Heartbreak, Hope, & The Wisdom of Joanna Macy (w/ Jess Serrante)

Episode Transcript
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Jess Serrante (00:00):
Uncertainty inherently means that possibility exists.

(00:04):
Possibility for all sorts of things.
For the darkest fantasies and fearsthat I have, and for the most beautiful.
And that, my life is a vote in thedirection of a possibility or a
set of possibilities, and I'm goingto give myself to the one I want.

Jeremy Blanchard (00:23):
Welcome to the Wider Roots podcast.
A show about how we can use thepower of coaching and personal
transformation to help create theworld we most want to live in.
I'm your host, Jeremy Blanchard.
I'm a coach for social movement leaders.
And today's episode is withmy dear friend, Jess Serrante.

(00:43):
If you listened to episode one, youmight remember that Jess joined me
to help introduce what the premise ofthis podcast Wider Roots is all about.
And I wanted to have her backon the show to talk about the
project she's been working on.
It's a podcast also.
It's called we Are The Great Turningand it's an exploration of the

(01:03):
teachings of her mentor, Joanna Macy.
If you haven't heard Joanna Macy's name,she is the creator of a body of work
called The Work That Reconnects, whichis designed to help us honor our pain
and get in touch with our deep love forthe world in the face of the existential
crises we're facing like climate change.

(01:24):
And having listened to a lot of theseepisodes as Jess was working on them.
I can say that they are full of the kindof spiritual wisdom and nourishment that
I know I am really longing for as I goabout my work for change in the world.
So in this episode, we coveredtwo themes, heartbreak and hope.
For heartbreak.
We're looking at this question of.

(01:46):
What would it be like if more coachingmodels and healing modalities and
spiritual paths helped us get in touchwith our heartbreak for the world.
As part of discovering what weare individually most called
to contribute to the world.
And for hope we look at this questionof what are the things we can use to
motivate ourselves when things getscary, or we start to feel despair.

(02:09):
Is that hope or is theresomething that's less fickle or
more stable that we can draw on?
Jess was very generous to share someclips from the episodes that haven't
been released yet episodes five and six.
And we're going to play some of thoseclips during the show so that you can
get a little preview of what's to come.
Episode one of We Are The Great Turningcame out yesterday and you can find

(02:31):
it wherever you get your podcasts.
And a quick invitation for how youcan support this show Wider Roots.
As you're listening.
If you hear something that touches yourheart, I invite you to take a moment
to send this episode to a friend ortwo who might also find it meaningful.
Since this podcast is prettynew, sharing it with others
really makes a big difference.

(02:52):
And if you're new here, make sureto subscribe in your podcast app so
that you can catch future episodes.
All right.
Let's dive in.
Hi friend.

Hey.

Jeremy Blanchard: Welcome back to the show. (03:07):
undefined

Oh, it's so nice to be

back.
So nice to be back after five episodes.
Our first repeat guest, ourmost frequent repeat guest.

All the superlatives.

Yes, absolutely.
So, This episode is going tocome out on April 23rd, and your
podcast, "We Are The Great Turning",the first episode comes out.

On the 22nd.

April 22nd.
Whoa.
So we've been just in the canoe onthis track for this whole wild journey
that been on for the last two yearsand this episode is a chance for us to
just like share some of the magic thatthis podcast project is with Joanna
Macy and, a chance to share some ofyour personal takeaways as someone who

(03:50):
just went on a really big journey andlike what that has to say about personal
transformation systemic transformation.
And really, I think this episode isgoing to be about Joanna's wisdom, right?
She has done this project with you toimpart ,possibly one of her big final
projects in the world, impart her,life of wisdom and her, like, elder

(04:11):
view on the crises we're in and howto face them our hearts fully present.

The heart's intact as we say at the top of every episode.

Yeah, I was like, why does this sound familiar?
Because I've listened to so many of

How to live through these wild times with our hearts intact.

Yeah, for folks listening, you and I have been
friends for over a decade now, as wementioned on episode one, when you
helped set up what the premise ofthis podcast, Wider Roots is about.
We're housemates, we're dear friendsand, yeah, if you were to give like
the synopsis of what this podcastis so we can have the container, the
context, going into the specifics.
what's the project thatyou did with Joanna?

Yeah.
So it's called "We Are the GreatTurning", and it's a 10 part series where
I have the great privilege of bringinglisteners to Joanna's dining room table
where we sit together with tea and talkabout what it is to live in these times.
And the series follows, what wecall the spiral which is the

(05:10):
structure behind Joanna's workcalled The Work That Reconnects.
And so we talk about everything from,what we call the three stories of
our time, like a way to frame up andunderstand what's happening in our
world right now, to gratitude, todeep anger and grief and heartbreak.

(05:31):
And then also into the like great openinginto our love for the world that happens
when we allow ourselves to honor our painand we talk about death and we talk about
eros, we talk about deep time and, climateaction and the big questions that are up.
So we explore these likereally rich topics, over
ten 20 to 30 minute episodes.

(05:52):
They're all somewhat short,which I think is right because
they leave the listener full.
They're really like rich episodes.

And having had the chance to listen to many of the episodes
as they were in development, what reallypart of the heart of this project for
the spiritual grounding, the spiritualprinciples that Joanna is speaking to.
She's not here to give us like thetactical how to of, showing up to
the climate crisis and the likeconvergence of crises that we're in.

(06:23):
But she really, especially comingfrom her like Buddhist perspective
and her systems theory perspective.
She just has so much grounding to offerto keep like, how do we return The courage
that we need to be able to show up ina time of like incredible heartbreak.

Yeah.
you Introduced her pretty well, but I'mrealizing we should probably say who
Joanna Macy is in case anyone listeningdoesn't know, in which case, welcome.
I'm so excited for youto know who Joanna is.
So Joanna Macy is a, as you said,Buddhist and she's a deep ecologist
and systems thinker and she is 95 yearsold and she lives here in the Bay Area.

(07:04):
And, she created this incredible bodyof work called The Work That Reconnects
that is by my calculus, at least, oneof the best tools, tool sets, frameworks
out there for people who, see thedestruction and are like heartbroken by
what's happening in the world and don'twant that to stop them from being able to

(07:28):
totally love their life and totally loveour world and stay in sustained action to
create a future that is more beautiful,more just, more life sustaining.
And she's been doing this workfor almost 50 years and she's just
an absolutely incredible elder.
And she and I have beenfriends for 10 years.

(07:48):
So this podcast comes out of, 10years of mentorship and friendship
that she and I have had together.

Amazing, so many things in there.
I think there's themes in here thatwe'll get to about, coaching and personal
transformation about how her teachings canreally, inform the way we go about this
intersection of, like, caring about theworld and, bringing our full selves to it.
And, there's also your story that I wanthighlight because this was such a huge

(08:16):
moment of you being in your purpose and onyour path and that's something as coaches.
Oh, we're both coaches.
Both work with social justice,climate justice leaders.
Jess is many things other than a coach.
Mm-Hmm.

