311. When the Ache Remains with Lisa Olivera

Hello friends, just a quick heads up that I'm going to be teaching facilitating a beautiful equinox gathering and a welcoming into airy season on Wednesday, March 18th from three to four thirty p and Pacific standard time. The workshop gathering will be recorded and transcribed for anybody who can't make it live. This event is being done for members of the Soltera membership, which you can join for $26 a month. You can cancel or leave anytime or you can join us for $40 and not join the membership. But together we will be talking about the medicine of the equinox. We'll be talking about how to honor this time on the wheel of the year. We'll be talking about the significance of this particular leap into airy season and of course I will be doing an intuitively channel download on the spring spiral and airy season, which is forthcoming just a couple days after our workshop. There'll also be like a little ritual to clear out the astrological spiral that's ending and a way to welcome the one that's forthcoming. So if you'd like to join us you can do so by going to the link in the show notes. Thank you so much and enjoy the episode. Welcome to Tarot for the Wild Sol, a podcast that explores the tarot through an inclusive Sol-centered trauma-informed perspective for growth, healing and evolution. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack. Hello dear ones and welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Sol. So so beautiful to be gathered here together with you. Thank you so much for gathering here with me as always. So endlessly grateful to be here in presence with all of you. I conducted the interview that I'm going to share with you today and was so nourished by just as a result of being in presence with this person. My guest and I have been trying to, which we talk about in the podcast, trying to get a date on the books for this interview since November. And I just cannot not all timing feels perfect but it really was perfectly timed. In terms of the gift that they have to share the medicine in this conversation. My guest on the podcast today is you likely know her work. The absolutely incredible Lisa Olivera. So a little bit about Lisa. Lisa Olivera is a writer, therapist and creative who shares work centered around radical acceptance, cultivating compassion and integrating our stories and full humanity. She holds a master's degree in counseling psychology from Dominican University where she received the Dr. Robert Schu Kraft Award for Inspirational Leadership. She's worked in schools, community-based mental health and private practice, all of which inform her lens of the world. Her work has been featured in many publications including The New York Times, Good Morning America, The Guardian and The Huffington Post. Lisa writes the incredible weekly newsletter Human Stuff, facilitates writing workshops and sees clients in her private practice. Her first book Already Enough was published by Simon & Schuster in early 2020. Her forthcoming book When the Acres Remains will be released in April of 2026. She lives with her husband daughter and two cats in Northern California. So in our conversation, Lisa and I really dive into not just her cannot wait to read her book. Her forthcoming book When the Acres Remains but also talked about that idea, that phrase, like what do we do when we are confronted with something that maybe we thought we worked through, maybe we thought we dealt with, maybe we were like, my gosh, I thought I healed this wound already. And like here it is again. And what do we do with the things that we will likely have a lifetime appointment to that we'll be attending as Lisa says in this interview in this conversation for the rest of our lives. How can we allow that to broaden us and blossom us and how can we allow that to in turn inform our terror practice? Because while Lisa and I don't really get into too much about terror in this conversation, the work that we do and that is present in my work with this podcast is very deeply rooted in this idea. We're not in sole terror. We're not going to the cards to fix, to predict, to tell us what's going to happen. We're going to them to help us be with what is. Right. And when we expand that out even further, how can we link that to what's going on collectively, the terror, the devastation, the rage around all of the destruction that is happening right now. And that's been unfolding really for generations, but right here, right now, it's so intense, beyond intense. What do we do when the acre remains? What do we do when we see so much evidence of destruction? What do we do when we have wounds that continue to stay open and that it isn't our fault that they are and we haven't done anything wrong. We don't necessarily need to work better or harder. Just is. How can we be with that? I think certainly with the wars, multiple attacks going on with the genocide continuing to unfold now in many places in the world. It's very easy to map this collectively. There's so much harm and we need only to look at the briefest, scantist view of history, but even the last several decades, last several hundred years, to see these these aches remain when these things happen, right? We can see this collectively. We can also map this to our own lives, right? All of us have these things and we all of our own way of being with them, coping with them. This conversation is taking place and took place in Pisces season. Pisces season is not the immediate initial candidate that most of us assume will show up in these moments, but Pisces' energy encompasses so much, right? Beautiful illuminations and daydreams and dreams and neptunian beauty, like plumbing the depths and beautiful. And Pisces can also because of the depth of its intensity because it is in many ways the dying of the zodiac cycle. Pisces season can be very intense. It can pull us into very old things, echoes of the past where we aren't totally sure, like what's here, what's not here, like how do we respond to this? We're definitely seeing that collectively. There's so much we don't know. So much we don't know. And so much that we do, right? And so that sense of liminality of void is exactly what, you know, because in Pisces season we work with the Moon card. It's precisely what we spend a lot of time with. You know, how do we respond when we're in the depths of the unknown? The other thing that I think we, Lisa and I talked about 10 of cups in this conversation, and I think that's a really important anchor before I bow you over to our conversation in a moment. 