SoulStirred: Stories of Growth And The Human Experience

Emily Garcia (00:03)
Welcome lovely listeners to SoulStirred Stories of Growth and the Human Experience. I'm Emily Garcia. And I'm Kasey Clark. We will be your guides on this journey. We are so glad you are here. Each week, we'll come together, sometimes with other incredible thinkers, creators, and adventurers, to generously share stories of self-discovery, recovery, triumph, and what it means to live a life on purpose. No matter where you are in your own journey,

connection is here for you at SoulStirred Settle in, take a deep breath in, and let's inspire each other. Welcome to SoulStirred

Emily (00:51)
Welcome back, SoulStard listeners. We are so excited you were here with us today. Just before hitting record, Kasey and I were having a conversation and I was telling her a story about I was in fourth or fifth grade. I had the same teacher for fourth and fifth grade. And my mom had a parent teacher conference with him. And at the conference, he pulled out a picture that I had drawn and it was a nature scene and there were clouds in the picture.

And he pointed out to my mom how poorly I drew clouds because they were all the same. And my mom came home and reported what she had been told in the parent teacher conference, and I didn't understand what was wrong with my clouds. And then because of that, I carried a story with me for years. And maybe I still do about, I'm not an artist. I'm not creative. Even if I go to draw a cloud.

To this day, I actually do question, what is a cloud supposed to look like? And so as I was sharing this story with Kasey, we were talking about all of the stories, all of those little things that have been said to us, whether we were children or it could have been in recent years, where it just stays in your head and it impacts how you look at yourself. So we're happy you're here with us today as we talk about the...

these crazy things that influence us and become our beliefs about ourselves. Kasey, do you have anything that pops in your mind?

Kasey (02:26)
Yeah, I just first want to affirm the power of the story making process and how we all, I think as human beings, are sort of story making machines and how harming that can be, how harmful it can be, especially when the story making comes from people in positions of trust, you know, parents, teachers, friends, people that we're related to.

The people who we have chosen, sometimes with intention, sometimes not, to give power over what they think about us, that the stories that get made have an impact that carry with us. What our listeners didn't hear before we got in here to record was, I asked you, can you think of other times in your life since fourth or fifth grade?

where that story that he made about you being a bad artist and not able to draw clouds has continued to impact who you are and how you have shown up with yourself in the world and in relationship. And that's the power of the story making process. So I think what's here for me today and what I'd love to invite our list all in with us is taking responsibility for our impact.

Emily (03:32)
Mm-hmm.

Kasey (03:50)
being responsible for the way the stories we make and share and the judgments we make and share and place upon other people affect people.

Emily (04:00)
You know, the other thing that comes to mind about the way that people speak to you and the little comments that people make okay, so I'm a very smiley person. I, it's just my natural way of being that I smile when I talk.

Kasey (04:13)
Yeah.

Emily (04:18)
Even my husband makes fun of me because he says, if you try to give a dirty look, it even looks like you're trying to smile underneath it. I just, it is how I show up in the world. And I have, this hasn't happened in recent years thankfully, but there have been multiple times where I've been in a situation talking to a man, usually an older man, and he will look at me and say,

Why are you smiling? This is not a situation you're supposed to be smiling at. And basically, tell me to wipe a smile off of my face. And how insulting that is, because this is just how my face looks.

Kasey (04:52)
Yeah.

And that hearkens me back, you know, Emily this, but I'll give a little context for our listeners that I'm currently in the middle of a project where I'm gathering and documenting story across the generations going back for 100 years and what you're sharing with us right now is reminiscent of something in that context for me that I asked my 97 year old aunt Rosie.

as we were looking at these older photos of her and my grandmother and her mother and her aunts and uncles So we're talking going back 150 years, you know, or 200 years and in family history Why none of the women are ever smiling? including in their wedding photos and My aunt shared with me. Well, that's because grandma told us women don't smile

especially not out in public places because men will perceive it as provocative. Men will think that you're being flirtatious. So this example that you just gave of this man telling you that you're smiling at an inappropriate time makes me just want to sort of rage at the patriarchy.

Emily (05:59)
Wow.

Mm-hmm.

