S4 E9 Embracing Shame (Sheila Rubin)

October 6, 2023

Episode Summary

What happens when shame stops us in our tracks? When we find ourselves in freeze mode and realize that it’s actually shame that’s holding us there? How do we break the spell and move through that paralysis - and what if there is a way to release that shame back to wherever it came from?

Episode Resources

→ Sheila Rubin: https://www.sheilarubin.com

→ New Book: Embracing Shame: How to Stop Resisting Shame and Turn It Into a Powerful Ally: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/90202114-embracing-shame

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Rubin: In your family of origin, where are you to deal with the shame in this lifetime? And we have processes for giving it back, up the family tree, transforming it, taking the dignity, taking the creativity, taking the life-force back in processes.

What happens when shame stops us in our tracks? When we find ourselves in freeze mode and realize that it’s actually shame that’s holding us there? How do we break the spell and move through that paralysis and what if there is a way to release that shame back to wherever it came from?

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Today we’re going to talk about the “s-word” as our guest calls it. We’re going to look at shame. We’re going to consider shame. We’re maybe going to consider what it might look like to embrace shame. But before we meet our guest, I want to tell you a story. I’m going to tell you the story of how a podcast about the healing power of ritual came to be called Shame Piñata.

Several years ago, I was facing a big transition and dragging my feet about it. I had been at a job for 14 years and the Universe was telling me it was time to switch things up, but I didn’t want to go. Over time, I got kind of mired down in feeling ashamed that I wasn’t brave enough to make that change, and honestly kind of not able to make that change because I was kind of trying to find a new job but it wasn’t working. I began to feel worse and worse over time till I reached a pretty dark place. But then I reached out for help. I started gathering resources, and surrounding myself with people who could help me heal, and I was introduced to the concept of shame exposure - which basically means telling other people, safe people, about the shame I was feeling. I knew right away when I learned about shame exposure that I needed to do it and it needed to be a ceremony.

So I started planning, brainstorming, heart-storming, journaling, talking with a close friend, feeling into exactly what needed to move and how I wanted to invite my community to be there with me while it moved. So this is what happened.

In preparation for the ceremony, I gathered up all of the swag t-shirts I had gotten at my former job and journaled out my shame on each one of them with a ballpoint pen. I wrote one shame topic on each shirt, long-form, journal style, confessing how awful that one part of the story was for me and how horrible I felt about it inside. I did that until it was all out on the shirts, out of my body and onto the fabric. That was extremely important. Then I made a list of all of the negative self-talk pinging around inside my head and I pasted those words all over a cute little piñata. Sorry, piñata! And thank you for holding it.

When my friends and I gathered, just a small group, just my inner circle, my safest place to share such hard feelings, I took each shirt out and read out loud what I had written on it. And then one by one, I put the shirts on. Each time I put on a shirt, I felt worse. I think I had 6 or 7 shirts total and at least one sweatshirt, so it was a lot by the time I had read everything out loud and put everything on - by the time I had symbolically donned all of that shame. My friends were compassionate. My friends stayed with me and witnessed my shame.

Then I moved across the room and faced that shame piñata, almost mocking me with those harsh judgements pasted on every side and I picked up the stick. But I didn’t want to hit the piñata. I wanted to fall through the floor and let the earth swallow me up. I had no will or desire to fight back, to reclaim anything. I just wanted to give in. So I waited. And we waited. And after quite some time, I began to hear a small voice inside me saying, “No”. It was so quiet. But it began to grow louder. “No.” And it grew and grew until it filled me and flowed into my arms, and pretty soon that piñata was no more. I took a pair of scissors and cut a small notch into the top of each shirt so I could easily rip it off until the floor was covered in piñata, candy, and fabric covered in my words. And we danced and we celebrated.

And then I went out on the porch and poured a huge bowl of marigold water over myself to release that old energy. And after drying off, we sat down together and we had an amazing brainstorm session of what kind of work did I really want to do in the world? What was my mission? What did I have to offer? And, this is going to sound cliché, but I got not one but two job offers in the coming weeks, which helped me actually skate out of that old situation and into my next chapter. And what was different between before and after the ritual? I was. I was finally ready to move on.

And it was on a lunchtime walk with a colleague at that new job that the title Shame Piñata came into consideration for this new project, a show about the transformative power of ritual and how inviting the important people in our lives to witness our transformations can be extremely profound. And I’d like to take a moment now to thank you for witnessing this story and spending a few minutes considering how embracing shame might help us heal.

We’re going to continue considering shame now but switch gears a bit and hear from a different voice. We’re going to meet Sheila Rubin, who has been teaching about shame for 30 years. Sheila is a Marriage and Family Therapist and a drama therapist. And she co-directs The Center for Healing Shame with her husband Bret Lyon. They have a new book coming out on October 17 called “Embracing Shame: How to Stop Resisting Shame and Turn It Into a Powerful Ally”.

Sheila and I spoke recently about many aspects of her work. Our conversation began with her early experiences of shame and then moved into a discussion of the book. Here was was my first question:

Thomas: Sheila, how did you come to work with shame?

Rubin: It's my favorite question. [LAUGHS] I was a curious child and I was a very shy child. And I decided that it was my job, not just to save my family, but it was my job to kind of like, secretly keep a journal of all of the times when somebody was, you know, kind of had their esteem up and their eyes down. And I was just noticing all the variations of, you know, shyness and discomfort, and, you know, what it was like to be a shy child. And I started keeping track of that when I was probably five years old. So I didn't know that it was shame. I just… I knew that it was an exploration of, maybe there's something wrong with me and if I could just figure everything out, I'll figure out what it is.” And then I'll be right. In the meantime, I thought, “Well, somebody must be interested in this. And probably I'll keep these notes and maybe someday when I grow up, I’ll write a book about it, because this is not anything that anybody talked about. So that is how I started getting interested in shame.

Thomas: Wow, that's fascinating that you knew at a very young age that you wanted to write a book about this thing and now you're publishing that book.

Rubin: It's amazing. Go figure. [LAUGHS]

Thomas: How does your inner child feel now that you are about to publish the book?

Rubin: She is so blown away. Because I have an inner child who's five who has been stomping her feet for a couple years, and going, “When’s it happening?” I did a couple performances, like about my mother and my family and you know, what it was like to survive kind of like an interesting family situation. And that was helpful for a while, but you know, she’s been stomping her feet, she started stomping her feet… it’s the inner teenager, that center, stomping her feet about two or three years ago, just like, they're both so excited, because of like, the book is not just for therapists, it's for everybody. And it's for people to kind of read and kind of understand that shame can actually be a friend. And shame can actually navigate things and shame can actually be helpful. And shame can actually be something that a person might want to embrace. And it's kind of amazing to say this, because my inner child was like, “You know, you don't say the S word. It's gonna embarrass people!” I know, there's all these words to say, but not one. But now I'm an adult and I can say the big s-word, which is shame. Because when you say shame, people go into shame.

Thomas: Yeah, that's, that's good... Wow, I hadn't. I hadn't realized that, but you're totally right. It is that powerful that we hear it, and instantly…

Rubin: That’s why I'm putting my hand on my heart and I'm like… it really touches me that you have this shame podcast and your shame piñata. And it's like, you've figured out ways of working with your shame. And so it's like, my inner child… I mean, I'm a trauma therapist, and I'm a regular therapist, and my inner child navigates a lot of the time and she lets me know if it’s safe or if I need to come back another time or, you know, it's like, when can I bring up this question. When can I not bring up this question. And so it's like, there's, there's a tenderness that I hear in your questions and there’s a curiosity that I hear in your questions. It’s nice.

I asked Sheila a bit more about the new book and learned it actively works with the concept of counter-shaming. This is something I actually hadn’t heard of before.

Rubin: We normalize shame. We say the book is a no mistake zone. You open the book and it's a no mistake zone. All the pages talk about all the theories of shame, all the different ways that we've learned to work with shame. All the ways of counter shaming are different because everybody's so different. Each chapter has exercises so people go through each chapter and they can answer the exercises that are there. They can write them down. There's meditation techniques. There's an origami bird technique. There's Tai Chi techniques, how to work with the energy in the hands to counter-shame while a person is reading the book. My inner child was with me as I was writing the book and Bret and I co-wrote that book. It is such a powerful book, because if it was just, if it was just my voice, or if it was just his voice, it would be missing something.

As part of her own work, Sheila offers Embodied Life Story Workshops which explore personal narrative through improvisation, playfulness, and sacred witnessing. As part of their work through the Center for Healing Shame, Sheila and Bret together offer workshops focused specifically on healing shame.

Rubin: You know, we teach people in the Life Stories, we do some tools and then we do witnessing and having a person's true self witness story and performance. And then it might be something that they never told anybody or it might be kind of like a realization that they're a creative person or realization that they're… whatever it is they discover about themselves in the group, it’s just kind of a beautiful process to be witnessed and kind of have that… Common in drama therapy, we have, like a self-revelatory performance that somebody does and drama therapy is their capstone project. And then the healing shame. You know, there's a curriculum. We do a different 10 week… every week… every month, there's a different workshop. There is one on shame and women, there's women on shame and men, there's a one on eating disorders, there's one, you know, empathy and how to show up for people but it's like, of all the different things means we're showing shows up, we have a different workshop each month. And each group that somebody takes, there's this deeper realization of, Ooh, not only was there nothing wrong with them, but they actually had some really good ideas in their family. And they actually had some really good things, ways that they weren't able to speak about, but in the group, were able to speak about it. And so that is life- transforming for people to go through that.

Thomas: Wow.

Thomas: Do you do specific work with your clients or in your workshops around healing, healing the ancestral line or ancestral trauma?

Rubin: Yeah, I love your questions. Yeah. In the Life Stories, it's all about healing ancestral line. But there's levels and levels of complexity. So we heal the ancestral line, and then it's like, not enough to one, sometimes people come back for another 10 weeks, and they do another line. And, you know, and then they go back to the grandparents on this side, and the parent is on that side and often there's been a war or, you know, genocide, or, you know, something happened along the family line, that sometimes people don't even know about, but there it is. And it shows up in the processes. And we you do process too, we do ritual at that point to honor the people what we can't even imagine they went through and then we give the shame back - not to them to whatever was oppressing them or darkening their light - and then we take the person's pride and we take the person's energy hands like okay, well now that you've done that ancestral healing now what you want to do in your life?

Thomas: Wow.

[MUSIC]

I asked Sheila if there was a specific practice she recommended for releasing shame and she shared a deceptively simple process with me of flicking a hair band across the room.

Rubin: I work deeply, deeply, deeply. But if I want to have a quick healing shame it’s like… this is like a hair band. It's kind of a stretchy hair band. And I want to just kind of say… if I want to give that shame back to where it came from, I could just go, “ding!” and it just goes and it’s gone. I could bring it back again or 10 times but each time I could let it go. And each time, we are a little bit stronger, a little bit clearer, a little bit creativity…, a little bit more of our true voice comes out. And the ritual of that is what makes it work in the imaginal realm, work in the heart realm, and work in kind of this somatic imaginal you know what you is thinking… what is feeling? What is in that place between both? What is more powerful than both is the imaginal realm? Let it go. And then see what comes up and let that go again. And it can shift. Working with physical objects… it's like right there. We're in the imaginal realm. We're in, we're in the imaginal realm. We're in the symbolic realm. We're in the dream world. You know, when I have people do the live stories workshop, we are using physical objects to help the client or the, you know, the person who takes the workshop, use a physical… a physical object to represent something that has not been able to be named, or has not been able to be talked about, or that has not been able to be grokked at this time, in this place. It gives it a power and it gives it a deep knowing. Iit allows our body and our mind all the different parts of us to wake up and go, “Wow, something's happening here!” And, you know, we're talking so much about shame, and I missed the most important thing. We have resilience. Brene Brown talks about getting people to resilience, and we have pride. In every moment, people are moving from pride or shame, or resilience or shame. It's wired in our nervous systems, I help people figure the way between pride and shame in the moment… To be able to know that there’s shame and to be able to say, “This is a no mistake zone” and to be countershaming. And many of the objects around me are counter-shaming objects.

Toward the end of our interview, Sheila held up a beautiful greeting card with an image of two fish swimming in a circle.

Rubin: This is one of my favorite, you know, these are the two fish. [LAUGHS] And it’s like, whenever Bret gets grumpy, or we have a little dynamic or something, you know, I look at these two fish. And it's like, it's two fish and they're so different. They look the same. They're both orange, but they're so different. And they're going round and round in this beautiful little card. And that just reminds me of the whole point of the life is not to pass, but to enjoy the moment and notice, where I might be stuck for my clients or students might be stuck and then say, “Okay, is there something artful I could do with that?”

Thomas: Well, thank you so much. This has been a joy and an honor to speak with you today.

Rubin: I'm so happy and touched by your questions, really, really, really good.

To learn more about Sheila’s work and the work of The Center for Healing Shame, check the links in the show notes. If you would like to read a free excerpt of and pre-order Sheila and Bret’s new book you’ll find a link for that as well. As a reminder, it’s called “Embracing Shame: How to Stop Resisting Shame and Turn It Into a Powerful Ally”.

I want to thank you so much for joining us for today’s topic. Shame is never an easy thing to talk about. But as Sheila and Bret note so aptly in the book, “Once we embrace shame, it loses much of its power over us.”

Sheila Rubin is a marriage and family therapist, a registered drama therapist, and Co-Director/ Co-Founder for the Center for Healing Shame. She has a 6-hour audio series called “Healing Shame” by Sounds True with Bret Lyon and their new book "Embracing Shame" will be out on October 17.

Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on IG, YouTube, and X at shamepinata. Reach us through our website, shamepinata.com. And subscribe to the show on your favorite player. Also be sure to check out our second show, Daily Magic for Peace, supporting you as you support Ukraine. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S4 E8 How Long Does Grief Take? (Irisanya Moon)

September 1, 2023

Episode Summary

Episode Resources

→ Irisanya Moon: https://www.irisanyamoon.com

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Moon: I think death has always been a really great, so to speak force in my life, it has been the thing that has pushed me forward to do things that I might not have done. Or taught me that I can get through really hard things.

A significant loss can come in many shapes and sizes and has the power to change us at a fundamental level. That rebirthing we go through after a big loss is so important and can also be so painful. Two questions that can often come to mind are: “How long will this take?” and “Can I make it through?” This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions.

The journey of losing someone or something important can have such a step-by-step quality, moment to moment, one foot in front of the other. Just keep going. Does this sound familiar? Does your body resonate with these feelings? [SIGHS] Yeah. Today we’re going to talk about grief and loss and explore what one woman’s journey has looked like. Our guest is Irisanya Moon, who, if you’re a regular listener to Shame Piñata, you will remember from last month, when she joined us for a conversation about discomfort as ally.

I think it’s worth saying before we begin that every loss can have two time aspects. A feeling of not being okay in this moment and a fear of never being okay again. I believe these are separate and yet both legitimate feelings to have. And it’s the latter that can, in my experience, be the real kicker. So please join us for this conversation today, where we look at the bigger picture of making sense of loss over time. Here’s my first question to Irisanya.

