What do we have to risk to be reconnected? with Nanci Luna Jiménez

What do we have to risk to be reconnected?

Join us in an honest conversation with Nanci Luna Jiménez (she/her) exploring why it is necessary to ground in our human goodness to end racism.

Nanci Luna Jiménez has committed to her own healing for more than 30 years to be a transformative guide, heart-centered listener, and authentic companion for leaders and change-makers committed to racial healing and social justice. Since founding the Luna Jiménez Institute for Social Transformation in 1994, she has reached tens of thousands of people with her core message of human goodness and connection as a transformational approach to social change.

Nanci works from the premise that systems are made up of humans, and unhealed humans perpetuate harm and injustice. Her approach centers healing and authentic relationships as the foundation for sustainable systems change and accountability. She gently reminds people what they already know: oppression can only end with their healing, and, with support, they can completely heal!

As a sought after TEDx speaker, coach, and master-level facilitator, Nanci’s approach honors the legacy and teachings of Dr. Erica “Ricky” Sherover-Marcuse, who coined the term “unlearning racism,” and Lillian Roybal Rose, M.Ed., an expert in cross-cultural communication.

Of Afro-Puerto Rican and Mexican heritage, Nanci was born in Detroit, MI, and raised in Detroit and Tucson, AZ. She currently lives in Portland, OR.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• How oppression fools us into thinking we can “feel” good 
• How adultism is the training ground for all oppression
• What becomes possible when we to build connection to our goodness
• Why it is so critical we get listened to
• The principles of the constructivist listening practice 

Check out LJIST’s upcoming Getting Listened To sessions: February 7th and March 20th 2024.

Connect with Nanci:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Email 

Connect with BWB

• wearebwb.com
• @we.are.bwb
• Casey LinkedIN
• Cait LinkedIN
• BWB Linkedin

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Transcript

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 am very excited to be with a very special person who came into my life over the last year and has changed it in so many beautiful, unexpected, um, and very, uh, wise ways. So, uh, her name is Nanci Lune Jimenez, and I don't need to introduce her.She can go ahead and introduce herself. So without further ado, Nanci, do you want to share with us whatever resonates for you today in this very moment about who you are and how you want to provide the listeners and the questions to hold community with some context about your life and your work?

NANCI: Thank you. Thanks for inviting me, actually, to be part of this conversation, to be in question with you, Casey. I've really come to cherish the way in which you are with people. And I'm really excited for the intimacy of this moment to be shared with others as it evolves. So let's see, I think what's really up for me right now. And I mentioned this to you before we started recording is that, um, my mother passed away. Um, Just two weeks ago yesterday. So I'm very aware of being an orphan. My father passed away– It'll be 10 years ago on Christmas this year. So it's a moment of a lot of change of a lot of transition. I attended to both of their deaths. They were both transformative in really different ways. Um, both because of what death looked like for them, but also where I am in my life. And being 56 and feeling this vulnerability in a really different kind of way and particularly losing my mom who's been the linchpin of the family, both our nuclear family and I think extended families. So that's really up for me and I want to just name that energy is here for me. And she loved what I did and also struggled to be able to describe it to her people being a mom. She wanted everyone to know, be proud of her daughters and be able to speak to that. I think of myself as a healer or someone who supports people's healing process and does that through listening. And we're going to talk, I know more about the specific kind of listening that we do. Um, I resonated with something I heard one of your guests say, which is that no one is getting enough listening in this world and I believe the listeners also need to be listened to and I think there's something radical in the exchange of attention as a form of loving and as a radical act because no money is exchanged, but rather it's the exchange of connection and attention. And it's not a transactional experience because it's outside of an exchange of money, the way we teach this practice and we empower people who go through our programs to use this in their own life for me is a really radical, radical outside of systems thinking way. To know a little bit about where I'm calling, I'm calling in from in this moment, physically where I'm grounded is Cowlitz land, which is Portland, Oregon, and specifically North Portland, which is, which has a whole political history to it. Um, but it's code for what used to be the Black community, which is increasingly less and less gentrification. So I'm aware of that change. I've been here longer than I've lived anywhere. My homes are many and I'm rooted here and I'm very much rooted in Mexico increasingly, which is where my mother's family is from and my Witchotika(?) community and people there. And also Boricuan, which is where my father was born and raised, um, which is most people will know as, um, as Puerto Rico. So, um, that's a little bit to know about. And I identify with all of those communities. 

