Rebecca
Hey Nat.

Natalie
Hey Bec.

Rebecca
How are you?

Natalie
I’m good. I’m good now that you’re here. I didn’t have an awesome day. It was a rather stressful day, but I was looking forward to this conversation. This felt like something to anticipate.

Rebecca
Oh, that’s nice.

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
How am I?

Natalie
How are you?

Rebecca
Let me just check in with my breath. I just went to get some water, so I’m a little winded from one short flight of stairs, which scares me a bit.

Natalie
It’s anticipation, see? You’re just pumped?

Rebecca
My body is. Yeah. Do we need to debrief the fact that we cried on our last episode? Does that require any debriefing?

Natalie
I don’t think I really cried.

Rebecca
It was more me!

Natalie
It was more you. I was utterly fine with all of it, had I cried or not.

Rebecca
I feel like you got a little bit… something.

Natalie
Verklempt? No, not really.

Rebecca
Nat, you were so verklempt!

Natalie
I’ve been teary in other spaces. All the time, for goodness sakes, but no — I didn’t in the last one. I took over for you. I felt like a rock.

Rebecca
You did. I was reading mom’s thing on loss, and I had one small moment. I was prepared to read through those tears, but you were just like: “Here,” and you seamlessly kept reading.

Natalie
Yeah, it was good. Keep going.

Rebecca
It was very smooth. It was smooth theatre.

Natalie
It was as if I had been trained.

Rebecca
You were sort of trained.

Natalie
It’s as if I went to Etobicoke School of the Arts for four years of musical theatre training. Oh, I did.

Rebecca
That makes me laugh. It really does actually, because it’s like the farthest thing away from you.

Natalie
Jazz hands and me. I think a few people from my time did go on and do work in that area, but not a bunch. It takes a lot of person to go on and do music theatre.

Rebecca
I think musical theatre must be so hard because the rejection in our industry, plus the perkiness…

Natalie
Required to be in that world? Oh my gosh.

Rebecca
Like, how you could get up and keep belting it with the same fervor, 20 years in?

Natalie
Oh yeah, not me. Not me!

Rebecca
Yeah. So this week, I have been thinking about new year’s resolutions — which I know you’re already hating the idea of. I try to make them every year.

Natalie
Do you, for real? I’m trying to picture you sitting there at your cute little desk, pondering this.

Rebecca
I don’t do it at my cute little desk — I do it on my cute little couch. I like goals, I’m a very goal-oriented person. So I do appreciate new year’s resolutions for that. You know, it’s a thing, the beginning of the year — so I’m thinking ahead right now. Right there, you should just say, “You’re amazing for thinking ahead.”

Natalie
There is something quite amazing about that, because it’s sort of like everybody having to be aware of supply chain issues and how we’re all having to do shopping a little bit earlier. So it’s like…

Rebecca
Getting ready for a supply chain problem!

Natalie
I mean, it’s a real potential problem. So I mean, good.

Rebecca
That’s funny, Nat. So because I’m preparing for supply chain issues, I would like to think about how if we could find the right words, that maybe it would stick and land for me. I’m a word person, and I think maybe one of the problems with new year’s resolutions is that they’re so flat or cliché-sounding — like, “I’m going to lose five pounds,” or something like that is just kind of boring to say in words.

Natalie
Right. “I’m only going to drink on weekends.”

Rebecca
Oh my goodness, this is loony. What are we saying?

Natalie
I don’t know. I think that because I’ve never been one necessarily to have a new year’s resolution — you know what I can get behind? Maybe more like a life mantra. I could do that, thinking of all this meditation stuff you’ve got me on.

Rebecca
Right, which I really want to hear about more. But a life mantra — my therapist has said to me recently (and I wrote this down on my whiteboard), “Limit harmful exposure to social media.”

Natalie
I know, and it is a very wise statement.

Rebecca
It is a wise statement. So I wrote it down. But it doesn’t have anything catchy about it — “Limit harmful exposure,” it seems like a sign on the highway or something. But it’s an important little nugget.

Natalie
That you need to listen to.

