153: Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home

Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. If you listen to the interview with Heather Platt a while ago on the art of holding space and it really called to you, then I'm going to invite you to pull up a chair and a blanket and your favorite warm beverage because I think you're going to love what we have in store today.

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I first stumbled on the book Belonging Remembering Ourselves Home by Toko-Pa-Turner, on my friend Brian Stouts bookcase and this is the same Brian who co-interviewed Dr. Carol Gilligan with me on the topic of patriarchy a couple of years ago. Talking with him is intellectually stimulating and at the same time absolutely terrifying because I always leave with a reading list as long as my arm so you can only imagine what it was like to visit him at home for the first time and see all of the books on his bookcase that I immediately wanted to read. One of the ones that stuck out to me was Toko-Pa's book. And I bought it and read it and loved it. And now she's here with us today to talk about it. And as we talked in the interview, I was so struck by the ways that we create separations in our lives between the parts of us that we feel are unlovable and the image of us we want to share with the world and the parts of our children that we worry aren't going to be acceptable to the world. So, we try to change their behavior to make it more acceptable much of the time we do that shaping by setting limits by saying what it is and isn't okay for our child to do. And it can seem like those limits are necessary for us to get anything done. But it turns out there are ways to get our needs for belonging and competence in our work and our hobbies and even for self-care while also meeting our child's needs for connection and play and joy and autonomy. And I can teach you how to do it. And I'll even do it for free in the Setting Loving and Effective Limits Workshop. And I'll let you in on a little secret, which is that I call the workshop Setting Loving and Effective Limits because I know that's what parents think they need. They think they need a way to set limits that their children will actually respect and I will teach you how to do that. But that part actually isn't very hard, limits should really be the last tool that we're using because they create separation between us and our child. So I'll teach you how to set limits and also how to set way fewer limits than you ever thought possible in the setting loving and effective limits workshop for the first time, we're going to have two ways to participate. The guided path where we support you every step of the way between May 9 and 13th. And the flex path where you can consume the content as fast as you like which starts anytime between April 25 and May 9. You can sign up and choose your option right now at your parenting mojo.com forward slash setting limits and we'll be in touch with whichever form of content you choose as soon as next week.

And now let's look at other ways to build belonging in ourselves and with others with my guest today Toko-Pa Turner. Her name was given to her by her parents who chose it for a book of poems Toko-Pa is a deity in the Maori creation myth known as the "Parent of the mist". She was born in Devon, England and came to Canada at the age of four and was raised in a Sufi community in Montreal. She interned for three years at the young Foundation of Ontario and now blends the mystical tradition of Sufism with a young in approach to dream work. Her book is about how we've become separated from our core selves and from each other, and how we can come to know ourselves again and be in right relationships with others. Welcome, Toko-pa. It's so great to have you here.

So great to be here. Thanks for having me, Jen.

So I wonder if you could start us out with a little treat and read us a bit from the book. And I'm thinking specifically of the opening of chapter two, because your childhood was not what most people would probably consider typical and yet you had an experience that I think so many of us can relate to. So would you mind starting us off with that?

Yeah. I loved to. This is my very dog eared copy of mine

Mine looks pretty similar actually.

You know, that's the greatest compliment you can pay an author. The mangier the better.

Yes.

Okay, so this is from chapter two, which is called the origins of estrangement. Like so many others, my quest for belonging receded in a alienation. I remember a recurring scene at the dinner table when, after an episode of hurt, I would run upstairs to my room in tears desperate for my mother to come after me and coax me back into belonging, but she never came. Instead, I would creep back onto the stairs outside the kitchen, secretly listening to my family going on without beating all my belly rumbles with hunger. And so we all have our version of the waiting stairs, at its heart, this is what it's like to feel outside of belong. It's the excruciating belief that you are not needed, that life does not consider you necessary when nobody comes after you with invitations. It confirms your worst fear and sends you pushing further into the province of exile, even towards the cold, back end of death, symbolically speaking, I spent many years of my life on those waiting stairs, hungry for love aching to be recognized as missing, wishing somebody may call me back into the lobby. And when leaving the table wasn't enough to make my family miss me. My departures became further longer, and eventually

Goosebumps.

I guess we're diving right in.

We kind a barrow Yeah. And of course, this being a parenting podcast, that passage spoke to me so clearly, because I just think it's so ironic that our first experiences of not belonging come at the hands of our families where we feel this desperate need to belong. And then thinking about, you know, why might your parents have, you know, instituted the conditions to make that happen? Why might my parent any listeners parent have that go to your room or not have called you back when they went away? And it's probably because they were trying to teach us some kind of lesson. They were trying to discipline us. I'm just wondering, do you remember what it was that particular incident that instigated it, I guess would be a better word that was so alive and present in your family that you remember it so many years later?

