00:06:42.080This is always the question where to dive in the deep end or walk in gently.
00:06:50.580but mostly on my mind to begin with is the themes of separation from ourselves and anxiety and
00:07:02.320so much of your work seems to focus on overcoming those moments when we feel fear and worry over
00:07:10.740disconnection and I just love to start by thinking through the ways our culture primes us for anxiety
00:07:18.740and disconnection? Yeah, that's a really beautiful question. I feel like the question itself is
00:07:25.300the answer. My therapist, who I always am quoting, my therapist has always talked to me about
00:07:33.660how depression and connection are sort of opposites, that when we're truly connected,
00:07:39.280it's difficult to go to those really hard places. And I don't want to ignore the fact that people
00:07:45.660are chemically depressed, and that might be upsetting to folks. But for myself, I've always
00:07:50.380known that when I'm not connected, when I'm not connected to myself, when I'm not connected to
00:07:55.660others, I go to, I'm far more anxious. I'm far more low. I feel lost and like life doesn't make
00:08:03.620sense. I've spent most of my writing life for 20 years writing about anxiety and panic attacks,
00:08:09.980and I was doing everything I could to try to find new ways to heal, to heal my relationship
00:08:17.440with myself and just the whole world and to dive into the deep end, as you were saying.
00:08:24.420About two years ago, I got diagnosed with ovarian cancer and something happened in the moment of
00:08:29.480that diagnosis where I almost felt most of my anxiety and panic and dis-ease would just
00:08:39.600fall off me immediately. And it took me some time to really integrate why that was. And I can now
00:08:46.820look back and see that it largely had to do with the fact that just as soon as I was diagnosed,
00:08:53.360I had almost this new way of seeing where I could see that I wasn't separate from anything or anyone
00:08:59.720in this universe. And there was something about feeling that I was no longer a loner,
00:09:05.060Like there was no more loner Andrea that yesterday I was doing this sort of writing workshop and I think I said it for the first time where I felt like my hand was holding my partner's hand and then I could feel my partner holding her mother's hand, almost like this paper doll string of life connecting all around the planet.
00:09:24.300And I think that probably had a lot to do with why a lot of my anxiety and fear melted off of me.
00:09:35.060Yeah, the feeling of loneliness is so anxiety-producing and, of course, depressing. And I think about the word Anthropocene, meaning the age of man, or Aramisene, the age of loneliness.
00:09:51.580And I really feel like we as a collective humanity are really feeling that loneliness consciously, subconsciously, and to be able to reconnect to that unifying force is so relieving.
00:10:12.440and before we move on to some other topics i wanted to read this quote from a podcast where
00:10:22.740which is called we can do hard things and you say quote when i got diagnosed all of that anxiety
00:10:28.880stopped and the first thing i realized that my whole life there was grief underneath that anxiety
00:10:34.060that ultimately under all of that was a fear of not being connected a fear of dying because of a
00:10:40.400fear of losing everyone that I loved, end quote. And so, yeah, I wanted to ask, how has your life
00:10:48.580journey led you to places where you've had to reevaluate and reframe the ways you've made
00:10:56.380meaning? Well, first I want to say, I think one of the really liberating things in that moment
00:11:03.420that happened was I realized that the feeling that I always thought I was feeling was largely
00:11:08.380not the feeling there was another feeling so I'm finding that all over the place now so for many
00:11:14.940years I thought my fear was fear and then to see that it was grief and I think it stemmed back from
00:11:21.540a trauma when I was very young where I was disconnected from everyone or trauma makes you
00:11:28.380feel I think it gives you the illusion of being disconnected from everyone in a way it separates
00:11:33.640you from yourself and I think healing is coming back to yourself and coming back to everyone
00:11:39.580coming back to everyone at the same time yeah I've been feeling that a lot lately of like if
00:11:45.180if I'm angry I can I can tell that anger isn't really the feeling that I'm feeling it's something
00:11:51.420else but the ways I've made meaning I mean right now I don't even know if it's any evaluation
00:12:02.120because I don't even know if there was much choice in it after my diagnosis and especially
00:12:08.860recently when they said it was incurable. It's almost like something keeps blessing me,
00:12:14.960opening my eyes and heart further and it doesn't feel like anything that I'm really doing. I think
00:12:22.800it's sort of like this gift that is being bestowed upon me and it's a common gift I think for folks
00:12:29.000in my situation where you're suddenly very directly confronting your mortality and it just
00:12:35.320widens your lens. My therapist had taught me years ago that one of the ways to get out of
00:12:41.200fight or flight is typically when we are in fight or flight, we have a very narrow focus.
