September 7, 2025 • 56 mins
E13: Excerpts from the "Ruin" section of "the skies are full of us" by Sarah Carter and Corinne Shark
At long last, Sarah and Corinne share excerpts from their upcoming book, "the skies are full of us: a true story of speaking up, burning down, and the unbreakable bond of friendship" releasing from Rebeca Books on October 21, 2025. Each of these readings is from the first of the three sections - Ruin, Rise, and Redemption - into which "the skies are full of us" is arranged.
Sarah's excerpt pulls back the curtain on the intimate and excruciating experience of her and her husband, Steve Carter, pressing "Send" on his resignation from Willow Creek Community Church. By allowing listeners and readers into this sacred moment of ending, she allows us to witness the pain, fear, heartbreak, and devastation with which both she and Steve wrestled as they fought to walk with integrity and love, even as it cost them dearly.
Corinne's excerpt recounts that moment where the insulating bubble of travel from Thailand burst and she, her husband, and their small children exited the airplane back onto U.S. soil. They returned as shells of the hopeful, excited selves they'd been when embarking on what they'd believed to be world shifting work with The Exodus Road to fight human trafficking. With these words, Corinne lets us see the heart and devastation roiling beneath ashen skin and broken spirits.
To connect with Sarah or Corinne, find them on Instagram: @heysarahcarter @thesaltyshark @sarahandcorinne
For more information about Spiritual Pyro, visit www.spiritualpyro.com.
Pick up your copy of the skies are full of us at bookshop.org or your favorite bookstore.
At long last, Sarah and Corinne share excerpts from their upcoming book, "the skies are full of us: a true story of speaking up, burning down, and the unbreakable bond of friendship" releasing from Rebeca Books on October 21, 2025. Each of these readings is from the first of the three sections - Ruin, Rise, and Redemption - into which "the skies are full of us" is arranged.
Sarah's excerpt pulls back the curtain on the intimate and excruciating experience of her and her husband, Steve Carter, pressing "Send" on his resignation from Willow Creek Community Church. By allowing listeners and readers into this sacred moment of ending, she allows us to witness the pain, fear, heartbreak, and devastation with which both she and Steve wrestled as they fought to walk with integrity and love, even as it cost them dearly.
Corinne's excerpt recounts that moment where the insulating bubble of travel from Thailand burst and she, her husband, and their small children exited the airplane back onto U.S. soil. They returned as shells of the hopeful, excited selves they'd been when embarking on what they'd believed to be world shifting work with The Exodus Road to fight human trafficking. With these words, Corinne lets us see the heart and devastation roiling beneath ashen skin and broken spirits.
To connect with Sarah or Corinne, find them on Instagram: @heysarahcarter @thesaltyshark @sarahandcorinne
For more information about Spiritual Pyro, visit www.spiritualpyro.com.
Pick up your copy of the skies are full of us at bookshop.org or your favorite bookstore.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Sarah (00:02):
For all the match Strikers. This
is spiritual Pyro.
>> Corinne (00:24):
all right, so we are just
inside four
episodes until
Skyes launches in October.
>> Sarah (00:36):
That is so incredible to me. I cannot believe it.
I'm so excited.
>> Corinne (00:41):
I can't believe we're gonna have that
book in our hot little hands so soon.
>> Sarah (00:47):
So soon.
>> Corinne (00:49):
Couple weeks.
>> Sarah (00:50):
Every week we're counting down.
>> Corinne (00:52):
She's gonna be so pretty. Yeah,
I can't wait.
>> Sarah (00:56):
So I feel like we should maybe talk about her
a little bit this week. A little
introduction, just a real broad overview,
introduce you guys to her. Just a, Just a quick
peek into what to expect.
>> Corinne (01:11):
Kind of how we've, how we've shaped
her over these years and how,
the formatting works. It's a little bit different.
Do you remember when we first
pitched our proposal and
the first response was, ooh,
two authors going back and forth? I don't know.
(01:31):
Do you remember that?
>> Sarah (01:33):
Yeah. Well, especially because it's memoir. So
it's like, okay, you're gonna tell your story
and you're gonna tell your story and you're both
gonna be doing that together.
How. How are you doing that? How's that gonna work?
especially because my story takes
place in Illinois and Arizona,
(01:54):
and your story is taking place in Thailand and
Arizona. And it's like, how's that going to work?
And that's really where the magic happened.
Honestly, that is where
this really beautiful kind of alchemy
occurred between chapter by chapter,
where we take turns writing back and
forth and we kind of maintain a timeline. We,
(02:16):
the era stays consistent as we're telling
our story, but the time and place and voice is
what alternates back and forth. And
we've divided the book into three
parts, so we're telling our stories
through three kind of different,
I guess, eras.
>> Corinne (02:35):
Eras.
>> Sarah (02:36):
We'll nod back to Mother Taylor.
>> Corinne (02:38):
I know. It is what it is, right? Yeah.
You know what I love about how that all
came together, though, was even in the
very, very first days
of putting together that proposal and
writing our outline and getting,
you know, really, really fleshing out the idea of
(02:59):
how the book would feel, even though there was some,
like, hesitation. Right. There was some. Not from
us, but as it was received as
this is a style and a format that's not typically
done. And we were like, yep, yep.
>> Sarah (03:13):
But this.
>> Corinne (03:14):
But she told us what she wanted to be and
this idea that we wanted to create
a dynamic that mirrors
us sitting around a fire, telling
our stories back and forth. You know,
one of us tells a story and that makes
the other one, remember a time and
(03:34):
tell another story. And that volleying back and
forth is actually just the true
nature of conversation. And we really
wanted our book and our story and the
whole of that to reflect that. This
back and forth, this mutual exchange, this
reciprocity of storytelling. So this
(03:55):
really unusual format of two
authors writing memoir,
taking turns going back and forth between the
chapters, that was so unusual,
to our agent at first. To our publisher at first,
actually kind of has become a little. I don't know, it feels
a little signature now for us. Like, of course, this is how we write.
Of course this is how we share a story. Because if we were sitting around a
(04:18):
fire, this is exactly how it would go. This is how it would feel.
>> Sarah (04:21):
Yeah, it's so true. It's such a reflection of our
friendship, I think, and our, the way that we communicate. And it
feels very natural and very organic. And
even as we were writing these chapters, we
stayed very authentic to our own voices. I feel like
we were both very careful and respectful to
kind of maintain the integrity of our own voice,
our own story, and really wrote out
(04:44):
our experiences kind of separately.
And then part of the magic was watching,
as we did bring our stories together,
how naturally they flowed. And kind of that
volley back and forth was so. So organic that it
just added to this. Like, okay,
something bigger is happening here.
(05:04):
Like this. As you say that, she continues to
show us who she wants to be, and we do.
We do refer to her as she.
>> Corinne (05:13):
She is her own being.
>> Sarah (05:15):
Yep. Guys, she is her own
entity, and she has definitely her
own kind of ethos. And.
Yep, she has. She has evolved.
She has. She has become so many different
versions of herself and continues to do that. And
it has been an incredible experience to get
(05:35):
to what has felt like partner with this
creative. This creative entity,
this. This book.
>> Corinne (05:42):
Yeah, it can. It continues to have been an
invitation every step of the way to
hold her loosely and really follow
her lead and then do the
hard, disciplined work of
writing. Right. You know, so it's like it is this
partnership. It's not like, oh,
(06:02):
it's, you know, none of it's us. No,
there's a lot of hard work that has been put into
following the lead of this story.
I also think about how the concern
early on was, you know, will it confuse the reader
to go back and forth? And I think that you speaking to our
unique voices, and our writing style,
(06:24):
I think that is something that was so
strong right off the bat and so clear
with such distinction. And then there was Also
this element, I remember us saying, like, we
trust our readers to be able to hang with us. We
trust our readers to be able to go back and
forth and take the time that
(06:45):
they need to take while walking through our stories, especially
at the beginning. But we were
just always confident that, no, this might be an
unusual format, but our readers can hang with it.
>> Sarah (06:58):
Yeah. And I also, I think breaking
the book up into three parts
also allowed for that kind of natural
inhale, exhale, that taking
the time that's needed to kind of with these different parts
of our stories. the first part is
we've called Ruin, which really walks through
(07:20):
the crisis point, kind of
that moment of true ruin
in our story that kind of brought us to our knees, the
breaking point, the trauma,
and both of us telling our stories and the ways
that those experiences in, in our
individual lives crossed over and both brought
(07:41):
us to a place of complete
devastation where we really didn't know
what would come next. And
from there we moved into the next part
of our lives, of our story. And in this book,
that is called Rise.
And that part of our story brings us to the desert.
(08:03):
And we do a lot of walking through the desert
in that part of our story. So much walking,
literally and figuratively, so much walking.
and through that experience, we move through
the book and through our life into a
story of return, which is the third part of
Skies. And so we thought it might
(08:25):
be fun these next few weeks
to walk with you guys through just a bit
of each of those parts. Starting
with a part that might feel a little heavy.
But we know all too well
that to get to the parts that feel
like that shimmering champagne, pop
(08:46):
fizz, sparkle goodness, you
have to be willing to sit with the hard stuff too.
And so we just want to invite you, we wanna invite you into
some ruin with us. We'd love to share just a
small piece of skies with you.
>> Corinne (09:02):
Never before shared.
>> Sarah (09:03):
Yeah, just, just a little bit. Yeah. And
maybe just share some backstory and
do a little storytelling. Yeah,
let's do it.
>> Corinne (09:13):
Can I. I also just wanna say how. Do you remember
how, how much we tried to not have
the sections be three Rs? Like, we're like
so, like no alliteration. We tried
so hard to not have alliteration. And then. But
it just again, like she just told us who she wanted to be.
We're like, this is just what it is. It's Ruin, Rise and
(09:34):
Return. Of course it is.
>> Sarah (09:36):
I feel like that was like our,
petulant teenage Era of like,
deconstruction. We're like, no, totally. No,
that's too sermony and too, like, no,
totally.
