Sense of Soul - Finding Freedom in Truth

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Today in this POWERFUL episode on Sense of Soul podcast guest Briana Pegado discusses with host Shanna Vavra, her new book; Make Good Trouble - a practical guide for harnessing the energetics of disruption (including astrology!) to catalyze positive change in the readers own life and society as a whole. Briana Pegado FRSA is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She is a trained Theta Healer, a psychic intuitive, a student of astrology and an artist. She was named one of Scotland's 30 Under 30 Inspiring Young Women in 2017 and artist. She was named one of Scotland's 30 Under 30 Inspiring Young Women in 2017 and has won a number of awards for her work as a social entrepreneur in the creative industries. Currently, she is an anti-racism and governance consultant working across the third and public sectors. Website: brianapegado.com

Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thank you so much for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. Enlightening conversations with like-minded souls from around the world, sharing their journey of finding their light within, turning pain into purpose, and awakening to their true sense of soul. If you like what you hear, show me some love and rate, like, and subscribe. And consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member, where you will get ad-free episodes, monthly circles, and much more. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, I have with me Brianna Hagado. She's a multi-award winning Values Compass facilitator and coach, an author, a Theta Healing Practitioner, and the author

of Make Good Trouble, a practical guide to the energetics of disruption. Brianna has a powerful voice and she is joining us today to shake it up and make good trouble. So please welcome Brianna. Nice to meet you, Shanna. How are you? I'm super good. I'm excited to talk to you. I'm excited to talk to you too. Yeah. So it seems like our journeys are very similar. And I love, love to hear people's stories of how they came into the divine feminine. I think that within our DNA, that needs to be healed, especially for women. Just we've been suppressed by so many things.

And just to give you a little heads up, I don't know if you know anything about me, but I'm also writing a book. And I grew up Catholic, and I started to study the Gnostic Gospels. So my journey with the Divine Feminine, it was all of the forgotten stories of those within that realm. So it started with the goddess Sophia, which is my main focus. Then Mary Magdalene wanted a voice. Lilith came in, wanted a voice, even Mother Mary. So yeah, I needed to give a voice to those stories and redeem them, reclaim their power back.

And I did some research and read as much as I could in your book and I was like wow you've had a very similar journey you're reclaiming the power of the divine feminine through your own pain to purpose story unfortunately unfortunately but it can be easier I won't say it can be easy it can be be easier. That's so beautiful. And also everything you say really resonates. My dad's side of the family is all Roman Catholic, Portuguese, Angolan. I was baptized Catholic and then went to a Catholic Portuguese school and was so terrified I learned one sentence the entire time. But then I went through the Episcopal kind of school system in middle school

and then went to an Episcopal church as a like preteen to late teenager. And just some of what you're saying there really resonates, especially as I think about little do people know, I don't know if I talk about this in the book, but maybe I do, but I have iconophobia and so I grew up with real phobia of Christian religious iconography stained glass and my dad just really couldn't understand it and he was really accepting of me and supportive and wonderful as a parent but I think on some level the kind of Catholic inner voice was like what's wrong with my daughter like why why

is she afraid like and i'm talking full-on phobia panic attacks oh it's a real thing i mean they termed it religious trauma syndrome and i feel like i definitely have we are the first of our kind to do our part in breaking down those pillars of conditions for the future generations to build their own upon something that is more authentic and something that is more true i think something that always deeply resonated when i was going through the process of training and kind of learning to become a theta energy healer and my theta energy healing master always talked about once that healing happens it instantaneously ripples and resonates across your entire family all sorts of generations and kind of conversations I've had I would have with family members or friends when

