Crying in My Jacuzzi with Dana Balicki

Beloved Disruption

• dana balicki • Season 2 • Episode 12

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in this penultimate episode of season 2, we explore the essential role of DISRUPTION as a catalyst for inner & outer transformation.
from protest movements to your own deepest inner work, let’s open up to disruption as responsibility, as intervention, and as disorientation from cultural conditioning toward a new personal and collective alignment.

~show notes~

  • uncommitted movement (@uncommittedmvmt)
  • CODEPINK (@codepinkalert)
  • wonder valley olive oil (welcometowondervalley.com)
  • enter to win a free coaching session ~ when you leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, you'll be entered into a monthly drawing for a free 90-min coaching session with dana (value of $388). DM (@danablix ig) or email (dana@danabalicki.com) a screenshot of your submission—take it right before you hit submit—along with the review name/title. winner announcements will be made across platforms!
  • have a question for advice dom? call in and SUBMIT (your own question) --> 760-820-9070


/// sound-editing/design ~ rose blakelock, theme song ~ kat ottosen, podcast art ~ natalee miller///

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@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭

Speaker 1:

In 2005, I did my very first public disruption of a politician. It was a conservative luncheon with keynote speaker Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense.

Speaker 2:

Official POS.

Speaker 1:

To talk about how well the war on terror effort was going in Iraq, which was a great big, fat lie. Anyway, I was with a woman who was a gold star mom, meaning her child, her son, a member of the United States Army and was killed in action in Iraq, was killed in action in Iraq. And so we stuffed banners down our britches and walked in like we owned the place, sat down at our tables, and the agreement was that I was going to go first and then she would get up and yell at Donald Rumsfeld and ask him why her son had to die. And I was so nervous I had never done this before and I so badly wanted to feel like a badass. But I was so scared and I, honestly, was just waiting the clock out, hoping that Donald Rumsfeld would just kind of quickly wrap up his speech, and she was urging me with her eyes.

Speaker 1:

Oh how cringe, because she needed me to do the thing first and I thought in that moment about some damn transformational course that I had taken a few months before. It was some of the first inner work I ever did. And there was a guy standing up in front of the room, in front of all the people, and the coach asked him something and the guy was like, well, I tried, I'm trying, I was trying. And the coach this stocky powerhouse named Sodi he was like, oh, you were trying. Huh here, pick up this box of Kleenex, Try to drop it. You can't, you can't try to drop it. You either drop it or you don't drop it. Like trying to drop it just looks like not dropping it. And I was sitting there at that table trying to get up but my trying to get up just looked like not getting up and it would look like not getting up even though I was really trying to muster the courage. And I thought of Sodi and that stupid tissue box and how goofy that man looked trying to drop it. Look, trying to drop it. I was like, oh, that's me, oh, that's, that's not it, that's not what I want. I don't want to try to do this. This woman needs me, Like weirdly, this woman, who I don't know and will never see again, needs me to do this thing so she can do this thing that she really needs to do. I am a fucking conduit. I am a portal for this woman to travel through so that she can ask Donald Rumsfeld why her son had to die. I can't even really comprehend all of this, but I just kicked my shoes off, got up on a chair and ripped that banner out of my pants and started shouting the second leader. She gets up, kicks her shoes off, gets on the chair, unfurls her banner and says the things that she needed to say. The look on her face and her body language. The look on her face and her body language. And she almost didn't get to do that because I didn't do it, Because I was busy trying, and instead I just did the thing, and it was so scary, and security guards came and kind of wrestled us down from the chairs and dragged us out and just deposited us back out on the sidewalk with the rest of our people. We did it because we had to. It was messy and awkward and confusing and scary and liberating and beautiful and tender and rage-filled.

Speaker 1:

There's this quote by Tom Robbins and even cowgirls get the blues that I love. And it goes like this In times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings artists, scientists, clowns and philosophers to create order. In times such as ours, however, when there's too much order, too much management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relieve the repression of the human spirit, they must sow doubt and disruption. And the writer James Baldwin once wrote the role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don't see. And lastly, dear Zadie Smith, in her novel White Teeth wrote you are never stronger than when you land on the other side of despair.

