Marebear: an Indiana girl finding my roots in Oregon

A conversation with my friend Mary, who is also my dad. Thank you for guidance! 🥹

Here’s my contact…

Email [e-mail]

Instagram @thisisemotionart

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This is emotion art.

(00:07):
I am emotion.
And I am art.
So are you.
Emotion art.
When I introduce people to my dad for the first time, often their response is, what?
This is a conversation with my friend Mary, who is also my dad.

(00:29):
We call her Mare Bear.
A bear in the woods.
Mare Bear.
Enjoy.
Awesome.
I was waiting for my heartbeat to become significantly faster after you said that.
Did it?
A little bit, but I think only because I brought attention to it.

(00:49):
Yeah, but we're recording.
Like obviously I'm going to cut this out.
Like this is fucking annoying.
Unless you really love ASMR.
Okay, the first thing we have to figure out is are we going to make an episode that I
have to put the tag explicit on?
Because every time I release an episode, I have to decide whether to click the explicit
box or not.
And you're asking me to know that ahead of time?

(01:11):
I'm just saying.
I think we're both pretty explicit people.
Yeah, that's true.
It depends.
Like if you say the word fuck in an episode, then does it have to be explicit?
Because if so, then I would say yes, I cuss often.
It's actually unintentional, but I do it a lot.
I think you just answered that question.

(01:31):
Thank you.
Cool.
You're welcome.
I like to take a minute of complete quiet.
My mom, I recorded with her, she prayed.
She like did a Christian prayer thing.
That's awesome.
And then like out loud.
Yeah.
Oh, that's so cool.
She's like, is it okay if we pray before we start?
And I was like, yes, I do that too.

(01:51):
Yeah, if it feels authentic.
Why not?
Yeah.
Do we...
Sorry, I realized that was during the quiet.
Hold on.
Let's try this again.
No, you are so good at this.
I love this.
I have to know.
I have to know what your question is.
Well, I was going to say, what is our form of prayer?
Do we set an intention together?

(02:14):
What do we want to do?
Well, our form of prayer is your form of prayer and my form of prayer practiced simultaneously.
Okay, cool.
Whatever your form of prayer is, is your form of prayer.
My form of prayer changes from time to time, but lately it has been gratitude and things

(02:34):
that bring me joy.
Just thinking about that.
Okay, well, you're welcome to express yourself.
I'm here where you want.
I'm very grateful for the crisp, cool air outside right now.
And then just the smells that I can't even describe that come with it with the fall and

(02:56):
the changing of the seasons.
I'm very grateful that we get to experience that on this earth.
That's my gratitude today that I'm feeling the most, I think.
I feel that viscerally.
Thank you.
Yeah.
One of the things that I really like when I listen to podcasts, people that record in
their garage or their houses is sometimes you can hear a neighborhood dog bark or the

(03:21):
birds chirping just throughout an episode.
And if you're wearing headphones while you're listening to the podcast and it trips you
out if you're in a place that doesn't have birds, you know what I mean?
You like that.
I do like that a lot.
Yeah, I really like that.
I think I had some hummingbirds in one of the episodes.
You did?
Yeah, I like to record outside and I'm going to start doing that.

(03:42):
If I could find a way to record out in the woods.
I love those sounds.
That would be incredible.
But a lot of people have told me that it distracts from the podcast and so you want to keep it
as clean as possible.
So I'm going to play with it.
Yeah.
I mean, you could do episodes anywhere, really.
Yes.
Depending on.
Yes.
What you were thankful for just stirred up a whole bunch of emotional colors inside me.

(04:07):
So now that's all I can think about is all the emotional colors.
What do you mean by emotional color?
If this is somebody's first time listening to this podcast.
That's a good question.
Is emotional color one thing?
Emotion and color have become the same thing in my mind.
I experience emotion and I experience colors and they have begun to resemble each other

(04:30):
so closely that they feel like the same thing.
OK.
The cover art of this podcast, all of those colors, I feel like I'm looking at the way
I feel.
Oh, not just the color, but the texture, like the oil brushstrokes.
So some are thicker than others.
Oh, yes.

(04:50):
Thick and thin, light and airy and dense and heavy and dark.
Creamy.
Creamy.
I'm sorry.
Yes.
But oil paint is really creamy.
Isn't it?
It's quite a creamy paint.
Yes.
Oh, that's an interesting thought.
I have not thought about it that way before.
But the point is that it has a lot of different types of sensation in it, both visual and

(05:16):
tactile.
I don't know about audio.
Yeah, actually, that's a good...
If emotions could be sounds.
That might be a bit overwhelming for people.
I think that most things are overwhelming for most people.
At least that's the stories we tell ourselves.

(05:36):
But I think the truth is that most people can deal with actually anything.
You know what I think is interesting?
Somebody might say, I'm overwhelmed with joy.
I was overwhelmed with joy.
And we don't hear that and think that that's a negative thing, even though overwhelmed
does tend to have that type of connotation.
But if you're overwhelmed with anger or sadness, it's not looked at as a beautiful thing.

(06:05):
Well, yes, that sounds true.
Humans tend to be dual creatures.
So we see things as good and bad.
So we have good emotions and bad emotions.
Yes.
But the truth is they're all just color.
So there's none good and none bad.
They just all exist.
And alone, they're really weird and make no sense.

(06:28):
One emotion by itself makes no sense.
But together they form this fantastic landscape.
It's hard to look away from.
Dynamic.
Yep.
Yeah.
What do you think of when you think of emotion and color?
When I worked at the children's farm home, we would do this thing called morning community
with the kids and we would all sit in a big circle.

(06:52):
And sometimes people would come up with creative ways to basically say, how are you feeling
today?
So sometimes it would be like, Mary, if your emotions were color today, what color would
they be?
And that was one of the questions that we had.
Sometimes people would get really creative with it and they would just, instead of just

(07:12):
saying one color and moving on, they would, I feel like somebody would give the example
of being many brushstrokes of different colors.
And you wouldn't have to explain more than that if you didn't want to, but you had the
floor to do so.
Just a different way to show kids that they can express themselves and not hold everything
in.

(07:33):
I just think it's so great.
I just wish everybody would do it all the time.
What is it?
If we come in and I don't know how you're feeling that day, I could be a lot in your
face and have no emotional intelligence of what you may be feeling today.
Maybe you need a little more space.
We would ask follow-up questions.

(07:55):
Is there anything that you need from us today?
That kind of thing.
So it's just a way for people to express their needs and express how they're feeling.
I think a pretty cool practice.
That might be something we should incorporate here at the Forge.
Yeah, I think that would be really fun.
I like that.
Okay, next time you're here for dinner, that's what we're going to do.

(08:17):
We're just going to some way find out how to fit that in, short format.
What do you call it?
We call it community.
It also gives people a chance to show up if they want to be helpful that day.
I don't know.
Everybody's ideas are what make this place what it is.
It's just getting weirder and cooler.

(08:38):
Yeah.
It's full of color.
You're one of the colors.
I hope I'm like a yellow, ever-changing shade of yellow.
You're like a teal.
Really?
There's a lot of colors that go into making teal.
My favorite color is the color of this room.
Like the green?

(08:59):
The brightest spring, living grass spring green.
So pretty.
It feels like life in balance to me.
I was just about to say how lively it is.
So that's pretty cool.
And I believe it's the color of or one of the colors of the heart chakra on the second
aura level.
I talk about things I don't know about because they're so interesting.

(09:23):
Wait, does it go?
So it starts at the root is one.
Oh, root chakra, sacral, and then your heart.
It's one, two, so root and then whatever the under the belly button one is.
Sacral.
Sacral.
And then solar plexus, three, and then heart is four.

(09:43):
And on the second auric level, so the first auric level is your body energy field.
And that's just, it's just body energy.
So when you work with those chakras, you feel a lot of body energy flowing.
But when you're able to step into the second chakra field, you're stepping into the emotion,
the realm of emotions.
And when you open those chakras, when you when you experience them and you can feel

(10:05):
them in your body, then you open them, you will actually physically see color.
And each one has a color that you just see.
Like auras?
Like people's auris?
You just see color.
I don't know enough about it to speak to to speak at the depth that you're asking.
But I know that when I I can't access any of my auras right now other than my body,

(10:31):
because for the first time in my life, maybe a month ago, I accessed my body energy.
And it was just incredible just to all of a sudden in one moment realize that I've I've
lived my whole life with one foot out of my body.
Because I was taught that the flesh is sinful, you know, just that whole that whole paradigm

(10:54):
that I grew up in.
It just made sense.
And all things take time.
And whoever I am on a subconscious level feels that I have to get to know my body level energy
really well before I go back into the spiritual levels, which is where I lived, lived most
of my life.

(11:15):
OK.
Oh, we have a kitty.
Hi, Georgie.
Georgie, poor Georgie.
Oh, she wants to be scratched.
She has gotten bigger.
Sometimes she comes in for like a lot of love.
Yeah.
Sometimes she just wants to say hi and then she's done.
For those of you that can't see Georgie, she's this she's this teeny tiny cat.
And it's like these really adorable close together eyes.

(11:37):
And she's like so cuddly looking, but very much a predator.
She's a normal sized happy cat.
We can agree to disagree.
That's our first argument on this podcast together.
But we agree that we like her.

(11:57):
Maybe even love her.
Oh, yeah.
She's precious.
OK.
So there's two.
There's more than one chakra field.
You call it a chakra field just now?
Well, did you call it?
Your body has chakras, which are the point where the universal energy interacts with
your body energy.
OK.

(12:18):
I don't know, dude.
I don't know.
Like I read I read three of Barbara Brennan's books and it just like captivated me.
I'm not actually familiar with who that is.
Well, I'll tell you about it sometime.
Those are the books right there.
Right Emerging was the one I read first and it is like it shook my world.

(12:40):
Really?
It put language to things that I'd been experiencing for a while.
So it's a validating experience.
I don't think of it that way.
I think of it as it helped me to understand something I was looking at.
I could see it.
I could feel it.
I could feel the spiritual energy.
I could feel my chakras.

(13:01):
I could feel my core star, the part inside me that is my connection to everything, to
God.
Core star.
Core star.
I got that language from Barbara Brennan.
Is that a term?
I love that core star.
Her third.
I want that to replace my heart.
Her third book is called Core Light Healing.
Wow.
It's very interesting.