Rebecca
Yeah, and I look at in my day. But I’m just thinking, if it was more beautifully crafted, would it resonate with me more and would I be more likely to do it? That’s the crux of the problem. Have you ever made a new year’s resolution, Nat, ever in your life? Please tell me when you were like, 21, you tried that very plebian thing?

Natalie
I don’t know. Maybe have said the words to myself, and then guffawed at the idea of really, actually…

Rebecca
Even before you started? “It’s not for me.”

Natalie
Yeah. Essentially. I am such a routine person, right? I do have these very specific patterns that I go through to get through my days.

Rebecca
Yeah, so you would be one to really nail them. You’d be like, “Yeah, boom, I said it, I shall do it.”

Natalie
Right. Except that I don’t know that I have felt some great need to start fresh in a January state. I think again, as an educator, I start fresh every September. So September is perhaps more my time for a quote unquote new year’s resolution, because I am literally starting a new school year that September. So that probably is part of it. But have I had a resolution? I don’t know. I’m not trying to be a bummer here. Just honestly, that’s not really been my jam. But I do like the idea of mantras — like I know that when I was pregnant with Frankie and Clifford was trying to help me just meditate through… what is it when your legs get all, like, crazy moving?

Rebecca
Oh, restless leg syndrome.

Natalie
Restless leg syndrome and stuff like that, just to try and help me navigate through that — what was the way I could take back some control? So there was sort of a ‘return to the breath.’ That was a very good mantra for me, because if I could just focus on that every time I got distracted by my really annoying legs, that would be something I would do. That was a mantra of sorts that I definitely took hold of. And actually, for that week or so that you gave me the free connection to your app…

Rebecca
You meditated for a week, Nat?

Natalie
I did a week, and it was really good. In that week, I did find that when your dude would talk and lead the meditation, I would find myself saying that…

Rebecca
Sam Harris is the dude, everyone.

Natalie
Sam Harris would talk to me and tell me the date, and I listened, but I would find myself having to say to myself — in the midst of his long silences, which were good but hard — “Natalie, return to the breath.” So I made up my own there.

Rebecca
So you like them more if you make them up yourself?

Natalie
It’s probably a control thing.

Rebecca
Whereas I really like to be told. I very much like to be told to do something. Told to think something, if I like it. It feels collaborative. I get excited by the back and forth.

Natalie
I like that. I don’t hear collaboration in that. I just hear an order, but that’s really interesting that you experience it that way.

Rebecca
Anything where I feel like someone invested in me, it’s like a dynamic.

Natalie
And your app was invested in you.

Rebecca
I’m totally fooled.

Natalie
Oh no, it is collaborative. You’ve paid into that app, and now they’re investing back in you. That actually makes a lot of sense to me, and it’s beautiful, actually, when I think about it that way.

Rebecca
But you don’t like this whole productivity thing, so we’re having this discussion, right? Is that one of your issues?

Natalie
I mean, when you did throw out there, “Do we want to talk about new year’s resolutions?” and I was like, “Mantras,” and then we’re going back and forth between what we’re considering as the issue here. I have found that one, “Return to the breath,” is very neutral. I can handle that as a neutral way of being in the world. But I do find that a lot of resolutions or mantras out there — that I’m hearing anyways — do seem to be very much based on getting things done. I spend so much of my life getting things done, and focused on getting things done, that the productivity side of it all doesn’t really energize me when I think about it that way. Because it’s like, “Well, obviously I’m going to get that thing done,” right? That’s what I do. But it doesn’t make me feel at peace or happy. I think too much about my job, and productivity seems to be the focus of all that.

I walked into my classroom the other day, and I actually found this really quite hilarious — I could see, because I share a room with another person, that this teacher had written some stuff on the board. He and I are very definitively not the same people. And so my students were reading lines, I didn’t even see it, I just saw it writing on the board. I’d moved on. My kids are facing me, these are all 17 and 18-year-olds, and they’re all witty and dry wit. It’s very funny. They start just saying they’re reading the lines, and the one kid goes, “A rolling stone grows no moss,” and another kid says, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” And then finally, another kid from the back of the class goes, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” Is this you, miss? And I was like, “Oh, no,” and I’m turning around and seeing it’s obviously not my writing. But I was so horrified that they could ever imagine that those mantra-type statements could ever be affiliated or attached to me. And yet I couldn’t just throw this lovely colleague of mine under the bus, and I have no idea what he was doing with those sentences anyways.

