The Hierophant: Spiritual Authority, Personal Truth, And The Courage To Evolve

What if the keys to your spiritual life already sit in your hands? We open the Hierophant card and follow its symbols—triple crown, gray pillars, and crossed keys—into a conversation about authority, lineage, and the courage to trust your own timing. Instead of treating tradition as a rulebook, we ask how wisdom moves when it’s offered with consent, when the body says yes, and when we let awe guide us more than fear.

We bring in your voices: childhood beliefs about who gets to hold spiritual power, whether happiness is found or built, and why perfectionism hides inside so many sacred spaces. From a therapist’s perspective, we explore how discernment is embodied—muscle, breath, and gut sense—and how shame-based teachings confuse control with care. The Hierophant becomes a mirror: is your practice opening the heart, or closing it? Is the ritual nourishing, or punishing?

Then we zoom out. The overview effect and Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot reframe everything: Earth as a delicate home, borders as imaginary, life as brief and breathtaking. That shift doesn’t make us small in a hopeless way; it makes daily awe possible. We talk grief and nostalgia as companions to growth, the privilege of goodbyes, and the quiet work of making meaning in real time. Spirituality shows up in the mundane—a sunrise from a plane window, salt air on the tongue, a memory that changes how you spend the afternoon.

By the end, the keys aren’t about gatekeeping. They’re about stewardship: choosing what matters, shedding what harms, and sharing wisdom when it lands. If you’re ready to question inherited beliefs, honor your body’s truth, and find the sacred in ordinary hours, press play and join us at the table. If this resonates, subscribe, leave a review, and share with a friend who’s reimagining their own path.

If this episode spoke to you, subscribe and leave a review so other listeners can find Heart on the Table. New episodes land every other Monday.

Join the conversation on Instagram @heartonthetablepod

Transcript

Welcome Back & Episode Setup

Introducing The Hierophant Card

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Welcome back to Heart on the Table. We hope that you enjoyed our last couple of episodes. The one earlier this week was on the witch wound, which was an episode that we very much re enjoyed recording. And so we would love to hear any feedback that you have about that. Today's episode is on card number five, and that is the Hierophant. So we're just going to get started by taking a look at the card and telling you what we observe.

First Impressions Of The Imagery

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Okay. I will go ahead first today. So I see a, I think it's a female sitting on this chair. It looks like a throne. The background behind her is gray. And it looks like she has some, she has like a red robe on, and underneath it seems like there's like white, there's white sleeves. She's holding a what is that?

SPEAKER_01 1:48

I don't know. It didn't come up on my notes.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Okay. Whatever that is that she's holding. She's holding some kind of like slim staff-looking kind of thing. She's also pointing two fingers above. She's wearing a very pretty yellow crown. Looks like there's two people kind of at her feet. And there's also two keys at her feet. That's what I notice. What about you?

Pillars, Crown, And Acolytes

Symbol Meanings And Themes

SPEAKER_01 2:13

I love it. I am noticing the pillars in the background. Very much reminds me of the two pillars from the high priestess. Oh, yeah. Though these ones are both gray and the background is gray. Her crown stands out to me. Looks like it's three-tiered. This card very much looks like spirituality or religion in some form. I see that there are the two keys at the bottom, much like you said. And they're kind of crossed, like almost like guarding something, but I know that that's not really the right term for it. Then there's the what looks to be like acolytes. They're both wearing different robes. One looks like it has roses on it, and the other one, I'm not sure, kind of looks like a white flower of some kind with a blue background. Oh yeah. I'm like, is it like doves? I don't know. Yeah, that's what stands out to me. So let's dive into some of those meanings. So the first one I have note of here is just the two acolytes at the bottom of the card, which symbolizes like a student-teacher dynamic or a transmission of knowledge or a lineage. The next is the triple crown, which is symbolic of spiritual authority, knowledge as sacred responsibility. The keys at the feet are representative of unlocking higher understanding. The pillars, the gray pillars, are representative of neutrality, balance between the heavens above and below, heavens and earth.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Some of the themes here that I noticed. So the triple staff, sort of. I mean, it doesn't really look like. Oh yeah, okay. Three crossbars represents the three realms: physical, mental, and spiritual, body, mind, and soul. So the Arifant holding this staff represents it's like a symbol of sanctioned spiritual power. And it's kind of showing that she has the ability and the responsibility to interpret divine truth for others. Red robes, passion, vitality, and earthly life, white sleeves represent purity, integrity, and humility. The two crossed keys, keys of heaven and earth, one silver and one gold. They look both gold to me here, but symbolizing access to both spiritual and material knowledge. The hierophant has the power to unlock wisdom or to guard it.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

