Episode 7: Intentional Community—with guests Emelia Loomis and Ian Nicholson

Episode Notes
Written By

At the start of the pandemic, Alison started a little social project with her friends Emelia and Ian. They referred to it as their "cult" and it was a way to stay socially engaged and active during the stressful early pandemic. Ian is an active member and facilitator of Illuman men's groups and Emelia was a co-founder of the Merchants of Reality artist collective in San Francisco. They talk about the what, why, and how of intentional community building. 

00:00 Intro - Alison and Anne catch up

This includes discussion about the meltdowns in Target, patriarchy, holding space for feelings, jam bands,  running for mental health, suicidal ideation, social health, MMIW and historical trauma, and wealth hoarding. 

29:21 Interview with Emelia and Ian

Intentional communities, drum circles (and how weird we feel about them), getting a late start in life, finding your true vocation in your 30s, childlike play, getting stoned and watching ancient aliens.

Release Tuesday, October 19, 2021.

Music is: "One Cloud is Lonely" by Proxima Parada.
Audio mastering is by: Josh Collins.

References/Resources:

References/Resources Interview:

Show and Tell:

Ian's sea urchin

Ian's drum

Guest Bios:

Ian Nicholson has been doing men’s work for over ten years. He is a member of Illuman, an organization devoted to men seeking to deepen their spiritual lives, and is on the board of their Southern California chapter. He is the lead teacher of the Engineering Academy at Hueneme High School in Oxnard, CA. As an ENFJ and 8 on the enneagram, his focus is on people and the planet.
Illuman.org

Emelia Loomis is an electrician apprentice and artist based in Arroyo Grande, California. She was a co-founder of Merchants of Reality, an art gallery in SF, which was open from 20111 to 2017 in SOMA.

You can see her artwork on Instagram: @milliloo.

Transcript

Alison Cebulla 0:05
Welcome to latch key Urchins

Anne Sherry 0:12
something is developing there with how we introduce ourselves. I don't know if we've settled on it quite yet, but no, I have the add friends you friends part. Yeah, I wanted more. I want more friends. Do I?

Alison Cebulla 0:25
I know you don't want any more friends. And you like to pretend like you're some sort of like introvert just sitting at home like rage like yeah, no come over my bridge

Anne Sherry 0:37
curmudgeonly,

Alison Cebulla 0:39
you're not. I know. Popular every time you post our podcasts on your Facebook, you get like 60 likes and fucking 20 comments.

Anne Sherry 0:47
No idea. It is hilarious a part of me that I don't know. That is just blended with this Do I belong piece? And I don't know. I she still is like, No, you're not really they just feel sorry for you. Or? I don't know. I don't I don't believe her. But I've just said I've just noticed this part that comes up. It's like, oh, he Paul connecting like, oh, yeah, yeah. So

Alison Cebulla 1:16
yeah, yes, I do. I mean, you and I share. And I think this is why we get along so well and always have because one of our guests was asking like how do you and and know each other and he was like, It's a weird fucking story. A weird story. Like, we didn't

Anne Sherry 1:35
need anything from each other. I think that was like, that was clear and a lot of ways. Like I was like, Oh, I could get down with this girl. She's like, totally suffering and doing it alone. I'm suffering and doing it alone. Yeah, and we just move in the same house together and gonna connect. It's true

Alison Cebulla 1:51
to each other every so often. And it was just perfect. It was just perfect. Neither of us was needy.

Anne Sherry 2:00
It's like getting up to all kinds of questionable shit. And I was like, Yeah, I guess that's okay. Like, am I supposed to, like have an opinion and be like, No, that's dangerous. Don't do that. You could get hurt. You don't do that though.

Alison Cebulla 2:15
Let's go. Let's do a whole episode on that. We went through a traumatic time period. Let's, I'm just gonna put that to the side for now. We're gonna come back. Okay. So how have you been this week?

Anne Sherry 2:30
Oh, this has been a pretty good week. I was off the week before in Colorado, you landed here sunk into a deep, something around the patriarchy. I don't know why I really

Alison Cebulla 2:45
want to go there with you on this because I have been reading the creation of the patriarchy by Gerda Lerner, which is like such a fundamental tax that I was like, Wait, how? Why was this not on my radar? And I've been really digging into that.

Anne Sherry 2:59
And there's a book I'm almost afraid to read but it's been suggested to me so many times. Patriarchy, Stress Disorder syndrome, something PTSD, but it's like patriarchy traumatic stress disorder. Yeah, and it's so weird. Why, you know, like now I know about this. I did a couple of women's studies classes and yeah, the 80s that university Colorado and I was kind of like, a bunch of whiners. You know, I like was fully because of our internet completely. And I think it's coming one is I'm hitting menopause. So I have some irritability and is never is patriarchy, or is this menopause irritability?

Alison Cebulla 3:42
Has that always, ever? Right?

Anne Sherry 3:45
A going shot. I was a target like and just like walking by the men's section. With three, maybe three choices of underwear, you know, oh, the underwear thing don't even Yeah, like tighty whities or some boxers or something else, you know, that's it. And then you go to the women's section is fucking torture chamber. You know, it's like, yeah, wish your boobs down. Make them bigger. Slim that shit up.

Alison Cebulla 4:14
Your ass cheeks?

Anne Sherry 4:17
Like, yeah, so not

Alison Cebulla 4:19
allowed to have panty lines. It's like, No, I actually want to see your panty lines. Like, I want to know that you're wearing underwear. Like it's super weird that we have this thing where we're like, no one can tell. Please. No one could tell I have underwear on.

Anne Sherry 4:30
Yeah, yeah. So I'm, there was something else around it too, that I was just like, My poor husband. Just He's so good. He's so trade. Oh, that sounds hard. Oh, and just sort of fired. I could never know what that feels like. But, I mean, literally, he's like, wow, you know, he is sort of like, I never we're both swimming again. Right? So he's got to his swimming muscle. Whatever, you know, doing two hundreds on the Sun have been something and I mean, my swimming is fundamentally changed. Like my body has changed. My muscles aren't don't just like snap back into place. I don't think it ever will I had to get you know, and I have to they probably won't work. Well or this is how you swim now like this is okay. It is right there to be like, this is fine. This feels good. But you know, it's kind of like, fuck, like, what is this thing that I don't the whole thing with women like even back to women sort of not, you know, you're having a girl and there's just sort of a tiny little bit like, Oh,

Alison Cebulla 5:36
yeah. Oh, salutely That's the thing. Yes. So

Anne Sherry 5:39
anyways, I fell into a deep hole with that I was like I was possessed. And I'm really grateful for that. Because I can get the sense of like, it's fine. It's fine. Just do your best. It's almost like some ancestors were like, No, fuck that shit. You need to remember, we still got work to do. Here we go. Still got work to do in so many places. But yeah, so it kind of felt good. But it was also really hard. And it was a very Yeah, so I appreciate all of that. And the ability to kind of be with it and know that it's sort of going to, like, rule settle down if I'm actually with it. Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 6:16
Well, and it's like, I'm, I'm like, coming back to this thing that I said I wanted to work on of like, actually sitting with the feelings and being like, oh, like, did you feel insecure? Right? Or I'm trying to think like, because normally what I would just say is like, Oh, that's great. Now let me tell story about me. Yeah, and what I really like my best self could do is to say, like, what was coming up for you? Like, were you feeling like angry about the patriarchy? Like, feeling insecure about your body? Were you feeling like, sad that you just can't swim as well? And like, how much richer? Yeah, like our relationship and our conversation, and this moment could be if I just like, sit with those feelings and hold those instead of like, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, blah, blah, blah. So I'm like, I want to do

Anne Sherry 7:07
that was it really, and I know, I know this from growing up how I grew up, like it's, it's don't do feelings, you know? So if I if I start to get that brittleness, and that intensity, and I fucking hate everything, and everything's wrong, I'm like, There's feelings that want to be felt, and I sort of have to just kind of and really being able to ask for help, like, Tom, you gotta, you gotta hear this or but because what you do is you just hold up and you're just like, I'm just gonna do this by myself. Nope. I

