Crying in My Jacuzzi with Dana Balicki

Postcolonial Jitters

• dana balicki

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What happens when you no longer want the dream you worked for (capitalism anyone, lol)? When the worked-so-hard-for-thing stops singing back? And can we make the trade for something riskier and more honest—prioritizing resonance over metrics and presence over pace? In this ep, we dare to embrace changes not as failures, but as craft, maturity, and a detangling (rebellion as practice!) from our cultural, colonial conditioning.

We also get a surprise visit multi-dimensional house-call from a beloved guide from seasons 1 & 2! An offering is made that doubles as ritual: cutting ties to shame, asking forgiveness, welcoming your spirit home, and helping others along the way.

If you’ve outgrown a plan/a relationship/a situation that once felt perfect, this conversation gives you language, tools, and permission to pivot without apology. 

Subscribe & share with a friend who’s at a crossroads, and leave a review to help more people find the jacuzzi-verse!

😭 show notes from the jacuzzi-verse ♨

  • Dr. Catherine Svelha on the Heroine's Journey, interview with Rohini Walker (https://mythicmojo.com/transcript-interview-catherine-and-rohini-walker/)
  • Overcoming Certainty & Embracing Conscious Confusion episode (https://pod.link/1689685885/episode/QnV6enNwcm91dC0xNzgyMzY1Mw)
  • Call Your Energy Back (a potent practice for this time of year) (https://pod.link/1689685885/episode/QnV6enNwcm91dC0xNDEwNzAxNg)
  • Free grounding meditation with Dana—a practice of calling your energy back/nervous system tending/reclaiming your attention) ~ (http://bit.ly/grounding-now)
  • Enter to win a free coaching session ~ when you leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, you'll be entered into a monthly drawing for a free 90-min coaching session with dana (value of $388). Send the name of your review (title and/or reviewer name) via IG @danablix or email dana@ danabalicki .com ~ Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.

😭 Sound-editing/design ~ Rose Blakelock 🤖 theme song ~ Kat Ottosen 🪱 cover art ~ Natalee Miller ♨️

Qs, comments, or requests for the jacuzzi-verse? Text us 😭🌀♨️

Support the show

@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭

SPEAKER_00:

I remember a couple of years back sitting with the realization that I had created some things that I had really wanted, and then when I had them, I realized I didn't really want them anymore. I was complete. Or they were changing in ways that were no longer for me, no longer resonant. And that really threw me for a loop. And you know, it's just so friggin' human to try something and to create, to experiment, to stretch into an unknown, to make something that didn't exist before. And then realize that through the making of it, there was some satisfaction, some completion, or some new bit of information that dropped in and directed us into uh a new timeline. You know, this is what Dr. Catherine Svela, uh mythologist, used to live here in the high desert. And she did this workshop years ago called The Heroine's Journey. And god damn it, just really one of the best workshops I've ever taken. Thank you, Catherine. Also, shout out, her podcast is called Mythic Mojo. Excellent. 10 out of 10. Okay, so the workshop was called The Heroine's Journey. And it was juxtaposed to the hero's journey and without breaking that whole thing down. Uh, one of the defining aspects that feels really relevant to where I'm sitting and this reflection of creating things and getting to a place that you really wanted to get to, and then you get there, and then you're changed, and you potentially want to go in a different direction. So that's one of the defining aspects of the heroine's journey, that we're consistently being changed by our experiences, by our relationships, and becoming more ourselves as we're shaped, as we're changed by others, as we're changed by experience, by living. And it's not just about being focused on the end goal, which, you know, dominant culture is pretty pretty focused on that. Right? Don't slow down, don't, don't get distracted, just keep going. Never, never waver, never undulate. And I think about that all the time because our culture tells us that in order for something to be successful, it has to last forever. Forever, never, never, never, never. I mean, just on and on and on. Right? Legacy, legacy, legacy, la la la la la. I just I don't think that's very human. It's not very heroin's journey. I mean, as humans, we're transitory. We're being transformed all the time. We're always changing. Right? All that you touch, you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change. I mean, all of the cells in our body turn over every seven years. We're literally brand new people every seven years. So all of that, that whole little undulating path to here, to this moment, because I'm here again. Or relative. And it has to do with the jacuzzi verse. Because when I was envisioning this season, third season, and I knew I wanted to have a theme. I knew I wanted it to be rebellion. I wanted to play with the idea of having a theme. And that theme seemed like a real good one to expand upon and stretch and help everyone, all the crybabies, across the lands, across the jacuzzi verse and beyond. What's beyond the jacuzzi verse? I don't know. To embrace rebellion, small acts, big acts to see how we can practice it all the time and how we must practice it all the time. And the other thing was that I wanted to do interviews, right? So I wanted to do interviews, and I had an idea for how I wanted to do it. It was gonna be a little more Pee-wee's Playhouse character sort of drop-in. I wanted it to feel a little less podcasty, interviewe, and more like a community of folks that we were continuing to visit and chat with, and but having like really deep, profound, and sweet chats. I mean, in Pee-Wee's Playhouse, Pee Wee's Playhouse, Pee-Wee speaking, you'd see the same crew of weird beloved beings, and then sometimes new ones would drop in or they would just reappear once in a while. Like the Countess, C-O-W Countess. She was a cow with a T on. She was like, Hello, Pee Wee. Oh man, I am realizing how much the Countess sounds just like the magical librarian. That's a coincidence. And then I didn't do what I had envisioned. I started interviewing people. I felt like I just gotten a flow. I wanted to record interviews, I wanted to edit them, and I just sort of put my initial creative vision on the shelf. And as much as I love every interview I've done so far, I mean, just with people I truly love and admire, and I'm so delighted and proud that I've introduced you to other humans and voices and perspectives and resources that may now be regular transformational guides in your life. But something about it, about the rhythm, about the way I was doing it, behind the scenes, jacuzzi verse work. Like I couldn't quite get my rhythm. I was just like doing things getting kind of in my rhythm. And then I would edit another thing and edit an interview and then sort of fall out of my I don't have a word for it. The just like my my creative flow. I never fully submerged into the jacuzzi verse. Like I wanted it. It just isn't my kink. And you know what? I'm telling you this because that's totally okay. I did a thing. I tried something out, I experimented with it, I gave my resources of my precious attention and my energy and money and time, and I learned a lot from it. And I'm not abandoning the podcast in any way, shape, or form, but I'm gonna leave that particular format of interviews or that the the rhythm, the pacing. I'm gonna change that up. That's not gonna be how the next seasons are going to unfold. Because what's so important to me is that crying in my jacuzzi is deeply creatively satisfying. That's my number one measure. Not metrics, not conversions, not even subscribers or listens. I'm basically telling you that I'm the most important thing. But I I feel like in that is some form of rebellion because culture teaches us that like everything needs to be monetizable, or you know, you need to put things in certain formats and package them up in certain ways for people to consume them with as much, you know, ease and whatever is possible. And like I'm not I'm not trying to do that. I want to make something, and I hope you enjoy it. I know some of you out there do, because you tell me, and I fucking love that, thank you. For everyone who does tell me, it really means a lot to me. But I could feel it, I could feel myself not in full resonance, and because there's so much conditioning we get, so much needing to have all of this empirical evidence to support my decision. I can just say that I can feel it in my body to be true. And my knowing doesn't come from my mind alone, it comes from my feet on the ground, it comes from my body moving through space, it comes from the way my heart feels, it comes from my relationships, it comes from the way I feel when I breathe. It comes from how well I'm sleeping. And so I'm calling myself back. And giving myself permission to know what I know and feel what I feel, and let that be the correct guiding force for me, and to give myself permission to have paused and chewed on what was true for me, just knowing little bit by little bit by little bit, and then finally giving myself enough slow-down medicine to understand my emotions, to understand why things were feeling the way that they were feeling. I mean, a creative revelation in a time when everything feels upside down and we're all grasping for certainty. And I'm saying, like, woo, uncertainty. But I've allowed myself to be uncertain, and then I found my own clarity. Hello. Hello there. Oh, oh my god. The magical librarian. I was just talking about you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I've heard you imitating me. I thought it was quite precious.

SPEAKER_00:

Even if it wasn't quite on the mob. Oh my god, you heard that. Well, I was actually doing an impression of the kids.

SPEAKER_01:

Anyhow, I haven't seen you in quite some time. And all the crybabies.

SPEAKER_00:

the library, and I've I've missed you too. And I know the crybabies maybe have also missed going to the library this season. I was busy talking to a whole lot of other people, which was great.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I listened to some of those interviews. First, human is that she know.

SPEAKER_00:

I know, I'm so lucky, right? Well, I didn't mean to let so much time pass.