Rebecca
And he didn’t have the wherewithal to erase that shit?!

Natalie
The funny thing is those lines aren’t necessarily wrong. There’s some real truth in not counting your chickens before they hatch. There is something in it, but none of them resonate with me, and they all do seem to be about doing. So if I’m not having trouble with the doing, then I need another type of mantra.

Rebecca
Right. Another inspiration. Do you remember that article, I think that dad sent us, about something happening in China…?

Natalie
Oh, with millennials, or post-millennials.

Rebecca
Where they’re taking on something, it’s called tang ping, about lying flat. So I don’t know how they’re doing this.

Natalie
Yes, I remember this. I think it’s a metaphor of sorts.

Rebecca
So they’re not actually lying flat.

Natalie
Some might be.

Rebecca
Like, on the street?

Natalie
Avoiding productivity, for sure.

Rebecca
Ok, so it’s a way of life, which is a resistance to the traditional corporate expectations. So not getting married, not having children, not buying a house or a car, refusing to work extra hours. So I was trying to imagine if people were getting together and lying down, or if this is just like a private statement.

Natalie
It could be both. I was imagining it more as a metaphorical piece, and very interesting that the government was squashing any ability to actually share the hashtag online, so as to try and quell this uprising.

Rebecca
Oh, I didn’t know that part. They don’t want people lying down.

Natalie
Yeah, they don’t want people lying down, because again, it gets in the way of what needs to be done for the quote unquote greater good of the republic.

Rebecca
Right. Though it is a very interesting idea, because sometimes I’ll be like, “Wow, but none of this really matters.”

Natalie
Yeah, totally.

Rebecca
Do you feel that about school, even? What is the purpose of all of us getting together and doing this thing?

Natalie
I feel like that when the students get really really hyper-focused on grades, because for me, what is so inspiring and thoughtful and life-giving are the conversations we’re having. But when it becomes about the grades, there are times when I want to be like, “Ok, you want the 88 versus the 87, take it, I don’t actually care.” But I know that we all have to play a bit of a game in that space.

Rebecca
I don’t know enough about this movement, but are they just saying, “I’m not playing this game anymore”? Which is really interesting.

Natalie
Yes, I think that’s totally what it is. It seems really brave.

Rebecca
“I’m done with this game.” But it’s so hard to resist the game.

Natalie
Yeah. Because you’re hoping for some reward. Which eventually might be to lie down. If you think about it, retirement at some point is technically the freedom to lie down and get paid for it — if there is in fact a retirement fund in place. But I don’t know, mom and dad, anybody who’s going down that road at that age, might have a different perspective on what retirement starts to look like — versus those of us in our power years, Rebecca (to return to that episode).

Rebecca
Maybe that’s why I don’t want to live down half the time, because I’m feeling so powerful. Ok, so recently, one of the exercise classes — I feel old when I say the word ‘exercise class’, by the way, I feel like Elsie would be like, “What’s an exercise class?” Does anyone say ‘exercise class’?

Natalie
I don’t know.

Rebecca
If you were going to do a workout?

Natalie
I would probably say I’m just doing a workout.

Rebecca
Ok, so that’s what I should say.

Natalie
But you do go — your app is the class.

Rebecca
But it’s not “The Exercise Class.” It’s called “The Class.” Anyway, the point here is that the woman leading the class was really emphasizing, we ‘get to’ versus ‘have to’ — which I thought was kind of good. Like, you get to do something. I’m returning to the mantra thing, because we’re not technically just lying down. We’re embracing some sort of productivity culture.

Natalie
Yeah. We’re in it.

Rebecca
We’re in it. So yeah, the ‘get to’ versus ‘have to’ — could that inspire you at all.

Natalie
I like that a lot. Yeah, that really can. Again, when the health issues have kind of reared their head, then the idea of getting to go for a walk versus having to, that sits right for me, for sure.

Rebecca
Yeah. I mean, it’s not exactly poetic, but when I was jumping around and thinking, “Oh, I get to jump around, and my body is functioning, and my daughters will come home and I will get to chat with them.” That was kind of a nice simple reframing, or a nice mantra. That might be the first time we used the word reframe today.