Alison Cebulla 7:38
feel we feel shamed. We were trained to feel ashamed to have feelings. I mean, oftentimes, way back

Anne Sherry 7:45
before our parents I

Alison Cebulla 7:46
ran away with like, on this kick of

Anne Sherry 7:48
like, this is generational. This was handed to us to just like, suck it up. Don't tell anybody nobody wants to hear it. I know my mother grew up that way. I know my father grew up that way you

Alison Cebulla 8:00
ever read to give her read Facebook comments? And I'm addicted. I'm like actually addicted and I need to stop because the problem with Facebook comments is that I would never know what was in some random person in Louisiana or North Dakota I would never know what's on their mind if it weren't for social media comments like I would never use them in real life I would never hear their opinions right it's not good to know because we don't share any and I don't want to know I just don't buy this this stuff this stuff around people are lazy people don't work hard enough just suck it up at you're a snowflake is all over just the rampant feeling of any comment section on the on the interwebs that makes me so sad. Like the the internalized hatred that people have for themselves that they really really think that that this is what they actually believe about about dear dear, dear human beings,

Anne Sherry 8:57
they like really know the truth. Yes, yeah. It breaks my heart. Well, and that is white supremacy culture. What are patriarchy are all these legacies. It is like everybody stayed disconnected. Everybody stay mad at everybody. This is why I'm this new book, United States of grace by Lindsey Duncan. I am really enjoying it's a memoir. He's also got a podcast about I think it's a blackberry jam. It's about he's a fish fan. He and this other African American women are friends and they're both huge fish fans, and they feel like there are not many black people in at Fish shows but they're, I mean, some of the titles for this. It's called Black Berry jams. It felt like to him it was one I mean, he was homeless at 13. And he was like, taken in by some dead heads or whatever. And he was like they were family, you know, and just the culture. One of them is like counterculture. Does It's just black liberation and he said that whatever's going on at jam bands shows and you know they call it out it's like some wealthy white people there for sure. But there's a for sure something that fish and the other jam bands and probably the Grateful Dead or I used

Alison Cebulla 10:15
close. Yeah, sound tribe Sector Nine that was the jam band that I was into I saw them first of Nashville back in 2006. And I'm renewing almost 10 times. Yeah.

Anne Sherry 10:25
Oh my gosh, yeah. Just while he's in there talking about just the the level of community the level of freedom, the level of dancing together, that we just don't I don't know if we have that in a lot of American environments. Yeah, and there's substances but he's in recovery, his memoir, you have to I'm gonna listen to get up. Like you said I wasn't ready. Yeah. Two quick quotes from that, that I feel like relate to what we're doing here is, one was my family didn't happen in a vacuum. But I think but I think a life of grace and forgiveness comes from unearthing unearthing the past and trying to understand the generational train have a chain of events that set your own life and story in motion. So it just gives it like, there is a reason to kind of look at your past. And, and just where is it in the place this like chain of history. The other one was, we're more informed by the most traumatic period of our lives than the favorable. And that kind of is how trauma works. We are etched you know, there is one story

Alison Cebulla 11:42
that your good memories are like you're writing them and say on a way to take them away I cringe memories are just

Anne Sherry 11:50
stole that's trauma. That's just how the brain works like Bessel Vander Kolk. And all those, all those guests talk about it, you know that there's one story really, and we just and so I do want to watch you know, I watch now that you and I are talking about this a lot. I'm like, I can feel that that part of me that's like, No, you weren't parented and you're fucked forever. You know, like, it's fine. Just keep trying go to the workshops, blah, blah, blah, it always comes back to this, like, really sad, lonely place, like, you know, so these parts are like, just give up and I but it's been helpful to say, Okay, well, it may not this idea that we're fixing ourselves. It's not that it's like learning how to build more capacity to be with when you're lost, like, what do you do when you're lost? goddang you got to tell somebody, you got to tell somebody who said, dark when you're not lost if no one's looking for you like Alison.

Alison Cebulla 12:51
Amelia, so Amelia sent that one to me. And we're gonna have her on today. So yeah, she was listening to our podcast, and I got to hang out, hang out with her last weekend and with another friend and she said, your podcast just made me realize that I'm a latchkey kid. I didn't know. I mean, she's like, I have a key. We didn't have a key to the door. But you that's what we were, you know? Right, right. Oh, hey, we may we help all of the neglected and abandoned children find their tribe, or the key.

Anne Sherry 13:31
Something there? How are you doing? I feel like I just talked all about how I'm doing. How are you doing? Alice?

Alison Cebulla 13:39
Thanks for asking. So, this week, I have been feeling a lot better. Since the pandemic started. There's been a lot of ups and downs, but it's been a lot of that languishing like mostly, you know, a feeling like what is life? Are we to destroy the world with global warming? Like why are so many people anti vaxxers? Like, why do I hate everyone? What is why like, even like working from home, I'm i is like, just like, I never leave and I'm just like, I picked a race to, to sign up for and train for so I have a race coming up. So I've been actually running a shit ton. And so that is really helping because one thing that I am always very honest about is that I have major depressive disorder. And what that looks like is that I get suicidal ideation, which is not it's not that bad. It's just some thoughts come in, you know, I mean, it's, I can manage it, and I feel okay with it. But when I'm running, and I'm running a lot, those thoughts go, I don't see them. So I haven't seen any of those thoughts since I started this massive training program. So, you know, running 20 miles a week. It's like, the rowing, you know, and it's just like, I feel good,

Anne Sherry 14:53
dude, I want this to be a lot more complicated, but almost 100% of the time If I move my body, things shift, that's exactly why I go on a walk, I go swimming. I really I have parts that are like, no, no, you're just, you're just gonna make us fall asleep. And we'll be back. But that's like so it really is this negotiation. Like, just try it, just try it move your body and I don't want to be like when you are in a major depressive episode, don't don't walk up to anybody, you know, don't be like, Hey, I was listening this podcast and and said, if you move your body or

Alison Cebulla 15:32
describe to that person, now prescribing here, yeah, we're not prescribing, I just am hoping. I mean, for me, what I've noticed is the more honest I am about that suicidal ideation stuff, the more people are like, Thank you for saying that I thought I was alone. And that's the only reason I bring it up. i Please exercise, I'm not saying that that's going to work for everybody. It's just, it's working for me at this moment, and it's really liking it. Another thing that I'm doing that's really helping because I just had this epiphany that things are not gonna go back to normal. This is how they are now. I was listening to an epidemiologist say, we need to come up with a five year plan because COVID is not going anywhere. And okay, so I was like, Okay, I gotta I gotta figure out how to be normal now, you know, so I made, I've made more plans to be social, because I realized that my social health was like, just non existent. So that's why, you know, I actually just did the two hour drive to Santa Barbara to go meet up with Alex, who was our guests.

Anne Sherry 16:29
I'm so jealous.

Alison Cebulla 16:34
Yeah, I was fine. He is just wonderful. And, um, and it was so funny, too, because this year has been such a shit show. And so I was like, okay, but even though it's a shit show, I'm going to put in the effort. I'm just going to do it. I'm going to put a podcast on a drive down to Santa Barbara. I'm gonna see my friends I'm gonna socialize and and then the one on one is like, on fucking fire.

Anne Sherry 16:59
I like heard that out in VR or something. And I just like I had, you know, of course, I didn't know till later. And then you said you were part of that. And I was like, oh, that's that's really sucks for them out there. And then I'm like, yeah, there

Alison Cebulla 17:11
was this part of me because because we have this back highway the 154 That's kind of treacherous, actually. So driving at night, I don't like doing it. But I was like, oh, I'll just take the 154 Don't worry about it. Uh, and I there was this guilt part of me. That was like you. Some people need to be driving and you're just doing this for fun. And you don't deserve to be a part of that traffic and make more traffic for everyone else. And you need to be a better citizen and stay home and go when the one on one reopens?

