EMBRACING THE UNKNOWN: Honing your Courageous Story with Ahri Golden Artwork

Questions to Hold with Casey Carroll

Welcome to the Questions to Hold podcast hosted by BWB founder, Casey Carroll. In a world that praises answers over questions, the act of holding a question is an act of resistance, presence and devotion. In this podcast, we explore the intersection of life’s biggest inquiries and our personal and professional worlds. Whose story are you telling? What impact are you having? Are you happy? Tune in for honest conversations with progressive leaders and entrepreneurs dedicated to questioning our institutions, igniting change, and provoking new possibilities. Join us for our next discussion.

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Questions to Hold with Casey Carroll

EMBRACING THE UNKNOWN: Honing your Courageous Story with Ahri Golden

May 28, 2025 • BWB

Entrepreneur + Award-Winning Media Midwife Ahri Golden is a podcast series creator supporting wise visionary women entrepreneurs ready to bring their next level impact into the world.

Golden is fascinated by being human and is deeply informed by stories and creative responses to the world that is unfolding within and around us. Golden's experimental audio projects inspired from lived experience enlist documentary, music + memoir to create a more urgent human response to the roiling changes in society.

Golden is Adjunct Media Professor at Southern Oregon University, where she teaches her course ALIVE: YOUR VOICE, THIS MOMENT, supporting students to hone one courageous story from life that gives them strength in times of great change.

In further response to this moment, since 2022, Golden embodies the role of Media Midwife in The Story Womb, a Podcast Series Production + Mentorship Program for visionary wise women leaders ready to grow their impact.

Join us for a conversation with Ahri Golden (she/her), where we explore Ahri's own courageous stories, and how she works with others to give birth to their unique stories into the world.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

Ahri's life-changing experience sharing her own story live on public radio
The importance of listening to stories - our own and others
Why oral story telling and podcast expression is such a critical art form
Ahri's process for guiding others to identify and give voice to their own courageous stories

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Ahri’s Website
IG + LinkedIn: @ahrigolden

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Podcast Song: Holding you by Prigida
Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/prigida/holding-you
License code: CELWR55ONTDIFRSS

Casey: [00:00:00] On this season of the Questions to Hold podcast, we will feature conversations with leaders, friends and peers, all dedicated to navigating the unknown. In this time of so much change and great uncertainty, we are being called to become skilled questioners, listeners, dreamers and builders. Join us as we hear personal stories that connect us to our shared humanity and explore how we can transform together and fully embrace the mystery of the moment.

Let's dive in.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Questions to Hold podcast. I am so thrilled to be in dialogue with Ahri Golden today, who I've been in dialogue with for the last few years as we were just talking about behind the scenes in these like really meaningful drips and drabs of like following that thread of when you're magnetically drawn to somebody and you don't know why, but you just trust that the bigger why knows [00:01:00] the way for you. So it's really exciting to be in dialogue today and and really get to dive into some of what's drawn us to each other in terms of storytelling, working with visionary women in identifying and articulating their story and being on two different sides of that, that can hold part of that container collaboratively for people and just making some room to hear your own story, and for the listeners here to get to learn from what you've personally gone through and then how you hold space for others to go through this in their journey as well. So I should say, Ahri, I'll kick it over to you to introduce yourself, but Ahri is an amazing media midwife, which as soon as I knew you took that title, I knew we were destined to be with each other because I always chose midwife or whatever it is you wanna call that I do with folks, whether that be coaching or supporting in their brand vision and things like that. But Ahri is a media midwife and an award-winning podcast, kind of like soundscape audio [00:02:00] magician in the realms of helping story come through in a way that delivers medicine, truly brings medicine to the listeners and to the individual sharing the story in the time, which I can think of almost nothing that's more important for these moments that we're in particularly, but also who we are as beings on the planet. So I'm so grateful to be in conversation with you, Ahri, and obviously please feel free to introduce yourself in any way that feels right for you, and then we'll dive into. Some of the juiciness together.

Ahri: Thank you, Casey. It's such an honor to be here and I've so appreciated how we see each other and how we, it kind of feels like a baton of client work where I am deeply in like a midwifery service of ideas and stories with my clients and help them to really hone in on the elemental core wisdom that they hold inside of themselves.

