The One You Feed - What is Wellness Culture with Fariha Roisin

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

Fariha Roisin is an Australian Canadian writer whose work frequently covers her identity as a queer, south Asian Muslim woman as well as self-care and pop culture. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Vice, Village Voice,and other publications. She has written a book of poetry (How To Cure A Ghost), a journal (Being In Your Body), and a novel (Like A Bird). In this episode, Eric and Fariha discuss her non-fiction book, Who Is Wellness For? An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind. But wait, there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!   Fariha Roisin and I Discuss Wellness Culture and … Her book, Who Is Wellness For? An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind The way her severe childhood trauma has shaped her entire life That we are shaped by the trauma of our families and ancestors The factors that weave into how we need to heal The importance of looking at and into the darkness for ourselves Being alive IS the journey of self-discovery to show up as a fairer, kinder version of yourself How discomfort is undervalued That unraveling is the nexus for change in life The difficult path of healing will give you your life if you follow it How achieving or ascension can be a trauma response What it means to become a more whole version of yourself – where every part of you is allowed The idea of taking only what you give How healing requires being present with yourself  Fariha Roisin links: Fariha’s Website Fariha’s Newsletter Instagram By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! If you enjoyed this conversation with Fariha Roisin, check out these other episodes: How to Overcome Childhood Trauma with Michael Unbroken Donna Hylton on Healing and HopeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The world teaches you not to be present with yourself, and I think healing is just the idea of being present and understanding that you're worth being present with. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do.

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast

is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Fareeha Roshin, an Australian-Canadian writer whose work frequently covers her identity as a queer South Asian Muslim woman, as well as self-care and pop culture. Her new book is called Who Is Wellness For? An Examination of Wellness, Culture, and Who It Leaves Behind. Hi, Fareeha. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Good. Welcome to the show. Thank you. We are going to be discussing your latest book, which is called Who is Wellness For? An examination of wellness culture and who it leaves behind. But before we do that, let's start like we always do with the parable. In the parable,

there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents as well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you, what does that parable mean to you in your life and in the work

that you do? When I first read the parable, firstly, I'm very happy that you started with that because I think it's a beautiful way to start a conversation. And for me, what I've taken away from that parable and my own life is that I have tried very hard to feed the part of me that is good and the part world right now, there is a reflection of the other form that's being fed, the greed and the anger and the hatred. And so I think my work is really contending with that dissonance and that void that's been created by, I think, lovelessness, really. So let's start with a little bit of your story so that kind of listeners understand where you're coming from. Because a lot of the book is you talking about your healing from severe childhood trauma. You don't have to spend a ton of time on it, but just share a little bit about what got you to the point that you needed

to embark on such a healing journey and get so focused on wellness? I would say that the main thing for me was that in my later 20s, I realized that there's like a two-parter in this story. Like my entire life, I grew up under a lot of violence and my mother was mentally ill and attempted to kill us, attempted suicide. There was a lot of like extreme devastation and negligence. And for most of my life, I kind of existed in this half self, hybrid self, a self that wasn't fully there or present and was in a performance of self. And it was really only until my later 20s when I realized that I was a child sexual abuse survivor and that that was very much

something that had shaped my entire life, even if I didn't have language for it. So I kind of embarked on this kind of reclamation of a self and of a past that I didn't have words for when I was going through it. But I definitely think that it's shadowed absolutely everything about my life, everything about my personality, everything about my work has been shadowed by this reality. That is the case for people who've been through trauma or adverse childhood events is that it does shadow us. Although I think that's true across the board, right? Our past shadows all of us. And you talk about this so well in the book. I don't have the line, but you know, how we're this collection of everything that has sort of happened up till now in ourselves, you know, and we're all this way. But some people, it's just clear from the trauma they've suffered, their journey seems to be a lot harder. I do think that like, as you said, you know, so many of us, if not all of us have this kind of tapestry, these familial lines,

these ancestral lines, these traumas that maybe, you know, we haven't directly even faced, but our ancestors have. And so we store it in our body. So there's like so many layers of this. And for me, I think it was a compounded reality of not just my own trauma, but my mother's trauma and my family trauma and my ancestral trauma that really sort of like, I think was all located in my body. Like I very much started to understand that I carried that and that there was a legacy of that in my own. Like I very much started to understand that I carried that and that there was a legacy of that in my own physicality, in my own being. And I understand why one would deny that, why one wouldn't want to face that because it's so overwhelming. I denied

it for 29 years and it was really, I think, a choice of wanting to live more fully and more holistically and wanting to actually be with all of it, not just the good parts or what I think are the good parts, really wanting to remember my life. And in that remembrance, also like understanding maybe there are parts that I don't want to remember, but the parts that, you know, are coming to me, I think, have such beauty in their travesty. It's a beautiful turn of phrase there. I like it. But, you know, like I've grown so much from my life. It's interesting to be at this stage, having put this work out that's so vulnerable and quite ugly.

