I've got a very special episode to share with you today, and it's part of a series we're releasing called Something to Normalize. One of the reasons I've always loved the Wolf Parable is because it normalizes being human and having difficult emotions. These podcast episodes feature my partner Ginny, talking with her friend and previous guest of the show, Brandy Lust.
In these unguarded conversations, they'll be sharing their lives and perspectives as women, alongside insights from experts, researchers, and writers on topics that are hard to talk about. We tend to keep these things to ourselves, though, and when we do, it can breed a sense of being the only one, feelings of shame, or evidence we're somehow doing life wrong.
Brandy and Ginny hope that by giving voice to experiences, feelings, and thoughts we often keep to ourselves, we can create a community with less shame and a deeper sense of belonging. I am so happy to share their voices with you. I think you'll find these episodes a wonderfully nourishing and supportive addition to the regular scheduled When you feed podcast episodes, you are used to hearing here and now I'm proud to present to you Something to Normalize.
Can you believe this is finally happening?
I know it feels like it's been so many months in the planning.
It has, and I kind of can't believe how many like atomic bombs have gone off in each of our lives as the reason for this did not happen when we thought it was going to happen.
I know you're absolutely right as far as that goes. And then I think with each of those moments that we were having a crisis, the evolution of this idea and topic has just continued to come to fruition in the way that it's landed today.
So I'm excited to be here. I mean this with you, Jinny be too, Randy.
Maybe with that we should say welcome, right, So welcome everybody to the very first episode of our podcast, Something to Normalize. So I'm Jinny Gay and I'm a certified mindfulness and meditation teacher. I help people become more aware of and work skillfully with their thoughts, their emotions, their experiences so that they feel less stress and struggle and more freedom and joy and ease. Yeah, So what about you, Brandy?
I am a speaker and consultant two's worked for myself for the last eight years and primarily worked with organizations and nonprofit and businesses and a lot of schools to really focus on how to build cultures of well being and think about well being as more of a collective enterprise as opposed to individual activities. So, yeah, I wonder if it makes sense to touch on like why we even thought of doing this in the first place, before we dive into like what does it mean to normalize something?
Yeah, I mean I can start by just talking about the moment that I think, God, yeah, yeah, and yeah.
So we were meeting.
For a walk next to a river that goes through the city that we both live in, and we had only briefly met through Eric, and I was excited to meet you, and it just so happened you were talking with those atomic bombs that like go off in our lives, and one had just happened to me, like right before we'd met. And so I think we just dropped into this really vulnerable place very very quickly, and.
Both felt really connected to each other.
And I felt like you understood something in that moment that helped me to feel less alone, and I feel like that depth of connection and that depth of vulnerability has really sustained itself over the course of us knowing one another. And we almost immediately started talking about doing something together. And this idea, I think was one of a couple of iterations and it's the one that really
landed inside of us. And throughout all of the last few months of different life experiences coming into play, we would sort of revisit and think about timing, and now on this day, it's arrived.
Here, we are, here, we are so we are friends, and we were fast friends, Like you're right, Circumstances just sort of opened both of us up and we connected and what a gift and treasure that felt, like I know we've talked about for both of us, like this just doesn't happen so often in life, especially the older you get, I feel like sometimes that's a little less common. So I remember when we were on the phone one day and you were like, I know what we need
to do. You were like, we need to do a podcast, And it made perfect sense to me for so many reasons, but most of which like neither one of us have a problem a talking be talking to each other or see being like kind of constantly curious about ourselves and life, so like, yes, yes we absolutely should. So here we are okay, And normalizing things is kind of the place we thought we might start because it's such a powerful
phenomenon to normalize something for somebody. So maybe now it makes sense to sort of dive into that a little bit about what exactly do we mean when we say something to normalize or normalizing something. I mean, we can look at it from a couple of different angles. I mean, maybe just to start with our home base, like what we mean when we say normalize, we talk about really just naming an experience or a situation, right and acknowledging
it as real. And that's really so much of the power of naming something is saying like, this is a real thing, and also then to accept it as just another part of our human experience, right, rather than evidence that we are bad or we're doing life wrong, or we're the only ones that have ever had this experience or situation or thought or whatever. You know, that could be so isolating and so shame inducing when we don't
normalize things that are pretty darn human. And you and I, Brandy kind of came around to like, that's what we mean, but what do others mean?
Yeah, just to build on what you said before, I talk about some of the definitions and history of this
term normalizing. I just wanted to mention that I think at the root of the work that I do professionally, but then also at the center of so many of our conversations is the idea of a common humanity intervention and that concept of having the moment where we look around and see that we're not the only one, and how incredibly healing that can be, and that so oftentimes when we're experiencing that sense of shame or that sense of alienation, it just takes one conversation of someone saying,
I understand I've been through something similar, and that conversation can really open us up to accepting parts of ourselves that previously felt like they had no place in the world or even inside of ourselves. And so, yeah, I think that you and I have this common understanding of the word. But I thought it was really interesting when
I looked up the dictionary definition of this word. There are a number of different ways of interpreting this, and the first primary definition is to make something conform to or reduce something to a norm or standard. So I think that's really interesting because for me, what I hear when I read that definition is like something getting small or like forcing something into a box, like this is where it fits. So is there anything else that comes up for you around that first definition?
Yeah, and that I don't like that.
I don't like that because to me, normalizing is like expansive and like expanding out into connection as opposed to like being authentic and like let our experience be what it is rather than try to fit it into something.
Eh, And I like it.