Thomas: Do you remember what's the first time you became aware of the concept of something being a rite of passage?

Moon: Yeah, I was in my last year of college and I was friends with this one man named Jim. And we had dated a while ago and all of that… we sort of fell out of contact, and I got a message from my best friend, because we were all still friends, that he was in the hospital. And he's 22. He had, like, a really bad sore throat and then suddenly within a week he died.

Thomas: Wow.

Moon: And to have someone that felt so young, and was so young at that point, to have them die so quickly without any warning, really altered me and I think the moment that I recognized that was a rite of passage was… When you go to funerals of 20 year olds, it is horrifying. It's shocking to the system. It is everybody that they went to high school with. It is everybody that was on, like, the football team with this one… this person. Particularly, it is football players crying. It is all of that. And for me, it was the recognition that this can happen at any time and that my life is important now, as much as it is, you know, looking back on it. And it actually thrust me into a couple of decisions that were very important for my life at that stage. If he hadn't died, I wouldn't have decided to go in a certain direction with some of my relationships, or to go in some of the directions that I did with writing. So it sort of thrust me into that. And I think that that was one of my many rites of passage, slash initiations, slash like really just altering events.

Thomas: So that moment landed for you as a rite of passage because of the ceremony, or because it was a surprise, or it was such a big change in his life journey…

Moon: I think it was all of those things. I don't think that there's ever just one thing. I think that firstly, the dramatic impact of that moment, and the… Throughout the week, there was a slow progression of like, “Everything's okay. No, it's not. It is. It’s not.” And that was back in the day of pagers. So we all used to get like, paged on this and there was also a moment at one point where, you know, like, “Do you want to go see him?” And I didn't. I could not. I… that I was, whatever I was 20 something maybe I was a couple years younger than him. I couldn't do it. The idea of seeing somebody was just too much for me at that moment. So it was the process, and then also that ceremony and that being at the wake. Because I don't… I know that we went to church, but I can't remember that as well. But the wake it was just, you know, people everywhere and watching people figure out how to deal with this in this moment was instrumental and then everything that happened after that was part of it too. And to this day, it still, it still impacts me in some ways. His… the anniversary of that was actually about a week ago when we're recording this, and it's been like 24 years since then.

Thomas: So that was your first experience of death?

Moon: Now it's not the first experience of death. That was the first one that was really the most impactful. I… My grandparents died when I was younger, but I didn't have a close relationship with them. And while it was definitely something I can still remember, I can still remember seeing, you know, because they had open caskets and everything. And that was, you know, as a child that is strange and, but not upsetting. It just felt like, “Okay, that's grandma or whoever”. It just didn't upset me. But somebody that I knew and I knew really well, I had dated, you know, my first kiss… You know, all of the things… was just more real than it has been than my family had been. I never saw them, I hung out with this guy, and, you know, back in the day, smoked cigarettes and drove around the Midwest and played pool halls and all that stuff. And so, like, it was a little different and it was, it was the idea that somebody my age, I could go through that too. And, you know, people who are “old” when I was younger. (Now I feel really bad ever saying that!) You know, like, that was different. That's so far away. So that's not really a thing. That's what happens to people, you know, who have gray hair like me now. So yeah, I think that it's… I mean, there's plenty of deaths that I've been through that have been really instrumental. But that was the first one and I was.. it impacted me so much. I actually got pulled over because I was driving I guess radically after… I got pulled over and like, late at night after all of the food and everything. And had to tell and I was telling the police officer what happened and then he was like, “Okay, you can go.”

Thomas: Wow.

That was a huge rite of passage for Irisanya. Her first experience of someone her age passing away. Someone young. Someone who was not supposed to die. Death can be difficult to make sense of at any age, but especially when the person we lose was someone so dear to us, and someone so young.

After growing up and experiencing more loss and particularly speaking with a friend who had also gone through a lot of loss, Irisanya got to a point where she felt like she had a kind of formula of how loss worked for her. She said it’s not a perfect recipe but it’s been consistent for her. Now, keep in mind that there’s no universal formula for how to grieve and there’s absolutely no way to grieve incorrectly, but that said, it’s interesting to hear what other people notice about how grief shows up in their life.

Thomas: Cool. So if I came to you, and I said that, I don't know what to do. What would you… what might you tell me?

Moon: I would say… the first thing I would say is like how long has it been since this has all happened? Because what I think I know is that it takes years. The first year is the year of shock. Absolute shock, nothing makes sense anymore. To a certain extent, if you're not feeling all the things and you're not sort of grieving actively, that makes sense. Because it's just a shock. You're just going through the motions. Going through the day by day. Figuring out what life looks like without a person or a situation or whatever. And this goes not just death. And then the second year is when it hits. And at least again, not a perfect formula, but I know for me the second year was always like I felt everything because now I knew what was going to come. I knew about the anniversaries. I knew about people saying things that were ill-timed and I knew that I was gonna have another year of remembering how bad our culture is at grief and handling that and holding that. And then the third year, it just gets easier. It starts to make sense, it starts to get integrated. It's not that the pain goes away, but you kind of understand that it's there. And that it's… why it's there, and how it might show up. And for some reason, that third year for me usually is like, “Oh, okay.” And, “Alright, I have to figure out how to build a life around this,” if I haven't already. But that's kind of the formula and it really has worked with most of my things. So I'm curious if other folks decide to look back and go, “Is that true? Did that actually happen?” It also was really helpful for me, because it defined time. I could go like, okay, because some of the one of the things I hate as a Sagittarius or just as me, is that I don't mind going through stuff. Can you tell me how long? Because that would be great. You know, is this going to hurt forever? So by having sort of a container, it does also go like, “Okay, I can get through this next month. Year.” Yeah, I mean, it's worked with deaths, and my divorce and all of that it’s been really consistent with. So hopefully, that helps somebody. It helped me tremendously.

Thomas: But I have to say, that's not super comforting for me in this moment, because I'm about to enter the second year of my mom being gone in a couple weeks. And I feel like the first year there were moments where I was just like, “I'm not feeling anything, and I think that's normal. But I feel like I should be doing something right now besides not feeling anything.” And it's making me think about some teachings I've been getting lately about digesting, you know, having time to digest transition, because it sounds like that's what the formula is. It's like, “Oh, my God, something happened”. And then, “Owe!” once I can feel it, right? And then it's like, “Okay, yeah, I've somehow, in the background, started to make a little sense of this. And it's not so weird now.” if that's even possible, right?

Moon: Right. I know. Right? I think that… yeah. I mean, blessings on the second year. I will not, I won't say that it was horrible the whole time. I would say that… I would say that… you know, it's… I think I was… I think I was ready to feel more. I think that that's probably what's true, for me at least, is that by the second year, I had worn down my defenses and my sort of like, “I can hold this together, and I can make it through the first anniversary of blah, blah, blah.” And by the second year, like, “I have to do this again”. And it's the realization of, “I'm gonna have to do this every year.” And it's a lot.

Thomas: Yeah.

Moon: But the third, I mean, it does happen eventually. And I think, you know, I think many of us if not all of us understand that on some level that it will eventually, sort of lessen. And just as like, the seasons change, the moon changes, all of that, everything changes and moves. So. Care for yourself wildly. Care for yourself in all the ways I developed quite a cupcake addiction for a minute, and I think that that was helpful for a minute. It was good. And then, mmm… Maybe we need to find something else. I thought my mom would be proud. She probably was. “Good job.”

Thomas: Proud that you're eating cupcakes are proud that you decided to stop?

Moon: Proud that I… probably both. She was a big fan of you know, indulge yourself. You work too hard. And also like, okay, reel it in! I think she would have said, I want you to grieve for an appropriate amount of time. But not forever.

Thomas: Yeah, totally.

[MUSIC]

Thomas: Well, to change gears slightly, I was curious. A question I sit with a lot. And I was wondering what you would think is, what do you think of the role of the witness? What's the role of the witness?

Moon: I think, first of all, it's a very important role that I want to say that first and foremost, I think that it is powerful to have someone else sit with you and not flinch. To have someone that can sit with you and not try to talk you through it, or try to say it's going to be okay. I think it's important to have someone just be there. Because that offers safety and it offers not comfort, necessarily, it does offer safety. And it offers the opportunity to know that you're not alone in this. And for me, that is the most important thing of any of this grief work and any actually any work, that you're not alone in the things you face. It's going to feel like it. But calling it a witness… it's also not something you necessarily need another person for like a human, like you can call in a whole bunch of different witnesses. And you can also be your own witness. But it's also like it is like sort of hopeful that you find someone that's outside of you. But it can also be a deity. It could be a tree, it could be whatever you want, right? Tell the tree what's going on and just be there. And allow yourself to be held in that. And I want to, like something that's just really bringing me in this moment is that… get the right witness. Because it really is important to have somebody who doesn't tell you what to do, doesn’t make a judgment, doesn't even I would hope not say anything, but just like just be there and sit with it until until. Because it might not feel better. But at least it won't feel invisible anymore.

Thomas: And that I think is where people who are witnessing or even just with us in our lives can have a hard time as if it doesn't feel better. If they feel like their role is to help us get through a hard whatever. And then that will mean that at the end of our five minutes or half an hour together, that we're smiling and we're ready to move on. And, and that's, you know, so not always… And sometimes I've found in situations I had to sort of pretend that everything was good to like, get somebody to feel like it. So that's not the ideal.

Moon: Not ideal. No, I mean, again, it's that discomfort, right? Yeah, like I… There's this one poem, the, the invitation by Oriah mountain dreamer and one of the lines goes something to the effect of like, “I want to know if you can sit with my pain and yours without trying to rush into fix it or save me save it…”, something like that. And yeah, I want to know if you could just sit with mine and sit with yours and just be here. There's nothing actually to fix. This is just something that's happened. I mean, I've never been sad forever. I haven’t, at least so far. And I've never been happy forever. It'll move.

It was at this point in our conversation that I realized that sitting with discomfort is profoundly anti-capitalist. Because at least American society is based on: Buy this, feel better. Buy that, feel better. Get this treatment, look better. Find a partner, feel better. It's all about happiness.

Moon: It’s all about seeking comfort… seeking… Comfort that it is temporary. And easy to be bought again.

Thomas: Right. Good point. Yes.

Moon: Here's the next thing. And here's the next thing because it does feel like it helps. And I'm not gonna say that I haven’t indulged in a little, you know, retail therapy to feel better sometimes. Sure. Refer to my cupcake therapy.

Thomas: I love that. Well Happy Mother's Day to you.

Moon: Yeah. Happy Mother's Day to you, too. What a day, right? Yeah, I spent… I went to the beach this morning because they usually do that on Mother's Day. And, you know, kind of talked with her for a little bit. And then… this is this is a funny story. So I got back to my car and my car wouldn’t start.

Thomas: Oh, wow.

Moon: And I was like, “Oh, no!. And of course, it's Mother's Day. So it took like a good hour and a half for somebody to get to me, to like, help me with my car. And after I hung up with them, I was texting a friend. I was like, “Gosh, I can't believe this is happening.” And I was like, “Oh no, I didn't invoke my dead mother in that phone call!” Because usually I would say something like, “Well, you know, my mom died. Can't you just… I'm really upset, can’t you like bring somebody?” She would have been great with that. She would have been fantastic with that. She's… I mean, you know, for everything that parents may put us through. I'm like, that is the least they can do. And that's what I texted my friend and said, and they were like, “Oh, totally!” because they lost their mom a few years ago too. And then I realized, I sort of took a breath and was like, “Oh, I'm in a different stage of grief.” Because it's not the first thing I thought of.

Thomas: I thought you were gonna say you invoked your mom and your car started.

Moon: I mean, that would have been a cooler story. But if… that would have been a real witchy story. But alas. Alas, I did not. I would have been sweet.

Thomas: Standing there with the red and the black cables. “Okay mom - ready! Do your thing!”

Moon: If my mom was there, she would be like, “Why don't you know how to use these?” “That's why we have AAA, mom!” Right now… So it was a fun moment… I was like I'm definitely going to bring that to this.

Thomas: Thank you, yeah.

I hope that, wherever you are on your journey after a significant loss, that you are finding ways to take care of yourself. Whether that is cupcakes or anything else that really makes you feel loved. It’s important that you know you’re not alone on your journey. So many people are making their way through loss today. And also, your loss and your experience of this particular loss is as unique as you are. So find your people, reach out if you need help, and, in the words of Irisanya, care for yourself wildly!

Irisanya Moon is an author, Witch, priestess, teacher, and initiate in the Reclaiming tradition. She is passionate about the idea that life is and we are a love spell, a dance of desire and connection, a moving in and out of the heart, always returning to love. Irisanya cultivates spaces of radical acceptance to foster trust and liberation to remind people they are not alone.

Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata. Reach us through our website, shamepinata.com. And subscribe to the show on your favorite player. Also be sure to check out our second show, Daily Magic for Peace, supporting you as you support Ukraine. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S4 E7 Discomfort As Ally (Irisanya Moon)

August 4, 2023

Episode Summary

Episode Resources

→ Irisanya Moon: https://www.irisanyamoon.com

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Moon: You will need to surrender at some point, because there’s… You can go kicking and screaming but I really encourage not doing that as much as possible. It’s painful enough.

We love to be in control. We love to know what’s going to happen, how long it will last, and what effects it will have on us. But what if, like a tree in the wind, flexibility and surrender are our greatest tools? What if discomfort can be our friend? This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions.

So take a deep breath. No really. Breathe with me for a sec. [TAKES DEEP BREATH] Today we are joined by my friend and teacher Irisanya Moon and we’re going to delve into the less-controllable parts of life. So if you didn’t breathe, breathe with me now [TAKES DEEP BREATH]. We’re going to talk about how ritual can create a container for big feelings and big experiences and also how there is a huge aspect of surrender in ritual (as there is in life). When we do a ceremony, we’re inviting a connection, perhaps with other people, perhaps with certain deities, or with All-That-Is. We are opening our hearts to Mystery. And that can lead us on a journey that might not be what we expected. Things might not be known, or uncomfortable, or clear from moment to moment. But we’re not alone. There are guides, myths, books, and teachers. And Irisanya is the perfect voice to hold space for this discussion. We begin with a question I asked her about rites of passage and how they’ve changed for her over time.

Thomas: How has the concept of Rites of Passage deepened over your lifetime?

Moon: Hmm, yeah, I think that's that come… that can be answered in a couple of different ways. First of all, I never really thought about it. You know, I grew up in the Midwest and I was Catholic for a very long time. And I think technically, I still am, on a technicality. I still am. And so I've been through those rites of passage. But I looked at those as sort of like, I have to do them and so they never really felt like things that I was in charge of. They felt like: When I'm in second grade, you do communion. When I'm in fifth grade, I think, you do reconciliation. In eighth grade, you do confirmation. And then you get married, and then you do all this stuff. So those felt more like obligations, maybe duty. As I stepped away from the church and moved into witchcraft, I… Rites of Passage was a class that I took…

Thomas: I took that too.