But that's been the heart of my work for the last eight years.
Yeah.

Absolutely.
So let's just start at thebeginning of this project.
When did the seed of this project,find its way into your heart?

There's many ways to answer question.
So in April of 2022, you and Iloaded into your car and took a
month long road trip around Utah.
Do you remember that?

I do remember that, Jess.
I was, I think I was there.
Was I there?
I was there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I had just left my life in New York, I didn't have a place
to land I didn't know where I was going.
I just knew that my life needed to changeand that was the first thing that I
leapt into was this road trip with youand time in the national parks and we
spent a ton of time on the road talkingabout our desires and our visions and
the intersections that you talk aboutin this show of climate and social

(09:17):
change and coaching and how those areat the core of both of our passions.
And I had this like seed in me that Iwanted to start a podcast and, I had this
funny moment when I found this notebookthat you gave me while we were on that
trip and it had a little list in it andit was like, I want to start a podcast.
Who would my guests be?
And on top of the listwas like Joanna Macy.
Two months later from that.

(09:39):
We had parted ways and I was in Costa Ricalearning to surf and having the hardest
time with it, terrified of the wavesand of my board and like crying all the
time, but I knew I needed to learn it.
And I was talking to Joanna on the phoneand she was so interested in the sort of
like spiritual journey that I was on with.
this, like, why was I showing up at thebeach every day with a board just to

(10:03):
like stare at the waves and cry and feelafraid and so she would be like, okay,
call me after your lesson tomorrow.
And so every day we were jumpingon the phone and this podcast,
fell into the conversation.
We were like, maybe weshould make something.
Maybe we should record theseconversations because we think
that they're really great.
And share them with people.
And that was the seed.
That was the beginning of it.

Yeah.
I guess I'm curious, that's whathappened, and then there's the seed
that was planted in your heart.
And so I'm curious, what's the, longingor a possibility that you saw that had
you say, I really want to share somethingabout these conversations with people.
What was that?

I love that.
I have had the life changingprivilege of having Joanna's
friendship for the last ten years.
And when we met, I was working, doingcorporate accountability campaigning
work at Rainforest Action Network,and she was really interested in what
I was doing and wanted to have herfinger on the pulse of what's actually

(11:00):
going on in movement spaces, right?
Because she was in her late80s, mid 80s at that point.
And that was a big part of our likethe reciprocity and exchange for
us was like, she's this elder, eventhough she's always been a mentor to
me, but she doesn't teach that way.
She's not like sit down kid and let melike, drop all this wisdom on you, right?

(11:23):
She's like, tell me about you tellme what's going on in your life.
It has had such a profound impacton me and the way that I organize
in the way that I lead to haveJoanna's friendship over these years.
And as you remember from being with meover the course of this decade, I was
constantly telling people I talked toJoanna and I asked her this question

(11:46):
about like how afraid I am of opening upthe door of our heartbreak to the world
in a room of activists when I was doingorganizing with Extinction Rebellion and
being like I'm terrified because there'sso much heartbreak in that room right and
then her reminding me that my only job wasto open up space for that to be named that

(12:09):
I didn't have to know how to contain it.
I didn't have to control it, right?
And in fact in the moments when I didtry to control it, I got feedback that
people felt like they weren't beingfully honored in their heartbreak, right?
So it's like I've had all thesemoments like that where I was really
felt like the trajectory of the waythat I could be in the world as a
coach and as a climate activist wasshifted by my relationship with Joanna.

(12:33):
And that was what Iwanted my peers to have.
So really like we've made somethingthat is available for a wide
audience and it was made with anybodywhose heart is broken at what's
happening in the world in mind.
But really, like the thing that broughtJoanna and I to the table, to the
microphones, was the fact that we wantedto make something where people who can

(12:58):
identify with me as a, younger person,looking out at hopefully a long life in
front of them and looking out at a reallyscary set of possibilities for the future,
could feel and receive that mentorshipand that kind of support, right?
Which I'm so excited to get to givethat to people, especially because of

(13:22):
the way that Joanna mentors right?
Which like I said, isn't like,here's how you're going to do it.
It's very coach-y actually, right?
It's like, well.
What are you going to do?
What does break your heart?
What does give you hope?
What is like moving toyou about all of this?

And let me sit with you in the pain like,
yeah, that breaks my heart too.
And I'm just like very, like a verypresent, like, validating, normalizing

And me, sitting with her in her pain.
One of the things that I reallylove about, our relationship
is the reciprocity in it.
It doesn't feel like, she'scaretaking me, she totally takes
care of me and I totally take careof her, but it's, it's very mutual.
And she was very clear aboutthat from the beginning too.

(14:11):
When we started the project, she was like,I know there's going to be a temptation
to make this the Joanna Macy show.
And I want to be really clear withyou that's not what we're doing.
This is the two of us teaching andspeaking wisdom alongside each other.
And that, at the beginning, especially thehell out of me, because I was like, who
the hell am I to sit next to Joanna Macy?

(14:32):
This incredibly beloved andwell respected elder and teacher
who's transformed my life.
But that's also a piece of thebeauty in her mentorship and her
friendship is her being like, Nope,you've got something to offer.
And I want you sittingnext to me doing that.
And it has been a hellof a road accepting that.

Yeah.
All of the ways in which,for all of us, doubt.
Self-doubt.
Making ourselves small, beingscared of bringing our full presence
into a project and the what ifs.
That's what you and I work with, ascoaches constantly with our clients.
That's roles we get to play.

Right and to be like given the opportunity to lead in a
project next to my hero, was just crazy.
Like I have journal entries from maybethe year that I met Joanna, where
I'm writing things like, I don'tunderstand it, but I have this deep
sense that my dharma is entwined withthe work that Joanna has created.

(15:32):
Or like, I have this longing to livea life like the one Joanna has lived.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what a privilege.
As we're talking, I'm having an insightabout Joanna's work and coaching that I'm
that let's, let's, go there.
So let me summarize the four steps andthe spiral of The Work That Reconnects.
So step one is gratitude as a foundationis sort of resourcing ourselves for

(15:58):
step two, which is honoring our pain.
And really being presentwith the heartbreak.

Mm hmm.
And specifically honoringour pain for the world.

Yeah.
thank you.
Exactly.
And then, the third step in the spiralis seeing with new and ancient eyes.
So as we honor our pain, wealchemize it into something where
we are suddenly available for awider view on what's possible.
And the fourth step is going forth.
So now what are we going to do about it?
Take some action.

