017 - Metabolizing Our Stories
“Art can serve as our metabolizer.”
It’s a sentiment that struck me as soon as I heard it, and it’s no surprise that the individual behind this poignant quote is none other than writer, wedding photographer, and storyteller Genevieve Georget.
On today’s walk, Gen joins me to discuss how she became a writer, finding balance as we experience the full range of human emotions, the ways in which stories and narratives can both free and hinder us, how to manage the tendency toward perfectionism, and ultimately to share where she is in what she refers to as possibly her most important piece of work yet.
In This Episode
(3:18) Introduction to our guest, Genevieve Georget
(7:57) How writing and photography influence Gen’s relationship with time
(12:22) Gen recalls a moment that brought perspective
(18:33) How authenticity and intimacy allow us to unburden ourselves
(20:23) What You Don’t See
(27:52) Carrying others’ stories while making space for your own
(32:13) A note about generational trauma and childhood experiences
(39:07) “How do you feel about somebody controlling the narrative of your life?”
(49:20) Intimate and honest confrontation
(56:13) Gen’s current, deeply healing project
(1:01:56) My mindfulness journey and equal empathy
(1:04:30) How storytelling allows for connection
Notable Quotes
-
“When we do have the strength, it allows us to be that anchor for other people. And to say, ‘I’ve got ya. I can hold this space. I can be here and listen to your story as you let it unfold in front of you and as you take down the veil, as you take down the wall.’ And just open up about ‘This is what I’ve been walking with. This is what’s been on my shoulders.’ It’s an unburdening process, and I think it’s interesting because we talk about art as a metabolizer or others have heard me talk about circling and things like that on this show as well, and to me, I think that’s the beauty of a practice like circling where we can verbalize what it is that we are working to process. And when we can do that in a communal way, it opens something up because it allows more and more people to know ‘I’m not alone.’”
-
“One of the ways that I am learning to dismantle some of those narratives, and that is an aggressive word, but I think it’s necessary sometimes to take a sledgehammer to some of the stuff that we’ve been carrying around for so long. It’s also a method that we’re starting to use with our children a lot. And it’s by asking the question, ‘What story are you telling yourself about that situation?’ So if one of our kids comes home from school and they’ve had something happen with some friends, the first thing we ask them is, ‘What meaning are you putting to that situation? What’s the story you’re now telling yourself?’ to try to help them, ourselves, recognize that we are only one part of that story.”
Our Guest
Genevieve Georget is a writer and photographer from Ottawa, Canada that believes in cultivating space for vulnerability, truth, authenticity, and storytelling. In her last two books, Solace: A Journal of Human Experience (2019) and Her Own Wild Winds (2016), Gen explored grief, pain, love, and inspiration. Solace was also named Ottawa FACES Magazine’s 2020 Book of the Year. Currently working on a healing-centered project, she is finding joy in her life with her husband, kids, and golden retriever.
Resources & Links
On This Walk
Genevieve Georget
Mentioned:
Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament by Michael A. Singer
-
Luke (00:00:01):
Welcome to On This Walk, a show about the winding journey of life in all its realness. I'm Luke Iorio. Please join me and my brilliant heart centered guests each week, as we look to navigate this journey more consciously and authentically. Uncovering how to tap back into that sense of connection with self, with soul and with something bigger than ourselves. Now let's go on this walk.
A colleague of mine, James, had actually helped me launch this show, introduced me to our guest today, my walking partner today. And I'll properly introduce Gen in just a bit. But you're gonna learn very quickly that she's a writer and her words carry a gentleness and intimacy while also holding the weight of truth being revealed. Her style and the energy of her words definitely had me very intrigued to connect. And also James who connected us, knew that I was looking for open, vulnerable, honest conversations. I think you guys know that by now in this show. And it seemed like that's pretty much what was lining up. And so in preparing for this show, Gen and I connected and I was reflecting on that first conversation that we had. And I was asking myself, why this conversation? Why now? Well, as she and I were discussing her writing and her background, Gen offered a passing thought of how art can serve as our metabolizer, the metabolizer of our experiences, of our stories. And well, damn. Because that's this, that's this in terms of On This Walk, it's this in terms of the little bit of writing that I share online that you guys see, as well as the ample amount of writing that fills my journals. It's also the reflective story writing that I've been doing on my own with one of my own guides, one of my own coaches.
And so I went and preparing for this show, I needed to go to the dictionary, gotta look up metabolizing, right? How are we framing it? Framing all this. And metabolizing is quite simply about turning food into energy, growth and waste. Well art, and specifically here, writing as metabolizer is turning our experiences and our stories into the energy that's inherent within our lives. It's turning it into growth, it's turning it into wisdom, and it's also turning it into release and letting go. And what I've recognized is that through this podcast, my own writing and journaling, I've been walking the narrative of my life to metabolize it, to be with it, to see what energy and wisdom it held to see what more is there that I've missed along the way as I tried to move too fast and not fully digest my experiences. And it's also helping me to see what has and still needs releasing and letting go. And even that releasing and letting go, it isn't just the so-called negative or tough stuff. It's not only the hurts, the pains, the traumas, it's even the times of joy. You see, the times of joy, they're meant to be savored, but they're not meant to in-snare you. They're not meant to be something to cling to. They're not meant to be a destination that you keep trying to get back to. This kind of metabolism, metabolizing our experiences and our stories is why Gen and I are here now in this conversation.