Moon: Right, exactly. It was one of the classes that I took. And so I was like, okay, this is interesting. I think it was the second class in Reclaiming that I took. At that point, I hadn't really met a lot of big situations that I felt were worthy of a rite of passage, I think. I didn't understand the value of that. That's a better way to say it. I didn't understand the idea of ritualizing things. And I think maybe that was a remnant of Catholicism. I was like, I don't want to ritualize like that.

Thomas: Sure, sure.

Moon: So I think that the next stage was realizing that that was really vital for my healing and realizing that a rite of passage is a way to have something witnessed, celebrated often, and a place to create a container for that and to have it be held well and softly, and like something precious. Because it is. And I think from there, I think through like my own initiatory process and through other things that I've been through, I recognized that the more I delineate who I was, and from who I'm becoming, or what's happening next, the more empowered I felt the more like… I don’t want to say in control, because I think a lot of this is surrender. But I think, you know, more empowered in the situation to claim that as something that is, that's important.

Thomas: That's well said. And I think it's true as we age and as we experience life. You know, there are deeper wells we fall into, and “Oh, my goodness, what is this experience? And how do I make sense of this?” And that's what ritual can do is, when it's done well, and it's a safe space, it can really hold space for this thing that's… just can be overwhelming.

Moon: Absolutely. I mean, how do you… Like ritual is, and can be structured, but it's also a really great place for things that are messy. And also holds them in a way that you can't always explain, at least that's been my experience. You know, having done a lot of rituals and things like that. Like, sometimes I don't know why it's working, but it is because there's some sort of like, “Oh, this is, this is what we do now…” and you sort of have to surrender into it, but that's a rite of passage too. This is what's going on and we’re going to have to go with it and we'll see what happens. Often.

Thomas: Trusting the mystery….

Moon: Absolutely. Yeah. I think, you know, I think of Inanna and I think of that story, of Inanna and all the gates, right? Like, at each gate, you gotta let something go, because that's the way it goes. And you can fight and be stubborn like me, and you can argue it every day. But the ways of the underworld are perfect and may not be questioned. And that's the way it goes, so like it or not, you can either struggle, you know, struggle all the way through, maybe just meet it and go, “This is awful. And that's just the way it is right now.”

Thomas: Yeah, and when things are so big and so overwhelming, it's kind of like there's… surrendering can be a way through.

Moon: It's necessary. It's absolutely necessary. It is also the worst. [LAUGHS] I mean it can be the worst, right? I think that I was teaching something the other day and someone… I was actually talking about initiation, so it's fresh in my head. And there was a question at the end that said, “But what if I… how do I surrender when I don't want to?” And I was like, “Good question.” And I said something to the effect of like, you know, surrender is sometimes about… or like not wanting to surrender is sometimes about not feeling safe to do it. Which, obviously. It's scary. You don't know what's going to happen. Our bodies are wired to, like, protect us and to not do things that they don't know how to do or that they haven't seen before. And I was like, I really think that part of surrender is taking care of that animal body and making sure that it knows it's safe. And that, you know, it's very simple stuff, you know, water, food, rest, movement, meditation or whatever practice like some spiritual practice that makes you feel safe. Being with people that make you feel safe, because then you know, even in the crumbling, I can fall apart.

Mmm. And falling apart is that moment that makes us so vulnerable. And, I would argue, it’s where some of the deepest healing can begin. But our animal bodies do need a safe place for that. Our nervous systems need a safe place for that. Safe, warm, centered, caring. A trusted inner circle of friends, a compassionate partner, or an intentional space and time on our own.

Moon: One of my phrases that I like to use is, I like to call in the idea of discomfort as ally. Discomfort teaches us something and tells us that it's something new. So if we can look at it as an ally, maybe it becomes a collaboration versus a fight.

Thomas: I like that.

Moon: That applies to a whole bunch of things discomfort as ally. So we're… how you deal with your various internalized oppressive thinking, whether you're dealing with… dealing with and working towards becoming more anti-racist, like “How do I, how do I sit with discomfort as an ally, not as something I did wrong? But something I could learn from?” Ideally.

Thomas: Right… and that's, I don’t know if that’s a muscle, but it's… I've had to dramatically increase my ability to be with discomfort around race, and thought for a while I couldn't, and then realized I could, once I kind of started figuring it out and trying it and… Yeah, and how incredibly essential it is, like a hack, a huge hack.

Moon: Absolutely, right? It is. Like once you're like, “Oh, wait… wait, okay.” Well, I think it's… challenging for so many reasons, but also for… I don't I don't think like a lot of society is conditioned to, like, be okay with being uncomfortable. Like we're always seeking comfort. Like from… And that makes sense. I do, of course, because, of course, I want to be comfortable. But because I think it's so easy to be so removed from it, then when it does come it feels so much bigger. And sometimes it's not. It's like it's uncomfortable and doesn't feel good. But it's not actually dangerous.

And discomfort isn’t usually going to hurt us. We just have a knee-jerk reaction to avoiding it. I’m not sure we can control that. But something we can control is to develop our capacity to notice when we’ve instinctively turned away from something that feels uncomfortable and to stop and consider. Is this something that can actually help me learn something about myself, or be someone better? Consider this an invitation. We’ll both try this. The next time you notice that you’re feel uncomfortable, maybe you find yourself walking away from a conversation, or your get a text you don’t want to respond to, or you’re confronted with something you don’t want to do and find yourself suddenly scrolling social media, take a breath and set a time for 1 minute. And just practice sitting with whatever feelings you’re wanting to get away from. Just allow yourself to be there for 1 minute. Allow yourself to develop a capacity to be with discomfort. And when you’re done, do a little dance. Because you’re a rock star!

[MUSIC]

If you follow Irisanya’s work, you know that she is a prolific author and teacher. In fact, she will be launching a year-long Aphrodite immersion in 2024, as well as the Heart Magick Mystery School. And one of the reasons I am so happy to have her with us today is to hear about her latest book: Pagan Portals: Norns: Weavers of Fate & Magick.

Moon: The Norns are the Wyrd Sisters. And so it is Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld and they are not quite, but we're gonna use this because it's simpler, you know, is, was, and shall-be. They are the ones that spin the threads, and then weave the string, and then also cut it when it's the end of the life. They are the ones who are in charge of that whole thing. In Norse mythology, there are thoughts about, you know, all of our lives are predetermined. So… and that is not a fun thing to say in this culture. Like, “I want to know that I am in charge of this life that I have in front of me.” And it’s not like everybody thinks the same way, but if we were to carry that it is, yes, everything's determined, and how can I meet what my life brings to me? Yes, everything might be predetermined and all of us have a piece of this web and how we interact does actually shift things. So I love to write… I love to do magic with the Norns because it reminds me not only of this interconnectedness and this again, this idea of not being alone in this and that we are all connected in some way, but it also reminds me that since time is not really linear, it's sort of happening all at the same time. That also means healing happens all at the same time. And it can travel back and forth, and up and down, and all the different directions. At least that's what I think. I don't, I don't think of time only going forward. I think that what's happening, what's already happened to me is still impacting me, so it is still a part of this. And that's why I think that's important. I think this idea of like time and sort of realizing that we we live in a society that has very, you know, specific ideas about what that looks like, you're and “You're running out of time”, or “You have taken too much time”, or “You have so much time ahead of you.” Why stress about this? To challenge that, I think is important. To challenge that and to bring that into rituals that… maybe it's not that you've missed an opportunity, maybe it's that you have a different opportunity to take. A different healing to send back to generations that might want it, need it, to send it forward to the future descendants that might want it and need it.

One of the things I bring up in the book that I think is vital to this grief conversation or rites of passage and things like that is… there's… I don't have a favorite Norn, I always say but this one's my favorite is Verdandi and she is most often related with the present moment. Which is something I find I've always had a challenge with. Like, how do I stay present? How do I, you know… worked real hard on that. The thing that I recognized as I was writing this and in other work with her, the present moment is so fleeting [SNAPS]. Like how do you define that? You can't. Like the present moment? Oh, there it goes, you know? And because of that, you know, every like this moment right now has become the past so quickly. So, she's such a great reminder of that and in this moment of like either encountering grief for anticipating grief, present moment how can I meet this present moment right now because it is building every… all of my past and it is also launching me to whatever comes next. So being present is a big part of all this when we talk about witnessing and all the different things. Present. How can I really know this moment because it's already gone?

Thomas: I'm curious if you've developed different strategies for staying in the present moment, after working with the Norns.

Moon: Yeah, I would love to say that I do that all the time. I think that… I think the best thing that I've learned is actually the things that I learned from her Verdandi is that… There's this one practice, I don't remember if I put it in the book or not, because sometimes you write books and it was a while ago… Like looking into a mirror is a really good present moment practice. Where are you at right now? Without looking away without maybe examining how things could be different. I think that is a practice I turned to and actually often turn away from because someone's gonna listen to this and go, “I've heard you spout off about mirror work.” I have, it is confronting. It's confronting to be in the moment, because it is not only like looking at yourself in the mirror, but it's also like, I'm in a moment where I could do something. Why am I not? Or why am I choosing this particular thing? For me, my cultivation of staying more present is often showing up and unprepared. I just do it more often now. I just show up for what is present. I think Adrienne Maree Brown talks about that in “Emergent Strategy”, like to be… it's be more present, like presence over preparation. And that is actually really helpful. Because instead of walking into something going like, “Oh, this is what I'm going to say, or this is what's going to happen” or anything like that. I just show up and go, “What's already here? How do I engage with that?” And it has become a muscle, I show up more and meet what's present. I mean, I taught at a camp in Australia recently and we did…the whole camp was about Aphrodite, but we had one day of grief. And my co-teacher and I realized the thing we had planned was definitely not the thing that we needed to do that day and so we had to surrender and come up with something else and just follow where people were at. And that is… it's a it takes time to sort of trust that that's going to be okay, but we did we trusted we trusted the people in the group we trusted the things that we did think we're going to be the things and it ended up being, from what I've heard and felt for myself because I'm in that too, we got to be present with what was actually real. Not worrying about where we would have been or where we wanted to go. Yeah. So just showing up and being like, “What I have to offer doesn't have to be perfect, but I want to be here, and I want to hear you. I want to hear me.” It just takes a lot of risk and a lot of doing it over and over until it feels like, “Oh, okay. I can trust myself in that moment.”

Thomas: Yeah, I feel like that's a marker of somebody who is more confident. When I think about, like, in the business world, people who show up, like, really prepared, you know, or it's kind of like, it's good to be prepared but then also there are people who show up, and they're just like, “Okay, I'm here, what's going on today?” You know, and that sort of happens, like the higher level. It's the underlings that have done all the homework, because, you know, the way the work is structured and everything like in a business setting… Yeah, it's, it's like, I love to see a woman who just walks in, and she's just like, “Okay, you know, I got a sense of it, and now, where are we?” And like, let's go with this. And, together, we're going to work with this thing, you know, and, yeah, there's a confidence there.

Moon: That's also trusting, like, where it's not just trusting yourself, it's trusting everyone around you and I think that trusting that everyone will show up in the way that they can, you just can't expect anything, you know, perfect to be perfect or the way that you want necessarily, I have many stories about that. But it is about trusting that you are in the space where something is going to happen, that something will emerge. And the other thing that Adrienne Maree Brown says, moving at the speed of trust is a way to… Yeah, it also helps people come together more easily and to meet these moments where it is possibly confusing and something needs to change because… some death, destruction, whatever. You know, this is a moment where what you've planned doesn't make sense and to do what you did plan would not be the thing. There is no perfection in any of this.

Thomas: No.

Moon: …there’s only arriving.

Thomas: Exactly.
So how are you in terms of preparing vs just showing up and being in the flow? I’m guessing you’re probably, like most people, a balance between the two. And how is surrender your friend? And how is discomfort your ally? [TAKES DEEP BREATH] I remind you of Irisanya’s thoughts on making it safe for the body. New things can be scary. Discomfort can feel awful, but there are ways to calm our bodies and our hearts and hopefully friends to have by our side on the journey.

Irisanya will be back next time to speak with us on the discomfort of grief and how to keep moving forward year after year after a particularly meaningful loss.

Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata, reach us through our website, shamepinata.com. And subscribe to the show on your favorite player. Also be sure to check out our second show, Daily Magic for Peace, supporting you as you support Ukraine. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S4 E6 Surviving the First Year

July 7, 2023

Episode Summary

If you or someone you know is in an emotional crisis, reach out to the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting 988.

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

The first year after a significant loss can be so hard. As the wheel turns and the light changes, visceral memories can arise of this time last year when things were different. How do we create space for our hearts as we go through a year of firsts?

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Just a quick note before we begin that I talk in this episode about how I felt right after my loved one passed away. If you are in a tender place, take care.

Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. So this is a follow-up to an episode from last season called "Surviving a Recent Loss". If you heard that episode, you know that my mom passed away last year. At the time that episode was recorded, we were just back from the funeral, the burial, the immediate time of saying good-bye. Those moments when the visceral memory of my mother's hand in mine was only a week old.

I mentioned in that episode that I needed more time sitting on the porch looking at the clouds - and I took that time. I intentionally stepped back from several beloved projects and made time in my schedule for me. For my heart. For my broken heart. Not in a dramatic way, but in a realistic, attentive, and responsive way.

I discovered that what I most needed was space. Space to feel. Space to remember. Space to breathe. Space to cry. Space to just be. I needed to find and trust my flow. To let myself drift toward whatever felt right. Some days it was sitting on the porch watching the birds. Some evenings it was photographing the changing light as the sun set. Some nights it was getting lost in my new favorite hobby, learning Ukrainian on Duolingo. In those moments when I had lost my flow, I asked myself, “What defies the call to get things done? What creates space for my heart? What feels right?”

There's something very special in carving out time when the heart needs it. Something that's actually counter-cultural because, at least in The United States, we're asked to be little capitalist robots who keep working no matter what. And as I really made a concerted effort to carve out space and time and my whole system was like, "Yes!" My heart, my head, and my whole body just kept giving me feedback that they so needed extra space and time. It's truly amazing how much bandwidth grieving takes up! It's called grief work for a reason!

A good friend of mine inspired me some years back by taking a trip to Brazil right after her mom died. And I don't mean like a week. I mean months. She kind of just went to Brazil to heal. I thought, wow, what an amazing way to create a container for the start of that new journey of life-on-earth-without-Mom. What a great way to disconnect from the day-to-day, and replace it with daily adventures and new experiences. Going someplace new, being a fish out of water, almost becoming a new person - because that's what's really happening when we lose someone, right? That essential connection being broken makes us a different person. There’s a necessary rebalancing, rebuilding, a recreating of self. And wow, what a great way to mirror that newness than to go live in a new place or switch it up somehow.

The first year after someone passes can be the most intense. I know it doesn't always magically get better after year one, but something about that first year can be like trial by fire. Especially because the wheel keeps turning and before you know it, there's a holiday, or an anniversary, or a birthday - another one of those poignant moments when the pain of that loved one being gone can be so awful. A year of firsts.