workout that's so vulnerable and quite ugly. And then to actually, I think, feel a bit of, like a sense of relief that people now know that there are people now that have access to this book. You know, people like me that didn't have anyone and that maybe didn't really understand what was going on. I want this book to be a roadmap. And so, yeah, it's really quite amazing to sort of sit with my own words sometimes and be like, wow, I survived all of that. And that's pretty wild. which is that not only do each of us have our own individual life history and, you know, what degree of trauma or again, I like the word adverse childhood effects because that's, you know, there's a study that sort of measures that. And I think it really gives us a sense that like you can be damaged in lots of different ways as a child. So we all bring that to the table. But then you also talk about there are other factors that weave into what we need to do to heal. Do a holistic, in a communal sense, that means looking at the legacies of trauma that haunt this nation, that haunt multiple lands that have been

colonized and those kinds of realities, you know, like even just sort of my own ancestral past and partition and the liberation war. What I wanted to write in the book and what I'm glad that you pointed out is that so many of us have these histories and genocide is one thing and like, you know, bad parenting is another thing. And they do affect us in really, really haunting ways, I guess, and how it's important, I think, for all of us to kind of start to engage with those kinds of realities. And I think that we are a society that has replaced God with capitalism. And we think that buying things and accruing things, and I guess essentially just replacing or filling that void that we feel that's so dark and lonely, instead of actually factoring in what's going on there. Maybe it's also a response to sort of the social realities that

people don't know what to do about. I think collectively, we feel very distraught, you know, like even if you do face your history, it's like, well, what do you do about it then? I understand that a lot of us are sort of like, well, where are we? And I think that that's sort of an overwhelming part about being human and being in that space of, yeah, we are in the unknown. And that's why I don't know if you remember this, but I start the book with this Joanna Macy quote about the Bardo and how in Tibetan Buddhism, you know, the Bardo is a very, it's a liminal state. Yes, but it is a state of immense shift and change the lens. I think that darkness is terrifying, but it's so beautiful to go in and jump and see what's there and see what's in those dark waters and make friends with what comes. I'm excited about us as a society and us as individuals doing that work, being able to tend to those shadow parts. Yeah, you have a line near the book I love. You say,

we need to return to a time when we were invested in ourselves as people, when it mattered if you were a good person. If that time in history has never happened, which I sort of tend to believe, why aren't we all actively jumping towards that possibility? Is it just our unevolved and unchallenged nature holding us back? Or is it something more like our collective traumas? I think that's such a beautiful way of thinking about it. But I do think to some degree what you're talking about there, and you reference it in a variety of different ways in the book, but it's really about being willing to look right back at ourselves and go, am I a good person? And that is not an easy question to answer. You know, what is our

responsibility to a world that always has had up till now, essentially infinite suffering, right? For all intents and purposes, it's infinite. And what is the response to that as a person? You know, how much is enough to be a good person is such a deep and profound, but to me, important question. And we're talking about existential life questions. And I think that there is a tendency, and maybe it's just like the sheer want or sheer will of the human mind to want to comprehend

things like that. Like, okay, we've got it. We figured it out. Okay. Life. Um, and I think the journey of life, you know, for me and yes, okay. I'm, I'm 32. I'm still quite young, but I have experienced like a lot. And I think that that has that sort of like profound abject loneliness, darkness has made me realize, and also seeing it with my mom, understanding, you know, generationally, that kind of trauma. I see how actually simple it is to surrender and to understand that being alive is that journey of self-discovery, of questioning, of challenging, of asking every day, am I a good person? I don't know if it makes sense to arrive at an answer. You know, I don't, I think that's besides the point. It should be besides the point because every day you're going to be a different version of

yourself. And the hope is that every day that you're alive, you can show up as a more clear, fairer, kinder version of yourself. I've got to read something that you wrote about this because I love it. And your writing is so beautiful. You say true healing means that at some point you're willing to die cyclically only to be resurrected as your truest self. It's an understanding the journey doesn't end. You don't just one day find enlightenment, much like how you don't just arrive at happiness.