CASEY: Thanks, Nanci. And Nanci, I'll just say because this is how I was introduced to you and some of the work. So Nanci is also the founder of the Luna Jimenez Institute of Social Transformation, otherwise known in a beloved language as LJIST. But that's how I discovered Nanci and the work. And also, you know, we'll be talking about this throughout our conversation. But that listening practice that you're naming that the organization and you do so beautifully, I actually was able to train in that through a couple of different training programs with LJISTics. And it has had a huge impact on me personally, Caitlin and I BWB and oftentimes, you know, we were doing a lot of that work in our processes, but not really having a name or an awareness, um, around it in the way that you've helped open up for us. So we'll talk about that more, but just wanted to name that too and offer my gratitude and appreciation to the organization at large that helped introduce us together. And as I was saying, I was talking to you, you know, before we started, but what I love about all that listening work and oftentimes what I say about questions to hold is that it is a listening practice at its like most fundamental piece and I'm curious to like start our road diving in together is just what you would say your relationship is to questions or questioning, um, and that can be both you being questioned, you questioning things, what it was like as a young person versus, you know, now really anywhere you want to take that question. 

NANCI: Oh my goodness. It's, it's rich and layered. Well, I can, first, I'll say that there was not a lot of room for me to question as a young person. Part of it was the way that adultism operated in my family, in my community, in my church, and adultism, for those of your listeners who may not be familiar with the term, is it's the oppression of young people and the belief that young people are inferior or not fully human, essentially, and that adults are the fully human goal that we're trying to get young people to, rather than honoring their humanness as young people. And that is a core oppression that we use in all of our work, because we think of adultism as a training ground for all other oppressions. So in my household, um, and this is not about how amazing and loving my parents were, you didn't question authority. And that authority could be your parents. It could be your teachers or the nuns. It could be the priest. It could be the dogma of the church. It, you just didn't question. And so did it mean I didn't have questions? Oh, no. I had a lot of questions and I persisted, I think, in a lot of ways to ask. Sometimes I had some space to get answered, but a lot of times those questions were not okay. And I'd say the other part where I got injured around questions was around getting tracked into gifted and talented education. So that space was not one that encouraged curiosity. It encouraged having the answer. It encouraged the status of knowing everything and really. What it was did a lot more damage, I think, than I realized. So my inherent and innate sense of curiosity and wonder, um, about the world. I would say that things have shifted obviously for me around questions where I still struggle. So I'll say, let me say where I still struggle. So where I struggle now is being questioned about what I know or my experience. So there is a place where I can feel undermined or not believed. And I think that's true as being a female, as being, you know, native raised Afro Latina, I think that can be true around being raised poor. That my experience isn't something that is believable or that is trusted. So that can really get a rise up in me. And I feel like I have chosen a path. Um, I'm a certified master level facilitator in addition to being a coach and a trainer and author and speaker is really how to ask questions that stay rooted in curiosity. Now, can you also use questions as weapons? Yes, and I have and I have to be really aware because in many of the places where I'm facilitating or leading my questions obviously hold way more power. I don't think any question is a neutral question. That's not for me the issue, but I can sometimes ask a question where I'm trying to make a point and rather than being in the curiosity of what that question is about. So that is something I really need to be aware of in me, like what's under the question, even more than the question itself. Do I really want to know the answer? Am I really open to someone else's response? Am I trying to position this person or myself in this dynamic? So questions are very powerful. It's a very powerful practice. One of the things that Lillian said to me is that you cannot ask people to do. You are not willing to do yourself. And Lillian Maribel Rose is my core mentor. She and I traveled together for 20 years. Much of the work that I bring into the world through LJIST was work that I first learned from and practiced with her. And so I think I'm reminded in all of my questioning, like, would you be okay answering this question? Have you answered this question?  Can you sit with the discomfort of what it is you're asking others to do? And I think this goes across the board in all aspects of my practice and questions are obviously a part of that. 