10 of cups is such an important resource for us right now. And it's really holding onto the accessible joys, the freely available joys, like the beauties that are right here that are not, they don't have to necessarily lift the spirit, but just to be aware, as Lisa said, like this glass of water, right, is quenching my thirst. And I mentioned my strange love and appreciation of like dAppled light. Dappled light on the wall is a big anchor for me. And I think that can be true for all of us, you know, like we all have those things that are just beautiful and present and can hold some moments when those aches remain. So so much of this is drawn from Lisa's wise words and just an honoring of what all of the gifts that she shared in this conversation. I'm so excited. to share this conversation with you. You can find Lisa, Lisa is an incredibly prolific person, but I cannot recommend their sub-starch human stuff more highly. Please pre-order their book when the AGRAMains please order their book already enough. And yeah, engaging and supporting their work just can't recommend that more highly. It's so nourishing for me. And I believe it probably will be for you too. And without further ado, here is my conversation with the lovely Lisa Oliveira. - Lisa, welcome to the podcast. - Thank you so much for having me. It feels, yeah, like truly like such a gift to connect with you in this way. - Oh my God, the gift is mine. I'm honored by your words. And I've been such an admirer, such a like deep fan. I hate that word, but also just like always excited, always like racing to read your words whenever one of your glorious sub-starchs come out. Your book was extraordinary already enough. And I cannot wait for your new book when the AGRAMains, which comes out April 28th. - And so on. - Oh my God, I'm so excited to talk about all that with you. Yeah, but I do wanna share that you and I have been, I believe trying to get this scheduled since November. Yeah, yeah, I like between like child illness and our illness and like holidays and travel. It's just like, we've just been like gently rescheduling with one another. And I must say that as I sit with you here right after this like bone-freshing eclipse that we've just had right after this eclipse portal in the depth of PCC's and witches. I mean, we talked about in the introduction like the connection of this conversation, I feel to the moon card and wanted to say to you, I feel so much of your work luxurious in a moon card space. Like you live in every space, but moon card is so much about like we are in this void. There is so much we don't know. It's ruled by Pisces. Pisces is very connected to grief and death as well as like dream spaces, liminal time. And I mean, I'm really feeling that. I think sometimes Pisces energy can be very dreamy, but it feels like kind of the deeper part of the ocean right now and you and I were sharing, we're both kind of feeling that to save the least. And I look at all of the horror that's going on in this world. So many devastations, this new war that we're in. And I just think I'm very grateful to be talking to you now. And I know that everybody listening needs your words more than ever, which are such a bomb. So that was a very long way of saying the spiral path that we had to travel to get here was hilarious and awful but also I'm very glad we're here together today. I really am. - Me too, me too. And yeah, there's also been something really like humbling and humanizing about, I don't know about the realness of our lives getting in the way of our schedule. Like that just feels so. I feel like that's happening in so many different realms and areas. And yeah, it's been so sweet to get to like feel the permission of having to set things aside and put things off in order to nurture what matters most. And obviously it's so disruptive to have a sick child and to be sick and to be moving through this, yeah, these different swirls of illness and underground, but I'm so grateful to be sort of humming out of that cocoon and into connection with you. It feels really lovely and sweet and so needed. - Yeah, I feel the same way. So Lisa, your reputation, you know, proceeds you, so many people know you, love you. You're an exquisite writer and a therapist, creative among many other things. And I feel like the similar to Mary Oliver's poetry, it's an extraordinary thing to read a lot of Mary Oliver at one time because you can just feel the persistence and the passion and the desire like how can I get even closer? How can I manage to describe the light right now, describe this moment right now? I feel so much of that in your writing as it relates to how can we be with what's right here? Like is there joy possible amid this grief? And I know from what you've shared about your own experience in your life, in your childhood, in your adulthood, in your journey to becoming a therapist, that this is, I don't want to presume upon you, but this feels like something that you have asked yourself very rigorously throughout your life and are now serving in such a wide way. Other people in their inquiry of this. So again, in a long-winded