It's not a destination as much as it's a state of being that needs consistency as well as a desire to adapt, to become again and again and again. This state of unraveling is the nexus point for change. That's just so well said. Yeah, I mean, I really, I think, feel it. I live it. It is a reality for me that that very thing and that sort of awakening and remembrance of, I guess, the beauty of being alive, which means that, you know, if you're not feeling good about your life, like really understanding what are those things that are holding you

back. good about your life, like really understanding what are those things that are holding you back. And I think for me, being in the natural world, going into the natural world, really just being alive with nature shows me how lucky we are to be on this planet and how every day should be carried with such reverence. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging.

Really? That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead.

It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You move between the personal and the collective a lot in this book. And one of the general critiques you have of the modern wellness movement is a little bit like what you just said, which is that I'm paraphrasing for you, but we treat it as a thing that we can get that like many things in capitalism, it's a product that we can buy and then we're going to have it. We're going to arrive. We're going to be enlightened. We're going to be healed. I can do it in a weekend or a month or whatever it is, but I'm going to get it. And then this is going to be over. Right. And, and one of your

critiques is like, that's not either the spiritual or the healing journey. That's not how it works. And, you know, my experience is when we present it that way to people, it's damaging. Because what I think happens is if we think we should be healed after a weekend workshop, and we're not, we internalize that we are the problem, not the fact that the promise made was a little too grandiose. And, you know, this is something that you've talked about looking in the mirror, right? I've got programs I sell that are about transformation and what's a reasonable way to market that that's fair and honest. You know, I'm often like, you know, my saying could be like,

I'm going to teach you how to not make things worse in your life. And I'm like, nobody's going to buy that. But if you can do that, that's a really good skill. You know, so I wrestle with this piece as a white male in the wellness industry, right? Like there's a lot in your book that causes me to have to look in the mirror, which I've been doing, you know, I've been asking these questions and I don't know if that was a statement or a question there. I feel like there was a question early on, and then I just kept talking. No, I'm glad. I'm really happy to hear that. I think that we can go back to the question, but I will say discomfort is undervalued. You know, I think that we deny those parts because we've been marketed to, and we've been sold this idea of the life that we deserve. And when we don't of the life that we deserve.

And when we don't get that life, we're like, hang on a second, there's something wrong. And we feel entitled to the life that we were sold. And of course we do. And I think that that is the nefariousness of market capitalism. Like it really sells you. You know, like you deserve a good life and you can have a good life. And that means you can be cured and like eat all of the fucking candy that you want for the rest of your life. And it's like, you know, it's like maybe your body doesn't want that. You go have a Heineken and you're that beautiful and you're on the beach, right? I mean, like who doesn't want that? You know, and I think

also we're facing a lot of people don't want to do the work. And I think that that's a tough part of society that we have to accept. Like not everybody has the possibility or the attention or the dedication to do the work. So how do we navigate that collectively? Yeah. And it's easy to sort of look at that and want to sort of blame that person for not wanting to do the work. But as we said earlier, we're all a collection of our experiences and the forces that are acting upon us. You know, there are often reasons that people aren't able to do quote unquote the work. Like if you're a, say, for example, a single mother who works two jobs, you know, has two kids. It's kind of difficult to engage in deep trauma work while you do all that. Right. And so, you know, those are questions that I don't begin to know how to

solve, but they're real. Yeah. And I think I definitely contended with that a lot while I was writing the book. And my hope is that obviously nothing is a cure-all or like a one-stop shop, especially when it comes to taking care of shop, especially when it comes to taking care of yourself, especially when it comes to like really looking at those deep-seated wounds in some of us, in many of us, if not all of us. But I also hope that the book gives a sort of introduction to many different things that might help and sort of help you guide through that work with yourself to just sort of have a template to see what does it look like? Because I think for me, because I've been in these worlds for so long,

a lot of questions that I've been getting, you know, for the last decade is like, well, where do I even start? Yes. And, you know, like those questions are ones that I've heard a lot. And I hope that the book sort of presents itself as an explanation and a beginning for something that then you can take on and hopefully is not going to impede on your life so much. But I think that something I had to shift in my own life was like, and this was very much through my work with my therapist, you know, like I have a chronic illness. And so for most of my life, I kind of denied it. And then as I've gotten older, it's actually gotten worse. So there's a part of me that I get very inflamed

