00:02:43.540And I moved out to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is a very ancient and very beautiful place.
00:02:51.880It's high desert, and it has been consistently inhabited by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years.
00:03:01.660And so it has a very strong energy to the land.
00:03:06.060And when I came to visit her here, I fell madly in love with this place.
00:03:11.100And I thought, I have to live there. The land is calling me. And so I moved out here to the mountains of northern New Mexico, outside of Santa Fe, to the indigenous lands of the Pueblo peoples here, and started this love affair with the land here and with this place.
00:03:34.940And after about four years of dating guys who I thought I was supposed to be with,
00:03:44.960And I started calling in who I wanted to be with.
00:03:50.860And so I knew that if I called them in from the outside in, I'd keep making the same mistakes.
00:03:59.100So I called him in from the inside out.
00:04:02.140and I knew that I had to be with somebody who had a very strong feminine and a great sense of humor
00:04:09.060and was really smart and interesting and very engaged with life and so I hooked up with this
00:04:19.080man who really fit my description better than I could have imagined and we started working
00:04:25.420together almost right away. And what happened for me with him was all my idealism got rekindled.
00:04:33.520I realized I really did want to work on behalf of Mother Earth, that that was my strongest
00:04:42.900spiritual connection in my life and had been since I was a little kid. And so he wound up
00:04:51.640starting a company called Seeds of Change, which was a biodiversity organic seed company.
00:05:00.260And I had a transformative experience in a garden where I felt like the spirit of the natural world
00:05:07.020tapped me on the shoulder and said, you're working for me now. And I was completely shocked,
00:05:14.480But it was unmistakable. And so I started working for Seeds of Change and embarked on the steepest learning curve of my life. And my primary, I want to say contract, but really, my primary allegiance is to the natural world and always has been.
00:05:38.920And so I have pursued a kind of secular spirituality. I've studied with a lot of Indigenous teachers.
00:05:48.220um and a few years after we started seeds of change uh we started something called bioneers
00:06:00.360because uh kenny was researching all kinds of amazing people who had brilliant innovative
00:06:08.320solutions for many of our most challenging ecological and social problems and one day
00:06:16.300he was in a hot tub with a friend and he was bemoaning the fact that no one had ever heard
00:06:21.640of these people. And the friend said, why don't you have a conference? And Kenny said, well,
00:06:26.980it sounds boring to me. Why would I do that? And he came to me and the friend said, here's a grant
00:06:35.000for $10,000, have a conference. And Kenny came to me and he said, you know how to do theater.
00:06:40.800will you help me make a conference and I had never been to a conference either so
00:06:46.260thankfully neither of us had to unlearn much and we just created this beautiful co-creation
00:06:54.560starting in 1990 where we could feature innovative people from all walks of life
00:07:01.740all ages all ethnicities all backgrounds and all disciplines and and help lift up
00:07:10.320the brilliant solutions that they had. And then I had this big awakening a few years later,
00:07:19.580when my father died suddenly, and a friend who was a very good witch, I must say,
00:07:28.180saw me in her video shop. That tells you how old it was. And she said, I have a video that I have
00:07:36.560to lend you because I think it's so important that I lend it to people for free. And she put
00:07:43.200into my hands a videotape of The Burning Times, which, right, is anyone can see online. And it's
00:07:52.200an amazing film made in the early 90s by a Canadian woman filmmaker. And I took that puppy
00:07:59.540home and it changed my life. And I watched the film and I watched it and watched it. And
00:08:07.480my first reaction was, holy crap, why didn't I learn about this in school? This is like one of0.88
00:08:15.440the biggest events in human history. And my second reaction was, is this all really true?
00:08:22.360And I started researching like a maniac. And my third reaction was, I know that this story still lives on in my bones. And if it lives on in my bones, it probably lives on in the bones of every human alive on earth right now.
00:08:41.720And it was like this giant light bulb lit up over my head.1.00
00:08:46.640And I realized that all the biggest challenges that I had learned about from Bioneers could0.99
00:08:55.500be seen as the imbalance between the masculine and the feminine.0.99
00:09:00.520And so a new purpose was born in my life, which was to serve the rising of the feminine.
