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United States of PTSD
Season One: Mental health concerns are on the rise in the United States. This podcast will look at the influencing factors contributing to the decline of our culture. With the rise of school shootings, political divisiveness, increasing levels of hate, and a chronic war of peoples' rights, we have entered a domestic war that never ends. Our podcast will look at whether this is done by design or is it an abject failure. We will discuss it from a clinical and common-sense perspective. Secondarily we will discuss ways to protect yourself from being further traumatized. Hosted by Matthew Boucher LICSW LCDP (licensed in RI) who has over 20 years of experience working with people who have addictions and trauma with a specialty of pregnant/postpartum women. Co-host Wendy Picard is a Learning and Development consultant with 15 years of experience, lifelong observer of the human condition, and diagnosed with PTSD in 1994.
Season Two: Is joined by Donna Gaudette and Julia Kirkpatrick BSW. Julia is currently working on obtaining her MSW and her LCSW. She is a welcome addition to the podcast.
Season Three: Cora Lee Kennedy provided research and worked as a temporary co-host. Dr. Erika Lin-Hendel joins as a co-host for season 3.
United States of PTSD
S 3 E: 18 War, Trauma, and the Fight for Humanity
In this raw, unedited conversation, we process our emotional responses to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran while exploring how intergenerational trauma shapes our understanding of war.
• Processing our emotional reactions to Israel's "preemptive strike" otherwise know as a declaration of war against Iran
• Examining how media messaging manipulates public perception of conflict to vilify people in Gaza and justify colonialism
• Discussing intergenerational trauma from historical wars and how it shapes our worldview
• Exploring the complicity of silence and the moral obligation to speak against genocide
• Looking at environmental contamination and health impacts as hidden costs of war
• Considering how art from conflict zones helps us process and understand violence
• Sharing practical ways to take action against global atrocities
• Finding hope in community organizing and resistance movements
The most powerful change often starts with small actions. Contact your representatives, join local solidarity groups, or simply have conversations with those around you. Remember: in genocide, there is no neutrality – either you're complicit or you're fighting against it.
Doctors Against Genocide: Lifesaving Medical Aid
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/hartzmann/no-time-to-die
License code: S4CEQWLNQXVZUMU4
Artwork and logo design by Misty Rae.
Special thanks to Joanna Roux for editing help.
Special thanks to the listeners and all the wonderful people who helped listen to and provide feedback on the episode's prerelease.
Please feel free to email Matt topics or suggestions, questions or feedback.
Matt@unitedstatesofPTSD.com
This podcast is not intended to serve as therapeutic advice or to replace any professional treatment. These opinions belong to us and do not reflect any company or agency.
Speaker 2:Hi everybody and welcome back to another episode of the United States of PTSD. I have Erica with me again today and I do want to apologize. I know there hasn't been an episode released in the last couple of weeks. I have been really busy which I do mention on another episode that we recorded but I haven't released yet, and I'm hopeful that after the end of this month we will be back on track. But Eric and I really wanted to do a podcast episode today to address the terrible things that are going on in the world right now. Erica, did you want to say anything before I jump into the story?
Speaker 1:Well, I think that it is clear that this will be a co-processing episode that we are sharing with you to kind of help you with what you might be struggling with right now, and hopefully what we have to say here will help give you perspective, um, and grounding that you can utilize to try and like, understand how you are feeling and how to talk about how you were feeling about this.
Speaker 2:um, yeah, but we're gonna start I was gonna say thank you for actually thank you for reminding me about that, because we, yeah, but we're going to start because, unlike podcasts or things you can edit, people walking around every day process it live. So this might be helpful to hear people processing it and being unedited and just kind of raw about their feelings. So thank you for reminding me about that. I forgot that part.
Speaker 1:I do have another like PSA part where I this is something that I like to do in a lot of my conversations where I speak about where I'm coming from. So, although Matt and I might not have expertise in the geopolitics of the region that is impacted, we have expertise in things that we will be speaking to today and I think it's important to understand that you can laterally apply your skills while also like holding that you might not know everything about history, but that should not be something as a barrier to be able to make a judgment call right about things like human rights and international law. Like just because you might not be familiar with all of the political history within a region, it does not mean that it is like you know it's unequivocal, like there are certain things that are unequivocal. So we do want to say like we are going to try and give you pieces of information that might be helpful on your journey of deciding how to understand. The information is out there, but we are coming from like a humanist forward position.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And I know, I know I say this in the intro of the podcast, but just for our sake, I want to remind everybody that what we express is really our opinions and it doesn't reflect anything else, right? So we're not talking for an agency, we're not talking for any other people. Eric and I are talking from our experiences, and you know just the humanity of what we're not talking for any other people. Eric and I are talking from our experiences and you know just the humanity of what we're seeing. So I will just kind of give a snapshot of what happened to me.
Speaker 2:So I have been trying really hard to turn my phone off before I go to bed, or at least put it away from me. And there was a message that went off in the middle of the night and I made the mistake of checking it, and that's when I learned that israel had done this uh quote, pre-emptive strike, unquote against iran. And I was up for the rest of the night, I couldn't sleep. I was just watching every video that was out there and, um, you know, part of what infuriated me and I know, erica, when you want to talk about this a little bit was the wording of a preemptive strike, so a preemptive strike? There is nothing about that. That is defensive, that is an act of war.
Speaker 2:Spin the narrative, because I'm going to say it right now, and I mean this about the government, not about the people, but F Israel, like I am so sick of it. I'm so sick of their genocidal regime and dragging everybody into their wars because they are just it's all about like colonialism and just dominance, and I think we're all sick of it. So seeing that and just feeling helpless and being really angry and not being able to sleep, I mean it was so. That's how I kind of started down this process. And, erica, do you want to talk about what it was like for you when you found out?
Speaker 1:I came in from from work and I don't know what I was doing. I mean, you know, like I, I basically tried to live and breathe this embodiment of like, restoration and repair. Um, and, and we'll get into more about why that is right, because, for me, my practice as a veterinarian, my um, my uh life, like what I do, everything that I do, is about the fact that I uh on both sides. My grandfathers were forced to fight in wars that they didn't want to fight in, right, and it shaped everything, like my entire life, how I was raised, entire life, how I was raised, the brokenness of my family, the intergenerational trauma, the ability to.
Speaker 1:I have people in my life from around the world, and many of us are people who have been impacted by war, and so one one of my and I said broken family, right, my grandparents were people who were traumatized by war. They raised children right Of how, like in, and how they raised my parents and how my parents raised me Like. There are echoes of that so you can look at, you can look at war veterans that are impacted right now, and earlier today I was looking at, you know, a video of an Israeli soldier, like screaming about how he murdered 40 people. He basically screams at the top of his like I murdered 40 Palestinians for you, and I can't even get mental health care appointments.