by food, certain kinds of food. So I've had to be just very restrictive since I was 10. And my idea of a good life is always like, okay, I want to eat all this dessert and like, you know, just like be allowed to just like drink a ton of alcohol, whatever, you know, like, I don't know. I think there's a part of me that wants to be a libertine, you know, like just indulge, overindulge. And my body has never allowed me to do that. And just recently, actually, my therapist asked me in the last couple of years, she was, she just kept asking me actually, like, why is it that you crave the things that are bad for you? Why can't you crave or why aren't you craving rather? And what's going on there? Why aren't you craving the things

that are actually help you? And I think societally, we're also, I think, dealing with that. Like, why is it that we don't want what's good for us? And why are we also, again, like with junk food, just the ways in which I think like Americans eat and like the globalized sort of food culture of, you know, these giant corporations, you know, being like, yes, like eat this $2 hamburger. You know, this has had sort of an extremely detrimental impact on our well-being. Even just farming, like just simply farming in America and all of the layers of violence that happen in food and food justice or the lack of food justice, especially if you're

a black or indigenous person, you know. So there's so many limitations. But for me, and what I hope through what I do is like showing people it's actually not only worthwhile, it's going to give you your life if you follow the path of healing. Heirs act upon us. Food is a great example, right? Like you've got your familial history with food, right? Like for many people, their family teaches them food is comfort. So you've got that. We know food is often used as a way of escaping or avoiding. So if you've got trauma, you're looking for some way out.

Food is one. We've got a marketing and advertising system that is constantly putting the worst kinds of foods in front of us. And like you said, we've got a food system that is sort of fundamentally broken. Like I walk into a gas station, which is also a convenience store. And I look around and there is often literally nothing in there that I will eat. And I want to be clear, there's plenty of things in there that I in a bad moment will eat and would eat, right? But if I look at what my sort of dietary goals are, there's nothing. Not like, oh, it's only a few things. It's often nothing. So again, if we look at food, we can see all these different layers that we are sort of

working with and against. Yeah. I mean, class. Class in America, I think, is one of the most riveting and dangerous realities. And we don't talk about it and we don't talk about how ghettoized so much of America is and how these food ghettos and the ways in these food deserts and the way that we like, I guess, not only harm people that are of different class brackets and oftentimes, you know, lower class brackets and how we underprivilege them just by, you know, lower class brackets and how we underprivilege them just by, you know, allowing them to have access to clean running water. If we're thinking about Flint, if we're thinking about, you know, all of the indigenous communities

throughout North America that live in reservations that don't even have like electricity or even like access to their ancestral meat, like buffalo, you know, the ways in which like buffalo farming's just been completely obliterated. And that was a really important engine of American colonization of this land, just completely severing people from their actual natural food resource. And we're, I think, just like finally kind of like understanding the impact that that like hundreds of years has had on us. Yeah. I was recently in Europe. Not that Europe has everything figured out or solved by any stretch of the imagination, but I was just struck by the difference in the food system, even from America. It just was a different sort of animal overall.

Again, not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but the difference was very stark to me. But it's more accessible. You know, it's not about money. It's not about class. Like everybody deserves to have indulgence. And I think a country like France that I have a lot of issues with, obviously there are things that are class based, but I think food in a lot of ways in European countries and a lot of countries outside of America, honestly, understand and value how important it is to feed people well. And how if you feed people well, that is going to have incredible effects on them as people in your country existing in this nation. You know, it's like, it's for the good of the people. And I

think to go back to the parable, actually, I think America has chosen to feed all of the other parts and not to feed the parts that are good, not to feed the parts that are deserving. I say this a lot in the book, but if America was to become the nation that it says it is, it would change the world. It literally would, but it chooses not to. It chooses not to be that. Yeah. You know, that's challenging as an American because that statement, like America chooses, makes it sound like there's one America. And it feels to me very much like there's two Americas right now, which is something I wrestle with, many Americas. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. There are many, but there does seem to be one vision that goes one direction and one vision

that goes a very different direction. And within those, there's a lot of difference, but, you know, I've thought about coming back from Europe. I was part of me was really like, I don't want to live here anymore. You know, like I don't want to live in a place that feels like it shares none of my values, but then there's another part of me that's like, well, but shouldn't you stay in your home and try and change it? And, you know, so again, sort of those looking in the mirror conversations, I'm like, I don't know the right answer. You know, I don't know the right answer.