>> Corinne (09:47):
So precious. And then we were like, no, no. It actually just is what
it perfect.
>> Sarah (09:52):
Yeah.
>> Corinne (09:52):
I love it.
>> Sarah (09:53):
I have so much affection for it now. I'm like, me too.
Me too.
>> Corinne (09:57):
I actually, like, can't imagine it any other
way. And I think that that is such a
sweet and telling part of the story that even
in. Even in creating the formatting and
the structure of this book, you know, we were wrestling. We
were wrestling with her the whole time.
>> Sarah (10:14):
We really were. We really were. There were
so many moments of invitation to
let her fly. We held so
tightly even when we thought we were
so open handed. And I have this. I have this
picture of this book kind of looking at us and going, oh, honey.
>> Corinne (10:32):
Like, oh, honey, I know, I know, I know.
>> Sarah (10:34):
Honey, I know you think you're being so,
like, open handed, but like, you gotta let me fly.
You gotta let me fly.
>> Corinne (10:41):
Yeah. It's like the meme that we keep sharing back and forth at
the, Pick fewer battles. Okay. Few fewer still. Okay,
now put some more back. Right, right. Fewer still.
And it's like the same thing. Like every single,
phase of this book has been
like, okay, open handed. Okay, Release that death
grip. More. Okay. Like, prying those fingers off a little bit more.
(11:02):
Okay, even more. You know, that's been
continuous and I think even down to this
final release date, you know that we have
m. You know, that we. We just were
expecting originally to have released at the beginning
of September. And then, you know, seeing
her get moved to October and releasing that and
being willing to just, you know, be so open
(11:24):
handed, even all the way to the very. To
the very end. And her beginning of
launch, you know, it's just a continual
invitation to let her fly.
Just let her fly. Okay. Even more.
Let her fly. You know, So I love that for us.
>> Sarah (11:42):
I do too. And honestly, I'm sitting here
as we're getting ready to share actual words
from these chapters, feeling
that like, ooh, I have butterflies and I'm a little nervous
and I'm like, oh, this is another invitation to let her
fly. Like, actually, every day
we're getting closer to this book being in the world
(12:02):
and being in reader's hands and she's
no longer just ours and she's.
Her words are not, going to just be words
we know, but they're going to be words that
every reader who holds her knows.
And this feels like a practice of that. It's like, oh, my gosh, we're about
to share words, and then they're not just words we know.
(12:23):
And that feels like a letter fly moment. We're having one right
now.
>> Corinne (12:27):
We are, like, in real time. And it's different from
having shared, you know, the drama of the story in our
first few episodes of Spiritual Pyro. Like, this is different
because these are the words that we have, like,
shaped and crafted over time. Like,
you know, it's like the. It's like the water that cuts through
stone, right? It's like the. These words are the
canyons that have been carved over these past
(12:49):
few years of just this constant flow of water
and this constant work. And
so these words that are on the page
feel like so much more
of an altar, a monument, you.
You know, the karn
of where we have walked and where we've been.
(13:10):
So to be able to share even just a couple
paragraphs each feels like.
I don't know, it feels like we're getting to tell a secret.
>> Sarah (13:19):
It does.
>> Corinne (13:20):
Like we're taking something out of the vault.
>> Sarah (13:23):
Totally. We're having a vault moment. Oh, my gosh.
That's really exciting. I'm kind of nervous, but, like, in a good
way.
>> Corinne (13:30):
I know. I'm, like, a little fluttery about it.
>> Sarah (13:32):
I also feel like it's important to say that,
like, when. When
we're. When we're reading this, it's like
this. This is. These are stories we
wrote, but we wrote them about our real life.
Like, the things we're writing about are.
>> Corinne (13:49):
Things we actually lived, moments that actually.
>> Sarah (13:52):
Lived through these moments. And then
time passed, and we wrote these moments down,
and then more time passed, and we're sharing these moments with you.
But these. There was a point in
time when the things we're sharing with you,
we lived them. They really happened, and they
are our real stories. And so the vulnerability of
(14:13):
that. It's wild how even as
we've been recording for the audiobook,
it's every edit we've worked through as we've
been preparing this book to go out into the world.
It doesn't matter how much time goes by, it doesn't matter
how many years pass. Reading the words
takes you back to that moment. And it is. It
(14:34):
is a practice of updating ourselves each time
to go, oh, it's not happening right now.
Again, it's that bringing back and going, like,
we're safe now. We're here now. But it
feels so visceral. It is a real thing. And so there's a
vulnerability That I think I'd imagine
when anyone who's written anything true
about their life always has a piece of them that
(14:57):
lives in that moment for always. And so
there's a practice, that feels like
even like a practice of consent to say we're, we
are consenting to invite you into this part of our story
in our life. And there's a kind of mutual
vulnerability in that that I think is really beautiful. But
I just like, I want to name that for like this is not casual
(15:17):
for us, right?
>> Corinne (15:19):
No, not at all. In fact, it's kind of,
it feels really significant.
Like there's a lot of weight to be held in that. And I think we
can talk about updating our parts. Like I
think this is, you know,
we love to joke about how this book feels like a
literary event, what, seven, eight years in the
(15:39):
making. Totally. But which is
like, you know, feels so,
large and these
things are true about our lives. And there's also
this offering up of the fact that
this is a situation or a
moment or a glimpse of
honestly now a younger version of
(16:02):
ourselves. Right. So we're also sharing
one of our younger selves here today.
And I love that because
it's the updating of our parts, but it's also this
offering of our. A younger version of
ourselves, you know, so that's language that we're
constantly using in the book and then with each other. And,
(16:23):
and so that's also true today is, oh,
this is like 2017, 2018.
Corey and Sarah, right? Yeah,
a lot of time has passed.
>> Sarah (16:35):
Yeah, there's something really tender about that. And
I love at the beginning of our book
we take care to include
really an acknowledgment of speaking
to that point that the stories that
we're sharing come
from younger versions of us and that
(16:58):
who we are is
continuously growing and evolving and
that that's a beautiful thing that we welcome and invite.
And I think that is a
really important framework just to live by. That's just a piece
that's true all the time for all of us. So I
love being able to kind of frame
(17:18):
all things that way. I'm glad you named that.
>> Corinne (17:22):
I'd also venture to say that every,
every step that we take toward this
book, toward her release and then
whether it's our audiobook reading or whether it's
sharing here in an episode is
a continued part of the healing. So
it feels like, oh, we get to share this today. And it's
(17:42):
another, like anyone who's listening
like this invitation is
into the continued healing. Like every
time we get to tell these stories,
it's a little less heavy,
it's a little less burden, it's
more shared. We feel a little less alone even
(18:02):
now. We feel a little less alone every single
time. So, I don't know, I feel
grateful for, just
every, every single person who's listening to
bear witness, even just to these little bits that we're
going to share today.
Sam
(18:34):
M.
So you want to go first?
>> Sarah (18:51):
Yeah, I'm thinking I,
I'll give just a tiny bit of context that the piece I chose
to share, comes on the heels of the
story that I'm telling about
right after, right
after Steve had submitted his
letter of resignation, publicly.
(19:12):
So on the heels of that, we as a family
had packed, up and
decided just to spend a couple nights
away from our home just to kind of avoid the
subsequent fallout. And so we were on the road driving
to Madison, Wisconsin. We were living in Illinois
at the time. so this is us having
(19:33):
pulled over on the side of the road to
actually push publish on the, that
resignation letter. And
so I will just share, I'll just, share a
little bit of my heart and soul with you.
This was my goodbye just as much as it was
(19:54):
his. I walked back to the car,
flowers in my hair and stuffed into
pockets, ochre and marigold
smeared across my tear stream streaked cheeks.
I reached for his hand while he held the laptop
open, fingers lingering over the
tiny box labeled Publish. Together,
(20:15):
we took a deep breath and pressed down.
It was done. I gently pulled the
laptop from him and set it under my seat,
laying small flowers on top. And
suddenly he was leaning heavy into my arms,
the weight of a man shaking with unspeakable, unspeakable
grief replacing the soft air of flowers.
(20:35):
My hair was wet with his tears and mine, our
kids both asleep in the backseat, blissfully
unaware of the gut wrenching memorial we'd just
created. We turned off our phones and
got back on the road, the worn asphalt seeming
like an ocean as huge storm clouds rumbled
emptying overhead. How fitting,
(20:56):
I mused. Let it all out.
Let it pour and rage and scream
and howl. Let it rush and
flash and thunder hard.
Let it pool and sink and permeate.
Let it crack open seeds and give life to
something beautiful. I thought
(21:17):
of the women who had first spoken up about sexual
misconduct. I imagined them as
oceans too, so swirling and brimming
and brewing, rivers snaking
across dry earth, searching and unrelenting
in their pursuit of the truth.
I thought of my friend and her trembling, pale face in
(21:37):
my doorway. I thought of the former
assistant and her unshakable commitment to speak up.
I thought of the many times we tried to get the church
leadership to do the right thing, to love like the
Jesus they claimed. I thought of
Karine speaking truth to power in Thailand.
I thought of all the women I knew in all sorts of ways
(21:58):
who faced similar repercussions for speaking up
about corruption and abuse.
I imagined all of us gathering at the mouth of a
canyon, streaming and crashing and
rumbling waters charged with such
wild energy. Forces to be
reckoned with, women bringing water
(22:19):
to dry lands, cracking open sick
systems and exposing inequity and creating
opportunities for new life and beauty to
flourish. I looked down
at the flower I'd been mindlessly spinning in my
fingers as we drove, holding it tightly and
clasping my hands together.
(22:39):
I didn't know what prayer was anymore, but I
wondered if it might feel something like this.
All rain crashing and hearts breaking and
small bursts of hope mixing in some mystical
chorus of me toos and
with yous. I closed my eyes and
let the tears fall, feeling solidarity with the
(22:59):
rain as it slid down our windshield and we drove away
from everything we'd ever known.