Speaker 2:Which, by the way, is no different in our country.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Our country treats military people terribly. Right so in terms of mental health.
Speaker 1:Right. So that person you know, you know and we can you know, like who's part of a system, who's been raised in a system, who's been raised with indoctrination and I say this as someone who is half german, right, I say this from a place of knowledge, of living, being a person of color, living, spending part of my time in Germany in a family, right that has this legacy, right, and it doesn't. It doesn't go away, right, it's still there and I grew up with it. I grew up in in the same household as it, with it, I grew up in the same household as it, and so what that does is that it's going to be intergenerational violence. So I have chosen mothers because my family had those effects or impacts after that, and one of those chosen mothers is from Iran.
Speaker 2:So when you first found out about it, how did you react Like, do you remember? Like, what was your like? What was your visceral response when you?
Speaker 1:Oh, when I was growing up. So, the other part of my family I'm half Taiwanese, right, so I grew up very young having being familiar with those conversations of what are, what are we? You know, the, the fear of imminent invasion, right, as citizens, right, the citizens of the fear of imminent war. So I have been right. So, like my chosen mom and I, like, have had conversations over the last two years, um, and before then, where, like war, the threat of war, because we, in order to see family, I did have the opportunity to meet extended family um, we had to meet in turkey, right, so family from iran was able to get to turkey so we could all be together to celebrate, um, the marriage of family in the united states. And that was my first time being like I can't even not begin to express like it didn't matter that it's a different culture. It still felt like home because there's something about that, about when, when the war is in the room, that, like, you take care of each other.
Speaker 1:Like my grandmother's community that I grew up, spending my summers in, were people who had to flee different areas and relocated, because we're originally from Sudetenland that was ethnically cleansed, so they had and they escaped. There's a cohort of people who also escaped from Sudetenland to East Germany and then escaped the Gestapo again from East Germany to West, and all settled together we're able to find each other. What right that like blows my mind every day just thinking about that. But they took care of each other, right? My grandmother's next door neighbor was from romania erica, can I jump in for one second?
Speaker 2:I mean, this is all like super relevant information but like but I just want to know, like, how are you responding when you found out about?
Speaker 1:it um, like my, like it, well, obviously, intellectualizing it, that's the thing.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a great. Yes, you are. That's the point, yeah that's the.
Speaker 1:I mean yeah, I well, this is because I've spent my entire life intellectualizing working on being okay.
Speaker 1:Right, and I think that's something that I'm coming to realize as a distinction. Right, because I grew up understanding starvation after war, like understanding the absolute annihilation of structures. Structure is what does it mean? To leave everything that you have behind and start over twice I mean technically by parents and their migration route. It was again, so three. You know like so many times. To restart, to look around, you see everything that matters to you and be like you know. So this is the philosophy that was trained into me at a young age is that your home is where you are.
Speaker 2:So it sounds like actually, your response was that you went to a place of reliving it, yeah, and also then intellectualizing it, because you do have firsthand experience with going through stuff like this. So that's, you know, for the people who are listening, that's, that's important. For other people who may be having the same responses, that that's, that's a normal response, whereas, you know, I don't have the firsthand experience. My first thought goes to my first feelings kind of go to rage and like helplessness and just like yeah how much of this do we need to see before the world says enough is enough?
Speaker 2:I mean, if you think about all the stuff that's happened. So we've had two lawmakers assassinated, we had a reporter shot on TV with a bullet, with a rubber bullet, who was just reporting.
Speaker 1:Horses being used to trample peaceful protesters.
Speaker 2:And you've got Florida. Who is like saying now it's OK to like run people over and they're going to like assault anybody and put them in the hospital, if they even get out of line, you know it's a culture of violence.
Speaker 1:It's an addiction.
Speaker 1:Like like it is an addiction, oh it's yes, it's, it's, it's ab, it's like abject fascism, it's just, it's like horrible, it's absolutely horrible I, you know, to be honest, part of it, what, what I have been feeling, what I've been feeling for I don't know, to be honest, probably my entire life, right, Is this? Um is horrified? Yeah, I have spent my entire life horrified. I have never not been horrified, even as like, like my first memories are being horrified and like I think there's something that happens differently when you have a relationship with death from a very young age.
Speaker 1:Right, my relationship with death started, you know, with some of my first memories and I don't like it's. It's just what I know, right, I'm just familiar with it and it's taken me a lifetime to try and articulate it or describe or to even understand what is happening in my body. And, like you know, I speak from a place of like intergenerational CPTSD. Most likely, you know, I'm also speaking from a point of just absolute refusal to accept this type of carnage as acceptable. It is not the world that I want to live in and I, you know, like so sometimes I think I'm. It feels like I'm going to vomit, right, Like this underlying nausea that has been, you know, hanging out on my shoulder, you know, as a little companion, throughout my entire life.
Speaker 2:You know what I think is difficult for tell me if I'm wrong about this, because I know this is what was difficult for me, but I know that you had the same experience in terms of like timeline is that from the get go I knew this was a genocide from the get go and you know I remember I was recording season one of this podcast when it happened and you know I wanted to talk about it and I know Wendy was really kind of remiss to talk about it. She, she was uncomfortable talking about it and everybody around me was like talking about how it was anti-semitic to then. It wasn't really a genocide and israel has a right to defend itself. Israel, the perpetual victim state. You know they, they just have a right to defend themselves and I and I now I've seen people are are where I was then, like a lot more people are starting to to see's happening.
Speaker 2:But I've gotten to the point where silence is complicity and I'm sick and tired of editing myself and not saying what I want to say. I've sent my senator two emails today saying you know, as a taxpaying person and I think this is true most people here I am sick of using my tax dollars to fund genocide in another country's war, in another country that controls us. You know, like, how many more times do we have to see him? And we've had people self immolate. You know to say, like, what they're doing is wrong. We've had people there are countless videos of kids being murdered. Countless videos, countless, like all sorts of atrocities happening, idf soldiers taking pictures of themselves themselves, like torturing people and posting it with smiles on their faces. And if you are still and I'm saying this to anybody if you are still defending israel at this point, you are a sick person. I am just.
Speaker 1:I am saying that yeah, I, you know the way that I would say, is also a dissociated from humanity person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, completely disassociative.