I'd resolve something or something had kind of come up that had been able to surface and kind of be healed even though I don't think it's as necessarily as simple as something emerges and you can heal it obviously with kind of theta energy healing there's that kind of possibility for instantaneous healing but I think as we know that healing journey is a spiral and it's it's kind of ascending so we constantly return to those patterns but definitely it makes me think about yes kind of being able to do that unlearning and uncovering and kind of sharing truths and other journeys particularly women kind of given how much of our patriarchal societies you know over the last several hundred years obviously that hasn't always been the case in human history but really dominated and suppressed the divine feminine and and kind of dictated how things would be passed on in terms of ancestral knowledge and

indigenous knowledge and spiritual knowledge I really I really agree I think that resonates deeply and also the beauty of seeing how so many people are uncovering this and approaching it in different ways through different modalities and through different um wisdom traditions and kind of doing that exploration and I think everything you said about Sophia and about Lilith and Mary Magdalene and Mother Mary and all of those stories that as you said and these kind of really important texts that are so central to so many different religions and wisdom traditions they're there but when you look at how they've been framed in Christianity and maybe outside of the kind of agnostic traditions but you know within any kind of wisdom tradition or religion how those kind of

women's voices and goddesses have either thrived and been protected and kind of their messages and their stories and those archetypes have kind of been supported or have been suppressed and I don't think it's as simple as suppression or promotion but just kind of seeing how those patterns have emerged and as you said we've been brainwashed and kind of convinced just kind of seeing how those patterns um have emerged and as you said we've been brainwashed and kind of convinced or kind of histories and and kind of knowledge has been kept away and I don't know about you but I did not believe in no goddesses I was like goddess is that like a princess and a fairy tale? Like that's not real. So doing my ancestry, I'm French Creole and the French Creole women were really suppressed because they weren't

accepted on either side. So they had fatherless children because it was against the law to marry outside of their race. And, you know, I didn't know any of this. So going deep into it and I found out Marie Laveau was in my tree. I grew up thinking Marie Laveau was the devil woman, right? You don't go down Bourbon Street. You stop when you see House of Voodoo. Doing like real research on her within my tree, reading real newspaper articles, following where she was and her real story. I learned that, wow, this woman in the 1800s, a woman of color,

she was powerful to be feared in her time. And I read the obituary, which was three pages long. The archdiocese named her the sainted woman. that's incredible and how they made her out to be such a monster i happen to have just synchronicity after synchronicity showing me these goddesses whether it was or i mean none of it was i didn't really seek any of it. It was just like coming to me one after another. And actually, my youngest daughter always saw all of this journey of mine right before me. So she had a dream about a girl with long red hair in a green dress. One night in the middle of the night, she told me about it. She said she had a new angel like Bridget it's giving me goosebumps hearing about kind of your daughter seeing these goddesses before just

before you because so much of what you just said resonates so deeply with a lot of the messages of the book the chapter three kind of talks about goddesses and goes through these three goddess archetypes one is Kali um one is actually Cassandra and we think about Greek mythology that truth teller who wasn't believed by anyone who predicted the fall of Troy her brother was the only one that was listened to because he was a man Troy fell um and she was taken by um one of kind of the warring clans and a really kind of well, well-known character in this whole fight and, you know, was taken into captivity and still predicted her own demise. So there's so much in there as well.

And then a third archetype, which I revere as a goddess, just going back to what you were saying about your ancestry, who is warrior queen Nzinga, who lived during the time that the Portuguese invaded Angola on the west coast of the continent of Africa and she fought for the kingdom of Ndongo and was you know when her father was was kind of assassinated by a warring clan she kind of led the resistance against the Portuguese for decades and kind of that warrior energy is really in there so I wanted to speak to that because a lot of those kind of well not in the same way but you know those goddess figures and archetypes are deeply

seeped and embedded into the book and then the second thing I wanted to speak to is also about as you were describing the fear that they had of this incredibly powerful woman at the time and how she was demonized that narrative narrative was flipped. And there's something really beautiful in that process of death and rebirth and transformation of reclaiming these kind of narratives. And also I think and hope in this book, if it attracts people that have been whistleblowers, that have been truth tellers, that have been condemned and ostracized, who feel really alone, it's kind of flipping that narrative.

That's been a lot of my own kind of journey as well of, okay, you're ostracized, or this narrative is being pushed about you, because people fear you because of your power. And it's so easy for us to get absorbed into the dark and anxiety into the fear, because you know, we're human, and we want to be part of a community, we're relational beings, We love being out in the world. We're deeply interconnected with all things that be, all living things, sentient beings. But that keeps coming back to binary. But yeah, that kind of binary of the dark and the light. And actually that fear and how people sometimes meet fear with fear because of what it reflects back to them.