00:09:07.380and of course the rising of the feminine and mother nature are two in the same things right
00:09:17.000so um so my whole spiritual life became imbued with women and the feminine in all of us and
00:09:26.260serving the vitality of the natural world and then I had a more recent chapter which has been
00:09:33.600all about racial justice and recognizing what it means to walk in this world with white privilege
00:09:41.360and how much I have to learn from my Indigenous friends and allies and mentors and how much
00:09:51.120being a woman gives us an empathic window on injustice. So I'm thrilled to be here with you
00:09:59.660on missing witches because I feel like I've been a witch all my life and uh and it's really one of
00:10:08.360the through lines that has informed my journey so I'm so grateful to you for starting this and
00:10:14.540for having me on Amy thank you we are so grateful for the work that you have been doing long before
00:10:20.380we started this project but it seems like we had a bit of the same thrust you said you know you
00:10:25.340watch the burning times and again as a canadian witch i was very happy to see a couple at least
00:10:32.900shout outs to the burning times in your book very happy to see that but um that was the question0.95
00:10:39.260that risa and i kept asking as we were discovering these these women erased women like why weren't we0.96
00:10:46.840taught this in school how come i've never heard of this person risa and i both have post-secondary0.97
00:10:51.880education, no lack of fancy book learning, but there were all these gaps, gaps, gaps. How come
00:10:59.660I've never heard of this person? I've heard of this person. How come I haven't heard of the woman
00:11:04.160who did three quarters of the work on this project? Exactly. Yep. And you mentioned like0.99
00:11:11.900the land called you and, and said to you, this is your job now. And that made me think of Mayumi Oda
00:11:21.260Yeah. And I do want to say we can't judge a book by its cover, but we're big fans of Mayumi Oda around here as well. We did an episode about her. And so I saw your book. I said, this has to be a Mayumi Oda painting. She's such a singular force.
00:11:39.640but she had the same thing with um um sarasvati's gift she said it was it was a message that was
00:11:47.080like this is your job now so i guess my question here is two-part can you talk about choosing
00:11:53.960samantha badra on bike for your for the cover of your book and can you also talk about like
00:12:01.380how how everyone can open themselves up to that instructional voice
00:12:08.180Oh, those are such good questions. Nobody's asked me that. Okay, let's see. Well, Mayumi has been my dear friend and mentor for a long time. I adore her. And she's astonishing.
00:12:25.680and uh and for several years she actually loaned us her gorgeous banners of the female
00:12:34.300goddesses for to decorate bioneers with and so there was never a question for me that I would
00:12:43.920prefer to have one of Mayumi's artworks on my cover and she is very generous that way and
00:12:52.760And I have a print in my office that's one of her prints that I absolutely adore that is making love to the God of Obstacles.
00:13:06.540And it's this woman goddess making love to the elephant.
00:13:10.620And so when I saw that picture of the woman on the bicycle with, you know, the elephant with Ganesh on her handlebars, I thought, that's the most wonderful image of women's leadership I may have ever seen.
00:23:46.360And so we have these rude phrases we've inherited
00:23:50.400like chick flicks or relationship flicks.
00:23:53.400Well, why don't men need to learn about relationship to excuse me, you know, and, and we have all, you know, all this mass culture that celebrates violence and brutality and domination. And, you know, slowly but surely a little more each time, more and more of the feminine and the interior qualities being celebrated.
00:24:18.460And so for me, what I found is that our cultures, and I say it plural because I understand that Canadian culture and all kinds of Indigenous cultures and immigrant cultures are all different, as well as gay and hetero.
00:24:42.220they're all different. And those are identities more than cultures, but they all have their
00:24:50.920perspectives and their biases. But what I think most have in common is a tendency to uplift the
00:24:58.280mental and diminish the value of emotions, of the heart's guidance, of our body guidance,
00:25:06.300and of our spiritual guidance. And so I see us as whole beings that integrate that my form of
00:25:15.060leadership that I'm always checking myself with and continually growing, I hope till the day I die,
00:25:22.980involves lifting up all of my ways of knowing so that I can rebalance my wholeness and do it from
00:25:34.360the inside out so that I'm listening to my what my body tells me what my breath is telling me what
00:25:41.320my heart tells me and what my dreams and intuition tell me so that's what I mean about the inside out
00:25:48.820you know and in terms of attracting a mate right for for four years I was dating guys who looked
00:25:58.440like who I thought I ought to be with. But when I got to know them, they were emotional withholds
00:26:04.620and they were like underdeveloped and they were immature and they weren't funny and they weren't
00:26:09.760smart. They were just handsome, you know? And so I got to the point of going, okay,
00:26:15.440I'm not going with that criteria anymore. I'm looking from the, I'm at calling spirit to help
00:26:22.260me find this person from the inside out. I love that. And it works so much. It works so much
00:26:32.400better. I can attest to this having had a series of relationships in my own life and, and one that
00:26:38.860has been extremely successful. So I'll go with that. Speaking of relationships, you, you dropped
00:26:46.000this phrase and I had to sit in it for a minute and I really would love for you to unpack it and
00:26:52.760throw all of the contents of the the luggage of it around the room you said in the book
00:26:59.080nature culture and the sacred everyone go pick it up right now um ritual creates relationship
00:27:06.700can you dig into that for us as witches as people who are existing in the world and trying to create
00:27:14.360relationships, not only with other people, but with our environments and with our cultures.