Speaker 1:

Jacuzzi Crying in my jacuzzi.

Speaker 1:

Crying in my jacuzzi.

Speaker 1:

Welcome, welcome, welcome back to Crying in my Jacuzzi, where we live, laugh, love in the Anthropocene.

Speaker 1:

In the last episode, where dear listener Stan asked us such an important question, brought to us such an important inquiry about how do we learn to be and live well with our anger, and the response we gave was about how being in relationship with it and how learning to be in relationship with it, the process of the relationship, could support him and others, the small population of us with just some anger and rage inside of us, that by being in relationship with those feelings, with that nuanced and complex and ever unfolding experience of anger and rage, that that unfolding relationship could help us be better community members, maybe even better movement builders. Because in these wild times and maybe this was always true, but dang it if it don't feel extra, extra, extra true right now our inner work supports our outer work. One is critical for the other. And because in this episode we're going to dig in on the diverse, diversely effective strategy of disruption on an inner work and outer work level. Because this is being recorded on the eve of the DNC, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Speaker 1:

It's also the full moon in Aquarius, the great disruptor, divine timing, as the kids say, that we might want to look at only what's happening out in the world, but here in this space, broadcasting from the Jacuzzi verse, we are holding both. We are going to hold the importance of the inner work with the outer work, because let's consider what's at stake. If we don't care for ourselves, we can miss our roles. We can miss our roles, we can miss out on our responsibilities to our communities, to our families, to people who need our solidarity that we may never meet. We can miss the miracles that are trying to come through us. We can be so.

Speaker 1:

Separateness, powerlessness and repression All primary wounds of humanity. And when we're that shut down, shut down to ourselves, shut down to the truth of who we really are, and just caught in these endless. They're like time loops right, where we're just repeating the same patterns over and over and over, without the shift of learning from them, of observing the patterns and being like, oh shit, what's that? Let me look at that. Oh, look at me doing these old things Like what's that about? Let me figure this out? Or let me get some help to figure this out and let me just be with this. And oh, what are those feelings? And oh, where is that in my body? And oh, where is that? From what point in my life or my lineage? When we're just in the unconscious swirls? There's so much that we could be missing, so many miracles that we could be missing out on the miracles of connection, the miracles of relationality You're a miracle the miracles of the unseen world, because we are just trapped in the only seen experience that we have known and our imaginations get so small and our lives get so small. So when we disrupt, disruptive this is the work that I do with my clients and students when we disrupt those old patterns, old unconscious patterns, it's not just for the experience of huh, whew. I feel better not being stuck in that old painful loop or not beating myself up in this way or that way.

Speaker 1:

I mean, that's a byproduct and it's delicious, just like my beautiful friend Allison, who makes Wonder Valley olive oil. And a byproduct of the olive oil pressing was this silky olive mush. It wasn't even mush, it was like just silky slime. And oh my God, lo and behold, you rub that shit on your face and it is amazing. So the main thing is the oil pressing.

Speaker 1:

There's pressure, there's tension, squeezing the juice when sometimes it doesn't seem like there's a lot of juice to squeeze and sometimes there are delightful byproducts, delicious experiences that arise from the tension and the pressure of the squeeze Of the inner work. Right, we are riding this analogy here. Inner work, right, we are riding this analogy here and you couldn't have seen or known the relief or the softness or any of the other things that happen sometimes as a result of inner work. And there they are. So you just rub it on your fucking face and everyone tells you you look refreshed and you're like, oh, thank god, I needed that.

Speaker 1:

You get the relief, the byproduct of when you're doing inner work, of the dis, when you start to disrupt those patterns. When we start to look at your life and look at the patterns of your life now, the places where you're feeling stuck and contracted, and we use them as access points to your deepest beliefs about yourself and the world and yourself in the world, and we start to look at those stuck places and we start to look at those core beliefs and we look at those Genesis stories and moments of your life of when those beliefs came into formation, how it happened when it happened, that sweet little person that you were, and how you were doing your very, very, very best to come up with this idea, this thought that then became a repeated thought, then, over time, became a belief, then, over time, rooted like a little plant inside of you and grew a tree and you have been watering it because it was the best you could do at the time. To believe that you were wrong just by being yourself, or you didn't belong and you were always separate, or the universe was never going to support you or be there for you and you are all alone, or that you have no power, or that your anger is bad and will hurt people, or you will hurt people if you are yourself, or that you don't deserve a love or care, or you'll never be met. Whatever that core, limiting belief is for you or are there are many of them that when we disrupt those patterns as they exist in your life now and make peace and love and relationship with those parts of yourself that have been holding it in place, and then protecting that little, tiny person version of you who definitely, under no circumstances ever wanted to have those feelings and destabilizing experiences ever again, whatever gave rise to that belief, that belief system, belief, that belief system, the disruption, along with the repair and the integrating, not just resisting. There is great power there. There is a miracle, a miracle. So, yes, you get that delicious, like relief, and that like silky, slime face mask of feeling a little calmer, feeling a little better, feeling like you understand yourself a little bit more. You get all of these delightful things, but it's always I'm coming back around here Hope you're still on the train it is always in practice for service of connection. Yes, we practice with ourselves, but this is about how we be with each other. So when we do the inner tending, using the analogy of the mask, it's like we're also really like pressing the essence out of the olives.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if this analogy is going to work, let's see. It's like we're squeezing the juice, the nourishing, the most nourishing oils, and that to me, is the long haul effects of our inner work that shifts us, that allows us to become more present, more relational, more available for connection, and that's, that's the oil. Right then then we can like lube ourselves up, mm-hmm, all slippery like, and then slip around out in the world with each other Like a bunch of little salamanders coming to shore to mate. That's a weird idea, but how cute are we In the miraculousness of our own inner work and tender tending, healing work, so that then we can be together. So disruption, disruption, disruption right, because when now? When we're together? So now, okay. So we've done some inner work, we've done some of the inner disruption of those old patterns. Looking at them. I'm not walking you through the whole process, this is what I teach. It takes a little bit longer than this, but the idea here is important because once we've known how to do that with ourselves, we have practice. Then we know what change feels like in our bodies. And let me tell you that was the number one reason that I moved from full-time activism and organizing to interpersonal transformational work. Because I was with people. We knew how to disrupt all over the place, outward, outside, out in the world. And look, that work matters. What's happening? It's literally called disrupt the DNC. It is happening right now People putting pressure on the Harris-Waltz campaign, on Kamala Harris, on Tim Waltz, on that burgeoning potential administration and the current Democratic administration. It matters to do this now and when.

Speaker 1:

I was super active back in the anti-war aughts right, like in the second Iraq war, aughts right, like in the second iraq war, pushing against the bush administration and then the obama administration, which I'll tell you what a whole lot of steam was created to get obama elected. Yes, we can obama. Oh wait, remember, yes, we can Obama 08, remember All the hope, hope, hope. And I'll tell you what that that fizzled out. That push for change fizzled. We're going to keep our eye on that. I suggest we do.

Speaker 1:

But in that time of activism, we knew how to make all the change outwardly and there was a lot of room for growth in the inward change and I was having my own personal experience of moving from burnout into my own deep spiritual work and that was changing the way that I was showing up in the world, because I hadn't been caring for myself. I was surrounded by a whole lot of people just like me. We hadn't been caring for ourselves. We actually believed it was bad to do that. I like to call that now punk damage and thank you to the brilliant Lacey Perpich-Hedgkey, in charge of the future in Minneapolis for introducing me to that term punk damage.

Speaker 1:

But we believed that it was bad.

Speaker 1:

This is what punk damage is To do our own inner tending.

Speaker 1:

Anything tending to ourselves, even just like taking time off or having any resources, really whatsoever was super selfish, was super selfish and we needed to sacrifice everything and just show up in suffering and stress in order to be in legit solidarity with those suffering out in the world.

Speaker 1:

That makes for a lot of burnout, and I'm bringing this up because in the not caring for myself and a bunch of us just kind of everyone I knew that was around my age inside of organizing and activism in some way, shape or form, we became really, really burnt out and so, in a way, we were missing miracles. We were missing our roles and responsibilities because we couldn't uphold them, because we hadn't upheld ourselves, and we were focusing on change out in the world and didn't really know what it felt like in our own bodies to dismantle systems of oppression inside of ourselves, to dismantle oppressive programming and conditioning inside of ourselves. We didn't know how to do it. It wasn't even okay to do it. So I went on my own quest to disrupt, to learn how to take my skills of disruption inside of myself.

