Episode 80

We are Just Bodies Bodying: Exploring Skin, Touch, and Love with May Lindstrom

Published on: 8th May, 2024

In this week’s episode Kate sits down with the lovely, the ineffable, the effervescent May Lindstrom. Together they explore themes of grace, slowness, and the intricate dance between our inner and outer worlds. May shares many of her incredible stories and laces throughout them a call to live a life full of compassion and love and a cherishing of the everyday. She invites us to think about how we connect to ourselves and to nature, about what it might mean to grow old while integrating the perspectives of ourselves when we were younger, and to follow a north star of love. Throughout is a conversation about what it means to have a body that is bodying - whether that’s your body, a worm body, or to imagine all the other bodies that surround us. She also dives into frontloading pleasure, making a mess, and building something you really believe in. May’s words and wisdom shine in this episode that is really about coming home to yourself. 

Find May:

May Lindstrom Skin

Instagram: @maylindstromskin

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Transcript
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Howdy. I'm Kate Cavanaugh, and you're listening to the Mind Body and Soil podcast, where we're laying the groundwork for our

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land, ourselves, and for generations to come by looking at the way every thread of life is connected to one another.

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Communities above ground mirror the communities below the soil, which mirror the vast community of the cosmos.

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As the saying goes, as above, so below.

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Join me as we take a curious journey into agriculture, biology, history, spirituality, health, and so much more.

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I can't wait to unearth all of these incredible topics alongside you.

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Mind Body and Soil podcast that is in slow transition to the Groundwork podcast.

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This morning, I've been thinking a lot about grace and slowness and what it might mean to give ourselves some grace in the

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time that it takes to unfold and unfurl into beingness.

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I think that this is in part the nature of spring, that you get to witness the time that it takes for a bud to slowly become

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a flower or for a fledgling to leave the nest, and that everything is happening on its own time frame.

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And I am wondering today what it might mean to extend myself that grace in something like transitioning this podcast or some

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of the many dreams that I am working on today that have so much to do with this space right here and the stories that we are

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telling and that it is such an honor to bring to you.

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For those of you that have been listening to the podcast lately, you'll know that we've been exploring a lot around supply

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chains and around the infrastructure that undergirds our built and natural worlds, and some of the confluence of factors that

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have sort of brought us to where we are right now.

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I've found that these explorations can be both heavy and heady in a way where I've really needed an anchor of what it means

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to come back to my body in this place and in this time.

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I want this podcast to be many things.

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I was relating to someone today that as a generalist, as somebody that has a lot of varied interests, One of the things that

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I am holding for this podcast is for it to be a catchall of a lot of different kinds did you hear that motorcycle? I'm sure it showed up.

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To hear a lot of different kinds of stories and to explore the things that make me curious and that light me up and hopefully light you up as well.

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This episode today with our guest, May Lindstrom, is very special to me because it really anchored me into my own body and

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a different sense of giving myself grace in a season where I've really needed it, both in these explorations and without them,

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in in other spaces of my personal life where I needed to remind myself of what it is to be a body bodying in this time and

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place and what it means to brush up against those other bodies and to hold compassion for them and to really dive into coming

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at things from a place of love.

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And May embodies all of this and more along with exploring what I think is a really important topic of just how porous we

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are as beings and that this is illustrated in our skin, but it extends to so many other aspects of ourself.

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Oftentimes, I will avoid recording these intros because for me, they carry a lot of weight.

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I really want to introduce these guests whose work I so admire with the appropriate gravity.

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And May and I had a conversation, over Zoom leading into this conversation and some conversations online that really made a big impact on me.

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And so in her her work, her words over the many years that I have followed them, that I have opened every email that she has sent, have changed and shifted me.

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I have let them soak into my skin, to my body, to my beingness, and I just want to share with you how beautiful the words

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in this podcast are, how incredible May's story is and the way that she shares it with the same love and magic that she infuse

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all of her products and and her life with are really incredible to me.

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They harken back to a sense of care and quality and love that I have held as an anchor through these explorations on the podcast,

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as well as what it is to come back home to our bodies in this space and time.

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And so I can't tell you enough how beautiful this woman's words are, so I'm just going to have to let her speak for herself.

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As a small note, if you are enjoying this podcast, it is produced by me or made me, and one of the best things that you can

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do to support it is to hit that subscribe button, follow along, and leave a reading and review wherever you listen to podcasts.

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As a little reminder, if you leave a written review on Apple Podcasts Podcasts and shoot me a little snapshot of it, I'll

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send you a little piece of snail mail, which is a great way for us to connect in a more tangible sense and something that I take great joy in doing.

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I am so excited for you to hear this episode and to hear your thoughts on it.

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So if you want to share this episode on social media, please do or share with me.

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You can reach out to me via email or via social email, social media. Thank you.

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Thank you for allowing me to have this broad range of explorations and to come back to a sense of story that I think we really

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need to hear and to have May to have May transmit that for us.

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Without further ado, here is the the lovely and magical and ineffable and caring and loving May Lindstrom. Tell me that story. We were talking about reality.

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Well, I was just remembering the last time we talked and we were talking about humaning.

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Humaning and still having hope for being human. Mhmm.

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Like, I'm still a romantic about the idea. Yes.

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And I'm really I'm not sure if I'm naive or if I'm just still really, really a believer that humans are good and that we were

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made of, like, love and sparkle and hope and faith and power and dreams, and we have this incessant drive to make things better. So I don't know. How could we not? Isn't that the human thing?

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Yes.

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I do. When we're not burning it down, we really are trying to build it up.

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And whether that's, you know, literal around us or within us, we're constantly setting fires and building anew and breathing life into new vision.

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And I just I have to hope that that keeps going.

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And you were just telling me a story about the man on your podcast eating a cookie and the idea I just wanna sit and listen

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to somebody crumble love into a microphone. Yes.

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To touch delight like that, to witness another in a simple moment of feeding and tending. It's so precious and so rare.

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I can't tell you when the last time I saw an old man eat a cookie is.

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Yeah. Yeah. What do

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you want? Us all to watch old man eat cookies every day of our lives.

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Imagine, we wake up and the first thing we see when we go to scroll Instagram is an old man eating a cookie.

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Very delightful. I I

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hold such a big hope, and I've been thinking a lot lately about the things that we have relegated to the mundane.

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The things like old men eating cookies or another little bit of reality snuck in.

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I was recording a podcast and her daughter came in and was playing with cars on the floor.

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And lo, in the background of the whole podcast, you can hear wheels on the floor, right? Like these little gifts.

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So I've been thinking about, has anything ever been as held your attention made you as excited each morning as whatever that

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piece of your morning ritual is a cup of coffee, a cup of tea.

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Like, have you ever come back to something with such hope and desire time and time again where it doesn't wear off.

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1000 and 1,000 and 1,000 and 1,000 and 1,000 and 1,000 of time.

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Yes. Yes, that is the crumbling of love to me.

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It is the desire to to come back to our routines, to these these gifts, these little anchor points in our day, and it's the

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noise of old men eating cookies and dogs interrupting podcasts and kids running a wooden truck over wooden floorboards in a house.

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But you see what you're describing is all of our senses.

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You're saying this, and I am imagining the sound of that cookie crumbling.

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I'm imagining the taste of it in my mouth.

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I can hear the vibration of the floorboards as the child vroom vroom, rumble rolls over it with all of the wheels. I can feel all of that.

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This morning I was holding my water glass and the light came in through the window just right and made this pattern of rippling

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water on the wall with a sunbeam through it. And we've all seen this. You've all seen this countless times.

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And still, I'm 40 years old, and I hold a water glass in my hand, and it sparkles at me like that.

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And it is like it's like being flirted with by a child.

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It's like having that old man hand you his cookie. It's like, no.

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I don't know the greatest compliment you've ever heard that you knew was true. Gosh. Just letting that land.

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You know, these little teeny tiny moments, it's the sparkles of of those senses. It's the humanness. It's that peace.

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It's this embodied peace we're seeing, we're smelling, we're feeling, we're we're hearing this world around us.

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I remember during the pandemic, coming across all of these playlists of the sounds of people in cafes, the sounds of people

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just in a living room, the sound of people gathered around a fire.

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And I would play it in the background while I was working, and I was working from home as I still mostly do.

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And it was just the sounds of the people around me.

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I don't actually want the people around me. It's not fair to say it.

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My hyper introverted self likes to work from my bathroom, preferably undressed. Maybe there's a robe. There's definitely incense burning in candles.

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And I'm sitting at this desk from 7 AM to 7 PM every day of the week.

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So, you know, I'm unboundaried, but I try to set the stage for pleasure while I'm in there.

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And it is those little things that keep me functional. Yeah. As well as hopeful.

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Yes. I also think they're the easiest things to forget sometimes.

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They're the easiest things for us to gloss over because they are made out of the everyday.

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When I was looking up the root of the word mundane, one of them, it meant of the earth.

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It was originally meant to be, and I'm pulling this from deep, it was the Latin answer to the Greek cosmos, but it was meant

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to be of the earth, not of the universe.

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That these are our earthly delights, these mundane things.

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And I think that they are the easiest for us to skim over at times, to to not see the ripple of water on the wall from the

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sun going through that water glass, and to not feel, I'll tell you, I've been I've been alone here on the farm.

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I think you know we've talked about this, that Josh is in Colorado and has been for half visceral

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thing.

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I mean, that is just such a visceral thing.

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I was in I was in Denver really briefly.

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And the only thing I wanted to do was to go dancing.

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And I'm an introvert like you and I don't get out much.

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And I just sat and I watched, you know, it was probably 12:30 at night, which is many hours past my bedtime. Right? I'm usually in bed at 7:30.

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And just watching the joy of people and bodies and the noise of everything.

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If that doesn't fill you with hope that we can come together and laugh and dance and crumble cookies, but the sun still flows through water and makes rainbows.

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I think we have to hold on to those those pieces with everything we've got.

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Well, this is where letting the body lead is so important.

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When it's body, space, time, letting the body be in charge.

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I was talking about this the other day.

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It was, something I learned years ago from a different teacher.

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It's it's paying attention to basically, there's 3 parts of yourself you can divide yourself up.

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And there's your body, your actual physical self experience.

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And then there's your mind that's in there telling stories about the whole thing.

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It's all the words, all the stuff to do.

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It's all the there was thinky thinky noise up there.

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And then there's this warm sparkly inside stuff, spirit stuff, whatever that is.

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And in any given situation, one of those 3 is probably best to be in charge.

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And all 3 need to be a part of it.

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But in all circumstances, there's probably a leader.

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If it's time for a shower, it might be a really good time to be in your body and feel the heat of the water, feel the sensation

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of brushing your hair, feel, smell whatever products you're using, whatever you're massaging into your skin, lighting the incense, lighting the candle. Get in there. Right?

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Like all of the physical sensations, let your body body let your mind rest, let physical sensations, let your body body let

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your mind rest, let whatever your mind is setting off in your heart and sparkly bits rest, and just let your body body.

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If it's time to take a math test, you might want to involve your mind, might have wanted to study for this, thought about some strategy, learn some things. You want your mind there. Your body's got to show up.

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You got to be well rested and fed and all those things. Your body will support you.

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Your caring, your sparkle will support you, but your mind has to leave.

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If it's time for me to tuck my kids into bed, yes, my body is there. My arms are around them. My cheek is on their cheek. Their hands are in my hair. Yes. I'm thinking about that. I'm talking with them. I'm listening to their stories. That involves my mind a lot. But who's in charge there? I hope it's the sparkly bits. I hope it's my heart. I hope it's love.

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And when I remember that, I stopped being so chatty.

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I stopped wondering when they're gonna stop being so chatty. I stopped rushing them along. I stopped rushing me along. I let my heart lead. I let the sparkly bits lead. That's who's in charge there.

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The other night, my husband and I, like most nights, were up way too late talking business stuff when the goal was to be a little sexier.

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The intention was to be a little sexier. Right?

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Like, we're due for the sexy time and here we are.