Those their own kind of fears, their own kind of them those their own kind of fears their own kind of needs their own rejection of themselves but also how can we actually take that as a signal of deep power and how do we sit with that and I say that to a lot of people who I work with I do a lot of anti-racism work I do a lot of work on grievances I work in the cultural sector and the arts and creative industries work in the charity sector and there's something here I would say because I started off my life in the student movement and activism before I went into the arts you know when someone speaks out or brings something to your attention or challenges you as fiercely or as gently as they like I'm not really speaking to that it is an act of love it's an act of gratitude because if they didn't care

they wouldn't bother so the fact that they're taking the time to bring it to your attention to work through it to kind of raise it really shows a kind of care ethic and a love ethic and I think often people sit in that defensiveness and that feeling of rejection oh I'm being challenged or criticized or someone's bringing something to my attention I didn't notice or my power is being challenged in some way. And I hope the book as well, especially in chapters eight and 10,

kind of explore what happens in the body when this happens and also Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of grief and how actually a moment of disruption, whether or not we make a choice to do that or experiencing it as an external event actually is us kind of also being activated potentially but going through these cycles of grief denial anger um all of bargaining all of those different stages and so that comes into the book a lot but when I was younger even though my dad

was baptized Catholic and kind of I was it was very extra I was flown to Portugal at 18 months to be baptized because it was like you better be baptized in our church type of vibes and of course I don't remember that trip and then after that I didn't really have much contact with religion because even though my dad had a Bible and like reference kind of Bible stories, my mom was really into her career and she was in politics. And I think that consumed a lot of her life. My grandparents, I saw a lot of evenings, weekends, summers, they were not going to church either. And I'm not saying that's the only way to kind of practice, obviously, but that kind of religious education or those reference points weren't as strong maybe until my pre-teens and

later so I think I was really influenced by popular culture by astrology and kind of reading horoscopes in the back of magazines and newspapers I had Christian friends who were Persian a few doors down and her parents were really strict about the films we watched the TV shows we watched so there was some of that influence there but I actually think I was really especially in my school education I was younger really supported and influenced by nature and kind of I think because of that these ideas of fairies or these ideas of spirits or goddesses I don't think I kind of fully grasp what that could mean. But I know that I also didn't think, oh, they don't exist.

I think I was kind of in this liminal space of thankfully being open to a lot of things and not being directed one way or another, being told, yes, this is true and this isn't, thankfully, because my parents started to like get a lot closer into attending church being part of a church community or some kind of religious practice when I was a little older and my parents separated and I actually think my mom sent me to church as like a place to go to be held so yeah I think those things were left quite open. You know isn't it so funny that they sent you somewhere to get baptized? It reminds me of my dad, like right before he died,

even though, I mean, they, they were Catholic, like, but they didn't go to church every weekend, you know? And right before he died,

he was like, I need a priest. Cause I need to confess just in case. Forever. I was like, Hey dad, like, but it's almost like this fear that lives within them that still has a hold on them, even though they're not even practicing.

There's still something inside of them that's controlled by that, by that fear of God, which I mean, fear in God should not be in the same sentence. Reminds me that my dad actually went to seminary so there's like an added layer to this and angola kind of when portuguese were still there and there was a lot because of a fight for this war for independence there was a subscription so my dad had to join the portuguese army and before he joined one of the best schools in the area was a catholic seminary so he went until he was 17. And then, you know, had the option to continue. And essentially, I think the line was something like, no, father, I've learned enough or something like that. He said, no, thanks. But I bring this up,

because you're talking about your kind of your dad's fear at the end of his life or towards the end. My dad was interesting. I think he was so well versed and so well trained, for lack of a better word. He had so much a lot knowledge about feast days and saint days and you know the kind of calendar and I'll never forget when I was 11 and I started puberty it was a really special time but also not a great time at the same time the day I started menstruating my mom took me downstairs because my dad was taking me to school and she whispered it to him. And again, I'm 11. I'm so embarrassed.

And my dad goes, what an auspicious day. This is the day of St. Dada. It was January 17th. And I was like, it's so interesting. His entire world was wrapped around this calendar. I know. Yes. And these saints, most of them that I had discovered discovered were just named saints because people were worshipping them.