Yeah, So that's the first definition.
The second definition is to bring or restore to a normal condition. And so I love the word restore and this because I think there's something about again, like bringing in parts of ourselves, parts of other people into belonging or acceptance that's really important.
Then we have this term normal.
Condition, and I feel like that is so confusing. So we'll talk more about what normal actually means. But I'll pad there and see if you have any responses to this.
Yeah. Yeah, normal is like a loaded word, right because it bears some unpacking and also like clarifying based on how you intend that word to be sent. Out of your mouth. But I might look at that definition and go, you know, restoring it to a normal condition can feel healing if the word normal refers to something that is very often experienced by human beings because they are human beings, you know, just a very human experience, right, So that
can feel healing. And that's how I'm going to choose to hear that, because another interpretation might not.
But what do you think?
Yeah, well, I love what you just said, and what it made me think of is replacing the word normal with the word wholeness or normal condition with the word wholeness. So to bring or restore to wholeness I think has more of a resonance for me.
I love it.
If I were to rephrase that for our own purposes, love it. And then the last definition is to allow or encourage something considered extreme or taboo to be viewed as normal.
We did not make that up, was that addiction definition?
This is a dictionary definition to allow or encourage something considered extreme or taboo to become viewed as normal.
I kind of like that one. How does that one land on you?
Yeah, well, you know it's so interesting. I think the word extreme doesn't completely land for me, and there's such a depth and a threat to human experience that I think that viewing something as extreme doesn't always completely fit. But I do think that this fits most with the ways that we've been talking about normalizing, which is to take something that maybe doesn't completely fit into our mold
of how we talk to one another. I should say something that doesn't completely fit into the ways that we accept or don't accept things in society, and then you know, allowing space for those things.
Yeah, you know, it's occurred to me. Is initially the way I heard that, I read that was to allow or encourage something E as an individual might consider extreme about myself or taboo about myself to become viewed by myself and great if you know, also by others as normal, you know, or yeah, so maybe less about what others think and more about what I'm secretly thinking about myself that this is too extreme, I don't really know.
Yeah, I love that. I love that.
As a reframing, those are the dictionary definitions of this word normalized. We've talked about what we mean by this term. I also want to talk about normalizing as a process, and this was really interesting to me. So there are a couple of researchers, Adam Beher and Joshua Nobe, and they talk about normalizing as a process that is part descriptive and part descriptive. So I'll say that again, normalizing is part prescriptive and part descriptive. So the prescriptive part is really.
About what our ideals are.
So it's really about saying, this is the ideal of this thing, or this is the perfect version of this thing. So an example that they gave is the ideal version of a grandma, and anyone who has a daughter or son who has a child is technically a grandma. However, when we think of what a grandma is ideally quote unquote in our societ, you know, it's a friendly, warm, cookie baking, older woman with gray hair who really has a lot of wisdom for us. And there are all
of these connotations of that. And so that's the prescriptive aspect, and then the other aspect is descriptive. So it's really looking at what is the average of this particular thing, what is it that most people think or feel or experience about this thing. And so what we don't realize is that when we're talking about normalizing without even being
cognizant of it. What we're doing is we're taking the prescriptive and the descriptive and we're kind of smushing them together, and that's how we come up with what feels quote
unquote normal to us. And so I thought that was incredibly fascinating because then we can begin to think about what are the ideals in our society that we uphold, and then also thinking about what do we assume as the average, And sometimes the assumptions that we're making aren't necessary rely the truth or the actual averages don't reflect what we think should be happening. And so those are
some really interesting circumstances. And an example that they gave of that is the average number of hours that people watch television, and so they asked, what do you think is normal a normal amount of television to watch? And people, for that particular question leaned more toward less television than what was average because they saw that as the ideal. And so there are lots of ways that these concepts interplay with one another.
So what do you think about that, Jinny.
Oh, that's so interesting. That last part especially kind of hit me because I think it shows how skewed our assumptions and projections often are about what an ideal is, or what normal is, or what good looks like or you know, it's often so convoluted by so many different variables, yet it so often can play a role in then how we compare ourselves as well, how to do we fit or do we not fit? Are we good enough?
Are we not good enough? And it's all just this like fabrication, you know, from a bit of a faulty operating system in that regard.
Yeah, so that's so interesting.
Yeah, I think this really leads into this piece about why this is an important concept. And there's a quote that I want to share with you, and this quote is from an article in The New Yorker. It says, what we think of as normal shapes our field of vision. It tells a story of the world and its possibilities.
To let that land for a second. That's huge. I think that's so powerful. It tells a story of the world and its possibilities, not only the world, but our own world, our own internal world. How we experience the world and its possibilities, like what is possible, what is permissible, what is allowed, and what is shut down. So I think that obviously it's a loaded gun, and it can be a powerfully good thing to explore, examine, claim you discover for yourself and begin to connect and share with
one another you know what our experiences are. But it can also be a really harmful thing, don't you think?
Yeah? I do.
It's really interesting because one of the things that I read about was that the term normalized gained a huge amount of popularity in twenty sixteen, right around twenty sixteen during the presidential campaigns, and it was incredibly popular, particularly with liberal folks, to talk about what we shouldn't allow
to be normalized. And so I think that when you were talking about how this is such a powerful idea, like this quote, that it shapes our field of vision and what's possible, what's acceptable, that was a time in American history where a lot of norms of what was acceptable in public discourse started to be broken, and what was acceptable from public leaders really began to change, and folks sort of had this I guess mantra of don't normalize this, don't make this the new normal for how
public dialogue operates. And so that's an example of like when normalizing something can be really destructive really harmful.