That was from a chapter in Ruhn called
Exile.
>> Corinne (23:14):
God, I love that one.
Yeah. I want. I want to, I want to
come back to one of my favorite lines
in this piece, but also, I think
it's one of my favorites. not because it's
so poetic as
your writing voice
(23:35):
just is. I mean, it's like your
hallmark. It's your calling card. but
really because of the
thread that it weaves through your
storytelling, the line where you say
blissfully unaware of the gut wrenching memorial we
just created, this moment of
(23:57):
complete annihilation, ruin
as a memorial, a
moment on the side of the road that is this
combination of beauty and the
wild force of nature, but it being
this big, big grief
mixed with relief, which often is what a memorial
(24:17):
is.
that has stuck with me since you first wrote that line, since
you first. That first draft of this piece.
But this moment on the side of the road, the kid's asleep
in the back, blissfully unaware.
And this memorial that you two
held together. So I don't know, I just. I would love
(24:39):
to kind of camp on that for a second. And,
that is, that theme of
death is really
kind of the core of ruin for both of
us. And how has,
like, how does that feel in thinking about
it as a memorial? How does that Feel all this time
(25:00):
later, even as you can still, I know. Feel it in your body
as you read it.
>> Sarah (25:06):
Yeah, I think it's, it's
I appreciate what you said and I, you know, by the,
by the time we had made this decision, I
mean, we had exhausted ourselves
trying to find any other
way to avoid having to
come to that decision. To finally have to get to the
(25:27):
point where resigning was the
choice that had to be made. and it
was over months and months of time to
finally get to that point and truly feel like
our hand was, was essentially
forced. And there is a,
there's a sense of exhaustion and
(25:48):
strange relief that comes when you,
when you finally make a decision, even if it's a
painful one. the liminal kind of space,
between knowing what
you're going to do, what's next, how's this going to go. That
was so agonizing and it lasted for so long
that I think that
(26:10):
the death, the time of death, calling time of death,
even though really
as dramatic as it sounds to say, like
driving away from everything we knew, like,
yeah, we had no idea what was coming next.
We didn't have like severance. We didn't know what was,
we didn't know what the next day was going to bring.
(26:32):
And yet there
was peace. I felt such
peace because I knew we were, we were
living with, in alignment within ourselves.
Like we, we had done
what felt right by us
and what we knew within us to
(26:52):
be the right thing to do. And
I don't know, you can't,
you can't buy that, you can't fake that.
You, there's nothing you can sell out for that.
And so I think there was
a strange sense of peace that,
that I felt getting back on the road. And
(27:13):
as much as the subsequent weeks,
I think definitely, you know, you come out of that
peace and you're like, oh shit. And
there's a ton of grief that comes after and a ton of, a
ton more. in that immediate sense, in that
moment, it was kind of like a bubble of relief
and in having made a decision and just kind of a
(27:34):
strange sense of like, oh yeah, this,
as painful as it was, it was the right decision.
Yeah.
>> Corinne (27:42):
And there's no guarantee, right.
There's no trophy for making the right decision
on the side of the road that day. Nobody,
nobody was calling to
reward you for your courage and your
bravery with some sort of guarantee of what would come
next. That was all unknown.
(28:02):
And I think the,
the space that exists
in between making that right
Decision and what comes
next can feel like
an eternity.
>> Sarah (28:19):
Yeah.
>> Corinne (28:21):
Not knowing, but having to
trust. I don't know that that alignment is the
only thing that, that we
get to hold on to.
>> Sarah (28:30):
That's so true. And you know, you know that
exact, exact feeling. I know. You know.
Yeah.
>> Corinne (28:43):
I think about so many of the things that
overlap for us. Right. in this
story, your kids are
blissfully unaware. and
yet they did experience
enough things along the way in
your decision making process to where
(29:04):
it's not like they didn't know that hard things were
going on. It's not like they didn't know that there
was stress or disruption
happening within their life,
within their world. And I don't know, I just maybe speak
to what that was
like for them to be in the backseat during this
(29:24):
memorial and you know, our desire to protect our
kids as mothers. Thinking back to that. They're so little
at that place. Yeah.
>> Sarah (29:32):
They were so young. I mean
Emerson was what, four or five?
You know. No, Emersy was four or five
and Emerson I think was like nine or ten. I mean they're so young.
And how do
you explain, you know, what's going on? And
I think even having that big of an age gap, it's like what we can
(29:53):
explain. What Emerson's able to hold is so different than what Mercy is
able to hold at that age. And
Yeah. And, and we were so upside down.
It's like how I would handle it out of
crisis myself or versus
within crisis myself is so
different. And how I will handle it and how I would handle it
(30:13):
now. So many years removed and so many years
older and wiser versus you know, there's so many factors
to all of that. I just, I look back with
so much compassion and empathy. Like oh
hon, you know, all the way. I just, all the way
around. I, I'm, I look back
now and I'm, I'm glad that they were sleeping in that moment. I,
I'm like, just stay asleep, please.
>> Corinne (30:36):
Just like sleep a little bit longer.
>> Sarah (30:38):
Like a kindness to that, that they were spared that.
And also it allowed Steve and
I to be. Steve and I, we didn't have to
wear the parent hat in that moment and we could just grieve
a little bit. We had a moment, you know. I'm glad for that.
that's actually really cool. I had to wear a lot of hats, most of
the time, as you did. You know, again,
(30:59):
what's so beautiful about our friendship and this, this, this
is such specific types of
trauma and woundedness. And so one of the
gifts of walking through that time was
having you. Because I could say this, and you're like,
you know, like. But you actually really know, and
that's rare. And so you.
>> Corinne (31:18):
Yeah.
>> Sarah (31:18):
To have had a moment of
grief, a stolen moment of grief, just
the two of us, and to just
be ourselves for a minute
was a gift.
Yeah. I would
love to hear your piece if
(31:41):
you would like to share it with us. Your piece of
ruin.
>> Corinne (31:45):
Yeah. I do want to echo
your words about what it. I mean,
I'm still in awe of,
like, what are the chances that our
friendship could
have the timing and the
capacity to be such a lifeline,
(32:07):
in that reciprocity for one another? Like,
I would have never wished it upon you or
any of my other friends to be able to relate so deeply to
what I was going through. And yet
it made the world feel so much
smaller and so much closer
to, for us to be so connected
(32:28):
through these wildly
traumatic experiences.
every time I think about it, I'm like, what are the chances that we would have been going through this
at the same time? What are the chances?
And I, don't. I don't try to figure that out
anymore. You know, I just am so
thankful. Yeah, I'm just really thankful.
(32:50):
So I think it's also what
makes this book so beautiful is that that is the
thread that just weaves all the way through.
>> Sarah (33:01):
Yeah. Incredibly fortunate to have had each other
and to have had our with youhs and our
candles lit and their desert
trails. All the things. All the things.
>> Corinne (33:12):
Yeah. I do love that our with yous just really,
genuinely came from these text messages.
A world away, an ocean apart, you know, different
hemispheres. that it's not
just a little phrase that we came up with, that it was
just really born out of the
genuine darkness and candle
(33:32):
lighting that felt like the only thing we had to offer each
other at times. And how
I love that. That's. It's just such a normal part of our
language now. It's something that we offer to each other and to
really everyone else all the
time and has become such a
beacon of, solidarity
(33:52):
and hope and. And, you know, along with the bonfires on the
bluff. Like, this is. This is how it
works.
>> Sarah (33:59):
Yeah. It's that I. I can't fix this. But
I'm not leaving you. You're not alone.
Yeah.
>> Corinne (34:37):
This is a section
from a piece called 30,000ft,
which is
our leaving Thailand.
not only after, Months
of heartbreak
and ruin, watching our lives
(34:58):
burn down around us, and
knowing that we would have to go home sooner than planned.
But then also really just the
actual getting on the plane and the traveling
home. you know, just hours after we
had found out that
what we thought we were leaving was only a part of the
story, after we had found out the
(35:20):
significance and the depth, of
the trauma that had actually taken place.
So we were in full fight or
flight, full survival mode in
this piece. And
I still feel it, even just thinking about reading it.
but the section that I want to share is really
(35:42):
about that liminal space,
like you had said, Sarah, that in between
of everything having burned down and
the loss and the grief, and yet
not quite to the point of rebuilding,
not quite to the point of knowing at all
what's next, but just that no man's land
(36:03):
of desolation,
where all feels lost
and the night
feels the darkest. And
all of that is that space, I
think, that, you know, so many of us, we can find our stories within
each other's pages, because we. We
(36:24):
all know those moments. So
that's the. That's the space that this section
of this piece comes from. And
that desire to just stay hidden
in the liminal space between.
I stare out the airport windows over the
(36:45):
meticulously manicured garden in
Bangkok. I watch the snow
fall on the tarmac.
Excuse me. I watch the
snowfall on the tarmac outside in Seoul.
I'm lost in the fog surrounding the
international terminal as we clear customs
(37:06):
in Seattle. I scowl
at the familiar saguaros reaching up
from the desert floor along the concourse in
Phoenix. I try to
stop our forward motion. I want to walk
backward in these airports, to
hide in the bathroom, to disappear.
(37:28):
I try to dig my heels into the moving
sidewalks, to stay in the in between,
suspended between what has burned to the ground
and what is going to require all of
us to rebuild.
Maybe we can just stay in the airports, never passing
through the next gate and never getting our baggage from the
(37:48):
carousel. I'm constantly looking behind
me, paranoid we are being followed,
terrified of being seen, and yet
desperate to be seen all
at the same time. Someone please
see me. Isn't that
how it often goes in our most
vulnerable moments, when we most want to be
(38:11):
put out of our misery and swallowed
whole by our pain? We are
simultaneously desperate for someone
to see through us, someone to slice
us wide open and witness the bloody
cross section of our survival, all
the little deaths buried inside.
