Nicole: Welcome to Modern Anarchy, the podcast exploring sex, relationships, and liberation. I'm your host, Nicole. On today's episode, we have Lorie join us for a conversation about the revolutionary power of softening.
Together we talk about healing intergenerational trauma, stepping into embodiment, and the transformation of belonging. Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Modern Anarchy. I am so delighted to have all of you pleasure activists from around the world tuning in for another episode each Wednesday. My name is Nicole, I am a sex and relationship psychotherapist with training in psychedelic integration therapy, and I am also the founder of The Pleasure Practice.
Supporting individuals in crafting expansive sex lives and intimate relationships. Dear listener. Wow, it is getting cold in Chicago. I am so glad to have these Vulnerable, heartwarming conversations to edit for you, dear listener, with Fat Cat snuggled up next to me on the couch, and this episode, this conversation, is an invitation to be in your body.
To take that deep relaxing exhale and to show up for yourself and that the people around you. Often we can fall into the black and white thinking of you're either in or you're out. You're with us or you're against us. And what does it mean to see the infinite gray space that exists between the black and the white?
What does it mean to remember our humanness? When you see people across the divide, and gosh, dear listener, with this time of year, so many of my clients speak to the complexities of seeing family. The parts of ourselves that get activated when we're with our family. I laugh because I feel that on a deep level.
Um, yeah. I talk about how our sense of self is created by our relationships, right? Relationships are mirrors. They're also canvases that we can create storylines and beautiful art with. But they are mirrors. to yourself, right? And so, as you are going to see family, going to be around these various relationships, an invitation to ask yourself, how do you want to show up?
And to embody that intention as you move with love for the people around you, and I definitely feel that as I go home to be with my family, my Mormon family during this time of the year, and the complexities that that brings up for myself and for all of my clients and my community that I hear around this time, it can be Heavy, heavy, heavy.
And so, I think this episode is very rightly timed for all of us as an invitation to ground in love, to ground in our humanness, and to
All right, dear listener, if you are ready to liberate your pleasure, you can explore my offerings and resources at modernanarchypodcast. com, linked in the show notes below. And I want to say the biggest thank you to all of my Patreon supporters. You are supporting the long term sustainability of the podcast.
Keeping this content free and accessible to all people, so thank you. If you want to join the Patreon community, get exclusive access into my personal exploration and research, then you can head on over to patreon. com slash modernanarchypodcast, also linked in the show notes below. And with that, dear listener, please know that I am sending you all my love.
And Let's tune in to today's episode. Okay, so the first question I like to ask each guest is, how would you introduce yourself to the listeners?
Lorie: I'm already emotional.
I'm an emotional person.
Nicole: Good, you're in the right space.
I guess that's how I would introduce myself as an emotional person.
Amazing, amazing.
Yeah, what's coming up for you with the emotionality?
Lorie: I want to say that I am my mother's daughter. I'm sitting in my mother's home right now. And there's just like pieces of our family everywhere around me and that feels very much a part of who I am and how I want to introduce myself. Yeah, my mother.
Lisi is an Afro Taina from Boriquen, Boriqua woman from Puerto Rico. And my father is Mexican American. We are Lipan Apache. We're part of the Lipan Apache tribe of Texas from his side as well. And I identify very much as a mixed race, mixed lineage. woman and the complexity of that. And I feel that I want to introduce myself as someone who was uniquely, in my experience, raised in a safe home for complexity.
Yeah, my home, my parental home where I was raised. It's kind of a sanctuary for a lot of my loved ones and friends who there was not safety and space in their own homes for the complexities of them for their, most often their sexual identities and experiences. Um, and more recently, I've been appreciating on a really deep level as it pertains to my work and who I've become and some of my personal work at the moment.
Um, the profound impact that it had on me to be raised in a safe home. Yeah. And I think I always appreciated that. And. I think I've taken it for granted a little bit. I think I took it for granted. And I feel at the moment that I'm stepping into a really profound potential to share that with the people around me and their complexity and their unfinished complexity.
And yeah, it feels really good. And sitting here in my mom's house, she has this humongous tree. That's like filled with the photos of the people in our family who have died, my father and my sister, and yeah, I feel very connected to all of them, and somehow they are all part of how I need to introduce myself and show up in this space with you.
Yes.
Nicole: Of course are so beautiful. Our relationships form our sense of self, right. And our quality of life. So yeah, of course, to bring them into the space because they form you and are with you and you form them. And yeah, I can imagine that growing up in a space where you were safe and loved is, a part of your ability to be embodied with your emotions, right?
When it's not a safe space, the amount of walls we have to put up to numb ourselves to quite literally move through that, you know? So for you to be someone that's open and receptive and soft, yeah, speaks to the safety of the relational space you've had.
Lorie: Yeah, I think the irony of that is that it's like, I feel that I've been someone a lot in my life who has put myself in front of other people to protect them.
And also these last years I've been realizing is I've been on my own kind of deeper healing layers that I had taken that that strength and that medicine for granted as well in me and kind of not acknowledging the ways that I was hurt through. Yeah, exposing myself to violence, harm, bigotry, racism, all of these things.
Yeah, somehow that's all part of me as well. So I appreciate the like recognition of softness
because I think that's kind of a new ish embodiment of me as well. I've always been kind of this warrior person and a certain embodiment of strength and It just turned 40. And I think somehow it's like, yeah, this is my goal.
If it must be a goal is to keep getting soft,
Nicole: right? Yeah. And the revolution, right? Like the political revolution of love and softness. I mean, there's a whole essay up in that one, right? So for sure. Yeah. And I know you spoke to, you know, when we were preparing just the, the beauty of the podcast of holding space for personal narratives and it starts, it's starting to unfold a little bit here, but I'm curious if you have a personal narrative you'd want to share with the listeners.
