Soul Path Sessions

The Soul of Relational Repair

Deborah Meints-Pierson LMFT & Brenda Littleton MA Season 2 Episode 4

Deborah and Brenda discuss the dynamics of repairing our relationship with those we share our life with and, more importantly, with our self. The latter requiring a skill set that asks us to be patient with our unresolved issues. Learning how to live with those questions takes us ever closer to the answers we seek, even when we cannot see them now. Trusting in that process informs a sense of faith in our soul journey, which is one of the keys to self-acceptance. When we are able repair our relationship with our self, when we accept the lessons our life has gifted us, we move closer to repairing our relationships with others. It is a circle of compassion.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Soul Path Sessions podcast with Deborah Minds Pearson and Brenda Littleton. Brenda is an educator and counselor rooted in YY and ecopsychology. She helps her clients understand the importance of the mind, body, spirit, and earth relationship for healing. Deborah is a licensed psychotherapist and has been trained in traditional and sacred psychology, exploring from the ground up what makes our human experience meaningful, wholesome, and enlightening. Deborah and Brenda invite you to accompany them on a soul path journey as they explore the possibilities of living them a soulful life as therapists, seekers, and lovers of fate.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to Soul Path Sessions. I'm here with my dear friend and colleague, Brenda Littleton, and this is Deborah Mites Pearson. And today we're going to address the soul of relational repair. And we're gonna jump in the water with something that you, Brenda, have, are, have written about that's beautifully written, and I'd like you to read it and then we can examine what you've actually are trying to communicate here.

Speaker 3:

Okay. Thanks, Deborah. Um, this is a piece that's kind of a preamble to a program that I have. And, uh, I, I needed to find some basic guidelines, uh, by which to contain how we repair and move forward in life. And so it starts as long as there is judgment, there is separation. As long as there is separation, there is denial. As long as there is denial, there is anger. As long as there is anger, there is depression. As long as there is depression, there is anxiety. As long as there is anxiety, there is panic. All of these theories are here to guide you back to acceptance for where there is acceptance, there is self-love. We start with self-love.

Speaker 2:

Wow. Sounds like a recipe.<laugh> that starts out with all the ingredients you don't wanna put in it. And so, and then it, and then it brings us back with like judgment and denial and anger and depression and anxiety and panic, things that we can all relate to. And then it becomes very generous and it says, these are Furies, a very mythic way of putting this, uh, these conditions we all suffer from, and that they have a medicinal purpose, that they actually guide us back to acceptance. So I'd like to give you some room to help us with these things that you reposition as

Speaker 3:

Helpers. Yeah. I, I, I have, um, I belief that anxiety is my best friend. Hmm. Um, that depression is my best friend. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, um, or from a young EM perspective. Um, my manic comes to visit me, you know, and so I host it and I I do not try and eliminate it. And these are all of our, our forms of orphans. Matt Lakota talks about our, our orphans mm-hmm.<affirmative> and, and the idea of bringing them, um, back to be rehomed. And they don't want to be told that they are not good enough and that they have to change and morph and be regenerative, and that they are in themselves enough. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And, and so anxiety is one of those orphans. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, there's that part of me that when I get really anxious, um, I realize if I stop and I say, okay, anxiety is here, how is it in my life? How is it formed in my life right now? And I go through, identify how anxiety lives mm-hmm.<affirmative>, and it's like, well, um, a month ago I had a similar little experience, but I dismissed it. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I, I pushed it aside. I said, I can, I can work through this mm-hmm.<affirmative>, um, so it's an accumulative fatigue almost. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> mm-hmm.<affirmative> and anxiety will not go away until it's fully present and allowing us to pay attention to it. It wants to be, it wants to be included. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, it will not go away until it has done its work. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So one of the ways that we keep, uh, in relationship with anxiety is de is denying it. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> is repressing it is taking anti-anxiety mm-hmm.<affirmative> to, to avoid it, to, I don't wanna go there yet, but if we do allow a sense of, uh, communication, a, a conversation, a sense of trust mm-hmm.<affirmative>, that there's a reason it's here. And yes, we have all of this inner cultural, outer societal and the world is going on, but how we allow this to be, to seep into our lives has been reframed and, and, um, curated from being a child, you know, from our family of origin mm-hmm.<affirmative>, what was acceptable behavior. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> mm-hmm.<affirmative>, um, our wounds, our, our our desires being dismissed. And, um, and we were taught to dismiss our needs mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And so we bring that with us forward, and so mm-hmm.<affirmative>, when I was making this kind of recipe as you call it Yeah. Um, it was about identifying Yeah. There, these are the stages that if we, we don't have to go back to the original wound, we can jump in and listen and be in conversation with and learn to trust that we can, uh, listen to these aspects of ourselves that they mm-hmm.<affirmative>, they are here bringing us opportunities to repair and recover. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