Yeah, because in so doing, you almost desensitize yourself to the shock and offense of things that are harmful if you give it permission to exist as this common human experience that we ought to just sort of allow and almost embrace. Right, So some discernment is I think important here.
Yeah, the term desensitized really resonated with me when you said that. Like, I think that in our society there are a lot of things that we've become very desensitized to and we don't even realize the impact that it has on us.
And so I'm thinking about a friend.
Who really loves and has experienced and had a lot of pleasure in listening to true crime podcasts and watching true crime shows and really just immersing themselves in this world of violence to an agree, and I think so
many of us do this. And so we had talked about monitoring the consumption of just different media and how that might be impacting her, particularly because she was struggling with some depression and anxiety, and certainly that was not at all the only factor by any means, but she decided to sort of play around with that a little bit and see how it affected her, and we had
a conversation just the other day. She's been practicing this for a couple of months, and she was talking about how she had become much more sensitized to violence and she had found that now there were things that she wasn't able to watch for would have felt like no big deal to her, And I thought that was incredibly interesting. So sometimes there is this piece about normalizing something where we're desensitizing ourselves to things that are really profoundly impactful.
Yeah, yeah, as you're describing like that doesn't surprise me at all as I think about it when you're talking about your friend. I mean, I just think this whole topic requires some care and some checking in with where things are coming from as we bring them up to talk about through the lens of normalizing. Absolutely what else is kind of coming up for me as we're just exploring this terrain of like when it can be kind
of harmful or really harmful. Is sometimes for me the fear of either me normalizing something that's in my experience that I might feel shame about. Is that shame because without me realizing it, like it's something that can be harmful to others or myself, Right, Like I don't know that, and so am I afraid that I'll get backlash highlighting that, which then causes me to anticipate the shame I'll feel, which then causes me to not even bring it up
in the first place. So I think there's a degree of like vulnerability that's required, a degree of humility, you know, that's required, and giving one another at least in this container, we're in the benefit of the doubt and the grace to learn where we need to learn, you know, and also like love one another in our attempt to grow in these directions.
You know, I love that container setting that you're doing right now.
I absolutely love it.
Is that what I'm doing I didn't know. Yeah, Yeah, what I.
Hear you doing is like speaking to us, the two of us, but also speaking to the community that we want to build and thinking about grace and learn, room to make mistakes and to grow together and to know that all of that is okay, Yeah, that that's actually welcome. And so we can have these conversations and do so with kindness, with the recognition that every person is coming with a different set of life experiences, a different set of skills, and we can meet one another where we are, yeah,
so that we can grow together. And I think ultimately this word is going to come up a lot that discernment process of is this thing inside of me something that I really need to examine and have some deep work around, because the shame is coming from perhaps a place of genuine discernment around something being harmful to someone else for example, versus you know, the discernment of here's a part of myself that I've become to believe I should be ashamed of, but really is just a piece
of myself that needs some love. And maybe there's no difference between those two things. Maybe these are all just parts of ourselves that need a little bit of love.
And so I think in.
This space of creating a container where we can really begin to normalize the parts of ourselves that need to come to the surface, then maybe don't always get as
much love and attention because they aren't as pretty. We can do that with a sense of hope, and that really I think is important because there are this is certainly dicey territory and mistakes will be made, but having these conversations can actually lead to a different perspective on our field division, you know, our field division can change when we examine what's normal, right, And so I think a really wonderful example of that in our society is
the incredible expansion of sexuality and gender that we have seen over certainly many many years, but especially over the last couple of years. And you know, not to say that any of these possibilities for self definition are new. All of these possibilities for self definition in regards to sexuality and gender have always been.
But this new era.
Of naming and allowing these identities to be recognized, to be accepted, to change our lexicon in ways that are more inclusive, to change what's in the media that we consume to be more representative. All of that changes happens so quickly, and I think that's a really beautiful example of something that's been normalized. And it's so hopeful to see that.
Yeah, it's so hopeful. And the last thing I'll say is, I think we grow in connection as we restore connection within ourselves and as we build connection with one another. You know, that's how we grow. So I hope through this podcast that I will continue to lean into the connection of sharing this with you and the folks that are listening. Whatever that experience is that I want to
share with everybody that I've had. In fact, maybe this is a good time to mention that, like, our intention with this podcast is to take on more topics than just the topic of normalizing. We want to actually apply the topic of normalizing two other topics that seem you know, relevant and important at least for starters to the two
of us. Right, So, yeah, grief is one that we're going to be diving into, and we're going to be sharing a bit from not only our experience with grief personally, but also you know, other voices that we think have interesting and important things to say on the topic. I mean, we have a smattering and we have a list of topics we'd like to sort of bring up for discussion.
But yeah, we're going to start this episode as we are already thirty minutes into it, but we're going to start through just exploring this topic of normalizing.
Yeah, and I think now is a really good time to transition into our own stories with this topic. You know, we can begin to dive into maybe the times when we've taken.
Our risk to say something.
Out loud, and saying that thing out loud was hard and it can have a whole range of of results, and so I'd love to.
Hear from you, Jinny, on an experience that you've had.
I was just about to say, Brandy, you don't have any of those, do you? You have none of those experiences?
Right?
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So, Janny, I feel like you will have a lot to say about this idea of the risks we take when we're trying to normalize something. I feel like something you're really passionate about is the experience of shame and how it influences us and the ways that it can sort of stop us from moving forward. So I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about that.
