Episode 129 - Journeying From Hope

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[Music] hey everybody so we've been in season six of the liturgist podcast which has been all about pulling apart the stories that pull us apart but often these podcasts are recorded weeks if not months ahead of time and then we gather audience stories and we edit things together and uh we're all living now in a world where months ago doesn't feel like the same world that we are inhabiting now um so we're kind of pushing pause on the the specific format being really cleanly fitting the format of season six for now this is sort of season covid uh because world the world is changing so quickly and and we're gonna still have conversations about the same sort of things that we normally talk about uh but we're just it's going to be a little less edited a little less like we've been planning it in advance because we're not planning in advance we're talking week to week now because it just seems like the world we're in again just to stay present to uh what's happening it just for now this is season covet not season six um but that's still i'm still like super excited about today's conversation because this this is a conversation and this person ruthie lindsey uh welcome ruthie thank you uh is is a friend um and brilliant beautiful soul and she's got a lot to share whether it's covet season or not um but some of her experiences are very [Music] relevant to what a lot of us are experiencing right now um being cooped up and pain and loss and grief and all that sort of stuff so her book there i am the journey from hopelessness to healing comes out april 21st so we'll talk some about that but we'll also talk just about what's going on and how we're all feeling and this idea of the journey from hopelessness to healing i think is pretty relevant uh to where a lot of us a lot of us are feeling kind of hopeless right now so welcome to the podcast ruthie and everybody else welcome to literature's podcast thank you i'm really really grateful uh we're so excited to have you and as one of my dearest friends you mean so much to me and the chance to talk about your book and this project and and to hear from you in this time feels like such a gift to me and i know it will be to all of us so thank you for joining us i know that um one of the things that i've heard you say in the last little while is that your your story some of the things that you've been through while you have been through them and come through the other side were still a way that you were orienting your life in a way that there was still a sense of of some of the things that you've been through as being defining of you in some ways often i know that in in the public eye your story has gotten you an opportunity to speak about pain and healing in on such a large scale and yet in some ways what that has done is again is reinforced that your life is about some of these things that you've been through yes so with that in mind and the desire to see you is so much more than the most painful parts of your life i also know that in your book there's so much of an invitation for us to experience and explore healing to see a whole journey to see all of you and i guess i'm just wondering as we're as we're meeting in this point this place in time which is yes understanding the context of everything that's going on around us but also with this this beautiful book of yours that's coming out telling your story what would it be helpful for our listeners to know about who you are if they're new to your work uh how would you like to people to know you right now in terms of uh how you see yourself just as an entry point to our conversation hmm i love that i mean you're so right i think you know i knew that when i lived in my bed that my whole identity was wrapped up in this pain story and i thought that's exactly who i was but what i i didn't realize is in the past seven years as i changed my life and i you know lived in my bed for seven years i jumped into trying to help as many people as i could and started sharing my story and until i actually went to on-site um where you can't tell anyone what you do for a living and you know you give up your phone and i realized that that was still so much of my identity was that pain story because i could someone would say what do you do i'm a speaker what do you speak about i share my story and i could give this little blurb and all of a sudden i'd get this like wow you know and so i think for me so much of the journey has been like as you talk about as we all talk about so much unlearning all of these you know human doing things these things that we do in the world as being our identity and just being like i i am you know human and i am love and i am i i'm inherently worthy and valuable just like every other human and anything that i'm going to tell you right now like speaker or podcast any of those things i don't know um even this pain story um they don't necessarily even though my ego thinks that's who i am and i have to remind myself a freaking lie because i forget everything i know that none of those things like i i want to be i really i want to be really really loving to myself and i want to be really really loving to my community i hope that's what a friend would say it's like who's really she's like a really good friend i hope that that would be because and i fall short of that a lot you know but i hope that i'm being a really good friend to myself and then a really good friend of mine humans and a really um loving aunt i have the most incredible nieces and nephews on freaking planet earth but yeah i think it's um even like writing the book i'm kind of like bored with my pain story now i'm like who cares like there's i think i like get really excited to talk about healing that you know um i think is for all of us and even with the title though like afterwards i'm like man i wish i could have just put dot dot dot and hopelessness into healing and to hope because like it's ongoing like i've definitely i mean just in the last few weeks felt a lot of hopelessness at times and felt really really shattered and gutted and you know for me and for the collective and felt all the things but that doesn't take away that i also and the other on the other hand really fully completely trust and healing also but i think that'll be the ongoing journey until i'm freaking on the other side in the in between you know yeah it's so ongoing i'm so glad you mentioned the process the back and forth of that that we don't get to healing as some sort of place that we arrive at and just stay there yeah and i think i've definitely believed that at times you know and for a great disservice to myself because of the shame that i felt when i was like wait i thought i already did this i thought i already you know went