Vulnerability and Tending to What Is Important

Valerie Friedlander 0:00
Hello, my friends, and welcome to an episode of unlimited today. We’re talking about vulnerability and tending what’s important. I’m your host. Valerie Friedlander, and if this is your first episode, welcome. I’m so glad to have you here. If you have been listening for a while. Hello. It is so wonderful to have you back. This episode is a little different than my normal episodes will be, and that is because this is like a pre season episode, an episode between seasons before I start the next season. The next season coming is season five, and I’m so excited to kick it off, but I have not been ready. I was going to bring the podcast back in February, and here we are now in February, and this is kind of like a bonus episode. I am sharing an interview that I did with Cher Hale, who it was my last episode or last interview of season four. And as we were talking, we were closing out our episode, our interview, and she asked me a question, and I was like, this is something I think I should record. So I asked her if that would be okay and hit record. And what I’m sharing is very much a processing of this question. So you’re you’re gonna get to hear a little bit of my out loud processing when it comes to the idea of attention and vulnerability, she asked me what my next steps are when it comes to demanding attention. So if you haven’t listened to our interview, I encourage you to go check that out first. This one is, I mean, it can stand alone, but we do reference the earlier one. I’m sharing this here and now because I wanted to give you something since I had said, Oh, I’m coming back in February, and I just, I haven’t been ready. I haven’t been ready to do that for a few reasons, one being that a good chunk of January I was sick. First I had COVID, and then my son brought a norovirus home, so I was down with that. So just energetically, I haven’t had the space to really engage the way I wanted to. And then there’s a lot of stuff going on right now, and it is a lot. It is a lot. So I before I get started, before I share the recording of this conversation with you, I do want to encourage you to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself. One of the things that came up recently with some folks I was having a conversation with had to do with the idea, or the difference between visioning and pretending and the reason we were talking about that is how it can seem like you’re just being really depressing all the time when you’re talking about what’s happening. And I mean specifically in the United States, if you’re listening outside of the US, and to be real about what’s going on, to not pretend, I think, is really important, and it’s exhausting, so making sure that you make room for Care for yourself and for the ability to imagine something that you can feed into, that you can build towards, that you can create, that you can put your energy towards. Because I talk a lot about how important it is to focus on what you want versus just trying to get away from what you don’t want. And that’s still true. It’s still important, and when you’re doing visioning work, to know where you are is part of how you take action. But before you take action, you do want to know where you’re going, what direction you’re building towards, so making sure that you have room for that, and then to be able to be grounded in reality. And those two things can feel at odds right now, because that idea of what you want and the hopefulness that comes along with it, and the joy and the spaciousness, and then to come back to what is happening. And what obstacles are in place. It’s it’s a lot, it’s a lot. It’s very exhausting. And that’s another reason why I’ve been taking some extra space and some extra care for myself and to connect with other people outside of the sharing of things and the business things and all of that, it’s so important to make room. And that is one of the things that Sharon and I talk a little bit about, is doing things because they matter, not because it looks good, and I would throw in there, also not because you know that it will work, and that can be hard, because I think a lot of us, myself included, really want to do the right thing, which means the thing that will work, we don’t want to waste time, waste energy. There’s a lot of talk in our society around the idea of wasting and that is often tied with being productive and being effective and efficient in all of these words, that are super caught up in our capitalist society that’s so focused on production all The time, and it’s important to make sure that you are caring for yourself through that and knowing that there are things that are important to us that we aren’t going to get