Casey: Mm-hmm.

Ahri: And [00:03:00] how that wisdom is connected to their purpose in the world and what they're being called to create and stand for right now at this critical existential moment, and from that inside out place, and then you and your team come together and bring such visual beauty and power and relevance and artistry and holding of my clients. So I love that kind of back and forth collaboration that we've been able to do. I come from a background in public radio making, and so I did that for many years making specials. Often it was connected to what I was going through in my life. The first kind of artful creative kind of catharsis experience that I had in making a public radio special about abortion was how I processed my abortion experience.

Casey: Wow.

Ahri: And it was in the [00:04:00] agony of the experiences and in the pain of going through that, I went out deep into the forest one summer and felt the grief of what I had been through and wrote about it in my journal and listened to the sounds of nature surrounding me and inside of me, and drove out from the forest to the ocean and screamed and cried, and felt all of the feels that I felt, and literally I came back home. The next week and got a call from a colleague who wanted to, at the time, it was a, a special about abortion. It's a long story, but the long and the short of it was, I believe in synchronicity. I believe when stories come through, they come through, I. In an Oceanic way.

Casey: Mm-hmm.

Ahri: Because we are water, because we are elemental. And so with my clients, we really go into your life. What [00:05:00] makes you come alive? What shows you who you are, who you've been, and how does that guide how you serve?

Casey: Yeah. And in that story that you're sharing, which is so beautiful, there's like three pieces that come up for me and take them where you will. But the first question that arose is like, how did you find your way to radio? What is it about radio and that medium that called you? So that's kind of like one of the pieces in there too. And also to what we're talking about, it's like what was the change for you from a personal transformation, but also from how listeners received it to feel safe enough in your own body to be able to share your personal experience with that in a public radio platform with listeners from all over and all walks of life and backgrounds to hear in that special and be able to kind of come and share with you about the impact, of course, your own personal, but then what that led for others. So those are a few. You can-

Ahri: Yeah.

Casey: -Be where you want, but that's what I'm hearing when I hear that.

Ahri: Yeah, I love that. Just to say the name of [00:06:00] the hour long special is called Shades of Gray. It won a national award, which, you know, it was just coming from a true place.

Casey: Mm-hmm.

Ahri: And so I think when work comes from that inner sanctum that it resonates universally. And I think, you know, I'll start with, yeah. I was on a road trip when I was 19 with my boyfriend and he was really into NPR and I'd never heard of NPR and he loved listening to it on the road, and I just learned about listening on that road trip-

Casey: Mm-hmm.

Ahri: -To stories that moved me to voices, the intimacy of sound really, it just kind of took hold. I, I felt so enlivened by it and I had actually just had moved back from New York City studying theater and like I was in theater school in New York and thought that was my path and was [00:07:00] very active doing that. Until I realized that I wasn't interested in having the physical be the focus.

Casey: Mm-hmm.

Ahri: For me, I felt as a woman in the nineties, that it was just so much about looking a particular way in the headshot and so much self-judgment and physical focus that I was like bored by that. I, I was just like, I don't care. I wanna know who you are. I wanna understand the soul of, and I think actors can do that, of course.

Casey: Mm-hmm.

Ahri: But I also realized that I wanted to work with voice, or I knew I needed to be creative. I didn't know yet that I wanted to work with the voice, but I knew that I was grappling with what matters.

Casey: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Ahri: So I took a three year break in college. I went to college for two years, went to New York City for three years because I thought I was going to do theater, and I came back to college at the University of Kansas. And when I came back to [00:08:00] college, I knew I wanted to get into radio, so I went into the NPR station on campus and walked in and said, I love this medium. How can I work here? So I ended up interning for two years and was doing journalism, had my microphone and headphones, and was out in the community and getting stories of people that were doing interesting things and making little stories and learning the craft, and was exhilarating. I was doing that alongside finishing my degree, uh, in English and Women's Studies. And so I left college with a reel of stories and went to San Francisco, knew I wanted to go out west. I was always really drawn to the West Coast. There were a few different synchronistic circumstances that happened that got me a job at the radio station there. So I ended up working in radio as an associate producer and then senior producer of a show called Beyond Computers, and it was family, technology and culture. And so [00:09:00] through that experience of working, I learned more of the craft got really networked in the country with all of the major heads at Public Radio International and PRX was just coming up around that time who, you know, they do amazing work and pr and so anyway, it, so it's a whole community of people. And so once I stopped doing that job because. Of a whole thing that made me a consultant and I stopped being in that job and never looked back. I've been independent since.