00:12:47.360Our actual eyes like focus on a small spot. And one of the ways that you can get out of that
00:12:54.620really heightened place of fear is to just expand your peripheral vision. So when you're looking out
00:13:01.060like right now, as I'm talking to you, I'm holding my hands way out to the side and focusing on both
00:13:06.760of my hands to widen my lens. And so I think that there might be something, even though I think
00:13:12.600we're inclined to think the opposite. We think that if somebody tells us we're going to die,
00:13:17.820then all of a sudden we go into a trauma place. But then suddenly when they say that to me, I see
00:13:24.080I see the whole expanse of life in everyone's life. I see my birth. I see my death. And then
00:13:30.820that in itself creates this whole widening of my lens. And it almost takes me out of that
00:13:37.480really acute place where I have this very narrow focus. And that narrow focus could be,
00:13:44.900God, everything's against me, or this is so tragic, or whatever the story is that goes along
00:13:51.860the lines of a narrow focus. And gratefully, that's not where I've been. It's not to say
00:13:57.880I don't have moments of it, but that's not where I've been as of late.
00:14:05.900Yeah. I noticed when I kept my focus narrow and primarily focusing on myself,
00:14:14.260I really felt horrible. It was really amazing how much anxiety and depression I went through
00:14:22.780when my focus was on myself, my life, my dot, dot, dot, dot. And when I was able to expand
00:14:30.340and be in service to the earth, find connection beyond my one story, my individual story,
00:14:39.660the relief and the openness and the spaciousness that came with that was so healing. And it's not
00:14:46.540to say it didn't come with its own grief as well. Of course, for me, when I opened to the world
00:14:51.340and to what's happening on earth, it was devastating in its own way. But
00:14:55.140things seem, it's not that they are more manageable, but I didn't feel as afraid.
00:15:02.500I mean, I felt afraid in different ways, but I don't know how to say it. It just really
00:15:06.340shifted my perspective and all of the attention was dispersed. And yeah, an incredible part of
00:15:17.000the journey. You've said that in such a beautiful way. And I'm always looking for words to say
00:15:23.080exactly what you said. And you said it in a way that really touched me. And I know what you're
00:15:28.020talking about because I was in years, years and years of therapy, which were necessary. They were
00:15:34.500vital to me. But in that process, I found myself, I was continually looking back at my psyche,
00:15:41.360looking back at my wounds, and then looking at the world through the lens of my wounds. And
00:15:47.200I think that was important for me to see and understand my experience. But when I started to
00:15:52.940find joy, and when I started to feel my life sort of blooming anew, it was because I was looking out
00:16:01.780at the world. And I wasn't looking back at my wounds first and perceiving the world through
00:16:06.620the lens of my wounds. And so I don't want to ever tell anybody not to investigate, you know,
00:16:12.060their histories and their traumas and why, you know, why they might be acting or feeling the
00:16:18.200way that they're feeling. But it's this sense of being life, you know, you look at the animals,
00:16:24.380the animals aren't spending time contemplating like who they are. And I was for so many years,
00:16:30.680It's just like, what do I feel about this?
00:16:56.560And almost always, if I feel like I'm not getting something I want or something's challenging, if I can give something to somebody else, or if I could ease the day or ease the moment for somebody else, it really, and I think that only speaks to how connected we are. It's not even like there is such a thing as a somebody else. We are all so connected. And yeah, so I love the way that you said that.
00:17:22.540Well, thank you. Sometimes stream of consciousness really works out for us. And sometimes it's very all over the place. But luckily, that one was clear. Yeah, I want to talk a bit more about wounding. And I'm appreciative that you brought it up.
00:17:39.840there is an interview you did called our angle of the get through. And you say, quote,
00:17:47.380when I look at my life, I don't see many absolute facts, nor do I see many absolute truths.
00:17:53.260My life is what I call it. And the more I have called it beautiful, the more beautiful it has
00:17:58.080become. What I have called my biggest wounds have very often been my biggest blessings because of
00:18:04.940where they led me and because of how often they further opened my heart, end quote.
00:18:12.480I really, I don't remember saying that at all, but that's nice.
00:18:20.620Oh gosh. Well, it is, it is. I really relate and it's gorgeous. And I think about
00:18:28.900somebody said to me the other day they said the only thing you can control is your attitude
00:18:35.540and of course it's really easy to kind of blow over for me like yeah yeah okay but it was
00:18:41.580interesting too because i thought a bit more about that later because life is so uncontrollable which
00:18:49.580is the beauty and the terror of it of course and maybe control isn't the right word but it's this
00:18:55.560mystery. And in a sense, all we can do is to regulate ourselves through it all. And that
00:19:03.940regulation can then be reflected by everyone and everything else in our lives. It's almost a
00:19:10.360positive feedback loop. And I feel like that's connected to the wounding too. Like the wound
00:19:15.640can grow and the wound could be fed and the wound can also be looked at as a blessing or something
00:19:23.020that gives us sensitivity to others, and so on and so forth. So I guess the question is,
00:19:31.440how does wounding lay us open to new identities or new understandings to the scope of human emotion?