And there was no actual historical proof that there was a St. Bridget of Kildare that was not. Or you look at there's even a St. Sophia all over hidden in plain sight right there. There's the biggest cathedrals ever which were once built to be the center of christianity but you know what's so what's so interesting and and i like to historically correct or give knowledge to is that you know how i described that all of my family was forced to be catholic at the beginning of the Code, I believe, started with no Jews allowed. But the second was that all slaves must be baptized and given Sundays off. This was a forced thing by the French, who also occupied many of the other smaller countries and and still today i don't know a lot of people know but it's something that infuriates me but what was once saint joming now haiti they still pay france

every year for their freedom that is freaking bullshit and the world should do something about that this is a country that has been desperate for centuries i mean this is it's unbelievable and i can't believe people don't talk about it it infuriates me but you know people don't know true history We've been sold. Yankee Doodle came to town riding on a fucking pony. That's not the truth. And I live in Colorado and where I'm sitting right now was once part of Louisiana. Louisiana wasn't some little tiny boot. It's so important you're raising this because it was really after 2020 and George Floyd in the UK, the conversation about anti-racism, what that actually means re-emerged.

Because obviously we know there've been civil rights movements. There's been kind of, you know, anti-slavery movements. We had abolitionists. This isn't new, but this kind of modern conversation in Scotland is huge because 1707, Scotland joined the Act of Union, joined the UK and had access to the slave trade. And it's Scottish slavers, colonists, merchants that kind of grew the slave trade. I mean, the city of Glasgow and the city that I'm in Edinburgh

is literally built on the backs of slavery. Streets are called Jamaica Street. All of that sugar, all of that, all of those crops, cotton built the UK. And it wasn't until I started to get into anti-racism work, because I do a lot of anti-racism training and facilitation, that I really started to understand the history, because of course, it's not taught in schools. Most people, if you ask them in the UK, what the British Empire was, they would say it's a point of pride, you know, and not talk about slavery, not talk about exploitation of labor, of bodies, of resources. But back to your point about Haiti paying that money to France, you know, now and continuing to, UK taxpayers were paying

former slave owners' families money that they lost during the abolition of slavery. Paying that off up until 2015. So my tax money has been going to paying off British slave owners' families. Instead of reparations that should be going to those families who were enslaved. Wow. Right? I mean, whoa. This is reality.

And this is where I feel real healing, not just for a race or a gender, but inside me when I did my ancestry and I went that far and I saw the struggles and the destruction of families and lives and a history that gave me the power to want to educate people because I believe that it is with the knowledge, right? And the education about the truth. This is where I healed. i needed to know what made this body what was living in this body what were the patterns that were playing out unconsciously and the minute i had that awareness i was able to heal and move beyond that that's where healing starts that's where i see that needs to be that's what needs to happen people need to know we've been kept in the dark. So you giving a voice to these things, you giving a voice to even goddesses I've never heard of. I don't know the story of Cassandra.

So thank you so much. I really want to do some research on her, but this is what we need to do. Yeah, I think there's so much here about our body's knowledge and intelligence. And obviously we've seen in the health and wellness world, you know, the rising conversations about nervous system and the vagus nerve and how we regulate our nervous system

and all of these kind of somatic impacts of trauma on our bodies. Obviously, these are things that ancient wisdom traditions from Ayurveda to Chinese traditional medicine, just so many traditions have known the entire time. And it's Western medicine coming back around to this knowledge. But I think something you said there is so key, because in my own journey, and I've asked myself this a lot of times, why would I gravitate to the empire, the place that as an American we escaped? And why would I kind of be so drawn to this place? And there's something

that's so beautiful about Edinburgh, its history the Scottish enlightenment the openness here but it's very complex and my relationship to the UK and to Scotland in particular shifted in 2020 because it unearthed all of this trauma all of this exploitation that I was aware of but I didn't really have deep knowledge about and where that sits in my body and impacted my body and all of us is so key and I think also when we think about anti-racist arguments not arguments but kind of anti-racist practice and learning about it being somatic and grounded in the body this whole white supremacist project of the ideal body type Aryan blonde hair blue eyes was invented by scientists and eugenicists literally in the 1400s 1500s and 1600s we have evidence of this but i think that what gets lost and i think is really beautiful about what you