Anne Sherry 17:38
You can't win. Who's that? Who's that part? Okay, so this is something to that I've been trying to. I don't even I don't know how to, not succinctly but this this idea, the more than I'm seeing us doing sort of equity work, and just the hard work of, Oh, what is the shitshow that we're in? He says it what's his name in the book, Lenny Duncan. But just how do we help? He's saying I'm almost afraid to write this memoir because I fear that I'm going to be judged because I'm not I'm not saying enough horrible stuff, or or I'm not, but he has a deep belief that we like America and its institutions are fucked. But the people are amazing. Like the people are amazing in America. And I get really hear you saying with the but it's like what's been laid on top of it, like so we can actually connect? So the people that are like, Oh, you fucking lazy, blah, blah, blah, you know, it's like, well, who what part of them is saying that are really believes that because it doesn't feel good to judge in that way. I mean, I'm a judging motherfucker. And I know, that is a part of me that's like scared to connect or scared to feel love or consider the past or it's something that's me that's unhealed, that I'm like, projecting on to somebody else. But it's this thing of being able to like, enjoy the beauty and have pleasure and be joyful. But somehow we're like, but then you're not looking at the really yucky stuff. You're taking your eye off the ball or something. What's that? I have to say that this What better structure to keep us oppressed? And to say, Oh, if you're like, I don't know what that is, like, if you're having some fun, like, oh, you need to, you need to simmer that down. Something bad's gonna happen. There's some like,

Alison Cebulla 19:33
grief coming up. Yeah, I do think that as a child, that my excitement was very often punished. Yeah, and in very small ways. I'm not saying that anyone was overtly saying like, how do I make my child my cute sweet child suffer, but I think it was passed down. So this is the control piece and you know, my dad grew up Catholic. So there's a lot of shame and guilt in the And so there you've said everything. Yes. And so, um, if I started to be like, embodied or present or in the moment and so this is like gonna make me cry so excited and joyful about something someone in my family would come to me, Oh, you think you're gonna have fun with that? Well, you're stupid and let your you don't get to have the kind of ice cream that you want or, you know, whatever, you're enjoying this, well, you're stupid for liking this TV show you need to go outside and play more. You know, it's just like any any kind of enjoyment.

Anne Sherry 20:33
That's that generational burden. Like I guarantee you what's being said is like, How dare you enjoy your body? Because your parents no doubt, no one taught them. Right? Like, and it just keeps, like, if you follow these lineages, I mean, then it goes to just places of, we're just a disembodied people, you know. And

Alison Cebulla 20:57
then so that's the guilt and shame part is definitely like my dad's side of the family. So some of these people were like, extended have a giant, giant, giant Catholic extended family. So but the mom's side is like a very different trauma with like alcoholism and sexual abuse and all that. So that was much more about if you're embodied, someone is going to hurt you. In a very bad way.

Anne Sherry 21:22
Right? Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah. I mean, think like if alcoholism and sexual I mean, the sexual trauma, no doubt about alcoholism. It's like chicken and egg like when basically we gotta check out check the fuck out. Because if you stay embodied, and then people are hurting you. It's a defense mechanism. That's just generations old. But we can. This is why we do this work. This is why we're talking about it. We're coming to now more than ever coming to healing modalities, the psychedelic assisted therapy, the trauma type work, trauma informed work, trauma informed work was not good. Didn't do therapy that way, for a long time. There's a lot of

Alison Cebulla 22:03
topics who don't know what trauma is.

Anne Sherry 22:08
I don't know how you don't know at this point, actually. So

Alison Cebulla 22:12
there's some people who cognitively know what trauma is, but they haven't done their own trauma work. So they don't they have in a body that the healing they can do about it. But you're like, This isn't healing me?

Anne Sherry 22:23
Yeah, yeah. And I sure I do that with my own stuff. I do. You know, talking about all this stuff isn't actually the work often so.

Alison Cebulla 22:32
Right. But I also a big thing that happened this week. For me that was really unexpectedly triggering, was that on Tuesday, we did an event for my for my day job at pieces connection, where we hosted a woman who is an expert on Well, unfortunately, because of her lived experience as an indigenous person, Arapaho from Wyoming talks about the missing and murdered indigenous women response to Gabby Petit doe. And my grandfather grew up on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. And this is the kind of the alcoholic grandfather who was abandoned by his real parents and raised by his aunt who had married a Shoshone man. So he grew up in a Native American, you know, indigenous community. And I'm just was like, unexpectedly, unexpectedly triggering to think about maybe like, what his the types, the types of travesties against humanity, that he inherited during his upbringing on this reservation that impacted different generations in my family.

Anne Sherry 23:46
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, that the cultural pieces are on some level, it's like this. It's like, there is that personal work, but it is sort of like this the generational chain of events that what you're here, you know, and it's sometimes I think it can feel like, Oh, this is too big. It's just too much trauma. It's just to set in stone what I felt that's, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I what I'm seeing is good trauma work. Especially, you know, I'm always gonna plug ifs because I live and breathe it, but it addresses what's called Legacy burdens, and they are working and there are ways to kind of be with and and unburden you know, the legacy of patriarchy, the legacy of racism, the legacy of capitalism, I guess, colonialism, colonialism, and it's it's, it's tough work, but they're doing it in communities. They just had the IFS conference and there were so many presentations on this very type of awesome addressing so ifs has Yeah, bringing yeah so much. It because it's not just oh, here's this cool Therapy modality and just heal personally it's saying no, no, no, no, we can heal communally. We can find ways that we're gonna find spaces to be with each other and not get caught in the like. I don't know, like, No, we can't be together because there's just too much pain. You'll never understand me, you know, totally

Alison Cebulla 25:19
willing to bring this around to the beginning of of our introvert, you know, talk today and the people that grew up the patriarchy. Yes, the book that I'm reading about the origins of the patriarchy in which she is studying, actually, the first known civilization of Mesopotamia. So she said that the patriarchy actually predates some of these other things like settler colonialism or like the land ownership, because she said that owning a woman or owning the child was actually the first form of ownership. So patriarchy is the oldest system of oppression and civilization. I didn't realize,

Anne Sherry 25:57
Oh, wow. Well, and what is this ability to own? I mean, isn't that sort of like, elite? What? Is that the elite class or?

Alison Cebulla 26:08
Yeah, did you just have,

Anne Sherry 26:09
like, have so much money or something? I mean, what is that? Like? Yeah, hoarding these hoarding. I was just talking with Connie, who was a previous guest with the Eco grief and she's studying this just those systems of oppression and the Hoard. Well, that hoarding disorder, right how our DSM is glad to diagnose people with newspapers, floor to ceiling, but they don't turn the lens on billionaires like who the fuck like hoarding billions of dollars is a disorder that morning, anything, Jeff Bezos, all those motherfuckers needing cold treatment hoarding? Yeah. And I think I talked about my chocolate paradox. And one of the episodes you did you did, yeah, yeah. Any of us, it's gonna happen. Like, that's why we need community to hold us accountable and say, oh, you know what Connie had said, sort of like, gosh, if you're actually connected, wouldn't you wouldn't like and I can see the eyes of somebody that needs something, you know, you don't? Like you wouldn't, it just holds you accountable. Because I think maybe biologically, we're just not that good.

Alison Cebulla 27:26
Segue. So we're gonna be sharing an interview with you today about intentional community. which always makes us want to barf a little bit.

Anne Sherry 27:39
That's triggered by intentional community, I just come up with like, I don't know, flute playing and drums and sharing meals. And why is that not the best thing I've ever heard and like sharing, but I'm just like it like, I get a visceral cringe. So that is something to study. That's not normal. So Right.