You noticed the guarding.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

I like that a lot. The crossed position suggests balance and union of opposites, conscious and unconscious, sacred and secular. I like this. The keys represent discernment, knowing what teachings to keep and which to release. Reclaiming them is the act of saying, I decide what truths open my heart.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

That's powerful.

Keys, Power, And Discernment

SPEAKER_00 5:04

I like some of that. I feel like that's a good place to kind of jump into here. Let's go and look at some of the Instagram responses for this one because there were some good questions that kind of tie into that discernment piece around spirituality, spirituality. So, were you raised in a religious or spiritual tradition? 70% said yes, 30% said no. Do these early teachings still influence you deeply? 50%, 17% somewhat, 33% not anymore. And then I put a comment box and asked, well, let's see. What's my question?

SPEAKER_01 5:45

What belief from childhood have you questioned as an adult?

Community Polls On Belief

Can Spirituality Be Nonhierarchical

SPEAKER_00 5:49

So we have one response, and thank you so much for sharing your responses with us. One response says that men hold higher spiritual authority than I, a woman. Another listener said that I have to know what I wanted to be when I grow up, that I had to have a plan for life. Another listener said, believing that happiness was something you found, not something you built. And someone said, I have to show up perfectly or not at all. I think those responses are so good. And I'm like ready to dive into them, but I'm gonna slow down because we have one more question and I just want to put it out there before we dive into the responses. Can spirituality exist without hierarchy? And 50% said yes, 8% said no, 42% said not sure. I think I have so many thoughts going through my head because this is one of the topics that I really love talking about clients is just spirituality and can it exist without hierarchy? I really like the symbolism of the keys on the hierophant and the keys representing like what did it say? Like guarding wisdom versus knowing when to offer it to share it, yeah. Share it. And I think when we're thinking about spirituality from a hierarchical structure, the symbolism of the keys and the hierophant being representative of somebody with that hierarchical power, having the power to release and share that information or to withhold it makes me just think about how sometimes I think with spirituality, when it is in a hierarchical structure, it really gives our freedom away or our power over our own spirituality to someone else. Does that make sense? What could spirituality look like if it's not hierarchical?

Therapy Lens On Timing Wisdom

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Yeah. Yeah, that was a question that I really pondered for a minute and I answered. I wasn't sure. When I was just, as you were explaining that, I was just thinking about it in terms of therapeutic relationship. And I think I'd said in one of our very first episodes, it might have been the first episodes, that we like, I feel like these days so much information or knowledge or wisdom is kept behind gates of some kind, right? And I feel like everybody should be entitled to knowledge or wisdom or whatever they're searching for. And when I think about it in terms of the therapeutic relationship, like there is a therapist and there is the client. And while the therapist does not hold any answers, right, we have the clinical skills or the clinical knowledge, and that is the wisdom that we have to offer. But I think offering it at a time when it makes maybe the most sense, or maybe when it resonates the most, we can share all that we know, but unless it is applicable or resonates with the timing, it's not going to be helpful unless it's something that the client is looking for or that the client needs to hear. So I was just thinking about it in terms of a therapeutic or clinical approach. And how we all carry our own truths, and sometimes we're not ready to acknowledge or hear those truths. We might have an inkling that they're there, but might not be ready or open to receiving that until we're in a place where we can accept that. When I think about the question, does spirituality have hierarchy? I'm not sure. I think that spirituality, whatever that is, whether that is nature, whether that is the wilderness, like animals, or even connectedness, right? Relationship, connection with ourselves, or be it other people. My initial thought was holding that reverence for the thing, right? Like holding reverence for nature, holding reverence for the other. And what I really was astounded, like it was there, and you just helped me see it, was that that includes us. Like we are a part of that. So I'm really interested to hear your take on the hierarchy of spirituality.