fashion, my first question to you is how long do you feel that when did you start asking that question? Like how do we hold the grief and the joy? How do we hold the horror and the hope? So just no big deal. (laughs) Starting in the essence of it all, which is my way of being. So I appreciate that. - Me too. - Goodness, I feel like, I almost feel like I was born into this question. My first experience on this earth was of my mother leaving when I was a few hours old and being alone in a field outside of mere woods and like crying and hoping, I imagine hoping someone would find me. And I, when I think about my infant self and the severance that she experienced and also her crying out for someone, I imagine this sort of dichotomy of a grief that I've been trying to understand and allow myself to feel and reckon with for my whole life. And also this undercurrent of like there's something for me here. And I think I had that experience of both being really acquainted with grief and loss and loneliness and a feeling of separation from a really young age. And also this like quiet pull to figure out what it is that could keep me here. Because for a long time, I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to be alive. I didn't enjoy being alive. I experienced a lot of pain and it wasn't until I actually started allowing myself to be with that pain and honor and hold it and let it be seen and known by others that I got to sort of find this desire to be here, growing and growing in small ways. And so I think just because of the experiences that I've had and the practice that I've developed in trying to find beauty and goodness and joy and even when things have been really painful, that practice has come from a very real place of needing that to survive at some points in my life. And it's grown into a much deeper source of connection to myself and to the natural world and to what it means to be alive during this time when there is so much pain, when some of our wounds don't ever go away, when we'll continue to reckon with things that are hard for a lifetime. And I've found that being in this practice of trying to really hold both in my hands and in my heart and also really see that everyone else is doing that too in their own ways. It has pulled me out of this place of feeling really alone in my pain and also in my need for beauty and has sort of placed me back into this trust. that's actually like the essence of what we're meant to be doing here. And so it's an ongoing practice that doesn't feel so acute now in this season of life that I'm in, but that at once did. And now it feels like it feels like a way of staying tethered to, yeah, like what it means to be human without feeling so pulled away from the whole of it. And I think the practice of being with both the pain and the beauty and the horror and the connection and just all of it is a way of like honoring, you have the aliveness that I really feel like I had to fight for and that I think so many people don't always have such easy access to feeling. And yeah, so my sort of meditation of being in this place, like this meditation, I feel like I'm always sort of living in of being with it all feels like a lifeline and also like something that kept me here so that I could actually experience it all in the ways that I'm, that I kind of feel like I'm just starting to learn to in some ways. Thank you Lisa, just bowing so deeply to your words. I know you've shared these things before, but it just feels like an immense bone to receive them now. And I know so many people are feeling the same way. How did you know or perhaps did you always know that you wanted to be of service to others inside of this? Like when do you feel like I feel like so many of us, it's it's very uncommon, I think, to find someone with the courage and inquiry of spirit that you have and the ability to translate it so beautifully to word. Yeah, when did that call to service, if you will, show up for you? I think for a long time I didn't know that I could be of service because I was in so much pain and because I was like so focused inward and so focused on my own figuring out of how to be here that being of service didn't even feel like it was accessible to me when I was young. But I have a memory of being a teenager and I was in this outpatient therapy group after I was hospitalized where I would go and meet with other teenagers once a week in this group therapy process. And I remember I kind of like naturally took on this role of being known as like the deep listener and the one who had something to share and something to offer the other people who are bringing their own pain to the circle. And I had this experience in that time in my life, I must have been 16, maybe 15 of realizing that because of the pain that I was in, I was able to really see people and really feel on behalf of others. And that extended to the wider world too. I mean, when I was a freshman in high school, I remember skipping school to go to a protest in San Francisco against the Iraq War and getting grounded and getting in trouble for going. But just from that time in my life, feeling a real deep resonance with the ache and the suffering that other people were holding. And I think when I started to recognize the ways that my pain and my willingness to be with my pain actually allowed me to connect to that that often goes and said in other people. I sort of started to be able to cultivate that as part of the gift that I have to share and part of, yeah, part of what I've longed to do in the world in some capacity. And I think it's taken years and years of sitting with myself and meeting my own depths and being in that place and also seeing myself be able to like fall into joy and beauty and connection and creativity, like to fall into these other places that I've really been able to feel the desire and the