00:27:18.740How does ritual create relationship? Well,
00:27:24.060I need to honor the source where I learned that, and also that it's part of a nine-word
00:27:33.800transmission, which became the guiding force for our women's leadership trainings and is a profound
00:27:43.360piece of wisdom. So about 10 or 12 years ago, I was in a year long training. And they brought in
00:27:50.300a guest teacher who was a Peruvian shaman. And his name was Oscar Miro Quezada. And he did this
00:27:58.240ritual that went on from like, eight at night until three or four in the morning. It was really
00:28:05.500long. And at the very end of it, and it was completely magical. I mean, this guy was
00:28:13.460amazing. And at the very end, he said, if you remember only one thing from this teaching,
00:28:21.320remember this. Language creates reality. Ritual creates relationship.
00:28:28.240um where's the third ah consciousness creates matter consciousness creates matter is the first
00:28:40.140one language creates reality ritual creates relationship so that's the whole transmission
00:28:46.720and when i heard it it was one of those moments where my inner listening went
00:28:52.740boing. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. I have to learn from this. And what I found, Amy, was that
00:29:02.600here's a good example. What I noticed was that I would come out of the shower in the morning
00:29:10.260and look at my body in the mirror and all these negative voices came up. Oh, your hips are too0.98
00:29:16.320fat, your butts to this, your, you know, all those, we all know them. And I realized that I0.98
00:29:23.220was doing myself harm every morning when I did that. And I thought, okay, how can I create a
00:29:30.300relationship that might help me change that, create a ritual, sorry, that would help me change that.
00:29:37.680And so what I did was I made up a ritual, which we can all do. And I'm sure you all do already.
00:29:46.320And I got a good body oil. And I added essential oils to it that I love the smell of. And I shook
00:29:56.820it up. And I promised myself, this is part of how I've learned to use ritual to create relationship.
00:30:05.920I held myself accountable for doing it every day, rain or shine, no matter how I felt,
00:30:11.420and continuing to do it at least until I noticed a difference in myself.
00:30:17.860And in my experience, that could take six to eight weeks.
00:30:23.440And somewhere in there, there's always a time where I start to become skeptical.
00:30:28.460And I wonder, is this really doing anything?
00:30:32.000But I hold myself accountable to keeping on doing it.
00:30:35.220So I made this body oil with smells that I loved from plant medicines that I loved.
00:30:41.420And every morning when I got out of the shower, I would anoint my body with the oil and consciously pour love into my body.
00:30:56.960But, you know, after about eight or nine weeks, I felt like I had broken myself of the habit of judging myself, at least in relation to my body.
00:31:10.380And, and I had developed a muscle about, about loving myself in my embodied form. And so, you know, witchiness is just about recognizing the connections between the invisible world and the visible world, and the lived reality, and then strengthening them.
00:31:35.500And so that's how I've found, I mean, a million other examples, but we've used ritual and I have used ritual to create relationship both within myself and among myself and others.
00:31:50.900Because when we do a collaborative ritual together, it creates trust and an amazing bond.
00:32:54.800And we talk about it a lot because it's this notion, you know, these girls, they come together and they find their power, but inevitably they turn on each other.
00:33:03.460Sure. So I'm hoping that you can tell us and maybe use your relationship with Terry Tempest Williams as example of how we can leave these notions of competition, which are probably driven into our DNA because we weren't allowed to own property or have credit cards in our own name.