Well, I suppose in some cases, it could be a conscious decision to teach a child the lesson. But I would say more often than not, these behaviors are embedded in trauma. So when I'm thinking about the origins of estrangement, which feels like a necessary endeavor, when looking at the question of what is belonging, we have to look at that sister component, which is exile and alienation and estrangement. And so, when I'm looking at the dimensions of estrangement, I'm really doing it at three different levels. There's the personal level, which is what we experience in our families. And usually there is some kind of you know, every family has its dogmas, or what is considered, you know, valuable and worthwhile and enviable and admirable, certain qualities and behaviors and personality types and locations, and so forth. And then on the other side, you have that which is rejected, and derided, and maybe even dismissed or devalued, or worse yet, not even on the radar, like not even acknowledged. And I say words, because that's something not acknowledged in your sphere is do you have this unactivated potential that could be really necessary to who you are as a person becoming themselves. So here we have this split between what is valued, and what is devalued or ignored. And this dogma is communicated in the family. And so as we grow up, within that dogma, we try to emulate that split, in a sense, you know, growing ourselves in those conditions to reach those values, in order to feel a sense of belonging at the very basic level, and at the same time, we learned to hide or dismiss or split off those parts of ourselves that are not valued or that are criticized. Now. So we're just speaking at the personal level here. And we have to remember that parents had parents and their parents had parents and so everybody has that personal level of estrangement to deal with or not deal with as the case may be in their own lives. But that's only just the first level the overarching culture is a huge consideration because the culture that we grow up in that we are embedded in has those same splits. You know, all we have to do is look at the extroverted culture that we live in here in the west to see all the things like strength and virility, and youth and confidence, and wealth. And all of these things that are, you know, consider the high achievements of our culture, this whole other set of qualities which are dismissed and devalued, and made fun of, and criticized or just looked at kind of blankly. As what even is that, get it away from me. So we have that is cultural piece in which so when we have families that develop dogmas, often they're quite similar from one family to the next, if they are raised in the same culture, because of course, we are a product of the culture that we raised it now there's a level above that, which is the ancestral, right, and this is when we start looking into those deeper displacements that have happened intergenerationally and consider huge diaspora. It's like the African slave trade, the Jewish diasporas and genocides, you know, throughout history, and many of us, even European descent don't have to look very far into our ancestry to discover a time and place where our people were exiled from their place of origin from their indigenous place. And so we have that to contend with, as well, in terms of the archetype of exile, that loops at the core of so many of us, now in present time. And so when asking that question you know, why do parents do what they do? we kind of have to look at that nested problem, but from all those different angles, which is why I actually find myself writing a whole book on it, and still barely scratching the surface. Because I think it's a topic that needs to be approached from a lot of different disciplines in lots of different lines, to begin to get a how this wound has become so ubiquitous, and how it drives us into making terrible decisions. And on the other side, how it can be healed at each of those levels.

Yeah, thank you for that comprehensive answer. And I'm just connecting it to kind of back to the original question about teaching our child a lesson or something like that. And where does this need come from? I think it comes from a pain of hurt in ourselves a fear that, well, if my child doesn't learn this, they won't be successful in our culture. And I want my child to be successful. It comes from the pain intergenerationally, that comes down to us where we remember, Oh, I wanted to be held like that. But nobody ever held me. And so I can't hold my child like that. I'm going to push my child away. Right now, I love the way you took us with that. And I've been thinking a lot about girls lately, and doing some research for an episode on girls and how they interact with each other in the world and present sort of a sanitized view of themselves. That's cool enough to be accepted, but not so cool that we're trying to be on top of the heap, because that just gets us knocked off the top of the heap. And that happens through sort of spreading rumors and stories. And, you know, he said, she said, you said that about whoever rather than sort of direct conflict, and I'm wondering about the lessons that we teach our girls, particularly about communication and how it's not okay, to see what we really think how we really feel, do you see a connection there?

Certainly, you know, when you get into conversation about gender, that is just a whole can of worms, because certainly we are raised if we have been assigned to the gender of girl, or female at birth. We are raised within a certain huge cultural history programming, which says that there are certain ways in which we should behave. I remember my granny always used to say sentences that started with the words, a proper lady should, you know, never, crazy things like I remember, my granny said to me once a proper lady should always behave as if she's being watched.

Oh, my goodness.

And I remember being trumped by that as a kid because I would go to the bathroom and I was like, okay. How do I behave in the bathroom?. You know, always, always, I think it's quite telling, you know, of her generation, and how that's maybe a more diluted version of it is passed down to those of us who are growing up today, but still, there's quite an inheritance of programming that takes place in that. And so once again, you know, any conversation around gender, well, you know, all we have to do is just take a sort of word association game and say okay, what do you associate with the word female, or feminine or girl, and then, you know, make a list, just say what you know, write down what comes off the top of your head, and it's quite shocking to see and you could do the same thing for boy, or man, or father and see what comes out. It's an interesting self evaluation exercise, and a lot of it is just inherited beliefs, but certainly it causes us to behave in ways that are, you know, again, this idea of being split off from the wholeness of a spectrum of quality is that we should have access to it and which we spend our lives, unhindering ourselves because of that programming in order to come back into the inheritance of that full gamut of possibility.

