Crying in My Jacuzzi with Dana Balicki

Inner Work is a Radical Act in Times of Crisis, with my Spiritual Teacher Julia Frodahl

• dana balicki • Season 3 • Episode 5

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There's room for personal growth in collective liberation—in fact, it's a critical component! Join Dana and her long-time teacher of nearly 13 years, Julia Frodahl, as they lean in and explore where our inner rebels come from, how we can show up for the consciousness revolution, the role of inner work as part of the Great Turning, self-compassion as a practice not a destination, cultivating vision when systems are unraveling, and how the mature rebel is actually the visionary—anchored in deep wisdom while remaining responsive to external realities.

Julia Frodahl's next live online group course on nature-based parts work starts May 25th, learn more & sign up (https://bit.ly/julia-group). 

You can also connect with Julia on IG @juliafrodahl + through her app (https://www.juliafrodahl.com/app)

  • Free grounding meditation with Dana ~ bit.ly/grounding-now
  • Get your copy of How Your Story Sets You Free
  • 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-minute coaching session with Dana. Email dana@danabalicki.com the review title + your review name. Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.

// sound-editing/design ~ Rose Blakelock, theme song ~ Kat Ottosen, podcast art ~ Natalee Miller///



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Speaker 1:

Crying in my Jacuzzi 13 years ago when I left full-time grassroots organizing. It was because I felt like we were limited in the ways that we organized because of the ways that we tended to ourselves or did not tend to ourselves inside of our organizing spaces, inside of our own minds and hearts about who we were and how we were supposed to be as organizers, change makers, folks down for a cause, people trying to change the world.

Speaker 1:

And so, after my own bout with burnout related to all that I really began to see that something else was possible, but it wasn't possible in at least what I understood and what I could see and what I could feel and what I could touch and in the relationships that I had and in the ways that I understood how to be in relationship at that time in my life I mean, I was in my 20s for gosh sakes, pre-saturn return. There's some limits on limits on limits.

Speaker 1:

The anti-war movement, the social justice movement, the social justice movement, the movements that I was involved in, were not holding space for spiritual growth and we needed it. It was hindering us More on that in a later episode, but I do want to say that the healing justice movement was born not too long after my reorientation from collective work to more interpersonal work, and that was a shift in the inner and the outer work. The social activist, american author, philosopher, feminist, grace Lee Boggs, said that to make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing institutions. They must make a philosophical, spiritual leap and become more human, human beings. In order to change, transform the world, they must change and transform themselves.

Speaker 1:

You've surely already heard me quote that this season, but it deserves another light shined on it, because as we all move into this next phase of our collective evolution, there must be space that we make and hold right, just like a boundary. The hardest part isn't making the boundary or setting it the first time, it's holding it in the boundary or setting it the first time it's holding it. So we have to really learn how to make and practice holding space for our own inner work when all our energy wants to go out. We're gonna have to direct and keep some in. We're gonna have to learn how to be with our attention in this multi-dimensional way, because inner work, self-work, individual work doesn't only mean that it happens with in individuals and we're all separate. I really feel like quite the opposite. All healing and growth and change and evolution happens in relationship with ourselves, with the parts of ourselves, with the divine, with the universe, with each other, with the earth, with the seen and unseen, with nature, spheres. I mean, there's so much guidance all around, so many opportunities for relationships to practice, and so I am really feeling called to go visit one of my teachers who I've been working with for 13 years, the brilliant Julia Froda, to talk about and peel the layers back on what it can look like and feel like and what's the place that our inner work takes right now, how to place it, how to place ourselves in this glorious, shimmering collective web.

Speaker 1:

Julie is a spiritual teacher and a mentor. She helps folks individuals, families, couples all the configurations navigate their own inner worlds, their spiritual lives, their relationships with each other, their relationships with the world. She studied Western psychology and Buddhism and Taoism and nature-based wisdom. She's steeped in contemporary trauma healing modalities and she's done a shit ton of her own personal inner work. It is evident she trains people in compassion and, lucky for you, has compassion emergence a few times a year.