<affirmative>, you know, I'm listening to you, I'm thinking of, uh, the work I do and the work both on myself and with my clients, and it has a lot to do with how we adapted to, to wounds and separation and judgment. Use your words. How we adapted to judgment as a child, um, coming from our family or our extended family or our, our community. Um, we felt separate and I, and when we felt separate, we may be in denial of that because you gotta fit in. Yeah. And in that denial, we may just have this low level of self-rejection and fear, which can turn into anger and that can depress our life energy and cause us anxiety. And the therapies that I found really helpful when you're talking about hosting, um, or, or creating room would be therapies like internal family systems or voice dialogue where you literally go into the body and find where it's painful and imagine it as an inner child or a wound and create, like, intentionally create a voice for it.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm.<affirmative>.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. As a protector, somebody who helped you when you're growing up.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Yeah. And it, they are there. They, I mean, those are compensation skills that do keep the ego, um, the ego creates these to allow us to move forward in our lives and not Yeah. Because at the time we, we were, we did not have the language to articulate. We perhaps weren't even aware of how to understand the feelings that we were having mm-hmm.<affirmative>, but they were real. So it's pre-verbal mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And that's why somatic therapy is a big part of

Speaker 2:

Into the body. Yeah. And then the stories that come up from the body. Yeah. So this idea that, um, that we can dialogue, create some room to say hello, little three year old memory, um, you couldn't really answer back to mom or dad or you, or you couldn't tune it down. So you adapt it and then you had to do that. Uh, we now have a term called microaggressions. So maybe we weren't hit or locked in a closet, but we may have felt overwhelmed day after day after day after day after day. And then we, we tuned ourselves to it. And my way of being dealing with overwhelm would probably be to hide. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Um, and or my way of dealing with, uh, underwhelmed that you're ignoring me would might be to reach out and try to get your attention.

Speaker 3:

Act out. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Uhhuh<affirmative>, because it's gonna, children are extremely resilient. These what we call unhealthy selves that maybe judge and separate are also and deny they kept us here.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. They created a world that we could survive in, in a world that we had very little power. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And, um, we brought those defense mechanisms or compensations or patterns along with us on the developmental scale as we became teenagers and young adults. And as we move through life, and usually we're quite happy with them until we realize the end result keeps repeating and we're not really happy with the end result. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And so what, what does that mean? Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And, uh, if I could David re Rico, who, who's quite pro prolific in his books, but he has a quote that I like. It's like, our problem is not that his children, our needs were unmet, but that as adults, they are still unmoored

Speaker 2:

Un mourned the word mourning. Yeah. Like grief work.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Grief work. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Yeah. And that, um, and, and this ties in with Matt Lakatos work as well, is that when we have these moments of grief and we separate from them cuz life goes on mm-hmm.<affirmative>, and we, we don't wanna dwell and we didn't have the, the language to dwell. We didn't come to the dinner table and say, gosh, mom, I had a really good day at school and can we talk about my grief mm-hmm.<affirmative> my unmet needs from earlier this morning. You know, we, we, we just don't live in a culture,

Speaker 2:

Especially if there's no room for that. No. If, if there's nobody there to, to hold it, as you would say. And I think this idea, um, what makes us work so challenging, I think individually for, for all of us is the sense we're doing it in a vacuum. And in my own experience, I needed to be in a therapeutic loving environment with a wise adult who would point out to me that I was compensating, I was judging or separating or denying and gimme a framework to understand that what I had missed. Because a lot of us don't, it's familiar. Families are familiar. So for if our parents tell us they'll love us if we're super athletic, or they'll tell us that we're, we're not worth their time because they're addicted and missing, um, we don't really have good models mm-hmm.<affirmative> for that wise adult. So this self-love that you talk about in the last line, um, to me that's a real reflection of being valued. And the therapeutic relationship, one of the things it can provide is just the, first of all, you value yourself enough to sign up for it. And then the therapist or the healer holds space for you is if you mattered. And is if the parts of you that adapted to your inevitability, uh, inevitabilities in your family of origin was went through a patient process for you to, to appreciate you. Yeah. You, the little soner in your family trying to cope with too much or not enough and needs to break into the realization of that and holds a place of the adult saying, how did that, that's, that's neglect or that's abuse. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, and they can even name it mm-hmm.<affirmative> because to to so many of us, it's so familiar. It's just what you adapt to.