Yeah. And I think so many of these moments come from inconsequential things like your grandma probably had no idea that phrase was going to stick with you, right? If a proper lady always behaves as if she's being watched.

She said often enough.

I was thinking also of the story you told in the book about your father giving you the IQ test. And to him that was probably, you know, it was like, whatever is something interesting to do, can you tell us how that played out for you? And where I'm thinking of is, it almost feels like a lot of pressure on us to know that these moments where we're like, oh, this is just something to do turns out to be something that profoundly shapes our child's perception of themselves and thinking, okay, so where do we go with this?

I will be happy to tell that story. But it should be said that my father was very much aware of what he was doing. My father was an expert in IQ. So he was literally the guy who writes the textbooks on IQ, and wrote those IQ tests. So for him, it was quite central to his life that a person have high IQ. And so when he tested me at, I think I was nine years old at the time, he felt it was a predictor of how intelligent I would be, and therefore how successful or even worthy I would be in relationship to him and to the world. So it wasn't such an innocent kind of game kind of thing. No, but can see what's the results from me. And I just assumed that he did that, because I turned out to be really stupid. But so for years and years and years, like I'm talking decades, even, I thought that he didn't give me the results of the IQ test because he was ashamed of his daughter. Well, so as it turned out, I confronted him I think, in my late 20s. And he said, Oh, no, no, you score very high. And you know, you have no reason to think that. And it really shifted my whole perception of myself because I had internalized this invalidation around my own intelligence, which was completely false.

Did you ever ask him why he hid the results from you?

I don't think I did ask him. We didn't know each other very well. And so I did need him when I was nine years old. But he was pretty much absent speaker in my life. And so that story I told him for asking him about it when I was 28, was during a brief visit that I had, and I think I only visited with him once more before he died, which would have been about 10 to 12 years ago. And once again, just a very short week visit. So yeah, we didn't have much of an in-depth relationship.

Yeah.

Lots of things I would still want to ask him.

Sorry to mention. It's almost like it's not that the giving you the test was the inconsequential moment, it was the fact that well, she hasn't no need to know the results.

There wasn't really a lot of consent involved. Yeah, had gone off the plane. And it was the first thing he did was give me this. He lived in England, so I didn't grow up with him. And so that was intimidating, because and to not give me the results also suggests that the results were just for him you know, Interesting.

Yeah, okay, so switching gears, rather, there's this concept of the death mother, in your book you talk about quite a bit. Can you tell us about that? What's the death mother's role?

Yes. So just to explain the death mother is an archetype and it was coined, you could say, founded by Mary Louise Von Franz, who was Carl Jung's closest student and a great great mind in and of itself, a great scholar. And so she didn't write a great deal about the death mother. But in the next generation of unions, there was Marion Woodman, who is a fairly well-known union analyst, who died just a few years ago, but had a really important contribution to the field of human psychology. And she expanded on the topic of the death mother, and she actually intended to write a book about the death mother, but she became unwell before she was able to do that. So the work was then taken up by a few other people who in current times are working to deepen our understanding of that concept. A few of those people I mentioned a fair bit in the book. One of them is Daniela CF, who is an evolutionary biologist who is very interested in trauma and has done a lot of work on trauma. Anyhow, so I don't know how much your listeners know about archetypes, but maybe I'll just say a few words about that. So archetypes are, it comes from the Greek Arkhetupons, which means first molded. And so the idea is that there are these blueprints in our psyches, which occur across generations, across cultures across eras. And we can see those archetypes in fairy tales, especially in different stories, and of course, in our dreams as well. So if we observe hundreds and thousands of dreams, we can see that the same patterns emerge again and again. So archetypes are kind of like a constellation of a pattern. Pattern of behaviors and characteristics. So the death mother is a kind of pattern of behaviors that the women that I mentioned, identified in the psyche, and one of the ways we see her in mythology is in the archetype of Medusa. So the death mother is that complex that occurs in the psyche, and sort of stops you stone cold in your tracks, sort of like by raising one eyebrow, or just looking at your whole body turns to lead or gets frozen. And it's usually before you can even get out of the gate with a creative idea or with trying to express yourself, or trying to make a move in a fan. So this negative mother archetype is it's interesting, I ended the book, I explore over the Medusa story a little bit in depth from a slightly different angle than it has been done before because I'm interested in what happened to make Medusa the way that it did. And of course, the story is that she was raped herself. And that is what changed her into a series of confrontations with the other gods and goddesses, turned her into the Medusa, we know and love, you know, head of snakes and the power to turn others to stone. So once again, we're sort of heading back on this theme that we touched on earlier, which is that you know, when you are traumatized, you then can continue that pattern of trauma. So I write about the death of Mother archetype in the book, because she was very important to my story, I grew up in a household with a mother who was very much possessed by that archetype. And so I have had to contend with that in my own psyche, even though I don't have any children myself and can't speak to the side of what it's like to then parent with the archetype, I certainly can speak to how it has affected my ability to be my creative self. And that sense of being quite paralyzed, both physically and also creatively as a result of that intense scrutiny that comes from the death archetype. So one of the interesting things that Daniela CF does in her work, because she's very interested in evolutionary biology, she looks at how in more ancient times, we could see the pattern of the death mother taking place in it different cultural landscape, where if you didn't have the resources, to care for the children that you had, and that you might have even abandoned those children to death, which is amazing, you know, to think of infanticide. Now, it seems, you know, very rarely happens in this culture, although, you know, we do hear stories, but it's obviously much less frequent than it would have been hundreds of years ago. However, it is interesting to pull on that thread, and maybe ask ourselves is that archetype activated by the lack of support that we give mothers by the isolationism, that is it created around mothering the absence of the village, the absence of collective support in raising children, and also the lack of resources, right, because we don't even consider the value of mother in this culture, and therefore, it's unpaid. One of the greatest labors that is unpaid. So I just found it interesting to pull on on some of these threads as it pertains to exile and to a sense of not belonging.

