Sense of Soul - Nature and Nuture

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

Today on Sense of Soul we have  author and world-class, renowned decorative artist, Elisa Stancil Levine. She is a writer, a maker, and a nature lover and she joined us to share the wisdom behind her newest book “This, or Something BETTER.” In which reveals how true healing of deep wounds happens one exquisite layer at a time—and invites us each to consider and embrace our own path toward wholeness and authenticity.  When the Sonoma Complex fire came to Elisa Stancil Levine’s California doorstep in 2017, her world changed overnight. The devastating fire torched thousands of acres, but for Elisa, that night that cracked her wide open. The fresh trauma of the firestorm sparked a quest: what treasure awaited if Elisa learned to trust human nature? Join us as she takes us back and revisites her painful past, shares how nature shaped her character, and it later informed her wildly successful career as the founder Stancil Studios, an award winning, nationwide decorative finishes company in San Francisco. Elisa along with partners has remodeled sixteen historic houses and was home and garden editor and feature writer for Sacramento Magazine. Learn more about Elisa and order her book at her website. https://elisastancillevine.com https://www.creativesonoma.org/artist/elisa-stancil/ Visit Sense of Soul at www.mysenseofsoul.com Do you want Ad Free episodes? Join our Sense of Soul Patreon, our community of seekers and lightworkers. Also recieve 50% off of Shanna’s Soul Immersion experience as a Patreon member, monthly Sacred circles, Shanna and Mande’s personal mini series, Sense of Soul merch and more. https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul Try KACHAVA! Your Daily Superblend. For your gut, your brain, your muscles, your skin, your hair, your heart. Your whole health. Use this link below!  https://www.kachava.com/senseofsoul

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart and soul. It's time to awaken. Today we have with us the author and world-class renowned decorative artist, Elisa Stancil Levine. She joins us to share the wisdom behind her newest book, This or Something Better, in which she reveals how true healing of deep wounds happens one exquisite layer at a time and invites us to consider and embrace our own path towards wholeness and authenticity. And we are so honored to have Elisa join us today to share her wisdom with us. Thank you so much for joining us. Hello. I love your poster of your book cover behind you.

Yeah, thank you. I also love your logo. I love these spots of color because I'm a colorist. I mean, like, yay. Yeah, right. Yeah, I got this giant thing made because having this private party in my studio which has got 30 foot ceilings and you know we needed something so then i'm like well i guess i'll use it for backdrop right i love it hold on i'm gonna shut my window i hear a dog barking yeah so i was gonna say my dad decided to show up this morning and start sawing a hole in my wall for god knows what you could probably hear it right now so anyway we just go with the flow yeah i agree i like we live on a mountain and um it's very quiet here but uh if you ever look on my instagram you'll see like mountain lions have come to my window you know things will happen what mountain sonoma mountain in california sonoma yeah sonoma mountain

oh pretty did you get affected by any fires that one what was that a couple years ago there was tons there was a number is the book is starts the whole first chapter is about the fire and that how that prompted the way that i changed my perspective on what I would do with the remainder of my life. Yet, we did not lose anything. But I say the fire hit me upside the head and said, you think you're a nature girl? Well, what about this? What about human nature?

Have you ever thought about that? Because I think nature is so magical, and I focus so deeply on that all my life with my solace, my everything, to the exclusion of people. That's what the book is about, is how I learn now that I have experiencing trust, if I take it as an idea and start moving with it instead of ignoring the human aspect, because it's uncomfortable. Wow. What a huge message that came from a tragedy. Yeah. We had 80 people died, hundreds of thousands of acres were burned. Yeah, it was intense. We had a guest who uprooted her life and moved to Colorado for a while and then to New Mexico.

Because she too did not directly lose anything but the air quality for her farm animals especially her horses she was so concerned about what they were constantly breathing in from the so many fires being around where she lives and I had never even thought of that we took our horses out to uh all the way out to the coast a wonderful farm out there took them in you know we brought a bunch of hay and our horses was so funny i can tell you i mean they were wearing their uh you know fly sheets and when they got there our paint they're both geldings but the paint was who's black and white sees all these white mares and thinks oh yeah this is where it's at they're gonna love me you know and they keep looking at him like what is wrong with you you have that weird outfit on on the third day i took off his fly sheet and all of a sudden they're like oh well so he was like

having the time of his life out there by the coast so he was okay but yeah there was a huge effort here and we've changed so many things because there's it's the fire season as you understand just goes on and on now so we have this huge group called halter and they all come together to you know rescue these animals all over and then many people go like to the fairgrounds where they're all going to be staged and feed and groom and do all that you know it's like something you can do right like you're waiting to be able to go back into your world, if it's still there. I'm curious, you said something that's got my mind just like going in circles. So nature is a beautiful teacher, yes.

