to say adolescence, but there's movement. There's maturity happening. And one of the things of this time is that it is about community, that it takes many of us, as it as you and I have talked about a lot lately, about diversity, diversity on the outer and diversity on the inner, and that it takes many skill sets and many gifts of many, many talents and many life experiences to create anything truly meaningful. But I think the thing that I'm noticing in the digital space right now is those that have set themselves up as gurus and not really acknowledging the tremendous amount of energy and beingness and experience supporting them and that are the ones crashing and burning right now. There's there's there's a shift happening development, to be for sure, in the entrepreneurial space, in the online coaching and teaching and facilitation space. And personally, I'm excited about that because it's becoming the opportunities to become more relational and to show the relationships and lead with the relationships rather than with that sort of very patriarchal image of this soul, often white person doing it on my own. [00:05:43] So from a systemic relational standpoint, if that's such a potent image, when you say somebody crashed and burned as a system, how do we hold people? Like how how would you see holding the people that are crashing and burning? Because we're in it. We're a closed container species. Right. And on a closed container planet. And what happens to one person impacts everyone else, right, in some way? [00:06:11] Yeah, well, it's interesting. I'm seeing so much love and compassion happening now in the end. Activism. So I'm part of three different groups online that are about they're specifically white spaces, not segregated spaces, but white spaces that where there is accountability with black people and or other people of color. For us to decolonize ourselves, deconditioned ourselves from the sickness that is white supremacy, that just like patriarchy and capitalism, has been the water we've been swimming in so that the problems or the unconsciousness. So what I'm seeing is people are being challenged. They're being challenged in their power. They're also being called in as much as they're being called out. So right now, I've never seen resources like this. And I want to say, you know, maybe that's my own bias that led with sharing about the white spaces. [00:07:15] There's so many black educators online now teaching white people, you know, people like Rachel Carr, girl who's been, you know, really big in the online space, breaking this apart. [00:07:28] Leila Sayad, who wrote me and White Supremacy. [00:07:32] There's so many resources on the black literary canon. You know, I. [00:07:39] I mean, stuff like James Baldwin and his work and just Mersea by Bryan Stevenson like stuff now and stuff that's more historical. Toni Morrison, it's being shared. There are so many resources available for us to do our work. And so my feeling is the people that are kind of crashing and burning because they were riding in an unconscious way and only centering themselves. It's not even just whiteness alone. It's this it's this kind of entitlement, this kind of elite ism and this kind of guru thing. Because I've seen it in spiritual circles that happens in educational other institutional circles. It's like it's it's a lead us and it's lone wolf. Right? It's a kind of I'm better than everyone. It's elevated. And of course, that goes with a white supremacist narrative. But our male supremacist narrative and patriarchy. [00:08:40] So there people are reaching out. Those people are being called out, but also called in. There is so much community support for people. [00:08:50] Who want to shift and change? Rachel Rogers, who's an incredible entrepreneur and leader. She's having a town hall calling people in to reimagine business. So I think if anybody who's willing to be humble. And come in from a space of I don't know, and I make mistakes all the time, and I'm saying that for myself, I make mistakes. I'm no expert on this. I've been committed to social justice for a long time. I've made so many mistakes and some public mistakes. And the thing is, though, not collapsing into our fragility. So the practice becomes, I'm making mistakes, but I'm living out loud. And my heart is here. Teach me. I'm willing to learn and I'm willing to do the work. So for the crash and burn people, it's like, you know, sometimes some of the more well-known people who have gone down or, you know, their businesses, I think will be impacted forever. And this happened with. I'm thinking of a couple women right now. That happened too recently. But I saw this happen with the men, including like Tony Robbins and the Metoo Movement. And there was a conflict with this woman and, you know, all kinds of things. I think how people survive is going to be are you willing to go low? Are you willing to say, I don't know, I've been unconscious this conditioning, because you do family, ancestral constellation work is not just me. This is this is centuries and centuries and maybe all the way back to millennial millennium of unconscious conditioning. [00:10:25] So how do we go low? [00:10:29] And stay open and stay an inquiry. And for me, my practice is to be listening to black women and learning from black women. [00:10:37] Right now. [00:10:39] It's interesting, I think part of my practice is, you know, I have this background in teaching emotional intelligence, especially in health care. And, you know, one of the big things, you know, that that I learned is that if if you have a difficult issue, you just don't do it on social media. [00:10:56] You don't confront on social media. You don't you don't even do it in a text if it has to do with a sensitive topic or it could impact a relationship. You pick up the phone because it's just we are just more relational when we can hear the intonations in a voice than, you know, there's just so much lost in the visual digital communication realm. [00:11:20] And I think one of the ways that I've been working with it is. [00:11:25] That when I see someone actually doing that, engaging in edgy, sort of confrontational, trying to like work out relationship stuff through email or texting without picking up the phone or being able to meet in person is I think it's actually a way that they're trying to get closer. [00:11:47] Like, it pushes us away. [00:11:50] But this is what I have learned so much in my constellation work, is that these movements in the relational field oftentimes look opposite of what the inner desire is, the inner longing maybe to come closer. And so what do we do? We start to kind of maybe engage in some dissonant behavior to create some dissonance, because at least that's intimate. Right. It's relational. [00:12:17] Yes. And I mean, I've created some dissonant behavior like that. I've had I mean, I've done that by and I've called people out after, say, in the case. I always go to people behind the scenes first. And I do try and have phone conversations, are asked for can we clear the air? Because I think that's the thing. We can't be afraid of that. It's so essential that we go privately first with my own personal business coach, who's one of the people who, you know, I think has had her business impacted negatively in this time. [00:12:50] And hopefully she'll learn from that and, you know, take the invitation that's been given her. But here's the thing. When these it's a paradigm. So when people set themselves up as a guru, I asked to speak with her with a friend of mine last fall, and she didn't allow it. So what happened when all of this came down? It goes out on line when people haven't been available for the relational thing. [00:13:19] And there is a whole very patriarchal way of, quote unquote, leveraging a business. It's very accepted in the entrepreneurial way. And the way a lot of people do it is to pass everything off to their team so that they can remain removed as a rock star. [00:13:38] But they're not a rock star. They're a teacher. They're a coach. [00:13:42] And and then there's no intimacy with your teacher or coach. It's so big. It's such an enterprise. [00:13:50] And I've thought for decades this is problematic in any kind of setup for real teaching, learning, the intimacy is lost. [00:14:00] So when does something become too big to me? I can't even imagine wanting a business where one of my students. I couldn't make time for a 20 minute call to clear the air about something to me. Then it's it's jumped the shark. Right. [00:14:16] It's like the desire for greed and so much money and the the promise six figure seven multiple, six figures, not just six figures, but multiple six figure seven figures, eight figures is very much about moving away from intimacy with clients. And I'm speaking very much. But in the thing you and I both do, we teach clients. I work with people in story. You do Constellation's. We do work together. We do work with other people. [00:14:45] And it's it's it's not so big, you know what I'm saying? That's why that stuff happens online. I think I mean, some many reasons for those things to happen. [00:14:54] But that's one of the reasons is the person is set themselves so far apart that they're not available for a phone call, even if you reach out to them or a short talk. [00:15:05] And this is really you know, you're speaking from the entrepreneurial world. And I can also say that this happens in health care. It happens around policy and politics. You know, and and I do think that this is one of the skills of the new leadership paradise. It's really how to be how to help people become more relational and how to lean in and to recognize some of these compensation's as a reach for intimacy so that we don't personalize everything in a way that we're all then reacting and bumping up against each other. [00:15:40] I had an interesting thing happen the other day, and I was I actually have to say I was pretty proud of myself because it was a it was a reframe of a trigger. [00:15:49] So like I grew up in a very small town. There were 200 people in the town. There were 14 kids in my graduating class. You know, there were. [00:15:59] You know, I think, you know, kindergarten through 12th grade, we were all under the same roof. Two hundred in the whole school. I mean, it was really, you know, there were. It was more than 200 people in there, including the outlying areas. [00:16:11] But it was a tiny. I grew up in a tiny little town. [00:16:14] So you can imagine, you know, part of what happens in those towns is I think it's a it's like it bumps up against the need for differentiation and intimacy, like how do we differentiate and how do we come together? And I think then it can become sort of messy and and those two processes can overlap in ways that creates hardship. Right. So one of the ways that that happens is, is through sort of the got the gossip chain in a small town. [00:16:41] Right. You don't experience the gossip chain in the same way in a large city. You know, there are just so many people. [00:16:50] But I'm back now in Oregon for a time. You know, not in the town I grew up, but in a town close by. It's relatively small. My family is known here. And I went in to a public place the other day and I saw someone who knows me. And I could tell she was really trying to get the dirt on my shoe. [00:17:13] She really she really, you know. [00:17:16] But she did it in a way that was like really like prying. And it was pretty inappropriate relationally. It just I sort of felt violated. [00:17:22] And because of my upbringing, that sort of felt like a trigger. But you know what? I walked away and I thought, you know what? That's care. [00:17:30] Gone sideways. You know, there was like, she wants to connect with me. Right? She's wanting intimacy totally. And this is really the only way that she knows how to do that right now. Because when you gossip, you know, it can feel intimate in the moment. It can feel like connection, a form of connection. But it doesn't call you to be vulnerable because gossip is all about the other two. And so I think we are living in this culture of othering. And I think that othering is what's concerning me about the how we will restorer the digital culture, because I think there are there are parts of our biology and our neurology that are are being challenged and hopefully not atrophying. And sometimes that's an image that comes up for me, is that with all the ways that our brains are responding to different ways of communicating, I almost think it's easier to other because we don't see we can send someone a text and get a reply and we didn't see the look of grief on their face. Yes, yes. You know what I mean? We didn't hear the tone in their voice that told us they were vulnerable. I mean, one thing that happened with this person who I recently had an experience with around gossip was that that helped me to bridge. What maybe she really was reaching for intimacy in and it was coming across as gossip, right? Yes. Was that I actually kind of saw the desperation when this person she was desperate. She was leaning toward me. She wanted something. It felt inappropriate and it felt a bit like a violation. But I also know that I have a sensitivity to that because of how I grew up. And it felt so good to actually feel like I could sort of bring her closer to my own heart and to feel some compassion for her, in a way. [00:19:29] Totally. You know, I think with emotional intelligence, I know I feel like people are practicing that more unbind. So there was one woman yesterday in a new group by men, and it's around people sort of looking at their privilege. And I can be very charged. Right. There's a lot of emotion. There's a lot of fragility. There's a lot of fear and terror about saying the wrong things. Shame could get triggered. I mean, it's a not a safe space. It's a brave space, but not a safe space. And even with conscious intention and she was a little bit I felt like a comment stepping on my toes and I didn't respond. And then she threw in an extra response. And this changed everything for me. She said, I just want to let everyone know in the space that I'm autistic. And so sometimes I come across in a way where it appears that I'm cold and I don't feel that way. But I come off this as cold. And in response, I said, I'm so grateful you shared that I'm a bit ADHD myself and I'm really an introvert. And I said, but with the ADHD, my brain can be moving so fast that I can come across as dismissive. And then she said. Thank you so much for sharing that. And she said, you know, we can have space here for disabilities to differences. Now, nobody's ever used the word about my ADHD disability, but I suffer from it. Privately a lot. And it just brought tears to my eyes. And then I wrote back and I said, when you use that phrase, it just fractures to my eyes and let me have more compassion for myself. So what I want to say is we bonded through the ether's and we've never seen each other's face. I have a profile picture. She doesn't. So she see my face digitally. But when I was I realized was that I've had this certainly on Zoome calls a lot with people. I think our brains are changing and we're adapting as a species. [00:21:43] And if we use our language, if we use language from the heart and slowed down long enough to move past what we're trying so hard to be heard about or like make our point. [00:21:56] And remember to bring that emotional language in. She was she. She went. She was vulnerable first when she she shared about being autistic and how she was perceived that it was the perfect thing to say to open me right up. [00:22:10] I thought, my God, I don't know this woman, but we just have this beautiful, authentic exchange. [00:22:17] It really did bring a tear right there to me. Nobody ever said that to me in my quote unquote, real life. [00:22:24] It's really it's a great example. It's a beautiful story. And I have to admit, I know people sort of make fun of emojis, but I do think emojis were created probably for that reason, because not everything can be conveyed even in language typed language. But so to see in a Mojie, it's like someone saying, here's my intention. I'm saying they're totally but I'm saying it with love or I'm. [00:22:48] And it really had a shorthand. It's a shorthand. [00:22:51] Well, and it's also a symbol. And the brain responds differently to a symbol than it does to written language. And I think it's really an interesting thing to think about, as I was, you know, kind of listening to you. I also had this image of wouldn't it be wonderful if every time we had to send a digital message message, we actually had to do an emotional check in so that prior to the message being sent, we used symbols, symbolic language or color or something that would let people know where we were in the moment. That didn't have anything to do with them. So if somebody is grieving, right. You know, prior to reading their their written message, you know, that they're in this place as they're sending it or somebody may be feeling, you know, particularly expansive as they're writing something. And I think that's the stuff in a way that we're we're missing, you know, because that's a lot of stuff. [00:23:48] It's a time of tremendous innovation. As you said that I thought as soon as you say that it's already manifest somewhere, we'll be doing that. We will be doing that. People are ready. You know, one of the things I'm asking for all my groups now is to insist that everybody show their face. We don't have to have makeup on. You can be in your bathrobe. I don't care. But like having some people show their face and others not. It does lead to intimacy, totally leaning into the conversation, being up close and having your face in rather than be like super pull back, you know, and I see it from other cohorts I've been in and what works and what doesn't. And with my students and all. And it's like taking conscious breaks, but it's a conscious break so that then when you're in the group that, you know, there's presence getting up and stretching whatever. But these emotional things you're talking about, you know, it's part of our work right now, especially as facilitators. You and I are both coaches and facilitators. And we we work intimately with people online to help them do things. This is part of our work to figure out how to create intimacy in the online space. Does it replace real life? No. It's a different experience, though. And how can we make it in some ways? What if it has? I know it has gifts, right? We know it has gifts that the real life space does it so that they both have gifts, they both have a place. But during this time of covert in particular, we've been given this offering with everyone at home for so long to take this as an inquiry like we're having now and to innovate around it. [00:25:34] Yeah, and I just want to say, you know, before we kind of wrap up the conversation, I think if there's anything I would suggest based on my experience and what I've read through research and what I've learned is that if it's sensitive, pick up the phone. [00:25:50] Yeah. And be available for people online to stay available. I reach out now to people who are just Facebook friends for conversations, you know, and. And it's great. And sometimes it's not even a sensitive thing. It's just like, wow, we really have a residence. Why don't we have a phone call? I just did this with this coach who we've been Facebook friends for four years, five years. We like each other a lot. [00:26:12] And I was like, quit, just talk. And she's like, I'm thinking of that for so long. [00:26:16] Let's do it, you know, so that it's not even about the problem. Right. But to take that connection off line when we can. [00:26:24] Well, and I I just sold a house and it was what you know, one of the people that I was interfacing with a lot is a millennial. And it was like. I've never experienced anything like that trying to use to do an entire real estate transaction primarily on text. [00:26:43] And that really was it was it was actually really hard for me. [00:26:46] I really thought this just doesn't feel right. You know, there's a lot of emotion and a lot of personal stuff, you know, behind selling a property, behind turning something, you know, that you've loved and you've lived in from one person to another. And and I thought, you know, I think that's you know, I guess, you know, I am you know, we are old enough now that we can start kind of doing our elder hood stuff. And I want to be really careful that I don't want you know, I don't generalize, you know, the generations. Mm hmm. With that said, I think I do have a concern for the millennials. And I I guess I wonder what they would say, because I do see an increase in trying to navigate big relationship issues through email and text. [00:27:36] And I think, yeah, that's a concern to me and I think I mean, my intuition around this is and different people and different younger people, including a woman who's worked for me. And I see her returning to the older ways. She and her husband and their millennials. They live in Brooklyn. They're very into like cooking clubs and sort of doing things even very retro. And like they have these book, you know, there there is a return. My my feeling about this is people will navigate a different. That's different. Right. Than just navigating stuff in the online space. Is talking about digital communiqu. Yeah. I think that though people will find the limitations and we all do. And then there's is we all have to sort of crash and burn right in our way. And what does and doesn't work around that. But yeah, and I have a lot of faith too. And some of the younger generations I know, they know stuff we don't know. And they're they're going to figure out their intimacy stoutly around it because, of course, there's always consequences for taking anything too far. [00:28:46] I think those are the two things that I'm curious about with the future generations have to do with. [00:28:54] Intimacy and. [00:28:58] Yeah, I think I mean, I think it's it's about it's about intimacy. I'm curious to know how we are evolving as a species in that way. And I could. That's another podcast. [00:29:09] That's another podcast. We have a lot to think about. Yeah, I'd like oh, if I say what I'm really thinking. Right. That we'll go another hour. Oh. Oh, I know what I was going to say. [00:29:21] Right. It's intimacy and instinct. [00:29:25] I'm really curious about. How intimacy and instinct are evolving in the human species. Because I wonder, like how is our instinct impacted when we're not in person so much? I've talked about this before on this podcast, but it was a it was something I read in some research that kind of blew my mind that when we're in a state of grief, yeah, we emit a undetectable scent. And so, I mean, we are human animals. We are biology. Right. And our biology is also an incredible metaphor. And I think we're moving away from our biology. Like that's like the digital is is gonna, you know, take over. [00:30:12] I mean, it is for now anyway. And for me as a story person, storyteller, story coach, it makes me realize that languaging our emotions. It's going to be more important than ever. Like, I like to stretch into vulnerability and to stretch into vulnerability and stretch the way with language, things or even what we're used to languaging. Take another step for the CIA correlational fields. Right. [00:30:41] Be curious, listening, working on not taking things personally at all our questions and leaning in instead of pulling back. [00:30:49] I think it's easy to to pull back and create distance and to other emotional intelligence for the digital age is going to be slightly if you than just emotional did it. Absolutely. So how can you and I it makes me think we needed offline conversation and how can we integrate it even more into our groups? And I agree on teaching it because, you know, this is the calling for it now. I agree with you. That's a great place for us to start wrapping up. Yeah. Thanks for the wonderful conversation. Always. Camille. [00:31:28] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture. [00:31:35] If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on iTunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community. Restoring the culture. You can support our podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we reach story. Our own lives. See you next time.

In this episode of Restorying the Culture, Tanya and Camille discuss the significance of our human footprint and "The Relational Impact."  How do we understand this idea of our human footprint around drama? How much drama do we have in our lives, around our emotional footprint, our psychic footprint? And how do we change that? What is the ripple effect of how we walk in the world? What is our impact, and what are we leaving behind? What are we sending out into the future? A part of restoring the culture is becoming more intimate with our own life, the environment, the natural world, and growing our awareness about our human footprint.  We have narratives that tell us in a way, to charge forward, be independent, there are all these messages that we're living with that, in some ways, impact our human footprint in a way that isn't supportive of us walking lightly on the planet.  “In spiritual circles, we often bypass our own shame. And until we feel our shame related to holding whatever privilege we hold in the world, we're dissociated from that aspect of our humanity.” Tanya Taylor Rubinstein [00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubins Steele Story mentor, and Camille Adair, family constellation facilitator. In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories servi lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness, moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments. In truth, so many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longing. Each one of us is necessary rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can restoring the culture together.    [00:00:52] Welcome, everybody. Last week, Tanya surprised me with the topic. And this week I'm actually going to be surprising her with a topic. So this is not something we've discussed. And rather than beginning with a quote, I'm going to share a dream I had in early 2000.    [00:01:09] And actually it was like mid 2008. So in March 2008, my documentary film, Solace, Wisdom of the Dying premiered at the Scottish Rite Temple in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And a couple of months after that, I had a dream. And in the dream, I was basically in the void and in the void there was a wall. And I heard a voice that in the dream. You know, I've sort of it felt like the voice of God for lack of other languaging. That's what it felt like to me.    [00:01:46] And. And the voice said.    [00:01:52] You have one question, you can ask any question. As your reward for making solace, wisdom of the dying, because this movie will help the world. And so my question was not a verbal question. It was. It was like a. It was almost like something. It was a reflection of something about my own being. Like the state of my being. And it was sort of an inquiry about something. That I already sort of knew, but I wanted confirmation and it wasn't even a formed idea in the dream. So without using words, there's this this, you know, communication between us of of my request. I'm taken over the other side of the wall. And. And I know that I am on the other side. As in after death.    [00:02:51] I'm in a living room. And I start walking quickly across the living room.    [00:02:58] And I'm so I'm walking like I'm in a hurry, which is, you know, it was sort of like Carolus and I bumped the side of the couch with my leg.    [00:03:08] And I looked down and I realize that the area around me has been bruised. So I realize the answer to my my non-verbal inquiry was on the other side.    [00:03:25] That there's there's no gap between doing and consequence.    [00:03:33] That we see the results of our actions immediately and that on this side of the wall, there's a delay, right? Which in a way makes you know, it makes me think about things like karma. You know, it's the delay between cause and effect and how, you know, we are learning our lessons in a much more slow down, you know, way that that likely has to do with being embodied and being in physical form. So.    [00:04:04] It was such a profound.    [00:04:09] Like teaching? Almost. And so what I'd like to talk about today is a concept that is that has come to me since that dream. And we talk a lot about carbon footprint. You know. Ah. And I'd like to talk about our human footprint. And that dream reminds me of the.    [00:04:32] The carbon footprint. We leave. All around us in ways that we're not aware of.    [00:04:41] By moving quickly, by not being mindful, by not being in our center, as my friend Michael Stillwater says, you know, when you go outside of your own medicine, you know, you're not operating from that set, that place.    [00:04:59] And so. I think also in terms of I've been thinking more about. How do we. How do we understand this idea of our human footprint around drama? How much drama we have in our lives, around our emotional footprint, our psychic footprint? And how do we. My hope is that that with the pandemic, we're gonna be more conscious about our human footprint so that it's not just about our carbon footprint, but also like.    [00:05:41] What is the ripple effect of how we walk in the world?    [00:05:45] What is our impact and what are we leaving behind? What are we sending out into the future?    [00:05:52] So, yeah, that's what I want to talk about, just that, like just last like just that cameo.    [00:06:01] So I thought you were good. See, you told me the other day you're like you're going to surprise you with a really light topic. I think fun. Is it okay.    [00:06:15] Life and death and living and dying. And because both an environmental equate should all psychic footprints. But like just that. Where do you want me to start?    [00:06:31] So, you know, it it's like whatever podcasts.    [00:06:39] I totally shocked you with the question. You were like, why? I like what's hardest thing in our entire being 20 years. Like what? That's how it feels. Right. I like. I think you're talking and I've got a whole DAP gig covered in notes that they're all Braddick and I like. I don't know. So do you want to focus at all? What would that be? Why would they be Burri?    [00:07:06] So this idea of I mean, the dream is the dream. And it was an important dream for me and still is. Yeah, I've been I think it's this idea of a human footprint. And if we talk about restoring the culture. A part of restoring the culture is like for me right now, is becoming more intimate with myself in my own life, with the environment, the natural world, and growing my awareness about my human footprint. Definitely.    [00:07:35] And we have narratives, right, that tell us like in a way, like charge forward, be independent, you know. I mean, there all these messages that we're living with that I think in some ways impact our human footprint in a in a way that isn't supportive of us walking lightly on the planet.    [00:07:53] Totally.    [00:07:55] It's a huge question and certainly an incredible inquiry, I'll just start with what is arising for me in this moment. I woke up this morning and. There was a few things that were coming to me. The first thing that came to me was a voice kind of in my head. You and I both get these deep voices that feel like they're part of us. And also beyond us in whatever way we define that in it. The voice said to me first, then when I woke up, you're out of exile.    [00:08:26] And I was like, oh, wow, I'm out of exile.    [00:08:31] I moved to Nashville this week, as you know, and 30 years ago.    [00:08:38] I was directed by an inner voice to go to Santa Fe, sight unseen. And I left in New York City. I think I've been an exile in the desert for 30 years.    [00:08:53] And I had to be because what I had to walk out.    [00:08:59] And it totally addresses what you're talking about. What I had to walk out was my shadow, my family's shadow.    [00:09:08] I had to walk in to cemeteries and sit with the dead myself. I had to you know, I grew up in Washington, D.C., a Republican family, pretty conservative, pretty elite, pretty privileged, as we've talked about here. Went to New York City. Was part of the AIDS pandemic. Not directly, but my my community as a theater artist died. A lot of people died. And that was the door to my awakening and where I got the directive. Come to Santa Fe.    [00:09:39] Go to Santa Fe. And I woke up this morning at fifty five years old. I was twenty six when I was sent it to exile by my inner guidance in the midst of my spiritual awakening. It wasn't to go to the light like I thought it was to go live in the darkness and to learn from the darkness. That's what New Mexico did for me and. I have such a deep attachment to the land there because it taught me everything. It wasn't it's not going into the light is going into the dark that I feel that exile was necessary for me to become somebody who even cares about my human footprint, who's even.    [00:10:28] Right. I didn't. I get that. I didn't care. I wasn't conditioned to care. I know you weren't.    [00:10:35] I mean, there was an inner empath in me that always cared about when we'd go to Beirut or Syria and see the children who were beggars. I was this little white privilege girl with my grandfather, who was the vice president of a university in Beirut. They had seven servants. I had we had we would travel around with what I call my Uncle Intune, a Lebanese man who was my grandfather's bodyguard, and we'd get out of the car and swarms of children who had nothing would try to sell us chocolates.    [00:11:09] The gum and I've talked about this before.    [00:11:11] And there was there was privilege in my my heart when my grandfather explained to me they didn't have food and they were trying to sell chocolates to buy their family bread and milk. There was an awakening in me and a natural empathy, but I didn't.    [00:11:27] And then I was cracked open by my friend dying of AIDS.    [00:11:32] It opened me to like the shock of life and death and lack of privilege.    [00:11:44] And New Mexico took me into exile where I had to go low, not high.    [00:11:51] And every time I tried to go high, which was the inner sense of privilege, I would get pulled down and knocked down into the knocked down, actually knocked down.    [00:12:01] The image I'm getting knocked down over and over.    [00:12:05] And that was completely necessary. I had to become a human. Most of us, I don't think, are human. I think what patriarchy and white supremacy in these 5000 years of patriarchy as women and being marginalized and in these relationships where we have to cut off aspects of ourselves with men in our culture, we are d humanized.    [00:12:31] We are so dehumanized. And can I just say one thing, because this is something I've been getting a little tripped up on lately. Around duality. Like, just the one I hear. I mean, because, of course, there's white privilege.    [00:12:43] I'm not at all discounting that. I'm not discounting the patriarchy. But I do think that part of humanizing is maybe dropping some of our labels. Right. Because, I mean, all of that affected everyone in the world.    [00:12:57] But I disagree. I disagree. For me, I really do. Like, I hear where you are, where you're coming from.    [00:13:03] And I think when we call it do ality, we bypass our own shame. And until we feel our shame as holding whatever privilege we hold in the world, we're dissociated from from that aspect of our humanity.    [00:13:23] And and while we've all suffered, that's that's inherent to the human experience and our ancestors suffered.    [00:13:32] But I do think there's a bypass that can happen even with what you're saying. Yeah. For example, the patriarchy is incredibly strong among women. Of course, women will not carry a lot of the patriarchy. So that's all I'm talking about is just I think it's more complicated than just sort of.    [00:13:52] Well, I think that when we humanize when you humanize something, right.    [00:13:57] Then it's like it's like that saying, you know, be kind to everyone, not just be kind to those, but want to be kind to, but be kind to everyone.    [00:14:08] I mean, this is really about moving out our humanity and not. I totally agree with you about the bypass.    [00:14:16] Well, I mean, yeah. And and and and it's just acknowledging our human placement in the hierarchy in the rank because there's hardly conscious rank and unconscious privilege.    [00:14:29] And yes, many women have adopted the patriarchy by taking on the characteristics of patriarchy.    [00:14:35] But it becomes nuanced for me. And what I realized is my deepest humanity.    [00:14:42] I've lost my taste for cruelty of any cop of any kind. But I also am developing my empathy because, again, I've had people in Santa Fe, people of color, say to me that Santa face an unusually racist place. And we I perceived it as an unusually kind place. So it was my job to listen to them rather than just go from my own experience, because we all have blind spots. Right. So I'm just talking about. I wanted to do the spiritual bypass. It sort of came to me having psychic giftedness and everything to just sort of want to go into. We're all one. And I don't see skin and I'm not a renaissance.    [00:15:28] And that's not at all what I'm saying. And that was when I was very young. No.    [00:15:32] And I just want to say, though, that it's been part of my human walk to actually feel the sting of shame, of the unconscious, unconscious.    [00:15:43] The privilege of I don't want to get too caught up in that, but it's coming back the way we're talking about. You know, I wanted to say that's a human footprint.    [00:15:50] I would have to say that I think there's a this is a really good distinction about what could sort of increase our I think shame increases our human put me to. I think it actually makes it. I think that. And I think guilt in terms of the way we talk about guilt and constellation work is you carry your own guilt and that makes us stronger. So we use guilt in sort of a different way. You know, people could say, oh, that's splitting hairs. But there's actually a very big difference between acknowledging totally I what I agree, harrying the guilt of your of your ancestry, of your lineage, meaning that you acknowledge exactly as you said, that's really important to life.    [00:16:30] And that's like the John John Bradshaw work. The difference between guilt and shame, guilt. I'm not familiar with that, but I'm like, take that while he talks. His book was the shape of something about the shame that binds us. It's like that guilt has the opportunity to help us be more responsible, take responsibility does. It's like waking up. And it made me become toxic. But I absolutely I think if the energy suppressed in us is shame, it can also protect in a way where it has to be felt to be transformed.    [00:17:02] And that's what happened to me in the desert coming out of exile now.    [00:17:06] I feel like in exile that I had to go in and do I had to just walk with the dead, with the shame, with my ancestors, with my privilege to become human. And now I'm feeling the only way to serve.    [00:17:21] And so you had to go through that and you feel like going through that time is in coming out of exile. How will that impact your human footprint?    [00:17:30] Well, now I'm prepared to serve from a much more humble place.    [00:17:34] That's what I was going to talk about. Humility. I'm so glad. You said that because I do, I believe there's a healthy kind of you know, I've always talked about that there's a spectrum. You know, this humility spectrum that's, you know, like healthy humility on one end and humiliation on the other. And and there again, it's like where where shame comes in. So I think.    [00:17:56] Yeah, I think I think healthy humility is something that helps us to be human and to be right in the world and does support our human footprint. Right.    [00:18:08] Yeah, because we draw line under it's. Yeah. It's a lightning.    [00:18:12] It's a lightning. And I'm curious about the connection between humility and this understanding of us as interdependent beings.    [00:18:21] Yeah. Right. Yeah. And we are. And every life matters. It's like. And every story matters. And how do we come into relationship now? Right. Right. With that as leaders. But also I see it as a circle now. You know, to me, the circle is part of the practice of humility. And and it's always been my impulse and story work to sit in a circle not as to not be on a podium or on a stage, but in a circle leading by being and leading by sharing and inviting people into the circle.    [00:18:59] It's interesting, you know, when you talked earlier about. Being in the desert and sort of having a desert as this, as sort of a it is a symbol of exile in a way.    [00:19:13] And I've been in the desert as long almost as long as you were. All right. I mean, my daughters my youngest daughter's twenty nine. And, you know, so I'm actually I moved to Taos 30 years ago in Santa Fe now. But it's it's. That's three decades. It's a long time to be at 7000 feet. And to be sort of drying out. And you can just almost hear your bones clattering sometimes. Right?    [00:19:40] Well, there is a quality to it.    [00:19:41] And where was I going with that? Oh.    [00:19:47] Thirty years. Thirty years. Yeah. But there was another point. I'll just come back to it if it comes to me. But just. I guess now where I'm going.    [00:19:58] Thank you for just my brain for just flowing somewhere else.    [00:20:03] It always does. It does.    [00:20:06] Right. So you're in Nashville after three decades in the desert. And I'm leaving tomorrow to go back to Oregon, my home state. So you've returned east. And I'm going west for a month. And it feels like a very purposeful time for me to be going there for some deep reflection.    [00:20:25] And I'll be close on the coast, just, you know, a couple hours from where I was born. And there's some potency in being able to, like, go out.    [00:20:36] And experience yourself in the world in a different way. And then sort of come back home and and to me, there's like there's a kind of integration that does deal with humility.    [00:20:45] I know what I was gonna say before, which is you talked about your lack of humanity around privilege and you had money and it was East Coast and it was all of that and what and what it was like being a very sensitive child.    [00:21:00] Also in the midst of all of them.    [00:21:03] And I actually think that mine. My way that I avoided that and made my footprint larger has to do with some of the Valkyrie energy, the, you know, being the oldest child and and and being a caretaker and then becoming a nurse and all the ways in which we try to serve and trying to like, navigate, negotiate between how we serve. And are we going to be the wounded healer or are we going to be a wounding healer? And you know, I've had astrologers tell me that my Kairouan, which is the wounded healer, runs and it does it runs right through Santa Fe. So I've been here doing this wounded healer stuff, which is, I think, my version of your going into darkness and exile for 30 years. Yeah.    [00:21:58] And when you talked at the very beginning about your dream and the fact that you were given the information that on the other side we go quantum. So we're its immediate manifestation.    [00:22:10] That's right. So that we have the opportunity that there's that it's not a better than less than. And I won't know. Also thinking which I expressed to you at the big before we got on this podcast. Yeah. That I had a recognition that we have other word, the dead, that we might time others and the other side would really it's just that's the ultimate split. The ultimate othering is to say we're only alive over here on this side. There's an aliveness and death. And there's a dying aspect of being alive.    [00:22:44] All the tiredly, a lot of dying about being alive, which means that.    [00:22:48] Yeah. Which means that it's the ultimate split. To see those two is separate.    [00:22:53] And if we're here, you and I talk all the time. Right. About healing splits in ourselves, embracing our full humanity and the divinity.    [00:23:02] To me now it's the integration. Because if I'm out of exile here, I can be more full and whole and firm in the world. But to me, New Mexico is the mother and that the darkness is the mother. It was me, the healthy mother, because I was never mothered. So the land itself and walking into the shadow became the mothering I needed to become a full human being.    [00:23:28] And now I know it's going to be always and when I was driving out in New Mexico's crying the way I always do and I just made a promise and I said, let me go the way maybe a young adult would say to their parent.    [00:23:40] Let me go and do my own thing in another place in the world. And I will always return to you. Huh? Right. So thinking about returning and life and death.    [00:23:51] Yeah. I mean, and the mother, you know, the the mother is the one that holds the death, right. I mean. Yeah. The feminine is that that holds the dark and the death and the unconscious and the underworld and all of that. So yeah. Interesting to think about being re mothered in the dark in the desert where there's actually so much light. It's really kind of a beautiful contrast. Right. And there's a and there's a lack of consciousness to that. I mean, it's almost like to be re mothered. You can't track that consciously, right? It's like you're being worked on. Maybe who knows the small self in relationship to the big self. But yeah, that's kind of what I'm. That's just fascinating. And I but I love this idea of becoming more conscious about our human footprint. And it makes me think about things that I'd like to do differently in my life, about how I make my choices totally, totally new and totally. Yeah. Specially like like I mean, not just in the outer world, but like in my body. And my personhood is its own universe. How is my footprint with myself? What are my critical thoughts like? Do I beat myself up my loving you know and why. Easy on myself and my hard on myself. Right. Why do I take up do I use up too much energy? Right. I mean, you think about like the carbon footprint has a lot to do with energy management and sustainability.    [00:25:26] Do I know how to ask and ask for help and collaborate even? That's my own needs getting met.    [00:25:33] And the interdependence must be a part of that, too. Right. Like, we just don't do this alone and. No. And yet no one can do it for us. So we're you know, we're on a dual path. This is a dual path of of, you know, individual wholeness and individuation and Škoda Viduka nation. And as we've talked about before, sort of this energy of the two by two and how two people can create something that one person will never create a clearly thing create.    [00:26:00] That's right. Her identity.    [00:26:02] And that's also returning from what you will. You would turn me on to that webinar with Tom Brady, the astrologer. That was amazing. But the return to the I vow, you know, the movement away from the right, just the individual, that relationship to the Dow, to the collective, to this pre verbal. And I'm not talking preverbal individually. It was before we had written language, right. To start to codify everything with the left brain. This returned.    [00:26:33] I posted something by Nina Simonds of the Bioneers today that she wrote about third stage leadership.    [00:26:40] And it's all very much about in the circle at the collaborative and what's happening now.    [00:26:46] Well, and I love. Yeah. Sorry. Gone again.    [00:27:00] It's not you know, it makes me think about.    [00:27:04] I think about all the people with dementia that I've, you know, been involved with in my hospice days and. And one of the practices that I have is like, you know, as I'm an aging person or in the youth of my older hood, you know, that's another way of being gentle on myself is like I forget something or. Yeah, if I know I know what I was going to say. It usually does come back.    [00:27:30] It's just being gentle with myself and going, oh, I guess I just don't have to work that hard to hold on to something. Like my mind is just a little softer than it used to be. And allowing that to be creative. So what I was gonna say is, I'm glad you brought up the left hemisphere of the brain, because I actually think if we were to go full circle and wrap up our conversation today, we could say something about all of what we talked about.    [00:27:52] When you product white privilege and beat people who are marginalized and sort of our rugged individualism and all of this stuff, that's all left brain told hemisphere up action.    [00:28:07] Right. And I think part of reducing our human footprint, not just our carbon footprint, but if we use carbon footprint, we use ecology and we use, you know, how we think about sustainability in terms of the natural world. And we apply that to the relational realm. That's all right. Hemisphere stuff. So it's like, what are the things that we can do to decrease our our human footprint at the same time, paradoxically, becoming more human just become more relational. It's to acknowledge our interdependence. It's to look at the human ecology.    [00:28:49] Well, and it's one of the reasons that and I moved to Nashville, even in the midst of the pandemic is two is there's community here. And one of the things I truly believe is that it's going to be really important that we move or live and deepen our roots systems in our local communities. So I'm like, be happy in your local community now where you want to be, because we're going to have to. I believe this is one of the things coming up for me. Let go of our addiction to cheap travel. Getting on an app. So whenever we feel like get in the car. So how can we go deeper and create really deep roots that are satisfying in our deep community and relationships that are satisfying. So we're not always getting on a plane because getting in a car, because it's not sustainable. Right.    [00:29:41] Not sustainable. The way I think about that. The way I buy my clothing. Yes. Where I buy my food, I try and buy food as locally as seasonally as I can. It's the same thing about clothing. You know, we've like there's so much now that's like, you know, fossil fuel based cheap fibers, sheep's clothing.    [00:29:59] It exploit Zachares. Yeah. You know, all of these things, they.    [00:30:05] Exploiting people and damaging the environment. It's all connected. So it's like, yeah, that like, how can we go really deep locally?    [00:30:13] Because now online we can be expensive globally. Podcasts. Technology. Zoom meetings. We have the whole world. Yeah. To be available and to that way. So how do we go. Really deep and small and intimate locally is something I'm totally interested in shifting my human footprint in that way.    [00:30:34] Me too. And I think our generation as generation X, we're older generation X. Yes. I think this is part of what how we need to differentiate ourselves as as, you know, going into the youth of our older hood. I mean, I think it's really important, which makes me want to end the podcast with a shout out to the millennials in particular about our daughters, Hayley, Claire and Chloe. I really have a certain kind of genius and brilliance within them about, I think, carrying the creative vision for how to live differently, how totally with more sensitive to their to their human footprint. I think they've got that in them to do that. And I'm. That makes me feel happy.    [00:31:23] I love that. And also a shout out to the baby boomers who came before us for breaking and cracking the culture open. They weren't explorers of consciousness. And it's interesting because once once again, Camille, here we are as the bridge walkers and I think is bridging generation knows were bridge our ages where branches have felt that that Generation X, that a lot of our job is to bridge.    [00:31:48] The baby boomers with the millennials because the baby boomers are such a big generation. Absolutely. I mean, energetically. And also numbers wise. And. And there's a big difference between the baby boomers and the millennials. Absolutely. And I do think that that's our our place is to be the bridge generation. And I think, you know. One thing Tom Brady said about the baby boomers is, you know, that it's, you know, the 1960s was about shocking transformation. Yes. And I think we're we're coming back into a time where we're going to see more and more shocking transformation. Absolutely. Some of these patterns are repeating themselves now. And how do we restoring that? Because the 60s won't happen again. But how do we restore the energy so that we can, you know, sort of harness it for as much as possible for the greater good?    [00:32:42] Absolutely. And to take what was learned and to look at honestly what didn't work as much as what did. And to know that as bridges, it doesn't mean we're marginalized as bridges. We're playing a really important. It's an rule.    [00:32:57] That's right. Hallelujah.    [00:32:59] Yeah. Great topic. I get a little light earlybird in conversation here for us with myself. Brain subject, shaft brain. I love that. Oh, my gosh. I love that. I've no shame in any.    [00:33:17] No. No shame in our humanity. Just letting ourselves be fully seen and seeing each other. Of makes us feel intimate and close.    [00:33:24] Exactly. I love it. So. So we'll end with intimacy. To be continued. Always. Thank you.    [00:33:36] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture.    [00:33:42] If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on iTunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community. Restoring the culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we reach story. Our own lives. See you next time. 