Yeah, I love the connection back to what mothering is in our culture. And it's almost like our culture teaches us that mothers have no worth. And it's our job as mothers to and I'm going to quote from the book you said reinforced deprivation until it becomes normal, right? So that we are teaching our children it's not okay to articulate your feelings. It's not okay to assert your needs. It's my job to make sure that you squash those things down so that you understand what deprivation is. And that becomes your new normal because that is the world that I am operating in as a mother and that is the world that you need to be ready to go out into. And I think there's real links there to the scarcity that is embedded in capitalism, that we always have to feel as their resources are scarce. And our job is to get our piece of the pie and make sure somebody else doesn't get that before we do. And it's so harmful to all of us

Indeed. I think one of the first steps to revitalizing that scarcity wound is for sure to begin acknowledging it instead of minimizing the impact that it has on our lives. And that's a really tough one, you know, because we are confronted with that cultural programming, like, you just have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and make it happen for yourself and all of that nonsense, which doesn't acknowledge the systemic problems that give rise to the scarcity wound. So I do think we have a kind of death mother culture in that sense. And so the work of revitalizing that wound is so important. And obviously, it's going to be very subtle, because we have to chip away at these old paradigms, and begin to find something new. So I think the first step to healing is actually refusal to keep minimizing the impact that neglect and deprivation and scarcity has had on us as individuals, and then on the world at large.

Yeah. thinking a lot about patriarchy these days as well. And, you know, working with parents who say, I'm doing it all I'm raising my children, I'm responsible for all the housework, I'm responsible for all the yard work. And I've stopped asking for help, because the conversations are too frustrating. And it's like we've learned not to ask, we've been conditioned not to ask for help. Because each time we ask, we get that, you know, slap that says, Don't ask, and then it's like, okay, well, I'm just gonna retreat further and further inside myself, and just stop asking.

Yeah. You know, I just want to check that piece that you're sharing, because I think that's really big. And it's very vulnerable thing to say out loud. And yet, that asking for help is the weaving of the thread of belonging. And so if we sees the attempts to ask for help, we're never going to leave into belonging with others, because it's when we feel needed by others, that we feel a sense of belonging. So this, you know, sort of symbiosis of giving and receiving is a huge part of healing this wound. And yet, as you say, you know, time and again, if you ask for help, and somebody doesn't show up for you, and whatever that looks like, there's only so many times you can experience that rejection before you start learning that, you know, it's easier to just do it myself. It's a sad truth that I think so many of us experience and the one thing that helps me with that is to remember that everyone is in the same boat in terms of operating from that scarcity place, which means that the depletion of resources be they emotional, be they physical be they spiritual is the bass line for most people. And so that practice of asking for help, and showing up for someone, when they make the call has more or less been forgotten, or fallen into disuse. Anyway, culturally speaking, how do we heal that unless we are actually actively practicing at it and teaching each other what we need and how to meet each other's needs. And you know, as we film and record this conversation, we, you know, it's important to acknowledge we're in the midst of this pandemic that never ends, and the extreme stresses that people are under the mental health impacts of the last couple of years are so high that whatever measly resources people had before, now, we have dug at the bottom of the well, you know, the groundwater of capacity, or they call it blood from a stone. And so we're seeing a lot of fracture in our relationships and communities right now. And I don't think we're at the end of it yet. So it's a hard conversation, because it's important, I think, for us to hold the understanding, and we could call it the faith or the hope of what you know, actually creating a life of belonging for ourselves and for each other. And knowing what that looks like, while also at the same time acknowledging that none of us have the foundation of that capacity, having been passed down to us, we are working with multi generations of a lack of capacity, and then, you know, in present time also being depleted at this extreme way right now. So I think the best we can do is kind of care as well for ourselves as we can in these times and maybe that sort of withdrawing that you describe isn't necessarily a bad thing or an unhealthy thing. It's just about doing what we can do it in these hard times in these moments.