CASEY: Yeah, I mean, you're bringing in so many of the different parts of questions, you know, again, like how you can be injured by them, what the motivation and intention behind them is, if they're being asked with the result or the expectation being that they're answered, how our identities are intersecting with them, how the question may evolve from one point in our life to another point of our life. And you're bringing it so many of the key pillars and simply because you are in so many of our listeners and so many of our clients in the BWB community are also coaches or facilitators who are like actively learning how to be in the skill and the craft and the art of questioning in a way that's expansive and curious and not in a way that's trying to replicate harm or, you know–and again, it's a very, it's a critical skill and awareness to be around all the time. And I know that you are in that, even in the work that I've done with you and with LJIST as well, but it's amazing to hear you kind of frame it all up in the beginning too. And oftentimes what we'll say is that we really feel like, you know, businesses too, whether we think about it or not, uh, businesses, organizations, projects, they're like asking a bigger question out to the marketplace or out into the world, which is like, you know, “can you make space for us” or can, et cetera, there might be, and there might be many questions, but from what LJIST is doing in the anti oppression space and the listening space in the work to end racism. I'm curious what some of those core questions you organizationally are holding and kind of bringing forward to to the world, really, but for the market.

NANCI: I think a core question that undergirds our work is what would be different about how we would approach the work of ending all oppression if we started from the premise or agreement or awareness that each of us is good and  so the current space that I feel like we're in right now, and I would, I feel like our work is trying to both disrupt, but also support a shift and transition is a combination of defining ourselves as anti. So anti racist is basically defining ourselves still around racism. It's not, it's not a future vision. And somehow the idea that we can only be who we are as long as racism exists is kind of counter to how we think. And also we don't describe ourselves as–in a dualistic way. And so anti is very much like, well, I don't think there, I don't think there's anyone on the planet who's pro racism. I think there's people who've been hurt around racism and think that racism will benefit them in some way or has benefited them in some way. And it's not the frame that we use. And so it's really–and then the other part, I guess I'll just say is that not being grounded in goodness means that so much of how we describe ourselves, those of us who are in this journey of doing the work of ending oppression. And I'm going to use a larger-large frame for that is it feels like we're still needing to perform our goodness. And this is where we begin to lack substance in the work. And well, this is who I'm reading and this is what I'm following. And look at how different I am from the rest of those quote, bad people. And you can fill that in like, you know, bad USers, bad white people, the ones that are the embarrassment to the group, and all of that is separation. So the anti separation, the good versus the bad is separation, and oppression is all about separation. Oppression only exists and only persists through division. And any act that we can take that unites, that connects, is about ending oppression, is about refusing the divisions that oppression would attempt to put on us as human beings. And I feel like the first kind of core division that happens is in ourselves, from our goodness. And I'll just share a personal example with my great nephew, who's not quite four and I was laying on the ground when I was, we were attending my mother's transition and– his bisabuela– and he comes into the house and he kicks me in the head. And I was like, okay, what's, what's happening, you know, and everyone was, and I get it was trying to get him to apologize for doing this bad thing. You could tell he felt so bad about himself. And I just said, you know, I want to invite you to apologize because I want you to know you're good. You're good no matter what. And you did this thing and I'm sure you feel bad about it. And I want you to help apologize to clean this up. And the minute I said, I know you're good, he was just “not good, not good!” Like just yelling at me and just arguing and I was like, oh, that's already been taken from you like that, that connection to your goodness has already been severed in such a way that you're fighting against me even saying what I know is true, which is that you're completely good and he had a huge cry and, and then unprovoked the next day he walked in, I was laying on the couch taking a little nap and he woke me up and he's like, Tia Nanci, I'm sorry I kicked you in the head. Like, he was like, there was no adults around. He didn't do it for anyone else. He did it because he wanted to repair us. And he wanted, he, you could tell he'd been upset about that overnight. And I think how many of us have done the thing where we're like, when we're connected to someone, we can't apologize. We have a hard time coming back and cleaning things up because we can't remember we're good. We get into defense, we get into justification, we get into explanation. We get into, well, other people did the same thing I just did so why, why does that make me bad? And it's like, no. Your actions are not who you are. And I would say that that's true of patterns of racism as well. Racism is not who white people are. It's a set of patterns that you're reenacting out of a hurt and a disconnection, both to other people, generally white people specifically and yourself and your own goodness. 