longing to be of service in that way. And also the capacity to do that without doing it from a place of needing to feel worthy or needing to feel like I'm like doing something that gives me permission to be here, which I think when I was younger, I had a sense of of this sense of like wanting to be helpful in order to be seen as good. And so I think in staying with my own process in my own pain and moving through the endless spirals of that, the desire to be of service felt more and more rooted in a real place, in a place that I tried to move from. And yeah, it continues to widen and grow and shift as I do, but I feel that sense of service, like getting wider and wider in me as I learn to hold my own stuff more and more. And it feels like such a gift to get to, yeah, to get to feel my own, my own aches become more than themselves. But I share what's grown from them with other people. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. I feel like again, acknowledging that you're a therapist, which again, thank you so much for your service. And so many people who, like there are a lot of people listening to this who are and many people who are in a helping profession that aren't. And I know something that including myself. And I think something that has always felt really super challenging for me is this idea and kind of, I know even though I work with Tara, I would not consider myself a new ageer, but I think in some new age spaces and even in some not-new age spaces, like neospirituality, self-help. I mean, it's really, I think a fear of dying and a fear of grief that drives it a great deal of it, really, if we're getting down to it. But I think what you're saying is so, I mean, this is a very obvious thing to say. It's so incredibly important. And it's so incredibly important to repeat it because everything in certainly capitalism, certainly colonialism, certainly in the Western framework. And certainly in a lot of self-help spaces are like always concerned, I think, with how do we transmute this? Like how do we see it as an initiation that can help us to evolve, which are very valuable inquiries. But even that is, can we turn this into something? Can we move through it? Can we move past it? And that's, I know a part of what you do, like how do we remain present with all that there is here? But one of the things that I really value and I know so many do is you are not attempting to fix anything. Like there is not fixing, there's no need to perform this. There is an impact. Something that, again, I just cannot tell you how meaningful it was to me. I'm an avid and voracious reader of your beautiful sub-stack called human stuff. And probably if you're listening to this episode, you are already subscribed to human stuff listener, but if you're not subscribed, please. The way that for the last couple of years, well, I think you were writing when the ache remains, you were sharing like you were going through a tremendously difficult time. And you were like, yeah, I'm in this. And I'm moving through these experiences. And I think when somebody, I know you've also talked very eloquently about like your complicated feelings about being a therapist and a public figure and a writer and like where the, like where are you in the spectrum of this? I'm not a therapist. I also have super complicated feelings about that. So I feel like it's been a bottom to read your words. But I think when there's an expectation, if someone somehow reaches a certain number or a certain level of popularity, they kind of stop being able to share what's going on with them and stop being able to share their process that they're in, it can make, I don't know. And it feels to me, this may be sad to say, but like very revolutionary and very important that you continue to share, like this isn't all past tense, like this is a continuing process. And I again feel very passionately about like depet-estilizing our helpers, like and the people who maybe many people are listening to, it's very challenging, I think for those folks to feel like, can I be a human in front of you still? Or like, am I gonna, I don't know, like, can I be a person who's still going through life and figuring this all out? And what do I feel comfortable sharing? So I don't know, I just wanted to again honor and bear witness to the fact that you really are such a beautiful example of somebody who is really not afraid to say like, yeah, there's been so much growth, so much learning, so much change, and I'm still in this life, and still going through my, still going through it. Has it, have you always felt like that was a natural thing for you, like a given for you, like I will continue to be transparent to the degree that I feel comfortable, or has it been a concerted challenging process to make that call? I think it's been a little bit of both, and I want to just thank you for touching on that because I agree with everything that you said around. Yeah, like what a gift it is to not let us stillize anyone, and I think as, yeah, I think as I got more and more followers or subscribers or whatever word you might want to use, there was a sense of almost like feeling like I needed more protection, or like I, I felt a little bit more exposed when I shared personal narrative or personal parts of myself, but a lot of that was really because of so much of the patriarchal colonial framework around what it means to be a therapist, and I think I have had to undo this idea that I'm not allowed to express my humanity in order to be seen as professional. When I have actually felt like every time I share parts of myself or parts of my life or parts of what I'm moving through, it's really coming from a place of wanting to be of service and wanting to be a mirror and wanting to remind people to honor their own humanity and to hold space for their own multifaceted selves and to have