In this episode of Restorying the Culture, Tanya and Camille speak about the danger of a single narrative in a crisis.   We open with this quote by Canadian author Topoka, "The world needs your rebellion and the true song of your exile. And what has been banned from your life. You find medicine to heal all that has been kept from our world."   What lens are we looking through? How do stories become so polarized?   What role does social media play in shaping our narrative now?   What's the difference between how thinking vs. feeling informs our relationship to a narrative?   Emotional intelligence, grief, and navigating the right and left hemispheres of the brain.    How grief not only informs but changes our narratives.    "The planet is waking up and seems to be relieved and coming out of its exile as we humans feel into our exile more fully at this time. Tanya Taylor Rubinstein  10 Restorying the Culture-The Danger of Viewing the World Through A Single Narrative.mp3 [00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubins Steam Story mentor and Camille Adair, family Constellation facilitator.   [00:00:11] In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories survive lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness, moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments in truth. So many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longing. Each one of us is necessary and rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can restoring the culture together.   [00:00:52] Hey, everybody, this is Tanya. Welcome back to another episode of Restoring the Culture with myself and my dear friend Camille.   [00:01:00] I want to start today with a quote. The world needs your rebellion and the true song of your exile. And what has been banned from your life. You find medicine to heal all that has been kept from our world. And that is by the author, Toko Україна Turner.   [00:01:23] So Camille and I decided we have all kinds of interesting and provocative conversations off-line all the time as we're dear friends and we've decided that we're gonna shake things up a little bit and make the conversations even more improvisational. Sometimes as if we're just on the phone and you're listening into one of our private conversations and to do this.   [00:01:48] We've decided sometimes to simply surprise each other with topics. And so I invite each other into an inquiry.   [00:01:59] So that's what we're doing today. So Camille doesn't know the topic for today. I'm just going to bring it up and why I'm inspired to bring it up. And what I want to call it is the danger of viewing the world through a single narrative and particularly in crisis. So, Camille. Thanks for joining me and and jumping in for this topic. I want to give you a little bit about just what what's been going through my head about this in the last few days. We're still in the middle of this pandemic. And I think it's going to be interesting to look back historically on our podcast in the midst of this pandemic and see like, you know, like as a cultural almost pop culture lens. Right. And the way the world's changing each week and our commentary on it. So I'm watching things online in different cohorts. I'm part of different groups of people like you. I'm a bridge person.   [00:02:57] I cross into a lot of different worlds are online, particularly on social media. I'm friends with people globaly from very different backgrounds and from very, very different contexts. I've got a lot of friends who are, you know, as strongly in a social justice world. People in the states, Europe, Australia, in in a business cohort. I'm part of friends from Santa Fe, from Nashville, different parts of the US to.   [00:03:25] And alternative communities. Santa Fe sort of counterculture vibe, and it's very disturbing right now to see the polarization and of people with each other. And certainly I've been polarized with others at times in my life. Viewing the world through my own lens, my own bias. And now as this crisis escalates. Right. And it's not only the corona virus crisis. It's the political crisis. It's the rise of fascism globaly.   [00:03:59] There's a lot of stuff around racism class. There's a lot of fear in individuals. How can I protect me? Mine are conspiracy theories, some may say, and someone else may say legitimate concerns about government, big pharma. But the polarization is painful. And as I'm hearing people speak, listening to the way things are around the face masks, for example, right now to whether or not to wear considerations around racial considerations, like if you're a white person, you have this privilege you have or or certain kinds of privilege, we can carry unconscious privilege and bias having money. Right now, some people are in food lines all over the country, food banks, socioeconomic privilege. It's really influencing how people think. I'm seeing some people I've really respected in the past. Professionals go into deep fear, a lot of new agey sort of conspiracy theories running rampant. So once again, what this all brings me to is that I don't want to come so much from my own bias or even so much from my opinion as I speak, from sort of the center of all of these narratives.   [00:05:23] Right. Because. And and and how do we shift?   [00:05:29] You know, this part of the inquiry I wanted to bring to you is to get your thoughts on because I feel pretty stumped right now. I know I need to speak through through the lens of different narratives and share more of my own experiences.   [00:05:42] But how what are your thoughts on navigating the polarities right now and the presumptions and the way to minimize harm? Because a lot of harm is happening emotionally.   [00:06:00] And I no harm always comes out of polarization when we stop talking to each other or talking to each other without out at being hateful or condescending, mean spirited. And at the same time, not shutting down the very real voices of people who are bringing up dissonance. Like it says the world. This is why I brought in this quote, The world needs your rebellion and the true song of your exile. And to be listening to people who are different from us and to be listening to people who've been exiled culturally, who don't have such dominant voices or be more marginalized for whatever reasons. So that's a mouthful, right? I know that. I just said it's a lot, but I'm thinking about the single narrative.   [00:06:51] And when we're in our own little microcosm and we're not able to extend and see other narratives and take these points of view in consideration, it just feels even more painful to me. It almost feels like we're doing violence on each other on top of the violence that's happening in the world. Mm hmm.   [00:07:13] Well, there are so many things that come up for me. I think the first thing and I'll just share with one of the things that I've been doing in these times to support myself and staying connected. But first, I'd like to speak to sort of this idea of one narrative, which is very, you know, in terms of, you know, the work that Ian McGilchrist and others have done on the right and left hemispheres of the brain. It's very left hemisphere to want to have an answer. It makes the left hemisphere of the brain feel safer because that's the competitive, language oriented side of the brain.   [00:07:54] And it's and that's not the side of the brain that's relational. So what I've been doing, because I live in a community and have a family, and I've actually noticed even the differences between the generations. You know, so I'm around people who have varying degrees of fear and and different thinking around how to be with the virus and how to be with other people with the virus.   [00:08:20] And I've started I kind of got to this place where, as I can know, I'm kind of sick of hearing what people think on what news you're exposed to or what articles you're reading. You know, it's like and that's a way we're feeding the left hemisphere of the brain. Right. We're just feeding ourselves all this information. Right. And there are a million different ways to like synthesize that and come up with, you know, your own version of what makes sense. And then people are sharing that. And as you're saying, they're polarizing.   [00:08:48] So I've just been for my self avoiding talking about what I think. Instead, I'm talking about what I feel, how do I feel about not just about the virus, but how do I feel in isolation? How do I feel right now at this time in my life? And I've been encouraging other people to tell me how they feel. If I if they start going into they're they're thinking around it. Because when we share our feelings, it softens the polarization, because you can have different thoughts about it, but you can have the same feelings. You know, you might have two people who are in fear. They both have different ways of interpreting what's going on.   [00:09:35] But they both feel fear or they both are having anxiety or they might both be having you know, they might find some kind of like a bridge or a middle point around.   [00:09:44] You know what I hear a lot of people now talking about, which is like, oh, my gosh, you know, like I've gained 15 pounds and I've you know, it's like I have, you know, my like, I haven't had a haircut or, you know, all the things that we're sort of used to having on our calendar. And those things really sound like things of privilege. But but those aspects of daily life also really do ground us, right. They their routines and they ground us in to the knowing that this is how we take care of ourselves. Right.   [00:10:17] And so, yeah, I guess that would just be the first thing I would say is that the narrative changes when it isn't about beliefs. So I've been trying to do that. The other thing I think about is. And this is really the deeper work that I'm doing right now that is murkier and hard to talk about because it is about the nonverbal narrative. And to me that's actually the deepest, most profound narrative. The happening is the one that's beneath the words, the one that is in the realm of the collective. The one that is that we can feel in the air, that we can feel in in our psyche that's coming through in our dreams. That is really. Yeah, it's difficult to put it into a story, but it's so there. And I really feel like that voice of the voiceless. The story. It's like the story beyond the story is really the work that I'm drawn to. And then how do we connect around that? So I've been meeting with people and spending more time having moments of silence and even just being in each other's presence. And I feel like there can be a lot communicated in those times. And then and then also really identifying who can I really talk to about the deepest parts of myself and not make pretty my pain or or what I'm going through, but to be able to just really be vulnerable so so that I don't get lost in my own, you know, my own single narrative of Camille.   [00:11:57] Right. Well, right. And we all have that right. Yeah. And it's dangerous actually to think we don't. I did challenge a woman on a social media page and sort of a spiritual white woman who I could feel was doing a big bypass. Like her opinion was the only thing that mattered, didn't matter how it might impact others. And I called her out and she said, I'm past my ego and identity and I'm sorry, you're not like I. That was what I knew. I had to stop responding because it would not have been productive for me because it would have sent me into a kind of a really a rage trigger.   [00:12:41] That's why I really have such a hard time with that form of communication. And I just think. I don't know, I do. I have big concerns about social media. We've had conversations about how, you know, people can either on the one hand, people can put sort of like a false life.   [00:12:59] Right. So like, here's the here's the beautiful thing. The beauty is the perfect. Exactly. The soundbites. Well, it's a selfie culture. And and then we can and it's narcissism.   [00:13:10] It feeds narcissism.   [00:13:12] Well, and then there's the also there's the you know what? I heard someone call, you know, keyboard warriors, which is. Yeah. People duking it out on social media. And I am I think that, you know, because I teach emotional intelligence and digital communication is one of the first things that I remember really learning in terms of how the brain operates and how the nervous system operates.   [00:13:34] It really it sabotages emotional intelligence and respectful communication. So I think it's it's really important to avoid, especially like on on hot issues. Right. Stressful because again, we're just moving into our thinking around it. It's not about the feeling.   [00:13:58] I mean, I agree and I disagree. I disagree only on the love of love. I think it's an effective form of communication that is kind of a great equalizer. And I think all my deepest level of values, like the way I see the story circle is ultimately it's egalitarian and it is a tribal story circle in a way. I'm talking Facebook. I'm talking Instagram. I know it affects the neuroscience and I've really had to change my own relationship to it. But for people talk about voice, you know, who would have been voiceless or maybe marginalized in the culture. It does bring diversity in to a conversation that I like. I mean, I heard that the Arab Spring uprising would have never happened without Twitter. You know, so certain things, because information can travel so fast, can be an organizing tool in terms of big social justice issues. So that part I can't. I love about it. I truly do. The connection. But and I, of course, agree with you on the neuroscience I've seen, the way it's changed my own brain chemistry. And I've had to I've had to walk it back so that there's more consciousness around what I'm posting and how. And I don't. Yeah. And I avoid a lot of those conversations. It was a thing for me to even walk away from her and not try and prove something, because the soul is, I think, comfortable with dissonance and with not explaining and just expressing and leaving it. I know the part of the ego. It's like to me, the ego that wants to win a fight which is very different from right sharing a point. And yet things can break down very quickly.   [00:15:42] Well, and I think that's a I wouldn't really call it a blind spot for me, but it's definitely an area of discomfort because because I feel like the path that I'm on about being relational is so important to me that sometimes I miss the both. And in terms of the benefits of social media and I know there really are some. So it's good for me to hear that. Right. It's. And you have a different experience of it than I do, just as I was thinking about that, about, you know, how much work you do on on Facebook and on social media. And I have networks of people who don't do anything on social media, and they're out there, too. But it's a different ask more email and phone calls and things like that. So it is a both/and, does it not, just really about how. What is our relationship to ourselves around these things in the world today and how can we. Try and stay in our medicine and stay in our integrity and stay connected in all situations on and off line, right.   [00:16:45] As much as possible. Yeah, yeah, yeah.   [00:16:50] For me, I I have I I've learned so much from being on social media in a positive way. And yeah. Not to get it make this all about social media. It's just again coming back to this narrative. The narrative is the single story. I'm very curious. It's why I started years ago. I decided to do the cancer monologues because I was most scared of anything in my life. I had like a total phobia about getting cancer because I had some trauma from my family. So I wanted to hear those stories. So I like to lean into stories that make me uncomfortable.   [00:17:26] And I've gotten to go into pockets of people that I otherwise wouldn't have gotten to meet. But because coming back to this of a friend of ours was sharing this yesterday, he said somebody shared this with him.   [00:17:40] I don't know if it was some kind of graph or me or email or whatever, but it was like there was a circle. It was a triad. Those like the people who think like. This is all a conspiracy.   [00:17:54] The people who think Big Pharma just wants to make money off this. The people who think this is the end of the world, the people who think this is the best thing to ever happen to Mother Earth. And then it was like in the tiny circle in the middle. Me. And I thought, well, that's powerful. That's this emotional intelligence to me of being willing to stay open to all these narratives and hang more with the mystery. And you and I have been talking a lot about to grief.   [00:18:24] Grief.   [00:18:25] So let's talk about that in terms of only having one narrative are getting really attached to it. What do you think is the role grief plays in that?   [00:18:37] Mm hmm. Well, I guess first of all, I think. Grief takes us out of narrative in a way, you know, the prefrontal cortex really shuts down somewhat, not completely, of course, but the brain changes depending on what state of grief we're in and and whether or not we are, you know, have resilience or whether there's trauma. You know, they're all different kinds of grief, but. Yeah. That's a that's a really good question. I don't know that I have any kind of an answer or worse or anything to add to that, except that I think. That grief is. A state, you know, there are some things that are emotions and then some things that are states of being, you know, or there it's like that I think of I think of grief as being a state of being that we travel through. And we've talked about that a little bit before. But, you know, grief is the big connector because we grieve, because we love grief, you know, is the other side of love or grief as the other side of joy.   [00:19:44] It's the price of admission for loving. And so I think it pulls us into those deep waters, you know, where transformation happens, where we have to sort of surrender to it because it's not something that we can just shake off. It's not something we can take a pill for. And and and we're called to just to go into the depth of it, you know?   [00:20:12] Yeah. And when you were talking earlier about people's discomfort with just being with the unknown right now. Right. And the mystery and the. And and how do we hold on to control?   [00:20:26] To me, the grief state can be a softening around that.   [00:20:33] Like for me, if I allow myself to actually feel and grieve and feel the terror of the unknown, my human terror of the unknown, and not try and just talk about it and do a spiritual by pathway.   [00:20:46] Yes, of course, I have faith and, you know, call on past experiences of faith and rather just be with it. And I feel like I do feel like that's at the heart of something that isn't named online and there's no space for that. Usually online and maybe it's not even appropriate to bring that there. Or maybe it is. Or maybe it's in conversations like this.   [00:21:09] But.   [00:21:12] The avoidance of grief, I think, makes us also grasp bond to a single narrative, because a single narrative is a cookie cutter answer. And even if it's not a complete answer, I think it can feel settling to the nervous system to say, well, I'm just gonna grab on to this belief.   [00:21:31] Yeah. You know, one of the things for me in terms of the single narrative and grief is that grief changes who we are. We're not the same when we come through the other side of grief. And so our narratives have to change because we change.   [00:21:50] Yeah. It feels to me. Yeah. Right. Something gets revealed that is deeper and truer, too. It's the cookie cutter. We're not grasping so much for it. Then.   [00:22:03] Mother, no answers. There are no easy answers when we're in a state of grief. I mean, we're almost sort of forced to to surrender to the unknown.   [00:22:12] And what's interesting to me in this time is there's individual grief, but there's collective grief, grief in states, in families and community, in the country, here in the U.S., global grief, there's eco grief right around the environment. There's a lot there's a and there are new things emerging and.   [00:22:43] Right. Right. It's a radical time. It's it's an absolutely. To me, the most radical time of my lifetime.   [00:22:51] And there's this really I've been thinking about this kind of almost the sweet juxtaposition between the grief that I'm feeling among humans. And then the joy that I'm experiencing in nature. Yes, I have seen more incredible birds at my house and more just the animals, even the insects. Everything just feels more alive. The natural world feels to me like it is just celebrating this waking up.   [00:23:18] It's waking up and relieved and coming out of its exile as we feel in our exile more in some way.   [00:23:27] That's exactly right. That's exactly right.   [00:23:29] They're coming out. I just posted something this morning about these incredible dare you have to look at me? It's happening in countries all over the world. And the fact that the smog is down, you know, I acid my husband how long it would take for the ice, you know, to stop melting. He said, well, he had read something on it. If we if we kept things like this without all the fossil fuels being burned, as many airlines and all three or four years. It's a big. Right. Like, how are we going to restore story the species and how we're relating to the earth?   [00:24:11] And yeah, that's the big question is the human species and the connection to the earth.   [00:24:16] Are we going to be hospice's humanity or are we going to be hospice's the planet in a way? I mean, we're not really going to hospice the planet. But the natural world, you know, I mean, well, are we going to have to hospice the species?   [00:24:30] I remember many years ago and when you asked that inquiry, I was sitting at the feet of a guru at the time. And we talked about me, started getting over the guru culture, but she said something very profound at the time and she said hope is as hollow as fear.   [00:24:49] Because both take us out. Of the moment of this mystery of the now we only have it and even hope. And I've always felt ambiguous about hope since she said that, right. Because it may be why what hope to sort of fight for something or move toward something. But I think hope's been taken away, if we're honest right now and people want to cling to hope in these single narratives.   [00:25:17] I think there are different kinds of hope, though. I think there's the superficial hope that like things are gonna get better. I think that there is a way of rediscovering the meaning of hope so that it becomes authentic to the experience that it's being applied to. Right. And I think hope is connected to meaning. You know, Victor Frankl talks a lot about that in man's search for meaning. And he talked about what it was like living in the concentration camp. Yes. Yes. He could always tell. You know, when someone was gonna die and as a physician, he said it was not about their physical condition.   [00:25:54] It was about their state of hope. Yeah, right. And so, you know, he talked about how he would walk and imagine seeing his wife in the sky and he in the clouds. And he would come up with these, you know, these little rituals for himself to keep his connection alive, because I think hope you know, if hope is external to us.   [00:26:17] It's superficial and hollow. I agree with her.   [00:26:20] But if Hope House is tied to our internal medicine and our meaning about life, then I think it's really I think it can help us with resilience.   [00:26:30] You know, I love that. And that is I love Victor Frankl. And I read his book years ago. And it's radical, radical resilience.   [00:26:39] And I mean, one of the ways I think I do carry hope or maybe some of us do is when we're with the unknown, whether it's about our own life, our own life and death, anything. The hope is for me, I think of my daughter.   [00:26:56] I think of the generation after us. I think of, you know, a friend of mine said this to me before all this crisis started. I dont know. A few years ago. And she said, the world is going to be a beautiful place and I hope I live to see it like on the other side of this fall.   [00:27:15] That was inevitable.   [00:27:16] It came whether through having Trump as president or, you know, global fascism or, you know, war or all these things.   [00:27:26] It was inevitable that a fall come right, because we've been on this collision course as a human species for so long.   [00:27:33] And that entitlement of sort of neo liberalism, we can all have whatever we want when we want it. You know, and it goes past red and blue. It's become this materialistic. All of this. And so it was inevitable that are in some ways our personal hope.   [00:27:55] Had to shift, I think. Now you talk a lot about the long game.   [00:28:01] Well, and I think that, you know, I remember when I interviewed Larry Dossey, I think I've interviewed he and Barbie, his his wife and mentor and dear friend of mine. You know, maybe three times. And I remember he was talking about a conversation that he had with Dean raden, who runs the Noetic Sciences Institute, and and that he asked Dean. Are you optimistic about the future? And Dean said, I don't have a choice. And Larry's message about that was optimism actually is our responsibility. And that reminds me of what it's like to be a mother and a grandmother, you know, for me to become kind of like desperate and and indulge myself in. And ruminating. You know, because ruminating really takes us down and the negative spiral.   [00:28:56] You know, it's like how it really is this this paradox that we're asked to feel the depth of our feelings and to go into our grief and also to remain optimistic and to exercise some of these tools like gratitude and and to practice empathy and to watch how we're starting to shut down or not feel, you know, or we get to beat like two interior inside of ourselves. And then it's hard to bring ourselves out. You know, all of those things, I think have to do with exile. Right. Because we can move them from exile in the world is external. But there's also internal exile.   [00:29:33] And our relationship to ourselves and our own feelings states, I think is one of the things that I want to work on in my lifetime in terms of re learning human connection, because there's so much emphasis on the outer conditions of the world.   [00:29:50] It's so true. And one thing I've learned by doing some family constellation work with you is I always felt exiled.   [00:29:57] And then I realized I'd exiled myself from my family, like from my lineage. And I was playing it out like I was somehow exiled. It's also taking that. Yeah, finding a way to take change. That story, you know, shift that narrative and taking more ownership to me always about whatever layer of narrative that I'm not seeing. That's the thing. All these narratives are playing out. So what aspect of the narrative am I? Am I exiled from perhaps willingly, which is different to me from even taking a stance or choosing an opinion or feeling about a narrative? But there can be this unconscious sort of way. We exile our self and sometimes exile ourselves from narratives that just make us uncomfortable or they feel so foreign.   [00:30:58] Anyway, this has been a great conversation.   [00:31:01] I love being able to do this on occasion, just being having an impromptu, you know, conversation around a topic that one of us chooses. And so it really it was very it was a creative process for me not to have put any thought into this subject. That's that's really great, as usual. I think one thing I'd like to maybe just say and kind of as we're wrapping up here, there's a great emotional intelligence exercise that helps you work with your own thinking in the way that you, you know, basically working with your narratives. And that is true for any situation that you're thinking about.   [00:31:38] Write down at least six options.   [00:31:43] And what happens is that it actually changes the chemistry in the brain. And oftentimes either one of those options will just clearly be the right thing or a new thing. The brain becomes creative in thinking about solutions where ways of viewing something. It doesn't have to just be about a problem, but it can be about a narrative. You could write down your narrative and then make yourself write down five other narratives that are completely different and some of them completely opposite from your first narrative, which is sort of your go to. And then oftentimes a new narrative will come out from that kind of creative thinking that you force your brain to come up with those things.   [00:32:27] I do that when my clients are trying to find a title, I'll say write downs. Really? Ready. Thirties, right.   [00:32:34] Wow. But it makes sense to me around six. I'm like 30 because, like, you're going to think it's this and this and this. Right. But the creative process, which you're talking about, it shifts the brain, which is to me why it's so important, right. To stay open to radical creativity and even improvisation. Even these conversations change my thinking. Deep conversations where we don't go in so much with an aunt answer, but like an inquiry and we're batting the ball back and forth. Maybe we see these things the same, these different. But there is a diversity. I think people talk about diversity. It's a word like hope on the outside. But diversity to me is an inner thing. How diverse can I be in my empathy and my curiosity to as many stories and experiences cannot do?   [00:33:25] I also trust myself enough to take in seemingly contradictory experience and not feel the need to lock down and know, but rather to trust myself, to work with it, to synthesize it in a way that makes sense to me and allow it to continue to shift and change as I shift and change and grow.   [00:33:46] There's something really, I think, about self trust that allows for more narrative and having empathy for your answer for yourself, right?   [00:33:54] We think of empathy as being for someone, having empathy for yourself.   [00:33:58] And one way we can do that is to remember that every thought we have was stimulated by a feeling feelings come first. Yeah, and the thoughts come from that. But we don't track the feelings. So, for example, if I have a feeling of fear, I'm going to have a thought that's related to that fear. So one of the things we can do when we find ourselves like sort of taking stock or evaluating our thinking and our beliefs is that we can actually say, what are the feelings behind that? What were the feelings that drove that? You know, because feelings are just information, you know, they're not good or bad. But when we can when we can identify those feelings, it calms the amygdala in the brain and takes us out of fight or flight, reduces the cortisol in the body. So it's for me, it's really in this left hemisphere, dominant culture, because trust me, I love thinking. I mean, I'm I'm in a union training program that requires me to do a lot of reading and thinking. But I feel like really where my I know where my work is in this life is for myself. Of course, I'm doing it because I need it right. It's not just that I'm helping others with it, but really bringing it back to the body, you know, how does it feel in the body and how does what are the emotions behind it and and what does that tell me about myself?   [00:35:21] It's interesting. It's a very different process, I think, from mine and I. And it's part of my process for me.   [00:35:28] I am only thinking about this because you stated your I like what will climb there and like mine is like full liberation. To give myself met permission to speak and think and feel exactly what's arising in the moment. And then permission to shift and shift and shift with that publicly. To be intimate with the world is my greatest interest.   [00:35:53] It doesn't always create harmony, but I'm interested. And having an intimate, ongoing revelation of myself and revelation of others back to me and I'm an I continue to learn the most often and I only realized this recently by relationships that allow for dissonance with me, allow for conflict. There's almost something in that for me. It's almost like I'm trying to experience some kind of mastery around freedom and conflict without it ending a relationship or rather deepening it.   [00:36:32] And I feel that way sometimes with individuals, but also with the world.   [00:36:38] It's so interesting that you just said that because I had never thought about that between you and I. Which is that, like your muse is the outer world.   [00:36:47] My muse is the inner world. And that is interesting because you and I are really doing radical work. Yes. Both of us in the world. But my stages inside, in your stages outside. And then we flip it. So we're both here. And then I take it out into the world.   [00:37:04] Yes. And we flip it and I take a deep inside and into a very intimate, private place, too.   [00:37:12] Yeah. Yeah. It's just that the way we. It's almost like our order is a little bit different. It's great. It is. Well, I I'm grateful that you have the intention set to be able to have dissonance in relationship because we really need that in the world. There's, you know, as we've said before and other podcasts, you know, that's dissonance really is the heart of creativity and beauty. And it unlocks intimacy, actually. Yes. Yes, it does unlock intimacy to have the safety and everything to belong.   [00:37:46] Totally. I mean, my husband often says that to me is like I'm letting I'm letting some anger out, you know? Come back later like I never had before. And he says, but I was never safe enough. No one could hold that and still love me.   [00:37:58] Huh. That's beautiful. It's a great place to end.   [00:38:02] All right. Thanks for jumping in the conversation. Thank you. That was a great subject.   [00:38:06] OK. Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture.   [00:38:18] If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on i-Tunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community destorying the culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we read story. Our own lives. See you next time.  