Yeah, I wonder if you can maybe illustrate that as we talk about pandemic hard times I'm thinking about this is not the first time you've experienced extreme hardship in your life, you talk a lot in the book about your journey with chronic illness, it seemed as though that really ripped you apart from the way that you describe it. And I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about that. And the connections between that and your desire to belong with others?

Yeah, well, I was diagnosed with an incurable disease in 2016, rheumatoid disease, sometimes called rheumatoid arthritis. And it's an autoimmune disease that is a systemic. So it's characterized by extreme inflammation, which actually attacks the bones and the organs and all the vital functions of the body and quite literally eats away at them. So that's why in the old days, more so than now, because there are some treatments for to see people with very deformed, hands and feet, because the cartilage is, you know, being eaten away, and the bones are being eaten away by the disease. And so it's an extremely painful disease. So yeah, living with chronic pain, well, let's just say that finally, we have found some treatment for it, which has helped me a great deal, thank God for pharmaceuticals. And also, it has given me a very unique perspective on isolation. As well, even in present time, as people are getting back to normal. I continue to live in a bubble because I'm one of those high risk individuals among the many millions of people who are in the same boat as me, it's a matter of life or death to avoid getting this COVID. So the extreme isolation of this particular, you know, living through the pandemic, but also, of course, when you have chronic illness, there's a different kind of more intimate isolation that comes out of other people not being able to relate to you. And the kinds of conversations that I need to have in order to feel intimacy are not the kinds of conversations that most people are comfortable with. I think a lot of people could relate to this in their own way, if they happen to be going through an extreme period of grieving. So for instance, when you lose somebody or something extraordinary in your life, it's very similar to getting becoming ill, or where you are dealing with these very salient life or death matters of just trying to stay alive on planet Earth, whereas other people may be just want to keep it light, you know, and keep it positive. So in that sense, there's another level, a deeper level of isolationism that comes out of illness. And, you know, I continue to find this challenging. You said earlier that it's sort of tore my life apart. And to be honest, I'm not sure it's done with me in that sense, you know, it is an incurable disease. And so, you know, every day is a new reckoning. But I think it has given me a sensitivity for understanding what it is like to live so confronted by one's own mortality in a daily way. And it has increased the depth of money, compassion for all the different kinds of people who go through something similar, or whether it's in elderhood, whether it's in extreme loss, displacement, war, you know, and so on. So I don't know if that answers your question,

I guess I'm thinking about you also described your bicycling accident and sort of the fear of being an imposition on others. And you know, the shame of being hurt and how you basically tried to recover by yourself. And then it seems as though there was a real shift through the course of your chronic illness in terms of how you approach that and the lessons you learned about being needy air quotes for those who are listening. And what that means. Can you speak a little bit about how that evolution happened for you? Yes. Well,

I think the story that you're referring to is, you know, when I was 20, I had a terrible bike accident, and I believe I was rather concussed and had a number of other injuries. And rather than seeking medical help, I just went home. I was living in a rooming house at the time. And I just remember sort of slipping in and out of consciousness for weeks. And I don't remember much about that time, but it seems completely mad to me now. And I, I have so much compassion for that girl who just couldn't ask for help. And for me, sort of circling back to the death whether I learned that my needs are not worthy of being met, and that I should defer my needs for other people's needs. And so this was a very deep sort of message that I was given as a child, but you know, in terms of evolving you know, I think a huge help for me was being in therapy for a long time. Because if you can find a great therapist, which I did, I was very lucky to have a mentor who I worked with for a number of years. Her name was Annie, and she was a union psychotherapist and she modeled that kind of good mother for me, which is something I had never experienced before. And so in her company, I learned to cry, really, I learned to we have I learned to share some of my secret shame with her to kind of parse out what was true and what was false inherited belief in myself in validation that I was carrying as a result of my lack of upbringing, because I did enter the system when I was 14 going on 15. So I had very little parenting at all in my life. And so working with a therapist, I think, is a really wonderful way to begin the process of just learning that it's okay to have feelings about things, and that those feet are being able to parse out what is valuable in one's own feelings, what is intelligent in one's own feelings. And in terms of neediness, you know, being needy. I do think though, coming back to our earlier part of the conversation that actually we live in a culture where people are not comfortable with holding space for a difficult needs and so that's a reality, you know, that's not just something you can evolve out of personally, because you're confronted with it in a very daily way of people being incapable of meeting you where you need to be met. And I'm not just talking about friends, I'm talking about doctors, you know, I'm talking about the entire medical system, and probably many other industries, outside of the medical industry. So this is a very real cultural problem. So there's only so much I can do with my personal evolution. But I'm still confronted with not having a place to take my needs. Thankfully, I have a wonderful couple of friends and partner in my life, who, you know, consistently meet me where I am and that's an extreme blessing, I think it's so hard to come by. So if you have even one person who can do for you either sort of winning the lottery.