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We're standing out on our balcony and we're under the moon and we're eating our snacks and we should be moving in the direction

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of sexy, but, no, we are not.

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We're still talking about whatever business thing we're talking about.

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And and then it was like, yeah.

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I think if we're gonna change directions, my body's gonna need the body.

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And we just put our dressed standing up on our porch bodies against each other, just lined up our bodies and put our faces

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against each other and our chest against each other and our knees against each other and our feet against each other and let our body's body. Mhmm.

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We let our minds melt away and the words stopped for a second.

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And when the words stopped for a second, my emotions that were kinda pissed, but this

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is what we were talking about and doing. And why do we do

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this to ourselves now? We're staying staying up late and we're not even making out. What is the point?

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That all got to turn off, and so my little tender feelings got to chill out for a second.

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And my body just got to body and feel his warm body body.

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And when I could feel his warm body body, I felt so tender.

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And I stopped feeling resentful of the time and resentful of the subjects he was choosing over me and us.

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And all of that went away and we just got to potty.

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And we intended to go

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to bed after that because now it was too late. But you know what? Body's got a body.

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And when we let our bodies really embody all the way, it didn't matter that we were staying up too late.

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And the stories that we got to tell after staying up too late were so much nicer.

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And the heart felt better, and the sparkly stuff felt better, and the body went, yeah. Yeah. That's why I'm in charge sometimes.

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And the mind laughed and sparkle stuff laughed and we got to be together.

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And I just do that over and over all day long.

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It's been one of the most effective methods for reorienting.

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And that I found is seeing that this is a triangle for me, I have a I will notice a physical sensation in my body that is uncomfortable.

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It is often just anxiety passing through, which is like a cloud, and it will go by if I let it.

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But usually, my mind gets involved, starts telling stories. I really wanna understand. I really wanna understand.

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So I'm gonna look at that cloud. I'm gonna look at that cloud.

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I'm gonna poke at it and get really wet. Oh, gosh.

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But now I'm all wet, and I've got sadness about it, and I've got all these feelings about it. And, oh, I'm gonna feel that.

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Now my body's getting bigger and more spun out.

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And so now I've got a bigger story. Now I've got a bigger emotion.

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Now I've got more in my body.

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And that can just go on forever until I just look at it and remember maybe who one of those needs to be in charge right now

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and the other 2 can soften a bit.

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Is there a moment that invites you into that? Is there a ping?

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Is there or has it become a habit that you have cultivated to remember to check-in with those three spaces to ask who's who's leading? Who's in charge?

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Oh, it happens when I crash, which happens many times a day at the moment. You and me both. Yeah.

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It's, it is a running out of steam.

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It I wish it was more at the surface.

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There have been periods, especially when I first started, seeing this so clear.

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It's actually a visual in my head.

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It looks like a triangle, and each of the points is one of those things.

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There's the body and the sparkly stuff in their brain.

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And and I know that they set each other off.

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I know that they go in that triangle.

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I also know that they can separate them and give them their own little, spotlight.

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And so having a relationship to that, if I'm an active awareness of it, it's actually really fun.

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It's like having friends and being like, alright.

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You know, so and so is gonna be the loud one today.

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And and taking turns in a cohesive racial relationship does that.

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You can't just have one person talking all the damn time and tell them what the other 2 what to do. It just doesn't work.

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And, really, like, my brain will just go and go and go and leave everyone out.

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And then I'm just a big allheart as a human, I think.

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And so I just walk around all tender all the time, and so the stories can get a little crazy. And I know that about myself. I'm better when I body.

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But I didn't learn how to body until I was, like, 35.

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So I'm only 5 years in to really letting her have a say it all.

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And so I do my best to let her get loud.

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It's pretty foreign territory for me, but she knows what she's talking about every time. She always has.

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And letting my body body is, a little just like letting myself be.

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It's such a special thing, I think, too, because I read through I think I read through every newsletter that I have ever received

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from you, since subscribing to your newsletter.

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And I ended up thinking so much about what it means to come into my body because this is a thing that has been growing for me and fits and starts, right?

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Like I have never been I am in my head.

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I'm also a a walking heart and a very tender one these days. And

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all of everything that you do has this really specific space of bringing you back down into your body, into your senses, right?

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Where we started this, where you, where you can hear the truck on the floorboards and the cookie crumbling, and you can see the beauty in the water.

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Like, it just begs an invitation to pause. And

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I don't

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know that we have enough of those, that pausing, because I think it's that pause where you find that space where you can say,

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who's who's leading and and can I put the sparkly mine is sparkly and gooey?

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Can I put the sparkly gooey thing in charge?

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Can I, can I let my body lead?

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And I noticed, you know, as I was I had been listening to you on different podcasts and I was on a walk today and walking

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is part of how I drop into my body, but I realized that I never pause on my walks and just let myself be.

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I stopped and I took my headphones off.

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And I sat on this mossy rock and the moss is just beginning to grow, which I I hadn't really considered and it was putting

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up these little tendrils of something and was particularly luscious.

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It's been raining for a couple of days and it's just like, oh, I can pause and feel.

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It doesn't have to be in movement.

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It doesn't have to be a space I can just drop in.

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And I know I think that so much that you do is an invitation. It's just this beautiful invitation.

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And even the way that you are finding your body feels like that, an invitation.

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It's funny that we've been talking about skin for decades now, actually.

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And to still feel new to my own self in it. No.

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I've been talking about the same thing for forever.

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I can go back and listen to interviews with myself from a dozen years ago, and I am saying the same stuff.

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I'm saying basically the same stuff, but it's because it's always been what I needed to hear. Yeah.

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And it was what I needed to hear even when I felt really far away from it, even when I felt like it was entirely aspirational for myself too.

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Yeah.

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And it still feels like that. I fall out of practice constantly.

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I know the things that make me feel better.

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It doesn't mean I'm always doing them.

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And sometimes It's an adventure for all

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of us.

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Yes. And sometimes I don't wanna feel better. Sometimes I'm fine feeling stuck.

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Sometimes I don't wanna lift it up.

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Sometimes, you know, like, sometimes it's okay to just go, it sucks. It doesn't feel good at all.

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And then, like I know that I could turn on a song, and my mood will soften and shift and shake itself into something else instantly.

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I know that that happens when I lie to match the second I smell that hit a sulfur, something shifts in my body.

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And when I am in quicksand and going down, I'll just go, no, thanks. No, thanks.

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I don't wanna feel better right now. I know I could stand up.

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I know I could do 3 jumping jacks and feel like a different human. And I will not.

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I refuse. What is that? What is because I experienced this too. Like, what is that?

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That's because the brain, that is what's happening.

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A 100% of what I just said, that is bat shit crazy brain over there going fuck that. No thanks. I'm not doing it.

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And meanwhile, if you can just silence that particular character who I have full respect for, but not today. You need to chill out.

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Leave a little space when the body comes into body.

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It doesn't matter if you want to. Like, walk into the shower.

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Walk into the shower with your shirt still on. Go brush your teeth. Do something change the moment.

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I keep the Jasmine Garden at my desk because, like, getting hit in the face with water and a splash of something, anything. Anything.

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Go take a sip of mango juice from your refrigerator.

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Go put a piece of snow on your mouth.

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It doesn't matter, but add something different to the equation that puts body back in the driver's seat.

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And very, very quickly, there's a different perspective. Yeah. They can't see the same thing. They don't speak the same language.

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I have this question for you that I that I think has been bubbling for a while now.

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And, and as we talked about this, and as you talk about how much you've talked about skincare, and that so much of this was a message for you, right?

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Like you were talking to yourself, it was aspirational.

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And, and in order to let a body body, I had this question of whether or not your body have invited you into this world, right? Like, did you follow your body?

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Whether consciously or not, into the space like was this your body's ask of you to create something that brought it home to itself?

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Oh, I can wind so far back with this.

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The whole time my body's been trying to get me to body All the way back. All the way back.

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When we talked, now our personal tea time, getting to know each other, chat, I told you about growing up in Minnesota and

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being raised by hippie parents on the land.

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Like, I'm a girl that was born in a literal barn in Northern Minnesota, raised without running water or electricity.

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I had a star and a moon on my outhouse outdoors with 60 below winters till I was 14 years old. Like, I grew up very different.

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I grew up so, so connected to the land.

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And the first years of that were incredibly intentional.

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My parents were back to the landers.

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They were they were grinding flour, making bread.

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They were learning to milk goats and turn it into milk and soap. They were trading with neighbors.

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That's how I grew up in the first handful of years.

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And when I was 4 turning 5, my parents divorced, and then it got really hard. They didn't have resources.

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Their dream hippie vision that they had only worked in community. It only worked in connection.

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And suddenly, they had 2 babies and no money and no

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consistent way of supporting us or each other. They were no longer a team. We were back and forth.

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The land connection suffered among many other things.

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But I went from being literally strapped to my mom's chest, spending my days in the gardens chasing after goats.

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The most exciting thing in the day would be a conversation with a chicken.

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You know, we were miles from neighbors.

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There was nothing around but me and a tree to sit in.

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And and then and then I was back and forth, between homes and sleeping in parents' friends' closets and spare bedrooms and

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on couches and in cars and wherever we were. And we weren't we weren't growing.

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We weren't growing the vision that they had had.

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We were surviving the circumstance that happened instead.

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And so we were still very deeply connected to the land, but it wasn't present.

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It was an aching of what there had been and a hope for what would be.

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But we weren't on the land anymore in the same way.

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And so I think that I had an an ache for that, an ache to return to what my parents were building, what they were dreaming, what they were visioning.

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I have romantic aspects of my parents' romantic vision.

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They didn't get to see it through.

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And so I think actually, that's not true. They're posting it through now.

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Now in their, older years, which is cool. They Yeah. Both entirely remained themselves.

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And and it took them decades longer to to find their way home, but they both did.

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And in the meantime, I got to have this incredibly special, challenging, but very expansive childhood that shaped everything about me. So foundationally, yes.

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Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep connection to the earth and a lot of unfinished business there. But it's shaped everything I've grown.

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It's shaped my entire approach to skin.

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It's shaped my entire approach to health, to what I eat, to what I like to breathe and smell and look at.

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It's all the things that I think are beautiful are because I spent my days laying in a field of daisies looking at clouds.

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My brain is shaped differently than if I had been raised a different way. Yeah.

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This brings me back to when we had our personal team.

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One of the things that really that you gave me, you've given me a lot of things, lately, but was this reconnection with the

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idea of older Kate and younger Kate and Mhmm.

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Tapping into some of those spaces, checking in some of those spaces.

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And I'm always fascinated by how those formative experiences, those really those experiences when we're much younger, how

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much they they guide us into the future, and they show up in ways that I don't think we could ever anticipate. Right?

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That that continued seeking to connect with something and to know that was when I was listening to you, I was I kept being

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struck by this vision of you as a young child on the banks of a river pulling up clay, covering your skin and in it.

:

There was something about the skin of the earth. Right?

:

This clay, this, like, this is earth skin and you putting it on your skin and then your body almost finding its way back to

:

all of these these spaces of sensations to bring you back home to your body was what I saw in that story.

:

And you can take it or please take it or don't take it if you don't want it.

:

Oh, no. I'm taking it. What was happening is my brain was painting the whole time you were describing that.

:

And I was seeing this this picture.

:

When I was 15, I went on this road trip with my mom.

:

I might have told you about this one.

:

We drove across the country from Minnesota to Arkansas, and we spent multiple days digging crystals in Arkansas in the clay.

:

And at and we stayed at this campground, and there was nobody there.

:

So it was just a forest and really just rustic campsites that you could, just pitch your tent at.

:

And there was nobody there, and we didn't see anybody the whole time we were staying there.

:

And this one day we had gone down to the river and covered our whole selves in in oh, I'm gonna have

:

to go back and tell the story I meant to tell, but

:

it was too funny. So I'm gonna skip forward.

:

Well, anyway, we didn't think anyone was there.