CASEY: Yeah, I can give a example of that too because it really, you know, really resonates with me how you're kind of putting–framing this all up together, which is when I started to do some deeper unpacking of my own identity as a white woman and even like pre that started doing some of the like implicit bias trainings, things that are out there, it overwhelmingly came back to me that I didn't trust white women. So when I had to like choose, overwhelmingly, I trust I didn't trust white women. And my takeaway from that was that I didn't trust myself. Which fundamentally changed my trajectory in understanding my work around my whiteness, in understanding work around ending racism, and my role within all of that, and understanding my identity. And it was so, so, you know, I want to say like a small switch, but I was like, I just don't trust myself. Which, as you're saying, tethers back to the, I'm not good. Which heathers into them the foundation and the underpinning of all the other things so I love with like starting with the foundation or assumption however you want to name that of like that we're coming from goodness is so key and the piece that I'm hearing you talk about and I wonder if you could expand on this a little bit is like the difference from quote feeling good. And in good, and then also performing good, which is like kind of what's also out there with a lot of, um, especially with the impacts of like solidarity work on social media and different things like that. So just curious, like, as you've lived into that question and the practice what you've seen in those different spaces.

NANCI: Beautiful. Yeah. So let's see: performing good. I feel like I talked a little bit about that, I can expand more. I think it's. I'm reading the right books. I'm in the right organizations. I've joined the equity committee at work. I'm on the streets protesting. I'm I've signed this petition and I'm not saying any of those things shouldn't happen. I want to be really clear. This isn't saying don't do these things. It's the question for me is what's underneath those things. And if we took those things away, how connected could you be to your goodness on whatever non target side, and I know we're talking specifically about racism here, but I want to be really clear that I'm referring to any non target, so a non target is the group that's not on the target side of oppression, so I'm going to speak as a USer, I'm a non target as a USer on the planet, so I'll speak from that perspective. And, you know, if I took away the performative aspects of showing that I'm in solidarity, or my, my awareness, or as it's described, both punitively and celebratorily, my wokeness, can I still remember that I'm good? I'll share a quick example. I remember the first time I was leading a public workshop with my mentor, Lillian, and it was in Watsonville, right back in the same community where I had first attended with her. I had invited all these people who I know and love, and I was so excited to stand up there and be this, like, you know, badass, amazing facilitator and on day two, this man who identifies who is gay man stands up and says, I haven't heard you mention, you know, homosexuality, heterosexism, not once you've been going on and on about sexism and racism and I feel really erased in this entire workshop. Right? And I wanted the world, like I wanted the ground to just open up. I wanted to just disappear. I felt horrible and called out as a heterosexual female in this moment. It was awful. And then this thing happened, like as soon as he stopped talking, this lesbian who's very close with, um, you know, with me, knows me personally said, well, I heard Nanci say lesbian or how are gay five times yesterday, and I'm going to say all the time she said it, and she started to like go on about what a great ally she is and how amazing I am. And I had to stop in that moment. Because the tendency, the pull, where I feel bad as a non target on this one was to go run behind her and “see, see, see, I am good. She just said I'm good”. That's the performative aspect. I had to instead say, I hear that you feel really validated in being here as a lesbian woman and I also hear that I completely missed it and blew it and was dominant and clueless for this gay man and both things are true and being undefended in that moment meant that I had to know I'm good, I'm not needing someone from the target group to validate my goodness once I'm in that space, I've lost. I don't have a sense of my own grounding and foundation. And this is where we get into being really liberal and permissive with things that are actually harmful and hurtful and perpetuate oppression. So that's one caveat there, and then I think there's what oppressive society is selling us, which is that you, in spite of the fact that there's all these oppressions that are devastating our lives and the lives of people we love and the planet, you can feel good. And that means basically escaping reality in my good life. If it comes at the expense of someone else's not surviving and thriving cannot be a good life. I cannot feel good, like genuinely notice the feeling of goodness if someone else is being destroyed for that outcome. So the best that our society can sell us is an escape can look so many different ways, right? It can look like a vacation. It can look like mindless screen time, whether that's from overworking or into so-called entertainment. It can look like a drink. It can look like a smoke. It can look like extra food on our plates. It's a disappearing from the present moment that we're told is feeling good. And I would call that numbing, I would call that a way of not being in the present in order to have some temporary basically dopamine hit of some kind. Now, should we never go on a vacation somewhere? No, I'm not suggesting that I'm saying there is a difference in the intention with which we are being marketed to to separate from reality to have a quote good feeling. And this is the part that concerns me about seeking pleasure about, I only want to be happy. It's like, I think, what is the movie? Um, the Pixar movie, the joy could only stay when there was sadness–