(13:22):
Yeah.
And it's all theoretical to me now.
As I was reading the books, I was experiencing inside myself the things she was talking about.
It was a very transcendent experience, but that was before I touched my body energy.
I read the middle book, then the first one, then the last one.
At the end of the last book, she has an exercise for opening your chakras on your first auric

(13:46):
level, your body energy level.
And so I just did it.
Like, I just thought of it differently, and I did it differently with my mind.
And instead of picturing a little whirlpool funnel that I would spin, extended from my
body, I just pictured a flat disk because chakras are like vortexes.

(14:08):
It's like a vortex.
I think of them as soft spots because I physically relax that area.
But at the same time, I'm picturing this vortex spinning clockwise.
It's all head games just to help you make sense of something that is there to feel and
experience.

(14:29):
So instead of picturing a vortex standing out from my body, I pictured a flat disk,
flat on my body.
And I just started turning it clockwise.
OK.
I was just about to ask if it was moving.
It almost made a clicking noise because it felt plastic.
It's like this flat plastic thing.
Like a CD?
Yeah.
Like a CD that had rectangle notches cut in it, and then you can turn it around, and it's

(14:53):
like mounted.
Like an old school clock or old school telephone.
Yeah, something like that.
And I just started turning it.
And I started with the root, and I just started turning the dial clockwise.
What does that do?
Gets the energy flowing?
I don't know.
It's just a head game that works for me.
It's the way Barbara Brennan says to do it.

(15:14):
Because through her books, she has practical exercises for how to access the content and
how to experience it and what to look for.
And I take it all with a grain of salt because that's her story she's telling.
But one thing that felt very true to me is that the story she's telling is about something
that's actually there.

(15:35):
And I can experience it too.
And it may not be in any way the same way that she experiences it, but I know it's there.
And I have experienced it.
So it's really fun.
Yeah.
But as I started moving up my chakras, you know how like all of a sudden there's like
a little bit of a temperature change or something, and you get this like flush of chills, like

(15:58):
these chills that just run through your whole body.
Yeah.
That's energy.
That's what it feels like physically.
Whatever it is when you get chills, because everyone experiences that.
And I'm sure there's some scientific explanation.
There's a wave.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
But I have this feeling that I have when I meditate.
And now as I have learned to meditate and go inward, I can consciously stay in that

(16:19):
wave of energy.
And I'm getting more and more familiar with it.
It just takes letting go of my concept of reality and accepting whatever.
Being able to just pretend everything's true until I start to realize what is true.
I don't know.
That's a messy way to explain it.
But by the time I got to all the way up to my crown chakra, my seventh chakra, and opened

(16:41):
it, the body energy was so intense and it was like a river just flowing and coursing
and surging through my body on a cellular level.
It was like I could feel every cell of my body.
It was an intense feeling.
And I just enjoyed it.
I just relaxed and appreciated a thing that I had never experienced fully before.

(17:05):
I had experienced body energy, but not complete.
And I've never been able to step into any levels above it since then.
Above?
Above body.
It's like you start at your body and then you go six inches out.
And then there's your first energy body and then another six inches and there's your next

(17:26):
energy body.
And I have no idea, but just think of it like that.
Each body starts at the very center and goes all the way out to its outside.
And your physical body is just one of them.
And then contained inside and around that is the emotional body.
And it's made of color.

(17:48):
And when you...
But the color changes, right?
It doesn't just stay the same.
Absolutely.
It is just swor...
It could be multiple colors at the same time.
Like it could look like what the fuck ever, right?
It's just a swirling chorus of color.
Wow.
That's a really beautiful way to put it.
It is also patterned after the first layer.

(18:10):
It follows the shapes of it as above so below.
What happens there is a reflection of what's happening above and below it because it's
still the same body.
It's just a different aspect of it.
That's how I see it.
Obviously I don't have a clear perspective of it, but it's very interesting.
Yeah.
No, it is very interesting.
You're making me definitely want to learn more.
I've got questions, but I don't really know how to form them.

(18:31):
Yeah.
This book helps me find my questions and also my language to answer them.
It is very helpful to put language to thoughts.
It's something that I feel like I am just now as an adult, 35 year old adult, really
interested in just for my own ease and understanding.

(18:56):
Yeah.
Marni Brown talks about it in one of her books as well, just being able to put words to emotions
and feelings and being able to express yourself in various ways is just... I mean, it's helpful
for you.
It's helpful for the people around you.
Yes.
Yeah.
But there's so many other ways, right?
There's so many other ways to express yourself other than verbally.

(19:18):
Yes.
Healing comes in many forms because all self-expression is healing.
That's how I see it.
It's all art.
It's all healing and it comes in every form that is imaginable and unimaginable.
One of those colors is you.
Yeah.
Nice yellowish.
Hopefully.
Maybe sometimes.

(19:40):
Probably not all the time.
How would you feel about answering some questions about your colors?
Do it.
The answer is yes.
Yes.
Yes.
I love your colors.
Thanks, man.
Where did you get your start?
Where did you come from?
In this life?
I mean, it's your question to answer.

(20:01):
My colors or me?
I just like to ask questions and see what happens.
I'm from Indiana.
I'm from Southern Indiana.
Do you feel like you have an Indiana accent?
Sometimes.
Yeah.
Actually, it's been really strong this week because I've been talking to my brother on
the phone a lot and he recently moved to Kentucky, so what used to be just this Southern Indiana

(20:27):
redneck accent has now turned into a little bit of a Kentucky twang.
I wonder if I could get my Tennessee accent back out.
I bet you could if you talk to somebody from Tennessee.
Your accent is a little bit strong, so I'm going to see if I can let mine out just a
little bit.
Okay.

(20:48):
I don't know.
I've never tried to do that before.
What's interesting to me is, actually, I think your dad and I were talking about this and
he told me that there's a difference between a dialect and an accent and that we get it
confused a lot, which I'd never heard before in my whole life.
If somebody has an English accent, then it's the way that they talk, the way that the ends

(21:13):
of their words curl or whatever, right?
He does have a lot to say about that topic and it is quite interesting.
It occurs to me, though, that that's an expression of sound as emotion.
Oh, our accents.
It feels like when I think about the sound of the accents, that color, I'm seeing the
color in the brushstrokes.
Oh, that's so cool.

(21:35):
It's really cool to see the world this way.
It's so fun.
I find that people in Oregon, I don't know if I would call it an accent that they have,
but the way that people in Oregon enunciate their words is so endearing to me.
I want to try to imitate it right now, but now I feel nervous to do so in a microphone.

(22:00):
I feel like people from Oregon, they don't really have an accent, but the way that they
enunciate their words is very clear.
Do you have an example in your head?
Yeah, I had this friend, a friend that I made when I first moved here.
The way that she talked was so enunciate.

(22:20):
Everything that she said was so enunciated.
It was so beautiful.
But yeah, I was like, I always think about that.
It's like Oregon, you know, you meet people from Oregon and they don't, it's not like,
oh, you sound like you're from Oregon.
You know, it doesn't really, it's not the same as like meeting somebody from Chicago
or Boston or.
My dad claims that there is no accent in Oregon and it's the only no accent at all.

(22:45):
I think he's right.
I have my reservations because that seems to.
Definitive.
It feels too definitive.
Yeah.
So I don't know, maybe the way that people enunciate their words is an accent.
I'm not sure, but.
So there's always another side of the coin and I look forward to finding out what it
is.
I'm sure it'll come back up at some point in my near future.

(23:08):
Indiana, huh?
Yes.
Yeah.
Southern Indiana, the very, very most southern tip last town there before you get to Illinois
or Kentucky.
You were born there.
I was born there.
In a hospital?
Uh, yeah.
It's funny that you asked that, but then everybody that I mean in Oregon has had their children
in a bathtub or something.

(23:28):
So I'm just kidding.
I'm sorry.
Oh no, I love, I love the stereotype.
Oh, that's awesome.
Um, no, I'm, I'm just mostly kidding, but a lot of people out here do have really cool,
unique stories versus just like, you know, a nurse helped pull me out.
So in your, in your upbringing, having a child at a hospital was kind of a foregone conclusion.

(23:51):
Yeah.
It was a little more, uh, everybody kind of does everything one way there for each thing.
Um, well, that's not true though.
Actually.
My mom was born in a 57 Chevy in the back of a 57 Chevy.
Are you serious?
Yeah.
On the way to a hospital.
So, you know, they were trying to, to stay in line with everyone else, but she, she,

(24:15):
she just, she had another idea.
Actually, today's her birthday.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
Today's my mom's birthday.
Happy birthday, Mary's mom.
Happy birthday, Janet.
That makes her my grandma.
I think.
Yep.
She is your grandmother.
It's fantastic.
Happy birthday, grandma.
She'll be happy to know that she now has a 14th grandchild.

(24:37):
I'll call her after this.
Fantastic.
What was your childhood like?
What are your standout memories?
Um, standout memories.
Oh, I don't know.
Yeah.
I'm just trying to get, offer suggestions to, so I can hear what kind of imaginations
are in that head of yours.
Yeah.
Um, I did, I had a very imaginative childhood.
Um, I was a very, I was very tactile kid.

(25:03):
So I was always outside whenever it was nice out, you know, the winters in Indiana can
get a little rough, but it was, it was snowing that I would be outside.
But like raining, I didn't really, didn't really go outside much, but I rode my bike
a lot.
I was really obsessed with Beanie Babies, um, when I was a kid.

(25:23):
Hold on.
Okay.
What are you doing?
You want your headphones?
You got to move the bed closer so that you can just, that can be like your desk, you
know, your podcast desk.
Just like all your stuff like that.
Dude, it's so fun to be doing this in such a like edge of your seat way.
You're literally tucked in the corner of the bedroom and we're wrapped around the bed a

(25:46):
little bit.
Yeah, I love it.
I do love the atmosphere in here.
It's very cozy and it makes it, it makes it calm, makes it calming.
Okay.
Yeah.
Back to that color.
I, I was, uh, I really liked Beanie Babies growing up, T.Y.
Beanie Babies.
And so I tried to collect as many of them as I could, but you know, so I'd ride my bike

(26:07):
down to this little store.
And if I remember correctly, I don't remember the name of it.
That's, that's a bummer.
That's something that's happened to me as I get older is I don't remember really, really
iconic things from my childhood, like names of stores that I frequented.
But you remember what it meant to you emotionally.
I do.
Yeah.
That's much more interesting than the name.