Alison Cebulla 28:05
Yeah, um, so, yeah, we have an interview with Amelia Loomis, and Ian Nicholson, who are two of my best friends. And we will be talking about the intentional community that we started at the start of the pandemic, to make sure that we weren't gonna go through it alone, which was such a lifesaver. And so we call it our cult we call Aladdin and we call it the 805 mashup, because we all live here in the 805 area code of California and, and so I don't think that this would have happened if it weren't for them. They're both people who who are very intentional about building community and their lives. It's something that for them somehow they're it feels more natural to them, or, you know, well, we'll hear but they must be

Anne Sherry 28:58
they must be a friend. I'd love to hear how they grew up. Yeah. Okay. All right. Today, what I got to do with a cloud

Ian Nicholson 29:20
recording in progress in the promo,

Alison Cebulla 29:27
yes, absolutely. Perfect. So welcome in and welcome, Amelia. We're here today with Ian Nicholson, Amelia Loomis, and thanks so much for joining latchkey rich and some friends today to talk about intentional community.

Ian Nicholson 29:44
I have an urgent here.

Alison Cebulla 29:46
Oh, and that brings stuff up for you. Oh,

Anne Sherry 29:51
literally an urchin? Yeah, he's got a beautiful Yes, just the word like the more that you say it. It's it's finger nails on a chalk book shop board and I am so curious. Like, I don't know exactly what that is. But just like being in community, just that term makes me especially intentional. What the fuck is intentional, like? We intended? I don't know, I'd love to hear more about that. So we'll see. I'm measuring like how cringy that statement is right now. It's like got it at like, 100. So I'm gonna, just as we go, I'm gonna Yeah, I've got a graph here.

Alison Cebulla 30:33
Perfect. So the reason I invited my dear friends, Amelia and Ian on today was because these are two friends of mine who are so amazing at starting and keeping intentional communities. So Amelia was a founder of an artist collective in San Francisco called merchants of reality for many years, which was such an impressive endeavor. It was, you know, artists. Can I say living and working together? It's not right. Yeah. doing art gallery shows, producing amazing work. And then Ian has been working with and facilitating men's groups for a number of years, also an active for for many years, and his church community. And so I really take inspiration from these two friends of mine who I've known my entire adult life. And so, last year, the pandemic had started. And the three of us found ourselves sitting around a table and enjoying a glass of wine. And we just decided we didn't want to be miserable, even though things seem to be falling down around us. So we started what we call the Colts.

Anne Sherry 31:58
And I can get behind.

Alison Cebulla 32:03
And so maybe I'll have a million add on we are what was our cult about a why did we start that?

Emelia Loomis 32:11
So I think part of it for me was having accountability partners for adventure and fun. Because it's so easy to talk yourself out of doing the fun in order to do the capitalist thing or, you know, like really be efficient with your time. And so it was it also had that feeling of creating like a childhood summer, like the ideal childhood summer, you know, where you just went and you did all the fun things and all the trips and adventures while being in a total shit show of a world. It was that

Anne Sherry 32:53
I love that. And so well.

Ian Nicholson 32:56
I remember the ground rules. It was was it June of 2020, when we first met was in Los Los Olivos. Right. Yes, yes. I think the agreement was that we were going to do a lot of activities within the area code because we're all living in 805. Yes. Because, you know, airline travel was kind of hard to do. Yeah. And large emphasis is on outdoor activities. And it was gonna be a small group. And that's how we got the name. It'll five mashup. Yes, yeah. of it.

Alison Cebulla 33:27
And what I loved was like, there was this mutual commitment, like we were all all in. I feel like that just doesn't happen that often. Where we, we all were like, We're gonna keep showing up for each other. And I'm, I want to say especially like, thank you to Ian, because you really brought the feely touchy feely shit and man did. So good.

Emelia Loomis 33:57
I just like poking at it.

Anne Sherry 34:00
What was that? What were some of

Ian Nicholson 34:02
the? Here's the thing, like, I can't do that with everyone. But with you to Amelia and Alison, like, I can do that. Like, there's not everyone, not all my friends. Can I? Can I ask those probing questions? It's something my grandmother used to say, like resilient people. ask probing questions and give honest answers. And so,

Alison Cebulla 34:23
um, well, that's true. And and so maybe you could share a little bit because I know that you learn a lot of these texts meet techniques from your men's groups. So maybe you could share a little bit about what those have been about.

Ian Nicholson 34:37
Yeah, so I'm in a men's group called illumine. And if you're the webpage, the mission says that it's to to help men seeking to deepen their spiritual lives. But I think the basic premise is that for the most part, men do not talk about what's going on in their lives with other men, especially And the purpose of illuminate it's primarily built around small group sharing, which we call counsel. And the idea is that we have prompts. And we create a place in a setting where you can talk about things that are actually going on and actually important. She could say that's an intentional community.

Anne Sherry 35:23
I have intentional communities. I have I have my goddess group, I have you, Alice. And I have these other ones. It's so curious that there's some narrative. And every time I'm in those, I will say to the women I'm in with, like, what a men do, how are they surviving, if they don't have a place where like, they can go and be vulnerable. And for myself, it took a good two years, I'm in a group, but we've been therapists, we've been getting together for 15, almost 15 years now, twice a year. But for the first two years, I wanted to quit it, like it took that long to get comfortable enough to say, Oh, these women aren't going to hurt me, or they're not going to shame me or so. Just everything that goes into what's so hard about showing up in a group is, I think, in this culture, in particular, saying Don't Don't be in groups that are authentic, or real.

Alison Cebulla 36:23
Oh, I was in a group for a little coaching circle. And I found myself constantly this was maybe six or seven years ago, something like that. I found myself feeling like I was on the outside looking in. And really judging each member as they would show up and share I'd be like, oh, this person is so insane. Because they're doing this and they you know, they're really rambling and can't stop. And they're, this person just sucks because they don't have any boundaries. Like any criticism that you could come up with, like was going through my head. And I was like, sitting like, very smugly, like, outside of the group. And I really, luckily, because it was like this coaching thing where we were having to work on our shit like caught myself, like, why am I why do I feel like I'm on the outside of this group? Turns out, that's one of the key pieces, the key signs that you may have had childhood emotional neglect as a child, is that you feel like an outsider looking in, always, in every relationship. And I finally had to do that work of like, No, you can't just sit back and judge people, you have to get in there, because you're also a human, and you need to get in there and show your true self and belong and fight for that belonging. And, and you know, and you know, that

Emelia Loomis 37:43
it's so true. I feel like that was a big part. In starting merchants of reality was kind of in in childhood, I really did feel like an outsider a lot in my family. My parents divorced when I was seven, and we would do a week with our mom, and then a week with our dad. And at my dad's house, it was all it was all guys like it was my two brothers, my dad and then I was the youngest. And I was the only female ever. And so like they, they all kind of got on the same page. And I always felt like just a little bit outside of that, like, why can't I be okay with this? And so, I think intentional, belonging intentional, you know, groups, it really does kind of draw off that, like, if you didn't feel like you fit into the family unit, you know, in the way that we were all led to believe that, you know, our family should just completely accept us and be this unit.

Anne Sherry 38:46
Yeah. I mean, that's sort of our template I would imagine. Like, that's our first group. Yeah. That reminds

Emelia Loomis 38:57
my dog. Yes. And then everyone else yeah.

Anne Sherry 39:01
Yes, Ian.

Alison Cebulla 39:02
So yeah, so I want to ask you both. Like what how do you relate to the term latchkey? You know, how do you relate to street urchin? Or you know, for me it was I wasn't an urgent but I was a ragamuffin. And what was the emotional environment of of your childhoods? I'm million maybe you want to?

Emelia Loomis 39:25
Yeah, so my dad took a very, very hands off parenting style. There was just, I mean, if he was present, it was like, Oh, cool. There's that guy that we live with? Great. And, I mean, there was love, obviously, lots of love, but, um, but none of the basic needs were being kept up with. It was very much you guys had mentioned in a previous episode about bedtimes that that wasn't a thing. It was like Oh, I was always trying to stay up as late as my brothers would my older brothers and I was always so tired and I'm like, Come on, let's go to bed guys. And they're like, no, no. And so just exhausted all the time. And it was like I Yeah, meals were very much everyone fend for themselves. I made the probably not wise decision as a seven year old to become a vegetarian on a cattle ranch. So it was very,

Alison Cebulla 40:31
very God centric. Oh my gosh, outsider

Emelia Loomis 40:35
all the time. I was so hungry. Um, and yeah, there's there's a story of i One morning before school because it was everyone you know, was on their own for lunches and everything and, and so I picked tomatoes out of the garden to bring for my lunch. And a teacher saw my lunch at school. I was probably in like, maybe third or fourth grade and they were like, What is this and called my dad and he's like, What? She likes tomatoes. There's no problem

Ian Nicholson 41:14
you're the Lego queen. Yeah. Oh my god has a lycopene joke.