Someone who knows the toll of bringing a knife
(38:34):
to a gunfight. And recognizes the
loss scrawled all over our
bodies. Trudging
through the long terminal corridor, we
eventually see our people, a small
handful of family and friends who showed
up to welcome us home. They are
pointing and waving and smiling,
(38:56):
having seen us coming a long way off.
I, wince at their happiness.
They know about the past couple of months,
but they don't yet know about the past couple
of days. They have no idea
who they are waving to and cannot see
the invisible baggage we are dragging behind us.
(39:18):
I know I'm supposed to feel grateful, but every
step closer to them is a step
further away from the safety of the cocoon
we've been suspended in. It's
a step closer to the harsh reality awaiting us
here in the desert. One by one,
we each fall into their arms,
(39:39):
going through the motions of trading hugs
and kisses. I wonder if their
fingertips can sense the haunted catacombs
just beneath my skin. I
see the joy on their faces and their
mouths are moving in the shape of words
about how good it is to have us home.
(39:59):
But like an old war film
after a landmine detonates and the
only sound is a ringing in the ears,
I cannot hear or feel a
thing. I am numb to
their touch.
(40:20):
Feels just a little
more distant each time.
And yet I remember her.
I remember her
so desperate to just hide,
to just want to hide in that airport.
I remember thinking, I could live here. I could live here
(40:42):
in Sky Harbor Airport. There's food,
there's like, I could just live here. Like,
I was so afraid. Yeah, I
was so afraid to leave the airport because that meant
I was going to have to
figure out my life. I was going to have to figure out what
to do next. And I just had no. I had no
(41:04):
capacity for that.
>> Sarah (41:05):
Yeah, that makes sense.
>> Corinne (41:07):
So I remember. I remember kind of
walking into a bit of a trance.
kind of a blur of going through those
motions and what came next.
so my system was so overwhelmed with
those flight responses where we actually
(41:27):
felt like we were running and escaping and
fleeing and nobody knew, nobody
knew why. So, yeah, that was.
I still feel it rolling through.
>> Sarah (41:39):
Yeah. Yeah. Like a wave. Roll
on through.
>> Corinne (41:43):
Yep.
>> Sarah (41:44):
Your writing is so visceral. Whenever I read one of your
pieces, I feel like I'm watching a movie. Like, I
feel like I can see it like a scene when, when you were
writing, like that scene. That moment is like a scene. And I
feel like I'm in it watching
you, and it's so
vivid. And, that feeling that you
describe of wanting to Be seen
(42:07):
and not wanting to be seen at the same time. And that
moment when your
family, your loved ones see you and spot you, and
the expectation, which is so pure and makes so much
sense that they're so genuinely excited to see you. And
it's been this and. And yet that.
That sense of, like, oh, are you. How.
(42:28):
How can you possibly find it within yourself to mirror
that back and they don't yet know,
and even just like, trying to
find the energy to summon. Like, there's just. You don't have it and
just. Oh, I can just feel it. I just.
The way you were able to bring us with you
and through that piece, it made it
(42:48):
feel so
urgent and so real right there with you.
>> Corinne (42:56):
What's interesting about that piece is that we have photos from it.
>> Sarah (42:59):
Oh, wow.
>> Corinne (43:00):
You know, like, our family
taking pictures of us as they
see us coming. And it's like. To see photos
of myself, like, so
ashen and so,
like, being able to
see right through it. Being able to see right through that photo.
(43:21):
You know, I think of. You know,
often we. We think of lyrics, right. And it's
like, can you see right through me?
I see right through me. Can you see right through me? You know, from the
Archer. so looking at those photos,
that's what. Looking
at the kids.
>> Sarah (43:42):
Yeah.
>> Corinne (43:42):
You know, looking at Eric and myself as we're just
coming from a long way off. And
I think that idea of taking a photo during a
difficult moment and not realizing
the.
Not realizing how
(44:06):
different the perspective is from the person
taking the photograph and the person being photographed.
because, you know, you know what you're thinking,
you know what you're feeling. so to look back at that, I
think, oh, they thought they were taking a picture of
a beautiful homecoming.
Little did they know they were taking a picture of
(44:27):
us as corpses.
>> Sarah (44:29):
Right. Right.
>> Corinne (44:31):
Well.
>> Sarah (44:31):
And from their perspective, it was right in their
memory. It was. And that's that both. And
it's all true. And,
you know, you do write earlier
in 30,000ft about kind of stopping yourself.
You have this sort of moment of wanting to take a selfie
and then having kind of this awareness, this clarity come over you
(44:52):
of, what am I doing?
Why are we pretending? What am I asking here? And I think that is
so profound. That, to me, felt like a moment of
your motherhood catching up
to your. I don't know.
I don't know how to describe this, Karina. I don't know if you have words for how you
would describe what that was for you, what was happening. In that moment
(45:13):
that was registering for you, that
connection that was happening, that was shifting kind
of in real time that you capture in that part.
>> Corinne (45:22):
Well, I think that, as
parents, we can relate
to any moment where our
desire to keep our kids safe
overrides whatever it is that we're
personally experiencing. So. So, you know
that piece, that part in the
chapter that you're referring to where I'm trying to take a picture while
(45:44):
we're on the plane, and it's like our deepest grief
and, catching myself in that moment, realizing that
we don't need a photo to remember this moment. It's
a moment that we will try to forget for the rest of our
lives. And yet that was my
attempt, kind of my, default in my
motherhood was to try to rally, to try to
(46:06):
create a moment that was better than what was
actually true. Right. Like, to
somehow spin something for my
kids so that the grief was a little less deep
or, you know, the flight
away from this life that they had come to live would be
a little less painful. because we
couldn't tell them the fullness of why we were
(46:29):
leaving. We couldn't tell them the fullness of. Of
why it was so rushed and why it was so chaotic.
So I think there was this desperation in my
motherhood to make it better, to
spin it, you know, to put a
better. A better veneer on it, even
just for a moment, just for them. And
(46:50):
having to catch myself in that moment and
put my phone away because
it was an offense to capture our, grief that way.
>> Sarah (47:00):
Yeah. It's like, best of
intentions, right? Like, such a beautiful
motivation coming from. Such a beautiful
motivation. And yet being able to
catch yourself in real time and look at it from a different
angle and go, whoa, whoa,
what are we doing? I. Yeah. Ah. I. There's. I
have so many stories like that, too. When I look back at that time, I think it's
(47:22):
even like, what I was saying about speaking to, like, oh. Oh. What
I would do differently. And again, from m. Such a place
of, like, just. You're in. You're in a
place of survival and you're operating from, like,
that instinctive, like, especially as a mom, like,
keep them safe. And nothing feels safe. And
so m. We. We go to such extremes, and
(47:42):
we're not thinking clearly, and you don't know who you can trust,
and everything feels upside down, and you're not sleeping
and you're not eating, and every. If it's just every.
There's so much. And
really, I think what we'll speak to a
lot in what we get into next week as we
dive into rise is how
long it took to
(48:06):
come out of survival, to even
begin not even healing, but just
like
to really take a deep breath for the first
time again. I stayed
pretty bound and wrapped tight in survival for a
long time. Even after coming back to the desert, even
after we left Illinois, before I could
(48:29):
even begin to attempt
healing myself. Yeah.
>> Corinne (48:40):
Sam,
(49:06):
I think there is, you know, whether it's in
parenting or whether it's just in relationship, it's
the desperation of
being in a moment where there's no plan,
there's no answers, there's no
good explanations. Like where you don't
have anything to offer the
(49:28):
people around you except for
your like actual physical presence. You
know, to not be able to,
to not know what you're going to do next, to not know how you're going
to respond, to not know what action you're going to take, to not
know. To not know anything. To not know
what you do the next day. I
(49:49):
think that is a, level of
survival and desperation that
is so disorienting and I think that's
this. Another intersection for our stories that
we've shared here today is just being in that moment of
complete disorientation and not knowing
what's next and not knowing what's
(50:11):
on the other side. Not having any
idea how we're going to heal, how we're going to,
how we're going to make breakfast the next morning. You know,
none of it. The most simple things, the most
complex things, just having no answers,
that's a bit of a death. I think
(50:33):
that
that takes a while to come back
from
having to do that in real time with our people. Right.
It's much easier when you can be like, okay kids, here's the plan.
Here's what we're gonna do. Here's, you know, here's how it's gonna go.
(50:54):
But having your kids and your people around
you watching you
have no fucking clue
what you're gonna do or how you're gonna survive. Like
that's a vulnerability and a humility that
is ah, leveling
in itself.
(51:16):
I think both of our pieces, your memorial
and then this moment for me of feeling
like a catacomb, you know,
where that's our shared space here
is that death of what was.
>> Sarah (51:31):
Yeah. And having no idea what would come next.
And I mean everyone,
everyone has a story like that at some point in their
life. It's, it's an unavoidable part of
being human. It's part. Because it's part of
change. It's part of growth. To be something
new, we must move out of something old. It's the
(51:52):
shedding of the skin. It's that. That snake skin,
that whole. It's.
It's an unavoidable part of the human
experience. And so I think,
as we speak to that, it's really
the understanding that
as it's the threshold. Where we
(52:13):
leave off in ruin is the threshold. You
can't stay in ruin forever. You're at
the tip, and it's that moment of
what's going to be next. You can't go back to what was
doesn't exist anymore. You made a decision and
you're onto something else. But you don't know what it is yet. And you're at the end
of yourself. You are no longer
(52:34):
exactly who you were before. You don't know who you are.
And you're not alone. And you're not just accountable for
yourself. And so there's just so much. And
that's really where we.
Where we find ourselves in that moment in
our lives. Yeah.
Until. Until next.
(52:55):
Until next episode. Really.
