Imagine, for a moment, entering a space where you are valued for your authentic self, where everyone understands and respects your identity and experiences. Join Suzi as she journeys into the world of connection, self-reclamation and community transformation.
Suzi would love to hear from you the listeners! Email her at suzigma@gmail.com or visit her website at suzilandolphi.com
Music credit to Kalvin Love for the podcast’s theme song “Bee Your Best Self”
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Contact Suzi at suzigma@gmail.com or (818) 470-2013 and share your story.
suzilandolphi.com
vetsandplayers.org
wildhorserescue.org
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
Imagine, for a moment, entering a space where you are valued for your authentic self, where everyone understands and respects your identity and experiences. Join Suzi as she journeys into the world of connection, self-reclamation and community transformation.
Suzi would love to hear from you the listeners! Email her at suzigma@gmail.com or visit her website at suzilandolphi.com
Music credit to Kalvin Love for the podcast’s theme song “Bee Your Best Self”
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Contact Suzi at suzigma@gmail.com or (818) 470-2013 and share your story.
suzilandolphi.com
vetsandplayers.org
wildhorserescue.org
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
I'm Susie Landolfi, and welcome to Be Crazy. Well, I want to read you something. It's a new book I found. It's called how we Show Up. I was thinking about that. Oftentimes, we think about showing up in terms of what are we wearing? What time do we show up? If you ever said that, I've said that a million times. What time do you want me to show up? We never talk about how do you want me to show up. What do you need? Do you need me to come in and help? Do you need me to show up with empathy? Do you need me to show up with boundaries? Do you need me to show up with joy? How do you need me to show up? I'm going to read something to you that means a lot to me.
Speaker 1:I've always said this it's always about connection, not about control. Finding and strengthening connection is a craft, not a science. There are common denominators, patterns and guideposts. I think that if we look inside ourselves and those closest to us, we'll find that we have most of the tools and materials and can figure out how we might put them together. Maybe it's not even something we need to construct. To paraphrase an idea from John A Powell, who leads the UC Berkeley Othering and Belonging Institute. I want to go there. We don't build connection because we are fundamentally connected. I find that perspective reassuring. I was thinking about that and I thought, wow, we don't build connection because we are fundamentally connected. We build it because we're not, because society and the idea of race and gender and money and everything else sets up barriers for us to be connected. She says the American dream makes us complicit in building barriers to a fundamental connection. Tries to keep us apart by telling us that we are out here on our own. That means our work has to be to become more aware of what's already there and peel back the delusion of separateness to reveal our interdependence. To peel back the delusion of separateness to reveal our interdependence.
Speaker 1:I couldn't think of a better time to read this book how we Show Up, reclaiming family, friendship and community. When you reclaim something, it means that it was taken away. It means that you had it and then someone claimed it and I was thinking about who does that and why do we let them and how do we let them, and maybe we don't even realize that something has been taken away from us until it's gone. So reclaiming family, friendship and community For any of us that have been abused, have been traumatized, have been oppressed. We understand that statement. We understand the idea of reclaiming our right to exist, our right to be treated respectfully, our right to be of equal value and to be treated of equal value.
Speaker 1:I remember when, as I was growing up I was still in the late 50s and early 60s in terms of my development of how I'm supposed to show up as a woman I watched my mom most of the time. We obviously learned from watching others and by watching what's going on in our family, and so I'm watching my mom and she's trying to deal with my dad and I'm little, but I see it and he's the son of a gun. He had lots of trauma and he was filled with fear and sadness and it turned to rage. So my mom had to show up in a way that was safe for her and for us. And finally, one day, I was five I bet about five or six years old and she decided she had had enough. It was too dangerous, it was too abusive, and he went to work. He owned a restaurant owned a small restaurant at the time and so he would work late. He would go to work late and we went to bed in our bunk beds in our apartment and at 12 o'clock at night I was woken up in my little feet, pajamas, given my stuffed dog and told to go walk out to the car. And I remember this as if it happened yesterday. And as I'm walking out sleepy-eyed to the car, there's so much movement around me and there's people picking up furniture and bringing it outside and I'm watching as these people going by me with furniture and going out of the car. I remember being in the car and the next thing I remember is waking up in the morning in my bunk bed in a new apartment.
Speaker 1:Now I want you to think about what my mom had to do to get us out of that situation, to reclaim her right to safety. So we moved, they went through a divorce and we learned how to navigate and show up for my dad at his mother's house. He moved back to his mother's house, mother and dad. But there was more to reclaiming. She all of a sudden had to get a car on her own. She had to get a credit card, get a bank account and start to run the household herself financially. My dad kept lots of cash in his pocket. He eventually started to put it in his socks because he didn't want her to take any, and he always had elastic band around it. Remember that as well.
Speaker 1:And so most of what was done in those days a lot of what was done was done by cash, some credit card, of course, and checks. Well, my mom had none of that. So she went down like you know the head of the household now and she went to the bank and tried to open up a checking account and they looked right at her and said where's your husband's? And she said, well, we're getting divorced. And they said, well, he needs the sign for this. You can't get a credit card in your name. You can't get a car loan in your name.