SPEAKER_01:

Never keep mine. The library is always available whenever you're ready to come back. But today, once I heard you somebody in a way, you're the countess, who sounds like a fascinating being. I thought that I would bring you a poem from the ladder. It's a poem from Joy Harjo, who I'm sure you're familiar with. Here you go. Why don't you give it a reading to the crybast?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh yes. This is perfect. Thank you. This is a a Joy Harjo poem called For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth and its human feet. Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop. Turn off that cell phone, computer, and remote control. Open the door, then close it behind you. Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean. Give it back with gratitude. If you sing, it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars' ears and back. Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were a dream planting itself precisely within your parents' desire. Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the guardians who have known you before time, who will be there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there without time. Let the earth stabilize your post-colonial, insecure jitters. Be respectful of the small insects, birds, and animal people who accompany you. Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them. Don't worry. The heart knows the way, though there may be high-rises, interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, maskers, wars, and those who will despise you because they despise themselves. The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few years, a hundred, a thousand, or even more. Watch your mind. Without training, it might run away and leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the thieves of time. Do not hold regrets. When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed. You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant. Cut the ties you have to failure and shame. Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction. Ask for forgiveness. Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor. Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse. You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return. Speak to it as you would to a beloved child. Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces and tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long. Your spirit will need to sleep a while after it is bathed and given clean clothes. Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go. Make a giveaway and remember, keep the speeches short. Then you must do this. Help the next person find their way through the dark. This is from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings. Thank you, Joy. And by the way, in case you don't know, Joy Harjo was a United States poet laureate in 2019. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Please pardon me if I'm mispronouncing that. Thank you. Thank you, magical librarian, for bringing us that. That was perfect. And I didn't know that the magical library made house calls or did delivery. Impromptu delivery.

SPEAKER_01:

Well sometimes we make exceptions. Besides, it had been too long since I felt the grind, babies. Don't let too much grass grow until your next exit. Okay. Agreed.

SPEAKER_00:

Post-colonial jitters. That was exactly what I needed to hear. Maybe you two. I mean, it makes all the sense in the world to be jittery as the systems collapse as we face the poly crisis with each other. Like that's what we have, our relationships to ourselves, to each other, to the land. I mean, to spirit. There are many, many layers of relationships that we can and must practice with. And we're being forced to let go of a lot of things. And it's okay to let go. It's okay to change. It's okay to move on from things. It's okay to recognize that you've put a lot of time and energy into something and it's no longer working. It's no longer or it's no longer resonant. I don't know. Maybe it was never resonant. That's for you to tune into. This is all I do every day with clients is help them figure out what is resonance for them, what is true for them, what is most valuable for them, how they got here, how to be present, how to vision what's next, but not from other people's visions, from their own. We keep doing things because somewhere, someone let us and maybe our entire lineage know that if we stopped, if we changed, if we didn't take something all the way to the far, far, far reaches, that we'd be failures. That we would have made the wrong decision. And oh God, we're so scared of making the wrong decision. But what if you can't get it wrong? Which also means sometimes, like, what if you can't get it right either? We have to like let go of that binary. Again, post-colonial jitters right there. Decolonial jitters, right? I mean, I didn't get anything wrong. I tried something, I experimented, I was changed by it. And I mean a few years ago, and I mean right here in this season of Crying and My Jacuzzi, the ebbs and flows of living an examined life where we live. Love, love in the Anthropocene. And I'm even being changed by my being changed. Whoa.

SPEAKER_01:

So cool.

SPEAKER_00:

Just meaning that I'm continuing to see and feel more and feel more resonant and more clear as I share this with you. As I say it, as I feel the words humming in my bones, as I honor that I gave myself permission to pause, permission to get it wrong, to have gotten it wrong, even though you know I don't really believe in that, but I had to reckon with that. I'm human. And I know that the breakneck pace we're all shoved into, and the urgency and the fucking just terror, right? All the hypervigilance that we're feeling and like the fight and the flight, right? Like, which are brilliant, brilliant manifestations of our nervous system, right? Those are not inappropriate. We don't want to be in them all the time, every second of the day, but we want to honor that, like our nervous systems. Yes, we can work with resilience, but we're not supposed to be a bunch of chilled-out zombies right now. You know what I mean? It's fine. I'm fine. And it's really hard to be in freeze all the time. Like, that's a hard one. Sometimes it saves lives. And sometimes a lot of us are in functional freeze a lot, and it's worth, you know, tending to the nervous systems, doing that work, which we've talked lots about over the many episodes, so that we can be present, so that way we can feel when it is the right time to to fight, to rebel, and to be in relationship with ourselves because when we're overwhelmed, we lose access to our healthy no. Remember from last episode, the interview with Sarah Payton. You can go back and listen, but all of that was about the disgust circuit. Ugh, I'm obsessed.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh my god, ew, David!