(16:26):
All of those steps are beautiful.
The one that's standing out to me inthis moment is heartbreak, is honoring
our pain for the world, particularly forwhat this podcast is about, about this
intersection of personal transformationand systemic transformation.
Right.
It could be easier to make the case thatthe other three steps are things that
are already present in a lot of coachingand personal transformation stuff, right?

(16:49):
Gratitude.
Okay.
We've got a lot on the gratitudeand the psychology of gratitude.
We've got a lot on seeing withnew eyes as like, okay, we're
going to transform your view.
We're going to get offer new perspectives.
We're going to help you shift your

We're going to come into into our connection to the web of life
and our connection to our ancestors

Yeah.
Yeah.

Mostly real feel good stuff.

Right.
And then going forth, takingaction, lots of coaching is
about taking action already.
So in these sort of apolitical,personal transformation, healing,
spiritual spaces, a lot of thosethree steps would already be there.
But it's occurring to me right now, I'mlike, Oh man, the juice right at the
intersection of Joanna Macy and coaching,like the sweet spot there, at least one

(17:32):
of them is our heartbreak for the world.
I mean, that's part of what drew Joannato this work is like, she felt so alone

Right

in her own heartbreak.
And no one's talking aboutthis and everyone's telling
me, Oh, it's going to be okay.
It's going to be okay.
And she's like, no, Ireally need space to grieve.
I really need space to like, letthis despair rise up in me about
what's happening in the world.

She went to a Cousteau society symposium in Boston in 1977.
There were talks on all of theenvironmental catastrophes and
it was just getting hit by oneafter the other, after the other.
That was the thing that sent her intoa year and a half of heartbreak and
isolation where she couldn't even imaginelike bringing her beloveds, bringing
her friends and her partner, her belovedhusband, like into that pain with her

Yeah.

at first.

Yeah I want to invite us to explore this thread
for a little bit, which is, What'sthe role of heartbreak and honoring
our pain for the world in showing upfully and bringing our full selves
to the world?
That's a big question,

it's

it's big.
Yeah.
And maybe a place we can start is you'vebeen so in the Work That Reconnects and in
Joanna's teachings for a very long time.
But this project was also likea huge deepening into your
like, level of understanding andlevel of practice of this work.
I just feel like there'sthis, intersection of like,
coaching and Joanna's work.

(18:55):
It's like, if all coachinghad this, heartbreak, let's
honor our pain for the world.
Let us, so get present to our heartbreakfor the world as our foundation for
discovering what we're here to do.
do.

So one thing that it feels important to say as we tip into this is
that no like aspect of the spiral canactually be separated from the others.
I say this because honoring our painfor the world can be such a revelation
to people when we discover that wecan do it that sometimes I feel like
I see people out in the world actuallyjust pulling that segment out and just

(19:29):
focusing there and it feels just likesitting in it, which also Joanna has
said many times, like the point of thespiral is always to get you to action.
Yeah, it feels really goodwhen we honor our pain.
It feels really good whenwe see with new eyes, right?

(19:49):
But the point of the whole journeyis always, always to get you
back out into the world, right?
But Joanna always taught it inthe format of a workshop, right?
So she had a discrete set of time withpeople and she would take them through
all the way into their deep painand heartbreak and to grief ritual.
And then she would lift them out andthen send them out into the world, right?
So we don't just stay in it.

(20:11):
So there's like these two extremes.
It's like one in which we justsit in it really deeply.
And we just hang out there, whichis horrible, but I think for some
people really like scratches anditch because we're so denied that,
Or we don't touch it at all.
And I don't think this is true foreveryone, but I think this is, I work

(20:32):
with climate activists, climate leaders.
And, I have seen again and again,interestingly enough, it often comes
up when the question that the clientis bringing in is about vision and
they're like, what do I want to do?
What is my purpose?
What can I contribute?
And many times we've been inthat conversation and then at

(20:53):
some point I'll say to them, areyou honoring your heartbreak?

Yeah.

And it's like, the floodgates open and all of this
feeling comes out and it's like weget emotionally constipated You
know, if we're not honoring that pain.
We don't have access tovision in the same way.
We don't have access to purpose in thesame way because our pain is Joanna
always says, our pain is the other sideof the coin of our love for the world.

Say that again.

Our pain is the other side of the coin of our love for the world.
So if we cut ourselves off from ourpain, we cut ourselves off from our love.
We cannot fully touch the depth ofour passion for our planet and for our
contribution, if we don't also allowourselves to feel the depth of our
heartbreak, which is really scary, becauseif you're anything like me, your heart

(21:46):
is so broken, my eyes well up just sayingthis to you, because even 10 years into
this work, this never goes away, thatI have spent many years feeling, and I
trust this more now, but I spent manyyears feeling like if I allow myself
to touch the depth of my heartbreakor my rage, I may never come out like

(22:09):
that'll break me if I really understoodcould let myself express the depth of my
sorrow at what's happening to our planet.
I would just have a mental breakdown.
And what Joanna has taught me isyou step in and you step out, right?
Step in and let it bring you deeperinto connection, which is resourcing
and go out and be a part of theworld and let that inform you.

(22:30):
And then you come back into thepain and it's cyclical, right?
So in that sense, Joanna doesn't talkabout this stuff through like the modern
lingo of trauma informed practice.
But in that sense it's so deeply traumainformed because we're not just like
diving straight into the deep end.
We're like walking in and titrating and.
Touching what we can touch withinour capacity, and then expanding our

(22:51):
capacity and then going back, right?

And doing it with others, right?
An essential part of thewhole work is that it's like
never meant to be done alone.
It's always at its core a group practiceand that our ability, I remember the
10 day retreat I was on with Joanna,we would have a section where the news
would be read to us, but as a group.
And we would hear like summaries of someof the stuff because we were on retreat,

(23:16):
we were unplugged, and someone would comein and be like, here's what's happening
today in the world, and here's some of theheartbreaking things that are happening.
And we're going to process this together,because these are things that are too
big for any one of us to process alone.

love that you did that.
Yeah.
So the short answer is it's essentialif your intention is to be in service.
My opinion is that honoring our pain forthe world essential for us to do that.

And.
I think what's beautiful aboutJoanna's teachings is that as you
said, she doesn't just say this isthe way we honor our pain, the end.
With you, it was a very relational processwhere you were bringing your pain to her.
You got to be in that together.
So I'm curious if wewant to share the clip

to share.
Yeah.
So something that Joanna taughtme as I was expressing to her, I'm
afraid that it, if I were to touchthis pain, I might lose my mind.
She said something reallypowerful that I can play for you.

Yeah, please.

So in this clip, I've just said to her, but I just said to
you, basically, like, I'm worried thatmy heartbreak is too big for me to hold.
And this was her response.

Joanna Macy (24:31):
Yes, I had that.
I think many are afraid of that.