Natalie
I like that.

Rebecca
Random. And also, I was thinking how we have laughed about this in a previous episode, but we do have a little mantra on a wooden block at our farm that says, “Sandbanks is our happy place.”

Natalie
That’s right. Frankie read it for the first time this weekend. He went, “What does that say?” And he sounded it all out.

Rebecca
And he’s like, “Why is that here? Don’t speak like that in those happy ways.”

Natalie
“Those light and breezy…”

Rebecca
Can you imagine that, if we were the type of people that did resonate more easily — like we weren’t bringing a critical spirit to everything — we could be so much happier.

Natalie
I am happy!

Rebecca
I like how you resist that. I’m like, “Yeah, I’d be so much happier.” And you’re like, “I am happy!” I would love it if listeners would give us feedback on if they think you’re happy — is that what they’re getting off of you? I don’t know, maybe it totally is. You know what, I do actually see you as a fairly content person. I would never say “Happy,” but I would say “Fundamentally content and positive.” I would say…

Natalie
Upbeat!

Rebecca
I don’t know. I would say “Happy when you’re cooking.”

Natalie
Yeah, I love cooking. That’s very true, that does make me really happy.

Rebecca
Would you call me happy?

Natalie
When you’re cooking? No.

Rebecca
Would you call me happy ever?

Natalie
Oh, yeah.

Rebecca
Oh good. Whew.

Natalie
Yeah. But it is interesting. Maybe we find our action mantras — is that a thing? Could it be that I don’t need the words necessarily, as much as I’m a word person. Maybe one of my action mantras is cooking. There’s something really awesome and meditative about chopping.

Rebecca
Wait, did you just make up ‘action mantra’?

Natalie
Yeah, right now. I think it is positive for me. That’s a space. And for you, I think that you are in a very happy place when you’re reading.

Rebecca
Actually, I was thinking that. That was a happy place for me. That’s one of my action mantras.

Natalie
Yeah. Honestly, the doing of reading for you is a very positive experience. I teased you about it the other day in the car. We pulled up to get gas, and all of a sudden you’re like, “Ah, I wish I had my book.” I’m like, “You were going to read while I was filling the gas?” And Elsie’s in the back going, “Yeah, she would totally do that.” It was just such a natural thing for you. I think it’s so beautiful.

Rebecca
Actually, I’m still stunned that that wouldn’t be possible for you. You were saying you would have to get into the right headspace. But I can totally understand that based on cooking — because I don’t just, like, cook. I have to work myself into that right space.

Natalie
Yeah, and you’re an amazing cook, but you have to want to do it. Clifford today was still talking about that cake.

Rebecca
Oh, I made such a good pumpkin cake. Although tonight I massacred some dumplings. They were almost not recognizable as food. The girls were like, “What?!” — because Simon makes them so well, but he jumped on a work call and I was like, “Where did you go for the dumplings, that was your thing! Because I’m going to hurt them!” — and I did. I was sad.

Natalie
Well, let’s go back to your cake, because your cake was amazing. You’re a baker. I think you are happy when you’re baking. That’s definitely the place in the kitchen you’d feel better at, versus other things. But reading — reading’s your thing.

Rebecca
Reading and pumpkin cake. Maybe we need some lines of literature, would those be better for us? So we have action mantras, — if literature is my happy place, if I had some more quotations around my laptop?

Natalie
Yeah, maybe.

Rebecca
Although they’re never the short phrases, right? It’s often a nice chunk.

Natalie
Long and pondering. That’s what I had noted for myself, because I’m reading this one book — that you gave me actually, that you suggested I read. Rachel Cusk’s Second Place. There are some really wonderful lines in there that actually give me pause. That’s not the action mantra thing that I was talking about, but more the experience of actually meditating and pondering something that could be its own version of a mantra for me. Her words, these beautiful words, actually do make me pause, and then I can start to ponder what they mean for me.

Rebecca
And do they change your direction? Is that the point of a new year’s resolution — you were going this way, and you’re going to change yourself so you’re going that way? Is that what those lines of literature do for you?

