CASEY: Welcome to the Questions to Hold podcast. I'm your host and BWB founder, Casey Carroll. In a world that often praises answers over questions, the act of holding a question is an act of resistance, presence, and devotion. In this podcast, I hold space for discussion at the intersection of life's biggest questions and our personal and professional worlds.
These are honest conversations with progressive leaders dedicated to questioning our institutions, igniting change, and provoking new possibilities.
Join me for my next discussion.
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CASEY: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Questions to Hold podcast. I'm your host, Casey Carroll, and we are celebrating over here a little bit because it is our official podcast launch! Woohoo! Today I get to be in conversation with my most favorite person in the entire universe, Caitlin Fitzpatrick, BWB co-owner with me, and, um, just the best person in the whole world. And so today we just wanna take some time to introduce you to what Questions to Hold is for us, how Caitlin and I started to really use this and understand it as a bigger concept than something we maybe originally had thought it was. And to kick that off, we're going to just dedicate this and all future episodes to all the folks out there that we've met or that we haven't met, um, who are committed to questioning their institutions, committed to questioning and holding questions for themselves that are helping them deepen their meaning and their relationship to the world and to themselves and who are constantly curious of the underlying, well, “Why?” “Well, is this right?” And just the bigger question that's always available to all of us in any given moment. So this one goes out to the questioners in, in the room. Some of the main questioners I wanna name that provide kind of a lineage and legacy to some of this work too, are Grace Lee Boggs, which is an amazing feminist revolutionary, um, and inspiration for myself, teacher, mentor, all the things who often used to ask the question, “What time is it on, um, the clock of the world?” to introduce meetings and I was always so inspired by the simplicity, but the profound nature of being able to kick off, um, meetings, anything, with kind of a question with that much depth and what it makes available and possible. Other questioners or legacy of questioners that this brings up for me are around Rilke, which is a poet, and lately Krista Tibbit, who has taken up to a lot of his work and talks about living the questions on her podcast, “On Being” and in that platform and institutions, and then as I said, just all the other everyday folks, our ancestors, our future folks, everybody that we get to talk to in the business who are just holding these questions. Anyone else, Caitlin, you wanna name or bring your voice in as we just start to kind of set up the Questions to Hold piece?
CAITLIN: I would say, yeah, you mentioned all of the clients and partners that we've gotten a chance to work with in the last four beautiful years that BWB has been, um, in service. So all of our clients who have helped us even challenge the notion of questioning even further, and also the BWB Creative Collective– our folks that are our designers and strategists and copywriters and just all the artists and people that are, that we have the, the beautiful chance to work with every day in the work we're doing including, I know what we'll talk about with, um, the design of the, the actual card deck that you beautifully brought to being.
CASEY: Yeah. So, right. And that is a perfect bridge into just naming a little bit about the origin story for this idea of Questions to Hold itself. And oftentimes me and Caitlin will talk about Elizabeth Gilbert's notion, um, in Big Magic, that ideas have a consciousness and they find somebody, and I feel that way about Questions to Hold in a sense, that it was its own idea circulating out there, and it found me as, um, the carrier in the beginning of it. And then it found BWB with me and Caitlin to kind of continue to bring it into fruition. So the short origin story here is that when I started BWB as a coaching practice, um, around 2015, I was coaching many women entrepreneurs and aspiring business owners and leaders who often, at the end of every call, it seemed like there was just knee-jerk reaction to say like, “What's my homework? What's my action item?” And I was subscribing to that a little bit in the beginning. I think out of my own immaturity or lack of kind of claiming my own voice around some of that and saying like, “Okay. That's right. As a good coach, I should be assigning an action item for everybody” and it really kept gnawing at me over and over, and I decided that I really wanted to switch that up and instead of offering an action item at the end of calls, I wanted to give folks a question to be holding in between the sessions. And the more I kind of understood why that was, it started to feel to me like really a resistance to our society's hyper focus on, um, doing or needing to take an action as the only way that these clients could kind of show to me or show to themselves that they were making improvements and advancements towards their goals. And quite frankly, it just felt so misaligned for me to kind of continue to assert that and again, I'm a Capricorn. I love me some action. There's nothing happening there. But it just did not feel aligned to continue to kind of promote that as the only way towards growth, advancement, um, meeting the goal. So as simple as that, I just started to offer questions to hold and they could be something like, “What is the purpose of my work?” Like bigger questions, or they could be simply like, “Is this making me happy?” And the idea was that in between the sessions, it wasn't like an answer was meant to be found on that question, but rather it was continued to be asked so anytime they may come up against something, that question might emerge again of like, “Is this making me happy?” and really living into that answer over and over again and seeing what emerges as an insight and takeaway. And it quickly became, you know, made clear to me that this idea was working and important and more than I could have ever realized on my own accord that it would matter and people were having really profound shifts in their own relationship to themselves and to their work and to what we started to talk about and I thought, “Okay, I'm really onto something here.” So flash forward, 2019, when Caitlin and I partnered in the business, we started talking about just that this larger idea, our larger resistance to kind of some of those dominant culture ideas and how questioning was playing a part in the business for ourselves. So, um, it starts there, but grows into so many other pieces where we were having conversations as part of branding about, you know, “What is the larger question that your business is holding?” and asking people as part of an opening process before we began to work with them. Some big questions about themself as part of this kind of transformative midwifery approach to branding. Um, and so Caitlin and I then really got our arms wrapped around like all the ways we wanted questions to be situated in the work, to redefine branding and to also take this idea of kind of branding and creative process out of the perpetuation of norms and into this bigger conversation on “What could all this be and?” and “What are our clients really coming to us to unpack and then guide them in, in developing?” So I'll leave it there, Caitlin, I'm, I'm curious what you wanna add too, about how Questions to Hold started to live in the business from there.
CAITLIN: Yeah, it seems like it became this central theme that we'd be like, oh yeah, the questions! Like I remember it came up a lot when clients would come to us, especially as it related to what they have been taught to think about or exposed to think about with marketing and that was something that kept coming up time and time again of, you know, well, “I don't really wanna be doing this, but I really should be doing it”. And we would start to get into the question of, “Well, why do you think you need to be doing this?” and “What do you think that will impact?” And what, you know, we would ask a lot of question, a long line of questioning around, you know, content and social media and that led us to, um, the creation of a, a course that we made with our partner, Randi, who I know–Randi Matthews, who I know you, you're interviewing in a, in one of the episodes. But it, it really has become this cornerstone of everything that we do, whether it's related to social media and talking about storytelling or why you need to have a business this size, or why your business needs to look that way, and, you know, so on and so forth. It really has become such an integral part of, of our work and it's, I really, the other thing I just wanted to name about it is it really is meant to be an iterative process, which is why we talk a lot about evolving as you know, people and a culture and groups and teams and all of this. So it's what I have loved about, um, incorporating the practice into my every day, is that a lot of times I'll pick the same card multiple times in a row, or it'll come up a week later or two weeks later, and I get to ask myself again, that question, and reflect back on how maybe something has changed since the first time I asked it. Or, you know, maybe, um, once I get past those first couple of thoughts around the answer, I go into this deeper level of questioning, um, that's beyond the surface. So it, it's just become a really powerful, not just approach, but also a tool for us and having the actual, you know, deck of cards to hold and to show and to, to look at every day.
CASEY: Yeah, I was gonna say, Caitlin said two really important things. One is the word “practice”, and that is absolutely how we see it and how we introduce it and invite others to engage with it as a practice, as a life practice, and as a business practice really, and you know that being iterative and something you commit to and you know, over and over and over are kind of working with as a tool in that way. And so we do see this as a practice. And again, how I even brought it into the coaching work was because I was in the practice of holding questions myself as like a devotional process for personal development and also, for kind of guiding what was gonna happen with starting the business. So I think that's really key, your naming “practice”. And then the other piece that is to just say is we started this with a card deck, which we haven't talked about as well, which I know we kind of said in the beginning, but really once that idea started–oh, Caitlin's flashing them on the screen cuz they're so beautiful, which we'll talk about Kelly, who did the design with us. But yeah, so it really started off as this concept, as we said, and we were baking it into our coaching and client relationships, and then at one point it just became clear that this was supposed to be a card deck, something that we needed to physically hold in our hands, questions that we needed to have as reminders around in those ways. And so last year, I took an art residency, um, in upstate New York and ended up carving out time to really dedicate and get a download on making this deck. What were the questions that we wanted to ask as part of the first deck, and really bringing this project kind of to life in a material way, which was like such an amazing process and an exciting process, and one that Caitlin and I got to partner with a dear friend and also a designer who's been instrumental in BWB, actually did the branding, um, and design for the company. And their name is Kelly Stangle, and they just kind of engaged in this process with us so wholeheartedly and willingly to go into just the intuitive possibility and nature of it. There was no real design direction other than “:isten to what your intuition is telling you, and let's see what emerges”. And Kelly created this incredible deck art, um, which you'll see in a variety of different ways, but that has so much symbolic meaning baked into the heron, and to the color palettes, and to the other, um, iconography that is available on the deck, which really just created such a, a sacred and special container for us to then be able to keep the cards in and the whole process itself really became a ritual in and of itself and a sacred moment for us. And then all of that is, um, you know, imbued in the meaning of the cards that now we give out as gifts or that are available for people to buy, and we use them as tools within our work and in our retreat and in, in so many different contexts that they come up to have that material form has been really cool. And Caitlin and I were just reflecting and launching this, like people have purchased these cards as clients to use as in their business. They've also used them in influencer boxes that they've given as part of their book launch, which is so cool. They've used them as ways, as gifts for people who may be going through challenging times or navigating change and needing to kind of dig into new dimensions of themself. So it's been really just a blessing to see how this is emerging into its own impact out in the world and how people are using them and how that's rippling out further beyond certainly what we could have originally conceived that would've happened with this, so.
CAITLIN: Yeah, and I gotta say, having them in actual form. I, they're just so beautiful and holding them and every morning doing it as a practice, like we were mentioning, has really shifted how I start my day and how I look at my day. And it, it's, it's always something that we bring up with our clients too, where a lot of times the card I’ll pull will be for a client. So it's, it's a really interesting practice and, um, the one that I pulled today, I, I always pull it and then I leave it up so I can look at it all day, but it's “What if the time is now?” And so it seems like the time is now to launch our, our podcast. I will say it's, it's just been a really cool way to see how this idea has evolved and how it will continue to evolve. We've talked about doing, you know, retreats solely based around questions to hold or, or many other things. So I'm, I'm excited to see where it lends itself, um, as we explore these conversations and as you explore conversations with all these, um, interesting folks that you've already started to interview.
CASEY: Yeah. Yeah. And as Caitlin said, I think the podcast is the next iteration that has emerged out of that for us, because oftentimes Caitlin and I will say, you know, we're holding our individual questions as Caitlin named, and we have that practice of pulling a card and what if the time is now, and sitting with that and making meaning with that. But also a bigger question that the business is holding itself, BWB, which is something we ask ourselves, which is “What does it mean to live a feminist business?” That's one of the many questions that is central to kind of the bigger question that I think BWB is bringing into the arena, um, into the bigger marketplace arena in that way. And how that emerged into the podcast was that so many of our other clients were also holding these big questions with their business that was then having this larger impact in the marketplace and in their community and in their personal relationships. And it felt essential to start being in conversation around those without the desire to answer them, but just acknowledging that there are these huge questions that are having, um, impact and what does that mean? So that's how the podcast has kind of come to be and the initial conversations are going in that way, and wiill continue to go that way and I think will lend itself to, you know, how this idea wants to kind of continue to evolve and emerge from there. But the podcast and these conversations are certainly, um, so many seeds, uh, that are being planted and we'll just have yet to see what they start to kind of sprout and bloom from there.
CAITLIN: That'll take a lifetime. Many lifetimes.