And so with that, let me properly introduce Genevieve Georget. Gen is a full-time writer, photographer, and storyteller whose work has been seen on oprah.com, The Good Mother Project, Addicted to Success, Real Leaders Magazine, Simplify Magazine, The Huffington Post, and among her online community of more than 35,000 people in readers. Genevieve's first book, Her Own Wild Winds, was published in September 2016, and her second book, Solace was released in the fall of 2019 and named Ottawa Faces Magazine's 2020 Book of the Year. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada with her husband, two children and their golden retriever. I also wanna encourage you to follow Gen online. You'll see all of the links inside of the show notes. But if you look up Gen, that's G-E-N, Gen Georget, George with a T, you'll be able to see all of her writing as she begins to release it. And I encourage you to do so because it's inspiring as well as touching. And with that, I wanna remind everybody, if you are not already following us here, do me a favor, hit that subscribe button wherever you're tuning in from. And with all of that out of the way, let's go on this walk with Gen Georget and metabolizing our stories.
Gen, I wanna thank you for being here.
Genevieve (00:04:25):
Oh friend, what a beautiful introduction. Thank you so much.
Luke (00:04:29):
Thank you. Thank you, thank you. I think maybe just the place to begin is that in hearing me kind of set us up for today and reflect on an element of the conversation that you and I had. I'm curious just what's alive for you in this moment?
Genevieve (00:04:46):
A great intro question. Gosh, when I was listening to you talk about giving our experiences both the good and the bad, a place to go, it made me think of Michael Singer's work. I'm reading his, I think it's his third book, Untethered Living, or maybe it's Living Untethered. Either way, it's brilliant, it's my second time reading it. But what stands out so much for me in that book is just exactly what that statement that you made is the fact that he says we have to fully process everything that we experience and if we don't, it becomes, it resides in our bodies and our bodies are not meant to hold that our bodies are designed to metabolize. And I think it's really interesting because we seldom think of it in terms of the good experiences. But if all we do is hold onto those really beautiful ones, it sets us up for disappointment later when other things don't need it the same way. And so I'm wrestling with that right now, wrestling with the, I've always been working so hard on releasing the heavier experiences that it never occurred to me in that same instance that you need to take all of it out of your body, you need to give it a home outside of your body, including the good ones so you can let them go and make room for new experiences in their own way.
Luke (00:06:23):
I appreciate you reflecting back on it that way because it is this recognition that we have this tendency to cling, to hold onto things. And certainly as you said, we hold onto the negative stuff, the stuff that's impacted us and the ways that we'd prefer not to have been impacted. And we think about we've gotta release this, but it's the same side of, it's the other side of the coin is that when we try to cling to even those incredible experiences we have and we don't allow them to just process through us to be able to move through us, to know that we've already been changed by that experience and that we don't have to carry it around with us all the time, it's still the energy of clinging, it's still that energy of holding on. And so it's something that is meant to be processed.
And I think that's what struck me when you would use that phrase of allowing our art to metabolize us, to metabolize our stories, was how little time and how little space we take to really be with the experiences of our lives. And I think that's what I've begun to recognize in your writing is that whether it's maybe a bigger experience that you've shared or even just these smaller experiences, and I believe that was part of what was the focus of Solace, it's like you've gotta have so much presence when you go through life that way. And the more that you reflect on it, to me it also offers not only wisdom but it has you viewing life and touching life and being present with life in an even more full way. I'm curious if that's, that's my interpretation of what I see in some of your writing. I'm just kind of curious how true you find that.
Genevieve (00:08:04):
I have such an intimate relationship with my own story that I'm still unpacking it now, being like, how did I get here? How did I become this person who feels life the way that I do? And so from where I stand, I'm still working through it to figure out the road that led here. And I think honestly I was a child who had a really difficult relationship with time. I can remember it's like I came into the womb having an existential crisis. I was always acutely aware that time was passing, people were passing everything, it was happening. And even as a really little girl, I remember being frightened by it, the more this, each day goes, we're closer to not being here or not being together or this is, and it was just really challenging to process as a kid and it's still challenging to process now sometimes, especially as you become a parent and time moves at a completely different speed.
And so I think for me, photography and writing gave me almost a sense of control over that a little bit. If I wrote it down and this doesn't get to get away from me. Now I get to freeze this single moment, I will capture you in the palm of my hand and you don't get to get away. So with everything else happening, it was this way of, I hesitate to use the word manipulate time, but bring it closer, slow it down a little bit, and to lead that fingerprint behind, to show that passing of time. I couldn't control how quickly it went or what happened in all of those moments, but I could leave a footprint in the sand of what that time meant and be that my own experience or someone's wedding day or the birth of a child and whatever capacity you get to look back and be like, yes, this is what time looked like and felt like for us.
Luke (00:10:22):
It's, it, several things jump out at me or at least strike me in hearing you reflect it that way. Number one is that phrase of bringing it closer, right? Yes. This slowing down that is there that we don't often do, but it's this bringing the experience, bringing that moment, bringing the feelings of it, the felt experience of what we've been through closer to ourselves and how rare that is because it, there's so much that we seem to not connect to or that we rush through and that we don't take that time to know I wanna bring this close and to be able to do that with even our grief and our sadness and our anger, not just our joy. And so if I flip it back from what we were saying before is even to bring that closer as opposed to trying to separate from it to recognize that that's part of us.
And I think the other thing that struck me, I've realized this I think for myself in the past, the more that I've taken the time to write or journal is I feel literally more fulfilled when I do bring closer any experience because it's literally you're, what do we fill our lives up with? We fill it with experiences. And so the more that we bring that close so that we can be present to it and we can really truly feel it and that allows it to be fully processed to move through us in such a way that we are changed by our experiences but changed in a way that hopefully is more mindful, more conscious when we go through a process like this. It does, it leaves you being able to sit back and reflect and go, yeah, this was a pretty full week or a pretty full year or a pretty full decade or a pretty full life because you have brought the experiences to you that much closer.