CASEY: Inside, Out.

NANCI: Oh my goodness. Yes. We as a society, and in particular, the U S this is not as true outside the U.S. I really want to emphasize this. It's like, we've built lives around avoiding feeling bad. We've built lives around avoiding feeling sad. We are worried if someone expresses sadness or feeling bad around us and we try to get their attention out, you know, and this is not anyone's fault, it's we–have been taken the skills for doing this work have been taken from us. We are born into the world knowing how to feel bad. We know how to, we know what to do with those feelings. Young people just feel bad. They feel them and they move on. But when I would start to feel bad my dad would say here's a cookie. Right? Or let's go outside and play. And it was like, so, or, or you need a nap, you're tired. So as an adult, I feel bad and I want to eat and I want to go play, or I want to go take a– I'm tired. I want to take a nap. Those are the things that got installed on me instead of just letting me feel bad. So when I often say to people, the journey to knowing you're good is not a journey to feeling good. It's a journey to feeling and to reconnecting to all aspects of our humanity. And at the, the beauty, I believe in the, at the end of this journey or a core part of this journey is knowing unshakably reminding ourselves that we're good. Young people knew it when they came into the world and it gets robbed from us very early. And then we're just building on top of foundation that's basically shame. It's a foundation of shame and feeling bad about ourselves in some capacity or another.

CASEY: Which is I highly recommend everybody obviously check out your website and the work but that's where some of the trainings that I did with you all in the adultism components of this too and starting with the oppression of the young person was like so revolutionary in so many ways as you said to just like as a way to touch back into that inherent human goodness that was there and then had been impacted at so many levels and then is getting like reactivated over and over again in certain ways. Um, so I really highly recommend folks check out that work. And as you said, you know, there's, there's probably many tools and practices about getting back into relationship with that goodness that you're talking about, but I want to make sure we touch a little bit on the how the constructivist listening practice that you all do is a key component to, and maybe there isn't a bridge there in my mind there's a natural bridge there but I'm curious how constructivist listening fits into some of what you're talking about now. 