I'm a non-American willingly living in America, critiquing America. You know, I think that we're in a very interesting time. And I do think that maybe there isn't an answer either. But I definitely stay here because I understand that changing America would change the world. You know, if things were to really effectively change here, it would have a ripple effect on the world because American culture and Americanism has completely dominated us in many ways and how we exist and how we interact as a global society. Yeah. So interesting how recent that is to broadly speaking, right? I mean, that's really post-World War II that that happened, which is just not that long ago. You know, your book,

as I said, goes back and forth between the collective and the personal. So we've been on the collective for a minute. I want to hop back over to the personal a little bit. You write early on, I've always found the pursuit of ascension a most honorable quality, like rising, right, or achieving more or doing more. And you say, I also found that that's a trauma response. And I wanted to ask a question, though, because it's also a spiritual longing and calling, right? To ascend, to become a better person, to become closer to God, or whatever, enlightenment, or whatever term you want to use. And I'm wondering how you think in your own life as a person who is deeply committed to your own spiritual development and your own spiritual growth and somebody who's a trauma survivor

and recovering from that, how you think about this desire to sort of get better or to ascend, how you tell the difference for yourself between those two, you know, trauma and spiritual calling slash longing? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think I've pivoted my desire for sort of material ascension, an ascension on sort of like a more professional sense and sublimated all of that into a spiritual ascension. And, you know, I'm very, very open and devoted to my love of God and my extremely deep connection

that is potentially the reason I'm alive. And understanding, you know, especially not having a family in a lot of ways, not having the family structure, not having a mother, not having sort of that reliance meant that I had to find that in different ways. And God became sort of the vehicle for me to understand my own journey, my own path, my own past. And I think the way that I differentiate between them now, well, I guess I don't really feel that kind of pressure anymore. Well, I guess I don't really feel that kind of pressure anymore. But I once or at least for, I think, a considerable amount of my life, I felt as if if I wasn't a better version of myself every day, every year, every month, every minute that I was regressing and that I would be very punishing, like self punishing andunishing and very critical when I would screw up or, you know, lie. You know, when I did something that I was like, oh, that's not good. Like I would be very punishing with myself. And I had to understand that the language that I was using,

that sort of self-criticality was entirely my parents. Like I had adopted the way that they talked to me and developed, you know, and I think a lot of us probably have this too, like a voice that just watched always and judged. And so, you know, I would just always roll my eyes at myself and just always feel just like very like, like annoyed and, you know, frustrated. And I think that it was only when I started to realize that that wasn't me, that had nothing to do with me. That was something that I felt as if it was like almost a constant creation that was there to sort of surveil me into being a good person, like make me afraid. And I think that that's probably also tied to like, that's how I was fed religion. That's how I was fed faith in a lot of ways by my

mom and by my extended family, not so much my dad, but you know, you should be afraid of God and that like God is fearful. And I had to unlearn those things. I had to unlearn and understand that God is loving and that God is compassionate and that those are the qualities that I want to focus on in God and in myself. I've chosen to shift in what I prioritize and understanding that my spiritual ascension, which isn't something that I can document or put on Instagram or like write about necessarily, maybe write about, you know, like eventually, but, or like, you know, processing, but it's not something that I can sell. It's something that's private and personal. And it is about that longing. And that means that it's consistent and it's every day. And it's something that I have to tend to rather than like hold myself against. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you

and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really? No, really.

Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. I think the word love is a beautiful way of sort of thinking about it. There is a pivot point there. And I think it's challenging because as somebody who's been pretty focused on my own spiritual development, there is an element in it for me of discipline. Zen is the tradition I've practiced in most recent years and to show up for meditation and for all that, even when I'm not feeling it, you know, so there's an element of that in it, but that can't be the whole element. One of the things I do when I start to meditate is I always try and ask myself, like, why am I doing this? And there is often a broad why, you know, like,

which is very much in my case, you know, the phrase I would use would be to realize my true nature. So there's that, but then there's oftentimes a smaller thing because I want to be a better partner today, or because I want to be kinder today, or because I want more peace in my mind. And then there are days where honestly, when the truth, the best I can do is like, because I've made a commitment to do it. That's why I'm here. You know, I hope it's not that very often,

