00:03:54.920But for myself, I've always known that when I'm not connected, when I'm not connected
00:03:59.460to myself when I'm not connected to others. I go to, I'm far more anxious. I'm far more low. I feel
00:04:07.180lost and like life doesn't make sense. I've spent most of my writing life for 20 years writing about
00:04:14.080anxiety and panic attacks. And I was doing everything I could to try to find new ways to
00:04:21.440heal, to heal my relationship with myself and just the whole world and to dive into the deep end,
00:04:27.460As you were saying, about two years ago, I got diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and something happened in the moment of that diagnosis where I almost felt most of my anxiety and panic and dis-ease would just fall off me immediately.
00:04:47.360And it took me some time to really integrate why that was.
00:04:52.120And I can now look back and see that it largely had to do with the fact that just as soon
00:04:58.600as I was diagnosed, I had almost this new way of seeing where I could see that I wasn't
00:05:03.340separate from anything or anyone in this universe.
00:05:07.260And there was something about feeling that I was no longer a loner, like there was no
00:08:20.840opening my eyes and heart further. And it doesn't feel like anything that I'm really doing. I think
00:08:28.840it's sort of like this gift that is being bestowed upon me. And it's a common gift, I think, for
00:08:34.620folks in my situation where you're suddenly very directly confronting your mortality and
00:08:40.260it just widens your lens. My therapist had taught me years ago that one of the ways to get out of
00:08:47.260fight or flight is typically when we are in fight or flight, we have a very narrow focus. Our actual
00:08:54.020eyes focus on a small spot. And one of the ways that you can get out of that really heightened
00:09:01.720place of fear is to just expand your peripheral vision. So when you're looking out, like right
00:09:07.540now as I'm talking to you, I'm holding my hands way out to the side and focusing on both of my
00:09:13.420hands to widen my lens. And so I think that there might be something, even though I think we're
00:09:18.780inclined to think the opposite. We think that if somebody tells us we're going to die, then all of
00:09:24.600a sudden we go into a trauma place. But then suddenly when they say that to me, I see the
00:09:31.820whole expanse of life and everyone's life. I see my birth, I see my death. And then that in itself
00:09:37.920creates this whole widening of my lens and it almost takes me out of that really acute place
00:09:45.880where I have this very narrow focus and that narrow focus could be, God, everything's against
00:09:52.400me or this is so tragic or whatever the story is that goes along the lines of a narrow focus.
00:09:59.740And gratefully, that's not where I've been. It's not to say I don't have moments of it,
00:10:05.160but that's not where I've been as of late.
00:10:07.920mm-hmm yeah I noticed when I kept my focus narrow and primarily focusing on myself
00:10:20.300I really felt horrible it was really amazing how much anxiety and depression I went through
00:10:28.820when my focus was on myself my life my dot dot dot dot and when I was able to expand
00:10:36.380and be in service to the earth, find connection beyond my one story, my individual story,
00:10:46.640the relief and the openness and the spaciousness that came with that was so healing.
00:10:52.220And it's not to say it didn't come with its own grief as well. Of course, for me, when I opened
00:10:56.660to the world and to what's happening on earth, it was devastating in its own way. But
00:11:01.180things seem, it's not that they are more manageable, but I didn't feel as afraid.
00:11:08.540I mean, I felt afraid in different ways, but I don't know how to say it. It just really
00:11:12.380shifted my perspective and all of the attention was dispersed. And yeah, an incredible part of
00:11:23.040the journey. You've said that in such a beautiful way. And I'm always looking for words to say
00:11:29.120exactly what you said. And you said it in a way that really touched me. And I know what you're
00:11:34.040talking about. Because I was in years and years of therapy, which were necessary. They were vital
00:11:40.840to me. But in that process, I found myself, I was continually looking back at my psyche,
00:11:47.400looking back at my wounds, and then looking at the world through the lens of my wounds. And
00:11:53.240I think that was important for me to see and understand my experience. But when I started
00:11:58.660to find joy. And when I started to feel my life sort of blooming anew, it was because I was
00:12:06.820looking out at the world and I wasn't looking back at my wounds first and perceiving the world
00:12:12.420through the lens of my wounds. And so I don't want to ever tell anybody not to investigate,
00:12:17.680you know, their histories and their traumas and why, you know, why they might be acting or feeling
00:12:24.040the way that they're feeling. But it's this sense of being life, you know, you look at the animals,
00:12:30.420the animals aren't spending time contemplating like who they are. And I was for so many years,
00:12:36.720just like, why, what do I feel about this? What do I think about this? What happened in my life?