Speaker 2:

And that's why he makes the big bucks.

Speaker 1:

So I shrunk my outer disruptor self, like the one who was out in the world as an activist, disrupting elected officials, chasing members of Congress around, trying to arrest them in public spaces, and I shrunk it down and leveraged, I guess, that power to tend and care for myself, and I'm forever grateful for that. That was a miracle. That was me becoming more of myself. This is my hope for all of us to use disruption in this way.

Speaker 2:

Oh hi, it's me Janet. Did you know that if you leave a 5 star rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, you'll be entered in a monthly drawing for a free coaching session with Dana? God, you bitch seriously. I'm so serious. Just leave five stars and a written review, then send dana an email with the title easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Speaker 1:

Details are in the show notes below so in the last episode I also said that we were in our apocalypse era and that apocalypse is an unveiling the veils being pulled back, dropped, revelations abound and I think in the past 10 months, when the active occupation of palestine, specifically of Gaza, turned into an active genocide of Gazans and the Palestinian people, that there have been a lot of veils pulled back for a whole lot of people. And you guys, I don't think we're going away from that. I think we're only going more into the veil dropping, removal. We're in a time now where young people who are maybe voting for the first time or this is their first presidential election election this is a generation that grew up with regular active shooter drills. I missed out on that as a 43 year old. That was not my reality.

Speaker 1:

These kids were and are, but were forced into a level of adulthood and death awareness See a couple episodes back called Just a Little Death Boop with a Side of Death Cult, a cult, a cult. I have great reverence for these kids and if they're not seeing the difference between Democrats and Republicans, that is not all on them. She's right. You know they have had a lot of responsibility continuously heaped on them and not all the work is theirs to do and not all the responsibility is theirs to take and hold. We all bear it is theirs to take and hold, we all bear it. And in this apocalypse era, in our apocalypse era, here we are all feeling the effects of these veils dropping of understanding aspects of imperialism that maybe we weren't paying attention to before.

Speaker 2:

I mean, project 2025 is in our social lexicon. Regular ass people now know who the Heritage Foundation is and what a bunch of psychopathic, racist, misogynist creeps they are. Oh, also, alex is on vacation, so it's just me today.

Speaker 1:

Crybabies, I feel expensive, though I have friends and clients, so many friends and so many clients that have come to me and been like oh my god, dana, I didn't see all of this before. And because of the nature, the violent, heartbreaking, mind-bending, soul-splitting nature of the annihilation of the Palestinian people, one of a few active genocides happening on the planet at this time man-made, man-made that they, these people in my life, many of them have chosen to disrupt, to take up disruption as a responsibility. Remember what I said earlier, that if we don't care for ourselves, we can miss out on our responsibilities and our roles to our people, to our communities, to our families. Because disruption is a responsibility. It is incredibly uncomfortable to do it in your own inner world and then to go out and do it, whether it's just a one-on-one conversation, uncomfortable conversation with someone you deeply care about and you realize you are not on the same page at all, or in the wider context of your family, or maybe your, your workplace or your community. Those folks are some of the bravest people that I know. They don't have a background of several decades of activism and organizing and being a professional disruptor like I do, which sometimes I'm so grateful for, and sometimes I have to be careful that I don't get complacent, but I'm watching so many of you move out of complacency.

Speaker 1:

That was just unconscious. No judgment truly into a place through the portal of apocalypse. That was just unconscious. No judgment Truly Into a place Through the portal of apocalypse. Right this unveiling Into all of these realizations and revelations and being willing to question authorities that had gone unquestioned to attempt to break down systems that feel monolithic.