00:19:41.220Yeah, yeah, beautiful question. Well, my favorite poet, Mary Oliver,
00:19:47.620and one of my favorite poems is just this tiny little poem that says,
00:19:51.240someone I love once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand
00:19:57.060that this too is a gift. And I think that there is a way. I've had this experience so
00:20:05.940recently where I almost feel like my acceptance of a situation, people don't love the word
00:20:15.580surrender. They think of it as passive. I love the word surrender because I think it recognizes
00:20:21.200that thing that you're talking about, that we are largely out of control. And I think that we think
00:20:27.580we will gain happiness and gain a sense of power over our own lives if we try to control things
00:20:35.200in every moment. And it's really liberating to understand that we are largely out of control
00:20:42.940and in that way to try to then sort of catch the wave of the universe.
00:20:49.100And that for me has been this experience of coming into my own power
00:20:52.720is understanding the power of creation, the divinity of creation,
00:20:58.380the wonder and mystery of it all, and sort of just going with it.
00:21:03.840I mean, when I think about anything that's happened in my life,
00:21:08.180I can't look back and say, God, I wish that hadn't have happened,
00:21:12.680And even these things that were very hard at the time, given distance, I could see how
00:21:19.480these things made me and opened me, continuously opened me.
00:21:25.540And now as I'm sitting here, you know, really confronting my mortality and thinking everything
00:21:30.780that I've ever lost, I've gained something greater because of that loss.
00:21:35.420For example, I'm in a couple of days, I'm scheduled to start this medication that is
00:21:41.500And so I keep thinking about, you know, right now I'm thinking that sounds so difficult. But if I consider that it's going to be what it has always been, then as I lose the particular vision of my eyes, then what vision will I gain in that process?
00:21:58.600And, you know, folks can tend to have trouble with this way of looking at things.
00:22:05.760The reason why it has felt so good to me is it almost, how do I put this?
00:22:12.660I used to believe that difficult things were not supposed to happen.
00:22:18.180That if you had a life that was bringing daily challenges, whether it's like the tiniest thing, you know,
00:22:25.460the snowplow knocks down my mailbox or the biggest things, you get a really scary diagnosis.
00:22:32.400I had gone through my life thinking these things were not supposed to happen and that something
00:22:37.000was going wrong in my life. If anything came, that was hard. Making the decision that they
00:22:44.340come on my behalf, like actually deciding that and knowing that, I mean, I know it. I know it
00:22:51.380in my cells now, it has transformed everything. And so what you were talking about earlier,
00:22:58.020your attitude, my therapist, again, I'll quote her, she says it a little bit different. She
00:23:03.180says the only thing we have control over is where we put our attention. So I'm thinking, okay,
00:23:08.140I can put my attention on the fact that I'm likely to lose a lot of my vision, or I could put my
00:23:14.360attention on, okay, I wonder what vision will I gain from losing vision in my eyes. And so
00:23:20.820that's something an individual has to make. And I've talked a lot about this over the last
00:23:27.880couple of years, because this is a new perspective for me. And it's always really important for me to
00:23:34.520say that people come to this on their own. And it also won't be for everyone. I have friends that
00:23:39.940are going through cancer right now that they're just cursing all day long. And that's what's
00:23:44.040right for them. I mean, there were people who didn't always curse. And so sometimes you just
00:23:49.560have to do the thing that you weren't doing before. If I wasn't screaming at the world before,
00:23:56.240that might be the totally appropriate and healing thing for me to do right now. But
00:24:00.400this place of gratitude and acceptance is what feels right for me right now.
00:24:08.060Thank you for sharing such intimacy with us around your diagnosis and your process. And
00:24:16.540And I was thinking about something I feel like I've heard you write or say in other interviews and such, and it's that diagnosis seems often it's something that happens to a person, especially within our current healthcare system. And I'm wondering how you are continuing to find autonomy within your diagnosis.
00:24:40.660this? When I first got diagnosed, I realized I almost in many ways just gave away my power
00:24:51.560to the medical system in a way, and not necessarily in a way that I regret now. I don't regret now
00:24:57.720because I can see that I would have chosen the same treatments that I did do. I mean,
00:25:01.220they've kept me alive for two years. But the thing that I didn't do was say, I am making this
00:25:06.960decision to do what the doctor is suggesting. I think that could have made a world of difference
00:25:12.120and just think everybody should do that. I think that's really important. But this time around,
00:25:19.460I was like, this is my experience. This is my life. And even when the doctors are telling me
00:25:27.020this bad news, I'm as present as I can be right now. I'm looking them in the eye and I'm engaging
00:25:34.340them as human beings in a new way. I'm picturing them walking their dogs. I'm picturing them at
00:25:38.660the bar. I'm picturing them in arguments with their partners to sort of just orient in myself
00:25:44.740that we're all on the same level. There is no doctor above me telling me what to do. And then
00:25:51.180I'm tapping into myself and really like listening. What do I want to do here? What is in line with
00:25:59.400you know, my joy, what is in line with my spiritual practice, what, and what seems like
00:26:06.620a sensible option to take. Even days when like blood tests would come at first or,
00:26:14.300or scan results would come back, I would almost feel at the mercy of, and it took me a long time
00:26:20.580to get to a place of, of no longer having that sense of I'm at the mercy of what the blood test
00:26:26.820says or at the mercy of what the doctor says, that this is my life. I get to be living in every
00:26:36.680instant of it. And I get to be alive and thrilled about my life, even in places where I guess I
00:26:46.760always believed it was impossible to be thrilled about having a body, thrilled about being alive
00:26:54.940and actually being alive in this exact body
00:29:13.900See what you can sell to one's attention.