(26:27):
It had like a squeaky door and a bell that would ring when you walked in and a little
old ladies, like this, this little gift shop that only had like novelties, like little
boy bears, uh, and just trinkets.
I don't know.
And I really, really liked trinkets a lot.
Um, but yeah, I, I would, I made a lemonade stand outside of my, out front of my parents

(26:50):
house and I would sell lemonade until I collected $12.
And then I would ride my bike down to the store, the little Beanie Baby store and buy
a Beanie Baby.
And then my, my friend Brian, he would take the other $6 and do whatever he wanted with
it.
So sometimes we would just go to the gas station and buy surge and chug them and see how hyper

(27:13):
we could get.
But is that Mella Yella?
It's yeah.
It's like, I feel like it's like a kind of like Mountain Dew.
Yeah.
Like Mountain Dew, but worse for you.
I think I don't even know if they make it anymore.
It's a very Southern drink.
Yeah, probably.
Yeah.
How old were you?
Um, in this memory, gosh, I want to say I was probably, how old are you when you're

(27:36):
nine third grade?
I think that when you're nine, you're nine.
I meant what grade are you in when you're nine?
Yeah.
I might've been nine, nine ish years old.
And then I would take the Beanie Babies and then I would draw pictures of them in their
natural habitat.
Oh wow.
Yeah.
I, there's one that stands out a lot.

(27:57):
It's, um, it was a little otter holding a piece of seaweed, just one little strand.
It's like on its back.
It's a really cute Beanie Baby.
I think I still have it.
Yeah.
And so I drew a picture of that, of the otter floating down the river.
Um, which I think I actually still have the drawings at home as well.

(28:18):
Did you draw a picture of the Beanie Baby?
Like the otter was holding the Beanie Baby?
No, no, no.
The Beanie Babies are animals.
They're all an animal.
So, so the Beanie Baby was the river otter.
Yeah.
It was a river otter.
Yeah.
Oh wow.
And so I would bring the Beanie Baby home and I'd be like, okay, now I'd like, I'd
like sit at my desk and I'd have like my colored pencils and okay, this little guy, what did

(28:43):
his life, what's his life look like in a, in his natural habitat?
So I would draw pictures of them.
Why did you do that?
Oh well, gosh, I mean, I don't, I don't think I could even.
How about, how did it make you feel to draw those?
I actually really liked that you asked that because I think that I felt very peaceful

(29:05):
and calm and concentrated, which is something that I don't feel and haven't felt very often
just in my life in general, but there are certain things that I do that kind of get
me into this, this level of presence actually, I think is probably what it is, right?

(29:26):
Anytime I was doing some, any, any type of art, I would be very focused and like really
just only paying attention to what was in front of me.
And then the time passes.
And then also, you know, you show people like people that love you, that aren't going to
tell you that your drawing is absolute shit, that it's really cute or sweet or whatever,

(29:46):
you know?
So yeah, I think it made me feel, is serene in the motion?
I believe it is.
Serene is a fantastic word.
Yeah, it's probably, I think I probably felt pretty serene doing that.
So what, what are your earliest memories like?
Usually it's about the emotion of where you live.

(30:07):
You know, I don't know.
Yeah.
Not a whole lot of pleasant things come to mind for some reason.
Ooh.
Yeah, I don't know why.
Intrigue.
Do unpleasant things come to mind?
I don't remember a lot from when I was like pretty young, but I just know that things
were pretty chaotic.
Do you feel like you blocked some out, like because they are chaotic?

(30:27):
I don't know that I even blocked it out or I don't know if because it was so, I was so
young and there was so much chaos around me that I was really able to hold on to any,
any memory rather than like you're talking about energy, you know?
Like that's kind of what I picture.
I mean, whenever I was younger, I would always carry around a little journal from, from like

(30:51):
the moment I could write.
I loved writing or I would read stories.
I would read books a lot.
When I was born and then by the time I was like old enough to walk and talk, my siblings
were getting involved in sports and stuff like that.
So it was just like, that's what I mean by chaotic.
It was just kind of everybody constantly on the go.
It was a very full household, full of, full of things going on.

(31:15):
And so.
How many siblings?
Three older siblings.
Yeah.
Were you involved in sports?
I was.
Okay.
So all of you guys.
Not till later on though.
I was actually pretty, pretty chubby when I was a kid and kind of not really athletic.
Like I, I, which is funny because I just like overnight became very athletic.
It was weird.

(31:35):
Like really good at sports.
And then suddenly, you know, I was in, I did dance from a very young age, but.
What kind of dance?
Ballet and tap and jazz.
All of it from, for like 18 years almost.
Yeah.
So.
Yeah.
I was in, I know it's kind of hard.
I know it's kind of hard to picture.

(31:55):
But I was actually.
Oh no, I don't think it's going to be hard to picture.
I sense a time in the future coming up where it's easy to picture.
Oh really?
Yeah.
In the future?
I'm, I don't know.
I'm sensing maybe even just like local forge classes of people who just want to do some
dancing.
Just get it out.
No, I know that.
I know dancing is so fun, but I, my real joy is.

(32:16):
Yeah.
I could teach some dance.
I could, I could, I couldn't really.
No, we'll add it to the list for some, some time when, when the stars align.
We do need to make a list though.
We have one.
It's hanging on the wall out there.
Oh.
Yeah.
That's where lists are.
I didn't, oh.
No.
There's a centralized location.
In the skylight calendar.
Oh yeah.

(32:37):
There's a, there's like a to do, like a fun to do list.
The skylight calendar, the thing that has changed our existence.
Are you in, are you, are you, are you endorsing?
Is that like.
No.
No, you know what I mean?
I mean, do you think that podcasts have like.
No.
Commercials is like what, are we breaking?
Oh really?
You're going to bring that up.
So this is something I've been thinking about.
Sorry.

(32:57):
And that's not why I'm doing this.
And I don't know how I'll feel in the future, but I mean, it's, it's going to take me a
lot of time to even get to the point where I'm marketable in that way.
Yeah.
But when I get there, I'm still going to want to be doing the same thing.
I'm doing this for my friends and family.
I'm doing this because I want to be visible.
Yeah.
I'm not doing this to make money.
I'll find other ways to do that.

(33:20):
And the future could prove me wrong.
It usually does.
Great.
That was a complete side trail.
That's okay.
That's what podcasts usually are.
But you said you danced and you said what kind of dances you did.
So ballet was my big thing.
Went from a very young age.
I wanted to be on pointe shoes.
So I worked really, really hard to make that happen.

(33:40):
Do you remember how, like how early you wanted this?
My mom and I used to have this tradition where we'd go to the Nutcracker and you know, there's
ballerinas and they're on their toes and the way they flow.
And you know, so I was like, I thought to myself, if I'm going to be in ballet, why
not just get to the top?
Like in the sense of like, this is the final thing you do, which it's really not.

(34:03):
The final thing is like Juilliard or like the American Ballet Academy, right?
Or something like that.
But what were you looking at as the final thing?
Being on pointe shoes and being able to do like a double pirouette on pointe shoes.
Like being able to do this thing that I had seen from a young age on stage.
And then I was obsessed with the movie Center Stage.

(34:24):
I still really love watching it, but there's this scene where the main ballerina, everybody
doubts her the whole movie, which I don't know what teenager doesn't feel like that
resonates with them, right?
So that was like, yeah, like that's me.
And yeah, she goes out on stage after everybody doubting her and she had put together this
number with her teacher and her two partners, like her two dance partners.

(34:48):
And at one point, like these guys were fighting over her as part of the scene and one guy
grabs one side of her like skirt and one grabs the other.
And then they both pull opposite directions and they untwirl her into this bright red
outfit and this tutu and it's so sexy and just absolutely different than what you know

(35:13):
ballet to be, right?
Kind of uptight and she's got these bright red pointe shoes on and this just thick makeup.
And then she's dancing to a hot chili pepper song and it's so sick.
And I was just like, that, that is what I want to do.
And so I just wanted to become as good as her, which I mean, I didn't, she's in the

(35:35):
movies, but that was like part of my motivation.
It's just the things around you know, that shape young girls.
That gave me chills.
Yeah.
It's pretty, it's a pretty cool scene.
Honestly, it's, it's a great dance scene.
And then Save the Last Dance is also a great movie.
I have seen that.
That's beautiful.
But that scene, what you described feels like, feels like a parable about a woman freeing

(36:03):
herself from codependency and becoming her own person.
Yeah, that's pretty bad ass actually.
That was the picture.
That was the emotional color picture that was painted in my imagination as you spoke.
Yeah, I like that.
We should, we should add that movie to the list actually.
I'd love to see that.
Yeah.
I think everybody would like it.

(36:23):
I would hope if they don't, that's okay too.
Yeah.
We'll make a movies list on the skylight frame.
Okay.
And then if you order your skylight in the next 30 days, you'll get a 15% discount.
See I wouldn't be good at it anyway.
Wow, look how the future changed us already.
I just really like skylight.
That was so fast.
I know.
Oh wait, that was true though.
The way you just said, was that true?

(36:44):
Oh, I was like, wow, that's incredible.
Don't, yeah.
I won't tell them you said that.
But it would be hilarious if you did.
No, it's just, it's just that, I mean, it's given us so much more space.
So it's hard not to talk about.
It's pretty much the same.
It's just, it's just that, I mean, it's given us so much more space.
So it's hard not to talk about.
It's pretty great, honestly.
What Michael is describing, it looks like this giant iPad.
It's like a long giant iPad that's attached to the wall.

(37:08):
And whenever the calendar's not pulled up, it just cycles pictures that people can upload
to the device from their cell phones.
And it's huge.
And it's so great.
It's so great.
And honestly, like anybody that comes up here that hasn't been here very often, they, as
soon as they're walking through the kitchen, they pause there and they stand there for

(37:30):
at least 20 minutes, just watching the pictures cycle through.
And then, and then before you know it, at least 10 people are just standing around every
time.
It's so cute.
Telling stories around the dinner table.
Sometimes it just turns into this like cacophony of storytelling and laughter about some crazy
pictures that someone posted.