But with nature becomes tragedy too and comes the unknown and it's unpredictable. And right now we're in a space in our world where we can't even trust nature because we have screwed it up so much. Just watch the documentary on Yellowstone and what's happening there. And it's just, I mean, all over the world, you're seeing these things happen due to things we've done. And then you add in this human nature, which also for me, and this is just my experience, is unpredictable and you can't trust it right now either. So both of them don't feel safe to me right now in this current world. What would you say about that? I think you're on to an aspect that is definite, and that

is the desire for safety. We have it. We've always had it. We have also this equal desire, I think, for freedom. And we keep thinking we're going to have these two in this duality and it's going to be somehow perfect, right? Like it used to be when you were a girl, it was going to be when you were 18. It was going to be this woman you became that was free and safe and whole. And all these things that are compressing our own sense of self coming at us, I mean, horrifying things that are coming at us and new changes in rules and ideas of how to be a human are very alarming. So I have to go all the way back down into the most simple thing of what is trust? What is freedom? What is safety? All right, let's look at first of all,

you say you don't feel you can trust human nature. You say you even see now that trusting nature itself is a terrifying prospect. Well, because we know we must trust the fact that we are going to have to face what's happening. I can trust nature to put up a huge hurricane and another one and another one and another fire and another fire because it's saying hey hey you know this is not good all right so i trust nature to slap us upside the head i don't know how we're going to respond i also trust that there is this idea of freedom and the whole concept of freedom this idea that you're going to have this be on a trampoline and just jumping up into this joy of rainbow love that's up in the sky and free, free, free, you know, trampolining about as a human loved by all things and you loving all things. That is what we dream of.

But how would we be able to attain that? And even when you think back to these little things of, let's say you decide you're going to do things opposite to the way you were raised. Let's say you didn't like your way your mother behaved and you want to be different than your mother. You're going to be free. You're going to be the opposite. Well, this is not freedom. This is reaction. So I want to kind of encourage people to go deep into the core of where they are and try not to go into reaction because I just don't see that as a healing. I mean, the minute Trump was elected, I don't know what your politics are or anything, but here in California, in my area,

you know, so many of us just focus immediately on our own community. So no matter what's happening there, there, there, or there, we have a community and people are being and whole and good. This is, you know, this is a safety and there is a freedom in it, in that you can pour your heart into it because you can see the results. I can't pour my heart into my prayers for the Supreme Court and see results today. I can make soup and give it to people that need food today. Don't you also feel like fear is maybe when you're unable to be present unless it is in the moment that your house is on fire or something like that. But a lot of times, you know, fearing

the unknown, you said we can trust that mother nature will definitely show us that she's in pain as will your body. But to live in fear is really not to be living in your present moment. And actually, I love what you said about your city, because that's almost like the freedom that you may be seeking outside of you and bringing it back inwards whether it's in community or in your group or in in yourself yeah this fear thing is fascinating and it's prevalent and everybody can identify with it either as something they've been through or something uh they are in and what i found to be true, let's just say, if you can imagine that today you're in the known,

this is your world, you know where you are, you may not like it, but you are in this known, and the future is another room, and there's a threshold. And it seems when you look into the future, there's this veil, the veil that is of the unknown, the fact that you do not know, is thin and very, very transparent, but it colors what you're looking into in that room. In fact, what happens when you don't really think it out, you feel like the whole room is filled with fear. This veil is the fear. And it appears when you're looking

through the veil that that's all there is in the future. More fear, right? I mean, this is how it builds. And the only thing I've done with anybody that I'm mentoring or any of the assistants that I have in the decorative art world where there will be tears in the studio, there will be fear. And what I have to say to them is, you know, right now we're here. We're in the known and we think we like it, but we know we have to go in that room. Just realize that once you step into that room, you will now be in the new known. You will not be in the unknown. So it is not all unknown from here on out. As soon as you go over that threshold, just stop that thinking, girl. You know, let yourself go into that new known. And sometimes, you know, it's like, should I move in with this guy? Or

should I do this? Or should I do that? I mean, there's only one way to find out. And this is where the whole mojo thing has to come in, where you just tear open your heart and go. Now, what's happening here, when we feel so impinged upon by so many different things, changes everywhere, you know, where are you going to tear open your heart and put your mojo? You know, right this second. I suppose with you both, with your young children and your maturing children, any number of issues about guiding and respecting are where you're going to be putting your mojo. That's where it's got to go. Your own whole heart, your body, self-love. I mean, that tiny little thing,

like I was in excruciating stress. My business was growing way too fast. And my super mojo man that I love the better than anyone who's now my husband, thank you, God. You know, he just needed space. Okay. Ah, horrifying. And I was at that, I was 52. Okay, this is not a time when a woman wants to be like needing having a man need space. It's like that way. I just realized I'm really in a stressful state. And I'm really just spinning, right? So I thought, and all the affirmations in the world, and my remote healer, whom I love so much, all these other things are good tools. But what can I do? What can I do? And I made up this little affirmation, which I love, which is, I trust myself to take good care of me. It's not the

magical out there. It's not the magical healer, not the prayer that I need to listen to. No, it's here. It's not the only affirmation I would ever use, but I tell you, it helped me so much. It just calms it. And then I decided, you know, what is wanted? And I said, well, I want to feel loved. And I said, well, what can I do? And at night, before I would go to bed, I would pick out my favorite cup, any cup.