Casey: Mm-hmm.

Ahri: I, I realized I'm not really having a job, is I've always needed to kind of create my own containers and went through a really huge drama breakup, had my last abortion, and was like, who am I? What am I doing with my life? I don't know, I'm, it felt so lost. It was a very deep valley. [00:10:00] And so the thing that really helped me was starting to explore what was devastating and what was so painful, and I, it just like, it really was interesting how, you know, life as art, life as our path to just knowing, being uncomfortable and learning how to just listen inside pain, I think is at the source, and not just pain, but also inspiration, but like what cracks us open? What grows us? What are the moments that grow us and what is our becoming? And so. I started to do that for myself. I started to, and it was very cathartic. After I created Shades of Gray with Jonathan Mitchell, my partner, I felt like I had digested something that made me ready for motherhood and, and partnership.

Casey: What tools and resources did you have to be able to go into that valley in a way that was, I don't wanna use the [00:11:00] word productive, because obviously that's not the goal and outcome, but in a way that allowed for something to be expressed and then digested in the way that you are.

Ahri: Yeah.

Casey: Yeah, because it's, that's a long, vulnerable journey.

Ahri: Yeah. I mean, I think it was really in service to others.

Casey: Mm-hmm.

Ahri: Like there was a sense of like, how do I explore what I'm going through by interviewing people, by learning about what this is? I know. I mean, abortion is pervasive, so I know I'm not alone in this quest-

Casey: mm-hmm.

Ahri: -To understand what, just, what happened, like, I felt so dissociated from the experience, and so I think there's like a real hunger of curiosity that's just naturally in me. So I just, I'm drawn to the edges and I always have been, I mean, really since I can remember, but definitely it's a quest to understand what's true. And I had been through a couple of really [00:12:00] intense experiences when I was younger that brought me to those edges that cultivated that wonder, that cultivated that sense of amazement for the idea that we're even here at all.

Casey: Did you have any, I always lovingly call it for myself, the vulnerability hangover when I share something and it was meant to be shared. And it was in service. And it was in service. And to me it was in service to others. And then all of a sudden I'm like, shit,

Ahri: Yeah. I wanna throw up.

Casey: I know I wanna vomit. Um, did you have any of that or was it really catapulting you into the, like purpose of how you've shaped your career since?

Ahri: Yeah, it was incredibly vulnerable.

Casey: Mm-hmm.

Ahri: It was so intense. It was so scary. It also compelled me, it also felt like something that I was called to create.

Casey: Mm-hmm.

Ahri: It was like I, it had its own engine. One of the ways that I really kind of, uh, I remember, right before Shades of Gray launched into the world, I called a gathering of [00:13:00] my closest friends and we all sat and listened to it and we all like, I just felt so held emotionally in my heart that it gave me a lot of strength to let it out and really, I am a very spiritual woman and I kept my spirituality very separate from my professional life for a long time. But it always crept in there. It was always like I couldn't, you know, it's just part of me. But I did pray about it and I was like, just sending, it's like when it's not about me. I think that was like another piece is that it didn't feel like a vulnerability hangover because it wasn't about me. It was a gift through creativity that was to help other people and myself simultaneously, and it was instinctive and not really conscious that that was happening. It's much easier to reflect on that now.

Casey: Yeah.

Ahri: And realize what was happening. And it's also what I do for clients.

Casey: I was gonna ask for you to talk about that a little [00:14:00] bit about how, you know, in some ways this is like the first formation of what, or an early formation, I guess I should say, of what became something of a process or in a a midwifery journey that you then bring others through, right? And we're always our own test case. At the same time. We're always working out that kind of, um, part, but it just is interesting to see it mirrored obviously in our work together. I've seen it more on the other side of what you're doing with clients, but of course there's like the origins of it or the early parts of it. So there's many years in between that and now. But I'm just curious how that is like resonant to The Story Womb and the kind of process that you do. With your folks in, in the work now?