Speaker 1:

My loving reminder to you all who are resonating with this and feeling like this has been your path over the last year, that there's nothing wrong with you for not having seen all the things that you see now, for not having seen them before. It is not your responsibility to take the whole thing down yourself. It's not your responsibility to save everyone. It can be your responsibility to care for yourself inside of this work, because this is the long haul and it can be part of your role and responsibility to be a disruptor, and that means the ways you've internalized these big systems that you are seeing outside of yourself right now, the ways that you have internalized them inside of yourself. Both and Both are necessary. I have learned this. I say this with the conviction of all of the marrow in my bones. In an apocalypse era. We are going to be disoriented.

Speaker 2:

Why be disoriented?

Speaker 1:

it is disorienting, but we can harness disorientation through disruption and then allow for a disorienting from our collective over-culture programming. What we are told is right and is wrong is possible and impossible. That when we have the courage to ask the questions, the important questions of wait, what does that actually feel like? What does that actually feel like? Is that resonant? Is that aligned with what I feel and understand to be true and right and of value? And am I coming from a place of presence and compassion? And so we harness that embrace. We embrace the disorientation because that's what is happening and it doesn't feel great. It is destabilizing, which is going to bring up all our oldest triggers, because all those limiting belief patterns I was talking about before, those Genesis times when we were just like little people and we were doing our best, that whole thing I said before, those all came from when we were little people, feeling destabilized, right. So this disorientation that is happening now for so many of us and then a reorientation. Mind you, we will not stay in disorientation, only that experience, forever. That is not how this works, but it is deeply uncomfortable and so we're going to try to get comfortable and we're going to try to find some security and stability, and it is worth looking at what is actual true security, because we might have other people's definitions operating for us, because maybe our previous definitions of security didn't include thinking about people that we would never meet and never really know in faraway lands, and then we realize how all of our yes, liberations, all of our security, all of our existences are really tied together, and then how do we want to find real stability? Right, that's this reorientation. So it's a lot.

Speaker 1:

I'm saying a lot of things and a lot of words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Disruption, disorientation, reorientation, attention, imperialism, interpersonal, inner work, shadow shadow, shadow, unconscious patterns, community responsibility. But inside of all of that, on the eve of the DNC, in a moment in time, on this timeline where school's about to be back in session, we are going to see the student encampments rise again and that solidarity movement, that anti-war, anti-occupation movement, the presidential campaign that is election time, mishigas, that is still going, and we are going to see disruptions, disruptions, disruptions out there as a real strategy and tactic for change. And maybe you're a part of that, maybe you're watching it from afar, maybe you feel like you're full of disagreement around it, maybe you've identified different roles and responsibilities for yourself. But wherever you are on the spectrum, I wish for you to care for yourself for yourself, to give yourself some of your own very precious attention.

Speaker 1:

I ask that, as we see each other working in different ways and maybe they seem contrary that we can find some presence in ourselves and some compassion and some curiosity for each other and the different ways in which we are trying to come together. And who benefits from us making each other wrong? Who benefits from us being shut down and lost and all the unconscious patterns and internalizing of oppressive systems? Who benefits from that? Because I bet it's not you.

Speaker 2:

I know my crybabies how uncomfortable and destabilizing and just scary it can be.

Speaker 1:

To just be alive right now oh, I'd kill for a good comma right now but to consider doing our own personal work and to just know that it's essential, it has a role, and even to do the outer work of disruption or to even see others doing it, when we don't fully understand the tactic that they're taking or why they're doing it. In this moment that we're all really trying to figure out these ways to disrupt these systems, and when we imagine that there's only one way to do it, or there's a right way and a wrong way, that that binary could be shrinking our imaginations of what's possible for each of us, what's possible for us in the collective, could be shrinking it down so small. And whenever we get that small and that limited and that separate, we're going to forget that we belong to each other every single time.

Speaker 2:

Because we're in this together and we got to help each other out.

Speaker 1:

I love you so much. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being here For crying in my jacuzzi with me. You are loved crybabies In all of your disruptive glory. Crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi. If you enjoyed what we did here today, go over to wherever it is that you are listening to this podcast and give us a rating as many stars Five as your heart desires. Theme music and other musical bits by the very talented Kat Otteson. Sound design and editing by the effervescent Rose Blakelock. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. I look forward to playing with you more in my jacuzzi. That sounded dirtier than I meant it, but you know what I mean, you, you.