So I have a lot of favorite cups. So like my best friends, I have a lot. So put my favorite cup that minute by the teapot, feel it ready to go and just go to sleep and then when I wake up in the morning I've forgotten I've even done that right I go in my kitchen I'm like oh look look I did that for me you know it was like it's just a little gift and then you realize you know that you're you're supporting yourself and this is a help you know what i did the other day i spoiled the shit out of myself i went and got a facial and a massage all at once it was like the best two

hours of my entire life when it was over i had to have a conversation with my body to get up. I mean, I really did. It was like, really, I was like, you can't get up there in the clothes. So good. And yes, there was chaos before and after. But just in those two hours. Yeah. Oh, I was in heaven. It was so amazing. But I hadn't done it in so long. And it like reset me almost. Yes. It's interesting because I will resist going to get these girly things. And then, I mean, it's sort of like this weird ball. So one minute you're on top of the ball and you don't need it anyway because you're, you know, all that. And then you're under the ball, you know, it rolls over on you and you're like, oh, my God, why haven't I taken care of myself? Oh, no, now I don't need to take care of myself.

You know, it's just crazy. So it wasn't like I went to get this because I was in pain. Like I literally went there just for the pain. Yeah, it was great. But you know, I wanted to ask you about the name of your book. It says this or something better. When I read that, I think about how often we settle. That's what it sounds to me.

It sounds like settling. Yes. I actually use this affirmation to end some marriages, which would also be the same question. Is this good enough? Okay. That sounds like a mean, selfish way to look at something, but guess what? It's very quick. Is this good enough for me? No. Okay, I'm out. It was really interesting,

because many people are having a hard time with this title. And it seems so obvious to me. I'm saying, here I have this, okay, I have this. But if there is something better, bring it. I'll take it. I love it. You know, I'm talking about my career. I'm talking about my sense of self. I'm talking about my relationship with my son, who's 53. I'm talking about my granddaughters. I'm talking about my new grandson. I'm talking about, you know, my relationship with all these nonprofits I work with, you know, for me at my age, right at 72, it's the thing. the thing is like everything seems to be narrowing down. And in order to really stay creative and courageous, you have to not let that narrowing

down happen. You must expand. And so that's what this is about. And in even running down the mountain, as we were leaving and fleeing the fire, the thing is, I see myself as very spiritual and very, you know, helping and doing and, you know, always on the spot. And if anybody needs anything, great. Well, I did not ask my husband or even think of telling a single neighbor as we ran down our one mile, it's a mile and a half road in the middle of the night, seeing this bowl of fire coming towards us. I did not stop for my neighbors now many people will say well it's instinct but i say no this is a hole in me this is a hole in my nature girl story i'm so great what about humans and i had to admit i

have more feeling for a tender fern or a tiny lizard than the people. I think the people should take care of themselves. Okay, this is a very brutal kind of hard fact for myself. And so when I rewrote my memoir, looking at this fact, I traced how this all came to be, why I became so distrustful of humans and dismissive of humans. And what could I do to be different? This is how this or something better happened to me. Because as we're coming down the mountain, I said to him, to my husband, I just need to let you know that what we leave behind today is everything I always wanted. But we will always have what we already had.

We will always have had it. So we do not need to worry. And I look down and I have this clipboard and I write patience and resilience. And I'm trying to think I'm going to make a list of what I need. But those are the only things that I could say. So all this time, I'm in this whole narcissistic realm, right? Well, we lost seven houses on our mountain, on our mountain, on our road, on that mile and a half road, burned to the ground.

Almost within minutes, these houses just were torched. And that happened in a few hours after we ran away. No one was hurt on our road. But had anyone been hurt, it would have been so devastating for me. Because early on in my life, my grandmother scrubbed me and called me a murderer for the first five years when no one was around. She had a problem, I guess. Anyway, it turned out when I was five and I asked her, you know, why do you call me a murderer? I'm just a little child.

She said, well, you're Catholic and Catholics killed thousands of people during the Crusades. So it's just like you did it yourself. And remember, I'm already in the Catholic Church with my mother, then hearing it, you know, I have original sin or, you know, Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, say but the word and my soul shall be healed. And I have to promise, you know, it's just like, it's just such a weird but horrible so my uh grandmother was not catholic obviously she was seventh adventist but she had this quirk um so anyway that i saw i had no control over her no power to tell on her i'm not going to tell my dad on his mother who's been doing this horrible thing i just just, she stopped doing it then. And I tried to understand it, but all I had was Crusader Rabbit. That was a cartoon show that started in 1953. Right. And so I'm like, no, it makes no sense. Sorry.

I'm out of there. You know, just she's dust. I can't deal with her. And so that's what this or something better really, it just sort of runs through every little thing that I see and do, because if it's going to be, I think I have to make it happen for myself, safety, freedom, openness. And that's why I said, okay, you can have 20 years to get this together, because some old stuff here to get rid of. Yeah. When you were talking about running down the mountain, though, and you called it like this narcissistic realm, I was thinking to myself, you know, when you're on an airplane and the oxygen drops, you put it on yourself or your child first.