(37:50):
And it's fun too, like, especially like, you know, I've only known you guys for a short,
a short period of time, but I get those pictures.
It is, but those pictures like give me such an insight.
And then they prompt the stories like, oh, Mary, well, this one time, like this, they
always have the craziest stories.
It's so great.
And then of course, underneath that is everyone's calendar and all the chores and everything
is scheduled and dinner plans.

(38:13):
And it has the menus.
It's so great.
It has like an AI assistant.
It's so great.
Oh, it has an AI.
Now it does.
It's brand new.
Like a Gemini.
It's like, hey.
Okay.
Okay.
It's like the same skylight.
Okay.
I know.
I know.
All I can say is I'm asking for a raise.
Yeah, you should.
You should tell them.
That was a long pitch.

(38:35):
So, so ballet, like we're talking about your, some of your earliest memories.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Sorry.
I did.
We're talking about earliest memories and I just launched into the things I like to
do.
Great.
Yeah.
I used to, I used to cartwheel through the house.
Like if I was in the living room and I needed like a cup of water, my parents live in this
really old big house, right?

(38:58):
Like in Indiana, it's just like, that's.
Like a farmhouse?
I don't know.
They just live in like an older neighborhood and all of the houses are like two stories
with an attic and in a giant basement kind of thing, but not like the nice basements
with carpet, like the kind of basement that's definitely haunted.
Sure.
Yeah.
So that's, so, you know, my parents have like a giant dining room and like each room is

(39:19):
separate.
Like there, it's not like an open floor plan where rooms flow into each other, right?
It's like there's a kitchen and then there's a doorway and then from the kitchen, there's
a dining room and it's massive.
And then from the dining room to the living room are these gigantic wooden pocket doors
that go from the floor to the ceiling and they're old and they're loud.

(39:43):
When you pull them out, they like rumble and they're beautiful.
I've never seen anything like it out here, but they're normal and the house is back home.
But anyway, then from, and then there's the living room.
So like I would cartwheel and people would get so mad at me because they're like, can
you not just walk?
But I couldn't, I had so much energy.

(40:04):
Like I was a very, I could be really hyper, right?
So anyway.
You were very alive.
I was very, I was a very alive child.
So that's like kind of what I remember.
I also, yeah.
Oh, yes.
I have a question.
I have a question.
I have a child in front.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Back to this basement.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, you like alluded to that.

(40:27):
Maybe you thought it was haunted.
Did you ever meet any of the haunting elements of it?
What was your experience metaphysically as a child?
Oh, I love to talk about this.
My parents' house is definitely, it's definitely haunted.
My mom told me once and she doesn't remember telling me this, which is fun because then
I play the game of, well, did that really happen, you know, in my head?

(40:48):
My mom told me once that the house that my parents live in now that I grew up in had
a bunch of cats in it, like before they moved in.
I was always like terrified of the dark and I actually still am.
And nothing ever actually happened for me to be that way.
So what I think, what I believe it to be now, and people can think I'm crazy.

(41:11):
I don't really care, but-
We do.
Good.
Good.
But I think that there was just always like, I could kind of see past a veil from a very,
very young age.
And I think I still can a little bit or at least feel it, you know?
My sister and I shared a bedroom and I would sleepwalk a lot.

(41:32):
And one time she was having this slumber party in the living room in a, like I said, it's
a very old, creepy house, especially in the nighttime.
And I sleptwalk down to the living room.
My sister was having this slumber party with her friends and I sat in my dad's lazy boy
chair on this old school, big lazy boy chairs that like rocked and it kind of creaked a

(41:53):
little bit.
It's like made out of corduroy or something.
And I'm just sitting there and I'm like rocking and I'm staring at the television.
And Andrea, Andrea's like, Mary, what are you doing?
And she said, I just stopped rocking.
And I just turned my head and I say, shut up.
And I never spoke to anybody that way because I knew better.

(42:16):
I knew better than to speak to any of my older siblings in that way.
Like want to get my butt whooped.
And then I continued rocking.
And then she said, no, seriously, Mary, you're too young to be watching this movie.
What are you doing?
They were watching some kind of scary movie, I'm guessing.
And I stopped again and I looked at her and I told her to shut up again.

(42:37):
And then I got up and I walked back up to my room and she said stuff like that would
happen all the time, but it was just with me, nobody else.
It wasn't happening to any of the other kids.
Anytime that the lights were off, I would sprint as fast as I could to the area that

(42:57):
had light because I was so, I could just feel, you know, and maybe they weren't bad.
You know, when you're young, you kind of think all ghosts are going to be like, grab you
and take you.
But I don't know that that's actually what would have happened.
I've never seen anything like directly, like clearly, you know, some people will talk about

(43:20):
how they've seen ghosts, but I think more I can hear them and feel them.
Yeah.
That, that, I don't know if that answered your question.
Did you, very much so.
Did you experience any?
I mean, I was raised, I was raised with the concepts of good and evil and God and Satan
and the forces of hell and the forces of heaven and the battle for our souls.

(43:42):
And yeah.
And are you familiar with chick tracks?
Dude, look up chick tracks.
What is that?
There, there are these like extremist tracks, like that track something that someone hands
out with a message on it for somebody to just read it and hopefully be converted.
They were cartoon, like they were written in animated style.

(44:04):
So that like anybody could understand it.
But it was like people in various, like a family with these issues, like alcoholism
or something.
And then you stay show the demons that are on their back controlling them and just like
all the evil and hell.
And then you see people living the horrible life and then dying and going to hell and
Satan's like, Oh yes, I've got you now.

(44:25):
Get his false teeth out.
You know, it's just like just very intense trying to paint a picture of the duality of
life, the good versus evil struggle that we are engaged in pitched battle on a spiritual
level where you can't really feel it here.
So that's like the chick tracks.

(44:47):
That was the mindset that I was raised in.
Okay.
So when you were a child, if you ever saw someone who was like a houseless person who
was maybe struggling with schizophrenia or something like that, were you, did you see
that often?
And if so, like, were you like, Oh, this person is being possessed by the devil or like, what
is that?

(45:08):
You know, what was that to you as a kid?
Yeah.
How was that explained to you?
Yeah, I would have seen that as demonic possession, but it went way beyond that.
I mean, some of the circles that I grew up in, even like disabilities, like if someone
was deaf, I just have a memory from my gym overshoot days of somebody telling a story

(45:28):
about walking by and just feeling so much evil and demonic, just demonic presence.
And they were just like, what is going on?
And they're like looking around them and they're walking.
And then they realize that they're walking next to a school for the deaf.
And that's why they felt all the demonic presence because the Bible talks about deaf and dumb

(45:54):
spirits being cast out of people and they could hear and see again.
So these people took that literally, like that Bible literalists will come up with things
like that.
And so I would even see that type of stuff as demonic possession, maybe sometimes, but
I just tried not to think about it too much more than just to try to prove all of the
things I could prove to the people I was witnessing to.

(46:14):
But I couldn't let myself question it.
There was no option for questioning it.
So yeah.
And then I'm thinking to myself, like if you're a child in that situation, like, and what
if you experienced something that felt disabling or if you had any type of mental health struggles,
like you wouldn't probably be able to tell anyone because then what?

(46:37):
It's interesting.
I was raised in a Christian household, but my parents are very gracious about the way
that they viewed their religion and they still are.
I mean, I'm from kind of the Bible Belt-ish area, but it wasn't...

(46:58):
What do you mean by graceful?
Like, they didn't tell us we were going to heaven or hell.
That was never a conversation that we had.
They didn't use religion in a way to like shame us or make us think something bad was
going to happen if we didn't do X, Y, Z.

(47:18):
My mom went to church every Sunday and my dad worked shift work.
So he went when he could.
And my mom knows a lot about the Bible and it's still very interesting to her.
And I mean, she's still a Christian, so it's still an active faith of hers.
But I just didn't grow up with that fear of the heaven and the hell.

(47:40):
It wasn't a strong narrative, I guess.
Did you not grow up with the awareness of it?
Or the awareness, but not the fear of it?
I think about that sometimes.
I don't think I was ever afraid of heaven and hell.
I had a hard time believing that that was true from a very young age.
I would pray to God a lot asking for him to prove himself though.

(48:04):
And then I would read in the Bible that that's a sin.
And so I think I was more worried about sinning rather than heaven and hell.
And I can't tell you why other than wanting to be good rather than a bad person.
So do you mostly have continuity through your upbringing, your childhood?
Was it mostly in this mysterious, unnamed town in Indiana?

(48:26):
I don't know, how long did that stage of your life last?
It seemed to me me got squashed pretty early on in different ways, but I'm not going to
blame that on anybody in particular.
I mean, we can talk about a thing without blaming it.
And there are other people involved.
Yeah, always.
We're all just bumping into each other with each other's trauma.

(48:47):
And all we have here is your perspective and we're real curious about it.
I lived in Indiana.
I lived in the same house from the moment I was, well, after I got home from the hospital
because I didn't get to have a tub birth.
I didn't get to be born in a tub from then until I went to college.
I went to like a commuter school, so I lived away from home a couple of semesters.

(49:11):
I went studied abroad for a little bit.
And then after that, I moved to Hawaii after I graduated college.
And that was the first time that I ever really like lived away from home in the sense that
I couldn't just drive home and ask my mom and dad for help on something or just be in
the comfort of the place that I grew up with.

(49:34):
How did that feel for you, that transition?
It was fucking terrifying.
But you did it anyway.
I did it because I knew from a very young age that like that town was not a place that
I could grow.
But even in Hawaii, I just moved from like these social constraints in Indiana to the
social constraints in Hawaii.
And so it wasn't until I moved to Oregon that I really felt like those handcuffs kind of

(49:59):
came off, you know, for some reason.
What was Hawaii like for you?
Hawaii was exciting and lonely and liberating.
I think I like finally learned that I couldn't just be the youngest child and depend on my

(50:19):
parents for everything, even just providing answers for things like I needed to learn
how to really live life on my own in different ways.
Did you have a landing like landing pad?
Was there someone you knew over there?
Yeah, my ex husband.
Okay, so you got married before you went to Hawaii?
No, no, no, no, I got married.