00:29:16.160When I think about that in regards to, you know, our phones listening to us and all of that, it gets, it gets spooky. But yeah, I love that about attention. And I also think that the more we're present with our attention and paying attention to where our attention is, then, yeah, I think our attention were meant to be just odd.
00:29:37.020And I cannot stop thinking about astonishment and awe and all it requires is just our presence.
00:29:49.180Now, I feel like you've touched on this a bit, but navigating mortality and on the podcast,
00:29:56.440We Can Do Hard Things, you say, quote, a loving relationship with mortality, which does not mean
00:30:01.220a joyful, like you're thrilled to die.
00:30:03.520It means a respect for it because I think our mortality is what makes this life rich, end quote.
00:30:11.380And so, yeah, I'd love to dive into that a bit more.
00:30:15.100Like what 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.
00:30:33.520I 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.
00:30:52.140that death itself is the seed that blooms a beautiful life, like the brevity, but also just
00:31:00.240the mystery of it to people ask what the point of life is. Well, what's the point of death might be
00:31:07.560how we would answer that question. And I don't even know how to answer that. I don't know how
00:31:12.720to answer any of it. But I have just seen so many experiences in my life. Every time,
00:31:19.920Every time I've watched someone in my life die, I've watched something incredible happen.
00:31:27.820My friend Liza was dying of cancer while I had a bellyache that I didn't know was ovarian cancer.
00:31:34.240And just watching her at the end of her life, she was an incredible person.
00:31:38.160And when asked how she wanted to be remembered, she said, no superlatives, just don't let anyone say I was the best at anything.
00:33:07.200And I remember at this young age starting to see, oh, there is something about death.
00:33:11.320There is something that helps us live the way that we were supposed to live.
00:33:16.380I read about this in my last book, but I had a partner whose grandfather, when he was dying in the last five or six hours of his life, he just laid in bed and repeated the word love, love, love, love, love, love over and over just for hours until he died.
00:33:34.500You know, I'm not going to say it happens to everyone.
00:33:36.560I don't know what Trump's going to do on his deathbed.
00:33:38.940But it just, there is something that just, it almost, it just brings us back to who I think
00:33:46.040we were intended to be. And I definitely have felt that happen with myself. And so while I don't
00:33:53.040wish anybody the news of a terrible diagnosis, I do wish the clarity that comes from just this
00:34:01.140awareness. And when I think about it, you know, my friends are asking what would be most comforting
00:34:06.640right now when we're hanging out. And the thing that would be most comforting to me would be
00:34:11.840if everybody sat around and talked about their death, if they talked about what their fears are
00:34:18.000about dying, how they would want to die, what they would want to do before they die. Because
00:34:25.140I walk around the world right now thinking, wow, I'm the only person that knows I'm going to die
00:34:30.080and nobody else seems to. And I want them to so bad, but people are afraid to. They think it's
00:34:36.280going to make them unhappy. I don't think it always does that. I think it commonly does the
00:34:40.520opposite. Yeah. It's really interesting to think of the fear and the, is it aversion or it's like
00:34:51.600such a deep no in our culture of talking about death or being near death. And I can understand
00:34:58.660the fear of letting go and the fear of losing, especially when we're in a culture that's so
00:35:03.920much about control and not about surrender and not even about natural processes. I mean,
00:35:09.700thinking about just even how we build homes, like they're soaked in formaldehyde, like even
00:35:16.420our houses are. And then that's so much of how bodies are treated once we've passed is like,
00:35:24.940don't let go, don't let go. Don't allow yourself to go back into the cycle. Or not even go back,
00:35:31.260we're in the cycle all the time anyways. But it's, yeah, it's this real aversion. And I think
00:35:37.440that's also partially probably why the fear grows so much is because we don't talk about it in
00:35:42.660kindergarten. And we don't talk about it as part of what we're all going to go through. And I don't
00:35:49.660know if normalized is the right word. I don't know, allow or something. Yeah, we really live
00:35:55.440in a death phobic culture and that's opposed to decay and so it all of this really makes sense
00:36:02.880and I think is challenging for all of us in our own ways well I think that the idea is that like
00:36:12.280it's also a fear of feeling you know because when I'm talking about this I mean there are moments