00:33:24.420and we needed to compete for men in order to survive let's just say that that there is probably
00:33:29.780this trauma stored in our DNA how can we release that how how do you and Terry Tempest Williams
00:33:37.520two very strong intelligent creative people keep your very dear friendship without it
00:33:48.800deteriorating into competition? Well, you know, I think, as you said, Amy,
00:33:59.300that that competition and that catfight story is a very deep legacy of the patriarchy.
00:34:07.900And it's important to recognize that during the burning times, you know, women were incentivized
00:34:14.540to turn each other in. Right. So, you know, you had seven generations of children witnessing
00:34:21.840the women all getting persecuted and, and, and try tried and burned. And, and so, you know,
00:34:34.420my sense is that healing that habit is essential to our work in this time. And that, you know,
00:34:47.100Terry became a mentor to me before I had ever met her. I have this vivid memory, Amy, of
00:34:53.300getting on a plane with her book Refuge under my arm. And as I walked, it was the first book of
00:35:01.280hers that I read. And as I walked through first class, a woman stopped me and said,
00:35:07.200oh, have you started it yet? You're in for such a treat. And so I went back into my seat1.00
00:35:14.400and feeling just blessed to be opening this book. And as I read it, I was so inspired by the way
00:35:22.560that her writing and her exploration defied categorization. You know, she wasn't about to
00:35:31.000be pigeonholed. And she wrote about everything from the most intimate to the most political to
00:35:38.520the most spiritual. You know, she wrote about science as a naturalist and her mother dying and
00:35:46.000womanhood through the eyes of birds. I mean, it was amazing, right? And so I became this fangirl
00:35:54.580of hers. And when I got to meet her, there was just this immediate sisterhood. And I think that
00:36:04.720that competition thing is not only a legacy from the burning times, but also that one of the
00:36:13.820cornerstones of patriarchy is that life is a zero-sum game, right? That only one person can be
00:36:22.800on top. And actually, what I found about leadership and women is that part of the brilliance of our0.93
00:36:33.660leadership is lifting each other up, is the chance to celebrate in each other, all of the beauty and
00:36:41.440power and gifts that we perceive, because so often it's easier to see each other than to see
00:36:48.520ourselves. And so overcoming the competition is essential, coming together in circles and covens
00:37:00.440and deep intimate relationships. And Terry and I, you know, there's a beautiful interview between
00:37:08.480us that's in the book. And I learned so much from her every single time we interact, because
00:37:16.100we just meet each other in this place of inquiry and deep listening. And there's so much respect
00:37:24.040between us. And I've always felt even though, you know, I feel like a fangirl with her and
00:37:32.080intimidated by her awesomeness and her brilliance. I can feel how deeply she respects me as well.
00:37:42.780And it's one of the things that I've learned about our intergenerational mentoring.
00:37:48.740You know, a friend taught me really early on about mutual mentoring and that whatever the power differentials might be, we need to meet each other in ways that invite mutual mentoring because we're all constantly growing each other.
00:38:08.900if only we're open and listening and really receptive to it. And, you know, one guide in my
00:38:17.440life once called it balanced mating. And she said, no matter who, whether it's a friendship or a
00:38:25.240family relationship or a lover, we come together in order to grow each other. And getting conscious
00:38:32.540about that can be a tremendous gift so I love this idea yeah this idea of our our relationships
00:38:42.120being gardens and and tending to them and and the aim being to all grow together yes
00:38:50.460I want to say you you mentioned that Terry's work is sort of defies genre and I think that
00:38:56.280Nature, Culture and the Sacred does too. It's a memoir, but it's definitely a workbook. It's
00:39:02.560definitely a philosophy book. And it's not new. You wrote this book and now it's being re-released.
00:39:10.580So can you talk about very briefly about why now? I mean, it seems obvious why now a little bit, but
00:39:17.040well, no, I mean, I was incredibly gifted, Amy, is the answer to the why now. When the first time
00:39:25.960that this book came out, as it came out, my mother was entering her end of life. And so I had no time
00:39:35.280or energy or attention to give to promoting the book. And I loved the book, but I loved my mother
00:39:43.300more. And I knew I had to be in service. I had to show up with all of me to tend to her end of life
00:39:53.580because it was such a blessed, sacred, hard, beautiful transition. And she was such a force
00:40:02.020in my life. And so the book came out with no fanfare, no marketing. And I always felt sad about
00:40:10.360it. And then a couple of years later, an amazing friend and partner in my work offered me a grant
00:40:22.220for me and Bioneers. And she said, here's the thing, you get to decide how it gets used,
00:40:29.640which is an amazing thing for a grant maker to say. I mean, whoever does that.