Natalie
I don’t know if for me it’s about changing my direction. It might be about hugging me where I’m at — letting me rest in that space and feeling understood. You’ve talked about how books can be places for you of real teaching, but also just feeling. In some of these lines (that I plan to share with you because I’m pretty excited about them), I feel quite seen. That kind of sitting in those lines, and just feeling that — I don’t know if I necessarily have needed to change direction per se, but I definitely can feel the warmth that comes from sitting in them, versus the irritation that I feel seeing a cheesy line written on the blackboard behind me. It feels very different.

Rebecca
Or the feeling that might come up with a new year’s resolution — that, “Ugh, I didn’t do it.”

Natalie
Yeah, that’s it. Totally.

Rebecca
Which is self-flagellation, versus being seen. Being seen is so much nicer.

Natalie
Oh, so much nicer. Again, it’s not even just the self-flagellation piece, but it feels more — what did you call it before? Collaborative.

Rebecca
Yeah, can you imagine if we did away with all new year’s resolutions, and we just had lines of literature, floating around the atmosphere?

Natalie
Yeah, I think that’s a big win. I know I mentioned this in another episode where I talked about right before Clifford and I bought the condo. When we were visiting it, the person who had lived there before us had all those self-affirmations posted around the house. If that’s what she needed, then that’s lovely for her, but I don’t know that it feels very ‘I’ — like, that’s where I’m at. Whereas there’s something nice about the literature (again, I’m going to stick with your collaboration line) as feeling participatory or community-based. If everybody’s reading this book, or lots of people are reading this book, then lots of people feel seen — or experiencing something similar to what I’m experiencing, and therefore there’s a collegiality to it.

Rebecca
Yeah, and maybe that will translate to us seeing each other more.

Natalie
Ok, so can I share one? In Second Place, she writes, “Why do we live so painfully in our fictions? Why do we suffer so, from the things we ourselves have invented? I have wanted to be free my whole life, and I haven’t managed to liberate my smallest toe.” I just think that’s so brilliant.

Rebecca
That’s really good. I think when I read that line, too, I really resonated with it because I absolutely felt seen in that moment. I was like, “Oh, yes. I’m still stuck!”

Natalie
But did you also laugh? Because I think that’s what I loved — that I laughed.

Rebecca
I think I laughed, yeah. She’s such a funny character. I just imagine her in her many layers of clothing. Doesn’t she talk about that, all her layers? Where she’s kind of hiding in her layers?

Natalie
Yeah. I love it. And then I thought this one was a really neat one — I really liked this one: “The truth lies not in any claim to reality, but in the place where what is real moves beyond our interpretation of it. True art means seeking to capture the unreal.” I think in a world where we live so adamantly searching for truth — true self, true whatever. I think there’s something really wild to think about those words there. The truth may not actually be quote unquote ‘real.’ But because it’s less about me and my interpretation about truth. It’s beyond me.

Rebecca
That’s more real — the unreal is more real?

Natalie
Yeah. Because again, it seems to remove the utterly myopic self-focus of so much of our world and our perspectives. I think that COVID did a lot of that — in my head, anyways. Definitely felt like my world was getting too small, because we were stuck in smallness. I want to think about others in the way that I engage in my own truths.

Rebecca
Thinking a little bigger again.

Natalie
I’m kind of excited about this one. I’m teaching poetry right now by this — he’s an essayist poet, and he just won one of the MacArthur Genius grants, Hanif Abdurraqib. The poem that I read with my students today is called Off White, and the twelves were loving it. It’s really interesting, because it’s a poem about the death of Michael Jackson, but also the narrator’s mother, and also about grief. Life giving dance moves and music in the midst of that grief. This was the line: “Inheritance is the gift of someone to spread the news of a morning you didn’t wake up.”

Rebecca
Hmm.

Natalie
And I don’t even know what it means yet. It’s such a big poem, you’d really have to go read all three stanzas to get it, but I’m sitting with those words that I’m still trying to figure out.

Rebecca
Because if you get to spread the news you yourself are waking up?