SPEAKER_00:

But basically, it's how we know what's for us and what's not for us. And for most of us, that circus is circus, not circuit, I mean, not a circus, is compromised, right? And so it's very easy to be overwhelmed because we don't know how to say no. We don't know how to say that is for me and that is not for me. And even if we have access to that ability to like pause and and understand ourselves and know what's resonant and access the healthy no, we are all still inside of the systems here that are collapsing. Livestream genocide, destabilized democracy, fascism, wars on wars on wars, and tell your own personal life stuff, right? People being fucking snatched and detained, even though it is not a crime to be undocumented. Literally, it's not a crime. It's a civil matter, not a criminal matter. So the jitters, the post-colonial jitters, the rattled nervous systems, the confusion. That's all happening, and I think it's some radical, disruptive rebel shit for us to slow down so that we contend to those feelings, those inquiries, those inklings, those ways in which we know when something is actually not for us. Because for me, I kind of lost interest in making more episodes. And I was like, what the fuck is that about? And instead of pushing myself through, or instead of shutting it down, or shutting myself down, I looked. I looked at the scary thing because I was scared to look. I was scared what I'd see. And instead I just saw myself. Hey, and my truth. So we can practice this and we can call it rebellion. You've heard me say this a million times over the season, seasons, really, but we can practice in small ways and big ways in our own lives, our own inner world, like I just did, you know, looking at looking at this podcast and my relationship to this creative expression. And like, look, there are people putting their bodies on the lines, like that woman in the polka dot dress, like middle fingers out, getting in front of that ice truck in DC. Or the people putting their bodies on the lines, protesting for Palestinian liberation. These are different kinds of disruption, different scales, but same muscle. The muscle of consciousness, the muscle of presence, the muscle of resonance, the muscle of agency. So maybe you need a pause. Maybe you need to pause somewhere. Can you give yourself that? Or can you just tune in to like some need? If a pause feels too big, just try it in the tiniest, tiniest little fractal sense, because this is the way that we practice.

SPEAKER_02:

That got the jitters out of me.

SPEAKER_00:

Some checking in with yourself, seeing how you feel, see what's going on for you, listen to it, feel it, see if there's a need, an unmet need at the core of it. Put some self-warmth there. And then see if you can meet yourself with that need. Or if you can ask someone for help with it. Just turn towards yourself, turn towards how you're feeling. Turn towards that tiny, tiny little spark, that little tug from that part of you. Asking for some attention. Let yourself be a bit confused. You can go back to my previous episode called Overcoming Certainty and Embracing Conscious Confusion. Could be a helpful guide if you are feeling confused, which most of us are, and it's totally appropriate. You're right on time. This is a sacred, important, and appropriate inquiry for these times. Stay with yourself, stay with the feeling. It's rebellious to stay. It's rebellious to not just try to fix. To go back to some knowing that may not even be yours. Allow the jitters to be there. Detangle comfort and safety, because they're usually all knotted up. And when you do that, in a way you're on the heroine's journey. You're more willing to be changed. This is our work. To meet each other, to meet ourselves, to show up imperfectly, to be tender, and don't worry so much about. Getting it right or being good. And we show up, even in the upside down, and maybe especially here. Beautiful things await us. Because what awaits us is us. That's how I know. That's how I know it's beautiful. Call your spirit back. Let the earth stabilize your post-colonial and secure jitters. Thanks for your patience with me. Thanks for being here in the jacuzzi verse with me. Thank you for letting me be changed by you and by making this for you. It's my honor. Send it to a friend. And if you haven't already, make sure to boop that subscribe button so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you are listening on Apple Podcasts, give us a rating. Five stars. In a written review. Send me the name of your review, and I'll add you to the monthly raffle for a free coaching session with me. Subscribing, rating, and reviewing are amazing, and they help us out immensely. And you listening, you sharing with your community is the very best thing that we in the jacuzzi verse could hope for. So thank you, Crybabies. Thank you for your support. Earworm theme music by the very talented Kat Otison. Sound design and editing magic by the effervescent Rose Blakelock. Keep questioning, keep feeling, keep rebelling in all the ways that matter. And remember the jacuzzi is everywhere. At any moment you could enter into the version of non normative consciousness. That is jacuzzi consciousness.