Embodiment, Awe, And The Ocean

Catholic Roots, Symbolism, And Shame

SPEAKER_00 9:51

I think that the way that I see it, and I am someone who I have a different perspective than those who have been engaged in organized religion their entire lives, right? So I've never really been connected to a hierarchical structure of organized religion, right? And however, I've also always been interested in what does a higher power mean, right? Like the idea of a higher power has always been something that I've very much resonated with, but I didn't know what that meant for me. But I've always felt something, I've always felt connected to something. I'm thinking this is kind of tangential, but just the idea of feeling and connectedness. I used to listen to Modest Mouse a lot when I was growing up. Did you ever listen to them? My dad listened to them, so therefore I listened to them. I was obsessed, and I was so obsessed that I even wrote like an autobiography on the frontman when I was in like middle school. And there's a song, The Ocean Breathes Salty. Have you ever heard it? Okay. I'm gonna just get the lyrics from it real quick because I want to read them because I feel like this was one of the moments when I really like, I don't know, something just connected for me. And the frontman of this band is very he's an atheist, right? But maybe this song kind of tells me like something, like he must he must believe in something. I don't know. So the lyrics are let me just find so some of them. I'm just gonna read through the song. So give me a second, because the ocean breathes salty, won't you carry it in in your head, in your mouth, in your soul? And maybe we'll get lucky and we'll both grow old. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, but I hope so. And then so let me just like that like the ocean breathes salty, won't you carry it in? I feel so connected when I'm near water. Like when I'm looking out at the ocean and I'm just seeing vastness and I'm seeing never-ending, there's no ending. There's I feel a sense of awe and a sense of wonder when I'm at the ocean. I feel for me that spirituality has become something because I didn't have this hierarchical like structure given to me. It's always been something that I've had to figure out for myself. But I knew that I felt connected to something, and I know that because I feel it in my body. I feel it anytime I feel a sense of wonder or a sense of awe. In coming back to like discerning truth from fear-based control, I very much believe that our bodies contain information for us. And when, like you were saying, when something doesn't like when it doesn't land, our bodies have a response to that, right? The things that feel true for us should not feel constricting or restricting. And so many times I do believe that some people find peace and meaning and they find that in their religion, in its hierarchical form, right? But some people do not, but they bypass the information that their body is giving to them that is saying, This is not working. Back to the awe and wonder thing. There was one more at the very end of the song. He says, That is that, and this is this. Well, you tell me what you saw, and I'll tell you what you missed when the ocean met the sky. And then at the very end, he says, You wasted life. Why wouldn't you waste the afterlife? And I remember being like 11. I'm like, damn, that something hit me from that song. But I'm like, how much time do people spend wasting the day-to-day or rushing through the day-to-day and not recognizing that do we think that we're just gonna land in the afterlife and we're gonna be that's gonna go away? But like we're here right now. Why would we waste this sacred time that we're given here on earth in hopes that we get to something different in the afterlife? I'm curious to hear your thoughts on some of that, as you just kind of come from a different space than I do with religion. So I'm curious about what your thoughts are if you feel comfortable.