In this week's podcast, Restorying Creativity, Tanya and Camille speak about the role of creative process in their lives as well as the culture at large.   Some of the topics covered are:   What defines the role of an artist in the culture? Artistry vs. Creativity  Our lives as a creative process Projections that impinge creative freedom Personal expression vs. Mythic Expression The role of Archetypes in creative expansion Healing as an opening to deeper creativity   Episode Transcript [00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubins Steam Story mentor and Camille Adair, family Constellation facilitator.    [00:00:11] In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories serve our lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness. Moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments is true. So many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longing. Each one of us is necessary rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can restoring the culture together.    [00:00:51] Welcome to another episode of Restoring the Culture. This is Tonya.    [00:00:55] And today, Camille and I are going to be talking about creativity and restoring creativity, whatever that means to us. So I have two quotes today. The first one is by Steven Press Field. And it's from one of my favorite books on creativity, The War of Art. The amature believes he must first overcome his fear. Then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless for your or a dread free artist. I love that line of dread free artist. And the other is just a one line quote from the musical The Amazing Musical Rent by Jonathan Larson, which is simply the opposite of war is not peace, it's creation.    [00:01:51] So with that, Camille, I'd love to hear. I did. I never read the quotes to each other ahead of time. We just sort of riff on them. So what comes up to you about either one of those quotes or both?    [00:02:05] I think, you know, for me, the word creativity has always tripped me up a little bit because I could never call myself an artist. And somehow I think of the word artist being connected to creativity. And I do think I'm a highly creative person. But I think the way that my art comes out is it's different. It's in the way that I think in the way that I feel and the way that I.    [00:02:32] Surgeons.    [00:02:34] Follow the bread crumbs in life and put things together in a way that that is I think I'm a synthesizer. And I think that that's a creative process for me. There's another part of creativity. I'm not quite sure why this comes up for me, but it's very dicey. And where it makes me kind of like want to like let my hair down or I think of myself as a creative and I think of my my wild side that I don't let out often enough. And I think it's interesting that as I've been thinking about this podcast that's from a lot of what's been coming up for me is the ability to.    [00:03:14] Give myself permission to not follow the rules.    [00:03:24] Follow the your inner, your inner. Directive or energy or longing? No. Well, you know, there's that kind of I have a while. You totally do. Right. That most people we wouldn't be such fools if you didn't. And I don't know why the word creative some people want. It's bringing that out. I think it needs to come out because I'm in isolation right now.    [00:03:53] It's it's sort of funny to me to hear you talk about creativity in that way and your ID or lack there of as an artist, because I definitely identify first as an artist in a pretty in my soul, no matter what else I'm doing. I do think there's something new and I have talked a lot about this. Right, the intersection of art and consciousness.    [00:04:15] And I think it's creativity that allows us to come to those intersections and to I've heard one definition of creativity is like I'm going to get this wrong, but it's basically all the different ways.    [00:04:30] Will you just use the words synchronized right or synthesize a way of synthesizing information?    [00:04:36] But it's very funny to me because something I know about you that many people don't is what an amazing writer you are, specifically what a right of what an amazing poet you are, that you're a closet poet, you're an amazing poet. And I've read your poetry. And I think it's amazing and profound.    [00:04:54] And I I see the artistry and everything you do, the way you cook your home, how you care for people, you know.    [00:05:05] And I think sometimes maybe we need to restore the word artist, because artistry to me is a way of viewing the world, not simply a form.    [00:05:17] So the forms we attach to artist are usually writer, actor, painter, sculptor. You know, the dancer, the traditional forms. And yet to me, it's about really the artistry of life, which I see you being such a actualized artist.    [00:05:38] Thank you. I mean, I really do feel that. I think I feel very creative and how I love and I feel creative in how I unfold my soul. So there are some ways of saying it. You know, there's like artistry and creativity that for me has to do with the energy of intimacy, love and and having this embodied soul experience. And you are such an artist and such a creative. I mean, it's really your platform in life. And so for me, it's like it's it's with you. It's how I know you in every way. I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about what creativity means to you right now, especially right now, like as we're sitting here in the middle of this pandemic. And I wonder about that. You know, there's also creative dissonance how the pebble in the shoe that we're walking around with, it's aggravating all of us on some level right now. And how is that being interpreted through the channels of creativity?    [00:06:48] Such is such a great question. For me, I would be dead. I would have been dead a long time ago without my creativity. And I mean that literally.    [00:07:00] So I'm definitely one of those people who says such and such saved my life.    [00:07:05] I remember Natalie Goldberg and one of her books, or she had an essay, How Poetry Saved My Life.    [00:07:14] By creative process is as natural to me as breathing. And I don't think about it because I'm engaged with it. I think in every decision I make. And moment to me, creativity is a process of being alive.    [00:07:31] And it's the lens through which I stay alive. And the times I've gotten depressed in my life or anxious or experienced to trauma. It was made worse or better by how much I could access my creativity.    [00:07:48] And only once when I had really severe panic attacks. And you remember this I think I was going through a divorce with my daughter's father. He had just been diagnosed with schizophrenia.    [00:08:01] The way it manifested in my body was to have these terrible, debilitating panic attacks where literally I'd stand up from my bed and faint and have to crawl to the bathroom.    [00:08:14] And the worst thing that happened to me during that time, because I couldn't sleep was I couldn't access any of my creativity. Somebody who writes every day, even if it's scribble.    [00:08:26] I'm not talking about writing for a book, but I I write every day. I write everything down. I speak. I process allowed and through writing. And I do create work art, even if it's a Facebook page like a Facebook post I'm creating.    [00:08:43] And during that time of acute anxiety, I was unable to create.    [00:08:49] And I could only like just lay there or I could watch a movie. I would watch Hedwig and the Angry Inch over and over it. Oh, my thing that brought me comfort about a. Then, you know, transgender Jr. the transition.    [00:09:09] And that gave me comfort because I just could be wild and out there and gave me this sense of comfort. It was funny. Whereas other people I knew felt disturbed by that movie and that brought me comfort in time of crisis.    [00:09:22] So and that's you know, it's I think creativity is like honoring our own wiring in terms of this time.    [00:09:32] It's it's my biggest resource as a leader. It's what allows me to keep bouncing along the waves of life. And I believe that this is the gift of creative process and practice when we embrace it.    [00:09:48] So it's like my mind or my being, I should say, it's not only my mind, but my creative. Being engaged is constantly seeking expression and a solution to problems.    [00:10:03] And there's a way that my own artistic voice manifests that is both about intimacy and resiliency. So it keeps my mindset focused on a way to serve, a way to express something I can write that is going to be support of it.    [00:10:23] So it supports me because it allows my expression to come through and that's how I process my life and integrate aspects of myself.    [00:10:32] But some of my creativity goes out there and serves whether I'm creating a program for clients or directing a show or right now you and I are creating a program, a writing circle that's going to go out globaly.    [00:10:46] Like for me, my creativity connects with my ability to serve in my family, my friends, my daughter, myself and the world.    [00:10:57] And it's the process itself. And not everything has to get done or even completed. But I see it as a way of being in the world. And I think it's something I teach. I believe it's for everyone. I truly believe that everyone is born creative and has access to creativity, whether they've been validated it or it and not or not may inform how they have an identity or not around being a creative or an artist of some kind, or that they see themselves as a creative in their work.    [00:11:35] However, their their life manifests.    [00:11:39] But I believe everybody has it. I don't think that Western culture and certainly the way schooling is is done affirms it enough because we we we idolize the intellect and we marginalize creativity. It's another part of the hierarchical process. But I think that's also been changing a lot. Right, because so many studies have come out and now organizations and companies have seem to finally have caught up to this idea that it's like creativity is the resource. Creativity is the resource that moves the needle on any on any process.    [00:12:18] What do you think about that in terms of creativity and organizations or creativity and and how structures can benefit from brain more creative process in.    [00:12:31] Well, I think that there's sort of a paradox that almost verges on an oxymoron there, because I think the trick with organizations is that you don't try and monetise creativity or that you don't try and like make it become a product. Because I do believe that creativity is linked to the soul. And so how is it that we have room for the soul and organizations, which is how do we have room for intimacy? How do we have room for reciprocity? And I had a really interesting conversation today, actually, with my analyst. We were talking about, you know, one of the archetypal patterns that I have, the tendency to sort of, you know, that I'm working with. Let's just say I'm working with that my whole life. Right? Probably. And it has to do with my sort of an ancestral imprint. And and that is sort of of the Valkyries curing, which is, you know, sort of this the soulless, you know, angelic being who whose job is to act on behalf of her father's bidding. Right. So she's sort of like one example. He used his like, you know, Japarta, who creates Pinocchio and then Pinocchio's journey of going from becoming a wooden puppet to becoming a real boy or the Velveteen Rabbit from becoming the stuffed animal to becoming, you know, a real life rabbit. And I had an experience recently with a friend who I do some co-presenter, same work with. And I found myself, you know, sort of this this process of learning how to give and receive. And I realized I'm really good at giving. Right. Which is, of course, sort of the Valkyrie nature of the hospice nurse. Totally oldest daughter. All of that not so great at receiving. And because I'm I'm experiencing this now and in a more regular way.    [00:14:37] I found myself actually saying, wow, is this really real? Wow, is it really real?    [00:14:44] That that that I'm experiencing this exchange of energy in this way. And then to be told, yes, this is real and I real, I kind of thought, wow, there is in this practice that I'm involved in, there is this waking up. I think that is happening for me in terms of. You know, becoming more and more human and becoming more and more and sold. Yes. You know, making room for my own soul and becoming embodied. And it's all of those things because creativity is the antithesis of working on someone else's behalf. Right. Creativity really is this inner spring. It's where alchemy turns into the, you know, the living waters.    [00:15:34] And it's first for us before it shared. And sometimes it's never shared with its first for us. Even if it's shared.    [00:15:42] That's. And it's brilliant. So. Right. So any organization that could make room for creativity. It's like you found a gold mine. But then how do you do you have leadership that can work with that kind of.    [00:15:54] Yeah. Not energy and not exploit it, but rather to shut it down.    [00:15:59] Zackfia or compartmentalize it or. You know, I think that's really I think that's the challenge.    [00:16:05] So yeah, for me I'm realizing, you know, that's definitely a. A process that I'm moving into in a. In a deeper way, and it's really a it's a beautiful thing. You know, I've I've often said our job.    [00:16:23] Is to live as a human being before we die. Yeah, completely. And I just. Right. Yeah.    [00:16:30] And I do think creativity and the arts are about embodiment and sommat like you said. And I think we've idealized, enlightened, meant to get out of the body, to transcend the body. And it's like why did we come here in these bodies if the first job is to transcend them. What about getting like you said in sold in them, embodied in them. And to me it's about the feminine and it's about the connection to our bodies and the surf and all artistic practice.    [00:17:01] I know it as might with that background as an actor, a trained actor is all about embodying and you can't embody another character without embodying yourself. That's part of the training, right? Dancers. It's it's even if we're reaching for the divine, it's than bringing it into the body, the earth to communicate and express it. So it's an amazing practice. And I also think about how receiving is the energy of the feminine, the giving, and especially those of us who have been conditioned to be over giving.    [00:17:35] Right. Which is certainly women in the culture. Not that it's all a gender thing, but over giving like reaching beyond are our human body capacity to do.    [00:17:48] Like you said, this big val curium thing, this big superhuman thing, I'll just be a fly. I don't even like it really when you women use the word the goddess. I don't want to be a goddess. I agree. I want to be a woman. I want to be a woman. Right. I want to be a woman on this earth. And, yes, connected to the divine aspects. But I got to tell you something really interesting on this. The first time I met you and you were a hospice nurse or becoming one. I can't remember.    [00:18:16] This is 20 years ago. Yeah, it was. I was I was just becoming. You were becoming one. But I somehow knew you were a hospice nurse. We'd had a few conversations.    [00:18:26] We might have even begun working together a little bit on the monologue project we did in hospice monologues.    [00:18:32] I can't remember. It was in the first year, too. And I actually think I verbalized this to you.    [00:18:38] I said, I think I'll be okay. Dying.    [00:18:42] As long as I have you by my side. Because you were so angelic like Jessica Lange and all that jazz who played the Angel of Death. And she was beautiful and blonde like your beautiful and blonde. This is 20 years ago. And like, so comforting in your disembodied moments. Talk about projection. I felt like I could die. And I knew all these people around. You were like, yes, I can die if I'm around Camille, who's like this angel. And then you were this hospice worker, but you paid a price for that around your own creativity. Can I know you did. I know you didn't originally asked about it. Can you talk more about that and how that. What it's like to come? You know, like what is the juxtaposition? What's brought you back into your creativity and what how did you.    [00:19:29] Like, how did you validate that projection? And then also release it to become more human and more woman in your body.    [00:19:39] Well, I think it started with becoming really sick. I mean, I was really overworked and went through extreme burnout in health care and had some health stuff come up. That was I was misdiagnosed and I unplugged from health care and basically was just sort of in a hermit state for a year. You remember that? I do.    [00:20:05] And I think in that year, I.    [00:20:10] I differentiated myself from those roles.    [00:20:14] In other words, I went through the withdrawal of what it meant to be the angel. I went through the the withdrawal of being somebodies nurse, the being somebodies manager, of being the good girl, of being the healthy, you know, emblem of a human woman.    [00:20:34] I mean, I went through so much letting go and that you were so much of those images. Dissolved and died and.    [00:20:47] And I think in that time. In that year, in that process of.    [00:20:54] Of rediscovery, a lot of what happened for me was I was taking long walks in nature that was sort of part of my healing process. Was just spending hours and hours out in nature and having incredible experiences with plants and animals. And I think it was my connection to nature that helped me come back into my creative, embodied and sold human self.    [00:21:22] You know? Yeah, totally.    [00:21:26] I do know. You know, it's interesting. On the last podcast, you read Clarissa, Dr. Clarissa, some estus. And I've been and you've been in union training for a while and I've been exploring more and more the role of archetypes of myths. And I wonder what you think about as we're talking about like restoring creativity.    [00:21:49] One thing I've had an experience of the archetypes opening up a wildness in creativity, even though my whole sort of the has been around personal narratives.    [00:22:02] There's something to me about the mythic and the archetypal. I mean, we touchin to the mythic or archetypal income relate them to our own stories. There's a creative expansion, I think, around how we can work with our material.    [00:22:18] Have you had that experience? Because it's been something that I've been really into lately and seeing finding potential in.    [00:22:26] Yeah, I certainly have. And I've also been warned about the dangers of that. So I think I think it's both potent and there's a lot of energy and creativity there. And I think the thing we have to be careful of is not identifying with the archetypes. So every archetype has its light and its shadow. And we certainly can start to track which archetypes are really alive in our lives and in the relational fields around us. And that's a really good thing to learn from. But it's dangerous to identify with the archetypes because that takes us away from our humanity in a way. Right. So I think it's both. I think it's being aware of them. But the other thing about archetypes that I find interesting from a constellation standpoint is what it's. And you talked about this. It's like finding your myth and finding your myth that's within your cultural complex. Yes. So for me to, you know, as a northern European woman, American woman, like if I were to all of a sudden develop this strong connection with African mythology, there wouldn't necessarily be anything wrong with that. But I would have to be really careful about it taking me away from my own myth.    [00:23:54] Absolutely. And it's also about white women in particular, appropriating indigenous people and other people globaly who also carry the suffering that goes with their myths and a particular type of suffering and marginalization to not appropriate.    [00:24:11] Right. And there's a difference between being inspired by and appropriating to. So I you and I have talked about this returning. We both have celtics' heritage in us. We have a lot of that. Northern European. You have Swedish as well. So like the term return to that, how does that make.    [00:24:31] As more human and at the same time more open creatively to our identity, I think, or how we view ourselves.    [00:24:40] When I think that when we learn about those the the the myths of our cultural heritage, we can learn a lot about where we come from, too. And you know, where the suffering has been, where the withhold has been, where the limitation has been and where our ancestors sacrificed so that life was passed on. And I think when we can look at it through that lens and we start to acknowledge the truth of what is, we free up the past and we free ourselves to. It's really it's really a contradiction, a seemingly contradiction that's a healing movement of the soul to honor the heaviness and the guilt of the past. And to embody that in a way, in the present moment where you acknowledge that this is where I come from. And these people pass life on to me. And then I take my life with all that it costs them. And with all that, it cost me. And when we can really say that and stand in that, something in us become stronger. And from that, it's almost like a sprout within us comes out. And it's a new creative, authentic expression of our lineage that we then get to walk out. But we don't walk it out by cutting off from the past.    [00:26:03] We walk it out by accepting and bringing that ed as a layer, right. As a total acknowledgement of a layer of our own story, all of them.    [00:26:12] That's freeing. And creativity is about freedom.    [00:26:15] And what I think about, too, is that you and I have talked about this for months.    [00:26:19] Multi-dimensional beings with multi-dimensional, multi-layered stories are stories, generational stories, our own unique stories in this lifetime and the way it connects to the web of life. And to me, like creating our own myths in a way by retrieving all these pieces and then re weaving it as our own story is the ultimate act of creation here. You know of creativity, but it's it's it transcends form. It's the creation of our beingness.    [00:26:56] Yeah. Well said, what? What do you want for yourself in the future in terms of creativity? How do you see that? Do you can you feel that your soul is longing toward.    [00:27:06] Yeah, yeah, I really can. My soul is really longing towards some sacred structure and my creativity in the form of a book. I think two books that are just mine. I had three shows that were just mine. I have one book that was an anthology that was just my people. Now, I shouldn't say just. But it was their stories with me editing and writing the foreword. But it's really my soul is longing for a book.    [00:27:33] You know, I think my teacher self, the teacher part of the artist and the teacher heal herself really wants a book very codified of my work in the world and the process. But what my soul wants is really the love story of me and my husband called Skirting the binary. So it's our love story. It's about my sexuality. It's definitely about my creative choices. I'm living pretty far outside of prescribed cultural boxes and the joy I found there and that that's the story that I'm really and I've been working on and off and on for about a year and a half. But there's a longing to complete it. And I know for me that one of the gifts of artistic structure and creative completion is there's a huge movement of the soul in a huge piece of life's work done when we finish one of those big projects. So on a personal level, that's what I'm longing for creatively. And as we talk about it, it makes it my commitment more real. To finish it. What about you?    [00:28:40] I think it's really an interesting question because I find that there's part of me that feels very quiet and in-process around some of the training and the the learning that I'm going through right now. That I know is that like something is just stating and so it's not time for me to really bring that out. And it's not even mine to know what the end result is going to be. And so there's a lot I feel like for me, a lot of my creativity is being held in the mystery. Yeah, in the dark. There is part of me that with my constellation work that, you know, I've created a training manual and I also have a death and dying book that's almost done. Those two things are sort of like right there. And they're sitting there and I feel I feel like leaning into to those two projects, but I don't feel the kind of feel that tells me this has to happen in this way right now. And I'm trying to just trust the timing of things. Yeah. I also think that in my a lot of in my creativity right now, it's it's really holding the tension of opposites and it's really learning, deepening the artist in me that is able to work with creative dissonance. And and I'm finding that in some of my personal relationships right now, I'm really transitioning what it means to be a mother of adult children in their thirties. What does it mean to be a grandmother? You know, like all of those things. I feel some of my relationships changing.    [00:30:28] Yeah. So I think.    [00:30:31] This feels really creative. This was a big step for me to do, you know, for you and I to say yes to doing this podcast. I'm very committed to this. Yeah, yeah.    [00:30:42] It's wonderful, isn't it? I feel like I'm my creative process. Yeah. I really like moving into wholeness is. Yeah. That's kind of where my energy is totally.    [00:30:53] And I mean that gets back to. Right. Creating our own myths, creating our own lives, being here embodied all these threads.    [00:31:00] And what an amazing opportunity to me. That's the juiciest process of all. It's our own creative weaving.    [00:31:08] And I love that.    [00:31:09] And I love these creative conversations, because I know when you and I get on and do these podcasts, then the commitment to it we're sharing with others. Yes. But we're having creative process with ourselves and each other. And in the conversation itself, going deeper, you know, with ourselves and our work, learning more. Getting another piece of the puzzle that gets to be integrated or released somewhere.    [00:31:35] I think there's another another thing for me that I'm working with. It has to do with myself as a lack, as a hermit and as an introvert. And then the other part of it has the strong calling to speak to big groups of people and how much I thrive in that environment and what a juxtaposition that is and not knowing what that would look like. And it's not about being famous or even really being visible. It's that something in me connects inside, around love. When I'm speaking truth in a certain way and I feel like the bigger the audience is, the more love I feel coming and going. And there's that's a creative process for me. So I'm not sure what that's kind of look like, but I can feel that in my own field.    [00:32:24] Yeah, totally. And I think that big this is the bigness in your soul that only gets mapped in that outer bigness. And I think we all have things like this.    [00:32:34] And there's no good or bad, right. As my friend or David Bedrest talks, he wrote a post recently as a psychotherapist, process worker, really brilliant guy.    [00:32:43] But something about if some of us are designed, you know, like a hummingbird and some like an eagle like who is using all these metaphors, the oaken, the acorn. And it doesn't matter big or small in a worldly sense, but it means that these pieces of our soul want to be creatively met. So if there's a part of you that thrives in that bigness, it will be met in that outer bigness. And another part that is small and introverted and quiet and wants to be met in a different way.    [00:33:13] There are, I think, creative living for me or integration as how many aspects of myself do I allow myself to manifest on the outer? How many pieces do I reclaim that I give myself permission to have expression of in the world?    [00:33:33] Well, this has been a creative conversation for sure.    [00:33:36] Always does. Thank you. Kimmy, I look for a return next. Yeah, me too. Keiki.    [00:33:47] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture.    [00:33:54] If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on i-Tunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community destorying the culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we read story. Our own lives. See you next time.   

In this podcast, Camille and Tanya speak about their ever-evolving relationships to leadership, especially at this moment of personal and global transformation through crisis.    Some of the topics they cover include: Knowing when to go low, when to go high Leading by being Shifting from the guru to the guide paradigm The inquiry, “can we take others farther than we have gone ourselves?” Women, boundaries, and leadership The role of failure in leadership The sacred vow of leadership and what it demands of us What it means to truly collaborate and why it's critical for emerging leadership paradigms      Episode transcript   [00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubins Steam Story mentor and Camille Adair, family Constellation facilitator. In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories serve our lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness. Moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments. And true. So many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longings. Each one of us is necessary and rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can read story the culture together.    [00:00:50] OK. Welcome to Restoring the culture. Today we are talking about restoring leadership. This is Camille. I'm here with my friend Tanya. And I'm going to start out with a quote.    [00:01:04] And this is from Clarissa Pinkel. Estas? Sorry. I'm going to start again. Welcome to Restoring Leadership. I'm going to begin by reading a quote by Clarissa Pinkel estus from Women Who Run With the Wolves. This is Chapter 1. I must reveal to you that I am not one of the divine who march into the desert and return gravid with wisdom. I've traveled many cook fires and spread angel bait round every sleeping place. But more often than getting the wisdom I've gotten in delicate episodes of the Calli and amoebic dysentery, such as the fate of a middle class mystic with delicate intestines.    [00:02:03] It might seem like a strange quote for leadership, but today Tanya and I are going to talk about how leadership is changing for us. And so I'd love to hear from you after hearing that quote for the first time.    [00:02:19] Yeah, well, it reminds me of my what it took me to immediately was my first one woman show Honeymoon in India, where I went to India with all these sort of like ideas of a colonized person, that it was going to be very glamorous somehow. And I was going to get enlightened on the banks of the Ganga River.    [00:02:42] And instead I got dysentery and parasites, you know, and I almost died. Do you know how to train? You know, that was somehow out in the middle of nowhere.    [00:02:53] And that was the awakening. The awakening was the discomfort. The awakening was having to confront my privilege, my perspective as an American white woman with ideas of fantasies of enlightenment versus the hard, hard work, the discomfort on inner and outer levels to, I think, become ourselves. And that's what it took me to immediately. And when I think of leadership, I'm I feel mostly that it's about how do we become ourselves or how do I become myself? Because unless I do that, I don't really have anything to offer. Everything else is artifice to me. So I love her. I love that book. I love that quote. She always just goes right to the heart of of truth to me. Yeah. So that's what I would say. What made you choose that quote?    [00:03:50] Oh, I think I think part of it has to do with where we're at right now with the pandemic and how as a leader, I'm feeling. Like, I'm sort of groveling around in my own shadow stuff in the midst of birthing something new, and that feels like there's no avoiding that and somewhere in there is a gift. And I also can look back at times when I've been asked to step into leadership. And little did I know that, you know, leadership, especially in health care, has pedestal energy. So there can be some inflationary stuff that comes with that. A lot of expectation and a lot of projection from other people who have are still, you know, working out stuff with parents or they're working out stuff with authority figures and really. Well, how I think not just in health care, but sort of in. The culture that I think we're working at restoring. It's really a setup because true leadership really is about authenticity and that's inner work. And most leadership training programs teach you how to step up on the pedestal. They're not about how do you go in and work with your own material and face your own shadow and learn to basically be at the bottom. Right. You push other people up from the bottom. It's the inverted pyramid.    [00:05:30] I couldn't agree more. I've been in. I think about that. Sure. You're coming from the perspective of health care, from our particular industry, from a to particular paradigm. And I think in Western culture, we're addicted to giving our power away. Getting back to my show, Honeymoon in India that I did years ago.    [00:05:53] That was for me a bottom around giving my power away in the guru paradigm.    [00:05:59] And I realized after following certain gurus, including American ones that wouldn't call themselves gurus, that. That my job and my work was to pull all that power out of projection back into myself and stop looking for the perfect mommy or perfect daddy, which is what I think happens when. Right. This sort of guru culture, putting people on a pedestal plays out.    [00:06:28] And I've put people on a pedestal and had the experience of being wildly disappointed in them, because that happens. And I've also had the experience of people putting me on a pedestal, which is the most dangerous place. And my work, because then you're going to fall to the bottom when you've been put up. And my work as a leader, whether I'm working with people on their stories, their writing, being doing my work as a theater director, working with people on business has been from the beginning to navigate that and and support people in in taking their own energetic back.    [00:07:06] So I'm a guide, not a guru.    [00:07:08] And I think that distinction is big because a lot of people want to be gurus, but there's a falseness to it, isn't there? There's a. And who wants to pull other people's energy away? What is that feeding in them? To me, it's a.    [00:07:25] It happens as leaders. It's going to happen like we're gonna have to experience that. I don't think it's a pure path. There's no like just ascending to understanding this. But from life experiences, like I've had to look at my ego, what part of me wanted to either take somebodies power and let them elevate me in some way because it felt good to me, felt validated into my ego or give away my power so I wouldn't have to do the hard work. But the movement of my soul for me has really been down, down, down on the ground.    [00:07:59] So I think the old, you know, old style leadership really kind of had this myth that you have to be something other than yourself if you're going to be successful in leadership. And I think. I think the leadership that is birthing right now and the world is the call to be more like yourself, to be as authentic as you can be and to step into your own humanity. And that truly is what all of us are hungry for and what we're hungry for from each other, because old style leadership puts up barriers to human intimacy and connection. And the new style of leadership really is all about coming into can human connection, interdependence, doing things together. You and I have talked about the two by two and about, you know, how the lone-wolf model of leadership doesn't work anymore. I've seen that play out so much in in hierarchical leadership models, in organizations. And and I think one of the things I've seen that play into that can be really harmful is something that I call founder's syndrome, that people have a really hard time passing on their wisdom, passing on passing the baton to the next generation. And as a as a previous hospice nurse, I've always linked the need for succession planning in an organization or in one's leadership role to the fear of death. Because if we can't come to terms with the fact that one day we're going to die and how are we going to leave our legacy and our work to keep it as alive as we can. If that seems appropriate for sustainability, you know, I think that that that I've found that to be a challenge for many people. And and I think so leadership, real true leadership is far from being a career pursuit. It really is a spiritual pursuit. It's some of the deepest it's some of the deepest work we can engage in in terms of the cycles of birth and death and our place in all of that.    [00:10:18] I so agree on and as you and I have both been on that path and seen each other and support each other, witnessed each other, all these things over the course of this thing, that it's it's a thing where it demands everything.    [00:10:32] And I remember making a vow to the guru twenty nine years ago. I want to say where I said at a party at ESTA in Estes Park, Colorado, at a little retreat center. Five hundred people. And in front of the guru, I said, I want to marry the truth with no possibility of divorce. She said, be careful. That's a dangerous vow. It's interesting to me because at the time I thought that vow meant right. The devotion somehow to the guru, some kind of like this illusion I had fantasy of awakening.    [00:11:06] But it's been this this thing that strips everything. Right. Like, take me down.    [00:11:15] They like I said earlier, you'd like to such humility, right.    [00:11:19] To really no escape, no emotional bypass, no financial bypass, no intellectual bypass, like all the way down.    [00:11:31] And then who am I there? I think only in going low to I find out what I made of what the ego wanted, wants the bypass. Right. And to kind of go high, I think for me anyway, that's been my path of leadership.    [00:11:49] Not in each one of us I think are tested in a way that has to rub up against the fragmentation in our soul, the trauma, familial, ancestral, conditioned, whatever it is. Right. It has to rub up against those hard places that we don't want to go.    [00:12:10] So I'm curious to know I mean, I'd love to have this conversation where we both speak to because, you know, we're old enough, right? We're in our 50s. We're in our mid 50s.    [00:12:21] And so we've had enough life experience to experience leadership, both from what informs the kind of leader we want to be and how we've probably both been the kind of leader that we don't want to be. Can you talk a little bit about a time when you were a leader where you learned about leadership by making mistakes?    [00:12:47] I think the biggest mistake that I've made or been most vulnerable to make has been not having good boundaries from the start around expectations, because it's it's that thing where for me learning.    [00:13:06] To love myself as a leader, to. And to just love and respect myself means laying out very clear boundaries around what people are going to get from me and what they're not. Because when what they are not isn't laid out ahead of time, all the projections you were talking about can come on to us as leaders. Now, I've been a self-employed person for 30 years, so I've been a theater artist and a writing facilitator and all of these things that I've done. Story. Story. Leader. Story. Coach. A story worker really around on my own as an entrepreneur. And I didn't have any business background, so I was always highly gifted in terms of getting people results like in the story work itself. But where it got messy was I didn't have sacred structures around me and I didn't really understand how to create them and have the boundaries of a business, not toxic business, but just like healthy business structures, the sacred masculine. And then it was much trickier and people would project more on me or like expect that if they had this amazing transformational experience with me, that meant they were automatically my friend.    [00:14:32] And that's been really probably the trickiest spot for me in leadership and where people have gotten disappointed in me. It was less about the work they did with me that than they felt that intimacy that happened in the work spilled over into friendship or social life.    [00:14:49] And so that kind of a marshmallow was something that happened in my family with me and my mom. So that happened in female relationships with some of my clients who didn't leave gracefully. I should say, or were angry or disappointed that I because what would happen is I would try to give that to them. And that was my failing and my codependency until I couldn't. And then I just sort of be done.    [00:15:20] Okay. We're done. You know, and that so that's a way that I've had to confront, really the mother daughter split in my family.    [00:15:29] And the way it played out, it B was to allow people to project on me. And that wasn't their fault. Right, because we're all just walking around trying to heal and get our needs met.    [00:15:40] So I had to.    [00:15:43] So I had to step way, way, way, way back and do a lot of inner work and stop committing to big projects with people until I could realign my boundaries. And from that, create a new kind of offering and way with working with people. So I think that's been the trickiest thing for me and my leadership and not feeling guilty for not being able to give more than I can. Right. That's part of my own and tinner internalized conditioning I've had to shift and release.    [00:16:18] So what about you?    [00:16:20] Well, I think I could speak to the mistakes I made. Working as a leader in organizations and then mistakes that I've made, working in my own business. You know, as a as a teacher and a healer. And I would say that the first one, because I worked, you know, at one point I think I managed 60 people and I was overseeing two different offices. And there were some pretty significant values differences. Between myself and sort of how the company was being run, although I wasn't real aware of that for a long time and I was fairly naive about how systems work at that point. So I think in a way, I mean, it was all kind of beautiful because there was a lot of permission, a lot of trust and there was also a lot of messiness. So I kind of look at that as being like one of those classroom situations for me where I learned a lot in it and in some of those ways were really great. And then some of those ways were really hard. So I think I've learned, though, about, you know, to to to have a sense of. To be really clear about one's values are really informs how you enter into agreements with other people. And I think agreements and bound boundaries are really important as a leader. I also think that. That I've had a tendency because I'm so specialized in my work to have dual relationships and oftentimes specialty communities can be sort of incestuous. You're right. In the beginning it feels like it's almost romantic, right? Like I finally found my tribe and exactlythe so, so satisfying and and it feels so good. Like when you feel like you have something valuable to offer and it's what people have been like waiting for. And I think that's also really can be super tricky. And so for me, I've been really learning about how to navigate those waters and how to be a responsible teacher and healer, how to separate out teaching and healing so they don't believe together how to have my own supervision, how to differentiate myself and to be able to discern, you know, where my places and how much of myself to bring in certain situations. So that's all. And, you know, that's really hard stuff to teach somebody. It really has been for me, like the school of Life, you know, getting in there. I've been really fortunate to. I would say my strength around all the messiness of that learning curve has been my ability to apologize. To talk about the elephant in the room, to have creative dissonance. To have to be able to hold uncomfortable conversations and deal with conflict. But that it's also not easy. You know, like that takes a lot of energy. So, yeah. That's been a lot of my learning in the last few years as a leader. And I think the other part of that is. You know, being a woman, being a nurse, being the oldest child, you know, who, you know, has some fairly significant codependent tendencies where maybe I haven't spoken up soon enough. Like if I had spoken up and really known, you know, trusted myself in the beginning, that maybe I would have been able to speak to something before, you know, things sort of developed in a bigger way or an issue sort of had progressed into deeper waters. So, yeah, I think speaking up early on is something that I'm learning about. And I think as women, you know, I mean, it's it's interesting. You know, we don't always need to talk about, you know, the differences between us as leaders. But I do think for women as leaders, I think finding our voice and finding our power in ways that we're not replicating male leadership models is a trick.    [00:20:43] It is a trick and not replicating male lead or ship models, but allowing ourselves as much voice and as much space. As often men do, and I think that's been my strength as you talked about yours, I was like, well, what's think as good as a goodbye? That's a goodbye.    [00:21:04] But. You know, and it can be off putting and it doesn't usually off put men, as a matter of fact, other than you, all my closest friends are male, which I find interesting.    [00:21:16] Men have no problem with my power, my boldness, my audacity. As a matter of fact, they often want to partner with it, work with it. And though I've had fewer male clients, they've been some of my most appreciative and gone further because I think they meet me in my power and they love it.    [00:21:33] There's no sense of threatend. It's more like a. So I think my my boldness is it's a powerful part of sacred masculine. And we've talked about this cause as I'm a woman, but energetically I think I carry a lot of the male to you. And I have talked about this or maybe both the masculine and feminine. I feel it inside almost like not a split, but a 50/50, almost percent integration of how I lead.    [00:22:02] And I do think the sacred masculine is beautiful. But I think one thing I my strength has been modeling the ability to speak. What we've been taught should be silenced or that we've been taught as women is unspeakable, though with men, it's totally allowed.    [00:22:20] Now, some women, you know, are very triggered by me around that and others have been wildly empowered.    [00:22:27] So, you know, I think everything in all of us can be held as a deficit or a gift.    [00:22:36] And for me, so much about leadership is how do I compose things and restructure things in myself so that they can be more and more of a gift, not a deficit.    [00:22:45] And the acknowledgement that we're not going to please everyone, any of us, not everyone's going to like any of us. And that that can really be okay and that the the deeper embrace is on the inside. Right.    [00:23:01] One of the things that you and I have talked about that I feel pretty excited about is, you know, sort of honing in on some of these concepts, not only concepts, but experiences. And from the experiences, we've identified some pretty specific principles. And as we're going through this big changing time with the pandemic and so many businesses are losing their footing or going out of business or having to restructure. And we talk about restoring leadership in business and what that's one of the things I'm pretty excited about participating in, because I think all these opportunities to really speak to, how do we humanize leadership, how do we bring sustainability practices to leadership?    [00:23:47] I think that we're coming into a time where a lot of what you and I have been working on will be increasingly welcomed in in larger organizations.    [00:23:58] And it's the lot of the larger organizations that have so much impact on human lives.    [00:24:05] Oh, yes, totally.    [00:24:07] Yeah. I'm excited about it, too.    [00:24:09] And, you know, I come out of the artistic and creative world, but also the entrepreneurial world and have been part of some cohorts and whatnot.    [00:24:18] And I'm really seeing how things are shifting. People and leaders who seem to be doing well. Right, like through this. Number one, have the willingness to ride the wave of the mystery into the unknown. Are talking behind the scenes about tracking their own emotions, going wildly all over the map, up and down, as you and I have been talking about.    [00:24:40] But the embrace of that, but that there's this more. What I'm seeing, too, is, you know, we have so much weight at the top in our culture, so much greed, so much, you know, overtaking manipulation, corruption, all of this. And even in entrepreneurial circles, I've been had some discomfort around some of the rates people charge simply because they can. I've been looking at my own way of pricing and structuring and knowing that I want to have models that are more egalitarian, that conserve the many. And I feel like the big places right now where there could be a great opening or inside organizations that serve the many an insert. And even with entrepreneurs to shift from serving just like the one or the one or fewer at a high, high rate, the work right now is to find ways to be in service of the many. And I do feel like there's this beautiful, more egalitarian thing.    [00:25:46] I see it as a circle, a circle rather than the top down moving from patriarchy to matriarchy. And you know that that thing of all of us in the circle finding our places and all of us in the circle having opportunities. And it's one thing I know from my work as an entrepreneur, we all have opportunities for people doing.    [00:26:06] No, I'll have to take advantage of the opportunities are there because they haven't been taught.    [00:26:11] And then these super elite programs, once again, whether you're looking at an MBA from a high Ivy League school or you're looking at a high ticket entrepreneurial thing that only the few can access. I feel like there's a breaking open now around inviting more and more people into the circle and restoring structures from hierarchies right to two circles.    [00:26:39] Yeah, I. It reminds me of when I was a manager in hospice, I used to send people out in pairs and I remember thinking, I know I'm paying two people, but I can tell that the like the alchemical shift that's going to happen when two people go out and market my two people. And it wasn't you know, it wasn't all the time. Not every nurse went out in pairs when they would see patients, but oftentimes I would send two people out so that it would be like a social worker and a nurse or a chaplain and a and a social worker. And they would go out together and there would be incredible things that would happen not only in the delivery of care and leadership from that standpoint, but how the community responded to them when they actually saw them together. It was as if the community would light up as seeing more than one person from an organization show up. In. In order to talk about the care of a dying person and how they could be of service. Right. And you and I have had a lot of conversations about coal leadership. And I think we'll definitely be doing more specific podcasts on this in the future and we're wrapping up here in the next couple minutes. But is there anything that you'd like to say about this idea of co leadership as part of a new paradigm?    [00:28:01] Well, I love the the word to just use alchemical. It's alchemy when two or more are gathered. Right, with some purpose.    [00:28:12] It's not one plus one equals two. It's two. And then that third thing that is created this much bigger really quantum thing. And how on leaders, when we allow ourselves to share power the way you and I have practiced doing for 20 years together and in other circumstances, and we find a way to do it where the greater the sum is greater than its parts. But it's also it's lighter on us. So it's a lighter leadership. I think when we think of leadership, we can think of a weight, a heaviness. Oh, my gosh, it's all on me. This heavy thing. I'm going to make this happy thing happen. But that, too, together, you and I have experienced this, including producing some huge projects together, together. It's all lighter and there's an ease to it that lets allows things. So just I think it's untapped in the sharing of power.    [00:29:06] And I I love that you some people out like that on pairs and like what is sort of more celebratory and like this thing. And again, not one person is carrying all the weight of any given situation an outcome.    [00:29:22] It reminds me of that, that vision I had of the lotus flower that turns into this this Taurus where the outer leaves fall away and turn under and they've become recycled into the big the middle of the flower that then continues to open up and reveal something mysterious at its core. And that in a way, this kind of shared leadership model is like that. There's some kind of a creativity that is much greater than its parts. And I look forward to talking more about this in the future.    [00:29:59] Thank you.    [00:30:04] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture. If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on i-Tunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community destorying the culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we read story. Our own lives. See you next time.   