00:12:40.720So I know how to feel about this other person. And then to suddenly just be life being life,
00:12:47.280like living and giving. And, and the other thing that you said, yeah, it's just so potent,
00:12:52.320that's been so potent in my life. If I'm having a hard time, you know, I guess the natural
00:12:58.420inclination would be to think, how can I do more for myself? And almost always, if I feel like I'm
00:13:06.220not getting something I want, or something's challenging, if I can give something to somebody
00:13:11.960else, or if I could ease a day or ease the moment for somebody else, if really, and I think that
00:13:18.000only speaks to how connected we are. It's not even like there is such a thing as a somebody else.
00:13:23.780We are all so connected. And yeah, so I love the way that you said that.
00:13:29.560Well, thank you. Sometimes stream of consciousness really works out for us. And
00:13:34.300sometimes it's very all over the place. But luckily, that one was clear.
00:13:40.580Yeah, I want to talk a bit more about wounding. And I'm appreciative that you brought it up.
00:13:45.860there is an interview you did called our angle of the get through and you say quote when i look at
00:13:54.420my life i don't see many absolute facts nor do i see many absolute truths my life is what i call
00:14:00.620it and the more i have called it beautiful the more beautiful it has become what i have called
00:14:06.380my biggest wounds have very often been my biggest blessings because of where they led me and because
00:14:12.620of how often they further opened my heart end quote oh I really I don't remember saying that
00:14:21.460at all but that's nice oh gosh well it is it is I really relate and it's gorgeous and
00:14:31.540I think about somebody has said to me the other day they said the only thing you can control is
00:14:41.040your attitude. And of course, it's really easy to kind of blow over for me like, yeah, yeah, okay.
00:14:47.000But it was interesting too, because I thought a bit more about that later.
00:14:52.860Because life is so uncontrollable, which is the beauty and the terror of it, of course.
00:14:58.400And maybe control isn't the right word, but it's this mystery. And in a sense,
00:15:03.180all we can do is to regulate ourselves through it all. And that regulation can then be reflected by
00:15:12.640everyone and everything else in our lives. It's almost a positive feedback loop. And I feel like
00:15:18.920that's connected to the wounding too. The wound can grow and the wound could be fed. And the wound
00:15:25.400can also be looked at as a blessing or something that gives us sensitivity to others and so on and
00:15:34.780so forth. So I guess the question is, how does wounding lay us open to new identities or new
00:15:43.480understandings to the scope of human emotion? Yeah, yeah. Beautiful question. Well, my favorite
00:15:51.240poet, Mary Oliver. And one of my favorite poems is just this tiny little poem that says,
00:15:57.460someone I love once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand
00:16:03.100that this too is a gift. And I think that there is a way. I've had this experience so
00:16:11.980recently, where I almost feel like my acceptance of a situation, people don't love the word
00:16:21.620surrender, they think of it as passive, I love the word surrender, because I think it recognizes
00:16:27.240that thing that you're talking about, that we are largely out of control. And I think that we think
00:16:33.620we will gain happiness, and gain a sense of power over our own lives, if we try to control things
00:16:41.240in every moment. And it's really liberating to understand that we are largely out of control
00:16:48.980and in that way to try to then sort of catch the wave of the universe. And that for me has been
00:16:56.340this experience of coming into my own power is understanding the power of creation, the divinity
00:17:03.140of creation, the wonder and mystery of it all, and sort of just going with it. I mean, when I
00:17:10.860think about anything that's happened in my life. I can't look back and say, God, I wish that
00:17:18.040hadn't have happened. Even these things that were very hard at the time, given distance,
00:17:24.740I could see how these things made me and opened me, continuously opened me. And now as I'm sitting
00:17:32.480here really confronting my mortality and thinking, everything that I've ever lost, I've gained
00:17:39.240something greater because of that loss. For example, I'm in a couple of days, I'm scheduled
00:17:43.940to start this medication that is liable to take a lot of my vision. And so I keep thinking about,
00:17:49.220you know, right now I'm thinking that sounds so difficult. But if I consider that it's going to
00:17:56.200be what it has always been, then as I lose the particular vision of my eyes, then what vision
00:18:02.700will I gain in that process? And, you know, folks can tend to have trouble with this way of looking
00:18:10.140at things. The reason why it has felt so good to me is it almost, how do I put this? I used to
00:18:19.840believe that difficult things were not supposed to happen. That if you had a life that was bringing
00:18:26.440daily challenges, whether it's like the tiniest thing, you know, the snowplow knocks down my
00:18:33.280mailbox or the biggest things, you get a really scary diagnosis. I had gone through my life
00:18:39.840thinking these things were not supposed to happen and that something was going wrong in my life.