reverence for the ways that they are unfinished and that there's beauty in that. And I found that I do have a natural orientation toward being more open because I've seen the ways that other people doing that has guided me back to acceptance of my own stuff that I'm still navigating, my own aches that will always be here. And so when I do share, I always try to make sure that it's not coming from a place of wanting to be vulnerable just for the sake of being vulnerable, right? But sharing from a heart-centered place in a way that feels grounded to me, in a way that feels connected to my own humanity and to what I want to put into the world, in a way that undoes some of the systems of harm that I'm still working on undoing in myself that tell me who deserves to share and whose story deserves to get heard and what it means to let ourselves be seen as fully human. And it's become a bit of a practice for me to really stay in touch with the place that I'm sharing from so that I can feel that groundedness, even as I share vulnerable or personal parts of myself. And I also feel like it helps me remember that I'm tethered to everyone else and that we're all part of the same web and that when I reach out a hand by sharing something that I'm experiencing that feels like it could be meaningful to someone else, that's a way of undoing my own aloneness and undoing the aloneness that I see so many people hearing their own stories in the world. So it feels like this constant practice of trusting that I get to keep what I need to keep for myself and also giving myself permission to share what I want and need to share when I know that it's something that is giving what someone might need in a way. And also, I get also feels like a gift to me to get to unravel from my own sense of isolation and aloneness in what I've experienced and let it be seen and known. Like that that's also a part of my own healing process is not holding things inside, not holding them to myself, not assuming that they're not okay to share because for a long time as a child, it was there wasn't really room for me to share what I was moving through. There wasn't really room for me to be honest about what I was experiencing. And so it's also a part of my own healing process and practice to let myself actually be seen and known in the corners that I've at one time kept hidden and to see the connection that can come from being honest about the fullness of who we are, which will always include the harder parts. So yeah, it's kind of this twofold, this twofold practice, I guess. Yeah, I see that and I'm deeply grateful for it, along with many other people. I'd love to, there's so much I want to talk about, but I feel that this is the perfect segue into your book. So you have two books, one of which is just getting ready to be birthed into the world, but your beautiful first book already enough is gorgeous. But your second book that's set to come out in April, it's available anywhere you get your books, please pre-order when the acre remains, is about your experience with depression. And I know that and there's a lot of wisdom that's woven into it, but the I love the subtitle for the book that if I'm remembering correctly is what is lessons on tending to the unfixable and finding beauty anyway. Is that it? Yeah, yeah, damn, damn. So I want to talk about that. So I know because I followed your work for a while, that how long, like, where, where, I feel like this is in some ways the depths of what you offer all the time, but where did this book come from and what inspired you to write it? Was postpartum in 2021 and into 2022 and 2023 and 2024 because I feel like postpartum last years, I'm still in it. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a long, it's a long place and yeah, when I became a mother, which happened just a few months before already enough came out, I got sort of long headfirst into a lot of grief and pain that I thought I had processed and moved through, but that came right back to the surface in ways that I was kind of expecting, but wasn't expecting in such an acute way. Yeah. And I think because I had written already enough and because I had shared about this this place of acceptance that I had found myself in, there was some shame around like, wow, I'm really struggling again and I'm feeling my own free verbal trauma and other experiences that I that I had had rise to the surface in ways that, yeah, we're really reminding me that I had more tending to do. And in that place, I was sort of, I felt almost initiated into this new relationship with my depression and my grief. And as I found different avenues and different ways of actually facing and meeting what had been shoved down for so long, grief that I didn't even know I hadn't felt because the freeze around it was so contained that it wasn't until I became a mother and felt this connection with my child and also my fear of connecting with my child that I recognized that there was still a lot of, you know, like a lot of tending that was needed inside of me. And as I was doing this tending and this grieving and this being with my pain in new ways, I was writing about what I was experiencing and what I was remembering and what I was coming to understand and what I was having a more embodied sense of and I was writing like poems to myself that I wanted to remember and words to my inner child that I wanted her to get to hold on to. And as I was writing, I kept just imagining like every younger version of myself almost sitting in a circle around me, like waiting to hear what I was understanding in this season of my life. And I was imagining them almost like absorbing it as I did. And then I kept getting images of that circle of thai younger selves like widening out into anyone who needed to remember these things. And so I was in this creative process of writing what I was