I hit my first first two days after my mom died. My first birthday w/out her. I just kept telling people, “Not this year. No. Later. Not now.” I even replayed a video of my mom singing happy birthday to me and felt nothing. It was a horrible day.

The next one was Thanksgiving. No thank you. I felt no desire to be around people and put on a happy face. My husband went to join the family and I stayed home alone. While that might sound sad, it actually turned out to be a beautiful day. Being on my own gave me space and time to do what I really needed to do which was to be with Mom. I spent the day chatting with her as if she was around, just kind of telling her what was going on, what I was seeing out the window, what I was making to eat, things I wanted to catch her up on. It was kind of like an all-day phone call with a quietly attentive companion and it turned out that it was exactly what I needed: a full day with mom.

Then came Christmas. I thought about Christmas a lot and especially how my mom handled Christmas when she became a widow. We’d always celebrated Christmas at her house, but the first two years after dad died, she didn't want to be in the house at Christmas. No way. No how. Did not want to be there. So so came out to be with me instead. The third year, she was ready to be at home again (granted it was a new house, but she was ready) but she wanted a man around. She was very clear about that. So she asked me to come home and bring my husband. After that, she was able to have Christmas at home again, but that was three years of strategic holiday planning and asking for exactly what she needed. Three years. That was something she modeled for me. Taking her time. Asking for what she needed.

So this Christmas I reached for a new thing, something to consciously step away from the traditions that had been taken from me. No tree. No ornaments. No family. Instead, my husband and I went on retreat and had a very quiet and simple day together sleeping in late and opening a couple presents in the sun. Just the two of us. I think there might have been a wreath somewhere, but that was it. It was really good.

The wheel has turned full circle now and the light is falling just the way it did when she left us. My heart is still broken and will never fully heal. But I can smile again and even mean it. And mostly, I’m so grateful to have survived the first hellish year. In hindsight, the worst part was my anticipation of the many special days. The actual days were tender but bearable - it was mainly the concept that I would be facing them without her that was the hardest on my heart.

MUSIC

So how has ritual been a part of my journey in this first year on my own? Well, I mentioned in the “Surviving a Recent Loss” episode about the "I Know What To Do" ring that helped me make decisions during the process of dealing with lawyers and insurance companies. I also mentioned my daily meditation practice at the workspace altar. I suppose that, like those, most of my rituals have developed out of necessity, a kind of follow-the-heart approach. Feeling into what needs to be felt, and who I would like to have there alongside me while I feel it.

Here's a look into three rituals that came about in this way.

Ritual #1: Mom Joins Us on Zoom. Around the 6-month mark, I hosted a Zoom call for Mom's friends. This was a loosely facilitated gathering which allowed me to surround myself with her inner circle to share some memories. At the end of the gathering, I played a short recording I’d made of Mom and me on a different Zoom call, one in which mom sang me a bit of a song she loved from a 1950’s musical. I shared it that day with her friends so we could all hear her voice again and see her in a happy moment sharing something she loved. What I didn’t anticipate was that on the video, the one with Mom, after she sang the song, Mom and I had said good-bye. And since I shared this video clip at the end of the group call, it had the unintended effect of Mom saying goodbye to the group. “Bye, love you! Talk to you Tuesday." It was unexpected and just lovely. There were many tears.

Ritual #2: The Magic Mom Ball. When mom entered Hospice care, I began collecting the little random things she said during the day, so I wouldn't forget them. Just simple things, like "I love you" or "You're good at that." Once she had passed away, I sat down, looked through them, and picked my favorite ones. I then ordered a custom Magic 8 Ball on Esty. I call it The Magic Mom Ball and it sits near her photo in its little box. To be honest, I haven't actually used it yet. I'm still in the phase where all I want to do is hurl it out the window as soon as I pick it up, so I can safely say I'm not ready. But I imagine that someday it will be a nice way to hear her voice again, so to speak, randomly telling me things in 32 characters or less.

I'll close with Ritual 3: Shouting from the Rooftop. It's actually a bit personal of a story but feels significant, so here is my telling of it, partially through speaking with you now and partially through playing a voice note I recorded to document at the time. This was a spontaneous ritual early on that helped me give voice to that immediate grief I was swimming in right after the funeral. It allowed me to shout out my pain and be heard in a way that I’ll never forget.

Shortly after we returned home from the funeral, I pulled out the video game "Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild". Breath of the Wild is an open-world game where the main character, who's called Link, wanders around the land of Hyrule doing questy-things and avoiding monsters. Link is pretty much on his own all the time, but he lives within a community of non-player characters, townspeople, monsters, and his trusty horse, which he can call to his side by whistling. That day, just back from the funeral, when I switched on the when I switched on the console, Link was hanging out in the last place we'd been, a little seaside community called Lurelin Village, a place with a cheerful little Caribbean theme song. While I normally find that song soothing, that day I didn't want to be in Lurelin Village didn't want to hear that theme song. It seems too happy. Here's the voice note.

So I left and I went up out of the village and then up a hill and kind of turned around and looked back over the ocean, the cliffs and the town. And I was far enough away that the theme song had stopped. And I realized that I just wanted him to shout out to the whole land of Hyrule that mom is dead, that my mom is dead. So then I just kind of shouted out in my mind and my heart, "Hey everybody in Hyrule: My mom is dead. I need you to know that my mom is dead." Because it feels like that's all I want to do in my life is just stand on that roof of my house and just yell that and have the whole world stop because the whole world has stopped in my heart, even as it goes on. And so what I did was I had Link whistle three times and that was him telling, me telling, the world that my mom is dead. And I know that gameplay will continue and it will be the same. That Bobokins will be the same. You know, everything will be the same, but they will all know. To look at it, there won't be a change but they will all know. Zelda and the old king and the random people doing their random routines. The family of three that lives in the big house in the village. They will all know. And we'll never talk about it but we won't have to.

I closed the game that day and somehow I felt different. I didn't feel so alone. The Hyrule community had somehow been able to honor this incredible loss with me. These three rituals are just snippets in time, moments of taking intentional action that helped me make sense of some very strong feelings. Ritual doesn't have to be a big deal. Ritual can be very simple. And ritual can be very profound.

If you are in transition right now, grieving a loss, letting go of something or someone you care deeply about, I encourage you to carve out time for yourself and for your precious heart. Grieving takes time and it takes space. It is work. It is actually a lot of work! And as you walk down the path of anniversaries, may you go gently and always surrounded by love, time, and care.

MUSIC

Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata, reach us through our website, shamepinata.com and subscribe to the show on your favorite player. Also be sure to check out our second show, Daily Magic for Peace, supporting you as you support Ukraine. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S4 E5 Entrepreneurship as a Rite of Passage (Molly Mandelberg)

June 2, 2023

Episode Summary

Finding our right work can be a journey. In our life, we may have had many jobs, explored many paths. What might it feel like to live your passion, to bring your full self to your work? If you listen very carefully, is your heart actually telling you which way to go?

Episode Resources

→ Wild Hearts Rise Up: https://www.wildheartsriseup.com/

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Mandelberg: There's nothing about you that you've decided is true that you can't choose differently. If you're willing to get curious about all those decisions and conclusions you have about who you are or what you're capable of… curiosity is like the key to life.

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. There are so many rites of passage in our complex, multi-faceted lives. Birthdays, weddings, new jobs, relationships starting and ending. One rite of passage we haven’t spent much time on yet is finding our right work, starting a business venture that comes from the heart.

You might already have such a business venture,or perhaps it’s something that sounds good but it’s miles away. If the latter is you, then you’re in luck. Today’s guest Molly Mandelberg is going to walk us through her story of becoming a coach and ritualist practitioner. I have to warn you that Molly’s enthusiasm is infectious. She is a very talented coach by nature and she will open up your mind and your heart to possibilities you didn’t even know existed.

Thomas: I guess what I would ask you is… would you take me into your story?

Mandelberg: Yeah, so one of the biggest transformations that I've gone through in my life was actually starting my business and stepping into more of a leadership role, I think, in my life. And while that was directly related to my clients, it also has spilled over into my relationships with my friends, my family, my communities that I've decided to partake in or involve myself with. And yeah… I wrote a whole book about this story of, kind of what I had to go through are the big turning points and lessons that I've learned, but who I was 10 years ago before ever starting my business was sheltered, and hiding… somebody actually used the term “hunted” about my energy once and I was kind of a prickly person, I was easily triggerable, I was very unconvinced of my self worth. I was kind of angry and hurt and had lots of trauma that was still unprocessed.

And I think that we as humans often go through a transformational period around 29 to 32, during our Saturn Return anyway, but it happened that I started my business right before that Saturn Return. So there is this real big wave of personal development and personal growth and I've always been someone who is interested in the bigger picture of who I am in this body on this earth and what that really means. But it wasn't until my late 20’s when I started looking at, “Can I help people?”, and “Am I capable of doing that, of being a contribution in other people's lives? And do I want to make my life kinda about that by becoming a coach or holistic practitioner?” And there was a lot of stuff that came up to stop me. A lot of places where I thought, “I shouldn't. I can't. No one's gonna pay me for that,” or “I should just go back and get a j.o.b.”

And through investing in mentorship and through taking the journey of really looking at what is that limiting belief and do I want to allow that to continue stopping me or do I want to choose something different now? Studying a bunch of different modalities of healing practices and techniques, and also really kind of for the first time in my life immersing myself in larger community and actually surrounding myself with people who are doing work similar to that of looking at the shadow and looking at what we desire and what we think is limiting us from getting there, from reaching for it, from actualizing that in our lives. Yeah, I've had some close friends who are on similar sort of parallel paths to mine, that believed in me before I believed in myself. They saw who I was becoming before I had an awareness of what that was. And choosing to trust them and what they saw in me when I didn't have that yet, was like really the one of the things that kept me from giving up or quitting or going back to some other life.

And now I get to run a beautiful business that lights me up from the inside out, while traveling the world and knowing that, at least in some people's lives, I'm making a really big difference. And I can acknowledge that like, plainly and honestly, that there's no doubt in my mind that I'm doing something of value now. Because I was willing to go and look at that stuff and keep moving forward through it, I think.

Thomas: Can you take us into, like, a moment when you were facing something difficult? Like a specific moment or time that you remember when you were still working through that process? What did that look like?

Mandelberg: Yeah, absolutely. So I had a moment where I was ready to quit, I was ready to quit my business, I was ready to go back to… I… before my business, I was nomadic Vagabond hippie aimless and working kind of jobs that I hated so that I could just get enough money just to get back on the road and go on another adventure. And I was looking at, “Okay, I, I'm not making enough money in my business to support myself…” I was about a year and a year and a half in… and “I'm tired of trying, I'm tired of it not working. I'm tired of not having the magic recipe that makes this successful or makes my efforts worthwhile.” And I kind of had this beautiful sisterhood of a couple of friends who were in a business training program that I was in, and I told them, “Hey, like, I'm gonna get a job like, I can't do this anymore.” And they said, you know, “We get it. We've been there. We see you.” And their advice to me or their recommendation, their hope for me was to just wait a week, because a lot of times when we're in the emotional throes of something that we feel like we can't face, that's not the time to make big life changes are big choices that are going to change your path.

Sometimes those are the times to just sit with it and feel the feelings and notice the emotions and maybe write down all the stories that are buzzing through your your head. But that's not the time to upend your whole life when you're in the midst of it. And so I did. I waited a week. And again, those were the people who saw something in me that I couldn't see yet. And so I was sort of looking at: What do they see? What is that that they're aware of that I haven't been willing to claim, own, or acknowledged yet? And it happens that in that week, a couple of people signed up for a session. A couple of those sessions turned into packages. My financial reality dramatically shifted in the span of a week or a week and a half. And I was doubling down on my business, I was like, “Okay, that's evidence to me that I'm moving in the right direction and I'm going to do with whatever the heck it takes to step into that, to step into whatever they're aware of, to step into my own discovery of what that is and what I can be.” But yeah, it was… it's emotionally challenging to run a business where you're basically selling yourself. You have to look at, “Do I believe in what I'm doing?” which is “Do I believe in me?” and we're not… most of us are not raised or programmed by the society to believe that we're worthwhile, or at least I wasn't. And so it took a lot of courage to start saying, “You know what I can, and I'm going to try and I'm going to unpack whatever story that is that says I shouldn't or I can't.”

Thomas: That's wonderful. I love that waiting a week. That's… I'm going to use that. That’s a huge bit of wisdom there. That's amazing.

Mandelberg: Yea, it sounds simple. But it does make a difference.

Thomas: Well, my second question is then, now that you're on the other side of the rite of passage, what is your life like? And what is your work like? And how do you show up in your work?

Mandelberg: Yeah, so I run a six figure business out of a sprinter van. I haven't given up the hippie Vagabond side of me, I just gave up the starving artists part of that. I make art. I write books. I have two podcasts. I have, I think, nine or ten different programs that I run. Usually, I'm only running about five or six in a year but I have a bunch of online courses and creations. I am on all different kinds of platforms and people thank me for my work. People show up to classes or workshops that I teach from all over the world. And I literally thrive on getting to do the work that I'm doing. I feel like I get paid to be myself more so than I get paid to do some service that I've come up with. And my brain works in kind of an interesting way. Because I have that heart-centered, spiritual emotional awareness of what I think how the universe works in my interesting point of view. And then I also have this kind of engineering brain of like tactics and strategy and pieces of the puzzle coming together and using automation and stuff like that. So I get to use both of those expertises, kind of, in my business where I'm helping people bridge that world of, you know, we're doing really deep, powerful work, but we have to use these really technological strategies to get the word out about them. And how do we do that without falling out of alignment with who we really are? So yeah, I get to live my passion which is creative. It's location independent. It's getting to see and be with the people that I love, no matter where they are in the world. Like, my mom was just going through a health kind of crisis issue the last few months and I got to just drive up to Oregon and spend that time with her and have her back while she was going through that, with absolutely no question in my mind that that's where I was going next. There was nothing else I had to move around to make that possible. And to get to live a life where that is something I can do with ease is, like, really extraordinary to me.

Thomas: Definitely. I'm curious how ritual played a part in your rite of passage. Was there a moment when you did a certain kind of ceremony or small ceremonies, or…

Mandelberg: Oh yeah. There's been lots of ways I've participated in… I mean, I've run my own women's circles and had… attended medicine ceremonies, and many gatherings that were deeply powerful for me. And also a big one for me is daily ritual and having sort of ceremony in my regular life. Every single day, I write before I get out of bed in the morning. I write before I go to bed at night and that is like, that's my spiritual practice, that's my mental health practice. That's where I connect to, you know, mantras and affirmations and gratitude and I'd say a gratitude practice is like the biggest tool that I've used over the years to keep my vibe where it needs to be, to keep… to pull me out of depression if that comes up. To raise, just raise me to the frequency I want to be living on. And then meditation has been a really like ongoing practice that sometimes I fall out of and then go back to and my goodness when I'm back on the wagon of meditating every day… And it is such a huge life hack, like the downloads and the insights and the information and the like peace and calm that's available with a meditation practice. I know I'm, like strumming a very old harp here, but it is so valuable and so life changing, in my opinion. So I think it's a combination of the daily rituals and practices that I have and then absolutely, I've had some, the, like, deep child stories of… I had sort of a evil stepfather when I was growing up and a lot of the work around that has been done in ceremony too and looking at my relationship patterns and who I be and in relation to other people and how I interact and how I'd like to be in those places. And sort of discovering what's the first step in changing that pattern? And finding that sort of throughline through ceremony and through sitting with healers. And I mean, shamanic journeying without medicine, and also with medicine, has been, yeah, a big catalyst in my growth. Absolutely.