00:18:44.880If anything came that was hard, making the decision that they come on my behalf,
00:18:51.760like actually deciding that and knowing that i mean i know it i know it in my cells now
00:18:58.620it has transformed everything and so what you were talking about earlier your attitude my
00:19:05.140my therapist again i'll quote her she says it a little bit different she says the only thing we
00:19:10.460have control over is where we put our attention so i'm thinking okay i can put my attention on
00:19:15.780um the fact that i'm i'm likely to lose a lot of my vision or i could put my attention on okay i
00:19:21.460wonder what vision will I gain from losing vision in my eyes. And so that's something an individual
00:19:30.260has to make. And I've talked a lot about this over the last couple of years, because this is a new
00:19:36.360perspective for me. And it's always really important for me to say that people come to this
00:19:42.620on their own, and it also won't be for everyone. I have friends that are going through cancer right
00:19:47.160now that they're just cursing all day long and that's what's right for them. I mean, there were
00:19:52.020people who didn't always curse. And so sometimes you just have to do the thing that you weren't
00:19:57.280doing before. If I wasn't screaming at the world before, that might be the totally appropriate and
00:20:04.420healing thing for me to do right now. But this place of gratitude and acceptance is what feels
00:20:10.080right for me right now. Thank you for sharing such intimacy with us around your diagnosis and
00:20:21.020your process. And I was thinking about something I feel like I've heard you write or say in other
00:20:29.360interviews and such, and it's that diagnosis seems often, it's something that happens to a person,
00:20:36.880especially within our current healthcare system. And I'm wondering how you
00:20:43.140are continuing to find autonomy within your diagnosis.
00:20:49.160When I first got diagnosed, I realized I almost in many ways just gave away my power
00:20:57.600to the medical system in a way, and not necessarily in a way that I regret now. I don't regret now
00:21:03.760because I can see that I would have chosen the same treatments that I did do. I mean,
00:21:07.260they've kept me alive for two years. But the thing that I didn't do was say, I am making this
00:21:13.000decision to do what the doctor is suggesting. I think that could have made a world of difference
00:21:18.160and just think everybody should do that. I think that's really important. But this time around,
00:21:25.500I was like, this is my experience. This is my life. And even when the doctors are telling me
00:21:33.080this bad news. I'm as present as I can be right now. I'm looking them in the eye and I'm engaging
00:21:40.380them as human beings in a new way. I'm picturing them walking their dogs. I'm picturing them at
00:21:44.700the bar. I'm picturing them in arguments with their partners to sort of just orient in myself
00:21:50.780that we're all on the same level. There is no doctor above me telling me what to do. And then
00:21:57.220I'm tapping into myself and really listening, what do I want to do here? What is in line with
00:22:05.440my joy? What is in line with my spiritual practice? And what seems like a sensible option
00:22:14.460to take? Even days when blood tests would come at first or scan results would come back,
00:22:22.600I would almost feel at the mercy of and it took me a long time to get to a place of of no longer having that sense of I'm at the mercy of what the blood test says or what the mercy at the mercy of what the doctor says that this is my life.
00:22:40.080I get to be living in every instant of it, and I get to be alive and thrilled about my life, even in places where I guess I always believed it was impossible to be thrilled about having a body, thrilled about being alive and actually being alive in this exact body with whatever timeline it has.
00:23:06.600I don't want anybody else's life. I don't want anybody else's body. I don't want anybody else's
00:23:12.520lifespan. I want my own. I've talked about this a lot. I've stopped thinking of lifespan in regards
00:23:20.160to length, but width. And if you start thinking about how much you can fit into a second,
00:23:25.740just with your own attention, my attention is the most precious thing to me right now.
00:23:30.820It just can be so full. The tiniest amount of time can be so full.
00:23:36.300When we dance, you will light a cigarette smoke and seagulls.