(50:42):
We got married about two and a half years after I moved there.
Yeah, I actually moved there to be with a boy.
Okay, where did you meet him?
How did you guys meet?
I grew up with him in Indiana.
Yeah, and was he a similar religious and economic?
His grandfather was the preacher who performed my parents wedding.

(51:04):
Yeah, so we went to the same youth group.
Got it.
We went to the same youth group growing up.
And then we both we kind of went to the same college.
I went to that college and he sometimes went to that college and then decided to join the
military.
And the timing is always wonderful.
So we started talking literally right after he got orders to move to Hawaii.

(51:32):
Yeah, and then we were young and thought that like, fairy tales were real.
You know, so we were like, oh, we'll just be together forever.
So you move to Hawaii and we'll just live our lives on from there.
Who knows what the future looks like, except for the fact that we're going to be together.
Right.
So that is what I did.

(51:54):
Do you think fairy tales are real now?
No, but I'm not as disenchanted by them as I used to be.
You know, after after getting divorced and somebody that I still really care for and,
you know, we have a very strong bond and friendship.
I definitely do not think fairy tales are real, but I do have to remind myself that

(52:14):
romance can be real and that that's OK to to not like for a long time.
I was just like, man, romance like a stupid.
I mean, I still really don't like Valentine's Day and things like that.
But romance is cool.
You know, if it could be done tastefully.
Did you just go stay on the military housing?

(52:36):
We lived off the base, which was really nice for me because I worked at all of the different
schools on the island.
And so the spot that we lived was pretty centrally located to different highways that would take
me across the island to get to the schools.
So I was a skills trainer for kids that experience autism.

(53:00):
Yeah.
So that was a lot of fun.
I really, really liked that.
I'm still in that field now.
How did you get involved in that?
I met a girlfriend of one of Tyler's Navy buddies.
And then when I when she found out I was moving there, she's like, you should apply to do
this.
A lot of kids on the on the island that need help.

(53:20):
And there's always a shortage.
And I couldn't have thought of anything better.
It sounded like a dream.
Did you have a background in anything like that?
Just loving kids.
I just love kids.
What jobs had you had before that?
I was a registrar in an emergency room.
Other than that, I just did like little things like I mean, just like, you know, my first

(53:42):
job ever was like at a grocery store as a cashier.
I worked at the college in the rec center, just checking people in and out.
And then in the summer times, I cleaned dorm rooms, which was really gross and fun, because
you know, the people you work with usually are really fun.
So we'd always like make a game of things.
It was all just like normal jobs that you work when you're young until you get into

(54:05):
a career.
And I guess I like I saw the skills training as like, okay, I'm going to be in like a little
bit more of a professional setting like this is a school.
So there's like teachers there and people that are professionals in one way or the other.
Not that hospitals there aren't.
Was it difficult to get the position?
No, it was actually ridiculously easy.

(54:27):
Because there was such a need.
There's such a need.
There probably still is.
Because I mean, what I do now here in Oregon, I'm a case manager supervisor.
And so we partner with agencies kind of like the one I used to work in, not exactly the
same, but that essentially hire skills trainers.
They're also not it's not that title.

(54:48):
It's not the same title.
So you coordinate support.
I used to now I now I supervise people that coordinate support.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So they're pretty.
How do you feel about that moving up on the corporate ladder?
I think that the further away you get from the people, the less enjoyable it is.

(55:10):
So what are you going to do?
That's a great question.
I'm 35 and I don't I don't know that I'm quite old enough to have a midlife crisis yet.
But you know, I told you I like to write a lot.
Yes.
Well, I always have my my degree is in creative writing, which, you know, people make fun
of people that have creative writing degrees is like really majored in whatever writing
children's books.

(55:31):
No, that's not true.
But yeah, I would really love to have a job where I could be more creative.
You know, I was telling you, like that serene feeling that I would get when I draw pictures.
So I used to love photography and I still do.
But you know, some people like to keep their hobbies even as they get older.
And I just let mine fall away.

(55:51):
And then I just focused on my career and I would like to get back to playing more.
Right.
Like those hobbies are important.
So I used to have a ton of really cool creative hobbies and I don't have them anymore.
I'm out of practice, I guess.
I still have a great camera.
I still have a pen and paper.
You can't really lose that.
But well, those are all extremely interesting fields of hobbying.

(56:13):
Yeah.
Fields of playing.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm just starting to explore them for the first time.
It's so fun.
It is fun.
Did you know what you wanted to do when you grew up, when you were a kid?
Like did you?
Yes.
You did?
I wanted to be a warrior for Jesus.
Did you?
I did.
Okay.
Are you a warrior for Jesus now?

(56:35):
What does that even mean?
That's a great question.
What is a warrior for Jesus?
I would argue that you kind of are a warrior for Jesus.
But like, Jesus is pretty badass, right?
Like he is.
He's a pretty badass dude.
Yes.
Jesus is a huge part of my formation as a human.

(56:55):
He absolutely is.
Yeah.
At least everyone's concepts about who he was.
Yeah.
I definitely have an affinity.
I have a soft spot for like when I hear somebody reading the Bible, it immediately feels familiar
to me.
But when I hear someone reading the words of Jesus, it feels like home.

(57:17):
Oh.
It's hard to describe other than it feels like sitting in front of a fireplace on a
cold day.
It's beautiful and it's like a song.
You know what it reminds me of is, oh my goodness, I'm about to be a heretic right now.
I never felt that feeling with any other book until I read the Bhagavad Gita, which is it's

(57:40):
Krishna and a general, a war general, right on the eve of a battle.
And they ride out in their chariot between the two armies and the general is just like,
this is terrible.
Like I'm about to kill all my own kin.
There are people over there.

(58:00):
I can't do this.
And then Krishna just starts talking and it's just beautiful.
It's the same.
It felt like I was reading words that were painted with the same strokes, the same beauty
full of love and hope and compassion and just the joy that comes from surrender.

(58:23):
I guess that's what it feels like.
Yeah.
But either way, words felt very similar.
They're beautiful.
So yes, I would say that no, I am not a warrior for anybody.
Okay.
I am just Michael.
I am a human and my name is Michael.
I think.

(58:44):
Are you human?
I don't know.
Yes, I am human.
You are human.
I am.
Yes.
I quite recently found my humanity.
It's wonderful.
Huh.
So how did we get on this side trail?
I don't know.
I was telling you about my life.
Yes.

(59:05):
Do you ask everybody about their lives when they come on your podcast?
No.
Okay.
I just ask whatever questions come up.
Okay.
Well, I don't even know.
If I'm sitting down to ask someone about their life, that's what I do.
But I wasn't sitting down with any intention with you.
But I'm very curious.
And so once I start asking-
I don't know that we've ever talked about some of this stuff.
And there's always more.

(59:25):
That's the thing is no conversation is ever complete.
What are the highlights of the extracurricular things you did in Hawaii?
I struggle with looking back at my time there.
And there was a lot of things that I did that I really loved.
And I was always very anxious living that far from my family.

(59:46):
And always kind of sad.
And a little bit like somebody that like there's always something wrong.
But I mean, oh man, I did so much there.
There's always something to do because the weather is always perfect.
So I had a dog named Sampson.
He's this little pit lab mix.

(01:00:09):
And while Tyler was on deployment, just insane, like every weekend hike to a waterfall.
Like that's crazy.
That's- but I grew up in Indiana.
We didn't have that.
It was like cornfields.
So in Oregon, that's actually still not that unheard of.
I just hiked to a waterfall yesterday.
But my love of hiking started when I was a kid.
My family, when I was very young, we used to go on vacation every summer.

(01:00:32):
We would go to the Great Smoky Mountains and hike.
And I just loved being out in the woods as a kid too.
So being in Hawaii where the woods were tropical, it was absolutely magical.
I mean, it was insane.
Like wild orchids.
What?
That's crazy.
Like there's like dandelions where I'm from.

(01:00:53):
There's like a wild violet or like a little wild daisy.
But I didn't have to be around people.
And I just was with my dog and I would like put my little GoPro on him on his little harness
on his back.
And he would just run up the trail and you'd see his little floppy ears.
And when people would come visit, I would just take them on these insanely magical hikes.
And it's like, it felt like an adventure.

(01:01:14):
It's just like always adventuring, but it's right there in your backyard.
Do you feel like you experience life mostly visually?
This feels like everything is very visual.
I'm wondering.
I am.
I am very visual.
Yeah.
And now, like as I'm talking to you and telling you about that, there's this one hike.
I'd hike to this old military bunker at the top of this mountain.

(01:01:38):
And I would just, once I got there, I'd just sit, it was like right out in the sun.
I'd just sit there with Samson and we'd just look over.
And it's just like ocean and like some little islands out that you could, you know, kayak
to and we would just sit there.
See, that's what I did in Hawaii.
I went to the beach and I went hiking.
So imagining yourself sitting there by the bunker, as you did, you can imagine what it

(01:02:01):
looks like.
You've already described it.
I can see it in my head.
Can you hear the sounds around you?
I can hear the wind because I was on the top of a mountain.
You can hear the wind.
What else can you hear?
I almost can feel the warmth of the sun now that we're doing this.
And the birds.
What does it smell like?

(01:02:21):
Kind of like warm dirt and foliage.
You know what I mean?
But like in a good way, like it's almost sweet smelling.
That jungle smell.
Yeah.
Beautiful.
And each one of those sensations all are just a different expression of emotion, just like
color.
It's all they're all just brushstrokes.

(01:02:42):
That warm feel of the sun playing across your skin and the sound of the wind with the birds
and some far some close all the textures and colors and the little buds of the insect going
by the smell of right where the moss connects with the dirt and the bark and the trees.

(01:03:03):
The wild orchids.
It's all just emotion.
Yeah.
It was interesting too because I feel like I go I go hiking to regulate my emotions.
That is what I use hiking for.
I use hiking to ground myself.
Maybe to get in touch with them.
Like to connect with them.