Alison Cebulla 41:22
What's the like? What's lycopene?

Ian Nicholson 41:24
Don't know? Oh, it's the it's the nutrient that's really in tomatoes. After works out that job. Okay, yeah.

Alison Cebulla 41:33
So, but so maybe because like you've you've shared with me. I mean, one thing that I love about you is like, is like you go to therapy. Like you show up. You do the healing. But it took like, it took a while right for you to be like, Oh, this was this was neglect. It took so long like he because he wasn't packing your lunch?

Emelia Loomis 41:53
Yeah, no, it tooks well, even I have a dear friend who I'm still friends with. We met in first grade. And we had opposite schedules when we were at our dad's house. And so when we were whoever was out there, moms would bring lunch and we would just share

Anne Sherry 42:08
Oh, my God. I love how.

Alison Cebulla 42:12
Yeah, you know, yeah, so Wow, you are so young.

Emelia Loomis 42:23
But yeah, it took a long time to see it as neglect, I saw it as Wow, he really believed that we were independent enough to raise ourselves and he really let us have a lot of freedom. And and I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't all bad by

Anne Sherry 42:38
any means. There's total gifts from that. That's

Alison Cebulla 42:42
one of the greatest gifts about your childhood Amelia, because there was a lot of freedom is that you're one of the most creative people that I know. And so part of this Artists Collective that you found it in San Francisco is really outside of the scope of anything that I would ever do. But to you I think it almost seemed like well, no one's gonna tell me no, you know, because no one ever did.

Emelia Loomis 43:03
I never thought of it like that. Yeah, that's

Anne Sherry 43:05
an awesome reframe. That for me, Allison.

Alison Cebulla 43:14
whose childhood traumatic childhood Can I reframe?

Emelia Loomis 43:23
It definitely created a sense of radical independence where like it is, it's a struggle for me to accept other people, either giving things up for me or helping me in any way. Like I've got that just like, hardcore independence built in.

Anne Sherry 43:40
I call it independence personality disorder. So yeah, perfect. Yeah. Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 43:47
So you're, what was the emotional environment of your childhood where you latchkey? Were you something else?

Ian Nicholson 43:55
So, um, I'd say that people were, are physically present but not emotionally present. And like, we were always provided for my siblings, and I, you know, financially physically, but so like, this is this is pretty telling, like, we summers, my, my brother and I, and my sister also, once she got older, we go to our grandparents in Tennessee for a couple of weeks. And it got to the point we would stop it. We would go to Space Camp, like the week before that, which was not far away in Alabama. Oh, in Huntsville, right? Yes, yeah. Yeah. So we also had family in Huntsville. So at space camp being there the first night, you know, this is your grade school at that time. You'd hear kids crying and you know, the counselor would come in because they miss home, they miss their parents, and I couldn't understand. Why would they miss home like why would they miss their parents? Something I talked about with my brother. Like we understand why these children missed home or miss their parents like For us, this was great. It's like some way somewhere news and we're exciting me to do fun things. Back on it later, it's like, what's actually kind of sad because like, there was no sense of rootedness. There was no sense of belonging. Yeah, at home because that comes from, like, comes from love. It creates that sense of place. And we didn't have

Anne Sherry 45:23
Yeah, I so resonate with that year when I went to University of Colorado. My mom drove me from Spartanburg, they were gonna put me on a plane in 1986. Like, I've never flown before. They're like, Oh, I don't know how to get you there. I was. Like, I've never been on a plane. And, you know, she drove me two days, I don't know what whatever it just was, what it was. And then I was like, by get out of here. You're just gonna like, like, it's first grade, you're just going to pull up drop me off. You know, that's it. And people were calling their parents and really missing home. I was like, Are you supposed to call them like, I see him I'll see him it. Parent. So resonate with that.

Alison Cebulla 46:10
Oh, that's so good. Yeah.

Ian Nicholson 46:13
You know, speaking of independence, yeah, that was it. It did leave me very independent to like, I remember. I was 12 years old, flew internationally and like I didn't think anything of it. And I think a lot of parents were like, I would never allow my child to do this. You know, this is too dangerous. And yeah, I was like, awesome. No,

Anne Sherry 46:30
yeah. No, I wish are I like kind of like regretting that our child is attached because I was we joined a pool and I'm like, I get to drop him off right at eight and then I get the day free and it's like no we don't do that anymore. Like I actually have to sit at the fucking pool all day with him attached child I'm like We'll fly you to Colorado to see your cousin's you miss them. He's like, no, no, don't do that. It's a burden, like being latchkey and then having attached children is like not a good fit so

Alison Cebulla 47:11
and so for, like, into adulthood, then a million and so Emelia, you know, you had merchants of reality? And Ian, you've had these these amazing men's groups? Was the was any of it hard? Or like did you have to learn how to do stuff? That's great.

Emelia Loomis 47:30
Especially for mine, just because it was also living in community and you have to consider everyone's feelings. was exhausted. I was like, oh, man, like, everyone was, there was someone always having just kind of like a mental break, like on a cycle. So like, not, there was never a moment where everyone was okay. I was like, Man, this takes a lot. But, yeah, like, where I'm more uncomfortable is just like, building the thing. Like, and if you know, I'm sure it comes from Yeah, just if we wanted a fort as kids, we found all the tools and all the wood and we went and we build a fort, you know? And so like that part of just like creative construction. And, and also, yeah, and, I mean, it was an interesting process, like it was definitely intended on some level to to be profitable, which never, it never was like. And I recognize that myself, like, I'm just a terrible capitalist. Like, I'm just so bad at it. I never, I never fit into that system. And so like it was, and so naturally, I sought out all the other people who don't fit into that system. And I'm like, Hey, you guys will do a thing. So there were definitely challenges like in Yeah, in the community living aspect for sure.

Ian Nicholson 49:15
I guess it's my turn then. Hmm. So I was actually thinking the first intentional communities I ended up in were 12 subgroups. And this is you know, when I started therapy in my early 20s, a therapist mentioned the word codependence and I did not know what that meant. So I went and looked it up. And I found there was a group called Codependents Anonymous. So I went to one of their meetings and then I found out there's a lot of people that went to a meeting called the adult children of alcoholics anonymous, and they took people from any background you didn't have to have anyone with a dysfunctional background, I went to them. But I think it really enabled me to belong like you know, I think if you come from a background where you don't have a great attachment like you need that he Old and for me, that was my godmother, you know, during my early and mid 20s. Like, I think she's the reason I have healthy are not going to say healthy attachments, but better attachments. So I feel really fortunate in that regard.

Alison Cebulla 50:17
And this was like a mentor that you had through church.

Emelia Loomis 50:22
Yeah, yeah. I'm wondering, too, like, just going back to childhood, like, did you guys do organize sports? Yes. I feel like that's an early childhood community kind of that's true. Yeah, that I completely missed out on.

Anne Sherry 50:38
I did that might be them saving grace.

Alison Cebulla 50:43
You did. So what did you do and

Anne Sherry 50:45
swim team and then volleyball, basketball. When you could join you can today, what we're noticing, like I walked onto the basketball team in eighth grade, you know, you didn't have to start as a three year old now kids are being put in these sports so early like August join basketball at seven and he's can barely drove. He doesn't have competitive spirit. He's like just handing people the ball. They're like fighting him for the ball. He's like, just take it. It's fine. Whatever, you know, so he's into swimming now. But yeah, we it was easier to just walk on to sports. It felt like in the 80s Maybe, but you got to already be really,

Alison Cebulla 51:27
really good. So interesting. And that brings up a lot of knowledge issues, you know, who has access to start? It's true, like Mozart playing the piano at three or like, yeah, harpsichord. Tiger Woods.