00:40:35.540And I said, really? Could I redo and update my book and help get it widely seen and heard?
00:40:46.840And she said, of course, I'd love for that to happen.
00:40:49.840And I had realized that even though there was no fanfare with the first book, it won
00:41:34.620And some of it's written in prose form and some of it's in poetry form.
00:41:39.480And it's three huge chapters that really each address different elements.
00:41:46.380But one of the things that made me happiest was to add discussion guides and embodied practices to it so that it could be even more useful for everyone who picked it up.
00:42:14.860Now, I have about a million more questions, but I know that you have a busy day, so I want to get to this question on behalf of Sarah, who's here, and maybe she'll chime in.
00:42:27.020You said, on the subject of turning 40, or you wrote, let me say, as I age, the more my desire to fully manifest the artwork of my life or the assignment that my soul was given is in its fullness burns in me.
00:42:48.940Now, our friend Sarah turned 40 yesterday.
00:42:53.520Yes. So Sarah, if you want to jump in, you can. If not, I'll just ask like 40 feels heavy and weighty. But when we get there, a lot of us feel like the weight is lifted. It's like going toward it is scary. But as soon as we cross that line, it's like, what was I scared of?
00:43:14.140So Sarah's here now smiling and nodding. Can you, I mean, first of all, wish her a happy birthday? And secondly, talk about being 40 and the artwork of your life.
00:43:25.500well sarah what a beautiful birthday you had on a on a huge full moon with astrological
00:43:36.280power mojo behind it congratulations and happy birthday and let me ask before i respond if
00:43:46.820i i feel like you answered questions before i even asked them so like um especially you gave
00:43:58.940me a ritual to do about body positivity i love it so much i love the the image of pouring love
00:44:06.300into me and so like basically thank you for already answering so many questions
00:44:11.960um i would i really would love to hear um your thoughts about you know using this time this
00:44:22.340when you turn 40 or just like the middle age that when somebody turns and claiming a rebirth of my
00:44:31.700own and shedding the old and like accepting that burning and finding that burning creativity
00:44:40.220like how would you suggest like finding that you know I feel it where is it what is it like you
00:44:50.220know how do I I love this I feel it but where is it give me a map please
00:45:00.540but if you feel it you already know um so let's see before I start I want to say
00:45:10.180that 40 is a wonderful threshold and wait till you get to 50. It's even better. And I'm now 65
00:45:19.580and I am having a better time of fully manifesting who I feel like I was born to be
00:45:26.620than ever before. So, you know, let's ditch some of the ageism that comes with all of our
00:45:33.420totally messed up cultures and say, you know, there's an over 50 club and it's really fun too.
00:45:41.540And, and I would, I guess I would say, give yourself free reign to experiment
00:45:48.800and listen inwardly as closely and carefully as you can. One of my great teachers once said to me,
00:45:58.400it was well there were two things that i'll give you from two different teachers
00:46:04.280one said you need to pay exquisite attention to what makes your flame grow brighter
00:46:11.560and she said it has to be exquisite attention because sometimes it comes and goes really fast
00:46:20.820like there's this little spark and it goes poof and if you're not paying exquisite attention you
00:46:26.620can miss it. So that was one clue that was tremendously helpful for me, is pay exquisite
00:46:34.600attention to what makes your flame grow brighter. And another one was, there was a time when I was
00:46:45.160right around your age, when I was really impatient for my assignment. And this very brilliant
00:46:54.840psychic said to me, she said, there is a chamber behind your heart. And it's where your yearning
00:47:06.820lives. And she said, if you pour attention into your yearning, it will attract to you that which
00:47:17.180you most desire. So these are kind of instructions about how to cultivate yourself from the inside
00:47:26.040out, right? Because that's a ritual that you can do when you wake up, you can do before you go to bed,
00:47:34.180You know, and I found it really helpful.
00:47:41.820You know, I find that everything that I can adopt as a ritual to consciously grow the parts of myself that I really want to help flourish works.
00:50:57.240I would love to speak to you again, anytime.
00:51:00.180Again, I have about five pages of questions that I will get to next time.
00:51:04.760But again, I just want to thank you so much for sitting and being in circle with us, for inspiring us to help us lead from the heart in a patriarchal world that wants to demean those values.