[SPEAKER_04]: And I think so often people say humans are plague to the earth and this that and the other thing and certainly we're acting like one but I think it's important to remember that we are the earth and we are part of it and there are so many parts where our stewardship makes the earth healthier and we can be a part of the process of healing the earth as opposed to just saying we need to disappear in order for this to get better.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're listening to the Good Dirt Podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a place where we dig into the nitty-gritty of sustainable living through food, fashion, and lifestyle.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're your host, Mary and Emma Kingsley, the mother and daughter founder team of Lady Farmer.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're sewing seeds of slow living through our community platform, events, and online marketplace.
[SPEAKER_03]: We started this podcast as a means to share the wealth of information and quality conversations that we're having in our world as we dream up and deliver ways for each of us to live into the new paradigm.
[SPEAKER_03]: One that is regenerative, balanced, and whole.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to put the microphone in front of the voices that need to be heard the most right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: The farmers, the dreamers, the designers, and the doers.
[SPEAKER_03]: So come call to be a better world with us.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're so glad you're here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, let's dig in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, welcome to the Good Dirt Podcast on this lush and vibrant August morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're now past the cross quarter day, which occurred on August first, which means we're more than halfway between the summer solstice and the fall equinox.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as always, when we're paying attention to these things, nature is giving us the subtle hints that help us connect with this shift.
[SPEAKER_00]: The days are getting shorter, the insect noises are changing, and bringing back all the back to school vibes for me, which takes me back a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Warnings are often hazy, and the light is just beginning to take on that distinct, autumnal slant that is so particular to this season.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now summer isn't over yet, there's so many hot days to come, and the garden is going strong, but in slow living, tuning in to these quiet cues can help ground us in something other than art to do list.
[SPEAKER_00]: And give us the opportunity to experience the seasons on a deeper level.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time of this recording, we're getting close to this month's full moon on August ninth.
[SPEAKER_00]: In some Native American traditions, the August woman is called the sturgeon man named after distinctive freshwater fish that was an important food source for those native populations living in the regions where they thrived and were caught in abundance this time of year.
[SPEAKER_00]: By giving a name to each full moon, Indigenous cultures acknowledge the intertwining of humans with all of creation, respecting the fundamental understanding of the Earth as the source of all life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here at Lady Farmer, and on the good dirt, we often look to the Indigenous traditions for guidance on our journey to living more closely connected to our Earth home.
[SPEAKER_00]: And our guest on today's episode is here to help us do just that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Madison Murphy Barney is a two-spirit sister, author, dula, and public health storyteller.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her work explores connection to self, each other, the planet, and all.
[SPEAKER_00]: All primary themes in her forthcoming book, are ancestors want us to be mushrooms, and her weekly newsletter on sub-stack, are a medicine.
[SPEAKER_00]: She also offers connection due to support across all of life's threshold.
[SPEAKER_00]: Birth, loss, breakups, career change, Saturn returns and beyond.
[SPEAKER_00]: Madison, who prefers to be called M, lives in the woods of Vermont on a journey of rematiation and connection through her work of landscape and guidance to others, her looking to build a more just world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen up for more on the work that she does and lots of stories and insights from this very wise human, M. Barney.
[SPEAKER_04]: So my name is Madison Murphy Barney and I go by M and I am a two-spirit Hupa and Chishoni sister and author Dula
[SPEAKER_04]: and public health storyteller.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I write a lot, and I spend a lot of time on the land, and I live as a steward of two acres of land in Central Vermont, and take care of that land.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've been there for about three years.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and that's what I'm up to most of the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just reading a bit about you and reading some of your writing as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is a two-spirit sister?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so two-spirit is an identity that I hold.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's an indigenous identity for recognition of the multiplicity of identities and spirits within all of us.
[SPEAKER_04]: And historically, two-spirit folks were medicine people and played many roles in communities and had relationships with the planet.
[SPEAKER_04]: And other children and just played a wide range of role.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's a really, it's an identity that means different things different people.
[SPEAKER_04]: Of course, like any identity feels different to each person who holds it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's like the best example I have is similar to how queer means different things to different people outside of an indigenous context.
[SPEAKER_04]: And sister is the first thing I put in my bio because I'm one of six children and just the most important role I play is being a sister and it's the most defining role.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think a lot of what I do comes from my identity as a sister.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's so fascinating.
[SPEAKER_01]: So to spirit, you said multiplicity of identities.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not necessarily like literally too.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like just multiple.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's a fairly new term at different tribes at different names for this role, but sometime in the nineties, I believe it was coined as two-spirit.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that was initially meant as the masculine and the feminine, which is of course within all of us.
[SPEAKER_04]: But it is, yeah, I see it as more of a multitude of identities in one person, which I think many of us hold.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's so fascinating.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciate that it makes me think of this is might seem tangential but I was just watching one of my favorite comedy shows last night and it was actually that the prompt was this is pretty silly but the prompt was
[SPEAKER_01]: to answer earnestly and not as a bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for comedians, it's really hard to be serious.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the prompt was talk about something that you're working on in therapy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the comedians said very earnestly to her credit, something that I'm working on is talking about or thinking about things as things that I'm working on as parts of myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm feeling scared.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a part of me is really scared about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: A part of me feels intimidated by this or a part of me feels joyful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's funny because it was a comedy show when she was just following a prompt but that really hit me like that's a very helpful way to think about when you're working through something it's so easy to be overwhelmed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I am scared or I am whatever it is you're feeling but thinking of it as if it's a
[SPEAKER_01]: piece of yourself or a part of yourself seems much more like generous and sermountable.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what this idea of multitude of identities.