00:36:17.820that I actually am and this is very new to me and I mean new in the last week where when I think
00:36:24.080about death, I get sometimes a little bit of excitement to me because I think, I'm pretty
00:36:31.080sure I've done that before, but I do not remember and I don't have any idea what it's going to be
00:36:36.120like. And there's some part of me that is excited with just the curiosity of, oh my goodness,
00:36:43.140what is that going to be? But that doesn't mean that those feelings don't live alongside of
00:36:50.320despair or grief or longing or just feeling like I have a million arms on my body that at every
00:36:58.440moment are just reaching out for everyone I love and just clutching and being like, I do not want
00:37:04.340to let you go. It's just all happening at once. And I think that we're just, we are afraid of the
00:37:12.220feeling. And I personally, I didn't know how much feeling I could handle. And more so than the grief
00:37:21.960or the fear, I was afraid of the grief or the fear making me go actually insane. Like I would
00:37:28.960lose my mind just sort of clutching to this world and grabbing for this world. And it's not been
00:37:35.820like that. But yes, like that's from the very beginning, we're as a culture training each other
00:37:41.760to fear feelings and thinking that feelings can ruin us. And a few years before my diagnosis was
00:37:50.840the first time, I mean, I was over 40 when I realized that there is no feeling that is bigger
00:37:57.180than me. There's no feeling bigger than my spirit or bigger than me. And yeah, but I was like maybe
00:38:05.76042 before I realized that. I thought my feelings were gigantic and I was this
00:38:12.440sort of tiny thing living at the whim of them.
00:38:20.340Oh, gosh. I could stay on this thread with you for a long time and just keep pulling.
00:38:27.060But there's other things that I also want to get to. One big topic being
00:38:32.840gender and fluidity in identity and expression. And I just really love and I'm so drawn to the
00:38:43.300fluidity of your work and how you speak of your experiences and particularly around gender identity
00:38:51.440and expression. And gosh, I think often this fluidity is something so many people feel
00:38:58.780regarding their identities and yet have so much trouble finding the words or footing to even
00:39:04.620explain it. So yeah, if you could just take us through how you've grown to embrace fluidity in a
00:39:10.080way that feels simultaneously expansive, but also comfortable. Yeah. So I feel grateful to be a poet
00:39:22.740because I don't know how much I would have figured out about my own gender had I not been writing
00:39:29.220because I never really came to the page. And I don't think anybody should come to the page to
00:39:34.100write down what they know. I always come to the page to find out who I am, to uncover the world,
00:39:40.260to explore it. And so never come to the page thinking you know anything. Come to it with
00:39:45.700curiosity and wonder. And so I would start writing about my gender and be shocked. I mean, I would
00:39:51.100run out of my writing room and just, you know, be in fits of laughter, like understanding myself
00:39:58.500through writing. It was really beautiful. And so years of writing and uncovering my own self,
00:40:05.960and then also loving how with gender, it was like a change. I mean, it changed all the time,
00:40:15.360then becoming never stopped. And I think when I came out as, I guess it came out as bisexual,
00:40:22.340then it came out as a lesbian, then genderqueer, then, you know, it was always changing. And I
00:40:28.520was thrilled that it was always changing because I think at first I thought that there was a
00:40:32.020destination and thank goodness there isn't a destination because that would have gotten
00:40:36.120boring. Maybe there is for some people, but I think that we're always expanding in that way
00:40:41.800if we let ourselves. I just recently did this whole speech, like this half hour long speech
00:40:47.560about gender. And I'm in a very different place with it now. And this is never where I expected
00:40:54.020to be. But since the diagnosis, I almost immediately started feeling the sense of
00:41:00.700the me that was most present was a me that felt eternal, the me that would survive my body,
00:41:08.700which me is a hard word because it almost feels more like a we, but the part of me, my soul,
00:41:14.160my spirit that would survive. And I could feel that very distinctly as a genderless me.
00:41:19.760And so right before my diagnosis, I still had like very specific things that like sexually,
00:41:25.700for example, where I'm like, no, I can't do that. That's not comfortable for me. And
00:41:28.940even sexually, that all just sort of changed where I suddenly was just felt like this being
00:41:35.640that wasn't that connected with gender.
00:41:39.100And when I say that, I mean in a pained way.
00:41:58.080I feel kind of not resistant to any of it.
00:42:00.940And it's not even like I feel like I don't mind.