That like, I might actually break my brain if I let
myself touch the depths of it.
That if I could like, tap into the veinof grief that runs through our world,
that my little body couldn't hold it.
That's my fear.

Yeah, and I've heard it expressed back then when I was
starting this work of saying, listen,if I were to let you let myself
feel, let alone tell you what Ifeel about our, uh, world situation.
If I wouldn't let you know that Iwouldn't be able to hold my job.
I wouldn't be able to support my family.

(25:16):
I go bonkers.
This is where my Dharma practice reallyhelped me because, uh, these are just
feelings and that these are, uh, notsome objective situation that's going
to come as an, you know, dark cloud.
It's a painful feeling.

(25:39):
Feelings just come and go.
And joy can come just like that,and so can pain, and so can fear.
You just pay great attentionto what's coming up.
And it's changing all thetime, it's a flowing stream.
And you're a flowing stream, but youjust go, at this moment I'm feeling

(26:02):
this, but that doesn't last longand it changes, you just watch it.

So, this was a wild moment in this process.
So something that happened a lot overthe course of this process was that
like, when we started, I had this wholeorganized plan about what we were going
to talk about and not so surprisingly,what emerged organically that was

(26:33):
alive for both of us, our pains and ourheartbreaks and our visions and what
was exciting us wound up being whatyou really get to hear in the audio.
I would always show up to a lot of ourconversations with a piece of paper and
a plan for what I wanted to talk about.
And, very rarely wouldit actually go that way.

So you had this plan that you thought, okay, we're
going to, I've got my outline forthe conversation we're going to have.
This will cover the X, Y, Z topic.

But the thing that rightfully that makes so much sense in
retrospect was that the moments thatwe wound up sharing that were the most
profound and I think the most interestingare the live moments of teaching right?
Where we were both actually at ouredge either in our relationship or
in my understanding of something orin her understanding of something and
you get to hear us figuring it out.

Yeah.

When I was working on episodes four and five, which are the
two episodes on honoring our pain forthe world, was in the, early months
of the genocide in Gaza, in Palestine.
And to write two episodes on this, Ihad to go all the way down into the
depths of what do I actually think aboutwhat it means for us to honor our pain.

(27:44):
And there was a moment, there wereseveral moments where I was just
staring blankly at the wall, likedoom scrolling, just like looping on
like, how the fuck is this happening?
And I'm so far away,and I can't do anything.
And my privilege, you know, all of thethings that just all of the outrage and
heartbreak at witnessing this happening.

(28:06):
And I couldn't write the damn episodes.
I like couldn't findanything to say about them.

What was happening in that moment?
What got in the way or whatwas the experience that was

It was like my pain for the world was so live that
I didn't have any space from it.
How can I say something of likewisdom to someone else, right?
And this is always a thing that catches mewith this stuff is like feeling the need,
and I think a lot of coaches experiencethis, feeling the need to like have some
sort of like emotional distance truthbomb thing to drop on someone about it

(28:42):
as opposed which Joanna has always beenbrilliant about being like right down
in the mud of the thing with someone andactually not needing to have my what I
have to say be some like well polishedlike Dharma teaching kind of thing, right?
And so I was so in the pain thatI couldn't find the teachings and

(29:04):
I also felt like who the hell am Ito have anything to say about this.
Look what's happening to these people,and I called Joanna and It wound up being
like I was literally crying on the rugunderneath like laying on the rug that
sits under my desk just like staringup at the ceiling being like okay what

(29:26):
would she tell me to do if she would tellme to just feel this and so I did and
then I called her and I wasn't planningto record I just needed her support
and It wound up being so brilliant,and I'm bummed I didn't catch the whole
conversation, but at some point I likeran over to my microphone and put my phone

(29:46):
on speakerphone and just recorded as wetalked, and here's what she said to me.

Which episode is

this?
This is episode five.

I'm wondering if, if in some way there could be the
possibility of a voice in you thatsays, that says thank you that you
can feel that that you're allowingyourself to feel this degree of horror.

(30:21):
And this human capacity is whathas to happen for all of us.
If we're going to grow up as a species,we have to feel the horror of which
we're capable without an anesthetic.
You can't wish it away, the pain.

(30:44):
It's a pain that you haveto, bow to as a human being.
That it is you wouldn't wantit not to be true for you.
You wouldn't want youto find it tolerable.

No.

And that somehow you've got to allow it to hurt like hell
without actually driving you crazy.

Yeah.
I think that's the fine line for me.
it, it feels maddening.
It feels intolerable.

And in a way, it's sort of like a sacred pain.
It is a good thing that wedon't want it to be true.

Exactly.
Yeah.

So it was a great thing you called me.
And maybe next time, I'll be calling you.

What happened for you in that moment, or what did that shift?

I stopped needing the pain to go away.
And that mattered for everything.
It was like more intolerablebecause I just wanted it gone.
And I think that's part of whyI was like grasping for the like
insightful thing to say, right?
Like I get some freaking emotionaldistance from this feeling of

(32:25):
my heart being ripped open.

Too much.

too much Yeah,

So in that moment, you didn't need it to go away, you weren't
trying to push it away, you weren't tryingto get emotional distance so that you
could go do work, and instead you couldjust say, okay, this is here, I'm gonna
allow my like full heartbreak to be here,I think there's something intuitive for
us that's like, we live in a culturethat says so often, Oh, you know, in US

(32:52):
culture, like, Oh, put on a happy face.
How are you doing?
I'm fine.
We were sort of like thepolite to say we're good.
I'm just curious,
like what happened?
Like what did letting yourself bepresent to that pain and not needing to
go away, what did that make possible?

The insight at the end of the day around all of this for me
was about trusting the flow of lifein me at all times and not needing
to manipulate or control any of it.
I like having things my way,sure no one can relate to that.
But I got it from that conversationwith her that nothing needed to

(33:28):
change and it didn't, it's not likeI heard those words and they was like
magic words and it all went away.
And I think I just letmyself sit in it that day.
And that mattered a lot.

Yeah.

Like the, it broke the spell of urgency.
I have to get over this now so thatI can go back and do my work because
it's not impacting me directly.
So who the hell am I to like need totake time off to sit in my heartbreak?
I
should be like, I should just get backto my work in service of a world where
this kinds of crazy stuff doesn't happen.

(34:03):
Get to it.

Yeah.

You know, there's a place for urgency, right?
For people on the ground, like there'sreal urgency, and even people not on the
ground, there is a real urgency aroundthis issue and I was like gumming up
what was going on inside me such thatI was useless to myself, let alone
anyone and it doesn't take a lot oftime actually, this is another thing that

(34:26):
Joanna's taught me is like we, we like,slam on the brakes at the gates of our
pain because we're like, Oh, if I go inthere, I'm never coming out, you know,
but the reality is that Youmight go in for five minutes.
You might go in for a half an hour.
You might go in for a couple hours.
If you actually let yourself gothere, you don't need to stay there.