Speaker 1:Like, all of a sudden, what she thought was hers was taken away and my father held it and then she had to reclaim it. She had to realize that one of the things that she didn't do or didn't pay attention to was how to show up for herself and keep hold of what was her right Now. What's interesting about that was my mom didn't go to college, she went and worked, and she had a younger sister, and my mom had a job during the war, during World War II and she helped pay for my aunt to go to secretarial school that's what it was called in those days and she paid her own bills. She drove a car, she had a job and once she gave that up to bring up three children. And she got married and bring up three children and my dad started to do that.
Speaker 1:It was like all of a sudden she gave up the right to have something that is hers, that never should have been taken away. It could be on hold for a while. It could have been that, you know, okay, you and I, as a husband and wife, we could just have our own business account, our own bank account, if you will, the household business, I like to call it and she still could have had access to a car, to bank account and money. That's not what happened. My father was old school, wanted control. Everything was about control, not about connection. It wasn't about connection. Connection scared him. So the only option he had was control and my mom, who was a very kind person, I think she felt she was going to just keep the peace. She was going to keep the peace and eventually she'd be kind enough, or my dad would be kind enough to figure out how he could show up for her because of her kindness. Well, that just enraged him more, so that didn't happen.
Speaker 1:So this idea of reclaiming family, friendship and community, I'd love you to think about for a moment what you realize you have given up, maybe a little piece of time, maybe a little moment at a time, maybe without you even realizing just by being generous, kind, cooperative, collaborative that there was something that was taken away from you. Or you actually gave it to someone to claim for a while because it made them happy, because it was a nice thing to do, or because you were tired, or you were sick, or you were pregnant, or you needed some time off, whatever it was, whatever the situation was, and then, all of a sudden, you wanted to come back and go okay, that's mine, I'd like it back. I'd like it back. I think a lot about power, control and how we show up for one another and what that means in terms of our interdependence and our well-being. I think all of us would agree that right now, at this time and I've lived a lot of times, I've been through a lot of situations in this country and in the world, and that's one of the gifts of being older is you remember you have experienced history and situations and wars and trauma and struggles and the loss of connection, the fight for power, the taking away of people's rights and then the reclaiming of that. And it's messy and it can be violent and it can be hurtful and it can be destructive and it can be exhilarating and it can actually create more connection than we had before.
Speaker 1:I was on a streaming radio. In fact, you guys should think about this. Is it streaming radio? Yeah, I guess it's a streaming radio show with video. I'm sort of getting used to all of this idea of streaming as opposed to saying television. So there's a streaming, wonderful streaming show that I'm on and I'm on it pretty much weekly. It's called the Michael Collier show, michael Collier morning show. Look it up C-O-Y-L-A-R.
Speaker 1:Michael Collier he's been a friend of mine for 30 years. He's a comedian. He started, came here, I think from the Midwest, could be from Chicago, and he came out to California as a young man to seek his fortune in the entertainment business. And it's very hard. I mean, at that time, 30 years ago, there was no streaming, there was no get on your computer, like I'm doing right now, and create something and put it into the universe. There were gatekeepers everywhere in the entertainment business so he went someplace where there was a lot of people and could drum up an audience, and that's called Venice Beach. So this very funny comedian African-American by the way went to Venice Beach and started to perform and did audience participation and created tremendous connection.
Speaker 1:Now I don't know if you've ever heard about Venice Beach. It's somewhere between sort of past, hippie, dumb and wonderful music, community and surfers and skaters. It's this wonderful mishmash and families of people that walk this area where there's all kinds of everything from old keep saying like kind of hippie clothes all the way up to wonderful rap, music and art, people's art and all. So it's pretty powerful, it's pretty wonderful place. Anyway, he created community, family and connection. There's also a lot of unhoused people there and has been for a long time, and Michael used to. After his show he'd take some of the money and he'd go buy dinners or lunches for many of the people that were on the Venice Walk. We call it the Venice Walk and we were talking about this. So I'm on this show and his two wonderful female comedians that helped co-host the show with him and most of his guests are African-American and I am one of two white people that are on the show.
Speaker 1:He had a wonderful gentleman on the other day that wrote a book called Historical Black Sayings. I grew up in a black family, so I heard probably all the black sayings. I don't actually remember all of what they meant and I didn't understand, I think, all the connotation to them, and I also remember I didn't say them and I loved hearing them. There was a cadence and a fun to the language, to the colloquialism, to the community of that language and those words that I just loved. And so he was talking to this wonderful young man who wrote this book with another author, and the other author who was not on the call can't remember their name, and if you look it up, though, you'll see. And the other person was oh, wait a minute, I think I have his number, his name right here Jared Hill.
Speaker 1:So it's historical black phrases, and Jared Hill is one of the authors and I don't know the other author, the other author, the other author pronoun had a pronoun of they, and Michael was struggling. He was struggling with this, not a lot, but enough so that he said I don't get it, I don't understand it. I always thought that they was plural and it's obviously talking about one person. And I'm watching this because it was my turn to come on afterwards. And he did in such a kind way that I was moved by how he showed up at this moment, confused, still respectful, wanting more understanding and clearly struggling, and owned it.