Genevieve (00:12:13):
And what's interesting about that is that I think just as you were mentioning this distance that we can have between our stories, I had this memory of this brilliant and beautiful woman that I used to work with back when I was in the fine arts and she was one of those women that just had such a magnetic presence about her and every hair was in place and her nail polish matched her outfits every day. And she was just a really wonderful human being in every capacity. And she just stopped coming to work one day. She said goodbye to everyone she normally did and then she just didn't come back and it was close to three or four months before she was back at work. And I sitting with her one day being like, do you mind if I ask what happened? Where did you go? She just looked at me and she said, I just couldn't keep up with it all.
And you know I have talked about resistance, right? Resisting the present moment, resisting the in-between, resisting whatever might be in front of us at the time. And for her, she had been so busy trying to keep up with what she thought the world needed her to be and to keep up with whatever else might have been happening in her life. And that resistance, the more perfect she tried to be, the more insecure she started to feel and she just had no way of storing it in her body. And her body stopped. And I remember listening to her tell me this story and it was the first time that I really was able to zoom out a little bit and recognize not only did I know so little about this human sitting in front of me really know what was going on in her life. I knew that the snippet of what she showed me. But I think for a long time she didn't either. And it was in the drawing closer of that reality and of some of that pain that she might have been going through at the time that enabled her to work through it and eventually make it back to a place where she felt more like herself. And she still came back as radiant and beautiful and brilliant as ever. But she was changed from the inside, now when she came back. And it was transformative for me to witness that and to observe it from a distance a little bit and be like, oh wow, our stories can be dangerous sometimes when we let them seep into our marrow in a way that's not healthy for us.
Luke (00:15:05):
I'm kind of curious of how this further even changed the way that you have responded and related to life the way that it comes up at different times. Because I know even just in hearing that some things that come up for me, but I'm curious to hear how you've approached that feeling, that resistance, feeling like you can't keep up with it all anymore or be the things the world wants you to be.
Genevieve (00:15:33):
Right. Yes. Well I'm not gonna lie, it hit hard. It was a difficult thing for me to watch unfold in another human being. And I think the most difficult part about it was what it was reflecting back to. I have always been a person I wanted to belong. I wanted people to like me. I wanted to feel like I fit in. That's very deeply rooted in who I am as a person. I've always felt like that as a child as well. And I felt it in my bones that I was very much making choices to try to meet whatever the narrative was around me. And it happened to be a chance encounter, getting coffee one morning that ended up completely smacking me in the face when a very beautiful person that I would see every day as she made my coffee, made a comment in passing about how perfect my life was and something physically ached inside of me hearing her say it because it was far from perfect. There was so many struggles happening in the background, but those aren't the side of ourselves that we show people because we think we're a burden or that's too messy. There isn't room in the world for it. And meanwhile I kept thinking to myself, but what if it isn't those things? What would happen if I said to her actually this day is, this day, this week, this month has been incredibly crappy and here's why. Would she still look at me as a whole human? Or would there be this disappointment or shattering that happened in the process? And I did eventually crack myself much the same way my colleague did. And I think what was really beautiful about that was that I noticed that that's actually where we connect with each other the most. The moment that I say to you, you know what Luke, today has been a gong show already and it's only 10 o'clock in the morning.
Luke (00:17:57):
Exactly.
Genevieve (00:17:59):
Gives you permission to also be like, you know what? This is what's happening in our life right now. Or it gives you permission to be like, you know what, I've got enough strength for both of us. Tell me what you need. It removes that wall that says we need it to measure up to something and instead gives us a place to connect.
Luke (00:18:22):
And the way that you brought that around, again I come back to what you said before of bringing things closer.
Genevieve (00:18:29):
Bring each other closer.
Luke (00:18:30):
We bring each other closer in those moments. And I've found that through this journey and previous to producing this show and everything else was the more that I started to open up in that full honesty of here's what life actually looks like, here's what it is that I'm going through, here's where I'm struggling, here's where I'm burning out. That's exactly what you described is that's when all of a sudden people lean in, and they lean in because it's like wait, you're kind of giving me permission to share my stuff, giving me permission to know that not everything is the social media highlight reel, that there's a realness, there's an authenticity, there's an honesty that's here. And I also love the part you followed up to say that when we do have the strength, it also allows us to be that anchor for other people and to say, it's rising. I got you. I can hold this space. I can be here and listen to your story as you let it unfold in front of you. And as you take down the veil, as you take down the wall and just open up about this is what I've been walking with, this is what's been on my shoulders. And it is, it's an unburdening process. And I think that's interesting because we talk about art as a metabolizer. Others have heard me talk about circling and things like that on this show as well. And to me I think that's the beauty of a practice like circling where we can verbalize what it is that we are working to process. And when we can do that in a communal way, it opens something up because it allows more and more people to know I'm not alone, we're not alone. And we bring each other closer.
What it also, because I wanted to also just kind of bring this back because you touched on the energy of it without actually referencing it, was I know that the original, not the original piece, but one of the early pieces that you wrote that all of a sudden you were a thing, Gen, she's onto something here and it was this post that you had put together and it was around what you don't see. And I was wondering if you could share a little bit of what you believe you were expressing, what you were finally letting out in that post. But I'm also curious what you think it touched in others. Cause to me that seems like it was such a catalyzing moment for what would unfold for you.