Finding Magic In The Mundane

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, so my experience with religion and spirituality, they kind of go hand in hand a little bit. I remember I was raised Catholic, and I remember being very young, probably like six or seven, when you start going to what what's called catechism. And we'd go once a week, and I remember just being so in awe about like the stories and the symbolism behind that, like instinctively, intuitively, my body recognized those stories for the symbolic material that they had to offer. And I remember thinking, I think I told my mom at some point, you have to, I mean, it's common practice to go to a church once a week. And times were offered at Saturday evenings and then twice on Sunday mornings. And I remember saying at some point, I want to go to all of them. I just want to go to all of them. And I mean, I realized that in the adult world, like that's a lot of time. So we did not go to all of them. But I looked forward to it, and I think that the again, I just really resonated with the stories. I think I resonated most with the stories of saints and what what made them special. And it was also very deeply ingrained, I think, in just my own origin story. I had a very my birth was very traumatic for my mom and for me. And, you know, was in the NICU for a long time and was always heard stories about my birth growing up and like how magical it was and what a miracle it was that like I'd survived and that I survived without complications, they thought that I would have. So I was always, and I get it, like that is miraculous. And also as a child being the object of so much pressure that I think that really maybe contributed to later struggles in life. But looking back on it fondly now, like I can recognize it for what it was, and it truly was a miracle for for my parents, my aunts, you know, my grandmas, like for the ones that were around, I don't remember it because I was a baby, but I always felt like I had a very special relationship to it, to religion, to the stories, at least. And it was about the symbolism for me. And then as I got older, that changed, and I started to develop like a lot of shame, a lot of guilt, and I started noticing some of the other things that came with that, and acknowledging that that hurt, it really did. It still holds a special place in my heart, albeit it's not one, it's not a prominent one. I have found my own meaning in spirituality and my relationship to myself and the healing work that I've done, and that's why this work is so important to me, and is what I hope I am able to give to other people, to give to my clients and the community that I want to create, just out of a sense of instinctual intuition, internal knowledge, and really reconnecting with oneself, like embodiment. I can think of probably a period of time in my life where I felt so embodied and so connected and so in tune with myself and the world around me and how I interacted with people with the world I was living in. And I don't know that I am supposed to feel that way all the time. Everything comes in cycles. There are times when I feel very disconnected, and that's okay. And it's just knowing that it's there or that I'm capable of that that you know keeps the hope that maybe I'll feel like that again someday. But going back to the we're going to be missing the sacredness in our everyday life if we think that we're going to end up somewhere. It's happening or it's unfolding in real time. And I think we forget that. I think we forget that the magic exists in the mundane or the things that aren't very magical, right? It's find the magic in the moment and making the intention to see that. We can miss it, we can miss it so easily. And I think that's why sometimes I know this is a bit of a side tangent, but I've also been doing a lot of thinking like with nostalgia, and how it's just come up, I think, more and more as like I'm getting older that we miss periods of our life where we didn't realize the magic was happening. And that's hard to realize that we had it so good or that it was so magical and it's over, and we will never get that back. We will never be that age again. The people in our lives at that time, they're different now, or you know, maybe they're not here anymore. So, with that in mind, using nostalgia for the present moment, like this moment that you have now will also be gone and you won't be getting it back. How can you make the most of this time and make it magic?