Yeah you

You can come back out, you can go back in.
And there's something in my mindthat like, it's taken a long
time for me to understand that.
I think it has something to do withbeing raised in a culture that doesn't
adequately, teach us how to have a deeprelationship with those kinds of feelings.
Right.
We just like keep them away.

Yeah, so there's two themes that I hear
in here that are speaking to me.
One is the theme of let yourself feelit, let yourself be in that flow of
life, let it move through you, becausethat is what any feeling and emotion and
experience will naturally do, will arise,it will be there, and then it will pass,

Mm-Hmm.

and then it will rise again, usually.

If your heart's open it will rise again.

That's right, yeah.
So there's that theme, and there's anothertheme in here that I'm curious about,
which is like, the way in which our painand our heartbreak, becomes part of our,
guidance towards what we care about.
And I know this is something that Joannaalso teaches about, of like, how to
use your heartbreak, keep your heartopen, let your heart break, and let that

(35:54):
heartbreak inform, what's mine to do?

yeah.

That's why it's a part.
It's this necessary step on the waytowards the fourth step of action and
going forward yeah, I actually thinkthat to talk about that, we need to
talk about the phase between thosetwo, which seeing with new eyes.
So seeing with new eyes is the hardestof the four stages to describe.
It's really about, the metaphorwe'll often use is like our tears

(36:20):
as we honor our pain wash our eyesclean so that we can look out and
see the world with more clarity.
And there's two pieces that I thinkare really important to this, which
is like when we honor our pain, thenew eyes that we can come out with,
first of all, it's about decolonizing.
It's about telling the real truthabout what is going on, like, about

(36:44):
the violence of the empire that welive in and the absolute, corruption
and violence of capitalism, right?
And, like, shedding the partsof us that seek comfort in
believing in those systems.
Yeah

And, or like shedding as a white person, my loyalty
and attachment to the culture ofwhiteness, as a place where I have
thought I was finding safety, right?
So when we can like, touch the pain,we can shed our attachments and see

(37:21):
these systems for what they really are.
And when we lose those, what we find.
And I'm careful aboutthe way that I'm talking.
I'm mostly, I'm talkingabout my experience, right?
This is going to bedifferent for everybody.
But my experience has been that,like, as I lose my attachment to
those dominant systems, what I findis attachment to something even truer

(37:43):
and more beautiful, which is the webof life and the web of human history.
I don't find safety in capitalismand white supremacy culture,
but you know where I find it?
I find it in my ancestors and Ifind it in my connection to future
beings and my like incredibleloyalty to the ones that will come.
And I find it in the way that I aminextricably linked to the great

(38:08):
web of existence and all beings,not just humans that have come
before me and all that has conspiredtogether to make my life possible,
I mean, you want unshakable belonging,like that's a place to find it.
When you know that you belong tothis world, there is no choice but
to get the hell out there and act

(38:30):
And fight to protect what's, indanger, and fight to transform these
systems and build better ways so thatwe can have healthy neighborhoods
and communities and, like all of it.
One of the things that's happened forme in this process is that I have fallen
more deeply in love with the thirdstage of the spiral, which I didn't
have as much of a connection with beforethis, but it's like deepening honoring

(38:50):
our pain deepens that connection.
And then it's like, goingforth is involuntary.
And I don't mean like youdon't have choice, right?
But it's like if you exhale yourbody's naturally going to inhale.

Yeah.

and it's just like This is what you do when you
love someone or something, andit doesn't have to be as forced.
The way we intellectualize action,there's plenty of space and
room for thinking strategically.
I'm not trying to say that we shouldn'tintellectualize it, but when that's all
we're doing, we're like muscling in a waythat I don't actually think we need to.

(39:25):
That it comes a lot easierwhen we approach action from a
place of love and connection.
Which, unfortunately, so many of usare cut off from because that's what
our culture is designed to do, to liketrain us into believing that we're
individuals and that we're separate fromone another and separate from our planet.

There's like a thing that's alive for me right now around,
if every coaching model out theresuddenly included a piece about honoring
our heartbreak for the world, and thenletting, like, where's your heartbreak?
Great, that's your calling.
That's where your dharma lives.
Like, connecting heartbreak.
And, heartbreak is our love for the world.
And our love for the world is whatwe're here to contribute for the world
and service like what that would doto turn personal transformation work

(40:04):
into systemic transformation work.

It's definitely one very simple and ironically
personal way to break the wall.
The like myth of individualismthat is like a blind spot, like
inherent in a lot of Western, inthe coaching models that we see.

Personal growth, spiritual models, healing models
that say, okay, what do you want?
What do you want?
What's your deepest longing?
And there's this implicitway that gets answered.
That's okay.
I guess I want this and I want thatand I want this and I want that.
It can very easily be answered atthe level of, it stops at me and
my family and my friends, right?

Like I have no business asking the question of
what's mine to give so long as I'm notconnected to what's around me, right?
Like it's an empty question.

Yeah.
Yeah.
And, To have an individualist vision toask only the question, what do I want
and have the range of site be just,a few feet in front of me, basically.
What I appreciate and whatyou're saying is that that is
never going to be fulfilling.
There's no way that I'm ever goingto just make myself happy enough and

(41:16):
like get the things that I think Iwant from this culture and rest easy
at night because there's a fundamentallike disconnection from earth and from
living systems and from the web of life.
And so, yeah, there's something inhere that our heartbreak opens our
heart, lets us totally feel our preexisting connection to the web of

(41:39):
life that is, I cannot be withouteverything else in the whole universe.
And it breaks my heart to see someof what's happening to life, people
and beings and living systems.

right.

But let me awaken to the heartbreak, to the tragedies, to the
disconnection from life that's all aroundme and the violence that's all around me.
Let me awaken as a part ofresponse, the quote unquote, immune
system of the planet waking up

right.

course-correct.

And it leads us to a different kind of action, right?
Because then we're talking aboutaction resourced from belonging and
solidarity, not action resourced from someconceptual intellectual theory about my
responsibility or something like that.

Yeah

That's a heartbreak for me to watch in our movement, how many
people are acting from their intellect?
And I don't mean to say this asa criticism because I still do
it and I have done it, right?
I'm not separate from this, but Ican see how differently I show up in
movement space, when I'm like tryingto perform like strategic action or

Having a good analysis?
Oh, we've got a best analysis,and I've got the right way figured

out and then we're like fucking swiping at each other
and the this is, it's like virtue signalparty and and it's all in the head.
And I think there are some movementsout there who really get this,
like Sunrise Movement is a movementthat I really respect for their sense
of what it means to bring soul andheart into organizing, you know?