Speaker 1:And you know this is when people talk about like decolonial theory, right, and I think it's taken me a long time because I've been very confused Sorry, I've been confused with American culture my entire life and it has taken a long time to understand that because there's so much waste, right, there's so much waste in this process, there's so much destruction, extraction right there, I think, like the soil is so contaminated, what is going to grow? Right? There are reports coming out from Afghanistan about the birth defects, right, we have information Of people in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1:Yes, birth defects cancer right, we have in my own backyard in Tucson. There's a wonderful book about it and actually I do believe we can get the author on here. Invite the author.
Speaker 2:Oh, that'd be cool. What's the book?
Speaker 1:I have to. It's called Disabled Ecologies. I, you know I misplace it because, like, I carry it around like a comfort blanket sometimes and you know being like. I'm going to read this soon. It's a powerful book. It's an academic, investigative, journalistic, community-based book about someone talking about how the contamination of aquifers by Raytheon in Tucson caused significant abnormalities in many children, right, and affected a whole community and has contaminated a precious aquifer resource for always. That water is not rescuable, right, and there was so. People living in that area who are so enthusiastic for war are very, are completely ignorant about that. They are not. They are not escaping from what is being done to their bodies just by the pollution that's being created by this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's environmental destruction is also impacting our entire planet. That's an absolutely great point and you know, even the strike, the of striking, like nuclear uh facilities or places where, like these, radioactive materials are, like the method of the strike, they could have ended up with radioactive contamination affecting affecting civilian areas.
Speaker 2:Well, they still might. I mean, couldn't they still I mean?
Speaker 1:it was like part of a risk right. So basically, what I'm going to say emphatically once is that if you are only following mainstream news and what politicians say, you are divorced from being an educated, responsible global citizen I 100% indoctrinated with propaganda yep, absolutely, and there's a.
Speaker 2:There's a um I god, I forgot the name of it. You may know it off the top of your head, but there's a um, a website to track APEC, like who APEC is giving money to. So for any of us, who, any anybody out there who doesn't believe this you can easily look this information up, like how many politicians and how many news sources are owned by APEC, and there are videos out there of them talking about very openly and honestly, about editing our media in favor of what they want us to see and and taking out the actual facts of what's really happening. I mean, we don't have reporting in this country anymore. We have propaganda. I I know people who are listening to radio um news stations from other countries. Actually, I have a couple of people I know that are listening to news out of portugal, because they said portugal is actually reporting information as a reporter and not like putting in like propaganda.
Speaker 2:So I mean anybody who thinks that the current government is working for us and is like delusional, you know and you had brought up about um, you know how they, they don't see how it's going to affect them, and I was watching a video the other day when, um, iran was, uh, defending itself against israel, defending itself because israel attacked them. I just want to point that out again because people keep seeing. People are just not seeing this part of it for some reason. There are people videotaping and there's one woman who is like sitting behind a, a a bus, like a bus terminal where you sit, and she's videotaping and she's laughing and the whole time and I'm thinking, are you delusional? Like there are missiles coming your way. But I think they are so deluded into thinking that they are just immune to everything that they can get away with whatever they want and it's you know, I, I, I, I mean it is.
Speaker 1:This is what happens when the military is so worshipped, right, because what they're doing is they're training soldiers. Right, they're starting very young childhood to accept, right, being foot soldiers in executing the most horrific types of violence on other human beings. That's, it's not, it's not normal, right you have like, that's not how humans, that's not how children want to grow up, right, children are beings of love there was something else I saw and I wish I would have.
Speaker 2:I've watched so many things over the past couple days. I should have been like keeping track of the things that I was watching, but somebody was talking and it was very true. They said if you want to know what country you're in and they gave examples of like so if you're in china, you can't. You can't criticize the chinese government. It's against the law. If you're in russia, you can't criticize the russian government. It's against the law. If you were in nazi germany, you couldn't criticize germany. In the united states, who can't you criticize? It certainly isn't the United States. We can criticize the United States, all we want. You can't criticize Israel, which is just wild.
Speaker 1:So for anybody who still truly thinks that we are not owned, I think you need to kind of wake up and I think the important thing is like, israel is not interested in the security or safety of anyone on this planet no way especially they want.
Speaker 2:the only thing they care about us for is they want our bodies for soldiers to go fight their wars. And I have to tell you any sitting person in our government who is going to advocate for us going into iran to fight israel's war, they should put on their uniforms, put on their big boy pants and go fight their own war and like seriously and take their kids with them, because the rest of the citizens in this country do not want to spend our entire history fighting Israel's wars.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to shift a little bit to you know, like, think about like to people, right? So we're we're going to shift to people because, um, I hope that's okay.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, I uh, maybe I was getting a little bit too we need to let a release right.
Speaker 1:So understand that there are places that you need to release that frustration, because this is, this is moral distress, right, and also so earlier today. So in you know part of my day, um, you know, I I do a lot of organizing, so of course that's where I find my uh sanity is, by helping my community with action.
Speaker 2:So, uh, I've got like 15 different projects that I'm doing at any particular time, but by the way, we need more people like you, because that is like if I think if everybody had that passion and dedication, we could get a lot of things changed.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what we were talking about some of our future episodes that we'd like to plan about. You know how people take action, right of stories of people who are taking action together. That will hopefully inspire, because each one of us can make, like every person, you can make a difference, right, and I've I talked about this in veterinary medicine. It's actually part of an anti-war message that I gave at a gala of an organization that I used to be on the board of, and it's about how we are. You know pebbles, and you can be be a pebble and fling yourself into the water and cause ripples, right. By impacting that, that, the immediate around you, you empower people to affect other people, right, and that can expand and together we make change. So that is the other thing that I'm trying to ground myself in. I'm also grounding myself in in other.
Speaker 1:The lineage of anti-war activism is global right, and it and it's is global right and it's throughout all humanity right. So, for example, in Taoism, there are anti-war principles in Taoism, and that comes from Chinese philosophers from thousands and thousands of years, and so we were talking about the art produced from communities who have been impacted by war, and I want to start out with a quote from an Iranian poet poet uh marjane satrapi um m-a-r-j-a-n-e-s-a-t-r-a-g-i?
Speaker 1:is this something that's public, that we can point like a link to, and then yeah yeah, this is a very, very powerful thing, because and this happened, you know, um at another point in time because it is very important that people actually go and learn about Iranian history, because we are we, the United States government undermines their democratic society, so we undermine everybody.
Speaker 1:And this is the quote. If I have one message to give to secular America, it's that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian. We don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me, and the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between you. Me and you, and our governments are very much the same.