Thomas: And is ritual something that you use with your clients at all?

Mandelberg: Definitely. Yeah. I mean, when I started my business, I was doing hypnotherapy. So I was using that as sort of a ritual and practice, also, but I bring in guided meditation and visualization. And we talk about the kinds of habits we're building and the ways that we're tending to our energy. A lot in my group programs, while we're talking about really strategic stuff, like hiring an assistant or, you know, using your email list well, or, you know, building out your next course or program, that is also happening simultaneously with the conversation about the energetics of who we're being and how that's magnetizing people to our businesses. So, yeah.

Thomas: As you're speaking, I'm getting a sense of so much intention, like intention with yourself in your heart, in your own practice in building your own life, your own work life and your life the way you want it to be, and then providing that to the people that you mentor and coach. It's really…. it's really inspiring.

Mandelberg: Yeah, I think intention is everything. Yeah, I think our reality is so much about the being and not as much as we think about the doing. And it's super important to pay attention to that I think…and and that, to recognize that we get to choose, we get to choose what we desire and focus our energy on that and that intentionality can change our entire life.

[MUSIC]

If you enjoy Shame Piñata, consider checking out our second show. It’s called Daily Magic for Peace and it’s a totally different kind of show. Each episode invites you to grab an item and do a simple ritual for peace in Ukraine. Episodes are less than 10 minutes long with a focus on calming the nervous system and keeping your heart open. You can find Daily Magic for Peace wherever you're listening to this podcast.

Thomas: One thing I wanted to ask you is that you spoke about broadening into community and trusting community more as you were growing. And I'm curious how your experience of community may be different now than it was before.

Mandelberg: Oh, yeah, totally. I had the story that I have to do it all myself, that no one is safe, and that I'm alone. And so I had this, I still have kind of this fierce independence to me. But it was a chip on my shoulder before and now it's a quality that I have access to more than anything. And, yeah, it took some trying, and it took some experimentation to find communities that I did feel safe and held in, to find a sense of belonging in those places. And that alone is a huge growth experience to go from. I know so many of us sort of far-out healers and holistic practitioners and like, just tuned-in people feel like we're alone in the world. And that, you know, if we get too visible, or get too loud about who we truly are, that we have that witch-wound that says, “Oh, no, you're going to be, you know, ostracized for this.” And finding places where you do feel safe to be all of you, where you feel safe to be in your bigness and your most magical and weird self and be accepted and adored and like high-fived and celebrated for that. That's a game changer, to not just be witnessed, but to be surrounded by people who get that side of you and maybe resonate to the same frequency is eye-opening, especially for me first as someone who…

I was raised in kind of a Christian community, not community, but the town I was in had a lot of Christian people growing up. And my mom raised us believing in like the Law of Attraction and the Akashic Record, and she used to channel and all this stuff. And so she kind of told me as a kid, you know, “We talked about this stuff at home, but we, it would probably be better if you don't talk about it with your friends.” And I carried that probably too far out into my adulthood of, “I have this weird, magical view on reality, but it's better if I just don't tell anyone about it, because people who disagree might, you know, shame me for it or make it wrong or not want to be around me because I have these weird views.” And so it took some time to deprogram that, but finally being in places where I feel that sense of belonging - and I know that that's possible for literally anyone out there. There is no kind of weird that's so weird, that it’s not shared by at least a few other people. Which is why things like Comic Con are so cool. It's like, in school you were probably a nerd and now you have all these people who think you're awesome for that thing. That's worth finding! There's websites like meetup dot com. There's all kinds of gatherings that exist in you know, the online space but also in person in different cities and communities that it's worth doing some research and going to show up to things like that, that maybe seem uncomfortable at first to see if you can find your your village, your sort of like-minded friends. Because it's easy to convince ourselves if those people haven't come across us in our lives, that we're the weirdo, that we're the odd man out. And the truth is, yeah, there's a lot of community available for any kind of person I think. And it takes courage to go and dig into that but it's so worth it. It's so worth it to not feel alone. We're not a kind of animal that's meant to be alone.

Thomas: No, it's like a matter of health and survival for us to actually…

Mandelberg: Hugely. Connection is vital to life.

Before we ended our conversation, I asked Molly if there was any last bit of wisdom she wanted to share with us.

Mandelberg: Question everything. “Is this true about me? You know, what would be the opposite of this? Is there evidence to show that that's also true?” You know, “What do I want to be right now? How would I like to be feeling? What would excite me? What can I add into my life right now that would just feel better or change to the game?” And then one of the things I say at the end of my podcast every time is, “Ask big questions!” …so that's a curiosity piece. And “Take bold actions!” So like show up. Try something new. Go exploring. Become the like, explore discovering your life every single day. And yeah… “You're here for a reason” is the last thing I say in my sort of sign off. Because I think it's true. I don't think people come into these bodies by accident. And it could be to change one life, and it could be to change a lot of lives, but it could just be to change your own life and learn, you know, what more you're capable of being and perceiving and actualizing for yourself. But that stuff is worth showing up for.

Molly’s story, Molly’s journey, and the passion she shows for her work are inspiring. I’m going to leave you with her wonderful list of questions. I encourage you, if you have a moment, now or later on today, maybe sit with them for a bit and see what downloads you get:

What do I want to be right now?

How would I like to be feeling?

What would excite me?

What more am I capable of?

Molly Mandelberg is the Founder of Wild Hearts Rise Up, Creator of “Magnetic Influencer Collective” and also the writer and illustrator of "The Wild Hearts Rise Up Oracle Deck". Molly works with coaches, healers, and conscious leaders to broadcast their messages with ease, so they can reach more people, and make more money with less time spent.

Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata, reach us through our website, shamepinata.com and subscribe to the show on your favorite player. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S4 E4 The Power of Tears (Ryan Kluttz)

May 5, 2023

Episode Summary

When someone passes away, the loss can bring us to our knees metaphorically - and sometimes literally. When it’s literal, that’s the body talking, echoing the heart. Crying can be like that too. Today we look at intention, death, and tears.

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Kluttz: I just feel so at peace with what happened now and I just think that some of my family members are not there yet, and so I try to be careful about what I say because I don't want to dishonor their grief if it's taking them, you know, longer than it took me because everybody has their own journey in it.

When someone passes away, the loss can bring us to our knees - metaphorically and sometimes literally. When it’s literal, that’s the body talking, echoing the heart. Crying can be like that too. Today we look at intention, death, and tears.

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Today I would like to introduce you to Ryan Klutz, a Women’s Marriage Coach based in Southern California. Ryan’s work was recommended to me by a friend who really admires how intentional she is.

Kluttz: I get up at about 5:15 so that I can have a solid hour, hour and a half to myself because I don't like to talk when I wake up and I don't want anyone talking to me either. So instead of forcing my family to be silent when they wake up, I get up early so that I can have that time and space to myself. And then I get to journal and meditate and drink my tea and then I take our puppy for a walk. And by then I'm ready to function on some level and, you know, if we run into someone who wants to interact with her or has a dog, you know, I'm fully ready to have a conversation with another human being. And then I come inside and everybody is starting to get up. And that's definitely the most important piece for me. So yeah, starting off the morning, doing journaling and meditating and then making sure that I have little bits of mindfulness throughout the day to keep it going.

Thomas: Do you have lists or things put around the house to remind you to drop into that place?

Kluttz: I put it in my list of things to do for my daily tasks for work because I've… Yeah, someone pointed out to me that because if I do struggle with that, then the place where I don't struggle is my to do list. And so if it's on my list, I'll do it. And that's what's been happening. [LAUGHS]

Thomas: Nice, nice. I just had this random memory pop in my mind of when I was working at a new job and I had a big list of things to do to remember how to do everything as I was being trained and I was very nervous. I stepped away from the desk, and I came back and somebody had written… somebody had seen my list, which I felt a little bit embarrassed about that somebody had seen that I had this list, and they wrote, “Do a little dance” at the end of it. [LAUGHS] So I did a dance and I checked it off. And I yelled, “I did a little dance!”

Kluttz: That's great. Yeah, that's, that's kind of the types of pushes that I need. You know, my husband will sometimes come out of the bedroom and see me hunched over my desk, and he'll try to gently say, “Maybe you should take a break. Maybe you should go meditate or something.” And normally what I was doing before was brushing it off and, you know, kind of feeling like “Don't boss me around.” Even though he wasn't, you know, he wasn't bossing me around. He was making a suggestion and trying… because he could see that that could be something that would be helpful for me in the moment. But I get… I would get tunnel vision on what I was doing. And so now, and this is just really within the last couple of weeks, because my grandpa passed away at the end of February. And it really… as difficult as it was to deal with at first. I mean, he was 96, so it wasn't like we were completely shocked about it, you know, we were just sort of enjoying the time that we had with him while he was still here. But when he actually passed away, it allowed me to see things differently. And to start recognizing that as much as I love to check off boxes and complete tasks, is that what I want to be able to be to say that I did when I potentially reach 96 years old? Or do I want to have, you know, I really enjoyed myself. And that was one of those things that I've read and seen… that list of the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. I'm fully aware of the idea of enjoying your life and I do implement a lot of pieces of those ideas but it just sunk in on a deeper level.

So when Ryan and I first met to chat and get to know each other before the interview, we thought it would be wonderful to have her come on Shame Piñata and speak about rite of passage she had been through with her husband and offer some perspective in the realm of conscious marriage. However, during the interview when she shared about the loss of her grandpa, the energy just kind of changed and I think we both knew that that was what needed to be spoken about that day. So you’re going to hear more about Ryan’s Ryan’s grandpa Jack. And I want to give you a heads up that her grandpa passed in kind of a sudden and kind of a sad way.

Kluttz: He was still skiing at 93. My dad actually had to go visit him in Maine where he lived by himself in the middle of the woods with just his dog and say, you know, “Hey, I think it might be time for you to not ski anymore given your age and, you know, the fragility of your bones possibly …” And I thought that was funny. And I know at 94, he learned to ride a snowmobile… And he was just constantly doing things. And one of the things… my husband and I asked him what the secret to life was, and he said, “Never sit down.” And, you know, we took that to mean exactly how he was - he was always doing activities and enjoying himself, you know, because he talks about how other people who were also WWII vets, they passed away sooner because once they retired, they just stopped doing anything, because they felt for some reason that, you know, retirement meant doing nothing. And he was still driving, still plowing other people's driveways for them when it would snow because he lived in Maine and snows a lot. Winter is very long in Maine. So yeah, he was just a really incredible human being and for me to have... As sad as I can get that he's gone, the ability to use that grief to change my own behavioral patterns has been really, really powerful. And so I'm grateful for that. And I'm also grateful that he gets to be with my grandma now, because she passed away almost 12 years ago, and he really, really missed her still. So it's just sort of like a completion and I've become accustomed to grief and so I just wanted to start to sort of use it instead of fight it.

Thomas: Hmm. Can you say more about that, about using it?

Kluttz: Yeah, I mean, I definitely, you know, when I found out… it wasn't… It was an accident, actually. He had been plowing people's driveways and he pulled his truck into the garage, shut the garage door, went in the house, and went about his evening, had dinner and everything and then went to bed. He never turned his truck off.

Thomas: Oh, wow.

Kluttz: And so his… his bedroom was right beside the garage, basically just down a little hallway. And so carbon monoxide got into the house. And so he did go peacefully in his sleep. He blocked… the dog past as well. She was a very sweet dog. And so I allowed myself to have that time of just feeling the grief, just allowing the sadness to come out however it wanted to come out. I took off a few days and let myself just do whatever I felt like doing which ended up being part of the way that I saw I could be allowing myself to be doing way more of what I want to do on top of building the career that I'm working on. And so once I was able to let that part pass, it became, you know, the sort of the things I mentioned earlier of how do I want to feel about my life if I reach 96? Or, you know, whenever it's the end for me, how do I want to feel? And I don't think that I would be proud of myself to say, “Well, I checked off all my boxes”, you know… So I just started to sort of pivot and and be inspired by his life instead of being… instead of continuing to be sad, you know. I'll always miss him. But I felt like, for the first time, in losing someone, I really felt like I could ask myself the question, “How can this serve me?” Because going forward, you know, we all lose people in our lives and I can fully sit with the idea that you have to let the emotions pass, but I also want to learn from it. So that was a way for me to learn from the grief itself, what can I pull into my life that I loved about him? And that way, he, you know, continues to live on.

Thomas: Definitely. That's so beautiful.

[MUSIC]

If you enjoy Shame Piñata, consider checking out Daily Magic for Peace. Daily Magic for Peace is a totally different kind of show that invites you to grab an item and do a simple ritual for peace in Ukraine. Episodes are less than 10 minutes long with a focus on calming the nervous system and keeping your heart open. You can find Daily Magic for Peace wherever you're listening to this podcast.

Thomas: It's so rare for people to give themselves permission to feel the grief when they lose somebody and especially what we've been experiencing with COVID, I think we've all become sort of extra numb to… It's been so overwhelming and it's been difficult. And then there's the personal and there's the collective and there's the global and there's so many layers to it. So I think even now, it's even more amazing when people can give themselves the time to really feel. So healthy.

Kluttz: Yeah. I mean, within the last year, I think people either were forced to feel, or, you know, just tried even harder to push it down, which is super difficult when you're stuck at home and you don't get to see anybody. But yeah, that's part of what I teach is letting your emotions out. Because someone once said to me, “What comes up must come out.” And if we don't address it… and I think people get scared when they think of, “Oh, I'm going to address my emotions.” And I learned several years ago that our emotions are really just feedback about how we're feeling. And it's not, I think we tend to feel like, the way I feel right now is I'm going to feel for the rest of my life, if I let it out. I'm scared of letting it out. And if we do let it out, it passes so much more quickly. It's been a week and a half and I really miss him, but I don't get choked up when I talk about him anymore. And you know, a few days ago, I still was, so I just give myself the time and space to let it out. And now I can feel the acceptance and the peace and the joy of who he was and the connection that we had. And I'm also really happy with the relationship that we had. Because, you know, sometimes when someone passes away, you immediately think of all the things that you should have done or that you wish you had more time for. And I felt completely at peace with the fact that we visited him, I called him, we emailed, and I texted him pictures of our daughters and our dog because he really loved dogs. And so I didn't have that feeling of, “Oh, I wish we would have, you know, seen him more.” You know, we did a lot and we actually were planning on seeing him this summer. So there was a part of me that was missing that and was, you know, because… even though he was 96, I really hadn't even thought about the possibility of not seeing him this summer. And so that was actually probably one of the hardest parts of the grief for me was accepting that. But yeah, I agree that a lot of people don't allow them to sit… don't allow themselves to sit with their emotions and I think it's just kind of a societal norm that you need to just suck it up. Keep on going.