And of course, you know, a lot of us would say we put it on our child first. In a way, what you did was, was not wrong. You were protecting yourself. You were putting that oxygen on yourself first. When I went to my very first reading after the book came out, there was this woman waiting. She was there early and she was just very sweet about my age. And she was just sort of seemed brimming with something she wanted to say. So I said, I was getting set up and I said, well, let's go over here. What's going on? And she said, I lost everything in the fire. I read your book,

and I want you to know you are not supposed to feel guilty. So this was my first person at the first reading saying this. I'm like, whoa, angels have come to me. I don't really feel guilty. I feel like I needed to stand and deliver to myself, to the world, that there's change that can happen when you face shortcomings that you find in yourself. Change can happen then. And if you don't, if you just hide it or whatever, I don't know what would happen. It's not the same. So what did that look like for you as far as you've had a lot of tragedy in your life? What did that look like as far as the work you had to do? I mean, did you have to go all the way back and do inner child work before you wrote the book? Did you heal through writing the book or both? Well, I planned to write since I was eight.

I planned to try to tell people what I saw was whole and real for children from the minute I could start trying to say, hey, you who children are wise. I didn't even start to write this book until I was 60 something because I was too busy. So it was pretty easy to write the very early stuff because it's distant, right? And it was kind of cool to write the really nice stuff about how my career was so fantastic in that realm. Okay. Yeah, that's fun. But when I was in workshops with the work, book people are like where's the messy part you have the horrible beginning and then you have this perfect ending and there seems to be a couple decades missing I'm like oh yeah well I had a business reversal my fiance died and I became addicted to cocaine but other than that everything was fine so I didn't want to write that part the

messy part is really where the juice is but it it took me, I mean, even talking about it right now, I feel nauseated because I couldn't face it. This part that I had been, you know, churn of all these difficult things coming together were very hard for me. And so it took me, I think, about 10 years to write this. It took eight years to write it and think it was done. And then it took the fire to make me realize that I needed to rethink and rewrite. And then I rewrote it. And it took two

years to get it published. So here we are. It's like a long journey. I would say all through that, there's therapy, there's blessings, there's mistakes, rewrites, all that. I had written for magazines in the 70s, and I had a literary magazine when I was in college that I started myself. So I had been writing and intending to write, but my other work got too busy. You know, art recently has become a way that I can show the world what I see inside. I found a way to share my inner seeing can now come to the physical world by the things that I create. And I find that to be just probably one of the funnest things I've ever discovered. Yeah. So what is your art like? What does it look like?

So I do digital art and it's very earthy. So I created the, well, it actually evolved into this thing that that's now called soul immersion. But when I was doing my energy sessions, I would always walk them into what I would see and I would see their sacred space. And it's always a nature, even if it's in the sky, it's still nature. It's still, you know, organic, but I'd always be like, Oh, I could see it so clear. Or sometimes they would see it with me. And so I'd want to like compare it even for

the longest time. I didn't think to just do this. And then I started to do it and they would be like, Oh my God, this is exactly what I see. And it's just exhilarating. It's almost as though when you're in the midst of building something like that, realizing something, it's the same as some kind of intense workout. You know, your heart rate, everything changes in your whole body over this discovery aspect. And it's just psychedelic. Love it. Yes, it is exhilarating. And you know what else it does? Is it completes it, you know,

instead of me thinking, gosh, I wish she could have seen she has a hard time visualizing, she could feel the space, but couldn't see it. And then it's like, now I can show them and it like completes it. And I'm like, okay like okay good I'm glad she saw that yeah I have to look into your soul immersion thing I saw it there and didn't get to it yet so I will look into that that's really exciting so how does art help you this isn't too exciting but this is a bookmark right if I put it maybe close enough you'll see it looks almost like a fingerprint in gold it's a clumped pattern and there's this little jewel that I put on it and there's this ribbon and on the back it says they're all different i made 80 of these for my people that were coming to my studio party

and so i took words out of my book so this one says ring the living bell some say what is yours will come to you and whatever these things that are in the book, and this is their bookmark. And it took about a week and it was really fun to do these 80 things. But in the decorative art world, my world is really layering color over color. So it's a very high end faux finishing kind of concept. So we're talking about if you need ebony tortoiseshell and gilding on a cabinet, if you want the whole building to look like a French chateau, if you want, you know, this is what we do. So, you know, we've like, I don't know if you saw that we've just been in every major magazine in design and we work all over the United States and in Europe and et cetera. So my son took over that company. And there, the idea of art is really just vibrational concept of color and pattern and texture so that I can make the space resonate

in the way it should for the other things, the people, the materials that are in there, you know, and light and the use of the room, the desire. And I worked very closely with architects and decorators. So I am what I call the bass player. Okay. I'm not the lead player. I'm not going to do a little piano solo over here. It's going to be the foundation, right? And make this whole building feel like it needs to feel for the others, not for me. So that is how my work is done. And the way I use nature from the time that I ever started this work was that I spent so much time alone outside.

I understand warm and cool. I understand rough and smooth. I understand all these different things, particulate and sparkly, all these kinds of things that are part of the language of essence, right? Essence arranges itself in a certain way. So if I get stumped and I really can't figure out how to make something work, I will just go out on a walk or go in San Francisco. I had my tree. I could just go lean my chest against the tree and ask a question. And I was lucky that I live right at Golden Gate Park and I could run all the way to the ocean and back. It's like a six mile run, only going over one street. I mean, that's pretty dang good.

I'm in the woods, you know, in the heart of San Francisco. That was nice. So there outside, you just, you get these answers. It could be, I'm really upset because I can't figure out how to do something. And then a leaf just pops up from the ground. I see it. And it's divided absolutely perfectly in half with dark and light. And then I realize, oh, I can just do both.