Kasey (06:11)
It's reminiscent for me of this episode of a show that I really love, Shameless Plug, Daisy Jones and the Six on Amazon Prime about a band. It's suggested that it's loosely related to the Fleetwood Mac story, but the first scene where Daisy comes in to meet all of the men in this band, she walks squarely up to one of them who is clearly looking her body up and down because she was a sexy little thing.

and says, you get that it's not my responsibility not to turn you on, right? And that's what your smile story reminds me of. Like, I'm only responsible for the smile on my face. I'm not responsible for your reaction to the smile on my face.

Emily (06:45)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I am not responsible for how you respond to how I look. No matter how I look, when I was in high school and I was in therapy for the first time, because of my history being sexually assaulted, I was really processing through as a victim, what did I do that brought this upon me? Could I have done something differently? And...

Kasey (07:01)
Exactly.

Emily (07:21)
When I was a child, I would wear layers and layers and layers of clothes in order to be hidden. And I told my therapist this and she said, Emily, you could go out there and strip down naked and walk down that street. And she was on a really busy road. She said, you could walk down that street naked. And yes, people are going to look at you, but you are not responsible for how they respond to you. They are responsible for themselves.

Kasey (07:49)
Yeah.

Emily (07:50)
those words from her really changed how I saw my own responsibility. It didn't matter what I was wearing. It didn't matter how I looked. It doesn't matter if I'm smiling. I am not inviting anyone to do anything.

Kasey (08:07)
Yeah.

Emily (08:09)
I'm responsible for myself and they're responsible for themselves.

Kasey (08:12)
Exactly. I'm not walking around with a stamp on my forehead that says please assault me just because I'm kind and friendly and open. And of course what happened to you when you were little was not your fault. And I can also relate having asked you know in my inner world some of those same questions of myself at six, seven, eight years old. What was it about me? What was I doing that made me a good victim?

Emily (08:24)
Right.

Kasey (08:42)
for him, you know? And that's not to say that it's our fault what happened, because it's not. And yet I think that it is a artifact of the rest of this conversation that has our minds even going there, because it has a little bit of an air to it for me that goes to this question that I'm often with in my own mind, what's wrong with me?

Emily (08:51)
No.

Kasey (09:13)
And it's from, I think, a compilation of events like what we're talking about today, where teachers made some judgment and said it to me or about me, parents made some judgment and said it to me or about me, that had me developing and growing along my path in a way that often felt like something wrong with me, rather than noticing that there may in fact be some things right about me.

And that is what we're talking about today and why. Because those comments have an impact and they shape who we become. And I can still hear even today, sometimes how they have an origin with something that was said or done when I was younger.

Emily (09:44)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Kasey (10:03)
You know, all of my report cards going back, if I were to pull those up right now, you know, for the sake of this conversation and look at the teacher comments from like, first through eighth grade, was some version of, she could be so successful if.

Right? It's like if she would just sit down and hold still, she could be successful. If she would just be quiet, she could be successful. If she could just insert, she could be successful. And all of that, to me, like in the way that my brain wired up around that information, is like I could be loved if there were just something about myself that I could change or shift or alter.

in some way, then I'd be worthy of love and belonging and inclusion and then I could have success.

Emily (10:59)
Yeah, if you could fit in a box that was predefined for you, then you can be accepted here.

Kasey (11:04)
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And for me, a lot of that, I didn't discover this until much later into my adulthood, sadly, but a lot of this concept was sort of sprinkled and salted and peppered with the fact that I had ADD, ADHD all of my life. But I didn't discover that until I was well into my adulthood.

Emily (11:26)
Mm-hmm.

Kasey (11:30)
And it was actually this one particular author slash psychiatrist who wrote these books, Dr. Edward Hollowell, who happens to be a psychiatrist who also has ADD. And so he wrote this series of books like Driven from Distraction and Delivered from Distraction, where he talks about the personality of ADD, how it's not just about not being able to focus.

Um, it affects so many parts of who we are and how we're wired and how we organize and operate and what our worldviews look like. But the whole twist that he writes about, which is what made me really love him and his content, but ultimately started paving the path where I learned how to love myself a little more is his premise is let's not talk about what's wrong with you because you have ADD, let's talk about what's right about you.

Emily (12:25)
Hmm.