Anne Sherry 51:41
Yeah. Oh, you need to watch the Tiger Woods documentary. That's a super fun.

Alison Cebulla 51:45
Yeah, amazing. Rough. Yeah, yeah, I did play some sports. But I was never good enough to really like stick with and stay with a team that I could bond with, per se. Yeah. And did you do sports?

Ian Nicholson 52:01
Yeah. So my, my brothers, my younger brother 21. Singer paved the way with that. He he was the athletic one, he's still the athletic one. He started getting the track. And so my dad became a coach on the Youth Track Team. And so that became our family sport. In high school, you know, I did track and cross country, freshman, sophomore years, you can do that.

Alison Cebulla 52:28
This is such a solo car.

Ian Nicholson 52:32
There's a lot more I can say about

Anne Sherry 52:35
people who do say more who do

Ian Nicholson 52:37
well in running. I think they have a really good ability to block out emotional pain and physical pain, which I'm unwilling to do, which is why I don't run anymore.

Anne Sherry 52:53
away or run.

Alison Cebulla 52:56
viscerally disgusted when people ask me to run with them. People that come to our running club, do you want to go on a run together? I'm like, This is what I do to get away from all of you. Leave me alone to run with you. No, this is my break.

Yeah, it makes me feel so weird.

Ian Nicholson 53:21
My brother was faster than me. So I stopped doing junior year of high school, I stopped doing it. And then fortunately, I found speech and debate. And I had been doing mock trial. But then I found speech and debate. And like mock trial was a team sport. But Speech and Debate was solo. And so like, that became my thing. I was really good at it. And we traveled the competition. And if I hadn't found that I think high school would have been a lot tougher because there certainly hadn't found my thing. And so really halfway through my junior year, and then you know, I did track again one semester at the end, but I did to be social but even that I was I was still an outsider, like I was never part of any of the cliques. I think about the athletic activities I do today like there's there's no team sports, it's cycling or surfing.

Anne Sherry 54:14
I know. There's kickball, there's kick, there's all kinds of like meet up like I see volleyball and kickball. And I'm like, I'm gonna go do Yeah, adult leagues, and I drive by and I'm like, Oh, I think I have way more social anxiety than I've ever done.

Alison Cebulla 54:30
Dada is back in if you were a neglected child or have any shit. It's gonna come up PTSD Central. I went to one dodgeball thing.

Anne Sherry 54:40
I was the one hitting. I was very athletic. Terrible, Tom and I laugh because he's just now a and I'd love to like connect you and Tom because he is on the verge of going to his first men's group on Monday and he there was an email like, does anybody have a drum? And Tom was like to rent a drum

and we totally laughed because I was the kick I had. I just was tough or so I don't I was the like, I was very athletic. But I was the one who would pick the kickball teams. I mean, this is how say sadistic like the gym teacher would say, you know, pick out the strongest people and do the kickball teams. So I was that and Tom would have been like the last person I would have a little kickball Captain got together and made a baby. But he turns out

Alison Cebulla 55:44
like, yes. All right, yeah. Tell us. Tell us.

Anne Sherry 55:48
Tell us and we'll post these things. I will post a little video

Alison Cebulla 55:53
to Instagram.

Ian Nicholson 55:55
This is the drum that I bring to men's group. As you can see, it is very stylish with this leopard print. It was given to me by someone else in the men's group. He got it at Goodwill. My my I want to believe that it came out of a strip club before that.

Anne Sherry 56:11
Were in the cult land? Yes.

Ian Nicholson 56:13
Yeah. I can't be Mary Magdalene drum.

Alison Cebulla 56:17
Wait, can you? What does it sound like?

Ian Nicholson 56:20
Oh, okay. Yeah. So here's something every pretty much every group of white people, if you're drumming it's going to be some variation of four, four times 12123. Every, every men's group ever, you're gonna hear some variation of that tempo. Okay.

Alison Cebulla 56:40
So why don't you start give what's what's an intro? Give? Lead us in a thing?

Ian Nicholson 56:45
Oh, yeah, we just do this for 15 minutes prior to a meeting.

Anne Sherry 56:49
15 minutes of drumming? Yeah. People dancing. Are they moving their bodies? Are they pass the drum around or

Ian Nicholson 56:57
larger groups at larger events? Yeah, see that? At the council that I regularly go to? No, we just, you know, maybe five to 10 of us. We sit in a circle and we're drumming but you know, other people are changing rhythms. And yeah, you get some polyrhythms going actually the drum the group I go to like the drum pretty well. Not every group drums well, like we drum well.

Anne Sherry 57:20
Yeah. I'll tell Tom Do not be afraid that drums or your friend? Don't get you out of your head or something. Yeah, actually,

Ian Nicholson 57:29
really? You can bring any Russian instrument? Shaker or Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 57:36
Yeah, actually, I was I was eat it. Before we started the interview I was we were kind of joking about how we get kind of nauseated when we think about community and drum drum circles. But then you just did like a couple seconds of drumming. And I was like, Oh, that feels good. Like, yeah, like okay, I'm get I gotta I realized I'm like, I forgot to give Ian and Amelia the introductions the the wonderful introductions they deserve. So Amelia is an amazing badass woman, electrician paving the way for women everywhere to enter the trades. So thank you, and it is an amazing school teacher. And, um, and so yeah, and I wonder like, if you can speak to what you're noticing, you know, in your students. In terms of I guess I'm curious. I'm super curious around questions of like, how does the school system because we talk a lot about parents, but um, but I spent I probably spent like, just as much time around school teachers as a child as I did around parents. Yeah. What do you think about school systems and teaching in and classrooms and whether they foster community or individual learning or what did we call it independent? Discourse I

Anne Sherry 58:53
disorder? Yeah,

Ian Nicholson 58:57
I think education has changed in the last 2030 years since we were in grade school. Like I think there's much more emphasis now on group projects than there was when I was in school like I can which are

Alison Cebulla 59:10
like can we just all agree those SOC

Ian Nicholson 59:15
preview into reality? The pandemic is the is the worst group project I've ever been but yeah, I'd say there is more emphasis now on group projects because when these you know, you'll you'll run to things you would really work into like so and so is not carrying their load or you know, this group is not communicating with each other like you know, and like I realized this you know, the I did an icebreaker activity at the beginning of the year and that went well, but then I changed the seating chart after that and so I now had students working with each other that didn't really know each other and it took a couple of days them to, to start cooperating with each other.

Anne Sherry 59:59
What grade do you teach in a teacher

Ian Nicholson 1:00:01
all grades of high school I teach engineering collectives. And

Alison Cebulla 1:00:06
there's that space space camp Space Camp guy.

Ian Nicholson 1:00:15
And I never heard I mean, maybe it's because I was in never a teacher when I was a child. But, you know, now we talked about social emotional learning. And I wonder, like, was that even a term when, you know, when I was in grade school, but like, now that's it wasn't, you know, now let's consider that that's important. You know, like, it's important for them to talk to each other in unstructured time. You know, we didn't, that wasn't explicit, per se, growing up as a goal was

Emelia Loomis 1:00:45
tarnished. Usually, yeah, that's

Anne Sherry 1:00:48
a good point. That you get like, a you and unsatisfactory talks too much. And talks too much.

Alison Cebulla 1:00:58
Other kids? Yeah. Oh, I remember that. Yeah.

Anne Sherry 1:01:03
Yeah, schools kind of rough in that sort of light, or I don't know, like the group stuff. But just get in your seat face, like be a good student. And that's, you know, just those kids Excel or but then there's this whole other the troublemakers that are talking and, yeah.

Emelia Loomis 1:01:22
I never fit into that mold of school. It's interesting. I've been thinking about it recently. I don't know why it took me so long to realize this in myself, but

I tend, I tend to put myself in situations where I am very much the outsider in my life, okay, like, just over and over again. So a couple examples. High school, I was a foreign exchange student in France, right? Didn't really speak French was just completely 100% the outsider. Wow, like, so much. So. I mean, I lived in West Oakland in like, you know, early 2000s Definitely an outsider there. I just became an electrician, like, like, can I just have no, no, you're not ever gonna belong? You're gonna make sure.