I don't have to have one or the other. Why don't I do both? Look what it says. And I kiss the leaf. I'm all happy. I go back and I figure it out. But you have to get to that point where you're willing to be open to the wonder that's going to come. If you just keep thinking, I have to do this and only I know and I should have, blah, blah, blah, all this negativity, it's not the answer.

The answer is always, what is wanted? So the question is what is wanted? And then you get the answer. If you ask what is wrong, what is wrong with this room, this color, this thing? What's the point? You're going to go 20 steps around the corner until you finally say, and then therefore to fix what is wrong, I will do X. No, just say what is wanted. What do you think was going through the mind of the person who invented popcorn ceilings because I want to kill them. This is a very hard thing to get rid of. And I mean, we don't know that all of these have

asbestos. Certainly the only the early ones had asbestos, the cottage cheese ceiling. You know, I used to buy houses and restore them. I did 16 houses in six years, and that was in the 70s. And there weren't that many people that had done that horrible thing but I have had to remove it and have had my team have to remove it way back in the day when we first started we're closing on a condo in Florida and in this complex and these condos were built in the 80s they all have popcorn ceilings and me and my husband are like what the hell you know yeah so my partner does like windows and doors and construction, and he always brings home these really cool pieces.

If he finds them from Denver, from like the original architecture, I have this ginormous stained glass from like, yeah. And I think he said it was from early 1900s, maybe even 18. And he did say there could be lead, you know, around, you know, there's lead in that. That's okay. Yeah. You're not licking that. I love it. I mean, and I decorate, I think I even gave Mandy one time, one of the windows you brought home. I mean, I absolutely think it's amazing. I'm from New Orleans. So anything like that after Katrina, they would have like piles, like my cousin got a whole bunch of them. They

were like original tiles from like some building they couldn't restore. And they would just put them out and people could just like come and pick from them. And like, those things are so amazing to me. Yeah. And you know, you you're bringing something to the table today in this entire conversation that we talk a lot about on Sense of Soul, and that is you use the word feel. I have never in my life thought about when you're designing something, how the texture would make you feel or walking up to a building that I find so mesmerizing and feeling it. You know, we as humans forget the feel piece. We tend to think we only feel through our eyes, our perspective, our hearts. But really, like for you, you're providing a feeling through textures and stuff for your clients. I actually touched my wall, which made me think of the popcorn ceilings. Because I never stopped to just touch the texture of my wall or the texture of my backsplash.

I mean, carpet we feel under our feet. But as a person who's been in that industry for so long and been so successful, you've been providing a feeling for people. That's really pretty. And it's so important in today's world to remind people to feel what i think is will help you and others when they're trying to get into this sort of zone is first of all as you can see i move around a lot when i'm talking because i'm super kinetic and i do suppose i am a synesthete a person who has synesthesia. So I have a combination of different senses that flood into one another. But for me, it's all kinetic. So if I see a color and it looks perky, or it looks bossy, or it looks, you know, they all have these personalities, right? And so there'll

be a fragile blue, a fragile pink, a winsome yellow, a sad yellow. Sad yellow has a little bit of extra green in it. It's just sad because it can't be all happy yellow. So everything has a feeling, right? Like you were saying, exactly. Thank you for noticing. And some of the things that we do with transitional architecture, it really has to do with when you have a wide staircase with wide stairs, you feel relaxed.

Now you're going to go down a wide staircase. Oh, all right. If it down a wide staircase. Oh, all right. If it's a narrow staircase and there's short steps, right? Short treads, you feel rushed. So all these things are actually impinging upon you all around you. The size of the window, how low is the window? If the window is at a really kind of a weird height, it makes your ankles feel thick. I can tell you right now, it's weird, but it does. And when I tell people, you know, like architects used to have me come and talk through the plan before the house is built. So I could explain and justify why we're going to have a high baseboard or a low window, that kind of thing. And for the clients, I would just say, well, I want you to just imagine

this. Do you feel this? And they're like, Oh my God, I feel that. It is. It's like being really intuitive on the feeling level for how space is going to affect you. This whole time I've been thinking about certain words we've been using that keeps standing out to me. And one was you talked about how, when you get older, it seems like things start to narrow. And then you talked about, you know, a narrow staircase. So the word narrow is really on my mind right now. And I was thinking, you know, my mom's in her early 70s and her life is really narrowing. I think a lot of times that's because some people let the world harden them, their trauma that she hasn't dealt with. But I think also your body, her body is hurting,

her back is really hurting. You know, she's not athletic. She doesn't like to work out. She never has. It's just not her thing. What do you do for your health, you know, so that you don't find yourself isolating or narrowing your life? I've been a distance runner and hiker since the early 70s. And that is where I go to a meditation. As again, so kinetic, sitting still is okay. The body scan meditation or something like that, I'm like, I'm out of here. And because my work was excruciatingly physical, I had to stay fit. I had to do weight training and I had a trainer. Now I have my own workout space, but during all this book stuff, it's kind of reduced. And then I hurt my knee. But now I figured out watching my friends that get kind of bitter and seem very

hardened, they are in pain, physical pain, like you said. And I have a couple of suggestions, but some people, once they get to that state, they're not open for new ideas. But I use this product called SAME, S-A-M-E. It has a big E. It's a long word. It's a supplement. And when you read about it,

you will understand that it builds cushioning in all the joints. When they started, they invented it 55 or 70 years ago. They were doing it in Germany and Switzerland, and they gave it to these older people because they had joint problems. And then the people began to report that their pain was minimizing, but it also began to report that they felt happy and they couldn't understand why this would be except for the lack of pain. But it turns out it is something that enhances the uptake of serotonin.