Kasey (12:25)
why every person in the adult world should want to have a person with ADD or ADHD on their team, leading their team, because we have a tendency to think faster, connect pieces up more quickly, see the pattern and the puzzle of it all. We're creative and innovative and electrifying. Like all of these things about myself that I really do love and appreciate, that the messages or the stories that got made, like my version of your clouds,

was that I was too much or never just quite right for whatever the environment was that I was wanting to fit into at the time.

Emily (12:59)
Right.

So, sometimes we just become thinking, um, talking about what we're thinking about, what we're interested in, what we're not interested in, and we're not interested in what we're saying, because we're just getting the idea of what's going on. So, you read those books.

Kasey (13:09)
So sometimes finding out more information about what we perceive to be wrong with us can help us to accept and realize parts of ourself that we're really right the whole time.

Emily (13:28)
And then what did you do to start to shift how you saw yourself?

Kasey (13:34)
That's such an interesting question, right? Because I think the first next thing was, again, part of this kind of systemic box that we're not ever feeling quite right in. I went towards the medical model and it was like, okay, at least now we have a name for what's wrong with me. So what do I do about that? Well, do we figure out how to medicate it or how to intervene in some way? I saw a doctor to say, affirm for me.

that I see myself being described here in these books and this feels really right and true, is that true about me? So A, even in that you can see, like let me go give my power to the professional to validate and affirm for me that I'm seeing myself reflected in these. And then how do we medicate it? So really it's like the solution is give me something that will change me.

so that I can fit.

Right? Do you hear the twist in that like I do? Because for me, true acceptance would come from how about we let me just be me, you know, without having to change me and then trust that I could also be worthy of love, acceptance, belonging and success from that place without needing to be tamped.

Emily (14:41)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Right, right. Well, you know that my diagnosis is more recent, that I was diagnosed with in a 10 of 80 in December. And so this is the first time in my life that I've had medication for it. And I realize how much I've compensated throughout my life. And so many of the things that I thought, I think there was a combination of

Kasey (15:06)
Um, yeah. But.

Wow.

Emily (15:35)
The comments like, oh, she doesn't know how to draw clouds. And then just my brain's inability to focus at times and how tired I would get, that all of that was part of it, which, you know, that affects your self-esteem. Then you start to say to yourself, oh, I'm just not good at these things, and I'm not meant to do it.

Kasey (15:38)
Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah.

Emily (15:58)
And in other ways, you overcompensate. I would, you know, make lists of everything and make sure that I had a plan and a deadline. And those things have really helped me to get stuff done. But how much easier it could have been for me had I just known what was going on chemically inside of me and helped myself earlier.

Kasey (16:20)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's kind of how do we allow for the people to grow up and be alive in a way that has them trusting and believing there's nothing wrong with you. You're actually just right exactly how you are. And then, from how do we change the system and the boxes.

so that all of the people get to find a place where they fit and get to know for sure that they are just right, just as they are. That has been a mission that you can probably hear the passion that come as fuel for that idea my whole life.

Um, and it's true with my kids, not to open a whole nother big story that could be its own episode, but they sort of experienced in school. Similarly, some of what I experienced where that I started to hear the musings of their teachers asking questions. Like, what's wrong with them? Because it seems like they're not learning in my classroom. And boy, don't you know, I came back with responses.

that are a lot like what we're talking about today when this was going on for them, where it was like nothing is wrong with my children. In fact, let's have them tested so that we can all just confirm that there's nothing wrong with my children. And we did in my daughter's case. She was in fourth grade when this was all happening. And I'll never forget how the teacher came and said things like, well, she seems withdrawn and she seems sad and she seems depressed. And we're very worried about her.

And I said something to the effect of like, well, tell me what it is that you have that's going on with her that has you so worried. And it was the example they gave at the time was, well, you know, where the other little girls are starting to talk in their circles about having some boys and hoping that they hear from the boy, your daughter is still playing with dolls. Okay, she's 10. She's in fourth grade. I'm not understanding the problem, you know? So.

Emily (18:31)
What?

No.

Kasey (18:39)
go on and have her tested. And of course, she comes back in normal limits on all of the required tests, the battery of tests. And they say to me, your daughter is exactly the kind of student we wish we had the resources to serve, where she doesn't qualify for special ed services, and she also seems to not quite fit in the regular classroom. But unfortunately, we don't. Well, let me tell you what the story actually was with my daughter. She was an intro.