Speaker 1:That's very powerful that's very powerful, right. So I would say that's a way to try and understand is look to the art that comes out of war and because our words are only so much, but imagery, the art like, especially, you know, anime, has a deep history and you know we'll see if we have time to talk about some of that. Um, but yeah, I mean this is. This is actually like a workers like across the globe. This is a global class struggle. It's people with a lot of money, with a lot of interest in continuous war, with feeding taxpayer dollars into a war machine, then destroying things and then picking up the contracts to try and repair it, but doing a shitty job of it. That's basically the cycle that we're in.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know, I think that's the hardest, having grown up here, and you know because you talk a lot about indoctrination and a lot of what we learn in school, growing up, is indoctrination and I think, having seen that as an adult, challenging that and realizing that, holy crap, like we have been the bad guys so many times in history, repeatedly, over and over and over again, but are told that we are the good guys and we are fighting for democracy that's a bunch of bs, like the only thing the only thing we're fighting for is to oppress everybody else in the world.
Speaker 2:That's literally the only thing we're fighting for, and it's nauseating, like once you realize that it's nauseating it's everywhere and the thing. The other thing I just want to say I know you want to go back to the people, but this is something that really pissed me off. Um, you know, obviously we have this whole like no king's day, uh, you know, a protest that was everywhere, and I'm sure this, I'm sure there's no um coincidence that that coincided with the attack on iran either. I'm sure, oh yeah that's what.
Speaker 1:That's what it is. I, I was just coming back from protesting and then I went to a know your rights and this, talking about our carceral slavery state. Anyway, that's another soapbox. That's another soapbox, um, but like and that's what. So like I had come home from a day full of like.
Speaker 2:No-transcript yeah and I. The thing that got me really annoyed is so you know, everybody on like all the people I know on facebook were obviously posting lots of things about this, this protest, and, like you know, f trump, and that they're going to go to the protest and all the stuff that they're doing and everybody's like supporting and that's really great and everything. And then I noticed that anything I post about people being killed in, like g, gaza or like any of the genocide that's happening, yeah, no, it's like radio silence.
Speaker 1:People I mean, like some of it is an excuse right have a tendency to be distractible and not follow up, or are not, you know, paying attention to multiple streams of information. I am audi hd, so not only am I able to, am I like, can't help, but pay attention to multiple streams of information by my autistic brain like demands that I categorize it. So, yeah, this head is.
Speaker 2:Well, I get that part of it. But I mean, if we were to take I mean I think I have like close to, I think, 600 friends on Facebook, which I know is, you know not, I'm not an influencer by any means, but I mean, if we were to even like take out people who are maybe ADHD or have issues about like processing, that is not going to be 600 people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, honestly, it comes from it's it's cultural right. I mean my perspective as someone who wasn't, didn't, wasn't raised with American cultural it's cultural right. It's like toxic individualism, it's so at a pathological level.
Speaker 2:Like I, literally I should I slap them all and be like, pay attention, this isn't like we're talking about you know somebody not picking up your garbage this week, and I mean this is like people dying, starving to death, like people who are being killed and brutalized and murdered, and like it's it's so ridiculous about the uh, how in florida, they're gonna like run down protesters now? And she was basically saying, well, good, because you know, the protesters deserve to be run down. And I'm like why do they deserve to be run down? And she said, well, because they're pulling people out of cars and they're like beating them up and they're raping them. And I'm like, oh, they are. And she's like, yeah, I'm like where did you hear that? And she's like it's all over the place, like doing it everywhere.
Speaker 2:And I said so. Then there should be some statistics on that, correct? So can you please look up how many people in Florida have been raped and beaten during protests by being pulled out of their car? And she looked it up on her phone and she was like, well, I can't seem to find it. Well, maybe there's a reason you can't find it. And she's like oh, like, oh well, they're suppressing the media. And I said so. You think they're going to suppress something, a narrative they're trying to push. That doesn't make any sense. Do you think there's another reason why maybe it's not there? Oh, because it didn't happen. Maybe that's a reason why it's not there because it didn't happen and it doesn't happen I appreciate you because I am, I cannot.
Speaker 1:I cannot even interact with people. I can't. I can't For my well-being. I stay very far away from them, so bless you and bless anyone who's listening. Who does that work? It is important, it needs to be done and I am grateful to you for doing it, because I cannot, I cannot.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to lie it. It's very difficult. It's very difficult, but that's the only way you're going to get people to see it is by, like, having them look at themselves and say, wait, this doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it doesn't so so I want to. I'm going to circle back a little bit.
Speaker 2:Okay, sorry.
Speaker 1:We're going to no, no, it's okay. I feel like that's going to be the cadence, right? You know, every conversation has like a rhythm to it, right? So this is the chorus. We go back to the chorus, and the chorus is sharing some things from different spaces. So this is from my chosen mother, who is so kind and so loving and, you know, as someone you know, she helps me heal a lot of things by being in my life and continues to um, and you know, like I'm not in partnership with her, hers, that I don't anymore, but um, and and I, we, you know we check in on each other, um, so I asked her, um, if she would want to share any words, and so, and I'll add that she says dear erica, I'm so proud of you, keep up your good work, you're a good human being.
Speaker 1:My thought on all this violence is it is not that people, wherever they are, hate each other to the point to seek destruction of each other. In the US, iran, russia, israel, ukraine, gaza or anywhere else in the world period, these are the leaders that, usually by manipulation and corruption, have come to power and, for selfish motivation, want to destroy people, the smaller leaders in service of bigger one that is like greed power, money, right? Um, that's my aside. Um, they have success by washing the brain of uneducated people, because it lets us not forget that any dictator needs the support of the public. If we want a change in the world, our best weapon is educating and making people aware. The more people have awareness and education, the safer, better world we will have, and she's sending us lots of respect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's so powerful. I mean I think you could probably even talk about this from your family experience. When there is that shift in power towards, like tyranny or towards fascism, I mean the first thing that they try to do is dismantle education right, and kill, like, all the people who have, or like get rid of all of the people who have like status and education. When you brought up the arts earlier, I mean this is something I only thought about when you were talking about, but it makes me think about how we have this cancel culture, trying to cancel comedians and trying to cancel actors and, you know, trying to cancel people with influence and trying to cancel artists, and that is I. I wonder if that was all part of a plan to get rid of the people who could influence in positive directions. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Like I just had that thought yeah, I think also, like capitalism has devalued art right and and created these systems of of disconnecting people from that. And the reason why I say that is because words is one way of receiving information. What is, you know? They say a picture is worth a thousand words right, yeah that was like there's meaning to that.
Speaker 1:That's not like a, that's not like a nothing statement. Right, when we experience, create something that is beyond the senses, when we look at words on a piece of page, but you know the pet, the pen is mightier than the sword and a picture is worth a thousand words like those should come together yeah, I agree those should go together, because when we look at imagery, and so for me, like it was like a um, and when we, when we, when we watch it, expressed an art in a different way.