So if it's going to enhance and increase your serotonin, you feel happy. So my husband used to have back pain and under huge amounts of stress. He was the CEO of a 55,000 employee company. So when he was feeling that way, I had him just start taking the SAMI and he would then feel great. In fact, women that have a lot of menstrual pain, they take SAMI when we're working with me right before their period and during their period and then they feel great. Unfortunately, they would always stop as soon as they felt great. I think that's silly. I just take it every day. Why would I stop? I feel good. So I would suggest looking into SAMI for your mom mom and then if she has less pain then encouraging certain core work i mean obviously she needs to work on her core for her

back and there's some really easy things to do but it's sometimes hard to hear from someone how you can be better and different yeah and what about having your mom do the grounding? Just just not trying to make it all woo woo, but have her stand on the earth with bare feet. And take Sammy, I would love to see that. I think that would help her. It all goes back to we have to find a way to release that pain or just it stores in our body. I mean, my mom's restless leg syndrome, you know, didn't start after my brother died. I mean, yeah, I have a friend, she know, didn't start until after my brother died. I mean, yeah, I have a friend. She goes to the movies so she can sleep.

She and her husband bought a house. It's a four hour drive away. So she sleeps the entire drive because she does not sleep at night. I was going to share with you. Have you ever heard of those necklaces where you can feel like the fingerprint of your loved one that passed away? No. Oh, my God. So they're amazing because of the texture. So like when my brother passed away,

we took his fingerprint and then we got it on a little for his daughter. And so you can literally sit there and feel their fingerprint. And then the other side of it is nice and smooth. I think that's beautiful. I didn't even know about that. I know it's so awesome. You can Google it, but I'm curious, does your book have any sort of feel when you feel your book, like the cover of your book?

Because as someone who has been in the industry you've been in, I can only imagine how hard it was to do your cover. And maybe I'm making an assumption, picking out the colors and all of that, or did it just come to you naturally? And does it have a feeling to you like a texture when you touch it? It actually feels all velvety. It's really interesting because this particular publisher, that's just the way all of their books feel on the cover. And I really love this fantastic book called A Private History of Awe, A-W-E. And it had this really stupendous clouds. And if you remember that book,

All the Light We Cannot See or something like that, that has also these clouds. And so I had told them that I wanted that. And this is what they came up with. The only things I changed on my thing was I changed the word better to be yellow because that's the point right more you know better um and then the the flames down at the bottom I don't know if you can see

it on here but um um I had those minimized a little bit just because it's really it's not just about trauma you know it's about getting to the blue sky, right? So yeah, it's almost like a little bit behind the veil. Yeah, it's probably looking a little milky there because it's getting a lot of light on it. It's really richer in real life. She and I have gone well because of her being a good friend of mine. I've gone down this road with her of looking at all of the pain and resilience that New Orleans has when it comes to hurricanes and just the history from the very beginning of what has happened on their land.

God talk about resilience and perseverance. And it made me just, I've never even been there. And it made me just think of the state as a whole and that community piece that you were talking about. Like, these are some really fucking badass people. Like, these people have been a lot. And in my mind, I'm like, why would you live there? Pick your shit up and move somewhere safer because, you know, it's not a safe place to live. And Shanna explains to me because that's just not how they are. They love their land.

They love their history. They're ready for anything. And I kind of feel that way about you and this book and these fires that happen in California. Why wouldn't you up and move and leave? Yeah, definitely. I have thought of leaving through the last two, three, four, five Supreme Court decisions. And I started telling my husband where I would choose. I might go to Vancouver, you know, the Pacific Northwest where there's a lot of moisture, right? You know, I mean, look at the people that live in Minnesota. Okay. You, this is cold. Okay. Did you know that? Or even just look at people who decide they want to

be a stonemason okay really you're going to have to be lifting heavy stuff for the rest of your life and you want to do this i mean this is just a thing things happen people want stuff and they connect to things spiritually i see new orleans is like the repository of all the rich knowledge and rich energy that comes all the way down the Mississippi and ends there. And this is where it is. It's a rich, rich, deep, and completely tangled and deep reality in that area. And to transplant to Houston, like, right, so many people were just bopped off to different places, total different environment, and certainly culture and consciousness. How?