In this episode of Re-Storying the Culture, Camille and Tanya speak of Re-Storying "Calling." Some of the topics they cover include: Tracking your calling back to early childhood What's love got to do with it? What have you always loved, and what clues does that hold to your calling? How to discover or re-discover your connection to your calling. What's the difference between calling and purpose? What does monetizing have to do with calling? Uncovering your calling. Embracing calling beyond form.   Episode transcript   [00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubins Steam Story mentor and Camille Adair, family Constellation facilitator. In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories serve our lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness, moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments in truth. So many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longings.    [00:00:38] Each one of us is necessary in rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can restoring the culture together.    [00:00:52] Hello. And this is Tanya Taylor Rubenstein welcoming you back to another episode of Restoring the Culture. I'm here with my dear friend Camille Adair. And today, we're going to be talking about restoring your calling core purpose. So a quote I'd like to share with you to begin is from Randy Pausch, who was the author of The Last Lecture.    [00:01:21] The key question to keep asking is, are you spending your time on the right things? Because time is all you have.    [00:01:32] And I wanted to share that quote today because I love Randy Pausch. And if you don't know who he is.    [00:01:42] He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.    [00:01:45] And one of the reasons I remember that is because I went there to their theater department for a while.    [00:01:50] And when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer as a fairly young man with three young children and diagnosed a terminal diagnosis, he he did a live lecture at Carnegie Mellon. That was just supposed to be for his students. And it went on and somebody videotaped it and it went viral on the Internet probably 10 or 12 years ago. And then he wrote that book and I thought it was so beautiful.    [00:02:25] And it just so profound, so simple. But basically asking ourselves, you know, what are we spending our time on?    [00:02:35] What we're spending our time on is the way we're spending our lives and embodying our purpose and our calling or not.    [00:02:47] Yes. So, Camille, I'd love for you to jump in and beautiful.    [00:02:51] Yeah. Yeah. Such a touching, such a touching quote. And, um, I guess, you know, what, it where it takes me is that I start to start that I start to think about purpose and calling. And you know, that they're sort of like different ways that we can think about that in terms of career, in terms of. But I guess, you know, I'm actually just sort of processing this as I'm hearing the quote. And it takes me to where I I went with my work when I was working in hospice as a nurse. And then I went into management and I was managing a lot of people. And I was really struggling with the lack of sustainability in the health care culture. So I started working on organizational development and an organizational health through this idea of systemic relational health. And I started studying emotional intelligence and became certified as an assessor and was teaching emotional intelligence to health care professionals primarily and leaders. And and one of the things that that you do in building your own emotional intelligence, which is a set of skills, is that you basically identify what your you know, what you're your purposes are, what you know, in one organization, six seconds that I trained with. They call it your noble goal. And and I think that that that requires a certain level of self-awareness and a certain level of identifying what your values are. So I guess where that takes me is when I think of calling and purposes, that's as we grow and evolve and change on and and know ourselves. So does our our calling and our purpose will kind of evolve and change. I think with that, as I noticed, mine has. How about you? You have your purpose. I mean, you're your link to story. Work has been so consistent for so long. I'd love to hear about that.    [00:05:04] Yeah. Are you sure? And one of the reasons I love that quote from Randy, I think and I was just I watched his last lecture over and over.    [00:05:13] It was very meaningful to me. He talks a lot about child like Wonder.    [00:05:18] And he created a whole career around that.    [00:05:23] And I often have had, for whatever reasons, a lot of my coaching clients, a lot of my story clients coming to me over the years and people I've worked with on their stories who will sort of even off to the sick side say, and sometimes they're in their 40s or 50s, 60s, 70s. I never found my purpose.    [00:05:44] And the question I always ask them is, why did you'd love to do when you were very young? What are the first things you remember? Because there's often a clue there. And for me, I can honestly say, you know, sort of the the. And I remember this well. My mom said to me that as soon as I could put two words together, I was putting it, stringing them together and writing poetry and would do, you know, push it under her door. Little poems with three or four probably misspelled words. And I remember that I was proud. It was before I even went to kindergarten and she was a school teacher. So she taught me to read and write very early. And I remember just being fascinated by. Yeah. Bye bye. Bye bye, star.    [00:06:31] Re reading my stories, I would read over and over and over, I'd fall in love with a story like Charlotte's Web and Weidner Summer, my mother said I read it like 20 times because I couldn't bear it when Charlotte died. But if I started reading this story over, she was alive again.    [00:06:53] And I think I connected some kind of magic to that.    [00:06:58] Our stories keep us alive. There was something young in me and then I became an actor. But it was when I met my mentor, the late Spalding Gray.    [00:07:10] When I was 20 in Boston, my acting professor took my class to see him.    [00:07:18] And for those who don't know, Spalding was a very became a very well-known monologue. US, though, not a household name to everybody.    [00:07:26] And I met him at 20 and he was onstage sharing about his life. And he was sharing stories that could be considered taboo in in our kind of culture. About his mom suicide, about his quest for the moment, in a moment about his sexuality, about his struggle with depression.    [00:07:49] And I walked out of the theater at 20 and I felt liberated and I thought, I'm going to do that. I didn't want to be behind the artifice of characters. I didn't know that until I met Spalding. But I felt alive and awakened. And he gave me permission.    [00:08:08] And I've pretty much spent my career giving myself permission to speak.    [00:08:15] Authentic story and help other people do that, and it's really true, it's like my outer career. Whenever I stick with stories one way or another, it always works and always had. And whenever I move away from story and think I should do something else, whether that's I think I should, you know, get a real job. And for a while I became a P, you know, work for a PR agency, had nonprofit jobs when I was younger. Number one. I'm miserable. But number two, my life falls apart. So it's interesting because for me, sticking with story is not only my barometer, but when I stick with story, my life just unfolds the way it feels like it's supposed to.    [00:09:04] So it's really. I know I'm very fortunate that my purpose presented so young and that it's like my North Star that I always can return to.    [00:09:16] Mm hmm.    [00:09:18] So beautiful, it makes so much sense, I felt like you were, you know, like Hansel and Gretel walking through the forest and leaving breadcrumbs for me to follow what was really I just had this complete reverie. And your story is gorgeous. Thank you. Yeah. Not sure about the Hansel and Gretel.    [00:09:36] I love the image I had. Totally. No.    [00:09:39] And those experiences, for me, it was our marriage, right? It is you, the inner part of your inner marriage.    [00:09:45] Is your relationship to story and how that's playing out inside of you. And I mean inside of you and how that manifests outside in the world.    [00:09:54] Yes. And it continues to deepen. Right. In this podcast. My favorite part is when we share stories. And you know what? I know there's a spiritual component in story work, too, that feels like at this age in my life, in my 50s. The part that I most expl interested in exploring that distort that intersection between spirit and storytelling, something that intersects in in my work with you, in our work together. But when people aren't sure their purpose, just getting back to what you said about Hansel and Gretel, I think bread crumbs are an important thing because I think the world can put heavy pressure on us around. Do you have your big purpose? So I think the inquiry is what is as close to me as my own breath. You know what's always been there for me? It may not look like a vocation or even a vocation that the world.    [00:10:54] But it's in there and it's it's a great inquiry to go back to childhood because often our deepest gifts are so natural to us that we don't always recognize them.    [00:11:08] I think that's really true, yeah. They're so close. They're some 30, so part of who we are that we don't see them as something that we would bring to the world through us.    [00:11:20] Exactly. And I see that happens with women a lot.    [00:11:25] And I think about all the clients I've worked with over so many decades. And, yes, something that can be that they take for granted, because in our culture, we don't always value our gifts or our gifts or have been called soft skills sometimes. Right. If they don't align with a degree or something that can be monetized or a monetized in an obvious way, they can be minimized and there can be a real unique brilliance that a person starts to marginalize to themselves. That is actually a gift and an offering to others and may be a bigger gift in the world that than people are able to recognize.    [00:12:10] Yeah.    [00:12:12] Oh, boy. I'm just this is going to have to be edited out because I just really lost. I was just onto something.    [00:12:19] Oh, I know.    [00:12:22] So I think one of the things that we confuse is calling with how we make money. Yes. Right. And I think that that it's a tricky dance, because we all want to do we all want to, you know, do what we love in our work and we'd love to make money that way.    [00:12:42] But the getting there is not typically a straight line for most people. And I think what I'd love to do is I you know, you talked about you're sort of calling and we thought about through story and breadcrumbs and you took it back to childhood and what do people love? And that really makes me think about mine.    [00:13:03] I haven't thought about it in that way.    [00:13:06] But, you know, when I was growing up, both of my parents are therapists. And so we would have you know, they'd call a family meeting. And, you know, for kids, I'm the oldest of four and everyone would just be like, oh, no, not the family meeting as my daughters did. They hated the family meetings. Right. Everyone felt like, you know, something was going to be revealed that was going to be hard, you know. Right. Or that people would be asked to share something that they didn't want to share. But I always at the thought of a family meeting, I couldn't get in there fast. I was the one listening to the adults. So I realized I had my whole life I've been really drawn to process. I've really been drawn to depth and intimacy and truth. And I think part of when I was a kid, like listening to adults talk is that what I was listening for was truth. I wanted to know. Yeah. And that's, I think, been a through line in my life.    [00:14:08] You know, when I was a hospice nurse, you know that, you know, the process of dying and the process of being a human being and being the humanity in the relationship. So it's really for me about connection and relationship and the process of that that that informed all of my death and dying work. And then it went into my, you know, emotional intelligence work and mindfulness work. And obviously in the Constellation work, I mean, that's very relational. And I think, you know, for me, the other words that come to mind are it's it's as if I'm drawn to process. And what can come about from in relationships through process, in the mystery that is has to do with inspiration, truth and revelation, and that that is transformative and that that often is unconscious and held in the mystery. So it's a lot of words to try and describe something about myself that's drawn to the process of relationship and the transformative power of that, I think. And finding truth, which is never one thing. Right.    [00:15:17] So for me, that's also part of, you know, restoring the culture around this is that a calling is not a set point, a calling. Like when I've when I think of calling, I think for me how I would read story that is that it's not something I'm pursuing. It's actually something that has called me. Yes.    [00:15:40] Like saying you're it. Yeah, totally. Right.    [00:15:44] And it and I can feel it coming, but I don't know what it is for a long time. But I feel like there's something else out there. And then when I'm called, it's like I slip in and it's all just effortless. And then I'm like, oh, my God, this is it. Like, how did I get here? Sort of like, how did I go to nursing school? That was a big, huge question mark. Right. Because I that was like never really. On my radar until it was. Same thing with, you know, moving into hospice work and constellation work. That was a total calling. That called me.    [00:16:19] I wasn't looking for that. And the same thing with the union work. You know?    [00:16:24] Here I am, 54 and graduate school so that I can fulfill this thing because I'm being called into this union container. I don't know where it's going to take me, but I feel committed to show a full as fully as I can so that I can be in this journey with myself and respond to this call. So it's really interesting. How do we Restoril? Because I'm starting to think like we can misinterpret, like calling us something that's comes through our will.    [00:16:53] But I actually think there's something bigger at work, a bigger maybe also a bigger part of ourselves. But there there is there's more magic to it than we realize.    [00:17:06] I think well, I totally agree.    [00:17:08] And one thing I want to share that has been super important for me is to trust that intuitive voice that you're talking about, the way you just kind of slip in and it's effortless.    [00:17:23] But there's something to that about trusting. And I know that I've had some, you know, projects that I've done, like when I did the cancer monologue project, that was very much part of my calling and purpose.    [00:17:38] But A, it came in a dream and B, it didn't make any sense. And I followed it anyway. And I want to say that an a business program I was in. I have been in. It was like it. It showed up. And on one level, it didn't make sense. But there was a draw right from the inside out. To me, there's something that when something's about my calling. It's not about my ego. I'm not just making a mental decision. It comes. And I think these things drop in for most people, especially for paths and people who are highly sensitive and open and creative. But I think when people are struggling for a long time, it may seem like that those messages haven't arrived. But I would say, have they arrived? And you haven't trusted yourself? Because I also know times in my life when the that calling has come and I've ignored it or I've marginalized something that wanted to come through because just because I wasn't in a space where I was trusting.    [00:18:50] So I just wanted to say that for me, it it arrives and it and it will come from a place.    [00:18:57] And when I do trust it, this is about the radical faith piece. It's almost like a different part of my calling. Them purpose is revealed. And it could never be something that I could just quote unquote, figure out.    [00:19:11] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.    [00:19:13] I mean, what do you think about that and the way intuition plays in with calling?    [00:19:18] I think yeah, it was very well said. And that's how it's been for me, is that it's something that comes from the inside. And it doesn't make sense. It's not my colleagues have never made sense. Right. I mean, going back to graduate school when I could be. Now, I thought with that one for a long time, because my constellation business has been really thriving and I've been teaching and I could easily take my skill set and run a really successful business with it. And so I struggled with that, like, am I always just chasing the next thing? And as I see it now, though, in terms of my own personal growth, it's really taken me to a much deeper place.    [00:19:55] That was a. So I would think about that like a soul calling, you know.    [00:20:00] And so for me, like that feels a little different than purpose because you're you're still calling maybe your purpose. But if when I just hear the word purpose, I get heady and I go into my thinking mind about it. And it's like it's something to be figured out. And I don't think a calling is something to be figured out. I think a calling is something we live into.    [00:20:21] And the beautifully set out. Beautifully put. Yeah. And Ted, I like you distinguishing them in that way because I kind of think of them as the same thing.    [00:20:31] But you're right. And purpose may very much have to do with how our calling is utilized in a more worldly way. Right. To serve others or consider even to make a living. Do you know the Japanese concept icky guy? Mm hmm. I've heard of it. I mean, it's a beautiful thing. And people can look it up and it's like it's a it's force circles and it's looking at the central point in the middle where they intersect. And it's what you're good at, what you love, what the world needs and what you can make. Money Act, and I think that may be more applicable to aligning with purpose rather than calling. But of course, what we love and what we're good at so often arises from calling. But that also puts out the inquiry. What does the world need? So how can we serve with our gifts, but also in terms of vocation? What can we make money at? And I do think the calling may or may not be able to fulfill that. Right. But like a purpose. Yeah. And the arts.    [00:21:42] I'm glad you reminded me of the icky guy because we actually who use that I brba Dossey, nurse friend of mine and mentor introduced me to that and has and brings that into her work with other nurses.    [00:21:56] It is a great tool.    [00:21:57] It's like it's like, you know, several that like sets event diagrams laid over each rightest.    [00:22:04] Great. And yeah, I think I think that's right. I mean, when I think about making this personal to me, I think about, you know, my tagline is re learning human connection.    [00:22:15] And I think since I've been in the union program, it's I'm becoming clear that my work has to do with the split, that what I'm drawn to is I'm actually drawn to how do we mend the splits inside of us and how do we and then and how those splits inside of us get projected in the world around us and that we live in such a fragmented world. And part of that may be that we are also carrying these internal splits and how do we mend that?    [00:22:49] And then, you know, so if I were to differentiate that as my calling, that's like my my soul's calling to my professional life.    [00:22:59] Yeah. It's manifesting in in this graduate program and continuation of my my training programs and client work and.    [00:23:09] And, you know, my desire to even, you know, do work with systems more because I see systems as holding so much power.    [00:23:19] I love working with individuals.    [00:23:22] And I also think that systems are like a little worlds unto themselves.    [00:23:26] And if you can bring some of these these like laws, these natural laws that guide and principles that that guide reconciliation and balance and harmony so that people can all live into their calling.    [00:23:44] Right. In a healthy state and a healthy human system, all people will be living into their gifts and purpose.    [00:23:50] Well, and that's something we're really looking at. Now, right now, in the midst of the pandemic. Right. In terms of restoring the culture and and seeing the parts of the entire system that have been toxic and broken. And how were we going to shift the split collectively so that we're not going back and recreating the old culture and rather moving with the energy of this pause and what it's teaching us. And I'd love to hear what you want to say about that, because I know it's bubbling up for everyone. You and I were talking about it this morning on a phone call. But the way I'd love to hear what you're thinking in terms of sort of the global system, some of the. Yeah. The collective systems that are not only failing us, but we're seeing the human impact and the impact to the earth.    [00:24:55] Well, I guess, you know, the first place I go with that is a simple exercise, which is the minute you find yourself looking at the other liberal, looking at conservative, conservative, looking at liberal, somebody who thinks we should approach the Corona virus, you know, from complete isolation, lockdown, quarantine to somebody who believes in herd immunity. Right. I mean, wherever you have an issue, you're going to have an opposite. And so if you start to find yourself getting really roughed up inside and thinking about that other who represents that issue and you start feeling like you are really right, you're convinced your way is right.    [00:25:43] I think be very, very careful. Because to me, that's an indication of of identity, an identification with the split, and the split is its own energy. And I think we are becoming seduced by the split. And it's not we confuse it for vitality because it makes us feel powerful and we have confused opinion and belief for relationship.    [00:26:13] And then despite. Right. In a sense, they're a waste of time. Yeah. Which comes from our direct experience forced our mind.    [00:26:20] And it doesn't mean that we we don't have, you know, an opinion or an orientation to something. But it means that if we start to just always think that our way is the right way and we stop being curious about the other or we start demonizing, I really believe that's the goal of this world. It's actually more related to greed than we might realize. You know what I keep thinking about that greed is is sort of the foundation for so much of what hurts us in the world.    [00:26:52] And and I think that what I'm looking at here with the split is something that's resonant with greed. And it may not seem connected, but if if everyone is so sure that they're right. And the other one is wrong.    [00:27:09] Oh, we're screwed, man.    [00:27:13] Well, I mean, I guess I think in terms of the Constellation work you do, right, there's a premise and I think it's a hard pill to swallow.    [00:27:22] Like when I listen to you, I kind of go, yeah, I kind of agree and I kind of down. But I do agree with the idea that everyone has the right to be long and it's a hard pill to swallow in a world where there's so much perpetration and where there's so much pain caused by certain toxic systems and people running with that. Right. Whether that's white supremacy or whether that's patriarchy. And yes, we're all carried along and damaged by patriarchy. The men and women. But I wonder about like looking at the perpetrator and the victim and everybody's right to belong. And maybe if you could talk a little bit more about that, because I sometimes do feel a kick back around. Well, this is the difference between judging versus discernment when some people or systems are clearly doing more harm outwardly to individuals or the environment than others. So how would you address that?    [00:28:34] Well, I think if you were to be in relationship with that. Then you would be curious to know what's underneath it, what's underneath the perpetration, what's underneath that thing that is causing more harm than good, and our human inclination is to push away everything that feels dangerous and uncomfortable to us.    [00:28:57] But the truth of the matter is, is that we live in a closed system. So if we talk about systems, global systems, we could talk about the planet Earth.    [00:29:05] Every time you throw something into the garbage, that thing doesn't disappear. It goes into a landfill or goes into, you know, you're putting it in the compost. Everything is recycled. Even sustainability, which I've always been drawn to, sustainability itself is always changing because we're always evolving and changing. So we always want to find one right answer. That is the the recipes. But we are dynamic, evolving beings, constant dating around each other. And sometimes it gets messy. And the truth of the matter is, humans hurt each other just. Absolutely. Just like, you know, suffering is part of the human condition, having pain and physical pain and emotional pain. It's part of having a body and a heart and a nervous system, you know. And I think I'm not saying we should run into the belly of the beast or throw ourselves in harm's way. That's not what I'm saying at all. But what I'm saying is that we have lost our ability to have creative dissonance, which is a phrase that I've learned from him, from someone who's important helping me in my life right now in my training.    [00:30:14] And this idea of creative dissonance is really.    [00:30:19] I'll tell you a little bit based in a dream I had recently that is still with me. I had a dream early on in the pandemic where I was given the answer to how to deal with the Corona virus. And that answer was that I could. I literally had a high pitched tone that I was singing through my right bundle of vocal chords. And I could even put my fingers like, you know, on my throat and feel where that was. And I was singing and kind of this high tone. And then on the left side of my throat, I put my fingers there and I could feel myself singing in a low tone. And there's a way in which if you sing in a high tone and you sing in a low tone, you can do. You can actually do that at the same time. And it creates an undertone that's like this that we think of like when we hear, you know, certain monks singing, my lord.    [00:31:20] That's what I was gonna say. A lot of that. Monks chanting and Tibetan monks chanting.    [00:31:26] Also, it takes me to my ancestral roots, which is, you know, when Swedish women call to the animals, they do that very same thing. They mix a high note and alone. And there's another bass note underneath it that creates some kind of a harmonic convergence. Now, this this this person who I've been talking to about this is actually an expert in music. And he was saying, you know.    [00:31:59] That's real harmony, that's that's what makes music really brilliant and interesting, is when you bring in dissonant notes and they create something that is completely different than themselves as dissonant notes.    [00:32:16] Right. They're just and totally each other. And that's what creates the best music that we have on planet Earth. And so why wouldn't it be the same thing with human beings? We've just really lost our way to do that. And again, there's a huge paradox here, because I'm not saying, you know, throw yourself at the perpetrator or indulge yourself as the victim.    [00:32:37] No, I'm saying that we've got we have a set of skills that we've lost that indigenous cultures knew how to access in their relationship to the earth and their relationship to their bodies and their relationship with each other. And they had ways of helping to maintain systemic relational health. And we've really lost that. And part of our losing that has to do with we are not able to deal with discomfort, dissonance. And therefore, we don't have resonance. We will never have resonance until we can incorporate dissonance.    [00:33:15] I agree. And I learn a lot from you. And I have my own sort of process with this. But I want to share a story about doing a constellation with you because I feel very, very, very charged personally. And I want to share this because I'm sure some of our listeners do, particularly as a somebody who has identified with people who have been harmed. I mean, I feel very angry about what's happened to indigenous people in this country. I feel very allied with black activists as a white woman.    [00:33:54] But, you know, I understand that the the voices have been marginalized, their culture, they're at risk for everything more in this culture, which is really capitalism run amok based on patriarchy and white supremacy. You know, the deep, deep cultural ills. And I have a lot of ya just allegiance with people who have been marginalized. And I think we could all be marginalized, though, in different ways. That's a different conversation. I think spirituality and people who are intuitive and imparts and psychic's have been marginalized in Western culture. There's levels of it. Right. And we're reclaiming some of that on this. But I do want to share that. It was fascinating to me that I did a constellation with you not that long ago in a group. And what came through was one of my ancestors who was a perpetrator that I did not know about who had led in Massachusetts. One of the, you know, great like well-known killings of a lot of native people there, and that there is even a statue of him in a square in Springfield, Mass. And that I did not know about him until I did a constellation with you. And I represented the voice of a lot of native women who had been killed in New Mexico in that constellation that took me on a rabbit down a rabbit hole where I did an Internet search and found out about this part of my family tree that I didn't even know about, which is kind of the crazy and magical part of doing family constellations. It's quantum work and it's amazing how it can get validated. But somehow that made some sense to me that when that story had been in the shadows of my family to the point that 10 generations down, I didn't even know about it until I did the work with you and then found it, which was incredible that somehow it's the thing you've talked about before, that we each have our own history, that we're each spiritually sovereign, that we each have our family history, that we are trying to reconcile things that are multi-layered and multidimensional.    [00:36:31] And often we don't know what's moving our anger or our rage or our kick back to something.    [00:36:38] But I just wanted to share that, because I think since then I've been hanging with more complexity on myself is the word. And yeah, so I wanted to share that because my natural.    [00:36:58] Response in terms of polarizing with myself.    [00:37:04] Has to do with, you know, ways people have very genuinely been marginalized.    [00:37:09] But owning my own particular family peace that was there and healing something and that maybe gives me more spaciousness in general towards the complexity of each of us. Right. We are such layered beings.    [00:37:27] And while we are and I I really appreciate you bringing that your own story into that, because I know sometimes when I speak about things, it can seem really theoretical and it can be really hard to relate to on that level. So I think it's really important to ground that because, of course, I mean, I have my own political opinions. I have my own causes that I get fired up about. I mean, it's none. So but I do think that. I do think that, you know, when I guess this is where we're running out of time here, but I'd like to share something that I shared with a friend recently, another health care clinician, and we've been working together. He's also a Constellation facilitator and we've been working on, you know, as to Constellation facilitators, how are those principles manifesting in our own lives?    [00:38:24] And then I found myself saying. Love. We'll call everything to itself. That is unlike itself.    [00:38:40] It's it's there's a bigger energy that everything is part of the system. And so we can have opinions and we can fight for our causes. But if we start to buy into the split, then we move away from love and then we'll get called back into it. And and that's not going to be an easy return. No, no.    [00:39:01] Totally. It reminds me of one of my dear, somebody who is so dear. And he passed from Lou Gehrig's disease. He was my daughter's preschool teacher and his name was Robbie. I'm still friends with his wife, Martha. Incredible, incredible people.    [00:39:15] And he was like out there in his like the 60s hippie, you know, tie dye t shirt. A very, very loving being and certainly very radical and sort of on the left, but very loving, very wise and astrologer. And, you know, I remember coming in after George Bush's second election and every parent at the school, you know, a little liberal conclave, progressive conclave in Santa Fe, we were all like so feeling really shattered. And he said something to me that really stayed with me. He said, oh, he said, George Bush. You know, he I wouldn't want to play his role, but he's doing a great service to us. I said, what do you mean, Robby?    [00:40:02] And he was just smiling very joyfully. He said, you know, he's playing the role to show us all who we are.    [00:40:08] He's playing the role of the shadow. He's he's willing to take on all those projections. And I thought about that in the, you know. Right.    [00:40:18] The collective, the shadow work, the things we don't want to see and how somebody who we see as a quote unquote, monster carries our projections. How much is about them? How much is about ourselves. And, of course, in politics, what collective consciousness do we choose to elect?    [00:40:41] And I also think about Alice Miller's work, whose, you know, the Germans psychotherapist who has written such amazing books like, You Know, For Your Own Good and her book of, you know, megalomaniacs, narcissists, monsters throughout time, who I would you know, we would label monsters.    [00:41:02] And of course, what does she reveal is the not only the abuse that they have suffered as children. And I'm talking ones who go on and do great, great harm collectively.    [00:41:16] But the fact that they weren't seen and they weren't witnessed.    [00:41:21] So the whole system around them, not only was there usually great abuse, but the system around them co cooperated with the abuse, enabled the beat, the abuse and how when children are abused. But there's somebody loving who bears witness to them usually changes the course of destiny in terms of how perpetration, part of how perpetration evolves. So there's there's so much in all of this, isn't there? Like it's like the ego wants there to be an easy answer. Good, bad black/white. And it doesn't in any way justify harm on others. Right. Or the responsibility there. But it opens up the bigger questions. I think we're talking about.    [00:42:09] Well, it does. And it and I'm glad you said that the part about the the answers in the black and white thinking, because that takes us back to Ian McGilchrist work and his incredible book, The Master and his Emissary. And he's talking about how we're moving into a time of left hemisphere dominance, which is, you know, because we have the printed word. Our brains have changed because of so many different things. And and and so we're becoming more focused in being goal oriented, in wanting to have the answers. And it's much less relational. And I think that's part of, you know, me fighting my good fight is about helping, wanting us to become more balanced in the right hemisphere of our brain, which is where art and creativity and poetry and relationship and feeling come from. And and and to have a relationship between the right and the left, which is the corpus callosum and how how do we work with that bridging? Because we need both just as we need both. Everywhere we go. And I guess I would like to end this. We're out of time. I just. And then I think you're going to give a couple writing prompts.    [00:43:14] But just to say how many people could enter into a conversation where they talk about their own shadow.    [00:43:27] That's interesting to me. Means what I'm doing my for crackdowns correctly and I'm spending that's been years on onlooking.    [00:43:35] My own shadow, that's what this is all about, you know, and that's really been the thrust of my story work. What are the things we consider unspeakable? Let's speak them. Let's bring them out. Because if that darkness is an address and we don't share it together and it doesn't ever come into the light, that's where it does harm. As soon as we share the stories, there's a liberation that happens emotionally and spiritually around those things we're holding. Which is why intimacy. Right. Is so connected to expression.    [00:44:10] Thank you so much. What a great podcast. You want to give some writing prompt?    [00:44:13] Yeah, well I yeah, I'll end on this.    [00:44:16] So I'm in the restoring process that I do with people and Camille and I often do ah. Each bring a different skill set to the restoring process. But one of the tools I've developed over the years I call wisdom writing.    [00:44:31] So I will if you want to do a little writing, you can use this for anything.    [00:44:36] You can use this in terms of purpose and calling that we started talking about or the way the conversation moved towards right shadow and dissonance and maybe some hard polarize places and ourselves. But what you want to do really, it's a three step process and it's great if you add a fourth step of sharing it with somebody and just asking them to listen to you and just say thank you, not to get advice so much, just to be witnessed in it. But even if you're doing it alone. Very powerful. So the first thing I say is just let's go back to purpose. And if any question you have around like anything that sort of bothers you or you feel unsettled about in terms of your purpose in calling and just writing that at the top of a page and this is to be done handwritten, not on the computer, it uses a different part of neuro with neuroscience that uses a different part of the brain where you can access more information.    [00:45:34] So just right at the top of the page, like, you know, for example, I want to know how to deepen my my service work in the world to make a bigger impact at this time.    [00:45:48] Just an example. So anything like that you're thinking about around purposeand service that isn't resolved just right at the top of this stage.    [00:45:56] Step two, just want you to close your eyes and invite in your inner wisdom. And as opposed to journaling or even a free right, you don't just write on a topic. You it's an inquiry.    [00:46:14] It's an inquiry of your connection to your highest self, your intuition, the Crohn God doesn't matter what you call it, and just say, you know, what do I need to know?    [00:46:29] To shift this issue energetically and then you just want to right, and just.    [00:46:37] I always say to people, just allow yourself to be surprised. A different voice may come through and that than what you usually access when when you write because you've asked a question. So be open to hear the answer. It's kind of like meditation on the page. Keep your hand moving right without stopping to judge. Don't worry about spelling, grammar, punctuation, any of those things and do it as a timed writing. So set your your timer for, you know, 15 minutes to start and let yourself go and really just stay open to see what comes. And the last part of the exercise is.    [00:47:16] Number three, what actions can I take at this time to help me move forward in terms of a resolution?    [00:47:28] And you can honestly and then again set the timer for 15 minutes and see what wants to come in terms of specific actions. So the answer to question number two is more about the energetic, the consciousness. Any insights and a shifts in your identity or creative ideas that want to come in terms of how you can meet the problem and set. And number three is really about any direct actions you may want to take. And then if you're able to share both the your story and the restoring that happens around it with somebody, ask them to just listen to you that what you're seeking is just to be witnessed rather than to be given any advice, because it's really just about being witnessed by another human being in the wisdom that is bubbling up from within.    [00:48:23] Thank you, friend.    [00:48:25] Mm hmm. Thank you, Camille. Always so wonderful to talk. And yeah. And share this with everyone who's out there listening.    [00:48:36] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture. If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on i-Tunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community, Restoring the Culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we read story. Our own lives. See you next time.   