shared is obviously this trauma shame guilt impacts all of us obviously you know black and brown people were exploited and literally treated as cattle and objects but yes what does that do to the psyche of the nations and empires that were trading bodies and imperialism and colonialism and all of this and I think that that process of healing is all of us collectively going well this isn't good for any of us and I'm not kind of making a comparison here but it negatively impacts all of our bodies that energetic exchange that kind of somatic knowledge that's kind of in our bodies from that deep trauma. And I think what's happening in the UK, it's a cultural thing. And Scotland's very different because Scotland has its own history of its culture erased, the Highland clearances,

tartan being removed, indigenous languages not being allowed to be spoken because of the british empire so it has its own kind of history of that but i think what has been erased is like this collective denial or amnesia of like not kind of understanding this or not knowing this but there's a real kind of healing journey and process around this and i think really quickly back to bridget when we look at scotland's history of kind of paganism and of the wheels of the year and all of the festivals like Samhain around Halloween and Beltane, obviously, there has always been a deep practice of this, obviously, in the north and the west coast of the islands and in the highlands but this kind of community of if you want to call it witches or pagans or wiccans or people close to the land is really thriving and re-emerging in ways that was always present becoming so much more popular and Brigid is Celtic and kind of you know a goddess of Ireland but the whole kind of region is so impacted by her energy and what she represents

and when we look at things like Christmas we know Christmas trees were taken from pagan traditions and Easter eggs and Easter bunnies were taken from pagan traditions and kind of the Catholic church and Christian churches said well people already celebrate these things let's incorporate it into our Christian holidays and all of that history is just so incredible as we see things being repurposed and claimed and and reclaimed and co-opted in some senses but that whole cycle is just incredible no matter where you are in in this world today it has been influenced so much we all come from the same place originally some well we might come from different planets, but yeah. But here on Earth, you know, we've all dealt with the same, you know,

generation after generation, you know, dealing with these. I almost feel like it's like every generation was less and less and less and more programmed and less of their inner world. But now all of a sudden, when we become aware, it like returns to us and we start remembering and connecting back with that. And you mentioned, and I do Reiki, so you do Theta Healing. And us who are awakened, we're looking to Mother Earth now,

ourselves, energy, our own power, reclaiming that that for healing how did you get into the theta healing beautiful well that comes into my my own story that you were talking about kind of that kind of pain to healing journey and part of this actually really briefly going back to kind of indigenous communities that's a big kind of interest of mine because on my mom's side of the family who are all from North Carolina we are Hala'wa Siponi and that kind of indigenous community is strong but you know even though my great grandmother who was alive until I was 16 it was really kind of blessed and grateful to kind of know her she went to the palace and she was still kind of quite active but even you know five years ago if you googled hollowest of pony nation you wouldn't even be

able to find an active website thankfully it seems the community um is growing and has a school and is kind of the language is still being kind of protected but that's something that's been so interesting to see that journey and something i'm really interested in um and it's not kind of protected but that's something that's been so interesting to see that journey and something I'm really interested in and it's not kind of a part of my heritage I've connected with directly but I really kind of intend to in the next few years. In terms of Theda and oh there's so much I could say about this and also kind of that link from Indigenous heritage into a trip I took back to the States in April but I'll come on to that later in terms of data it was 2017 I was a few years out of college showing my age and I was in this predicament so I was running this arts festival I set up as a social enterprise working two three jobs to kind of pay my rent and I lived with my ex his parents

bottom his apartment bottom his flat but it was a really emotionally abusive relationship and I was still kind of working through my own trauma history kind of with emotional abuse in my family and in my childhood and essentially I came across this article. And at that point, I was I've already I was already very kind of aware and into angel numbers and kind of I still had my own spiritual practice, I could call it. But I had this real dark night of the soul kind of turning point moment because the festival was going into its third year, one of our funders had pulled out last minute. So it was really chaotic, you know, the relationship wasn't in a great great place and I came across this article that basically was talking about how you could incite and call Kali the goddess Kali into your life and it had this mantra which I've been