Speaker 3:

Especially if you adapt in a way that is viewed as being, um, exemplary mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So all of a sudden you're in your forties or fifties or sixties and you realize what you've valued because you've been told that you're valuable because of the skill that you developed at compensation. It's also a hindrance. It's, it's also a sense of, um, a contributor to your ongoing patterning that's causing you deep grief. Yeah. Um, such as in my own life being, um, you know, my life was, as a kid it was very competitive and, um, my parents made sure that I had, that they, that they wanted, that they wanted to know that they were giving me everything possible that they never had. So it was highly, you know, like all the private schools and the activities and the events and, and all I wanted to do is my way of compensating was to go into my room and read a book mm-hmm.<affirmative> and that became my life, my lifeline where reading became my compensation. And so reading meant that I ended up being a really good student. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> and that meant that I went on to be eventually, you know, a collector of degrees mm-hmm.<affirmative> because that was me telling myself, if you just do this cuz you're really good at being a student, if you just do this, you'll be okay. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And eventually it's like after doing it and realizing I'm still not okay. Yeah. There's still deep grief here. There's deep, there's work that's preventing me, there's work to do that I haven't done that's preventing me from getting where I wanna be. Yeah. And no matter how good a student I am, it's not gonna be enough. Um,

Speaker 2:

Well it has to do with not connecting. I mean, one of the things that Terry Real is talking about in his book Us, which I love, and I'm gonna read again because I, it's just making such a good point where we connect is not being better than or worse than it's being us. The name of his book. It's feeling you're not even thinking about the connection. It's just comfortable. You're part of us, we care about you, we are just the way you are. You're just here and there's, you have no more value or less value than any other human on earth and you don't have to worry about that. And he makes a further point that our culture is just soaking in a patriarchal view of, uh, that we are constantly gotta be, uh, in a position approving ourselves to some model that we can never achieve. And it's inherently damaged our parents mm-hmm.<affirmative> and then they pass that on to us. And for us to really take a strong look at how rarely when we're in this journey to get ahead, we're really stopping mm-hmm.<affirmative> to pay, even pay attention to each other. Like as if there's some sort of safety in the next and none in the moment. So to me, self-love is love on a, on a deeper level appreciation for the journey I've been through and the appreciation for the journey you've been on. So I can be in love with you and you can be in love with me and our shared experience. Cuz the minute it's held out there that I've gotta do something to earn it, I am lost.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. What's that outside validation? It's, it's lost. It's that search for chronic outside validation. It's,

Speaker 2:

We're so, it's so pervasive that now with TikTok culture now many likes, it continues on and I'm sitting here in this little studio with you and I'm looking at myself on a screen up here in my kayak and thinking when I'm in my kayak, I'm alone. I'm not compared to anything, I'm connected to nature. When I'm having the best conversation with you, we're not trying to achieve anything mm-hmm.<affirmative> other than the connection. And that's, that's that warmth and that forgiving environment mm-hmm. Of compassion.

Speaker 3:

Compassion and self-love and the sense of it's, it puts you in a different platform to be in relationship with another as opposed to when we are so addicted and we don't even know why we're driving ourselves to, to crave outside validation because, um, a youngian term is so within us without, and if, when I, when I hear a client say, you know, I really, all I want is to be loved, I hear them saying, all I need to do is love myself. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, and they, this, it's the same reciprocity. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, uh, I, I responded to David Rico's con quote by saying, um, the idea of of going back and, uh, really grieving, uh, not eliminating, um, not preventing that self-love, but but going in and grieving as a form of cleaning and clearing and accepting and holding and rehoming those orphans. Mm-hmm. So that all of the, the unmet business, um, all those, those love letters to ourselves are completed. Mm-hmm. And, and that we then have a different foundation. And I say this deep grief, will alchemically convert the insatiable longing to be loved into visceral self-love. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, when we search for a partner from this place of repair, this place of self-love, we don't attract nor let in perpetrators of pain, snipers of soul, people who will eat your energy and suck you dry. There is just no way they can make it through your gates of self-love.