:

We ended up being completely covered in this red clay.

:

We were pulling this clay out of the river, And I'm 15.

:

My mom is 22 years older than me, so she was only 37. And that's the right math. 22. Yeah. Yeah. So young.

:

And, and so we're naked at the river and had a little picnic set up, and we're eating blackberries and completely covered

:

in mud and our hair and everything. So long hair, completely coated Mhmm.

:

Red clay, naked bodies were kind of look like trolls. Yeah.

:

And and I had to pee at some point.

:

And so we tiptoeed, you know, ran with our naked clay covered bodies into, the bathrooms that they had there.

:

And we're in there, and the cleaning man, shows up to do his weekly check of the bathroom, whatever it is, and walked into

:

naked me and naked mom, hair standing straight up covered in clay, body is bright orange covered in clay, and just scared him to death. So,

:

anyway Too soft things.

:

Too damaged. In the same way that we could not be more surprised to be seeing him, we hadn't seen anybody there in days.

:

He had to have been equally surprised to see us there.

:

He was just doing his check it off the list check.

:

But when you were describing when you were describing that, I was picturing us sitting down by the river and what that actually

:

looked like as on the rocks, our bodies red with the same clay as all of the earth around us.

:

And I could picture the earth's skin when you said that, and I hadn't seen her like that.

:

I could picture the the woman the woman there of of the earth and as though she was red and flat.

:

And we were just just bathing ourselves in her skin and becoming her. Yes.

:

And then we'd get in the river and flow back into her and then get out and get covered in it again and again.

:

The dance of that, I could just imagine it as a painting. Mhmm.

:

Our bodies and her body and the way that we dance from beginning to the end and when we return.

:

Yeah. Yeah. That we're just flowing in and out of one another.

:

Wearing each other's skins of clay.

:

Yeah. And and recycling it through deep time. Right?

:

That those were were rocks and the atoms and minerals of other beings at different points in time that have weathered into

:

into dust that we coat ourselves in and then take in through our skin, through our food, through our water. It's just this constant exchange.

:

And I wondered too what you thought of that because I think that we we have this idea that our skin is the barrier of ourself. Right?

:

This is how I think of this is my this is my my little barrier to the outside world, but it is also the point with which we

:

connect and blur and become the outside world, that our skin is inhabited by microbes, and it's constantly taking little bits

:

of the environment in and sloughing some of itself off into the environment too.

:

And so as much as it's a boundary, it also feels to me like a, like a portal.

:

That's something that's that's blurry, that's connecting us as much as as much as we perceive it separating.

:

Barrier feels so dead. Barrier feels like paper, feels like a wall, feels like a coating, but skin is alive. Skin has sensations.

:

Skin is riddled with nerves, and it connects to our hormones, and it connects to our joy. It connects to our ache. It connects to our hunger. It connects to stimulation sensation. It calls out to be touched. That doesn't sound like a barrier. It's actively hungry for touch.

:

Why is it so delicious to be touched, our own or anyone else, Whether we're scratching our back like a bear against a tree,

:

or we're making love, or washing our face, or we're putting our cheek against the baby.

:

Our skin is so hungry for these things. That doesn't feel accidental. Mhmm.

:

That feels that feels like the entire point.

:

Hungry. I just that our skin is so hungry for all of those things.

:

It's like a mouth. I think about and I know you think about these things because you think about all the little worms and

:

the creatures moving around in the earth.

:

And I think about imagine yourself in a worm body, just for a second. Can you feel it?

:

All that soft warm inside, all of that sensation on the outside picture moving through pender ground. Picture moving through warm wet mud. Picture breaking through cookie crumble sand.

:

Mhmm. Mhmm. Big blocks of clay.

:

Picture eating. Picture eating the land around you through your skin, smelling it and feeling it and feeling vibration. That's your entire existence.

:

It's your entire existence as a worm.

:

Taking all that in, it's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. There's nothing barrier about skin.

:

It is our largest, yes, most vulnerable, but also most participatory organ we have. It's so involved. It's so out there.

:

So the audacity of skin to be so

:

visible, to be so

:

out there. Everyone can see it. No other organ gets seen like this.

:

That just made me think that the process of observation, how we're changed by the act of observation alone.

:

Yes. Yes.

:

You know, I love

:

Into participators.

:

Yes. Like, we are

:

changed by the act of observation into becoming a participator.

:

Like, that means by observing, we are participating.

:

And then when there's an audience involved, which does not happen for lungs, right, the lungs just lung, The heart just hearts.

:

But the skin, gosh, we all get to be involved there. It's such a different interactive dynamic.

:

We give such little credit to the relationship that skin has with the world.

:

We think about the relationship the world has to skin. We think about being observed.

:

We think about what we look like.

:

We might even think about, you know, what it feels like if it's a little sore, if it's a little tender, if we get a little

:

red or a little dry or a little whatever. We might be thinking that.

:

That's all brain stuff, by the way. But

:

when I go back to feeling like a worm, but in this human body.

:

And I remember what my skin is hungry for and how good it feels to feed the things that my skin likes.

:

I am struck I am struck by a couple of things.

:

First, I don't think I had ever considered that our skin is the only organ that is seen.

:

I mean, it's it's obvious when you say it, but I don't think I had ever stopped and thought about what that is, right?

:

That we don't see a lung or a heart or a kidney.

:

I think a lot about the inside of bodies because I've seen the inside of bodies and they work and and and I love the inside

:

of I is the most intimate and stunning and gorgeous and fascinating thing.

:

But the skin is where we are seen.

:

And then, and what a thing to be seen to see ourselves, the whole spectrum of interaction.

:

I am also I have spent, I spent my whole life, I'll be driving in the car with Josh. And something will come up

:

and I'll be like, what do

:

you think it feels like to have deer feet?

:

Or a worm body.

:

Yeah. So the idea of having a worm body, I loved, like that was a meditative experience for me.

:

I love to feel into the idea of what it would be to be in different different bodies, whether they're animal or plant.

:

Like, what does what would a plant body like?

:

What would it feel like to bask in the sun and make sugar as a leaf?

:

Like, what what would that feel like?

:

What would what would tree skin feel like since we're talking about skin?

:

Like, what would it feel like to have bark that was healing and growing and shifting and being inhabited by other little creatures being pecked by a woodpecker. I mean, I just

:

All of that. Yes. And do they desire it? Right?

:

When a tree is being pecked by a woodpecker, it's like, yes. Yes. I needed that. That was fulfilling something for me.

:

Or is it like when we get a hang out, we're like, fuck. You messed up my day. You know?

:

Or is it more like when we're exfoliating, it was like, oh, God. That felt so ridiculously good. Why don't I do that more?

:

Like, all of these it is so magical to imagine the sensation of the world around me.

:

And while I don't know what a tree can feel, right, I cannot actually know what sensations a tree can feel.

:

I know that right here in this human body,

:

I have the ability to turn something on if I want to.

:

I have the ability to feel my skin if I give my skin space to be felt.

:

And what was missing for me for most of my life, and I hear from everyone I talk to in all capacities of my life, is that

:

we just didn't we just didn't know.

:

You don't know what you don't have sometimes until you have it.

:

And so if you've been hungry for a long time, you don't know how wonderful it is to be fed. Yeah.

:

There's just a getting used to the hunger. There's getting used to the

:

there's there's just this numbness and detachment and removal of ourselves from

:

attention to things like pleasure.

:

Yeah.

:

No. These mundane things, we can make them mundane, but they're not mundane.

:

Anything but

:

The most precious, most important pieces are the act of boiling the egg, the act of pulling up your bed sheets, the act of

:

tucking in the child, the act of brushing your hair, the act of just putting your head back under a shower for 5 seconds and feeling hot water hit scalp. Feeling a single drop, fine spine.

:

When we can do that, everything else stops enough to make sense for a second too.

:

And for me, if I can't stop and feel that, that is when I spin.

:

That is when it gets really loud.

:

That is when my brain takes over everything, and everything gets spinny, and I get stuck.

:

But when I pause, I remember and my head gets clear, and I can step out of that 15 second reset shower with clarity and with power and with compassion. For myself? Yes.

:

And that translates to everything around me.

:

Because I can't think about the world around me if I cannot stop torturing myself inside.

:

And so when I can get tender here, when I can stop and pause here, when I might not be able to come up with anything nice to say. Okay, brain. That's brain. Right?

:

I might not be able to come up with anything nice to say, but that's not the point.

:

I can, for one second, feel that drop of water.

:

And sometimes that is the job, is to feel that drop of water.

:

To tune into my nose for one second and see what comes through the air, are my neighbors cooking something?

:

Can I focus on something else for one second that feels 2 shades warmer, one shade warmer, half a shade warmer?

:

Every time it takes me out of whatever spin I'm in and puts me back where I can exist amongst the world that I'm actually in. Because this body is not alone.

:

This body is out there, body and with all the rest of them, and we're all walking around like robots just totally out of our bodies.

:

It looks right now like the world is out of their minds, but it's not. We're all out of our bodies.

:

We're all out of our bodies. Think about every tortured, torturing,

:

empowered, out of power person right now. All of them.

:

Think about the people that are hardest to think about that you don't understand right now.

:

Picture them putting their socks on in the morning.

:

You know, they put their socks in the morning just like I do. They take a shower, maybe. Gosh.

:

What is that like right now for them?

:

It all feels so impossible all the time. I haven't met a human.

:

And, well, I don't know if I've ever met a human that's doing okay. I don't know.

:

I think we're all just trying to do this together, and we're looking for signs of hope.

:

We're looking for a reason to connect,

:

and I can get really in my own head.

:

I spend my day working from home on my computer.

:

I'm talking to people all over the world.

:

And I feel really warm in my heart when I'm doing that because I can feel people.

:

But it's a whole different thing when I'm out and I'm seeing people in their bodies, and I'm watching people interact.

:

And, you know, the cafe is not a soundtrack from Spotify, but it's it's the paper crinkling at the bakery where I'm about to eat the cookie.

:

And I'm exchanging warm words with the cashier.

:

And I'm looking which seat to sit at and which people to sit next to.

:

And those tender little human pieces, they feel like what I imagine world leaders putting socks on.

:

And I need to do that sometimes or I'll write stories about the world being bad. And I don't believe it. I don't believe it.

:

And when I get in my body, I just feel differently.

:

I think of every other body I've known. I can imagine them. I can imagine them soft.

:

I don't wanna rush to say anything because that was so exactly what I think a lot of people will have needed to hear.

:

I

:

was thinking about there's this book by Frances Weller called The Wild Edge of Sorrow. Do you know Frances Weller?

:

I know that I've heard that book before, but I probably even known it. That's how that works.

:

That is how that works. But tell me, tell me.

:

I think a lot these days about our loss of what I call the village, for lack of a better word, that we used to live in a deeper community.

:

I think it was the community your parents were probably searching for, when they initially set out with that vision.

:

When I heard the stories of you sitting with women with your mother when you were young, Like, I think that that was a part

:

of of that idea of the village.

:

And I think that as humans, we're herd animals in a way.

:

We are meant to be bodies bodying together.

:

And to see that vulnerability and experience one another.

:

And I think for many 1000, tens of 1000 of years as humans, we lived in these bands where we saw that deep intimacy of putting

:

on socks or whatever that equivalent thing was, right?

:

We saw bodies being bodies, we bathe together in in little little pools on the side of a river.

:

And we touched bodies, living bodies, bodies being born, bodies dying, dead bodies.

:

And we're connected to to all of the plant bodies and animal bodies around us, that sense of bodies doing body stuff.

:

When you said, we're not out of our minds, we're out of our bodies. Yes, we're out of our bodies.

:

And we're out of that connection that flow through that, that hungry skin like a mouth just aching to be fed, just biting

:

at whatever little scrap it can take.

:

And I think in that forgetting, there's also been a turning off that just as much as our bodies, as you've you've so beautifully

:

put it, can turn on and feel and experience and the nerve endings, the tingling and everything from a baby's cheek to a good exfoliation in the shower. Right?