That is all. Nothing is actually wrong with her. We discovered after some time and finding a school for her that was actually available to understand who she is and how she thinks and how she learns and how she operates and meet her there that we came to understand the only thing wrong with her is she doesn't belong in like a book club. She's actually reading and writing at the ninth and 10th grade level.

Emily (19:10)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm.

Kasey (19:37)
in fourth grade at 10 years old. And we're able to see that in her when instead of making her process the book as part of an out loud extroverted group, we allow her to go off by herself, read the book, and then write us a report about it. And so she's just introverted. There's nothing wrong with her. And I do have to admit that a party was just really affirmed.

Emily (19:57)
Yeah.

Kasey (20:04)
by this whole experience because it turned out this whole experience because it turned out mine and all of yours, just change is the boxes we put them in and the cysts that we put them in, the cysts that we put to discover things like how does a child learn? how does a child learn? Do they need a more introverted process they require

Emily (20:16)
Mm-hmm.

Kasey (20:32)
to behave according to the larger masses, because there's too many kids in every classroom and teachers don't have the time or the resources to really understand the needs of each of the individual children in this way, unless you're privileged like us and end up being able to find a private school that can show up for them. So I personally was able to sort through this and access.

you know, the things that were needed around it for my kids. And I think there's a large part of me that is now still reparenting myself in this way. That's revisiting what was it that I needed back in those years when I was the student in elementary school. And they're just.

Emily (21:18)
What do you think you needed? What would that have looked like for you?

Kasey (21:21)
Oh, wow. Great question. Great question. You know, perhaps a school that was made such that children aren't expected to sit down and shut up. So perhaps a school that has things like standing desks, bouncing balls that we can sit on so that I could move my body and learn the information at the same time. Schools that celebrate things like creativity.

You know, I might not take the same, like if we're, if 30 of us are all headed to the same destination, the path I take it from where we are to where we wanna be might look really different than the other 29 people in the room, but I'm still gonna get there.

Emily (22:07)
Mm-hmm.

Kasey (22:08)
So why does my path have to look like yours in order to be right? So long as we all end up at the same destination, is it not okay for me to take a creative way? You know?

Emily (22:20)
Yeah, I have heard that one of the critiques of our traditional school system is that we teach children to be students, not to be out in the world. And I don't want that to sound like I am criticizing teachers because there are amazing teachers and in my personal life. And I just think about that comment.

Kasey (22:38)
or not.

Emily (22:47)
What does that mean for all of the kids who can't sit at a desk and the kids who learn in a way that is much more hands on and the kids who need to talk to each other in order to learn? That's the opposite of your daughter with my kids is one of the comments that is always made about my kids is they talk a lot. You know, they're respectful, but they talk a lot. And I kind of giggle because I talked a lot too. I'm like...

Kasey (22:55)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Emily (23:15)
As long as you're respectful to your teachers, you're gonna talk. And I don't say that to them. I'm not like, oh, go ahead and talk. I do want them to be able to listen and follow through, but that's not a huge deal to me. I think it's part of how some kids process and how they learn.

Kasey (23:29)
Yeah.

Yes, yes, it's an artifact of being an extrovert. I so can relate to your kids. I think as I speak is the thing for you to understand.

Emily (23:44)
Right.

Kasey (23:46)
And so for me to get to my own clarity about something, I have to have trusted people or persons in my life that are willing to allow me to process on the outside what I'm thinking and how I'm feeling about a thing. And it's in the act of that process. I get to what do I think and what do I feel and how do I want to proceed?

and left to my own devices in a quiet space, all of that information gets like tangled up inside of me where I don't even know I can get a little stalled because I'm not sure how to forward my own action without having the space and time and trusted people to do some of that external processing with. And so to your question a minute ago, if I think about that about myself back when I was in school, the teachers are telling me to sit down and shut up.

when the truth is I can't learn without being given the space to think out loud about what you just said to determine what I think and how I feel about it. And so from that point of view, and I agree with you, we're not here to bang or criticize on teachers. Totally have complete understanding for the timing and the culture and the context.

Emily (24:52)
Mm-hmm.

Kasey (25:08)
of how schools are designed and how things were when we were growing up. I give, you know, credence to all of those factors that affect this truth. And the bottom line is, I honestly don't know what I might have made of my life had I been able to be handled with a little more care and a little more understanding of how I'm wired and what I need in order to learn and flourish and grow.