[SPEAKER_01]: is making me think of just because that's like fresh in my brain.
[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, so yeah, I think that it can be really hard when we've been conditioned in a society of this or that or I am this or I am not this to open up and hold space for the multitudes in the gray area and I think that has everything to do from our identity to how we are to what we're working on in therapy like it's never just one thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the way that our language is technically it's probably not, it's not correct English to say I am scared, but we drop the feeling and we we identify with our feelings in our emotions.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the idea of an identity and using the beaver like I am this I am that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's just a lot to peel apart there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm interested in knowing more about your background and how you grew up within a family of six children.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what is your
[SPEAKER_00]: Indigenous identity is their particular indigenous nation that you claim as your heritage.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I am Shashone and Hupa and my grandmother was put on a reservation boarding school in the White Earth Preservation Minnesota and so I grew up partially there and partially in North Dakota mostly in North Dakota in the Dakota community and right now actually living in Vermont.
[SPEAKER_04]: I am very involved in a Lakota led Sundance community which is interesting because it's not on the Dakota land but it's very familiar to what I grew up around and
[SPEAKER_04]: is in Vermont.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it's one of those sort of life hands us big gifts, moments of being not on the land.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was raised on, but certainly having community and traditions that I'm familiar with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And tell us a little bit about your family life and how was your heritage woven into your growing up years or was it something that was not spoken of a lot?
[SPEAKER_04]: And no, it's definitely a huge part of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's who we are.
[SPEAKER_04]: And my grandmother was, as I mentioned, she was putting boarding school, but she went on to be an educator.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so she stayed there and taught, which was really rare at the time.
[SPEAKER_04]: But she really wanted to be a force of pride and of maintaining cultural traditions and ways of knowing and passing that down to her students.
[SPEAKER_04]: And in residential schools weren't typically places where that was allowed.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she was really remarkable in so many ways.
[SPEAKER_04]: So at her funeral, after where people had gathered at a restaurant and my dad had made some sort of joke about her being difficult or stubborn or something, they had a very loving and very nuanced relationship.
[SPEAKER_04]: Somebody there, an older man, started to tear up and said, you don't understand.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like she was all we had.
[SPEAKER_04]: She taught us to be proud to be indigenous.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she did something that was rare and brave and only in uphill battle.
[SPEAKER_04]: There was no part of what she was doing that wasn't challenging, but she devoted her life to it and really instilled in us the importance of that pride and that identity and the ways of relating with the planet and with each other that it's so
[SPEAKER_04]: Fascinating because I think now science and things are catching up to indigenous knowledge and realizing like how all of it is necessary to get back into right relationship with the planet and with each other and that's just like having been raised in that worldview.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's yeah, of course that's of course that's everything's catching up to that that's how we
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to make it and that's how we're going to create a world with safety and nourishment for everybody and so it's a fascinating moment to be alive and I would love to have her here to talk about it with and have her assessment of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would too.
[SPEAKER_00]: For years, I've been working on a novel about a child that was sent to Indian school.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm tried to clean as much knowledge as I could from written accounts and whatever, but it's still, it's not my story.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's Tetris Grand to try to tell something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: but and it's just part of this person's story so it's not the whole thing but I think it's really important for you to be talking about that part of your life story because there are a lot of people that don't even realize that happened as is common in things that are shameful about our history and they do not have to be talked about
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was a very profound impact on a whole generation or two.
[SPEAKER_00]: How long did it go on?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, went on for over a hundred years and many generations of children and I have an elder now who's part of my community who herself went and so it's and those impacts are of course when children are raised in that way.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you can even even use that verb, it of course impacts the generations to come in so many ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think there is the getting to be some light shut up on that chapter of our history.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know I saw a story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was about the one that was in Pennsylvania, the moral law school, if that's incorrect.
[SPEAKER_00]: I apologize, but I think it was that where families who had lost relatives, like the children had literally died, just unrecognized and forgotten.
[SPEAKER_00]: The families have been invited to come back and visit the burial sites in honor and acknowledged.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's children that lost their lives in those institutions.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something that needs to be unearthed in our history, talked about.
[SPEAKER_00]: I first heard about this in the book written by Forest Carter, the education of a little tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you know that book?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a movie they made of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a really beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I read that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a story that twenty twenty five years ago and it opened my eyes to this, what had happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fictional, but I think it's based on his story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they literally plucked him from the mountains where he was living with his Native American grandmother.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the grandmother was white.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was very common in Appalachia that because of the Cherokee intermingled with Scott Irish settlers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was being raised by his grandparents there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was being taught this sort of multicultural
[SPEAKER_00]: very holistic.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have nature in the world and all of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as happened, the government came in and literally plucked them out and said, you're you're going in these and they seem to Pennsylvania.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he read the story this memoir, which is technically fiction, but it's based on his story.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, he very, yeah, that's the extent of my knowledge of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I would imagine the most people don't have any understanding except from this book in this movie because it was like a movie in the theaters in the nineties.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And very strange like he could have to be a white supremacist.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it makes you think about this psychological damage.