Speaker 1:

The wisdom in my 13 years working with her I have experienced the depth of her wisdom and the humility, the compassion and the container, the care, the depth and the breadth of all of it, and I've really had the great pleasure of calling her a teacher for a long time now and hopefully for a long time to come. So let's head into the forest now. This is where we're going to find her and while we're walking and I'll keep my voice kind of low here because the forest is a quiet forest my work with Julia has really run the gamut from pulling apart some of the most existential inquiries of my life, she was a huge support in helping me process getting proposed to by my now husband, ryan.

Speaker 1:

If you missed that episode what to Do when Change Sits on your Face and Proposes Marriage from Season 1, go back and listen, get the whole story and then, a decade after that, helping me save my marriage and so much more oh, we're getting close, okay, last thing I really think I know, I know that my work with Julia Overtime has helped me become a better coach and guide myself, and that's why I'm beyond thrilled to introduce you to Julia Fradal. Ah, here's her cozy cabin in the forest. The door's already open, let's head in. Hello, so this season I mean, I think this season not just on the Crying in my Jac rebellion and just thinking about the context of our work together which has been so shaping for me and that, like, yes, it's individual work, but a lot of our work has also been tending to, you know, working with me, working with my inner rebel and sort of also my transition from activist work into my coaching work. And that was around the early times that we, you know, when we started our work together I was in that transition.

Speaker 1:

So many folks are figuring this out for themselves and finding themselves, perhaps as individuals, placing themselves in this like broader web of connection and resistance or all the ways that we can hold it, which I know that you, you have a, a lot perhaps to say and feel there, that part of us that wants to resist. How to cultivate it so it's not just tension crunchy. Cultivate it so it's not just tension crunchy. Ah, fuck you guys. I don't want anything to do with you. There's so much more to it that I've learned through our work together.

Speaker 3:

So a couple of things come to mind when you put that on the table and ask that question. So the question about the inner rebels. When we're talking about the inner rebel, what's important to understand is, just like the inner conformist, those are actually both wounded places. They're reactionary places and their point of focus, their center of focus, is externalized. So both the rebel and the conformist are looking outside themselves and deciding either to obey what's being asked of them, conform to what's being asked of them, or to rebel and do the opposite, or to rebel and do the opposite. So a healthy alternative comes from a complete reorientation to an intrinsic motivation and that comes from, you know, sometimes a long path of inner work and individuation right. So we live in societies now that are very extrinsically motivating and oriented. We are motivated by punishment and reward. The carrot of belonging is held by conforming, even conforming as a rebel right, belonging to the club of rebels.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:

Totally. That's still. That's all extrinsic motivation. When we're in extrinsic motivation, we bypass the developmental work of the individual and finding our, our deep humanity and actually accessing the, the deep reality and and experience of interbeing right, and not only amongst humans but with the whole earth community. And so I mean there's a whole historical legacy we could maybe touch upon here, because I would also love to talk about a framework that can help make sense of what's going on and help people find a role to play here, called the Great Turning in which we could show up exploring the idea of rebelliousness, because I think that there's that mature rebel and that in that sort of maturity that there is a lot of like diversifying, that happens.

Speaker 3:

It's like this inner world, when we are guided to tune into it, when we learn to tune into it. That's where insight and wisdom come, that's where our imagination comes through and creative thinking comes through and the ability to be a visionary for a future. So I would even say that perhaps I would call the mature rebel the visionary, because their point of reference is no longer external, right, they have been able to tap into some some deeper, and not that we are oblivious to the external. We take that into consideration, right, and we're navigating as part of that web. But we're anchored in ourselves and you know deeper sources of wisdom that we're able to tap into that way, and that's sort of like the. That's the primary grounding that we're working from while we're aware of and responding to what's going on outside of us.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and.

Speaker 1:

I feel, like that's practice, that's not something that happens overnight, and I feel like that it's going to be such a big part of those of us who serve in these various ways, the space that we're holding for practice, because more and more folks, you know, as the space is being flooded with like horror after horror, whether it's climate crisis or mismanagement that leads to these crises, all of the different pieces fitting together that are surely just you know we're in that we're on that long road now and like how are we going to be in these practices of like finding ourselves learning how to make space for even that, for the practice, let alone being in the practices? Right, and yeah, and I know you hold spaces for practice in that way. Just I'm curious if you have in your own work, how you're noticing being in these times, like does it feel different right now for you, maybe personally, but also collectively? Like what you're feeling with and noticing with folks, like how they're arriving, how they're dealing with the sort of consistent onslaught of information processing and what you're noticing?