Speaker 1:And I have, you know, even though japan occupied tai, taiwan for 50 years, um, I still have uh, an an engaged in its own, like imperial violence.
Speaker 1:Um, I still have a lot of respect, I have a deep respect for the artistic community and how they have um explored some of this um heritage and um explored some of this um heritage. And you know, like I just went, you know, as as part of my um resort of doing some fun things, um, I went to go see um some anime and theater and um, there was an uh, there's going to be a new Godzilla coming out, and so it was Shin Godzilla or something like that, and during that there were a couple of things where it, you know, godzilla is like the atom bomb and war, like that's what it's about. And every time where you see the looks on the faces of both the actors and the citizens of something that is so destructive that the power defies the mind, and they, they capture it very well, like, what do you do? When, when, when nothing you have, is possible to fight against this destructive?
Speaker 2:force. Is that what the symbolism behind? I never knew that. Yeah, you totally just taught me something. I, I honest to god, never even heard of that. But that makes sense now that you say that so um I recommend like people um watch.
Speaker 1:You know, grave of the fireflies is another very famous one. Um did you say grave of the fire of the fireflies is another very famous one.
Speaker 2:Did you say Grave of the Fireflies Grave?
Speaker 1:of the Fireflies, it follows two children after the atom bomb.
Speaker 1:Oh god that sounds awful. I think it should be required for every American citizen to watch, just in general, watch that before you watch anything about Oppenheimer. I, you know, honestly, the whole like. I have so much like. I haven't even been able to watch Oppenheimer yet because I am full of rage every time like so, so my rage is delayed.
Speaker 1:I'll put it that way my rage is delayed, um, my rages is, is and disappointment is held in the repetitive nature and the lack of critical like analysis that exists within american culture, because it's always like this, putting militarism and violence on such a pedestal, it's everywhere right, like just bringing like Marvel Universe, right, oppenheimer, like all those things that kind of try and worship like this idea of like technology for control and dominance. It's, um, it's a distorted sense of values, because it's basically like life-taking. All of it is a worship of destruction and um, it's why I've dedicated myself to like the medicine that's dedicated to as many living living beings as possible. And so I've always, you know, and I'm disappointed in my field, I'm disappointed in my industry. I'm like you know, I'm looking around and I'm like at veterinary medicine. I'd be like I'm, you're here now I bet that you have not where, where, the, where the heck were you, uh, during Vietnam war, you know, by industry. I wonder about that.
Speaker 2:We share that in common. I'm deeply disturbed with my, with my profession as well. I mean, there were plenty of social workers. I'm sure they were killed in Gaza and but apparently they don't have any value to the NASW because they're not American or not preferred or whatever, but it's, it's just so disturbing. But they of course gave a statement about Israel. Of course, fall into that world either is that. I also do know there's a large proportion of citizens in israel who are anti-war and have also been protesting that yahoo, they're just not publicizing that as much. So there are certainly plenty of innocent people all over the place and it's really tragic. It's the it's. That's why I keep stressing it's the government, I know, it's not the people. The government is just bloodthirsty. Well, and I mean I will say it's the government, I know, it's not the people the government is just bloodthirsty.
Speaker 1:Well, and I mean I will say it's the government and also the people can be a tool of the government sure of course, like um and like I, I keep on, I try and communicate.
Speaker 1:Like I, I am speaking from two generations and that's what like I, that's what I see, and this is with the start, with with the start of any war, my entire life, with the start of any war, with any area where there is starvation, I think I, like I, have sat there in moral distress and there are so many people like me, right, and you know there are so many, the anti-war movement. It's like that's the one thing that's keeping me sane, right? I've got people in my life who were fighting against who, who their first time getting arrested was was protesting against the vietnam war. Yeah, so yeah, I've, I've learned over the last two years that where my community is, my community, are humanitarians and people who are fighting against war. That's the community I belong to.
Speaker 2:Those are great people to know. Certainly I hope that we get a bigger group of people like that, who are both critically thinking and who are looking towards humanity. I hope so. Did you want to? I know you had read a poem. Did you want to read that poem still, or?
Speaker 1:yeah okay yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, ready to do that. I have enough. As shy as I am about it, I do have feedback from a very a Jewish voice for peace and professional poet, who I hope will be on our podcast as a guest at some point. Gave me the feedback.
Speaker 2:And I, just when people are listening to erica something I want you to picture, because while I was watching, erica read it the first time on their background it is it's an aurora borealis, and I just want to say that you looked like a divine being when you, oh my god I want people to picture this okay, um, and and afterwards I'll tell you like, I'll make it clear the like dedication of of this poem leave things better than you found them.
Speaker 1:Lineage of that in my father the bombs, the lost ghosts of magical creatures and miracle medicine, the loss of nourishment we are starving ourselves, a dysfunctional consumption, binging the resources to vomit up waste. What ruin. I beg of you do not realize the nightmares of my fathers. Stop materializing. The agony of my mothers, others. The disordered eating of humanity is causing us to waste, us to destruction. This beast, this titan that is consuming everything and purging the remains in the wasted land thank you for sharing that, erica.
Speaker 1:That's very beautiful and very powerful yeah, um, my great-grandfather um, was a german soldier. He in world war. He held a hill with very few men to allow for a town to evacuate before it was bombarded. So he saved a lot of civilian lives and for that he received a medal, pretty much the equivalent of the German medal.
Speaker 2:Like a medal yeah.
Speaker 1:He. This message came transmitted from him to my grandfather, to my father, to me, that he was like the world will not survive another world war. Avoid war at all costs. We must avoid war at all costs. I had family in the Dresden fire bombings that died, burned alive. That was a city full of refugees and artists. It was not a military target and they dropped pieces of paper on those civilians.
Speaker 2:And you know it's interesting because when have we seen that?
Speaker 1:recently, right when that happened, I collapsed. I couldn't stand when that news and when people were talking about it like a legitimate form of treating civilians, I didn't know that that was possible, like I didn't. That had never happened to me before. I didn't know that that was possible, like I didn't. That had never happened to me before. So you know. The other thing is that my father it was the thing that was taught to him by his father and this will leave things better than when you found them.
Speaker 1:The place where my family is from it's no longer Germany and displacement. You know, when you think about communities being broken, families being broken, families being erased, you know that part that I've come to understand more was that where, where my grandfather and great grandfather from were from the borderlands, where the majority more citizens died right and more men were forced conscripted into the army that died in that area than any other part of germany. So it is a um. The people from there were much more anti-war and then, as part of world war ii before that they had been under occupate military occupation, um and um, and then got pulled into another war and then got pulled into another war and then were ethnically cleansed. So what happened to those people, those citizens, those people who were consumed by their governments, is not something that I've really had places to talk about, because it was like Nazi Germany, germany, of course, right, but um, and also you know that what came from that was this this you know, understanding that a resource is precious, anything is precious, right, my grandmother would open presents in a way that she would save the paper to be reused, right, nothing was thrown away.