moving through and what I was coming to understand and almost seeing it as this tether too. Oh yeah, there are so many of us who have these aches that may never fully go away. There are so many of us that are reckoning with pain that will need our attention for a lifetime. And I'm not actually alone in this. And the writing of it and the putting it into a book in particular also became this way of again, like pulling me out of this place of shame around having to do this tending over and over again and remembering that this gets to be part of my aliveness and part of our aliveness is cultivating this willingness to meet ourselves, to meet each other, to meet the world with a willingness to hold what it is that we find with as much tenderness and care and open hard in this as we can. And the writing of the book really pulled me back to this place of embodying a trust in how deeply human it is to have these parts of myself that are going to need my relationship until I'm not here anymore. And it's giving me so much courage and strength to, yeah, like to get to put some of that into words and to get to put it into this thing that I now get to share with other people. I feel like it's been another layer of my own healing to let this work be seen and known and to offer it and to, yeah, let it be this spiral that gets to continue deepening and widening and that will be needed in new ways. And the whole process of writing it has felt like a reminder that, yeah, that it's okay that we still have these aches and that actually these aches are part of what we have to give to each other in a way when we allow ourselves to hold and honor and see them in ourselves and then one another. I literally, I mean, I was so excited before I simply cannot wait. I want to just think you so much for sharing this and for writing this book and for doing all the work you do in the world. But I really just want to come back to the essence of what you're sharing that I think for so many, for me, you writing this book feels profound because you're absolutely right. There are aches and wounds that will be tending to for the rest of our lives. And I think I do, I do want to share briefly and then obviously center back on you. I think it's not even back and forth. But I have, of course, a completely different origin story from you and our kiddos are not so far apart and it's been a real shock to me. I'm like, in having my daughter, I've been like, oh, like I thought I did this work on my mother wound. I thought I like, I thought we were like, okay, like now that my, now that my child is, is for. And obviously, like nothing stays the same, everything changes shape, but there, there have, I've been really sitting in my own grief over the last few months. I think in dealing with such an acute level, like I find like any time there is an acute up leveling of depression that I'm just going through personally right now, just because. And my child being so sick and they're being such a high need, which is such a privilege. And also brings up like there's no one tending to me. Yeah. And it continues and it will always be that way. You know, there will, there will always be a level of tending, but not at the level that did not get met, right? And that won't ever get met. And so I think like that idea of beginning to really say, like what, it's been a bit of a grappling process for me recently to be like, oh, maybe this just won't go away. I had never considered that. So I feel like the fact that you walked through this path in the forest and carved out a way for people to follow you and left caerns for us is really important. And I offer that to say that I think, did it come as a surprise? Yeah, I think you shared that. Like it was a little bit of a surprise to you. Like, oh, like did that feel really acute? This sense of, oh, my gosh, like this might be here, not forever, but this might be just something I am tending to for the rest of my life. Like somehow it feels so clear that we can honor others in that process. We can honor like your wounds deserve time, space, tending care. They don't have to go away. And yet for myself, it was a big surprise. Did that also feel that way to you? Yeah, so much. And yeah, I'm just holding the tenderness of what you shared and the tenderness that I know you move through and goodness, like the gifts that you offer in spite of that tenderness and maybe even because of it feel so meaningful to me and to so many people. So thank you for sharing. And yeah, it did feel surprising. And I think part of me was, yeah, maybe afraid of like, wait, if this is going to keep surfacing in new ways, like that means that I don't get to keep trying to fix it. And if I'm not doing that, I don't even know what to do with it. It felt like you and it makes me think of our wider culture and like the wellness world and the world of spirituality in some ways and this incessant, this incessant pressure to fix and make better and ascend and come out on the other side of and have this clean before and after story. And it just like shattered this notion of what so many of us are taught and sold to do with the things that are hard and with the things about our own lives that we might not ever be able to fix. And so I think there was a lot of fear when this came up again in this really under way. But there was also and there has continued to also be this like deep sense of relief of like, oh, I can actually practice setting down that impulse to fix or change or make better. And when I set that down, like I actually get to be present with what those parts of me are needing and with what the pain in the world is needing from me when I start trying to fix it. And when I just sit with it and listen and name, like, of course this is hurting, of course this is here. And so I think that's the place that I'm sort of grappling in right now, is is trying to deepen this sense of willingness to just be present with what arises, and to notice when the impulse to fix it or to change it or this shame that it's not quote, "better" comes up and to keep returning to this place of, yeah, like I actually have a lot of capacity to meet this ache with love and care when I don't try to eradicate it. And that is something that I'm still learning in very real ways that I don't get right very often, but that I feel really devoted to practicing now. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think there is a kind of a, like a shock to that realization that I just want to make sure that if people are hearing this, they know they're not alone in that surprise, you know, because it can come up that way. Yeah, I have a question for you, which we've been talking about this and we, I mean, you've been answering it, that I wanted to put like a finer point on it, which is to ask you, because I know so many people struggle deeply and mightily with how do we live in a world where there is so much injustice, genocides happening in front of our eyes, wars, deaths that are so tragic, so senseless, so devastating. How do we not avert our eyes from those things, which is incredibly important, as I know you and I both share that understanding and know that we also can keep our eyes open and must to the beauty around us as well. I think so many people feel like they can't or they shouldn't, or that it's somehow selfish to do that. And you have a way of framing your own practice with this both and that I don't think is like tight and polished like, oh, there's a formula on a practice that you have and share, but you, you live it in your writing and to anybody who might be struggling with that notion, is it okay? Do I have permission to rest, to drink in the beauty of my world while so much horror is happening in the world outside of me or even around me? And I think it's probably a really sharp parallel too with like when we're moving through depression, grief, heartache. Sometimes there's no joy to be found and sometimes there is and that can be really strange too for some of us and yeah just what would you have to say to somebody who is struggling with that maybe? Goodness, I think I first just want to normalize how, yeah, like how human that tension is and how human the struggle to give ourselves permission to hold all of it is we don't have very many models for how to do that. We don't have very many models for how to face and be with all without bypassing any part of this experiment of being alive. And as you're sharing, I'm thinking of Joanne and Macy is someone that I consider a deep wise teacher for me and I consider the spiral of the work that we connects and how the first part of that spiral according to her and her wisdom is gratitude. And I think about how Joanne would teach that a lot of people don't like starting with gratitude and want to go right to the pain because they think that gratitude is going to pull them away from what hurts or pull them away from the pain, pull them away from the grief and the despair. But she would teach about how in almost every indigenous tradition like ritual always starts with giving things with honoring what you have with bowing and reverence to the gifts that the earth gives us to the things that delight us to everything that we have and that the more we can actually hold and feel and honor that the more we actually have to bring to the pain. And so I think about for people who feel guilty or feel like it's a betrayal to the injustice or feel like it is somehow unacceptable to hold or make space for beauty or rest or care or even just like delight or dancing. I think about how much those things actually buoy us to show up on behalf of all of life and how much beauty and connection and joy and delight and pleasure actually give us more capacity to meet what is painful with the kind of spaciousness that what's painful might actually be asking of us. And I think so many of my own teachers and so many people that I've learned from like point me back to that over and over again. And so I try to hold it as this sort of symbiotic relationship that actually allows us to meet all of life more fully when we feel like we're resourced with the goodness that's also here. Gloria's thank you. I love that you brought forward Joanna Macy's work. What a what a light what a force. Mass of loss and it also reminds me a lot something that I think about probably on a weekly like semi-weekly basis is that beautiful story that Tara Brock shares at the beginning of true refuge when she wasn't able to walk for a time and she was down at the ocean with her family and everyone left to go to the ocean. She so badly wanted to go with them and couldn't and they all left and the tears flowed and she found herself saying out loud with her dogs. Please may I love this life no matter what. Which I think is for some of us maybe a tall order. They may remain in this life no matter what possibly but I do think about that a lot. What would it take for me to love this life today here? I feel that so much in what you're saying too. Whatever adjective we want to put on there for ourselves. I think gratitude. So just perfectly named there. Yeah. And I think something that also really helps me is letting it be really small when it has to be small because sometimes I don't feel grateful for being alive. There are moments when I'm like I don't know how to do this. Why is it so hard? Why is there so much like why are we here? And asking myself to have this constant place of being grateful when that's actually what I'm feeling just doesn't work and doesn't resonate. And so if I can actually shrink it down and say like and have it be something so small that I can attune to. Yes. Oh that deep breath felt really restorative. Yes. This glass of water like