:

Like, as much as we can turn on, we have turned off.

:

And I think it's remembering that sense of what it might mean to come back into a body and then next to a body to press knees

:

together, you know, with with your husband and to I don't know, imagine that vulnerability.

:

I I I sometimes have when you said that about world leaders putting on their socks, I sometimes have these moments where I'm

:

like, you know, people are in their bodies and their minds just like I am.

:

And it feels it feels like a revelation.

:

It shouldn't be, but it feels like a revelation that people are having the same doubts and insecurities and hopes and dreams and hunger that I'm experiencing.

:

It gnaws at their bellies just like mine does.

:

I think that's also why human aiming amongst other humans is weird and hard too because I know that when I'm not in myself, when I'm out of body. Mhmm. But I'm not really here. I'm just walking around. So there's my body. You can watch it go. It's doing something. It looks like it's performing normally. All systems go, by observation.

:

But I know how little I'm actually in that room.

:

I know how little I'm actually in that conversation.

:

I know how not present I can be in my body sometimes.

:

And when I go out in the world and I'm around people and they're not in their bodies, which is not almost everybody I encounter

:

right now, that that is what makes me feel anxious.

:

That is what makes me worry about humans.

:

That's what makes me you know, that's the larger existential thing is

:

I

:

where was it going with that?

:

When I'm with people and they're not in their bodies, that feels scary to me.

:

When I'm with somebody and they're not in their body, it feels scary to me. Because I know how,

:

incomplete minds are.

:

And so if we're just walking around in a world full of people in their heads, People in their heads spinning through whatever

:

they're spinning through in their heads, in their, in their little torture chamber conversations with themselves. And it's happening. Now it's happening all the time.

:

People are just in there talking to my themselves in the way that they do.

:

And we're all walking around acting like we're normal.

:

We're all walking around acting like we're doing okay.

:

But in any room, there's somebody just in there totally out of their body.

:

And we're just going on like it's normal.

:

I think it makes me feel really disconnected.

:

And when I feel disconnected from my other humans, I feel disconnected from humanity.

:

And when I feel disconnected from humanity, I lose hope for the world.

:

And I think that that's the crux of, depression for me.

:

Anxiety for me is feeling untethered from my other humans, feeling like they can't see.

:

And I understand because I often can't either.

:

But when I'm with the person who's in their body while in presence with me, I am the most hopeful human. I can see everything.

:

I have such a clear vision for the world.

:

When I feel,

:

when I feel, period. When I feel, I feel hope.

:

But if I don't feel, I don't feel that hope.

:

And so when I look around and the world is full of non feelers, I know there's there's just a lower ratio of hope than we really need.

:

And so I'm just looking all the time for ways to invite us back to where we can remember that we want. I forget that I want. I lose my appetite for existence.

:

And that sounds dark, but I also know that it's true.

:

It shows up in so many ways. We lose our appetites. We lose our drive. We lose our physical appetites. It can result in the opposite. We lose our attention spans. We forget to dream.

:

I will have, so many visions for what I wanna do with my myself, my company, or my home, or my family, or, you know, my 9,000 pet projects in my brain.

:

When I'm feeling well, when I'm feeling, period, I'm connected to all of those things. It's incessant.

:

It's a burbling brook of constant ideas and inspiration.

:

But when I disconnect and I find myself out of my body and I find myself without hope,

:

I forget. It's just so easy to forget.

:

I wonder, and I'll ask you, do you think it's easy to forget because our bodies are our memories?

:

Our bodies are what we come home to. I think our bodies remember. Right? They hold really hard memories. They hold trauma.

:

They hold it in muscles and in tissues, but they also hold the memories that are unlocked when we smell the sulfur in a match,

:

and they are also filled with our mitochondrial DNA. Right?

:

These memories of our mothers, mothers, mother's.

:

These deep, deep time memories that are beyond something that we could explain.

:

Our bodies remember how to breathe without us ever ever asking them to do so.

:

They hold the memory of what it means to take a step and another step even when we fall and we have to get back up.

:

That when we are in feeling that our bodies are able to bring forward that memory.

:

You know, one of the things I I wrote down, I and and that you you come back to is the idea of coming home to yourself.

:

And I think when we come home to that body, we are coming home to humanity.

:

We are coming home to a memory of being humans, humaning.

:

And maybe maybe we for we think that remembering happens in here in the mind.

:

We have all of these ideas, but is it really in our body?

:

It's always in the spaces in between. And sometimes that's the point.

:

I was reading something, I I think it was this morning, actually, talking about and we know this. We know this.

:

When we take a shower, that's when we get our good ideas. Right? And people told me that.

:

I heard that maybe you need a shower in your office.

:

But 100%. I do have a shower in office.

:

But in general, a lot of humans will say this.

:

You know, there's a reason people keep notebooks and things like that.

:

So across all careers, all spectrums, all types of people, pretty consistently, people will say if you quiz them about where

:

they get their best ideas, pretty consistently people will say in the shower.

:

And it's not about the shower, actually.

:

Like, I am a big time shower advocate all about all the things that happen in there. Obviously, we've talked about it.

:

The sounds, the smells, the the whole experience.

:

That is a big part of it.

:

The other piece is actually it's just the only space you're not looking at a screen because we don't even pee without a screen now. Yeah. And so it's literal.

:

It's almost the only place where we're not getting some inbound input. And even then, often we are. I am.

:

I still listen to podcasts in the shower.

:

I still will take a class and listen to it in the shower.

:

I will still, relisten to a conversation I already had with a teammate or something that I recorded and needed to make notes on.

:

I will listen and listen and listen and take in and take in and take in so many words, so many other voices constantly, incessantly.

:

So even in my in between of doing the actual tasks, I'm still not leaving space for my own unfolding of ideas, enough breathing

:

room for something to bubble up to the surface.

:

How could it possibly there's no surface. There's no space, there's no room.

:

And so the active on purpose turning off of those outside voices of that outside input and going quiet and going still and

:

leaving space for nothing but the mundane. You're cracking the egg. You're hearing the shell break.

:

You're putting your thumb in the yoke. Right? You're turning on the bath. You're pushing in the water stopper.

:

You're pouring in an oil you love. Whatever the steps are,

:

just moving in the direction of doing

:

moving in the direction of having the body do the thing that gets you to where there's space for the mind to rest.

:

I'm holding 2 little pieces that I I think might fit in here.

:

And one of them is how much we talk about the importance of boredom for our children.

:

Mhmm.

:

But we don't talk about it for ourselves.

:

That those those moments, those in between spaces when you're in the shower, when you're peeing, when you're just cracking an egg in silence.

:

But those are not boredom per se, but they're the in between spaces for just like you said, for your mind to rest so that

:

things can bubble up that you don't expect.

:

But I was also thinking, I don't know if you saw this, there was it was just last week, there was this study looking at the

:

efficacy of different treatments for depression, and there was a pretty wide range of things on there.

:

There was talk therapy, there was yoga, there was walking, there was SSRIs and pharmaceutical treatment, and everything was

:

in a pretty, you know, there was this kind of line where it was getting more efficacious, but it was all pretty in line. There weren't really any outliers.

:

And at the very top of it was a total, did you see this? As a total bowler was dancing?

:

Yes, I did see this.

:

And I was really struck by it.

:

Because it was about a body, bodying.

:

Yes. Yes. Fully. And because dancing dancing actually at its core, and it was specific. It was any kind of dancing.

:

So it wasn't about a roboeck activity. It wasn't getting your heartbeat up.

:

It wasn't about the kind of music.

:

It was when you dance, you enter that same flow state where you just move and you're following your inner compass. You're moving from within your body.

:

You're finding your own beat, your own rhythm, your own relationship to it. And you can just

:

ripple like a wave inside of it and let it move you.

:

It's such a rare thing that we get to do that and everything else even if, you know, you're doing yoga, right? Like yoga is wonderful. I love doing yoga. But I'm following directions.

:

I'm listening to her tell me to put my hand in the air, to put my foot over there, or do this particular movement. And that's wonderful. It keeps me going.

:

It keeps me, like, moving all the different muscle groups and keeping it even and working on actual strength and other things that are important.

:

But it is not the same thing as just landing your hips sway.

:

It's not the same thing as getting, you know, the song that you jammed out to as a 9 year old moving through your ankles. It's not the same thing.

:

So, yes, I deeply appreciated seeing that too and seeing the science behind it because I think if we studied any of this,

:

gosh, I wish we could see what it looked like for our bodies to feel pleasure.

:

Imagine if you could see colors on the skin as they felt different sensations.

:

The reward of that.

:

But as you said that as you said that little bit of goosebumps went up my arm.

:

And and the hairs on my forearm stood up for a moment, imagining what it would feel like to have an octopus like response

:

to pleasure, where we we flushed and changed colors and morphed and shifted that my body do. Oh, we do. My body came on.

:

My body came on and it it grazed goose flesh and my cheeks flushed.

:

And I could feel that no, no, pleasure is here.

:

And there are signs of it, right?

:

To see a vein and the pulse in it quicken.

:

Oh, it's just like ties into so many things about like beauty and aesthetic too, because we are constantly trying to unhuman ourselves. Right? Like, don't show your sweat. Don't show your redness. Don't show your flesh. Don't show, you know,

:

don't show

:

that you're gonna shed your skin. Oh, better not let them see you flake or sweat or smell or any of those human things.

:

But that's it's the whole thing.

:

Yeah.

:

We're and then when we're not trying to completely make it disappear, we're playing it up because we'll also put the blush on the cheeks. We'll put the highlighter on. We'll curl our eyelashes. Look how lush I am too. Mhmm.

:

And so we're in this constant battle of show more show more human and put it away. That's too much human.

:

Yeah. Show up.

:

Of course, we feel conflicted. That's why worms have got it going on.

:

They're just Oh,

:

it'd be

:

a worm. I would

:

have been thinking about that. An unobserved worm. An unobserved worm.

:

How different would it be to be a body unobserved?

:

And then how different is this to be a body when we observe it?

:

So for me, the more I observe my own body from a place of pleasure again, this is not the mind's job. This is the body bodying job.

:

When I'm observing from within as a body, feeling the sensations, feeding the sensations on purpose, looking for the things

:

that feel good, A airbrush running up your arm.

:

Whatever the thing is, if I'm feeding that on purpose as a body, everything gets better.

:

And when it's not that, when I find myself not having a body at all, I can feel almost nothing.

:

What a strange,

:

scale that is. Yeah. And I think that's that that's that piece of this is the different thing about skin as an organ.

:

It can be, I suppose, just a barrier keeping the dirt out of our blood.

:

And we could go our whole life just trying to keep the dirt out of our blood.

:

But the

:

clay wants to wrap itself around us like a mother. Mhmm.

:

Her body wants to sink into the river.

:

Mhmm.

:

We want to throw our head back.

:

We want to feel our jaw open.

:

We want to feel our feet plant in the Earth. We want those things. We're so hungry.

:

We're so tamed.

:

We are tamed. I sometimes think that we are we're domesticated little animals and and and just tamed.

:

But I think you said something and I I have this quote that I pulled from you that you said on a podcast. You were talking about pleasure.

:

Because I think that so much of what we're talking about is speaking to tapping back into, and I'm gonna even say allowing the experience of pleasure back in.

:

And you said this, and I loved it so much.

:

You were talking about front loading pleasure.

:

And you said that you reach for pleasure over and over because I know in between is all the actual pain and reality of the world.

:

And I want to be prepared for it because there is a lot to contribute and we can't just hide in our love and our light, but

:

it has to be there to catch us so that we can go out and do the work we need to do in the world in every way.

:

I really run up against

:

feeling like it's a constant battle to show people that love is not frivolous.

:

It's not frivolous. It's not wasted on us to love ourselves.

:

And I'm not insisting at all that we must actually love ourselves. That can be, incredibly hard.

:

I am insisting that love is an action verb.

:

Our job is to action verb ourselves.