Speaker 1:I was raised with that. Everything like food, you know, like everything. If you did not eat it, you used it to nourish the soil. There was nothing like everything was precious, because they understood what it was like to basically be in a wasteland where, if you could not grow something, you would starve. Or they were picking up, like my grandmother used to.
Speaker 1:Because we kids, we loved, um, these potato pancakes, right, we would have them with applesauce. It's like not only not only jewish people eat latkes, right, um, uh, so we had potato pancakes and we loved them as kids, and my grandmother always struggled with it, because she was like this is, they would pick up potatoes and cabbages off the side of the road, that would fall off of trucks. That was the degree of starvation and because potatoes and apples last longer and you can kind of preserve them. And you can kind of preserve them, you can make food out of it, right? So every time we asked for potato pancakes with apples, my grandmother, she would ask she would make them for us. But for her it was traumatizing every single time.
Speaker 2:That totally makes sense. Thank you for sharing that, ericaica, too. It's a, it's a mirror for what happens to the people now, right like what's happening right right now in gaza, like I see all these videos of these kids who are literally wasting away and you know the the, I think, the saddest thing I've ever seen, and this is, and again, if you're listening to this and you are not paying attention to this, I would really urge you to look at videos coming out of gaza and just see, like, what palestinian people really look like. I mean, I've seen plenty of videos of them giving food to animals first yes you know, and the animals are all starving to death.
Speaker 2:I saw a dog that was wasting away and you have kids that are giving food to like cats and dogs first before feeding themselves. And that's a testament to the beauty of these people, like the resiliency and like the strength and you know it's the same for your family that you're talking about like their ability to to thrive in the worst possible conditions ever.
Speaker 1:And I mean this is why also activists in Europe have been so like maddened by their country's responses because we like it's like it's like we were raised better. Yeah, just like our youth today are like you raised us to expect and demand better.
Speaker 2:I was actually. It's funny. You say that I was very disgusted by France's response. I don't know if you saw France, but they said they're going to be backing Israel, of course, and Israel's assault and attack of a sovereign nation.
Speaker 1:And they're going to continue the GHF war crime. You know.
Speaker 2:France was on my bucket list, will never visit france now. I mean, that's just absolutely disgusting. But I'm happy to know countries like ireland and spain and like italy have been like and greece have been like.
Speaker 2:You know, no more turkey there's reasons for that history of those countries there are, yeah I'm happy to say I'm, I'm, you know, 30 irish. I'm very happy, you know, I love the irish people. I mean, they're just amazing people. And you know, I'm really, really disgusted by francer, and I'm really disgusted, yeah, and and I'm also I'm like 20 something percent french too, so like, but not proud of that right now.
Speaker 1:You know what? What I would say is still still look to the lessons of the past, because we have had like radical, humanistic, forward lineages of organizing that have literally been stamped out. Do you know? The poem actually starts with first, they started with socialists and communists, right, right, like it's because and that actually undermining that and we can anyway. Sorry, this could get real, we could get real deep into the weeds here, but fundamentally- Maybe we'll do that on the next episode.
Speaker 1:Fundamentally, when we think about like resources, resource extraction right, extraction right asking you should be asking questions about why why our health care system is shit. We should be asking questions, like you should be asking questions. I mean, I I've already asked myself those things and why I feel the way, those things that I have.
Speaker 1:But if you have it right with the education system right. Why are we like? Why are resources like the? What they were trying to do is take kids off of benefits from off of benefits, um, like snap and other things at the age of seven oh yeah, while also fighting things like free lunch in schools and fighting homelessness and like watching our public lands to be like a free-for-all for resource extraction oh yeah you know like this is.
Speaker 1:This is like wealthy people wanting to make more money and to do so, they don't care. It's short, short-term thinking. They don't care if we are going to be in a toxic soup that is no longer sustainable for future generations. They do not care I.
Speaker 2:I had a friend. He wrote a book called the toxic the toxic states of america, and one of the things he wrote about in there was um, oh my god, I just had a brain fart. What were you just remind me what you just said. Um, oh my god, I just oh. Yes, I know what. It was okay that at one point in time in organizations it was called personnel, but now it's called human resources, and he was talking about how, because people are just seen as resources, they're actually not seen as like individuals that's a really great point and I thought, oh my god, that is, that is a good point.
Speaker 1:He also referred to media as weapons of mass destruction, which I thought also was a really great point I mean when you think that media has manufactured consent for the absolute obliteration of the Middle East for decades, specifically for oil.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, guess what? They did it with rubber before, then. Now they're doing it with rare earth minerals.
Speaker 2:That's what's fueling the Congo too, right? Isn't that what's fueling the congo too right?
Speaker 1:isn't that what's fueling the genocide in the congo was also resources yes, it is yeah yeah, it is, and and it's why they are grabbing immigrants off of the street to be put into private prisons, to be paid a dollar a day to do work. This is not like. So it's all. It's all connected, right? Nothing is more profitable for the few than war.
Speaker 2:You know. Interestingly enough, you said when you were talking about how history is important because it repeats itself, and it really does. I will point out that the most peaceful countries have always been matriarchies. I'm just going to point that out, yeah, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm I'm pro that position. There's a lot of truth behind that uh, you know, I think that if your, if your leaders are not talking about generative and restorative things that nourish communities and are talking about control, regulation, what like, like criminalization of, like, human beings, so this whole, like we're going to make it illegal to be unhoused so you can then go to prison. A reason to move state tax, like taxpayer dollars, into geo group um again for for labor yep, free labor.
Speaker 2:I mean I mean tech. It's just slave labor, that's all it is. And they're actually. They just tried to. I don't know if it passed or not, but they were trying to pass a bill in Rhode Island to make um crimes for sex work not sex trafficking, sex work more punishable.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because of course that's just putting more people in prison for nonviolent crimes.
Speaker 1:That shouldn't be a crime to begin with, so that we can just have slave labor in the form of prison systems. Yep, I like you know there's. I think that people like what I think and I do have some compassion for it. A little bit, not a whole lot of patience. I can have compassion and also be impatient. Oh yeah, and part of it is this you know the methods of control the violence. Coming back to the core, because we are in the hunger games, we are the capital, so that's.