Natalie
I think where I’m going with it, where I’ve hit a sense of understanding with it — because he’s talking at that point about what he’s gained in the loss of his mother. The inheritance that he was given from her. But inheritance is the gift of someone to spread the news of a morning that you didn’t wake up — meaning somebody wants to share your story. You’ve inherited the sharing of the person who’s passed, and you will pass that on to somebody else. That’s where I’m going with it. I could be completely off, but for some reason it made me feel very thoughtful — as I’m talking to a group of teenagers about this, but also just thinking of sharing all these stories with you on here, thinking that people are listening, that maybe some of them are resonating. What kind of gets carried on — the inheritance of this podcast, let alone of the conversations we’re having with our kids and our friends. Yeah. So those are the words I’ve been sitting with.

Rebecca
That’s a big one. I have to think about that one. I’m reading Hell of a Book right now, by Jason Mott. He just won the National Book Award. It’s so funny, Hell of a Book — it’s a hell of a book. The protagonist is a writer who’s written a book called Hell of a Book, so it’s very meta. The protagonist, I don’t think he actually has a name, but his fans are always telling him, “It’s a hell of a book you wrote.” It’s just so funny — even how he conceived of this book is so interesting. So he’s a black man, and there’s been so much trauma and pain in his life, and he has dealt with it by disassociating a little bit. He has this black boy that he talks to…

Natalie
This is the narrator you’re talking about?

Rebecca
This is the protagonist. It’s a very heavy book, but the way he treats it, it’s so funny. He sees himself so clearly, he’s like, “Yeah, I’m drunk, and I’m broken, and this is why,” and then can make these really funny statements. He has this one really good moment where he sees himself as a good person for a second: “So maybe I’m not just caught up in myself. Maybe the outside world is actually getting through. Maybe someone else’s pain is actually crossing through my lead-based wall of narcissism and self-obsession. Maybe I’m empathizing. Maybe I’m being a good person.” Does the humor come through in that, or you think you need to hear it in the context of the book — to hear his irony…

Natalie
Kind of flippant?

Rebecca
Self-flagellation. He’s just recognizing that this is who we are as humans.

Natalie
I see why you would see that as funny. Even in the opening of our podcast, you talk about being self-deprecating, and that is a kind of humor that you…

Rebecca
I guess I resonate with?

Natalie
But I’m hearing the beauty of it in your description of this. I want to read it.

Rebecca
Yeah. It’s so powerful, too. He has these scenes where he’s talking to the boy that he sees, and they’re very heart-wrenching because the boy has witnessed his father getting killed by the cops. But that has also been the protagonist’s life — as a black man watching these things happen. And he had his own pain of watching his dad, who just wanted to disappear. Then there’s this line here: “This isn’t so flippant, but tragedy and trauma are the threads that weave generations together. Hell, being black, we should know that better than anyone.” I don’t know. Do you want to comment?

Natalie
Well, just the weight of those words.

Rebecca
I mean, this is what books are right? You’re never going to understand some of these things if you don’t read. I can’t understand the experience of being black, but reading this can help me understand it.

Natalie
Certainly help you empathize. Empathizing with other people.

Rebecca
Well, I won’t understand it as a lived experience, but if I’m not reading, if I’m not getting into other people’s perspectives, how do I change?

Natalie
Well, and that hits on exactly why I think I’m so ‘meh’ about the new year’s resolution idea. Unless the new year’s resolution is “I’m going to read more,” which actually would be a very good resolution.

Rebecca
Or, “I’m going to empathize more.”

Natalie
Ok, fair enough, but I think that it still centers the ‘I.’ I would like to keep centering ‘we,’ and building community, and striving for that. I think that’s what the different projects you and I get into try and do. Certainly the way that we try and maneuver through life for our kids and our family and our friends. I think all of that is just a much healthier way to live — in my body anyways. Otherwise I could get very lost very quickly in frustrations — with my leg, with moments in my job, with whatever. My mantra of returning to my breath is a good one, but I think I’m really liking this going with literature.

Rebecca
Although how are we going to pull them up? We’re going to need lots of wood to paint them all over, and then we’ll have to keep repainting when something doesn’t speak to us as much. There’s some business in that.

Natalie
Yeah, like stickers, and then you can overlay other stickers. So it’s like quotes shining through quotes. That could be something interesting — how different authors speak together.