through that and experienced um the healing of that and then then being able to go back and like oh no i just get to go even deeper and on a stronger like i get to go i had to do that level of healing to go to an even to even be at a place where i could wrap my head around some of these things that i were stuck inside of me that i didn't even know needed to be healed you know and kind of changing my world not my just changing my whole viewpoint on it that it's like no it doesn't mean that that healing wasn't real now you just get to even go deeper and you have more that you get to expand upon and grow with and like what a gift that's that's the human journey you know like i hope when i'm 95 years old i have a little notebook being super curious and like trying to learn and grow and experience you know like i i hope i never think that i could arrive until i'm dead you know one of the things you mentioned is is that you spent seven years in your bed and i know that you tell us a lot more about how you got there and what that was like for you in the book and so maybe this is a good chance to to tease people with that and to tell them to go read your book but one of the things that i've noticed for people who've been through particularly traumatic or salient experiences is that what we're going on in the world around us has surprised them in bringing them back to those in some ways so for people who grew up experiencing neglect feeling like they can't access their friends has felt like so much re-experiencing of the trauma or being restricted in your movement in some ways has felt like coming back to a season where you were yeah again restricted in your movement that our body remembers all these things that we've been through and so i'm just curious if if there's something about the right now that's reminding you in some way of what you'd been through before and how you're dealing with that what it's been like for you absolutely i definitely have felt myself feel really triggered and actually miles and i had a conversation the other day which was really helpful to have a lot more grace for myself because he was like you know we've done these huge programs at onsite for people that were in mass shootings and for people that went to war and the ones that come like people can experience the exact same thing and the ones that are here and aren't handling it well are struggling in the midst of it were re it all had early childhood trauma and it's re-triggering old stuff that hadn't necessarily been healed before and so that gave me it's almost like i needed that permission to have grace for myself because this has felt triggering in a lot of ways of you know i live alone and being um i think when we have trauma responses it's like fight flight freeze and mine is freeze um and so i found myself paralyzed in a lot of ways and not knowing like what to do and going back to some old coping skills and and then after after noticing that and seeing myself shutting down and being really fearful and feeling triggered of being alone in this home by myself again you know i um i've been doing a lot of really probably more than the work i need to be doing but a lot of self-care um a lot like i've been doing a ton of embodiment practices and reminding myself that i'm safe and like i do the thing that you taught me all the time now because all i want is someone to hold me and tell me that i'm okay it's like my deepest and so i've been doing that for myself like literally every day i hold myself and i say you are safe you are loved you are held and i just have been also copying what liz gilbert talked about like writing a letter to love and she's like well what do you think love would say to you it would be all the things that you would long for a partner to say to you right now so while i'm hugging myself and touching myself i'm like i will never leave you i am here i love you so much and i'm just trying to have this like really really tender gentle kind loving things like today i felt a lot of stuff come up earlier this morning and i just took a pause on the work i was doing and i went and i did this like beautiful embodiment yoga practice and wrote i journaled for like four pages and then i was like wow that was an hour and a half of not doing this other stuff but it felt so needed and so loving and i you know when i had these stories come up of shame and these things that don't serve anything you know i'm like journaling a lot and actually started the artist's way again just to like give myself this time to process because i was avoiding writing because i was i think really just avoiding myself and my feelings and so that's felt really really loving to help myself process right now and to be just really gentle really really gentle with myself um and those not kind words that sometimes i you know just easily can fall back to you so i'm like writing those down and then actually like switching them to affirming phrases which has been really sweet too i noticed you did that even when you mentioned coping skills i love your little like i notice in your writing and then you're speaking you have lots of little tiny things that you'll say that seem like they've come from some experience of why you would change words yeah uh yeah i love you call mrs god just little things there's like there's a lot to that one little three letter yeah thing there um but coping skills rather than like coping mechanisms or other ways that we talk about that yeah um [Music] how do you hillary would love to hear any of your thoughts on this as well how do you do you see any difference between the things that are obviously like good healthy loving self-care things right now like holding yourself and embodiment practices and and things that are like anybody would agree yeah that's a good thing to be doing do you differentiate between that and binging that netflix show or eating the you know like what's how do you differentiate what is a coping skill yeah and uh a quote unquote healthy practice for saying it's a coping skill that's part a lot of times we use these coping skills to be okay and to survive and and when you add shame to that it just makes it you know when it's like i should be doing something better i should be doing exercise and embodiment right now but instead i'm just eating lots of ice cream which i've done that too yeah exactly and that's what i i hear the positivity even when you're saying copy skills but then how do you differentiate between those types of responses um to your scenarios and and how how do you differentiate those well hillary will have a way better answer i'm sure i know that i know that i know i'll let you go and then i'll tell you what i what i'm doing i'm not sure is i don't know it's what works for you oh why don't you start i want to hear yeah well i mean