NANCI: Yeah. I mean, as you said, I, I often say to people, if you have a practice that's working for you now, stay with it. And if what you're doing isn't working, consider part of the practice that we're offering. I think the core theory is that we're good. And the core practice is this constructivist listening, which is a term that was coined by Julian Weissglass. He's an emeritus professor from UC Santa Barbara and an activist in this space as well. And mostly in math and STEM work, but broader than that now, it's essentially an exchange of listening. And this is what I think is so radical about this approach that I first learned from Lillian when I attended her workshop almost 30 years ago was there isn't a listener. There is an exchange of attention and with the attention with the, it's confidential and you don't get judged. You don't get advice. Um, the assumption in that. The theory and the practice is that you already have your own best answer and that when we get listened to, we can hear ourselves out loud. And sometimes we'll be like, Oh, I can't believe I just said that. I don't really believe that. But look at that just came out of my mouth or. I really have these feelings and they're really big feelings. And once they're out, they're done. And you are not your feelings. We get to be able to then separate, not see our feelings as the thing we get to defend or act on, but rather to feel. And I think that that's a really important distinction out there because there's a lot of validation that we have feelings in the world right now, which is great. I think that's a shift from when I started this work 30 years ago. And the validation of the feelings doesn't mean we should then act on all our feelings. The validation of the feelings is that we need to feel all our feelings and not have people confuse us with our feelings. And that's, I think, an important distinction in this practice. And then what we find is that as we get heard more and we heal through the listening, that we're able to recapture the picture of our goodness as a young person. As we heal from feelings of discouragement or burnout and defeat or feelings of shame get released or, or, or healed over time through this practice, which is an ongoing practice like meditation or yoga or for some painting or others running. It's a thing that the more you commit to, the more that you see the results of in, in a long, long view practice. So short term, it can feel so good. Um, and that's why initially some people are really drawn to it because it's like I've never been seen like this before. I've never been listened to like this before. And there's a great quote from David Augsburger, which is sometimes getting listened to deeply feels so much like veing loved that most the average person can't tell the difference. And so there is this very beautiful experience of being seen. And when we stay with it, we will hit harder and harder stuff. And this is why this is not work we do alone. We do this in community. This, in our view, we got hurt in community. We got hurt as parts of groups and members of group in society. And this is not an individualized or individual practice. And that's also really hard in our society. Because everything about dominant society, dominant patterns is to individualize, is to separate into your unique experience, and that somehow your experience is different, so different from others that you don't have community, or you have to find a very small slice of a tribe that maybe you can connect with. And we're opening up our perspective to be that this is this happened to all of us through adultism first, um, that where we can find that connection, then the other oppressions and the way we work on those other oppressions is decidedly different because we've started from a place of connection first. First, even as we look at the other ways that we might be divided. 

CASEY: Yeah. And I know, I mean, in just to say before I forget this part, there is a Getting Listened To session that is coming up in February on February 7th, 10 a. m. Pacific. It's really, I highly recommend it. I will have also the link to that in the show notes and we'll put it in anything that we, um, share out about sharing this episode because that was such an amazing training and session and primer into so many other ways that you might skill build with LJIST and others beyond in your life. So just wanted to say that, but I also really have seen this practice so much in the work we do at BWB as well. And again, I didn't have the word constructivist listening or the framing of that, um, in the way that you, and then as you named, um, kind of linked it back to Julian, but oftentimes we would, we start with this exercise of just tell us your story and there is no, there's no like thing we're trying to get, you know, people are like, well, tell me what I need to get from you or what is it you're wanting me to say? And over the last few years, Caitlin and I doing this, we've just talked so much about this, like prioritization of the listener and how we often or how we've seen so many people's storytell, which is like, storytelling for the listener and storytelling is an art and it's a dance between like touching into the heart of the story and thinking about who might be hearing and receiving. So we're not saying that that's not like an interesting dynamic to consider, but it was just fascinating that the notion of just being there to listen to somebody with nothing we were trying to get or do or make, they didn't need to perform anything for us. We had no judgment for them. They didn't need to live up to any expectation. We were just there to listen. As you said, like exchanging attention with each other was so uncomfortable. It was very uncomfortable for a lot of folks. And now you know, especially through the training, we have some new language and we can always direct them to your work as well to go deeper into that. But it's just been really like a fascinating inquiry for us to be with over time, especially working with so many people to tell their stories and become storytellers of just how-how little we really know how to just share without thinking about, or like at the end of a session, people would say, did you get what you needed? Did I say everything that they were there for us to get what we needed versus just, we were there to listen to them, you know? And so it's just really like, then, you know, we made all those connections, but then taking it one step further in the, the getting listened to work and the constructivist listening work with you all has been so amazing as you said, of like, just giving ourselves the gift of listening, which can feel like love or be confused with that because it's so, I think so many of us are longing for that and needing it. 