>> Corinne (52:57):
Till next episode. Yeah. So
I. What I love is that, the
magnitude of these experiences that we've
shared stretch, it really stretches
out the boundaries and creates this really
big open space for
us to find each other and find ourselves in between
the pages of each other's stories. So it's like you don't
(53:19):
have to have experienced something like I don't
have to have experienced what you went through
and vice versa. And then collectively, we
don't all have the exact same
experiences. And yet the truth
is universal. And the way that we
relate is so closely
(53:39):
woven and so closely connected. So
my hope is that as these
really big
stories get spread out on the
pages, you know, in front of us and in
front of each listener and reader, that there's
those moments, those. Me too. And with you. Moments
(54:00):
that get found
in all the different and complex ways that, our
stories overlap, our map lines overlap.
So I love that about our stories
in that they make so much room for
the wild and crazy and
(54:21):
unpredictable ways that all of our lives
unfold. That there's room for all of it, and it all
belongs, no matter how simple
or complex the details could be
(54:44):
foreign.
>> Rebeca (54:50):
You've been listening to Spiritual Pyro with
>> Sarah (54:53):
Sarah Carter and Corrine Shark on the 1C Story
Network. For more information about this and our other
stories, please visit
just1c.com that's
J-U S T O N E C
dot com.
>> Corinne (55:27):
add that to the list of things that we're not going to say.
>> Sarah (55:29):
Okay, so instead of those things,
we're going to say, welcome to Spiritual Pyro. We're so
glad you're here.
>> Corinne (55:37):
We're so glad you're still here.
>> Sarah (55:38):
Thanks for being here.
>> Singer (55:41):
The 1C Story Network.
For the love of stories.
For all the match Strikers. This
is spiritual Pyro.
>> Corinne (00:24):
all right, so we are just
inside four
episodes until
Skyes launches in October.
>> Sarah (00:36):
That is so incredible to me. I cannot believe it.
I'm so excited.
>> Corinne (00:41):
I can't believe we're gonna have that
book in our hot little hands so soon.
>> Sarah (00:47):
So soon.
>> Corinne (00:49):
Couple weeks.
>> Sarah (00:50):
Every week we're counting down.
>> Corinne (00:52):
She's gonna be so pretty. Yeah,
I can't wait.
>> Sarah (00:56):
So I feel like we should maybe talk about her
a little bit this week. A little
introduction, just a real broad overview,
introduce you guys to her. Just a, Just a quick
peek into what to expect.
>> Corinne (01:11):
Kind of how we've, how we've shaped
her over these years and how,
the formatting works. It's a little bit different.
Do you remember when we first
pitched our proposal and
the first response was, ooh,
two authors going back and forth? I don't know.
(01:31):
Do you remember that?
>> Sarah (01:33):
Yeah. Well, especially because it's memoir. So
it's like, okay, you're gonna tell your story
and you're gonna tell your story and you're both
gonna be doing that together.
How. How are you doing that? How's that gonna work?
especially because my story takes
place in Illinois and Arizona,
(01:54):
and your story is taking place in Thailand and
Arizona. And it's like, how's that going to work?
And that's really where the magic happened.
Honestly, that is where
this really beautiful kind of alchemy
occurred between chapter by chapter,
where we take turns writing back and
forth and we kind of maintain a timeline. We,
(02:16):
the era stays consistent as we're telling
our story, but the time and place and voice is
what alternates back and forth. And
we've divided the book into three
parts, so we're telling our stories
through three kind of different,
I guess, eras.
>> Corinne (02:35):
Eras.
>> Sarah (02:36):
We'll nod back to Mother Taylor.
>> Corinne (02:38):
I know. It is what it is, right? Yeah.
You know what I love about how that all
came together, though, was even in the
very, very first days
of putting together that proposal and
writing our outline and getting,
you know, really, really fleshing out the idea of
(02:59):
how the book would feel, even though there was some,
like, hesitation. Right. There was some. Not from
us, but as it was received as
this is a style and a format that's not typically
done. And we were like, yep, yep.
>> Sarah (03:13):
But this.
>> Corinne (03:14):
But she told us what she wanted to be and
this idea that we wanted to create
a dynamic that mirrors
us sitting around a fire, telling
our stories back and forth. You know,
one of us tells a story and that makes
the other one, remember a time and
(03:34):
tell another story. And that volleying back and
forth is actually just the true
nature of conversation. And we really
wanted our book and our story and the
whole of that to reflect that. This
back and forth, this mutual exchange, this
reciprocity of storytelling. So this
(03:55):
really unusual format of two
authors writing memoir,
taking turns going back and forth between the
chapters, that was so unusual,
to our agent at first. To our publisher at first,
actually kind of has become a little. I don't know, it feels
a little signature now for us. Like, of course, this is how we write.
Of course this is how we share a story. Because if we were sitting around a
(04:18):
fire, this is exactly how it would go. This is how it would feel.
>> Sarah (04:21):
Yeah, it's so true. It's such a reflection of our
friendship, I think, and our, the way that we communicate. And it
feels very natural and very organic. And
even as we were writing these chapters, we
stayed very authentic to our own voices. I feel like
we were both very careful and respectful to
kind of maintain the integrity of our own voice,
our own story, and really wrote out
(04:44):
our experiences kind of separately.
And then part of the magic was watching,
as we did bring our stories together,
how naturally they flowed. And kind of that
volley back and forth was so. So organic that it
just added to this. Like, okay,
something bigger is happening here.
(05:04):
Like this. As you say that, she continues to
show us who she wants to be, and we do.
We do refer to her as she.
>> Corinne (05:13):
She is her own being.
>> Sarah (05:15):
Yep. Guys, she is her own
entity, and she has definitely her
own kind of ethos. And.
Yep, she has. She has evolved.
She has. She has become so many different
versions of herself and continues to do that. And
it has been an incredible experience to get
(05:35):
to what has felt like partner with this
creative. This creative entity,
this. This book.
>> Corinne (05:42):
Yeah, it can. It continues to have been an
invitation every step of the way to
hold her loosely and really follow
her lead and then do the
hard, disciplined work of
writing. Right. You know, so it's like it is this
partnership. It's not like, oh,
(06:02):
it's, you know, none of it's us. No,
there's a lot of hard work that has been put into
following the lead of this story.
I also think about how the concern
early on was, you know, will it confuse the reader
to go back and forth? And I think that you speaking to our
unique voices, and our writing style,
(06:24):
I think that is something that was so
strong right off the bat and so clear
with such distinction. And then there was Also
this element, I remember us saying, like, we
trust our readers to be able to hang with us. We
trust our readers to be able to go back and
forth and take the time that
(06:45):
they need to take while walking through our stories, especially
at the beginning. But we were
just always confident that, no, this might be an
unusual format, but our readers can hang with it.
>> Sarah (06:58):
Yeah. And I also, I think breaking
the book up into three parts
also allowed for that kind of natural
inhale, exhale, that taking
the time that's needed to kind of with these different parts
of our stories. the first part is
we've called Ruin, which really walks through
(07:20):
the crisis point, kind of
that moment of true ruin
in our story that kind of brought us to our knees, the
breaking point, the trauma,
and both of us telling our stories and the ways
that those experiences in, in our
individual lives crossed over and both brought
(07:41):
us to a place of complete
devastation where we really didn't know
what would come next. And
from there we moved into the next part
of our lives, of our story. And in this book,
that is called Rise.
And that part of our story brings us to the desert.
(08:03):
And we do a lot of walking through the desert
in that part of our story. So much walking,
literally and figuratively, so much walking.
and through that experience, we move through
the book and through our life into a
story of return, which is the third part of
Skies. And so we thought it might
(08:25):
be fun these next few weeks
to walk with you guys through just a bit
of each of those parts. Starting
with a part that might feel a little heavy.
But we know all too well
that to get to the parts that feel
like that shimmering champagne, pop
(08:46):
fizz, sparkle goodness, you
have to be willing to sit with the hard stuff too.
And so we just want to invite you, we wanna invite you into
some ruin with us. We'd love to share just a
small piece of skies with you.
>> Corinne (09:02):
Never before shared.
>> Sarah (09:03):
Yeah, just, just a little bit. Yeah. And
maybe just share some backstory and
do a little storytelling. Yeah,
let's do it.
>> Corinne (09:13):
Can I. I also just wanna say how. Do you remember
how, how much we tried to not have
the sections be three Rs? Like, we're like
so, like no alliteration. We tried
so hard to not have alliteration. And then. But
it just again, like she just told us who she wanted to be.
We're like, this is just what it is. It's Ruin, Rise and
(09:34):
Return. Of course it is.
>> Sarah (09:36):
I feel like that was like our,
petulant teenage Era of like,
deconstruction. We're like, no, totally. No,
that's too sermony and too, like, no,
totally.
>> Corinne (09:47):
So precious. And then we were like, no, no. It actually just is what
it perfect.
>> Sarah (09:52):
Yeah.
>> Corinne (09:52):
I love it.
>> Sarah (09:53):
I have so much affection for it now. I'm like, me too.
Me too.
>> Corinne (09:57):
I actually, like, can't imagine it any other
way. And I think that that is such a
sweet and telling part of the story that even
in. Even in creating the formatting and
the structure of this book, you know, we were wrestling. We
were wrestling with her the whole time.
>> Sarah (10:14):
We really were. We really were. There were
so many moments of invitation to
let her fly. We held so
tightly even when we thought we were
so open handed. And I have this. I have this
picture of this book kind of looking at us and going, oh, honey.
>> Corinne (10:32):
Like, oh, honey, I know, I know, I know.
>> Sarah (10:34):
Honey, I know you think you're being so,
like, open handed, but like, you gotta let me fly.
You gotta let me fly.
>> Corinne (10:41):
Yeah. It's like the meme that we keep sharing back and forth at
the, Pick fewer battles. Okay. Few fewer still. Okay,
now put some more back. Right, right. Fewer still.
And it's like the same thing. Like every single,
phase of this book has been
like, okay, open handed. Okay, Release that death
grip. More. Okay. Like, prying those fingers off a little bit more.