In this episode of Restorying the Culture, Camille and Tanya explore the topic of Restorying Friendship. In their most intimate talk to date, the two decades long friends open up about deeper truths and obstacles that so often run through female friendship and how they have navigated them. In this talk they share around their own experiences on: The myth of the "BFF." Confronting hard truths around how the culture separates us from each other. Transforming codependency to vulnerability in female friendships. Committing to friendships with the same passion we commit to marriages/romantic partnerships. What makes it worth the commitment? The dance of dissonance and healing Why two women visibly sharing power is radical and rare   Episode transcript   [00:00:02] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubins Steam Story mentor and Camille Adair, family Constellation facilitator. In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories survive lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness, moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments in truth. So many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longing. Each one of us is necessary in rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can restoring the culture together.    [00:00:50] Hi, welcome to Restoring the culture with Camille and Tanya. And today we'll be talking about restoring friendship from our two decades plus friendship with each other. And I'd like to start this episode with a quote from David White. Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another's eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn without tolerance and mercy. All friendships die.    [00:01:35] Welcome and I. I'd love to know what you think about that, Tanya.    [00:01:39] Oh, well, that's such a profound quote I said ahead. There's so much there. There's so much there.    [00:01:48] I mean, what comes up for me is, one, the deep truth of a right to have to forgive each other over and over in small ways and big ways. And what also comes up for me is what conditions create the motivation or the inspiration to do that. Like for myself, when has it been worth it for me to really make that big a commitment?    [00:02:19] Right. Because that's a tremendous commitment. It's a spiritual commitment.    [00:02:23] It's a.    [00:02:26] It's like a marriage commitment to you to have that kind of commitment in a friendship.    [00:02:33] And how do we get there and sharing about our stories, how have I gotten there? How have you gotten there? There's just so much there, isn't there?    [00:02:42] Well, there is. And one thing I keep thinking about is that it takes a certain kind of for me anyway to do that. An internal condition of my own sovereignty to be able to hold that kind of space for another person living. In other words, I have to feel a certain amount of wholeness within myself so that I can pull back projections and I can have tolerance and mercy and and not pathologize or not allow a friend to make mistakes or have their own kind of their own stuff.    [00:03:17] And I think that's you know, I've been thinking a lot about this in terms of for me in my own life, friendships that I have with men and women. And it's not just in my life, but I've heard other women talk about this, too, that I think women have a tendency to, too. Go really deep and bond and relationship, but I think we have a harder time often allowing for space and sovereignty between each other. And that and that can kind of get in the way. You know, that it's it's actually one of the wounds of of Howard where. I think what we're trying to do in bringing the feminine and developing the feminine more is bringing in also those internal sovereignty boundaries that allow us.    [00:04:11] To be okay with someone else.    [00:04:16] Even when we're not okay. Or when they're not OK that we know where we stop and where another one starts.    [00:04:22] Right. And obviously, yeah, the codependency or the enmeshment model. And when there's not a space to speak in to disagreement or dissonance, where it's not a big enough container, I think that's one huge issue that blows up female friendships. But I'm also thinking about this morning I saw something that and Doyle wrote on Instagram about also in patriarchy, how we've been conditioned to turn on each other rather than turn on the toxic conditions. So I think that happens a lot in female friendships. Right. You and I have talked so much about this competitiveness. Is it okay for me to be big in you, to be but big?    [00:05:16] Is it okay for me to really genuinely celebrate your wins without feeling threatened about my own? There's so much to navigate.    [00:05:29] Well, there isn't that. And everything you're saying really is like the sort of the sign of a mature adult who owns their own space in life. In their life. Right. And sometimes I kind of feel like.    [00:05:45] We have been wounded so much, I think, in our lives and our friendships that there's maybe a part of us that stops growing in that way and kind of has the tendency to go into this like this uber boundary place of protection, which is understandable because sometimes the wounding between women actually can can really be trauma inducing. And then we carry that for our lives. Like, I sometimes feel like even older women still carry some of that energy of like, oh, this is my BSF. It's like we can be seduced into the old hallmark model of what it means to have a girlfriend told lies that it's like some superficial feel good thing when it couldn't be further from the truth. If you're really in it as to whole people, it's completely rewarding. But it takes it takes work and it also calls us into our authenticity and into being able to hold suffering with another person.    [00:06:47] Yeah. And to learn to do that when most of us anyway. And this is cultural as well as personal carry so many wounds from our own mothers as most of our mothers carried wounds from our grandmothers. And I think for me and I and I really do want us to get personal about our friendship to share, because it I think it's easy for people to project on us and go, wow, look at them. They have this amazing long term relationship.    [00:07:16] Like, I'd like to know the real back story of Oprah and Gail's long term relationship, because I think you and I have had as many ups.    [00:07:24] We've had a lot of ups and downs and spaces in between, a lot of different manifestations and coming in carrying the wounding of our mothers and then hoping to have, I think, A A B, Afaf. Right. Who's a, quote unquote, perfect mother or substitutes for the mother we didn't have or the sister we didn't have or that what our past wounds.    [00:07:49] It's a lot to navigate. And I'd love to care from you.    [00:07:53] I don't know if I've ever asked you this. I mean, we've never even really had this exact conversation before. And then I'm happy to share what it's been like for me. What is it been like? What have been the the hardest parts, maybe in the best parts of navigating are very depth based, complex friendship for the last 20 years.    [00:08:23] Thanks for asking.    [00:08:30] You can tell that we don't script these parts.    [00:08:39] So you think I know the value.    [00:08:45] You have a tendency to go for the jugular. And I have to admit, I kind of admire that about you. I mean, I feel like with you I know where I stand.    [00:08:55] You know, and that's one thing I I admire for better, for worse.    [00:08:58] And sometimes knowing where I have stood in your life has been painful.    [00:09:06] I think you and I also even though there's a lot that people might look at us and think that we're so much alike, there's a lot of ways in which we're different. And I think that's difficult for women to navigate. I think you and I have had a lot of opposition stuff come up. And how do we hold the tension of opposites? You know, we've had this conversation before, which is that, you know, you have had a tendency, you know, you're I mean, you're an introvert, but you're very extroverted.    [00:09:33] I think in the way that you deal with situations. Right. And I think I enter I've been I've had a tendency to internalize a lot of things and try and and navigate in a maybe in a quieter way. But from a from an observational standpoint. And I think that's been hard for us in the past. You know, I think I mean, you and I had a I remember when we had a break almost 20 years ago for a while and it was actually very calm in the beginning.    [00:10:11] But we just sort of said it was like, I want to do this and this is what I need. And you said, well, that's not okay with me. And I said, OK, but I need to hold onto what I need. And you said and I need to hold onto what I need.    [00:10:22] And we kind of walked us profit for a while.    [00:10:25] And that was that was painful. And there was some stuff that happened around that that was, I'm sure, hard for both of us.    [00:10:32] But I think the thing I want to emphasize is that there are very few people, not that our friendship hasn't been honestly one of the most challenging for me at times as a marriage could be wrong.    [00:10:46] It has been, yeah. But it's like you keep coming back and being willing to stay in the game. And I think that to me is what's so profound about our friendship. It's not that you and I have this, that we don't have a lot of complexity and that we haven't had dissonance and that we haven't judged each other and that we haven't heard each other. But like you are willing to step in when many other people wouldn't be willing to step in and say, hey, let's go another round. And I think that's where you and I match up. Yeah. I I'm always someone who's like, you want to stay in. And that's why I have so many long term friendships. Yeah. Because I am if somebody is willing to be relational with me and lean into the opposition, I'll stay in a relationship.    [00:11:36] Yeah. Totally. You will. And I will, too. I do. I think that, you know, and that's the thing that we don't control in a friendship, a deep friendship, a real intimate friendship or in a marriage. Sometimes I think the reason people go their separate ways is more than anything. Somebody is just not willing or able for whatever reason to stay in it. And of course, sometimes it's not appropriate to stay in it. So. So what makes it appropriate for us to make the choice to stay at it? That's almost like opening up a whole other inquiry, isn't it?    [00:12:18] It is. Well, I mean, for me, it's it's somebody who's been willing to like on their part in a dynamic where I think you and I both have done. I mean, we've opened up really hurts, hurt places and and and. You know, and for me, the reason I was willing and able to step back in it and have another round is like, I mean, you really owned your part in it.    [00:12:45] And and I feel like, you know, I don't know if you feel like I owned my last one or not.    [00:12:54] I don't. You could speak to that. Yeah, I could.    [00:12:57] I mean, the can I speak to the last round? Because I think it was the hardest, the most profound. And it brought me the closest to you. And I just want to sort of say, from my point of view, I grew up as an only child without siblings.    [00:13:14] And I think I think that in and of itself can make it hard to being an only child to learn to share and share power and be intimate with a peer.    [00:13:29] Cause you're in a relationship. I was always in relationship with adults.    [00:13:35] And I just want to say there's something historical about that that I don't even quite understand. I just know it's come into play. And also, I was a very lonely child and and longing for intimacy I didn't get. So I think I come in with a lot of those heavy relation, heavy expectations on female friendships. And I have wanted that sort of old school BSF.    [00:14:02] And and yet I now I get it more that there's a myth to that.    [00:14:08] And the more I've embraced sort of the myths of like the illusion, it's like Prince Chuck, what Prince Charming is to man BSF SA to female friendship.    [00:14:18] Right. That's right. It's a lie.    [00:14:21] So the myth of friendship getting past the myth and the facade of who we should be to each other versus allowing who and what we really are like found was my own internal process. I think you got battered by me a bit because of that projection. I had it with another two other friends who, you know, are no longer friends of mine, but they were willing to step more into the role. And in the end, I didn't want the role. I wanted the authenticity. And I also, you know, and that's what you provided. So when we had a split, which was only like a year ago and went our separate ways for a while. I mean, I feel like I was it was sort of like when an addict has to hit bottom. I was kind of in a different relationship with a different friend. And I mean, this sounds like lovers and it's not. But it felt passionate like that. It felt like I had to choose between you and this other woman. And what she was sort of offering me the illusion. And there you were like that. I I really do feel like the sister you've always been to me on.    [00:15:41] There is a sisterhood between us and a depth. And when I came out of that kind of bottoming out with the illusion of that, you said something that really, really changed my entire way of relating to you. And it changed my feeling about you.    [00:16:01] And you might not even know this, but we were sitting in and we were sitting in a little cafe in Santa Fe, close to our house in the very back of the restaurant, having dinner and talking about all of this.    [00:16:15] And what you said to me was you said, no matter if we never do business together again, no matter if we never, like, make any money together.    [00:16:28] Because part of our relationship has all also been partnering professionally and we've had to navigate dual roles. You said no matter what, if nothing ever happens again, I just want you to know I love you and I pick our friendship first. And for me, that completely, you know, I started sobbing.    [00:16:50] I think at least into at least I sobbed inside.    [00:16:53] Maybe you just saw a tear to run down my cheek. But for me, women have always wanted things from me in my life.    [00:17:04] And I'm a man of Hester. I definitely tried with somebody who I I do. I make magic carpet. I can own that. I make opportunities happen for people.    [00:17:15] But there's something about my own childhood having to jump through hoops, perform, make sure people got goodies that I brought with my step.    [00:17:25] There was a sense for me of always proving myself and not being loved, unconditionally being loved. Friendships for what I can do for people. And you were so sincere and so earnest that I think it took me about 19 years and our friendship to feel loved by you.    [00:17:49] And and in that moment I felt loved and everything else went away.    [00:17:53] And I was completely committed to you and our friendship like I let go of all that had blocked me from really having intimacy with you.    [00:18:07] Wow, thank you for sharing that, I'm so touched. And also just amazed at your year, the courage and for where you're willing to go with your vulnerability and transparency, which is partly why this friendship really works for me, because I'm someone who is so drawn to the truth.    [00:18:26] And the truth is not off. It's not always pleasant. And and I I just. Yeah, I love being able to go to these places with you. And I'm so grateful that you were able to articulate that and that we're making progress on a blow in my mind.    [00:18:45] The difference between you and me, because, like, I don't even feel anything about making that public, but you push me behind the scenes. I think at ways that are deep and profound and that's where my discomfort is. It's in the private and in the intimate spaces. And would you say that sometimes I push you maybe in the public spaces?    [00:19:09] Would I say it? I would say that's an understatement. I feel like flying out into the into the atmosphere.    [00:19:22] But it's good.    [00:19:22] You know, I was talking with a mutual friend earlier today about this podcast, and I was telling him that, you know, I have so much happening in my inner world. And, you know, and the things that I'm learning and pursuing and developing and engaging in that are also fruitful for me. And the harder part for me is to take things out into the world, even though I've done that a lot through documentary filmmaking, but I've always done it as the person behind the camera or the interviewer. Grant's been behind the camera, but I've been the one across and doing the interview and really tending the content and knowing that that movie, that message lives inside of me. And that's going to come out in this very intimate, specific way, which is why, you know, when we did all of the editing we did on our our movies, it was like the editing process was just this incredible experience for me because it was so specific, the message needed to be so specific.    [00:20:27] But that's a different way of putting yourself out there because you're putting someone else's wisdom out there in a way. Right. And even when I had my first podcast, you know, I mean, my podcast, it was in 30 countries and it was on death and dying. And it was called a lifelong practice. And it was in the early, early podcast days. It was on i-Tunes. And but I was still interviewing other people as the experts. And so for me, the big way that you're calling me out is not that I'm an expert, but that I am being public in who Camille is and what Camille thinks, not just about. How interested I am in other people, but how can I be interested in myself? And that's really a good thing for me.    [00:21:15] Yeah. I mean, I think it's so of this moment, isn't it? Like we're still in the pandemic. We're still under quarantine. You know, we're doing this podcast in New Mexico. And I like look around and I'm like, look, look at the X so-called experts around us.    [00:21:35] The so called like nobody freaking knows. And like being with the mystery, it doesn't mean we don't have expertise in our areas. It just means to me on some profound level.    [00:21:48] The guru ages over, and I remember when my grandfather died, I was 14 years old and he had been the director of finance at NIH National Institute of Health. So when he got diagnosed with a brain tumor, he was taken, you know, into their very best program. The experimental program. And my grandfather, who was the person I admired the most in the world. You know, he'd gotten his p._h._d at Columbia. He had all these big jobs all over the world and Lebanon and Pakistan.    [00:22:29] And then in the D.C. area, he he put his faith.    [00:22:34] In doctors and in education and my family puts a lot of education up, a lot of faith in graduate degrees. And I didn't even finish college. I job dropped out of acting school three different times.    [00:22:50] But there was something for me that it was a disillusionment because he died at NIH and he died a very painful death.    [00:23:00] And and I walked in his room one day when he was just wailing. And then he he died, hooked up to all of those machines in a coma. And he came out briefly and was just begging to be unplugged.    [00:23:16] And what happened for me in that disillusionment at that young age was I went, OK, my are the experts. We these these are the best doctors, the best medical stuff available in the country.    [00:23:33] All these p_h_d_, an M.D. My grandfather's made this choice and he has a p_h_d_.    [00:23:39] And, you know, all of those quote unquote things that we mark as authority in our culture.    [00:23:46] And and he died and he didn't have a good death. And there was a kind of shattering around inside of me, around what's an expert.    [00:23:58] And I think it pushed me even deeper onto a kind of path, which is my nature to question everything.    [00:24:07] So when you talk about that, I go to me, the greatest gift you can give is Camille. And I trust like you and your life experience on such a deep level and feel like people get so, so much from that. Not that there's not a place for talking about expertise or systemic change or anything in any kind of systems.    [00:24:29] But to me, at this moment, there's something radical about us just being who we are and letting people letting that be an offering. What? And it may resonate and it may not for people, but to me, what comes out of your soul is so inspiring. When you're just you.    [00:24:49] And I love that. And I imagine that others hearing you love that, too.    [00:24:55] Oh, thank you. Yeah. I mean, it's I think a lot of this goes back to ancestral stuff for me. I think that this is an ancestral imprint. You know, then the thing about I've talked I think before about God to log on, which is this, you know, Scandinavian phrase, that means basically don't think you're special and don't stand out. And and there were really important reasons why that became embedded in the culture. And for those of us who, you know, have, you know, lived in this country for several generations, we still carry that, which to me is just sort of a testament to how much we carry the past with us and within us. And it's asking to be healed through us.    [00:25:37] So for me, when I step out and I've you know, on the one hand, I feel like it can almost kill me because of those old imprints, even though, of course, it won't. But I'm also I'm healing the past forward. I'm not just I'm not just re patterning something for myself.    [00:26:01] But it goes back and then it's carried forward into the future. And that feels like, you know, it's important for us, I think.    [00:26:09] And that goes back to sort of what we said earlier on about friendship, which is are we going to be willing to face, you know, these things that are so difficult, that have such a huge payoff in terms of the growth that comes through relationship.    [00:26:30] And I mean, to me, that's the ultimate blessing here, right? It's really intimate relationships where we work past these fears, because what you're talking about, you feel like it's almost going to kill you opening up sometimes to me, it feels that way in a friendship in our relationship or in other relationships, too, really. It's like terrifying that we long for it to totally be seen.    [00:26:59] And I think that requires a forgiveness and a mercy on ourselves. Going back to David Whyte's original quote, a mercy on each other. Yes.    [00:27:08] But I sometimes think the harder thing is to be forgiving and have mercy on ourselves enough to show who we are imperfectly.    [00:27:20] Well, I think and women have a hard time cutting each other's slack, you know, and that goes back to my grade, the grade school days. And I think it carries through. And I've been I've been thinking, knowing this podcast was coming up, I've been thinking a lot about. Shippen and I've been kind of tracking this this this theme I'm noticing between the people in my life.    [00:27:42] Who are interested in what I'm doing and invested in who I am through my actions versus the people who are interested in my process.    [00:27:58] And I think and that's been a big a big way that I've been sort of differentiating between what I feel like I'm growing into, which is sovereignty for me means we don't cling to any relationship that we see the other person as their own whole person with their own family system and their own ancestors. So we don't become enmeshed in that way. Right. And then we get to stay sovereign. So if they do something that may be disappointing to us, it's not personal. But I find it fascinating that if somebody doesn't agree with like a choice or a deeply personal, you know, direction that you're going in your life, that people instead of.    [00:28:44] Saying like, I hear a lot of this kind of thing, which is like, so you did this, huh?    [00:28:49] And it feels very unreal. Right. It does.    [00:28:52] Or what's going on with this? And they only want to hear the upper story. They don't want to hear the story beneath the story, which is what is that about for you? Because then that's what where the intimacy is. Right. It's really understanding somebodies process, because we would be surprised right and left if we could hear the story under the story, which is I have no idea why you made this choice, but. And I may or may it's not even my business to agree or disagree with your choice. That's when I get outside of my own medicine, totally when I start judging other people than I know I'm out of my medicine. I start criticizing other people. I'm out of my medicine. But when I can become curious and say, wow, I am so I am so curious about what went into that that decision for you, what was the process in it for you? What what what are you learning by doing that? That's really how to me, how to go deeper in any kind of relationship, whether it's a, you know, like a a life partner, whether. And I'm working on that with my children, my adult children. Not so easy.    [00:29:58] Like me. I am sitting with my adult daughter. Absolutely. To not judge their choices except quit and to give space for a different story to reveal for them, because I definitely agree that judgment is such a barometer to me that I'm out of myself and another and in it, it relates to control and fear, doesn't it?    [00:30:20] Thinking that we need to also get in there in control and fear. There's something about that judgment that is like for me anyway. I don't think something's going to be okay. And here comes my codependency conditioning that I have to change it or fix it or pull way back from that person.    [00:30:39] Whereas like this loving titration is is really to me and friendship, giving people the opportunity to have their own process. And I think you and I have practiced that with each other doing that over time. Right.    [00:30:57] I think we really have because you and I are quite different in the kinds of people we we have, you know, married than in relationship with, you know, the kinds of people that other are their friends.    [00:31:09] Right. Your friends and my friends, you know, wouldn't necessarily be friends all the time. It's interesting because our friend and I are twins and yeah, we are.    [00:31:19] And yet our clients cross so far, like so many of our clients cross over, but not necessarily are personal friends, so.    [00:31:27] Right. And just that thing that everybody represents a different part of us. And because we're different. There's nothing wrong at all. It means we have other friends and people in our lives that reflect different aspects of ourselves that we don't share with each other. But we have this incredible intersection that we do. And to me, accepting that no one person, including a partner or lover or husband, a spouse and a close friend is going to fill all of those needs. To me, that's been the liberation and to love and to get out of judgment, thinking that somebody should or that I should have a commentary on your process. If it looks different from mine.    [00:32:10] And again, like my wiring, all the stuff that's underneath that's informing that decision. It's coming from a completely different source in my ancestry than yours is. And even beneath that, there's something we all share in common. So there is also a lot of paradox in friendship. Right. That were part of a human family. And so sometimes we do feel like sisters or we feel like, you know, we've we've done this before or we feel that we're walking something out that's really important in our lives or in the world.    [00:32:41] And it has those. And so it can feel that way. And also, you and I have had moments where we have recognized how like radically different our growing up.    [00:32:53] Oh, my gosh. Like we talked about in the last podcast. Absolutely.    [00:32:57] So all of those things in form. I think it's interesting, though, I want to share this story with people who are listening that for 20 years we have walked around wherever we've gone together, Santa Fe. You know, being in San Diego, Dallas, we did shows down there. We did some professional event. People will ask us if we're sisters. And it's not that we physically look so much alike. You know, if people see us, especially in person, there's we're about the same height. We're blond. Our faces really don't look alike.    [00:33:29] But there is something energetically that has been bigger than us, because people would ask me that about you even when we weren't together or even if we were. It's like one of our two sort of splits in our relationship where we really were in kind of a break for each other and to me there's just something about that that speaks to the mystery, though, of a kind of soul sister like friendship.    [00:34:01] But that isn't about the projection, but is rather the deeper invitation we've had.    [00:34:07] Yeah, I think there's probably some kind of a resonance that builds between people over time, that it is like the third thing in a relationship, that it's an energetic and and I'm sure that, you know, you have that in different relationships in your life. Right. Every significant relationship is going to alkermes and transform us in certain ways. And there's a third that comes out of it. Yeah, I think for you and I, the third has often been interpreted by other people as us being related. That's true. It's been really especially in the last five years.    [00:34:40] Yeah, it's kind of crazy sometimes.    [00:34:43] Yeah, it happens very frequently. Yeah.    [00:34:48] Yeah.    [00:34:48] So I'd love to share a little a little exercise about something I I do with clients and it's a practice I do for myself that that supports what I consider to be relational sovereignty, which, you know, for me when I think about friendship in terms of relational sovereignty, I think of, you know, someone who's gonna hold with you in the mystery and they don't have to make your life their line. Right. But it's like we're interdependent and yet. We're walking out our own lives and working on this transformative process. That's not always very conscious toward this movement, toward wholeness.    [00:35:34] Yeah, and I think that can be the shadow of friendship. Right. And I guess encouraging you to share this, but we've both experienced it with that enmeshment takes over and then neither person is sovereign. And for a while it can feel all sort of cozy the way any addictive thing can feel. Right. Kind of fun and cozy. And then it blows up.    [00:35:56] That backfires on us. It can't. It's not sustainable anymore than that kind of enmeshment that sometimes happens in a new love. And there's an illusion to it. Right. But what you're talking about, that sovereignty. And getting back to the original quote by David White. You know, the mercy and forgiveness. And I think the it's a spiritual practice to learn to be friends.    [00:36:21] Such a spiritual practice. And one one constellation principle I'd like to share is that we don't have the right.    [00:36:29] To take someone else's fate away from them.    [00:36:33] And I think sometimes in friendship we do that because we haven't been taught how to be with suffering and we become so uncomfortable with a close friend who's having a hard time that instead of being able to get closer and to practice compassion with them and really hold space for them and be intimate and close, we end up pulling away because it's almost like we're afraid we're going to catch it right. And we don't know how to hold for someone else to have pain because it triggers our pain in ways that we haven't dealt with. So this exercise is one that you can do for friends, you can do for lovers and partners and spouses, you can do it for other family members, even really works well for people you work with. But right now, let's think about it with a friend.    [00:37:22] So you basically imagine your friends standing in front of you and you can do this as you close your eyes and you imagine their parents behind them. Regardless of what their relationship with their parents is. And then you imagine their grandparents behind them. And then you bring in the grandparents and you bring in all the ancestors, and then you can even invite in the energy of their homeland, where they where did their ancestors come from? And you see that friend in front of you. With. Their unique. System.    [00:38:07] And then you realize that you have that same thing behind you and you feel what it feels like to have your parents behind you. Your grandparents and great grandparents in order going all the way back to homeland, as far back as you want to go. And then you feel what it feels like to look at your friend.    [00:38:27] With their lineage behind them and your lineage behind you.    [00:38:35] And it changes. It can change everything. And then you can even without saying it out loud. But like as in a little meditation, you can say, I see you.    [00:38:45] With your family and I see you with your ancestors. And then you can imagine your friend saying it back to you and something can be made right in that process. Well, then we don't have to like buy into the splits that happen in friendships. We get to just see our friend is a unique person who's connected to us in important ways, but they don't have to be us and we don't have to save them. And anyway, I just that's been helpful for me.    [00:39:20] Yeah, it's a beautiful process. It's a beautiful process.    [00:39:25] So are we going to go on and now record our next fit, our next podcast?    [00:39:31] Yes, we are. Yes, we are.    [00:39:36] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture. If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on i-Tunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community, Restoring the Culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we read story. Our own lives. See you next time.   