i have i do have my old coping mechanisms quote unquote you know that i fall back to which for me and hillary you know that's like mine i can so quickly go back to food to just stuff how i feel and to numb out and disassociate and to not be here when i feel triggered or i feel scared or i don't know what to do with big feelings i can easily and quickly that's one of my first ones also um like mine are entertainment food those are like my my big ones and so i have seen myself 100 doing those things and so um in the last week and a half i've kind of just made an assessment like what does that make me feel better no it doesn't it's me i i felt really sad like really really really sad and i gave myself space i wasn't like beating myself up for doing it but i did do that and then i was like i i feel like it just put me in a darker mindset and so you know i put a timer on my phone on like certain apps that i didn't really pay attention to before and i'm just like when that goes up when that goes off and it goes dark that's it that's only time i get on my phone because it's not serving me to just be on here unless it's like facetiming my people you know like of course like we all need our phones right now but the way i was using it felt scary and not good for me you know and then and also with food so even though like for me sitting down with my people and sharing meals are one of my favorite favorite favorite things to do and i can't do that right now and so um instead of like eating mindlessly and eating my feelings in my bed which i love to do even though it feels terrible i'm like actually creating like really delicious food for myself and um let giving myself the opportunity to sit down with for meals for myself and i'm trying not to have any music on any podcasts on any and like what is this like to just be with me well and it sometimes feels really uncomfortable honestly like really really really uncomfortable and i've only been doing it for about a week but now it's i don't know i'm like looking forward to this time of just um the thing that like has been is a food is a real that is one of my main struggles and now i'm like letting it i'm just trying to reframe what this is like and this is nourishing my body and i'm eating actually when i'm hungry and what my body is asking for like how loving how sweet how precious is that instead of eating two boxes of gushers while i watch the real housewives and this is just it's like it's it's become a bit of like um a little meditation and i listen i'm i'm alone so everything's gonna look different for everyone some people have three kids at home and they're trying to you know that's that's not going to be their practice right now and that is you know that's of course like we're all whatever fits for you and feels like it's of service to your spirit that's something that i made a list of things that felt like i'm gonna try to do each day and it's not a big list because i don't wanna because if it's too big it overwhelms me i'm like fuck that never mind you know and so that's one of the things that i'm doing for myself and it has felt really really sweet even though also uh uncomfortable i love and i love oh good nicole we both started with i love yes i want to hear what you're going to say hillary but just i was going to make a quick comment on that um just that i love how your it's still about like pleasure and what you want and what your body wants rather than what you should be doing i'm not hearing should from you i'm not hearing uh you know it's better it's healthier for me to be doing these things than this other thing it's still about following what you actually want like oh i noticed that if i watch all this entertainment all day and stay on this apple day it actually makes me sad and that's not what i want and then there's not a shame and if you want to do that fine yes great yes um so i just i'm noticing that and applauding it i think it's great well that's that's taken a lot of i've shed myself a bazillion billion billion times before so that's a pr that's a good that's a practice you know and but then once i like what learning what my body actually wants has like that that's revolutionary for me as someone who has been disassociated most of my you know life and so coming back in i'm like wow that tastes so much better right now or i'll think i want something and it's more of just like my mind and i'm like that doesn't actually taste good and i'm like whoa that's i mean that sounds so freaking basic but for me that's actually a really big deal it's a big deal because i'm learning to listen to my sweet little body that i thought hated me all these years i thought she hated me because of my pain and i thought she was enemy number one and so i'm like f you i hate you too you know and treated um i called her it and treated um her accordingly and now i'm just yeah it's just a reframing and it's really just been so much unlearning these stories that i believe so much and yeah it's it's really been so sweet so sweet [Music] hey everybody before we jump back in to the conversation with hillary and ruthie i just wanted to let you know that ruthie is actually going to be at the sunday thing this week it's at 11 a.m pacific and it's open to anybody and we do this weekly zoom call there's usually well the last few weeks there's been like two or three hundred people we meditate together we do breakout discussions and ruthie will be there this weekend to join us and take your questions and should be a good time that and so much more is available this podcast is sort of the front door for the liturgists community for a lot of people the liturgist is not just a podcast it's a community and we've got all sorts of stuff going on including this thing called the sunday thing and you can check that and a bunch of other things that we're doing out at the liturgists.com slash community we'd love to see you this sunday [Music] one of the things i i know about pain and illness particularly when it's chronic when it exists over longer periods of time is that those things happen in our body they happen we could even maybe a more accurate way of saying it is they happen to our bodies and and so what that can mean is when we are experiencing illness or pain our bodies feel like a liability or they feel like the enemy instead of instead of seeing our bodies as the place that oh where the injury is happening and and turning up the affection and care and resourcing for our bodies what we do is we turn our bodies into these objects that we hate like you were saying and so i'm just curious if you could talk a little bit about what it was like to to fall into healthy i was gonna almost say like fall in love with your body again maybe that's not the right way of saying it but to build build the relationship with your