Speaker 2:

I love that. And you know, one of the ways I work with that, um, with my clients when they're, when they're saying, why did I get stuck with a narcissist again? Um, when they're, when they do the inner work and we go back through decision making memories as a kid, you know, when I gave myself up and I had to hide in my room and I couldn't talk to you, and we create this environment where they close their eyes and go in and make contact in the interview, the interview<laugh> interview the interview. Yeah. And then naturally what happens is they begin to pay attention. There's a consciousness in us. Like when you see a puppy and it needs these help across the street, it's sort of a natural desire to help mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And once that connection is made, there's an internal protectiveness compassion that is very parental. Wow. And so, as we retrieve these lost puppies, these inner orphans, there is a natural protectiveness that starts to develop, which we call the inner parent. And so when that person goes out into a dating atmosphere, they're highly aware of the way they were wounded and lost and orphaned. And if someone does not care about them or steps on their feelings, they're much more inclined to be the first witness of that. Mm-hmm. And to take a step back and say, I deserve better than that. Um, are you good enough for me? Becomes the question not, am I good enough for you? Are you present enough? Are you human enough? Are you grounded enough? Look at the words I'm using. Not not like you're the perfect mate in sense of like, I have parabolic stance, but are you a true human being? Are you able to be wise and grounded and protective of both of us and interested in both of us? And that to me seems like the, the ultimate repair when we go out into the dating world. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> or the relationship world

Speaker 3:

And safety. Yeah. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, are you safe for me? And, and having what

Speaker 2:

Am I safe for you? Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. And well, am I safe for you? This, this, um, leads me into responding when a client says, well, I'm just gonna let it all go. I, I, you know, I, there's just too much to work on. I'm just gonna do better. I'm gonna show up. I'm not gonna dwell, you know, it's that, um, denial again. And I say, and to address another perspective when there is a system of denial, avoidance, resistance, repression going on within our own self. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, especially when not dealing with grief, our wounds, our pain, we contribute to contaminating our partner's love for us. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, in other words, when the overall air quality of our psychological, emotional and physical energy is thick smog, we suffocate love.

Speaker 2:

I love that idea. I mean, it's basically, uh, what you're saying is I get so protective what I'm hearing you say, when I get so protective of my space, I I have no room for your space. I'm protecting my wounded self and I don't even have the bandwidth to find out how you really are doing and what you're projecting. So I keep recreating the same situation

Speaker 3:

And hoping that you'll put up

Speaker 2:

With it Yeah. And hoping you'll put up with it. And I probably am, uh, traumatizing you in the relationship. Yeah. Because very likely if you keep pursuing me and I'm sending out toxins, uh, very likely you're my partner is denying themselves. So we're, we're having this relationship with each other's wounds. Yeah. As opposed to noticing that I don't feel grounded and I wanna drop the conversation into the body and I don't feel safe. I'm gonna drop the conversation. And I have this thing I, I work with clients on, it's called scary questions where we can actually ask, do you feel grounded right now? Cause I'm feeling really wiped out<laugh> or, um, are you noticing that, uh, like we're talking at each other, like just calling what's going on in the room? Because we're more grounded in our feeling like our, we have a sense of safety in the body. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, we're learning to breathe into the body and we have, and the other thing is, we're not afraid of our wounds. That's huge. If I'm not afraid of my inner children because they're just wounded and they're just waiting for me to pay attention to the little snippet that they're gonna show me where they made that important decision to withdraw or to overwhelm people and I know how to be present for them. I'm not afraid of them anymore. So when a client says, I don't wanna do inner child work, I did it back in the nineties or whatever, like, you don't know what your body's gonna tell you when you close your eyes, it needs healing. It's constantly healing like the cells of your body are repairing. Yeah. And your body will give you the image that's blocking you today cuz it will resonate. So you tell me this story about today, close your eyes and ask your body, where did it come from? When did it originate? We don't have to spend years in therapy to find

Speaker 3:

That. Right. It's right there. Yeah. The body, the muscle memory, when I say to to clients, it's like, what's your gut reaction? You know, it's don't, don't intellectualize it. Um, that's, that, that would be re deferring and putting the burden on ego to come up with the right answer as opposed to relying on soul, which is, um, the spirit within the body.