Ahri: Yeah. I love the relationship that you're making right now. It feels really part of my journey as a leader.

Casey: Mm-hmm.

Ahri: And my own creative process to, to really kind of hone in on the origin stories of my work and how it connects [00:15:00] to my clients. Now, there's a similar fascination with life that I bring that is just. I'm fascinated by life. I'm fascinated by the edges of life that bring us to the next level of our becoming and how that stretches us and grows us, and shapes us. And for those who are moved to make from that, that's the connection.

Casey: Mm-hmm.

Ahri: Is this sense of there has been a journey that I've kind of cultivated over two decades of taking life and making meaning from it as a way to alchemize, as a way to orient to the next what calls us inside of ourselves. And so when I think about The Story Womb, it really is this patient holding of someone. I mean, I am as, as [00:16:00] midwife, fascinated by who you are. I'm fascinated by what you've been through. And it's interesting, it's therapeutic, but my clients have already therapized. They're already, they've done enough alchemy work to really have harnessed the power of what they've been through to animate their purpose, animate what, what their path is calling for them to, to come forward into right now. And, and so there's that, but then there's also just the technical expertise, cultivation of recording and of working with the material and listening for, you know, when something feels off to like have them restate it. It's this patient space of deep listening, honing in on the stories, and then making a plan from that, and then going back and recording in a really natural way where I'm asking questions and and helping them to really shape their ideas. [00:17:00] And then I cut all of that extra out, just illuminate the essence of, of the wisdom that they're here to share.

Casey: And what have you seen on your client's end of the personal transformation like that that happens for them once they get to that essential nature of the story, and both as you named in your own journey? Not just about how that serves them, but how it's meant to be getting ourselves out of the way, how it's of service in a bigger way.

Ahri: Yeah, I think you just, you just said it, getting ourselves out of the way. There is this sense of relaxing, like when you feel like you can just fully relax into a gestational space. There's no judgment, there's no like external measurement of how you should speak, or it's really just communing. I mean, it is a communion of your wisdom and so when there's that relaxed sense there is, it's so creative. I mean, it's, it's so alive.

Casey: Yeah.

Ahri: The [00:18:00] stories are. There's like new discoveries. There's new connections that you make. Like, ah, my clients are connecting. Oh my God, like I just did with you. You know? My clients are connecting. Turning points in their lives that connect in with, oh my God, that makes so much sense. It roots the work and it expands it. If you think about, you know, a garden, I mean, it's just like putting really good soil and just enough water and just the right conditions for it to just pop. And that's what I'm looking for in every recording. And I think it's, I mean, aside from the fact that it's also magnetic for who my clients are reaching because they're deeply known from the material that there's this deep trust that is so essential right now. I mean, there's such a chaotic environment that we're living through right now of massive systemic [00:19:00] transformation and change and pain and grief. So I think, yeah, the work of going in to remember our courage, remember where we were brave, remember how we saw life differently for the rest of our lives. That is medicine and we all have it. And when we hear it, even if it, you know, in the deeply personal is the universal. So when we hear it. We hear ourselves, we can see ourselves in it.

Casey: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things you mentioned that stands out to me too, you named that a lot of your clients have done some of the work to be able to, I know the right word I wanna use for it, but basically be in ownership or in a, a mutual power dynamic with that story where it's kind of like there's different stages where it might not be ready to be shared yet, or there are different parts of the process, which I imagine in The Story Womb with a patient space, there's [00:20:00] gonna be some of that preterm where there's a lot of like also understanding how we sow it into our own bodies, how even understand what the story was and build our own sense of awareness to it. And then we get to actually shape it and hold it like you're naming and come into a different type of relationship with it, and then offer it as medicine in that other way, which is, I really heard that in what you're naming and wanted to underscore that preterm part because I think there's so much grace and non-linear time in what can happen to just be in our own relationship with not even knowing what the wisdom of our stories quite is yet. And then once we do that, then there can be this other unfolding in an external or a kind of the inside out part of the process that you're naming as well.