(11:02):
Okay, even more. You know, that's been
continuous and I think even down to this
final release date, you know that we have
m. You know, that we. We just were
expecting originally to have released at the beginning
of September. And then, you know, seeing
her get moved to October and releasing that and
being willing to just, you know, be so open
(11:24):
handed, even all the way to the very. To
the very end. And her beginning of
launch, you know, it's just a continual
invitation to let her fly.
Just let her fly. Okay. Even more.
Let her fly. You know, So I love that for us.
>> Sarah (11:42):
I do too. And honestly, I'm sitting here
as we're getting ready to share actual words
from these chapters, feeling
that like, ooh, I have butterflies and I'm a little nervous
and I'm like, oh, this is another invitation to let her
fly. Like, actually, every day
we're getting closer to this book being in the world
(12:02):
and being in reader's hands and she's
no longer just ours and she's.
Her words are not, going to just be words
we know, but they're going to be words that
every reader who holds her knows.
And this feels like a practice of that. It's like, oh, my gosh, we're about
to share words, and then they're not just words we know.
(12:23):
And that feels like a letter fly moment. We're having one right
now.
>> Corinne (12:27):
We are, like, in real time. And it's different from
having shared, you know, the drama of the story in our
first few episodes of Spiritual Pyro. Like, this is different
because these are the words that we have, like,
shaped and crafted over time. Like,
you know, it's like the. It's like the water that cuts through
stone, right? It's like the. These words are the
canyons that have been carved over these past
(12:49):
few years of just this constant flow of water
and this constant work. And
so these words that are on the page
feel like so much more
of an altar, a monument, you.
You know, the karn
of where we have walked and where we've been.
(13:10):
So to be able to share even just a couple
paragraphs each feels like.
I don't know, it feels like we're getting to tell a secret.
>> Sarah (13:19):
It does.
>> Corinne (13:20):
Like we're taking something out of the vault.
>> Sarah (13:23):
Totally. We're having a vault moment. Oh, my gosh.
That's really exciting. I'm kind of nervous, but, like, in a good
way.
>> Corinne (13:30):
I know. I'm, like, a little fluttery about it.
>> Sarah (13:32):
I also feel like it's important to say that,
like, when. When
we're. When we're reading this, it's like
this. This is. These are stories we
wrote, but we wrote them about our real life.
Like, the things we're writing about are.
>> Corinne (13:49):
Things we actually lived, moments that actually.
>> Sarah (13:52):
Lived through these moments. And then
time passed, and we wrote these moments down,
and then more time passed, and we're sharing these moments with you.
But these. There was a point in
time when the things we're sharing with you,
we lived them. They really happened, and they
are our real stories. And so the vulnerability of
(14:13):
that. It's wild how even as
we've been recording for the audiobook,
it's every edit we've worked through as we've
been preparing this book to go out into the world.
It doesn't matter how much time goes by, it doesn't matter
how many years pass. Reading the words
takes you back to that moment. And it is. It
(14:34):
is a practice of updating ourselves each time
to go, oh, it's not happening right now.
Again, it's that bringing back and going, like,
we're safe now. We're here now. But it
feels so visceral. It is a real thing. And so there's a
vulnerability That I think I'd imagine
when anyone who's written anything true
about their life always has a piece of them that
(14:57):
lives in that moment for always. And so
there's a practice, that feels like
even like a practice of consent to say we're, we
are consenting to invite you into this part of our story
in our life. And there's a kind of mutual
vulnerability in that that I think is really beautiful. But
I just like, I want to name that for like this is not casual
(15:17):
for us, right?
>> Corinne (15:19):
No, not at all. In fact, it's kind of,
it feels really significant.
Like there's a lot of weight to be held in that. And I think we
can talk about updating our parts. Like I
think this is, you know,
we love to joke about how this book feels like a
literary event, what, seven, eight years in the
(15:39):
making. Totally. But which is
like, you know, feels so,
large and these
things are true about our lives. And there's also
this offering up of the fact that
this is a situation or a
moment or a glimpse of
honestly now a younger version of
(16:02):
ourselves. Right. So we're also sharing
one of our younger selves here today.
And I love that because
it's the updating of our parts, but it's also this
offering of our. A younger version of
ourselves, you know, so that's language that we're
constantly using in the book and then with each other. And,
(16:23):
and so that's also true today is, oh,
this is like 2017, 2018.
Corey and Sarah, right? Yeah,
a lot of time has passed.
>> Sarah (16:35):
Yeah, there's something really tender about that. And
I love at the beginning of our book
we take care to include
really an acknowledgment of speaking
to that point that the stories that
we're sharing come
from younger versions of us and that
(16:58):
who we are is
continuously growing and evolving and
that that's a beautiful thing that we welcome and invite.
And I think that is a
really important framework just to live by. That's just a piece
that's true all the time for all of us. So I
love being able to kind of frame
(17:18):
all things that way. I'm glad you named that.
>> Corinne (17:22):
I'd also venture to say that every,
every step that we take toward this
book, toward her release and then
whether it's our audiobook reading or whether it's
sharing here in an episode is
a continued part of the healing. So
it feels like, oh, we get to share this today. And it's
(17:42):
another, like anyone who's listening
like this invitation is
into the continued healing. Like every
time we get to tell these stories,
it's a little less heavy,
it's a little less burden, it's
more shared. We feel a little less alone even
(18:02):
now. We feel a little less alone every single
time. So, I don't know, I feel
grateful for, just
every, every single person who's listening to
bear witness, even just to these little bits that we're
going to share today.
Sam
(18:34):
M.
So you want to go first?
>> Sarah (18:51):
Yeah, I'm thinking I,
I'll give just a tiny bit of context that the piece I chose
to share, comes on the heels of the
story that I'm telling about
right after, right
after Steve had submitted his
letter of resignation, publicly.
(19:12):
So on the heels of that, we as a family
had packed, up and
decided just to spend a couple nights
away from our home just to kind of avoid the
subsequent fallout. And so we were on the road driving
to Madison, Wisconsin. We were living in Illinois
at the time. so this is us having
(19:33):
pulled over on the side of the road to
actually push publish on the, that
resignation letter. And
so I will just share, I'll just, share a
little bit of my heart and soul with you.
This was my goodbye just as much as it was
(19:54):
his. I walked back to the car,
flowers in my hair and stuffed into
pockets, ochre and marigold
smeared across my tear stream streaked cheeks.
I reached for his hand while he held the laptop
open, fingers lingering over the
tiny box labeled Publish. Together,
(20:15):
we took a deep breath and pressed down.
It was done. I gently pulled the
laptop from him and set it under my seat,
laying small flowers on top. And
suddenly he was leaning heavy into my arms,
the weight of a man shaking with unspeakable, unspeakable
grief replacing the soft air of flowers.
(20:35):
My hair was wet with his tears and mine, our
kids both asleep in the backseat, blissfully
unaware of the gut wrenching memorial we'd just
created. We turned off our phones and
got back on the road, the worn asphalt seeming
like an ocean as huge storm clouds rumbled
emptying overhead. How fitting,
(20:56):
I mused. Let it all out.
Let it pour and rage and scream
and howl. Let it rush and
flash and thunder hard.
Let it pool and sink and permeate.
Let it crack open seeds and give life to
something beautiful. I thought
(21:17):
of the women who had first spoken up about sexual
misconduct. I imagined them as
oceans too, so swirling and brimming
and brewing, rivers snaking
across dry earth, searching and unrelenting
in their pursuit of the truth.
I thought of my friend and her trembling, pale face in
(21:37):
my doorway. I thought of the former
assistant and her unshakable commitment to speak up.
I thought of the many times we tried to get the church
leadership to do the right thing, to love like the
Jesus they claimed. I thought of
Karine speaking truth to power in Thailand.
I thought of all the women I knew in all sorts of ways
(21:58):
who faced similar repercussions for speaking up
about corruption and abuse.
I imagined all of us gathering at the mouth of a
canyon, streaming and crashing and
rumbling waters charged with such
wild energy. Forces to be
reckoned with, women bringing water
(22:19):
to dry lands, cracking open sick
systems and exposing inequity and creating
opportunities for new life and beauty to
flourish. I looked down
at the flower I'd been mindlessly spinning in my
fingers as we drove, holding it tightly and
clasping my hands together.
(22:39):
I didn't know what prayer was anymore, but I
wondered if it might feel something like this.
All rain crashing and hearts breaking and
small bursts of hope mixing in some mystical
chorus of me toos and
with yous. I closed my eyes and
let the tears fall, feeling solidarity with the
(22:59):
rain as it slid down our windshield and we drove away
from everything we'd ever known.
That was from a chapter in Ruhn called
Exile.
>> Corinne (23:14):
God, I love that one.
Yeah. I want. I want to, I want to
come back to one of my favorite lines
in this piece, but also, I think
it's one of my favorites. not because it's
so poetic as
your writing voice
(23:35):
just is. I mean, it's like your
hallmark. It's your calling card. but
really because of the
thread that it weaves through your
storytelling, the line where you say
blissfully unaware of the gut wrenching memorial we
just created, this moment of
(23:57):
complete annihilation, ruin
as a memorial, a
moment on the side of the road that is this
combination of beauty and the
wild force of nature, but it being
this big, big grief
mixed with relief, which often is what a memorial
(24:17):
is.
that has stuck with me since you first wrote that line, since
you first. That first draft of this piece.
But this moment on the side of the road, the kid's asleep
in the back, blissfully unaware.
And this memorial that you two
held together. So I don't know, I just. I would love
(24:39):
to kind of camp on that for a second. And,
that is, that theme of
death is really
kind of the core of ruin for both of
us. And how has,
like, how does that feel in thinking about
it as a memorial? How does that Feel all this time
(25:00):
later, even as you can still, I know. Feel it in your body
as you read it.