physicality with yourself as a body and to come from hating to this tenderness i mean what uh what a chasm to bridge and it's ongoing listen i am human and i am i i get the opportunity and the invitation to remind myself of that literally every day i mean it's it's an ongoing journey and and i think honestly i you know i writing this book took me on more of a journey than anything so far because i think at us essentially kind of had to re-traumatize myself going back in and i had been you know sharing my story as a living for about four or five years before probably four years before i started writing the book but that i could speak for an hour and i could still stay pretty disassociated i could i love sharing stories i'm a storyteller and so if i could talk about it kind of in third person like it it was like this thing that happened and you know and i could tap in and out of certain things or i could do a 15 minute instagram post but i didn't have to really be in it and writing this book i mean it's a two and a half year process right and i had to be in it and live in it and experience all this so um so brutally um really it was it was so painful and it was so hard and i felt um kind of like we were saying earlier triggered and i i found myself back in that bed i found myself like my pain felt worse than it had ever been like it exasperated hello whatever that word exacerbated it just felt so much bigger than anything i thought i could handle and i up to that point i thought going into my body would kill me because it my pain was so great that i thought i can't go in there so i jumped from living in my bed for seven years from the spinal cord injury to like i'm gonna help as many people as i can and jumping to try to just help and needing to feel needed honestly to feel okay and it became kind of my new drug and i didn't realize until i mean hitting such a massive wall writing this book because it was so painful that that became ultimately that kind of breakdown on some level like became the largest breakthrough so far which i'm sure i'll have plenty more you know listen by the end of comet i might have another big ass just but i um i don't know it just it opened me up it cracked me open because i was so desperate because i was so miserable and i felt so hopeless i'm like i can't do this and i was lucky enough i feel like the universe god mrs god whatever you want to call it like brought myles and brought you and brought these people into my life that were these mirrors of um remembering like oh this is the only way that you can actually heal these things is by going in and and i think when we give ourselves that space that we're so deserving of and i started remembering what was like i started remembering what was so right with me and not what was like wrong with me and i started going inside i had never meditated a day in my life i thought that would literally be my the death of me going in i thought that pain would be too big and starting to get quiet starting to spend time in nature alone and quiet i'd never i mean like i'm a seven i want to avoid pain and which is hilarious for me with chronic pain but all i want was to avoid pain at all costs you know and so even if i'd go on a walk i'd have music blaring or i'd have these things and the more quiet and the more i came in i i feel like these those stories started giving i was giving myself an opportunity to remember and to remember like oh my god this body this body that has been holding me and loving me and um calling me home like i i really would every ounce of me believe that every single thing that happened were these like invitations for me to come home to myself and do this like really loving really painful but really really really loving work and a lot of that was through like experiential therapy a lot of that was through writing like it was crazy once i actually gave myself space to like feel the emotions i learned about mind body things through dr vander kulk i had no idea that my body could hold on to trauma which then could also be pain and i learned from this woman named nicole sacks this like journaling method where you literally write out these things as a child that we swallow that we don't think we can handle like in my home i grew up where it was like really you know southern and my mom was a child of alcoholics and everything was like be pretty smile and be cute and show up and i wasn't allowed to feel you know rage oh my god i would have gotten a whipping you know i wasn't allowed to feel fear that that would have i would have you know i would i got in trouble or i got made fun of and so i swallowed all those things down but they don't go away just because even though they might seem like minimal things when you give yourself space to like process those and feel the things that you felt when you were in third grade and someone hurt your feelings on the playground i mean that stuff if you aren't given a chance to process it it stays in your body and so as i was doing that work i actually felt pain relief which i didn't think could be i'm the only human in the world that's had a wire in their brainstorm you know my neck looks more like a fucking toaster oven than it does a spinal cord but like i had i have pain relief and that just showed me that mind body connection and how like oh my gosh this this healing this isn't this isn't mine like we are our bodies and our brains and our hearts they're all looking longing for homeostasis they're longing to come back and and i think it was a just complete three like 180 mind just shift and believing that my body was holding all this wisdom and love and care for me i mean it's just been it's been so hard it's been the hardest the last three years i mean you've walked with me through so much of it hillary it's been so painful and it's also like the most beautiful um sweetest loving kindest thing that i've ever done and i think before i thought i had to just go help all these people and now i'm like the more loving work i do on myself that's the most healing thing i can ever do for anyone in my life because then i get to walk out and like be a mirror of like this is yours this isn't mine this is yours like this is ours you know and that's felt so it's shifted how i want to do every ounce of my work you know um yeah it's i feel like it's mostly been unlearning like oh yeah you know i thought i was this depraved broken wretch and i was taught that in my church and to remember that i am so inherently good and worthy and loved and needed and held and so is every other human like i thought i was broken i actually the proposal that i gave my um that i got a book deal with was my book was called salvage building a beautiful life with broken parts because i thought i was broken like i was calling myself trash you know and now i'm like oh my