Speaker 1:That's what I thought a lot with the whole eczema thing like it's just anyways, but uh, like not quite the same, but um anyways. Um they're, you know, and and I don't it's really hard to recognize. I think some people have really been talking about like the leaders that we have, right, like people in these areas of, of of conflicts, also within the United States, who are like we have leaders that are absolutely insane, yes, right, and I also then I look at all of the other levels of leadership right in institutions and I'm like it's either um, cowards, uh, completely full of self-interest, or, um, absolutely insane and um, I also like, so I don't, I uh I have had more time to to cope with it and and figure out like how I I want to move through that reality. Uh, and I have like some, some compassion for people who are like getting thrown into the hot water like, who wake up and are like holy crap, like it's like a whole, you know, probably identity crisis to a certain extent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a. That's a great point.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry If you're, if you're like trying to process all of this all at once. I'm so sorry. I've been dealing with it my whole life.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's a lot, but people have to start. I mean, if things are going to change, people need to wake up. You just stop walking around like being distracted by all of these things that are, you know, like the whole. What's that show? Not Desperate Housewives? What is that show? The Real Housewives, right?
Speaker 1:The Real.
Speaker 2:Housewives of the White House, Elon Musk and Donald Trump. That whole thing was just theatrics to get people to pay attention to that stuff. We need to stop looking at that stuff and we need to keep looking at things like Gaza. We have to keep looking at what's happening in the genocide. We have to keep facing it and fighting it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because have to keep looking at what's happening in the genocide. We have to keep facing it and fighting it. Yeah, because that's the only way it's going to stop. So my other recommendation to the audience is go to the doctors against genocide webinar from today, june 15th. I don't know. I know that you were in for part of it. Um, it was, it was, it was absolutely uh, it was so powerful and honest can you access the recording after the fact is, or is that? Uh, yeah, they posted on their youtube page I didn't.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that they had a youtube page they put all of their webinars they loaded up on their youtube page that is good to know.
Speaker 2:Thank you for telling me that. So I I put the link on facebook today and nobody paid attention to it, which pissed me off. Um, but but okay.
Speaker 1:So I've also been doing it, since we're talking about like, trying to like, like, screaming our heads off of at people in our lives who are like, they're like I'm just trying to get by and I'm like you know what. So is everyone like? This is not the time to sit on the sidelines, honey, and there are many ways. There are many ways, right. Not everyone has to like be in 15, try to be in 15 places at once, like I'm trying to do. It's not you know like, but something right, because I have so many people in in my life who've been like oh, erica, you're just like. So you, you're um, you know, you, you care so much and like, you're like, yeah, but I also do it because it's about our survival yeah you know, and and um and it would.
Speaker 1:I, you know, I do have many people in my life who I love so much, who are like having a really hard time, but their, their really hard time is resulting in them being very insular and focusing on their direct problems. And if you are not somebody who is having class struggles in this country, like if you have housing stability, if you have employment stability, if you are physically safe, you need to be doing something.
Speaker 2:Yep, I am going to say this, and I, first of all, I do want to thank all the people who continue to listen to the show, Because we have some very, very loyal listeners and one of them is in Germany, by the way, who has been following us from day one and I do also want to say that send us feedback, because if there's things you want us to talk about, we will absolutely talk about it. But I do want to say and maybe I'll lose a couple people for this but there is no such thing as neutrality in genocide. Either you are complicit or you're fighting it. So I don't care if you have a busy life. I'm not saying you need to run out and make protests every day. I'm not saying you have to send out a thousand letters. But if you even contacted your rep or your senator and said I oppose this, I don't want any more money spent on this.
Speaker 1:That's something, please do and make a call. If you make a call every day or if you call more than once a day, if you have the ability to take five, 10 minutes out of your day to go through five calls, right and and the log that specific component, and there are plenty of call scripts online that and that's in dags call to action that makes a difference. If you are a health care worker, if you are involved in medicine, keep your freaking institutional organizations pestered.
Speaker 1:Make them call them too yeah right, they are ignoring emails, oh of course they are.
Speaker 2:They like my chris murphy. I email him all the time and I just get those generic emails back about like, oh, thank you so much for your email. You can just go to my website and look at where I stand on these things, or I'll get an email about something I didn't even send. I mean, this is all generic bs, they don't care.
Speaker 1:Have conversations with people.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that's really the emphatic component of parting to do actions is having conversations with people, having conversations in community and taking action in community said, we have to really focus on commonality and stop this whole division stuff and realize that at the end of the day, like you said, it's affecting everybody. It's poisoning the soil, it's causing cancer, it's causing all sorts of stuff. This is the world we are living in and if we are just ignoring people being blown up all over the place, at some point in time it's going to be on your doorstep well, it is already on our doorstep.
Speaker 1:It's it's with the police, brutality responses oh, absolutely right, it's um, ice is a, is a is a gift from 9-11 and gift I don't? Obviously I'm being sarcastic, um, I just wanted to say that explicitly. The increased surveillance state, you know, and right now I'll be clear with the jails that people are putting in, they do not. They are overcrowded, they do not have enough water, they do not have enough food, they do not give people medical care.
Speaker 2:And to add to that too, because I think this is important before and again, I know our listeners are very smart, so they're not going to fall for this, but when you hear people say, oh it's, you know, the Republicans, oh it's the Democrat, no, it's happened under both. Like a lot of the stuff that you just said actually happened under Democratic presidencies, and it's it's both sides because they work for the same master.
Speaker 1:It is Biden that we have to thank for reinstating open-air prisons in deserts to throw back to Japanese internment. Yeah so, but except in this situation, there are very little resources. Some of these people only get fed because of mutual aid resources, and it's another thing that people are trying to criminalize. Whenever people are trying to criminalize the feeding of other people, they are in the wrong and stop.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, also, you know, you have to laugh, because they also are these same people who are fighting against help, these people who are putting laws in place for feeding people and housing people and and stopping people from getting murdered are the same people who are running around screaming the moral high ground about how wonderful and perfect their morals are right, and it's like I swear to god sometimes. I think I think if, if I don't believe in the devil, but if I think if the devil were real, netanyahu would scare him because they're, they're just so evil.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, like they're, like I don't. I don't think that people have a real concept of, of, of that, just like I don't know what it is that is removing people from it. Um, it is not hard for me to recognize that right like um, and also to recognize the, the, the devotion to the war machine, right, and that anyone who has a devotion to the war machine. There's no good in it. There's no, there's no good in it. There's nothing. There's never been anything good in war, valor. Valor is a fallacy, like valor and killing is a fallacy.
Speaker 2:It's like do you, do you watch that show? Black Mirror.
