communities dr rhee believe that people have powerful stories about personal transformation when shared their stories begin the process of healing your host walk them to create peace at home and have different cultures so we're going to start from that place of being from the same country but experiencing the country in a different way i invite you to meet my friend r welcome to the show thank you very nice to have you here my pleasure it's only been a very short time since we met and but it's already feels like it's been a long journey because when i met you i felt like oh my gosh you know i've met met a sister and that we're going to have the opportunity to do some great things together and we will be sharing some of those projects with you so staying gauge with us tonight this is going to be fun  and it's very old and deep and rich and we grew up all knowing that nothing is more important than education and politics and cricket supposed to be gathering in coffee houses and having passionate conversations about how to change the world why marxism failed why marxism should still nights that go into singing lying back and getting you know i wouldn't always say emotional but sort of you know feeling the elements very much you know the elements and is i  primal connection with some of the culture you know like arts writing theater music they're like food to us you know we just live like that and my grandmother will join and she will chant something in my mother had a beautiful voice so every evening was like a show that you know and then they will discontinue chatting with till the night will just run and run no one caring that they'll have to wake up for the next day to go to work so life is a very slow pace that we think slow paced but very very fall it's very and that's what i really miss about my culture is that from the moment you wake up until the time you go to bed you're you're engaged in something extra either in a conversation or you're exchanging ideas or you're learning to do something new the difference that of as a  the mind yet and so people are really used to using the muscles of mind and then go it's well you know it's kind of like the new and we're very good at using all of our bodies as i was speaking with for us that with we lived in a house that had three steps going up and you know the water systems have never been the best in old delhi so when the big  for example and no monsoon is like evil ron and to the man what is a mango trees and there would be fallings or will catch them and then it's wonderful to swim in a horn in to our journey to this country is immigrants when did you get here and what brought you here i got here when i was twenty two right after i was twenty two and that was one year electrical engineering bachelor right prior to me here no one could believe i was coming here because i was part of very extreme leftist politics and america was everything that no one associated with me but brought me here was that i was really getting deeply into politics and drugs and the police were of to me and my parents were horrid and one day woke up and thought it's time to see the world i thought that i didn't want to be born and die in this same country same place same house because before that i had never left my parents house you know it's never been on a plane never been outside calcutta except for going to the village i've travelled you know but not lived in any place so one day i remember waking up sitting on the bed and saying ok it's time to get up so i applied to two or three universities i didn't get a grant because in that first time it's hard to get a grant for a masters but what i did well  early my education my grades were really good and somehow i managed to get a loan from a bank to pay for the ticket remember the first time the plane landed in memphis prior so i was supposed to go to louisiana tech because they wanted to study biomedical engineering and they said i'll go out and find a hotel to  no idea what this country is so i thought in the airport and they gave me a room in the airport ok imagine this this is the first time i ever been alone in a hotel room number one i've never seen a bath tub before and i've never seen a t v channel with more than two channels so the entire night i flipped through every t v channel i made the mistake of putting the soap the bat thing you know the and much has happened between that but i want to get to you you know what your life is about now and when that shift started to happen for you because you did work in the corporate world were a very long time and i would stop working for anyone else and call myself back and just spend the rest of my life fall in my path i never knew what that path would be and i knew that i would find my  software company and i started my exploration of what it is that i stand for what is my purpose i always knew that it will be a mix of various elements year to india that was my grounding but then after coming here i had to make money i had to send home money and why had that i can be a woman empty you know and what should i do with money if my soul is empty i would rather be rich inside and have the time to do everything i want than make money and you know i the ok i got to get out there and i knew that my really not just creative it was more about i need to first of all find who i am what is it that it's only me and no one else you know what's my essence about identity or with that we are really about the spiritual essence it's i can say one or the other it's more about because to me  here to teach what's my quote this that is part of the identity and within that this of course gender and that's the spiritual connection this what really touches me and what really makes me come that i grew up with whenever i do something and homeless do it for the community i'm not one of those who will read self help books or sit down and just meditate very mean if i think you know what i would want to try this out my way is and trying to figure out what what is it the trigger do you what are you challenges what are the things you learned from what you and through and how can we draw in the light lights from out to my mother exactly that here and thirty five i came out to my family in india even though i had explored my gender identity since then i had the courage for the first time to say ok am me i'm going to have to face who i am here i am this is where the spirituality the part that helped me in trying interesting lee was not any kind of spiritual exploration but going into coaching school you know are gods and goddesses they are just like us yeah making mistakes learning from them what's the consequences so looking at their lives i feel like i don't have to be terrible i don't have to be ashamed of things i do because know we're going to take a short break so you can watch a video in which you will get to see some of the siren peter work that was directed by whenever i see any work i'm absolutely in thrall by the energy that she put into everything that she does and i want to talk a little bit about what is the source of your energy even though you've talked about culture and you've talked about many things but is there a course source that you go to before you start a piece of work absolutely i go to the good i of my village god is the shiva and she is the goddess of overcoming obstacles so she is the killer of the demon who was destroying the earth and the heaven and she her energy was created by all with us the process that happens from the inception of an idea and right now you're working on living with death so last year zero theme was fear and the role that death plays in living how do we choose the themes it's very organic you know normally it definitely comes from all the community discussions come into dialogues we have year round for example where a death came from last year was as we started doing our workshops and community collaboration around what is fear you know how does fear limit ourselves as women and not just about mental fear or physical fear or emotional fear it's all of that it's individual fear it's fear society a teaching us starting from when we're born fear is that our only in our minds that's out stopping us and  making us feel limited fears that are taken from your parents or you know you grew up with and even from the stories of our ancestors absolutely because i when