[SPEAKER_00]: it did to that generation sometimes going the opposite way.
[SPEAKER_04]: So anyway, that's just saying the way that was designed, that that education was.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it was the idea.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it was the effectiveness of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I have a friend who talks about she's indigenous and was raised in Texas and her grandparents claimed to be Mexican because they said it's better to be anything than to be an Indian.
[SPEAKER_04]: And for self protection, many people
[SPEAKER_04]: past as non-indigenous and I think my generation is really one where we have the safety and more capacity to reconnect with old ways and we're on really a ticking clock because there's so many of our elders are passing and it's our chance to re-engage those ways of knowing and make sure that they're available for future generations but yeah I think what you share of his story shows that it was it was a really effective and powerful
[SPEAKER_04]: and intentionally designed policy and practice.
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, it was ubiquitous.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a documentary out that can be seen on Hulu called Sugarcane and it follows some folks who are in Canada and I'm going to the Catholic Church Tips for apologies and for reparations and just that with that journey looks like because this is the generation that can do that and is hoping to get visibility on the stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: Taking what you were just explaining about your being in Vermont and it sounds like this isn't indigenous land to you, but you're sounds like you're creating this community or you're a part of this community.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell us a bit about that and how that has come to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: How have you found yourself in Vermont and how are you creating and continuing this community?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so when I was eighteen, I left North Dakota and I lived abroad for four or five years and then I came back to go to grad school in Boston and then moved to New York City.
[SPEAKER_04]: And when I moved to New York City, I was like, oh, always be in New York City.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the place for me.
[SPEAKER_04]: And a few years into that, I just, and throughout it, I just had this real desire to like, to be on the land and to be in community that was less transient and more like place-based and land-based.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was it came to head in the time when I was in a relationship.
[SPEAKER_04]: I knew that I needed to be out of and we were going to move in together and I just kept getting this feeling like I needed to go to Vermont and I got it would be like I would walk out the door and there'd be like
[SPEAKER_04]: two Vermont license plates or I'd be on the train and people will be on the phone talking about Vermont or something.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was such a strange thing because I was like, this is not my ancestral land, but I also knew that as a two spirit person and just with the weight, my beliefs and values that it wouldn't be sustainable for me to live in North Dakota and Vermont is a very more liberal and very weird state.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I think that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_04]: Any time I'd gone to Vermont, I got this since the land here of love says there's cultural things that are strange but like the land here loves us and holds us and so I just I kept getting these signs to go and then I I'm also in Dula and two of my friends who live in Vermont were having a baby and their due date was the last day in my lease in in
[SPEAKER_04]: Brooklyn and so I was like, okay, let me just go up and they had the cabin on their land that they said I could stay at because they wanted to post part of support as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, all right, let me just go to Vermont and see.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I packed to you all and went and then found my house through just like this really.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't I didn't I have no other word than like magical and ancestry led.
[SPEAKER_04]: process of it was a time where you had to like basically pay cash for a house in Vermont and and go over asking and wave the inspection and one person and that was not something I could do and wow, but it all just happened and it worked out and now I'm on this land and
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a few months within being there.
[SPEAKER_04]: I got connected with this community of indigenous folks who do a two spirit Sundance and it's just like an ongoing community of Vermont and so I've been connected with them.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's just one of those things where like none of it makes sense, but is all really aligned and beautiful to be there and
[SPEAKER_04]: taking care of this land and being a part of this community is just like exactly what I wanted and if I had like it couldn't have happened to any other time like I needed time in New York City I needed time moving around but like returning to be a steward of land and things like that has just been the perfect thing for me over the past few years.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's so cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I guess the word for that would be, it was very sick and crannistic, the whole thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would love to hear how are you stewarding your land there?
[SPEAKER_00]: And did you say it was a couple of acres?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm on two acres.
[SPEAKER_04]: The people who lived in my house before me were getting by in the ways they knew how to get by and so the land was really cared for.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of junk and things on the land when I got there.
[SPEAKER_04]: So the first step was clearing that out and and growing culturally significant plants growing sage growing sweet grass growing things like that, but also growing food for community and growing herbs for my do a clients and just really learning the land and planting
[SPEAKER_04]: Indigenous species that are meant to be there and things like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's been a process, but as you all know, it's like it takes some time to learn the land.
[SPEAKER_04]: I thought like my first growing season, I'll get it figured out and I'll get everything, but now I'm on my third and it just it takes time and it takes a lot of learning and perhaps there's been flooding in Vermont the last two summers and
[SPEAKER_04]: And my home hasn't flooded, but the land I live on has so it's a matter of just understanding what the water's doing and how it's moving and and also just by host a creator's residency on my land as well and just really thinking about it like.