Speaker 1:And this young man, jared Hill, was so moved by how Michael was showing up for this section, this talk, this wonderful discussion about historical black phrases and about the two authors and their pronouns, that they had the most wonderful connection. They reclaimed community, a straight black man, a gay black man having a discussion about their history, the history of their culture and their race. So I get on and I decided how I wanted to show up Now. I could have ignored it, I could have not brought it up and I thought you know I'm going to talk about this. I said, michael, I can see that you were struggling with the word they for a single person. He says, yeah, you know, I still struggle with that. And I said, okay, let me explain something to you.
Speaker 1:I said, in many indigenous tribes, indigenous cultures, when a person identified and had a whole being, their entire being, not just their body and their genitals, but their whole being, said to them that they were male and female, that they showed up with both, that there were times that, if they say their body was more male than female, yet they identified and could really relate to how women showed up in the world, how they were and how they connected and what they did in the culture. And most of these indigenous cultures called men and women who identified as either gay or bisexual or trans. They called them two spirits. They were revered as wisdom keepers because they understood that spectrum of gender. So I say a spectrum of gender because, as much as we would love sort of a solid line that says, oh for male to female, it doesn't actually exist. And there are times where, as babies and a fetus starts to grow, it starts with, say, female genitals and they morph to male. That's actually how we get our genitals is. They morph because the tissue and the nerve endings in the blood is all the same and so sometimes it doesn't morph all the way, or sometimes parts of them morph and not others.
Speaker 1:So this idea of gender being this hard and fast, that they're all female, they're all male, or that the body determines how someone feels and shows up. It's just not happening the way that we would quote, unquote like it to happen. And, by the way, since I came from a mixed race family, when are you black and when are you white? Or how much? And where's that line? So you get my drift.
Speaker 1:So, to reclaim this idea that you don't identify, you don't live as your entire being is telling you, that you show up male and female, and they actually includes all of that, and I explained that to Michael and to these two wonderful women they're on the show and they thanked me because it made such sense to them and all the stigma and all the judgment and all the self-righteousness of like, well, you're a female, you should be called she and if you're male, you should be called him. And when I said, no, this idea that we can be all of it, there are people that literally walk this earth knowing more about what it's like to have all of the genders in them and to access them and to show up with them. So I was thinking that that's reclaiming what we've had for generations, as long as people have stood upright and walked to the earth, whether they came from fish or wherever we came from, as we morphed and evolved that, that inclusivity, to say, oh yeah, they, they can, they can be both, they can be all and we can show up in a way that uses all of our gifts, all of our strengths, all of our being. And I don't know about you, but I'll tell you. When I talk about and I hear the word reclaiming and reclaiming community Boy, that's a scary thing. Thought that there are a bunch of people that want to break down community, want to increase the barriers and put up barriers that stop us and inhibit us from being connected. I'm also old enough to remember the Berlin Wall. I'm understanding of this idea that we have to put up walls and and make sure that we split things. That's mine and that's yours.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm not saying everything should be shared 100%. It's just that I know some things. I know that there's no place in the, in the ocean, other than what we've created, to say this is where my part of the ocean begins and ends. I know that on the land, that if I walk through the forest, I won't know where one state ends and one begins unless they put up a fence and unless they put up a sign. And I know that the animals and the trees and the sky and the wind and the rain don't understand that either, that it's all here, and I also know that if somebody does something upriver, it's going to come down to me and that there's no way to absolutely deny that what I do on a daily basis affects everybody.
Speaker 1:It may not get to someone halfway around the world very quickly, and I understand that my responsibility is that now the community is much bigger and much more, we are affecting each other much more and we are interdependent that what I do on a daily basis actually affects you, and I know that and I take responsibility for that. So I just wanted you to know that I really appreciate this idea of how we're going to show up and how we're going to show up for these coming holidays. So we have all these wonderful holidays Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and Christmas, and there's probably more that I can't even think of right now and the new year, and how are we going to show up for ourselves? And then how are we going to show up for community, family and friends. That's a choice, that's a practice, how I show up. So I invite you to think about that and then make some decisions and practice showing up in a way that is authentic to you and also honors the idea that we affect one another. We are interdependent community, we always have been and we always will be. There's no way to get around that.
Speaker 1:So I wish you connection and I'll see you next week. I'll talk to you next week and I so appreciate any and all of you that listen to this podcast and I would love, love, love to hear from you. I can't even tell you how much I enjoy when I'm on Michael show and people are typing in questions, so I just would appreciate so much. And if you'd like to be on the podcast how fun would that be? Just email me, suzie Landolfi at gmailcom. Su Zi Lan dol PHI and I know this wonderful producer named Cindy Thompson will put that in the bio of this when she posts this podcast and please feel free to contact me. I'd love to hear from you and I'd love to hear how you're going to show up. Bless you all. Be crazy Well, by the way. Be crazy Well. And this wonderful theme song was by Calvin love, check him out. And Calvin with a K.