Yeah, your relationship with your partner really came through so clearly in the book. And it almost seemed as though this lesson that you had learned was shown through the bicycle accident, you know, if I burden other people with my pain with my needs, they will reject me that your partner sort of a living meditation in showing up and meeting you and acknowledging your needs. Maybe even when you don't always know what those needs are, there was just an extraordinary feeling to think about what it must be like to be you surrounded by that sense,

it's true, I have to say, every single day, I am amazed. And I learned so much from Craig on a daily basis, because he's such a unique human being and that he has this depth of patience, and wisdom, and forgiveness that I've never met and another individual, and somehow, I'd like lucked out to have him fall in love with me and stay in love with me every single day. I don't know how I got so lucky. But I try to work it out with a lot of gratitude.

And I just want to sort of think back to you know, the depth of that relationship and what that means to you, and how this shows up in the wellness community and how you know, that sort of Instagram posts on rising above things like anxiety and sadness and anger. And it's almost like the polar opposite of that, right? Instead of stuffing our feelings down and dissociating from anything that doesn't fit the image that we're building with ourselves. We're getting deeply in touch with that stuff and allowing somebody else to see that.

Yes. It's so exhausting. The whole bootstraps mentality that we see, especially in the New Age wellness world where there's just this constant programming about, you know, leaning in and rising above and, you know, being heroic and against all odds. And there's very little true vulnerability that's ever acknowledged or encouraged. And I understand why, you know, it's not sexy to talk about sinking down into the muck of your most shameful and difficult feelings. But honestly, I would say that this has been one of the most liberating things that I've learned in my life is that those feelings are intelligent. They are there for a reason they have something to say. And if we don't first listen to them ourselves, how can we ever move authentically in the world to our inner relationships? Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying, you know, feel anger and express it all over the place. Obviously, I don't mean and judiciously I mean that there's something to learn by being in more intimate relationship with each of those things with the anxiety with the fear, with the shame, with the sadness with the anger, and you know, it is quite a biological response to be having those feelings. And we need to learn how to get curious about them. But there's a very big chapter in the bit book, I think it's the biggest chapter of all right in the middle called the Dark Guests. And it's a series of short essays on each of those so called negative emotions, to kind of tried to reframe the intelligence behind those feelings, the concealed medicine in each of them if we give them a bit of a moment, to just express themselves and perhaps teach us something about where we're at with whatever issue is in contention.

Yeah, it's almost like you're describing the word that you call invulnerable bravery.

Invulnerability bravery. Yeah, I invented a new word for it. Because I think that vulnerability, it requires such great bravery. And it's, you know, trying to reframe that whole bravery thing that we were talking about, and actually fuse it with vulnerability, vulnerable bravery. And she knows somebody write that word in my book, and they actually had it tattooed on their arm. And she sent me the picture of a tattoo. I thought, that's amazing. It has like, no,

Wow, it does, indeed. That's super cool. I think you've also described this phrase step into being seen, what does it mean to step into being seen, I think it's connected to probably being vulnerable, brave

Being seen is a paradox, because I think it's the thing that we want more than anything we want to be seen. And yet, it's the thing we most fear being seen. And so it's both of those things. And but when we are truly see, and I mean, when somebody holds, presents for us, in such a way that it is undivided, and it doesn't have any judgments, or expectations, it's literally just showing up for the being that the other is so that their own flowering can take place, whatever that looks like having a good cry, or saying what's really true, or coming to an idea that they needed your presence to get to holding that kind of presence, substantiates the other, it actually gives us substance because we needed that level of mature presence in order to truly become ourselves. But it does require a great deal of vulnerability

