Eset Rose

Oh my goodness.

This is great.

It's interesting that you brought up belonging because I feel like with the pod squad and you create such community.

And so I'm curious, like how you feel like community and that level of connection can change people.

And in these times really help us survive and grow and meet this moment.

As you're speaking, it's really reminding me of ancestral ways.

I've done a lot of study with ancestral indigenous communities and they speak of these very things and these practices of, you know, grieving and wailing and then going out and doing whatever the work is and the job is for the community and everyone has their job.

And one elder was telling me like, if it was his job to go chop the wood and we need that wood to make the fire for dinner, he doesn't do it.

We don't eat.

And like, we all sit with that, you know?

So doing that work and then celebration and the dancing and how the dancing and the singing is also what moves the grief and allows us to meet the challenges of the moment.

So much to me at this moment is about returning

to these ways that are just like so simple when there's so much madness and noise trying to pull us from what matters.

And I love when you spoke of folks who are meeting their grief and their pain head on and feeling the feelings as being more trustable.

As someone who grew up in a family of denial, my own self-trust was eroded because I couldn't feel my feelings.

And then all the masks and all the things to perform and be good and be loved.

And yeah, it's not trustable.

The real stuff is getting in there and going towards that painful stuff that maybe some call your shadow or your darkness or whatever, but there's nutrients there.

Back to Ancestral Way, it's like it all happens in the dark.

you know, it all, all life starts in that place and we've got to go down and grow down to grow up and out.