(43:29):
And they're, of course, pulling onthe great legacies of the Civil Rights
Movement that did this so beautifully,

so maybe what is what you're saying, I wonder if it's not so
much the presence of an intellectualanalysis, but what I'm hearing is really
the, absence or sort of, lack of a realconnectedness to heart and heartbreak
and personal, like where's my spiritshowing up in this whole journey?

Yes.
We want both.

Yeah, exactly.

We want both.

Yeah.

And I have definitely fallen into the trap of thinking
that my intellect itself is enough.
And I burned myself out from there.
It's not like the love was ever not there.
It was that I was afraid of thepain that was connected to it.

Yeah I feel like we're just truly in a Jess
Jeremy conversation right now wherelike we're real-time exploring
things that we're both like really

curious

always trying to put new words to and like
really deepen our understanding
so I've been thinking a lot about hope.
I know you think a lot about hope.
I just interviewed MargaretWheatley for the podcast, and
she thinks a lot about hope.
And we had a very interestingconversation about that.
That episode won't be out for anothercouple weeks, but, I think, yeah,

(44:42):
there's something in here that's deeplyconnected between heartbreak and hope
in my mind of like, okay, I'm going toopen myself fully or at least more to
the realities of the world and what'sbreaking my heart about the world.
I think there comes thisobvious question of like, am I
going to be able to handle it?

(45:04):
And like, am I going tosee such a bleak reality?
Am I going to see so muchviolence and pain and separation
that I want to give up.
And so there's so many questionsthat I know Joanna talks about,
about hope, and you two had somany good conversations about that.
So how does this connection workfor you between heartbreak and hope?

(45:24):
How does that show up?

I think for a long time hope was the thing that I relied
on to buoy me through my heartbreak.
I'm afraid, I'm sad, I'mangry, I'm numb from all of it.
Overwhelm, all this, and that is sounbearable that the thing I will hold on

(45:48):
to, to survive this is hope, hope, Likethat it can be different that maybe it's
not as bad as I think it is that likemaybe you know some great silver bullet
solution will fall out of the sky andlike it will be Like, all the great sports
movies where someone scores the winningpoint after the buzzer kind of it's just

(46:11):
like the thing that's going to save us,
And for me, that's the connection.
It's like the hope thatsome miracle will happen.
But what I found through the inquiryinto hope that I did to write this.
Episode six called the H word,that doesn't tell you something
about how I feel about hope.
Is that, I was using a versionof hope as a source of false

(46:35):
security for a long time.
Like to me for a while, having hopemeant believing in that, like there
would be some positive outcome andwhat's changed for me through this
process is that, I don't always thinkI know what we mean when we use the

(46:55):
word hope and there are other wordsthat are become more interesting to me,

Such as?

Such as possibility and uncertainty and commitment and courage.
And I can talk about those words, like
something that I discovered throughmy conversations with Joanna that
she helped me see and through reallygrappling, the hope episode was
the hardest of the whole series.

Absolutely.
it got rewritten.

Three times.

Yeah.

Three fully different drafts.

I remember.

Because the first two drafts I was just like writing a bunch
of bullshit because I was trying to, Iwas like trying to like, again, have the,
this has been so good for my ego, right?
Like the part of me that wants tolike puff up my chest and be like,
I have an answer here, you know?

Yeah, something insightful to say.

Something insightful to say.
And then I was just like sayinga bunch of crap that wasn't
really it wasn't helping me.
It wasn't helping anyonewho was listening to it
and when I talk to Joanna about hope,she wants to talk about courage, or
she wants to talk about possibility.
And I, and she didn't like explicitlylay out like an analysis on hope for me.

(48:04):
And I just had to like swim inthose waters for a while to be
like, okay, well, she's not goingto tell me what to think about this.
But I know I need to talk aboutthis because we can't, no one
can talk about climate change andaction without this word coming into
the conversation, rightfully so.

Yeah.

Because we're looking for, okay, what's going to carry me?
What's going to keep me in action and whatI found was that for me, we talk about
this in the episode, there's this sortof what we call like American style hope.
It's like sunny Pollyanna optimism.
It's all going to be okay, right?
Like I just believe it'll all work out.

(48:39):
And that always felt unstable to me.
Like it was a lie I told myselfto make myself feel okay.
But then when I really went down totouch it, I was like, that is fragile.
That like crumbles in myhands the second I touch it.
But the reality of the situation is thatthe future is unwritten and uncertain.
And that where uncertaintylives, possibility lives.

(49:02):
And that, that's just true.
You know?
Uncertainty inherently meansthat possibility exists.
Possibility for all sorts of things.
For the darkest fantasies and fearsthat I have, and for the most beautiful.
And that, my life is a vote in thedirection of a possibility or a

(49:22):
set of possibilities, and I'm goingto give myself to the one I want.
And I can only do that effectivelyif I also fully let in the other
possibilities that are present.
And that's part of theconnection between heartbreak.
It's like it has to be in the roomfor me to fully give myself to the
possibility that I actually want.
Right.
And this is why the podcast iscalled We Are the Great Turning.

(49:43):
The Great Turning in the work thatreconnects is the transition to a
more just and life sustaining society.
It is one of the things that ishappening in the world right now,
while we have global corporatecapitalism just like ravaging the
planet and our lives and we haveunraveling and collapse and war, right?

(50:04):
These are things that are also happening.
But the possibility that I give myself tois the one that we call the great turning.
And I have to fully let in the presenceof the other two in that fully.
And that was something that I don'tthink I fully understood until
through the process of writing this.

Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you're speaking to one of thefirst lessons that I ever encountered
of Joanna's, I remember watching thisYouTube video that I'll link to in the
show notes that's Joanna laying out thisvery thing of when you, fall in love,
you don't know what's going to happen.
You don't know if the relationship'sgoing to work out or not.
Or when you get pregnant, you don't knowif it's going to be a healthy baby or not.

(50:56):
And so on and so on, thateverything has uncertainty with it.
And that uncertainty andpossibility are just true.
And therefore they're not fickle.
They're not going to, slipthrough your hands in the way
that I hope we get this outcome.
I hope we get it.
I hope we get it.
I hope we get it.
And that's such a, I don't know.

(51:16):
It's so scary personally for meto take in that lesson of hers
of like, wait, you're taking awaymy, I really needed that hope.
The other word that's relevant inhere for me is motivation, right?
It's like, where do I find my motivation?
To show up, am I going to hingemy motivation on getting a certain
outcome that I want, hoping that Iget a certain outcome that I want.

(51:41):
Okay.
Maybe, maybe that's one, one path that'sbeen a lot of my life has been spent
with that as the source of my motivationand what Joanna offers and what you're
helping share here is like this.
Okay.
Yeah.
Is that stable enough?
Is that the one I reallywant invest my energy in

at some level that certainty is a lie
you're telling yourself.

right.
Brilliantly put.
Yeah Like we can't know that that's goingto happen We can invest in that we can I
love the way you put it my life is a votein favor of this possibility that I see.
Feels like great I can do that even ifthat possibility isn't coming to fruition.
I can still be a vote.
I can still invest my whole being into it.