>> Sarah (25:06):
Yeah, I think it's, it's
I appreciate what you said and I, you know, by the,
by the time we had made this decision, I
mean, we had exhausted ourselves
trying to find any other
way to avoid having to
come to that decision. To finally have to get to the
(25:27):
point where resigning was the
choice that had to be made. and it
was over months and months of time to
finally get to that point and truly feel like
our hand was, was essentially
forced. And there is a,
there's a sense of exhaustion and
(25:48):
strange relief that comes when you,
when you finally make a decision, even if it's a
painful one. the liminal kind of space,
between knowing what
you're going to do, what's next, how's this going to go. That
was so agonizing and it lasted for so long
that I think that
(26:10):
the death, the time of death, calling time of death,
even though really
as dramatic as it sounds to say, like
driving away from everything we knew, like,
yeah, we had no idea what was coming next.
We didn't have like severance. We didn't know what was,
we didn't know what the next day was going to bring.
(26:32):
And yet there
was peace. I felt such
peace because I knew we were, we were
living with, in alignment within ourselves.
Like we, we had done
what felt right by us
and what we knew within us to
(26:52):
be the right thing to do. And
I don't know, you can't,
you can't buy that, you can't fake that.
You, there's nothing you can sell out for that.
And so I think there was
a strange sense of peace that,
that I felt getting back on the road. And
(27:13):
as much as the subsequent weeks,
I think definitely, you know, you come out of that
peace and you're like, oh shit. And
there's a ton of grief that comes after and a ton of, a
ton more. in that immediate sense, in that
moment, it was kind of like a bubble of relief
and in having made a decision and just kind of a
(27:34):
strange sense of like, oh yeah, this,
as painful as it was, it was the right decision.
Yeah.
>> Corinne (27:42):
And there's no guarantee, right.
There's no trophy for making the right decision
on the side of the road that day. Nobody,
nobody was calling to
reward you for your courage and your
bravery with some sort of guarantee of what would come
next. That was all unknown.
(28:02):
And I think the,
the space that exists
in between making that right
Decision and what comes
next can feel like
an eternity.
>> Sarah (28:19):
Yeah.
>> Corinne (28:21):
Not knowing, but having to
trust. I don't know that that alignment is the
only thing that, that we
get to hold on to.
>> Sarah (28:30):
That's so true. And you know, you know that
exact, exact feeling. I know. You know.
Yeah.
>> Corinne (28:43):
I think about so many of the things that
overlap for us. Right. in this
story, your kids are
blissfully unaware. and
yet they did experience
enough things along the way in
your decision making process to where
(29:04):
it's not like they didn't know that hard things were
going on. It's not like they didn't know that there
was stress or disruption
happening within their life,
within their world. And I don't know, I just maybe speak
to what that was
like for them to be in the backseat during this
(29:24):
memorial and you know, our desire to protect our
kids as mothers. Thinking back to that. They're so little
at that place. Yeah.
>> Sarah (29:32):
They were so young. I mean
Emerson was what, four or five?
You know. No, Emersy was four or five
and Emerson I think was like nine or ten. I mean they're so young.
And how do
you explain, you know, what's going on? And
I think even having that big of an age gap, it's like what we can
(29:53):
explain. What Emerson's able to hold is so different than what Mercy is
able to hold at that age. And
Yeah. And, and we were so upside down.
It's like how I would handle it out of
crisis myself or versus
within crisis myself is so
different. And how I will handle it and how I would handle it
(30:13):
now. So many years removed and so many years
older and wiser versus you know, there's so many factors
to all of that. I just, I look back with
so much compassion and empathy. Like oh
hon, you know, all the way. I just, all the way
around. I, I'm, I look back
now and I'm, I'm glad that they were sleeping in that moment. I,
I'm like, just stay asleep, please.
>> Corinne (30:36):
Just like sleep a little bit longer.
>> Sarah (30:38):
Like a kindness to that, that they were spared that.
And also it allowed Steve and
I to be. Steve and I, we didn't have to
wear the parent hat in that moment and we could just grieve
a little bit. We had a moment, you know. I'm glad for that.
that's actually really cool. I had to wear a lot of hats, most of
the time, as you did. You know, again,
(30:59):
what's so beautiful about our friendship and this, this, this
is such specific types of
trauma and woundedness. And so one of the
gifts of walking through that time was
having you. Because I could say this, and you're like,
you know, like. But you actually really know, and
that's rare. And so you.
>> Corinne (31:18):
Yeah.
>> Sarah (31:18):
To have had a moment of
grief, a stolen moment of grief, just
the two of us, and to just
be ourselves for a minute
was a gift.
Yeah. I would
love to hear your piece if
(31:41):
you would like to share it with us. Your piece of
ruin.
>> Corinne (31:45):
Yeah. I do want to echo
your words about what it. I mean,
I'm still in awe of,
like, what are the chances that our
friendship could
have the timing and the
capacity to be such a lifeline,
(32:07):
in that reciprocity for one another? Like,
I would have never wished it upon you or
any of my other friends to be able to relate so deeply to
what I was going through. And yet
it made the world feel so much
smaller and so much closer
to, for us to be so connected
(32:28):
through these wildly
traumatic experiences.
every time I think about it, I'm like, what are the chances that we would have been going through this
at the same time? What are the chances?
And I, don't. I don't try to figure that out
anymore. You know, I just am so
thankful. Yeah, I'm just really thankful.
(32:50):
So I think it's also what
makes this book so beautiful is that that is the
thread that just weaves all the way through.
>> Sarah (33:01):
Yeah. Incredibly fortunate to have had each other
and to have had our with youhs and our
candles lit and their desert
trails. All the things. All the things.
>> Corinne (33:12):
Yeah. I do love that our with yous just really,
genuinely came from these text messages.
A world away, an ocean apart, you know, different
hemispheres. that it's not
just a little phrase that we came up with, that it was
just really born out of the
genuine darkness and candle
(33:32):
lighting that felt like the only thing we had to offer each
other at times. And how
I love that. That's. It's just such a normal part of our
language now. It's something that we offer to each other and to
really everyone else all the
time and has become such a
beacon of, solidarity
(33:52):
and hope and. And, you know, along with the bonfires on the
bluff. Like, this is. This is how it
works.
>> Sarah (33:59):
Yeah. It's that I. I can't fix this. But
I'm not leaving you. You're not alone.
Yeah.
>> Corinne (34:37):
This is a section
from a piece called 30,000ft,
which is
our leaving Thailand.
not only after, Months
of heartbreak
and ruin, watching our lives
(34:58):
burn down around us, and
knowing that we would have to go home sooner than planned.
But then also really just the
actual getting on the plane and the traveling
home. you know, just hours after we
had found out that
what we thought we were leaving was only a part of the
story, after we had found out the
(35:20):
significance and the depth, of
the trauma that had actually taken place.
So we were in full fight or
flight, full survival mode in
this piece. And
I still feel it, even just thinking about reading it.
but the section that I want to share is really
(35:42):
about that liminal space,
like you had said, Sarah, that in between
of everything having burned down and
the loss and the grief, and yet
not quite to the point of rebuilding,
not quite to the point of knowing at all
what's next, but just that no man's land
(36:03):
of desolation,
where all feels lost
and the night
feels the darkest. And
all of that is that space, I
think, that, you know, so many of us, we can find our stories within
each other's pages, because we. We
(36:24):
all know those moments. So
that's the. That's the space that this section
of this piece comes from. And
that desire to just stay hidden
in the liminal space between.
I stare out the airport windows over the
(36:45):
meticulously manicured garden in
Bangkok. I watch the snow
fall on the tarmac.
Excuse me. I watch the
snowfall on the tarmac outside in Seoul.
I'm lost in the fog surrounding the
international terminal as we clear customs
(37:06):
in Seattle. I scowl
at the familiar saguaros reaching up
from the desert floor along the concourse in
Phoenix. I try to
stop our forward motion. I want to walk
backward in these airports, to
hide in the bathroom, to disappear.
(37:28):
I try to dig my heels into the moving
sidewalks, to stay in the in between,
suspended between what has burned to the ground
and what is going to require all of
us to rebuild.
Maybe we can just stay in the airports, never passing
through the next gate and never getting our baggage from the
(37:48):
carousel. I'm constantly looking behind
me, paranoid we are being followed,
terrified of being seen, and yet
desperate to be seen all
at the same time. Someone please
see me. Isn't that
how it often goes in our most
vulnerable moments, when we most want to be
(38:11):
put out of our misery and swallowed
whole by our pain? We are
simultaneously desperate for someone
to see through us, someone to slice
us wide open and witness the bloody
cross section of our survival, all
the little deaths buried inside.
Someone who knows the toll of bringing a knife
(38:34):
to a gunfight. And recognizes the
loss scrawled all over our
bodies. Trudging
through the long terminal corridor, we
eventually see our people, a small
handful of family and friends who showed
up to welcome us home. They are
pointing and waving and smiling,
(38:56):
having seen us coming a long way off.
I, wince at their happiness.
They know about the past couple of months,
but they don't yet know about the past couple
of days. They have no idea
who they are waving to and cannot see
the invisible baggage we are dragging behind us.
(39:18):
I know I'm supposed to feel grateful, but every
step closer to them is a step
further away from the safety of the cocoon
we've been suspended in. It's
a step closer to the harsh reality awaiting us
here in the desert. One by one,
we each fall into their arms,
(39:39):
going through the motions of trading hugs
and kisses. I wonder if their
fingertips can sense the haunted catacombs
just beneath my skin. I
see the joy on their faces and their
mouths are moving in the shape of words
about how good it is to have us home.
(39:59):
But like an old war film
after a landmine detonates and the
only sound is a ringing in the ears,
I cannot hear or feel a
thing. I am numb to
their touch.
(40:20):
Feels just a little
more distant each time.
And yet I remember her.
I remember her
so desperate to just hide,
to just want to hide in that airport.
I remember thinking, I could live here. I could live here
(40:42):
in Sky Harbor Airport. There's food,
there's like, I could just live here. Like,
I was so afraid. Yeah, I
was so afraid to leave the airport because that meant
I was going to have to
figure out my life. I was going to have to figure out what
to do next. And I just had no. I had no
(41:04):
capacity for that.