told later on by a guruji you never read mantras from the internet so I've learned my lesson but it was this mantra to incite the goddess Kali and Kali the mother goddess you know this energy of kind of protector and destroyer she's this fierce warrior Durga is her flip side this fierce warrior as well and this protective energy but really she's there to kind of cut ties with things in your life that aren't serving you I basically right off this incantation went to sleep And I kid you not, within a week, my festival had lost its funding. So actually, it was kind of in a precarious state, the festival lost its funding, my relationship was over, I was out of my apartment. And everything

felt like it was falling apart. My health was really suffering, of course, because of all of this kind of stress. And I had this real opportunity to kind of start again. And thankfully, because I was in a really great supportive community and network of friends, I had plenty of places to go. But it was at this real point, my visa, even in the UK was kind of at risk, because I was planning on applying to stay in the country on a partner visa, even though up until that point, I'd gotten an entrepreneurial visas and made my own way so what I'm getting at is it was February 2017 within a week all of these things cut my kind of festival health part-time work relationship living situation visa status is I going to stay in the UK and I went through this process of reconnecting with myself. And I remember going to a friend's birthday within that time, within like a few days of this happening.

And she's an artist and a dear friend. And she had been seeing a theta energy healer because she was really struggling with her fertility journey. And this theta energy healer is a shaman and an artist. And she said, Brianna, you should talk to Eileen, you know, just as she's really helped me. And I then spent three months with her going through an intensive kind of almost apprenticeship in terms of a shamanic practice, data energy healing practice. You know, she helped me connect with my higher self. We did medicine wheels. And essentially after that process, I decided to sign up to train under the healer.

She trained under Jennifer Main, who is American from the South and lives in Edinburgh and started my Theta Energy Healing journey through that process. So it was really kind of a kind of number of synchronicities, events falling into place. But it was also kind of really initiated by that action i took to call in khali and originally it was supposed to be about khali and evolved into make good trouble okay well you need to get or look up rashree Ma. She received Kali Ki Reiki. Oh, incredible. Yeah. Because I don't know about you, but that started to come into my work too. And my journey was so similar. I tell you, I mean, it was just lines of synchronicity. I mean, I wouldn't have ever seeked Reiki. I mean, you know, that was out of the scope of religion and staying in my lane,

right? And I was worried at first that I would be persecuted as many women had before. This is the new lane. I've done shifted over to this lane. How have you navigated that being worried about being prosecuted sorry my adhd brain interrupting you but yeah how did you navigate that you do but yeah how did you kind of process that because I think a lot of my processing of that has been through writing the book but I've always been the good girl who wants to follow rules who wants to be validated who wants to be you know liked who who's a you know recovering perfectionist recovering people pleaser that's all that trauma journey but there's also a part of me that's a little bit of a rebel a menace you know I was in an all-girl punk rock band when

I was a teenager I played tackle football on the boys tackle football team I was the only girl so I think what's happened with me is throughout my life I've had moments where that kind of energy kind of just has to come through I can't do anything about it in that sense of injustice but I think I was often told by my mom you know don't be a bleeding heart you know you can't fix everything you can't be worried about everything. You're too sensitive. And obviously that language isn't helpful, but yeah, I've kind of, it's, it's not that it's a dual thing. It's all been part of me, but I've always been navigating that like goody two shoes and also, nope, I'm not standing for this, but not able to speak for

myself. That wasn't deeply integrated, that ability to actually stand up for myself. But yeah, how did you navigate that? I feel the same, everything that you just said. But I think that when I really did learn about how this was a pattern from generation to generation to generation, and I looked at my daughters and I said, no, this stops with me. This stops right here. And the only thing that set me free was the truth. And I had not been living my truth. I had been living what everybody had told me to live, believe. And so I started to live by my own experiences of what I knew was true. And that's still how I live today.

You know, I use my discernment, right? When you talk that healing journey through energy and learning that I am multidimensional, you know, I'm not just this meat suit and I can trust this body to tell me yes or no. You know, here I was a mother reading books written by a man on how to, what to do with my child. When I could feel these things are not right, you know? And you know, what's interesting is one of the things, you know, they've, they've done studies where, you know, how they used to say, you should let your baby cry it out. It never felt right. I hated that so much.