gosh you precious precious soul you were never broken broken fucked up things happened yeah for everyone and we have these these traumas like now instead of brokenness i'm like that's trauma you're not broken you're traumatized you know but you're inherently like you're whole and worthy and loved and good and needed and so uh endeared like i don't know it's just everything feels really different wow i'm sitting here like it's nice being on the zoom call where i can see your face and and see hillary's face and i'm just thinking about like how that thing that you can tell when people have been through some pain and and used that rupture and that disruption of what we wanted and what we thought life was supposed to look like um to grow and to evolve and to learn as opposed to fleeing and retreating and repressing and which can be the easier route but um you know i mean we've i haven't mentioned spiral dynamics in quite a while on the show but the idea of spiral dynamics they would talk about as you would evolve into sort of new ways of seeing the world bigger context a lot of times that those transitions into new world views new world space or like spaces of consciousness don't happen by themselves it takes some sort of disruption it takes some sort of trauma or or event or pain to eat to to be able to like if it's not until that rung of the ladder's not working anymore that you climb up another rung you know um and so here we are in this world that we're all experiencing this just disruption of on one level or another and i'm curious if you are hillary again because as i as i look at both of you i see people who have gone through a lot but have somehow uh come out stronger and and and there's a character and a a strength and a resilience and a um it's like a light even that i don't think that that doesn't come without a severe amount of pain and i'm wondering from both of you how if you have any thoughts about how we can use or even how we respond to the pain to the disruption in ways that we don't retreat backwards into smaller ways of being but that we can actually allow um the growth that's possible and the evolution that's possible within a severe disruption like this to to take root hillary ruthie you get it girl well then i really want to hear your teach me thanks hillary mcbride i well first before i even go into that i want to say to both of y'all and i mean this with every ounce of sincerity like y'all way before i knew you were teachers to me and i believe with every ounce of me that like i hear you say it all the time like we are created to heal in community and y'all were my community way before you you knew it like i was so excited for y'all to catch up and realize that you're gonna love me too but i just waited come on humans catch up but i look to people like i you know when i see someone that has true grounded joy um not like toxic positivity which i have lived that truth many many times but true grounded joy i assume that they have been through so much and they have done such beautiful beautiful healing work on themselves i i just i know too much to know that it can be any other way like we don't just arrive at something and so i believe like from learning from y'all and i have other teachers that have been through so much hard shit and so much trauma and they are not only they're not just like survivors they are wholehearted healing beautiful souls and so i was lucky enough to have the liturgist podcast and to have uh miles and to have these people around me that i trust that had been through so much and had done really hard work to help be mirrors to me of what i was capable of doing and you know i think for so long even when i lived in my bed i when i first had that first breakthrough and i started weaning myself off the drugs and getting off everything i heard that quote from gabriel brawn that the deeper sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain and i think what's so easy right now is for us and it's so human and if you're doing it oh my god of course you are this is so hard but it's so easy to want to numb and to not feel the weight of the things that we're feeling because it's so freaking hard and no one's ever been through this before of course you feel traumatized of course you're struggling a for of course you feel angry and you're trying to numb yourself like we have these coping skills that happen way way way long ago to survive so i i want to first say off that's where you are right now of course like i i am you i feel you it's so human it's so human and then on the second rung of that is now like how can this be this opportunity i think for me like writing feels really really important because whatever i'm feeling and whatever you're feeling is important to feel and i think us numbing it it doesn't it doesn't go away it just then you feel shame and then it feels it doesn't it gets lodged you know and so whatever you can do to process what you're feeling for me that's dancing and writing like that's my two i i mean i've gotten to do five rhythms with you before and for both of y'all it's like it it's medicine for for my sweet little soul it really feels like medicinal and anything you can do to allow yourself to feel and also not comparing your situation to someone else because that also brings so much shame if you're like well yeah i'm so disappointed like because i saw myself at first i'm like so disappointed that my book tour was canceled and all these things and then i felt shame because i'm like but these people are dying and these people can't feed their families and these people can't work and that doesn't serve just because i'm shaming myself doesn't i'm not actually feeling empty empathy for them i'm just now i'm just thinking about myself with more shame yeah you're not helping i'm not helping them at all and so allowing myself space to feel whatever i'm feeling and giving myself that room to do that that's exactly why i started the artists weeks i was avoiding doing it you know and i'm like giving myself space and then in the other hand yes feel so much gratitude and i have so much that i am so grateful for and that doesn't take away that this is still really hard and painful and shitty for me and the collective and i feel both and i think dismissing either one and just focusing on either one is a disservice to the whole you know and so i'm trying my my my work that i'm like trying to be really tender with myself to do right now is letting myself have both and because it is both it's never one or the other it's always both um now hillary you give us some more better oh gosh ruby it's such a joy to listen to you and to see to see all of these things um take root and and maybe the best word that i can think of is really alchemize pain um to take it from something that could feel destructive