That would be the other part of the PTSD right there, right? Because you're a stranger in a strange land, I'm sure. I know that my mom said when she was younger, I mean, it was exciting. It was like, oh, yeah, we're going to have a hurricane party. Oh, my goodness. No, I'd be terrified. Really personal question. How did your fiance pass away? We were working on a house, a big, beautiful house. He had to, he was getting ready to go sail a boat to Hawaii. He was also a sailor. And so he drove down to the

Bay area to say goodbye to all his friends and do whatever, get some stuff. And he's just spending the first night he was ever going to spend away from me. And he had said, you know, don't forget to remind me to get gas. And this was during the gas shortage in the 70s. And I said, okay, but as he said goodbye, you know, I leaned out at the top of this big Italian mansion. And I said, you know, I'm supposed to tell you something. I don't remember what it is. He goes, well, don't worry. I'll see you in the morning.

You know, don't just don't don't worry about it. And off he went. In the middle of the night, I kept thinking, well, before I went to sleep, I thought, well, I could call him because I really miss him. It's just that's silly. I shouldn't impose myself in his life. But I didn't call. I thought, well, if he if he misses me he'll call me if he needs to no call and at five in the morning i just sat straight up in bed and

went oh my god yeah i called my friend i said something's very wrong she said if it was anybody else i would say go to sleep but since it's you yes something's wrong and then within a few minutes I got a call from a friend of ours and he said for me to come over and you know now it's like 5 45 and I said really is Harry there and he said just come over so I just drove over to and found out that I had decided in the middle of the night that he why am I here I could be with her i love her i'm going home so he came to go home he ran out of gas because and there was no gas stations open and he was standing by his car trying to flag someone like this in at two in the morning and this guy had a suspended license had had three duis and was driving a stolen truck and was only 20 years old that hit him.

And he didn't die right away. You know, he died at five something. And so, you know, when I was informed, it was just horrible because my first baby died at birth. So I thought I knew how to deal with death, right? But that first baby, I was 17. So I had a plan. But no, you don't know. to deal with death, right? But that first baby, I was 17. So I had a plan. But no, you don't know.

Each death is different, right? And each death is actually, if we really think about it, expected to some degree, right? Here we are on this planet for a short time. But each death is so unique, right? The loss. Yeah. And forgiveness for this 20 year old and then for like someone like your grandmother who said such horrible things to you when you were young how have you found forgiveness or have you well my grandmother i empathized with her from the very beginning

she had a very hard life and the 20 year old i mean there was a trial they said that people thought i should go i mean i said there nothing, there's no point in going there. The most important thing is, this is how I deny the deepest pain to help me heal, was just to say, this did not happen to me. The most important thing is that he lived. So I will honor that he lived and this will be my approach is I'm not going to like mark that day of death although I have a what I call the season of grief the time that my baby died then my mother died then Harry died it's all within the same period and I go into this weird just mental place for the first two weeks before that season starts where I lose everything. I can't find my wallet. I can't find, you know, I'm just not myself. And then I go, oh, that's right. It's

my season of grief. I better eat some chocolate. This is all I got. Give me some of the self-love, right? So the forgiveness for that boy, he was put into a mental place, a mental institution or something like that. I don't know what happened with him. And when I drive by where that happened, there's an exit. And it's near, if I'm going to see somebody from my past, I'll drive by that exit. And it was really amazing to me. Finally, after, what, 40 years, I didn't mark the exit. It didn't come up as like oh you know I just didn't

see it I'm like okay now let's just say that that is a beautiful thing you know because that's where he died that's not where he was born and what he did in my life because he really connected me to my womanness and it was amazingly important you're, do you think denying that it happened to you? Because there's no right or wrong way to grieve. So this prompted me to go into that. It promoted the idea of just becoming more and more reliant on cocaine to pretend like I was fine. I think it was a very, you know, fake left go right kind of thing. You know, I thought I was making a good idea.

But it really was partly that I was already tending to use cocaine in my life. Okay. First of all, it's present. So that's a problem. And then it's present and available. So that went on for four years. Yeah. I used to love that magic dust myself. Yeah. It was so funny because I felt so embarrassed when I finally stopped. I thought, what in the hell? It's like a big steam shovel going into the same exact part of your brain. I get a headache right here when I think about it.

It's just like the same hole. You're not going anywhere new. You're not getting anything different. Now you're just doing it in the middle of the night to clean your handbag or something. It's just ridiculous. It's just a waste of time. So forgiving myself on that, that was harder than all these other people. Yeah, I definitely can relate to that.

And I am so sorry for the loss of your child. That child was born, stillborn, correct? Yes, he was born, stillborn. I had to fight for every minute I had with him because my parents want me to get an illegal abortion. Then they wanted me to have it given away. Then they sent me to live with some people in three states away to be their au pair while I was pregnant. And then they sent a guy who said that he wanted to meet me and had a fancy car. They thought, I think they

thought I would like go out with him or something and then give away the baby. I mean, this is like so crazy. During birth, the doctor wasn't available for me to push, so the nurses told me not to. And I said, I have to push. There's something wrong with my baby right now. There's something wrong. And they said, you know, been a good girl up till now. You just be here, wait for a doctor. Right. Baby died in the birth canal because the cord was around his neck. He was dying right then. I could have saved him. I didn't. I didn't push. The minute the doctor came in, I pushed and there it was. And I said, what is it? And they said, oh, it's a boy. I said, no, I'm saying what is wrong with my baby? And I smell alcohol. I feel a cotton swab on my

arm. I'm tied down. This is in 1968. They tied you down and you're going to have a baby, believe it or not. Anyway, I'm tied down. I said, let me hold my baby. Let me hold my baby. I said this like a mantra five times. And then, bam, they give me the shot. I'm out. Some 14 hours or whatever, I'm out.