Speaker 1:

feels like most important or supportive.

Speaker 3:

I mean, we're in such an acceleration of, let's just say, unraveling and without a vision for what we can do in that unraveling. It's really terrifying and obviously there are groups of people that are more specifically targeted and suffering, so it's really hard. I see everything from a lot of backsliding into, like past sort of trauma states to like the hero in a person being awakened. So I think it really helps to keep a couple things in mind. One is to remember that that is the intention to overwhelm, right, that is an absolute fact. But the other is to understand, to zoom out and understand that every catastrophe and every aspect of cultural and environmental collapse we are experiencing and witnessing, they all come from the same root cause, right? So that can help us dial down into that root cause and some of us can work there while others work in other very specific places, and maybe that's where we can talk about the great turning a little bit. But it does help to to both zoom out and then dial down on that, that fundamental root cause, which again is a failure in human development, a failure to develop these like deeper capacities of the human being, like compassion, like the, the understanding of inter inter being, again not just amongst humans, but with the whole, the whole planet. Right, it's called eco, eco belonging.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we are living in a world that amplifies a very egotistical state of being, and sometimes anthropological, but I would say that both of those are actually extremely limited in their understanding. So I think it helps to understand that there is a root cause here and we need to be working at that root cause, while we also put out the literal and proverbial fires at the same time. Right and, and everyone has their unique set of capacities and interests. There's a place for everyone in this time. So, you know, do you want to talk a little bit about the great turning to maybe sort of help people see these three main kind of buckets that are defined there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I, you know I think about this all the time. What you're saying, everyone has a place. My dear friend, Leah Garza has a year long course called Living Systems. She says nothing is superfluous in a living system, even maybe the hopelessness when that's coming in or despair like even that is not superfluous. The idea of using the failure to develop compassion and interbeing the failure isn't superfluous in this system either. Right, like there's a place for it.

Speaker 3:

You know right.

Speaker 1:

It's sort of like no mud, no lotus right, yeah, right, right, yes, and so yeah, I would love maybe that. Maybe that was a little bit of a lubrication into a great journey.

Speaker 3:

I know I love that.

Speaker 1:

That's really beautiful are you interested in deepening your understanding of yourself and your place in our world? How your story sets you free is an incredible book that will help you do just that in deepening your understanding of yourself and your place in our world. How your Story Sets you Free is an incredible book that will help you do just that.

Speaker 1:

Co-authors and story enablers and two of my favorite humans, heather Box and Julian Moseen McQueen, know that human beings understand the world best through stories. They work with leaders and changemakers from all over the world to support them in telling their truest, most personal stories in powerful ways. As it relates to their work, their message, their purpose on the planet. How your Story Sets you Free is full of richness, humor, heart and practical exercises to help us all find the power and clarity we need to tell our stories. Whether it's your future book, the TED talk you've been dreaming of, or simply showing up more fully at work or in life, the book will support you. I even use their life map exercise in my own coaching practice. It's that good. Go to millionpersonprojectorg, sign up for the newsletter, buy a book, tell your story.

Speaker 3:

Okay, so this is an idea that comes from historian and anthropologist. So there have been three major revolutions in human history. The first one is the cognitive revolution, which actually allowed us to start to build societies in really early primitive times. And then after that we had the agricultural revolution, which drastically changed the way that we live. We could talk for hours just about that. And then there is the scientific and industrial revolution, right, which really accelerated the way that we live but also mechanized the way that we live right and externalized our orientation to a great extent. And so scientists and anthropologists have called the period that we're in right now the consciousness revolution, which also has been called the great turning and a moving away from these mechanistic ways of being and these extractive ways of being to one of interconnectedness and one of more stewardship and care. And they have said that they've seen us moving, that data shows us moving in this direction. But of course, the old world doesn't go out without a fight, right.