In Episode #5, Camille and Tanya explore the role of community, both familial and extended and how it shapes our identities. Close friends for two decades, these friends explore their starkly contrasting experiences around community (or lack thereof that impacted them well into adulthood.  From Farmers Markets to Local theater events, they wonder how a deeper community can and will unfold in the current climate of isolation as we have all been called to "stay at home." Their conversation drifts from Camille's famous literary neighbor in Portland, Oregon to Tanya's first acting class in the D.C. area, to the 12 Steps inclusiveness and how these things all weave together to create individual and collective experiences of community. On building community: "I think more and more of us are called to walk back and forth on that bridge between perceived inside and perceived outside." -Camille Adair   Episode transcript   [00:00:01] Welcome to episode number five of Restoring the Culture. This is Tanya and I'm here with Camille today, and we're going to be speaking about restoring community and Camille's gonna start us off with the quote.    [00:00:16] This quote is from a book called Blue Moon over Thurmon Street by Ursula Gwinn. And the quote is by a man named Homer Medica, who she has a photograph of.    [00:00:29] In this book, everybody that I grew up with has moved away, not out of town, across town, mostly, but moved away.    [00:00:42] So beautiful and we were just talking about being in our homes during this time. You know, whether you're listening to this and we're all still in quarantine all over the world or we've moved out of it. We're recording this podcast about ten, twelve days in here in New Mexico. Something like that, since most of us have started started to self-quarantine. And then the governor gave an order later earlier this week. And Camille and I were talking about community in a time when we're all in isolation. But yet community is springing up. And it let us go back to talking about how we grew up a little bit. We didn't go too far in the conversation. But Camille, can you tell us about this quote and about your relationship with the author? And like growing up in that I can talk a little bit about because we have such good contract sticks start, right?    [00:01:34] Sure. I was I lived next door to Ursula Gwin when I was growing up. Not for a long time, but for a couple of years. And I used to play with her son and I would put my mom's blue eyeshadow on and I would go over and hop around in the backyard. And I remember she would look at me and say, you're such a pretty bunny. So I have such fond memories of her and that time. And living on Thurman's Street in Portland, Oregon, in a house that was four stories and had an intercom system. And basically we have like four families living there. So my family, we had one floor and then another family had another floor. And it was really such a different time. And it makes me think about. Community. You know what it was like being born in the mid 60s, and for me, growing up in a counterculture family and what community was like for me growing up in contrast to what it was like for you growing up.    [00:02:42] Well, let me ask you this before I get into my story a little bit. What was community like for you growing up? Like, who were the players? What did it feel like? How did you experience community like in your family and in your town? In Portland, in your city?    [00:02:58] My mom had really good friends. So I remember there was like a feeling of a lot of fun and activity. And I had very young parents. There was a lot of social activism at the time going on. I mean, I remember a lot of the unrest during Watergate and my mom was involved in like social marches and things like that. I also was a latchkey kid, and so I spent a lot of time by myself. And, you know, I made friends with a bus driver in Portland. And so I instead of being home by myself, at the end of the day, oftentimes I would get on the time at bus in Portland and I would do his whole route with him. And no one knew where I was. Were you phones? I was like in the second and, you know, I would get off. And there was this show called The Ramblin Rod Show in Portland. And I would get off and I would just wander in because they had birthday parties. Right. Were they people would reserve and you would get on the Ramblin Rod show and so they would do cartoons. But like on the you know, in between cartoons, the Sky Ramblin Rod would interview kids in the audience. And I remember a couple of times wandering in there and saying and just saying, can I be on the show? And I think they felt sorry for me. So they would let me on the show or I would get off the bus driver would have him let me off. And Fred Meyers and I remember remember those some small balls, like a cartoon that was like a milk carton. And I would do that. I mean, whoppers. They were whoppers. You're right. And I remember sitting on this like brick wall and people watching and eating walkers. And that was a different time. Nobody knew where I was. It was like in a way, the world was my community. And I think, you know, we're the last of that generation that had that kind of freedom. So there was a lot of freedom, not a lot of boundaries, not a lot of container. And then when my family moved to a rural town in Oregon, then the community changed. And it was very much a tight knit people sharing, you know, produce from their gardens. And the counterculture families really bonded together. You know, and in this town, you were either like from a logging family or farming family or you were from a counterculture family. So that definitely created a lot of identity in its own way in this tiny little town. I want to hear. Oh, I know. I mean, I I've heard your stories about what it was like for you walking in and having a maid and being able to let your coat slip off and.    [00:05:44] Well, I mean, yeah, we couldn't have grown up in more different families, a family. Just to give her an idea. Talking about Watergate and all, one of my first very clear conversations that I remember with my grandmother was she walked in the room and she was crying.    [00:06:00] And I said, what's wrong, nanny? And she said, I'm so upset for Mrs. Nixon. This is so unfair.    [00:06:09] This is just terrible what they're doing to Mr. President and Mrs. Nixon.    [00:06:15] I mean, my grandmother would choose the she was the president of the Ladies Republican Club of Maryland for like decades. And then the rest of the time, she and my grandfather lived in Beirut, Lebanon.    [00:06:28] And. And so that was one thing that was interesting. And they were very politically conservative. And, you know, and I was an only child. And we lived on, oh, 80 or 90 acres out in Maryland outside of d._c. But I had my freedom was in the woods and my animals were my community. I was an only child. I rarely got to see other children. So I was very afraid of them. I was very shy. And like when I hear your adventures on the bus, I'm just so envious.    [00:07:02] I'm like, I'm like, God, you could just get on. And like, you know, I create sort of your own adventures and experiences and community. And my the way I reacted was, well, I know I became an artist because of my early childhood. I became a writer. I would write poems all the time. I would write short stories. I got a lot of validation of my family from that. And yes, in Beirut, my my family had, you know, all Americans were kind of treated like royalty abroad back then, especially in certain cultures. And so they were in Beirut. And before that, they lived in Pakistan, in Karachi. That's when my mom so, you know, graduated high school.    [00:07:46] But. It was sort of America through that lens, though. White supremacy and hierarchy. And and there's a lot of shadow in that world. Right. There's a lot of price one pays in these sort of with the global elite.    [00:08:11] And my family wound up being like at the top of that food chain.    [00:08:16] You know, we're connected with, you know, and very involved with diplomats and and and and the top politicians in any country in various countries.    [00:08:31] And my my sense of community as a child who's being very alone and isolated.    [00:08:37] And it's easy on you because I was, too. So we have such different stories.    [00:08:41] But I was very lonely as a kid in spite of yourself inside of myself. Totally. So, I mean, I that's why I think I fell in love with acting when I was 14, my first acting class, because it was my first sense of a real community where I fit in, I fit in. And of course, as we've talked about here, theater is a form of healing and it's shamanic. And the people who thrive in it are parks. And there is this total overlap. So interesting. Yeah, we both felt isolated. And I've certainly heard a lot of stories over the years of people with very big families and. All right. That the child who is often the empath, also the one who's the disruptor in any family system, no matter how that looks, but challenges authority, challenges the way things are, is moving, as you would say in Constellation work, the family story further. We're often lonely, right, because we're marginalized. So then there's a longing. There was such sexual longing for me as an adult to make community. And I did you know, I made community in the acting world in New York. I made community with friends from that time who are still my dear friends coming to Santa Fe. I had a longing to create family of my own make community. What about I mean, what about you in all of that? And like, what is your relationship to community now? And as we were. Could be called to go deeper locally in our communities while expanding out into the world globaly. How do you think part of the restoring peace comes in, in your own life and in what you're examining right now and about that loneliness piece, too, or that isolation? How do we come back inside?    [00:10:30] I think it takes me to what I talk about so much that I feel my work is, which is working with the split. And I've often thought about that in a way I was born in. My parents divorced when I was five or six. You know, my mom, you know, was very liberal. My father's very conservative. And so I I grew up going between two households that couldn't have been more different in a way. And so I do think that that's really informed how I. It's interesting, as I hear you say that I actually think the way you're building community is more intimate than mine. I like the way you build community is is really up close and personal in the way that you support people in sharing their stories. And it's very relational. And while I talk a lot about being relational, I think mine ends up being a little more global inside myself. Like I track the splits. I want to constantly be finding commonality. I talk a lot about holding the tension of opposites and how do we kind of move toward center, which is a little more sort of theoretical in a way that also it's I do apply it to my life.    [00:11:47] But I guess as as I'm reflecting on that, there's still a little bit of some loneliness in that as I'm hearing myself say it and.    [00:11:57] Yeah, I mean, in the last podcast we talked about nursing and medicine, I often think about that with Split the American people and how things can be that everything can become politicized. And then there's a split. And I get really frustrated with that, which has to do with my own complexes and my own material in terms of how I grew up, you know, feeling like I was from a family who was counterculture. And I had this tremendous radar about wanting to sort of find a way to fit in or be sort of normal and how that's translated into how I was even chosen partners and what kinds of friends I had. And it's really it's just interesting to kind of reflect on all of that, because really I think those early experiences really do speak to how we form community.    [00:12:48] And I think in a way I do minelife life now at the age of fifty four has sort of prepared me for what's going on in the world in a way, because I know how to work with splits.    [00:13:05] I think about just the crisis that we're in right now and how a community now how are we community in isolation. So if you and I both had inner isolation as children, how did we build community? And now here we are doing that again for very different reasons.    [00:13:21] We're building community in isolation, really, and finding the ways that we lean into our humanity and mirror each other or sometimes like to. It's so valuable to me to look at my intimate relationships and especially with you and ways we do it, because it makes it helps me track patterns. You're talking about tracking splits and I'm always internally tracking story patterns and like I'm always tracking story structure internally. Like, how is the story playing out? And it's interesting to me because because of your outsider status as a child, you wanted to find your way in and you had the giftedness to find your way into systems. I was marginalized as a child, I think, because I had ADHD. You know, I I was tested very high, but had learning disabilities and struggles in school and systems, I think, because, yeah, there was a kind of insider's point of view in terms of patriarchy. Right. We were the inside people and I saw the shadow on the inside. And so I wanted to bust out of every system. And that's the shaft of my life. And now at fifty five, the integration is finding systems that work, creating new structures that work. And we talk a lot about the divine feminine and one of my own sort of a hause of my own business life. And moving my work out into the world at all is how it's the sacred masculine to me, the sacred masculine structure that is a relationship to divine feminine, the sacred masculine as opposed to the toxic masculine holds the feminine. And then there's this integration, right. So the coming together, you call it healing the split.    [00:15:11] I often call it integration or of course, in unity in terms of your in your depth space union thing, you know, the inter-marriage.    [00:15:20] So how do we after are the trauma and and and the split and experiencing either a busting out of this or need to be in it because both are survival strategies.    [00:15:36] Right. On some level. How? Well, why don't you talk a little bit, if you will, about your movement, either professionally or personally to heal that split.    [00:15:47] And where are you standing around that in terms of building a new kind of community that the world has never perhaps seen or is seeing now or living into? And then I mean, I'm happy to share about how I've been building community globaly also, because I think it's interesting the different ways around the insider outsider stuff. Right. And some of us I think more and more of us are called to walk back and forth on that bridge between the perceived insider and the perceived outsider. Right.    [00:16:17] That there's a healing when the two are bridged and people are less polarized.    [00:16:25] Well, I think that yeah, it sounds funny when you say insider outsider, because where I heard that was literally insider and that's where I wanted to go was inside that that. I do think that that's what that's for me, partly how I'm working with the split as healing my internal splits. And and and so what that looks like, it's almost holding my own feet to the fire. And so staying with relationships that can be challenging, staying with relation and letting them. Form so relationships don't have to stay the same. They don't have to. The roles can even change, but not allowing myself to to throw people away. And I think that that's become a value for me. It's almost become like a spiritual practice. And it was not easy. And I think the tricky part for me is walking that really narrow edge because I can so easily fall into codependence. So like, when is that codependents and when is it me being really skilled at working with my own inter-marriage? So that on the one hand, I know that there is no other whether there's no such thing as another, there's no such thing as a throwaway. And we also live in a in a world of duality. And so we do see what's in opposition to us and how can we hold that and lean into it and work with the tension of opposites, because that really is how we work on the inter-marriage within ourselves. And and that helps us to pull back our projections. It helps us not to be in denial. It helps us to go through our own internal transformative processes in terms of how that works for me and community. I think it takes me back to this paradoxical place that sometimes that can be lonely.    [00:18:21] And I wonder how much loneliness and and in a way suffering provide a little bit of grist for the mill.    [00:18:33] For us, it's like the pebble in the shoe, it's the thing that keeps us awake. It's the thing. It may be in a way, it's a little bit of the loneliness that that that causes some kind of an outward movement that keeps us alive and that in some way. I mean, I think there is so much paradox in that. And and it feels like what I'm saying feels sort of depressing. But I think I'm not wanting for some reason in this particular conversation because I know we need each other so much. We are interdependent beings. It is so critical that we know that we're interconnected and that we don't do this alone.    [00:19:12] And you and I have talked about that in your phrase, which I love. Is that the time of the lone wolf is over. And you're absolutely right. Like we talk about the message that I got years ago about the two by two and that you and I are trying to consciously do this. This shared leadership model together about how do we walk this out two by two. Because if we do that, it will be greater so much greater than if we do it alone. And that means having creative dissonance and facing things that might stretch us in ways that are really uncomfortable and inhabit comfortable conversations for the sake.    [00:19:44] So nature. You know, I think that. Yeah. And that it's Mehdi's rabbit and that we can be. So why have we been conditioned to be so afraid of dissonance? Because of course you put two people together. We have very different life experiences, different triggers, even if we have a lot of shared value, shared beliefs and deeply shared things. Any authentic relationship. Right. Is going to have some dissidents. We've been conditioned to be so afraid of that, of meeting it honestly, without just blowing it up or cutting and running. Right.    [00:20:21] And that's what we're conditioned to to to do, because it's that goes back to the podcast on grief that we did. When Stephen we talked about Stephen Vine's quote about the more we move away from grief, the more pain we feel. It's the same thing here. I think with community we are in a time of literal isolation with the pandemic. And we are also at a time where people are literally dying from isolation and loneliness. I mean, as a nurse, I can tell you it's totally up in our conversations, you know, about public health. It's a public health concern. And I think what I guess I want to say to that, like kind of wrapping up the conversation about how we restore a community is somewhere there's got to be the integration of the inter-marriage on the slide before we can really have the community on the outside. And I think we have been taken so far away from doing the work within going within to ourselves that it makes it really hard to have community on the outside.    [00:21:24] It really does. And I'm thinking about our community here in Santa Fe. And it's an amazing place. But there's a shadow here and community and a lot of people come to me and speak about the shadow. I feel like I've been embroiled in certain situations in the shadow. But here's the thing. We're much more comfortable with our community, right? So we have music on the plaza and people go and participate. We have an amazing farmer's market. But where I find the dissonances, those same people who can be engaged in these beautiful community building activities is not that there's anything wrong with that. They're great. It's just it only hits on one level and people then walk home and are by themselves. And there's like the emotional intimacy still hasn't happened. You might say hi to 30 people there. And that's wonderful.    [00:22:17] That's a community that has your back. And it's very much going back to the old ways. But what you're talking about here is the emotional community or what I'll say is and I know it's why people love solo shows and memoirs and all the story work I've done over the years. People are come to it because they're dying for intimacy. It's like, please just tell me the truth. Mirror me back to me. And then after the show, they just want to stand there and tell all their own stories. Right. So to me, restoring community is built on the great things that are happening. Community models, town squares, getting green, building things that we talk about a lot when we're talking about restrike community.    [00:22:54] But then how do we take it further? How do we move that? Part of the inquiry is to a place where everybody's story belongs. Everybody gets to be heard.    [00:23:03] You know, people have places to come and be with the deeper issues and nobody's exiled.    [00:23:12] You know, it's really interesting because I I've experienced your work enough. You know, a lot. Enough to know that those are some of the most rich community bonding experiences that I've experienced. And I actually have put us both up on a pedestal. I also just want to say that, like in the Constellation work, I feel some. Very similar where something is transcended. And it's no longer those those community constellation workshops you bypass the superficial kind of community get into a much, much deeper you know, as I talk about the river beneath the river, the slow river.    [00:23:51] And when you tap into that together, whether it's through your story work or through family, constellation work and doing ancestral and lineage healing, it's a deeper experience of community.    [00:24:02] And I think that's what we're missing, just as we're missing out on the deeper experience of being in community really with ourselves on the inside, being in community with intimacy, whether it's about integrate, work with healing or being there, and both require that we let go of all ego would be very transparent about who we are and where we come from in our shadow issues, as well as celebrating each other and our joy. But what we're I think we're tapping into something really essential for based on our own experience.    [00:24:33] Restoring the culture means building out the wonderful community pieces there, but taking it deeper, more circles, more, more coming together around the place where we're just longing to be seen.    [00:24:49] And I would add and I think that's absolutely right and I would add to that, that we honor the other, because if we're gonna really talk about diversity, diversity can can be like lip service. And if you're really wanting diversity, it means you honored people on the other side of the aisle that you don't see the other as the other guy. I know that they're part of they have just as much right to belong in their communities. We all do. And it's walking it's walking that out because that requires the relationship.    [00:25:20] It really does. And one of the best models, I must say, I have seen for that are the Twelve Steps and I've been part of 12-Step programs. It honors diversity. Everyone has the right to belong and they get to share. You don't have to agree. And that's actually written in district steps and traditions. There's a really safe container there where you can get wildly diverse people and nobody has to feel that they're giving up their own sovereignty or soul or that by accepting doesn't necessarily mean agreeing, but it's an acceptance.    [00:25:54] Right.    [00:25:54] Well, and I think that that takes away the judgment. And judgment is one of the things that undermines safety, the safety of intimacy in in two people. The judgment undermines the safety of self-criticism, undermines the intimacy we have with ourselves. And then judgment projected outside of ourselves in the community creates a lack of of a safe and community container. And then people aren't coming together and connecting. So I think that's right. I mean, I'd love to sort of say that as our end note for restoring community is it's you know, without judgment, we have a chance.    [00:26:32] Beautiful, Camille, perfect place to end.   

This week, speaking from their homes in Santa Fe as the pandemic continues to ravage life all over earth, Camille and Tanya plunge into the multi-layered sensation of this moment, namely, grief.  How do we meet it, befriend it, re-story it into something of value and importance?  Throughout time, as humans we have been overwhelmed and terrified of feeling grief. It manifests through us and touches every aspect of our lives. In this conversation while speaking of mentors and healers on this topic, including Stephen Levine, Camille and Tanya speak about how they have been learning to meet, rather than avoid, the topic and all that accompanies it. Sharings on: How to let go of our personal dreams at this time in the collective The price we pay for ignoring our "unattended sorrow" Teachings and inspiration from poets and wisdom teachers including Stephen Levine, David Whyte and Peter Levine.  Moving from isolation in grief and into community Camille speaks on what it means to be able to process grief in health care systems and how un-met grief is related to burn out in doctors and nurses. Being re-triggered in former loss each time we experience new loss and how to honor and integrate it.  Tanya tells a story of a hospital stay related to anticipatory grieving in this pandemic. Grief as a zen bell..."wake up, wake up, wake up"   Episode Transcript   [00:00:02] Hi, welcome to podcast. Number four today, Tanya and I are going to be talking about restoring grief and to begin, I'm going to read a quote from Stephen Maligns book called Unattended Sorrow.    [00:00:15] If we listen for unattended sorrow, as we might for a cry from a crib in the next room, we can hear it calling to us to have mercy on ourselves and move it forward with a heart full examination of our lingering disappointment and distress. Instead of turning our back on it, when we turn away from our sorrows, we intensify our pain and close off parts of ourselves.    [00:00:46] And. I love that so much.    [00:00:50] Yeah, I mean, I loved and Stephen, of course, is like Stephen Vine just such has been such a voice for a long time. When I was in New York City and I was twenty seven right before I came to Santa Fe. That was really the first big spiritual book I ever got. Was his book Healing into Life and Death. At the time, it was in the middle of the AIDS crisis and I don't remember if somebody gave me that book. And I was I felt young to have that book about mortality and death and dying. And it was, you know, just just he just everything he always talks about, it's so profound in that concept of unintended sorrow is so heartbreaking and so poetic at once to me when I think we all have.    [00:01:41] A certain amount of unintended sorrow. Just living in Western culture. Because, you know, we're not supported in facing our suffering and facing grief. You know, we are you know, we're sort of conditioned to bypass a lot of that. And instead of going deeper into our humanity.    [00:02:00] And so, you know, it reminds me of something David White says, that when you have a big event in your life, that there's that you're you're moving toward a big event like the loss of a job, a death, an illness, a divorce. Like what we're facing now globaly with this pandemic. You know, he said we hit those walls with this tremendous velocity and then everything kind of like has to fall apart because we have not kept up with our lives. And I think that for me, this idea of unattended sorrow is one of the ways that we're not keeping up with our lives. And so when it hits, it is such a shock to the system.    [00:02:45] Totally. I mean, a complete shock to the system. And, you know, and and there's something to I mean, I just noticed that of myself. I was having a conversation with my husband today because something like hits, right? And then have all of the unattended sorrows of the past come out. We were talking because, you know, every time he meets grief or or things falling away because things are out of control, he goes back to when he lost his daughter, who was eleven years old, from cancer. But there's this whole recycling almost. But I'm also thinking about grief and from our conversation and how projection. It's like this at the unattended star almost to me, it's like get out a projection. It's almost like the Zen bell is in it. Like when it comes on fast and hard like this.    [00:03:43] Let go, let go, let go, let go, let go.    [00:03:46] You know, we were going to build didn't let us show where we're talking about it six weeks ago. You know, he was up for possibly a role in any New York City theater production, implosive. You know, and his two films had come out and now all those film festivals are canceled in an artist a mile and started the way my business was going. And these things align. And then it's like here it is, the Zen step, right. And when the Zen stick comes that our projections or our human desires to control it come like like up like a force unto me. Somehow what they're they're carrying or covering, I should say maybe they're covering it are the unattended sorrows. And then the way in are our day to day life. We're trying not to feel all of that and we're trying to just stay on the course of these these these big are big life, you know, parks, or so we think. But then this other force is like a tsunami in some way.    [00:04:48] Does that make sense? It makes a lot of sense. I mean, to me see, I'm feeling that. On the one hand, you know this we are talking about velocity and kind of even the noises you made in the crashing and the image of a tsunami and how much power there is behind that and simultaneously how Greece brings us down. And so to me, it's this sort of the juxtaposition behind the power and how Greece slows us down, whether we like it or not. And I've been noticing that in myself, which is partly why we decided to talk about restoring Greek today because of what's going on in the world. And you and I are so fortunate to be seeing clients on zoom in to be where we are and to be relatively safe. And I and and yet I feel like because I'm and I'm sensitive like many, most people are and all people are natural. It really is is that I get tired. I think I was telling you, like I'm getting really worn out by like two in the afternoon. I want to go calling dad. My rhythms are off. I've been getting up in the morning and just making myself walk at least two and a half to former, whether it's windy or cold or whatever. And just really forcing my that just is like a non-negotiable now, my physical health. But I think I'm still really feeling this collective grief. So there's this thing that, you know, grief is personal, but it's also collective. And I. It takes me to the image of, you know, the Aspen Forest, how the Aspen trees look like individual trees. But they're actually one organism connected by a common root system underground. And I think we've maybe used that metaphor before in the podcast. But I think when I think about collective grief, like we're our root systems are connected and we're feeling these things and it's really with me for some reason today, I guess I'm really feeling well.    [00:06:50] There's something to even about. Yeah, I'm I'm noticing that I'm hitting a kind of wall energetically and self-care is just non negotiable. Drinking water, taking walks, taking vitamins, being really vigilant about what I'm eating, all of it. And of course, we're being called to boost our immune systems. Take care of ourselves. But it's a deeper thing. And I you know what you said about collective grief for me my entire life, I've kind of been unkind of somebody who receives a lot of information about it event at the front end, which, of course, you know, know this. But our listeners don't. At the very beginning of this event, I was in the hospital overnight and never have been in my life.    [00:07:38] But several times in my life, I've had this experience of kind of because you and I are both impacts that I know many of our listeners are impacts, you know, sensitives healers.    [00:07:53] A lot of coaches, facilitators, health care workers as well as artists tend to be writers. That's right. So we're almost like the canary in a coal mine thing. We're feeling it before it even happens. So for me, I ended up in the hospital and I realized because I was having live racing heart stuff and wanted to do the EKG and all that. But ultimately for me, the way out. What I realized has happened is I was feeling this what's happening? It made me collapse actually, before it even happened. And you and I, of course, all up talk a lot about point in time. And and the people are had different people based on our sort of nervous systems and our energetic spiritual systems. Grief is hitting us all in different levels of waves. So it's almost to me like collectively, some of us are feeling it more intensely at different times, almost like. And talking about going back to the root system of the Aspen's. I think we're we're all not only crossing assessing individual grief, but collective grief and that this is the grief of a love, a way of life. And even if there were toxic elements have been many, many toxic elements in this way of life. There's no spiritual bypass away from our human meeting, the feelings. And as the comfort of that way of life is stripped away. And it's a thing even I remember years ago when I was going through a divorce, the minister who married my former husband and I. He said something that really touched me related to this. He said, I know you're not just reading the individual. You're grieving a dream.    [00:09:44] And right now, globaly. We're grieving, right?    [00:09:50] The dream only collective dream. You know, it's interesting when you're in the hospital, you know, I I went and I was with you for a short time in the E.R. and it was sort of it was the beginning of the lockdown time for the virus, for the virus. So it was a scary time. And one day and I had a migraine headache. I wasn't feeling well. I had really bad allergies. It was just this was almost like there was this perfect storm. Right. Totally. One thing I didn't share with you. Speaking of grief, I realized it. It didn't hit me for a few days after that. What I realized just, you know, I worked in an emergency department and the room you were in may not have been the exact one, but it was in the same cluster little area where I actually was with the 12 year old boy who died when Camille. And so, I mean, that was one of the most significant experiences of my life. I had to too much to go into in this podcast and just to say. I had some really difficult times working in that emergency department as a new nurse, and it was all right there with me when we were there. And to be there with you when you and I are are so close and you were having the sort of the scary events that you were having. And then to have it be right in that same place. Right. I was 20 years ago at a very traumatic time with this 12 year old boy who was at that time just a year older than my daughter.    [00:11:26] And.    [00:11:29] Just incredible. You know how, again, your life can sort of come together, and then there was the.    [00:11:33] Then there was the feeling of what it was like being in the hospital at that time during the covered 19 lockdown. I mean, it was really surreal.    [00:11:46] It was very surreal. And it's so wild. We're sharing this now for the first time. Not even we didn't do it with each other because it was in the same bank that my daughter almost died before she was diagnosed with asthma and had the whole breathing respiratory thing, which, of course, as a mother. She's 22 and lives in Chicago has been a big fear. And one of the few covered patients in Santa Fe at that time was wheeled out of one of those rooms. And by. And so one thing I discovered, though, as I was in the hospital alone that night, I thought, well, isn't this interesting? Because we're heading into this dark, dark time. And there was some kind of spiritual kind of thing for me. And it sounds like for you to be like, OK, like we're having to meet our shadows again. We're circling around back towards grief. We're circling back toward some old trauma, some old fear. And then in this moment, you know, the distress and the new thing, too. And sometimes I do feel as a story worker and tracking patterns of stories with people. That we are brought right? It's the layers of the onion tube were brought back around with that story to meet it now new in this moment. And how are we going to be even more available? How are we going to be more intimate with this grief or with this revisiting? You know, I don't know what you do with that. Exactly. But like for me, it was something actually like the day after all, I left the hospital.    [00:13:29] I just felt joyful in the midst of all this because, of course, we know there is this relationship between grief and joy.    [00:13:38] When I met that grief and fear and I was there and I was scared and there was re triggering, but there was this exuberance that I felt and also a real connection. I would say on a spiritual level or soul level. I've just come another to another level of being prepared to step up in service at this time.    [00:14:00] You know, I think what it brings up for me is what it's like for the nurses and physicians, myself included, who are not working right now at the bedside. And it's, of course, like we have this privilege of being in the profession and supporting in different ways, but not taking the same risks that our colleagues are taking. And it really makes me want to cry because it reminds me of a.. It's like it's it's such a paradox, you know? That what is the book Waking the Tiger? Stephen Labi Not Stephen the line. I'm just having my little midlife brain moment. But anyway, waking the tiger, his last name is Levine.    [00:14:43] I think Peter Levine. Peter Levine I was combining Steve on the line with Peter will be. Yeah, but we got it together.    [00:14:52] We figured it out. So you write the story in that book about these kids that are buried under some kind of like a mudslide or landslide in a bus. And what they found is that the kids who were active in digging their way out were the ones who actually fared the best in terms of long term trauma, because it was because they worked it out.    [00:15:16] And I think when you get out in the body to thimbles, do moving through the trauma, not just a frozen response. Right.    [00:15:24] Right. And I do think that, you know, I think that for those of us who are not able to go help at this time, I think there's a little bit of that frustration of the freeze, too.    [00:15:35] Like, I mean, I could just sit here. I guess that's what's coming up for me right now. Makes me want to cry. But just the feeling that I'm feeling about it for nurses and physicians, especially because a lot of the allied staff were doing telehealth. But the people who who work with the body, who have to be there, you know, mostly nurses and physicians and support staff like, you know, a physician's assistant assistants, nurse practitioners, certified nursing assistants, you know. I I I just I guess I just have a lot of grief coming up about that, and it really brings up for me this, you know, project I've been working on for a long time that is now starting to sort of gain some momentum, which is taking a look at the systemic issues of health care. And one of the things I identified because I in my work, I look at splits like everything has the right to belong in a certain order to each other, in order for there to be systemic help and organizational health.    [00:16:40] And one of the things I discovered is just how nurses and physicians really are in a way systemically pitted against one another.    [00:16:50] And and, you know, the nursing and medicine, they don't get along on Capitol Hill and they don't get along in a lot of leadership positions. Now, a lot of nurses and physicians get along. You know, when they're there working at the bedside. But there are still these dynamics. And I just it just recommits me to this movement of finding ways for nurses and physicians to align, because if we could do that, we could transform health care. There are almost a million physicians and there are four million nurses. And if we could come together and work together, we would be five million strong in this country. But we can't seem to like how are we ever going to have change if we can't bring. You know, some some collaborative peace making and understanding to our two tribes. That feels really, really important to me. And I've talked with actually more physicians even than nurses about this. I feel like speaking of restoring and getting some of the story beneath the story as a nurse for where physicians are and have been out with that, that's deepened my awareness and understanding and and help me grow my empathy. And I'm I'm just really excited about bringing these two things together. So that's of interesting Segway. I wasn't expecting to go there in this conversation of grief, but don't you think, too.    [00:18:16] OK. So thinking about the patriarchy that we talk about so much and it's deep. The way that it is so deeply embedded in each one of us, regardless of gender. But in a patriarchy, there's always a hierarchy. There's there's. It's not viewed as a different valuable role. It's, you know, the way we marginalize the feminine. And again, not about gender. The way we we the way to be. We glorify the intellect. We marginalize the deeper gut wisdom, body wisdom, hands on soul mate wisdom in the moment. I mean, and where the nursing profession, you know, the root system with the the healers and the midwives and the women who have always been there for birth and for death and for the tending. And then once again, the glorification of science, of Western medicine, and not to also dishonor all the gifts of that. But when will we? It's very much like a marriage to me in a marriage where both people aren't honored equally for their contributions. But you know, the split again. So. So in terms of the shift that's happening now, how do you even see that? Supporting that and the grief for everybody when there's a split in any system and the grief and the fallout then. And the child in a family system, on the on the patient and on the innocence in the system that aren't even playing the dominant rules. What do you think about that?    [00:19:56] Well, I think that's absolutely right. And I think the thing we have to be really careful about is that we don't make this too complicated. I did a had a retreat through the Oslo symposia, which is now the equal project with just with the board members and. And it was such an amazing thing, we rented a house in Albuquerque and we cooked together and we had talking circles and we did some basic basic emotional intelligence kind of sharing exercises.    [00:20:34] And it was basic, basic, but it literally we all left there feeling completely rejuvenated. And there was one physician, a surgeon, who said, if I can do something like this, I think maybe I can stay in medicine. He was thinking about moving to another country and leaving medicine altogether. I mean, it had that much of an impact. And so it literally my vision for this really is that there would there would be these retreats where nurses and physicians come together outside of the system and they share with each other and they cook together and they, you know, talk about their families and they talk about their experiences. And this is the kind of healing that we need.    [00:21:14] It's this this human contact that we don't get in these really fast paced, you know, these systems where, you know, nurses and physicians both end up spending oftentimes more time looking at a screen than they do at the patients.    [00:21:33] And that is all of our lives. No, it isn't a cut. But this is the issue. Right. I mean, there's one thing we're all global, global and all. But where are we with our depth based work, our deep facilitation or artistry? And in the case of doctors and nurses. Like you said, interfacing, being with the humans that we're serving.    [00:21:56] Because if we don't, it causes moral distress.    [00:21:59] And if we have moral distress, that takes us back around to grief. Moral distress at its foundation is a loss. It's the grief for the loss of a way being connected to doing what what we came into the profession to do. And for many, many nurses and physicians, they feel that's been taken away from them.    [00:22:17] And there's so much grief around that. And really no languaging or no ways to to to approach it or to come together around it. And I put you know, the Dalai Lama says and many other people, Gerta and a lot of other people have said this. And I think it's really fascinating that love is understanding and understanding is love. And to me, that's what happens in these kinds of intimate retreat settings. You start to develop an understanding. I mean, I remember this same physician said something to me one time because he's a surgeon and this was something I didn't realize. But surgeons actually sometimes are are considered not even a physician. They're higher on the hierarchy chain. They're considered higher than a physician. So he said, you know, we're put up on a pedestal. And he said and once extracted from us on that pedestal. Like, it's like basically the price we pay for that is so deep. And so it really is it's this real side of the hierarchy hurts everyone. Dehumanization hurts everyone. And we were all walking around in grief. This is just one lens. This is just one sector of life that is up for us right now because of the pandemic.    [00:23:33] We're totally. It's huge. It's huge. And it's I think also there's an awakeness, though. Part it to me, the restoring is the gratitude, the appreciation, the we have everyday heroes in our midst who are willing to be here for us and to end to end at the cost of that profession, whatever role in it. Like you were talking about in the beginning with the twelve year old boy is a lot of grief. And I've been with you and talk to you when you left hospice bedsides of many beloved patients who have died. I remember, you know, conversations and stories over the years. I've certainly been at my own bedsides of just people in my life who have died. But one of the things that to me is so huge to us. Coming back to this culture once again, we're meant we're set up to deal with grief and isolation when what it's all about. It's not even just like you said. Yes, formal retreats. But to me, story circles right the way we come together, you and I. The intimacy and our friendship every day. But the and that we go that we allow ourselves to go really deep with the conditioning, isn't there? In many families still and certainly not in many cultures and many systems. But it's like to me, this is what we need. You know, I just always am making this this this with my hands. The circles, the circles, the circles, because the circles of the feminine. They're that medicine to the hierarchy. Cause when we get together in circles. Right. It takes us back to our egalitarian roots. It takes us back to our tribal roots. Are indigenous roots in a circle. Everybody belongs in a circle. Everybody's voice. You know, again, indigenous cultures, the talking sticks that everyone matters. And it just feels to me that there's so much going back to Stephen's words in the beginning of this piece, unattended sorrow. When our voices are run over, when there's no place for our voices. Like I work with so many women and men, maybe they're 40 years old or maybe they're 50, 60 in their 70s, 80s. I've worked with elders, as you know, working with them, writing that need to give voice to. And it's like to just say, this is my story. Somebody see, I'm here. This is somebody able to acknowledge that I existed and I mattered and I matter. And, you know, the basic needs around being just seen and heard and valued and how the systems in this culture are set up not to value or to make people feel valued, but that somehow, like the medicine or the circles we talk about all the times we're circles we create. And I'm just thinking about your thoughts on how people can just create that sense of circle or that sense of retreat like in their day to day life if they're feeling, you know, far away to you.    [00:26:42] How do you create these impromptu sense of circle and community to be some of the medicine for the isolation of grief?    [00:26:53] I think doing exactly what we're doing here.    [00:26:57] It's really like leaning in. And the words that keep coming up for me are it's like permission based that we give ourselves permission to have our humanity factored into the equation. So that doesn't mean that we collapse, but it does mean, you know, one thing, you know, compassion when you know, when you are met with compassion, that it's like medicine.    [00:27:19] Right. I mean, I feel that with you when you and I talk and we talk about how you had today was heart day or I'm really struggling. It's like that kind of connection. It's the medicine for grief. It's not doing it alone. It's having an understanding that. The grief changes the brain. So for us actually to to not have the same kinds of expectations for ourselves. Of productivity. Linear thinking of tasks. You know that it's in a way it's. It's interrupting. Life is normal. Grief interrupts life as we know it. Like whether we like it or not. And it actually I think that the hidden opportunity there is it gives us a doorway into vulnerability, connection, creativity in ways that we're not used to. And it's like Stephen said, if we avoid it, we increase the pain. So I think it's being permission based about it with ourselves, with each other, having a lot of understanding and compassion and and and knowing that, you know, grief is a process. It is something we go through like Earth and like death. It has movement. It has stages. It is circular in itself. It's not linear. So you don't go through like the Kubler-Ross stages. That was like in that time, that was a breakthrough. And now we know that the stages of grief, they they move and they're more fluid.    [00:28:47] Absolutely. I mean, the next my life experience. Right. That's life experience. It's fluid. And that we circle back around. It made me that same grief like you did 20 years later. Like, you know, and I remember just I think, what are the worst? Or I shouldn't say worse. I should say most intense experiences of grief in my life was when my ex husband, Chloe, was a little my daughter was a little girl. Well, he had a schizophrenic break, as you know. And and we were going through a divorce, like I went after this phone call with him when I really knew that we were never going back. And I think about hero's journey and heroine's journey, strict structure. Right. Because of the heroine's journey, the descent like perception aid in terms of mythic structure into the underworld. I mean, the descent is the opening to a greater life. And I remember my little daughter there with her, a little saggy diapers of me, just like having to get a micro grilled cheese sandwich. But inside of myself, I was literally picking myself up off the floor after just like being hysterical and devastated, but not picking myself up off the floor. But what I knew was that I was no longer in the world as it was before. And Inge and Joseph Campbell talks about this. And Maureen Murdoch and anybody who studies Stephen Jenkins said, you know, all these amazing story people, some storytellers and story workers. There is a descent into the underworld that is necessary. And to me, it's a slow read. It's a surrender to the not even well to the grief and just the emotion, but the surrender to the fact that we've gone into a non ordinary world, a non ordinary state of consciousness. And we're not going back once, once on the journey. There is no going back or there is no story, there's no transformation. And at a certain point in the journey, every, you know, book, hero's journey, structure, heroine's journey one. And when one is on the road or in the case of heroin, heroine's journey in the underworld. There's there's some point where to me, like the grief shifts and transforms and one is simply on the journey is sort of being even carried on the journey. And to me, I think of how rather than avoiding the grief or numbing the grief or the fear of the grief, that doesn't really let us feel it's actually in the feeling that we're carried across the River Styx, that we're carried to the other side, that we're carried somewhere, and that we're walking in this in this new world. It's a transformational process and grief is such a part of it. But also just remembering that the joy and creativity that came out of my life after that time was some of the most profound stuff I've made. I did all these big worldly projects. These things happen. I had a book come out. I got to be on stages all across the country. But the bigger thing was my creative creativity got activated and kicked into high gear. Right after that time that I'll always think back on in my life like, wow, I was just in a cauldron of grief.    [00:32:11] We're just about out of time. But I'd like to just just, you know, kind of add to this. I love everything that you're saying in it. And it reminds me of the word or the toss when the Latin word for bereavement. And I actually made a documentary, a short teaching documentary on grief. And the name of that documentary is or guitars and or guitars is where the word orb comes from. And so it is like an or were. So what that says to me is it is another world, like you said. It's also gestational like the womb. And so when we're in grief, we're actually being held like in this form, like container. And something's transforming. Something is changing. Where something is dying, we're dying with it and something else is going to emerge. And just to have some patience and understanding that this is a normal process, I guess that would be my. The way I talk about restoring and grief. And I'm so grateful to be restoring it with you because you've been one of the people in my life who's had the kind of depths and soul and compassion to meet me and my grief. And I'm so grateful for that.    [00:33:21] It is such a blessing. It's such a blessing. We have each other and just. Yeah, I love what you just said. Camille, love for people to just leaving our podcast today, understanding for anyone listening if you're feeling so overwhelmed in it. Not number one. What Camille said that it's a normal process and two, that it's a journey and you're not because you're feeling grief. It doesn't mean you're going to be feeling it forever. And this is where are our practice of faith or practice. Even if we can't access faith to just keep breathing and keep walking comes at. Right. Just keep breathing and walking because it is going to shift. It is an actual process like a laboring on raw.    [00:34:04] I'm with you. Yeah. And it doesn't always feel like sad. It can feel like pissed off. It can feel like blame. It can feel like a lot of different can feel like denial. It can feel like so many different things. And just to have patients with all that. Totally. Oh, man.    [00:34:19] Welcome to All Too Big to be continued in our next blog, Jestina. 