:

Our job is to love ourselves as an action. Our love is to be loving. Our job is to be loving.

:

I don't know a more important job than waking up every day and doing the loving thing.

:

We talk about love romantically or with children or with family members, maybe with friends.

:

We mostly speak of it with romantic love, and it's like expecting a marriage to be made out of a wedding day.

:

A marriage is not made out of a wedding day. Love is an action verb.

:

It is a forever commitment to love somebody

:

is a is a role. It's an agreement.

:

And so when I wake up and I say I love myself today, I'm not just laying out my to do's. I love myself today. What does that mean? It means I get up.

:

It means I get in the shower. I love myself today. What does it mean? It means I get up. I boil the egg. I love myself today. It means I make the bed. I love myself today.

:

It means that I get that one last kiss, the second kiss, the third kiss for running 5 minutes late. Give me another kiss. I love myself today.

:

It means I do that most important thing on my priority list instead of fucking around.

:

I love myself today means I call.

:

I love myself today means I send the hard email.

:

It means I say no to the thing.

:

It means I say yes to the thing. I love myself today.

:

We have to look at it on purpose. This is not accidental. We can go our whole life.

:

We can go our whole life and not know.

:

We are so hungry, where are these mouths walking around? But mostly we're hungry for ourselves.

:

I spent decades looking for answers in other people's bodies.

:

I spent decades looking for answers in other people's touch.

:

I spent decades looking for answers in other people's words.

:

I moved into my body over the last handful of years because I decided that this was my home And it is my job to paint these walls. It is my job to decorate.

:

It's my job to put flowers in the vase.

:

It is my job to water them.

:

It's my job to decide what color I like to paint the walls with it.

:

It's my job to remember I like rugs.

:

It's my job to remember I want a bathroom that I can work in.

:

It's my job to build inside and outside what love looks like for me.

:

It is my job to learn what it means to love her.

:

To love her, Little fat baby Her, rolling around in the grass.

:

Little tender child Her, talking to the fairies in the field.

:

Teenage her looking for answers everywhere. 20's her on the adventures,

:

running into walls,

:

living impossible stories. 30s her doing impossible things, 40s her, who's she? I'm learning.

:

I look forward 50s, her 60s, her 70s, her 80s, her we're hanging out. 90 year old me.

:

What am I going to feed her?

:

I'm gonna have to wake up every day for her too. Think about it.

:

Think about yourself. 60 years old, 70 years old, 84, 92.

:

If we're lucky, we're gonna wake up at 92 years old in our bed.

:

And these bodies, My God, I love her so much.

:

I hope I have loved her so much for so many decades still to come. That is not a question.

:

But I know that I have always spoken aspirational.

:

I know that I have always written myself into the life that I believed could be.

:

And so this is what it is.

:

It's it's writing a love letter through action, through touch, through commitment to showing up, finding out what loving means

:

to you, from you, for you, with you, as you, in this skin.

:

You said at the beginning that we sometimes and and I don't know where it comes from. Right?

:

But there's nothing frivolous about loving yourself. And

:

must had all these different pieces flash through my mind.

:

I was thinking about these these little ocean snails that collect these rogue particles of calcium in the ocean, and they

:

accumulate them to make their home over time. Right?

:

Like, we're we're building this home that, oh, I I hope it wakes up at 93, and I hope I can feel those sheets on skin that has grown creepy. Mhmm.

:

What that might feel like to to be thinner, to maybe be a little bit closer to everything else.

:

Like, that's I felt that old cape and that that thin skin that just gets us a little bit closer. Yes.

:

The settling of the bones. Yeah. I do think it will be a different body.

:

It will be.

:

It's a different body. It's a different experience. I just

:

it helps me to hang out with those women, to hang out with those other parts of myself.

:

It helps me to see my tender self in bed at the very, very end.

:

It helps me to see my fat little baby feet at the very, very beginning.

:

It helps me to see that, really, I'm just in it. I'm just in it.

:

I'm in the thick of it, of course. Of course, it feels like this.

:

Look at all these lives inside and still to be born.

:

It feels busy in here because it is, we contain multitudes.

:

Over the last couple of months since our chat, whenever I have thought about older Kate or younger Kate, I found that it actually

:

puts me more squarely here in this Kate, ultimately.

:

Maybe not in those moments, but, you know, I'm kind of, like, looking around, and I think it's also seeing you know, you talked

:

earlier about body and sparkly gooey and mind driving, but also sometimes there's different ages of me that are that are leading that are driving.

:

And and sort of checking in and observing that seeing where they were, who was present.

:

I had a moment today before we got on where I I really checked in with older and younger Kate.

:

I've been holding a lot since we talked.

:

The Kate that started that business, right, that took all those risks, that that had a different hope and a different I mean, she was in a different body. Right? Yes.

:

And an older version of me and to see to see where they were and they were.

:

And I I don't know why I'm telling you this, but I'm gonna keep going. Mhmm.

:

They were sitting on the porch, a porch somewhere.

:

It it was a different porch, in rocking chairs, and they were laughing together, this older and 20 something version of myself.

:

And they were waiting for for me, and I realized that me was 6, 7, 8. Right?

:

They were waiting for for me because I I needed that space to just be waited for it to come out, just feeling feeling shy and feeling overwhelmed by the world.

:

And they were just out there laughing and knowing that I would I would come around eventually.

:

And when I've come back to these, these little practices that you really reminded me of, I've found that all of a sudden I'm

:

present with where I am now and wanting to tend to that space more.

:

Yes. That's my experience too. It is it's like having these little cheerleaders that are also just a reality check.

:

And what happens is little girl me is just kind of in awe And elder me, she's funny because she's a character that feels looser

:

and freer than I am now, but also feels a little like my littlest girl.

:

Mhmm.

:

And so they're the same. They're kind of the same.

:

And there's the me in the middle that's feels a little sticky because I'm trying to carry the world in all this middle age

:

moment of, you know, being the just being in this stage where we're building our businesses and our families and our our everything.

:

It feels like it happens all at once in this chapter.

:

And the elder me just comes and puts her arm around me and kinda taps me on the shoulder, and it's like, it's okay. It's okay.

:

And she laughs a little bit and she jostles me a little bit and she pushes me a little bit, but she's big and she's bold, and she's colorful, and she's funny.

:

And she makes me remember what a funny child I was.

:

And and those parts of my energy, the silly, sparkly, ridiculous, little fairy parts of me.

:

And so the elder me is in touch with those little girl pieces of me, and they both come to remind me that I have all of those pieces in me all the time.

:

Those parts of me that are like, oh my god.

:

I'm, like, trying to live out this story that 25 year old wrote.

:

And she was a badass, but she was nuts.

:

I don't know what she was thinking, and she signed me up for things that feel impossible. No. No. Impossible.

:

And I have been building a vision that I literally wrote at 25.

:

I've been doing this for 15 years, and she's just a different she's on a different planet.

:

And if she walked into the room right now, man, I could use her on my team.

:

I could really, really use her on my team.

:

And then I just have to remember that she is on my team. She is on my team. I am her. But I'm this one too.

:

And this one carries all of the pieces in between from where she was and where I am now.

:

And I don't value these pieces because I'm in them.

:

But when I zoom out, 50 year old me knows what I was doing at 40. 60 year old me knows what I was doing at 40.

:

And they won't just be remembering me spinning out, which is what this chapter feels like. It won't.

:

Any more than when I was 25, it felt like I had it figured out.

:

At 25, I would not have described myself as a badass, but that's how I see it now.

:

You know, I look at 18 year old me in my memory living in my car, waking up every day in California when I first got out here,

:

and literally peeing on the curb every morning of my life for months months months, getting food from women's shelters twice

:

a week, getting to the end of the bag, not knowing where my next meal was coming from. Like, these were very real things.

:

That feels so close to now and also so far away.

:

She had no idea what would be.

:

She had no idea what was coming.

:

And I look at her and I admire her so much.

:

She's so much more fearless than I am now. And, yes, that was naive. She went and did ridiculous things. Oh my god. I'm made of that. I'm made of that.

:

And so looking back helps me remember that not just looking forward is covered, but so is now, so is now.

:

All of those things that made every day possible for all of these days still here.

:

There's a reason we still wake up every day, most of us, most of the time.

:

I don't always remember why I want to.

:

And so my job every day, that's why the loving is an action. That's why it's on purpose.

:

That's why we're given these bodies to tend.

:

Imagine if we didn't have any motivation to crack the egg.

:

Imagine if we didn't have any reason to tend the skin.

:

We would so quickly become just mind.

:

We would so quickly become the robots that it's so easy to become in this age. This is what we're doing.

:

So these human things, these mundane things, these survival things, these simple, simple, simple, what am I eating today? Where am I sleeping today? How should we return to that?

:

It puts us back in the bodies.

:

It puts us back in this planet. It puts us back in gratitude.

:

It puts us back in this moment.

:

I wanna read you something you wrote that I highlighted in these notes because I think that I think that in some ways the

:

imagining of all those versions of ourselves and to recognize that they are here.

:

They're here for us running this business. I've asked I've asked that Kate. Right?

:

Like, all the crazy things she did, called her in. I need her right now.

:

I need I need her her idea of risk.

:

I need her idea of, of big, big dreams.

:

And you wrote in one of your newsletters, which I read every single one. So what will we carry forward?

:

Reflection is about seeing and receiving the gifts of what has passed as we carry ourselves into the future.

:

And I just I loved this so much. It was

:

it's about bringing something with us but not letting it define us. Right.

:

And and looking towards the future while being in us right now, what will we carry forward?

:

Oh, well, we carry forward.

:

And I think this we talked some about this over tea, this being in whatever it is, middle age. I don't know. I don't know. You know, what what defines

:

a lot. Right? Also. It's really assuming a lot.

:

It is. It's assuming so much.

:

But you said it is building like it

:

is such a building phase, right? Like it is building, building families, building the dreams that we laid the foundations

:

for when we were crazy and 25.

:

It is it is building and I

:

It's hardest season. When I look at life, right, again, we zoom out. We zoom all the way out.

:

Look at our little fat baby self. That's a seed. Right?

:

Look at the creepy old lady in her bed under the sheets making all different sounds of noises with that skin than now. Right? She's at the other end.

:

She's about to go back to the Earth. We're in the middle. Our fruit has come to bear. We're full of blossoms. We're ripe.

:

Now that is what this is right now.

:

We've been feeding this and feeding this and feeding this in the infinite ways that we have from the beginning.

:

You asked about my connection to Earth in the beginning and how that shaped this whole thing, and I can take it all the way back.

:

And look, I was building there, and look, I was building there, and look, I was building there. I'm adding to my treasure chest. I'm adding. I'm adding. I'm adding. It's like fertilizing the soil.

:

And I had the earth to begin with, and I had the little seed of me to begin with.

:

And I went along my path, and I added this, and I added this, and I added this.

:

And I got watered here and fed here, and depleted here and run over here and smashed here and picked back up here and put

:

back in the ground here and watered again and watered again and fed this.

:

And then the sun came and then it left, and there was rain.

:

And then this came and this came, and now I'm 40, and I'm doing this part. And, look, everything is in bloom.

:

I'm fucking terrified because I've never seen bloom. I've never seen bloom.

:

I've only seen build, and I don't know how I'm gonna keep building.

:

My hands are so full, but my hands are full because I'm carrying so much fruit. I'm carrying so many flowers.

:

And I know that the next step, I might lose some of those flowers, and I might lose some of that fruit.

:

But what I don't know yet is I'm turning it into pie. I'm canning it. I'm filling my freezer. I'm giving it to neighbors. I'm spreading it out.

:

I have an entire whole building full of jars of this fruit.

:

It's building and building and building, and that will sustain me.

:

And I'll be eating that apple sauce when I'm 92 sitting in my sheets. Mhmm.

:

It will feed me all the way through.

:

That's the whole idea of this harvest season now Mhmm. Is it will feed me then.

:

And I only got to now because I was a seed once.