Genevieve (00:21:01):
What's fun is today, tomorrow, tomorrow is the anniversary of that post going up. And as we had spoken before, it was really just an off the cuff decision I chose to make at nine o'clock at night to post something before going to bed because I kept getting these comments about how perfect the life of a wedding photographer was all the time. And I had been asked to write a piece for a fellow photographer in the US for her blog. And quite a few months had passed since that went up. And I kind of was feeling, it was hitting a nerve in me that there was just this constant belief that oh you just have to show up and click a button and everyone's in their most perfect state and that's your life and you get paid to work one day a week. And it was becoming frustrating but it was also a microcosm for how we see each other as a whole. And so when I had originally written this piece for my colleague, she had a whole series on it and everyone sort of talked about the behind the scenes of their photography business. And so I chose to do the behind the scenes of it being a human business. And I talked about that encounter at Starbucks getting coffee and what that felt like for me. And I asked the question straight up, what would it be like if it was okay for us to give the honest answer, and what would it be like for us to still hand out gold stars to each other for climbing the mountain? Not just always reaching the top of the mountain for coming out of the pit, not just always winning the race but just starting it in the first place. We're not in this thing that we're doing, this life, it's not meant to be done alone. It's not meant to put on a mask and walk through as some unknown person and what might that feel like? And the reality was I didn't know what it would feel like. It was really, really scary, just the thought of it, as a self-proclaimed perfectionist or at least now a recovering perfectionist, trying to be. At the time though, it was deep in my bones to be as perfect as possible all the time. And it was a scary question that I was asking just as much for myself as for anyone else.
And within days we could not keep up with what was happening on social media to the point we thought we had been hacked or something like that. But there was, I had news outlets reaching out, there's just thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people responding and sharing. And I'm, 750 messages in my inbox about people who had read it. And the thing I gathered the most from it was just like, oh how great would it be to just be able to tell the truth and having be okay. Right? And that's it. It not about needing to live in that place but just allowing it to be real so that we can all move on. And I think that's often what was getting us stuck. We talk about being stuck in our body and stuck in these dark places. It's because things like shame need somewhere else to live. They need light and they need voices. And the act of sharing it lowers the intensity of it as a whole. So what if we did walk around and just be like, you know what, life is fine and today is crap so we'll take two Tylenol and try again tomorrow, and have that be ok without it being a whole thing sometimes. And in other cases, yeah, there's really big challenging human things happening that will take longer and that has to be okay. You shouldn't have to put on the happy face for that all the time just so we don't make other people uncomfortable.
Luke (00:25:29):
Yeah, it's, oh man, there's so much to go off of here because it's something that certainly comes up in these conversations is this challenge that we have with what's uncomfortable, to be in the discomfort of a moment and the discomfort of our own stuff and the discomfort we feel when we hear another person going through it. And to be able to hold yourself within that space to be able to hold another within that space is a capacity that we need some work on. It's something that we need to grow in. And because I, man that question of how would we feel to give the honest answer, what would life be like? What would life feel like to be from that place? It opens up so much for us and as you describe it, how it strikes me is that we walk around without it truly acknowledging what it is that might be weighing on us at any given time or what it is that we might be going through. And it's the very act of not expressing it that keeps it bottled up in the body as we began with. And it has no place to go at that point. So it just truly gets stuck. It rattles around within us and we need to be able to find ways of being able to express, to go let that out and to not be afraid of, is my experience going to be too much for somebody else to handle?
Genevieve (00:27:01):
Yes, yes. Great quote, and I'm gonna butcher it, I guess I don't have it in front of me, but it's one of my favorites. It says, there must be those with whom we can weep and still be considered warriors. And I love it.
Luke (00:27:18):
I love that.
Genevieve (00:27:19):
Right? It's just that idea that I am just as whole now as I was before even though I'm falling apart or breaking, that doesn't make me weak or less of a human. It's not a character flaw, it's just part of my humanity, all of our humanity. And if we could actually honor each other's stories in that capacity, I think we would start all feeling like warriors pretty quickly.
Luke (00:27:51):
You bring it back to honor each other's stories. Cause I remember from the first conversation that we had, and this actually came up before and I'm glad we're finding a place to bring this back in, is how we learned to honor our stories, honor another stories, other story, and yet not allow it to become an attachment. Not allow it to, as you described before, to seep into it, to be absorbed by it, meaning to be taken over by the story so that we can't see beyond it at any point. And so I'm curious for your perspective, because as you've, you've had this chance now to write so many of these stories for others and for couples, for yourself, for the big moments, the small moments. And it's given you that chance to honor the stories that are there and yet as you continue to process, to not be taken over or consumed by those stories either. And so I'm just kind of curious for your reflection on how you walk that fine line.
Genevieve (00:28:53):
I love that you said that it's a fine line because I think that's also something new that we as society are having to navigate. So yes, I spent the first eight years of my photography career telling other people's stories and then I shifted into my own story for a while and then I've spent the last four years supporting others as they shared their story. And now I'm back knee deep in my own, which we will talk about a bit more later. But the big thing that's really coming up for me with that is that it is a really delicate space because in an ideal world, we are all raised in a story that's encouraging, loving, empowering, but the reality is that we're raised in a story that's very human, which means that it's messy and it's frail and it's full of mistakes and sometimes it's outright traumatic.