Shame, Control, And Organized Religion

Overview Effect And Perspective

SPEAKER_00 19:12

There's something that you said that I think is so incredibly important when we're trying to do the discernment of what is our truth versus the truths that were kind of given to us or we're supposed to, right? Like the truths that are also followed, you need to do this because this is the truth. And we're trying to discern like what is spirituality for me versus what has been told to me. You said there was a point in my life where I felt so embodied, and I, you know, maybe I don't feel that now. And you said, and that's okay. And I think when we're trying to discern, is this my truth or is this truth something coming from elsewhere? If it's not okay for us to maybe feel a little more disconnected, a little maybe less ritualistic in the things that we do that do kind of add to our spiritual practice. I don't know, maybe for someone who's a part of some organized religion, like they can't get to church. Is that leading to feeling like shame? Or is that leading to feeling like, you know what, it's okay? Is it being met with if there are things that you have to put pause on, or if there are times in your life where you feel more disconnected? Because you will naturally, because like you said, life is cyclical. But if we're taking a break or we're choosing something a little bit different, and we're being met with, oh, I feel a lot of shame at feeling disconnected right now. Is that a truth that you want to continue to ascribe to? The truths that bring shame or consequence or guilt? Because for me, I'm just like, how long till that's not working for you? And that's only impeding your psyche, right? Like I've heard it before. Is the kind of God that you want to believe in a God who is damning and shaming and cruel? Because how long till that just doesn't work? Or how long till that creates so much like anxiety? And then kind of along with the Emperor episode, you're very rigid in trying to maintain control over everything that you can in order to continue to feel connected to your God. Like it's interesting being here in Utah because I hear so like such a vast array of experiences, especially with the LDS Church, where some people have had such meaningful leaders within ward or stake that have really contributed to them having a very good relationship to their religion. And then some on the contrary, where they've had very, I don't even know what to call it, traumatizing, cruel, like damning experiences with church leaders that have led to perpetual guilt and shame through like throughout their life. So sometimes I'm like, I don't know what the answer is, truly. I think what I'm getting at is the importance of coming back to identifying does this work for me or does this not? If you've been in a religion where someone down the street has had an amazing experience and still finds a lot of meaning in that religion, yet you yourself have had traumatizing experiences. Why are we still trying to fit ourselves into that mold if unfortunately the experience of that religion created so much trauma for us? Because we all internalize things differently. Because religion is so vast and so big, everyone has a different experience within it. But I think it still comes back to is it working for you or is it working against you? And I think that's so important when we're identifying spirituality, because I do believe personally that spirituality is in the everyday, and we can spend so much time or we're in a rush and we're missing it, and because we're very much stuck in I often hear the term worldly come up, but I think like we're stuck in the worldly if we're not pausing in the present and recognizing like the present magic that is like within our day-to-day world.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Because that is we are in the world and of the world right now. Yeah, I know there's a lot of things that I don't entirely understand, or you know, I can't speak to people's experiences, but I just know the importance of whatever you're using to lead you spiritually should bring you peace. It should bring you closer to feeling connectedness, it should bring you closer to a sense of awe and a sense of wonder. I'm thinking about when I'm in an airplane and I'm looking out the window at the clouds and the sun is rising or setting, like above the clouds in an airplane. I'm like, whoa, that reminds me, there's actually, and there's an author, Oliver Jeffers. Do you have any of his books for Theo? One of them on top of my mind. There's a really popular one. I need to talk about this for sure. Here we are. You need this book. Looks like I'll be going getting that book. You need it immediately. It's so good. He recently wrote another book, and at the end of it, he wrote an essay. And I think that there may be a similar essay in Here We Are. And he talks about this effect. Let me remind myself what it's called. Okay, this is so good. He uses in a lot of his books like the picture of the earth from space, and he is trying to get us all to kind of like, and especially our kids, to understand this is the earth and this is the thing that we are on, and this is our planet, and there's the moon, and there's the rest of the planets, and we're looking at this from that perspective. And he talks about at the end of that book, I believe, something called the overview effect. And he says, Why am I getting emotional? It's just so good. It's a psychological and spiritual shift that many astronauts report after seeing Earth from space, especially when viewing it as a small, fragile, interconnected sphere suspended in darkness.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

And so Oliver Jeffers talks about how, like, that's what inspires a lot of his books is the overview effect. And this says too, is it's a profound cognitive and emotional transformation that occurs when astronauts see Earth from orbit or from the moon. They describe a sudden it's getting to me right now, a sudden realization of the unity of all life on Earth, the fragility of the planet's ecosystems, and the artificial nature of boundaries, divisions, and conflicts between people. And I just think that's so beautiful. To me, I'm like, that is it. That is what embodies spirituality, which is why I love his books for Charlie and myself. That to me is so spiritual. And apparently it has a name. It's called the Overview Effect.