What does it mean to be a healer? What is a healing process? What does it mean to view life through a healing or artistic lens and do the two always intersect? These are some of the topics that Camille and Tanya explore in this episode of Re-Storying the Culture.  They also delve into professional experiences to share their perspectives on why some stories are helpful, and why other stories harm or re-traumatize.  From a cultural lens, Camille speaks of certain pressures or obsessions that those of us in Western Culture often experience around telling a personal narrative or experiencing a personal  healing. She offers thoughts around how to hold this in a gentler manner and re-story the energetic by calling in our connection to a much bigger familial story.  Tanya speaks of cultural movements through the lens of storytelling and the end of the era of the guru. Camille shares on her own experience with a life threatening illness, and her work as a hospice nurse to humanize health care and mental healthcare.  Tanya speaks of writing mentor, Natalie Goldberg and what it's like to go deeper and deeper in writing practice to access underground stories.   Subscribe to the podcast Join our Facebook Community Restorying the Culture: https://www.facebook.com/groups/restoryingtheculture Learn more about Tanya and Camille: www.camilleadair.com www.storyleaderglobal.com Support the podcast by donating to Living bridges: https://living-bridges.org/donate/     Episode Transcript   [00:00:01] Hi, welcome to Episode 3 with Tanya and Camille Restoring the culture. Today, we're going to be talking about how we restoring healing. And I'd like to share with you a quote first by Diane Wolke Steen and Samuel Kramer in the book Inanna Queen of Heaven and Earth. Life must be properly nourished and cared for before it can take root and begin to be differentiated. And we'll start by asking you, Tanya, how are you restoring healing in your work?    [00:00:45] Thank you, Camille. You know, it's funny because I never thought when I was starting out in any way that healing, first of all, was not something that interested me. Which is amazing because my whole career and life and work now, I feel is defined as a story worker, as a writing coach, solo performance coach, helping people extract their stories. My work has evolved into something completely of a healing nature.    [00:01:16] And for many years, I didn't even want to come out of the closet about that. I thought it would somehow diminish my credibility as a quote unquote, real artist. What I've learned is that real art is is ultimately about transfer formation. As a matter of fact, there are two kinds of stories that I've identified. And one is a toxic story, actually, and people don't think of storytelling can be toxic. But I'll explain in a moment. And one is a healing story, a transformational story. It's also the highest form of artistry to me is to go to the transcendent.    [00:01:52] So one thing I learned, as I have learned as a somebody who works with people so deeply on their personal narratives around one person shows and memoirs is the shadow of this kind of story. Work is self-indulgence from the ego. Or actually getting more attach to the victim's story or the story. Yet mostly the victim's story and the trauma story and reinforcing it by telling the story over and over and over. And interestingly, I had one client who was really an amazing client, but I start and very talented comedian, improvisational actor, but he was doing very deep trauma story. And what I started to realize was that rather than the story moving to a place of transcendence for him, he was getting really attached to doing it over and over and over and over. And I and I saw he was retaught traumatizing himself. And he was also getting validation from the audience as a victim. So this is real tricky. Knew what shadow stuff and many story workers and writing coaches, they and people at work with people in their books like I do.    [00:03:14] But I know a lot of people in the literary world, other other story coaches, writing coaches, they don't quite know how to work with us.    [00:03:21] And I mean, I've been working with this for a long time, but it's like behind the scenes, we all know it, but it's hard to identify it because it can be hard to verbalize it and help people move past it, because there's almost like the sacred thing around story where it's untouchable.    [00:03:39] But the reality is, it's all about a framework in which stories helps.    [00:03:44] And some years ago, I knew that I had to do something about this myself so that I could find a way to language with my clients what to do if I as their facilitator, which really means holding spaces, a healer for them to move through the story without looping, looping, looping on the trauma story to the point that it became their identification. Now the other type of story in the story in my work that I'm always working to move people towards is the story where they're actually telling the story not for the sake of the story itself, but to release an identity, to release trauma, to release. And suddenly as their own perspective, where they've gotten locked in on a story to live in, to the mystery, to oh open to the unknown, to live into a more expansive story for themselves. And when they do that, they're actually modeling that to the reader, to the audience, to who whoever they're serving them with their story. Because when we do tell a story, I feel. Yeah. A lot of my work is about the responsibility of telling stories and how they're helped because stories can retraumatize. And it doesn't mean there's not a place for the big breaking open.    [00:05:09] But how is one how one is presenting it right, especially as a work of art, as a solo show, as a whatever. And one story brings us closer. And when actually locks people either more into egoic identity or even pushes people away from them, that's also a danger when somebody stuck in a victim story or what can be read as self-indulgent. They're doing it to achieve more intimacy. But what happens instead is they push others away.    [00:05:37] Well, you know, as I was listening to you talk, I was.    [00:05:42] Taken immediately to the number of clients that we've shared and how we've talked about how our work together is is going beneath the story, right? It's about finding the story under the story, and that's where the healing and transformation take place. And it actually is taking me back to the quote I shared that has to do with that. Life must be properly nourished and cared for before it can take root and begin to be differentiated. So there's a paradox here where oftentimes I think the stories that we tell are not healing stories, because in order to differentiate, we have to tap into our root system and a lot of stories take us away from our root system. So I guess what I'd like to say is that.    [00:06:32] In my work, I find sometimes an over identification with the concept of healing. And a lack of connection and nurturing to the life that was passed on to us through our lineage and that it's the.    [00:06:49] It's the it's the going low and going slow.    [00:06:53] That helps us to reconnect to where we came from, that I think helps us sort of release.    [00:06:59] Even sometimes what I would think of is like the panic ground around our story and our healing. Right. Like that somehow that we're not okay just as we are or that we're not able to be vulnerable enough to to to have the people behind us who passed life on to us parents, grandparents and ancestors.    [00:07:23] Like with all that it costs them.    [00:07:26] And with all that it cost us for life to be passed on. And so I've developed something called systemic relational help. That's a framework that it's really not new. It's my it's language that I'm ascribing to concepts are very old. So I think I think that Spiderweb, you know, in any system is like a web. You touch one part of that system itself by all other parts of the system. So really our work is looking at the relationships between the things in the Web and and really understanding that we are relational beings, that we are we are organisms that are part of a greater organism. And how do we come into greater conscious awareness around the things that drive us in life, the things that influence us? And I think, you know, it's about for me, healing now has more to do with consciousness than anything else. And then I and I go and that actually takes me plenty how we come full circle. Right. So takes me back 20 years to when I started working in hospice as a nurse and making documentary films around Death and Dying. And and and I remember having one of those big aha moments when I realized that some of the most significant healing I was experiencing was the healing of dying people. And just to see the health and wellness are on a continuum, but they don't define who we are as people, that healing can happen. In any bodily condition and that it's not just about the body, right? Healing is multidimensional. And and I think the more conscious we become of ourselves as multidimensional beings, the more we can see that the body is is a part of that. But it isn't the whole story.    [00:09:26] How have you restoring healing in yourself?    [00:09:32] Well, one thing I wanted to say as a story worker is, and including myself as a story worker, as a performing artist, as a writer and ways I've worked with story as well as healing and how they've interrelated in my own life. But one thing, just going back a minute, I wanted to say all stories.    [00:09:55] In my experience, must be welcome like that, there's a sense of belonging around stories. And then it's appropriate developmental. Lee And I could say this in my own experience with truth of like really leaning into being an intimate storyteller, like my mentor, the late Spalding Gray, who I always honor in my work because I wouldn't have had a path or modeling without my early 19 year old reading of him and seeing his work and meeting him close with a college professor.    [00:10:25] But anyway, so there were times because I didn't want to my earlier stuff to sound a little judgmental. There is a time when it's almost appropriate for us to acknowledge our victim story, right. It's very important to develop, mentally move like through these different layers of story. I needed to do that. There was a time I just needed to speak out. And most people do rage or anger. If there's been a perpetration in our families, there's been a trauma in our own lives, our disappointment, our fragility, our fear of meeting lives. But when we get in lockdown with them is the problem. So I want to say that the expression of them is never the problem and develop mentally. We move individually and culturally like the metoo movement I see as a very important turning moment in the story for a certain kind of women's rage that I certainly relate to to come out. But it's not the end of the story. That's when it gets tricky. When we think these movements or even our own stories are the end of things. I think about story work as like enlightenment. It's not a finite process. When I was young, I thought, oh, enlightenment was static, awakening was static consciousness. There was an end point in one time. And, you know, we're given these sort of guru stories. Right? We get there. Part of my own story has been to let go of that role model. Understanding that authority on the outside is is simply another illusion in many ways to me, each person to me.    [00:12:00] We have the ability to awaken inside ourselves and we have the ability to work with story inside of ourselves. And the key. Right.    [00:12:10] And the trick is not getting attached, allowing one and expressing and continuing to move to go deeper, deeper, deeper, to sink deeper into our relationship with our stories are bigger stories. And that's been so the movement of my soul over the. To use a constellation phrase over the last let's see, third twenty five years since I did my first one woman show and I had such a passion for that. And I always say to people, to my clients and people working with purpose to move toward your passion, your desire. I had such a heart's desire to do that show and it opened up everything for me. And yet the key has been to do another show and another show. And then monologues move into my role as a mentor and coach and continue to morph not only in my professional life, but in my personal relationship to story moving from doing a certain kind of therapeutic work aligned with that, to doing more Quantum what I would call work with the quantum field, with the ancestral work with you, with shamanic practices that I've I've I've imbued by my work with others in those fields. So it's like the story work of one's life, right. My tapestry of my story work has been to deepen and deepen and deepen it, open the circle of belonging rather than shut down in a moment in my life. And that is the danger of a single story of a single moment, an attachment to it, that the bigger story work is the opening, the circle for ourselves, for our lives, for the world of stories, and less than I want to say on that. For me, a lot of the personal work has been to let go of any idea of taboo or any idea of unspeakable if we're human and it's happened. It's essential as part of our development with that in the restring to be able to speak it and be heard in it. There's no story to Tabu or to. Marginalized to have a place in this. The phrase that has come to me for decades is the global circs story circle. And that's what I've been working to create a place of these circles expanding and what they can hold. And it's been my own path to to hold to to just speak my life very intimately and transparently. Day to day, not just in formal settings of being on onstage or writing a post on Facebook or something. But being willing to be intimate with my personal story in the moment has been my healing. And you, Camille. Let's turn this on you in terms of your work, particularly with Constellation work, as well as systems work and your death and dying work, like what has been your personal journey and understanding on that journey and insights on that journey? What is your lean in to healing and restoring your concept of healing over these last many decades? I've known you for the last two.    [00:15:26] Well, you know, it's funny, like I knew exactly where I was going to come into this conversation, but just having you ask the question, I think took me a little bit deeper. And what came up for me is sort of this awareness that I have now that the path to wholeness.    [00:15:42] Is is to is to be allowing of where we're broken.    [00:15:49] And so for me, healing is in the way that you talk about story. For me, healing as a nurse and as somebody who's moving into the field of of humanizing mental health care and union psychology, I think.    [00:16:08] Yeah, I think that it is it is all about belonging, like you and I are saying the same things and we're applying it in different ways. But in terms of kind of my healing story.    [00:16:19] I think I had to.    [00:16:23] Experience where I was different and unique. Before I could in my family system, even before I could come back to being part of the family, which speaks to. There are all of these different developmental stages that we go through. Right. And so I've come back to feeling very much a part of my family system. But I had to feel like sort of an ugly duckling or sort of an odd one out for a while in order for me to sort of feel comfortable with being that and being connected. And I and I agree with you. I think part of lineage work in every way is naming, not only naming our parents and our ancestors, but naming our teachers. And so I'd like to acknowledge Helen Newman, who was my teacher and family constellation work and to Bert Hellinger and and many of the others. We're going to sit here. Who influenced the work and the Zulu tribe in whatever ways they contributed to this work?    [00:17:25] I want to acknowledge that and how that was really a big part of my healing after becoming a nurse. I would say that. Trusting my intuition has been part of my healing. I had a..    [00:17:39] I was given a diagnosis of a life threatening illness. And it was came on the heels of experiencing some extreme burnout and deep, deep chronic stress. Working as a hospice manager managed. I think at one point I was in charge of equal between two different offices in a a system that was very dysfunctional with a lot of heart and a lot of soul, but a lot of of it are relational kinds of dysfunction. And it took a toll on me. And and I just I was given instruction on how to handle this this potential, this this potentially life threatening illness. And I just knew intuitively that wasn't the right way for me. And so I didn't see a health care provider, clinician, physician, nurse practitioner for two years. I pretty much just rested and did the work that I could do that was not harmful to me for that two year period. And I think that that was what it was like, a restoration of something that needed to happen. And when I came out of it, then I went back into the system and I went to see a specialist who had been recommended to me. And when I went and saw the specialist teachers, he said, oh, you don't have that. So that was interesting that I didn't have it all along, but I was told I had it. And it took me into I mean, I literally got to the place where I was.    [00:19:13] I was doing my death and dying work after being a hospice nurse and making documentary films on death and dying and then being a hospital manager and coming up with my own, the things that you are sort of where erosive of my own healing, which were a lot of my unseen patterns about being a rescuer, about, you know, being a caregiver and over caring and not taking care of myself in the ways I needed to and how that has played out really in every relationship in my life. And so that's been a lot of my own healing work. And.    [00:19:55] So, yeah, I really have to say, I love, love, love what you said about belonging and about and I do think I can see that with you, that you're like a master of being able to hold any story from any person, wherever it like you meet people where they're at. Like that's one of the things that the teaching and in hospice work and it's stayed with me and my work is that we meet people where they're at. And when we can release judgment, I mean, I think judgment is one of the biggest enemies of healing.    [00:20:30] Well, one of the things that comes immediately to mind that is about our relationship to each other. Both of our work in the world, but and also our personal lives as. Restoring culture to a more healing place to me, I believe, will start with circles of humans all over the world.    [00:20:55] You know, I've had this vision like it's one of those subtle things in my mind's eye for 20 years since I started doing the work. And I would say it over and over. I see people in small circles, on stages all over the world sharing their stories. And since then, I mean, you and I created some of that work together. But I see this I see this going global. It's the small circles.    [00:21:17] You know, I know I'm part of a beautiful online group. My friend Perdita Finn runs and her husband, Clark's friend, The Way of the Rose about the divine feminine and praying the rosary. And I'm not Catholic. I'm spiritual, but not in any framework. But I just want to say, people are coming along. We're seeing this is a movement. I have my own group. You and I are having a Facebook group. It like goes now beyond just stages. Right. But no matter where we are, the small circles of women I think about and just people.    [00:21:51] I have a history in 12-Step programs, which is essentially a global story circle and the monologue work of people sharing around topic coming together, not just related to addiction or codependency or any other pathology, but just to or process, which is very, very valuable. But we've brought together groups of people around cancer, hospice, hospice, caregivers. What are the most meaningful things work I have ever experienced in my life was when we got to work with the Palestinian and Israeli and Arab Israeli girls who were brought all the way to New Mexico just so they could get in a circle together because that was it safe or possible where they lived. So they had to come thousands of miles to come on a circle together. And I remember we put them up on stage together sharing their stories. And here they were, three different groups. And this, of course, relates to global peace. It's like three different groups who came with all this fear of each other, see othering of each other, their families, of others, each other. There's individual and collective trauma and they're up on stage. Right. You remember that crying. And we'd gotten the meet red roses. And they were up there with their roses crying, holding hands after being in the circle, sharing their stories in front of about four or five hundred people together at the old sweetie center and then at the temple to holding hands, taking their vows, crying.    [00:23:19] They were one, and they were bound by stories. They each had the opportunity to be heard in their stories. And then they were there hearing each other's ancestral stories. They were there hearing each other's multi-generational stories bearing witness. Each one of them got a voice. And I for my life experience, the whole thing is bring two people together in collaboration, in stories to deeply listen and be heard. We witness them by the audience because something magical happens then, right? There's a bridge of compassion and awakening, breaking open in each person who's not only sharing, but of witnessing and bearing witness to these stories. So for me, you know, restoring the culture means, you know, restoring our healing work means listening deeply, being taking the risk to be intimate, sharing stories and letting the stories move through, move through us into bigger and bigger circles of story. So that was what first came up, is this is the time of the circles of wisdom and stories coming together. Tell me from you what first came up. Because I know there's so many ways into this in terms of restoring the culture around healing.    [00:24:41] I think for me, restoring the culture, it's side by side. You and I have so many parallels, right. Like you have your. And minds right next to it. And there's their cousins or their sisters or their one. But they have different expressions. Right. And I think for me, Reese, restoring. Healing in the culture has to do with intimacy and connection. And I think there's also the voice of the voiceless. You know, the feminine isn't always told in the in the story of the voice in language, because that's the left hemisphere of the brain and the relational half of the brain. I mean, of course, they're connected. It's not just right, left, right. They they have a relationship, fortunately. And then I think. I see circles of holding like you see circles of stories, I see us being able to heal with each other through close contact, through like restoring, restoring our human nervous systems and through resonance, close resonance with each other and through close resonance with the sensitive, highly sensitive relational fields that surround us and really learning how to tune in. And just to say that when I talk about mother, father and generational stuff, I also know that some people have stories that make that just feel completely unsafe and are out of bounds. And I get that and I totally embrace that and honor it. And I just want to say that there are ways to heal mother and father wounds without it being your mother and father. There are ways for us to get mother energy and to heal with one another through our nervous systems by us. As my friend says, lending his nervous system. I love that phrase. And and I just want to say that I feel like like healing is about coming closer or not moving further away. And holding center, I think learning how to hold center in these turbulent times, times of change and times of dissonance and crisis, it's like can we lean in where it's a bit uncomfortable instead of pulling away and and making the tension of offensive in our lives so taut that we become isolated and not just from others. That isolation happens inside, that we we actually reinforce the internal splits within us. And I think we're really being called right now to soften whether that softening through a dying practice, which doesn't mean you're necessarily dying, it means that you you understand that one day you will die. And it's, you know, like Stephen Levine's book, A Year to Live. If we all acted like we all sync up with the fact that we had the year to live, how would life change for us? You know, those are questions.    [00:27:40] Those are really helpful practices that even though they're called dying practices, they really are living practices. Those are the practices that reinforce living. And for me, healing is about coming into these human lives before we die. Before we die. Are we allowed to be fully human and fully connected as a human being before we die? So that means we're not always ident so overly identified with the world outside of us that we don't get to come into our vulnerability. Are we able to not disappear by persons and just identify with archetypes outside of ourselves and be led around in ways that we're not conscious of that take us out of our humanity?    [00:28:22] All of these things about how can we become human before we die? That's for me. That's the ultimate healing. Tanya, are you going to give some writing prompts now?    [00:28:34] Yes, I was actually just thank you for that. It was wonderful.    [00:28:38] And one of the things Camille and I are just sort of playing with and things may change and morph a little is we're just starting this and are but committed to showing up on these podcasts for a time being. We're playing around with ideas of really supporting you because we're really both facilitators as well as as mentors and speakers and writers and all the things we do to to have an interactive process where we're we're actually offering a writing.    [00:29:12] And you may or perhaps want. And Camille, we'll be doing meditations as well and we'll decide if we're doing it every week or one of each every every week. We're going to try both today. But for you to start a journal perhaps around restoring your life here and you can in the journal you're invited to do the weekly prompts or writing Cordle's to to begin to read, story your own and through the writing, see what wants to bubble up your own story, your own wisdom, your own healing. So we're going to start that today in this one. So related to your own healing.    [00:29:59] And I want to honor another one of my mentors and teachers, Natalie Goldberg, who wrote rap Writing Down the Bones is here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and actually worked with some of the young women with us on that exact project with the Palestinian and Israeli Arab, Israeli young women I was speaking of and came in and helped us facilitate.    [00:30:18] But Natalie has written many, many amazing books, some writing, and her classic is Writing Down the Bones. So the way I work with people when you're journaling or free writing is through Natalie's sort of lens and guidelines, which is, you know, you may already do this, but it's important because do not do this on a computer because it actually uses a different part of the brain.    [00:30:43] This is getting really rooted with your intimate self, your writing voice. They just pen and paper. So the premise of free right is to just basically do a timed writing and keep your hand moving no matter what. OK, so I'm going to give you two props, actually. One is a topic and the other one is going to be a kind of an inquiry. And if you want to time it and just keep your hand moving for five minutes to start, that's great. If you want to do 20 minutes, you just decide. But the timer is important because it keeps you safe by yourself in a container. So because this really is an exercise of letting yourself go deep, but then safely bringing yourself out. So the first prompt that you may want to write on if this speaks to you is what story?    [00:31:38] Is getting my attention now. What story is getting my attention now?    [00:31:46] And you can just right on that. And another one is.    [00:31:51] And it actually is combining the last two podcasts. This one and the one before. My body, my body and just letting yourself go there five minutes or 20 minutes. Those as the two topics when an inquiry and one just to free ride on story that wants to reveal itself.    [00:32:13] And Camille. Are you going to close this out now with a meditation?    [00:32:16] Sure. So, again, this is going to be really brief, but it's something that you can take with you. And what I'd like you to do is close your eyes.    [00:32:26] And I'd like you to focus and find the place of least resistance within your body and rest there.    [00:32:35] And allow the natural breath to move in and out of your body. Just notice how we don't have to think about our breath. It happens even when we sleep. Like the tides of the ocean and the waves that move in and out. And I'd like you to imagine a river that flows at the pace of your life. And beneath this river is the slow river. The river beneath the river that I use in my work. And this river moves at the pace of your saw. And I'd like you to just stand next to this river beneath the river. And to really allow your body and your nervous system to feel that pace. And when we sink ourselves up with the river beneath the river, we sink ourselves with the naturalness of our being. And with nature herself, we find that everything that needs to happen happens.    [00:33:53] There's plenty of time.    [00:33:59] Because here we come into ourselves in a way where we are inside our. Medicine. And just allow yourself to do this when you feel yourself speeding up or feeling anxious and worried. Bring yourself to the river beneath the river.    [00:34:22] Thank you.    [00:34:26] No dispute. Well, thank you, everybody, for sharing with us this week and just acknowledging, my dear friend Camille or her beauty and wisdom here. It's such an honor to be in conversation with you, Camille.    [00:34:38] Thank you. I feel exactly the same way.    [00:34:41] I love everybody so much. Love. And you'll be OK. Yeah.   