There are perceived and real risks, right with stepping out and being vulnerable and sharing our experiences in hopes of connection and better understanding. Right, so, there are certainly inherent risks,
and we can explore those. I mean, I think I might want to back up and say, like, first, there are the inherent perceived risks of like embarrassment, which leads to this idea of shame and judgment and criticism both from others and from ourselves on our inner world, and that can just lead us to not speak up and things don't get normalized. So there's a risk when we don't normalize something or attempt to speak up about something.
I mean, I think when we don't speak up with someone else about what's going on in our inner world. Or a world with other people. Is we tend to suffer when we think we're the only one who's experienced or is experiencing a certain thing. You know, I think we can find tremendous healing and freedom in connection and community with others. But when we don't speak up, when we don't give voice to what's going on inside of us, that is the breeding ground of shame. Right, Shame thrives
on secrecy, It thrives on not being spoken. In fact, if you think of something that you are the most ashamed of about yourself, you almost can't think about it much less ever say it right like. It's the thing that can't be spoken. That's how you know it's the shamiest thing. So then the antidote to shame is talking about it, of course, you know, if it's a very vulnerable spot, you know, finding a person you feel safe talking about it with, you don't want to just as
my mother would say, cast your pearls among swine. You know, if that's a terrible saying, I guess no, day like, it just doesn't sound very politically correct for whatever reason, but that's what you would say. But you just want to use some discernment with who you talk to. Right, But once we speak about our shame, it loses its power. The shame begins to melt away. So I think of normalizing as the antidote to shame and self hatred. And I'm not the only one. So Brene Brown, the Great,
the brilliant, the beloved Brene Brown says this. She says, I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. Something we've experienced, done or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection. So this terrible lie that shame tells us cuts us off from connection and love and belonging. And the antidote to it is speaking up right.
So when we realize that something we've experienced, done, or failed to do is not a personal flaw or evidence that we're inherently bad or doing life wrong, but rather it's a common human experience, you know, shame is lifted, right, connection is restored, and we feel more free to grow beyond what has previously kept us really small and stuck. So that's some of the risk of not taking the risk of speaking right. Yeah, But when it comes to
your experience. Yeah, have there been times when you tried to normalize something and maybe it didn't go as planned or it didn't go very well.
Yeah, So the very beginning of working for myself began with this idea of trying to make something normal that wasn't normal at the time.
I want to begin by saying I have never.
Told this story publicly before because I was embarrassed when it happened, because I felt like I really undermined my credibility to do the work that I had been doing and then continued to do after the circumstance happened. So little bit of background. I was a high school English teacher for a long time.
I think it was.
Something around eight years, and the last couple of years that I was in public schools, I transitioned from this role of being a classroom teacher to being what's called
an instructional coach. And essentially what that means is that I was kind of a teacher of teachers to some extent, like I would provide professional development experiences for teachers another way of saying that as learning opportunities, and then I would also work with teachers one on one in their classroom and help them to implement new strategies and try some new things, and they were open to it, I may give them some feedback. And this transition happened in a time in my life that.
Was just completely unmooring.
So the same time that I accepted this new job, I started really struggling in my marriage, and we went into therapy together, and I was having an emotional affair with someone at work. My grandma, who I had been close with my entire life and lived with while I was in college, started dying of the cancer that she'd lived with for over a decade, and during that two
year time period passed away. So all of these things were happening during this two year window, and it became very clear that for many reasons, I needed to leave my job and go.
Do something else. So in the process of.
This, I had reached out to someone that I'd worked with in a professional development program at a local university, and the program was really for educators who wanted to write themselves, and so I asked her to write me a letter of recommendation because I was going to go to grad school for counseling, and she happily agreed to do that, and the reconnection point really facilitated a conversation around me becoming part of a project that she was
working on. And so this project was an extension of the program in the university, and we were going to write a book for teachers by teachers, just talking about the experience of being an educator. So one of the things that people who aren't in education may not know about education is that it really has this history of being restrictive in the ways that you're allowed to share
personal content. And so if you have ever posted about drinking or smoking or any of these things, like literally when you apply for a job, if they were to find something like that, they would make sure that you took it down before you would step foot in a classroom. Like that's not an unusual circumstance. There are some teachers who don't live in the communities that they teach in because people can be judgmental. Some people don't want to be seen having a drink in a bar because a
student might see them. And a lot of this is really based upon the history of education as a primarily female enterprise and women as moral pillars in the community, and so there's all of this stuff in educational communities about showing up as we really are, and so this
was something that I wanted to begin to normalize. And as I was working on this book chapter and talking about some of the things that I had been through, I also decided that there were many other people like myself who were struggling personally and professionally at the same time, and I was seeing that, and so I wanted to offer something to them, and so I offered a series of mindfulness based workshops and invited anyone who wanted to attend to come to these workshops, and it ended up
being a really gorgeous experience where I had these rooms full of full of people, maybe ten folks who had showed up to really be themselves and to see themselves not just through the window of their profession at work, but being at work as human beings and talking about things that human beings go through. So it was really influential for them, it was very influential for me. And I wrote this chapter based upon my experience of running these workshops and these tools out myself and shared in
a really vulnerable and meaningful way. And so I remember the day that I got a call from the editor.
After this project had completed.