to see in our lifetime. That doesn’t mean that they won’t happen, and it doesn’t mean that it isn’t important. You just think about all of the artists who became famous after they had passed, and like authors and painters and just just so many people, people who made a difference but didn’t necessarily get to see the difference that they made. Activists. There’s so many people, and I know that I would love to see the world that I am working towards and that I put effort into. And I also know that what I want to create is too big for that. I want to create a world that is caring and supportive, and that is going to take time from where we are, so that means that I probably won’t get to see the fruits of that labor, and that doesn’t mean that they are not going to happen. So I just want to encourage you to hold on to the places that support you in that visioning and release the perfectionism and the pressure for it to be something that you get to know and see and know that doing it matters regardless that the intention and the effort and the energy that you put into being in the world matter, and whatever you can do matters, and it doesn’t have to be huge and big and Create this thing that you can see. So anyway, I’m rambling a little bit. I just, I want, I want to send you so much love right now, and it is a little vulnerable to say that it’s hard right now, and here we are, and you’re here, and I’m here, and I’m glad that you’re here. So what we’re going to talk about in this episode are a little bit about me, and you’re going to hear me processing, and I do want to say about some of my processing. I mentioned some things about my life and the things that have impacted my life, and I want to make sure that I’m clear, particularly when it comes to and I’ve referenced this before, growing up in a home impacted by alcoholism, I’m not blaming anybody in this, and I’m not actually. I’m grateful, I would say, for the experiences and for the relationships that I built through the process of unlearning things and through the process of recovering, both with the alcoholism in recovery and the codependency and all of the impacts of that in recovery. And so I have a lot of gratitude for that. I don’t say that in this episode show. I just thought it was really important that I say that here, while I’m talking about the emotional impact and the dynamics of not. Being visible and not feeling safe being visible, it’s much more. I don’t know how to explain this. It’s not about for me. It wasn’t about fear of my safety, physically or even as dramatically as it is for some people, it really was about the idea of belonging and emotional safety. So I just, I wanted to be clear about that, because it’s important that I am, I believe. But this is a is a vulnerable conversation to share in a lot of ways, because, again, it’s neat out loud processing, which is something that I do. A lot of my clients are also out loud processors, so that’s a thing, but it’s vulnerable to do that as well. So we’re going to talk about that, talking about unlearning and divesting from supremacy culture and shame and the necessity of community and the importance of storytelling and really looking at what you’re tending in your life and what you’re not tending and why, and what you want to do about that which ties to that visioning of like In this vision that you have for your life, where you can tap into that, what needs attention, what needs tending in that vision, or in order to make that vision happen, like if you imagine this amazing garden, and you’re planting seeds, you need to tend those seeds. So what seeds are you planting? What seeds are you tending? So that’s what we’re talking about. As I mentioned, this is a pre season episode. I’m not doing an intro, an outro. This is just this. I am planning on revamping some of the like intro outro, I’m gonna start sharing ads for some amazing podcasts that I’m connected with, so that you know other places to go, as well as potentially some short ads about things that I think are amazing that I want to share. And so that’s coming, but again, lots of shifts and energy. So my intention is to have my season start in March. So look for that. Then I would love to hear from you, if you have thoughts. One of the things that I’ve been percolating is the idea of doing like, uh, answering questions that people might have about my thoughts in the world. So if you have questions, I do have a Ask Me Anything link where you can click and do that, and I encourage you, it’ll be in the show notes. And I think that’s it. So now I’m going to share this conversation with Cher, who’s amazing again, all the links in the show notes. Check them out. Thank you for being here. Without further ado, let’s get started. You.