00:25:19.940See what you can sell to one's attention. Yeah. And I think about that in regards to
00:25:25.100you know our phones listening to us and all of that it gets it gets spooky but yeah that I love
00:25:31.560that about attention and I also think that the more we're present with our attention and paying
00:25:36.540attention to where our attention is then yeah I think our attention were meant to be just odd
00:25:43.060I cannot stop thinking about astonishment and awe and all it requires is is just our presence
00:25:51.680mm-hmm yeah you know I feel like you've touched on this a bit but navigating mortality and on the
00:26:01.840podcast we can do hard things you say quote a loving relationship with mortality which does
00:26:06.920not mean a joyful like you're thrilled to die it means a respect for it because I think our
00:26:12.560mortality is what makes this life rich end quote and so yeah I'd love to dive into that a bit more
00:26:21.000What richness can come from examining and sitting with our own mortality and how might mortality be a connecting force, especially when we recognize the patterns of life and death that surround us?
00:26:39.600I don't think that we were ever meant to think, how do I even say this? I wish it was taught in kindergarten. Hey, you're going to die. Like, I just wish it was taught because I had no idea how juicy it was in regards to its nourishing capacities for life.
00:26:58.180that death itself is the seed that blooms a beautiful life, like the brevity, but also just
00:27:06.280the mystery of it to people ask what the point of life is. Well, what's the point of death might be
00:27:13.580how we would answer that question. And I don't even know how to answer that. I don't know how
00:27:18.760to answer any of it. But I have just seen so many experiences in my life. Every time,
00:27:25.960Every time I've watched someone in my life die, I've watched something incredible happen.
00:27:33.860My friend Liza was dying of cancer while I had a bellyache that I didn't know was ovarian cancer.
00:27:40.280And just watching her at the end of her life, she was an incredible person.
00:27:44.200And when asked how she wanted to be remembered, she said, no superlatives, just don't let anyone say I was the best at anything.
00:30:36.120and nobody else seems to, and I want them to so bad, but people are afraid to. They think it's
00:30:42.320going to make them unhappy. I don't think it always does that. I think it commonly does the
00:30:46.560opposite. Yeah. It's really interesting to think of the fear and the, is it aversion or it's like
00:30:57.640such a deep no in our culture of talking about death or being near death. And I can understand
00:31:04.680the fear of letting go and the fear of losing, especially when we're in a culture that's so
00:31:09.960much about control and not about surrender and not even about natural processes. I mean,
00:31:15.740thinking about just even how we build homes, they're soaked in formaldehyde,
00:31:21.780even our houses are. And then that's so much of how bodies are treated once we've passed is like,
00:31:30.700don't let go, don't let go, don't allow yourself to go back into the cycle. Or not even go back,
00:31:37.340we're in the cycle all the time anyways. But it's, yeah, it's this real aversion. And I think
00:31:43.480that's also partially probably why the fear grows so much is because we don't talk about it in
00:31:48.700kindergarten. And we don't talk about it as part of what we're all going to go through. And I don't
00:31:55.700know if normalized is the right word i don't know allow or or something yeah we really live in a
00:32:01.680death phobic culture and that's opposed to decay um and so it all of this really makes sense and i
00:32:09.160think is challenging for all of us in our own ways well i think that the idea is that like it's also
00:32:18.800a fear of feeling you know because when i'm talking about this i mean there are moments that i actually
00:32:24.640And this is very new to me, and I mean new in the last week, where when I think about death, I get sometimes a little bit of excitement to me because I think I'm pretty sure I've done that before, but I do not remember and I don't have any idea what it's going to be like.
00:32:42.400And there's some part of me that is excited with just the curiosity of, oh, my goodness, like, what is that going to be?
00:32:51.600But that doesn't mean that those feelings don't live alongside of despair or grief or longing or just feeling like I have a million arms on my body that at every moment are just reaching out for everyone I love and just clutching and being like, I do not want to let you go.
00:33:11.200It's just all happening at once. And, and I think that we're just, we are afraid of the feeling. And I personally, I didn't know. I didn't know how much feeling I could handle. And more so than the grief or the fear, I was afraid of the grief or the fear making me go actually insane, like I would lose my mind, just sort of clutching to this world and, and grabbing for this world.