Speaker 2:

That's right. It's attention, it's loving attention as if you cared that somebody hurts and somebody has a neural network to a time when we made an important decision to not trust and let's find them. Let's put down the rope and the flashlight. Yeah. Let's pay attention.

Speaker 3:

That's why it's so easy to get caught up intellectually and to spin around. Yeah. And I, I I, I've, I'm really good at that myself, you know, being a purveyor of words and a writer and a teacher of words and it's like, stop it. Go into the body and, um, act imagination from a young I perspective it, it it is, it is like one the key. It's one of the three stools of a a three leg of a stool. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, um, dreamwork, uh, dialogue and active imagination, which includes looking and working with the images of our dreams, but more importantly identifying in the body where that particular moment that that friend the, the anxiety or the panic or the orphan mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Um, and we just deal with the moment. We don't have to go back into the lineage.

Speaker 2:

No, you don't have to tell a real long story cuz it's the moment of decision, um, like your first line here, as long as there's judgment, there's separation. So I'm gonna make that long lines of the conversation of self-love. When, when we look at the wound from, from a soft place mm-hmm.<affirmative> when it's felt in the body, and then the little snippet of memory comes up and we're allowed to see it and feel it and bring it in and spend more time, the separation goes away. We're willing to do for ourselves what wasn't done for us back then. Right. Which is to just attend. So what happened, and the thing I always tell my clients is it's already happened. You don't have to be afraid of it. Mm. Boots on the ground. You're here, you're having it, the sense, but we're also, we're here. I'm an adult and you're an adult and we're witnessing what happened to somebody else. So it already happened. We bring in the wise adult and then there's no judgment, there's no separation, there's no denial. There may be anger, but it's gonna be the anger that the child is releasing or that we allow the child to release or we feel in the moment. So we don't have to be afraid of the, the, the sadness. Depression is really a lot of sadness. We don't have be afraid of the fear either.

Speaker 3:

And also the anger from my own life is, and I've seen this, is that I get mad, my anger erupts when I see someone doing something I don't allow myself to do. Yeah. And it's usually with respect to, to repairing Oh, interest. Allowing, allowing myself to love those little pick peccadillos about myself.

Speaker 2:

Like what, like, like when did you notice like somebody else was doing something and it activated

Speaker 3:

You, um, acting out or speaking or, um, a, a primary one that I, I think I've mentioned this on a prior podcast, was when I was visiting, um, one of my husband's family and their kids were running in the hallway in a very long, long hallway making tons of noise and, and having fun, you know, just being kids Yeah. Five year olds Yeah. In the house. And I remember my, my mother yelling at me, don't run in the house. You can't run in, go outside to run, go outside. We don't, we don't run in the house. We had inside voice and we have inside behaviors mm-hmm.<affirmative> and running in the house is not permissible. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And here I was watching these kids be freely allowed to run in the house. And so I got mad mm-hmm.<affirmative> at them. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. But really it was my little girl inside saying, how come they get to run? And I didn't

Speaker 2:

<laugh>. Yeah. It that's interesting. Right. That's a good example. I know. Um, one of mine is I watched, well my brother, my dad, I've talked about this before. He died when I was 21. So a lot of important passages. He wasn't there for it. He had suffered from poor mental health before that. So I was standing on the college campus with my niece and my brother who had actually taken her there to show her around and familiarize her with the campus. And at first the first thought was, oh, she's such a baby. I mean, I went to University of Texas by myself. I didn't need parents there to walk me around. I didn't anybody to familiarize me. And I felt really judgmental and separate from them. Yeah. And then as I let my heart in, I realized I felt jealous. Yeah. Because my brother took an interest in his daughter and she was going to university and my dad, he was just sort of like a World War ii. Went to the, you know, didn't get to go to university and he wasn't around for it. So I felt when I, I realized I'd separated myself. I had a, a need to be shepherded and encouraged to go to university that I did not get Right. In fact, there was some relief when I dropped out with his mental health and then I went back. But I realized I had disowned it to that extent. Yeah. Like it, I don't need it. And,

Speaker 3:

And those moments well only come if we allow them to. Yeah. That sense of realize being in conversation with anger mm-hmm.<affirmative> and saying, it's okay. I'm, I'm capable of having these conversations. I'm I'm not gonna judge myself. It's not, I'm not gonna burn. You know, I'm not gonna, it, it is that sense of decom decompression. It's like I can handle this and it, it really is a sense of self-compassion

Speaker 2:

And, and it's subcortical behavior. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And you's rewiring,

Speaker 2:

I'm, where am I coming from? This goes back to John Lee's work on regression. When I am triggered, I am not coming from my wise adult. I'm coming from my subcortical region. My limbic re place that can only respond is responded when I was under stress. It's making decisions for me. I'm not making those decisions anymore.