And the fact remains true that because of the context and culture and timing and the boxes that we were brought up in, I received and heard loud and clear a lot of messages that affirmed something was very wrong with me.

Emily (25:54)
Yeah, me too. Yeah.

Kasey (25:56)
And it takes its, I'm discovering it takes a life to unravel those wires and reprogram them with something different. You know?

Emily (26:04)
Mm-hmm.

Right. You know, for me, when I was in grad school, part of a clinical class that I was in where we were learning about therapy was that we had to form groups in our class. And it was like a support group. We had to be able to be authentic and vulnerable with each other. And

Kasey (26:25)
Mm-hmm.

Emily (26:31)
There were groups where you would like look over and you could see them just bonding and sharing. And there was something going on in my group where people had a wall up and were not going to share. And it's my personality that I'm, I'm not the forceful forward person who's like, Hey, come on, get it together. Even though in my head, I'm like, get it together. Come on. Like the other groups are doing it. And finally, one of the women in my group, the professor

Kasey (26:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

Emily (27:00)
You know, talk to us one day and said, what's going on? And the woman in my group said, how can we share with each other? We're in class together every day. And she pointed to each other person, person in the group and said, and she's a blah, blah. She had a label for everyone. And for me, it was she's a wallflower and she's not going to talk. And I remember that day going home and Googling what is a wallflower. Cause I was like, I don't even know what she means by that. And I thought.

Kasey (27:26)
Yeah.

Emily (27:29)
You know, that was sort of, it was sort of not a safe environment to begin with, created within our group. It wasn't up to the professor. It truly was an issue with the people who were in the group. And now looking back, I think, how are you ever going to help clients if you couldn't show up in that environment and share with each other? But also that got in my head. I, after that thought.

Kasey (27:54)
Mm-hmm.

Emily (27:57)
Oh, I'm a wallflower and I have nothing important to say. It, and that was in grad school. I was an adult at that point, but it stuck with me for a while until I realized, oh, I do actually have something to say.

Kasey (28:05)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and look at you now.

popular, you know, like I often see you with a microphone in front of your mouth. Let's put it that way. So.

Emily (28:20)
Maybe that's why I held it all in for a while and now I'm like, I have so much to tell you all. I don't know Yeah

Kasey (28:26)
I really do. I have a lot to say and I don't know what had me flowering on the wall, but I was never meant to be a flower on the wall. I was meant to be a voice out in front. And here I am. Thanks for seeing me. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I think that is a little bit the work of life, right? Is like understanding, hearing, listening to.

Emily (28:35)
Yeah, it's been all stuck in my head. Here. Yes.

Kasey (28:50)
responding, reconditioning what are the stories that we've made up about ourselves that have been affirmed by people external to us, and then authoring something new, some new kind of ending.

Emily (29:02)
And sometimes that is the question in our head. Like maybe part of me was going, do I have anything to offer in this group? And then the external affirmation of that was, yeah, you're a wallflower, you have nothing to offer. And I went, oh, confirmed, got it.

Kasey (29:09)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not okay. Not okay. And I think especially for people who have, you know, in positions that give them the power to influence and impact other people, especially young people, need to be incredibly mindful of how they use that power and responsible.

Emily (29:36)
Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Kasey (29:45)
for how they use that power. I should say it this way, I wanna say when I get to the end of my life, but the truth really is I think about this as an intention right now every day in my life. Like who do I wanna be in this moment? And what is the kind of impact I wanna have in this moment on these people?

Emily (30:04)
Mm.

Kasey (30:10)
If whomever I'm with, it should occur that this is the last time I ever see them, what do I hope they remember and how do I hope they feel from this interaction with me?

Emily (30:20)
What will they remember about how I made them feel?

Kasey (30:23)
Correct. And for me, the answer is very values-laden. In other words, it's like I don't want any person to leave my presence feeling like they need to be small. Ever. In any interaction or situation, I hope that the effect that I am having is to lift and light and champion.

anybody who gets to interact with me. Like I want people to leave me feeling like nothing is wrong with them.

Emily (31:05)
Hmm. I love that. It also brings to mind for me something that we are told over and over in our lives, and it's really hard to wrap your mind around, but however other people are showing up, when a teacher is unkind or a peer is unkind or some random person in your life is unkind or vice versa, it is all a reflection of their inner world. We are treating people

Kasey (31:32)
Yeah.