00:33:40.300And it's not been like that. But yes, that's from the very beginning, we're as a culture training
00:33:47.200each other to fear feelings and thinking that feelings can ruin us. And a few years before
00:33:55.520my diagnosis was the first time, I mean, I was over 40 when I realized that there is no feeling
00:34:02.500that is bigger than me there's no feeling bigger than my spirit or or bigger than me and yeah but
00:34:10.840i was like maybe 42 before i realized that i thought my my feelings were gigantic and i was
00:34:18.180this sort of tiny thing um living at the the whim of them oh gosh i could stay on this thread with
00:34:30.460you for a long time. Just keep pulling. But there's other things that I also want to get to.
00:34:37.160One big topic being gender and fluidity in identity and expression. And I just really love
00:34:46.880and I'm so drawn to the fluidity of your work and how you speak of your experiences and particularly
00:34:55.580around gender identity and expression. And gosh, I think often this fluidity is something so many
00:35:03.940people feel regarding their identities and yet have so much trouble finding the words or footing
00:35:10.140to even explain it. So yeah, if you could just take us through how you've grown to embrace
00:35:15.160fluidity in a way that feels simultaneously expansive, but also comfortable.
00:35:22.580yeah so I feel grateful to be a poet because I don't know how much I would have figured out
00:35:32.140about my own gender had I not been writing because I never really came to the page and I
00:35:38.480don't think anybody should come to the page to write down what they know I always come to the
00:35:42.580page to find out who I am to uncover the world to explore it and so never come to the page thinking
00:35:49.580you know anything, come to it with curiosity and wonder. And so I would start writing about
00:35:55.240my gender and be shocked. I mean, I would run out of my writing room and just, you know, be in
00:36:00.960fits of laughter, like understanding myself through writing. It was really beautiful. And so
00:36:07.800years of writing and uncovering my own self, and then also loving how with gender, it was like a
00:36:16.560changed. I mean, it changed. It changed all the time that becoming never stopped. And I think0.77
00:36:24.760when I came out as, I guess it came out as bisexual, then it came out as a lesbian, then
00:36:29.860genderqueer, then, you know, it was always changing. And I was thrilled that it was always
00:36:35.860changing because I think at first I thought that there was a destination and thank goodness there
00:36:40.080isn't a destination because that would have gotten boring. Maybe there is for some people, but
00:36:44.140I think that we're always expanding in that way if we let ourselves. I just recently did this
00:36:51.300whole speech, like this half hour long speech about gender, and I'm in a very different place
00:36:56.560with it now. And this is never where I expected to be. But since the diagnosis, I almost immediately
00:37:04.200started feeling the sense of the me that was most present was a me that felt eternal, the me that
00:37:13.040would survive my body, which me is a hard word because it almost feels more like a we, but the
00:37:18.760part of me, my soul, my spirit that would survive. And I could feel that very distinctly as a
00:37:24.180genderless me. And so right before my diagnosis, I still had like very specific things that like
00:37:31.140sexually, for example, where I'm like, no, I can't do that. That's not comfortable for me. And
00:37:34.980even sexually, that all just sort of changed where I suddenly was just felt like this being
00:37:41.680that wasn't that connected with gender.
00:37:45.140And when I say that, I mean in a pained way.
00:38:04.120I feel kind of not resistant to any of it.
00:38:06.980And it's not even like I feel like I don't mind.
00:38:09.760it's just like, yes, sure, she, yes, he, yes, they, whatever. But I'm at a fun place with gender
00:38:17.740at this point in my life. And I think that was happening in the years leading up to my diagnosis.
00:38:25.780I love hearing you speak to the different identities and that
00:38:28.900you've been enjoying the shifts and the changes. I think it's hard when we get too stagnant or
00:38:37.620I'm actually making a fist, although you can't see it, this kind of feeling of like, this is me, this is who I am forever. It's like, well, or not, or not. What if we let that go?