Speaker 3:

so we're right now experiencing a the great unraveling of the old way while the new way is being built or being born right and so there are three, uh, sort of three categories or three roles that a person can play to participate in the building of the new world, to participate proactively in the great journey. The first category, like the holding actions, so they're all of the ways that a person or a group can slow down the destructive ways of the industrial era. So this is what we typically understand as legislation, activism and things like that. There's all kinds of things in there, but it's holding things back to prevent as much destruction and death as possible. And then the second category is the building of new ways. So this is where people are creating the new world and attracting people into that new world and that new way of being. You can do that as an entrepreneur. You can do that in an endless number of ways building the new ways of existing together more consciously and with an understanding of interrelated things.

Speaker 3:

And then the third category, which is actually essential for everyone to participate in and that everyone can participate in, and that's inner work. That is, developing your own awareness, doing your own inner work from, uh, from the healing of of wounds and trauma and you know the undoing of conditioning and and coping strategies, all the way to the expansive work of not just intellectually understanding you know what I'm calling interbeing, but actually having the felt experience of that, and there are practices that support us in that. But those are the three main categories, and you know the second category, the building of new ways. It can't take root if there aren't enough people doing that inner work to change their consciousness and and, through that change in consciousness, change their choices and change the way they interact in in the world. Right. So that that's the great, and I find it to just be a really helpful framework in terms of trying to wrap your head around what's going on, what's happening, and find a place within it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I really appreciate this and I mean we've talked about these things before in our work and just for myself, thinking back to, like my early activist and organizing days, my early time was with the group Code Pink Women for Peace and it was like I could see number one and two trying to like slow the war machine, trying to slow these systems down, trying to figuratively and literally, sometimes like monkey wrench right, stop the system from moving as fast as it was, and the human cost and the environmental cost and the consciousness cost, all the things. And then inside of that work there were folks that were you know, in number two oh, we're building the new ways. Were you know in number two, oh, we're building the new ways. This was way back in 2004, five, six, where I was seeing, I felt, like a tension between one and two. Some people had ideas about like well, no, we have to do number one like number two, whatever. And it was like I got really clear like, oh, these are both necessary. I'm in this camp over here mostly with my time and energy, though, like I'm really glad people are over here.

Speaker 1:

In number two, we're in slowing down, which included accountability, which included a lot of things and you know pink wigs and feather boas, somehow. But you know how we found lightness in all of that and then in my own work, right finding as an activist, realizing that, like, number three was was didn't exist in those spaces. It was what I've come to call punk damage. Right, it was like there was no room for inner work and it was looked down upon and there was shame because there was no accompaniment of, like, the experience that we were actually having and we were all having a lot of emotions. Right, like yeah, because doing this work in the unraveling, watching, watching, feeling, experiencing, the old systems unravel and and that they're not just unraveling over there, right, they're like the multi-headed Hydra coming out and everyone's being pulled down.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and I mean the reality is we can't any. Any system we live in can only be as good as the, you know, as mature as the humans that created them. Right? So we have to do this work too, so that, as we are trying to come up with new ways, they are coming from these, um, much more mature understandings.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you know, and one thing I noticed really early on as I started doing inner work with people which is so beautiful is that, almost without exception, after a person did a certain amount of healing, before I knew it, they would come to the session with the question or the statement I've been wondering how I can be of more service. You know that it's just, it's this thing that naturally arises in us, it's this thing that naturally lives in us, but it's this desire to be of service and be integrated in that way. But it's suppressed by our trauma, because when we're in our trauma states, we're just so focused on being okay that we often can't see beyond that. So we can't skip that work, we have to do that work, but it naturally leads to an unfurling of the heart that just wants to weave itself into the world and be a contributing member.

Speaker 1:

That connection. For me, that's never not relevant. As systems unravel, we will unravel. Like you said, we can only create systems as mature as we are right yeah.

Speaker 1:

And so there's a depth that I feel like we're being called forth to when we're watching these systems unravel and that like where we're being called to go, and that connection, those connections that we are being invited. The great turning is an invitation to, yes, connect with each other, yes, build new together, but that we have to do it from from another place. So this idea of like the master's tools will not dismantle the the master's house. It's like okay, great, so we don't want to rebuild the master's house, there's something new and we can't build it with the old tools well, no, I love everything you're saying, I just it's in it.