reductive disconnecting silencing and use it as this invitation to be gentle with yourself uh to connect you with other people to dive deeper into knowing and loving yourself just really feels like i don't know what else to call it except magic it feels so so hard to describe i mean in in my clinical world the language that we often put on that is called transformance which is to say there is this something in the human spirit that kind of like the blade of grass pushing up between concrete always knows how to move us towards wholeness and the light and and that is always there and when we are looking for that and kind of leaning into that part of ourselves it will always take us to wholeness because that's written into us in that way and so hillary yes i just i i mean i know i've told you this before but i want to say it again because last year so you know it's crazy i think sometimes things happen in like sevens and i'm woo-woo but i really do believe that but i lived in my bed for seven years and then i had a complete nervous breakdown and then this last summer the seven year anniversary of my breakdown um i stopped sleeping again and it was so traumatizing and so scary and again those shame stories of like i've already done this like what what how can i be here again my medicine in that time like i literally would google you and i would listen to anything i could find any podcast with you on it because you spoke such truth to my soul i would like to take myself out to nature when i like didn't sleep for a long time and you kept reminding me of those truths and you spoke so much even though like we weren't necessarily talking all the time but you spoke so much love and truth to me to my body to my spirit to help me remember when i couldn't remember like my when you don't sleep your brain like you can't yeah logically and so i just want to thank you again like you what y'all are doing it's just you're friends to so many of us that like michael i know a lot about your story because you've shared so much like because of what y'all you and lisa have been so generous to share with us of your really brutal painful experiences and then allowing us the window in to see what your what your healing journey has looked like like that has felt that has been medicine for me and just mirrors for me so i don't i just love y'all so much so grateful and it's the same back to you i mean for you to come on this podcast for you to write your book is so generous i mean you're giving us you're giving us all these parts of your heart your pain and your wholeness and your healing and everything that happened in between and you don't owe that to anybody and i'm just so so so grateful that we get to keep learning because of how honest you are and because of all the work you've done it seems to me like we have choices i mean maybe that sounds obvious but in moments where we feel overwhelmed when we feel weighed down or suffocated by circumstances or pain whether those are things that happen outside of us or we carry inside of our body it to me i constantly think back to frankel viktor frunkel who write wrote man search for meaning and he he has so famously reminded us that no one can ever take choice from us and sometimes we don't feel like we have enough energy to make a choice that makes anything different but we always have the choice to say this is the best that i'm doing or this this is and i'm not going to add more pain to the story and i think about these moments for me and my life where there has been incredible pain uh something i've carried inside or or even i think this compounded at seeing the way that the pain on the inside of me was moving through me into my relationships into the world and what looked like creating even more pain and then the shame that came from that but the choice for me when i think about this alchemy that i was mentioning in relation to you ruthie when when pain becomes something transformed for me there has always been a decision to first not add more pain to the pain that's already there right not shooting the second arrow or not blaming myself shaming myself not saying and this is because i'm worthless or this is because i'm unlovable or i made this i make the world a worse place so not adding more pain but then seeing and again this is a choice and it doesn't always feel available to us and so in those moments that's okay too but seeing pain as some sort of doorway and truly i mean i wish i could i wish i could be more um kind of spiritual sounding than this but really interpersonal neurobiology has completely changed the way i see myself in the world and i wish it was something like wow this you know this great meditation this loving kindness meditation and i you know what that would be a lie because the truth is learning about kind of the hard science of our bodies and the way that we're wired to belong to each other has given me something that feels concrete like moving back to empiricism even just for those moments has been like okay i can i can back this up this claim but one of the things that really changed me was understanding that sadness is wired to actually signal care from the other person it's meant to signal to the other person's brain whoever we're close to or in proximity to hey i'm hurting and i need you to come close and i need you to reassure me and provide some comfort and when we diminish our sadness when we move away from it we exclude ourselves from from the ability to receive the comfort that could be there and when we're not in tune with ourselves then we can't respond to other people's sadness in a way that draws us towards that so that mechanism of noticing the pain and being if everyone's connected to their feelings our bodies know how to do this thing that brings us close together and in that moment that sadness is this invitation for somebody to bring care in now that's that's great on the outside but what i think about is really transformative for me is seeing that same process as happening on the inside that there is a part that is carrying pain still i mean she is still with me constantly and there are these other parts though that are so loving and nurturing and i developed those nurturing parts because i felt my own pain and i responded to it and other people in such a way where i was like oh i know what it's like to be there i want to be close to you and i want to help alleviate your aloneness but i realized that i could turn those nurturing parts towards the pain parts within me and in that way create a kind of inner relationship or inner landscape of so much nurturance so even this week earlier i was out for a run and i found this this pain part of me kind of getting loud and she was saying some things that she used to say a lot and be really kind of with a lot of intensity like she used to