And into, building it, right?
Like it lives, The GreatTurning is alive right now.
It's not like a future thing.
It is happening.
We can see it all around us.
We can see it in like, you know, therestorative justice efforts happening
in our community and we can see itin our local urban farms and we can
see it in like the healing, it's justlike, it's every, it's everywhere.

(52:48):
And that just energy transitionin land back movements, right.
It's all over.

Yeah.

It's not as strong as we want it to be yet.
It has, it's not the dominant story,but that's what we can choose to
live for is the building of it.
A line I wrote for the one of the lastepisodes was our relationships and
also our lives are the bricks that thetemple of the great turning are made of.
And that's, understanding that weare a part of a intergenerational

(53:17):
project of building a culture anda world that is just and aligned
with life and life sustaining.
And it started way before us, lestwe delude ourselves into thinking
that we got that bright idea,

Yep

You know, and it's going to go on way after us.

This feels like a perfect place to share another
one of the clips from the episode.
That was, I know one of your big turningpoints, where you were talking with
Joanna about hope and, the way thatyou've made the great turning into

a god

A god.
just to set it up a little bit.
Pretty much every time you came homeafter recording, we would talk about
the, like, huge shifts that werehappening and the breakthroughs and
the like, wow, Joanna really likemessed with my head today when she

this
about

about hope or said this about grief or
said this about possibility.
And this was really one of the bigones that you came back and it was
like, really rocking your world forthat week and onward for many, many
weeks of, how you'd been holdingthe great turning as like a future.

Yeah, so this is, this is from episode six, the H word.
And, um, you get tohear Joanna school, me.

Great.

There's a way that I have held this from time to time that's like
As if the Great Turning is somethingto believe in or not, and I'm, I think
I'm starting to see that that's areally flawed way of looking at it.

Oh, like you have to believe in it for it to work.
It's like whistling in the dark.
That's what you fellfor, which is wonderful.
You still wanted to talk about it, but youthought it was just whistling in the dark.

What do you mean, whistling in the dark?

To cheer yourself up.

Yeah, yeah.

It's in a, it's a dark path, and I don't want, I would walk right by
the cemetery, and the least I can do,I'm scared to death, but I'll whistle.

I realized I had been holding on to the idea of the Great
Turning like a good luck charm, likemagic, instead of seeing it as one of many
realities of our world, a reality that Ican see around me and can contribute to.
Okay, give me a moment becausethis is a breakthrough for me.

(55:51):
It's so much simpler than I was making it.
I've been using it as a way to, like,cheer myself up in the face of the
incredible uncertainty that I'm living in.
Like, oh, if I can just believe in agreat turning, if I can just believe
that this great paradigm shift ishappening and, gonna win, that's

(56:12):
using the great turning as a crutch.
It's using it to like, oh myGod, I could cry right now.
It's like using it aslike a false protection.
It's like believing in God.
To create a certainty that doesn't exist.

I believe that you'll go to heaven when you die.
You don't know.
And no, it's not that.
It's seeing that all around us, thereis this happening and it's in us.

It is happening, and I am a part of it.
Period.
I choose, I can choose to be a part of it.

Which means, I can choose to remember that it's happening, and
I can choose to see how huge it is.

I'm kind of speechless because what I'm getting in this moment
is there's nothing to believe in.
This is just what is happening.
And it is true that I get to participatein it and that I get to choose to see it.
I get to look for it, like sniff it out inthe world around me and be a part of it.

And not only that, I myself now am in goose
flesh from my scalp to my toes.
Because I'm just opening to whatyou're allowing yourself to see.

Yeah that blew your mind.
mind.
What blew your mind about it?

Just what you heard, I saw the way that I was propping myself up.
I believe in the great turning.
And it actually made me unstable.
It was a lie.
I was telling I believe thatthis is going to happen.
As opposed to the ease I feel, even thoughit's also very scary when I say what I can

(58:14):
now say, which is this is happening witha lot of other shit that I don't like.
And I don't get to know how the cardsare going to fall for the future.
The end, and I think this is there's alot of different people talking about
hope and a lot of different ways, butit's it makes me think of that well
known quote from Rebecca Solnit whereshe says, "hope is not a lottery ticket.

(58:36):
You sit on the couch and clutch,it's an ax that you break down
the door with in an emergency."
That really captures the heart of it.
So whether or not we use that word,it's the sense of our connection
possibility that we love, that welike break through the bullshit.
Our own mental bullshit, thebullshit in the world, right?
Like we like cut through it to go andact in service of the thing that we want.

(59:00):
And so this is also why when youfirst asked me about, what am
I interested in if I'm not somuch, not as interested in hope?
And I said, courage.

Yeah

And I think I also said commitment.
Like the thing underneath hopefor me, that is just untouchable
is my care for the world.

That's

that like, you could shut off all the lights.
You could take all my people away fromme, you could take everything and
you cannot snuff out my passion forlife, for mine and the lives of others.
It is a thing I will die with.
And it is one of the truestthings about who I am.
And I know this is true for, I believethis is true about everybody else.

(59:43):
And it's like that, my connection tothat feels so much more compelling.

yeah

It doesn't matter what, like how, what's amount of
what 0, 0, 0, 1 percent chance.
I think there is that things willgo and I think the odds are higher
than that, that we will, that I thinkwe are, doing our work and seeing
efficacy

Jeremy Blanchard (01:00:03):
even if it were.

Jess Serrante (01:00:04):
But even if it were, we're like, we're living in on the
road and Parable of The Sower, right?
The image, the apocalypse image thatalways comes into my mind, nothing
can take away my care and as longas I have care, I have motivation
to act, so like when people get intothis thing, this conversation that

(01:00:26):
can come up with like, are we notgoing to act if we don't have hope?
It's like that conversationis just irrelevant.

We have care.

We have love.
We have care.

deep care for life.
that's right.
I don't know what's happening for folkslistening to this right now, but I know
for me, whenever we get down to somethingso true, my whole system can feel it.
I'm like, yes, it is truethat there's uncertainty.
It is true that there'sgreat destruction happening.
And it is true that I care about life.

(01:00:55):
And it is true that I'm committedto being of complete service in
whatever role I see as mine to play.
That's true, and something in mywhole system relaxed from that place
where I was clutching on to I reallyhope it goes well, I really want it
to, you know, and I can then just belike, oh, it actually, I don't need
to invest any more energy in that.