is hydrating the part that I had. Yeah. Well my child's laughter like makes me laugh like when it It can be so small, indouable. I think of agearing Marie Brown, who says, "Small is all." I think that can apply to giving ourselves access to gratitude or pleasure or joy as well. It doesn't have to be taking over our whole sense of self or our whole idea of what it means to be alive in every moment. It can actually be so tiny. We feel we find ourselves having more capacity for it to actually feel really big in a genuine way. I think there's something about that permission that feels really important when things are actually quite difficult sometimes. Ruchelle, I'm so glad you named that. I feel like a card that has obviously worked in the field of tarot and sometimes tarot isn't everything for me, but one card that has really become that anchor for me is 10 of cups. I started noticing it would come up for people in situations like what you were describing. It just sucked. It came up for me in moments where I was like, "I understand. Objectively, I've so much to be thankful for." But I really hate being alive right now and I just don't feel connected or tethered to that gratitude. The hook in for me was dappled light. It's like I really love dappled light. I'm glad to be here to see it. I'll miss it when I'm not here. Similar to what you're saying, I get to pet my cat today. They're here today and my child is safe and well laughing downstairs. That's really great. The glass of water that sky right now. It's interesting because in a lot of the more foundational paradigm of the way tarot is taught, 10 of cups of looked at is like you got everything you wanted, which is granted, which is just a gentle thing that has to be undone because it doesn't really exist. If that doesn't quite align, then what else? It just reminded me a lot of that. Yeah, that's so beautiful. I love that that card came through. That feels so, so resonant. Yeah, thanks. How is it feeling? We're going to wrap up our time here in a moment. How is it feeling to know that your book is right about ready to come into the world? How does it feel compared to the last book you wrote? I think with the last book, I feel like I was more concerned with how's it going to do? What's the response going to be? What's going to happen? How many book sales will I think I was in that place of being really concerned about all of that while also having no energy to do anything about it because that was three months last part of it. I was just like, "I cannot." Sorry book, but you're not getting my attention. With this book, there's an interesting felt sense of actually really trusting that it's going to find the people who need it and almost this sense of surrendering to outcome at all, which feels ridiculous as someone who is not capable of just not caring about how the things that I share do in the world. But it also, I just feel really grounded in the book finding the places it needs to find. I feel almost like I've done the work already. So now the book gets to find its way. It feels really nice to feel a little more relaxed about it all and to feel just to feel excited to get to share it at all. That feels like such a gift and I feel grateful to not have all this sort of tension around what it's going to mean about me or about my work or success or whatever. I feel like I'm just practicing letting it go and trusting that it will find its way. If you ask me a month from now, I might feel different this year. That's how I'm feeling right now and it actually feels good to recognize that. That's beautiful. I'm so happy. It could not be more deserved. I feel like I mean literally with Bated Breath. I mean it's pre-orders, it'll be there at my door the day it comes out. I'm so excited. Thank you. And yours is out just a few weeks after. Which is so cool. I know. So many books. Yeah. Yeah. And Terry Tempest Williams came to my door this morning with the Glorians. I can't wait. So I feel like it's just embarrassment of riches in terms of beautiful books that are being born right now. I'm lucky to be a part of that. I don't know. Lisa, this has been such a gift. Where can people find you? My website is LisaOlivera.com. And from there you can find my newsletter or my Instagram. Those are kind of the places I tend to share most. And yeah, all the information is there. And yeah, I'm so very grateful that I got this time with you. I feel so nourished. And sometimes at the end of podcasts I can feel a little like I need to go lay down, but I actually am feeling more energized and more grounded. And I'm just so grateful for your presence and your wisdom and your care. So thank you. Well Lisa, thank you so much. It was such an honor. And I'm also honored by your words. I too feel like shifted after this conversation. You're just such a gift. Thank you so much for all you do for all of us and in the world. And I'm so happy that you're here. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. This podcast was edited by Chase Voorhees. Podcast art by Rochelle Sartini-Garner. If you wish to dive into more of my work, learn more about Soltero. Work with me in any kind of capacity. I'm always creating new things for us to do together. You can find all about our self-led courses and classes and new offerings on tarotforthewildsill.com. And if you want to be the first through know about any new offerings and new projects that I'm doing, if you want to benefit from discounts and early birds and all kinds of lovely newsletter only offerings, you can sign up for the newsletter at the link in our show notes. And finally, if you have a question for me to answer at the podcast or if you'd like to work with me live on the podcast or if you'd like your question answered on the podcast, please click the link to asklancy and send me your cues. Thank you so much for being here.