Yes. I'm all ears. I'm ready. We're ready for you. It's vulnerable. Of course. Invite all the emotions that come up for that. Thank you. Yeah,
Lorie: I want to share that I am kind of leaning deep into this. space of not knowing. I listened to so many of the podcasts that you have with people, and I was so amazed at these people's beautiful knowing.
And I have, I am someone with a lot of knowing and a lot of wisdom, of course. And, It's so tempting to speak from that place. It's so tempting. It feels like, Oh man, that would be so dignified and empowering. And right. The truth is what feels right is like to be in my not knowing right now. Powerful. So, what am I not knowing?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I'm a wife to a man named Skeets, who I love very much. We've been married for 12 years. We have a son named Phoenix. And I am in a process with Skeets of what I consider A big work of intergenerational healing in the realm of interracial intimacy.
So skeets identifies as a white man, a mixed race person with all of the complexities I named.
And this was never an issue for us for the first almost decade of our marriage, until one day it was.
So, it's been some years now that we've been engaging in this. And, I experienced a big opening of trauma, of racialized trauma, of intergenerational trauma. It was not, um, catalyzed by him, but as my partner, he witnessed it and how he engaged with that made it worse.
Nicole: Yeah.
Lorie: Yeah. And it made it worse. Again and again for some years, and he was not trying to make it worse.
His intention was to be there for me. To his credit, he has been. He has been there for me without fail. And in that process, we have learned a lot. About the embodiment, the complexities of racialized trauma, not just in the world and how we perceive that playing out now and in generations past. We've learned a lot about that in our own bodies.
how that plays out between ourselves and each other. I particularly have learned a lot about how my mixed race identity and racialized trauma has influenced the embodiment of my sexuality and my intimacy. And I've learned a lot living in Europe. I live in Portugal now, although I'm from the States. So just kind of getting that Zoomed out perspective of stepping away from the ver the very like American centric, right?
Rhetoric and dialogue and the politicization of all of the things. Like we've really made a lot of space there and that has been very, at times difficult because in that space. And in the letting myself be softened by where I am, my mind has changed about a lot of things that I held really dear as part of my own identity, as my needs of where I felt that I belonged and what was the right work to be doing and how it was to be done.
I have let my mind Change and I've let my mind change also as an act of love by my partner, who through this process, I came to understand had some very different beliefs. About some of these things.
Nicole: Yeah.
Lorie: And I didn't know that until I knew it. So
he would say, um, that in this emergence in this process, we came to understand that we had very different ideologies, like political ideologies.
Nicole: Sure.
Lorie: And. In the way that political ideology can often be pit against each other, the kind of necessary separation of who's who and us or them. When we came to find that we were perhaps in different political ideologies.
Nicole: Right.
Lorie: We also learned that that had very different meanings for us and our bodies.
as far as safety and belonging. And it's one of these things that could be like an irreconcilable difference. Yeah, what was going on? It was like the intersection of Me Too, of the pandemic, of the racial reckoning. And what that evoked in me seemed to evoke the opposite in him. Oh no.
Nicole: Right, and you've been together for 10 years at this point, and you're finding out now.
Lorie: Yes. So at a moment when everything is like coming to a head and it's like time to band together and do the thing, and now like all of the stuff that we've been working on our whole lives. I've always been like very politically active, politically minded, engaged in social and community work. I'm like, yes, it's time for all of this shit to come to a head and we're going to put all of our power behind it.
And then my closest like in home ride or die partner is like suddenly on the other side of all of it. Yeah. Wow. Shocking. Yes. Shocking. Okay. So what I have been engaged in these years. Is like a really profound, I think, audit of who is us when we're talking about like us versus them and these experiences that come inside of us when we are like triggered in our wounds.
And I'm specifically curious about I'm calling them traumas of division. So it's any experience where we suddenly feel like it's us versus them. It's like making enemies of people who are not enemies. I have been doing an audit of my social ecology. Like, who is my us? Yeah. And I have realized that my us is very complex.
It is not as black and white, or wrong or right, or us or them, or left or right, or anything. It is not, it cannot be divided into these camps. My other ride or die, Emily Royce. is a disabled woman and what she needed during COVID and what made her feel safe and in belonging was very different than what I needed during that time.
And as I looked into my closest, I'm talking my closest circles, I found A lot of what would be and might be considered like competing needs.
Nicole: Hmm.
Lorie: And I feel that we have been leaning into not competing with those needs. And I'm gonna loop it back to my parents because. I was raised in a home of mixed ideologies.
My mom was very Catholic when I was growing up. She's not anymore, but she was. And My dad was like an out and proud atheist . Mm. Wow. Yeah. And this was never an issue in our home. It was an issue at church sometimes. Sure. Because at church they would like feel sad for me that my dad was going to go to hell, which is rude.
No. So rude. I was young. Oh my God. . Yeah. And thankfully my mom, who's amazing, was just like, that's bullshit and rude and not true. And there was a home where these, I'm so grateful for this. And for some people, you know, there's different people have different deal breakers. So I'm not trying to say what's acceptable in my home.
It's acceptable for other people or should be
Nicole: right. Sure.
Lorie: But I've been leaning into this a lot because in this experience with my husband, you know, a lot of people who I relate with, who are really. Dedicated and conscientious about racialized healing and these kinds of things are like, man, like, you shouldn't have to put up with this.
Like, you should, you should have somebody who's there for you and who understands these things and who understands why it's safety. And like, God, of course, I want that with like, every cell of my being. And I cannot disregard the million and uncountable ways that this human has had my back through every single aspect of my life, through all of my complexity, and including this, like he continues to show up for it, imperfectly bless him, so do I, I'm like, off to the mess, you know?
And I just cannot afford to throw away my people because they cannot fit into whatever box That I need them to fit and they don't throw me away We need like believe all women are not whatever this like Impulse to have to pick your side and let it just be that only I have come to feel that I cannot afford.