I was standing outside of my son's elementary school classroom and I got a call from her, and immediately her tone was just so apologetic and sad, and she said, I'm really sorry, Brandy, but the folks above me in this program said that we cannot publish this book chapter because it puts you at professional risk for sharing that these things had happened, for sharing the fact that you know, I had had an emotional affair, or that I had drank too much while I was depressed, that I ended
up going to therapy, Like saying these things out loud, they felt actually put my professional reputation at risk. And they also said that they did not think I was qualified to do the work that I was doing, and they thought it put me and the school that I worked at a risk.
Ugh. Yeah, it was. I mean it was.
Such a blow because I had just started this business and I really was already feeling like can I do this thing that I think that I can do? And I just started to reevaluate everything, and it really made me question myself and wonder if I was going to be able to do it, if I was allowed to do it. It made me deeply insecure, I would say, and really shame filled.
You were hoping to get I'm sure support for doing a brief thing that was healing, yeah, and broad about connection, and yet you were met with the establishment's mantra of why this isn't done exactly exactly.
And so it's really interesting to think back because the story that I just shared with you, that I wasn't allowed to write in a book is the same story that I tell at the beginning of almost every single speaking engagement that I have good for you. And so I've shared this perspective in school buildings across the country with thousands of educators and universally. There is just this sense of relief when people have that moment of yeah,
I've experienced something like that too. I actually when I tell this story of the experience of going through such a difficult time while also being an educator, When I tell that story to folks at the end, I ask them how many of you can relate to some part of what I've shared, and I ask them to bravely raise their hand if they feel comfortable to do so, and then look around the room, and it's incredibly powerful to just see, you know, hundreds of hands raised and
people just looking at one another and knowing like.
Yeah, this is part of it.
This is just part of the human experience. And so it went from a situation where I wanted people to be at a certain point and that community just wasn't And so I think that gets into this idea of you talked about the risks of not taking the risk, there is also a risk to doing the thing. There's a risk that the community that you're in may not be your people, and that can be really hard.
You said it was a blow, and it sounds like one. And so did you initially have the experience, Wow, my community is not ready for me, and or did you also initially have the experience of like, I am bad or I've done something bad? Right, this is not something I should have done. How did that land?
Yeah, well, it's really interesting because I remember in the conversation with this woman and I still think of her as a wonderful mentor in this conversation with her, I said, let's call her Mary. Mary, this is exactly what I was writing about, Like, this is so ironic, and she just said, I know, you know, And so immediately I did have this sense of just the irony of the situation.
But I also remember, and.
This is so embarrassing, but it just so happened that someone else was standing there was like a little playground right outside of elementary school, and parents would stand there kind of like you know, as kids were going into school, and then a little bit afterward and just in this place of deep insecurity talking to another parent who was a professional psychologist and essentially asking them for permission and like being really kind of awkward about it because I
was seeking that validation. I think that's what these situations can really do. When we're feeling really torn down about who we are and was this okay? We start looking outside of ourselves for validation.
Was this okay? Was this okay? Was this okay? And I think that.
That was just where I was in my development with this particular issue. I wasn't secure enough in myself yet to sort of stand up and say, you know what, I have every right to share this content. It's really interesting because the credential that this organization thought that I needed to have was actually a master's in counseling or some sort of social work counseling. I guess that kind of area and I was actually starting a program that next year to get a.
Master's in counseling.
In the year that I spent in the program, which I didn't end up finishing, I didn't learn anything about mindfulness based tools or even positive psychology in the application of those tools. I had a professor that told me that they thought psycho education, which is the category that he put my work in, he essentially told me he thought it was bullshit. So even that community was not really interested in the particular thing that I was doing.
So it's just the perceptions that people have, and I wonder probably there are lots of communities.
That are like this. I know myself that education.
Is one of those communities where the credential, the piece of paper, the next class, the next training, all of that is highly emphasized, and I think it can really lead to a sense of inadequacy, like never good enough to really, you know, do the thing that we're already doing and doing so well. And I think so many people have that sense of it too, like I'm not trusted to just do this thing that I've been doing for so long and just do it well, you.
Know, absolutely, I think what you did was so wise, which is to connect with like a mentor someone who you know to be a bit of a touchstone and in line with your values and who you hope to grow into being, and like you had a bit of a check in around that based on you know, hay, I was met with this response, had some guidance on navigating that from somebody you really trusted, so that you could stay true to like your values in your voice.
Yes, definitely with a woman that I had the first conversation with.
Yeah, the woman, Yeah, like I.
Said, we'll call her Mary. Yes, the second conversation I had. I think that person was like not talking about that for me. Yes, not that one, Not that one. Yeah, the first one, Mary, for sure, not the second one.
Not the second one. That's so interesting. I was in the pharmaceutical industry for thirteen years and very often, especially with the last company I worked for, feeling like I was just a square peg in a round hole, like I just didn't fit in. The things that I did from a place of like either wanting to normalize or empower were often met by the systems of power with a lot of like just shut it down, but anyway, potentially more on that another time. Yeah, I think you're
touching into one of our favorite topics. Yeah, this could be a little bit of a teaser for a later but certainly the power of the patriarchy and what it means to be a woman within the structures of a system that's very male dominated and just.
Has that ethos and that energy. So we'll definitely have to talk more about that later.
Yes, yes, stay tuned for more on that. All right, So, how is the idea of normalizing showing up in your life right now? I'm curious to know. Yeah, something we haven't necessarily talked about in the last month or so.
So there are a couple of things that I think come to mind when I think of this idea of normalizing.