Camille and Tanya speak on the topic of Re-Storying the Body from their homes in the first weeks of the quarantine in the U.S. In this episode they speak of the virus, and what it's triggering individually and collectively in relationship to our bodies and to the body of the earth.    Topics and explorations in this episode include:  Vulnerability and The Body How we identify (or not) as a Body The Body as a Tuning fork The Stories We Carry in our bodies. The body as an instrument, presence in the body Ancestral trauma and grief in relationship to our bodies. Breaking through shame to embrace our own sexual nature.   Subscribe to the podcast Join our Facebook Community Restorying the Culture: https://www.facebook.com/groups/restoryingtheculture Learn more about Tanya and Camille: www.camilleadair.com www.storyleaderglobal.com Support the podcast by donating to Living bridges: https://living-bridges.org/donate/     Episode Transcript   [00:00:00] Meal is great to jump in and share.    [00:00:02] Ah, oh, that relates to our topic this week.    [00:00:06] Hey, everyone. So this some this quote on restoring the body was from humming the blues. I cast English.    [00:00:16] You're not a trophy. Not some kind of ornament, a decoration for the sky. You're a priest. You're the healer. You're the wild God who turns her ear toward heaven. Who digs her feet into the earth. Who whispers in the wind?    [00:00:40] That quote felt really appropriate for where we're at in the world right now, just so we're here to to honor the body, to honor the body during a time when when things related to the body feel very fragile. And also to talk about how we can reach story the body as part of restoring culture. So we're going to start out with Tonya actually talking about where she sees people, her clients and people that she's been working with for decades.    [00:01:12] How? How?    [00:01:15] What is their relationship to the body in terms of story?    [00:01:21] Thanks so much, Camille. And first, I just want to acknowledge that incredibly powerful quote that you shared. And I also want to acknowledge that it's March 22nd, 2020, and we are in about a week into for most people, some a little more, some a little less here in the US in to be asked to quarantine self-quarantine. Certain cities in the US have the state stay in place thing happening.    [00:01:51] So I want to acknowledge we're in quite a moment with the body and in terms of the work, I've done so for really about the past two decades, starting with my own work as a solo performer, but then moving on and building space as a story worker with such a diversity of people.    [00:02:09] I've worked with veterans. I've worked with over 100 people who've experienced cancer in their bodies as well as their beloveds, people with HIV AIDS. I've worked with marginalized voices. I've worked with prostitutes, gay, lesbian and transgender people. So I really Palestinian and Israelis with you on peace monologues many, many years ago. We did these incredible shows helping people open up their stories. And what I want to say in terms of the relationship to the body to me.    [00:02:47] OK. Couple of things.    [00:02:49] The the the issues that create the most suffering on the planet related to the body. I think if I look at if I can pull it back in a few different lenses. One is believing that one only is the body because one has not opened up to the experience of the soul, the deeper knowing of the soul and has been indoctrinated through religion, through you know, we know the whole other thing. We're always talking about patriarchy, educational systems, family systems. And I also want to acknowledge that it's trauma. And my experience with people, grief and trauma, unprocessed grief from trauma primarily that blocks the ability to a right connect with that greater sense of identity that we're soul, not just the body, that there's something deeper going on here in a field bigger than what we experience in the physical. So there's a lot about that. But also the grief and trauma lock people. Which is why it's so important to sign the words, to speak, to write through the stories, including writing through the grief, trauma, marginalized identities and painful experiences. Because when those things are unspoken and there's a sense of this is to tap to be spoken or this goes against my religion, to speak it or it goes against my family to speak it. That continues to keep people locked in to a relationship with their body. That is very frightening and very I think leads to a lot of other behaviors that don't serve, including addiction, including I mean, it can go in a lot of different directions. Right. So the biggest thing that I want to say is that trauma and grief and process locks the ability to tell the deeper stories and shift the identification in terms of yes. On the body. And that I'm a I'm as that poem said, I'm a priest in the body and the wildness in the body.    [00:04:57] I'm the infinite. I'm connected to the infinite in the body.    [00:05:02] And the body is not in contradiction to it. Actually, the body is the vessel to get there. And the stories are the vessel to get our so. Now, Camille, I can turn the question around to you in your work with ancestral healing, you have such an amazing background. You've been a clinician. You were formerly a hospice nurse. You've done so much work, including as a documentary filmmaker around Death and Dying. And you're you. You're my wonderful friend and you're you. And you're such a full being in person. Like what? What's your weigh in with this topic of, you know, the the aspect of the relationship to the body and those you've worked with in yourself? But primarily, let's say, those you've worked with through the years where where there's a calling for the topic for the identity to be restarted.    [00:06:05] Well, I think a lot of what I've learned in working with people over the years, both people who are dying and people as a family, constellation, facilitator and teacher, I would say that if I start thinking about the dying first, you know, when people know that the physical body is is the temporary shell, they start to identify oftentimes with a deeper part of themselves. Right. I mean, that's the that's really the invitation at the time of death. And hopefully we do it before then. That was a lot of my work is how to bring the wisdom of what dying people go through that actually allows them to be more alive at the end of their lives. How do we bring that to the living? And that's relevant these times right now with the scare of the Corona virus, the real, very real threat to our human lives. And so I think, you know, there's a liberation that comes from that when people on the one hand. They they get in touch with that part of them that is greater than than just the physical body, and at the same time there can be a real tenderness and a real surrender to this body has been the beloved vehicle that's taken me through this lifetime. And having a deeper appreciation of it and also just how it's you know, it's very humbling that when we experience pain, you know, oftentimes we forget about how difficult it can be to be in a body. Right now. Everyone's. Obviously, we're all trying to avoid exposure to the virus. Right. I also have seen so many people at the end of life who can't wait to leave. They literally one of the most common things that hospice people will say is, I can't wait. When am I when can I go home? And that's and that's not a product of dementia. That really is a way you start to feel like you're almost there, but you're still in this audience. The heaviness of body and pain bodies are to almost weigh the soul down. And so I guess that. Then really leads me to my constellation work and what it's been like for the last 12 to 15 years to really be able to grow myself in that framework and in mind, it's changed my work. And so it's as. When you're in a constellation, as you know, Tanya, because you're such an incredibly highly sensitive constellation representative in your own right, that when you step into the knowing field in that way, your body becomes like a tuning fork for the soul beyond space and time. And so the body is an instrument. And I have been really working with more and more as this this this body has this incredible circuitry. We have you know, we have the the the intelligence of the microbiome in the gut. You know, we have the heart intelligence that has more receptors in the brain. Right. We're so used to relying on the brain, but we're realizing that we have more than just one intelligence and we're learning how to use that.    [00:09:20] I have there's a physician, retired physician met with periodically to to do work with in terms of because we're both family constellation facilitators. And he has this wonderful process because lending his nervous system. And so it's he's taken what he has learned as a family constellation, representative and facilitator. And he actually brings that sort of into daily life with people in a presence in a way that's very healing. And so I think we're just now sort of skimming the surface for what's available in terms of healing and in terms of empathy through the body. We know that the brain has mirror neurons.    [00:10:05] So I would say that we can actually be in service to the soul through the sacred instrument of the body. And I think that's the big, big shift of moving into a more feminine way of relating to one another in the body.    [00:10:26] So I guess now what I'd love to hear from you, Tanya.    [00:10:31] Because you're actually somebody who I feel like has you. You have such a big soul and a big spirit and you have found ways that I've seen really express that in the body and really inspiring to me. I think, you know, you have kind of you've had a radical path on many levels. And I would include the body in that way. And I just wonder then how do you re story your own body in terms of terms of restoring the culture?    [00:11:04] Thank you for that. And I loved what you said. The body is a tuning fork and you're coming through the healers perception background.    [00:11:13] Then I started as an actor and every actor knows this bar and I stumbled into my acting abilities. I guess it was always in me, but when it started, manifesting was right after my grandfather's death. And literally on the day he died, I was 14 years old and I'd been interested in acting before. It was the day of my first acting class and my mom said, should I count? So, you know, grandpa died in the night and I was reading this book.    [00:11:47] Part of my soul was just like, no, I want to go. And then I was handed a monologue. Basically, I went outside of my body. I channeled all my own grief, loss, pain into this character. And I didn't remember anything. I went outside and I saw something greater, came through me. And all I remember was coming through. When the spotlight goes off, my first monologue with tears in my eyes and my classmates, maybe 10 other teen teen age people standing on their feet giving me a standing ovation. I didn't know what had happened, but at most actors can have a story like this. Usually it's a Genesis story when they. Really new acting. Was it because what we're doing as artists and musicians do this to performing artists of all kind. Dancers. Speaking of the audience, the embodiment. When we were at when we were really with our give. We're stepping out of the way in the body to allow the soul to use us as an instrument. And when you see great, great actors like Meryl Streep, for example, or somebody who's, you know, what's happening is an outcome of process, what's happening? See, there's an interest there. My work has been so much about the intersection of art and performing artists and as well as writers at expressing the stories through the body. What happens is with when it when it really happens is a Dow chemical and it's transcendent for the performer and the audience. And so a shift in consciousness, a healing a soul retrieval takes place for the performer. And their gift is that the the audience's experience it in some way to a solution. My own path has been reconciling and trying to really find my place in my body, which has always been super connected to the soul. The forms it's wanted to come through have shifted throughout time. There was a time when I didn't want to act anymore, but I wanted to use that energy for storytelling and something. I want to just get back to that. You said to me many years ago it was very influential to me and the way I continued to work with artists and and healers and and performing artists writers to help them get their stories out there, whether they're professionals or not to me. Everybody has the right to tell their story. That's something. When we were doing hospice monologues together, which was a collaboration many years ago that you and I did with. Caregivers and hospice professional people who just lost loved ones sharing their stories was something you said to me about that there had been some kind of research at the time that those who could tell their stories before they died had had an easier death, a more peaceful death. And to me, that comes back to the audy, because just like we don't the body doesn't deserve to be objectified. I think even in spiritual circles, it doesn't need to be marginalized. The body and the storytelling and being able to tell our stories to our bodies and really honor our unique human experience, not from a place of ego, but from a place of. This is me. I murdered. I live. This is my story.    [00:15:28] And the way we humans make meaning of that, that could allow for a different kind of transition. It can also allow for a legacy and for teaching that can.    [00:15:39] Be here in service after the body. This is no longer here. And so to me, that's. This is like this is some of the stuff that for me has been about restoring my relationship to the body. And I live so in the field of stories. And what I see through stories is the beauty of every person that the over identification with the body doesn't allow to be seen sometimes in the culture. So restoring to me is through our bodies, these sacred vessels. Every story is beautiful and the person becomes more in touch with their beauty. So from your point of view, what's what's been part of your relationship to yourself, your body, your own work, that that has shifted, that it's been about restoring how you hold body from the way the conditioning it all starts to where you're at.    [00:16:33] I think I've been very impacted personally by the collective story of being a woman in a body, my relationship to beauty, my relationship to shame, my relationship to hiding. You know, sort of like how our vulnerability makes itself so apparent through the body.    [00:16:54] I think that that's something that I've been working with my whole life.    [00:17:00] But I I do know that there is some way in which the physical body holds the stories of our lives. And I also know from my family Constellation work that the physical body holds the story of the generations. So it's not just the story of this one life we carried the story of our ancestors in our bodies. And so the more we can tell the stories of our lives, we can talk about our memories and the more we get in touch with our ancestry, even if you don't have details and that there are extra exercises that I teach and lead my clients through and ways in which even if you don't know anything about where you come from in terms of your your ancestral lineage, there are ways to get in touch with that. And when you feel that in your body, there is a release that is freeing because on the one hand, you become freed from the thing that was holding you in silence. You also get free to build on all the resilience of all the generations that actually allowed each one of us to have life. All the hard work that we talk about generational trauma, and we very seldom talk about generational resilience.    [00:18:16] But there's been a huge amount of resilience for, you know, my ancestors who left Sweden, likely because, you know, because of hardship and very cold temperatures. And, you know, I had ancestors who came over from Ireland around the potato famine.    [00:18:33] And, you know, it's I mean, we think about all the people let through to pass life on. And there's a tremendous amount of resilience and there's also a tremendous amount of trauma. So I think it's really beautiful because now we have information, knowledge and tools for how to kind of work with that, the woven structure between trauma and resilience and that and how that has gone down inside of us.    [00:18:59] I have had a real interest in learning more about female sexuality because I do believe that in a way there's there's been research that women are really cut off from their sexuality so that in some in some ways we have been cut off from the waist down. And and and that keeps us living a kind of half life.    [00:19:19] So part of for me, this process of embodiment, this process of being more connected to Mother Earth has to do with also being more connected to like, you know, sexuality as our birthright. And that could be probably a whole other podcast. But just to say that I think sexuality is one of the beautiful aspects to being in body.    [00:19:44] And I want to just say one more thing, and that has to do with this deep healing that I've been experiencing in the Constellation work, where when I'm it happens. It can have been virtually as well.    [00:19:57] I work with people on zoo that when I've been in big groups, I oftentimes will have women sit down on the floor in a maternal line and they lean back into each other and hold each other and we can go back six, seven generations. And what starts to happen for these women when I do this process of re weaving and sometimes I even bring in mothers milk and I move the mother's milk through the line because you can see where the mother's milk was actually interrupted in the female line and then the sweetness of life has been interrupted. And so to be able to actually use our physical bodies in service of other people. It also is in service of ourselves that there is something this intersection about working with the body on behalf of the soul.    [00:20:44] It is such a great tool and I think we're just waking up to that opportunity.    [00:20:53] I love that cameo. And yeah. Very provocative. And it made me want to share a little bit about my own story in terms of both sexuality and the mother's milk. So, you know, and there is there's. And I love what you say. And it's been so much in my healing process to work with you and ancestral work and being my own kind of relationship to a soul retrieval around my mother and my grandmother and my great grandmother and my great grandfather, including even though he was the sexual abuse perpetrator of lines in the family.    [00:21:34] It's like starting to end not with spiritual bypass.    [00:21:38] I'm not suggesting that at all. Wherever people are at in their process, it's very important to work through whatever the fear, the anger or the sense of betrayal, all of that. It's the trauma and grief. But then what opens up is like this greater story. And to me, when we're tight trading our personal stories with the bigger story with our families and then taking that out into the community, the collective, the Cosmo's, we are multidimensional beings. And it's another way we've been marginalized as like. And even like me, it's like, well, I literally had to have had therapies that have kind of made it seem like all my traumas, my trauma. And I'm just going to have to be in that trauma for the rest of my life. We want to validate the anger. We want to make that person a devil or a monster rather than really going deep in us. And it's really about the deaths, because on a certain level, we can say some people that objectify them as monsters. That's why we have these relationships of objectifying both men and women for very different reasons. And that's part of the cut off from our real sense of power in the body, connection to the earth, connections to our lineage. I knew what I was saying. So when I was born, my grandmother said to my mom, my mom had an impulse to want to breastfeed me. And this was in 1964. And my mom, we lived in a family home for generations. And, you know, all that came along with that. Some of it was opinions from the elders that may or may not have served. But my mom's impulse was to breastfeed me and my grandmother, my nanny, who I love. She passed on about eleven years ago and I feel very connected to her and foster her these days. But she said to my mom, you wouldn't want to do that because people would think we didn't have the money to buy formula. Right. And this is a common story I've heard as a story worker. There was some version of that shame. You know, we do we know like in terms of a picture of the body of the world in Africa. You know, nicely and, you know, corporations shaming women with very little money. You know, all of that. And so when I breastfed my daughter Chloe, till she was I breastfed her until she wanted to stop, which was around three years old. And I just surrendered my body to my daughter's desire and to her need and to her want more than just the need. It came at a certain point she could live without the breast milk. But it was a wanted desire and it was a huge surrender. It was the biggest surrender of my life with my body and the sense of letting my bra breasts be stretched out. And like all the things you were talking about. But what was very interesting to me is after that time period, I came into my body. I got in my body in some ways for the first time in life. And that's how my daughter, you know, that was like this reciprocal relationship that I felt more on my body, one when I actually births her. But that was part of birthing myself into my body and then the breastfeeding and not to at all shame anybody or say this is the path for everybody. I just personally, though, that is that breaking the the the thing of some generations being cut off from the actual breast, not from the mother, from the early connection to the mother and how that restored something in me. And interestingly, right. Of you know, a few years after that, I had been in relationships with men for my whole life and I had my first sexual relationship in my late thirties with a woman. And it was the first time I felt pleasure sexually. And it was because I was cut off from in my head. And I'm not I don't identify as a lesbian, nor do I need to identify as straight. I've had experiences with men and with women. And I'm currently married to a transgender person, female to male. What I want to say was I was fluid and I was longing to have something returned to me that I didn't even know I wanted because it was so out of my thoughts about myself and my body and what I should have that I wouldn't have even known that that unknown could bring me such pleasure. It it brought me into a journey that began in my late thirties. And I really feel that the most sexual pleasure I've had, as well as connection to my body, has been through about 38 to now at 55 and not totally linearly. There were times when I did not feel that and but had landed in my sexual wholeness in some relationship, in how I mothered and being in my body and the way I surrendered to serve my daughter and not in that serve the way we are conditioned to serve men and remove ourselves for pleasure. It was just a big surprise, and it came from a return to my feminine. And there was something that healed in my maternal legacy for sure.    [00:27:00] Beautiful, I love. The courage you bring is sharing. I really want to say I appreciate so much about you and I want to go back to something that you said in the very beginning.    [00:27:14] And then we're going to we'll wrap up the show.    [00:27:17] But when you talked about the sexual perpetrator, your family, your grandfather and your great grandfather and how that was something that you were even taking deeper and I just want to say that is so politically incorrect and it's so courageous to say that from a family Constellation's standpoint. What I want to just contribute to that is it takes so much courage to go to the point of disruption to one's line. And you find that. And I can guarantee you what I always find as a facilitator is that at that point of disruption, where we find a perpetrator, there's always a big story for the person that includes suffering and where the lineage was broken for them. So it's not about blame. It's not about it's not even about forgiveness. It's about going in and reordering the system, bringing help to a system that has been disturbed, where something has been missing and something needs to be seen and acknowledged. And it's just such deep work. And I admire the degree to which you've been willing to do that and your own healing. And it's something that you and I have been walking out together as friends for many years in our families, but also in our friendship.    [00:28:37] Like, you know, the all those things that apply to a system, a family system, apply to a friendship, apply to a job, apply to a community.    [00:28:46] So to be able to learn these principles is a big part of, I think, how you and I are restoring the culture by restoring. I would say that I have looked a lot around sexuality and sexual health, and I've seen the wounding in both men and women around sexual shame around rolls around how the brain has been wired through visualization such as pornography. I think that that's a big thing in our culture. And it actually connects us from the body and it and it reinforces objectification, which makes us lonely. And I think for me, intimacy has become really a big part of my work when I talk about re learning human connection. That's really the work of intimacy. That is my that's really the tagline of all of my work is how do we work with the split? Both the internal split and the splits outside of ourselves.    [00:29:45] And I think I'll just share the story I had of I was receiving a massage and I was in another city for work and it was a massage therapist who has a really broad set of skills in terms of healing. And then I remember he put his hands on my stomach and massage therapist. Doug usually massage the abdomen anymore like the body. You know, we've like I used to be a massage therapist, so I know how it's changed and I know how more boundary it is.    [00:30:22] And we compartmentalize the safe areas and the not so safe areas. And the draping has even changed. And I remember he might my bare abdomen was exposed and I remember he just looked at my belly and he just said, this is where you held life. And he was so loving and so honoring of my female vessel as a woman in her 50s who's who's given birth, that I literally started crying. And I cried and cried and cried. And and he held that was so some tenderness. And I'll never forget that. So I just also want to say that. Love.    [00:31:05] Bringing love and respect to the body.    [00:31:10] It has tremendous healing potential. And we oftentimes know sensuality.    [00:31:17] Yeah. I mean, I couldn't agree more. Camille and like this whole restoring the body of our individual bodies is restoring the world to me. Like everything micro is macro. And I think about Eve Ensler is amazing play that she wrote after she had a very in cancer when she really was shifting her relationship radically and making some big connections. And it's called the body of the world. And she was speaking about like the women in the Congo. Went gone through some unbelievable abuse. I mean, the depth of the abuse of the rapes and this sexual abuse, it's seen as a metaphor in her own body. But she was connecting the micro macro. And I want to say and again, never is bypassed, but by the way, to reef story that my family story about the sexual perpetrator, my family took over 20 years of me addressing it. And he did come to me and meditations as a little boy weeping and weeping, weeping. And I couldn't turn away from this little boy. I had to bring that little boy in my heart. And I could see, although I may never know the details, the bigger story there. Right. So and it took a lot of work and it involved killing my mother wound. And I won't get too far into that. But the micro is the macro. If there's anything we're learning in this moment. Right. With the Corona virus, we are a global body as well as the individual body. We are one in we're being taught that in a very real way. And all our stories and responses impact everything. So this is a time, you know, to. Honor our body. Take care of our body. Pleasure our body. Restore our relationship, like you said, the softness, being gentle with ourselves and the body. Because how else are we gonna learn how to restore our relationships with others and with the Mother Earth herself? So it's a big time, isn't it? Yeah. And so just sending everybody so much love and tenderness. And we are walking out news stories together. We are being called to walk into the unknown and into the mystery. And I was just sharing with Camille this morning. I woke up knowing that after hearing about this for so many years, feeling good in myself, the divine feminine or the feminine feminine essence, however you frame that, the new feminine that's been emerging on the planet. It is. It's not like that will be driving less in the future. It is here. And the divine feminine includes the sacred masculine. Really important to say the masculine. It's not the time for us to turn around and objectify or ostracize or cast out the masculine. It's bringing in a new way of being feminine. Has a place just like any real story circle or ancestral circle for everyone and everything. So we're being asked to create new noli ways of being container's. So just something everybody so much love.   

Restorying the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor Rubinstein, Story Mentor and Camille Adair, Family Constellation Facilitator. In this podcast, these long-term friends explore how stories serve our lives and how they don’t. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theatre, health and consciousness, moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments in truth. So many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longings. Each one of us is necessary in rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can restory the culture together. In Episode One, "Re-Storying the Mother" Camille and Tanya explore the archetype of "The Mother" through different lenses. 1. Personal Storytelling around what it means to mother and be mothered 2. "Mother as Nature" and how our consciousness impacts the earth 3. The Mother Wound 4. Archetypes of Mother: Critical, Loving and Collective 5. The Call of the Mother: What is our part in healing? 6. Patriarchal Wounding and Motherhood 7. Collective Consciousness and Mothering: How it's shifting the dominant paradigm.   Subscribe to the podcast Join our Facebook Community Restorying the Culture: https://www.facebook.com/groups/restoryingtheculture Learn more about Tanya and Camille: www.camilleadair.com www.storyleaderglobal.com Support the podcast by donating to Living bridges: https://living-bridges.org/donate/     Episode Transcript   [00:00:02] Welcome to the podcast Restoring the Culture, The Conversation, Medicine for Small Talk with Camille and Tanya. This is episode number one. And our topic today is restoring the mother. And before we get started, I just want to welcome our audience and introduce us a little bit. And in terms of the intention for this podcast, Tanya and I have been friends for over 20 years and we've gone through what longtime friends go through illness, divorce, having children, worrying about our children, you know, having business successes, having business losses, relationship challenges. And what we've decided that we want to do is to take the vulnerability of this friendship with all that that we hold with it that contributes to our wholeness and bring it to the public as a model for how women can be leaders together through vulnerability. And so you'll hear us sharing a lot about our personal relationship. And that's one of the great gifts of this life, is to have a female friend who's willing to walk through the stuff in the same way that maybe we think we're committed to walking through with them in a marriage partnership or something. But oftentimes, we don't bring that kind of commitment and intimacy to our female friendships. So what I'd like to do in introducing our podcast, Restoring the Mother, is I'd like to have Tonya talk a little bit about why restoring. Thank you so much, Camille. And hello to our new listeners, were so excited to be here with you. So at this moment in the culture and where we actually are actually standing while we are making this very first step of sode of our podcast that we planned it earlier is in the midst of the Corona virus, where most of us in the U.S.    [00:02:15] right now are being asked to stay at home. So standing in this place, obviously, clearly the paradigm is shifting the global. The way we've done things locally in families, in the culture and globaly at large, ever. All bets are off. Right. Everything's changing. Old models are blowing up, breaking apart, and something new will be growing out of something new. There is opportunity here to create new narratives for how we live or how we love, for how we work, for how we relate to each other, for how we communicate. There will be new ways of work working, new ways of being. And and the call, of course, is towards a more sustainable future for our children, our grandchildren and the earth herself. So Camille and I both have decades of experience between us. Camille has been a hospice nurse. She has been a documentary filmmaker, eh? And she is currently an incredible ancestral family, constellation facilitator, deep, deep, deep healer. I have been a in my life a solo performer, a writer, an actor. And that's my deep root system and a story, coach and story for helping thousands of people over the last 20 years share their stories in books and on stages. So between us, we have incredible background and experience and it's very complementary yet also very unique in terms of in terms of story and the importance of story. And so we're here to share that and hopefully inspiring support you in restoring your own your own lives. And I'll just add to that part of how restoring came up for us is that we have often shared clients and what we've realized is that there is a story beneath the story and that oftentimes the story that's above ground, that's in our conscious awareness, that actually that story can reinforce suffering and and difficult dynamics in our lives.    [00:04:43] And so we we kind of came together in this commitment to help bring out a new story that is not inside conscious awareness and between the two of us. We have tools for how we do that, how we take people deep to recognize things about their own story and their own families that they may not be consciously aware of. Some now time is going to share a quote on Reece that's dedicated to restoring the mother. Exactly. So this quote is actually a quote from a friend of mine, a very dear mentor of mine for many years, Peggy O'Meara, who was the founder of Mothering magazine and which was a very, if you don't know it, innovative magazine about attachment parenting and restoring the narrative of parenting in our culture. She has impacted many, I would say hundreds of thousands, if not millions of children and families. So this quote from Peggy is the way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice. The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice. So just sort of moving into our conversation, Camille, and I know, you know, Peg goes, well, I know that quote. What does that quote mean to you? I think. What it means to me is, is it takes me actually to sort of this this lineage place, which is not a way that we think about ourselves and in this culture because we have a tendency to be so individualistic. And I think what it speaks to is the interconnectedness that the mother lives inside of us. Always. And and I think that we have sort of lost our way to track. The thing that gave us life, the things that is sort of like informing the very, very root system of our being.    [00:06:56] And so too, that's that quote for me brings that concept into conscious awareness just about how children are. These are vessels that we that we fill. And and then as the children like, part of how Tanya and I are restoring is to say, what was I filled with? What were those voices that I was filled with? And rather than. And actually being in being vulnerable, we feel the. The blessing of some of that and we feel the pain of that. And and then how do we lean into that and and move into a place of sovereignty in our own lives where we are able to take the mother with all that it cost her and all that it costs us as the one who gave us life. Some of us have have really active relationships with our mothers as friends, and and it's a very loving connection. Some people don't. Some people have very difficult histories. But the one thing that is a truth for all of us is that we all have one person who passed life on to us who is the link to our ancestral lineage. And by acknowledging that and seeing the mother as the one who passed life on it makes us stronger. And I'd love to know what you think, Tonya. Yeah. I mean, I love everything you've said, Camille, and it's so much of our work here. And I want to share very intimately a little bit about my own process with my mom, because I think about that, how the places and myself and of course and I also want to see this extends to Kosh, to all my clients I've worked with over many years, working with so many people. I'm getting on stage to share their own stories with people around their, you know, stories of having had cancer, all kinds of issues, many performers, all the intimate story.    [00:09:04] And and what I noticed is where there's creative block and where there's an inner critic. It's very likely a mother's voice. It is occasionally a teacher's voice. But the mother is so close, the aspects of our self and all that. I'll just say this for myself. The aspects of myself that have been hardest for me to heal and actually not, you know, to embrace have been areas where my mom's been critical of me. And this morning before I just sort of sit before Camille and I started this podcast, I had a little breakdown and started crying to her and saying, you know, I feel very comfortable sharing my vulnerable stories. That's actually part of what I've always been attracted to and do as a solo performer story worker. But I really judge myself and I'm highly critical of myself for where I feel unfocused, disorganized and and like messy, like I'm messy in my paperwork. I'm messy in my house. I was never formally diagnosed with ADHD as a child. I was as an adult. I often help my own clients reframe that diagnosis. I call it creative brain and Sharman's brain. You know, there's a spiritual and creative component to the way it's neurodiversity issues to its to the way we're wired. But my mom was very she was a neat nick and a bit of a control freak. And so she would really shame me honestly around like being messy. And I wasn't intentionally messy. I just didn't know how to organize things outside of myself. I can organize story internally and I can track the tiniest details to a story and never forget. But I don't organize spatially in my environment. So, you know, here I am, fifty five years old and we're doing this podcast, you know, about these deep topics that I'm like, you know, up against my own vulnerability, understanding, like that's still a part of myself.    [00:11:08] I feel really critical about almost to the point that I didn't want to get on here this morning because I thought Camille was going to judge me. Would she does it four ways I judge myself that that's still that inner voice. On a positive side, because I think with the mother so easy as Camille was saying, for us to focus on criticizing. That's been my path and my criticism back of my mother judgment made me pull away from her for decades. And my last several years have been restoring, restoring and restoring that relationship and having intimacy with my mom again. She's 80 years old that I haven't had really since I was a child. But like, I have a really unusual relationship. I would say in Western culture with my body in the sense that I. I accept myself. And I think that has to do also with my mother in my lineage. And this is very typical in Western culture. My mom was a bit overweight and my grandma was a bit overweight. And yet in our family, the emphasis wasn't on our bodies. It was on our intellect and on our and on our talent. So I was really validated for my writing talent and for being intelligent and being a good reader. Those things were very, very celebrated in my family. And I can honestly say that I went through my whole childhood without anybody criticizing or really commenting on my body. My body, my weight would go up and down. And as a teenager, I got you know, I got acne. If there wasn't a lot of commentary on the body and I'm so grateful because I worked with so many women and this is so true of the culture, women who suffer so deeply because of their body and body image and even in aging.    [00:13:06] I feel quite an unusual bit of acceptance around that. And I knew that was a tremendous skill in my female legacy that now I can really notice. So it's like. But once again, that root system of whether we've been judged and criticized or whether we thought something very healthy and positive but accepted. Boy, doesn't it show up Camille, like in us, like whatever that thing is. It's it's there in such a core way when that imprint is so young. And then, of course, extends the narrative extends forward and backwards in our generations. Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that I think is a result of all of what you're saying is that because we don't know how to create a home for the mother within. Right. I mean, we have a tendency to push the mother out as part of our our individuation process, but we don't know. The actual true individuation means that first I have this image of belly it in the ground. Right. Because that which shows up in my work with clients oftentimes is the sort of people field much bigger than their mothers that they're they're larger than life. And the mother is the one who's kind of feet on the ground and more grounded. And so it's about bringing people into life, being able to be the human child to that mother. And and I oftentimes we use this image of putting your belly on the ground and connecting with Mother Earth first and then coming up and seeing your mother is the one who passed life on with all the vulnerability that might be there around that. And even all the pain, just acknowledging what is you know, that's where a lot of the healing is.    [00:14:56] Because when we don't do that, as you and I have had years of conversations around and we've actually experienced this in our friendship is how tricky it is for women. Not to project their mother went on to female friends, and I think that that's one of the things that, you know, you and I have dipped in and out of. And and sometimes we've not been conscious of it, but we've we've been able to kind of come to a place where then we are conscious and and we do see kind of what's the the dynamics that are underneath sort of the reactions or the behaviors. And, you know, for me, with my own personal mother, my mom was a teenager when I was born. She was pregnant with me when she graduated from high school in nineteen sixty five. And so for me, a lot of my work has been about giving myself permission to be the child and not being the mother to the mother. And even though my mother is very much my mother, it was more like being the first born and sort of just the way that a lot of that came about in my wiring was a lot of hyper vigilance and and feeling like I needed to be the grown up at a very, very young age. And I think I love hearing your stories. And I actually have this great visual image of your mom tap dancing in a leotard. And I'm grateful to have met your mom in person. And so I I know what you're saying in terms of the body laughs that you don't have body shame. And I would say, yeah. Just to share. Can I open that up for a second? Just the image for our readers.    [00:16:32] I mean, for our listeners, my my grip, my mother and my grandmother. So my grandmother was in her mid eighties and my mom in her mid 60s and they were in a touring tap dancing group called the Dancing Grannies. And they would go around together with like six other women in the true and tap dance in their eighties and sixties in leotards. And both of them, by conventional standards, overweight. And I'll tell you, my mom and my grandma, who had to dance with her cane, were just out there selling it to the audience, like with big smiles on their faces and doing turns. And there was no body consciousness. And I got to see them in a performance back in Maryland. And, you know, it makes me cry thinking about it. An incredible gift. That is that is a gift. Unfortunately, I feel like in my family lineage that this is and I don't attribute this to my my mom personally, but, you know, I do think it has more to do with northern European ancestry and sort of this don't stand out. You know, it's almost like there's there is there is a sense of it's not OK to really be attractive or beautiful. And and I think the body shaming, it fits right in there where there's this this value, which is really great. It has to do with humility. And I think humility is an important value that definitely is part of my family system and ancestral value system. But I think the thing with humility is that it can actually move into humiliation. And when we don't know how to honor the feminine and we don't know how to honor the feminine in our in our mother line, that's transmitted to both.    [00:18:27] Two to men and women to up to all to general genders in our ancestral lineage. And and shame is such a tricky thing that it is sort of like this. It can be this toxic, silent undermining of of our our ability to even celebrate our own lives. And so that's been one of the things that I have worked on my whole life and and still work on. You know, I kind of celebrate my my own woman less than my own mother ness and my aging. You know, this is such a huge topic. I know we're going to be like unpacking this in so many ways and. Yeah, and getting out of what? Whatever that critical internalized voices. That is bigger than an individual mother. Right. Like you're connecting it back. I know you've shared with me about your Swedish ancestry in particular, like cultural stuff that has made it hard to stand out and celebrate your unique brilliance, which is so huge, but that there is a thing about that. And another thing I want to talk about just briefly is touching on like the patriarchy. Right. And I think as women, this is the era of me, too. But there's so much sort of confrontation towards men and the patriarchy around their very inappropriate behavior. You know, the sexual stuff and abuses of power, which we know runs through every facet of the story. But what I want to see is the shadow aspect to me as women, as not calling ourselves out on way, we will we stay separate from each other. And when we marginalize each other, I mean, we're hyper critical of each other. Ever we're competing rather than celebrating and collaborating with each other. We too, on the outside may be saying, you know, like down with the patriarchy, but we're in we've internalized that behavior and we're harming other women, not by being sexual predators, but we're harming other women by by our inability and unwillingness to celebrate and share power.    [00:20:44] And I just want to say that's one of the most beautiful things in our relationship, is even what we're doing here right now to me, challenge challenges that loomed that we can be too powerful, imperfect, complex women with complex histories and come here and be willing to be vulnerable. The restoring and I think an invitation to our listeners is like just a reflection on, you know, where in my head off in my my beautiful connection to love then and where. And also that we make our mothers like it's that it's that virgin whore thing right in the in the in Christianity, the Virgin and the prostitute. We split off, but rather can we allow our selves, our female friends, our daughters, our granddaughters and all our own mothers to be imperfect, complex, multidimensional humans who make mistakes and give great gifts. And, you know, and our end. Can we let ourselves be that? This reminds me of something that happened with my own daughter, my oldest daughter. That shows also the way things can change in the generations and. I remember when I started my menstrual cycle, it was all about how do I hide this, right? It was not it's uncomfortable. You know, it was messy. It was sort of the thing that, like, you just have to bear as a young woman. It's the thing that you just have to bear. And it's like the curse. Right. People talk about it as the curse of the language that we would ascribe to to what, you know, to something like in a sacred way.    [00:22:57] We think of it as the moon cycle. Right. And and I think about what my daughter went through when she started her menstrual cycle. And she literally was so excited. It was sort of like when I started and she wanted to call friends, including family, friends, male friends who were like my parents' age. She wanted to, like, announce it to the world. And I remember thinking, wow, you know, this is one of those places where a change happened. I don't know how it happened, but a change. Very significantly changed for my daughter's generation. Not that they don't carry a lot of what I carry, but I also think it's really and I loved what you said about think knowing that like why is it that we have such a hard time showing compassion to our own mothers? It's like we have this thing that they should have been perfect, but they were children, too, with their imperfect mothers. And oftentimes this is an ancestral pattern that can happen in a lot of times. The work that I do is actually one of the most fundamental things I do is to try and restore. The the nurturing and the care and the love, the flow of love in the maternal line, because it oftentimes feels so broken that there's just no nourishment. And so I've even begun bringing in breast milk as an element to try and moisten and bring back the sweetness of life to a female line. So for us to know that. All of that our mothers did. It was hard for us. Is a reflection of all that was done.    [00:24:50] It was hard for them and for us to see this as a systemic relational pattern, I think is really helpful so that we can actually understand that the suffering and the pain that we've gone through is not in vain and that it was not in vain for our mothers or their mothers and that we have the gift of this kind of consciousness right now that we can actually start to work on the repair of our lineage. I think. Yes. And I just want to say, I think this is all really radical work. And I want to really acknowledge that radical simply means to get to the root system. And the root system is the mother in our bodies, but it's also the mother earth and that the feminine and the darkness and the mother is found underground. It's our indigenous root system. And each of us was indigenous once. And you and I have had these conversations for a long time because we live here in New Mexico and are very in touch with indigenous native people to the Americas here. But we were all indigenous to a place once I was indigenous. My ancestors were indigenous to areas now known as Scotland and England and France primarily and Ireland and and rather than appropriate indigenous culture of other people to return and heal the mother wound. I know for me it's been so deeply about returning to a sense of my of my own indigenous nature and also walking things out on the land, getting with the roots, being with the earth herself to heal my human relationship with my mother. And if we've projected the split of the planet right now and our relationship with the earth on our one individual mother, how how can she hold that? No one can hold that.    [00:26:58] We're projecting the collective conscious and the wounded and the mother in this moment and going back generations on this one human. And it's so humbling because I have a daughter. You have two daughters. So humbling when my daughter was in adolescence and that her anger, her own anger started coming to me. And I wanted to say, Chloe, I'm not that it was so big. But then to understand, I'd done the same to my own mother, making all of the traumas of life, the patriarchy, being a woman, having, you know, terrible sexual and violent experiences. And put projecting that all on this one human, my mother, the struggling human. And then watching my daughter do it to me, but returning to our own connection with the darkness underground. The roots of the mother, right? What do you want to say about that? Because we talk about this stuff all the time. Well, and I think when we think of the underground, it's that which is not in conscious awareness. It includes death. It includes the life that is germinating in the seed that holds up everything that it needs to reproduce. You know, it's the things actually don't really die. They change. There is this cycle of birth, death and rebirth that's held underground. That is part of our inheritance. And we oftentimes are walking around living a half life because we're only connected above ground, which means most of us are walking around, connected from the valley up, you know, very much so that we are not grounded from literally nothing down on. And anyway, so this is what a great conversation. What a great first episode. I'm very excited about how this is going to unfold. And it's, as always, such an inspiration to be able to go to these deep places for you, because as we laugh and talk about sometimes we both have like an allergy to small talk.    [00:29:07] So that's how we get right. That's how we got our subtitle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's wonderful. And the last thing I want to say is to our listeners and we're grateful you're here. And you know, all of this all this conversation is not in the bubble. We're including you. We're sharing our own intimacy. But it's it's we're including we're including you. And I think what that means will reveal itself more and more as we go. But we're honored to bring you into our intimate space. And we were just talking about it this morning. You know, the culture is dying of intimacy. We're all longing for intimacy. And that's why we're showing up. And it can be a practice to learn to risk being intimate in what can often feel like an unsafe world. And yet the intimacy with ourselves and each other really just may be part of the medicine for these times of restoring getting closer when the impulses to want to move away. And so I guess I just want to say the invitation here is we're inviting you in closer with. I think the nexus of intimacy and our ability to have relationship. It is tied to the mother. So thank you for being with us.