Anne Sherry 1:02:21
Are you a four on the Enneagram per chance? I'm a sound

Alison Cebulla 1:02:27
just like you. I think I missed you. too. Actually, you got that reminded me of a thing that I thought of between that in the million I have talked about in many of our cult therapy sessions, which was this feeling of of because of our childhoods feeling like we were really catching up. So I didn't really find my stride until like, literally last year, you know, I mean, or like, a couple years ago, when I went back to school and got a grad degree and was like, oh, I want to work in public health. And this feels right for the first time ever in my adulthood. So mid 30s. And both of you, we've talked about how that was the case for all of us. And Ian, you've had you've kind of shared how a lot of your 20s you felt like you're going backwards?

Ian Nicholson 1:03:22
Oh, yeah. Well, you know, like going to Berkeley while you were there, too. And then, you know, having you know, people in the same dorm who were selling companies to Google's in their mid 20s. And, you know, people getting married and having children and establishing careers and buying houses and like, at at 25 Like, I was just so depressed and in bed and like, underemployed and working through so much. And there's a lot of hands Yeah. And yeah, I just thought like, these other people are going forward. And I'm going backwards, but you know, that's also I mean, I think it's also 111 of the younger members of the men's groups I go to because most men do not end up in men's groups to middle age or later because things start not working for them and it just happened that I did my midlife crisis a quarter life ahead of the curve now I feel like oh

Anne Sherry 1:04:34
another awesome reframe I love that. Same. Yeah, I imagine that is a hallmark of these emotionally. I mean, how do you know what you want to do if there isn't some sort of way to check into your body or your motion that feels good? That doesn't feel good? I mean, I got out of college I had never been I went to university Colorado never went to recall those things. career people or guidance counselor somebody didn't understand. Yeah, I didn't I like at the end of four or five years, I was like for credit, shy. You know, I was like, I think I've graduated. They're like, No, you're not. I'm like, Oh, I probably should have talked to someone. And then I was working. I was managing a coffee shop for like, $1,000 a month. I was like, and yeah, internships, and they're in their grad school. And I'm like, I thought this was kind of good, but I guess not, you know, so relatable. Yeah, but I got, I got my graduate, I became a therapist at four, I got my whatever thing at 40 My masters at 14.

Alison Cebulla 1:05:37
So I want to share that with every listener about cast of just like, you can start whenever you want. For real,

Emelia Loomis 1:05:43
I just got an associate's degree at 35.

Ian Nicholson 1:05:54
lectricity is magic, I don't even understand what it is

Alison Cebulla 1:05:57
you're doing. You're doing some hard talk and share and you pick such a good thing. I mean, that's, it's like maybe for you, you may feel like oh, I just got my associates that 35 But for the rest of us, we're reading all these articles and you know, Business Insider about, you know, every millennial should have picked electricity or electrician or plumber, and you fucking did it. So you're also ahead of the curve here.

Ian Nicholson 1:06:26
And your arms are so toned. wires. Mom is jealous.

Alison Cebulla 1:06:39
So, um, maybe like a final a final kind of question, or questions to, to consider as we wrap up, like, if people are thinking about wanting to be more involved in an intentional community, or if they want to start a little project, a little quilt project like we did, or a goddess circle or a men's group?

Anne Sherry 1:07:05
Like, how join one?

Alison Cebulla 1:07:07
Yeah, start one on one. Yeah. Um, do you have any advice or thoughts or things to? I don't know, do final thoughts.

Emelia Loomis 1:07:17
I honestly, I think a huge part of it is just saying yes. And showing up. Like, even if it's uncomfortable, even if you're like, I could get so much other stuff done today. Like, is this really important? Like, it comes down to just prioritizing, you know, showing up?

Alison Cebulla 1:07:36
Yeah, of like prioritizing the community and the social interactions of like, this is actually important.

Emelia Loomis 1:07:42
It is important, it feeds us emotionally. And I think we live in a really individualist society. And so there's not a lot of value put on those kinds of relationships, that you're not getting something either financial or, you know, stability wise out of. I mean, I would argue that emotional stability comes from these kinds of interactions, but there's, there's definitely a huge value in it. And it's so easy because of how we as a society approach time, it's so easy not to make time for that kind of thing.

Alison Cebulla 1:08:23
Yeah, what are we doing instead with our time? Yeah, bullshit.

Anne Sherry 1:08:28
Yeah. Tom was playing with like, idea of spending time or saving time like we we traveled the summer and we were in France and just say they just stretch out an afternoon at the cafe. And he's like, we're always saving time but for what four or five

Emelia Loomis 1:08:47
hour long dinner is amazing.

Anne Sherry 1:08:51
Ah, yeah, so Wow, yes. What do you say Ian for our men like to emotionally be together? Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 1:09:01
What do you got? What Yeah,

Ian Nicholson 1:09:03
well, it takes a couple of things first, it takes courage to make that first step to look for something and then yeah, then it takes finding the right spot like you have to find the right container where it is you know, safe and people are doing that inner work and you're creating something that's you know, greater than the individual parts and actually makes me think that like, I was looking for community once it really all my life, but in all the wrong places like joining a fraternity in college and then even as I was starting therapy,

Alison Cebulla 1:09:39
I just sorry, not to cut you off, but why was that the wrong place?

Ian Nicholson 1:09:45
Um, I would say a lot of hurt people, not knowing how much they were hurt and not really doing anything to heal that hurt like I followed a mutual friend of Alison and our and mine to into the attorney because that well If this guy is doing it, then it must be okay. Because, you know, I look up to him, and you know, he's a cool guy and

and it ended up not being a good experience for him. And, you know, even when I started therapy, I was looking for cute, like, you know, joining a young adult group at this

UU Church in Oakland, but like, there wasn't that intentionality of going deep. And it was all surface level stuff, like we're gonna go do activities together, like, but I think that's like the unsaid thing, like people come to the activities because they actually want real bonding and sharing. So I think that's what makes the men's group I'm part of a little different, because it's explicit. It's like, we have these prompts. And this is the material and this is what we're going over today. And without that structure, I think with especially man, you're not gonna go there, because there's gonna be surface level talk jokes, I don't know, sports, beer, whatever. Yeah, like even even in friends that I have, you know, close to my age, they may have had a deep conversation or two with and I would like to go to those places again, like, that's, you might not get that again, like it's very much seems like it's dependent on mood or setting or whatever. But you know, when you have a group and you have the purpose is like we are here and these are our prompts. And these are the questions we are going to ask ourselves and, and share on today that I think that's what you need. So

Alison Cebulla 1:11:29
what are some of the prompts?

Ian Nicholson 1:11:33
I can share with you the ones we have the last meeting.

Alison Cebulla 1:11:36
Yeah, I want to know I'm here

Anne Sherry 1:11:38
I'm here. Like, I think getting a little bit of insight intentional means we're actually going to connect and so I really now get like why my body

you and I might cry

Alison Cebulla 1:11:59
to you that for men. It's even harder. I mean, that's the thing is like I do feel like and you're saying oh I have those women are allowed to connect women are like you're allowed to have the goddess group, you're allowed to Cracow cry to a woman you're allowed to grab your best girlfriends and go to the bathroom at the bar, you know, and that's always allowed for us. But for men, it's like you're just going to talk about sports the whole time and never dig in there. And so um, yeah, yeah. And what's what was the prop for your last meeting I'm just dying to know

Ian Nicholson 1:12:31
the way we we have some material. And because the group was founded by am the Franciscan priest by the name of Richard Rohr, he often is the source of us stuff from very popular I'd say amongst liberal Christians. And so the, the written stuff was a couple paragraphs written by war on waiting. And so the prompts were, well, first, we start off with what I like to call the internal weather report, you know, like, what's, what's top of mind? Let's talk like that's changed since the last time you were in council. Oh, and by the way, we go from we go from drumming to 10 minutes of contemplation, because ideas like you got to settle in like that. So firstly, you do the internal weather report and then the next prompt was, what are you waiting and seeing for in your life right now? What are you waiting and seeing for in your life right now? Okay. The next prompt was what tension Are you holding? What are the opposing forces squirming here?