One of the pieces that I would want to bring into the conversation is working at the edge of what it means for me as a highly sensitive person in a world where the structures in place are not intended to create a sense of safety and are really built around maintaining power, and those who have power really just holding onto that very tightly and not really allowing the voices of folks to aren't having the best experience inside
of that system. I think that as a highly sensitive person, I get an intuitive sense sometimes of whether a container is safe or isn't safe, and then that can't evoke really strong feelings for me, feelings that something needs to be done to try to create change.
And none of that is.
Easy, but it is also I'm recognizing a little bit of my own superpower to be able to walk into a container, and by container, I just mean a space that's intended to be held for a specific purpose. And then like sit with the sensations of things just being
a little off and knowing what those are. But then when it comes down to human dignity and humanity, allowing myself as that sensitive person to say what needs to be said and not really worry about what others say in response, because I think oftentimes the response in those situations can be very gaslighting. It's sort of like, what are you talking about? That's not how things are, and so so, working at that edge, I think I'm trying to radically accept those parts of myself that have not
always been easy. Another way that it's showing up in my life right now is creating those same really safe spaces for others to be radically honest about who they are. I actually host an event series here in Columbus. It's a monthly breakfast lecture series called Creative Mornings, and during our last event, this gentleman raised his hand after the speaker, and honestly, I have to say that he fit the stereotype of someone that I wouldn't have expected to be vulnerable,
and that's my own stuff. You know, he was someone in his forties, you know, looked a little bit like a business d type of person, and what came out of his mouth just really surprised me and made me kind of question my own, I guess, perceptions of what's
normal to use that term. And he shared how he had just moved to city three years ago, which, of course the connotations of that are that we've been in a pandemic for three years, and that he'd been telling himself that home was inside of himself, and that he realized during this event that he's been lying and that he felt a sense of home for the first time in a long time being in this community. And it was very emotional and the community just really lifted this
person up and was really present for him. But you know, he showed up exactly as he was, exactly as he was on that day, and I was just profoundly touched by that. It was incredibly brave and just an example of that radical transparency, self acceptance, honesty that I want for myself and that I want to build in the community just that I serve. So that's how normalizing is showing up in my life right now.
How about you, Jenny.
For me, the most recent example that popped into mind was around the topic of grief. So not to take too much from the episode that is to come on that, but there's one example that I thought i'd share. So, my mom passed away from a long battle with Alzheimer's back in October, and so as her primary caretaker, I've been, you know, on that journey with her since diagnosis and
with her, you know, physically most of the time. So there's a part of grief that, you know, I've been grieving the loss of her little by little as this disease took her from us, you know, little by little, and then her death of course, but for me ended up being the hardest years, which were like the first three or four actually I can remember when I was with her. It was acutely hard and acutely sad, and
all consuming for me. It was really hard for me to do anything when we were in Atlanta with her other than a ten to her, you know. I just didn't have the bandwidth for much else. And then we would go back to Ohio and I would return to like a cadence of day to day life and attending to life and work, and I remember feeling like those were moments where I could have a respite from the weight of what's going on and elsewhere, and over time when I felt that division in my experience and I
just felt so distant from my grief. When I was in Ohio, very often I looked forward to going to Ohio where I had some space, and I just remember like, as I was experiencing that, what I thought or I feared was that I somehow was like not integrated in my experience. I was like really compartmentalizing and almost felt guilty for like the ability to go have a life somewhere else while she was suffering so mightily under the
weight of everything here Atlanta. And I had some judgment on myself around that, although I didn't know how else to navigate the situation that I was in in life, you know, So then I was reading this book. I'm reading I am reading this book on grief, and it's a book called The After Grief by Hope Edelman. And anyway, she says, there's this idea of very normal experience that
people have called grief dosing. And she describes it as moving back and forth between periods of acute emotional distress and periods of focusing on practical restorative tasks, so it's like loss oriented versus restoration oriented. States that this actually resembles an organic pattern of like emotional or self regulation. And so when I read that, I immediately thought about this three or four year period and what I was
actually doing was like grief dosing. And I was fortunate enough to have an actual like place to go that was separate from her. That's not a privilege that many people have, but I was four enough to have this, and it gave me a time to restore and rejuvenate and then dive back in. It turned out to actually be a really like supportive healing thing to do along
the way. All my judgment on myself all of a sudden was like kind of patting myself on the back, like, yeah, turns out you navigated that pretty well.
You know.
But Hope goes on to say about this idea of normalizing, and she's talking about it through the lens of grief, but I think it broadly applies, she says. When my lived experience didn't mirror the path I'd been told that normal grieving people should take, I assumed the failure was mine. I never considered that the definition of normal might be flawed. Yeah, so I did not have a role model for someone that was in any kind of similar position I was
in at the time. I just had what was happening in front of me and inside of me, and so I guess I thought, if you love your mother and you're sad that she's dying or has died, then you can't pull yourself off the floor, and you can't pull yourself out of grief, and you're going to be sad for years. I mean, that was just the idea I had. I don't know. So the other thing I thought was like, well, maybe I don't really love my mother as much as
I thought I did. Like shoot, you know, because I'm able to pull myself out of it when we go to Ohio. So more on that later actually, But that's how it's kind of showing up for me right now.
Wow, Yeah, it's really interesting. A couple of things that came up when I heard you talking, and one of them is, like you had said, the skillfulness how you were engaging in that way, and that your body actually
just knew how to do that. I'm trained in sematic work, and there's this concept called titration where you actually navigate in your inner experience between a place that feels really safe and comfortable for you and then a place that maybe feels uncomfortable or a little higher risk, or there's some physical manifestation of discomfort there.