And what I mean by that is that it's not true. Like, to throw away my people would be to, like, disregard a part of myself and to not show up in my wholeness and in my complexity. Yeah. Because there are edges of my understanding. There are, like, some unpopular edges of my opinions too. Because I'm still working it out.
I am still out here in the world, like, figuring out what I feel and think about all of this. I'm a very inquisitive person. I'm very curious. And I feel like I have some edgy questions about a lot of what I'm seeing and experiencing in this world. Sure. And I think we need safe places to ask these questions.
And this is what I feel that we've been engaged with, not perfectly, but being witness to the edges. of our belonging with each other as like a people of complexity. And I'm using this term from Rize Guzman, Kinfolk, people of complexity, shout out. And I think I'm uniquely positioned to be in this as like a mixed race, mixed lineage person of like in these edges of I'm not in that camp or that one.
Nicole: Right.
Lorie: I'm somehow in both. And from giving myself to that experience, I have seen that other people around me have also expanded into that experience. Yeah. And that has been healing. It's been really healing. It's been really scary. I think to step into our not knowing, are we okay? Are we going to be okay?
Mm hmm. There's not a lot of kind of support reflected to us. in society with like slowing down, being in the nuance, I call it claiming each other.
Nicole: Yeah.
Lorie: How do we claim each other in our fullness, in our difference, especially in our difference? I see it reflected in nature. I see it reflected in spirit.
This is really an important part of my existence. Yeah. And it's where I'm at right now, this project of claiming each other. Um, how do I stay soft? And embody these collectivist, indigenous. Full hearted wisdom of relationship is you're saying this ecological truth that we are connected, right? I fucking love you.
Nicole: Mm hmm.
Lorie: I have this medicine like ready available now Even if someone else isn't totally ready to claim me like that yet. Yeah, that's not the lineage they came from That's not how they were taught to be. Yeah Yeah. How do I claim somebody who's like up in arms when I am unarmed? Right. I believe in this right now.
And I don't know if it's going to work. I won't unclose. Sure. This is the research I'm engaged in at the moment.
Nicole: Yeah.
Lorie: Of claiming each other across the divide. particularly when we are in traumatic responses, which I observe that a lot of us are more than maybe we realize and decentralizing healing even out of the therapist's office into our social ecologies.
Like we can come for each other. This is like not just specialized. Yes, therapists and practitioners have like dedicated wisdom and practice. And if we're wired to be together that we can. Heal with each other. Like, yeah, do this.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely do this. Yeah. I mean, the field of psychology is what, like a hundred years old.
What did we do all before those hundred years? You know what I mean? Exactly. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So I think we'll we're growing here and, uh, I appreciate you sharing all of your personal experience with this, particularly with your positionality, right? As a mixed race person and seeing the edges of those cultures meld together and just holding the complexity of the pain of, yeah, being with someone for 10 years.
hitting this point of, yeah, you've built so much love and intimacy and moments of caretaking and connection and feel such a rupture and have to sit with that nuance of the yes and of I love this person and we are in different spaces. And What do we do with that? Like, right. You were hit up exactly with that, you know, cultural messaging of leave them, abandon them.
And, and, and where does that come from? Right? Where do we get this message of when someone's a problem? We, we push them out and just forget them for someone else's, you know, job, you know, of course, the complexities of we don't want to, you know, we can't harm ourselves, you know, You know, and which makes me then think of holding that harm collectively, right?
We're not the only person to be with that person in their struggle. We do that in community. We pull in together because if we do try to do it alone, we will sink together. We need to hold hands with the other people to pull that person in. And so the complexities of that are so nuanced. But thinking about that collectively, I do think that's how we're going to heal, right?
Collectively in community. Yes.
Lorie: I think it's actually to, like, bring out your problems in community, especially when it comes to these issues that are polarized, right? Yeah, for sure. It's like, I felt at the beginning of this, like, very implicated in a way, like, complicit, of like, if I stay with this person in this time of deep turmoil, When we're supposed to be or I am maybe supposed to be like putting my weight to this sea change.
Right. I am complicit now in what I experienced as rich as racism, perhaps. And so who, especially when my a lot of my close ecology. More share some of the at least perspective, if not closer lived experience as me. It's edgy, right? Then to say like, this is what I'm working with at home. My closest person.
Yeah, totally. Is not there, right? It implicates me. And I, it's hard for me to connect to that right now because I don't feel that way anymore. Um, because now I feel more grounded in the work that I'm doing. Right. Right. As in within within my couple hood, but I remember feeling ashamed. That's what it is.
It's like a deep shame that I was allowing myself to be treated this way. Yeah. Right. To be spoken to with these words of. Whatever hurts, harm, ignorance, embarrassment to tell anybody because I think deep down I expected this is that people, especially when we come from fractured societies, people who are often not connected to their lineage, cancel culture, as you're saying, we're trying to kind of cut people out if they don't meet our expectations and standards.
I kind of felt that this would be the response. It's easy out. And for me, it's like, it's just not that easy. No, it's not that easy. And I know we're gonna do all the work. We're gonna do all the work until we understand what's happening until we are like embodying some other liberation from this. And so we've just been doing that.
Bless him. He has been showing up.
Nicole: Yeah. Wow. It's hard. It's really difficult. Right? Yeah. You, you, I'm, you know, processing through my own experiences of similar moments where people have looked at me and said, how, how are you close to that person when they say that? Get rid of them. What are you doing?
You're not a part of the movement if you're here. Whoa. Okay. Yeah. What do we do with these people? Again, we leave them behind. I mean, I think that I just think back to my own experience, right? So I'm a queer relationship anarchist. I love my queerness. God, I'm so gay, you know, and it's just it's not it's not funny.