but so I've always found trying to get that balance right. You know, one of the things I work a lot with people on is how do we hold ourselves sort of accountable to our values without being mean or hard on ourselves? My experience of a good life is we want both those things, right? This is something that in terms of accountability, and I talk about this in the book as well, and sort of about transformative justice that goes hand in hand, I think, with accountability and like accountability culture. We live in the time of cancel culture. We live in sort of this

obsession with carcerality and the obsession which is sort of i guess like pretending as if like people are disposable and if they make one mistake then they're you know off they're out and i actually think something that is really exciting about utopic envisioning which is something that I think I hold very dear to my heart and something that sort of is like a lodestar for me, you know, it's like idea of what does utopia look like? You know, if we were to evolve, all of us, if everything was to just come true, you know, about like us changing as a society, then what would that look like? And I think that we have to begin to understand and make space for messiness and for chaos and for the realities of just like

people make mistakes, people, everyone, absolutely everyone makes mistakes. And some people might have a different opinion than you. And hopefully those things are not about harm, you know, like racism, like not big things, but like, you know, I think that we also are at this moment in time where it is so black and white and people are just so on one side or the other, there's so much finger pointing. There's such, I think, a disassociation of self and actually like, what does it mean to be human? These are not human conversations. They're just performative.

They're so gassed up. And if we actually were able to sort of look each other in the eye and talk about these things and talk about how valuable it is to make space for our complexities, which means like, we're going to, you know, we're going to do things that we're not proud of, or there's things that we're not proud of, but the hope is to continue to move towards a place of heartful, heartfeltness and love and love. I mean, it's so cheesy and so corny, but like, I have been thinking a lot about just like the anger that I have and this sort of frustration that I have when I see, you know, people that are violent towards women and, you know, even just

like everything that's happening with Roe v. Wade, it's hard not to feel immense anger. And then the reality is, is that as simple as, and sort of as corny as it sounds, so many people that make laws in this world don't love people. They just don't love themselves and they don't love people. And that just has to be something that we consider, that we understand, that we can see clearly like, wow, there are so many people in this country, in this planet, on this planet that are hurting. And that's just the reality. And so how can we start to see the hurt instead of, or not instead of, because I think the other thing, seeing the reality is also really important, but also seeing the hurt instead of, or not instead of, because I think the other thing, seeing the reality is also really important, but also seeing the hurt.

Yeah. It's really difficult to see people behave in ways that to our eyes seem to be clearly harmful to others. And what is the response to that? What is the response of a person who's trying to hold themselves to a high standard of moral conduct, you know, and a high standard of understanding what is the response, you know, in Buddhism, we talk about the three poisons, right? Greed, hatred, and delusion, right? And those are human qualities. Those show up in all

of us. Now, in some, it seems like it's showing up more. And like you said, there's something about a willingness to say like, okay, that's not who I want to be, you know, like, I'm going to actively work against those things. But I do think actively working against them does mean really thinking about how do we relate to the people that we would quote, unquote, call our enemy. And again, I use that word, because it's not a word I would normally use. But I think in religious context, it's a phrase that's used often, right? You know, how do you relate to your enemy? There's so much to it. There's so much complexity. And I love what you said about human conversation, because that is what I mostly feel really is missing. You know, how do we have a conversation about the really difficult things in life and be able to allow ourselves

to make mistakes and evolve and change. And make space, I think, for that humanness, you know, like if what you said, was it greed or the three poisons? Greed, hatred, and delusion. Hatred, greed, delusion. You know, if these are natural parts of the human being, the humanness, the human reality, the human experience, something that, again, my therapist really helped me with was coming in and saying, like, I want to be a better version of myself. And I think like two years into us working with one another, she was like, okay, so I have sort of a rephrase. What if instead of you stop saying you want to be a better version of yourself and you said you want to be a more whole version of yourself? What would that look like?

Yes. And I was just like, what? And she's like, your anger is allowed. Your hurt is allowed. Your messiness is allowed. Every part of you is allowed in this version of yourself. And I think that this obsession with perfectionism and material ascension doesn't necessarily mean about like money, but just like sort of materiality and like the ascension of like on a material plane. You know, I think that that was something that I felt like would give me meaning. Like if I like strive for that kind of perfection and like get better and better and better and like be this perfect version of myself always.