Pale Blue Dot And Surrender

SPEAKER_01 25:57

I absolutely love that. And thank you so good for sharing. I'm so glad that thought popped into your head, and I'm going to go get that book now and read it every night. Um, it reminds me of, I believe it was in school, actually. I don't know what class it was, but that we watched. Have you ever seen the pale blue dot speech on YouTube? It sounds super familiar. By Carl Sagan. If you haven't seen it, go watch it. It's a philosophical reflection on humanity's place in the universe, inspired by a photo taken by Voyager One that showed the earth as a tiny point of light in a ray of sunlight. And it just talks about the duality of human insignificance and also human cruelty with paired with the empowerment of stewardship. And, you know, we have the power to change as well. And like with everything, I think it has some really emotional background music to it that just kind of drives it home. I do think we tend to get caught up in our experiences as unique to us and it's isolating and it's lonely. And that overview perspective of the earth and space and how fragile it is. I think it helps me to remember that I'm insignificant, that I am just a tiny second in this cosmic life. Like I don't matter as much. And that helps my problems not to matter as much. It helps me to just to put everything into perspective that like the world will keep turning and it is going to be okay. And it's precious and beautiful. And me spending so much time worrying out of a place of fear is not going to change anything. And so I make the choice to be present instead and to surrender to the unknown and to be just to be open and find ways to connect to the part of myself that feels that land, right? To the part of myself where I feel that stone drop and it hits the bottom. And to reconnect with that spot. It's buried down there. I don't think about it all the time, but moments that can really bring that to the surface or remind me of the capacity to feel that deeply or to remember the fragility or the preciousness of this time that I have. Yeah. Make me spend it differently. Makes me choose to spend it differently.

Values, Presence, And Change

SPEAKER_00 28:21

And how lucky we are to be here for the fraction of a second on the grand scheme of the Earth's life cycle. I think having a daily practice of connecting to some gratitude is an important spiritual practice.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

And really, I think defining too, I mean, it's a question that I've been asking myself a lot lately, and it's one that we posed as a reflection in one of our earlier episodes. But what matters? What matters to me, to you, to anyone listening? What genuinely matters? And are you living close to what that is? Yeah. You know, in the therapeutic world, we call that act, identifying what your values are. But all clinical labels aside, like I prefer to communicate in the magic, in the magical thinking, in the magical sense, like what matters underneath it all.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

Yeah. If we're spending so much time trying to fit into like the script that we were given and it does not feel aligned, is it time that we shed that in favor of something else or trying something else?

Grief, Nostalgia, And Becoming

SPEAKER_01 29:28

Okay, this thought just occurred to me. So I'm gonna try and make sense of it. And if it doesn't make sense, then I'll but I think part of that too is maybe we're so afraid of change because we think we need to make a lasting impact. We need some way to be remembered, and that has to be for some reason inscribed in stone, which means we can't change. Yeah. But really, I think the whole point is to evolve and is not to stay the same. No, you're not supposed to stay the same. I am not the person that I was when I was 17. I am not the person that I was when I was 22. I am not even the person that I was when I was 25. Like I'm supposed to change. Everyone is supposed to change, and resisting that change, I think only hurts us, and I think it hurts everyone around us too, because they benefit from our change. Like we change and they change and we grow together. But when we keep ourselves from growing or we keep ourselves from changing, that only hurts us.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

And if those things, if there are institutions or if there are people or there are relationships that are not growing with us, that's no fault of our own, right? It's important to question like those relationships. We're never the same, we're in a constant cycle of growth and change. And I think it's hard for people to apply just acceptance to that because like it is sad.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

And there's a whole lot of grief. Yeah, we keep growing and we keep aging, and with that means. Means that we lose people. Life is very much a grieving process. And while we may commonly attribute grief to heavy sadness, I'm thinking of like the stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, but acceptance is a part of the grieving cycle. And something that's also goes hand in hand with acceptance is creating meaning out of our grief. How you create meaning can be entirely up to you.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

You make your own meaning. You can make your own meaning. I mean, just like looking at these cards, right? Like we infer what we think about the symbolic aspects of the card. And then there is, I mean, there is the collective human experience one. But I think pulling out first our own interpretation of it can highlight maybe a certain situation or circumstance that we're currently experiencing at any given time. That's why one card lands heavier than the others. It's because it resonates more. And back to the like life is a grieving process. I think that's why we feel so much nostalgia. And I feel like that's where a lot of people get stuck. Like we're stuck in the nostalgia for a moment that no longer exists. And that's hard to feel stuck. We've talked about feeling stuck before and how difficult that is. And like it's okay to remember it as like an amazing moment. Maybe it was hard. Maybe there is nostalgia for the hard and recognizing that you got through it. There's nostalgia for every kind of emotion. And I think honoring that for what it is, and also just allowing yourself to move through it with fluidity, you grieve yourselves. Like you were never the same person, and that's okay, and you can grieve that. And I think it is it's harder to see that in ourselves, right? I mean, we can maybe look at pictures and see the differences and how we change physically, but it is hard to recognize growth in ourselves unless we're actively paying attention to it. I think for me, it's a little bit easier to see growth in like raising my little boy.