00:42:03.720It's just like, yes, sure. She, yes, he, yes, they, whatever. But I'm at a fun place with gender
00:42:11.700at this point in my life. And, um, and I think that was happening in the years leading up to
00:42:17.120my diagnosis. I love hearing you speak to the different identities and that you've been enjoying
00:42:24.700the shifts and the changes. I think it's hard when we get too stagnant or I'm actually like
00:42:32.300making a fist, although you can't see it, like this kind of feeling of like, this is me, this is
00:42:37.300who I am forever. It's like, well, or not, or not. What if we let that go? And I would love to read
00:42:44.940a poem that you wrote called Your Life. And you say, that made you into someone who now often
00:42:53.200finds it easy to explain your gender by saying you are happiest on the road when you're not here
00:43:00.280or there but in between that yellow line running down the center of it all like a goddamn sunbeam
00:43:07.180your name is not a song you will sing under your breath your pronouns haven't even been invented
00:43:14.240yet yeah so yeah i'll tell you a story about this and i can't remember of what i said and
00:43:23.500then we can do hard things podcast i said so much i talked so much that day but i don't know if i
00:43:29.220told this story or not. And it's just one that I've been loving. One of the most beautiful
00:43:33.720conversations that I'm hearing people have right now about, and I'm so glad that this is happening,
00:43:39.720but because the country seems to be pretty split in the world right now. It seems like half the
00:43:46.080world are really hating or fearing trans people. And I think transphobia, to me, that's the best1.00
00:43:53.160word to use. I know there's hate out there, but I think that when people are afraid, and I think
00:43:58.800that people are more commonly afraid. And I think it's important to call it fear when it's fear,
00:44:03.680because if it's hate, what do we do with hate? Besides say you're a bigot. If it's a fear,
00:44:08.320we can say, what are you afraid of? And I know why people don't want to go into those conversations.
00:44:14.060They don't want that happening on their bodies. I understand that folks don't want to dive in,
00:44:20.380but some people do. And I do, because I want to ask, what are you afraid of?
00:44:25.660So then I can have that conversation. But one of the most beautiful things I'm hearing people talk about, which I think is so important, is that we are at this amazing place in time where forever we have been telling children who they are.
00:44:43.760We have been saying, this is who you are.
00:44:47.260I remember growing up, like, that's just what parents did.
00:45:10.360It says, you get to tell us who you are.
00:45:12.660You get to tell us. And that expands far beyond gender, its impact, its evolutionary impact of what it will do in creating a beautiful world. It's not going to stop at gender. We need a new world. We need so much to change. And think about how more changeable it will be if we are raising children to define themselves and to be able to create themselves new all the time.
00:45:39.960I think it's just such a beautiful sentiment to think about how impactful it will be for generations if we are asking children to tell us who they are instead of us telling them who they are.
00:46:09.960Close your eyes and tell me that the sky's coming down, it's breaking at the seams
00:46:16.800Or turn your head the other way, she's falling, she's not what she won't seem
00:46:24.560But I'm one of those that still believes in revolution
00:46:31.800Yeah, I'm one of those that still believes in a solution
00:46:39.960gosh and all of the wounds and pain and confusion of us telling children who they are
00:46:59.520what that's led to it's like this hasn't worked out well for us and there's so much
00:47:07.100beauty in allowing people to unfold for themselves. And of course, it makes me think of
00:47:15.680surrender and not control. Like we've been talking about, whether we're talking about
00:47:21.300mortality or gender fluidity or grief and wounds, it's like surrender to our attention to the
00:47:33.240present, there's these similar themes that are coming up for me, or I don't know if theme is
00:47:38.120the right word, but there's like these connection points that feel like it's all coming back to this
00:47:43.640circle. I'm seeing it visually, which is hard for me to explain, but well, maybe that's actually a
00:47:49.460good transition to talk about something else that feels very unexplainable, which is God and the
00:47:56.360relationship with the divine. And you discuss your relationship too, and thoughts on the divine
00:48:02.320often. And so I'd love to open up the space to think through what kind of God or what type of
00:48:11.300meaning for God we may need in times like these. Yeah, it's the hardest thing for me to put words
00:48:20.160to. So I'm talking about it constantly trying to find the words, but I think it might actually
00:48:26.460ultimately be a wordless thing. But I grew up in the Baptist church. I went to a Catholic university
00:48:34.540and there were lots of negatives to both of those things, especially as a young closeted queer
00:48:40.740kid. But there were also a lot of positives because I believed in miracles. I believed in
00:48:48.460magic. And I was thinking outside of the box. I was like, you can have a virgin birth. You can
00:48:56.340you can part the sea you can heal the sick with the touch of your hand you know whatever you
00:49:01.920think about that stuff at this point and and I sort of at some point in my early 20s when I came
00:49:07.320out as queer through that all the way at that point too but the miracle part of it stayed with
00:49:13.600me and it always found its way into my into my writing like when I did my last book and
00:49:18.260and uh the the artist was designing the cover the only thing the only feedback I gave was
00:49:25.660please have the cover be a miracle, something that actually couldn't happen. And so the cover
00:49:31.520is a person lassoing the moon. And I know that this creative part of me that is imagining outside
00:49:39.860of what I've been told is possible and has come from that, like was born from my Christian
00:49:48.860upbringing. And now I left all of that for a long time. I sort of threw away, I guess you say,0.60
00:49:56.840threw the baby out with the bathwater. But when I realized my queerness, I thought, okay, I have to
00:50:03.700leave God at the same time. And I always had a loneliness to myself. I always felt I wish I was
00:50:10.160connected to something greater. And for a long time, I thought it was just poetry, making art.