And like the perfect friend the perfect daughter and it's like well where does that leave room for me to be tired be lazy want to smoke weed and not talk to anybody yep not pick up phone calls be really bad at texting i'm really really blunt i say things to people's faces and i'm like i get myself into trouble. You know, there's all of these parts of who I am that should be allowed to be alive and, and to be a part of the conversation. I'm, I don't want to hide those parts of me anymore. Like I want to be a real version of myself. And I think that like doing this work has really helped me understand that it's okay if people can't accept me if I'm like showing up as my full self, because that's not going to change the way that I show up.

Yeah. I'm going to bring everything to the table and I'm going to, and, and, and hope for the best, you know, hope that, hope that people respond and that people understand. But if they don't, it's okay. Because I think that being authentic is a very valuable pursuit. Indeed. Boy, there's so much in what you said there that we could dive into. I love that reframing from better person to whole person. I think that's really true.

You know, and authenticity is a really interesting idea because I think it's good to be who we are. And what's really difficult about that sometimes is who we are. Like, who are we? That question. What feels authentic is very often very damaged. You know, as a recovering heroin addict, I relate with like that felt really authentic to me. There was a whole thing there that felt authentic and real. And yet it wasn't.

Actually, I shouldn't say it wasn't because it was, but it's not where I wanted to stay. It's not the person I wanted to be. You know, it was very destructive. And so I think this is such an interesting question and kind of what we've been sort of batting back and forth that I think about all the time, which is, yeah, we want to encourage the best parts of ourselves, but we also want to allow ourselves to be okay as we are. And how do you balance those two things is something that, you know, I think is another one of those very complex questions that takes a lot of discernment. It takes a lot of discernment. But I also think that it's just really meaningful to bring those parts of oneself. Like the fact that, you know, you have this history of addiction. And what does that say about where you were and who you are? I mean, to me now, I'm curious about what happened to you in your childhood, you know, and like what brought you to that state of like, I know self-destruction. I know what that looks like. I've experienced it

myself and I've done it in different ways. And I think that like when you choose that kind of drug, it's like, it says a lot about how you feel about yourself and how you feel about the world. And I think that's really compelling to talk about. Yeah. And listeners know it's something I have talked about, you know, a fair amount. And I think the question of, you know, what happened to me to get me to that point is it's hard to figure out. I don't have a good, clear answer, right? There's a few things that go into it. One is I remember almost nothing of being a child. Now I've heard that that can be a trauma response, right? That people who are traumatized don't remember anything. That can be a trauma response, right?

That people who are traumatized don't remember anything. I also spent a good number of years of my life obliterating every brain cell I possibly had. So I've been on antidepressants, which are known to mess with memory. So the reality is I don't know whether there is a capital T trauma event in there somewhere or not. The lowercase T trauma, you talk about carrying what your parents carry, right? I think in your novel, you quoted the character saying her parents were thoroughly self-loathing. And I don't know if I would go that far with my parents, but I would say they were

thoroughly depressed, unhappy, angry, and they were carrying what they had been passed down from their parents. And I know that I was a sensitive child who I think needed to be held and parented in a certain way and just wasn't, you know, just wasn't. And how much of that is nature versus nurture, right? Like I can look through my family and be like, well, there's alcoholics there. There are lots of depression in there. So the dots all sort of connect, you know, again, whether there's a capital T trauma, I don't know, cause I don't remember much, but I can see how I got to the point I did, you know? I mean, I think for me, I've often said that drugs and alcohol, I think I had done a

really good job of trying to stamp every emotion and feeling down. And I think I had done it fairly well. But the result of that was I felt dead. And so all my life, I was into crime because it made me feel alive. You know, drugs and alcohol, they weren't my disconnection. They were actually my connection. You know, they were the way I felt alive. So that's a short version of me recounting kind of why I think, you know, I ended up at that point. What's your sign? I am a Gemini. Do you know any of your other placements? I wonder if you have 12 houseplants.

I do not know. My partner might know that. She's done a chart on me at one point in the past, I think, but I don't remember. Okay, you'll have to send it to me. All right. All right. I'm curious. Yeah.