:

I did not start holding all this fruit, and I will not end holding all of this fruit.

:

And it feels heavy right now because harvest.

:

But that harvest is tenuous and scary, and you've gotta get it up all off the ground before it rots. Yeah.

:

You've gotta bring it in before it rains. It's a mad dash. Catch it while it's perfect. It is a mad dash. Of course, it feels frantic. We're waiting for hail. We're waiting for fire. We're waiting for drought.

:

God, I

:

don't wanna wait for any of that. I wanna anticipate jam forever. And so I'm trying.

:

I'm trying to believe in jam because if I don't believe that I can make a jar of jam, I'm never gonna plant a raspberry.

:

So that's what this whole thing is from birth to death.

:

We're feeding and feeding and feeding with the hope that through the action verb of loving that we bear fruit.

:

And that fruit sustains us through.

:

Every year, I wait for peach season. That's my favorite season. I love a stone fruit.

:

Every time I see a peach, I think about the fact that because as you were saying that I was thinking about, it's not just

:

that these seeds that we've planted are bearing fruit, but us ourselves, like, this is, like, this full ripeness of being here. This is like hot August sun.

:

And I think about how we talk about ripeness in peaches as something that is so juicy and wonderful, and it is.

:

But I also wonder at the flash of a peach and what it means to be so ripe that your skin is beginning to split open.

:

That there is a sort of upheaval and this is not quite a violence, but like there is a there's there's something very visceral about coming into ripeness. That isn't just sugary juiciness.

:

That is also, you know, tearing open flesh you're so full to bursting.

:

It's what breaks ground. Mhmm. That. Yeah. That's how river shapes rock. That's how bone becomes.

:

The bursting forth, the heave.

:

Yeah. The heave.

:

I was thinking about that, and I was thinking about you.

:

It was a really beautiful moment in one of the podcasts that I listened to where you talked about folding your children into

:

your and your husband's work in ways because it's what is present, that you're here in this harvest season of life with them.

:

And you're out on the, you know, the patio late at night with your husband talking about work. And I I know that. I know that. I know that story. I live that story.

:

And then to have these kids that are better a little bit more than seeds, their sprouts.

:

And folding it all in together and letting life be this messy layer cake of everything that is right now because it's where it is.

:

And I just it made my heart sing a little bit to hear that to hear fullness like that peach that is juicy and ripe and sugary

:

and perfect in the sun, but also bursting and full and heavy, splitting

:

open. And sometimes we ferment.

:

Sometimes our skin shrivels up.

:

Yes. Yes.

:

And sometimes that's a feeding too that goes to the earth too.

:

It's it's what all of the little attempts along the way are.

:

I feel like I would be remiss if we didn't talk some about this beautiful thing that you've built.

:

I think I think in all the time that I had spent reading May newsletters, I had thought a lot about you, and I hadn't thought

:

about this incredible thing that you're building.

:

And I was really struck as I went through all these podcasts at what an incredible thing you are building and how much action verb love

:

you have put into it at every step of the way.

:

And I've I've been having a lot of conversations in my life about quality in in meatiness. Right?

:

Like in in the and I mean, like meat of a fruit.

:

I mean, like quality and all of its goodness and seeking that out and building something that is about values and about love and about care.

:

And I think that you are leading in that space in a way that I didn't know.

:

I was just I was just floored May, like I was just absolutely in awe of what you've built and, and just that, that you have

:

built something that is made out of love, and that you have built something that is giving care to farmers, to employees,

:

to every customer that supports your business that invests in your business.

:

I don't know.

:

I was just I was I was struck on so many different levels.

:

This harvest season of what that wild 25 year old was writing.

:

I had no idea.

:

I had no idea

:

it would look like this.

:

Yeah. I am incredibly proud. I'm incredibly proud of what we've built.

:

And it's incredibly hard to to build a business, to build a sustaining business just on a purely practical level.

:

And people ask me all the time, I swear, to have the people who follow our work follow it because of the way that we work.

:

As much as for what we're actually sharing with the world, and maybe that's the point.

:

But I have such romantic aspirations about the way that things can be, And it's just my wiring. It's just the way I am.

:

I I want to make every little moment more beautiful and more special and more warm if I can. It's my it's my religion. It's my orientation.

:

I don't know how to be a different way.

:

It's it's how I operate in the world.

:

And when I was younger, I had lots of little random odd jobs.

:

There was a very entrepreneurial spirit from the beginning.

:

And so for years years years, I worked for myself and by myself, and that usually meant I was working 1 on 1 with people.

:

And so everything was very relationship based and very much about connection and intimacy and caring.

:

And I just saw over and over and over that no matter what part of business I was in, whether I was teaching or I was cooking

:

or I was formulating or I was, you know, talking all

:

I

:

could see was hungry bodies. All I could see was hungry bodies. It's just all I see.

:

It's all I see everywhere I look is how hungry we all are.

:

And so I've just done the same thing forever.

:

And I guess when you just do the same thing forever, you get good at it.

:

But it also turns you know, this is the love part.

:

When you do love as an action verb every day on purpose, it does eventually become instinctual like anything else.

:

And for years years years years, I would wake up and be in service to the people I was with. It's just what I do.

:

And so when I was building my Lindstrom skin and a question comes up, can I make it more beautiful? Can I make it more special?

:

Can I make it so when it arrives, the sides of their mouth turn up and you can hear their smile crack?

:

Now can I incite sparkles in eyes and bellies?

:

Now what if goosebumps was a given?

:

What if delight was the whole point?

:

I say all the time now that I solved these formulas years ago, years years ago.

:

But what happens today is I get to reach out my hand every day and welcome in someone who's ready to be in a different relationship

:

with themselves, to be in a different relationship to their care, to find themselves at home in their tending.

:

And it doesn't mean you have to buy our products.

:

It doesn't mean you have to have anything to do with skincare. This can look different for everybody.

:

I think there's people who just follow our channel just to watch videos and have me talk to them so that I'm saying nicer things than their own thoughts. Sometimes that's the case.

:

I get these messages from women all day, every day who just say they just needed to hear it.

:

They just needed to know it was okay.

:

They just needed to see an example.

:

And so now I have women in their sixties seventies eighties who are writing me, who are telling me that never in their life,

:

never in their life, have they touched their skin like this.

:

Never in their life did they take fruit into the shower. Never in their life.

:

Did they sit down on the floor in the shower and give their little toes a massage.

:

Never in their life did they roll out their ears until they got warm. Never in their life.

:

Did they put a hairbrush and massage their chest? Right? Never in their life. And why?

:

Because we've never seen it, and we don't talk about it, and we do these things in private.

:

And somehow, when someone shows up and lands in my little corner of the world and sees me in the shower unrolling my ears like they're flowers. We get these little permission slips.

:

And I get women who are 76 telling me about the massages they give themselves before bed now. And think about that woman.

:

Think about that woman from 76 to 92. Right?

:

Look how many more years she's got before she's that 92 year old with the creepy skin.

:

What if 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 734, 5, 6, 789? What if all of the eighties?

:

She gave her myself a massage every morning and every night with oil.

:

What if every time she took a bath, she drank a bowl of chicken soup while she was in there? Right? Why? Why is that ridiculous?

:

It doesn't take more work to be kinder.

:

It doesn't take more time to make it nicer.

:

It feeds so much.

:

We just need to know that we actually are worthy of extraordinary care. We are.

:

We are inherently worthy of extraordinary care.

:

And we're responsible for delivering that to ourselves. Nobody's gonna do it for you.

:

This is us.

:

I have so many places I want to take this, and I always have these moments in podcasts where I can see these little branching spaces come off.

:

But I have to say, you know, because because you give this invitation to touch this reminder, and I heard you say this too,

:

this reminder that we we can give touch to ourselves.

:

And I think, you know, in this last year of having spent a lot of time alone, one of the things I felt hunger for is touch

:

And I forget that that is something I can give myself and you do. You invite that back in.

:

You invite it in in these, like, swirling images of sparkly gold liquid.

:

And the way that you share your practice is contagious.

:

You are contagious, and you speak these words of permission.

:

And when I was prepping, I looked up the word formula because I was thinking I was thinking a lot about your background.

:

I was thinking about May the chef in kitchens because I was I was a young woman in kitchens too.

:

And I was thinking about hospitality and that you invite a sense of hospitality in your care.

:

But I kept coming back to you call yourself a formulator.

:

And I had never really heard that word. I'd like it.

:

It just had never really crossed my mind. Right? May is a formulator.

:

And I was looking up the etymology of formula.

:

And the first use of formula was in the 16 thirties, words used in a ceremony or ritual.

:

And I just thought, yes, Yes. May is a formulator in every in every conceivable definition throughout time of that a recipe

:

maker, but also you you speak ceremony and celebration and touch and permission to people.

:

Weaving spells with our words. We're writing poetry with how we touch our bodies.

:

The words are really important. Now there's all these studies on water. I'm sure you've seen them. Right? They've been around forever.

:

And you write loving words on a jar of water or a jar of rice and put that next to a jar that has mean words, negative words

:

of the same thing and and how they change, how they've shown it. They've seen this in science. It's studied.

:

There's brilliant minds sitting around talking about the actual literal scientific power of words, how they affect matter? Matter.

:

This is not this is not me talking about sparkly stuff.

:

This is me talking about stuff stuff. Word like, words shape matter.

:

And yet, we pull out jars that say anti age on them.

:

I cannot participate in that.

:

My role is to write love into everything that I touch, is to weave it in, is part of the potion.

:

I imagine back in the 1600 version of that word, formulator. What do I see?

:

I see women gathering around with ingredients. I see plants. I see oils. I see honey. And I see words. I see intention.

:

I see on purpose weaving in of beauty into these shared moments of connection and celebration.

:

And that is all I have ever tried to bottle.

:

Malinstrom's skin was born as a catalyst for connection to self and others through the skin. That's what I first wrote.

:

I didn't know what that meant when I wrote it, but I could see it.

:

I could feel it, and I knew I was hungry for it.

:

But I had no idea that 15 years later, 20 years later, that is what we're doing here.

:

We have the most stunning raw ingredients that come from all around the planet.

:

When I imagine those women in my mind, the women throughout centuries gathering around the fire with their all of the raw

:

materials they've gathered from their village to make potions. We do that. That happens every day.

:

And the gathering of women to bring it all together.

:

Hey, I've got our team of women. They are fucking fantastic.

:

And believe me, they're weaving love into those bottles. It's so inherent in our process. It's so intimate what we do.

:

This is not some giant factory somewhere that makes all of the skin care for the whole planet.

:

This is our little private kitchen lab. It's our hands. It's our people.

:

Now the women in our kitchen lab, they've been with us 5 to 10 years. They've given their lives to this.

:

It's so beautiful and so special and so sacred.

:

I never feel like I have a skincare company that it doesn't even register as that's actually what we do. It's not.

:

It's this meeting ground for celebration, for remembering, for returning.

:

The formulas work. It's very real, but it's so much bigger than that.

:

It's so much bigger than that because the active participation of you and skin is the thing.

:

You could put anything in that bottle, but write a love note on top. Weave it into your skin. We can do this for ourselves. We must.

:

All I do is remind us that this is one more area where it can show up.

:

Now chefs that are teaching you how to bake a perfect chicken, You know, they can tell you all the steps to bake the perfect

:

chicken, but it does feel a little different when someone you love hands you a bowl of steaming chicken soup versus getting takeout.

:

Yeah.

:

Both are delicious. Both have all the nutrients. But what is this intangible love? Well, it's not intangible.

:

Science shows us again and again, loving on purpose results in changed matter. It matters. Catalyst?

:

Yes. It matters. It matters. We can change matter by having it matter.

:

You know, the word root word for matter is is is mother, right? Like it is mother. It is the Latin.

:

Like matter root.

:

Yes. A catalyst.

:

What a beautiful thing to to want and to dream and to bring into existence.

:

Like, I feel like you have called this forth with words.

:

And I do like I I see that sort of catalyst in the way that you write.