00:38:49.620I would love to read a poem that you wrote called Your Life, and you say,
00:38:55.820that made you into someone who now often finds it easy to explain your gender by saying you are
00:39:02.980happiest on the road when you're not here or there, but in between. That yellow line running
00:39:09.640down the center of it all, like a goddamn sunbeam. Your name is not a song you will sing under your1.00
00:39:17.060breath. Your pronouns haven't even been invented yet. Yeah. So, yeah. I'll tell you a story about
00:39:26.760this and I can't remember what I said in the We Can Do Hard Things podcast. I said so much,
00:39:32.680I talked so much that day, but I don't know if I told this story or not. And it's just one that
00:39:37.320I've been loving. One of the most beautiful conversations that I'm hearing people have
00:39:42.140right now about, and I'm so glad that this is happening, but because the country seems to be
00:39:48.420pretty split in the world right now. It seems like half the world are really hating or fearing
00:39:54.780trans people. And I think transphobia, to me, that's the best word to use. I know there's hate0.98
00:40:00.780out there, but I think that when people are afraid, and I think that people are more commonly
00:40:05.960afraid, and I think it's important to call it fear when it's fear, because if it's hate,
00:40:10.460what do we do with hate besides say you're a bigot? If it's a fear, we can say, what are you
00:40:15.080afraid of? And I know why people don't want to go into those conversations. They don't want that
00:40:21.320happening on their bodies. I understand that folks don't want to dive in, but some people do. And I
00:40:28.520do because I want to ask, what are you afraid of? So then I can have that conversation. But one of
00:40:34.500the most beautiful things I'm hearing people talk about, which I think is so important,
00:40:40.460is that we are at this amazing place in time where forever we have been telling children who
00:40:49.360they are. We have been saying, this is who you are. I remember growing up like that's just what
00:40:54.820parents did. They told us who we were. And now think about its impact, that people are beginning
00:41:02.800to ask their children, who are you? What name do you like? What pronouns do you like? What's your
00:41:09.140gender. If you ask every child that, I'm talking about cis children as well, think about what that
00:41:16.000does. It says you get to tell us who you are. You get to tell us. And that expands far beyond gender,0.75
00:41:23.420its impact, its evolutionary impact of what it will do in creating a beautiful world. It's not
00:41:29.700going to stop at gender. We need a new world. We need so much to change. And think about how more1.00
00:41:36.160changeable it will be if we are raising children to define themselves and to be able to create
00:41:43.820themselves new all the time. I think it's just such a beautiful sentiment to think about how
00:41:51.420impactful it will be for generations if we are asking children to tell us who they are
00:41:56.220instead of us telling them who they are.
00:42:06.160Close your eyes and tell me that the sky's coming down
00:42:30.560But I'm one of those that still believes in revolution
00:42:37.840Yeah, I'm one of those that still believes in a solution
00:42:45.700gosh and all of the wounds and pain and confusion of us telling children who they are
00:43:05.560what that's led to it's like this hasn't worked out well for us and there's so much
00:43:13.140beauty in allowing people to unfold for themselves. And of course, it makes me think of
00:43:21.720surrender and not control. We've been talking about whether we're talking about
00:43:27.340mortality or gender fluidity or grief and wounds, it's like surrender to our attention to the
00:43:39.280present, there's these similar themes that are coming up for me, or I don't know if theme is
00:43:44.160the right word, but there's these connection points that feel like it's all coming back
00:43:48.980to this circle. I'm seeing it visually, which is hard for me to explain, but maybe that's actually
00:43:55.340a good transition to talk about something else that feels very unexplainable, which is God and
00:44:01.680the relationship with the divine. And you discuss your relationship too and thoughts on the divine
00:44:08.360often. And so I'd love to open up the space to think through what kind of God or what type of
00:44:17.340meaning for God we may need in times like these. Yeah, it's the hardest thing for me to put words
00:44:26.200to. So I'm talking about it constantly trying to find the words, but I think it might actually
00:44:32.500ultimately be a wordless thing. But I grew up in the Baptist church. I went to a Catholic university
00:44:40.580and there were lots of negatives to both of those things, especially as a young closeted queer
00:44:46.780kid. But there were also a lot of positives because I believed in miracles. I believed in
00:44:54.500magic. And I was thinking outside of the box. I was like, you can have a virgin birth. You can
00:45:02.380you can part the sea you can heal the sick with the touch of your hand you know whatever you think
00:45:08.140about that stuff at this point and uh and i sort of at some point in my early 20s when i came out
00:45:13.480as queer through that all the way at that point too but the miracle part of it stayed with me
00:45:19.880and it always found its way into my into my writing like when i did my last book and
00:45:24.300and uh the the artist was designing the cover the only thing the only feedback i gave was
00:45:31.700please have the cover be a miracle, something that actually couldn't happen. And so the cover
00:45:37.560is a person lassoing the moon. And I know that this creative part of me that is imagining outside
00:45:45.900of what I've been told is possible and has come from that, like was born from my Christian
00:45:54.900upbringing. And now I left all of that for a long time. I sort of threw away, I guess you say,0.60
00:46:02.880threw the baby out with the bathwater. But when I realized my queerness, I thought, okay, I have to
00:46:09.740leave God at the same time. And I always had a loneliness to myself. I always felt I wish I was
00:46:16.200connected to something greater. And for a long time, I thought it was just poetry, making art.