(01:03:24):
No, no, I've no I like to very much avoid avoid my emotions.
And what what what happens when you're hiking?
What does it feel like?
You've used the word ground.
Yeah.
So in grounding, like I'm paying attention to my senses.
There's a hike that I'll do and I go off the trail into this little section.
It's a very mossy but stick covered ground and it's like the sun filters through the

(01:03:50):
trees there very differently than it does at the rest of the hike.
And it's always like this little it's this little pocket so then Louie can run around
off leash.
But the way it smells is very different.
The birds the way the birds sound.
It's almost like you walked into a place where the acoustics are just insane.
And if you're quiet enough, the bird song around you is just like kind of reverberates

(01:04:14):
in your ears.
And so yeah, I use hiking to ground me not necessarily to like think about my emotions
or or feel into them more but more just you know just to be present in something else
other than my everyday life.
As you're hiking, it sounds like you're being present.

(01:04:35):
Yeah.
With the smells and the sounds.
Definitely.
And the feel.
What I'm imagining from what you're describing is that you are absorbing all of the sensory
information around you.
And you are opening yourself to it and allowing your emotional frequencies to harmonize with
the frequencies coming in around you.

(01:04:56):
How does that feel to you?
I like the idea of it instantly I wonder if it's accurate.
Like I wonder if that's what I'm doing.
Because I wonder if my energy might disrupt.
What do you mean you wonder if it's accurate?
Well, you said that I'm in harmony with.
Because what you use is we're grounding.
So that means basically to me that means you are opening yourself up to the energy from

(01:05:19):
the ground and allowing that energy, the wavelength of that energy to overwhelm all of the wavelengths
that are coming from your thoughts from your head and allow all of those wavelengths to
come into symmetry with the wavelength coming from the ground from the earth.
I guess that is what I'm doing.

(01:05:39):
That's a really cool way to put it.
You were also talking about wanting to escape from your emotions and that you're not really
feeling like you're getting in touch with them.
But then you talked about all the sights and sounds, which all of that stuff comes from
the earth just like you do.
But I just kind of gave me the image of opening all those wavelengths to the wavelengths around
you and allowing the harmony to just happen.

(01:06:00):
That's presence.
That's being in the moment.
Yeah.
How long were you in Hawaii?
For three and a half to four years.
Around there.
Why did you leave?
Because Tyler discharged from the Navy.
His contract was up.
He wanted to go to school and I wanted to be somewhere where I could keep hiking.
Legitimately, that's what that was.
We were like, well, what's this Corvallis organ?

(01:06:23):
We didn't even know how to pronounce it.
What gave you the idea of Corvallis?
He looked up colleges and OSU had that nuclear engineering program and they have a reactor
on campus.
He really wanted to be a part of that.
So we were like, oh, what's this place?
Oregon.
We've never been there.
Let's go somewhere we've never been.
We wanted our life to be an adventure together.

(01:06:44):
It certainly was.
That's so cool.
Yeah.
We moved here from, well, we road tripped out here.
We flew back to Indiana, had our stuff shipped by the military to Seattle.
Then we went, saw our families for about a month.
We had gotten married at a courthouse in Hawaii in Honolulu a month or two prior to leaving.

(01:07:06):
And then so we went home and had like a quote unquote real wedding, you know, with friends
and family and all that stuff.
So you'd lived together for a few years by this time.
We had.
And then how did you feel getting married?
How did that feel for you?
Like actually doing it?
I wanted to be married so badly because remember I told you I thought fairy tales were real.

(01:07:26):
I do remember that.
Yeah.
I thought that that was like the next part of the fairy tale.
I very, I genuinely believed that these different steps attained more and more happiness.
But then when that wasn't true, when that wasn't what was actually going on, then I
was like, it all shattered.

(01:07:49):
When did you realize it wasn't true?
Probably about two years after I moved here and our marriage was not going well and we
could no longer live in this like facade that we were just these two grown adults that were
married and could figure out how to move forward.

(01:08:09):
I mean, we just both had so much shit we had to work through.
And it was just like, we literally looked at each other one day and we were both so
sad.
We were so sad and we were like, this isn't working, is it?
And we were like, no.
So we went and we got some divorce paperwork and we filled it out together at a coffee

(01:08:33):
shop and played rummy while drinking hot chocolate.
Still having fun.
Still, well, yeah.
In whatever way you can.
Things were not fun before that.
Yeah.
So.
Was that the first healing step maybe?
We actually agreed on something for the first time in a really long time.
I wonder what he would think hearing this.
How did that feel for you at that point?

(01:08:55):
I was at a place where I was just like, and I think he was too, like we were so done.
We were so tired of fighting and disagreeing and just kind of, kind of like not liking
each other anymore.
You know, like we knew we loved each other.
I will always love that dude.
He's so great.

(01:09:16):
I adore him.
And I think he would say the same.
I talked to him like once a week, sometimes a little more time will go by, but we're very
similar in like, in our communication styles, which actually kind of played to our detriment
a little bit because we're both a little avoidant.
Yeah.
Oh.
Yeah.
I think we were both just like relieved.

(01:09:37):
You know, I think we both certainly have looked back and been like, well, I could have done
this differently and I could have done this differently and like, yeah, sure.
We could have, you could have, I could have, but what?
I mean, what is that?
Like we were so young and to give each other the grace now that we always wanted back then
from each other.
It feels incredible.
Like it feels better now than it probably would have then.

(01:10:00):
How long ago did you get divorced?
It was 2018, I believe when I got divorced.
Six years.
I know it's been a long time.
How long?
Our anniversary, our anniversary was a few days ago.
September 26 was, was when we got married.
Congratulations.
This feels really awkward all of a sudden for some reason.

(01:10:20):
Does it?
Cause I'm not actually married and I said anniversary.
And I said congratulations and I don't know.
No, the wedding was a blast.
It was the only relationship I had had up until that point that ended peacefully and
I was getting divorced.
I was so terrified of the stigma of divorce, but then once it came, just like anything

(01:10:46):
else I was like, why do people make such a big deal of this?
We didn't have children, we didn't own a house.
So they're obviously like, you know, you know how people can fight about things that don't
really actually, I mean, children matter, but like we didn't have to fight about money
or anything like that, but I was so terrified of the judgment of people.

(01:11:08):
Yes.
Oh, welcome to being human.
Yeah.
Terrified of the judgment.
One of my favorite things to do now, especially with people that I know come from like traditional
parts of the U S just to slide in a conversation that I'm divorced and look happy or proud
about it is one of my favorite like shock factors.

(01:11:28):
I don't do it as much anymore because I think shock factors are kind of a little bit immature,
but like sometimes it does bring me a lot of joy to like slip that in because I think
people think that you have to be sad and feel broken over things like that and you don't.
Like that your divorced is means that you're damaged goods.

(01:11:49):
Yeah.
Who cares?
Fuck that.
Yeah.
It could be a great thing.
We're human.
Yeah.
Whatever our condition, we're just human.
It really genuinely feels like it was a lifetime ago, but again, everybody's experience is
different.
Some people do have very painful divorces and so my heart goes out to them, but I think

(01:12:10):
we knew we were doing the right thing for each other to continue to evolve.
And you've obviously done the work inside yourself to heal.
Yes.
And as much as I can up until now, what a gift.
What a gift to be able to stand here already in your youth and look back at the beauty
of it.

(01:12:30):
Yeah.
Do you see yourself as an optimist or a pessimist?
I see myself as a pessimist, but I try to be funny about it.
Yeah.
I'm not a glass half full type of gal by any means.
Imagining just the part of your life that say is this past six months or a year, would
you say you're looking at somebody who is a pessimist?

(01:12:52):
The last six months to a year are pretty tough.
So, yeah, I mean, I would say that I am getting better.
I would say that I'm kind of shifting a little bit.
What do you mean getting better?
Well-
Do you see pessimism as bad?
I think that if you think that all these negative things are constantly going to happen, they

(01:13:13):
fucking happen because your perspective is everything.
I'm so passionate about that.
I have this thing that I've been doing and Michael, it's been working.
Perfect.
I get really anxious often and it will aid in a lot of sleepless nights and unsettled
feelings.
So, I've been doing this thing where I'll tell myself, it's very simple.

(01:13:37):
I'll just be like, oh, but you can do this.
It's like this thing that is making you anxious and you have this big fear of it seems really
hard and the underlying thought there is that I can't do it, is that I'm not going to make
it for some reason.
My body is reacting as if I'm going to die.
So I just say, you can do this though, but what if you can do this?

(01:14:01):
And I've been doing that.
I've been telling myself, even my alarm on my phone says you can do this.
And so, 6.45 AM every day, you can do this.
And it's like, you're right, I can fucking do this.
Like I said, the last six months to a year have been really rough.
They have been really rough, but it's also some of the deepest, deepest emotional work

(01:14:23):
that I've done.
And so, I can see a difference.
I can take a lot of positives out of really deeply painful transformational situations
that I've put myself in.
I've planted myself in a lot of tough situations.

(01:14:43):
It's been really cool to watch the process you're describing happen in you.
And for what it's worth, what I see is somebody who's a realist.
I like that.
Realists often confuse themselves with pessimists.
I've always known I was an optimist, but lots of people have told me I was a pessimist.

(01:15:04):
But realist, you're a realist.
You look at the thing and you say, that's a this.
That's not whatever you want me to believe.
As if I know.
You're a realist.
But what I see in my interactions with you, what I see is an optimist.
I knew you were going to say that.
A human that has optimism radiating out like a light out of the sun.

(01:15:25):
You are an optimist.
That's what I see.
And you are a realist.
And you are sarcastic.
You love to have...
You got all the shades, girl.
All the shades of yellow.
It's incredible.
But I do not see pessimism in there.
And I've only known you, like you said, for a little bit.
So I could be wrong.
True.
You've heard my worldviews before.

(01:15:46):
I've come to you crying.
And so for you to say that I am an optimist is kind of cool because you've seen me in
a light that I...
A lot of people don't want anybody to see them in.
I've seen you messy.
Oh, yeah.
And you've seen me messy.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
We've gone through some very, very difficult times in the very short amount of time we've

(01:16:06):
known each other.
Yeah, definitely.
And I've always felt safe to just be a mess and just to be mad and just to be frustrated
and depressed.
Yeah.
I've never felt judged.
So I've always just done it.
It's great.
I know.
It's pretty great.
That's the good thing about The Forge.
The Forge is cool.
Just show up.

(01:16:26):
So when you guys moved to Corvay-Less...
Corvay-Less.
Oh, I can't believe we called it that.
That's so funny.
You guys got a place together or what was your landing in Oregon like?
We lived at the KOA in a tent for about a week.
Yes.