NANCI: None of us got enough listening, any of us. And this is not through any fault of any parent as you are a parent of young ones. The research says that every young person means about seven adults ratio to one young person to get enough attention and listening. So yes, it can, we've, none of us gotten enough of it. And I cannot emphasize enough. The point that you are making here is such a profound one Casey, because there's a million workshops out there and like how to tell your story and how to have your story be the hook or the conversion story I've heard is like this new thing or becoming a great storyteller and the art of, and it's like, it's all for influence and outcome. And that is not what constructivist listening is. Constructivist listening is for the speaker, it's the person who is exploring for themselves what is true for them. And I, to go like the next step with you on this was when if when, when we do these practices and people come to us and be like, Well, did you get what you wanted, what you needed from me? Did you hear? Did I get to where you wanted to be? We then ask the question-and this is where, you know, for us, we're very specific about what kinds of questions we ask and when we would ask questions in this practice. It's usually wait, we wait a lot longer than what happened in a regular conversation. And this is a practice of these kinds of questions would be when maybe it was the first time that you felt like you had to meet someone else's needs about who you are? Like, in other words, what's the next level underneath where they don't feel like telling someone about themselves just for them is enough? And so we try to go to what's the root underneath that. And I really think the root work is the key work here. And it's often the work that we're not supported to do in workplaces. We see somehow that it's separate from who we are in the work. And the truth is. It's showing up everywhere. Everywhere we go, we are. Most of this work is unconscious to us.  And having somebody be with us in the longer, deeper question of where did this first come from? It almost always will go back to an experience around adultism that has been invisible or unconscious or being told that that was regular. Everyone had that experience and therefore it's not unique or your experience isn't unique. But it is unique. It's both unique and shared and it's ours to heal. And if we don't have those spaces to heal them, we will continue to reproduce them. We will continue to replicate them and inadvertently replicate the oppression that happened to us. It's not our intention. None of us, I believe, not any one of us was born into the world saying, I can't wait to reproduce oppression. And when we don't heal from its effects, which happened to us as young people, we're going to do what we've done when the pattern will repeat itself unless and until we're supported to do the healing around it, we'll either repeat it or we'll flip it. Which is not the same as healing it. And I want to be really clear. A lot of times it feels so radical when we did the opposite of what we did as young people, or we are doing the opposite of what our parents did. And we're like, look, I'm not at all like my parents. And then I'll be like, are, are you just flipping the very hurt that you experienced as a young person? Because that's not healing. Healing is flexible. It's relaxed. It's allowing for all sorts of possibilities. It's not rigid. And the hurt when we're not healed, it will often be dualistic or rigid. And that's where I feel, for example, languages like anti are showing up in our movement is that we haven't done the healing work as a movement. So the best we can figure out is to be anti and against and dualistic and rigid instead of connected and whole and flexible and healed. 

