Questions to Hold with Casey Carroll

What does it mean to be a living ancestor? with Stephanie Ghoston Paul

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Join us in an honest conversation with Stephanie Ghoston Paul (she/her) exploring what it means to be a living ancestor.

Stephanie Ghoston Paul (she/her) helps movement-makers bring to reality a radically transformed world through wholehearted coaching and consulting. 

With individuals that looks like self-care and boundaries work to help leaders balance their lives by coming back home to themselves. 

Within community, Stephanie holds space for collective healing through truth-telling, and explores what it means to be a living ancestor. 

In organizations, she co-designs pathways to name harm, imagine liberatory ways of being, and engage in the messy culture and people work needed for that transformation. Stephanie believes that when people, communities and ecosystems fully align and embody their purpose, we move toward a future where all human beings are free, whole, and enough. 

She’s been described as a purpose-whisperer, an ecosystem connector, and a culture alchemist. Stephanie is also a best-selling author, podcast host, documentarian and recent TEDx speaker. She centers ease and care in her life and her work, making sure to practice what she preaches. When she's not "working" Stephanie enjoys cooking spicy dishes with her partner, finding new flavors of delicious tea, and witnessing her toddler discover the world.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • How we can make change “irresistible”
  • The role of questions to “re-member” and “dream ourselves into the future”
  • How we can intentionally become a living ancestor
  • The two sacred responsibilities of being a living ancestry
  • What it means to be in the practice of holding tensions

Connect with Stephanie:

Resources in this episode:

Connect with BWB

Be sure to subscribe on Apple or Spotify, and leave us a 5-star rating + review!

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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 Casey Carroll, and I am very excited to be in conversation with a special guest, Stephanie Ghoston Paul.. Stephanie and I met luckily last fall. I got to train and study with Stephanie through a program called The Art of Skillful Facilitation, which is with an incredible group of other folks, including Tristan Katz, who has also been on this podcast, Michelle C. Johnson, May Nicholson and Rebby Kern, and it was like a life changing facilitation program for me. I've done many different facilitation trainings and programs, and it was something really special. Um, so for anybody who's interested in movement building, change making, holding space for the big conversations that we're all in the process of right now, um, with different social, political, cultural moment, race, gender, collective healing, all of that wrapped into one program. It was really quite profound. So that's how I got to meet Stephanie, um, in that group format. And then hopefully we'll have some more opportunities to deepen in our conversation today and then in future work together. So that's enough about me. I'm going to kick it over to you to get to introduce yourself in whatever way feels right for you in this moment. Also in whatever way feels true for you in terms of setting up any context for the listeners that might be helpful in terms of your social locations or identifiers that are important to you or context to your work or what we may dive into talk about today.


STEPHANIE: Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be on the podcast. I'm going to do, I'll introduce myself. In a way that feels, um, familiar, and I'm going to try on something new today. I'm in a class called Dream Yourself Free with, um, Ebony Janice Moore. And one of the– it's like a, a multiple month cohort experience where we have different speakers come and talk to us. And our last speaker was Thea Monye, who I'm a huge fan of. Um, I listened to, she has multiple podcasts, and just like a brilliant, just very wise soul and she talked about your bio being a terms and conditions document, right? So some bios are like, here's where, like, here are the credibility markers that we think we need to say so that people will be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, she knows what she's talking about. But she had the host read her terms and conditions, which I was like, “Oh, that's fascinating”. So I want to try that on today. Um, the first half that feels familiar is, um, again, my name is Stephanie Ghoston Paul and she/her pronouns. I am on the ancestral lands of the Wichita, um, Kickapoo Humanos people colonized as Dallas, Texas, I'm a coach and a facilitator and a consultant. I work with movement makers and their organizations to figure out how do we bring radical change to this moment right now, which is great because we pulled a card about the time being now, I think that a lot of our planning and our commitments take us into the future, some future state of when we have this, or when we get free or when we… and I work with people to figure out how do we practice that future now. We do that, I do that through individual coaching, um, really working with folks around boundaries and care and how to center themselves in their work in community. As Casey said, I do retreats and online events and gatherings, um, really centered around collective healing and truth telling, like how do we heal by telling the truth as a collective? And then in organizations doing some organizational development work around our commitments, who we say we are versus who we're acting out on a day to day basis. I do a little bit of dreaming and scheming, which is a term I got from May Nicholson, another brilliant cofacilitator of mine. Um, doing some dreaming and scheming with folks to figure out where are we now? Where do we want to be? And how do we close that gap? Doing a lot of culture work, messy, messy culture and human, human work to, to make that possible. The, the second half, the terms and conditions, and I'm going to, again, this is new and I'm just trying it on some, what feels like core tenets to my work are I, I want to get at the root. And so I work with people. To discover on earth and sit with the root of what's happening. We can look at the surface and we can do some work there. I love getting deep down to the core, to the root so that people can learn to problem solve from their own genius. Right? That a surface symptom might continue to pop up. But if we start to work with the root, um, folks will have the tools and the resourcing so that they can solve any problem that might pop up. So if you resonate with working with the root, um, that's part of my ethos. I move from a space that I don't believe people are broken. I don't believe systems are broken. I believe we are as we, we are who we are and systems are as they’re designed, right? So. I think it applies to people and systems. And so when I work with folks, I'm working from a space of wholeness and like trying to restore wholeness rather than trying to be someone else. A lot of times leaders that I work with are like, teach me how to be a white man. And I'm like, that's not, I don't do that. I want you to be more of yourself. And there are flaws and there are things that we might not like. And that's part of who we are. So, and the last thing I'll say is. I think last year I took a course on being a death doula, which has really been having me think about life and death and legacy and the death of systems. And so I think about what are the care systems that we need to usher out the old, which helps us shape the rebirth. And again, that's something that the Thea Monet talks about that in this cycle of. Life, death and rebirth. If we can get comfortable with death, we can help shape what comes next. And so I do see part of my work as being with what is dying while also ushering space and resourcing for what is to come.

CASEY: I love the terms and conditions. What a brilliant, like, framing. And also thank you for being willing to be in the practice and try it on and see what comes through. It was beautiful. And I'll link Thea Monet's work also in the show notes, along with the, the facilitation training that I did, also the upcoming one that's coming this fall. And you also named Ebony Janice Moore's work, I believe, “Dream Your Hope”. I can link all that in the show notes so folks that are interested in checking that out further. But yeah, I'm really, obviously at BWB we talk a lot about like bios and supporting people and writing bios and messaging and storytelling and I have not heard of it as a terms and conditions and that is so good. I love that.

STEPHANIE:  I love it. I had never heard of that. And just the way she spoke about it, like it really is about affirming like who you are and what you're about so that people who resonate, companies, organizations can come. It's not about proving. It's about like,  I already know who I am. The internal validation is there. Let me give you some terms and conditions so that you can figure out how you want to engage if you want to at all. And I feel like it just feels like a liberating space for both people to like, get some consent. Like here's who I am. Here's how I like to work. I want you to consent into this. And so, yeah.


CASEY: Yeah, exactly. I mean, yes, we talk a lot about too, the like, credential listing out that a bio can become, especially as professions go on, or you're doing more visibility work in these kinds of ways. And we also try to flip it on its head. So I have to check out her work in that space too. I always like to start because there's–so even when you were offering your terms and conditions, I'm like, Oh, I want to go in there.I want to dive in here and go in here. I trust we'll get to all of it, but I love to start with the broad brushstroke, which is what is your relationship to questions? And I'll just leave it as that that can be all the way back as a little one or now how it factors into your work, how they make you feel whatever comes up for you as you hear that question. I'm curious to kind of start into our landscape that way. 


STEPHANIE: Me and questions. We go way back. We go way back. We are very good friends. I think as a coach and a facilitator, they're one of like my main tools. I love asking questions. I love shaping worlds with questions. And I do think it started as a young age. I asked a lot of questions when I was a kid. My parents probably didn't know what they were getting into. Like me being very curious about everything and about like, Knowing how things worked and why people were doing the things they were doing and questioning things that I don't know that they necessarily had an answer for, but they were willing to entertain in some way, shape or form. When I was very young, my parents were like, you'll be a lawyer and which, of course, I, I did become a lawyer later and I learned to ask questions in a very different way. Right? And I think as a coach and a facilitator, my relationship with questions now feels like– it does feel like a world creating exercise. Questions aren't neutral, right? So it's not like, Oh, like I just asked this. Like I have a full context that I'm bringing to the question. My own lived experiences, my perspective, my analysis, and it's coming up against that person's. I think as a lawyer, you know, you can ask leading questions, right? That there is a way you can ask questions that unearth some assumptions about how you're coming in. And I love doing that as a coach. Um, I can think of some questions that I asked this week, like people telling me about all the stuff they have to do. And I said, well, do you actually have to do that? Like, that's not a neutral question. That's not like I have some opinions about, uh, about the world that this person is creating or the reality that they're facing. And so, yeah. I'm also reflecting on the fact that I feel really comfortable asking questions, and I'm not often in spaces where people are asking me a lot of questions that I actually need to answer. So people ask me lots of questions all the time. I don't necessarily always answer them because I don't, I don't always feel like it's my position to. Like, a lot of times as a coach and a facilitator, I'm holding up a mirror for other folks and saying, Oh, that's a good question. What do you think? I think that's like a facilitator trick, but it also is literally, I'm like, I'm accompanying you on this journey. You are holding the bulk of the labor and the work here. I'm here to support, or to maybe provoke, but not necessarily to answer your questions. So podcast interviews, less familiar, um, but people ask lots of questions all the time. I'm usually in the position to try not to be giving answers.


CASEY: Yeah, that is absolutely the invitation of this whole podcast of this whole practice of everything we do, um, through like the practice of holding questions, we often say, you know, part of my what I'm coming into this, which is that I really view the leaders of the now and of the future as being those who are asking and guiding questions, not in the answering and kind of that positioning of, um, the expertise and the power dynamic and providing the answer. So any question that gets posed in here is just an invitation to like, move in the inquiry and not answer the piece. Um, but just be in that practice of like, living into the, whatever that answer may be or where that question starts to take us towards. So I really, really resonate with that. And that can be different for certain folks too. I think being somebody in your position where folks are like, Oh, okay, Stephanie. And they ask you a question. And instead of meeting them with an answer, you actually take them deeper into the inquiry. We've seen that that's confronting in both a good and almost a scary way sometimes for folks, where it's like, well, what's the answer? Because we're so accustomed to like using that as a sense of illusionary safety and, and knowledge, things like that. So I love that you're bringing that in already. And I'm curious– there's so many parallels and pieces with the work that you do in this space of Living Ancestors, um, and the platform that you were naming at the beginning, but then also all of your work. So I'm curious if you just want to set up the Living Ancestor. I'm gonna use word project, but that might not be the word that you use. But, um, you're Living Ancestor platform project.


STEPHANIE:  Mm hmm. Yeah, I would call it a, I call it a body of work, a body of work. 


CASEY:I like that. 


STEPHANIE: I feel like it's been happening my whole life. And again, it's been channeled in very particular ways, um, in the last few years, I'll start with the story from where it came from for me, uh, an origin story, which I could start from like when I was born and talk about all the ways that, these things lined up for me to be in the space of inquiry around living ancestry. But one catalyst was I used to live in Portland, Oregon, and I was at a luncheon that was honoring Black women. And so Black women from all over came to this hotel space, to honor our contributions, our, our artwork, our entrepreneurship, um, and our elders. And so as part of the program, there was a, uh, a portion where elders got presented like, an award and then they got to speak and this one elder and I'll never like, I'm a, I'm  already know I'm going to get chills. It's part of the artwork for the podcast. She said that for this phase of her life, her ultimate goal was she was focused on what she wanted to do was to plant a seed. For a tree under whose shade she knew she would not sit. And so I'm like sitting, I'm like, Oh, okay. I'm like, okay. Okay. And then all these things come together, right? So I hear this elder talking about planting a seed for a tree. Under who shade. She knew she would not sit. Then shortly after, um, this quote came, someone sent me the quote from Les Brown that says, the graveyard is the richest place on the planet. I'm like, oh my goodness. I'm like, oh my gosh. Oh my God, what's going on? And then Layla Sahd has a podcast about being a good ancestor and what it means to like be in the present and rethink “ancestor”. And so all these things start to come together for me to think about, okay, what would it mean to see ourselves as Living Ancestors. We don't have to wait till we're an elder to start planting seeds. We're planting seeds already. We've been given gifts and medicine and a purpose and all kinds of destinations and inquiries. What, how do we engage them now and not wait until we're old or until we die and then those go to the grave with us? And really, how do we not see life as a series of accomplishments? Like, I gotta do this, and then I gotta be successful, and then I gotta do this, like, we have work to do in the present that is touching both our past and our future. And so what if we shifted the way we saw how we lived our life in the present, which is how living ancestry was born. Like, what does it mean to be a living ancestor? Part of how I see it is that Living Ancestors have two sacred responsibilities. One is to remember our past and really heal our timelines. Look at the inheritances, multiple, that we've been given. Through our blood lineage, through our cultural, racial, gender lineages. And reckon with that inheritance, good, bad, ugly, everything in between. And then how do we dream ourselves into the future? How do we make the future happen now? What do we need to practice so that people that come after us will have the things that they need, the pathways and the resources and the messages that they need.And so, yeah, it just kind of bloomed from there. There's a TEDx talk about it. I have a podcast called Take Nothing When I Die, where I explore this, writing a book now about it, just the like, methodology and the lineage and this body of work that is collectively held. And that's why I feel like it's a body of work. Every single workshop, interviewee, every single person I've talked to has added to the collective understanding of this concept. And that's what I'm writing about in the book. 


CASEY: I'm so excited. Well, first of all, everybody should go to your website, listen to the TEDx, because I loved you tell that story that you just kind of gave, gave us an intro to as well, which is just so beautiful. I also was like, got chills. And then you have that quote on the bottom of that page on your website to the graveyard quote that you just named as well. And I was like, Ooh! So I'm, I'm, I'm on that same, um, path with you that you just invited us on there. So definitely take a listen to it, but I love this kind of different ways in which Questions To Hold is also a body of work for me, but I love the way in which you're talking about a podcast. I think you said on your site, it might be a docuseries. Then you're talking about the book. You've engaged different mediums with this, like conversation and writing and reflection, and probably your own, you know, inquiry process around it and many other ways to like get inside of the question of what does it mean to be a Living Ancestor, really.  And as you said, you're kind of, I love it because you're defining some, what did you call it? Like a sacred, two sacred pillars of it. 


STEPHANIE: Responsibilities. 


CASEY: But at the same time, you're not overly defining it. And it's really like, it's living into that question of all of it and letting it get informed and continue to like, grow and give back to you its answer in different ways as you're kind of like going through and listening to the folks, which is really so cool. And one of the things in the TEDx Talk that spoke to me was you talk about this remembering part of the work that you bring in here too. And I'm just curious, like what you see as the role of questions. So like for all of us that are interested in this work and are like, yes, I want to be, I want to like be a living ancestor now, like the time is now, as you're saying, it's not tomorrow now, like, how do we do that remembering? And how could questions be a part of some of that, like as a, as a practice? 


STEPHANIE: Yeah, I think that's such a powerful question that you pose. I think the first thing that came to mind was like, what's required is curiosity. Like there's so many things that get in the way and there's some like structural barriers. Like every time I talk about lineage, I'm in a room where there are folks. that don't have access to their history. For descendants of enslaved Africans, like me, some of our history is destroyed, banned, written over, right? Like literally not available. For some of us, for folks who are adopted, or for folks who are in foster care, for folks who have queer families, like the blood lineage and who, biological who's who, We don't have all of that. For folks who are indigenous in the country, this country, like, literally. There is a campaign to try to, to attempt genocide on a full people, like literally wipe it out. And even if you don't hold any of those identities, I think about the ways that dominant culture socializes not to talk about the past, right? So we’re indirect, and we don't want to tell the truth, and we don't want to hurt people's feelings, and we want to be nice. And some things feel too painful to talk about, like the trauma and the, some of the violent histories that we hold. But I think sitting in a space of curiosity rather than judgment helps us to sit with what we've been given. I don't believe our ancestors need to be valorized. I also don't need they need to be villainized. Nobody was all bad and all good, but we have to be willing to sit with and reckon with who has come before us. And we can't do that. And we're saying, Oh, no, I'm not gonna look at that. Like I'll take the good, but not the bad. I think that's a reflection of how we see ourselves today. Like if you think you are all good or all bad, you will reject parts of yourself that are part of the fullness of who you are. So I see questions as like, how can we get curious about who and what has come before and what does that actually mean for me? What does it mean that I come from a history of folks who violence has been enacted upon us, but also people my timeline have enacted violence upon other people. That's part of me as well. And that shows up today. I talk in the TEDx about remembering is literally putting ourselves together. How do we interpret with that information, what it means for us today? Stuff will happen. I'll be like, Oh, that wasn't me. Like, like it's not present body. Stephanie, somebody that was, that was, that's some ancestral stuff. I approach that differently than if it's like, there's a specific trauma that I went through in my lived body for-in this lifetime. I will address that differently than if it's ancestral trauma. And so yeah, I just come into curiosity. We have to be willing to ask those questions and that takes bravery. It takes consciousness. It takes capacity in space. It takes infrastructure. I think about folks in my family that one question can make everything fall apart. Right? So that's that world making, right? Like you ask about that one, like, whose dad is this? That's going to mess up some stuff. You ask about like, this thing that happened, you asked about the thing that no one's talking about, it’s too dangerous, or it's not safe, or people don't have infrastructure and structure to hold that. I can hold compassion for that rather than judgment. And then think about what I might need in order to hold that in this lifetime. So curiosity. 


CASEY: Yeah, it's a key part to both of those two responsibilities that you name of both remembering the past and dreaming ourselves into the future that like curiosity and questioning piece for sure. And I'm, I believe in the TEDx, I don't think you named it in this conversation yet, but you underwent a process where you were asking your folks some questions, and I'm in that process as well with my father, and it's really, really beautiful and challenging, but beautiful, um, in a holistic word. So it's, it's another interesting part of the TEDx that I resonated with. And this gets me to something that you did say, but I want to like amplify it a little bit more is how this connects overall to change. And I think like, change is, you know, a through thread in your work, at least that I see in either of like, your coaching, your consulting, your facilitation, your body of work with living ancestry, all those pieces. It's like, and one of the pieces you reflected back to me as a question that you sit with is around how do we make change irresistible? And I think especially when you're naming, like, you're going to rub up on some edges and like, you're going to ask these questions and you're going to do some of this work and change is going to be required, right? If we want to play into answers and ancestors and live into that practice. So, and again, knowing that there are no defined answers, I'm just curious, like where that inquiry has brought you, like what you have found in the change space that makes it irresistible or makes us willing to do it. In a certain way, 


STEPHANIE: That's a really interesting question. It's hitting like it like, hit a couple different like, edges. So I want to share those. One is something I just said, which is about capacity and infrastructure, something that I'm still learning so much about is how we build and scaffold and like, deepen the capacity for folks to hold change. It's usually not the change itself. It's all the stuff around it. It's what else is going to be different about my life. It's what- it's the unknown. It's the fear. It's the worry. It's the anxiety. It's something else. It's like not the thing, but it's the things around the thing. And I'm really interested in figuring out how do we continue to hold people, to hold those things like how do, how do our change processes reflect what people need in order to change and so that feels that that came up right away. 


CASEY: I think your work in the artist skillful facilitation what that group is doing and then the alchemy of facilitation that's upcoming and then I know in other capacities that you do this work um individually and in the community too but is around how do we also meet change in any given moment versus coming in with this prescribed notion as you're naming, or it seems like a under unsaid part of what you were just naming, which is not that we like have the change formula or like that we're like, okay, I know the scaffolding and the structure that needs to happen, but the change that might be required in this moment here and the scaffolding and the structure and all the pieces that need to be in place is in kind of like a constant state of evolution, really. And so it's like meeting it in any of those given dynamics. That to me is both the exciting and the challenging part of it because it's dynamic. It's always moving. And I think when we're not, we're not fluid with it in a certain way, what I've seen is that like, especially with a lot of clients that we worked with, change becomes hard or scary or avoidable because we're kind of like prescribing it in the wrong setting. So I think that's part of what I was hearing underneath too, which is like, and what, what I've learned from your teachings, which is like meeting things in the moment and being willing to like, facilitate and hold space in real time for change, uh, versus like, but this was the agenda. We're going to march through it no matter what. It's like, yeah, that doesn't always work. 


STEPHANIE: Yeah. It usually doesn't. I mean, we know, we know it usually doesn't work, but we're just like, I gotta get through. I love this. Yes. I love this point. And it's bringing me somewhere else, which is like how we got to this, this place in the first place. I think there's like a two part process, which is the transformation has to meet us where we are and we are where we are because of a set of patterns, beliefs, behaviors, cultures, institutions, systems. So like we have to reckon with all that. And as we move to shift, we're incentivized to get out of the thing in the same way we got into it. Right? So as we go about change, most people will repeat those same patterns, beliefs, behaviors, structures, because the thing has not fundamentally shifted. So they might know some, some new terms. They might know like, some new agreements. But nothing has fundamentally shifted about the infrastructure or about the thing that got them there in the 1st place, which means they'll go about the change in the exact same way and they'll get the exact same result. And so I think it is important to, as someone who holds space for transformation and change to know what are those patterns that people are coming in with and how do we meet them where they are? While, um, shifting things about that pattern so that when they go about the change, they don't do it in the exact same way that got them there? And I think that's probably been the hardest piece 'cause people are like, they revert back so easily. I mean, it's, it's familiar. It's easier, it takes less time. And to do something new is not just the thing. Doing something new in a new way. It's like totally different. So yeah, it's the root work because we could just keep doing the surf-I mean, that's what a lot of people do. Let's do the surface stuff. Let's do another training. Let's get some more vocab. Cool. But like the root of how we're relating to each other, what we believe about this thing is the same. So yeah, there's all the metaphors, like the iceberg or the, like, there's all the things for that. Looking at the core will help us make a shift that is actually sustainable. 


CASEY: Yeah. Yeah. And it's this piece around the question of just like the irresistibility of it that I when I saw you pose that question that I've been sitting with a lot since then of just like, Hmm, what makes something irresistible?  And also how can we or you as a storyteller as a guide as somebody like bringing um, people into this work. What are the actual, like, mechanisms that we can make something feel irresistible for people to not in a manipulative way, but in a way of like, actually having it land. And this is where I get excited through things like art or storytelling or, you know, different mediums that can help people actually breakthrough and like the concept and be like, Oh, I need that. Like, I want that so much again, any different conditions in place for that. But that's the, that's that part of that question. And I was like, Hmm, it's like that irresistibility piece. I'm not sure. 


STEPHANIE: Yes. Yeah, I mean, it's a quote from Tony K. Bambara, and it also comes up in pleasure activism. I think it is the marrying of the things that we don't talk about, but that impact our work. And so, yeah, sometimes it is art and like, it's it's things that some of those things feel palatable, like, yeah, we can make some art together, but like, talk about pleasure at work. Like, let's, let's talk about that. Let's talk about desire and passion at work. Like that's a little more like taboo. Do we do that? Do we do pleasure at work? And I think we have to tap into people's desires, um, and pleasure in a way, in a way that they're already present. It's not actually, it's like naming the thing that's already in the room rather than pretending. Yeah, because we just pretend like, you know, it doesn't matter. But then you have people who are burnt out or feeling unappreciated or feeling like they don't see an impact or a connection to their work. It's because we're not tapping into some of those things. And so I'm not like, I'm not saying we should make oppression like, more palatable. I'm just saying like, we might have to tap into some things that we don't usually talk about at work because they're there. We can pretend like they're not, but they are. 


CASEY: Yeah. So there's many different things to say in terms of how I want to context this. So oftentimes when we start working with folks, we'll ask them like, what's the bigger question that your business is asking the marketplace? Like what, what's, you know, and there can be many questions that, you know, our businesses are actually like asking into the marketplace. And you may have a few of them. One of them might be like, how can we make change irresistible that we just named, but I'm curious to between like cultivated sense. And then also through your, your other projects and body of work. What's like, your big question, like you're asking to the marketplace or a couple of them, you know, where it's like, is there space for me? Can I be happy? Am I satiable? Like, can this work make money? Like, there can be a million questions, but I'm curious if even in hearing that post to you, there's a few things that come up.


STEPHANIE: Let me sit with that. Is there a bigger question of this? Is there a bigger question to the marketplace? 


CASEY: It could be a small question, too. 


STEPHANIE: You know, the thing that's coming to mind is about holding tensions. It's like, how can free people exist in an unfree world? You know, like, like, that's, that's how I felt. Like, the thing that I'm working on the most for myself and other people is something that's fundamentally against how society is structured. And so, yeah, I, I think this comes up for me in parenting. I'm, I'm raising a free Black child, where is safe for a free Black child like where in the world is safe? I think about the coaching that I do when I get to the root, I'm like, this is not going to make you popular at work, you know, like, like, this is like, you advocating for yourself, centering yourself, standing your authority and autonomy goes fundamentally against the current rules. But if the time is now, if we're bringing the future here, then where can we exist? And I, I just think about that. I think about even the question you just asked about change. Sometimes I feel like I'm in the position of selling people something that they don't actually know that they want, but they'll figure out later that they need. If I want to give like, a true ad for my business, it will be like, I come in and blow shit up. Like that, that's like, that's the thing. But it's like a contained blow up. It's like an intentional blow up. It's a resource blow up. If that's what you want to do. Like some people don't want to do that. Most people would not sign up and pay money for someone to blow up their business. Like that's just not what a lot of people pay for. But I think it's, yeah, it's about like, if your work is fundamentally trying to dismantle the systems that uphold the thing and not just dismantle. There's an affirmative side. We are trying to build new systems. They feel fundamentally at odds with what is current.  And so I'm always asking, like, in this structure, what can be done here? In the non profit industrial complex, what can be done in this container? What can be done in the United States? What can be done in the South? What can be done for racial justice? What can be done for mass incarceration? If we're playing by these rules, and often as a consultant or a coach, because I don't work at the place, I don't always experience the consequences of what it means to blow that shit up. So I'm, I'm like, how do I do that ethically? How do I be in integrity? And also like, if my mode is liberation, this is how I operate. That was a whole lot. There's something in there. I hope there's something in there that makes sense. Yeah, there's a lot. It feels like a lot of the question. I think too. 


CASEY: Well, it is a big question. And again, like, it may change over time as the work evolves too but you didn't use the word paradox. So this is my word. But sometimes we say that too. It's like, I think you called it holding tensions in that way. But it's like, how can you have a free child in an unfree world? Or, you know, those kinds of things and the both are true. Right? So it's like how to like, be with the contradictory paradox of all of that and lean into making, as you said, like the nowness of it, like dreaming it now and exploring it. And then, you know, letting that set up where we go from here. But I think sitting in something in that, like tensions, paradox, contradictory stew feels like, um really interesting. And I just asked that because we asked that for everybody. And I think a lot of people don't think about the questions they're actually posing into the marketplace. Like, you know, even if I said. Do you, it could be a small question because it could even be like, but like, am I happy, like, can I be happy in this work? You know, like, it doesn't have to be like the big fundamental culture shift question that we're having, we're having– that exists too–but can be some of these other more, which are also equally as transformational and big in their own right, but they're like, quieter and they're more subtle and they kind of like come up as this little, this other voice in the mix of it that I think it can be helpful to realize like the marketplace is just a space. We're getting to ask big questions and then start to like move into our inquiry around. I also, I got Pleasure Activism with Adrienne Marie Brown, which I've loved and I believe I've included in other resources, but I'll link in here. But there was one other resource you shared. You said it was where the quote came from, Irresistible. 


STEPHANIE: Oh, Toni Cade Bambara. Yeah. And there's the original question was something about revolution being irresistible. And she also asked one of my other favorite questions, which has become one of the intake questions for my coaching. And she writes a book called, there's a book called Salt Eaters. And there's a line that says, are you sure you want to be well? It's like, like, you, you sure you want to be well? There's a, there's a long quote, like, because wellness ain't no joke. Like, are you sure? And lots of questions coming from Toni and her work.


CASEY: That reminds me too, of Grace Lee Boggs, who, and I don't want to misquote, but there, the exact quote that sometimes she would lead meetings with something about, like, what time is it on the world clock? 


STEPHANIE: Clock of the world. 


CASEY: That's like the question, right? 


STEPHANIE: What time is it on the clock in the world? She also has one of my favorites, um, Change Yourself to Change the World, which is about that internal, external piece. And, you know, even as you talk about marketplace, I think, like, What is the distinction that we're making between us and like, is it, isn't the marketplace or is it also us? We talked in the beginning about, there's stuff happening out there. There's also a universe in here where, where are the arbitrary distinctions, where do they come from? And like, how are we? I think about that a lot. I've been asking lots of questions. About social media and my audience, like what's the relationship I want to have with them. And it's led me to think like, what's the relationship I want to have with myself? So that, that has me thinking too, like we have this, the marketplace out there and then there's us, but we are, we are also part of the things and how do we see ourselves as part of that.


CASEY: Mm hmm. And knowing that I feel like we could talk many more moons and hopefully we will about some of this as we start to come to a close, I'm curious. I mean, there was one question that I wanted to ask, and maybe we can link it into a question that you might pose to our community who's listening here too, to sit with. But one of the questions was like, how can we, how can we step on the intentional path of living ancestry as you named, like, what are some questions that we can really like ask ourselves to start to step into that intentional path to like, make it now to do to take on those responsibilities as you're naming and just really, yeah, lean into the living practice?


STEPHANIE: Yeah, um, I thought a lot about this because I want, I wanted living ancestry to be an accessible concept, right? That like you don't need any special degrees or any special things. And even in the simplest requirement where I think about like, living ancestry requires consciousness, it's not that quote unquote simple, right? That capacity and consciousness takes some privilege, and so I'm aware of that, and one of the starting places is, can we get off autopilot? That's like half of the work right there, because of the systems and the culture that we live in, we are incentivized to go from thing to thing to thing. We are incentivized not to look outside and look at the trees.

We're incentivized not to tap into our dreams. We're incentivized not to get curious about where we come from and actually do things in a way that upholds and perpetuates the systems that are currently here. And so I, I think, um, yeah, if it seems simple and I know it's very hard, it also requires infrastructure and requires capacity, it requires privilege. But one way to get started as a living ancestor is to get conscious. Can you get conscious? Can you get off of autopilot? Can you start to notice? You don't have to even name, you don't have to have language, you don't have to analyze, you don't have to have a framework, but can you notice? Oh yeah. I, I look outside or yeah, I listen to podcasts on 2x or, yeah, I eat through lunch every single day. Like I'm just gonna notice some things that are happening that I do, that I do, that I don't really wanna do. Noticing my energy when I'm with this person or not. Like how do we start to, if we can get conscious, can we start to notice? And then we, we might be able to quote unquote evaluate, right, that this thing over here not serving me, this thing I don't really like, but I'm, I'm clear about why I'm here, this thing that's going to take a long time to shift, this thing that feels like low hanging fruit that I can start on today. I think those things sometimes require us to be in community. And so I would encourage people, one step is also to like, get with some folks, push back against these systems that say, you're an individual, you're special, it's just you. We're all going through some very similar things right now, get in community, in community that feels supportive, maybe you might need to be an affinity community around your identities, stop isolating yourself and being isolated. Again, I know that these are things that systems do or create conditions or barriers for us to access or be in community. And one last thing that's coming to mind is like, I think one piece that feels crucial is grace. I think, you know, we learned about something. We're like, Oh, we gotta, we gotta go do this and we gotta do it perfectly. We got to check off… That's the thing I was talking about with, with change and transformation. The way we got here is not the way we're going to get out of it. So like, as we start to look to notice and to maybe evaluate it, to get into community and get more conscious, so much will come so much. You'll be like, Oh my good-I can't believe I've been doing this for 40 years. Oh my gosh. My family, like you just things, things will open themselves up. I think grace is needed because we don't have to do it perfectly, we don't have to do it alone. We don't, it's not just a one shot thing. I do think that we need to have grace and compassion for ourselves as we uncover and discover some of what we have inherited and also our relationship to the future and those dreams. A lot of times when I talk to people about dreaming ourselves into the future, there's a lot of guilt, um, because people are like, I'm not actually in touch with my dreams. All right, let's start there. What would it take for you to be in touch with your dreams? And how do we get conscious about where we lost that connection? For me, all of these things, the good, the good thing about all of these things is that they're actually within us. We have to unlearn our way back to ourselves. So like people will say, you know, I don't, I don't even know how to nap anymore. Right? When you were a baby, you knew. Nobody taught you. Like that was innate. It's in you. You learned yourself away from that, so we got to unlearn that's like the good thing. We can always come back. Yeah, that feels important for people to start to realize that they have the things that they need. And a lot of it is stripping away what we've been taught, or the ways that we protected ourselves, or the ways that we've had to navigate systems and we've tried on pieces of ourselves that are not actually ourselves.


CASEY: Mmmm! Thank you so much for being in conversation today and giving that whole kind of landscape– that felt like a call to action to me too at the end, which is so beautiful because it's like being in those questions, but also actively being in those questions in a way that we're engaging ourselves in that. So thank you for that and I already named at the beginning that I am excited for The Alchemy of Facilitation, which is happening in October. So coming up next month at the end of the month. But is there any other way you want folks to find you in the interim? 


STEPHANIE: Yes. Okay, there's a couple things. So one is Yes, join Alchemy of Facilitation and really this is us deep diving into a few areas we could spend –Casey's been– we did a five day retreat. This one's a three day and we do these twice a year. And so, if you really are, like, I need the 5 day experience, there'll be one coming up in March. They're always in March and October. We had an interim one in June this year. That was about meeting the moment because the time is now and so we'll probably have an interim offering in the middle of the year as well. For me personally, I have a Boundaries Play group on September 27th. So I do a quarterly Boundaries Play group where folks come and we play with boundaries. It's a play group, not a working group, not a workshop. We're playing. I know boundaries are very serious and we also need to play around them. This, um, this quarter's theme is about step by step. So we've explored what are boundaries and why don't we set them even if we know we should or could, and what's our relationship to boundaries. And now we're getting to the nitty gritty. How do you set a boundary? What's a step by step way that you can do that? Yeah, Boundaries Play group. And then Michelle and I are offering an 8 week course at the beginning of the year. So Q1, around her new book called A Space for Us. So if you are a black indigenous person of color or person with a global majority, one, go get the book. It's amazing. And we're going to offer a series talking about how to lead BIPOC and PGM affinity groups. So if you are someone who leads those at your organization, or in community, or you want to, this course is for you.  All that can be found on aspaceforusbook.com/event. Applications for the Q1 course will open up September 25th. And last but not least, if you want to be in community with me in a more intimate way, I'm doing less on social media. Like it's gotten less and less and less and less, I guess, Patreon is social media, but, um, join me over at Patreon, uh, patreon.com/tnwid, Take Nothing When I Die, the initials, I'm giving book updates as well, as extended versions of my newsletter, I used to do a Tuesday talk at the end of every month that's moving to Patreon and it's just a more intimate community where folks are witnesses and learners in that in that space. So, I invite folks if they, if this is resonating with them. Go to Patreon. 


CASEY: Okay. Perfect. And all of that's linked in the show notes too. So it'd be easy to find those things. And Stephanie, thank you so much for being in conversation today and for the ongoing conversation that I know we'll have over the coming months, years, hopefully many years.


STEPHANIE: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun. Like I said, I don't, I'm not often on the receiving end of. Answers that I want to give or should be giving or could be giving. So thank you for asking excellent questions and having me on the show.


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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.