[SPEAKER_04]: For me, it's a very ancestral process of me having land in being from a lineage where land was taken and stolen is really important.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so that's having this safe place that is loved and opening it up to others has been really key to my process of taking care of this home in this land.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's a big learning curve learning what wants to grow, what doesn't want to grow, what things will overgrow, things like that is as you all know.
[SPEAKER_04]: It takes a lot of just like listening and patience.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's been really helpful for me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm someone who feels and has a lot of like urgency.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the beautiful thing about growing on land or getting to know land is if you make a mistake in spring, you have to wait till the next spring to remedy it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you have all year to think about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: But there isn't this like rapid way you can fix things or solve things.
[SPEAKER_04]: You just have to wait and listen to land and watch what wants to come and want to connect out there is that
[SPEAKER_04]: I really, I've been thinking a lot and learning a lot about clothes and how smart they are and like what wonderful birds they are.
[SPEAKER_04]: And when I first moved into my home and on the land, there were no clothes and they would be like a cross street and things but never and but never around.
[SPEAKER_04]: And as this process has gone on and things and as I've learned the land more and more, there are pros and the land sometimes like so many that I'm confused by it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm not feeding them anything in particular to to lure them, but it's just like one of the things that when you let the land teach
[SPEAKER_04]: I found when I let the land teach me that it just I can the species that want to be there can come back and it just it takes this time and this slow process.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my goodness.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'd be very interested I think in our most recent podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was with a woman named Edwinne von Gaulle and she's the founder and president of an organization that you'd be very interested in.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the perfect earth project.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just attended a symposium that they did this week up in Terry Town, New York and
[SPEAKER_00]: The remarkable thing to me is how many people came to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Landscape professionals, people working with private clients, people just wanting to do this on their own land exactly what you're describing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is a movement of people that are hearing the same directive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's coming from from many different places, some professional landscapes,
[SPEAKER_00]: and you're speaking from your indigenous heritage.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm speaking from just a person that has a little bit of land and I'm being called to help heal it because I can see the obvious damage around me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think we can all be encouraged that the Earth is actually speaking to a lot of people now and to embrace a similar approach.
[SPEAKER_00]: From different angles of course, it's going to take all kinds.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, just all of our lineage is for so long up until his point had relationship with the land with lands with knowledge.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's in all of us and I think so often people say humans are a plague to the earth and the same.
[SPEAKER_04]: The other thing and certainly we're acting like one, but I think it's important to remember that
[SPEAKER_04]: We are the earth and we are part of it and there are so many parts where our stewardship makes the earth healthier and is we can be a part of a process of healing the earth as opposed to just saying we need to disappear in order for this to get better.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know we actually have work to do due to the damage we've caught to to collaborate and I think
[SPEAKER_04]: the part where that goes too far is when folks when we try to like outsmart nature rather than listen to it and think we can do this intervention and it'll solve this thing and it's no we're there are billions of years ahead of us of like really sophisticated there's no waste in nature like these processes that we need to learn rather than try to outsmart with our very young brains in terms of our time here on the planet and especially our time
[SPEAKER_04]: causing the amount of harm that we are right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it's we belong here and the earth loves us and we have a role in the healing of the planet, but we just need to remember that as it was being like, there's nothing we can do and or we can now smart it because we certainly can not smart the planet.
[SPEAKER_01]: This reminds me of, I don't know anything about your book yet, but the title makes me think that it's related to what we were just talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: So can you tell us about the book that you're working on?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm writing a book called our ancestors, Warnas, to be mushrooms.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's coming out in spring, twenty, twenty, six.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the focus is really all of these teachings of mushrooms and mycelium and the ways in which they
[SPEAKER_04]: can teach us how to get back into right relationship with each other with ourselves with the planet through their symbiotic relationships and creativity and gifts and hearing and how we have all of those that wisdom and we've left the plot a little bit, but if we look to mushrooms, it'll remind us like how our ancestors also live.
[SPEAKER_04]: as a part of nature and in right relationship and seeking with nature and one of the things also is allowing life to happen in cycles and it happens in cycles and all of our ancestors regard the so of our lineages.
[SPEAKER_04]: really lived in accordance with the cycles of nature.
[SPEAKER_04]: So how do we relearn that and understand how to get back into a place where we are contributing to the plan and healing of the planet rather than from like the extractives systems that we currently operate within.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can't wait to read it.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's been really fun.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's been a really fun in my newsletter.
[SPEAKER_04]: I do some like I picked a different species and say our ancestors want us to be like what's it a collendula and other things and just like we have all of the answers we need like all of these species teach us all of the things that we need to just get back to being human and as we were designed and as we
[SPEAKER_04]: And what feels right, like, think so often when we are in the right rhythms and in right relationship, we do feel that's, and so, like, release, and, oh, yeah, this is, this is how we were designed to live and to be and to play our role on the land.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you feel that you're being called to be today?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I look.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a really good question.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's interesting, uh, do the work is a part of my life, as I mentioned that it's so interesting upon being a do the like how I've started to see everything as birthwork and do the work and I think what I guess.