And vulner bravery

Yeah, exactly. So I think it's a dynamic, you know, it's not just a one sided thing I think being seen, seeing and being seen is an exchange. It's kind of like, Have you ever met a wild animal in a forest of some place like a fox or a deer, I remember I was hiking or a bobcat. I once had this amazing experience when something woke me up in the middle of the night. And I got up and I didn't turn on any lights in the house. And at the time, I was living up in the Rocky Mountains. So it was quite a remote place and very, very wild all around the end of the Moon was completely full, so it casts its own light. So I didn't turn on any lights. And I went into the bathroom, which was surrounded by windows, and I sat on the toilet, and I looked up and there six inches from my face was a bobcat, looking at me right in the eyes. And I looked at it. And it looked at me. And there was this profound exchange that took place. And this happens with many wild animals. If they truly see you and you see them, you'll feel this a bit, almost impossible to describe exchange, because by seeing each other in this way, you recognize how other the other is, but at the same time you are seeing and you feel more substantially yourself in that otherness. And there's wonderful exchange is what I would call wisdom. It's a kind of knowing that emerges from that exchange. And I think we can do this with each other too. It's a kind of practice that I think as a parent, you probably recognize those enlightened moments where you truly see your child out, and you see your child being seen, and they see you. And there's a magic and it doesn't happen all the time, but we can practice at it. And I believe we could potentially also hold this kind of presence for our feelings, and for what's happening for ourselves internally, which is why my central practice is dream work. I love to work with dreams, because there we see the otherwise impossible to know, psychic processes, the psyche, in all its myriad forms, interacting with each other. And so it's substantiates that ineffable that it's, and from there, we can practice as we work with our dreams, we practice it come to know the myriad selves within and as a practice, this helps us to know, you know, there's this symmetry that takes place where when we practice that internally, it makes us better at really showing up with precedents for the other relationships and encounters that we have in our outer life as well.

Thinking about the dream work, which I know is so important to you. And there are these stories of people's dreams woven throughout the book is illustrating certain ideas and thinking back to what you said at the beginning of the conversation about how some things are culturally accepted, some things are not culturally accepted. And in the sort of psychological scientific world that I spend most of my time in dream analysis, let's say does not form a prominent role. It's not having a permanent role. And I was just sort of being conscious as we've been talking about how I feel about that. I want to admit, actually, that when I was forming these questions, I was like, do we think we can get through this interview without mentioning dreams? Because I wonder if my listeners will just think that's a bit too woowoo? A bit too, out there? And I put a question, and I'm so glad that you went there first. So for folks who may be listening and thinking, dream work, what would you say to people who don't really have any understanding of the role that dreams can play in our lives? Where would we even start?

Firstly, I would say, Jen. I think you'd be surprised because you know, no matter what the walk of life, I've met many thousands of people in my line of work throughout my life. And when they asked me what I do, and I tell them, I do dream work, there may be an initial kind of blankness or, you know, not being sure how to take it. But within seconds, they say, but I did have this amazing dream. I think there's actually a really deep thirst that people have to talk about our dreams, and the only reason we dismiss them in modern times and in our culture, specifically, because we come out of this sort of Cartesian rationalism, which has taught us that anything that is ineffable is dismissible. If we don't have empirical, you know, hard proof of it, then it doesn't exist, or it's nonsense. And this is part of what we were talking about earlier about the denigration of this huge, vast storehouse of qualities. But really, if you trace most indigenous cultures, the ones that still exist on planet earth, all of them, without exception, have a dreaming, practice and pay attention to their dreams. It's only us that have some kind of dismissal of our dreams, which I think says a lot.

Yes

Dreaming is biological, you know, we have to dream. And from a scientific perspective, if you deprive somebody of their dreams, say for instance, waking them up during REM cycles, actually, they don't do these sorts of tests anymore. Back in the 60s, you know, or 50s, you know, anything went and they studied was that if you belong, Dream deprivation, for long enough people will have psychotic episodes start to hallucinate and dreaming kind of breaks through into waking life into conscious reality because it has to be done. So this is a very interesting question. From a scientific perspective, you know, why do we have this biological impulse to dream and what function does it serve? So I think that line of questioning is very fascinating, and where I have arrived with it for myself, because I am interested in psychology, but I am also an animist, and I'm very interested in our relationship to nature. And you know, it is believed that all animals dream, not just us. And so what is this biological necessity to produce images that are meaningful? And what I've come to for myself is that it's actually nature, naturing through us. So I mean, an analogy would be say, like a tree that produces crab apples, you know, why does it produce these foods? It's part of an ecosystem and is in its nature to produce fruits and dreams, as far as I'm concerned are the fruits that are produced from us and we can leave them unharvested and live a fine life, you know, nothing terrible is going to happen if you don't pay attention to your dream, but what I have discovered is when you do pay attention to your dream, you start to come into conversation with a greater intelligence, which is pulsing through you. And you can call that, you know, 100 different names, you could call it nature, you could call it Sophia, you could call it collective consciousness, you could call it God, you know, whatever your particular languaging of it doesn't necessarily matter. But the fact that we can find in our dreams, these archetypes, these blueprints, which transcend culture, and time, so you could find, you know, people in Nigeria are dreaming about their teeth falling out, just like you dream about your teeth falling out. And this is an amazing fact to me, because there's something that the images are trying to teach us. And you can become skilled in learning this symbolic language. And it's only because we have such an emphasis on rationalism in our culture, that we don't have any efficacy with symbolic language, but it's actually our mother tongue. It's a tongue that transcends language, because as I was saying, Before these images recur across time and space, so yeah, so I have, you know, devoted my life to try and to understand dreams, and they always remain elusive to me. And so I consider myself more of an apprentice than anything else. But I do try to teach people that there are some basic gestures, there are some basic practices that you can follow in order to start paying attention to your dreams, and to begin to discover what they might have to say to you. And when you do, what I have observed, is that people come more strongly into alignment with their purpose with who they are authentically meant to be in this life. That is, of course, if you believe the idea that you come into life with a purpose with a fate that our dreams will help to align us with that fate.