00:50:14.980I 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.
00:50:26.280Now I understand it as something different because it's no longer a belief for me.
00:50:34.380It's an experience that happened in these last two years, and it keeps happening.
00:50:39.320It 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.
00:50:55.920like I can feel it so intensely like I look out at the beauty at my whole yard is blooming with
00:51:02.200flowers right now and and and the love and the divinity and the creation of that and I'll look
00:51:09.960at a flower now and I can feel in my heart of hearts that I was made in the exact same way
00:51:16.540that flower was made and just this abundance of love. And so much trust comes from that. So much
00:51:26.020trust comes in looking out at this beauty and feeling my heart pumping, feeling my feet take
00:51:34.480steps. I am just in the experience of being loved by God or source or the divine or whatever you
00:51:44.960call it. And when I think of God, I'm not thinking of something outside of us. I'm thinking of
00:51:49.420a God within us. You know, I could replace the word God with any of my friends' names.
00:51:56.140And it's just that to me goes back to your original question. Because, you know, loneliness
00:52:03.680resonates in the same part of the brain as physical pain. I always think about that fact
00:52:08.160it is physically painful to be lonely. And there is a loneliness that I always felt,
00:52:15.560no matter how much I was loved, I have amazing friends, I have an amazing partner
00:52:19.560and family. I felt a loneliness until I felt connected to the divinity of creation and to
00:52:29.040just the source that makes us could not possibly have made us in anything but love.
00:52:38.160Yeah. I'm going to read one of your quotes because it's going to help me get into the
00:52:45.020unexplainable or hard to put into words question. And in an interview with Rough Cut Press, you say,
00:52:53.100I use the word God a lot in my work, and I never quite know how to explain what I mean when I say
00:52:58.580God. But if I had come up with a one word definition, I'd say truth. On a personal and
00:53:04.900political level, it's what I put my faith in, truth. And on the flip side of that, what I'm
00:53:10.260most afraid of are lies. So even when the truth fills us with grief, it's a healing grief. It's
00:53:16.640a grief with momentum towards positive change. It's something to count on, to believe in,
00:53:21.480to build our lives in service of, end quote. There's so much in this quote I'd love to
00:53:29.080talk about, but the word truth is interesting to me because I see something similar in terms of
00:53:38.540God being truth. And then there's this question that goes, well, how do I know what's true?
00:53:49.440And I think about the place we're in right now as a humanity on earth, and we're surrounded by
00:53:58.960so many different truths and also a real lack of accountability because we don't all share the same
00:54:04.560truth or the same value system or believe in the same God or spirituality. And so there's so much
00:54:11.400confusion there. And of course, there's one way to say, oh, but it's beautiful. We can all have
00:54:16.540these different belief systems, but it also can be really destructive if our belief and value
00:54:23.660systems are so different in terms of like dominion over earth versus reciprocity. And so I go, gosh,
00:54:32.840yeah, God is truth to me. And how have I come to my truth? And it's like, I feel like I can rely
00:54:43.320on my intuition and I don't even know what the question is here. I'm more just kind of in the
00:54:48.440tangle of it. And I'm trying to come to something that feels a little clearer with you.
00:54:55.280I just, I can feel the tangle of it too. And I just know there's somebody out there that can
00:55:03.940make sense of it all because I know exactly what you're saying in regards to the different truths.1.00
00:55:08.720Like, okay, so somebody's saying, you know, it is my deep truth that two women should not get0.99
00:55:15.880married. And I feel that in my heart of hearts. And I know it. And I know, like something like1.00
00:55:21.080that. And, and that just isn't truth. And so I think that the thing that I think of is truth
00:55:27.840is clear seeing, seeing without our biases, seeing without our attachments, seeing in many ways,
00:55:35.100without our mind or our psyches. And that's, it's a hard thing to it's a practice, you know,
00:55:42.120It's a practice to see without your mind.
00:55:45.360I think about it all the time, or I don't necessarily think about it, but I feel about
00:57:00.760I don't know if I can put any truth around, I guess, the details.
00:57:05.300And I think that's the thing that I'm learning is that I don't know how much circumstance.
00:57:13.020I don't know if that's larger than what's happening within us.
00:57:17.260And it's a really tricky thing to talk about because I think to some people it sounds like abandoning the world.