As the interview went on, our conversation turned to the power of tears, how they help us, cleanse us, rebirth us. How they are a physical process highlighting our body’s innate ability to heal and self-regulate. And we both acknowledged times when we didn’t want to cry out of a desire to protect someone else.

Kluttz: Actually just… four days after I found out, I was listening to soothing music laying on the couch and like going in and out of crying as my, my girls were sitting on the couch watching a movie. And I wanted to be able to let it out but I didn't want to…. I didn't really want to talk to them about it in the moment. So I was, you know, sort of in this in-between place where I know, it's okay for me to cry in front of them, but I just kind of want to lay here and let it out. And as you know, the tears were coming out, it felt like, I had this thought of, “This as a physical manifestation of just my body needing to release these emotions.” And it's really powerful.

Thomas: And then if we follow it and let it happen, you know, if it's a safe enough place, or we're just able to go there, let ourselves just drop into that, it can really just do what it needs to do.

Kluttz: Yeah, it's just it feels counterintuitive to do that.

Thomas: Yeah. Have you noticed your tears being different for different kinds of crying ever?

Kluttz: Actually, no. I have not noticed that. But I feel like the next time I cry about something, I will start to pay attention. Like, you know, how it feels when they're when they're coming out. That's very interesting.

Thomas: When I'm really emotionally attached to something, and I'm really like, “This is unfair!” … and I'm creating, like a lot of content, that my tears are sort of small and hot. But then I had this other experience where it's some… I don't remember what even what it was, but a couple of times something was just breaking my heart that was just… it sort of had a beautiful quality to it. It wasn't like tears of joy, but it was just… there was a lot of selfless feeling to it…. an innocence. I don't know how to explain it, but the tears were, like, cool and large. And they just had such a different feeling to them. And I was like, “Wow, this is crazy! My body creates…. I cry different apparently depending on, like, what I'm processing.”

Kluttz: I've never noticed the difference in temperature. But I guess the amount that comes out sometimes can differ. I actually… when I watched a live stream of the funeral and you know, I have… I had already allowed so much of my grief to come out that when other people were speaking and crying… especially my dad when he was speaking, because he was the second oldest but my uncle that was the oldest died in a plane crash, gosh, almost 20 years ago now. So he's been the oldest for a while and so he spoke and it was a good mix of sad and then light things that made people chuckle. And I had my husband makes fun of it when they show it in movies, but I'd had one single tear went down! And then other times, it's like across your whole bottom of your eye and it feels like it's just like gushing, but I don't know what the difference is as far as how I'm feeling when those things happen or when other things happen. So I'm gonna definitely watch out for that.

I’m glad that you got to spend this time with us and that you got to meet Ryan and hear a bit of her story. And I hope that your relationship with your own tears is a connected and loving one. The people we love are such a gift and losing them can be so very hard, like a hole ripped into the tapestry that is us. I encourage you to be as gentle as you can with yourself today if you are going through a recent loss and know you’re not alone.

Ryan Kluttz is a marriage advocate teaching women to empower themselves in their own marriages. She has been married herself for 16 years and knows what it takes to make it amazing. Ryan currently lives in Southern California with her husband, two daughters, and their puppy. Find her work at married and manifesting dot com.

Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata, reach us through our website, shamepinata.com. And subscribe to the show on your favorite player. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S4 E3 There Must Be Something Wrong (Sheryl Paul) [Remastered]

March 31, 2023

Episode Summary

Today we revisit one of our most popular episodes, an early interview with Sheryl Paul, author of "The Conscious Bride". Sheryl's work allows us to reflect on how the pain, grief, discomfort, and vulnerability that can arise throughout the wedding process can actually be doorways into joy if we are willing to let them in.

Episode Resources

→ Sheryl Paul: https://conscious-transitions.com/

→ The Conscious Bride: https://conscious-transitions.com/books/

→ Shelter in Place Podcast: https://shelterinplacepodcast.org/

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Paul: I'm always interested in what's not being talked about what people are experiencing, but are trying to stuff away, trying to sequester, trying to sweep into the corner under the rug... when all that does is create shame and all that does is create anxiety.

Sheryl Paul has a unique ability to see the invisible, to see what has been silenced. Her book "The Conscious Bride" has been helping couples prepare for marriage for 20 years - and prepare in a very specific way. Her work helps couples create room for all of the emotions that come with transition, not just the picture perfect ones. Funny thing is, that allows for even more joy. Join me for a conversation with Sheryl Paul.

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. When I got engaged six years ago, a good friend of mine gave me a book called "The Conscious Bride". Now, I'm not a reader, as my husband will tell you, but I devoured this book. I loved it because it touched on the shadow, the stuff we don't talk about, the stuff that gets in our way when we want to feel one way but actually feel a myriad of other ways all at the same time. It named the shadow that hovers over the wedding: the attachment, the fear, the uncertainty, the hidden power-struggles and the grief that lies beneath them, and that a big part of stepping into a new life is letting go of the old one - and not just for the couple. The Conscious Bride gave me permission to feel all the ways, and it helped me create room for everyone else to feel all the ways too, so ultimately, we could all process the transition without getting into weird fights about random things. I was so happy to have a chance to speak with Sheryl Paul.

Thomas: So what led you to write this book?

Paul: So, I was in a master's program around that time. I was at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, which I don't know if you're familiar with, but it has a very strong Jungian focus. And I had always been interested in rites of passages and I had a deep sense that there was a lot that was not being talked about around the wedding. And I started to interview women and I did a lot of interviews, especially when it came time to write the book, which came from my master's thesis. So it started out as as a thesis and then evolve into a book. And I started to see that there was a big gap in the cultural conversation around around transitions in general. All transitions are bypassed and overlooked, but particularly the wedding and then in particular, how much focus there is on the joy and the perfection and everything has to be blissful and ecstatic from the moment of the proposal into the first year of the wedding, and there was just no conversation happening about the shadow, about the death experience, about what women (and men) are actually experiencing quite a bit of a time. And, you know, the more I researched and the more I looked and the more I spoke, the more it became quite clear to me that just that again, that there was a real gap in the conversation around this pivotal rite of passage, one of our few ceremonies that we still invoke in the culture. And yet it's done in such a way where we really gloss over the element of a transition, of the reality that when you are in transition, you are in a death experience, you are in a liminal zone, you are between identities, you are letting go, you are grieving. And we only expect people to feel joyful. It creates a lot of anxiety and it creates even more chaos than there naturally would be around an event like this. Because I'm feeling sad, because I have a sense of loss, because I feel like a part of me is dying, because I'm not over-the-moon ecstatic... something must be wrong with me, or with my partner, or with the decision to get married - something's wrong. And it's an incredibly deep sigh of relief to the soul to know that nothing is wrong. In fact, the more you let those difficult feelings in, the more you will open to the joy; that the pain and the grief and the discomfort and vulnerability are the doorways into the joy, into what we are expected to see all and into what we hope to feel. And what I started to say earlier was that that the wedding more than any other transition, I think, has (probably being pregnant becoming a mother comes close) carries a very strong cultural expectation of unilateral joy and it is supported in a big way by the wedding industry that sells perfection and sells joy. So it's a it's very big money behind selling us the bill of goods by selling us this message that you are supposed to be joyful and the way to do that is to create a perfect event.

Thomas: How do you work with someone if they're just starting to realize that they don't have to only feel joyful?

Paul: So, I tell them to read my book. And, you know, it's really the first part it's about re educating people to understand all of the normal and necessary feelings that accompany this transition. And once they understand that everything they're feeling is normal and necessary, they can start to let it in and and feel it, feel the grief, feel the loss, feel the vulnerability, feel the loneliness. These are all normal feelings that accompany transitions. So once we give ourselves permission to feel without that overlay of "because I'm feeling this it means there's something wrong" everything changes from there. We don't then have to misassign meaning to the feelings and to think, "Because I'm feeling sad, it means I'm making mistake." No, it has nothing to do with that. You're feeling sad because you are in a rite of passage. You're feeling sad because you are in the death experience, letting go of this identity, this primary identity as single person, as daughter, and shifting into an entirely new stage of life, a new identity. And there is no way to go through that without feeling grief.

Thomas: You spend a good portion of the book talking about how the bride is separating from the father/father figure and the mother/mother figure and the friends. Can you say more about that process?

Paul: Yes, so it can go a few different ways. If the bride is very close to her father, that's one set of emotions and experiences where there is tends to be a lot of grief, a lot of crying, really good, medicinal, necessary crying to make that separation process... and to make it more effective to make it more complete to make it more conscious. Again, in the naming, to say, I am separating from my dad, I am no longer going to be... Yes, I'm his daughter, but not in the same way, not as my primary identity. That my new partner is going to be number one and I'm transferring allegiance. So, that's one example of one way that it can go if if someone's very close to their father. If somebody doesn't have a close relationship with their father or there is no father figure in their life, that's a different kind of grief of the loss of not having had that or never having had that. The same as somebody has passed away. If somebody who's getting married and their mother's no longer alive. You know, that's, that's one way that grief can come through, as opposed to a mother who is very much alive and very much involved. And then there's a separation. There's… there's a loosening of cords that is required.

Thomas: I'm curious as you're speaking how this applies, I'm sure it's very different, but how it applies to folks who were older when they get married, or maybe a second marriage.

Paul: It can be different, it can be similar. It depends. It depends on a lot of factors. But regardless of the age, especially if it's a first marriage and you're getting married at 40, you're still letting go of a massive identity. And in some ways, it's even more of a letting go because of all of those years that you spent as a non-married person. And so there's a lot of grieving, a lot of shedding of the independence, the separateness, all of the control that you have when you are a non-married person, that every inch of your life is your own: your home, your space, how you spend your time, how you organize your weekend, it's all yours. And so that is its own massive death experience for somebody who marries later, you know, and who has had that many more years than someone who's 22 if you're 42, that's a lot of years of being the sole architect of your life.

Thomas: So you work with people around transitions, all kinds of transitions now, and I'm curious if ceremony plays a part in that with them.

Paul: I'm a big fan of ceremony. Because my work is largely over the internet. I'm not the one doing the ceremony with them. I would love to be that person, but I'm not. But I always encourage people to create ceremony and create rituals. And so, you know, if it's somebody getting married... and I've had a lot more men come my way, by the way, since I wrote The Conscious Bride. And I'm thinking of some right now who are in one of my small coaching groups. And he's getting married on Saturday, and I won't, I won't share the specifics, but it's... because it's his story. But it's really beautiful to witness men in their transitional process and the rituals that they come up with because I encourage people to find their own rituals that are meaningful to them. Ways to acknowledge the end of you know, in his sake, his bachelorhood that that time in his life is over. And so he has been sharing these incredibly potent rituals that have come to him for ways of recognizing that that time in his life is over. And what ritual does is, as you know, is it, it concretizes, it makes it and embodies what's happening, so that it brings it out of just that realm of talking about it and it sends it into a realm that we can't see with our five senses, but very much exists and yet calls on the five senses to help transmute the experience into another form. And so rituals help us cross over that sometimes very scary divide that just looks like a big, cavernous, empty space, crossing from one identity to a new identity, from one stage of life to the next. And without the rituals we are... we're pretty lost and so, you know, again, as I, as I said earlier, the wedding is one of the few ceremonies that we have, which comes with ritual. A lot of people tend to minimize or diminish the ceremonial aspect because they're so focused on the party and the reception, you know, that's where all of the energy goes. When really, it's the ceremony that has so much power to carry us over the divide between one stage and the next.

Thomas: And that's something I'm trying to encourage and put seeds out in the world for as well, that people take that the ritual, the ceremony of the marriage, the wedding and they, they feel free to do it their way so that it's powerful and is as powerful and meaningful for the couple as possible.

Paul: Yes, yes! And I think we are at this extraordinary time in our world where we have freedom to do that, where we are breaking out of the traditions that have gone stale and revitalizing them with personal meaning of what is meaningful for you. And there may be long-standing time-honored traditions that are still meaningful. And I'm by no means one to throw everything out that we've come from, because many of those rituals are gorgeous and meaningful - but only if they're meaningful for the individual, right? Only if they land in a place where something inside of you says yes, right? That helps me, that bolsters me, that comforts me. Right? So, you know, whether it's at a Jewish wedding standing under the Chuppah, you know, it's just this beautiful symbol of, of our new home and and this, you know, long standing tradition... if that's meaningful to somebody great. If it's not, then it really.. it's not going to do anything for you on a spiritual level.

I shared with Sheryl that before my wedding, I created a self-commitment ceremony for myself. And in that ceremony I presenced all of my Ancestral grandmothers with the acknowledgement of how important marriage might have been for them, how much of a survival tool. I did this because women’s standing in society has evolved so much even since my mother's generation, but yet we are still connected to our Ancestral legacy and felt like a really important thing to me.

Paul: That's incredibly beautiful that you did that and so powerful and it's probably the number one fear that comes up for women that I'm working with in their pre-wedding time in their engagement, is the fear of what does marriage mean? And does it mean that I am beholden to this person now and I lose all sense of self and I become boring and frumpy and... This is the legacy. This is what we've been handed, right? This is what it has meant for thousands and thousands of years is that for women, marriage has meant really the death of self: I exist, to take care of the man and to take care of the children and that's it. And so there's this very deep ancestral legacy that we have to consciously break with and recognize that we are so lucky and we are so blessed to be on this new threshold, that we get to redefine what marriage means for us. And we only can really know that after we've taken the leap, because on the other side, on the first side, on the engagement side, it just all looks and sounds so scary to most women. And you know, that's why I have so many exercises in The Conscious Bride, more-so I think in The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner, on what does it mean to be a wife? What does that mean to you? What does the word wife connote? When you think of wife, what is the connotation for you? And it's very rare that someone's going to say, "Oh, I see this rad, sexy woman, you know, like, doing like, the dance on the rooftops." Like, no, that's not usually what we think of when we hear the word wife. But it could be. More and more we are redefining that. And we are seeing that. And so I tell people, but look out into the world today and find those those models of marriage where you see a woman who is doing her life fully, you know, and yes, maybe she's also a mother and she's, you know, loves being married and she's fully committed to her path and and making her offerings, and doing her work in the world. Right? Separate from wife and mother. So, yeah, I love, I love that I love what you share. I love what you did. I think that is not only powerful, but essential on that ceremonial ritual level to recognize what we've come from.

Thomas: I'm just so happy and honored to have the chance to talk to you after, after all this time of really, really, really appreciating your book and your wisdom.

Paul: Yeah, thank you, Colleen.