It never felt right. But you know that with studies, that may have caused some children to be narcissistic. Right? Makes sense. You know, this is how our brains end up changing, right? Because of our environment, right? That epigenetics. Well, I was freaking determined to change my environment, my perception for my children,

for that to stop with me. That was, you know what? I could do it for my children. I wouldn't have been able to just do it for me though, Brianna, because I wasn't, I'm not wired. For generations, we only did for our children. That's all they had. So that self-love was not there.

So that was something that I really had to work on. But when it comes to boundaries or for sticking up for anybody, it was them. And then after my anybody, it was them. And then my journey. Debating that self love takes time. And again, it's, you know, it's also generational. And I don't want to generalize every generation, but I think younger generations, agency, there's like, so much beauty in how kind of asserting themselves and also learning from the mistakes and learning from what they see from our generations and previous generations. What you said there

really resonated because in my own family history, my immediate family, and my family gets very touchy about this, especially, you know, a black family in the US, you know, it's don't air your dirty laundry, especially kind of Sutherland's in your business. But you know, my family, you know, exists within a toxic narcissistic family system, they will not admit to that they don't see that. But back to what you said about never again, I don't blame anyone. It's their own trauma histories, what they've inherited, their what they've learned, it's not, you know know it's really hard when it comes to things like narcissism it's like I'm not saying it's anyone's fault but back to what you said about kind of letting babies cry and that kind of activating or enabling that kind of narcissistic tendency

and that narcissistic behavior and we think about being in the US you know and growing up in the states and all of those you, messages we're told about success and picking ourselves up by our bootstraps and anyone has an opportunity to thrive, which isn't true and is a real challenge. I think, you know, I personally had to kind of be away from the States to kind of be out of that energy and out of those influences to get that perspective. I'm sure there could have been other ways to do it. But I really hear you because for me as well, it's like, I don't want these patterns to repeat, I want them to resolve. And if I have children, I definitely don't want to pass on these habits, behaviors, this trauma, this intergenerational ancestral trauma to them, but also so grateful

that I have access to the knowledge to the to the guidance I don't want to call them experts I think we've got a little bit of a like hero guru obsession and it's a complete process continually of growing of becoming um and something you said really briefly as well about discernment because there's a kind of chapter in my book about values and I've done this values compass tool which people might be familiar with for years with artists I work with, with people I'm coaching and mentoring with organizations to help people kind of unpack, not from a perspective of morals, beliefs, what they were told through religion, but genuinely trying to align with that inner discernment, intuition and inner knowledge and going what brings me fully alive how can I understand what my values are and live in a way that I experience less resistance because I'm not out of alignment with my truth and so everything you said there reminded me of that too and it is a constant practice building those muscles of learning to keep those boundaries in place and

also I think sometimes when we're in stress or overwhelmed, and I don't know how you feel about ADHD and your experiences with it. I'm recently diagnosed. But yeah, in those moments of overwhelm, we kind of default to the path of least resistance, what we're used to, and building those new neural pathways

and choosing differently and unlearning those patterns is beautiful and so worth it takes effort. It's another thing that needed to be broken. Vulnerability is what connects us as humans. I, you know, yeah. So that's, that's another thing that had to be broken. And I think that was, that was hard for me. I'm like, Oh God, what am I going to do? I'm just going to, I'm going to go and have a podcast. I'm in the top 1%. I'm like, people are freaking listening to this. And here I am just speaking my truth. And it's not an easy journey. It's definitely not, but it's through those challenges, right? Things are going to shake up. You're going to have to make good trouble to get through it.

And I, that's why I love the name of your book. There's lots of polarity in this up. You're going to have to make good trouble to get through it. And that's why I love the name of your book. There's lots of polarity in this journey. You're going to find the light in the dark, right? Yeah. Just like there's been an imbalance of energies when it comes to the divine feminine and the, well, and I would just say the masculine. And now I'm seeing how important I've been so focused on the divine feminine. And now I'm starting to really seeing the need and the importance of the divine masculine, not masculine, I realized, you know, I'm still learning, right? The journey is, it's never ending. There's so many layers and layers of, I mean, if I'm, if I ever figure it all out, I'm probably just, you know, part of the cosmos or something, but I'm far from it. So I feel very fortunate to be able to connect with people like you. I feel so aligned with you