It's sad and I think maybe this hits at the heart of it, right? Is I grew up very, very Christian. And so in my early twenties, teens, I was coming into class saying, the Bible says, homosexuals are sinners. They're going to hell. They're going to hell. They're going to hell. They're going to hell. Okay. I'm queer as fuck.
This book today, what do we say who was responsible for the harm that I was causing? And I don't want to like say I wasn't responsible for that, right? But I grew up in a culture where I was taught that this is how I love people is by saying these people are going to hell. Like the people talking about your, your dad, right?
Let me go and save them. Let me go and save them. So I thought I was doing what I was supposed to be doing while internally having such a conflict of actually wanting to express this type of love. And so. What would have got me to here? Would it be ostracizing me further and saying you're horrible? Get out of here, you know?
And obviously it's not the responsibility of that one queer person to sit with me and try and show their whole world so I can expand. Right. But like, how do we get from there to here? I don't think it's ostracizing people, but some sort of much more nuanced dance of pulling people into community through a balance.
Lorie: That's really interesting. I don't know because I'm, I don't know. I know you're not asking me and it's a bit rhetorical, but also we're in the investigation, right? And I, I hear ostracization and the power of belonging, right?
The need, the innate need to belong is important. And. You know, just speaking from my own experience, like my belonging to my relationship was threatened as well, but from a different way.
Not if we necessarily couldn't see eye to eye or have the same beliefs, but if we couldn't find a way to mutually respect, support, and love each other. Yeah, I feel like I've been, um, like I need to say like a lot of nice things about my partner, so does it feel like I'm just like talking shit about him?
Does it feel that way?
Nicole: Not, I mean, to me it sounds like I hear you loving him. I hear that. I hear you saying, wow. I mean, I hear that. I hear sorrow and grief of I love this person so much that I don't know how to be in the space with them. Not talking poorly about them, but truly the love that you have for them.
As you're trying to reach out for deeper connection with them and feeling this impasse. I mean, I hear that as love and I know that again, I feel that way through my parents, right? Like where they're at with their Mormonism and, and these other things of like, how do we name these views for the harm that they cause?
But also I love them and in, in, in that pain, the grief of that. So I hear that.
Lorie: Okay. I'm happy to speak for my own experience. I'm also a somatic experiencing practitioner, a somatic sex educator. I do also healing work with people. And yeah, that's kind of one thing. Right. And I would never universalize my experience.
So to say, like, everybody should find a way to stay in relationship and proximity with people for whom they experience. Like, no, right. I think it's very important for me to say that this is uniquely my choice. I do feel a calling. I feel an ancestral calling. I feel close to his ancestry as well. And I feel the want of this and the real somatic intelligence of what we're doing.
And I'm careful when I say that we have the opportunity to build bridges and to claim each other and to be in greater tolerance. Yeah, I never want that to be encouraging people to continue to expose themselves to harm or, um, to give people an excuse to not learn and grow and evolve and do their own work.
Yeah, of course. Nuance. Exactly. Exactly, but I do feel that being in slowness, like a certain slowing down to honor the complexity, to honor the urgency of what I feel this work is right now in the world of reconciling with these, I don't know, what are made to feel like polarities, right? Of political thought, of racial, of gender stuff.
It's like, it's urgent in that it's important. And I feel that slowing down is a really congruent response to that kind of urgency because it deserves and demands respect. and care. Yeah. Yeah. It's like our souls. We're talking about our bodies, our deep, the deepest parts of ourselves and our lineage are on the table here.
And I think through my work, I've been so privileged to be in that, you know, like ceremonial liminal space with people where those deep hearts can be seen and acknowledged. And I want us to create that more with each other for each other outside like the therapeutic space, just in the sanctity. I want us to like build sanctuary together, like with every conversation with any interaction.
Yeah. Yeah, so that we can just be in that softness with each other.
Nicole: Yeah. I'd be curious to see or hear what that looks like, how you're stepping towards that and part of what I was thinking about as you were speaking was just the balance of it all, right? Like, just the way that we can balance these relationships when we are pulling people closer in who maybe have more.
Somatic trauma in their body and it's showing up in a wide variety of ways, right? Like, how do we balance that relationship with some of the other relationships that allow us to come in with more grounding? So that it's not that, you know, I don't want to say pulling us down, but like, just again, balance.
How do we find harmony?
Lorie: Yeah. I mean, I think that's so subjective, of course. I don't know how you do it.
Nicole: How do you do it? Yeah. We can't answer the world's woes.
Lorie: Yeah. And also just acknowledging that everybody's, these like metrics and the volume of whatever balance is. different for everybody. Some people can handle more intensity or some people want a lot less and that's intolerable for people, right?
And also that balance, I, you know, I think of the yin yang symbol. It's, it's a moving experience. It's not a static, like one for one. It's moving. So I think being so self aware Of where we are in our own capacity is really important because when we are not, I'm going to bring it back to myself. I have noticed that when I am not as self aware of my own capacity is when I have more potential to hurt somebody because I'm impatient.
I'm not as careful. I'm tired. I'm not aware of my blind spots in the same way of my own ignorances. I'm not aware of my blind spots in the same way of my own ignorance. Yeah, I'm just like, I can get, I guess, sloppy or careless. And I, I see in the world. Right. That we were tired. A lot of people are tired and stressed.
Yeah. I think our collective capacity has been compromised. I think it's by design.
Nicole: Right.
Lorie: Right. And so that demands, I think, even more care, more slowness. And that's why these ideas that are often coming, you know, from our black kinfolk, brothers and sisters around rest and, uh, rest is the medicine, rest as ministry, rest, um, down regulation, right?
Like we need to attend to our capacity to feel, to be present with our own complexities. Yep. If we can't even tolerate our own complexities, I find it difficult that to feel that we might be able to tolerate the complexities of everybody around us. Right. So I have been in like nervous system terms, learning what it means to unwind my nervous system.