And so an.
Example might be, let's say someone is experiencing a lot of anxiety in their stomach and they're trying to really get away from that anxiety. It's the anxiety is creating anxiety, right, the desire to escape. So you know, you can navigate, for example, to your hand touching something soft and really feel into those sensations of the softness and the contrast of any temperature that might be there, and those experiences might be pleasurable or neutral, and then you can slowly
dip into Okay, now, how's the anxiety feeling. What's the impact of that and then navigate back to the part that feels comfortable. And so that actually is a skill for building resilience and being with difficult experiences. So you were building your resilience while you were dipping in and out of that space of grief.
So I thought that was really beautiful.
And you know, when we talk about grief, I think one of the things that we're going to need to talk about is pets. Because I have been following a local Columbus woman. Her name is Ali and was a photographer here locally but now works with a lot of small businesses and Ellie Layman, I should say that's her last name. She's been very public about the grief that
she's experienced from losing her pet of thirteen years. And one of the things that I thought she said that was really interesting because she also talked a lot about the death of a grandparent that she had, and she said, the death of losing a put is so immediate because it's so daily, it's so moment to moment. It's like losing a part of yourself. And so I think that there's a lot of grief that we don't acknowledge as
being significant or real. So I just love that you have brought your experience to the table and really shared this piece that was important for you and your own survival and resilience, and how that was reframed from something that actually at one point created shame.
You know. That's so powerful. Yeah.
Yeah, Whenever I would come back to Columbus and people would ask how I'm doing, I had to like explain or like justify why at this moment I wasn't actively weeping, you know what I mean. I promise you I'm sad, but like at this very moment, you know, I can't live like that. I have to like survive and do life. So I'm okay, But yeah, we should absolutely talk about
the grief of pets. In fact, but my heart just like clenches when you say that, because our two little doggies that are thirteen and I'm just like living in some anticipatory grief of them passing. But more on that later.
Yeah, it's interesting because I hadn't even thought about on the one you feed. I always hear Eric talking. That's something that he brings up a lot, is grief from the loss of pets. So yeah, yeah, you know, themes, lots of little threads that we can pull on.
This past Saturday, I don't know that I've mentioned this, but we drove from Ohio to Atlanta, a nine hour track and got in at seven pm and realized that I needed to take Lola to the twenty four hour vet room because she had what we thought was a UTI, like pretty obvious in all the signs, and like they came on all of a sudden. They were really intense,
and so I drove her down there. You know, it was a long night of like tests and stuff, but I mean I just had that sense of, like, please God, let it just be a UTI that a round of antibiotics can address, you know. I mean, we love our lits so much. Turns out it was, which is glorious. Yeah, so that's really good. But now we have two dogs and diapers in our house. Oh and it's yeah, it's quite a place to be with us right now. I digress, I digress.
Yeah, So, as we're nearing the end of our conversation, I wanted to ask the question, are there other voices that have impacted your perspective on this topic or just other voices you want to bring into the space to honor them or give a moment to appreciate.
So glad you asked there is. There are a couple, actually, but I think the one I'll focus on right now is so as a mindfulness teacher, that's my practice. My daily practice is around mindfulness, mindfulness, meditation. But it's the
lens through which I experience life. And Joseph Goldstein is a teacher, a really revered teacher in this space, who's written a book called Mindfulness, and one thing he points to is this phenomenon that tends to be a This is how I guess Buddhist would say it, but that all things arise when the conditions, when the appropriate conditions are present, and all things pass away as conditions change.
I love that in particular because I think it speaks to sort of anyone being capable of anything given certain conditions, the appropriate conditions.
Right.
It's less personal when we realize that there are reasons, there are contributing factors to the thoughts we think, the emotions we feel, and that making it less personal to me causes me to be able to to examine it closer without a lot of moral judgment getting in the way. Here's just a quick example. So when I learned about what Buddhists will call the five hindrances to mindfulness, which our desire aversion the sexily named sloth and torpor, of restlessness,
and worry and doubt. So these are things that literally we will all face, and people have faced since they started meditating centuries ago. When we learn about them, then we can expect them and we can skillfully navigate them. Instead of experiencing them and interpreting it as well, I get so restless and distracted that that just means I
can't meditate. Meditation's not for me right. Actually, know what you're encountering is absolutely inevitable, and here through the centuries are the ways that we've learned to navigate this skillfully, so we can stick with it instead of saying, like, this is my restlessness that's coming up. It's just relessness. It's just what happens to us, and we know how to meet it. So that's one example that's a little
bit from another context. But I think for me, I see a connection in that human experience, the fact that there are reasons in contributing factors to the experiences we have, and by connecting with others we can learn how to navigate things skillfully. So I'll just pause there for a second and see kind of what's coming up for you.
I love Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzburg and all of the folks at the Insight Meditation Society, and I actually had the opportunity to, over the course of the pandemic, do a silent retreat, an at home retreat with the two of them. And I feel like I didn't know as much of Joseph's work, but getting immersed and hearing him speak about these things was just really incredible.
And I think that's all to say.
I think that we really need to talk about retreats and silent retreats, yeah, because it is so interesting the responses that people have, Yeah, when I tell them about this thing that ideal but something that I wanted to share that came up for me while you were sharing these sentiments that are so I think powerful and really the foundations for mindfulness meditation practice is that on retreat and I cannot remember which teacher this was, but one of the teachers that I had would say that, like
all of our inner experiences are just nature, Like it's just nature coming through. And so I think that going back to the idea of normalizing. If normal is the natural state, if we want to use that as a term that we can play around with, because I think that that's one of the beautiful things about language is that it does kind of evolve with us and can
mean different things at different times. But if we're going to use that as an example of what this could mean, then nature is our natural state.