00:57:26.840but I feel like when we are going to healing the world without prioritizing healing our own selves
00:57:36.340we are jumping over a necessary step for healing the world and so I think doing both at once where
00:57:43.600we're we're working to love the world and we're working to love ourselves but I understand the
00:57:48.680tangle that you're talking about and I too can land on truths and I can be like this is a what
00:57:53.700I think is a truth. And at this point in my life, it is only when I feel entirely at peace,
00:58:05.080where I notice I'm not having many thoughts at all, that I understand that I have actually landed
00:58:10.020on a truth, that I have landed on truth. But it took me a long time to even understand that.
00:58:16.320And I don't know if when I even said that thing that you read previously, if I fully understood
00:58:22.260how to know when I had reached a truth.
00:58:29.120And I think there's also something so beautiful and humbling about not knowing too.
00:58:35.440You know, it's like, we don't know, we're not going to know. I think there's some kind of
00:58:40.660knowingness that can occur, which maybe is the feeling of love or reciprocity or being in right
00:58:51.340relationship, there's a type of maybe peace that comes with that type of humility and service. But
00:59:01.600it's so challenging because I don't think we can ever know. And if we think we can know,
00:59:07.560we've kind of gotten too full of ourselves. But then we have to come to a place of knowingness
00:59:14.580or something where we can feel steady in decisions and in our lives. So it's really,
00:59:22.460gosh, we don't need to keep going down this path because we've been going for a while.
00:59:25.920And there's a few more things I want to ask you, but it's maybe for a second conversation because
00:59:30.280I mean, the thing that you said about, I don't know, I've been thinking about that.
00:59:34.680And I will tell you that I think that there is a chance that the, I don't know is the answer.
00:59:41.580and because I feel so every doctor I go to has all the answers every single one of them they
00:59:50.280all have different answers but they always have the answers and I instinctively trust any doctor
00:59:56.900who is willing to say I don't know I find that to be the ultimate wisdom and if a doctor says
01:00:04.780I actually don't know the answer to that, I feel immediate trust. And so I feel like we've got a
01:00:13.080lot of folks running around the world. And I was one of them for a long time. And I can still catch
01:00:17.820myself going to these places sometimes of, you know, I know this, or I know that and no, it's
01:00:23.760the, it's the I don't know. And then even like writing that way, you always get to come to the
01:00:29.300page not knowing. And it might be that if we all collectively agreed, we don't know,
01:00:36.640I feel like the answers would just give themselves to us. If you even feel into the physicality of
01:00:42.540the I don't know, it's almost like you can feel your arms thrown open, like, you know,
01:00:48.240your arms throw open as if to catch the answer. So maybe that is just the step that the only step
01:00:55.780we should be focusing on right now is the I don't know. Because all the knowing,
01:01:01.840I don't know if that's working right now. I don't think it is on any level.
01:01:07.420If we just even took the topic of climate change and solutions for how to, quote,
01:01:15.360take carbon out of the atmosphere, it's like, we really don't know. I just think that all the time.
01:01:20.600I'm like, oh my gosh, anybody who tries to sell me an idea, kind of like what you're talking
01:01:25.340about the doctor. I know how to solve climate change. I'm like, nope, immediately red light.
01:01:32.360Or I know how to, we know this organization or this idea, this is the solution. This is what's
01:01:38.180going to save us. Anything about saving or knowing, I'm like, oops, okay, I want to take
01:01:43.960a couple steps back and just really not. Listen, I want to listen. I think it's interesting
01:01:50.360psychologically, of course, because we, gosh, there's just that deep desire to know and to
01:01:58.400save and to kind of goes back to the mortality issue too. Like we must not let go. But I think
01:02:07.540there is so many problems to that hubris and it shows up in every aspect of our culture when we
01:02:15.860are too certain that we have the answers. It really hurts us in the end. I think it even
01:02:21.780hurts us in the process. And it takes years or lifetimes to uncondition that knowingness.
01:02:31.060And so, gosh, yeah, so much there. So in our last few moments, well, it's just been so beautiful.
01:02:38.720And I think what I'd like to begin to close on is a theme that comes up through your work and your conversations. And to me, it seems like it's the idea of striving for internal peace and peace within the world.
01:02:57.880And I'm wondering how you've come to recognize this balance of peace with yourself while working for broad peace in the world. I think it really connects with so much of what we were saying. There's so much noise and distraction and so many questions.
01:03:16.940And those questions are expansive and can really open us. But at the same time, how do we also come to a place of stability and regulation within ourselves and within the greater world, humanity, earth, collective?
01:03:37.040Yeah. So I think about it in regards to nourishing ourselves. And when I think about nourishing
01:03:48.780myself with, the best way I can see that is offering myself or creating as much peace within
01:03:56.700myself as possible. And what that means for me is to not be in resistance with the facts of my life
01:04:03.800And to not be, for example, battling against, like, I've never thought of myself as fighting