Speaker 3:

I think so much of the population is either directly or indirectly, indirectly dissuaded from doing their inner work because of this idea that it's self-indulgent or selfish, especially in these times, you know, when there are so many, again, literal and proverbial fires to put out.

Speaker 3:

But you know that couldn't be further from the truth, because you know, like you mentioned active imagination, and you know which is sort of being in conversation, compassionate conversation with these various parts of ourselves.

Speaker 3:

Well, amongst the outcomes of that kind of work is it also changes the way we are engaging with other beings, right ourselves.

Speaker 3:

We practice this ability to listen and this ability to find a deeper understanding of why a part or a person is doing what they're doing or acting the way they're acting, and it all it always.

Speaker 3:

You know, if it's a negative thing, it almost always comes from suffering of some kind. And so as we practice that experience on ourselves, we naturally find ourselves walking around the world in that same paradigm and seeing others that way as well and having a much deeper understanding of why people are doing what they're doing. And that doesn't mean if it's something harmful, it doesn't mean we're like, oh well, but they're suffering, so it's okay. It doesn't mean that at all, but it does change the way we respond to that thing and it enables us to respond to that thing in a way that is potentially a lot more constructive and healing, or more about protecting someone else who is being threatened by someone who is harmful, as opposed to directing harmful energy at the one who's being harmful. Right, I mean, there's an infinite number of ways that that plays out, but the point is that you know, doing your inner work is the furthest thing from selfish you can get because of the way it ripples out in the world of the way it ripples out in the world.

Speaker 1:

There's a rebelliousness. You know, if I'm to use that word, knowing I'm using it like very generously and also generatively, everything you were saying about, like when someone does the practice of inner work and turning towards themselves, eventually there will be their own version of the turning from. That choice of doing the thing that we are taught in so many ways is not the thing that we should do, and especially as conscious people, right being in this, the consciousness revolution that, like no, we should really focus outward. That even social justice movements, as we understand them, can pull us into that old paradigm of shutting ourselves off to ourselves, right, and that that's not. We can't get all of the growth and maturity that we need from that.

Speaker 3:

Right, we would bypass all of the unconscious content, would bypass all of the unconscious content, and we would, as many religions do. Unfortunately, and as you see, in a lot of activist spaces, we end up justifying our own violence. You know, in in the way that we're sort of presenting this other that we're fighting against. And you know, the buddha said it, martin luther king said it hatred is never going to destroy hatred, right? Only love can do that, and so we have to learn to come from that place of love that is resilient love.

Speaker 3:

Love is not, you know, some like light, fluffy thing. It has a lot of different forms of expression. This is one of the things that we do talk about in my compassion training that you know, love and compassion can express themselves in the gentle, soothing way, but they can also be fierce protectors. So we just haven't been taught about the multifacetedness of these really powerful qualities, and so we only think of them. We've been taught to think of them, especially in our culture, and compassion is considered a weakness, right, but it's not. It's actually an incredible strength.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I feel like it's like that teaching around weakness, and also that sometimes it feels like compassion. It's almost like this capital C, some big practice that I have got to really work on, because I don't know where it is in me and I don't have it for them or that and I can't do it, and it's like this inaccessible monolith that we cannot.

Speaker 3:

Well, because we're thinking of it again externally. We're trying to apply compassion externally before we learn to apply it to ourselves. That doesn work. That becomes either what you're talking about, where we disqualify compassion as a powerful tool lack of a better word in that moment or it turns into people pleasing and enabling of harmful behaviors. But if we start with ourselves right and we start with that love and that comes from a deep understanding of why things are the way they are, how things came to be the way that they are, why we've been doing things the way we've been doing them, we see the, the roots of suffering there. Then there's this whole opening that happens and then we have this natural opening for others.

Speaker 3:

Right, it's just this, it's a, it's a gross misconception that you know, going back to what you're talking about, earlier that you didn't use this word, but you know you were talking about paying attention to yourself. I'm talking about, like, finding actual self-love, right and self-compassion. And there is this assumption I encounter it like numerous times every compassion immersion I lead. There's this fear that a person's going to become narcissistic or selfish or self-indulgent. Those words mean very different things. I mean to love someone is to want them to be well and happy, basically. And so, if we take that basic definition, self-love is wanting yourself to be well.