Emily (31:34)
with the same respect that we treat ourselves. And if someone is unkind to you, it's because they don't feel good about themselves. And if they are feeling like, I mean, when I feel good about myself and I'm like, yeah, I'm happy with who I am, I show up differently in the world. I am like, I'm walking lighter, I'm friendlier to the cashier at the store, I'm more.

Kasey (31:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Emily (32:01)
I'm more congenial to the people trying to merge in traffic. Like I am not the same person as when I'm in a bad mood and all of us are like that.

Kasey (32:11)
Yeah, well, the way that I have often said what you're talking about here is people are the parts that they can't be within themselves. And so in the context of this conversation, I feel like if the teachers we're talking about had this sort of layer of enlightenment that we're talking about, the question wouldn't be what's wrong with this child. The question would be

What do I need to do to improve my teaching practices? And probably it feels like an unsafe circumstance to ask those kind of questions in the context of today's systems, right? Because I'm sure that they're exhausted and overworked. And I know aid and undervalued and parents are impossible. All the things that we could do a whole episode on what's really incredibly hard about being a teacher. And mean it.

Emily (32:57)
Yeah, they're met with a million, a million expectations. Right.

Kasey (33:10)
you know, because it's the truth. And I just don't, what do you think it is in the world that has this mechanism where when things aren't working, we almost always immediately go over to how someone else is bad, wrong or broken. Instead of when things aren't working for us turning towards, right?

Emily (33:11)
Mm-hmm.

It is so much.

Yeah, what am I doing? We often go, okay, what are they doing?

Kasey (33:39)
What's my... Right, right. I wanna, I mean, that's kind of the invitation. Well, it's easier, it's safer, right? It's like for me, I think I said this to you in our pre-recording too, I'm pretty astute at seeing what's going on in other people's systems.

Emily (33:46)
It's so much easier.

Mm-hmm.

Kasey (34:01)
When clients come around my couch or a couple comes and they're on my couch or back in our child welfare days where I was going and being on other people's couch, it only takes me a little bit of time to kind of have sorted what's the dynamic here and what's happening and with quite a bit of accuracy usually. And yet looking at myself in that same way, the picture becomes a lot more blurry, right? Like we are the only person we can't see from someone else's perspective.

And yet I think I have this hope for the world and like the divide that is currently, you know, right in between all of humanity, it feels like. Seeing that gap is two things. I think one is whenever we notice ourselves looking at someone external to us to try to find or identify what's bad, wrong, or broken about them, there's an invitation to turn that lens inward.

and instead ask, what's my part? And then the second thing that's here for me is I think that we also could all respond to an invitation that allows us to change as people without making who we had been wrong.

or bad. It is OK to say, I'm going to improve now without needing to paint everything I have been as a person with a brush that goes, you've been bad or wrong up until now. We do the best that we can with what we have and what we know at the time. And then when we learn better, we try to do better.

Emily (35:40)
Yeah.

We are carrying around every single previous version of us inside of us. We're carrying around the baby, the child, the tween, the teen, the young adult, the adult in all of the years of adulthood. And so we're not without all of that life experience and the friendships, the relationships, the losses, the celebrations, all of the things that have made us at different times in our lives, we're not without that.

Kasey (35:56)
Yeah.

Emily (36:19)
It's made us who we are today. And so you, although we all have those moments where you look back and go, oh my gosh, I'm so ashamed that I said that thing or I did that thing. I hope no one remembers or I can't believe I, you know, you just, there are those moments, like I'll lay awake at night and go, oh, that's so embarrassing. But also we are who we are today because of everything we have done and everything we have been through.

Kasey (36:46)
Yeah, yeah, and so hold all of those parts of yourself with love and grace. Grace. The gift of grace. Uh, yeah.

Emily (36:58)
Yeah. And the gift of grace then, to go back to what this episode started about, is when we give ourselves grace, we will give other people grace. We then can speak to them in ways that we really do feel are kind or are at least neutral. And hopefully they don't carry the words that we've said to them years down the road and go, what did she mean by that?

Kasey (37:10)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. As I hold myself with more compassion, I notice that I hold others with more compassion as well. It turns out that compassion is quite contagious. So from this perspective, what would you go back and tell your fourth or fifth grade self about her clouds?