Speaker 2:Sometimes yeah there was an episode now, granted I I boycott netflix so because they're complicit in genocide, so I haven't watched the show in a very long time because I boycott. I canceled it but a year and a half ago so I can't go back and re-watch it. But if I remember correctly, there was an episode where they were giving soldiers thought that they were killing as uh, like a zombie outbreak, and then it turned out that they were given like some sort of drug that made them that they were seeing zombies, but they were really actually taking out like villages of people and you know, that's basically what our military does.
Speaker 2:That's literally what militaries. They don't necessarily have to give people the drug, but they convince you that you are fighting these as they talk about Palestinians all the time. Less than human, that's what they do. We have to stop seeing that.
Speaker 1:Everybody has value I think that anytime you find yourself dehumanizing another human being, it is time to look into yourself right and check your own moral compass, yeah areas.
Speaker 1:So, you know, like, um, like I serve people who don't think that people like me deserve to exist and I still like, I, I think that is important, like cause, when I think about the fact that, um, uh, israeli doctors who've been responsible for torture and murder um are coming back to the United States, um, or people who are involved in healthcare, who have been, who have committed war crimes, come back to the united states and students are like I don't feel safe learning from these people and then they get punished, I, you know it's, it's like, uh, the there's something very wrong with the ethics of this nation Foundationally.
Speaker 2:So we need to. So the homework for the listeners, if you would like homework, is to go out and you know, like we talked about, make a change, do something to stand against genocide, to stand against the stuff that we are seeing right now.
Speaker 1:Get connected. In every state, in every state, there is an organization. There is an organization. It can be very helpful at times to take a look at what whatever health care workers for palestine, um doctors against genocide, um animal health care workers against genocide you can find local community, of course, and then there are palestinian led, like specific long-standing palestinian led. I'm in arizona, I'm part of the arizona palestinian solidarity alliance and also through that, like, there are members that are showing up for every community, right, and, if not, you know, indigenous community. If there's an indigenous community um stronghold near you, that um you can explore. And, of course, like you, like we always need to be also looking out for, like um systems of abuse, right, because systems of abuse exist in every space. But, like, don't don't compromise your values right from humanist forward. Don't compromise your values right From humanist forward, and understand that there is so much work to be done and you can make a difference. Each person can make a big difference, but we have to, and by being in community, you can inspire other people.
Speaker 2:And I know, and the only thing I would add to that too, is that I know for a lot of people people it can be scary speaking up. So I don't want to minimize that there's fear behind that, but I think what, from all the stuff that erica was talking about and all the stuff we know about history and all the stuff that's going on right now, is that not speaking up the end result is going to be much scarier down the road than it is speaking up right now. So just try to remember that it is scary, but, as Erica said, there are communities out there that can help people make stands and you, you just have to do what's in your comfort level to as long as you're doing something, so it doesn't have to be moving mountains. It just has to be that you were not being complicit by being silent and just watching it. So, erica, as always, it's been a pleasure. Should we tell like a funny story or something to like wrap up with? Do you got any funny stories?
Speaker 1:I have one, you know. I I have a lot to think of Um, you know, I, I think I'll. I'll tell a story about my grandmother.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:My grandmother, my German grandmother, who spoke a language that is dying, a dialect that is dying, okay, my grandfather, who was a veteran, was abusive. So I spent a lot of time with my grandmother and I saw, and that abuse came from being a war veteran, right, and I spent my time as a child, um, like kind of being alongside her, shall we say, and, um, you know, you come to understand what it looks like when someone is in their thoughts and is revisiting painful places, and there's a lot of kind of sitting with. And one of the most meaningful moments that she and I had together, she had a stroke. You know, when I, when I was in college and I was, I had just arrived, I basically was asleep and woke up to our neighbor, you know, because I had jet lag and everything and and she had been brought to the hospital. So we, and when she was finally in recovery and doing okay and had been stabilized, I and I was visiting her in the hospital and we were just sitting and we were looking out the window and there were these beautiful flowers in the room and we sat next to each other and we just had this whole discussion about how beautiful different colors of flowers and and throughout my life, blooming flowers have always been my comfort when sitting with death, to be honest, right, and those feelings, and that also with flowers and their blooms, right, this beautiful structure that you know we'll laugh a little bit is a sexual organ right Of a plant, right, and that has all these cool biological functions.
Speaker 1:And also it's like this, this rhythm, the rhythm of nature, right and from and many people who come from war zones and history, as far as, if you look in the artist history of this discussion, blood is a nutrient, bones are nutrients and in areas where there have been the most violence, there are also some of the most beautiful blooms that come from it. Afterward, and that rhythm of the blooming of the flowers and what we see when they produce seeds and they go back into the ground and they emerge again, there's something to be said to remind ourselves that life is possible in some of the most terrible places. You just have to let it bloom and you just have to have faith that at some point seeds will be able to grow again. And focus on that, focus on planting seeds and focus on that. Focus on planting seeds, be they verbal, be they visual, be they relationships Drop seeds.
Speaker 2:wherever you go to help people, help things bloom. Well, that was very deep and hopeful, so now I don't want to tell my story because it's funny that was all you could do.
Speaker 1:We could pause a moment and then you can insert it early because that was.
Speaker 2:I'm like I can't, like I can't go after that. Come on, that was so my story. I'll tell it really quickly. It is really funny. It's very light, I think, a good way to end the episode. So when you were talking earlier about your grandmother and how she didn't waste anything, right? So my grandmother grew up in the Depression. It was the same thing. She never wasted anything. She would do this thing and I think a lot of people who had grandparents could probably relate to this where she'd save grease, like anything that she cooked with. She would save it and she would reuse it to cook things with. But my grandmother also used to make me tapioca pudding all the time, right? So you know where this is going, right? So there was one day I went in the refrigerator and I saw this big thing of what I thought was tapioca pudding. So I was so excited and I got this big spoon and I took a huge mouthful of grease you know they used to put um like lard on spread, lard on butter spread lard on butter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, that was the thing that my dad grew up with and apparently my it was something that my grandma used to say stories about, uh, funny stories about my dad.
Speaker 2:Um, that he used to really like having his um bread that had lard on it, um, to eat it with it upside down that's really interesting, because I that must have been a thing too, because I remember when my grandfather would make like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for me, he would always put butter underneath the peanut butter and I thought that was weird. There must be something to that then. That's interesting. So I I hope for everybody. I know that was raw and we wanted it to be raw. Um and um. Again, thank you for listening and please tell more people about the podcast. We uh, eric and I would love to have more guest speakers. Um, come on as well. And, eric, I know you have a few lined up. I have a few that I've reached out to as well, but we want to hear from the listeners too, so please contact us. All right, thank you everybody, and thank you again for listening. This is just a reminder that no part of this podcast can be duplicated or copied without written consent from either myself or Wendy. Thank, you again.