So we're nearing the end of our time. Let's talk about a term you have that you use near the end of the book that I really like. It's called sacred reciprocity. Share a little bit about what that means to you. Well, sacred reciprocity is something that I learned from two people, an ayahuasca teacher that I was working with for a couple of years and also a indigenous elder named Robin Wall Kimmerer who has a book called Braiding Sweetgrass. It's an incredible book and she's also written an essay about this called The Service Berry. But it is very much like native thinking and terminology

and something that I think across cultures, indigenous cultures in the world, there is this belief. And I think in a lot of ways I was raised with this, but an understanding of the gift of anything. So the gift of time, the gift of love, the gift of, you know, literal gifts, you know, how important and sacred it is. I think that something that was really hard for me when I came to America was how much, this is just like a small example, but like to go back to food, you know, like if you have a plate of food and you have like six people around, who's going to actually think about, okay, there's six people. Everybody needs to get an equal and fair share. How do we do this? Often I was encountering that people would take more

and like not really consider, oh, this is like a group meal that we're all eating. And so those kinds of dynamics, I think say a lot about what we feel we are owed and what we feel we are entitled to. And I think that that also comes from lack and, you know, it's not just, again, like something that we just have to be like, that's, you're wrong. It's understanding that comes from lack and it comes from a place of like, it'd be easy to be like, you're selfish. But I think, yeah, it's like a place of just like, I am so scarce. I actually need to take more and not considering like, oh, maybe other people need that as well. And I think that sacred reciprocity and understanding that fairness is really important and that everybody deserves a slice of the cake.

Everybody can have a slice of the cake. That's also the shift. It's not that there's only 10 slices. It's like, well, if there's only 10 slices, let's make more slices for other people. And like, let's find a way to actually commune honestly with this thing. And because we have money, we pretend everything is finite and limited. But in nature, it's very different. You know, it's like, oh, of course, like, you know, things are expendable.

But if you are working with that, then it's never going to be gone. If you are considering it energetically and considering I'm going to meet something halfway, then you can have a more balanced, something that like is sustainable, just genuinely sustainable. And I think in terms of ecology and climate, you know, that's really where we have to shift. We are taking everything from the earth, believing that there's no consequences, but there's such vast consequences that we're experiencing now, you know, and it's like, oh, heat rising. It's like, I wonder why, I wonder why that, you know, we're in a pandemic even. There's a lot of factors going into this.

And so to me, sacred reciprocity is just simply understanding that all humans deserve things and are deserving of consideration and love and that changing the way that we take and interact with people and really sort of reestablishing a more fair model that understands like take only as much as you give that there is something extremely beautiful in that so that's what sacred reciprocity means to me yeah take only as much as you give i think that's a beautiful idea and one that is you know thinking about you know in our own lives like okay how do we know that and that leads me to another question i kind of wanted to ask you. As somebody who's had to heal a lot of trauma, that takes a lot of interior time and work and focus. And, you know, your spiritual practice part of it takes an interior time and focus. And I wonder how you think about,

is there a point at which I turn too much internal towards myself and less giving to the world? Or, you know, is it all the same? If I'm healing myself, am I healing the world? How do you think about that? I think it starts with healing yourself. I think it always has to start with healing yourself. I think a lot of people look the world and they're like, let me heal this. And then they get overwhelmed and they stop. But if you heal yourself, that is going to have effects on your family, your friends, the people around you, you know, the people that you buy coffee from. Like it's going to affect all of your relationships and your connections with humans, with plants, with wildlife, with, you know, animals.

Like it's going to change everything. And that's why I think self-love and love is really the place to begin a journey of healing. I don't think that you can actually have healing otherwise. It's paradoxical. You have to start at that place that we're not allowed to sort of be present in, which is ourselves. You know, so much of the world teaches you not to be present with yourself. And I think healing is just the idea of being present and understanding that you're worth being present with. And for me, that was a really big thing. I also, you know, not in the same ways, but have relied a lot on drugs and alcohol and smoke a lot of weed. And at a certain point in my life, my therapist was just like, why don't you want to

be with yourself? What's going on here? Like, why do you always want to disappear from yourself? And I think just realizing that there is just such beauty and just being present with yourself, with your friends, in an interview, on a podcast, it's like that affects you. That changes you. Having that kind of connection with anyone changes you. So to me, I think everything is a moment of teaching and awakening. And so I'm always excited for that kind of connection, you know, like no matter where I get it. Well, that is a beautiful place, I think, to wrap up with that idea. Thank you so much for coming on. It has been such a pleasure to talk with you and get to know you and get to dive into your work.

We'll have links in the show notes where people can find all your information. You've got a newsletter that's really good. You've got this latest book, you've got a novel, you've got poetry. So we'll point people towards all your stuff. So again, thank you so much. Thank you so much. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a

member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer go to really no really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign jason bobblehead the really no really podcast follow us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever

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