[SPEAKER_04]: me today is like a du-la for that world that we're ushering in where we all have safety and nourishment and the abundance and so it is yeah I just see everything is du-ling it and so I think that's what I've been called to be most days is whether or not in a birth or a death or just at a like right now I'm at a conference regardless it's like a that du-laural carries through everything I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but you were saying about our role as humans finding the path between thinking that we can't do anything and thinking we have to manipulate nature to fix things.
[SPEAKER_00]: that path between of just waiting and watching and connecting and listening and all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're hearing that more and more in our conversations with people as we talk to people in this show that have written books in or in this field.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just that message is coming across so much that this is something we can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's something that everyone can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no matter your circumstances.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if it's just recognizing some sort of beauty in your immediate vicinity and connecting with it, having a heartfelt connection with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, is there anything you'd like to say about that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, to speak, this is for everyone.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there's message certainly and there's we all have our own lineages and the brilliance of our lineages to look back to is what we all have this blueprint and I think that to your point of it being for everybody it's like the call here certainly isn't for everybody to go find their own two acres of land that he like that's not for everybody some people really belong in cities and but how can they then
[SPEAKER_04]: honor symbiosis and honor the relationships there and honor how we all care for each other by nature.
[SPEAKER_04]: A word I've been thinking a lot about is in tingle like we're all very tangled and so like how do we honor that and let that be true regardless of where we are because it isn't that in order to heal the planet we have to
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, go back to the land.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know that was a movement for a while, but it's that is for somebody, but it's some people, but it isn't for everybody.
[SPEAKER_04]: And for others, it's to have a startup and as startup that honors the cycles of the earth and things like that and honors what we're being called to do.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's so many paths to it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it just depends on that inner knowing of what we know like we need to do is answering that call because it's different for each of us, believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, in a recent interview, someone described her experience working volunteering in a prison and she said she went in there and she went there to talk about plants and gardening and stuff and she really didn't have a sense of where it was going but she said it ended up being a very moving experience because
[SPEAKER_00]: She was able to guide the people there in recognizing the life around them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if it was just a little flower coming out of a crack in the concrete or something in this guy or something that could look at and connect with an absorbent.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said it was really profound.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was a real opening up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there may be people in many circumstances that feel very shut down about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's very hopeful to hear
[SPEAKER_00]: There's always a way to connect because we're not because back to this idea, the great separation, the great forgetting that we're separate for nature, but we're not.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a remembering and opening our eyes and being connected to recognize.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just the beginning.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, certainly.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think prisons when we think about that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Bye.
[SPEAKER_04]: that live in New Orleans, Alabama, Vermont, but I'm talking to you in New Orleans.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I am in the city with the highest incarceration rate in the state, with the highest incarceration rate in the country, with the highest incarceration rate in the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: And when we think about that, I think that we think about it's we can get to a very out of sight out of mind, thing of that like
[SPEAKER_04]: what happens there and when that happens, people are taken from us and taken into places where we cannot see or contact them.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that's that could not be true if we didn't also have mindsets of the far more doing be out of sight out of mind as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's not our issue or problem, but we remembering that connectedness is that the fact that we are putting people in prisons and then putting tons and tons of trash into oceans and to
[SPEAKER_04]: landfills is this idea that things that are challenging to deal with or take a lot of reconciling can just be taken away and put somewhere but that's not true because it's we are so interconnected that it is it is on all of us to have more just systems for how we care for people and care for the land and I don't think we could if we didn't see ourselves as separate from land we would never accept people being taken to incarceration and or the planet being treated the way it is I think it's also interrelated
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so embedded in the language we used.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just this, the very simple everyday term.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just throw it away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where is a way?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're sent away, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're, again, we're as a way.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's up.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And when we have that larger view that as a part of the interconnected world, we, there is no away.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're just like still on the planet that you're living in, that's still in the city that you're living in, it's still.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a question, I was scrolling your sub stack earlier and you have a beautiful, I say about our medicine, so getting in touch with our own medicine.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you've mentioned it a few times too, connecting with our lineage and like our individual lineage.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that we human, especially right now in twenty twenty five when we can just type something in and get, we think we can get whatever answer we want to whatever we need.
[SPEAKER_01]: really quickly we want to be told what to do and sometimes in some cases we want to be told want to think.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think what I got from that I say that you wrote is what we really need to be doing is asking ourselves and our own ancestors what we need and for those answers that are already within us.
[SPEAKER_01]: As a Dula working in this type of thing, how do you help people figure out how to do that, how to connect with their own medicine.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's a great question.
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, as you mentioned, my sub stack is our medicine.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's the idea that we have, we have this knowing, we have this inner knowing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if we feel disconnected from it, it's not, it wants to be remembered, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I think so much of my practice in all of the work I do, be it storytelling or do those.