Well, I will say that the night after I did the preparation for this interview, so you know, I'd been reading your book again in depth and reading all these stories about dreams, I had a dream about having another baby. And so if listeners will know that my daughter is almost eight, and I started giving away the infant stuff when she was about four months old. So that was very disconcerting. But maybe I'm birthing something else. I don't know, maybe it's a metaphor for something. I appreciate that. I wonder if I should almost start a journal of dreams and see what arises from that, would that be a good place to start?

Absolutely, the dreams love to be written down. I think of it a little bit like breaking something across a bridge between the two hemispheres of the brain, if that metaphor works for you, because we need to sort of restore our relationship to that world in order for it to strengthen and become more interesting and more symbolic. And so writing dreams is a way of materializing it, right? I'm taking something that comes out of the eternal psyche and brings it into the material world. So it's a way of giving it relevance. And what we find is when people write down their dreams, their dream life sort of explodes with generosity. You can get much dream material as the results

I dont think I can handle anymore babies there. Want to leave us on a really practical note. We've started to go there and we're talking about journaling about dreaming. Are there practices that we can put into place to invite this sense of belonging with ourselves and with others as well? Where would you advise people to start with that?

Wonder if I can find the passage in the book where I write about that. It could be trick. But how about I open the page exactly where it's supposed to be?

Well, I would hardly believe such a thing would be possible.

This is a section I call be longing. It's fun that those words are embedded in belonging. Instead of always asking where do I belong? A question that's based in shortage consider reversing your definition of the word from a noun to a verb in which belonging becomes a practice of generosity as in I belong itself. To that which I love. I belong myself to that which I love. A wise teacher once told me that the great spiritual practice he knows is to discover what you're most missing in your life and then give that thing away. In other words, take what little you have, which knows too little about everything big and make of it an offering. Belong yourself to those who need you, find those human and other than human who are drifting to the fringes who are the least valued or most unexpected to have something to offer look for those without a voice and draw them in closer. When you go to a party instead of letting the fear of fitting in overcome you, practice wondering instead, if anyone you meet might need longing. The recognition that everyone around you is just as afraid of not belonging is a revelation. We're all looking for that presence in another which can shelter us. It do's our own stories make us feel through their engagement that we are necessary in this life. At some point, we must come down off those waiting stairs and begin to act as if necessary. Whether it's reflected in the world yet or not, we must assume our own importance and begin to give the gifts which we possess and which are desperately needed. So where you long for the friend who calls only to find out if you're well, be that caller for and, where are you long for eloquent prayers to be made of everyday things, let your own clumsy words, bless your beatles out loud where you wish for ritual under the moons. Be the one who holds the heartbeat of gathering, where you ache to be recognized. Allow yourself to be seen where you longed to be know. Sit next to another and listen for insight into what they love, where you wish to feel necessary. Give those gifts away rather than a disappointed wanting to belong. This is the practice to be the long maybe it will take a lifetime or maybe only the young ones who come up around you will feel the benefits, or maybe it will sneak up on you in a suddenly moment as you sit feasting with your loved ones that you belong to this beautiful village you've made a few life.

Is there anything you'd like to say about that? Because I think that could quite happily stands our conclusion.

I'm happy to leave it there.

Yeah. Thank you so much for writing such a beautiful book and bringing it out into the world and sharing it with us today. I'm so grateful we were able to have you here.

Me too. Jen, thank you so much for holding this great conversation and for your viewers for listening. It was a pleasure to be here.

And don't forget that you can find a link to Toko-Pa's book belonging remembering ourselves home at your parenting mojo.com forward slash belonging and you can sign up for the setting loving and effective limits workshop at your parenting mojo.com forward slash setting limits.

Speaker 1 57:29

Hi, this is Jessica from release Panama. I'm a Your Parenting Mojo fan and I hope you enjoy the show as much as I do. If you found this episode especially enlightening or useful, you can also donate to help Jen produce more content like this. And also save us from those interminable mattress ads. Then you can do that and also subscribe on the link that Jen just mentioned. And don't forget to head to YourParentingMojo.com to read your own messages for the show.