Speaker 3:

Right. Love is wanting yourself to be well. Right and then, when you're well, what happens? You humans want others to be well.

Speaker 1:

It's so simple energetic grounding is the age-old cornerstone of countless spiritual and magical practices. For me, grounding has been one of the most important and nourishing practices of my adult life. It's how I tend to my nervous system. It's how I call my attention and my energy back to myself. When it's scattered, when I'm in the swirl, it helps me connect to myself and those around me that I care about, because it helps me practice staying, practice presence, practice tenderness, even when the world around me doesn't seem to have a whole lot of any of those things. It's even more important than I do that we do so. Go, get your free grounding, guided meditation, the link in the show notes, have me in your ear, use it whenever you wish.

Speaker 1:

We could all use some slow down medicine right about now. Medicine right about now that was one of the trains of thought that was coming through earlier. I'm glad you named it. Our sort of reticence, our like resistance to leaning into the depths, the bigness of those experiences, like we'll pull back, we'll have a million reasons why not to do it, and a lot of it unconscious, some of it conscious. Or the little like mechanisms we've used to hold those old protective measures in place, like what would you offer to someone who maybe is noticing they're holding back in their own care, love for themselves themselves, right? Feel like there is no room for it and or it is self-indulgent and I know you've been saying this, even if there's someone out there cry baby, out there right now, listening and and feeling like they they want to extend love, maybe out to others, maybe maybe to themselves in some way.

Speaker 1:

They want to expand their capacity for care, but it feels scary, or there's reasons that they keep giving themselves to, to not. What might you say?

Speaker 3:

let the shell break and go slow and, of course, if there is a lot of trauma in there, find a guide you can trust. If even that feels insurmountable, start by reading books, because you know books, reading books about these things gives a person who has really learned to be untrusting of other humans who might be guides for them. It just gives them this little distance from the teacher right or the therapist to read on their own and then that can open something up to something there. But you know, we do ultimately need to understand that pretty much all of our emotional and psychological wounds are relational wounds and they ultimately have to be healed in relationship. So you know, however far away anyone is from that, it doesn't matter. Just find a place to start and you know, just know that there's literally no being that is unlovable, right?

Speaker 3:

I think I would just add to some of the fears that you were laying out. One that I often hear is people are just afraid that if they look in they're going to find some terrible monster inside. They just know it's in there. They're afraid to encounter it. Right, that is an interjection of some projection that came their way. There are no monsters in there.

Speaker 1:

There's just a lot of misconceptions, and those are the things that one will want to remove, and if one finds the courage to do that, there's just a whole lot of love in there, isn't it always amazing I find this in my practice and, of course, in myself turning towards the things that feel scariest, that, even if just turning towards it doesn't always mean like flipping all the way around and exposing ourselves belly up to it, right, sometimes we're just kind of like side-eyeing it for a while, where sometimes the turn is slow and it's different maybe for everyone, but that sometimes shit is still really real and scary, but we're not saying hey, I'm not saying that, but but that so often there's a, a tenderness, a love or a version of ourselves that we'll see that is like the younger, scared version, or the like the, the young, tender one, or you know, who just had an experience, and like that.

Speaker 1:

There's so often where we think the monster is, there, is, is, you know, maybe also with it, or maybe sometimes in place of that is just a tender spot where love or care needs to be right, or there's yeah, what's that real key quote?

Speaker 3:

Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are just I don't know. I don't remember angels that need our love, or something like that.

Speaker 2:

If I may, the full quote is perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and we learn that feels resonant for, you know, also thinking about unraveling and this idea sort of of the visionary, the mature rebel, whatever this place of oh right, I can look at them all as dragons, and then that fills me with dragons or that fills me with dragon fire or something, whatever the, whatever the ideology might be, and that, as we do, the, the inner work, and and and that doesn't include, you know, breathing fire on ourselves, necessarily, right, like there's a tenderness in, in, in that work often that allows us to then practice and then do that, you know, see, as you said, like see the world in a different way, see each other, begin that like interbeing, that connectedness, that relationality, and even seeing the systems in that way.