Speaker 3:

And it's pre-verbal. Sometimes it

Speaker 2:

Can be very pre-verbal. I mean kicking and hitting and swearing and spitting and locking ourselves. Sweating away.

Speaker 3:

Sweating, sweating and getting headaches and upset. Tummies and irritable bowel syndromes. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> and just freezing, you know? And it's like, ah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I love the face you're making. When I first learned this<laugh>, I remember holding two spaces. One was just a simple awareness that I was regressing and I was gone. My wold had left the room and that I was aware of that. Just that little simple step. I'd like the listeners to imagine that they can do this. That when you're our, our, our subconscious, I just learned this four times a second cycles to see if we're safe four times a second, folks. So when I can just notice that I might not be feeling safe because I have too many appointments in a day, or I'm nervous about a presentation I'm gonna be doing or taxes or whatever it might be that I am now coming from a place of regression and I have a style, like you said, that I chose mm-hmm.<affirmative> that I learned very early and it's gonna click in. Yeah. And I'm coa aware of that, then I can do some self-regulating. I can take a deep breath, I can release it, I can do another one. It's free. I can pick up a journal or paper and be into write about my regression. I can be aware of what it's doing as I calm myself. I just need to know that I've just left the

Speaker 3:

Building. Yeah. And, and what I like to do for myself, and then I've practice this with others, is, um, exactly where the steps that you've just said. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> in my body, I locate that young girl mm-hmm.<affirmative> and I say thank you. Oh nice. Thank you. Thank you for getting me here. Now would you be willing to sit at this table and advise me as an adult, as a mature woman, how else I can behave that will honor your mission mm-hmm.<affirmative>, and yet let you rest in peace. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> mm-hmm.<affirmative> and be available if I need you. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So I'll call you, but for now, can you advise me on what other behavior is appropriate that would represent your mission? Mm-hmm.<affirmative> and I do get in, I I I'm shown ways of acting and being and repurposing and reframing. That's not the four year old. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> not the two year old, not the 12 year old. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. It's the 67 year old.

Speaker 2:

I love that cuz I mean, I think what you're really doing is, is basically trusting if the child isn't very activated, that they may have an innate wisdom that you're gonna tap into. They don't have to scream it or hide. They may just be saying in my body, I don't feel safe right now, or I need more quiet time, or I need to be fed.

Speaker 3:

And they've been doing the job for a long time. Yeah. So they have some brownie points and um, I liken it to remember when you were four and you wore a pair of shoes that you loved mm-hmm.<affirmative> or a sweater that you just, that was you. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So bring it with you and, and those pair of shoes you wear, that sweater you bring along and then all of a sudden you're, wherever you are in your adulthood at 67. Can I put on those shoes? Will they fit mm-hmm.<affirmative>, will the sweater cover me? No, it's appropriate for a four year old, it's not appropriate for an older woman,

Speaker 2:

But we appreciate the four year old Absolutely. For having that sweater. Yeah. And maybe we do Yeah. Need to understand we need some more warmth. Yeah. And grounding, but not in the way a child would

Speaker 3:

Do it. No. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So, um, RKI has a, has a, um, a, a a quest that I keep, uh, close to me and he says, be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> and try to love the questions themselves. Mm-hmm. Like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions. Now perhaps you will then gradually without noticing it live along some distant day into the answer.

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, that's beautiful. That implies faith in the process. Yeah. It applies great faith that when we can accept, go back to the bottom of what you wrote for where there is acceptance. I'm on a journey of the soul. I'm learning a lot about where I've been and when I can accept that leads me to love including self-love. Absolutely. Oh,

Speaker 3:

Beautiful. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

And that concludes this week's episode of the Soul Path Sessions podcast with Deborah Mikes Pearson and Brenda Littleton. If you'd like to hear more about living more soulful Life, please subscribe to our channel on your favorite podcast app and be sure to check out the show notes in links below. For more information from Deborah, visit soul sessions com and for brenda brenda littleton com Thank you for listening and remember to follow your soul.

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