I want to like shout from the rooftops that that's like great and everybody should do it. And I want to give like a caveat that like that is what led to. Changing my mind. I changed my body. I changed my system and I changed my mind and that made me experience things and come to believe things. That I didn't want to believe when I was in a less regulated nervous system state.
Nicole: Right.
Lorie: Right. I did not want to learn how to be more tolerant of racism, for example. And at that point, in a different point in my life, it's something that I wouldn't believe. I would never have wanted that for myself. I would have never made that as a goal. I would never say we need to learn how to tolerate racism more.
And it's something that I was very critical of at the beginning of my somatic experiencing program, because I of course did not see much racial representation or representation across the gender spectrum. And I got curious, like, are we just teaching people to better tolerate injustice? Because I don't want to do that.
I don't want to pass on these methodologies in an effort to create more. Yeah. Tolerance of harm.
Nicole: Yeah. And I mean, immediately my brain is just going to my existential professor and mentor and, and it's the yes. And I do not tolerate harm. No. And, you know, I haven't even done this work. He's done this work.
So we're going to go here. You know, he's sitting across from a child molester. What do you do with that person? Of course you do not want the harm to continue. Yes. However, how do you love that person so that you actually can prevent the harm, right? What does it mean to love that person, you know, who is coming through with all these harms?
It is not to, I mean, obviously this is just so nuanced, right? Like it's, it's that yes and of what does it mean to love someone that is causing harm? It is not to hit them over the head with the brick and say, you're bad, you're bad, you're bad. Of course. The harm is not okay, right? But to extend love and compassion and understanding for that person is, I think, the long term goal to prevent the harm.
And so what do all of us need to do, right? Again, we can't answer that question. So like, in our own lived lives, right? Like, What do we need to do with the people next to us when we see this happening? And how do we balance that? I mean, again, like you're saying, first step being our own reaction, because if I'm sitting in that room with a child molester, and I'm starting to get activated so much so that I'm, I can't even focus or anymore because of maybe my own trauma.
That's not a good space. I need to refer that out to someone who has the capacity in your body to sit with that person. And so for all of us just thinking about, okay, we want to heal collectively. Where's my own grounding. And so I'm curious, you know, you named a few things, like what are some things that a listener could kind of pin to like, Ooh, I'm off.
How do I know I'm. I'm off. For me, my dishes start to pile up. I have a laundry that hasn't been done. I start to multitask and I'm a little jittery, you know, like, but I'm curious for you, how do you start to know like, Oh, I'm moving too fast and I need to ground?
Lorie: Yeah. I mean, anytime that I find myself being in either or thinking, which I love to do, like there's a part of me that's like, okay, it's either this way or that way.
Like make your choice. That's what I'm like, Oh, wait. And if it's so real, it's so real in the moment, right? And in those states, like, that's what it is. That's what it's for. And also, that's my sign, right, is to like, pause and assess, like, what and not to bypass myself, like, oh, I'm projecting danger where there is none,
Nicole: right?
Lorie: Like, no, what is being threatened? What do I feel? Right, it's often something that is deeply important to me. Some sense of dignity, some sense of love or something is being threatened that has put me in that place. So it doesn't do me good to say like, oh, no, that's not real. I just need to like, calm down.
Right? I need to acknowledge like, ah, it's my sense of dignity right now that I am like, all up in arms about. And I'm giving, I'm like throwing out ultimatums for everybody. So this for me, and I love, like, I am, I love some righteous indignation, some righteous, like sympathetic states, righteous rage. It's like one of my favorite embodiments and it can be, it has a shadow too, of course.
And so for me, it's like, You're either with us or you're not like, get in or get out. Like, and I, I have to trust that too. Sometimes is the thing and bring in more nuance, even then. So, there are times, you know, working in consent and boundaries, for example, it's a sex educator as a trauma therapist. It's like, reestablishing our agency and our boundaries is super important and knowing that.
It's like boundaries, and I cannot fuck with you right now, and I still love you. Right. I'm still claiming you. Mhm. It's both, right? I'm not gonna do this. with this person, and they're still a member of my community, and I love them, and I wish them well, and I'm going to act accordingly. I'm going to act respectfully.
Nicole: Yeah.
Lorie: Right, but I need to act respectfully, like at this distance, because right now we're too close, and I'm like, I'm not able to connect to my love to them.
Nicole: Right, right. And I, you got a name as a, you know, as a feminist, how hard that is for women, particularly who are, you know, so responsible to, to care, take and heal and love everybody to actually take that step back and say, no, I need to put up boundaries here for myself.
Lorie: That's hard for so many women. And I'm also conscientious of that because I do feel that I have like a big mothering nurturing capacity. Yeah. Capacity. I feel like that's part of my personal medicine and I know that it's an important work for people in femme bodies and women to investigate that for themselves and where they have been inculturated to bypass their own boundaries and to give into the shadow and, you know, give for our sense of worth.
Yeah, I feel such an immense capacity to fucking give and like, hold, like, to the point where. It's like scaring people.
Nicole: People are scared to, like, be held so deeply. It's intimate. That's really uncomfortable for people. It's so,
Lorie: I know. And I think because I was raised in, like, a secure attachment situation, I have had the beautiful, amazing experience of, like, being a part of sharing that, of helping other people who I love kind of repattern their attachments with me, like, their relationship with me.
And God damn it, it's not easy because they come with their, with their like wounds and their guns and their judgments and their everything, you know, because they've had to fucking protect themselves. And so have I. Right. So have I. And I want us to protect ourselves and protect each other and what's dear, of course.
And. I feel like, wow, we're so good at protecting ourselves. I'm really curious about how good we can get at claiming each other. How good can we get at, like, disarming ourselves and letting, like, letting love heal us? It sounds so cheesy. There's such, it's such a cliche. But this is really what I feel that I'm experiencing.