:

I connected to your newsletters before I ever connected to your products. Mhmm. I heard your words first.

:

And they call me back on when I see you on social media, your words, your actions, the example that you set, the way that

:

you lead, sort of contagiousness that is a catalyst.

:

And I think when you're thinking about that action verb love in every step, And it becomes a real catalyst.

:

And I was thinking about that as I comb through these podcasts and comb through your your website where you and I can hear

:

you in it, explain every ingredient and where it's from.

:

And getting to get closer and closer to it over the years to fresher and fresher ingredients to bigger relationships

:

a network a network of support in that.

:

And I could see that and I could almost like, it was like something so, I don't know, media about it.

:

And then building a company environment too, based around care and love, not the not the bare minimum.

:

But to put into it loving people and caring for people that in turn are caring for you.

:

And I just saw how much reciprocity there is within your kitchen lab.

:

And the love that comes back and I know having been a customer, what care comes through those emails and that you are there

:

not just to you are there beyond your products.

:

If somebody sent you an email, I know that your team would answer it, regardless of whether or not they were a client, just

:

the way that your missives come out to everyone as an invitation to touch themselves in a different way to experience our own loving touch and words.

:

And so a catalyst, yes, and branching out from, from every space, right?

:

The all these different skins, I think a lot, I think a lot about supply chains, and I always think about all the hands that moved something to me. Yes.

:

So the hands, the hands like that palm skin.

:

I think about calluses and, and pots and sweat and dirt, right?

:

Grew the food and ship the food and transformed, something into an oil and packed and wrote a note and pulled the tape over onto a box. Yes.

:

And you are a catalyst in every single one of those spaces.

:

And I was just I was just in awe listening to it and imagining all of the skin, all of the hands that were moving these things the world over.

:

That's the most beautiful picture to see because it is.

:

I think about the hands pressing those seeds into soil.

:

I think about these hands harvesting them.

:

I think about the incredibly delicate and precise nature of turning 1,000 and 1,000 and 1,000 of petals of Jasmine into an oil. What? It's so many flowers. It's unimaginable.

:

It is an unimaginable amount of flowers that only bloom at night and must be picked by hand and pressed so carefully to extract their precious oil.

:

It's wild what goes into the making of every single precious ingredient.

:

All of the stories, all of the humans, all of the land, all of the people that it feeds way, way, way before it even gets

:

to us, way, way, way before that ingredient dances with all the others to make a complete formula to find its way to your

:

home, to your skin, to your touch, to your sense.

:

We eliminate a lot of hands along the way because we are so small and because we are so specific and because our sourcing is so direct.

:

Now our shade comes literally right from the village in Africa where the women make it.

:

Nothing in between goes directly from the women whose hands crush the seeds.

:

Our money goes to their hands directly. Directly. Yeah.

:

Directly. That's

:

cool. The ability to do that, the power to do that, that I get to feed them on the other side of the world, and that they

:

get to have their flowers show up on our faces, It's unbelievable.

:

What we do is not different than people have done since the beginning of time.

:

We have been wherever you are in the world, whatever continent you spring from.

:

People have gathered clays and salts and honey and oils from the beginning of time.

:

The difference for me is I have access to all of the world's villages.

:

I don't have to use what I grew.

:

I don't have to be able to walk to it on my own feet. I can source the dream everywhere. I can choose who to feed. I can choose who feeds me.

:

These are choices we make with every bottle.

:

I know the stories of what really went into each of these bottles.

:

And so for some people, they may not care.

:

It may not matter what is in there.

:

It may just matter if it's hydrating or if it helps their acne clear or, you know, softens the effects of their dermatitis,

:

whatever it is they're moving through in their skin.

:

You know, some people will find their way to us for formula, and some people will find their way to us for delight.

:

And some people are just trying to get through the day with their skin being here, but isn't it lovely? I don't know. I don't

:

here, but isn't it lovely? I don't know. It's a great big mystery.

:

I don't know how I'm still here all these years later.

:

I don't know how I still wake up and get to do this every day. It's it all feels so unlikely. Then here we are anyway.

:

Here we are anyway, getting told through active love, through our people on purpose, purpose, making the effort, reaching

:

out, extending, putting their hands to ours, saying, I see you. I support you. I believe in this. I want this. I fund this.

:

Yes.

:

We're a 100% customer funded business since day 1. Day 1 in beauty. In beauty. We compete here. It's mind boggling.

:

Deeply, deeply humbles all the time, every moment to do what we do.

:

In this very special way, we get to do it.

:

It's a really spectacular and amazing thing.

:

And I think that the idea that your customer funded was so interesting to me. Right?

:

And and the freedom that that gives you, but also the the investment that that is in so many places. I often think

:

when I'm spending money, who it touches in that same way. Right?

:

All of the hands that that it passes through, throughout a a system, a chain. And

:

making that decision to invest in me. Right? I'm investing in me.

:

I'm investing in my relationship with myself and my body and touch.

:

I'm also investing in a work environment, this amazing kitchen lab that has created a space that cares for people and investing

:

in ingredients that are touching people who are directly raising them. Right?

:

There's there's this flow and connection that feels good to me, and it feels like an investment.

:

It feels like an investment that's rippling through something.

:

And I think that every every time we purchase something that's the case, it just it's so it's it's so opaque. It's so obfuscated from us.

:

I'm always wondering how to make it just a little bit shorter so that I can really imagine those hands.

:

And it's really beautiful to have something that's been invested in in so many reciprocal ways that are rippling out.

:

Again, I think that's that's a catalyst.

:

And then the key is you have to believe you're worthy of it.

:

Because even our people, they'll take home.

:

You know, they'll they'll they'll order the blue cocoon eventually. Right?

:

But then it sits on their shelf.

:

It sits on their shelf waiting for that special occasion.

:

It sits on that shelf waiting for them to say

:

I'm guilty of this.

:

Today. Right? Because you're skipping your shower, because you're doing something else, because you used that thing from the

:

drug store instead because your skin's fine. You don't really need anything special. It's okay. Maybe Sunday. Maybe Sunday, I'll take a bath. You know?

:

And maybe Sunday is always just maybe someday, and I don't know, but it's just not true. It's today. It's always today.

:

Today is what we have, and we forget it all the time.

:

So I'm really I'm mostly just trying to remember for myself that today means me too.

:

Today means me too, and it can feel good.

:

And that is a choice, and it is mine to make.

:

It's a good reminder that it's a choice.

:

I think so often we walk through it and it feels like

:

the machinations of life are choosing it for us.

:

And to remember that we can step into that choice.

:

I on one of the podcasts you talked about your favorite spoon. I am a spoon girl.

:

I have, I have a collection of favorite spoons. They're all the same.

:

They're all iced teaspoons and I mostly eat everything with a little iced teaspoon.

:

So I my yogurt with an iced teaspoon and

:

I Is it the iced teaspoons where it's a tiny little head and then the long do you have the twirly

:

stem? Oh, no. It's just it's just a long flat stem, not twirly. Cool. If there's a twirly stem.

:

I'm picturing this this, ice teaspoon that I had as a kid, and we would, use it when we would make ice cream floats.

:

And it was a it's a silver spoon, and it had a smallish head.

:

And then it had, like, a like, a spun like, a twisty. Like, a

:

like a twisty kind of Yeah. Like a swivel.

:

Stem, like a swivel stick, and then the end had a little red ball on it. Yeah.

:

And You'd hold on to the little red ball when you spun it around in your, tea glass, and it was very satisfying.

:

And my mom liked to make these sundaes that were I've never heard seen anyone else do this.

:

So I don't know if it's because she's from Kansas City.

:

I don't know where this comes from.

:

But it would be vanilla ice cream and hot fudge and Sprite or 7 up and Peanuts.

:

Sprite or 7 Up?

:

Yep. Wow. Yep. And then when you

:

put the

:

chocolate in there that you put the still you still do the fudge. Yeah.

:

You still got the ice cream, but it's really nice.

:

It's like a And then a little salt in the crunch from some peanuts.

:

But that's what I remember in those. I'd remember a tall glass probably.

:

I mean, I've been drinking out of Mason jars my whole life.

:

And so if we were really going overboard and there was no parents home and we were just getting away with sneaking ice cream,

:

it would be a whole quart jar with that shenanigans going on.

:

But sometimes just a perfect little thin glass, then you swirl it around with that gray spoon.

:

My favorite spoon is a soup spoon, so it's a whole different thing.

:

It has a great big wide head like a bowl, and then it's, yeah, it's an it's a antique design, and so it's got pretty little flowers in it or something.

:

But it's the shape of the actual bowl, and it's very nice when having something brothy specifically.

:

That's the only time I exit my iced teaspoon is for something brothy or soupy, and it's a soup antique soup spoon.

:

And and all of my spoons have pretty little little flowers, and I I prefer spoon over a fork, in in every possible occasion.

:

Generally speaking, because I want to have sauce and I want to have all of the other little elements and I want the perfect bite.

:

So I'm with you and the the shape see, all of these things matter.

:

There is not a direction where I am not thinking about what the weight of the spoon should be, what the texture should be.

:

That Swivel stick should not get in the way of it actually being practical for use.

:

If it's weighted in a particular way, it should feel like good and hefty in your hand, but not awkward, where your fingers

:

fall, you know, the little red ball on the end of mine. Like, I remember that.

:

I haven't seen that spoon in, you know, since I was 10. It's been 30 years.

:

So, you know, I can feel remember.

:

I can feel that twirly handle, though. I haven't seen one either.

:

And it's felt like I don't know.

:

You know, one of those those first questions, like, was your body leading you into this?

:

And I think that you have such a tactile sensory experience of the world.

:

And in your stories about your skin being so sensitive.

:

And I just feel like there's something in May that is

:

asking this question of how to touch differently, how to care differently, how to love differently, like in your body.

:

Those felt sense of everything, right, of how how your favorite teacup feels, your favorite spoon feels.

:

Yeah. And also it being safe enough to feel what the body is experiencing.

:

When I look at the timeline of my life and the different chapters in which I was more or less connected to my body or more

:

or less experiencing the world through my body,

:

Well, there's just a lot to look at.

:

When I was a kid, it was a very specifically embodied existence growing up the way that I did. But as a

:

my teen years through my late twenties were riddled with very difficult relationships to my own physicality, to my appearance,

:

to eating relationships, food dynamics, my sexuality, abuse, neglect,

:

and episodes of physical violence. I had many reasons to not wanna be in my body for a long time.

:

And so my body today at 40 can remember the freedom of being a little girl in the fields, but she can also remember a lot of pain along the way. And it,

:

it took an active conscious effort of returning

:

to all of it, to feeling all of it.

:

Because without being able to actually look at what was hurting, look at what was still hurting, look at what was still scared,

:

look at what was still shaking, to understand why I actually couldn't feel pleasure. I wasn't having orgasms.

:

I wasn't motivated to move my body in any way.

:

I was a sloth out of choice in some ways, avoidance in many others.

:

And so there is this part of me that has very strong ties to my

:

15 year old me, 16 year old me, 17 year old me, 15 year old me, 16 year old me, 17 year old me, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24,

:

25, I don't know, Maybe through until a decade ago.

:

I didn't wanna revisit what was happening in that body in those years.

:

Did they get me here? Yes.

:

But it's not a physicality I'd want to return to. No.

:

Neither the parts about my skin, like my whole body would erupt in blisters and rashes. My skin would bleed.

:

I go to bed with socks up to my shoulders, or I'd wake up in the morning covered in blood.

:

My hands were always the worst of it, so I couldn't even touch things. I couldn't touch people.

:

I couldn't wash my face, not because of my face, but I couldn't even get my hands wet often enough.

:

And so my physical body was tender then.

:

The years where I didn't have consistent housing or years when

:

I witnessed physical violence was part of having my body be taken from me. Now those are in there too.

:

And so being in the shower today and feeling warm water on my scalp, being in the water today and making the decision to dry brush my body. Yes. That extra 30 seconds. Yes. That feels good. Yes.