SPEAKER_00 32:50

My mind was going there as well.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Like he he's just over two, and I get these memories that pop up on my phone in my photos app that is, oh yeah, I remember this this period of your life. Yes, I do. It was just like yesterday. And I never I know that there's a poem. I don't know that I should read it. It's by Jess Ulrich, I believe is how you say her name. She writes a lot of motherhood poems, and they're just it's all about grieving the versions of you know your child that you never really got to say goodbye to. Yeah. Maybe I'm misremembering who said who wrote that poem. I know it's a TikTok audio comes up often. I can't think of it. No, I feel like I should have just left it at that and said anything about who was by, but may or may not be. You you don't really get to say goodbye to any of the versions of them. I mean, maybe when you're it's the eve of their birthday or something, and you really have to sit with the fact that tomorrow they're going to be a year older. But that is constantly happening every day.

Goodbyes, Death, And Meaning

SPEAKER_00 33:51

I like to think about often that saying goodbye is a privilege. We're very fortunate and lucky if we get to say and have a goodbye with our loved ones. Sometimes, more often than not, we don't get that. My grandma passed away on my mom's side just last year, December 24th. We were like, God damn it, grandma. I had to go on Christmas Eve. Or it was like the day before, I think. I can't remember. I think it was the day before. And we cleaned out her stuff on Christmas Eve. I would go visit her all the time, her care home, because that's just a whole other story. Me and Tori would go visit her all the time. They called me on December 23rd and she was gone. I had imagined and envisioned me being able to sit with her while she was dying, and I didn't get that chance. I knew every time I was saying goodbye to her that it could be the last time. But I and she was old and frail. But I also, and whether this is my anxiety or whether this is me really acknowledging and sitting with the truth, anytime I say goodbye to anyone, I sit with, what if something happened? And that was our last goodbye. And I try to make every goodbye meaningful. But like with the whole like life is grief, it's important to sit with, we don't often get goodbyes, which is why it's important for us to really embody being in the present. Yeah. Like I remember kissing my grandma's forehead the last time I said goodbye to her. And I was very intentional about that every time because I was like, this could be the last time. And I was right. And I'm thinking about I'm getting emotional, talking about all this. She's just deaf and dying coming up in spirituality. But when my dad died too, like I was very lucky to go be with him when he died and hold his hand and be there for him. Some people don't get that.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

And when we do, we really should recognize that what a privilege that is for us to have been able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