Nicole: Good. We need you. Keep going. Right? That's what we need is love. Love with boundaries. Right? But love.
Lorie: That's what I need in myself. I look around at the people who I love. That's what they need. I don't know what everybody else needs, but that's, I think that's where we're at. And when there's so much.
Uncertainty. There's so much to be afraid of. There's so many real threats to protect ourselves and each other from. We all have the axe hanging over our heads every time. I'm like, but we need each other. And I have just found that being in those places where we actually diverge, not where we think exactly the same and we're just vibing and we're resonating and it feels so amazing.
Like that place where we actually diverge. It's such a rich place. Where I get to experience a whole nother reality of the world that is like, Oh, no, I didn't sometimes it's like really fun and exciting. And it's like, Ooh, you see it that way. Cool. Sometimes it's like, Oh, no, I don't know if I want to see that facet of reality.
I don't know if I want to believe you, but that's what you're seeing and feeling. And so believing somebody, like, finding what is real and true about what they're saying, as I want them to do with me, as I want them to honor my truth and my reality, and really recognize, you know, I believe that reality is You know, it is made up of all of our subjective realities, right?
There is no objective reality. And if there is one, it's made up of all of our subjective realities. And so, but I too can get into like, Oh, you see it that way? No, that's not true. That's not real. That's ugly. Yeah. Um, when it challenges my sense of dignity or the dignity of people that I love and communities that I care about. It's not.
And yet, being willing to look a little bit deeper, especially when it's a critique of movements, political movements, when it's a critique of how communities is. How we are printed against each other. I want to be soft and look at that because there often is wisdom there. It's just hard when it comes sometimes from not within myself.
For example, I'm like, I will make the critique. I will say what I have to say and to acknowledge somebody else's critique. Or perspective that's challenging and like, okay, but we do it, you know, my suggestion, right? If I had to share, it's like, it's the people that we love that. I'm talking about our circles of people.
I'm not talking about someone across the. Yes, we honor everybody's perspective and I'm talking about trusting and acknowledging the complexity of perspective of embodiment from the people that are in our inner circles. And recognizing that we're not all the same, even if we feel like these are my people, we're like minded, we have the same everything we're all, you know, and it's like, when we really get in there, there's probably a lot more complexity than we would like to admit.
And often it's the like, you know, the shared experiences, the shared things that will bring us together. And then it's been my experience that once we stay together. Yeah. For a while, we started to run into where we're different.
Then what? Then how do we have each other's backs? And that for me is like the gold right now.
I want to be held in my becoming in the edges of my understanding. And I just, I want to do that too with all the people that I love.
Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. When you were speaking, it was making me think of a YouTube show that I've seen a couple of episodes called, uh, middle ground. Have you heard of this? You might enjoy it.
It's interesting. Like they have people come in and talk about some of the contemporary hot topics and questions where it will be like having a whole group of queer people talk about. Some sort of queer issue and you have conservative queers and liberal queers, right and like just seeing that like, oh you think queerness is this?
Oh, yeah Okay, they have different views and perspectives and where is the middle ground between all of us when we sit and talk about that so I've really loved that show and and and those pieces and Yeah, I was just thinking too, as you were speaking about, you know, as someone on the podcast, who's talked openly about getting an abortion, right?
I got comments from people on YouTube who had said like, Oh, my God, you are a murderer. You're this or that. Right? Exactly. And so it's like, Oof, like how can I hold the reality of, yeah, in their world, I am a murderer and in my world, I chose the best thing that was for me. Right. And, and both of those things being true, sure, but don't attack me for it.
Right. And like how, again, so how do we navigate that world of all that? I'm thinking about my mentor too, of when we're talking about therapy and sitting with that person that makes us uncomfortable to really look for that tightening in the chest. That moment that someone says something and you feel that and go, oh, and then that's when you want to go.
You know, and you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Okay. You know, like how do I take a deep breath and breathe? How do I go for that walk? How do I come back so that I can yeah Love rather than the initial snarling that I want to do when someone calls me a murderer, right? And that love might be Hey, I hear you.
That's your opinion. I'm going to go walk this way, right? Like, and that's the love that I needed to, you know, exactly to that person. And that, that was it. There's no further engagement. You know what I mean?
Lorie: For sure. Or the walk, you know, you're saying you take a walk or you take a breath. Like that is the love too.
You're like giving love to that space and that experience of like, Oh, and if you're going to give yourself to that, Not everybody's gonna be like, let me see what's true about that. And like, not everybody needs to do that. Everybody's gonna do that.
Nicole: Yeah.
Lorie: So if you're going to do that, that is the deep work of being in the complexity of honoring of being curious.
And if you feel. That there's something true about that. That demands love and space and respect and care, right? So even like making space between whatever your response might be, let me take a walk so that I can respond in kind. I feel like no, the walk is the love, right? That's the gift already before we even make a response to somebody or do anything.
Like how? How do I attend to this?
Nicole: Mm hmm.
Lorie: Yeah.
Nicole: Which begins from embodiment, right? It's feeling first.
Lorie: Yes, exactly. You know, I've been considering how to, um, giving everything that I've been learning and practicing, and I've been developing some work to do with interracial couples that I'm really excited about.
And I just want to start with, like, We're all gonna lay in the grass and look at the clouds for like five hours minimum, like a minimum of five hours first, like you think we're gonna show up and get into it and learn how to dialogue and do these things, I'm like no, we're gonna lay in the grass for minimum five hours.
Yeah. Silently.
Nicole: Ground into Mother Nature. Yeah. You'll hear her hold you.
Lorie: When was the last time any of us, anybody, like, laid in the ground for five hours and looked at the sky? It's goddamn delightful. Right. And then we see. How we come into a situation, you know, it's like this. What is important? What do I feel?