Cher Hale 13:25
So when you think about what comes next for you in terms of feeling comfortable, feeling like you have agency, like you, like you can demand attention for yourself, in spite of the fear or the discomfort, what do you think is next for you? What’s your next stage of healing or growth that needs to happen.

Valerie Friedlander 13:41
I think it ties into what we were talking about before, about about community. I mean, that that’s a big part of what I’ve been exploring is like extricating a lot of the individualistic thinking and the white supremacy conditioning, because I want to be really mindful of the system. When I show up to it, it’s like what you were talking about before, also about, like the energy of investing into a relationship. Because to do that, it’s both unlearning programming. It’s excavating the programming and and releasing it, divesting from it, all the facets of it. So I think about this in terms of, like, you know, there’s, there’s the the hierarchies, right? Like we are conditioned around hierarchies to think in terms of, Where do I sit in my proximity to power, and who am I above, and who am I below? And how do those things work? So in terms of my own ability to call attention to myself, being taught, over time, as a young person that I don’t get attention and also not wanting to call attention to myself because I could be then targeted for i. Bullying. For you know, I grew up with alcoholism in my home, and I always thought that that was like, uh, one. I thought, well, this is just my family. And then I thought, Oh, well, this is this is addiction. And then I realized, Oh no, this is supremacy culture. Do? I did a workshop with resmaa manichem talking about like the conditioning around protecting the white man and white women being conditioned to you be the gatekeepers of white supremacy, so protect the white man, and a lot of that has to do with protecting his emotions. And so calling attention to myself means one, I could be a victim of his emotions, and two that I could activate his emotions, and that’s dangerous on multiple levels depending on what emotion I activate, because they’re not taught to have emotions and to process emotions, and so we have to Protect the emotions so that we’re not attacked by them in some way. And so the way we’re conditioned to do that is both protecting them from us as well as protecting them from other people, especially other identities, who are going to be seen as more of an attack, right, because of that conditioning of supremacy culture. So for me, it’s it’s unpacking all the layers of that, both in terms of my complicitness with the protection of the hierarchies through protecting above myself, upholding the ceiling above myself to protect my I mean, I think glass ceilings are they end up becoming both a way of keeping us out, but also a way of protecting ourselves. And if we don’t unpack both aspects of that, then we uphold them without realizing we stand on the glass ceiling while holding the while trying to break the glass ceiling. And so unpacking my my protection of above myself, as well as unpacking the ways in which I hold off people who are seen as lower on the hierarchy in our society. So it involves a dual effort in that respect, so that I am being really mindful of myself, but also that I am doing the emotional work to receive critique and assess critique, so that I’m not fragile like because I think, you know, I think about glass ceilings. I’m holding the glass ceiling while standing on the glass ceiling. But ultimately, I but ultimately I am the glass ceiling, sure, right? That’s the fragility, if I’m if that’s why I am so fragile, right? So drawing attention to myself is full of shame, both being taught to be ashamed and then that tool being coming forward when I realized that I’m complicit. So it’s like I’m taught to be ashamed. I realize I’m complicit, and the shame activates to reinforce the structure. So that was like a long way of saying, this is really I’m not a short, winded person, but that’s like my outlaw processing of of what what’s next for me really has to do with ensuring that I am in community with other people doing similar work, so that I am not just lost in my own wounds and in my own thoughts, and I’m taking inspiration from others and ensuring that I am uplifting others in the process. That I’m doing things because they matter, not because I want to look good.

Cher Hale 18:57
Yes, it’s not performative, right? You know, as you’re talking, what I’m realizing is that we are in community, yes, to be supported and to support others, but also so that we can have a close hand view of what it looks like from others to be in a right relationship with things like attention, right we need examples. This is why representation is such a huge topic, and it continues to be an issue that we’re battling. It’s because we need those models, we need those stories to remind us that this is possible. This is what it looks like to be in right relationship with the aspects of ourselves that we need, that we want to we want, we want to touch, to have honored and with also the skill set we need to to affect change.

Valerie Friedlander 19:39
Yeah, I love that you use that terminology, because that is something that that comes up frequently, that idea of really interrogating right relationship, what is my right relationship with this, as well as thinking about thinking about, what am I not paying attention to? Right Like, not just what am I calling attention to? To or allowing myself to receive attention. But what do I not want? What am I avoiding attending to, and why?

Cher Hale 20:09
Yeah, the key word here is attending. Uh huh. I think you use, like the Latin, the Latin root effectively, right? Which is like we are when we give attention. Like, what are we not attending to or attending to in in favor something else or to avoid something else? Yeah, I think often about what it what’s stealing my attention away from me so that I can’t focus or give attention to what I think really matters. And there’s so much I feel like the attention topic, just like it hits all the angles

Valerie Friedlander 20:42
It does.

Cher Hale 20:43
of like, both our growth as like, of what we need to to affect change and with how our system is intuited into our personal lives.