CASEY: That's the point! Sometimes we say one of these questions might be for you to hold forever. Um, these are not answers. Um, and again, we, we say this a lot, but it's that form of resistance of how much praise there is out there for the answer and you're the smartest in the room if you have the answer and if you're always saying, you know, et cetera, that's kind of what's been rewarded. And so this is an opportunity to unlearn and explore what is on the other side of the reward if you actually continue to hold the question, um, instead of, and instead of trying to overly favor the answer in that kind of way, so.
CAITLIN: Is there anything else, Casey, that you wanna name with today being the official launch day of the podcast? It's been, you know, obviously a lot of, you know, we've been talking about this as a possibility for so long and it's such an exciting moment for, for you personally and for BWB, but also just anything you else you wanna acknowledge or folks you'd wanna acknowledge with, with launch.
CASEY: The only addition I would have is really that this whole project from start to finish has emerged only when there's been time for rest. When this whole original concept emerged in coaching, it was because I had a lot of time and space to be thinking about practices and tools that I was wanting to bring into, and there was a deep element of a rest practice in my life and it allowed for me to hear this idea that wanted to kind of come through and each time that a new iteration of it, whether that be the deck or now the podcast, it emerged from taking time, dedicated time to rest, and that being the art residency that emerged the deck and then my, my maternity leave that then the podcast kind of came on the back of and taking four months of a summer to be able to rest, think about all of these pieces, allow an idea to communicate to me and to us more fully, and then being able to put this next layer of practice out into the world. So I just want to really honor and acknowledge rest as being a key part of the creative process that has allowed momentum, um, to kind of come in the waves that it has for this idea to build. And I see that as being, not, uh, what's the word? Like as it being kind of the larger wisdom that's behind how this deck and how this practice is meant to work in the world, which is this commitment to kind of like rest and reflection and interior world thinking, and then momentum and outward movement and that kind of being, this ebb and flow wave. So as this has been preparing to launch, I've just been deeply acknowledging that and then, you know, Caitlin, you and I being able to talk about how this coming into a season of rest, um, or at least fallowness, launching it in wintertime, being so appropriate, um, to really have time to like sit and listen to a podcast and actually engage and listen with a full sense or take the deck and start to really engage those cards, so seasonally, it just feels like the right time for kind of all this to come through too and then, um, there will be other momentums of practice and doing and then rest that will come with that.
CAITLIN: Yeah, that's a really good point. It, it's, it's something. I know we talk about a lot, but it's something that is not always acknowledged, is taking that time for creative brain space, right? And like having the actual dedicated time. I remember when you went on that residency, you were holding the question of like, “What is this going to become?” And you were like, “Even if it doesn't emerge, that’s great, that's fine. I'll just walk in the woods or sleep or journal and whatever happens, happens.” So I think not having that like deep expectation of, “We're launching this in on this day and it has to be done”, you know, there was not a sense of urgency that made the result become something different. It really had the room to, to breathe and evolve, um, as an idea too.
CASEY: So yeah. And that's the spirit we wanna be holding it in as it goes into the future. So the last thing I would say, just to wrap it, is like, thank you to listeners, thank you to the people who have come on the podcast, who will come on the podcast, who are listening and supporting this kind of work. Again, there can be that like knee-jerk reaction of like, “Oh, what will I get if I listen? What will I learn?” And this is kind of a risk to put out a podcast where undoubtedly there's learning, undoubtedly you're gonna get “something”-- I'm doing air quotes–but, but that is not the selling point of it. And so just really appreciating that there are listeners and there are interests of people who are exploring questions and curious to hear others who are exploring questions and how that begins to shape our culture and our world when we do that. So, so, much appreciation and gratitude for that, and may it be what it will be and we'll see where it goes.
CAITLIN: Cheers to that!
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CASEY: Thank you for listening to the Questions to Hold podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode and are leaving the conversation with way more questions than answers.
I invite you to build a more meaningful relationship with yourself and the world around you through the simple yet profound act of holding questions. Visit questionstohold.com and wearebwb.com to learn more about this practice, our Questions to Hold card deck, and explore more conversations. See you there.