Anne Sherry 1:13:47
It is now moved one podcast and I'm loving that time and you're where you're aware of and heartaches.

Ian Nicholson 1:14:09
Last prompt was, is there something where instead of being correct, you can be connected?

Alison Cebulla 1:14:15
Oh,

Emelia Loomis 1:14:16
that's nice. Wow.

Alison Cebulla 1:14:20
That is lovely. Yeah, that's a great. And so how often does your group meet?

Ian Nicholson 1:14:26
Well, we meet once a month and we rotate. Whoever's, you know, hosting I'd like these, these prompts are from when I hosted at the end of September.

Anne Sherry 1:14:36
So it's got this sort of flat horizontal. Do you have a like a leader, person or, or me we have

Ian Nicholson 1:14:43
a couple of people that the organizers that like, maintain the email list and send out the reminders and we'll ask people to you know, lead,

Anne Sherry 1:14:55
and

Ian Nicholson 1:14:57
it's interesting. We actually just did last week we did like a big leap. You're portrayed to try and select the next leaders of the group at the Southern California level. And it was really interesting to see as a teacher, because you tend to get extroverts and outspoken people that usually end up in positions of leadership. And the way we did this process, you need to realize I leave a lot of talent on the bench in my class. There are introverts that want to be involved, but you know, they don't necessarily drop their elbows to get to the front of line. So

Alison Cebulla 1:15:27
I was really thinking about that, in terms of our podcast, actually, as I was thinking about all the wonderful people that we want to talk to on this podcast is that I could feel myself going, who's gonna be easy to talk to. And I was like, shoot, that's really going to limit who we invite on here is people who like to talk or it's easy for them to talk. I don't, those aren't the only people that I want to like, share, you know, what their journey has been. But those are gonna be the ones that gravitate. And those are going to be the ones that make it feel like, you know, when you when you leave a conversation, and you're just like, Oh, that was that felt SO, SO fun and effortless. And I think that a lot of podcasts do that. It's been on my mind lately, where they invite the person who wants to share their platform or wants to share who they are or wants to, like, be at the top have some sort of social thing where they're like, Oh, let me share my thing. And that when we listen to podcasts, and I think unless the host is very intentional about that, it's just going to always be those types of people that you're listening to.

Anne Sherry 1:16:31
Do you know that Chris, somebody where he just he's the comedian that he just calls somebody he just randomly or they call you that you call into his show, Chris Chris Gifford Greg Gethard. Anyways, it's just peep, just regular folks that regular folks just want to talk about something. And he just talks. So it's just, it's just the regular people out there. And it's a fantastic show that and they end up talking about just what's normal, but it goes he gets them to go quite deep.

Alison Cebulla 1:17:03
Yeah, that's like the humans again.

Anne Sherry 1:17:06
Yeah, it's people calling in. But there's this quality of like, it's, it doesn't have to be really, it doesn't start with sort of, it's not somebody calling him with this big talent, or I'm this or I'm whatever. So sort of reminds me of that. I mean, that's how I feel sitting in the back of my house. Why are we keep adding these show? Yeah.

Alison Cebulla 1:17:36
And so, um, I guess I wanted to just also, maybe, just really quickly, for a million and to share a fun cult, a cult memory.

Anne Sherry 1:17:50
Huh.

Emelia Loomis 1:17:54
I mean, maybe one of my favorite adventures was going to the tallest peak in Ventura to watch the comment. And being terribly ill prepared actually wore shorts, it was so fucking cold. Like, it was so cold. But it was so amazing. And it was just all these people geeking out on stars, which I love, you know. And it felt. I mean, it really felt like a huge adventure. With not, you guys probably put in more effort than I did. I think I just jumped in someone's car. But like, it was just one of those really brilliant reminders that there's so much to explore, like, within our communities, and within like a short range of distance. And without having to spend a ton of money or, you know, take off a bunch of time from work. It was like a very contained, just exploratory mission to kind of another world. And it took a couple hours to get there. And it really blew my mind.

Ian Nicholson 1:19:06
Really nice to hear. Yeah.

Emelia Loomis 1:19:09
Thanks for that.

Alison Cebulla 1:19:11
And it would be so easy to be like, No, I'm too tired. Oh, yeah. Because we had the intentional community. Yeah, we had to show up for each other and then it been enriched our lives. Yeah,

Anne Sherry 1:19:24
it's well, it's worth the effort. I think I was saying that last time we met out it's always worth the effort. No, yeah. Okay. And

Ian Nicholson 1:19:34
a min ago, Vespucci? The best reference to the best game of Buffy ever played.

Alison Cebulla 1:19:41
We were playing bocce and just somehow someone started yelling something in in Italian and then we made it like this whole thing where we were yelling, various it was like, what's that stream of consciousness?

Ian Nicholson 1:19:54
And we just started I mean, we started riffing on each other and why was it so funny? You know, it was just you had the best That was hilarious.

Emelia Loomis 1:20:01
Yeah. And it's that for me too, like a lot of what our cult experiences were they were just that like childhood wonderment and just purely about having fun play out is what I often miss in the world is doing things only for fun without any other outcome that you're hoping for just showing up to laugh.

Anne Sherry 1:20:25
I love that.

Ian Nicholson 1:20:26
That's a really good point and actually think outside of the cult do I have that in my life? And that's

Alison Cebulla 1:20:31
why we started the cult I know.

Anne Sherry 1:20:35
Give it a chance, and it will spread out into all the places of your life, I imagine. Yeah, no,

Alison Cebulla 1:20:40
one of our early coat hangers was like we hadn't gotten stoned in a really long time. And we were like, because it was something that we love doing in early adulthood but that I hadn't done in probably 10 years. So we were like, oh, like let's go find some marijuana. Again. We're not endorsing and for anyone to use drugs if you don't want to

Anne Sherry 1:20:57
buy your an 805 You don't have to find it. You go the second store and buy it

Alison Cebulla 1:21:01
right. Yeah, but we hadn't been to the pot shop. Like I only know this like a whole thing you show your ID you have to sign it.

Anne Sherry 1:21:09
Just in Colorado so fun. It's so fun on North Carolina.

Alison Cebulla 1:21:13
Like which kind of product Do you how many are there? Turns out there's hundreds 1000s So

Anne Sherry 1:21:22
many just some stuff some like stuff with stems and seeds in it you know that's

Alison Cebulla 1:21:30
not enjoy smoking. The marijuana is I have to do the gummies but we did smoke a little bit and just watched Ancient Aliens

Ian Nicholson 1:21:43
I will say as a public employee, I was there but I did not inhale

Anne Sherry 1:21:52
Okay, Bill

Alison Cebulla 1:21:57
that was just such a riot. Because yeah, it felt like we were reliving some of the best days of our young adulthood or teenage years of just smoke a little bit laugh watch something silly. Just hang out just that quality time. Yeah. And knowing

Emelia Loomis 1:22:13
you have no responsibility like that, that you're setting aside this time just to like, not have any responsibility on your plate. Yeah. Literally just watching Ancient Aliens. Like some history, you know?

Alison Cebulla 1:22:35
Well, both so, so, so much for sharing about the calls and maybe, you know, maybe it'd be fun for in our show notes to include, like a copy of this kind of the initial spreadsheet that we put together. If anyone else wants to copy our idea. We just made a list of all the stuff we wanted to do. And then we just did it, you know, so that would be

Anne Sherry 1:22:56
awesome. Yeah, yeah, monetize that shit. Sell it. It'll be like, you know, a subscription of 99 cents per month to be a cult member. Like and Subscribe really helps. Got to do with a towel roll.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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Episode 6: "Chill the F*ck Out" Parenting—with guest Thomas Sherry, LCSW