It means a great deal to me to have the opportunity to share Sheryl's wisdom with you. I hope that you are able to use it or pass it along to a friend. Here's one final bit of wisdom, a quote from The Conscious Bride. "A marriage is a rite of passage no matter when it occurs, and the woman must still pass through the phases of her transformation. She must die, she must sit in the unknown, and then she will be reborn."

Sheryl Paul is the author of The Conscious Bride and The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner. Her website contains a plethora of resources for addressing life transitions. Learn more about Sheryl and her work at https://conscious-transitions.com. Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please take a minute to review it on Apple Podcasts. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S4 E2 From Pandemic to Endemic (Megan Sheldon)

March 3, 2023

Episode Summary

As we continue to move out of the pandemic and begin to vision what we want our new lives to look like, what do you see for yourself? What are you creating? Are you anxious to get back to everything at once or perhaps are you seeking a slower, more intention way of living. What might that look like?

Episode Resources

→ Be Ceremonial Website: https://www.beceremonial.com/

→ Be Ceremonial App (App Store): https://apps.apple.com/app/be-ceremonial/id1582513679

→ Be Ceremonial App (Google Play): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beceremonial.app

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Sheldon: I learned this beautiful word during the pandemic called languishing and it was this idea that you're not thriving and you're not kind of depressed, but you're just kind of floating through. And I think that's what happened to a lot of us. We shut down because we just got overloaded with all these feelings. And I think now that I'm starting to turn that back on and kind of move out of that languishing kind of, you know, blah, and move back into feeling alive and connected, I think that ritual has been a huge source for me to get back there.

As we continue to move out of the pandemic and begin to vision what we want our new lives to look like, what do you see for yourself? What are you creating? Are you anxious to get back to everything at once or perhaps you’re seeking a slower, more intention way of living and what might that look like?

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. I have a good friend who is always trying to get me connected. She tells me about the amazing people she’s meeting in the world and encourages me to keep connecting with the movers and shakers in the world of ceremony. She helped me connect with Megan Sheldon, a leader in the field of ritual. Megan is wonderful. She is grounded in nature, really connected. She’s a cultural mythologist, a storyteller, and a celebrant. She makes ritual accessible through an app called Be Ceremonial. We actually dedicated a whole episode to exploring Be Ceremonial and how it was created and how you you can use it. Check the show notes for a link to that episode.

Today, though, we’re going to listen to Megan speak about slow technology and how she is using ritual to help us transition from pandemic to endemic. We’re going to start out with a simple question: What is ritual?

Sheldon: People often ask me what the difference is between a routine and a ritual. You know, if you think about, “Oh, I make my coffee the same way every day, is that a ritual?” Like, no, it's not like it becomes a ritual when you add that intention when you add that meaning. When you're, you know, remembering the way that your dad made coffee every morning and using that as a chance to connect with his memory. Or thinking about the stress and anxiety that your body might be holding and using that moment as the pot of coffee is brewing or the kettle is boiling, to just move your shoulders around and feel the stress in your body and just kind of release it. So I often say that we fall into a routine but we step into a ritual. So it's this idea of you just fall into something and you just do it out of habit, that's not a ritual that's just laziness or routine,or that's something that you've just become accustomed to. But as soon as you elevate it through that intention of like, “Okay, what am I want that action to serve? What do I want it to bring? What I want it to do?” Then you've kind of stepped into that ritual mindset.

So stepping into a ritual mindset. This is something Megan says that we can do on a micro-level every day by simply adding intention to a daily practice we’re already doing. I would say that just playing around and noticing what feels good throughout the day is a good place to start. Maybe it’s taking a deep breath at every stoplight to help calm the nervous system, or keeping a gratitude journal, or taking a moment before we leave the office to reflect on what a rockstar we are at our job. Megan says that these kind of micro-practices can give us a good foundation to draw on when big life things come up in life. And when we need those more encompassing ceremonies, there are options. There are talented ritualists in this world and there are also more and more resources to support us in creating our own ceremonies. Megan’s app Be Ceremonial is one of those. She spent some time telling me about what it was like for her to bridge ritual and technology, and said something I’d never heard of before: slow technology.

Sheldon: If you think about the slow movements, you've got slow food, you've got slow fashion. It's about being mindful of what you're using and how you're using it. So I remember there was a small little town in Italy and I heard stories about them that they were resisting fast food. They were saying we will not allow any… we will not allow any fast food to enter our region. No McDonald's, no Burger King, no…you know, all the for the most part American but also European kind of versions of fast food where you go in and get the food and you leave and you eat really quickly and you know, you don't really have time to digest and there's no conversation. There's no unfolding. And the Italians do food so well. So they made a law. They forbade fast food to enter their walls. And instead it was the slow food movement. So how do we get back to eating with intention and seeing eating not as something that just like fuels our body, but something that feeds our soul and creates these connections and we allow it to digest and we allow ourselves to kind of enjoy each bite? And so the slow food movement was something that I was introduced to in my early 20s and I just loved it. I just felt so, so right.

And I know that they have adopted a kind of mechanism, the language for a lot of other things like slow fashion. If you think about the way that we're consuming apparel these days, and these, you know, companies that are just mass producing all this stuff that’s just going straight into the landfill. And I lived in Ghana for a while and I remember seeing this giant, giant landfill of all these clothes that were sent to Ghana from North America in such poor condition that nobody wanted to wear. And just went straight out into this dump, into this landfill as pollution. And so we have to be more mindful of how we're consuming things.

And technology is, is there too, right? If we're, if we're not mindful of how much we're on Instagram, or how much we're on YouTube, or how much TV we're watching. If we just kind of allow technology to become so fast that we're… we don't even have time to react, it's just in our face all the time, which… I'm raising small children, so I'm very aware of their relationship with technology and it's forced me to look at my own relationship with technology. Where am I… Where can I bring more mindfulness and ritual into that experience? So the idea of slow technology, for us at least, is that we want to create something that can give people tools and inspiration and share stories. And you can print out the ceremony and have it in hardcopy, so you can leave your technology behind so you don't have to bring it to your ceremonial setting. We don't want to kind of force people to feel like they're missing something if they're not there with you all along. So a lot of the workshops that we create, we're going to be pre-recording, and we're going to be putting them into the app environment so you can access them when you need them. It's not… there's not a deadline, there's not this kind of, you know, movement forward where you feel like you're gonna miss something if you're not saying yes to everything.

I have a dear friend here in Vancouver, and she told me that… what was her exact quote? “Urgency is a Western construct,” and I laughed, I'm like, “That's it! Like somebody sends you an email and you think you have to respond right away.” Well, okay, let's be ritualistic with the way we respond to emails. What would your life look like if you didn't just respond to an email when it came in? But every day from 10am to 11am, you made the same kind of cup of tea and you sat down mindfully, maybe you put on a song, and you said, “For the next hour, I'm going to respond to these emails mindfully. I'm going to read each one, and I'm going to think about it. And I'm going to respond in a way that feels, you know, intentional in the moment. And then I'm going to turn it off and I'm going to wait until the next day to respond to the new emails that have come in.” What would our lives look like if we just slowed things down a little bit? Easier said than done…

Thomas: I like it and I can feel the resistance of the part of me that's like, “No! They need me, I must, you know, I must reply now…they asked me, I must be needed!”

Sheldon: That's that fast culture being like… permeating into us, into our psyche, saying, you know, “Do it now, or else you'll miss out,” or, “They'll be angry, or they'll be upset, or they'll move on to the next.” And I do think we can reclaim the space and ritual is a really… You know, daily ritual and tapping into that kind of intentional way of living and the mindfulness… they're all connected, hey're all hopefully teaching us to not just respond for responding’s sake, but to digest and… like the Italians do with their food, right? Imagine responding to emails the way you would enjoy a beautiful meal in a small little town in Italy, savoring each bite. [LAUGHS] What would that experience look like? And maybe you're looking at the email and you think, “No, I'm not going to respond to an email here, I'm going to phone them,” or “I'm going to ask this friend or this person that reached out, you know, I can sense that there's something more here I'm gonna ask them to meet me in the forest and we're gonna have a forest walk instead.” I've hosted, I don't know, 50% of my meetings the last two years in the forest instead of over the phone.

Thomas: Wow.

Sheldon: And what that does for us is a whole other whole other chapter…

Thomas: That's so wonderful.

[MUSIC]

Speaking of slowing things down and savoring them, Megan inspired me to consider how the pandemic has helped us appreciate the things that really matter in life.

Sheldon: It's been three and a half years since my mother-in-law in Sweden has seen my children. And she comes next week. And I am full of ideas of like, “Oh, okay, what are we going to do with her? What are we you know, all the things…” And then I just have to slow down and think, “You know what, it's not about that.”It's about creating those ritual moments, the small little moments of intention, where there's no pressure, there's no traffic, there's no urgency. We're simply creating space to be with her because for three and a half years, that's what we've been mourning and grieving. So I'm really starting to let that resonate of how we can have her leave after the month that she spends with us and feel really full like that… you know, that felt ceremonial in some way. There was something that happened at the beginning and the middle and the end of the trip that allowed us to acknowledge the things that we've been holding and witness each other.

Thomas: Are you working with people specifically around rituals to mark changes in the pandemic?

Sheldon: I actually just hosted a retreat in person two weekends ago and it was all about emerging out of the winter into the spring, also known as the pandemic into the endemic. So the whole theme of the weekend was around, you know, the first evening is all around releasing what was. So the way that I frame a ceremony, there's always an opening ritual to kind of invite you in and a closing ritual to kind of close it off. But in between, you need to acknowledge the past, the present, and the future. So the first night of our ritual, we acknowledged what was and we all went around and we shared stories about what we've been holding and what we've been grieving. We wrote things down on paper and ritually burned it in this beautiful old stove fire. And we did it in silence. We witnessed each other. We didn't rush. We just kind of, you know, we were present in that moment. And the next day we found rituals to be in the present and to acknowledge what is and to not think so much and not stress so much and not regret so much. And of course, I took everyone into the ocean, because that's my go-to these days for being present. But it also comes back to breath and we were doing a breathing ritual together earlier and I think coming back to breath is so important. I base a lot of my rituals around the four elements to how you incorporate fire and earth and water and air. And really finding that stillness I think is an integral part of the ceremonial experience.

And then finally, the third day was around acknowledging what will be. So how do we… how do we create our own legacy? How do we leave the pandemic, leave the kind of winter kind of feeling behind and move forward with something that we want to carry intentionally? How do we plant those seeds that we hope will soon grow? How do we think about it as a rite of passage? How do we incorporate this back into our daily life? So I think the beautiful part about the ritual retreat was that we all came together and we all co-created these things. The finale ritual that we all created was I brought a giant bowl in the center of our circle filled with epson salts and I invited everybody to spend some time on the 30 acre farmland that we were spending the weekend on and find a natural piece of grass or flowers or moss or seaweed - something that they had found. And then at the end, we all offer that to this giant salt bowl. And we did so with intention. We were sharing something that we needed or something we wanted to offer the group. And as we placed it in the center, one by one witnessing each other, we then had this big giant bowl full of all of our intentions and our wishes and our blessings and our hopes and our dreams. And we stirred it all up together and then I had little jars for each person. I invited them to scoop up their own little glass jar and then take that home with them. And then I said, “When you're feeling disconnected. When you're feeling that you are missing the energy from this weekend, or a version of yourself that you remember this weekend, take some of these salts and place them in the bath or go down to the beach or put them in your room somewhere where you can see them.” But for me, it's that ritual bath it's just like I soak in the salts that were co-created by people that I grew to love - I’d just met three days earlier and we became a community. So for me that type of ritual that you can leave people with something to hold on to, something to tap back into that experience. And it doesn't have to cost any money it can be a pine cone you find in the forest, it can be a rock you find on the beach. I mean I'm a little biased because I live and live in the Pacific Northwest where we're surrounded by mountains and forests and oceans but you know, it can be a quarter that you find on the sidewalk in downtown Manhattan and suddenly that quarter holds a different symbol symbolism and meaning if you if you imbue it with it ,if you take that quarter and you think this is going to represent this day or this feeling.

You may not be able to attend an in-person retreat with Megan or join her in a bracing dip into the ocean, but there are ways to connect to her community.

Sheldon: We will always make Be Ceremonial available to people in some shape or form. So, I think that if you are interested in ritual and ceremony and you want a place to start, I think that it's a really good place just to start to get some inspiration and just to have, you know, a little sneak peek behind the curtain as to what's possible. And if you want to go deeper, if you're somebody who really wants to bring more ritual and more ceremony into your daily life, into the lives of those that surround you, there is a place for you here. This is the growing community for me will completely be fueled by our stories and sharing with each other what's possible. And that gets me really excited, that fills my bucket just imagine the idea of a co-created community around the globe of ceremony seekers and people that are, you know, they they might not even know it’s ceremony and ritual that they've been seeking but as soon as they hear it as soon as they you know introduce it back into their lives, they'll know. And I think it's really important for people to know that you know, I'm not here to teach you about ritual and ceremony or how to be more ritualistic. I'm here to help you remember because I do think that we are all naturally ceremonial. I think that if you look at kids… My three and five year old last year were so craving ceremony and I wouldn't even give them that much parameter, I would just create that container and give them that invitation and they would naturally become these little ceremony beings that were so happy to have a place to channel those feelings that they were holding. So if we if we ever think that we don't know how to do ritual and ceremony, just ask your kids, or ask your friend’s kids, or go down the street and see a little one and, you know, invite them to talk about, you know, the things that they do, that might be defined as ritual. And I think it should inspire all of us because it doesn't have to be complicated, it doesn't have to be costly, it can simply be that moment of intention with the hope of creating meaning in your life or in the life of someone else.

I hope you are able to take a breath today, maybe schedule a time tomorrow to finish going through emails. I hope you are well and healthy in moving from pandemic to endemic and that you have as much support, creative inspiration, and love as you could possibly have. Be sure to check out the first part of my conversation with Megan where we take a deep dive into the Be Ceremonial app. Find it on the Shame Piñata feed or at the link in the show notes.

Megan Sheldon is a Cultural Mythologist, End of Life Storyteller, and a Celebrant. She is also the co-founder of Be Ceremonial, the world's first ceremony creation platform, giving you the ritual tools you need to create your own ceremony. You can sign up for a free account at Be Ceremonial dot com or download the App in the App Store.

S4 E1 The World's First Ceremony Creation Platform (Megan Sheldon)

February 2, 2023

Episode Summary

In those significant life changing moments, like becoming a parent or losing a parent, it’s easy to feel lost, ungrounded. We might think to ourselves, “Yeah, ceremony could maybe be a useful thing right now, but where do I start?” Well, there’s an app for that and it’s beautiful!

Additional Information

→ Be Ceremonial Website: https://www.beceremonial.com/

→ Be Ceremonial App (App Store): https://apps.apple.com/app/be-ceremonial/id1582513679

→ Be Ceremonial App (Google Play): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beceremonial.app

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Sheldon: Here’s a wedding ceremony and you follow it step by step and here’s a funeral ceremony… and I wanted to blow that out of the water. And so it’s like a choose your own adventure experience where… here’s a bunch of things to inspire you. Pick and choose the ones that you like and then change them if you want.