I love that.
It is just to what we are.
You're part of it and it's part of us, and so I think that speaks to what you're describing. Everything has a cause and effect and a consequence and we're all just natured unfolding moment to moment, right.
Yes, yes, it's so beautiful. I love that. Oh my gosh.
Yes.
My teacher, Martin Illward, he says, like, I'm never surprised by my thoughts. I mean, like I can think anything, any kind of thoughts can pop into my head, Like with the right conditions, anything can pop up there. I'm never shocked. I'm never surprised.
I mean.
And what I think he's saying with that, it's like I don't take them too personally, like because I got that that means I am or you know, and so I appreciate that freedom to just be like, look at that, you know, I'm just, yeah, an animal doing its thing.
My very first retreat was so awful.
It was a ten day retreat and the that was your first one, Yeah, with Gowinka is the teacher. And so for anyone who knows anything about retreats, they're quite intensive.
Yeah. I can't remember exactly how many.
Let's say, like twelve to fourteen hours of meditation a day, three hours a day where you're supposed to try to not move at all while you're sitting. Only two meals a day, yeah, so you don't have dinner. It's just a very highly structured system. I've only ever done it once. It just wasn't my jam. Yeah, but kind of along the lines of what you're saying about thoughts and how
they just pop up. Had two roommates, but one that I had gotten to know a little bit before we went to silence, because you have twenty four hours or something like that before you kind of dive into the silence, and we'd chatted before, and so then ten days later when we got to regroup, she told me this story about sitting outside in this freezing cold. I think it was February and a Midwest state and so just completely freezing.
And she said to you, was sitting on this bench looking out at this like frozen lake, and in her head her first thought was, well, this is actually kind of pretty.
And she said in a completely different voice.
This voice just came in and said desolate a f but without the app like saying it all out loud.
And she said she just sat there and thought, huh, okay, that's sure where that came from. Exactly exactly. They're just the most random, uncontrollable things, right, yeah, yeah, try try to control your thoughts, like, good luck with that.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I think we are coming to the end and a question that I love to use for reflecting upon an experience, and feel free to.
I love when you use this question, use it, say it, lay it on me, Okay, I love it.
Feel free to take your time with us and really kind of settle in and see what comes up for you.
But my question is what's alive for you right now? Jenny? It's feeling alive, okay.
So I'm feeling a lot of gratitude for the last hour or so that we've been able to have this conversation. I'm feeling grateful for our friendship and our connection and for our showing up and doing this thing that we've been wanting to do for a while. I'm also feeling my inner critic popping up, going like, oh, you know, you explored things too philosophically, it was your bored people to death, Like you know, who's going to come back for more after this. I'm just noticing that, I'm noticing it.
I'm also noticing how much I love this. I love being able to explore this idea and the ideas to come like with you in this forum. Also, what else is alive for me is I guess just the insecurity and nerves around hoping that what we're saying connects with people in a way that we hope it will, And for me, that hope is in a way that feels healing and enjoyable, you know. I just I hope that that is how it lands, and I hope people join us for future conversations. So I'm just feeling all kinds
of things alive in me right now. What's alive for you right now?
It's interesting because we've had so many conversations, and I think that feels very alive for me right now, I'm thinking of all of the moments leading to this, for example, and this has popped into my head for probably three or four times in the last hour that we've been
sitting together. But I'm just imagining leaving you a voice memo on WhatsApp while I was sitting next to this beautiful little waterfall on this hike and I was by myself, and I was just thinking about you and wondering how you were doing and wanting to be there with you in this hard.
Moment you were in losing your mom and.
Just when I would hear your voice back, when you would leave me the next memo, Like the threads through all of those experiences, just being like, this is such a rich dialogue that we're having, and it's so personally meaningful, and it also feels like something I want to include other people in, you know, And so I think that
that's coming up for me. That's something that has been a personal experience with the two of us, Like I'm so excited to share that with a larger community, and like you, at different points of this conversation, I feel like there's two parts of me and one parts to watching the other part do the thing, because that's how it is when you're doing something that you are aware of the fact that other people are going to hear, and so you have the watch yourself going on, and
then you also have the self that's just trying to be in the moment. Yeah, so yeah, I'm aware of that too, just the watch herself. And yeah, I'm really excited for some of the conversations that we're going to have. You know, we talked about, of course, the topic of grief, and I know that we also want to talk about boundaries.
I think is such a passion topic of mine. I know we both have a history with family estrangement and we want to talk about that with folks and lots of others, just really juicy, juicy things, you know.
Yes, I mean, my hope in future episodes is that we continue to find ways to share more and more of our own stories, because I think those are the moments in this conversation that I enjoyed the most.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, same, all.
Right, friend. I never know how to wrap things up. I always feel so awkward. I mean, like, okay, bye, okay, see you next time. Okay, bye, Okay, that's a rap.
Yeah, how do you.
We don't even talk about this, how do you? How do we end our episode?
I think just saying, you know, thank you yeah for spending this time with us. I hope that you've got a sense of the care and the love and the joy that's present, the positive intentions, and the hope for grace and kindness for all of us, especially within ourselves but also with one another. You know, those things really ripple out. So I think we wish those things for our new friends out there.
I love it, I love it. We'll say that, thank you friends, Thank you Fred.
Bye.
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