So we have these stories and especially as children, we aren't in necessarily in a position to write that story on our own. We go through a chunk of years in our childhood where it gets written for us through other people's voices and through the experiences that we don't necessarily have control over. And I think what's really important in those scenarios, and when I speak to this, I speak to it also in the capacity of communities, cultures, not just families. Generational trauma's a really real thing. And I think one of the best things that we can do for each other as humans is allow the space for ourselves and for those we care about to write their own story. But that takes time to learn. It takes time as families, as communities to say, okay, this is part of our history and the story's not over and we get to keep writing it and we can write it however we want to.
So yes, maybe there are some really challenging things that have happened in our past, but we can honor them and still hold them at a distance while starting to write a new one. Cause we all come into the world with a degree of baggage, some of it bigger than others, and just the nature of being in community with each other, means we're gonna share in that it's an impossible, it's impossible not to because just our filter of life works that way, right? So being able to grant permission to those around us, to write their own story, the narrative that far surpasses anything we could potentially write for them, I think is the greatest gift we can give to each other.
Luke (00:32:14):
There are two things I wanted to comment on before we keep moving through this dialogue. First is what Gen brought up, generational and ancestral trauma. There are many lenses that we could view this through. We could look at this through the lenses of culture, race, gender, and orientation that encompasses the collective traumas and collective stories that we are each born into. But I wanna take a slightly more personal meaning, an individualized lens and example, just to talk this through a bit further. You see each and every one of us is a product to some degree of our upbringing and childhood environment. The families that we are born into and how we are brought up, and that childhood environment impacts how we then relate to and raise our own children, let alone how we relate to and interact with other people. So if as a child I were raised by a parent who was very controlling, who had exceptionally high standards and everything needed to be done just perfectly to feel like you were earning their love, you could ask the following questions such as what did that parent experience in their life as well to condition them to where they are?
But you could also take a look at what's the likely residual effect on this child being raised this way? Now if we focus on the parent for a moment, it's possible that this parent had their own parents who just wanted a better life for their children and pushed and pushed and pushed her or him to excel, to be the best because that's how they were going to get out of wherever they were and into a new life to a so-called better life. And then that child grows up with that pressure and becomes the adult and never lets up. Everything has to be just right. They have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get ahead. And then ultimately that's how they parent. And now if I am their son, I am either going to be conditioned into that same mold, that same constant pushing for more and perfect and it's gotta be this way and that's how you earn and feel love.
Or maybe I rebel against it, and I try to go in a completely different, maybe burnt out or counterculture type direction. But in either instance, it's the same energy just playing out in different ways. It's the same conditioning, just forcing different directions. And until someone in this lineage looks at this pattern, it's going to go on uninterrupted and it will, in some form, keep getting passed down generation to generation. However, in many instances it's not just the pressure to be perfect and earn love or get it right that is being passed down, but it's patterns of abuse, of neglect, of prejudice, of harm, of trauma. This creates a cycle where the trauma and the old limiting stories of what is or is not possible or what is expected of you gets perpetuated over and over again. And over time it can pick up momentum and seem like an insurmountable pattern to escape.
This is where we need to not only do our healing work, but we need to support each other across society, across cultures, race and differences of all kinds. We need to support each other in rewriting our own stories as well as supporting others as they live into their new stories. And that was the second aspect that I wanted to comment on. As Gen said, being able to grant permission to those around us, to write their own story, which is a narrative that far surpasses anything we could potentially write for them, I think is the greatest gift we can give each other. I very much agree. I also will freely admit that as a parent, this is really damn difficult. I still wanna help my kids with their stories. I wanna help them avoid pain. I wanna help them get after whatever it is that they seem inclined towards.
And yet that's not truly in service of them. I have to look at my own motives and my own story to be clear that I'm not trying to author their script, nor can I pass along any of my baggage, my misconceptions in limiting beliefs. And yes, traumas onto them. And we do this in such subtle ways that look and feel like love. And yet we're really just trying to heal or resolve something that's been within us. I, along with my wife, we really just need to be able to create these containers of love and acceptance to keep them reasonably safe and then let them explore. Their journey is their own, their story is their own and we're meant to support that. And this holds true for everyone you meet. This isn't only about our kids, this is about us freeing each other from needing to live up to other people's stories.
For us, it's time to celebrate each other's stories. It's time to honor each other's personal sovereignty. And at the same time, we need to take responsibility for our healing and not project our imbalanced stories that have come from pain, hurt and trauma onto others, placing that personal responsibility alongside support of others on their story, recreation opens us up into a whole new space of healing for us all. For interrupting these cycles and rewriting new stories, this is healing work. Thankfully, it's also something we're starting to see in the marketplace for expanded access to mental health services and programs through companies like Better Help and Talk Space and many others. But this isn't only about therapy or mental illness. We all need support in healing and wholing those parts of ourselves that have become limited, fragmented or imbalanced. There are many other forms of healing depending on your needs that are available.
You've heard me speak of circling, which is an incredible communal practice that helps us to investigate, to explore what it is that we need releasing. There's nature based work such as the work I was doing with Tim Corcoran. There are whole programs out there devoted to eco-therapy as well as eco-ministry now. I've benefited from practices such as voice dialogue. There's also a more well known version of this called Internal Family Systems. There are many spiritual practices, energy healing, contemplative traditions, journaling and writing practices and much more including getting more deeply connected to nature. We can just start with a quiet walk in the woods or sitting by a still lake. The key is beginning to explore and see which one or which combination of practices are the ones that best fit your needs. The key is for each of us to take responsibility to start. And if you do not know where to turn, reach out to me and I will help point you towards any number of resources to help you find your path.
There's a lot here again to go off of first, what you wrapped up with is for anyone to reflect of when you feel like somebody is offering that narrative, that advice, that direction. How do you feel about somebody controlling the narrative of your life? Don't like it.
Genevieve (00:39:15):
How many times do we see in families? But we were, we've all been doctors, we've all gone to this school, but it's the family business and what do we do if someone wants to be, but I wanna go into the arts or I want to travel or giving them the freedom to have a new path.
Luke (00:39:38):
So to be able to open that space where they can begin to bring their own story forward. And as you were describing this, part of what I was reflecting on is the fact that when I've had that opportunity to both write and express my own stories, just how much I learn about the narrative that I've been living with, when I finally take the time to go back and bring it closer again to my current mindfulness and consciousness and awareness around things. And I'm curious how I'm gonna describe how I do this, but I'm curious if you've got some perspective as to how you do this or how you may do this with clients. Is that very often, I'll go back and I do this with clients as well, where it's almost like, let me first capture the facts of what at least I think occurred, right?
And now let me go back in and let me look at the emotion that might have been involved. Now let me go back and look at multiple perspectives of how I would tell the story or how I imagined somebody else would've told this story who was involved. I may go back and say, so what were the bigger qualities or even kind of archetypal themes that were going through something? So what I'm doing is I'm just continuing to give myself any number of different frames, lenses to look through at the same story. And when I do that, all of a sudden I start to draw connections that previously I didn't even realize were there. The number of times people have heard me talk about on this show, the number of times that I have told this story about when I was five and a half years old, my house had burned down and what I went through, the decisions that I made at that point in my life, well it took me a better part of a decade to understand so many of the different elements that came out of that one experience. And the way that that narrative lived in me at times to narrow my perspective of life and in the way that I needed to feel safe and control things and things like that, the way I needed to shut down emotions and others.
And then one of the ones I found very much later on was part of the reason why I did that was I didn't wanna burden others because at the time I didn't wanna burden my parents with more stuff to deal with. But I had to go back and revisit these experiences in that particular experience to recognize, wow, there are so many plot lines that developed out of that one experience. And then I can tell you about other seemingly small experiences that have had almost just as much impact on me and I can choose to see which are the ones I want to continue to weave with and work into my life because it brings out more of the richness of life that I wish to experience and which are the ones that I wanna say thank you for how you have served me. And it's time for me to put an ending on that one for me to be able to move on. And so I'm just curious, I'm curious how you do that. How you go back into your experiences so that you can write them with the richness that you do and honor what is there, and then make those choices about what you continue to weave with, walk with and what it is that you choose to allow to be the end of a chapter.
Genevieve (00:42:41):
Right. Well first of all, I just wanna thank you for sharing that story of yours. Because as I was hearing you talk about it, I just thought, gosh, I imagine that you must be exceptional at making people feel safe as a byproduct. So through that trial, what an incredible superpower to come out of that your resilience and your coping mechanisms at such a young age. And I can attest to that firsthand at what it means to feel safe even in this capacity as a person who feels pretty nervous doing these types of things, and to feel that ease. So I love that you shared that because it also shares what that resilience can bring into our lives, when we start to take that perhaps coping mechanism that no longer serves us, but then we turn it into a service to others. So thank you for that.
I've been thinking, I've been thinking a lot about that because this brings up for me how stories impact empaths, especially. If you feel the world deeply, then this can be a very, very challenging journey for you. Until you can learn to observe and not absorb everything, then you begin taking on a whole new level of storytelling. A great dear friend of mine who you've had on the podcast before, Corey Blake once said to me, he said, you would be a much calmer person if you weren't such a great storyteller. And I always love that, you're right, I can go from zero to 100 in 60 seconds about pretty much any scenario. But when you feel the energy from other people as well, you begin taking on their story. So one of the ways that I am learning to dismantle some of those narratives, and that is an aggressive word, but I think it's necessary sometimes to take a sledgehammer to some of the stuff that we've been carrying around for so long. It's also a method that we're starting to use with our children a lot. And it's by asking the question, what story are you telling yourself about that situation? So if one of our kids comes home from school and they've had something happen with some friends, the first thing we ask them is, what meaning are you putting to that situation? What's the story you're now telling yourself to try to help them, ourselves, recognize that we are only one part of that story? And then as we start to talk a little bit more about it, let's say, okay, I'm telling myself the story that they don't want me around and that I'm not fun to play with and they don't want me in the group anymore. The next question is, is that true? Is that a hundred percent true? And 99.9% of the time the answer is, I don't know, may not be true.
And learning to recognize that we are interconnected, we are woven together, our stories are often that giant tangled web of Christmas lights that you have to undo. We're all coming to a situation with a different story and the only one we can control is our own. And so when I stop to look back for myself, I mean I think with children it comes with time and maturity and age, but with myself now I'm learning just to ask more questions. If this is the story I'm telling myself about a situation that's happened with someone, I can also just go and ask them, is this what's coming up for me? Is this accurate or would you like to talk about it and share perhaps your perspective on it? As humans, we're naturally gonna fill in the gaps. If we don't have all the information, we're going to create the information. And lots of times it's not gonna be in our favor. That default mechanism, our mind can be a challenging place. And so with people who feel safe, and I do wanna reiterate that because vulnerability needs a safe place to land, then you just go and ask those questions and it gives you the opportunity to know other people's stories. It's just a really remarkable thing too.
Luke (00:47:41):
Yeah, it's one, just a great reminder that our minds are incredible storytellers. However, I will say that mine, very often is more like a litigator and will convict me, it's part of that negativity bias. And so for us to be able to go back and consciously process, what is that story you are telling yourself about this? And the meaning that you are assigning to it is a very important part of regaining that awareness and bringing that consciousness back into what's actually unfolding. The analogy of the tangled bowl of Christmas lights is gonna stay with me for a while. But it's being able to recognize where in our stories we feel those knots. Where do we feel like we get really tangled? And being able to ask, well what's tangled? What about that is giving me that feeling of being all nodded up? And was it the story? Was it the way I'm explaining it? Was it the interpretation I had of that event? Do I believe that it obligated me to something or committed myself to something? Just continuing to ask those questions to understand why does it feel so nodded, I think is excellent. And actually, if you're willing, I'd invite you to share a little bit, cause I saw one of your posts and stories the other day of exactly what you just spoke about is when something doesn't line up, going to that friend or that colleague who maybe the exchange that was there was not the one that you would've hoped for and it left you with something. And I know in, well, let me let you share it because I know when you posted this the other day, I knew the exact feeling that you were describing in myself of how that has manifested before.
Genevieve (00:49:34):
So it's a very dear friend of mine. We've known each other a really long time. And she said something in passing that I could feel it land in a place that was kind of a little bit prickly. I felt the tension kind of happened in my chest, but I also know this person really well. And I was like, well, she would never mean anything by it. But for whatever reason, over time I caught myself struggling to let it go. I kept going past trying to move past it, and I was just, it wasn't working for whatever reason, it was, clearly it had hit an insecurity in me that was lingering. And this is the thing with our stories, when we start to create them, we often don't realize how we are changing in response to that story. And for myself, I recognize the change in the tone of my voice, in my body language, in the very subtle ways that I was starting to create distance between us. My text messages would get a little bit shorter, the tone. And I started to just realize that if I am now very much a contributing factor to something that's happening here, whatever she said may not have been intentional. But what I'm doing, I'm very aware, and if I love this person and care about this person and value this relationship, then I owe it to both us as humans and the relationship to talk about it and to ask, right? Because I think in most cases we have zero intention of hurting each other, but we don't know. And if we don't say anything, then we're not giving space for it to be resolved. And one of the things I mentioned in that post specifically is part of that is our cultural views of conflict. And I put quotes around that because it's only conflict because we label it that way versus just having a discussion and clarifying.
And so I went to my friend and I just ask, and I said, look, I apologized first for waiting so long to bring it up because that's on me. I apologized for how my behavior has altered and changed. And then I explained, I said a while back you said this, and this is the story I was telling myself around that situation. And almost instantly, all of the brick wall just slowly came down. And she was very much, she was grateful that I had approached and said something. And she also acknowledged I was feeling a bit scared. And that's how it came across. I was trying to be vulnerable. And this was also, it was my way of, of cushioning the blow in case you weren't okay with it. We're always kind of instinctively trying to protect ourselves. And so once we were able to talk about it, our hearts felt whole again. And it was fine. And if anything, our relationship is even better now. But I also knew that was a safe place to go and do that. I have also been outright rejected in moments like that as well, which leaves emotional scar tissue that can take a while to recover from.
Luke (00:53:06):
Absolutely. And I've experienced both as well. And I think that's what struck me is to be able to be in that space, to go back to somebody that you feel there is some level of that safety, that trust that can be held inside that container to go back to readdress something that you felt as a weight on you. And I, I feel it as that pit in the stomach as I'm sure we all do that when we know there is something that's just dissonant within us. And we can either continue to just stuff it down and try to keep going, but frankly we know that doesn't work. So finding that way to be able to come forward and to have that conversation. And I'll say I've also, I've had that conversation with those that were not receptive to it, that it's been tossed back or otherwise, and over time, not initially, over time and through a lot of different experiences and maybe some shifts in my own awareness and consciousness, I'm okay with that too. I'm okay now with it if they don't want to engage that way or they just wanna outright reject any element of what they may or may not have been a part of, even if it's only 1% and 99% was on me, that's okay because for me, I view even the act of trying to readdress this in a safe way and in a trusting way as something that is integral to who I am. And it's a way of me beginning to release and to express the move forward. And I don't need to have it received for it to have been shared and for it to be clearing for me.
Genevieve (00:54:47):
That's lovely. That's lovely. Yes. I read somewhere that the question we should always ask ourselves is a year from now, will we be happy with how we treated that other person? And I think that's a really lovely statement and I would add to it a year from now, will we be happy with how we treated ourselves in that situation as well? Because if you are feeling aligned and acting in your best integrity, then I think that is treating other people with the best part of what you have. But it needs to start with us first.
Luke (00:55:30):
Absolutely. The other thing that you had said in beginning that, cause I wanna talk a little bit about the project I know that you've got coming up and part of what you described in this last exchange with a friend was how is it that we change in response to the story? And I think that is just, I would love everybody to just spend a few moments just kind of sitting with that of a time that, you know, have told this story about a particular experience and then the ripple effect of that. All the ways you changed who you were and your behavior and your mm-hmm <affirmative> reactions and everything else. And the way of doing that. And I wanna put this in the context of we can then look at that over the course of our lives, not just a given experience. And that's what, Gen, you and I connected, I was so mesmerized by the healing potential of the project that you are working on. And so I would love for you to share a little bit about it because to me, I mean this was just like, I could see how challenging this can be and I could feel the healing energy that can come from it too. Challenge kept up first though.
Genevieve (00:56:43):
Yes to both of those statements. Yes and yes. Right. So right now the project I'm working on, which will is quite possibly the most important work I will ever do in my life. So I was raised by a single mother ever since I was, gosh, four or five, I don't even quite remember, is fiercely strong woman raising a daughter on her own. And we had a really remarkable relationship for most of my life until about the age of 14 or 15. And then things just depleted. And it's not like we necessarily fought or anything. There was something was happening that neither of us could articulate and neither of us knew how to navigate. And I would think it's safe to say the past 20 years has been very difficult and distant for us. We have had a shell under the relationship that we once had.
And it's sad in a lot of ways. In most ways, it's really when you know, have separation from a parent that also impacts the rest of your ecosystem too. My children don't get to see her as much and have the same kind of relationship with her, and you just stop knowing each other is what it comes down to. And this past summer I made the decision to reach out to my mother and ask her if she would like to write a book with me about our relationship. And I would like her to write her part of that story. My mother's a beautiful writer and I asked her to take her time to think about it exactly for the reasons you said it could become very challenging and also be very healing. But the goal of it was to let's sit down as adults and truly hear each other's story.
And so we've been working on it for about six weeks now. We are into the early chapters of it. And it's honestly the most remarkable process, and it makes me want to just stop every person I see on the street and say, have you asked your parents about their childhood? Have you really asked them about their stories? Because how often do we ever visualize our parents as a 10 year old, as a five year old, as navigating the hard things? We see it in our children all the time and we have so much compassion, we so deeply wanna protect them. But how often do we look in the other direction and start to notice that? And my mother and I are learning so much about our respective stories around the same situation that happened.
So our book is starting out with a lot of looking back, my mother sharing her origin story, which I really knew very little about. I knew snippets of and kind of reflecting on my experience as her only child. And then we come together at a very culminating moment when we finally leave one another. I come here to university in Ottawa and she moves out to DC and it's the first time we've ever lived apart, been apart. And what that means for us, when you've been intertwined with each other, it was her and I against the world. And then having to tackle the world separately. And then there was so much distance, not just physical distance, but emotional and what those paths look like as we were apart. And now as coming, trying to come back together. And it is such a healing experience to hear someone say, I was really scared of losing you, or I didn't know what to do and I'm sorry.
As we mentioned, we fill in the gaps ourselves and oftentimes we blame ourselves or we blame other people, or especially teenagers. And so that's what we're working on right now, we're gonna publish our book eventually in hopes that it can share with other people. You don't have to wait that long. Just sit down together and hear those stories without judgment. And it might be hard because you're a part of that story, you're a supporting role in that story in some capacity. But to truly recognize and see that humanity in someone else, you can never unsee it once it's been shared and it changes everything.
Luke (01:01:57):
It's a different way of getting at this, but it reminds me of when I was taking up my own mindfulness journey and we got into compassion based mindfulness, and I started to learn different meditations from one of which was referred to as equal empathy. And how is it we can recognize in both, in all the loved one, somebody who challenges us as well as a complete stranger. These deep inner desires of how much we all want to free ourselves from certain pain, from the clinging and the grasping and the attaching, how we wanna avoid that and how much we wanna bring that joy, that happiness, into our lives. And what it connected me to was beginning to see these common threads that are in every single one of us. And in hearing what you're describing, there's that, and then being able to hear what it looked like personally to your mother. What was the struggle and the challenge and the pain that she was trying to heal or hold back or defend herself from, as well as what was the joy and the bliss and the happiness that she was trying to create in her way, from her background, from her origins. And it's such a beautiful way to get to know a single person. And at the same time, there's so much we learn about us and our humanity by doing that with any single person as well.
Genevieve (01:03:26):
Oh yeah. And it makes it really easy to see where things went wrong with us, but because we never talked about it, we never realized that we were both trying to achieve the same thing. And at the end of the day, I think everyone just wants to belong. Everyone wants to feel seen and heard and feel safe just showing up as their radically imperfect selves in any situation. And you described it perfectly. We're all just trying to protect ourselves a lot of the time. And that often gets mixed up with loving each other. I love you and I'm scared of you, because I love you. I'm afraid you're gonna leave me or you're gonna hurt me, right? It's crazy. Being human is a crazy thing. It's so weird sometimes. And stories are how we bring it together, it's how we start to see those sides of each other. And we can't know them if we don't ask.
Luke (01:04:47):
It's the reminder I wanna give to everybody. In case you were wondering, we're all that crazy.
Genevieve (01:04:53):
We really are.
Luke (01:04:54):
We all are. We're all in our own weird little world. And if we can invite each other in, we do get to know each other in a very, very different way. And we get to realize that we're or nowhere near as alone as we may feel at any given moment. We're so much more connected than that. There is so much more that we share in our humanity. The details may be different, the backgrounds may be different, the cultures may be different, but there's some just raw essence of what it means to be human that we all share. And that comes through our stories and it comes through getting to know each other that way. And that's why it was, as I said in the very beginning, why I think this conversation was happening now was I'm in the middle, everybody's watching. I am metabolizing my experiences and my story and my journey here and live on camera with everybody as we go. And thankfully enough to be joined by Gen, individuals like you who can share so much light and wisdom along this path and share a bit of who you are and let us into your world for a time. And I thank you for doing that with us today on On This Walk.
Genevieve (01:06:03):
Thank you so much for having me, for holding space for this beautiful conversation.
Luke (01:06:07):
Thank you, Gen.
Thank you for joining me for this episode of On This Walk. Before signing off, please subscribe to the show and don't miss a single episode. Also, please rate and review us. This helps me greatly in getting the word out about this show. And remember, this is just the start of our conversation. To keep it going, ask questions, add your own thoughts, join the ongoing conversation by just heading over to onthiswalk.com and click on Community in the upper right hand corner. It's free to join. Until we go on this walk again, I'm Luke Iorio. Be well.