I think our relationship to death and dying is not what it would be, what it used to be, or what it maybe should be. I say should very lightly because shoulds come with judgments or what it could be, I guess. I feel like these days I've sat with several clients that I've worked with in the past who are elderly or aging and they've expressed like a deep fear of dying or of even thinking about it. And so it prevents them from going and doing things or living their life. They stay holed up and they're afraid to do anything. And that's not living either. And I think our relationship to it, even from a very young age, I mean it's scary when like suddenly your life has changed and someone who has been in your life is no longer in your life. I remember a very er experience that I had with death was the passing of my great-grandma. I'd seen her a couple times, and I have a couple of I don't know if they're necessarily memories or if they're just things that I remember based off of photographs. But I remember her funeral. I remember it so distinctly, and particularly a part of it where I couldn't understand why everybody was crying. I was little. I had to have been at least, I don't even know, three or four. Like little. So I didn't understand what was happening. It didn't feel like a huge loss that time because I remember the speech that was given, like the eulogy. I don't remember who gave it, but I remember everybody was passed around a Hershey kiss, a chocolate Hershey kiss, and everybody wasn't like int instructed to unwrap it and hold it in their mouth. Which as a child, I just want to eat it. Like I just wanted to chew it and eat it. But I remember listening to the instructions and holding it and letting it melt. And there was a whole thing about just the patience that comes from that. And there was a message that people remembered being given by my great grandma that you know, savoring the moment. And I remember doing that at four years old at my great grandma's funeral with a Hershey kiss in my mouth, like the urge to want to bite it and eat and eat it, but savoring the moment, and that has stuck with me. Which speaks to that it was powerful for you.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Yeah, I love that. Oh, this has been a good conversation. There's so many more places I could go to, but I'm like, I'm saving them for the death card because I love that card. And it's one of the more feared cards in the deck. But I'm like, I and I think spirituality and death and religion all go hand in hand, right? So I'm like, can buckle in, I could talk for another hour about all this and the interconnectedness. Like I'm my brain is going so many different places, but I think I'll reserve them for death. Maybe death would be a good one to even have my friend who's a social worker, he works like that's kind of his favorite stuff, is talking about grief and bereavement. And yeah, that could be really good. We could probably do several episodes on the we could do actually like a couple part series on the death card. I like that. We're working, we're workshopping live right now, whether or not this makes it good or not. So if you have thoughts or opinions on that, please share them. Is there anything that we've forgotten? Oh, this overview effect stuff is so good. I just want to share this quote that instead of sharing a reflection, there's this quote from this astronaut, astronaut Edgar Mitchell. And he says, When I looked down and saw the earth, I suddenly understood that we are all part of one tiny fragile ball of life. There are no borders from up there. Oh, I got jealous. Yeah. I just love that. I mean, just think about how powerful that is. Just and coming back to the first thing you said, like we when you were like, I was thinking about hierarchy. And then you were like, but I realize like we are a part of that. We are a part of nature. We've talked about this a little bit before. Like when we're thinking about, oh, are we above? Are we below? We are all connected. We are all sharing this like short experience here on earth for this time, and we collectively share that experience.

Reverence, Animals, And Interconnection

SPEAKER_01 39:49

And maybe like the I think when I had mentioned my wondering if it was one or the other, okay, I'm gonna need to provide some context to this. So I like to have like deep conversations with my husband. And so I was telling him the other day about how I was on my way to an appointment and I was driving behind a truck that had a couple of goats in the back. And I was like, are those goats? That's not something you see every day on the freeway. And sure enough, so I was just I was thinking about animals, and I think these days, like there's a lot of I mean, I find myself envisioning myself living a slower life, right? Living a slower life, disconnected from all of the technology and the ways that keep us connected these days. But you know, whether that be on some land and having your own ways of being self-sufficient, like it is appealing in some ways, and I recognize it's also really hard. So I was thinking about animals and just like the ways that maybe we don't have the relationship to them like we used to. I was thinking, particularly in farm life, or I guess you could call it that, that when you had when it came time to use the animal for sustenance, like the and you had to do it yourself. These days you don't do it yourself, you just go to the store and you get what you need, and you don't think about what comes, like what had to happen for you to be able to do that, and just the incredible like reverence that you would have to have to do that yourself, right? You would have to recognize the sacrifice that this animal was making so that you could survive, and vice versa. And I was thinking it in terms of that because of the most recent experience I had driving behind a truck of goats. I guess you don't necessarily I mean that is just the reverence for another being for the other doesn't necessarily put one over the other, it just means that you recognize you're a part of the same thing. That's really beautiful. So I get my thought process was was combing through my recent experiences and the deep conversations I was having outside of.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

Yeah, is there anything you wanna do as a reflection?

Reflection Prompt & Listener CTA

SPEAKER_01 41:51

I like this one that says what teachings or traditions have shaped you and which no longer fit. That's a good one.

SPEAKER_00 41:59

Thank you so much for listening to our podcast episode today. We hope you enjoyed it. And if you did, give us a review on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify or wherever it is that you're listening. It just helps us further this community and further our reach. So thank you so much if you're playing a part in helping us to do that.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

Yes, and we look forward to recording our next episode. We want to ask you all that if you particularly resonate with something that we're talking about or have ideas for ways that we can shape our future episodes, we would love to hear your feedback. We enjoy hearing all the comments. It really means a lot to know that this is resonating with you all. So if you have things you would like to share with us, we have created a Google form, which can be found at the link in our bio on Instagram. Please feel free to share your thoughts and come take a seat at our table.