say them and they have a particular signature and kind of like pattern to them and so i could recognize wow that's that part of me that's feeling this thing and right away i stopped on the run and i sat down and i put my hand on my body in the place where i was kind of connecting to where that pain was and i said oh hi yeah you you're here and you have something to take to say something to tell me about what this is like for me tell me a little bit about what's going on and why are you here and why did you come back and why are you so loud and what do you need and wow i really see that this thing that's happening right now around us is reminding you of this thing that happened a long time ago and really just imagine going into this room sometimes i think about it like a kitchen table or sometimes i think about it more of like this you know like a bedroom or something where there's these parts of me that get to meet and have dialogue and that part of myself that is so nurturing and attuned and loving of other people that that that gets pivoted and it moves directly towards the part of myself that feels pain and in that way it seems like the pain is an opportunity for even more care in a way that i i don't know if i'd necessarily know how to do that if the pain wasn't there and so really it's because of these these aches these wounds that i have been able to develop a loving practice that i carry on the inside i mean i'm sure on some level it's possible to do that without so much wound but for me that has felt like the invitation constantly that when pain is there whether it's physical emotional and i mean the more research that we have about this more we see that they're not actually different that your brain processes emotional social uh psychological and physical pain all all the exact same way all in the same parts of your brain but whatever the reason is that the pain is there the more pain the more invitation the more opportunity the wider the doorway for the compassion and nurturance to come in and instead of feeling just the pain now i see myself in this relationship with all of these parts that know how to take care of each other so much of yes christianity that we all grew up with um the importance of helping others loving others serving others and that's a it's a i think that's a beautiful thing about christianity but what i love [Music] um in both of you and seeing and experiencing in both of you is how much healing both of you bring to the world but it's because you've you went in like you there's so much of an impetus a lot of times to be a good person you got to go out and do that go out and preach the gospel or go out and serve the poor go out and help the widows and the orphans and again great beautiful but to see that when you move into your own body and you move into your own emotions that and and you then can heal and experience healing when you focus on that aspect of your reality of your life that hillary was talking about being like this blade of grass that pops up through the concrete that source of life that keeps you going and moving and and you surrender to that by moving inward that life breaks out and you guys are both both of you are shining examples of that idea to me of how by moving in to that life that is inward it spills out and and it there's what better way of healing the world than by being that healing rather than having this yeah oh gosh you're just hitting something that i've been thinking about so much the last little while because i think of the idea of self and individual really as a as a postcolonial construct that that it's kind of minimizing the interconnectedness we have we have between us that it also creates this narrative we carry that that is an individual there's kind of a a singular or coherent self structure and i actually think the more that i think about this and read and learn that there are parts of us on the inside that there are different elements or parts that we use depending on the context that we're in some parts feel young some parts feel old but when i think about the words of jesus especially the the story of wherever wherever there is the least of these there i am in the midst of them and for a long time i thought that was outside and i realized that we can create least of these on the inside too our pain can be the least of these and we can say no no our pain my shame the story about myself it's unacceptable it's unlovable it needs to go away for me to be in society for me to be okay and i realized within myself and i really put these two things together recently that that i had been creating lists of these on the inside and then i don't think that there's anything discriminatory about the love of god in such that god would say well those leasts matter more and i guess i think of god and and the love of god or love itself is being here to undo all of these binaries or hierarchies where we say that is worthy of love and that is not and to eradicate the separation between all of those things and so thinking about that as existing on the inside for me has been a huge impetus for me to be able to move care towards myself to say oh oh love doesn't just get to go to the places that everybody else is is are deserving love goes to all of the places that we have been told it cannot go including on the inside yeah it is yeah and i think you know so many of us have been told like deny thyself the flesh you know so many stories that i don't believe were is the story of love in the first place and so that that's such oh that's such a beautiful invitation and such a beautiful visual like we're all ev there's there's no you know there's no us in them it's it's always all it's for everyone all of it is for everyone and you and me we're all so deserving of it everyone's so deserving of it and the more you don't deny yourself but you actually go in really lovingly and do that the more that you are capable of going out and like we're saying earlier and you know mirroring that that love and it's those mirror neurons are so beautiful and the more you expand your own aura and your that love inside of you the brighter you are to go be that love and yeah it's just it feels counter to what i've been taught you know but it feels like the truest thing i know ruthie you mentioned earlier this tension or i'll call it attention um this being the hardest thing you've done like going into the pain instead of just pushing it away but also how how it has been the kindest and most loving thing you've done for yourself and to back it up even further to the beginning of the conversation you were mentioning right one of the things that they noted on site which is when things are really hard for obvious reasons sometimes they're even harder because of the non-obvious reasons which is that our nervous system is