Speaker 1:

And that doesn't mean that we have to, like you said, like go be like okay, well, they're all angels, and I think that's part of a design, like, oh, if we look at, if we turn towards people, and we and we do give compassion, that somehow that means zero accountability and that true compassion, I think it requires that accountability, requires that accompaniment.

Speaker 3:

it's not a like hands-off, oh, you know no big deal, and it's, and then the swing of that would be, you know that intense aggressor and we're trying to find another which is very black and white, right, it's love or not love, compassion or not compassion, as opposed to under, yeah, yeah, and I I think it's important to acknowledge too that you know, because of how far along or how far away we are from healthy human development at this point, we don't have a lot of role models to show us these things, right, role models that you know, we can, we can look to to understand.

Speaker 3:

Okay, what does a more complex understanding of compassion look like? What is what is compassion with? What does a more complex understanding of compassion look like? What is compassion with accountability? What does that look like? What does self-compassion with accountability look like? Right, what does all of that look like? We just don't have a lot of models around, and so this is what's creating this vicious cycle, because we have a lack of humans who are actually mature adults and have done their own developmental work that can usher others along, and so we need more of that too, their own work, and then who might step into those roles as mature adults and eventually, elders who are there to help others.

Speaker 1:

That really just shifted something in the way that I've been thinking it did not. I think maybe I told you this in a session that we had, I'm not sure so, but uh, and I feel fine sharing it here where I'd recently been having a conversation with Ryan and we were on a walk and we I, I like laid down on the ground and had all my big you know like, just really like dumped so much energy into the ground, you know, ask permission released and just like uh felt so, met, and then afterwards I was walking with Ryan, we were on, we were out in the desert and he said something. We were looking at how beautiful the desert was and I made some comment about being midlife. You know, like we're cause we're. He's about to turn 45. I'm going to turn 45 at the end of the year and he's like, yeah, 45 more years to go.

Speaker 1:

And I was like speak for yourself. You know, I was like I don't want to live 45 more years. That sounds terrible. Maybe I wasn't being quite that salty Cause, I was actually like quite calm and peaceful in that moment, but I do remember like having that feeling and and what you just said about like being an elder, because I think I've had resistance myself. I think, just in that moment that you said it, a new little possibility opened up for me, like a possible future. I just like caught a little shimmering, glimmering glimpse of it, of of wanting to be that. I'm wanting to be that and wanting it more than I'm afraid of whatever might be scary about all the things that I could imagine or that many other people have imagined. And thank you, Thank you.

Speaker 3:

That reminds me of thank you too. That's beautiful. That reminds me of something AOC said in a video recently I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember exactly and she was just doing what she does so well, which is she said I don't care if I she was talking about the Nazis salute that Elon Musk made, and she was saying I don't care if I'm the last good person standing. I'm going to be that, and me too, and I think me too for a lot of people, and you too. Yeah, and I think that the vision that we hold of what's possible in this moment makes a huge difference. Right, because that guides the choices and actions, the blinds and cover our heads and hope for the best version of this terrible version. That's what we're going to get. But if we hold another vision of what we dream, of, what's possible, then we're more likely no guarantees, but we're more likely to get that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah yeah, just proof, like there's always more layers right as things unravel, we unravel, as things unfold, we unfold, systems unfold, we unfold like yeah I kind of knew that there was that fatalism in there, but it wasn't until that moment when you said the word elder.

Speaker 1:

Just touched it and, um, there's a some, some little veil that was just like really gently removed. So I can see that and and tend tend to there. So I'm sure we'll be talking about it in our next session. Thank you so much, and thank you for that's beautiful, for everything always for everything.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, too, it's a pleasure. Thank you For everything. Thank you, too, it's a pleasure.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. If you'd like to work with Julia, her next live online group course starts May 25th. It is a nature-based parts work group course. This coursework encapsulates inner child work, self-talk, self-love, reparenting and overcoming limiting beliefs all in one. Reparenting and overcoming limiting beliefs all in one. It's a form of parts work similar to internal family systems, but with more aspirational components for a spiritual life. This is right up our alley crybabies. The link to learn more and sign up is in the show notes. There's a payment plan option too. Crying in my jacuzzi crying in my jacuzzi oh, I love you five stars

Speaker 1:

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