(01:16:47):
Yeah.
While we were perusing.
We had Samson, so in Hawaii it's really hard to find a place if you have a pit mix.
So we...
I probably shouldn't be saying this, but we had our vet change his...
Because he wasn't aggressive.
He's just a happy little guy.

(01:17:07):
We had her change his breed type to just mixed.
It said nothing else.
It just says the word mixed.
And then we basically just drove around looking at four rent signs and then we found I think
like Dirksen and Associates.
They're like a brokerage and they ran out of places.
So that was the first place we ever lived in a little duplex.

(01:17:32):
Actually there was somebody that was killed there a few years prior.
And so we're talking about...
Gruesomely?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That can leave a mark, man, on a place.
Well I think it did.
I think it did.
We had a garage, which that felt really good for us because rent is so high in Hawaii.

(01:17:54):
We'd never had a garage before.
And so we felt like hot shit and we had like a little dart board in there and we would
have like little dart board tournaments.
We had a fireplace.
That was so nice.
We were living life.
It was just a little two bedroom, but it was so...
We had a washer and dryer.
I don't even have a washer and dryer now in my apartment.

(01:18:15):
So...
But experiencing the little luxuries for the first time feels wonderful.
Yeah but honestly though, like it felt good.
And then after a while I felt like trapped a little bit in some kind of weird story.
You know?
Really?

(01:18:35):
And then from there it just got worse until we both were like, let's shake hands and call
it good.
Whenever you're willing to drop the expectations of others, even if they aren't putting those
expectations on you on purpose.

(01:18:57):
If it's just part of their lifestyle and it's part of the lifestyle that you had growing
up, right?
I'm just Midwest.
It's just so interesting.
And then getting away from that far enough and for long enough to where you're like,
oh, I'm interested in doing this.
But then you question yourself.

(01:19:18):
You're like, but am I?
Essentially like knowing what you want.
Yes.
I did not know what I wanted for a very long time because I was so used to letting everyone
tell me who I was and what I wanted and what I wanted to do and what I was good at, what
I wasn't good at.

(01:19:39):
And like I said, it's not their fault.
You let them.
Yeah.
From a very young age to where it was like overwhelming to then try to think, well, what
do I want?
What do I like?
And at some point you transitioned from somebody who lives life codependently shaping yourself

(01:19:59):
for the interest of your perception of other people's feelings.
And at some point you have shifted because you no longer do that.
I don't think I try not to.
I try really hard to catch the people pleasing side of me and that that side of me that it's
like, well, if I sense that this person's upset with me, so I'm going to do I'm going
to reach out and I'm going to do this so that so that I can change their minds.

(01:20:24):
I mean, that's kind of crazy, but we do that all the time.
Like I'm going to do this so that this person's no longer upset with me.
Whatever.
Just it's fine.
Just be you.
It's fine.
It's okay.
Yeah.
That's something that I still struggle with a little bit and a lot of relationships have
kind of like suffered a little bit because of that.
Because when you're a people pleaser and then you decide not to, but then you don't communicate

(01:20:48):
that you're not going to anymore.
That's the piece that I'm kind of trying to still figure out.
But like when you don't announce to the world, world.
I am now going to have boundaries.
Yes, I am no longer going to show up like this because it actually hasn't felt good
this whole time and I'm exhausted.
Suddenly people are like passive aggressively upset or they do something that is actually

(01:21:11):
incredibly painful and hurtful, but you have to really dig down deep and undo that narrative
of like, oh, they're just not used to me showing up like this instead.
Yeah.
So that's kind of where that's where I'm at right now.
When did you become aware of that transition?
When did you become aware that you A are doing things to please other people and B don't

(01:21:34):
want to do that anymore?
I want to say about probably back in January.
That's when I realized.
That's when I realized that's what I had been doing for about six months.
And then I realized why it was so painful.
I realized, oh, I'd been people pleasing and that's what I'm stepping away from.
And it's painful for me too.

(01:21:56):
Painful to not to not be the golden child.
Oh, we love Mary.
Mary does this and this and this.
But now it's like, Mary, what's up with Mary?
Mary's learning how to say no.
Yeah.
Mary's learning how to have boundaries so that she can put up a boundary so that she
can heal the hurt that's getting hurt over and over and over and over.

(01:22:18):
Right.
Being able to say what I want or say what I don't like, that's something going along
to get along.
I understand that timing can be important in life, but I'm now just trying to mend and
revive relationships where my communication fell off while doing that because it is helpful

(01:22:39):
to communicate to the people you love.
It is.
And it's so difficult to...
It can be.
Words are not my...
Whole communication is not my thing, it's just not.
Written in a letter, sure.
Text message, absolutely not.
Don't even come at me.
But yeah, I'm very good at feeling things and not knowing how to express them to other

(01:23:01):
people.
It's very, very rare for somebody to feel so safe that you're like, I'm going to try
to say this thing and I'm going to fuck it up.
And for them to just hold the space and not get defensive.
That's just really hard.
I'm not very good at that either, holding that space for people.
I try, but...
Isn't that the safety that every human's after?

(01:23:22):
I know that's...
Yeah.
I'm trying to make myself a safe person for myself, right?
Yeah.
So that's a good one because my dog doesn't talk back.
Oh man.
That can get too fun too fast.
We're all just going to walk around wearing the I love me some me shirts after...
I love me some me.

(01:23:43):
Once we figure out the...
The fairy tale comes full circle.
Ah, the fairy tale.
It was me the whole time.
It was.
You're just staring at yourself in the mirror.
Because everything that happens on the outside is a reflection of what's happening on the
inside.
That's how I see it.
It sounds like you feel like you're still in this chapter.
I think I am.

(01:24:03):
I think I am still in this chapter.
I do play around from time to time about is there somewhere else I want to move and check
out?
I kind of have always had that in me a little bit.
Is it time to go?
Is it time to go?
Is it time to go?
I don't know if that's because I just don't know how to be where I'm at.

(01:24:28):
Can I be happy where I'm at?
Or is it for my growth, is it time to check out a different scene?
Where does it feel like you want to go?
I don't know.
This is going to sound so silly because I think you can find it anywhere.
You just have to find it.
But I want to be in a creative place.
I think I want to maybe be near, closer to a big city.

(01:24:52):
I know we're near Portland.
Portland, I feel like, has a lot of creative people that just do out of the box things.
I don't know if that's it for me.
Because I also miss certain things about the Midwest, but I would fear moving back somewhere
that didn't have a queer friendly community to be a part of.

(01:25:15):
So I'm still waiting it out to see.
Meanwhile, I'm just going to keep hiking and training my dog.
Oh, one thing that I really wanted to say on this podcast today.
I'm being serious.
Out with it.
I want people to think about this like, are you OK being bored?

(01:25:36):
It's OK to be bored because out of boredom, usually something creative comes.
So OK.
Full body reaction to that.
Oh, really?
Oh, yes.
Oh, I want to know.
That immediately brings my awareness to breathing, which is a concept I've been thinking a lot

(01:25:59):
about meditating.
Breathing.
I don't know the right words for the process of thinking without using your brain.
But OK, I've been sitting with the concept of breathing a lot and how life and death,
all the dualities that we see as humans is really just breathing.

(01:26:19):
It's a breath in and a breath out.
We're trained that we always have to be doing, accomplishing.
You got to do the thing.
You got to do the work.
And so we're always breathing in.
We're trained to breathe in.
Learn, learn, learn, soak, absorb, get better, progress, climb the ladder.
You're always breathing in as a culture.

(01:26:40):
That so resonates.
Even as a world.
But not really, because the more I listen to some of the thought processes of the Eastern
world, they don't see it this way at all.
But in the Western world, we're always breathing in.
And so breathing out feels like boredom or sadness or depression or stagnation or the

(01:27:01):
rut or whatever it were taught to see it as.
But when you said that, what I heard was it's OK to breathe out.
Yeah, it is.
Because when you breathe out, you make room for another breath in creation.
It is OK to breathe out.
In fact, it's essential to your well-being to breathe out.

(01:27:23):
It's OK to have some emptiness around you.
Yeah, that is so true.
We are always just breathing in.
We're always taking in.
And then that brings us full circle because we started this whole conversation talking
about overwhelm.
Yeah, it was part of the beginning.
And that's why.
That's why we're always so overwhelmed.

(01:27:44):
But that's probably why it gets such a negative connotation.
Because when we need air, we just try to pull more in.
Yeah.
Just let it out.
Everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be.
You can do this.
It's not going to go the way you think it will.
I have a hard time being around hardcore planners because I just really I'm like, well, everything

(01:28:08):
that I've ever wanted and planned in my life has completely dissolved.
So I'm done.
I'm done trying to do that.
Do you see yourself as a wanderer?
Mm hmm.
Yeah, I do.
And I can be very type A about certain things if I'm feeling anxious, you know, in a more
bird's eye view.
I definitely see myself as a wanderer.

(01:28:30):
How do you feel about that?
Is that how you want to be?
I think it's OK to be bored.
That's my answer to that.
I think the wanderer in me is always trying to search for something because she thinks
there's more.
Yeah, I should like draw myself a map of like big life events that I thought destination
happiness, destination happiness, you know, because it doesn't work like that.

(01:28:55):
So the wanderer in me, maybe she actually just wants a little spot to call home and
to, you know, to be at just to be.
Has she found a spot?
Has she?
Have I?
I think I'm getting closer.
Where's home?
We've had this conversation before.

(01:29:16):
Yeah.
I just realized that.
Yeah.
I just had a flashback.
Well, like, you know, the last couple of days have been really good days for me where I
have felt more connected to the universe and everything.
And so I would say I have felt just at home wherever I'm at.
But that's not how I always feel.

(01:29:37):
Because you breathe.
That's the goal.
Yeah.
You don't always feel that way.
You're learning to breathe.
Yes.
Breathe out.
Yeah.
Breathe out.
And as my dad, you are certainly always at home where I am.
Yeah.
There's your backup home.
You are my son.
I am.
I should certainly hope that I feel at home near you.

(01:29:57):
I have no idea how I became your son.
But it just is.
It was just meant to be.
It's very easy to predict what's meant to be.
Is it?
Are you going to?
What's your answer?
What's the answer to that?
Always you can answer what is meant to be because you just look at what is.
OK.
So easy.
I actually really like that.
I'm going to use that along with my whole you can do this thing.