Ahri: I love that. Yeah, Casey, that's really interesting. Yeah. When I hear you say that, it's like that sense of coming to the place of really [00:21:00] taking such good care of the parts of us that felt shame about whatever happened, fear, anxiety, terror, dismemberment. It's like, yes, I love you. I'm here. It's like really mothering ourselves, mothering ourselves enough to see, yes. It's actually not personal. It's actually the collective. It's actually the collective suffering in a system that doesn't work.

Casey: Yeah. And oftentimes what we'll say, and part of the work that we do with folks over time is like that switchover, I feel like so many times as a storyteller, we're prioritizing the listener. Thinking about, are they gonna like my story? How are they gonna receive it? Am I saying everything I need to say for them? You know, it's kind of like this external thought versus oftentimes we'll invite space. And it sounds like obviously you do as well in your work with people, but for that, like if you're not prioritizing the listener and you're prioritizing yourself, what story wants to be shared and emerge [00:22:00] from there. And then once we know that truth, which is very vulnerable and requires a lot of trust with ourselves and with others, once we know that, then we can shape off. There might be some pieces that are private that never wanna go public. Those are ours. We can keep them sacred and then we can move some of these other pieces forward that are meant for the kind of collective to emerge. But it's like if we're always prioritizing the listener in that way, even though it's subtle, it's unconscious, it's just how we've been taught. A lot of us been taught to story tell, then we. We're not even listening to the, and, and Ahri and I before we, um, started the recording, we're talking about that deep dropping in of that listening so deep internally, which has institutionally, systemically across the board interpersonally kind of been taken away from us. And that's the piece when we get to get back into that. And you just such a beautiful job of holding your space for folks to do that too, so that when they get to these other places, it's like the full kind of [00:23:00] transmutation or transformation comes into view for them.

Ahri: Absolutely. I love that. I think that this idea that we have agency, we actually have agency to create a different way. Nobody can take our light from us without our permission no matter what is happening externally. And I think that that sense of, I'm saying that now, but honestly raising my kids up to 20 and 16 and being in menopause now and being with my partner for 23 years, there's like a way that I feel I'm integrating in a new way that is really liberating to realize that, yeah, the external measurements, being obsessed with doing all these things that, am I okay? Am I smart enough? Am I, am I good enough? Like coming from lack, coming from scarcity [00:24:00] subtly without knowing it and having all this wounding that was like, I'm going to create this world around me that is gonna protect me from feeling that vulnerable. After the gateway of raising kids up and mothering in the way that really has been healing for me has infiltrated my, my work and infiltrated my forgiveness and my sense of love and my sense of such tending, like when we tend our most insecure terrors and hold space for ourselves In doing that really start to cultivate the idea of like really being seen and seeing others. That it is this primal need that we have as humans to be deeply seen and gotten and connected. And the first kind of trauma comes when we disconnect from that. So it's like how do we get back to our original belonging, our original selves, our [00:25:00] sense of like, yeah, our aliveness. And I think that doing the work of that inner tending really does kind of create more capacity to be with the unknown. More capacity to take care of the vulnerability that we feel and just allow it to be okay to be vulnerable.

Casey: Yeah. 'cause what I'm hearing in that too is this question that I'll often ask myself or have, um, been reflected in others asking themselves in work that we're doing together. But it's like, you know, the question on the surface might be, does this story even have value? What would this do? Right? I'm air quoting, but beneath that, it's kind of like, does my story have value? And then beneath that, it's like, do I, because it's all just mythmaking and story in that kind of way. And that, to me, that kind of like tracing backwards is what you're naming of. Like getting back to that original place where we're not questioning our place and or it's just like [00:26:00] the story, the art, the beingness that we're here to have and share versus the notion of like when it gets severed from that and it's then completely, it's not good enough, or it's for somebody else. Or does this have any value on what scale? What's that all mean? All those different pieces. And then it's like that tracing back and once we get there, then we can trace back forward in a way where the story can have, its like fullness of presence and you know, you can feel that throughout, like all the realms of your body, of your spirit, of your mind, uh, through your soul. The resonance that comes out when those kinds of like words and pieces are shared because it's just that pure energy, that purity of energy that comes through.