>> Sarah (41:05):
Yeah, that makes sense.
>> Corinne (41:07):
So I remember. I remember kind of
walking into a bit of a trance.
kind of a blur of going through those
motions and what came next.
so my system was so overwhelmed with
those flight responses where we actually
(41:27):
felt like we were running and escaping and
fleeing and nobody knew, nobody
knew why. So, yeah, that was.
I still feel it rolling through.
>> Sarah (41:39):
Yeah. Yeah. Like a wave. Roll
on through.
>> Corinne (41:43):
Yep.
>> Sarah (41:44):
Your writing is so visceral. Whenever I read one of your
pieces, I feel like I'm watching a movie. Like, I
feel like I can see it like a scene when, when you were
writing, like that scene. That moment is like a scene. And I
feel like I'm in it watching
you, and it's so
vivid. And, that feeling that you
describe of wanting to Be seen
(42:07):
and not wanting to be seen at the same time. And that
moment when your
family, your loved ones see you and spot you, and
the expectation, which is so pure and makes so much
sense that they're so genuinely excited to see you. And
it's been this and. And yet that.
That sense of, like, oh, are you. How.
(42:28):
How can you possibly find it within yourself to mirror
that back and they don't yet know,
and even just like, trying to
find the energy to summon. Like, there's just. You don't have it and
just. Oh, I can just feel it. I just.
The way you were able to bring us with you
and through that piece, it made it
(42:48):
feel so
urgent and so real right there with you.
>> Corinne (42:56):
What's interesting about that piece is that we have photos from it.
>> Sarah (42:59):
Oh, wow.
>> Corinne (43:00):
You know, like, our family
taking pictures of us as they
see us coming. And it's like. To see photos
of myself, like, so
ashen and so,
like, being able to
see right through it. Being able to see right through that photo.
(43:21):
You know, I think of. You know,
often we. We think of lyrics, right. And it's
like, can you see right through me?
I see right through me. Can you see right through me? You know, from the
Archer. so looking at those photos,
that's what. Looking
at the kids.
>> Sarah (43:42):
Yeah.
>> Corinne (43:42):
You know, looking at Eric and myself as we're just
coming from a long way off. And
I think that idea of taking a photo during a
difficult moment and not realizing
the.
Not realizing how
(44:06):
different the perspective is from the person
taking the photograph and the person being photographed.
because, you know, you know what you're thinking,
you know what you're feeling. so to look back at that, I
think, oh, they thought they were taking a picture of
a beautiful homecoming.
Little did they know they were taking a picture of
(44:27):
us as corpses.
>> Sarah (44:29):
Right. Right.
>> Corinne (44:31):
Well.
>> Sarah (44:31):
And from their perspective, it was right in their
memory. It was. And that's that both. And
it's all true. And,
you know, you do write earlier
in 30,000ft about kind of stopping yourself.
You have this sort of moment of wanting to take a selfie
and then having kind of this awareness, this clarity come over you
(44:52):
of, what am I doing?
Why are we pretending? What am I asking here? And I think that is
so profound. That, to me, felt like a moment of
your motherhood catching up
to your. I don't know.
I don't know how to describe this, Karina. I don't know if you have words for how you
would describe what that was for you, what was happening. In that moment
(45:13):
that was registering for you, that
connection that was happening, that was shifting kind
of in real time that you capture in that part.
>> Corinne (45:22):
Well, I think that, as
parents, we can relate
to any moment where our
desire to keep our kids safe
overrides whatever it is that we're
personally experiencing. So. So, you know
that piece, that part in the
chapter that you're referring to where I'm trying to take a picture while
(45:44):
we're on the plane, and it's like our deepest grief
and, catching myself in that moment, realizing that
we don't need a photo to remember this moment. It's
a moment that we will try to forget for the rest of our
lives. And yet that was my
attempt, kind of my, default in my
motherhood was to try to rally, to try to
(46:06):
create a moment that was better than what was
actually true. Right. Like, to
somehow spin something for my
kids so that the grief was a little less deep
or, you know, the flight
away from this life that they had come to live would be
a little less painful. because we
couldn't tell them the fullness of why we were
(46:29):
leaving. We couldn't tell them the fullness of. Of
why it was so rushed and why it was so chaotic.
So I think there was this desperation in my
motherhood to make it better, to
spin it, you know, to put a
better. A better veneer on it, even
just for a moment, just for them. And
(46:50):
having to catch myself in that moment and
put my phone away because
it was an offense to capture our, grief that way.
>> Sarah (47:00):
Yeah. It's like, best of
intentions, right? Like, such a beautiful
motivation coming from. Such a beautiful
motivation. And yet being able to
catch yourself in real time and look at it from a different
angle and go, whoa, whoa,
what are we doing? I. Yeah. Ah. I. There's. I
have so many stories like that, too. When I look back at that time, I think it's
(47:22):
even like, what I was saying about speaking to, like, oh. Oh. What
I would do differently. And again, from m. Such a place
of, like, just. You're in. You're in a
place of survival and you're operating from, like,
that instinctive, like, especially as a mom, like,
keep them safe. And nothing feels safe. And
so m. We. We go to such extremes, and
(47:42):
we're not thinking clearly, and you don't know who you can trust,
and everything feels upside down, and you're not sleeping
and you're not eating, and every. If it's just every.
There's so much. And
really, I think what we'll speak to a
lot in what we get into next week as we
dive into rise is how
long it took to
(48:06):
come out of survival, to even
begin not even healing, but just
like
to really take a deep breath for the first
time again. I stayed
pretty bound and wrapped tight in survival for a
long time. Even after coming back to the desert, even
after we left Illinois, before I could
(48:29):
even begin to attempt
healing myself. Yeah.
>> Corinne (48:40):
Sam,
(49:06):
I think there is, you know, whether it's in
parenting or whether it's just in relationship, it's
the desperation of
being in a moment where there's no plan,
there's no answers, there's no
good explanations. Like where you don't
have anything to offer the
(49:28):
people around you except for
your like actual physical presence. You
know, to not be able to,
to not know what you're going to do next, to not know how you're going
to respond, to not know what action you're going to take, to not
know. To not know anything. To not know
what you do the next day. I
(49:49):
think that is a, level of
survival and desperation that
is so disorienting and I think that's
this. Another intersection for our stories that
we've shared here today is just being in that moment of
complete disorientation and not knowing
what's next and not knowing what's
(50:11):
on the other side. Not having any
idea how we're going to heal, how we're going to,
how we're going to make breakfast the next morning. You know,
none of it. The most simple things, the most
complex things, just having no answers,
that's a bit of a death. I think
(50:33):
that
that takes a while to come back
from
having to do that in real time with our people. Right.
It's much easier when you can be like, okay kids, here's the plan.
Here's what we're gonna do. Here's, you know, here's how it's gonna go.
(50:54):
But having your kids and your people around
you watching you
have no fucking clue
what you're gonna do or how you're gonna survive. Like
that's a vulnerability and a humility that
is ah, leveling
in itself.
(51:16):
I think both of our pieces, your memorial
and then this moment for me of feeling
like a catacomb, you know,
where that's our shared space here
is that death of what was.
>> Sarah (51:31):
Yeah. And having no idea what would come next.
And I mean everyone,
everyone has a story like that at some point in their
life. It's, it's an unavoidable part of
being human. It's part. Because it's part of
change. It's part of growth. To be something
new, we must move out of something old. It's the
(51:52):
shedding of the skin. It's that. That snake skin,
that whole. It's.
It's an unavoidable part of the human
experience. And so I think,
as we speak to that, it's really
the understanding that
as it's the threshold. Where we
(52:13):
leave off in ruin is the threshold. You
can't stay in ruin forever. You're at
the tip, and it's that moment of
what's going to be next. You can't go back to what was
doesn't exist anymore. You made a decision and
you're onto something else. But you don't know what it is yet. And you're at the end
of yourself. You are no longer
(52:34):
exactly who you were before. You don't know who you are.
And you're not alone. And you're not just accountable for
yourself. And so there's just so much. And
that's really where we.
Where we find ourselves in that moment in
our lives. Yeah.
Until. Until next.
(52:55):
Until next episode. Really.
>> Corinne (52:57):
Till next episode. Yeah. So
I. What I love is that, the
magnitude of these experiences that we've
shared stretch, it really stretches
out the boundaries and creates this really
big open space for
us to find each other and find ourselves in between
the pages of each other's stories. So it's like you don't
(53:19):
have to have experienced something like I don't
have to have experienced what you went through
and vice versa. And then collectively, we
don't all have the exact same
experiences. And yet the truth
is universal. And the way that we
relate is so closely
(53:39):
woven and so closely connected. So
my hope is that as these
really big
stories get spread out on the
pages, you know, in front of us and in
front of each listener and reader, that there's
those moments, those. Me too. And with you. Moments
(54:00):
that get found
in all the different and complex ways that, our
stories overlap, our map lines overlap.
So I love that about our stories
in that they make so much room for
the wild and crazy and
(54:21):
unpredictable ways that all of our lives
unfold. That there's room for all of it, and it all
belongs, no matter how simple
or complex the details could be
(54:44):
foreign.
>> Rebeca (54:50):
You've been listening to Spiritual Pyro with
>> Sarah (54:53):
Sarah Carter and Corrine Shark on the 1C Story
Network. For more information about this and our other
stories, please visit
just1c.com that's
J-U S T O N E C
dot com.
>> Corinne (55:27):
add that to the list of things that we're not going to say.
>> Sarah (55:29):
Okay, so instead of those things,
we're going to say, welcome to Spiritual Pyro. We're so
glad you're here.
>> Corinne (55:37):
We're so glad you're still here.
>> Sarah (55:38):
Thanks for being here.
>> Singer (55:41):
The 1C Story Network.
For the love of stories.
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