In those significant life-changing moments, like becoming a parent or losing a parent, it’s very easy to feel lost and ungrounded. We might think to ourselves, “Ceremony could maybe be a useful thing right now, but where do I start?” As the saying goes, there’s an app for that and it’s beautiful.

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Today I’m excited to invite you to join me on a behind-the-scenes look into Be Ceremonial, the world's first ceremony creation platform. It’s an app you can download from the App or the Google Play Store and it lets you build simple, customizable ceremonies for any purpose.

Just to give you a sense of how it works, I’m going to open the app on my phone right now and tell you what I see. So on the homescreen is a list of latest offerings including new ceremonies and free virtual workshops. If I click on the “Create” button, I can open a free sample ceremony and customize that or I can choose from a list of ceremonies with a defined topic, including trying to conceive, mother blessing, miscarriage, abortion, wedding, divorce, terminal diagnosis, or sitting vigil - and that’s only a partial list.

Okay, so here’s how building a ceremony works. If I click into the free sample ceremony, I’m asked to choose if this ceremony will be for me or for someone else (I think it’s cool that you can actually gift a ceremony to a friend). Then I’m asked to choose if it will be me doing it alone, with other people, or virtually. And then I can begin building my ceremony which is structured in 5 parts: opening, past, present, future, and closing. For the opening, the app gives me three choices: Opening Space, Candle Lighting, and Three Breaths. I can click into any of these to see what they’re about, what materials and preparation I’d need to do them, and a list of steps to follow. And I can look through all of the offerings until I’ve found the flow that works best for me. For example, I might choose to take 3 breaths to open my ceremony, release the past with a fire release ritual, take a ritual walk to honor the present, and then ceremonially cross a threshold to step into my new future, and finally close with a water ceremony. Once I’ve chosen all of the components, they will be available as a step-by-step list that I can have with me as I prepare and actually hold the ceremony. It’s actually very cool and user friendly. And it takes some of the guesswork (and groundwork, really) out of building a ceremony so that I can really focus on what is moving in me and choose ritual components that match that flow.

Now that we’ve taken a deep dive into the app itself, let’s come back out to the bigger picture so I can bring you into a conversation I had last spring with Megan Sheldon, the co-founder and CEO of Be Ceremonial. Here’s a listen.

Thomas: I'm curious, how did you find your way to ceremony in life?

Sheldon: I've always been a community seeker, a connector, a convener. I was recently at a retreat that I was hosting around ritual and a girlfriend of mine from high school was telling me about these, you know, we didn't… we didn't call it ceremonies then. But she's like, “You would host these gatherings and you were so intentional in the questions you would ask and the way you would bring people together.” She was the first of any of my friends to have a baby. And she remembers, I had forgotten about this, but she remembered I gathered all of her girlfriends around in the room and I'd found this little owl shaker and I passed it around and asked everybody to infuse it with, well, you know, wishes and blessings for her. And that was, you know, 12 or 13 years ago. So I'm constantly reminded that this path hasn't been an A to B kind of path, it's been an unfolding.

When I was 20 years old, my mom went through breast cancer. And my mom and I are very close. And I was living in Montreal and she was here in Vancouver. And I remember getting the phone call from her and just like every instinct in me wanted to just get on a plane and come home and be with her. But she didn't want that. She… I was in the middle of exams and she really needed me to stay where I was, so she could focus on herself. But what she ended up doing, I now see as ritual, is she would find these books, and she was introduced to Yungian kind of theory and Marion Woodman and Women who Run with the Wolves and all of these books that, you know, she was just discovering, and she would buy two copies, and she would send me one in Montreal, and I remember I'd get these books and I would be reading them at the same time she was reading them on the other coast of Canada. And opening up this kind of world of the Divine Feminine and what it means to connect with your Ancestors and your roots and your heritage. And I'm… a white settler stolen lands here in Canada and I have really struggled with my place in this… in this part of the world. And where do I fit? Where do I belong? I think that need for belonging has been a huge theme in my life. And these books kind of taught me how to connect with that part of myself. And with my mom and with her mom and with her mother's mother and this beautiful lineage of women and men. So it's a tricky question and one that continues to evolve. But if I am being completely honest with myself, I have always been ceremonial, I just was never given the language or the permission to kind of see myself that way. So I've had to really come into it on my own and reclaim that space in a way that feels like me.

Megan echoed one of my own ideas about ritual, that of it be self-organizing. That we know how do ritual together, it is one of our inherent gifts. We might have just forgotten.

Sheldon: It's so interesting because people always say to me, “Oh, I could never do what you do. I could never do this!” And I think, “Do what? This was just like… I'm actually not doing…” I always say to people, “I'm actually not doing this, I'm setting the container, you know, I'm offering the invite...” I've studied a lot under the Art of Hosting - I don’t know if you know it - it’s like a global-wide kind of way of gathering people and their philosophy is like, the invitation is everything. If you can send out an invite and let people know what to expect and what to prepare and how to feel empowered in the space so that they're not having to look for the leader like, “Who's in charge?” Like, that's… that's one of the worst ways to convene is to have that hierarchy. So the idea of the Circle Way of having everybody step in and be responsible for co-creating the ceremony, the ritual environment has always guided me. And I'm a firm believer, and I say that every time I can be in a ceremony or a retreat, or rituals with friends, I, you know, I focus on the invitation, and I say, we were all stepped into this and we are now going to co-create this space together. And if you need to be quiet, if you need to walk away, if you need to scream, if you need to do anything that is okay. Like this is you're making your own experience. And I think that's just a way of thinking that we haven't really been taught in our capitalistic patriarchal culture of, you know, the top-down, right? This feels rebellious for a lot of people so yeah…

Thomas: And it's kind of the same principle with the app, right? Because you've created this technology that people can... there's tools, there's framework, there's structure, there's examples, there's ideas, all this kind of thing…. But you're not there helping somebody in person, helping somebody create a ceremony and they can create a ceremony… Like, I created two today that are really important to me but I'm not ready to do them yet but I have the framework set for when I'm ready to step into them. And so you won't be with me when I do them. I mean, unless I could call you later and talk to me because I know you…

Sheldon: Please!

Thomas: …but like, you won't really be there with me. But yeah… you've created the… you've given the invitation and you've created the container.

Sheldon: Yeah, and it took me a long time to see how ritual and ceremony, which for me is so sacred and so precious and so important in my life and in the lives of those that I serve and that I work with to see it as, you know, bridging with technology. So backtrack a little bit, my husband and I decided to get married eight or nine years ago now and we looked at the wedding kind of template that was in front of us and we've been to so many weddings before, and they were so lovely and so wonderful. And they weren’t us. I never was like… oh… this felt exactly like me because it was exactly like my friend or my family member. So I really wanted to learn how to intentionally craft a wedding that represented our values. So that was our first ceremony to co-create together and I think we did a really wonderful job. And shortly after our wedding, we tried to get pregnant and we did. And, you know, seven weeks later, we miscarried. And then we got pregnant again and miscarried. And a third time, miscarried. And each time it was like this invisible loss that nobody knew. It was just, I mean… this was seven years ago. So it was just starting to kind of get a little bit more traction in terms of the media and people talking about it a little bit more, but nobody was talking about a ceremony where I could honor and say goodbye. I was never even offered any of the remains from the hospitals after my DNC procedures. It just… I know now I could have asked for it and they would have had to have given it to me. I didn't know that then. I didn't know my… what I was allowed to do. Everything felt so kind of, you know, the health care system owned everything, right? You don't ever think of it as being something there that you can challenge or that you can confront.

Thomas: Yeah.

Sheldon: So I started to create my own rituals around my loss. And my husband, Johan and I, we created our own rituals and ceremonies to acknowledge not only the loss of life, but also the loss of the stories we'd started to tell ourselves. I had a lot of growing anxiety. What was happening? Why was my body doing this? Will I ever get pregnant? You know, it was in my mid to late 30s at that point, so that… you know, there was this time pressure that was both external and internal. Yeah, I think that time for me it was really about learning how these things that I naturally wanted and needed did in my life were rituals. It was ceremony. It was, you know… I wanted to sit with my girlfriends and not only share my story, but hear their story. I wanted to, you know, every year on a due date or on a loss date, I wanted to have something that I could do that would connect me so that I wouldn't forget that I wouldn't grow… grow further away from it.

Thomas: At the same time that Megan and Johan were dealing with pregnancy loss, they were also losing Johan’s father to ALS.

Sheldon: There were so many invisible moments along that journey that we did not know how to recognize. You know, a diagnosis when you first… when he first received it, but when he first told us like, what do you do in those moments? How do you bring ritual and bring ceremony to that moment when the floor comes crashing out from underneath you? And then over the next, you know, six months and year and two years as he started to lose his capacities and we started to lose that kind of feeling of hope for the future and… There were so many of those moments that I did not know, at the time I could have brought ritual into, I could have been kind of slowly building out that kind of legacy. So we went through that experience. And then when the pandemic hit and my husband was, you know, found himself at home, and I really wanted to imagine something new. He's a problem solver. He's like, “I just want to build something that will help people.” That’s just has been his driver. It has been a really interesting experience to bridge ceremony with technology and one that I continue to learn about. But I'll get emails from people on a weekly basis about how, you know, they were gifted something through this experience, or they discovered something. They were able to honor, you know, a death anniversary in a way that they never thought was possible. And I know for 100% of… I know without a doubt that I would never have crossed paths with that person had it not been through technology. You know, they'll be in Australia, or Belgium, or St. Louis and they'll be reaching out because this app touched them in a certain way, it impacted their experience. So yeah.

Thomas: Wow, you're inspiring me now. I'm thinking I have a lot of my good friends, I have their death anniversaries on my calendar so I remember to reach out to them. I would love to share your app with them.

[MUSIC]

Thomas: So as people check out the app and they get started with it, do you have any guidance for them on how to start the process?

Sheldon: Yeah. So the app is Be Ceremonial and you are invited in and there's two pillars that make up the app environment. And one is the ability to create your own ceremony, like a DIY approach. And we started with the birth and death aspects, the two areas of life, because they're the two thresholds. They're usually the places where people are seeking ceremony the most. They… you know, they have a miscarriage or they find out they're pregnant, or they, you know, they want to honor, you know, the end of their breastfeeding journey. There's something that happened in that kind of beginning of life stage or the end of life. You know, they lost a parent, or a death anniversary’s coming up, or they have been hanging on to these ashes from a cremation and they don't know what to do with them. So we really started to populate the app with these ceremonies that you could create for yourself around birth and death. And we are now in the midst of bridging out the life cycle. So, I am a Life Cycle Celebrant. I work with people on ceremonies around mastectomies and hysterectomies. Ceremonies around moving into a new home or leaving a childhood home. I've worked with people who have been fired and lost a job and they wanted to create a ceremony to kind of honor what that job brought them and also kind of burn in the fire the things that they wanted to never do again. There are so many points along the lifecycle, both visible and invisible, that deserve to be ritualized. They deserve to have that kind of ceremonial intention built into it. So that's, that's the pillar one that's like one side of the app experience is to be able to create your ceremonies and some people might come in and know exactly what they want and they just want to create a ceremony around a death anniversary, and they can just, you know, pay per use so it's a single-time purchase that they want.

And then other people are really seeking something more. They're really wanting to understand their own relationship with ritual and ceremony. Or they’re a care provider. We've got a lot of death doulas and birth doulas and hospice volunteers, midwives, naturopath counselors using our app and they create ceremonies for their clients and their patients. So they're using this as a tool that they can kind of bring to the people that they work with. I've also got a lot of celebrants using this, so there's a wedding ceremony in there and if you are, celebrate, and you've got a new client, and you want to kind of give them some ideas as to what's possible in terms of ritual, you can create a wedding ceremony that you then send to them and they can pick and choose rituals they like. You can then add new ones, you can create your own, you can draw… You know, it's the biggest thing to remind yourself there is that it's you know, you don't need to follow this word for word. It's just a guide to inspire you. I think of it like a blueprint.

The other side… the other pillar of the app which we're really starting to build out this year is the learning environment. So I've hosted tons of online workshops and courses I ran last year, had about 120 students come through a six week training that we offered around end-of-life rituals. And I want to take all of those little mini workshops and build them into the app environment. So for the people that are the members, the subscribers (you can have a monthly or yearly subscription), I want there to be a place where they can go and think, “Oh, gosh, if a client just reached out, reached out or a friend reached out, and you know, they have a child who died.” And they really want to acknowledge the you know, the grief that the family and the friends might be holding. And I want to be able to create a ceremony workshop that explores kids’ relationship with grief, and how to explore that.” You know, on the other side of it, maybe there's something around, you know, I've hosted a lot of divorce ceremonies, which has been really interesting for people. And everybody's always like, “Oh, I want to know more, I want to know what what else I can learn about this and how else this can be done and where the, you know, what other cultures are doing” So being able to look at the… the learning environment as a place to have that, that ability to go deeper if and when you choose. I think is really exciting for me, and for a lot of the people that have reached out because I think that there's, you know, the people that come in, and they just want something quick and they want something now and they know, you know, they don't need a whole lot of hand holding. And then there's the people that really want to build a community here and they want to share back their story after they created a ceremony so that it might inspire someone else. And that's my big hope with where Be Ceremonial can grow is that it will become, you know, “This is us. This is our invitation. We've been a catalyst, we've created this framework. Now let's let the community populate it. Let's let people step up and make this their own space. Let's allow this to be a place that connects us and inspires us when we hear stories from people around the world and how they took the same five rituals that I took and yet their ceremony turned out so differently. That's so interesting. I want to hear about that…” And that’s the storyteller in me is just wanting to create a space where those stories can be celebrated and witnessed.

Thomas: That's wonderful. Well, I feel like what you've created with this, the two of you, it's just such a gift. So on behalf of, I don’t know, everybody everywhere, I just want to thank you so much.

And I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to join me in this exploration of Megan and Johan’s work at Be Ceremonial. I hope that a piece of Megan’s story, either a moment of creating ritual to honor a life transition or her overall entrepreneurial spirit has inspired you as it has inspired me. Megan will be back soon to speak more about slow technology and how she is using ritual to transition from pandemic to endemic.

Season 4 Trailer

January 26, 2023

Announcing Season 4!

Season 4 of Shame Piñata launches in February! Join us as we continue to explore the rites of passage we've missed and how we can creating new ones. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Radio Public, or your favorite player.

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Hi there, it's Colleen Thomas from Shame Piñata. We're back from haitus and ready to speak with more industry leaders in the rites of passage world.

Sheldon: There are so many points along the life cycle, both visible and invisible, that deserve to be ritualized.

Mandelberg: We get to choose what we desire and focus our energy on that. And that intentionality can change our entire lives.

Find the show on your favorite player and go to shamepinata.com to learn more.