(01:01:17):
I can actually just relax intodoing what I'm called to do, doing
what's needed of me in these times.
And from a coaching perspective, toloop it back around to that, I feel
like this is like, there's so manycoaching modalities, there's so many
healing modalities, there's so manyspiritual paths out there, all of them
bring something beautiful to the table,and what would it be like to lift up

(01:01:39):
the ones that are really equipping us,like the Work That Reconnects does, to
look at reality with clear eyes and,show up fully out of our care and love
for the world, regardless of how wethink things are likely to turn out.
There's something so energized.
Imagine coaching sessionswith our clients.

(01:02:00):
I mean, you and I have these sessions,but imagine everyone having more coaching
sessions where the conversation is,what breaks your heart about the world?
How does that inform you aboutwhat you're deeply called to?
How does that show you what you love?
Where does that point you in terms of theservice that you want to be to the world?

(01:02:21):
Great.
Now let's talk about if we're doing avisioning exercise as we do in coaching.
Now let's talk about yourvision from that as our ground.
What would that be like?

I can tell you as someone who has done this many times,
it's freaking beautiful, right?

Yeah.
Wow.
We've covered a lot of ground.
So as we do, oh my gosh, there were, like15 more topics on my list of potential
things for us to talk about that we willhave to save for a future conversation.
So I didn't get to ask you this thefirst time you were on the podcast,
but it's a question I ask all of myguests at the end of every episode,

(01:02:57):
which is where are you getting yournourishment, resourcing, is that books
or poems or teachers or practices thatyou want to like offer to our listeners

I think that lately for me, the answer is
always like back in my own body.
My mind has been so full writingand creating these episodes The
things that have anchored me thisyear are dancing alone in my room.
And just like letting feelingsmove as I wiggle and shake and

(01:03:33):
being alone has really mattered tome cause it's just about feeling.
And then also through Muay Thai.
I've gotten into Thai boxing thisyear and it's a return to an early,
a younger version of myself becausemartial arts was my primary sport as a
kid and getting to reclaim that in mythirties has been deeply nourishing.

The
inside joke between Jess and I is, andI'm sure many people can relate to this
is, oh gosh, I have that, I want to gowork out or run or go to the gym or do
my thing for, my body moving Jess wouldalways say, should I go to Muay Thai?
I should probably go to Muay Thai.
And we have enough evidencenow to say that the answer is

The answer has never been no.

The answer has never been no.
Every time you get back fromMuay Thai, it's, Oh god, I'm
so glad I went to Muay Thai.
I really needed that.
That was absolutely the right choice.

It's like a total reset on my brain, getting into my body that way.
It's an intense sport, I needed apractice that pulls me out of my
head and totally into the presentmoment and totally into my body.
It's like better than a powernap in terms of like reset.
It's like the hard reset button every day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think before we start to draw to a close here, what I
most want to say is I've read Joanna'sbooks and I've had the chance to
go to a 10 day retreat with Joanna.
So And having listened to theseepisodes, I feel like Joanna
is such a Dharma teacher.
Her wisdom comes through when she speaks.

(01:05:08):
And there are only a handful of thingsout there where Joanna is speaking.
Most of her public teachinghas been her books.
And there's something so alive andelectric about the conversations you
two had that comes through in thispodcast I can tell I'm going to go
back to these over and over againbecause they're so deep and rich.

(01:05:30):
So thank you for spending twoyears of your life fully devoted to
bringing this wisdom and these likevery intimate conversations forward
because yeah, our movements need allthe spiritual nourishment we can get.

It was the clearest thing in the world
for me to do You're welcome, I
guess I did once the seed was planted,there was no other way that this went
other than me giving myself to it fully.
And I feel, I just feel so grateful thatit's out, that we get to share this.

Yeah

I hope that these conversations can impact
people, even a fraction of theway that they've impacted me.
Yeah.

I love you so much

I love you so much.
This wouldn't have happened without youor it would have happened, but it would
have been very different like you haveheld me through every step of this.
The many tears and the many overwhelmingself doubt conversations and fears and can
I do it and do I have what it takes Youknow the many months period where I didn't

(01:06:36):
have funding there was so much challenge,extraordinary amount of challenge.
This called me to my edge in everyway possible it's such a gift to like
have you by my side in those momentsand also all the celebration and the
deepening into figuring out, likeit's been such a gift to me to get
to think deeply about these topics.

(01:06:56):
And yeah, you've beenessential to all of that.
So I want to thank you

Yeah.

for all that you've done and all the grace you've extended
me as a friend, in this process.

Yeah I love you a lot
It's been a deep honor to get to bealongside you, because I love you so
much, and be alongside this project,because I love this project so much.
And to have a project that's such, aclear Dharma purpose project that as I
said, before we started recording, youcaught a Dharma wave and you've are riding

(01:07:30):
it in a way that as coaches, we are alwayslike helping our clients, get in alignment
with their deepest calling and it has beenso deeply inspiring to me to feel what
it is like when someone is so fully onpurpose and to just be a part of it and to
support you and to support this project.
So love you

(01:08:02):
Thank you so much for listeningand a big thanks to Jess for being
so openhearted and vulnerable andsharing her journey with us here.
You can check out the show notesfor all the resources that Jess
and I discussed on today's episode.
And if you made it this far, pleasetake a moment to open your podcast,
app and search for We Are The GreatTurning, so you can subscribe and catch

(01:08:24):
all of the magic that is coming in thefuture episodes with Jess and Joanna.
Episode eight comes out intwo weeks with politicized
somantics trainer, Staci Haines.

Staci Haines (01:08:38):
There's no such thing as personal change
outside of a social context.
You actually can't separate aperson from our social context.
And that that is just like, duh, howdid they ever think we could do that?
And that social contextis based on power over.
And what we're committed to at whateverlevel we're working is transforming

(01:08:59):
all of that to a social economicconditions that are based on power
with each other, but also the planet.

So make sure you subscribe in your podcast app of
choice so that you can catch thatepisode and all the future ones.
As always, please headover to widerroots.com to
sign up for the newsletter.
If you have not yet to get alot of resources that don't
fit into these episodes.
And you can always reach me byemail podcast@widerroots.com.

(01:09:27):
And you can follow the podcaston Instagram at wider roots pod.
Shout out to Meg, trustee and Anyafor offering feedback on this episode.
Thank you so much.
And thanks as always to Wild Choirfor the theme music for this show.
You're currently listening to their song,Remember Me, which will play us out.
See you next time.

start, Did

one the other day that was like a fuzzy spider.

And there's another one up there.

And another

another one over there.

another one there.

we got a live audience.
This is a live podcast
recording.

then another
one there.
Uh huh.
Jimmy there's so many

Jeremy, there's so many bugs on your

There are so many bugs.

Yeah.
Great.
All right.
Well, we're recording infront of a live audience

a live audience today.
The fun thing about recording withyou is I have too many bloopers
to choose from at the end.

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