[SPEAKER_04]: to get people back in touch with that and to know like for example in the first a lot of times there's all these new things that people can learn like new breathing techniques or new this so that the other thing and it's what we really is required in a verse is deep interconnection with yourself to really go inside and
[SPEAKER_04]: Communicate with your body and your baby and to go out when it's to happen.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think rather than learning all these new things, it's just reconnecting that brings people to be grounded and be able to bring a baby Earthside in a lot of times that is through going to their family and hearing birth stories from their lineage or practices that were there and incorporating them in.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's true for all of us, not all of us are burning a baby, but we are all creating something or a part of creation and how do we
[SPEAKER_04]: call upon the just incredible web of life that brought us here and know what is like in our bones and in our DNA wants to be remembered as opposed to this like searching energy or what will be the next thing that like heals me or fixes me like I'm definitely someone who's been on paths before be like I need to fix myself and then just to be like that actually is not an addition process but like a subtraction process of getting back into
[SPEAKER_04]: Our design and how those unique gifts that we have that nobody else can have, how do we bring those forth into the world because I think those are the part of that roadmap that we'll get us back into right relationship.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so we each have our own.
[SPEAKER_04]: medicine of connection, and I think the key to the key to life, might I say, is that connection beats, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like being connected to yourself, being connected to others and being connected to the planet.
[SPEAKER_04]: And once we have those practices in place, we're going to feel much more connected if they are our own medicines as opposed to trying to find others and be in that sort of searching, seeking again.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know how the feeling of that being almost like a void where you just tried to do all these things and find all these things to feel something but I found so awesome when we go back to our medicines of not only our ancestral but also our own like what do we do and how do we do things that that are that nobody else can do.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then how do we bring forth those gifts into the collective to usher us and first that world that we all are hoping to live in.
[SPEAKER_00]: for someone to him this language sounds very new about connecting and listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: And do you have some practical, like, how to begin?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, someone that's just, like, really opening up to this message for, yeah, this idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: So very practical, like, how does one begin?
[SPEAKER_00]: How does someone from the other world come into this way?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it takes a lot of honesty, self honesty of what feels good and right and true as opposed to what feels like it has to be done, or it should be, I think that should art is key.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that there's certainly that aspect to it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then others are just slowing down.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think so much of my so many of the teaching values have come only once I've slowed down and not when I'm like, right, degree searching for them.
[SPEAKER_04]: And also I think so much of it comes in story.
[SPEAKER_04]: We all have different relationships with our family of course, but there's ways to find out the ways that two or three generations before you were thinking about things and doing things that can unlock a lot of knowledge about where to look next and to find people who are in those practices presently.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it can just be the practice of calling up an octi or something and then they might remember oh yeah like we used to do it this way and things like that and just trying to reconnect and then certainly out out of family research can be helpful especially family relations are straight and just looking at where we originated where our lineage is came from and there's many people on this.
[SPEAKER_04]: on this path right now and so there's certainly folks from all paths that can be metores in that reconnection, but I think it's slowing down, listening, getting rid of almost what seals should like or from a place of should and then spending time also in.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's silence in contemplation is really key.
[SPEAKER_04]: I certainly am someone who almost always has headphones in and is listening to something and taking a new information.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's certainly everything that I really have to practice even.
[SPEAKER_04]: I try to take three walks a day for twenty minutes with nothing and that in that contemplation so much knowledge drops in and so much
[SPEAKER_04]: I think we can just also really trust ourselves.
[SPEAKER_04]: There doesn't always have to be a logical answer, but what's something drops in and feels right and feels a line that just trusting that knowing and maybe will trace it to its origins at some point, but just letting it be and letting all that happen and it can't happen without silencing and contemplation.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's necessary part of it as challenges that can be to
[SPEAKER_04]: want to.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the other thing is I think that follow what life is showing you, follow the threads that you're being seen rather than like, I need to figure this out right now, being like, what's coming up in my daily life right now and where might those threads be as opposed to the dig around and sign them, just allow yourself to follow what is being presented because there are certainly clues along the way that make a lot easier than trying to.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, dig around one example of that is I've practiced like practices around shadow work before and there's a lot of fighting your shadow and the rejected parts of yourself and it's like you can go around and try to sign those things or you can look at where they're coming up in your daily life and the things that are really activating and just allow that to guide you and that's a lot easier and more present than trying to just be like I will sign these things with it be when it can feel so ambiguous.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's so interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the idea like working on yourself and whatever that means, it feels like work.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's got us to down and think about this and journal about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's fun to think about or you could just like notice when something is activating you or your upset or your what is mommy always say something like it's like discontent is
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the term divine discontent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Divine discontent.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our divine discontent being like a helpful message for us to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, something's not right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen to your point and not to get all crazy, drawn to fix it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hear a lot of, I hate my job in the city.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to go buy ten acre farm and be a homesteader.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's going to think.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's perfectly right for some people.
[SPEAKER_00]: But obviously not for everyone, and that's not accessible to everyone in their ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're otherwise to listen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of our big points of conversation on here is letting to listen to those feelings and notice them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, no point.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to slow down and have to pay attention to really notice how you're feeling.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And separate your feelings from cultural messages and so forth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or the parental voices in your ad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: how it should be or what things should look like and listening and noticing how you feel because to your point, your feelings are a great guide.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels really good to get out of here and pot these plants.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is that telling me?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a couple of cookie questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first one is, are you at all interested in astrology, specifically astro cartography?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know about that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know my son, moon and rising, and I check in, I like, I am interested in it, and I have a really hard time retaining the information that I learned.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Always re referencing, but I'm always, and yeah, people who can really just say, oh, just tell me this, and I can tell you to set me up.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you know about Astro cartography?