Ahri: I love that. Yes, yes. Thank you for that. I, I agree and I think that in every session that I work with clients, we always start with gratitude for our ancestors. And we start with this moment that we get to be [00:27:00] alive to speak. They did not have this chance to speak. We are, you know, that there's a responsibility we have to share our stories to shape culture in a way that comes from the inclination to live on purpose, to help others to, to bring healing in the world. And the idea that that should somehow be devalued or not powerful or a problem is part of the conformity of controlling a narrative that's not working. So we get to bring forth something else to counterbalance, counteract, create. I think often of like every edit, every moment, every conversation is planting a seed for our descendants to have a ance. And so I think about this long, it's a, it's a long-term vision, right? It's like [00:28:00] not, it's after our lives. It's before our lives. We're conduits between the realms, and I really believe that. If we stand in that it takes us out of like, oh, it's about me. I say that and telling my own stories is like the hardest thing for me.

Casey: I feel like most people, right? We get so many people too that'll come and be like, and you are too, you're like kind of, I'm air quoting, but like a professional storyteller and like, you know how to help people move their story into form and so do we. And then telling my own story, I'm like, oh, SOS. Caitlin, can somebody help me? But it's that thing, you know, because you need the mirror. Like I was, I was thinking of that in the beginning part of your share where you named that when Shades of Gray came out and you asked folks to come witness it with you and be in community with you as a support structure, but also as a, as a witnessing, as a way to make it real in this kind of way. And I feel like that's, we're kind of coming back to that again too, of like, that's what we [00:29:00] all need. 'cause we have these deep truth that come through together and, and we kind of need each other in bringing those out. It's, you can't do it alone. Even if you're quote, a professional storyteller, you need each other. Like, I'm sitting here and I'm like, great, can't wait to hire Ahri. I need to get tapped into this wisdom. What's happening here?

Ahri: And I think that's also the other piece is that, gosh, you know, the, the inclination to reflect back the wisdom that we see in others, it's so, it's so powerful. I mean, it feeds me every time I work with others, before I was working with clients and, and making projects that were interviews, there's like a receiving of more courage. There's a receiving of the wisdom that they share with me, and so it helps me to kind of loosen and open and grow in my own kind of creative inclinations and [00:30:00] endeavors, which are gestating currently-

Casey: Ever more.

Ahri: -Ever more. But I actually am working with someone who I've trained to be my media midwife. So I am receiving and realizing that that's what I need too.

Casey: Yeah, it's so important. So I'm curious, as we're kind of coming to a close too, for everybody that's listening, including myself, asking for a friend, how do you recommend, like if you're curious what some of that story may be there for you, how do you recommend like a first step towards thinking about what that courageous story is that might be, or the origin story or you know, everything that you walk your clients through in The Story Womb and in your HONE work. Like, how can we get there? How can we start to think about it?

Ahri: I mean, I can say what, what has worked for me is to go into nature with a journal and just to ask, ask ourselves. When we ask, and just [00:31:00] wait and see what comes through the pen. And it might be nothing and that's okay, but to just start to really hold the questions. And I imagine, you know, the first time that I work with clients, you take out a piece of paper and I just have them, take them through a meditation and then just like without thinking about it, bullet point, start with six of the core stories that you've been through in your life that took you to the edge. Just like write a one word or a couple of words that will bring you into that. And then we basically go back to those bullet points and then we start to, I start to ask questions and I start to get really curious about the context, what the moment was we just like, really? I, I just love to sort of like, it's almost like clay pulling it apart. And not knowing, and, and that, that's, that's good. It's good to not know. You don't have to know in here, in here, it's a safe space of [00:32:00] curiosity about, you know, you have wisdom to share and it terrifies you or it doesn't, or you know, you're drawn clearly to create meaning in the world, and you are a conduit for that meaning.