We speak then from that other place of embodiment of deeper connection of more ease of being held by what is larger, right? It's both. It's like our human problems are real and they're serious and Ah, there's so much more happening. There's so much more we're a part of. There's so much more grace and beauty and love and peace to be shared.
And I think it's so important to bring that into our healing work more, not just like the self flagellating. We have to do the work and it's going to be shitty. And so buckle in. And it's like, Let's enjoy it. It's so we're so like, some of us are really privileged to be able to do this kind of work together.
Let's enjoy it. Yeah, this is one thing I realized is that in my whole life being connected to my complexity, my racial complexity, my lineage complexity. I was also raised in queer culture for most of my life. It's still. It's such an experience of joy. There's so much joy and pleasure in it. And I realize that people for whom did not enjoy and were raised in that complexity have experiences of these identities as divisive as, oh, God, every time we talk about race.
It's bad. It's because this is the experience. This is a lot of people's lived experience. Right. Is that it's a polarizing issue. It's tense. It's trauma based. It's all of these things. And I don't want to reinforce that by coming into those conversations every time with like, there's a problem. There's fucking trauma.
We need to solve this right now, you know, and realizing like, oh, we need to also be like, they don't have that whole life experience of the joy and the pleasure. How sad. Okay, let me. Find a way to share in this with them as well, because that's what's going to support us as we do in these other communities to be in the complexity with each other.
Nicole: Right, right. Yeah, which makes me want to hold a little bit of space too to ask You named one practice of laying in the grass and looking up at the sky and taking in the clouds and the expansiveness of our earth, and I'm curious what sort of other pleasure practices you do in this work.
Lorie: Yeah. Gosh, I I have like a million practices.
I know. That's good. My whole life is a practice. Yes, I'm here for that. And I'm really into like the, I call it the magical mundane.
So like the foods that we eat. What are we eating? Are we, I love to, I've been gardening for over a decade and growing food and medicine, cooking with people, decolonizing our food.
What is the food from the bio region where you live? What are the recipes from your families of origin? Connecting with these and sharing them with your peoples, right? Your friends, your loved ones, et cetera. This is like, Gold, right? Telling stories with each other, like ancestral stories. What do you know?
Tracing your lineages with each other in curiosity. Um, I have ancestral practices that I inherited, right? So, and people from all over the globe have these, right? So investigating your own lineages and how can you be in connection and reverence to the inherited resiliency. That you now embody and be in gratitude with all of the peoples who have your back and you have had your back who brought you here today.
Nicole: Right?
Lorie: And whatever brings you joy. I love movement. I also am quite like earth energy. I will sit, I'm like contemplative. I'll sit motionless, like out somewhere, just like be with nature and observe the expanse of reality. And. It's like, wow, this is impressive. Are we seeing reality right now? So as a simple, like I always share with my clients and the people I love is just a simple gratitude practice I do with my kid.
It's like, are we being grateful for literally everything? It really recontextualizes our struggle, our strife, the kind of And I say this with care and love, like the egocentric nature of our suffering.
If we are here, there are innumerable people, beings who have our back, um, naming them, connecting to them and being grateful.
And not any one of these, right, is going to be accessible to everyone all the time. But these are some of the things that I feel like have gotten me through my darkest. darkest hours. It's hard to look back and be like, wow, how much did having access to my garden and cooking in that period of time when I was so depressed, it's hard to know how much just those simple foods really got me through.
And I suspect it was a lot, a lot more than I realized. I'm just like, oh my God. These plants, these vegetables, my oven, my potato, like whatever it is. Yeah. I'm just like, I love you so much. Thank you. Mm-hmm . And I just wanna share that these simple things that are meaningful in our lives, like I think anything can be a ritual act of gratitude and the chance to share and connect with each other and just be in the pleasure of our lives a little bit more.
Nicole: Mm-hmm .
Lorie: Yeah. Yeah.
Nicole: Mm hmm. Yeah, your garden. How beautiful. I can feel the emotionality there and right takes that softening to feel that and I just think about, you know, we know the brain has neuronal pathways and it's kind of like a muscle, right? The more, that's why I like the word of practice of gratitude of, right.
You, you start with one little thing you think about maybe at night and then it starts to flow into two things or three things, right. And, and the way that that muscle gets stronger and you start to see the world through that perspective of gratitude and, and. Pure presence, maybe we could even say, right?
For what's here and, and, and feeling the full pleasure along with the pain and the loss and the grief of our world. And, and when we feel the fullness of both, we're, we're really present with everything that is right here right now. And so I'm, yeah, I'm often thinking about what's the frame, right? We have this stimulus, this experience, but how am I viewing it is, which is the simple cliche, right?
Is the cup half full or half empty? Yes, it is. Yes. But what's right. Like it's that cliche right there, but not that will shape your whole reality of your life.
Lorie: Yeah, yeah, I'm compelled to say there is no cup.
Nicole: Deep, yeah, because we're all one, both relative and absolute, right? And we're all, we're all together, right?
When you were talking about the divide, even, I was even thinking about, yeah, we have such a divide between humans and animals. Other animals forgetting we are a conscious and right, like, we don't even have to get into that. And then the, you know, the oneness of matter and all we could, we could, yes.
Lorie: And I'm conscious of like, not, you know, it's like, sometimes it's like gratitude, be grateful and be in pleasure.
And it can feel like a bypass sometimes, you know, it's like, and I'm not suggesting that, like, I am, I want to give myself fully if what's more really fully here is brief. Gratitude to me is like a line. It's like, I tell my sister, Emily, like, hold the line for me. I'm going in. It's like poltergeist, you know, it's like, hold the line because I'm going in to the dark place and I don't know, I don't know what's going to happen.