i hear stories about the part where you know my ancestors w from the collective impact of us all so we choose a topic from what the community has been talking about most what seems to be most important or one of the things that's really coming up as an important topic now what happened from the place of fear evolved more into mental wellness in the second part of the project starting with the general playing  fear idea which was a mixed media theatre production was how does mental wellness mental health impact our personal relationship and how does personal relationships really affect threaded one single two and half hours theater together which had only the people's characters maybe not the exact names but it represented those souls and connections and their life work with each other over three months to put together out on stage and invite three hundred six hundred other women and men to come and share that and we all this do immersion theater which means it's not like a stage and audience it's within the audience you know audience becomes part of those characters we mix together with the audience so that they experience is shared as much as possible and the ultimate fear you know death drug of people two to two places there are when they feel and irrationally in this culture that it's talked about as part of  process that includes being born and dying but it's one passage here it's more you know you celebrate when somebody is born and you grieve when somebody dies and yes we do that too but i think the continuity yeah maybe because of our belief system in reincarnation the blow seems to be a little softer even though losing a loved ones trevor blow i'm fascinated with the whole notion  an all women community healing through the arts did that come out of the theater experience that you start to think about you could take this project bigger and make it about women's wellness and under that rubric we can you know talk about almost anything and manifest and create yes because teach and learn well i started using theater because to me created music for the theater some were dancers who choreographed pieces so they could use under the umbrella of here that are every form of art and celebration of artists so the reason i really i feel as humans creative it is our unique tool and i also believe that we create our lives and as a porch i believe that you actually create and draw your own life you know times you know we all go through those very lonely periods and also those periods transition where we're not really sure what we want to do we don't know where to turn to more and more beginning to believe that the presence  ringing in my ears share a little bit about because it's the siren community is very intergenerational it's also very mixed and how did that come about this community come i explored and experimented in so many communities so there were the geeks technical people there all the indian people you know that my community meant then there were all the dances because i started mentorships but this it has to be both ways because young people are learning and doing their own things in their own way and unless we understand that there is no bridge there's no learning because they can't be criticism of one path over another path there has to be coming together for so that both the elder in on the child are learning out and showing all the time intergenerational yeah because for us growing older we had to oldest member and other thing is just because who i am being a woman of color i have every community you know and i'm someone who loves you know i think why does a color yellow is a color i'm an artist so every color is a color so i want every color to be there i'm very uncomfortable actually it is i get physically uncomfortable if i don't have diversity around me one of the reasons i live in the berry and specially in oakland so that was pretty much each other and getting to the point where we can actually support and help each other without being called a therapist or some woman to woman doing that work with each other lifting all women up i mean that's what i read you had a very good point which is one of the things i felt missing here so i personally went through a very bad emotional nervous breakdown around two thousand and six and seven you know i have a long history of mental illness in my family with my mother specially and when i went through it what i missed was not having that family and community support because it was like  ok go to this doctor go to this therapist go and do this go and do that and i was like wow i really understood the value of what just us not having to be a professional terrorist at the same time if we can hold that person in that space they will come out and if they come out and talk about it a half of the problem is solved you know and so  people see us practice that that that grows a different kind of a woman's community it's intentional but it's intentional around dignity and intentional around that it is about love and it's it is about generosity and it is about knowing like you said today i was so touched when you said obama nominate met you i knew there was a place i could go to and there would always that and that i would be fed and that's what i miss because i'm used to being able to knock on the door of a friend that do that so it's that thing that at least in my conservative culture everything i wanted to do was like unto that there's no there was no place to be able to dream here when i came here people ask me why i'm still here because that's the light that keeps me shining is that even if i were down the street and talk to a complete stranger and say hey i'm trying to do this he or she will say well america has given me that place of like things are possible that's why i left india you know i felt i was shocked yeah you know i actually finished a masters in journalism and times of india hired me and wanted me to go to flower shows and you know fashion shows and stuff like that and i was like no i want to cover like real real stuff yeah and it just was it's like oh no you're a woman you cultures bridging values bridging age identity everything but for me it's about how you use the darkness to manifest the light that's pretty much it because if you push it down the more you push it down the more advances so that's what cern is about let's go deep let's really look at the roots of problems and we will you know dance with glory absolutely i'm sure that we will do many shows together not just in this studio but out in the world as well and i'm very excited to be part of the siren project that you know what i just want to say that you being interested in certain project has the flame is burning people are gathering around it energies come in are we have some direction but when you look at a couple of years from now what impact do you believe the si project will have on the women in this community first of all the most important thing for me is for every woman and everyone but specifically every woman safe and they will be heard that's like the basic first and foremost thing that they can pick up a phone they can send an e mail and they will always have a center like a physical place they can go women but they can just be themselves you know because i believe in everyone should be able to hold their individuality diver's they are absolutely and still be able to come together and celebrate number two i want to be able to support and assist through siren in three main aspects of life and they are learning more king and playing because we have to do it all i don't believe that we can just look at it just one angle wellness living well is about being able to integrate all your  based on community based on a ten to city i want siren to be able to reach out and give a space to all women who can come together to create wellness in their lives in the community in the globe and for all the people to come in the future and i want to really think you for coming into my life at this do not oh no it's wonderful to hear everybody's voices and a chance to work on my own voice and find some stories inside myself how can i play with these  i would like to tell everyone who has ever been afraid you are not alone i think that was one of the greatest strengths of this project was hearing other people where you yes that i had them and really feel less alone i understand