Casey: Yeah, so I highly encourage, obviously all your information's in show notes, I highly encourage everybody to reach out to you, but I'm also just thinking or wanting to verbalize that, I know a lot of your work is in the realm of podcasting and radio and media in that kind of way, but what I feel strongly at the end of this conversation is like, even if that never wants to be the output, even if the art is simply audio in your own story for yourself or just understanding your story through these perspectives without attachment to whatever that output becomes. It just feels like such a essential investment in ourselves and in our time, as we said, no matter what, but especially in the moment of change and [00:33:00] new direction and needing more folks asking these big questions and honoring their own legacy and life story in the midst of the time that we're in. And I just wanna say that for anybody that's listening that may be like, well, this sounds really interesting and I, I don't want a podcast.

Ahri: Yeah.

Casey: It just, not about that.

Ahri: It's, it's interesting for, you know, just that as a reflection and, you know, yes. That this is, you know, such an opportunity to share wisdom and even if, yeah, it's like for your family, for your best friend, for... to remember.

Casey: Okay. So Ahri coming into the end of everything too. Is there anything you would wanna leave the listeners with or anything that feels important about your own story to complete in our conversation together?

Ahri: You know, I, I guess I'll say that it's, it's amazing when you think about the impact that one [00:34:00] moment can have on a life and-

Casey: Mm-hmm.

Ahri: -If you think about like the ripple effect of what occurs when we are deeply connected and seeing and being seen by another. You know, I'll say that when I was a young girl in sixth grade, I had a social worker who saw me in a really hard time and I was able to share with her in a way that felt so safe and so supportive and that conversation, those, it was an ongoing kind of process with, Mrs. Tucker was her name, but that was my first transmission of feeling deeply seen and our relationship created so much healing in my family system between me and my mom. There's a, there's a whole kind of fascinating story that I'm working on right now. So when my podcast and, and audio comes out, it will be a story that will be out [00:35:00] there in the world. But, but the point is, is that the power of communing in that way creates healing in the world. And I do believe that, and I do sort of work to, I'm just saying this now, but to create, co-create that same resonance in all of the ways that I show up to serve women leaders right now who are on purpose in this world, who are creating, you know, kind of soul work that can help society and, and I think to your point, that even if you're needing to tell your story and you feel it, let's talk, let's talk, because it, it is, there's just, there's so much that can come from that synergy and that potency. That's what I'll say.

Casey: Yeah, I love that too. And I'll reflect in there that what you're naming, which is a question I'm gonna be [00:36:00] leaving this with, is who is the first person that really saw me or when I felt really seen in that way in addition to like the piece you named of going out or tracking some of those six big moments and starting there and the process of identifying some of this work, it's even from that of like who really made me be, feel seen so that I know the kind of energy I would want to come into the container forum, what it might feel like when my story is really, and myself is in a way where I'm feeling really seen and and whole again and all of that. So I'll be taking that out of the call too. That is a question.

Ahri: Yeah.

Casey: But it's a long, a long journey of asking that question and thinking about the people who have helped and what that looks like.

Ahri: Yeah, because there is this sense of going, going down a path of really, once you feel that you never forget it. It's so generous. It's [00:37:00] so, it's like, ah, you, you feel safe, you feel unprotected. Like you don't have to be guarded in any way. And, and I think, you know, particularly in these times, we're hungry to feel connected.

Casey: Mm-hmm.

Ahri: -In real ways, in intimate ways. It's, it's a companionship, it's a togetherness. And I think holding each other right now through that and, and ourselves, is how we're going to get through the nightmare that we're living through, you know, it's, it's catastrophic and it's also catalyzing into something totally different. And, and how are we shaping that? How are we gonna lean into that pain with fascination and, and soulfulness and imagination? Imagination, creativity. I mean, we get access to our creativity when we're not [00:38:00] afraid. So we can't rely on the externals to make us feel safe right now. And going inside is that, is where the juice lives.

Casey: Well, thank you so much, Ahri. Thank you for being in this together with me, for having this conversation and I know for sure it's just the one of many more.

Ahri: Thank you, Casey. So great to connect with you and just, I appreciate you so much. Thank you for all of the incredible living you're doing and and intention you're bringing.

Casey: Same to you.

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 [00:39:00] questionstohold.com and wearebwb.com to learn more about this practice our questions to hold card, deck, and explore more conversations. See you there.