I'm 17. I'm crying, but I don't remember anything. I just cried for all those hours. Do you think that your baby came back to you yes and I hadn't really gone into that idea until later he came at a better time and he's amazing and when he was born I heard the angels singing I can't tell you this song is so amazing I mean it was like a thousand or maybe ten thousand angels all singing this harmonic note. And so I told him about this and it's in the book, you know,

like sometimes we'll do something and we'll look, he'll look at me and he'll say, and the angels sang. And I'm like, yes, they did. I love that. Yeah. If there's one main message for readers and our listeners that you want them to have at the end of your book when they put it down what would it be trust yourself to take good care of you nice mantra and what if you don't what if you don't trust yourself to take good care of yourself I think then you're just on the precipice of being able to. You're

just on the outside, just on the, like, it's a tipping point. You just can just fall into that space. If it isn't something that you would ever have thought of, that doesn't mean that you won't easily transition into that. It's not a hard job. It's a simple little thing. You know, it's a simple little thing. And from that little seed, I mean, it's like always a seed is tiny and the results are huge. And sometimes with the planting of a seed, you think you've done something and then it's not hard.

But I think the hardest part, and I'm sure others might agree or disagree, for a seed is the pushing through through the soil to the new reality, right? This is the hardest part where the most energy is expended. It's just getting to where it can collect energy from the sun. So it's the same thing. This little tiny mantra gives you the energy to get the seed implanted and then it'll bloom. Maybe not for a while. I think humans make things just so much more harder than they are. I know I do. So when I hear like, you know, trust yourself to take good care of yourself.

I'm thinking, oh, okay, well now I have to get off the phone. I got to go put on my running shoes. I've got to go probably run at least a mile to start today. Like, so that's where my mind goes. You know, I like to make it like, oh, okay, or okay, now I have to go eat plant based, and I have to get off my Cymbalta, and I need to be more holistic. And so it's hilarious that my brain starts going those places when really, it can just be a small mantra to start. Yeah, I mean, it could, you know, I have a nice little story that you might like

from my daughter-in-law when she was tiny and she was in a school. It was very, very rude and rigid school in the Indian ocean in Mauritius, reunion Island off the coast of Mauritius, which is far away. And the nuns were very rude and cruel, but they had this one thing. It was this box and in the box were all these beautiful images. So if you were the best person that day, you got to pick a belle image. And you would have whatever picture you wanted. And you were allowed the whole next week to look whenever you wanted at your belle image. That's what you did. And so everybody, because it was a really rigorous school, wanted to get a bell image that they could look at for a whole week. So I would suggest for you that you would

create an image that is trusting yourself to take good care of yourself, not a task, but an image, so that it just imprints. You go, oh, so like, you know, see, I have these gardenias. New Orleans will know the gardenia is it you know, but if you have a flower, even a picture of a flower that you love, it brings you look at you look so beautiful right now. Look at you. I love this. See. So my daughter in law now she's a professional photographer and she has a thing called bell and that's her company yesterday i was mesmerized by this photo i could not stop looking at it so it's all women of different shapes and sizes one's breastfeeding one's breastfeeding a baby at the bottom oh it's i see it it's like it's a tree but it's people it's. It's all just these beautiful, beautiful women.

Yeah. In a tree. I don't know why, but for some reason, that picture just brings me like to this very peaceful place and reminds me, you know, that we're all so different, different curves, different experiences. Women are really on my mind right now. Yes. Yeah.

I think it's a time that women really need to lift each other up and support each other. So maybe that's why it spoke to me so much yesterday as well. But maybe that'll be my picture for the week. Yeah, I love it. Where can our listeners find your book and learn more about you? Well, the book is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it's at libraries. And it's also, you can get it as a, what do you, Kindle. And I like it if you do buy it from Amazon because they're making it impossible for anybody

to write a review unless they bought it from Amazon, which is just ridiculous. But that way, if you like it, you can write a review. I have tons of great, super happy, loving reviews. And so the book is available there. And the website about the book and even reading, you can read the whole first chapter on my website, which I think is very beautiful, called ElisaStanselLevine.com. And there are some other essays that are sort of prompted by COVID and some essays of all kinds of travel and just other magical essays with images that are from my blog as well. And now it's time for break that shit down essence joy transition transformation peace love all those words we should just put them all over but thank you so much for coming on

unfortunately um you know i felt like i wanted to share with you uh because dr seuss is quote one of my best friends we used to work at Children's Hospital together. And whenever one of our children would pass away, she always held on to the quote, don't be sad that it's over. Be happy that it happened. Yes, exactly. Yes. Yeah.

And I loved that because it kind of reminded me about, you know, how you felt about celebrating your fiance's life. And I just love that quote so, so much. Yeah. Thank you. I love you guys. I love connecting with you guys so much. I don't want to lose the connection of friendship. Thank you guys for your loving and kind and warm time. I really appreciate it. Well, I'm not going to be sad that this conversation is over. I'm going to be sad that this conversation is over. I'm going to be happy that it happens. See you guys. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear,

don't forget to rate, like and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.