[SPEAKER_04]: I know I should never live in Chicago or LA.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I know that where I live in Vermont is part of maybe a moon line.
[SPEAKER_04]: I might be saying that wrong, but something about it makes sense that more of that like duly mindset and things came out for me upon being in Vermont and being on the land.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but that's I know why specifics more than I know generally, but I know there are places that frustrate us and all of it's important, but maybe don't live on.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, through the line or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But so cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our conversation about reconnecting and ancestry and where you came from has made me think about astrocardography a few times in this conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then my other cookie question is about specifically past lives and if you do any if you think about or believe in any like reconnecting with your own past soul lives or if that comes up for you at all.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I believe in everything is what I've ultimately come to.
[SPEAKER_04]: Same.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when I get to confusing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's all true.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm into my human design and in human design, I have an open head so it makes sense.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's true.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's all, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is your human design?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a three, five manifesting generator.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know to detail, but I think we're both projectors.
[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And being me, I'm a projector.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, sorry, about past lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: Keep going.
[SPEAKER_04]: No.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but just on the topic of believing in everything, I lived in Malaysia for a year.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the, I lived in there were a lot of beliefs and ghosts and people would see ghosts in presence of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the certain kind of ghosts that having been buried and shrouds would jump around because they were, they were shrouded still and things like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And when, and when I would talk to folks who had it, but they'd be like, okay, but what really is it?
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm like, whatever they believe in is true.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like that's, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Just I'm like everything.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and I've done, I think, one, maybe two, past life for Greshens, and I did a soul retrieval.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I do believe that there are things from past, like, even on a more basic level, energy cannot be created or destroyed.
[SPEAKER_04]: We are made of the same things that came from an explosion billions of years ago.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, of course, there's memories and cell memories and everything, even if there isn't the full belief in a soul past life, but I also believe read that.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I see it so often and I think that babies' souls choose to come to the planet and I see so many babies now.
[SPEAKER_04]: Be born and they have this in their eyes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like they know what they signed up for and they're ready for it.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can't not leave past lives are a part of that or that they had some agency in choosing and such a challenging time to come to the planet and at the same time.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: A wound like right now, we're living in an infected wound and in order to heal from an infected wound, you have to clean it out and look at the mess and look at all of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: It takes very specific people to come to the planet who want to do that, but we can't move forward if we keep ignoring the exposed wound so it's uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_04]: But knowing that I think belief in past lives and experiences and wisdom helps to just be like okay, we chose this time.
[SPEAKER_04]: So then what's our call to do to hear?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh gosh, I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Use the term it's a challenging time to come to the planet and sometimes for those of that look around and see a lot of pain and suffering and damage and to people in the natural world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and we just look around and oh my gosh, how are you going to get out of this
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's very easy to go down the slide into despair.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what you're advice to people like recognizing this is a very challenging time to be on the planet.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we keep from going there to where we're like ineffective?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, I think it's one recognizing like in terms of that ineffective question is we can all only care for and steward our little corner of the earth and our selves and I used to really roll my eyes at that advice of it starts with you and things like that, but turns out like that's all we really have agency over and so
[SPEAKER_04]: being in right relationship with yourself, with the land around you, with the people around you, and just trusting that as interconnected people on an interconnected planet that ripples out is the is really think key.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then also that times a reckoning with destruction and what this doesn't feel right and why we're angry, it points us to what's possible.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like we wouldn't be angry, we didn't think something better was possible.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I think just honoring that and letting
[SPEAKER_04]: that grace be really generative and letting that grace be really creative.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think grace can really be a portal or threshold into what we want to be true and how we can have our hand making that true without thinking that we can like heal the world as one person.
[SPEAKER_04]: We can heal our corner of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Just trust the others.
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll do the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let Greece be generative.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's wonderful.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really great.
[SPEAKER_04]: We can look to other places and be like, they're doing it.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're standing.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you wouldn't be so prone to look elsewhere is you didn't think there was a mess right in front of you that needed to be cleaned.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's I think really key.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my goodness.
[SPEAKER_00]: So do you go by?
[SPEAKER_00]: the moon for planting at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a system that you follow?
[SPEAKER_04]: Not as rigorously as they probably could.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have some ceremonial practices before I planned and during and living in Vermont like our things can't go in the ground until basically June first.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I think by the time that rolls around, I've just so excited that I can't wait.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, I maintain the ceremonies and things and the
[SPEAKER_04]: frayers over the plants and how and who they made nourish.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I'm less tied into the cycles for planting.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I've seen some great things about it and read things about things used to be planted and harvested.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's really beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I grew up in Appalachia.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I tried to adhere to the system that was around me as I grew up.
[SPEAKER_00]: All timers, the contemporaries certainly weren't doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's referred to as planting by the signs.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's different systems.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of different systems.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the by-demand.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's all kinds of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: But planting by the signs is one that's particular to the one I grew up with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we do a monthly calendar on our sub-stack to help guide people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's got some real, just real, fundamental roles.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it gets really particular.