And so I use this language with her, with my husband, like, hold, just hold the line for me, cause I'm like in the dark place for a second. And. Also gratitude is that way where the more that I practice it when it's accessible, it's like tying off the line all around me in the web of life. So that when it's a moment where I need to give myself fully to my grief, I can just do that without needing to be like, and I need to be grateful for this, that and the other, because I'm already like, yeah, I can feel, I can feel it already connected all around me.
And that does give me the courage that is needed to sink into the dark place. Find the wisdom there, right? And trust that I will come back out alive and better for it, probably more wise, more soft, more loaded with gifts to share.
Nicole: Right.
Lorie: But I think I need to do those things. So it's preventative medicine, right?
Well, I'm feeling good. I'm going to like, name it and claim it and praise it now. Yeah. Knowing that the struggles around the corner and that's going to get me through.
Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. Presence with all that is right. Yeah. Yeah. Very powerful. Very powerful. Allowing that to be in the body. Move through you and to, like you said, hold the line, right?
We have community that will be there with us when we're in those dark spaces and not just one person. A community.
Lorie: Oh my goodness.
Nicole: So many beings. Yeah. Yeah. Mm. I want to hold a little bit of space. We've covered so many topics today. Yeah. But I always check in with my guests and ask them to take a deep breath.
Is there anything else still lingering on your heart that you want to share with the listeners? Otherwise, I can guide us towards a closing question.
Lorie: I just want to share a deep deep gratitude for my people who I know will be listening to this when it comes out. Yeah. I've sent out a call to my circle of intimates to be with me as I speak to you today.
And I'm I want to like name them all and yet I know that if they're listening when this comes out that each one of them has been such a teacher and a healer for me.
And I just could not love them more than I do and appreciate them. as I do. So just gratitude for everyone who's with me now who has had my back in my journey.
I feel like I cannot do my life work and the profound work that I'm doing in the world without their love and acceptance of me as I am.
Nicole: Thank you. Yeah. So beautiful. And I want to invite all the listeners just to even take a moment and think about who are those people in your life that have held you, that love you, Are there with you now, you know, we take sometimes we holidays, we write the cards, a birthday, we write the cards, but there's so many times in our life we could just pause to feel that fullness.
Yeah. I see you're emotional and it's beautiful. I'm so, so happy that you are this way. Soft. And I continue to get softer each day and can cry about my community these days. And I'm so joyful. I'm so joyful. I can cry about it.
Lorie: Oh yeah. Our people are amazing. We're so beautiful and deep and wide and like interesting and divine.
Oh my God. We're so amazing.
Nicole: I know. And the people who tune into this podcast are vibrating us. At some similar level, whatever words we want to call it, right? They tune in each week saying, I'm finding something here. So I know that the people that are listening could be a part of our communities just as much, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Well, if it feels good to you, I can guide us towards our closing question. Sure. So the one question that I ask everybody on the podcast is, what is one thing that you wish other people knew was more normal? Hmm. Hmm.
Lorie: That question is landing, like, very bizarre in me right now.
My first impulse is to consciously object to the imposition of what I would say was normal onto anybody's lives that might be listening. I don't know what's normal. I don't know if any of this is normal anymore. I don't know what's normal or not anymore. And in the spirit of decentralizing power, I And coming for our communities, I want to encourage us to really be in deep, caring inquiry about what it is for us.
What is normal for us? Is it okay for us? Whoever your us is expansively, is it okay for us? Yeah, I want to say that it's normal to love deeply and widely with people who are just not like you at all.
Nicole: Yeah.
Lorie: Oh my god, I think we, we, there's so much to find like like minded and people who vibe and our community, you know, find our tribe and that's so important and to do this like Delicious.
work of seeing our differences, of honoring those, of uplifting them. It is normal to be in deep love and care with people who are not like you in so many ways.
Nicole: Yeah, I really want to thank you for bringing this conversation into the space because like you said, it's so needed, right? That love and it's been a running joke on the podcast of the, uh, secret anarchist test to deconstruct the question and say, No. Screw normal. Who said normal is what? You know? So you passed that test.
Yay! Not the way to do anarchy, but that one you passed. Yes. Fuck your tests. I don't need a test. Push back on the power. Say no. So yeah. Well, it was so good to have you today and invite all of us into, you know, the nuance Of love and I'm sure this is a conversation that will continue to evolve whoever you nominate all of us to next in this thread.
I'm sure it will continue to evolve through these conversations. So I really appreciate you today.
Lorie: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you. This is my first podcast ever. You took my podcast cherry. so much.
You are very gentle, yes!
Nicole: Thank you! Hey man, if I can use my therapy skills for anything, it's a damn good podcast, right?
Lorie: Oh, yes. for what you do and what you bring. I really appreciate your dedication to, um, Being a amazing therapist while also being, um, thoughtfully critical of the way that our, this profession has contributed to harm. Um, and that a really powerful, um, and important work to share with the world. So thank you.
Nicole: Yeah. I'm only a baby now. Just wait till I'm a big Sequoia and what I'm talking about then.
Lorie: I can't wait. I can't wait. I'm going to be sitting in my rocking chair, looking out at the land, just like praising you, cheering you on. Thank you.
Nicole: Yeah, I want to hold some space too for listeners who have connected with you and want to learn more about your work and potentially work with you.
Where would you want to plug your content?
Lorie: Yeah, I would love listeners to come see me in Portugal in the southwest of Portugal because I am not very active online. Um, and. You can find me at Soma Sanctum, SomaSanctum. org is my website and also at Soma. Sanctum on Instagram and at Claiming Each Other, which is now in development on Instagram as well.
Find me, come into an email communication with me and come to Portugal. We'll lay in the grass together and we'll get deep and wide.
Nicole: Yeah, beautiful. Such a joy to have you on the podcast today. Thank you. If you enjoyed today's episode, then leave us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast and head on over to modernanarchypodcast.
com to get resources and learn more about all the things we talked about on today's episode. I want to thank you for tuning in and I will see you all next week.
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