Rebecca
Oh, that’s interesting. I could read more quotations from Jason Mott, but let me just end with this one. I’ll let you go read him because I am not doing it justice at all, and it really is such a funny, powerful book.

Natalie
Well, I think you are, and it obviously is because it’s won this big award.

Rebecca
It’s so clever. This is a really good Rilke quote. I keep this one by my desk. I don’t know, I just really like it. “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” Boom. Although I feel like you might have got caught at ‘princesses.’

Natalie
I did. I paused, but then I moved on. I love that. “Something helpless that wants our love.”

Rebecca
If we skip the princess part — although there’s nothing wrong with princesses…

Natalie
I don’t think they’re helpless, but anyways.

Rebecca
We don’t like that part.

Natalie
So what are we working with?

Rebecca
Let’s forget the first line, because that just put a damper on it. Let’s just go with, “Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” That speaks to me, because so many things frighten me.

Natalie
Oh my gosh, we’re ending this, and you ended on that. There’s so much to do with that.

Rebecca
You are not walking around with a lot of fear. Things don’t frighten you.

Natalie
Oh my gosh.

Rebecca
Natalie, you know what, this has been so beautiful because we’re never going to get to the end of this podcast. I’m sorry everyone, we’re just going to talk forever because she’s still surprised. I’m surprised that you’re surprised. You’re surprised that I still have this feeling. It’s just so wonderful. I’m going to take a sip of water.

Natalie
You know what, you’re an inherently interesting person to me, and I think that that’s a good thing. I didn’t know fear was your…

Rebecca
I’m pretty sure fear is at the root of everything.

Natalie
For you.

Rebecca
For humans, yes. For all of us. Isn’t this common knowledge, that we’re all afraid, that fear is at the root of most things?

Natalie
I didn’t know that was common knowledge.

Rebecca
Where is Tamara? I need her here right now, holding my hand. She’d just be like, “Yes, Natalie. Fear.”

Natalie
You could call her. Pull her into this one, at this point.

Rebecca
Do you think she would answer?

Natalie
I don’t know. Not right now.

Rebecca
She might, Nat.

Natalie
I would have maybe said that at the root of a lot of my stuff would be frustration or anger. I’ve got other things to work through. I didn’t know it was fear. But maybe I could whittle that away and come down to fear. I have to sit on that one.

Rebecca
Sit on it and come back, because you would wonder — is anger not actually fear?

Natalie
Yeah, it could be. It’s just not the word that went to. I wasn’t at all dismissing it in you. I’m not sitting over here going, “I’m not fearful.” I just didn’t think of that word. It’s not where I would go. But maybe I need to — maybe I need to be more vulnerable. You know what, we’ll start with these quotations.

Rebecca
We’ll start with them?

Natalie
Yeah, you know. Taping them up around our laptops.

Rebecca
As in, this is…

Natalie
A good place to begin our mantra journey. Our not cheesy early new year’s resolution.

Rebecca
It seems like we both need to sit with that one. “Perhaps everything that frightens us is something that wants our love.” Because you can just be like, “No.” You can talk to it. “I’m not afraid. Fuck you, mantra, it’s not what I feel.” And then you can talk it around, and see if it comes. That’s what you need to look for. Do you have a moment where you’re just like, “Wait, I feel something.”

Natalie
I feel lots of things. A lot of things. I love you, Rebecca.

Rebecca
I knew you were going to say, “I love you,” too. That’s just so funny. I really love you.

Natalie
Cheers to new year’s resolutions.

Rebecca
Where’s our drink? Where’s our really good gin? Because that’s what we need right now.

Natalie
That would be a really nice way to move forward with this podcast.

Rebecca
Every podcast we should end with a…

Natalie
With a new cocktail. Or, some could be non-alcoholic, some could be just a new juice recipe. Should we also consider sharing some recipes, going forward? That’s something to think about.

Rebecca
I think we should, because this actually would be way more fun if we had a drink right now. Any kind of drink, just any beverage, right?

Natalie
It’s true. And good books.

Rebecca
Yes. Sister On!’s going to invest. Ok, let’s hang up. Goodbye.

Natalie
I love you.

Rebecca
I love you.