:

That's enough for it to feel good. Yes. I'm gonna do it anyway. Like, these are little choices. This is what love means. It doesn't mean she's okay. It doesn't mean she's better. It doesn't mean she feels safe. She doesn't. She doesn't feel safe yet.

:

That's why the 80 year old still talks to me.

:

I don't feel safe yet. I wish that I did.

:

I don't think that that's the whole thing.

:

Sometimes, it actually just feels good to scratch your back.

:

Sometimes you just need a full belly.

:

And so I just try to do the practical part of loving me now.

:

And because I, on purpose, love myself now, I actually know what it means to feel good in here again.

:

And so I just again, and again, and again, find ways to create a new pattern.

:

Because I think if I keep going like this, the momentum of loving, it builds and it builds and it builds until that's the

:

story that I see when I look back.

:

And I know I know that if I live forward another decade or 2 decades or 3 decades or 4 decades, if I get to stay on this planet

:

living forward like this, loving forward like this on purpose every day, feeding myself.

:

For those years where I had to leave my body to be safe,

:

They won't feel as big relative to all of the other years where I loved myself so good. I was so loved.

:

Remembering all the time, it is mine to do.

:

It's so easy to look outside ourselves and look for someone else to love us, look for someone else to give that.

:

But it's on us.

:

It's on us, and it does change everything.

:

My husband and I have been together for 14 years.

:

And the first decade of our marriage, I would have

:

described our sexual compatibility as maybe one of the challenges.

:

And for many of those years, I thought it was us.

:

And around year 10

:

well, around year 10, I turned 35.

:

And I remember being a little girl, someone told me that we reach our sexual peak at 35.

:

And I was a child hearing this. Right?

:

I remember hearing this as a child too.

:

Must have been something

:

that you

:

don't know. I don't know why

:

to tell people this.

:

But I remember hearing this before I was an on purpose, active sexual being.

:

And so I remember aspiring to 35 a little bit, especially in my sexually active younger years where I actually wasn't feeling that good.

:

And I remember thinking, well, they did say it gets better.

:

They did say that all of the things conspire and 35 is it, hormonally and everything else.

:

And so I remember aspiring towards that through, gosh, years years years of kind of sexually dysfunctional relationships. And then I turned 35. And you know what? You know what 35 did?

:

Is it made me go, you gotta stop waiting for 35.

:

Because here we are, and you're still you, and you're still carrying around 35 years of story. Yeah.

:

And at 35, I started waking up every day and dedicating 5 minutes to myself. That was it. I made a 5 minute promise.

:

I will spend 5 minutes with my body today. That's it, on purpose.

:

And so I could lay on a yoga mat in my pajamas and roll around in happy baby for 5 minutes.

:

I could take a nap for 5 minutes.

:

I could dry brush my body for 5 minutes.

:

I could dance to a song for 5 minutes.

:

I could self pleasure for 5 minutes.

:

I could do whatever I want for 5 minutes.

:

But those 5 minutes, those are for me. I'm doing that 5 minutes. Or the length of one song. It might even be 3 minutes.

:

You can keep it if you want. But that was the commitment.

:

One song for 5 minutes every day.

:

And I just made it as nonnegotiable as any other basic thing in the day. I brush my teeth. I spend 5 minutes with myself. I eat the food. I go to sleep. This is part of it.

:

And so for 35 years, I didn't, And then I did.

:

And then I woke up, and I spent 5 minutes.

:

And I woke up the next day, and I spent 5 minutes.

:

And I woke up the next day, and I spent 5 minutes.

:

And it became longer, and I started figuring out what to do with those 5 minutes.

:

And then I wanted 6, and then I wanted 10, and suddenly there was 20.

:

And now, you know, I still have a 5 minute a day commitment.

:

And sometimes it's more than that, but it's not less than that.

:

Because I still have to feed it on purpose.

:

I'm still rewriting years years years of other stories.

:

And I just want the chapters ahead to include this piece. We're building.

:

I have potentially decades of loving myself ahead. How beautiful can I make it?

:

What would I ask if I was asking somebody else to love me in the biggest, boldest, most beautiful, most connected to me? Do you know me? Do you love me way? Do you see me?

:

If I imagine the person who knows me most loves me most in all the world, if I imagine all the people who've known me and

:

loved me over my whole lifetime, if I imagine all of the ways that they could love me on purpose.

:

What if I did that? I waited a decade for my husband to be a different person interacting with me.

:

You know what? He's great. And you know what? We're great. But you know what wasn't happening?

:

I hadn't arrived in my body until year 10 of our marriage.

:

So, of course, so, of course, that never really felt like our thing.

:

It wasn't our thing because I hadn't shown up yet.

:

I hadn't shown up yet. And then just because I'm showing up, doesn't mean that he knows how to show up in his body yet, who taught him?

:

Who gave that precious man a moment to love himself on purpose?

:

And so I watch him every day learning at 43 Mhmm.

:

How to wash his sweet tender face, how to massage his sweet little toes, how to put his man body against my body and stay.

:

These aren't small things.

:

We're learning new stuff together every day.

:

We're 14 years in and we're brand new.

:

And we're still still in this culture and in this existence that demands something so different of us.

:

Robert said to me the other night, and he was trying to imagine what our world would look like if we were all actually sexually free.

:

Like, we've barely touched the tip of the iceberg with each other 14 years in.

:

Imagine if we weren't untangling the whole way.

:

Imagine if we had been feeding ourselves independently from day 1, instead of starting year 10.

:

And everything would be different, and so I wouldn't take any of it back because we ripen at the speed that we ripen.

:

But it just makes me think of the years ahead.

:

It's why it comes back to these simple little moments that we return to.

:

There's nothing groundbreaking about cracking an egg or stepping into a hot shower.

:

I mean, I referenced it 5000 times in this conversation because

:

when we can't do that, I just don't know what else.

:

I don't know how to do anything else.

:

Build a lifetime out of those moments, out of cracking an egg, out of getting in the shower day in and day out.

:

Reaching a foot across the bed to find another foot.

:

We mean this

:

We are hungry mouths. We

:

are hungry mouths. Yeah. Hungry mouths. I was thinking as you talked about that about how easy it is to mind together. Minds minding together. Right?

:

Josh and I have worked together for business together for 12 years. We've been together for 15. Right? We know how to mind together.

:

Mhmm.

:

Still figuring out how to body together.

:

Yep.

:

And I think that there's so many things that disconnect us from this.

:

You know, it's it's it's all it's it's a concert of things of the, you know, the village we don't have, of the society we

:

grow up in, of the things that we absorb, the words that we absorb through our skin, through our minds, that we hear repeated

:

all the time, just like disconnects and disconnects and disconnects.

:

And when you said that, you know, what what would it be if we weren't spending all of this time untangling?

:

And I think that what you remind me of constantly.

:

And then throughout this conversation is that we can choose on purpose what we entangle right now that builds the future,

:

what we entangle into our bodies, the way we entangle our bodies with other bodies.

:

Whether they're husbands or plants or other women, whatever that is, right? Yes.

:

The the entanglement of hands across a globe.

:

Just in the touches that move our everyday things that we touch to us.

:

That we can we can choose that on purpose and build a life out of all of those touches and all of those moments.

:

If we're lucky enough, that life will be written all over our our old skin.

:

Think I was just picturing picturing the elder versions of us looking back.

:

You know, just looking back and reflecting on the years that are actually still to come for us.

:

There is so many, and I am so curious where we will go, me and you and the collective of us. Mhmm.

:

The world looks so different, you know, even over our lifetime. Yeah.

:

And I think that's another part of why these little moments that are unchanging, The need to feed, the need to cleanse, the

:

need to rest, the need to move the body.

:

The world can change all around us.

:

There could be new technologies, Could be entirely new systems.

:

The government could fall and be built again.

:

You know, there's there's so many ways in which the world can change countless times over in the decades to come.

:

But for me, what will not change is that daily commitment to tending, to presence, to feeding in.

:

It doesn't have to be some big monumental thing. It just is the thing.

:

It's the thing that we can touch when all around us just carries on.

:

In here, we wake up and we begin again every day right back at the sink, right back at the stove, right back making the bed. These little moments take us home.

:

When you said that, I was thinking about the sink and the stove and the and the bed as little altars.

:

You know, like, these are these are the altars I come to. And

:

These are the altars of our humanity. Yeah. These are the physical altars.

:

Notice all of those things are bodying things.

:

I think our role right now is to body.

:

There's these other times, I think, that might be something else.

:

But right now, right here, this human experience, we're given these hungry mouths of skin. We're given these bodies of desire.

:

Or given these cells that call out, or given a body that talks.

:

There's so many messages in us all the time, and they come to the surface. They show up in our skin. They show up in our cravings. They show up in

:

they just show up, this body.

:

I wanna bring it back to something you said at the beginning, which is that we're not out of our minds. We're out of our bodies.

:

And I wanna thank you because you have

:

you have in moments through words, through leadership, through the beautiful products that you make brought me back to my body.

:

And the may that wrote what did you say it was going to be? A catalyst for?

:

For connection to self and others through skin.

:

To self and others through skin. And I think that I I just wanna thank you for being that catalyst for love and for bringing people back home to their bodies.

:

And I know that you have been that for me, and I know that you have been that for so many people.

:

I see the way that you are catalyzing and formulating

:

these spells with words that give us permission to come home to bodies that Earth needs us to be in right now, that we need

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one another to be in right now.

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We need that love.

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Helps me to come back to the picture of those hands and maybe this is where we end is just picturing us. Picture everyone we mentioned today.

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At the beginning, the old man pausing in the middle of your podcast to eat a cookie. Right?

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All of the different farmers along the way, those that you know in your world, those that I touch in my world, my team, our

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families, our lovers, our history, and the women ahead of us, all that we've taken along the way. Pat, picture all of those people. Picture all of those bodies. Mhmm.

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Picture all of them in their skin.

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Picture all of them putting on their socks.

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Picture all of them, their hands stretched out.

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Picture all of us, our hands touching each other.

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Picture all of us fingertips coming together.

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Picture the electricity of that touch meeting meeting meeting, finding each other across the globe.

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We're all here at the same time in these bodies sharing, sharing this this one precious life.

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It is the honor of my life who hold you in care.

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It's the honor of my life to be here, living a life that is dedicated to care.

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And it is the lesson of my life to continue to wake up every day and choose loving as my action, as my stance of power in this world.

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Thank you, Mae. Thank you for being that.

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It is an honor to be here with you to be, to touch that. To get to touch each other.

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Yeah, I know. Like to get

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to glance my fingertip off of that.

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Thank you for all of your words.

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We're gonna have a 1,000 links in the show notes for where everyone can find you, And I think that's the the perfect closing

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piece, and I just wanna thank you.

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Thank you for having me. Such a gift.

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Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Mind Body and Soil podcast.

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If what you found resonated with you, may I ask that you share it with your friends or leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts.

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This act of reciprocity helps others find mind, body, and soil.

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If you're looking for more, you can find us at groundworkcollective.comand@kate_kavanagh.

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That's kate_kav

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anaugh on Instagram. I would like to give a very special thank you to China and Seth Kent of the band Alright Alright for

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the clips from their beautiful song Over the Edge from their album The Crucible.

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You can find them at Alright Alright on Instagram and wherever you listen to music.

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About the Podcast

Mind, Body, and Soil
Where the health of land and the health of bodies and communities meet.
Welcome to Mind, Body, and Soil. Join me, Kate Kavanaugh, a farmer, entrepreneur, and holistic nutritionist, as I get curious about human nature, health, and consciousness as viewed through the lens of nature. At its heart, this podcast is about finding the threads of what it means to be humans woven into this earth. I'm digging into deep and raw conversations with truly impactful guests that are laying the ground work for themselves and many generations to come. We dive into topics around farming, grief, biohacking, regenerative agriculture, spirituality, nutrition, and beyond. Get curious and get ready with new episodes every Tuesday!

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Kate Kavanaugh