Emily (37:49)
Hmm. Your clouds are just right. And he's an idiot. That's a little mean to him, but like that means nothing. That means nothing, little Emily. Your clouds are just fine. And it doesn't mean anything about who you are.

Kasey (37:53)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So many adults carry wounds around creativity, where the art in you had been judged or criticized in a really painful external way. And I just find that so sad. I think one, because I have such a high value for creativity, but two, because we are creative beings by nature.

and those wounds really do have an impact. I wonder like for instance how much time do you spend now in your life coloring or drawing a picture of the outdoors?

Emily (38:46)
Oh, virtually none. Unless I go to a, like, a, you know, painting class with friends where we actually have a reason to be there. Yeah.

Kasey (38:49)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it can be so soothing for the soul to spend an afternoon just getting out your crayons and a big blank piece of paper and coloring a picture. But it's like that little part of you that got wounded has kind of stayed in the closet, if you will, you know? And so we need to, I think, take really good care of all of the parts of ourself, like you said, that we carry all of those parts around with us every day. Yeah.

And I want to tell my younger elementary self, if you want to dance while you're listening, it's OK. If you want to walk while you're learning, permission to do so. If you need to talk for any reason at all, I'm here to listen. Yeah.

Emily (39:54)
You have value to add, little Kasey.

Kasey (39:57)
Yeah, yeah, even with my, you know, moving about ways, my shifting in my seat, my hold still. That's my body trying to communicate with me and others that still is not how it needs or wants to be right now. And let that be okay. Yeah. I love this conversation that feels like it's been a little bit about everything and quite a bit about nothing all at the same time.

Emily (40:19)
Yeah.

Kasey (40:27)
And yet the bottom line seems to be like love yourself more right where you are just because you are.

Emily (40:28)
I agree.

Yep. It doesn't matter what other people say because they're speaking about themselves as they speak to you. So speak to yourself kindly and with grace and love. Yeah.

Kasey (40:42)
to that.

Yeah, it goes back to our episode about Don Miguel Ruiz's The Four Agreements and Agreement Number Two. Take nothing personally, because nothing that anybody outside of you ever says things or does about you is actually about you. It's about them and their own survival. So detach and take back your f**ks.

Emily (41:04)
Yeah.

Yes, take them all back. Kasey, what are you grateful for today?

Kasey (41:17)
Oh really I am I know I say this a lot every time but it's only because it's true and it really is on my heart that I'm so grateful for you. Our friendship just really means everything to me. I can show up with you and be 100% of who I most truly and authentically am and know that I will be met and received and held in a space of not judgment at all but just unconditional love and

um you do that for me and so then you help remind me to do that for myself and to show up in the world you know more as myself for free unconditionally and on purpose and that's an extension of you and and how you impact me that i'm able to show up and be even more me so today my

Emily (42:13)
Thank you. I take that and I receive it.

Kasey (42:14)
What are you grateful for? No, good. What are you grateful for?

Emily (42:20)
I am grateful for these real conversations. I'm grateful that we get to talk to each other about the real things that can go on in your mind where we carry around all these thoughts all day, every day, and we often don't say them to people or process them out loud, and that I can do this with you and that you can do it with me and that you trust me to process. Thank you.

Kasey (42:48)
Yeah.

Emily (42:49)
I'm grateful. I'm grateful for this whole setup there. All right. Soul stirred listeners. Thank you for joining us today. Just as a reminder, we are hosting a 66 day gratitude challenge. You can find information about it at tribe mind body.com forward slash gratitude. And we want to thank our listener, Lisa con.

Kasey (42:55)
Yep.

Emily (43:14)
She is part of the challenge and is doing an awesome job. And we are grateful for all of the people that are part of the challenge. And we want to hear from you as well. So check out the challenge, join it. And we want to know what you want to hear about. If you have questions, if you want to write to us and ask a question about something from your life or you want to share a story.

You can write to us at solsturdpodcast at gmail.com. We would love to hear from you.

Kasey (43:48)
We'd love to hear from you and we'd maybe even love to have you on the show, not that it's required, but just know that we are here with the intention of cultivating connection and building community and we can't do it without you.

Emily (43:49)
Okay.

All right, everyone, have a great day.

Kasey (44:05)
Take good care of yourselves and each other. Bye bye.