in, in what you're doing and your purpose and your book. In fact, I really would like to have your book in my hand, you know, read as much as I, oh, look, it's so beautiful. And I actually saw you, I don't know if it was on your Instagram or something and you walking into a bookstore and there your book was. And just such a beautiful moment made me think about like all right shanna get on your horse and finish that book i'm super close but it's important to give voice to this right i can't wait to read your book and yeah i have so much gratitude as well for you and the work that you're doing and connecting you and i think something you said about that balance of energies and also there's that real and I always say this the little kind of chaos monkey agent in me the kind of little

rebel child the rock girl always says it's like you know it's always about cultivating that relationship to chaos and discomfort you said there's so much polarity in this journey there is and I know that you know there's age- polarity in this journey there is and I know that you know there's age-old wisdom that brings us back and time and time again of you know the thing you're avoiding is where that deep work is but it's a balance of you know gently moving towards that deep work and doing that work and also giving yourself space for love and joy and fun and playfulness and I've found throughout my journey I've sometimes kind of it's the hyper focus, hyper focus on the healing or hyper focus on things I need to learn or things I need to change. And, you know, I've always been aware of my neurodivergence,

but it's definitely been kind of amplified in the last two, three years, in part because of writing this book, like really having like a day job and writing the book and kind of balancing those things but yeah something said about that was so beautiful around that journey and I'm also so grateful for all of my teachers because you know I went to Montessori school for a bit which is in the book much of my journey with a science teacher that had you know like 45 animals in our science classroom and this peaceable kingdom yeah with animals that shouldn't coexist living in this peaceful space and I had the real opportunity to study indigenous religions of the contemporary world at college and university and comparative religion in high school and just I'm so grateful for all of that knowledge and as you said it's a constant learning journey I will

continue to learn and unlearn and especially when anyone asks me you know what is my spiritual practice and even on the back of the book I say I'm a student of astrology because I will never be an astrologer who knows all of this work deeply I'll still be learning and I'm still very early on the astrology journey but yeah I just think kind of it's so beautiful thinking about this as this process of learning and extending ourselves that kind of curiosity and the last thing I'll say about it is the book is framed by the tarot and it opens with the tarot card the fool and the fool is kind of this figure you know that's stepping off of this cliff into the unknown and people might be looking at this figure and thinking wow this is foolish this is ridiculous but it's really embodying this energy of being a fool to life, being open to whatever comes, you know, answering, responding to this call to adventure and having no idea what might emerge in front of you. It could be a stairwell.

It could be a path that kind of emerges and I kind of invite the reader at the start of the book if they're open to it to embody the energy of the fool on this journey and think about kind of change and disruption and our relationship to chaos and how that energy can be cultivated as a call to adventure that if we're open to it we can answer a woman or man yeah exactly dude that's amazing dude I freaking love you do you do sessions virtually beautiful question I will be starting to do sessions in the next couple of months so I'm about to introduce a kind of workshop session two-part series on values but I would love to collaborate because I'm about to introduce a kind of workshop session two-part series on values but I would love to collaborate because I'm looking to do that and also in August I'll be in the States I'll be in upstate New York and I'm planning a retreat with another healer I love

called Daya basically yes is the short answer and there's more to come so please keep eyes peeled for that what's your website tell everybody where they can find you tell them the name of your book and where they could find that as well beautiful my website is brianna b-r-i-a-n-a pagado p-e-g-a-d-o.com and you can find my book make good trouble a practical guide to the Energetics of Disruption, anywhere you buy books. Online at your local independent bookshop. Always support the locals.

You can order it through my Instagram at Brianna Pagato. And also my publisher, Watkins Publishing. They have a beautiful website. You can order it anywhere you buy books. Awesome. Thank you so very much. It was so awesome to meet you. I hope that we keep in touch.

I'm so grateful for you having me on. Thank you. Speak to you soon. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to Sense of Soul Podcast. And thanks to our special guests for joining me. If you want more of Sense of Soul, check out my website at www.mysenseofsoul.com where you can work with me one-on-one or help support Sense of Soul Podcast

by donating to my coffee fund. Thanks for listening.