00:46:21.020I thought of love as whenever I'd say God in my writing, I meant love, the divinity that connects us all, the heart within us all, our compassion, our empathy.
00:46:32.320Now I understand it as something different because it's no longer a belief for me.
00:46:40.420It's an experience that happened in these last two years, and it keeps happening.
00:46:45.360It most commonly happens if I ever get away from it, if I'm outside, I look at a tree and I can feel and it almost overtakes my entire being that this tree had to have been loved to have been made.
00:47:01.960like I can feel it so intensely like I look out at the beauty at my whole yard is blooming with
00:47:08.240flowers right now and and and the love and the divinity and the creation of that and I'll look
00:47:16.000at a flower now and I can feel in my heart of hearts that I was made in the exact same way
00:47:22.580that flower was made and just this abundance of love. And so much trust comes from that. So much
00:47:32.060trust comes in looking out at this beauty and feeling my heart pumping, feeling my feet take
00:47:40.520steps. I am just in the experience of being loved by God or source or the divine or whatever you
00:47:51.000call it. And when I think of God, I'm not thinking of something outside of us. I'm thinking of
00:47:55.460a God within us. I could replace the word God with any of my friends' names.
00:48:02.220And it's just that to me goes back to your original question. Because loneliness resonates
00:48:10.340in the same part of the brain as physical pain. I always think about that fact that it's physically
00:48:15.240painful to be lonely. And there is a loneliness that I always felt. No matter how much I was
00:48:23.160loved, I have amazing friends, I have an amazing partner and family. I felt a loneliness until I
00:48:29.900felt connected to the divinity of creation and to just the source that makes us could not possibly
00:49:54.540So I think about it in regards to nourishing ourselves.
00:50:01.200And when I think about nourishing myself with the best way I can see that is is is offering myself or creating as much peace within myself as possible.
00:50:14.100And what that means for me is to not be in resistance with the facts of my life and to not be, for example, battling against like I've never thought of myself as fighting cancer.
00:50:26.200What I am doing right now is I'm giving my body every single thing that I know that I've ever
00:50:32.440learned in my history of learning about medical or nutrition or anything, just giving my body
00:50:40.480as much health as I possibly can. And then at that point, after that sort of being hands off
00:50:46.920with the universe, like trusting the universe to do what it will and that trust and that trust in
00:50:54.060my own journey and that trust also in my own death, for example, of like, of everything coming
00:51:01.000my way, coming in service of my soul. And so I'm with that trust right now. And that creates an
00:51:08.820abundance of peace in me. It doesn't mean I don't cry all the time. It doesn't mean that I don't
00:51:15.340have, yeah, grief. I just have so much joy. I can't, I can't believe how much joy I have. And
00:51:20.720that's something I could cry about is how much joy I have because I'm not battling the facts
00:51:27.720of my life. But at the same time, I am giving my body everything, everything that I know that it
00:51:35.720would need if it would ever have a chance of being well. And I think that is so important to do
00:51:42.020at the same time as not necessarily battling with the world, battling with the facts of what
00:51:53.640are happening in the world right now in my psyche in a way that creates pain within myself and
00:52:01.900a way that creates constant arguments with people who disagree with me, but to be at the same time
00:52:09.260nourishing and giving to the world everything I can. And that is nourishing to myself too. I think
00:52:17.240we are here to care for the planet in the way that it is caring for us. It is just, you walk
00:52:23.020outside and this planet is caring for us. It's doing everything it can to thrive in spite of
00:52:31.160what we're throwing at it. And so I think both of those things happening at once. When I was young,
00:52:38.540I used to think I would save the world by just, I was always looking outward. And now I really
00:52:44.820feel that nourishing of myself and nourishing of the planet at the same time, but to not battle
00:52:51.080against it. And that's for me, because I mean, I grew up in protest. I grew up in activism. I grew
00:52:57.340up for many years, just for myself, believing that was the way. And some people, that might
00:53:03.980be perfect for them. For me right now, that sort of battle energy, it's not what I'm right now
00:53:11.040believing will be most transformative. For example, I used to write a lot about factory farms and the
00:53:18.080horrors of factory farms. Now I could write about that same issue. And maybe the first thing that I
00:53:25.120would say on that issue, instead of writing the details and the horrors of the factory farms,