(01:30:19):
OK.
I'll send you the royalties form.
Please do.
I can't charge royalties for universal truth.
That may be wrong.
Because it's always changing.
It is.
You just never know.
It is always changing.
I'm just like looking and see if there's like an animal sitting outside that's going to

(01:30:40):
endorse this somehow.
Mary.
He's right.
What are you most afraid of?
I'm most afraid of.
Oh, it comes to my gut.
What am I always afraid of?
Being eternally lonely.
I think that's that's what I'm most afraid of.
But there's nuances to it.
Like, you know, you can say this one thing.

(01:31:00):
But what I really mean is like feeling other than for the rest of my life, like as if no
one else on this entire planet or no other thing on this entire planet will ever accept me fully
for who I am.
I think that's my biggest fear.

(01:31:20):
Fear of being alone.
Well, I don't know.
Lonely and alone are different, right?
I like being alone quite a lot.
Wow.
OK.
So what does lonely mean to you?
What are the feelings around the word lonely?
Lonely to me is like sitting down with people that you trust and love and telling them telling

(01:31:43):
them something close to your heart and them not understanding.
Do you feel like you're afraid that you're never going to be seen as yourself, understood
as the creature Mary?
Does being seen just mean like being accepted?
Is it the same thing?
Do people interchange those?

(01:32:03):
I think they do.
So here's the problem with language is that words only mean what they feel like.
So that's why I like to use lots of different words so that we can kind of dance around
the emotion in the middle.
What I'm curious about is what is that loneliness feel like?
Paint the picture.
I find it harder to paint a picture whenever I'm not actively in the fear loop.

(01:32:27):
Oh, yeah.
So like I like, you know, because I struggle with depression and anxiety.
And so I, you know, I'm not in an active fear loop right now.
But I know that the thing that most comes up is like being in the middle of a crowded
room full of people you know.
And yeah, nobody's looking at you.

(01:32:48):
Nobody's everybody's talking to each other.
They don't even know your name.
That's terrifying to me because I've been there before.
It's like going through it's like one of those movies, you know, where you see like this
guy or this woman who they go through their every day and there's not one person in their
life that they pass by every single day that really knows them.

(01:33:13):
That's my fear.
Like let's say they go to the same coffee shop every day.
And they walk by a newsstand and buy a newspaper from a guy every day and that they don't even
know their name or they don't know anything about this person.
They're not connecting, but they see them every day.
It's like, oh yeah, I know of that person, but you don't know that person.
Do you think you feel like it is possible for one human to know another human on that

(01:33:37):
level?
No, I don't.
I don't expect another human to come to me and figure this out.
But I would love to one day be so connected to another human or another group of humans
that they know what's in my heart generally.
Like if I mess up, their default isn't, well, Mary's bad and this is why.

(01:33:59):
We're not surprised she did this because XYZ.
People that love you so much that they give you the grace, like to be a part of a community
where love is like the foundation.
Do you think that it's possible for a human to offer that kind of knowing, acceptance,

(01:34:23):
complete integration to their own self?
I think that they can get close, but I truly believe that healing has to come from a community
and not that other people can do the work for you.

(01:34:43):
There's like scientific research about how healing involves community.
Well starting with when a baby is born, if it does not have some sort of a communal bond,
it dies.
A human baby.
Yes.
I think that's been proven.
So as a human being that is a complete tribe animal and needs connection in some way to

(01:35:07):
survive, do you think it's possible for one of those humans to see themselves in a perfectly
accepting light, to not have judgment for themselves and to understand why they would
do what they would do and who they are and just to really see themselves fully?
Do you believe that's possible?

(01:35:27):
My gut says no.
Why not?
I don't know.
Okay.
I think, yeah, I'm not sure why I don't.
What if it was possible?
But what I'm asking is would that bring about the fairy tale that you no longer believe
exists if you could find that place inside yourself?
I think that's better than the fairy tale.

(01:35:49):
Don't you?
I have my suspicions.
I believe that state of being exists.
I believe that.
No, I know.
I know that a human can meet themselves that way, can see themselves that way, can hold
themselves that way and can offer themselves that home and safety and therein lies the
fairy tale of just being completely accepted and perfectly belonging in every space you're

(01:36:13):
in.
I have heard exactly what you're saying that people do believe that and then people have
experienced it.
What's interesting though is like, yes, that can be true, but I still think we need community
and then how do those two things, how can those two things be true at the same time?
And it's interesting to me that when I talk about a place where you're in complete harmony
within yourself, your response is always, yeah, but you also need community.

(01:36:38):
My curiosity is why does your brain go to this positive connection, this positive of
a completely harmonious connection within yourself?
Immediately you think of a negative of you no longer need connection with other people.
Why?
I don't know why my brain does that.

(01:37:00):
Because I've stepped further and further into this place of complete union with myself.
Number one, I found that it's breathing like everything else and so with the breath out,
staying in communion with yourself is just knowing this is the way it's supposed to be.
Acceptance.
Everything's already perfect.
Yeah.

(01:37:21):
And it's not going to go the way I think it will and it's going to go better than I could
have architected it.
So here we go.
The more I step into that for the first time in my life, I have completely full satisfied
connection with the people around me because I have it already with myself.
And when everything starts to get, feel like a live wire, just like vibrating chaotically

(01:37:46):
inside me and my energy and my emotions are just starting to like get all spazzy and raw
on the edges and I'm getting snippy, starting to snap at somebody or just feeling spazzy.
All I have to do is go sit and become perfectly quiet and allow all of my emotion and thought

(01:38:07):
vibrations to ground.
I mean the way you described it is perfect.
And it's like they all just enter the wavelength of the world around me and I just take a deep
breath physically because I realize that's all I'm doing.
It's just breathing.
And then I'm clear again and I'm at home again and I belong and everything's perfect again.

(01:38:28):
And so then I can go out and deal with the same chaos, the same difficulty that you're
already experiencing before.
But as a functional human.
One that knows where he belongs and who he is.
It's kind of interesting you saying that just now made me think like it's interesting how
everyone has different thresholds for where they belong and how.

(01:38:51):
I grew up in a chaotic home and like in my head it feels very loud to think back about
it.
But I don't know if it was actually loud or if the chaos was just busy and kind of like
no time, no time, Mary there's no time.
There's no time.
Got to get the stuff done.
Breathe in, breathe in, breathe in.
Literally just exactly what you were saying.
Like it was just always you know.

(01:39:12):
But now being in that type of environment I might be used to it.
But I think I would probably just completely dissociate and just be like this is an environment
where I don't get to think and I don't get to be in my body.
And it would feel like I didn't belong.
What I hear is that you're finding your way home.

(01:39:33):
Yeah.
Welcome home.
Thank you.
I really appreciate talking to you today.
I appreciate being here with you and Georgia.
Georgia.
Oh, Georgie.
Is her name even Georgia?
Is it just Georgia?
Oh, okay.
Because I was like if I'm just calling her that this whole time and just like without
her consent, that's kind of rude.

(01:39:53):
Embarrassingly.
It was a name that I held in reserve just in case.
I'll forget it.
What?
I don't want to talk about this stuff because for a long time I used to be like I wanted
a girl so bad.
And then I then I started thinking about what if I was one of my boys and then my dad's
always being like I wanted a girl so bad.
And to me it's like I love them so much and I wouldn't trade.

(01:40:16):
But there's also another thing where I was hoping to have a little girl.
But it turns out that I just wanted to be wrapped around someone's little finger.
Didn't have to actually be a girl.
Oh my goodness.
Oh, so wait.
Sorry.
Were you going to say that you wanted to name a little girl Georgia?
Because that's beautiful.
Yes.
So now you do have a Georgia and that's beautiful.

(01:40:36):
She's just very with four paws.
Then a super, super cute little kitten reached out both of its paws from its little cage
with all its little brothers and sisters in a gravel parking lot.
Just somebody was trying to get the kittens to a good home.
And she just literally stood there staring at us reaching her paws out and we grabbed

(01:40:58):
her and she grabbed my hand with her paw and put it over her face and held it there
as she snuggled against me.
So the rest is history.
And then now we have a little murderer on our hands.
She does keep the house protected from rodents.
That's been a learning experience for me too.
Just watching that process because sometimes like right now we don't even have a cat door

(01:41:21):
and we're in so many different construction projects.
So we leave the bedroom window open so that she has a way to get in and out.
And sometimes she brings her little playmates in through the window before she plays with
them.
And so she brings it in and then there's a little mouse and a big cat in here.
And I feel like I'm in the middle of a Tom and Jerry movie and there's a lot of crashing

(01:41:43):
and I just countenance it because...
I feel like I'm in the middle of a Tom and Jerry movie.
I love that though.
She's just being her...
Talk about chaos.
That show is crazy.
It is.
It is.
And there's a lot of life lessons and parables in there.
But the learning for me with Georgia and her playmates is that she doesn't hate them.
She loves them.

(01:42:04):
She thinks they're beautiful and fun to play with and she's just being herself.
As I see the mice, they're running away and they're trying to escape, but give them just
a couple of minutes and they're in a game that they know well genetically.
They're instincts.
And they play their part and she plays her part and there's a certain sense of surrender

(01:42:28):
that I learn from it.
I don't have to judge what's good and bad here because both just are.
I can't stop Georgia from being Georgia and I can't stop a mouse from being a mouse and
I appreciate what both of them bring.
I just get to be a human and watch the world be itself around me.
And then you do the thing.
What did you say you looked around?

(01:42:50):
What was the question?
Who am I?
Those are the two questions I ask the most.
Who am I?
What do I want?
But I don't think that's what you're talking about.
I ask myself a lot of questions.
I'm working on asking every question and I know there's infinite questions so I have
a business plan for an infinite amount of time.
I'm going to ask all the questions.
To yourself or to everyone?

(01:43:11):
I don't know.
I just like questions.
Remember originally we were going to ask each other a bunch of questions just back and forth?
Yes.
And then I was thinking about it and I was like, how will we keep that going?
But no, this was really cool.
This was better than that.
And I like the way you think.
Thanks.

(01:43:31):
I appreciate that.
I appreciate you asking about my story.
Time to go.
It's time to go outside and take a breath of fresh air.
My butt hurts.