remembering what something was like before so in light of all of the people who are listening who are maybe just now putting together oh this isolation is hard or not being able to see my family or not knowing what's going to happen next is is creating so much uncertainty uncertainty for me because it's reminding me of my past trauma and then hearing you say it's hard to go in but it's also the kindest thing to go in what might you say to somebody who's who's just about to start their journey or starting their journey of trying to turn towards their pain and maybe is doing it now while all of this is happening what would you want for them to know or what would you say directly to them well first piggybacking what you're saying like one of the things they taught me at onsite is when our responses to things are hysterical they're always historical um and so if we feel ourselves it feels so big and just hysterical like this is like you said an invitation and so i think first and foremost is like such gentleness and care for yourself because this is a journey and right now is heightened so you don't need to expect to come out of this like okay everything feels really chaotic and shitty and so i'm gonna do this work and come out on the other side of this and have it like that's just not that's not how it works but i think taking note of what big things are coming up but like what is this triggering and again for me writing is the is the thing that i use the most that i feel like stream of consciousness writing allows me the space to like actually see things and to start kind of with curiosity just being really curious about what things it's bringing up and just i think in a lot of ways just taking note because you know we we heal again in community and i think this is a time to like go in start noticing the things let it be an invitation and just be really really really kind and gentle with yourself because we are in the very very very very messy middle like this is just beginning like you know this isn't this is gonna be this is hard this is really really really hard so whatever you can do to be so gentle with yourself i listen to i know i mentioned it earlier but this podcast that liz gilbert did and i've been writing myself a letter from the voice of love every day and i bring up all of my fears because we can't fear's not going to just go away like kind of like you said earlier just be be in conversation and let love talk to all those things that are coming up like i've seen a lot of shadowy stuff like this morning i felt so envious of the situation and i that's not something i i i mean i have that in me but it's not something i genuinely feel all the time right and it was like i felt so jealous of this experience that this girl was having and i was like whoa wow like what hi you know like i literally was like hi old friend like wow i know you you know and i think it's it brought up just some old stories and i went and i wrote and i did this like embodiment thing and i just tried to be really really compassionate and tender because my old story would be like ew that's so gross you don't feel bad that's not okay that is not okay that's fucking gross put that away that's disgusting you love her get over it you know and so instead being really really gentle with myself and seeing this as like an opportunity to kind of be curious and go in and love on myself i think that more than anything because we're not going to just like have this all figured out you can't go sit in front of a new counselor right now you know what i mean like we we need each other to be able to process but i think what you can do is try to be so loving and so gentle and give yourself space to write out what exactly what you're feeling because every feeling matters your feelings matter and like you are given permission to feel whatever you feel like you you can't push it away if you push it away it just it comes out bigger it comes out sideways it doesn't it doesn't go away so i think just yeah compassion and being curious in this time like i'm trying to see when things are triggering like what what time frame or what where did that voice originally come from you know where did that limiting voice where did that where was the original wound and like the more i write i'm like whoa i didn't even know i remembered that like that where did that come from that's crazy you know and i'm just trying to be curious i'm trying like to tap into my childlike curiosity and go back like the cover of my phone is a photo of me at one in my office and like in front of my desk it's a picture of me at my first birthday and i'm dedicating my like embodiment practices to her i'm like trying to just really i'm every night i'm listening to an audiobook of someone's voice that and then something that feels really nourishing like someone's reading me to sleep and i'm just doing things that feel nurturing when things feel scary you know wow and i'm in this bed alone and i'm scared so what can i do for myself that feels really nurturing and loving and calming and peaceful and yeah whatever that feels like for you you know like there you know you have those answers inside of you you know everyone has those inside of them and knows what feels good for them um so i would say really be curious about that ugh you're making me weepy here i love it so good thank you for sharing that ruthie thank you all for letting me there i am the journey from hopelessness to healing comes out april 21st get it get it let her just you go you're just can't i just your house anyway yeah that's right read a book oh just this book i mean ruthie you were so gracious to me to let me read some early versions of this book before it's in its form here and gosh every time i read it it felt like i got something new out of it so this for me your book has not just been like a one-time read it's been like a every like once a quarter like once a month book like oh what do i need to remember oh yeah yeah and you have this way of inviting us into believing that the things that you know about yourself that we too could know about ourselves or do on some level already know like there is this way that you help us remember ourselves remember what's true through telling your story and i'm just i personally am so so grateful for your friendship and for your book and i feel like gosh if there has ever been a time that we have needed it it's now thank you thank you so much that means so much i'm so appreciative of both of y'all and letting me have the space to it's like oh what a gift i've loved you for so long so i'm so honored to be on this podcast that i just uh has been such medicine to me for so long so i'm so super super appreciative and for y'all's friendships and your love it just it means more than i can put into words thank you [Music] [Music]