[SPEAKER_00]: I try to follow them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we have a string of really good planting days right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just it's pouring rain today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today's a really good planting day and I'm a little frustrated.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll after this, I'll probably go out there rain or not and simply really wet.
[SPEAKER_00]: But because I've been to your point, you get late in the season and you're looking around and it's time to do this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, so like you need to wait for the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, that's that's a little bit of a side thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really love what you were saying a few minutes ago about how slowing down is one of the best ways to engage with that reconnecting and listening to yourself conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess my question for you is how do you do that in your everyday?
[SPEAKER_01]: What is slowing down and slowing living look like for you?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's definitely an iterative practice that I, at the end of many days, feel like I've failed that.
[SPEAKER_04]: But as I mentioned, those daily walks time in the garden and I sounds intuitive, but it's actually working.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've recently created like pretty set calendar and scheduling systems myself.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I don't get to the end of the day and realize I've tried to do absolutely everything in one day, but instead just have it.
[SPEAKER_04]: spread out has been really helpful in visualizing like what is possible in a day, because otherwise it can very much get in though.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just keep going things will keep getting done, but and yeah, time outside.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think spending time with children is necessarily slows down living.
[SPEAKER_04]: We spend a lot of time like looking at one thing, but things so time with baby definitely helps with that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, it's just taking a ton of self forgiveness in the process.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I think also being stewards of land and there's this idealized version of it as a slow and like connected process, but that idealized version is very different than the true and capitalistic system of caring for land while also needing to take care of yourself and others and also being a community member and also to set any other things.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think just being honest about what's possible and just
[SPEAKER_04]: sounds really cheesy but just taking as many small moments as possible for that contemplation and that sitting down or standing up and going outside and even ten minutes and things like that just really creates the sort of I think like infrastructure in the brain chemistry to be like oh yeah this is what we do in times we slow down but it's definitely a training process for me is going against so much conditioning and back into that like remembering of how our bodies want to be you got my attention we said take three walks a day
[SPEAKER_00]: because that I think that really ground you in keeping it a part of your day instead of just, oh, I got to go take my walk.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got to be in a half so they got to reframe it and this is something that encompasses the whole day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but maybe it makes it more accessible to people to take twenty minutes at a time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that's an interesting idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, thank you for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a person is a land steward, this next question is probably very obvious to you, but we ask it anyway, because people come up with all kinds of wonderful answers, but what does the good dirt mean to you?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think about full
[SPEAKER_04]: All life on earth is because of a really small layer of topsoil.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think about the dirt is the dirt that truly and metaphorically, I'll say think that's like a metaphor of a tree.
[SPEAKER_04]: Then the dirt is like the dominant narrative and culture and things.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the roots grow out of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the trunk grows out of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it gets all the way into our personal relationships and relationships with ourselves.
[SPEAKER_04]: So without a relationship with the dirt and without recognizing what's in the dirt and what can grow from the dirt, we can't then blame the tree for being how it is.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have to go back always to honoring the dirt.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I've just been really also interested in the idea of compost piles as a part of what we need to do for life too is throw some things in the compost pile and see what comes out sometime later.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that's a part of it too of just letting that alchemy process happen so that the dirt can be good and not try to.
[SPEAKER_04]: like letting that time-bound process happen rather than trying to like artificially make the dirt good and growable, but really just giving it that full composting time for, yeah, in both the literal way and the metaphorical way in real lives.
[SPEAKER_04]: Beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So tell us what it is you offer in your services and help people can find you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, a couple of things.
[SPEAKER_04]: I write a sub-stack called our medicine on sub-stack.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we agree, exploration of connection to self, each other, planet.
[SPEAKER_04]: My book is coming out in spring, twenty, twenty, six, but joining the sub-stack, you'll find out all about that as it comes out.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have a creator's residency on my land.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you go to my website, Madison MurphyBarnie.com, there's information there.
[SPEAKER_04]: I also, and of course, do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm a dueling, breath and death, but I also offer something that I call connection dual support, which is like dueling through.
[SPEAKER_04]: grease or breakups or transitions or career changes and all those things because I think there's an emphasis on coaching culture, but I think we need more due the culture of to be held in the mass and then allowed to find your way out and other than that and my other sort of work I do.
[SPEAKER_04]: storytelling consulting for health and justice focused or organizations and and spearheading a movement called entangled health through that and that is also available on my website.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's for my human design, manifesting generator really comes out.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of things going on and they're both connected and not, but those are my being offering.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: And is there anything else that you would like to believe the audience with anything that you'd like people to most understand about the work that you do?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that our lives depends on the quality of our connections to ourselves, to each other, to the planet, and that all of that takes a lot of trust and trusting yourself, and that is something that is possible and worthy of doing for all is that deep trust.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for tuning in, calling in, and spreading the good dirt.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This show is produced by Lady Farmer, a slow living lifestyle community.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the original music is composed in perform by John Kingsley.
[SPEAKER_02]: For more from Lady Firmer, follow us on Instagram at WeAreLadyFirmer.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's WeAreLadyFirmer, or join us online at www.ladyfirmer.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you next time on The Good Dirt.
[SPEAKER_02]: Goodbye!