CASEY: I want to say it gave me chills hearing you say that because I remember the question of when was the first time you were listened to, you posed that question in the training. And I remember, you know, just when the rock like *boom* went down, I was like, Oh, Wow. And I, I, I still think about that question. I'm still holding that question. Honestly, I'm not sure I have an answer to it. Um, I've been kind of like untethering it since probably about a, whenever that was a year ago or, um, right around that you posed that question. And it's been very, it's so for anybody that's obviously interested in that program with you or just in general, like that, hold that question with me over time, offering that up because it was so simply stated. And what I've found in being in the inquiry of that is that it's really, it's been tricky to answer actually. And it's brought me to so many like wounded pieces within myself of like, and where that confusion between love and listening was and things like that too. So I really, um, wanted to just name that. And knowing that, obviously, we could talk about so many more things, I'm curious if there's any questions you would want to offer out to the listeners or any last pieces to bring this conversation to a close for all the different pieces that we've touched on.

NANCI: So I'm just, I'm aware that we are still in a pandemic that looks differently than it did two or three years ago now. Um, so that will, of course, date this moment, but I want, I think it's important to know that one of the ways that our society in its current form has us thinking we're feeling good is when we are isolated. And we have confused isolation with boundary setting or protection or not having to deal with stuff that we don't want to deal with. And so I've been asking this question of myself a lot, which is what is seductive about isolation? What is comforting about not being connected and not having to do? The hard work of staying in connection, because I know that for me, going back again and again in relationship means I'm hurting. I'm open to more hurt. I'm open to the rough stuff that comes with being close with people. It's not only and can never be a feel good experience. And I think that is, in this time, I just hear people saying, I want a break. I want a relief. I'm exhausted. I want out. I just want to feel good. I only want to do things that are joyful or bring me pleasure. And I do think we need things that are joyful as long as they don't exploit other humans or the planet. And I'm sitting with like, where am I seduced into feeling that being alone is better than being connected right now. And for many of us, we got the message, if we weren't isolated, we were going to potentially kill someone else or we were going to ourselves be killed. So there's very real messaging now, even deeper around the fear of a pandemic and the loss that many of us experienced of people. We'd love that we were protecting them by being away from them. And we are now it's killing us. I do believe that. Isolation is a form of death. It's a spirit death. It's a disconnection of ourselves as social beings. I know the surgeon general has said, you know, that we are in an isolation epidemic and there's health consequences to it and it somehow still feels attractive and I want to not pretend that it doesn't. So what is seducing us away from that connection right now? And what would we have to risk? Each of us, to reconnect in a, in a way that would risk also feeling hurt, being willing to be heartbroken because heartbroken is the way– that it's the light that lets in that break in the heart is the light that lets into our spirit that I believe sustains all life. And that's one of the things I'm really learning about my mother's death as I'm heartbroken to lose her physical body. And I'm in the grieving and the mourning, the collective experience of this loss. I'm really allowing my heart to break and know that that light that comes into that break is what sustains my connection in the future with a deeper connection, a willingness to be heartbroken. again. 

CASEY: And does it feel right to end with that quote that we were talking about?

NANCI: Yeah. So this is something that as I was attending to my mom, I came across a quote, um, Her Transition by Terry Tempest Williams and who wrote, “if I can learn to love death, I can begin to find refuge in change”. And I believe that. It is, death is the only thing that's certain in life, and, and it is a profound change that happens to all of us when we face our own death or the deaths of ones we love. And I, I believe if we are going to change this society to be one that is just for all, this is a pathway to that, is letting go of what is no longer serving us, of letting it die, of being in the transition of it, of attending the transition, and closing the chapter. We need to close the chapter if we're going to build something together that is in the now, that is healed and whole for us all.

CASEY: Nanci, thanks so much for such a beautiful, rich conversation that touches on so many different pieces. I appreciate you. I'm sending so much love to your mom on her journeys and feel her with us in the conversation. So thank you for being here with us with that. And, um, yeah. I hope everybody continues to hold the questions that you've just posed and, you know, deepens into the work with you all and LJIST and the ways that you're engaging in this kind of like call to action and movement building together. So thank you so much. 

NANCI: Thank you. Thank you so much, Casey. It's been a real pleasure and delight to be with you.

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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.