Valerie Friedlander 20:53
Yeah. Well, yeah. So taking that word, because I love words more nerd, and taking that word and thinking attention and attending to and then tending like, what am I tending? Yes, and what needs tending, and what am I not tending? And why am I not tending? It sure, and that idea, going back to what you were saying before about that, what are my needs like? Asking for what I need, asking for what needs tending,

Cher Hale 21:30
Yeah, and I neglected to say this earlier, and I wish I had, but so much of what’s transformed my relationship with attention is nervous system work, so allowing myself to have the space to do EMDR therapy number one. And then there’s a protocol called the safe and sound protocol, and I do that in conjunction with my therapist, but it just it targets your autonomic nervous system to remind it that it’s safe. And that has, I’ve seen the dividends there of what it’s like to feel just even 1% more courageous to ask for what I want.

Valerie Friedlander 22:06
Yeah, well, I’m glad that you mentioned that the nervous system work is so key, because, again, we’re wired for belonging. And Amina Chaudhary, in an interview that I did with her, talking about belonging and how we’re wired for belonging has been so informative because of that understanding that our nervous system senses danger if we don’t feel a sense of belonging. And because our society is not designed around belonging, because we are not thinking collectively, we’re thinking individualistically, we’ve replaced belonging with fitting in. And so fitting in is where we start to uphold the, you know, niceness, the not allowing attention to the things that need attention because they disrupt the status quo, right? The status quo like you were talking about before, of like, what we give attention to, what we don’t give attention to that idea of playing small, as it were, right? I struggle with the whole playing small and playing full out, because, like that often gets tied up in, like, the hustle culture, sort of thinking. But our nervous system actually goes Danger Danger, because we sense the potential of being left to the wolves, right? If we get kicked out of the group, we will be eaten, whereas, if we stay in the group and we don’t ruffle the feathers, we keep everything okay, then we are stay, at least physically, say, even though, or you know, as we talked about that, that’s also an illusion because all of the other things. And so to do that nervous system work as an adult, because that gets conditioned early on. That’s early childhood conditioning, right? So to do that as an adult, to be able to recognize what’s true, and that what we really need is belonging to be whole, rather than fitting in, that that’s actually eating away at ourselves and not tending I mean, and I literally mean eating away at ourselves because it feeds addiction, and it it creates autoimmune disorders, and it does All of this havoc on our bodies, and of course, the more you have to contort yourself and stifle yourself, the more it’s going to harm your body. So I’m glad that you brought that forward of doing that work, because I think that I’m not trained in that sort of thing, but it’s something I hold space for, because I recognize that it’s so important in order for us to create change from the inside out, because that’s the only way we really can do it.

Cher Hale 24:48
Yeah, and Carmen Spanola, if you’re familiar with her work, talks about systems of collapse, you would love her. She’s incredible. If you don’t have access to a therapist, Carmen Spanola has a membership. In it, you can get access to the Safe and Sound protocol so you’re able to benefit from it without having to jump through the hoops of healthcare system.

Valerie Friedlander 25:09
Yeah, that’s key, and that’s going to be key, most likely. So, yeah, I will absolutely. I’ll put that in the bonus episode show notes, because clearly we have a bonus episode.

Cher Hale 25:21
I mean, that was for it, it was it was spontaneous.

Valerie Friedlander 25:24
It was spontaneous. But I appreciate the question and that reflection. That’s the power of asking questions. Anywhere else you think we should go right now?

Cher Hale 25:37
I do feel like you and I could sit for like a half of a day and like not touch the tip of the iceberg. So of course, we should just call it yes back in the future.

Valerie Friedlander 25:47
I agree. I agree. I love it. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate you being here. And please click that subscribe button if you haven’t already, so that you make sure that you are notified when the next episode airs, and check out the show notes in it, there are some great links, including signing up for a free exploration call if you are looking for coaching support, and signing up for my email newsletter. That is a great way to stay in touch and stay in the know of what’s going on with the podcast and with events offers recommendations and musings, insights, inspiration. I usually send out emails about one to two times a month, so not a ton, but it’s a great way to stay in touch without relying on algorithms. Again. Thank you so much for being here, and I will talk to you all next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai