Episode 4: Climate Grief and Care—with guest Connie Burns

Episode Notes
Written By

Eco-Grief Circles explore grief and sorrow, anxiety and fear, guilt and shame, anger, and despair. This experience is designed to offer mutual support, healing, insight, and love. Participants express profound gratitude for being among people who could talk honestly about grief, suffering, and the ecological and social challenges of our time. Hosts Alison Cebulla and Anne Sherry catch up on what it's been like to launch this podcast and share current event perspectives for the first 20 minutes before the interview.

Connie Burns is a body-centered psychotherapist living in the southern Appalachian mountains. She believes in the healing potential in all things, and the beauty of all that is. She can be reached at connieaburns [at] gmail.com. Find Eco-Grief Circles at Creation Care Alliance.

References/resources:

Transcript

Alison Cebulla 0:07
All right. Hey everyone, welcome to latchkey urchins and friends Podcast. I'm Alison Cebulla.

Anne Sherry 0:13
And I'm an Cheri. Welcome, everyone.

Alison Cebulla 0:15
And first of all, we just want to say thank you to everyone who tuned into our first three episodes of the podcast so far. We just launched last week and it's been super exciting to to go live super unexpected and was Anne was saying,

Anne Sherry 0:34
Oh, her record. I, to be honest, Allison, the way that like, I really am embodying I think the neglected experience and you know, how used to just get up to shit like recording, I don't know, making albums, you know, on cassette tapes and all that and I'm like, you're just playing? We're just pretending. Right? And you're like, No, it's real. It's going out. Oh, shit.

Alison Cebulla 1:08
I don't warm you up for it either. No, no, for our listeners. Um, we basically actually started the brainstorming process. I think probably January is when we started brainstorming the podcast and putting together what we wanted to do then we started recording interviews, like in May. And um, and then you know, now we were starting to actually produce the episodes and and make them live. But I just sort of threw us through a sin I was like, Hey, this is what I were going live

Anne Sherry 1:38
for about you. You're like my friend from childhood. That's like, No, we're actually going to do this. We're not just going to talk about it, you know? Yeah. You guys terrify me because you make me be seen in the world and I you know, I didn't realize that part of me was that not this is not isn't ready. I don't know. It's it's just an interesting sensation to actually put yourself out there. So yeah, it makes you vulnerable, right to like people saying stupid shit or Well, stupid guy. stupid shit or whatever.

Alison Cebulla 2:18
Yeah, we already had one. One troll on Instagram. Which is super surprising to me. I'll actually like in I you know all night show

Anne Sherry 2:26
me the trolls. I will not look don't look,

Alison Cebulla 2:30
you don't need to look I don't I'm just like, I know this is a human being. And I want to respect and have compassion and empathy for all humans. But I can't I'm just gonna not engage. I just literally cannot. I

Anne Sherry 2:45
think that's the wisdom around that. So yes, yeah. Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 2:52
But we've also had people leaving comments like content suggestions. Yeah. You know, I had a friend reach out and tell me his own latchkey meal.

Anne Sherry 3:03
Oh my God, I am like dying. It's some of the stories and people that lived through the the pool days with me who lived through that with me or contacted me and like, lived through. Yeah, some one of one of the persons had just the funniest story about her getting lunch, you know, where her mom basically is like, screeching into the pool parking lot honking the horn and just throwing the lunch over the fence and driving away. You know, it's the mom

Alison Cebulla 3:34
speeding off for the mom didn't even have like three minutes to

Anne Sherry 3:39
no good. No, not then. Yeah. I don't know what it was, you know, at that. Well, I do know what it was. We were it was just that it was the 70s neglect. That's how kids that's how we did it. A lot of us did it. You know? Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 3:56
Yeah. Like for me what I've had to do a lot of healing work around. And this is a good segue to announcing our our interview with our guests that we did, but I had to do a lot of grief work around the content that I don't like I said it's not it's not that I want to throw my parents under the bus. It's not that I want to blame them. It's it's not their fault. They didn't invent content, they didn't invent neglect. They didn't beat they didn't

Anne Sherry 4:25
invent structural layout this whatever this structure we're living in that that works for America somehow other countries that we it's really particular to this culture for

Alison Cebulla 4:40
exactly and so but that just the the overall feeling in my family around care, and even having children or having a family was just such contempt. Like what? You need my attention again, you need me to make you a meal again. You want me to kind of play with you again. You want you forgot your lunch when you need me to bring it to school, how dare you, I work with

Anne Sherry 5:04
people all the time who like come into my office and beat the shit out of themselves? Because they don't know how to play with their kids.

Alison Cebulla 5:12
Oh, yeah, how

Anne Sherry 5:13
are you are, they're exhausted or they're overwhelmed, or they don't get it, you know, it's like, I don't know how to play with my kid. And they're like, something's wrong with me, I'm like, nothing's wrong with you, you just who showed you, you know, if you don't have this sort of embodied felt sense, it's either comes across as this like, I don't know, overly like, by the book type play, which also, you know, it's this kind of, I should, you know, I should color with my kid, this amount of time, I should be doing this. You're shedding it from a book. And there's a level of inauthenticity, it's good

Alison Cebulla 5:51
to kids can absolutely tell if you want to be there or not?

Anne Sherry 5:54
Well, and my heart goes out to all of us, I'll just full full disclosure here, I just had therapy. So I've got some really my own therapy. So I've got a lot of love and compassion for how our poor little systems organize themselves around not feeling loved or not feeling valued or not feeling like they matter priority. And we're amazing beings. We're just amazing. So I do want listeners this, this is a we are here to normalize anxiety, depression, intense critics. And also that that doesn't have to be that that's not who you are. It's just your poor little system trying to survive in this world. So

Alison Cebulla 6:43
I'm, very well said there's a film. And I'm not finding it. So I'm going to post it in the show notes. About a couple, we just screened it at work. And it's there's like a bunch of great aces adverse childhood experience. This is documentaries, and I can't I'm not finding it. Exactly. But it's one where there's like a couple and it's two parents. And the mom inherited so much trauma from childhood that she's not she's not able to be loving towards her kids. And it's very severe. And it's a documentary. So it's the actual parents, and it's their actual kids. It's a very brave film, I really commend this couple for, for being willing to be shown in such in such a way because it's really kind of disturbing when you see the mom, you know, like she actually gets up, makes breakfast and comes in, sits down in the living room with her son. And her son needs way too much than she can give. And she just gets up and goes into a room and shuts the door on him. He's like four years old.

Anne Sherry 7:44
Oh, yeah, heard it. Yeah. So that mom deserves enormous amounts of compassion

Alison Cebulla 7:51
so much. Yeah. And I think that the filmmaker gives it to her, which is really nice. Yeah, I'm sure that all parents can relate to moments like that in some way or another. And, um, you know, it really is just like, can you do your own healing work? So that you so that you are available? Sometimes? Yeah, yeah.

Anne Sherry 8:11
Well, I mean, I'm just gonna say like, the internal family systems that I go on and on about it is one of the ways that absolutely can heal these parts and bring compassion. So everybody, Google emotional neglect, Google and turtle families that actually you put it in the show notes, right, put in

Alison Cebulla 8:30
the shadows, and I actually made a video last year on how to how to use the Psychology Today website to find a therapist. So I'll put that in the show notes as well. Because some people don't realize that that exists, that you can just kind of put in a couple of terms and find the perfect therapist for you. So I'll put that there. So um, yeah. Do you feel like

Anne Sherry 8:55
we're not having to wait, we've got we've gotten a little heavy.

Alison Cebulla 8:59
Well, we need to we need your laughter. I know. I know. Yeah. What I wanted to say, you know, in regards to launching the podcast, which is you know, we're kind of saying like, Oh, it's like a mental health podcast with humor is like, at the end of the day, this stuff is actually heavy. You know, like, when my friend texted me and said, I loved your podcast. He goes, it's helping me look at the fact that when I would wander around for two hours after school, and then I would come home and my mom didn't even care that you know, whether I was alive or not, that's heavy. Yeah,

Anne Sherry 9:31
yes. Yep. Oh, believe me, if there are tears and somebody holding space for you, and I'm placed for these little stuck parts of you, for someone to witness them, they it's easy to feel the you know, a lot of this is like I just there wasn't any space to feel it. Especially if you're a big feeler. You got to put that shit away. And that's a lot about what we talked about that that it's here. I have feel like I've done a fair amount of work so I can be with the funniness and the resiliency. Like even in my own therapy today, I got to this place of God just remembering the freedom of being this dirty ass child on my bike, going like 700 miles down a hill, no shirt on, I'm probably seven probably, like even starting to develop boobs. Yeah, I don't think I wore a shirt for until some kid was like, That girl's decade and I was like I was like, you know, I like jeans. sweaty. And just I mean, like frickin Tatum O'Neal and Bad News Bears. I think I was that kid. But there was just a lot of freedom and resiliency and aliveness in that, too. So I appreciate that there's room for there's a ton of resilience around this. And I think Jenny's web does talk about that. It's not like, but in adulthood, it can look a lot like depression, anxiety, criticism, I'm not enough, you're not good enough. So if you find yourself with that tape, and that narrative running through, I guarantee you even if your parents were like, right there at the ready all the time, there's probably some level of emotional neglect. Neglect, yeah. liens. Yes.

Alison Cebulla 11:30
But you are right. That on the other side of the healing is a lot of humor. Like it really because we just I think we would just die without it. But um, I wanted to at least kind of maybe talk for just a couple of minutes before we play the interview. About maybe like current events or anything you're watching or listening to is education

Anne Sherry 11:54
on Netflix. Oh, okay. Oh, is that what you're asking?

Alison Cebulla 12:01
You just have one. What is it?

Anne Sherry 12:03
God sex education on Netflix, Tom and I were talking about caught my husband, we were like, holy shit, what would life would have been? Like, if all this shit was talked about? Like,

Alison Cebulla 12:15
what would life have been? Like?

Anne Sherry 12:18
He wouldn't have had like, shame, there wouldn't have been so much shame about like getting your period or having sex or using protection or being being gay. I mean, we knew who was gay. It was somewhat in our high school, but it was no room for that. You were boys and you were girls, and you were burnouts. And you were the in crowd. I mean, so compartmentalize. And in this, there's just like, it's just so free with what they were who they love. The sex they get up to? I don't know if there's a documentary style, or is it? No, it's Gillian Anderson. Okay, is the she's a sex therapist, and she's the main character. Oh, I

Alison Cebulla 13:08
just see that it helps out at school. So like, to me the show is also something

Anne Sherry 13:15
and her son and another character, like provide like, basically sec. Sex counseling. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is. Brilliant.

Alison Cebulla 13:26
Got it. Oh,

Anne Sherry 13:27
I mean, just you can do and be aware. I mean, it was so tight in my high school. Yeah. We're just who was you just did that you like, just belong to this group or this group? And you if you're a girl, you like boys, your boy you like girls? I mean, it was like it was so weird. And pretty much like also by race and class, we kind of hung out as well, like, Well,

Alison Cebulla 13:58
I think like what Alex was talking about in episode three last week, was like, the social media has really helped different people within like, especially he can speak especially well to the LGBT QI plus space has all these different people with different gender and sexual identities having a place he's his research was on Tumblr, to like connect with people and like I feel this identity that like you said, isn't as isn't as narrow of you know, yeah, I can be who I am. And it's there's there's a community for me online. It's just been remarkable.

Anne Sherry 14:34
It is remarkable. Yeah. Just the shame around bodies. Jeez. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. We need a whole episode. Tell us tell us how you found out about sex hitting puberty. Also, there's a whole grew up in the 70s and 80s or whatever. Yeah,

Alison Cebulla 14:51
there's that there's a conversation I've been having online with some girlfriends around. What what age did you get the diet talk? And what I've realized that only girls it was only the boys I know didn't get the diet talk of like, you need to always be on a diet. You need to be skinny and thin. I was I think I was 10 because 10 Oh,

Anne Sherry 15:11
I can remember my mom. Yeah, I used to swim. And so I could eat 8000 billion calories a day. I was a competitive swimmer. And then I quit and I kept eating like bags of Snickers and she's like, you're gonna get fat. And I'm like, do you? Are you even curious? Why I need bags of sugar to see Yeah,

Alison Cebulla 15:30
she was. She couldn't. She cannot hold space for that. Oh,

Anne Sherry 15:37
yeah. Sugar are from Yeah, well, I took us on a tangent, but yes, sex education. Oh, yeah. Yeah,

Alison Cebulla 15:45
I just wanted to share that like right now in the news cycle. It's been so much about the Gabby Petitto murder. And then there's this whole other conversation around like, what about all the indigenous missing and murdered women in Wyoming? And, and it's just gotten me kind of thinking like, I'm absolutely the media's obsessed with, with white women going missing. But it has to be like a particular it has to be a particular slant. Like, here, here in my home home area where I Live Central Coast of California, we had another one just like this happened recently where this guy, this couple owned a surf camp in Santa Barbara. And the guy was convinced that his children were reptilians. So we took them down to meisho saw

Anne Sherry 16:33
that, Oh Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, God.

Alison Cebulla 16:38
And and I think like the captivating part about both that story and yeah, so Gabby Potito story is that there's these core pieces of imagined American cultural identity around like the dream of having your own business or the dream of living the van life, because the van life is like the new American dream. I don't think it's just that she was white. You know, I think it's also like, they wanted to be influencers, which is so day 21, they were starting a YouTube channel, they were living the dream, they were visiting the National Parks, as well as like the surf camp thing being like, oh, like, they walked away from their desk, they started their own business, they have, you know, they have this sovereignty over their lives. It's, it's like messing with that identity, that accepted American identity or that idealized identity. And it's like, oh, American Dream gone wrong. I think that's, you know, what I mean? That's what I'm really feeling. Yeah.

Anne Sherry 17:37
Well, and I mean, we do have to say, there's a certain visibility to that, right. Like, we're, we like that visibility white, pretty girls. Like, a handsome family. Yeah. Had some white family that you know, figuring it out, and we see none other shadow underneath. And

Alison Cebulla 18:03
that's a good point, though. I

Anne Sherry 18:04
don't know, we just have to, we got to get way more comfortable with shadow.

Alison Cebulla 18:09
Okay, I wanted to say one more thing about the new the media and these high profile murder cases, which is that I've kind of noticed that the sensationalism of the media tends to focus on like, the fact that this surf instructor guy was really into Q anon. Which I'm, which is interesting, because I'm like wool. It sounds like maybe he was maybe and I'm not, I'm not gonna diagnose, but just based on some of the stuff, he was saying that he may have been suffering from schizophrenia, or some other delusional, right, if you believe that you're gonna quantiles that's you're no longer in reality. And of course, I'm sure that the media doesn't want to. I'm sure that the media doesn't want to stigmatize. So they're not going to use the word schizophrenia. But then I also just, it feels like we don't get to have these, these really good conversations about mental illness. Immediate just avoids it to prevent because of course, not every schizophrenic person is violent. And so you don't want to you don't want to say like, oh, this happened because of mental illness. That's terrible. But I just feel like we're missing we're missing because they keep saying like, Oh, Q anon. Q And on Kuhn on and I'm like, about mental

Anne Sherry 19:26
health. Right? Right. Well, and just the layers and the complexity of it, and the stay in again, that like, what is it that keeps us from being in relationship we just want to other right, we're always othering that's the problem in like, equity stuff is like we're othering you know? And like, I mean, just all the adages there but for the grace of God go I walk a mile in someone else's shoes, there's like, like, and I can feel it. It's like it's too complex. We just need to split this up. and walk away because I am just trying not to. I don't just trying to figure just day to day shout outs, like we're being bombarded to there's that's a whole nother thing anyways that like, every single second is full with distractions it seems like and that's covering up. I think like Edvard monk scream Do you know the screen? Oh, love it. I think that's what's actually happening under any neglected soul. Yeah, it's a scream in a vacuum. Yes. We have all this activity tried to bring attention to that and it's really hard to hear so you're getting a little insight into my, my process

Alison Cebulla 20:47
today? Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, the screen one. He's one of my favorite painters just I think just because my my family is Norwegian, my hurt my ancestral part of my ancestral family. And it's so interesting when you think of how, you know, like Trump said that thing about how come you know, blah, blah, blah shithole countries? How come people don't come from Norway, but people were leaving Norway. And they were leaving Norway during that time of monk doing those paintings. And so life was really brutal in Europe. And that's why the United States was was settled. And that's a point that my my boss always makes about people were fleeing Europe for some terrible terrible terrible reasons such violence and persecution. Yeah, much

Anne Sherry 21:28
violence. So much. Yeah. After generation certainly leaves to leads to, I think, just a whole like this invisible wave of heat wave almost of neglect, you know, it's really scary to actually connect to people. So so can we just record a whole nother episode? We'll be releasing this one.

Alison Cebulla 21:55
So this is why we interview. So yeah, and I'll let you I'll let you introduce Connie. This

Anne Sherry 22:17
climate crisis we're in might be some of the loudest information we're getting about being disconnected. I'll say America but other countries are too, although I think that we do a lot of the damage. So we wanted to have a someone who's actively working in this field. Her name is Connie Burns will be our guest. And she so introduce her a bit Connie burns, she's been counseling and connecting with people over 30 years. Connie Burns is a body centered psychotherapist who specializes in body and trauma therapies. She has a passion for teaching people how to connect with their relationships, relationships with our own bodies, other people and the natural world, Connie was urged to act on her strong convictions about the current division and conflict happening in Western culture as well as the imminent threat of climate change. So she's joining us today to help us understand how cultural neglect childhood emotional neglect, are having impacts on climate and in ways maybe we're not feel like we're able to address it. What makes this check out. And here she is. Hi, Connie. Hello.

Alison Cebulla 23:43
Welcome, Alison. Hi, Alison. Nice to meet you. I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for joining. I was listening to a little bit of your other podcast and I'm really excited to get to talk to you today. Great. Well,

Anne Sherry 24:01
we just kind of Connie, we're just there's some winging aspect of this. Okay. Yeah, that general framework and just we like it to feel pretty relatable. And it's not really superduper scripted. But I think some of the stuff Alison and I were discussing were just, oh, how do we get in your your insights? On what? Yeah,

Alison Cebulla 24:25
what inspired you to get into this work?

Connie Burns 24:28
My own personal grief about climate change? Really? Yeah. I was doing a lot of work and CO counselling around this. And I was in a women's group I'd been in for a decade and a half and one of the other women said, you know, I really feel like I need to do some grief work around climate would you sit with me? And as we talked about it, I said, Well, let's do a circle. And so we started a group and then another young woman who's a I've been really involved in Climate Group kind of joined the group. And then she connected me with the creation Care Alliance here in Asheville. And then a group of us therapists and pastors came together to create this format of a circle to take people through.

Alison Cebulla 25:19
When did you say Creek creation care?

Connie Burns 25:23
What did you say creation Care Alliance,

Alison Cebulla 25:26
which kind of just gives me goosebumps because we like that sounds like so much more care than I have in my life.

Anne Sherry 25:39
Nation care?

Alison Cebulla 25:42
I want to just bathe in that.

Connie Burns 25:46
Wonderful. Yeah, yeah. And part of the other part that motivated me is that thing you're naming that? How in the world can we face into an existential crisis, like the climate crisis, that is an ongoing threat, that's not going to be over in our lifetime, even if we really begin to seriously address it. And we have to have connection, we have to have support, we have to have places where we can go and be held in our grief, in our love in our passion. For this work with other people, we can't do this alone. And there's so much that I think, as white people anyway, in white supremacy culture that we've been sort of taught, we need to do alone. It's, it's all individual. And that's such, for me, that's one of the foundational myths, misses,

Alison Cebulla 26:49
right of the culturally hurting us.

Connie Burns 26:51
Yes, yeah. It's damaging.

Anne Sherry 26:54
Yes. And I think of it on these levels. So like, it's it sometimes it feels like a certain amount of the strategy has been a certain amount of therapy brings you to enough connection internally, right? And then it's like, Oh, where do I take this connection? You know, like, you do get this natural being led out. But that's just takes a long time. I don't. I mean, you know, that's trauma based therapies, and all that's coming online quicker and quicker, certainly, way faster than what was going on in the 80s when I started, but Right, I think we've talked about that. But how to, like, address this, but not be in a rush and trust and you know, but not use that characteristic of white supremacy culture, which is action items, or urgency? Yes, it's a weird thing to have that polarization of we need to act. But we got we can't act if we're if there really isn't care if it's more, yeah, just do this thing. Yeah. And just, and how

Connie Burns 27:57
do we have the faith? If we aren't connected to each other? If we aren't, if we don't like for me, it's been so powerful to remind myself when I go into grief and sometimes into despair around this, that there are 1000s, if not millions of other people on the planet, who are doing whatever aspect of this work, they're called to I am not alone, by such a longshot, and then to be personally connected to other people who are involved in this just gives me that sense of both hopefulness and also resilience in the connection and care that I can go, I can go to this and cry, I can go to this and talk about the ecstatic connection this spring. I can go to this and say I'm, I'm feeling cynical and hopeless today. And have people hear that and not be freaked out by it. Yeah, I know. And here's what's giving me hope today. It's, it's just so essential. I think we can't we can't fight the things we need to change without connection to each other and care and love.

Anne Sherry 29:10
Yeah, yeah, I was getting this. Well, I been a self described independent personality disordered. sorter Yes, yes. Oh, and just the terror that it can be just that being connected to others. Yeah. And how terrifying when you miss that so early in that being that that thing that happens in this neglectful culture, you know, and just, I don't know, I got caught up a long time. blaming my parents. And there is work to do there. But that stopping blaming and saying, I'm just establishing Oh, I'm an unconnected person. Yeah, and I get tired.

Alison Cebulla 29:57
Yeah. They didn't invent it. Right. No, they didn't invent disconnection. You know, we've talked about this that it felt like starting with Alice Miller's book. Yeah, remind me again, the drama of the gifted child. Yeah. Like the 80s. And the 90s. Were like the blame parents era, you know, just every New Age book was like, your parents did this. And then they did this. And you probably have to hate him for this. And yeah, they didn't invent they didn't invent neglect.

Connie Burns 30:29
No, or disconnection like it, right. It's the endemic thing that that. And for me, it's like, it's all so interconnected, because it is the disconnection from our bodies that we learn, I think about the whole thing of I think, therefore, I am not I have a body therefore I am, I feel I experience I love therefore I am. And so, you know, Western culture, people have been learning to disconnect from our bodies, from inter reliance on each other, from the natural world. For So, so long. And so we we have so much reconnecting to do, and I and I, so get it i, i So learn to be self reliant as a child. And I was going to somebody, I ran into one of the women that does the Eco Grace circles with me who I had known before. And she's an amazing, powerful woman. And I ran into her somewhere. And she said, like, a couple of times, just in the few minutes, we were talking, I'm so glad to see you, Connie. And I realized, like I was shocked. Like, oh, I'm surprised when somebody is like, they really want it. They really she wants to be connected. She's really trying to connect with me like, what's natural here? What

Anne Sherry 31:51
do you want for me? I was doing I was doing some personal work around what it is to be in groups. And the first part that will come up if I really check inside is like, what do you want? For me? That's a protector. I guess I had to like develop to be like these people want something? Well, aren't they? Yeah, things that. I just think that we didn't get in our families. So it's just that having those parts that are so suspicious? Yeah, we need to do it. We're going to do an episode on cults too. Because, yeah, like that thing of like, yeah, that's,

Alison Cebulla 32:26
by the way, I love I'm so addicted to all things cold, is that primitive part of my brain that loves to have an enemy. I love how in colts there's a bad guy. And it's almost always a guy. But there's a bad guy. And like, somehow we are hardwired because this has been written about and research has been done that we love to have an enemy. It's like maybe like just part of our animal nature. And so I'm just starting to notice that part of me because I love listening to Colt books, audiobooks. love watching Cole, you know, the vowel, and it's somehow just feel I can't, I'm just noticing it. And I'm kind of, I don't want to say I'm disgusted with myself. I'm just curious. You know, it just feels so good for there to be an enemy, you know?

Anne Sherry 33:15
Well, certainly that part I developed you know, about what? What do you want from me? Like, I was like one of those idiots joining that call trying to belong, like what it is? Did they know better than that? You know, and

Connie Burns 33:29
I'm so curious about this, Allison. Because something I've been, like really noticing in myself is self righteousness. And I wonder if it's the same thing. Like when I see somebody else who like I pick up trash every day when I walk, it's just kind of my sort of prayer to the natural world. And I would find myself thinking the same things repetitive. Who are these people who do this? What's wrong with these people who are throwing their trash out the window? And I finally realized, oh, my gosh, I'm having this. Like, this gives me this feeling of self righteousness and better than that's, that's got that sort of sticky addictive quality.

Anne Sherry 34:07
I don't want to do that.

Alison Cebulla 34:09
Natalie, yeah, definitely. I don't I definitely think I'm the type of person who could and would join a cult. So I'm not judging anyone. Why not? You know, but based on kind of fun, but

Anne Sherry 34:26
um, yeah, somebody told me what to do. Yeah. So um,

Alison Cebulla 34:31
but like I just finished another audio book about called winners take all the elite charade of changing the world where fully like philanthropy, as we know it is broken, because, you know, a corporation will destroy the planet with all that they do. They'll extract all the resources, they won't pay their workers. They'll lobby in DC so that workers rights are very low. They break up unions, but then now with their big pot of money that they put wordid Because they've extracted all the resources, you know, from Earth and people, then they go, Oh my god, we're so generous. We're gonna share some of this. We're gonna pan out too much of it. Yeah. And I just enjoyed the shit out of that book. Because, again, I just think it was like, Oh, well, there's the enemy. Look how terrible those people are. And so maybe it is that. Like, I'm not terrible, like they are. But it was such an addicting book to read, like, I finished it in like, you know, like in one go like I like,

Anne Sherry 35:32
yeah. Yeah.

Connie Burns 35:34
Well, I think too, it's like, part of that is if there's an enemy, and we can get rid of them or change them, then problem solved, rather than, rather than I mean, it's so clear to me that part of the reason there's so much climate denial is it's unbelievably overwhelming to face this to recognize, yeah, we have to change foundationally. I mean, my belief looking at this as this means if we're going to fix this, we have to change the way we're living, we can't, we can't use the amount of resource that we're using. We can't continue to, we can't have an endlessly expanding economy and have a planet that can support that. That's completely irrational. And so if we face this, we have to face there's a lot of fundamental stuff about the way we've been living that really is not sustainable and doesn't work. And that's, uh, how do you,

Anne Sherry 36:34
how would you? Like, what's the wake up process around that? I mean, doing? You know, like, I think, I don't know, what do you see that's happening? That's waking people up to this just, well, the

Connie Burns 36:47
weather. I mean, you look at storms, fires, so many things are happening that are so intense, and there's information coming out. And I think when it hits your town, it's a little bit harder to stay in denial about it. I think even farmers are beginning to I read a book called, I think, cataclysmic planet and was looking at over time, all the ways that the life on the planet has expanded and contracted that there's been blasts and things and then there's we're in the sixth mass extinction now. But one of the things he was saying was he they walked in a corn farm. And the dirt is no longer soil. There's so much petroleum in it, that it's like dirt. And so then I heard on NPR one day they were at somebody asked a farmer so so is the way that we're farming actually sustainable. And there was a long silent pause. And he said, No, it's not. So so what we're doing is insanity. And, and my feeling is part of what's happening that I think is profoundly helpful is we're beginning to see the interconnection of all the problems. Racism, sexism, xenophobia, religious oppression, oppression of indigenous peoples, oppression of animals oppression of the planet, they're all the same problem. Right? And so yes, that's completely overwhelming, but it's like, oh, so we have to sort of fundamentally change the way we're looking at everything else living around us and see the sacredness in every single thing. And then this shift becomes in some way really simple. So it's,

Anne Sherry 38:35
it's, it's not as hard just that kind of, it may not be as hard as we think it is. We're just we're trying to make it is very complex. But this piece of like, so what? So what is this force that doesn't want us to do this work doesn't want us to connect? Because there is I mean, the how to not have this be this deep polarization we all get dragged into.

Alison Cebulla 39:03
Like, such a big,

Anne Sherry 39:08
huge, like, Yeah, well, and I wonder what it you know, we are still people like to, you know, we look at the big structure, but it is still made up of people. I mean, I had this, I told Allison about this my chocolate paradox that I had found these coupons that Oh, yeah. Why a backhand? Oh, yeah. Because I was like, I'm so good. I share I love people, you know, self-righteous and the other people. But I became a greedy people because I found these coupons. I found a loophole on the coupons. And I was able to hoard free chocolate, like you could get five bars and there was no limit on it. And I did it. I'm a chocoholic. And the more I hoarded you know, and I was like, for free. I didn't work for that. I just found the loophole. It seemed like the more that I hoarded shit, I didn't actually work. For I sold, I was more greedy, we were going to Tom's family for Thanksgiving. And I couldn't I was picking through it to only take the shitty chocolate I didn't like, you know, that's what I was willing to share. But as I saw masses build up, like so this thing of, I don't know, we have to regulate ourselves, I don't think we can trust ourselves. I don't think we can trust people, I think we have to regulate, you know,

Connie Burns 40:29
II think and to, like, if you're really living in community, where you are connected to the people who don't have, how different it is, like, I think I think there's such an addictive quality to all of that. Because we're one we're trying to fill holes that would naturally and organically be fed by connection to the natural world to other people. And in those connections. I mean, like, think of indigenous cultures, where the giveaway is a huge ritual, it's a part of tradition, it's like we understand that we need to keep, we need to keep giving back. And when you live in a capitalist society that tells you Oh, earning more and more and more means you're successful and smart, you're good, you're doing well. You're a good capitalist. Like, how hard is it then to say, actually, no, this is not good. And this is separating me. This is this is not joyful. This is

Alison Cebulla 41:35
feels like we don't really know what joy is in our culture. I don't know if that's a stretch, I I have trouble connecting to joy. And I know, it's been especially hard for all of us with the pandemic, its life in general is probably like the least joyful it's ever been. So I want to acknowledge that. But I it just doesn't like okay, I have an example. As I want to say like, especially in the US because I lived in Belgium and the Netherlands, right after college, I moved there for a year because actually just wanted to experience what it was like to live in a more socialized government country, I just wanted to see if it felt different, it did. felt safer, for sure. And you know, like health care, just going to the doctor was amazing. And I like would travel around, you know, meeting different people on couchsurfing, which was so fun. And there was this big festival happening in Bruges, that um, cool city in Belgium that has, like, you know, fully Renaissance medieval buildings, because it was never destroyed by any wars. And they had transformed the whole city into a dance party, the whole entire city. So you could wander around the whole city. And every time you got to a plaza, there would be a different kind of music. So there was like salsa, there was EDM, there was you know, just, I don't know, there were every little kind of music and dance that you could imagine you'd have different folk dances. And you could go and dance with a whole bunch of people and move along and the holes and open containers of alcohol, you know, people just hanging out dancing, drinking, talking. And then in the morning, the you know, the the government had cleaned everything up. So it was spotless, like you could eat off the ground. Because they had together created this society and this government that said, Yeah, we want to have fun, we want to have joy want a party, and we want it to be clean and tidy, and we're gonna pay for this, you know, like, we're gonna pull together and we've decided that this is the culture that we want, and we're paying for it. This is important. Yeah, but here in the play. Yeah. And my hometown, where I live now in San Luis Obispo, California. They used to have this really fun like Mardi Gras parade where people would, you know, costumes, joy, fun parades. And everyone's just like, No, it's too loud. It's too rowdy. It's too messy. And it's it got canceled like 15 years ago, right. We don't get to have. We don't have parties. We don't dance parties. We don't have, you know, too messy

Anne Sherry 44:06
is too. Yeah. Yeah, it's Yeah,

Connie Burns 44:08
right. Like it's too. It's too natural and unpredictable. Like, I think you're right. And I think like, I feel I've said this so many times. I know that at a time in my early middle school high school when I was really depressed and really struggling. Like what saved me was my connection to the natural world. My parents moved me us out to this little small cabin in the woods outside of school down in Indiana, and I was living in the woods and so I would just go out in the woods every day after school. And that kept my sense of wonder and joy alive. What am I peak memories of my life is there was this beautiful snowfall one night and I went out like it was dark but you know how snow kind of glows. Like the light is reflect thing off of everything. And I remember just walking through that and feeling this unbelievable peace and joy. And like, those moments are so sustaining. And I think we aren't, like, I know many, many people who say the same thing like this, these are, these are the things that have sustained me that helped my soul stay alive that, you know, helped me stay a loving person, et cetera, et cetera. But how many people don't have access to that? Yeah, and don't have community. So what is there? Like, right? Or do you get that sense of Oh, my gosh, I can open every cell of my body to this experience, and be fully here and feel alive and joyful and safe. This is what life is about. You don't ever have that experience, then, you know, alcohol and sugar and shopping and snacks, mindless body lifts, disconnect effects. Well, those are pretty good substitutes, if you don't know what you're missing,

Anne Sherry 46:04
right? Well, in that, I mean, just looking at just our chart of the education that we value, you know, you take all of those pieces out. For the most part, it's we were talking about this thing just a bit ago, just watching. Like my kid Auguste go to school, and he had been in a very outdoor preschool. And they just had very few tools. You know, they used very few things. It wasn't a bunch of toys, it was like a real shovel real knives, like Waldorf inspired and just how hard it was for him to even settle in what is sort of a, it's a charter school that prides itself on being pretty natural. I think they go outside a little bit more. They they combine it, but he still had to just just sit and they get like 30 minutes of outdoor time, right? It just blew his mind. He was just like, What is this thing that you're like, putting me into it? It was off? I was like, do we take them out? It just travel around the country? And you know that I mean, it's like, oh, but you'll do this thing to yourself. It's so sanctioned by this society? Well, I guess I gotta get on board, what's you know, I can't have a freak show kid or whatever. Right? I want him to belong. So it's this thing of like, we've created this thing that we all have. That's like all have to belong to so how do we, I think these things that you're creating creation, but at creation Care Alliance.

Alison Cebulla 47:35
But don't you think like that belonging, rejecting the status quo is a privilege. I mean, this came up for me. So I was an ecology major in my undergrad at Berkeley, and I had this environmental studies class where she was talking about people who are dumpster divers. And I wasn't able to relate to it at all, because I can have this deep feeling of growing up poor. And there was a real identity for my parents that they earned and bought something new. Yeah, they weren't going to take the free thing. We weren't going to go dumpster dive, we weren't going to go reject culture, because we hadn't really made it into the we wanted to, like buy our way into the culture, we couldn't reject it. And so you know, sending your kid to like a fancy school that rejects culture, that's like a privilege where you felt like you were a member of the culture first, before you could reject it.

Anne Sherry 48:33
Right? Yes. So how do we interrupt this like belonging, who I don't know, interrupt this belonging path to whatever this is, but we all got to taste it first. Those privileged and then to say, now that's not I wonder about that if that's what's in the way it partially of people rejecting stuff and things and status? Yeah, makes sense. Yeah.

Connie Burns 48:59
Yeah. Yeah. And, and, I mean, like, all of the complexity of this, of sorting out what do different groups of people what has to be surrendered to move into the new culture, and really different things from different aspects? And somehow we've got to make that conversation safe enough for everybody to participate in about what is this look like?

Alison Cebulla 49:30
Right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Things aren't Yeah, things are not and I guess that's what I'm trying to say is like people do not feel safe enough people don't people feel so disenfranchised from mainstream culture. There's no way you're gonna get someone who's like barely paying their bills. They don't even they don't even feel like they belong to regular culture enough to be like, let me let me commune with nature. This I mean, isn't

Anne Sherry 49:57
that isn't that by design, though. It It's not by design, it's this thing that's gotten out of control. I mean, we are nach. We are this evolutionary species from so long ago. So we it's like it's coming to this conclusion like, was it always going this way? Does it have to get this loud to get our attention? Maybe? I don't know. Right. And I

Connie Burns 50:21
think what you're saying is, you know, it's like, I don't think it's an accident that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Shortly after he started the poor people's movement, like saying, all of us who are being oppressed need to come together. Because the in I don't, I don't believe it's a cabal. I don't think it's a circle in particular people. But the system as it is, yeah, exists because there's oppression. Like, right, if we did something like universal basic income, I think that's such a fantastic idea where everybody gets their basic needs met. Oh, then all of a sudden, there's this energy, like people aren't trying struggling to survive. How do you have energy to face into these things? Unless they are right in your face? If you don't have enough to eat if you're struggling to house and feed your children? It's not Yeah,

Anne Sherry 51:16
it's not possible. Yeah. So

Alison Cebulla 51:19
would you keep people in fear? People just barely hanging on for dear life? Yes, then they can't really have have that cognitive waking up that we really need to transform. Yeah.

Anne Sherry 51:34
What are you trying? I'm trying to be helpful. But I'd like the more we talk. I'm like, I think this is what happens, right? Like, you're just like, is how it was gonna happen. But it's overcoming that fear, Connie. Yeah. Yeah. But

Alison Cebulla 51:47
so you were kind of talking about the world, this kind of motion of coming in maybe falling apart, coming back together? Can you speak about that maybe, and maybe like some hope that you have in terms of like, maybe like cycles that we go through?

Connie Burns 52:03
Yeah, and I have to, I have to be honest, like, I want to one of you know, in our ego Grace circles, we have an intro. And then we have a circle on sorrow, anger, guilt, shame, despair, hopelessness, and integration and despair and hopelessness is in there. Because when you start facing into this, it is you. Like, you really have to reform your sense of what you're hoping for. Like right now, I think what a lot of people have been hoping for is, oh, we can just tweak some things and continue doing what we've been doing. And we'll just, you know, we'll just create these things that suck the co2 out of the atmosphere, and everything will be fine. But more and more, as we see the linkage to note, no, this is really about how we're treating the world as if it's a thing that we can suck resources out of any human beings as if they are things we can suck resources out of. And so, yeah, I think that kind of transformation requires that things have to start falling apart for us to say, Oh, we're not gonna be able to put a bandaid on this. We have to be, but think of how enormously creative and innovative and inventive human beings are. Yeah, we are amazing. And when we come together, and really believe in what we're doing, I think there is an enormous amount of hope that we can figure out how to unite in a way that allows so much more complexity and nuance and innovation, of thinking to happen. Like, you know, the white supremacy idea would be somebody's gonna come along and tell us all what we need to do some great leaders in it. Show us the way. Yeah.

Anne Sherry 54:08
Exactly. SLAVE TO YOU hierarchy forever. So do the thing. Right here. Yeah.

Connie Burns 54:17
But if that can't happen, then we sort of have to begin saying, oh, we need to start valuing indigenous wisdom. We need to start valuing all the different cultural ways of seeing and understanding things and finding how do we bring that together? For me, it's like, it's like moving from hierarchy, like you were saying, and it's that moving from top to bottom to horizontal. Everything is sacred. Every one is sacred. Everyone has something of value to contribute. How do we make the interconnections in the space for that to happen?

Anne Sherry 54:55
Right, right. Yeah, I was something about that just sort of like you know in the trauma world of like that bottom up processing and top down so that bottom up sort of feels like really people doing be growing their capacity to feel a lot of grief. It's very motivating. I know when I did, but it's scary when you're in it, you know, I when I really some of the anti racist work I've read God, I can't remember what book it but it just really laid out just horrors of hate lynching and I mean, just story after story. I mean, it brought me to my knees and pain, and I was out for like, a year, I think I mean, still showing up trying to do the work. But this this terror this like, just really feeling how awful Yes, humans can be sort of bringing it. That's sort of the the bottom up piece, but I'm still, you know, the top down. I guess it's like local communities like, I mean, still regulate, I mean, coming out of a Trump era, which was total, like, I mean, just flagrantly saying, This is bullshit. What are y'all? You know, just making fun of it. But how many people glommed onto that and said, Yeah, he's right. This is bullshit. We don't need to do this. It's the me and miners, you know, I'm here for me and mine. So that liberal individualist community that America is so fond of, you know, me and mine, I'm just taking care of so we got to make me and mine Walker.

Alison Cebulla 56:33
But the book that I just was telling you all about about winners take all he has another perspective on it, which is that when you look at the history of policy in the United States, it was Clinton who opened our borders to globalization and disenfranchised American workers, basically. And he's saying that people chose Trump's kind of, you know, that was there some brainwashing happening? Yeah. You know, they sort of looked at him as this isn't someone who's an insider like Clinton, or Hillary Clinton, right, who is running against who, who they're just crooked. They want to sell us out to China. I think they couldn't quite distinguish that Trump wasn't the solution. But he seemed like he's, he's an outsider, he's not going to do what these politicians have always done. And so we can't just keep voting for politicians that that sell our rights. And so that's a different, that was a different perspective that I really needed to hear that allows me to offer more compassion.

Connie Burns 57:36
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And there's truth in that right. There is. If we continue supporting the same systems, we're gonna keep getting the same results.

Alison Cebulla 57:50
And it's both it's Democrats, it's Republicans, the system as a whole is broken. It's not serving any of us.

Anne Sherry 57:57
Right. Right. Right, right.

Connie Burns 57:59
So I just wanted to name because you were talking about grief. And there's no just for people who are listening. There's an amazing book called The wild edge of sorrow by Francis Weller. Yeah, it's so powerful. And it's not just about climate change. But it's certainly that's a large part of what he's talking about. And part of what's so sacred for Nana book is the recognition of grief, as sacred and as part of love. And as part of if you're connected. If you're really connected to life, grief is part of that. There's no avoiding that. And so how do we create spaces, rituals, communities, where that's honored and where we can do that work, so that we can let our hearts break open and get larger and find larger solutions? Because as long as we're sort of staying in control, and in our minds, as long as we sort of feel like, okay, we can figure this out. I think our solutions remain really small. Right? And for me, what's been I don't want to feel anything? Yes, yes. And for me, what's been so powerful about hopelessness is, as I let go of hope for these sort of simple solutions, is I let go of hope that, oh, we're going to we're going to do this in time to stop sea level from rising too much, or, you know, we won't have too much refugee crisis, if we address that by now. And as each of those sort of passes, I have to expand my sense of hope, to a larger perspective, have to really look at okay, we may lose many, many things. What's meaningful enough that I can keep going through this, that I can keep that that I love this enough, even though my heart is breaking, to keep walking this path and in my experiences when I get to that place? I feel unstoppable. I feel like it Doesn't matter what you do to me, this is what in every fiber of my being, I believe is, is right is in divine order is my contribution is what I'm called to. And you can take away everything from me. But I'm not stepping from that path because this is my soul. And in we've lost so much connection to that, again, like the culture we're living in, that tells us what's important is have another car, you know, get a bigger house look good. As long as your vacations on Facebook look really, really good, you're successful. It doesn't matter if you didn't even have that frigging vacation. It can be paid. But as long as you're looking good, that's

Anne Sherry 1:00:42
it. Who wants to hear the sad stuff Kati, like oh, she's always talking sad stuff. And I having also entered into grief spaces. Just for those listening out there. Like somebody who came from a neglectful childhood that was spawned by a neglectful culture. I really got it wasn't safe to feel or cry, you know, because the crying the whole cried out movement, like, I'm so interested in the what we've done to make people frozen, just that cried out. piece, especially from the seven days was what I learned my body learned was Do not cry, or do not feel or do not let anybody know that you're in pain about something because no one's coming, you know, no one's coming. So that that sort of message plugs right into the effectiveness doing, you know, just you're recognized for who you do what you do. But when there's no like, how do you make money out of grief, Connie? Like, how am I gonna monetize? You know, I mean, it's like, well, what, what are you doing? Would you grieve, you know, just kind of opening up, you know, and there's something. Another piece I read too, is that grief and grace, like, ride side by side, you know, it's really hard to be in places of grace. If you're not able to go deep into grief. But it's a scary, it's a scary road into grief. I mean, every fiber of your being many of us are saying.

Connie Burns 1:02:22
And again, like just the feedback loop of that. We're afraid of it. Because we didn't have the experience of children, as children, of being able to like, really feel it deeply and have parents who could hold that and be right with us, and be present and know that we're going to come through that. And it's okay. We didn't get to watch them go through that. And comes through it with grace. Yeah, find grace from it, which we do. And so, absolutely. And then when we don't have that we're terrified of it. And when we're terrified of it, we go the other direction. So

Anne Sherry 1:02:59
yeah, yeah. Yeah, that method to have, that I find in my practice, often with people are, you know, they were like, Well, no, the happy child, we just want you to be happy. Just want you to be happy. And it's really good intentions on the part of the parents. Like, don't cry here. Let's go do something. Let me buy you something. So it's cleaned out immediately. Yeah,

Alison Cebulla 1:03:21
the ice cream. Parenting is real. Yeah. I have to say, though, just because we spend so much time kind of focusing on the negatives of parenting of what you just said, Connie, about getting to watch our parents grieve or not. I had the great gift of getting to watch my parents grieve and heal, which I think was an option. You know, I was born in the 80s. And my parents found therapy once they got divorced. I was seven when they both started therapy and their parenting changed so much. Once they discovered my dad said, you know, therapy taught me how to love for the first time of my life, you know, that's it had to teach me that. Yeah, yeah. And we felt that and that's been this touchstone for me, I can come back to watching them feel feelings, especially their humility. Their humility is very inspiring. They will always say, I fucked up. I did this wrong. I learned how to do it better. I didn't know. Yeah. And it's been it's been such a gift. Yeah. And so I just wanted to honor that. You know, wasn't all wasn't all neglect. Got the 80s children?

Connie Burns 1:04:40
Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, like I got from my father loved the natural world. He was a birder. And he, you know, I mean, it would drive me crazy as a kid to walk through the woods with him because you'd have this book of ferns and he'd be identifying which Fern we were looking at, or which bird was that color. or what kind of tree was that? And I, you know, at the time, it was like, Could we just take a walk? And now I look back and think, oh my God, no wonder all my sisters and I have such an appreciation because he gave us that. And he was able to listen to me and be curious about me. As I got older, as I came to be an adult, he really wanted to know what I thought about things. That was a huge gift. So absolutely, I think it's important for us to, to recognize the gifts along with him. And I know, I know, both of my parents, if they had had the capacity, like if they had understood or known what it meant to feel. Of course, they would have done that. Of course, they would have done that. They just they grew up in even more rigid families than ours. And they didn't you know, my mother's mother was German and you around her. You just do it.

Anne Sherry 1:06:04
Yeah, yeah, I'm kind of thinking like, you know, what was both my parents grew up in the poor, poor, poor, poor, poor Alabama. No, no running water. No, for ya. indoor plumbing. No electricity, even though like the TVA, the electricity wires were being right over their houses, but it wasn't for them, you know, it was for the cities are. But just how much I think they did spend so much time outdoors. They did subsistence farming, and what they gave to us was like, that's the bullshit life that is like hard and hot and poor. And it was very much inside that would not why would we? Why would we spend a lot of time outside? It's like, it wasn't nice. Yeah, that and we lived you know, I grew up in Spartanburg and um, I hike all around Western North and it's only an hour down the road. I'm like, I grew up an hour from here and I've never been hiking around

Alison Cebulla 1:07:01
here. It was a rite of passage for them to reject the land. Price oppression. Yeah.

Anne Sherry 1:07:09
Yeah. Like anything homemade bologna white bread. Really? Yeah. The process was better. I know. I know. Exactly. It was like you were moving up. I guess that was some of that. Yeah. Anyway, that is it is that piece of you've got to ascend, you've got to acquire more, you've got to have more luxuries, you've got to rather than the gift of I think it'd be a gift to you know, August, my kid will eat vegetables. He grows. Not ones that come from the store, but he will flat out take leaves out of the you know, off shard plant be like here, we grew this, feed this eat this, but if you know, it came if it shard from the store was not happening, stressed, nothing to do with it. So he doesn't trust we have a relationship. It doesn't have a relationship. Yeah. Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 1:08:04
So we'll start to wrap up. And so Connie, if you have any concluding thoughts you'd like to add, you know, or anything else we didn't get to? And I read a

Connie Burns 1:08:19
poem. Yeah. This is a poem from all weekend save, which is a book about the climate crisis and this is from it's called the unbroken from Ashanti Re. There is a brokenness, out of which comes the unbroken a shattered pneus out of which blooms the N shatter bubble, there is a sorrow beyond all grief, which leads to joy and the fragility out of whose depths emerges strength there is a hollow space too vast for words through which we pass with each loss out of whose darkness we are sanctified into being there is a cry deeper than all sound whose serrated edges cut the heart as we break open to the place inside which is unbreakable and whole while learning to sing thank God us for poetry.

Anne Sherry 1:09:21
Thank God I think I think it is I see it as it is love calling out to us, you know, like poetry arts and it's so interesting that that's what gets squashed like in schools and lesser is somehow lesser you know, oh art you're not gonna make any money as an artist you know? Oh, why would you do that be a doctor what I just that. But it's essential. Like I don't think we can solve this or we can move into this without voices of love to

Alison Cebulla 1:09:57
bring it full circle to what I was talking about with Belgium. I can I remember visiting this rooftop garden where they were creating all this really gorgeous art. I think it was like honeycomb art, you know, like they had bees, and they had a garden. And I was like, how do you make money? And they're like, Oh, the Belgian government pays us. They want art to exist. And so they just

Anne Sherry 1:10:18
did that in Canada, there's a certain amount has to go to artists, like they

Alison Cebulla 1:10:24
want to live in that world.

Anne Sherry 1:10:25
I want that. Yeah. Yes. That it's like public. Yeah. Oh, that's under threat constantly. Yeah.

Connie Burns 1:10:33
Well, I want to say thank you so much for having me here. I love that we all are doing this and having these conversations from this place that can get people to be connected and heard. And thank you. Thank you.

Anne Sherry 1:10:49
Thanks for spending time with us. Yeah,

Alison Cebulla 1:10:53
I feel better. It's so funny, because you know, you talked a lot about how many problems there are, but somehow coming back into the body. And what I can feel from you is that you're very present. And you've worked hard on that you've worked hard on cultivating that for yourself and others, that there's such richness in there. Like that's almost like where the hope is that if we can return to that place. Yeah, we were stronger.

Connie Burns 1:11:23
Oh, elephants. So well said thank you.

Alison Cebulla 1:11:26
Want to say thank you for reminding me and our listeners about that, that source of hope. So thank you so, so, so much, and where can people connect with you and your work?

Connie Burns 1:11:40
Um, they can email me at Connie a burns@gmail.com. I don't have a website. But I'm thinking about creating one soon because it's time. And if anybody is interested in the Eco grief circles, which are still happening online, and you can go to the creation care alliance.org website and look for eco grief circles. And those are happening all

Anne Sherry 1:12:07
over the world are all over the US. And they're starting here

Connie Burns 1:12:11
is sort of started here. But in our last two circles, we had someone from England and someone from the Netherlands, so it's growing.

Anne Sherry 1:12:18
So great. Yeah. Wow.

Alison Cebulla 1:12:20
All right. So thank you so much, Connie. Thanks. Great to meet you. Nice to meet you

Anne Sherry 1:12:26
by Connie.

Alison Cebulla 1:12:30
So, just some final some final thoughts, you know, closing thoughts. Yeah, yep.

Anne Sherry 1:12:37
What are your final thoughts? I love? Well, I love to how you felt hope from that. Just that little bit of connection that we did? I think that's exactly it was she

Alison Cebulla 1:12:47
touched on that, you know, despair and hopelessness. I mean, that's like, I've never known anything else. I've never known anything else. I

Anne Sherry 1:12:55
Why would you want to go into it? Right? Well, at some level,

Alison Cebulla 1:12:59
it just felt really nice to have her acknowledge it. Yeah. It I felt seen, you know, it really, it's interesting, because my own healing journey. Like I have, like I said in this episode was first I needed to blame my parents. First, I need to point the finger at them and be like, You did this to me, you made me feel despair, you made me feel hopeless, because you didn't do this. And you do this? Right? Maybe some of that is true, whatever. But they didn't event despair, neglect, just like I said, at the end the real culprit, because when you look at the Greater trends as a whole, you know, deaths of despair at an all time high. Right? Addiction, suicide, alcoholism. The opioid epidemic, you know, I have lost so many people my age to suicide or drug addiction, or both. And we're looking at some pretty massive trends of hopelessness and despair that have nothing to do with my parents did this, this or that? Right? Right. We're looking at a massive, huge trend of if you're a millennial, and you were born, you know, while Reagan was like, reconstructing American culture, so that, you know, trickle down, people at the top, get all the wealth, and we get nothing, you know, and then we had the great recession. Now we have the pandemic, you know, we're like the birth, we're not having kids. We're gonna have families, we can't afford to buy a home. It's like, why would I not feel despair?

Anne Sherry 1:14:25
Right, right. Yeah. And so you can't I mean, you have to keep following it past your parents, right? I mean, if you keep digging and you keep I think that it does take you through that and that informs you and your circle gets larger so you got to stay in there. You know, you can't just stop and it's because it does lead you once I felt my healing journey got me to enough capacity that led me into it. There was like as natural lead into anti racist work. I was like, I can't stop, you know. So I guess people just me do your own work. But it's this sort of you got to do both at this point, you know, we're

Alison Cebulla 1:15:10
all angry phones in the United States come back to racism, all of them. Yeah. If it weren't for the massive, massive genocide of Native Americans and African people at the very origins of our country, we just wouldn't have the US that's really causing so much despair today. All right. All the roads lead back there.

Anne Sherry 1:15:31
Yep. Yep. Yep. So and so I guess, you know, this thing of like, you cannot do grief by yourself. I mean, the healing work. I mean, what a lot of people learn. And that's exactly what Connie said, like, you must get with other people. So you have to fight against that American individualism and being okay, and get curious. Why can't I feel anything? I mean, this is I mean, I, that was the piece for me too, around doing parent work. It's like, I was not feeling grief when my father passed away, or my brother passed away. And that was assigned to me. I was like, what is up with me? Like, why am I so cut off, you know, and so to stay with that curiosity, there's nothing wrong with you. Something happened to you to say, don't feel anything and you have to be we have to be led by our feelings. And they're messy, and they don't fit always. And it's like, if you've been somebody who's been very depressed, I can imagine you not wanting to, you know, no, no, no, no, I got to do those steps that keep me out of this feeling. But I really think all of that is is the universe or climate crisis or the natural world talking to us this disconnection, you know? 100% Yeah. So people, we got you. We're gonna be here reminding you it's not all you at all.

Alison Cebulla 1:17:00
It's not Yeah, and it's all things wrong with you. It's allowed to be messy. I know. I have this book, right here called the crying book. Just Oh, look at those tears. Oh, about how wonderful and beautiful and amazing crying is.

Anne Sherry 1:17:14
Yeah. Well, the thing that's so scary is to let to trust that others will hold you while you grieve. And not everybody's breathing. At the same time. It's like you you really experiencing being held or it's a sign I'm lost. You know, I'm I need help. And it's been hard to trust that for all the ways that this culture has told us don't trust that the way we grew up. So it is a process of like, you're really going to have to lean into it because you will burn yourself out you'll get rigid, you'll get hateful. If you feel these feelings that weren't met when you were a kid, you will not you will not survive in this work. And we need you we need every single person to start doing, doing feeling something doing this from places of love and trusting. It is an act of love. And I don't know why really is baffling to me, like I don't know, as a self described hater, for much of my life. And being very curious about that, that like why do I waste all this time on hating people and othering people like where do I get that from? You know, but it's like, that icky feeling that yeah, I've discovered like, I'm like, Oh, love is so gross. You know, it's so gross to a Caribbean community a lot off people people are gonna that

Alison Cebulla 1:18:34
was your adaptation. That was an adaptation. It's

Anne Sherry 1:18:37
not the it love is not the EQ it's the fear of loving, isn't it? So love is I promise you move through the EQ. Try to you just gonna have to trust it that people don't want to dominate us. I mean, that's what's actually happening. So to be in community, and not have it hierarchical, like we are the committee, right. Rob Bell said that he has a whole episode on that. That like this whole thing that we're like, somebody's got to do something. We don't know who's gonna do something you know who's gonna do and he's like, You You're the committee. There's no committee. There's no committee, but you you were so thoughts on it. Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 1:19:25
Thank you for inviting Connie. She's such a gift. Holy crap.

Anne Sherry 1:19:29
Total gift y'all y'all saw get on that care. Creation Care Alliance. Okay, creation Care Alliance. Yeah. The pandemic has made it easy for us to zoom with each other. So you can attend all kinds of stuff, but don't do too much.

Alison Cebulla 1:19:46
I know. I gotta go out in nature, like immediately. Yeah,

Anne Sherry 1:19:51
I'm definitely going out in nature tonight, for sure. So everybody do that. All right. All

Alison Cebulla 1:19:57
right. Love you and laugh. Yeah. Good bye

thank you so much for listening the latchkey urge friends. You can find show notes for this episode at latchkey urchins.com Thank you so much for sharing this episode with whoever you think would enjoy it. It really does make a difference to us. Thank you for following us on social media we have an Instagram latchkey ergens and thank you so much. The song at the opening and closing credits is one quad is lonely by Proxima parada.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Previous

Episode 5: Psychedelic Assisted Therapy—with guest Heather Smith
Next

Episode 3: Acknowledging Our Privilege—with guest Dr. Alex Cho