Breaking the Blocks
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Thanks for stopping by! Life is tough, and I think this podcast might offer you some relief. My aim? To inspire you to overcome some of your own blocks through the inspirational, honest, and at times, downright raw conversations with some wonderful guests, not huge celebrities, regular people like you and I. Let’s see how they have overcome the difficulties in their lives and offer you some advice and more importantly hope.
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Breaking the Blocks
Artistic Transformation: Zak Foster on Quilting, Community, and Ancestral Reflection
Join me for an inspiring conversation with Zak Foster, a trailblazer in the artistic quilting community, whose journey from a high school Spanish teacher to a full-time artist and podcaster is nothing short of transformative. Zak shares the pivotal moments during the pandemic that led him to embrace his passion and create the Quilty Nook, a vibrant community for quilters. Through our discussion, we uncover how Zak uses his art not just for expression, but as a force for community building and social change, highlighting the courage required to leave a conventional career path in pursuit of one's passion.
Discover how "Apogee Jubilee," Zak’s innovative creative piece, serves as a metaphor for humanity's journey and potential, tackling future anxieties and championing self-awareness and connection. We discuss the subtle power of everyday interactions in combating loneliness and nurturing community ties, illustrated by Zak’s journey in crafting a festival quilt for a folk school. The conversation is peppered with insights on the balancing act between creativity and responsibility, the nuances of setting boundaries, and the vital role of self-care in sustaining leadership within community spaces.
This episode also takes a poignant turn into the realms of family history and ancestral trauma, with Zak exploring the silence surrounding his own roots. We address themes of privilege and identity, particularly through the lens of Zak’s experiences as a white, male, queer artist navigating Brooklyn's diverse landscape. As Zak uncovers the layers of his family's past, he stresses the importance of confronting historical truths and the transformative power of understanding one's heritage. This enriching conversation promises to leave you with a deeper appreciation for art's role in community building and the courage required to follow one's true calling.
Well, hello there and welcome to another episode of Breaking the Blocks. I'm your host, rachel Pearman. Thank you so much for being here. So my guest today on the podcast is artist and quilter Zach Foster. Now he's got his own podcast called Seamside. He is an author of a book called the World Needs your Next Quilt, and I love it how he calls himself the cheerleader of the Quilting Nook, which is a group he runs with his own platform.
Speaker 1:Zach is not only an artist and a fantastic quilter. He is such a great narrator, a great speaker. He just has this authority. When he talks, you want to listen to him, you want to listen to his ideas, and in this podcast today, he talked about social inequality, social injustice.
Speaker 1:He talked about his family history and how he is trying to break the vow of silence, not only within his own family, but also within the world in general. He's trying to bring people together to find their own voice, to help raise awareness on issues that are important to them and important to us as a global community, and he talks about what we need to do to really push past our own anxieties and to help lessen the fears that we have within ourselves, but also that we have as a collective. It was a really fascinating interview. It's no surprise that I have had a girl crush on Zach for quite some time, but at the end of this interview the love for him was even bigger. So I hope that you'll enjoy the interview, and I think you might hear a side of Zach that you've not heard before. So sit back and relax.
Speaker 2:It's just got to feel right, I know.
Speaker 1:It's got to feel right. Anyway, hello lovely. Mr Zach Foster, it is so nice to be in a room with you again because you know I've always had a little crush on you.
Speaker 2:I have kind of mutual. Oh, I can't believe it's been so long, because you asked me. You asked me how long it's been since we last talked and I was like, oh, two years, and we started doing the math and it's been more like four or five exactly, I think, a good four years, which is just outrageous.
Speaker 1:But I've always liked everything that you do on Instagram, so that makes us friends right, because Instagram is the real world. Well, it is lovely to have you here, and I have followed your journey, because when I approached you, we were both, I think, at the beginning of our crafting journeys, weren't we? I mean, you obviously were a quilter and established and you'd been quilting for years. This was all kind of new world for me, but in terms of where we were headed, we were both like little babies really, and I remember you saying to me, zach, at that time you went shh, rachel, I've got to tell you something, I'm just about to stop teaching and I've wanted to do this for so long, and so you really were taking a big leap then, weren't you in that point?
Speaker 2:I worked in the public schools for 18 years, teaching high school Spanish so totally unrelated and I knew for many, many years that I was meant to be doing something else. I just didn't know what that something else was. And with the pandemic I saw the exit door, and a good friend of mine had given me advice years before says it's not time to leave until you can see the exit door. And so I just kept watching, and one day I saw that I could do this thing. I saw a way to make a viable livelihood as an artist, as a community organizer, as a storyteller. I could do all of that. And so I just took that leap of faith and here I am.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's a big leap because obviously, as a teacher, you had your regular income and you live in Brooklyn, which, as we know, is not a very low cost place to live. It's quite expensive. So it really was a big gamble for you. So when you started out, zach, did you have different intentions, do you think, than where you've ended up here now, because I certainly have you, and I have just been talking about this before. We started recording that I didn't have a choice. I was shown the exit door because my job came to an end and it was like okay, I have no income, so now I have to do something and I wanted to stay in the crafting community. So I thought, okay, I'll have some retreats, et cetera. I could never have imagined where I would get to right now, with it being more about community and building a community. But for you, zach, when you started out, is it what you wanted, where you are now?
Speaker 2:I'm going to say, yes, I mean the contours have clarified over the last three or four years, but my exit door looked like starting a community. Because, as someone who has spent nearly two decades in a classroom where my job every year on a cycle was to build community in September, see it through, shepherd it through until June and then do it all again the next September, I got so much practice at that and it's just an intrinsic part of who I am. I like bringing people together. I feel it's kind of like the sculptor Ann Truitt said when she was at Yaddo Retreat here in New York. She said she felt so comfortable. She felt like one of a litter of puppies surrounded by all the other artists at the retreat. And so I think that's how I feel most comfortable in this world being just one of many puppies surrounded by other artists in my community called the Quilty Nook, and so, yeah, so that was my exit.
Speaker 2:I remember thinking that when I was first testing those waters I was still teaching, but testing the waters I started out on Patreon and I told my partner. I said, if I can get X dollar amount per month, I gonna quit teaching, and I was starting it over the summer. So I had a couple of months to kind of find my stride. By the end of summer I had not reached x, but I was like maybe there's something here, we, I, can make this happen. And so I left and then I started and this never looked back, never looked back, not once.
Speaker 1:Do you feel as well that you how to phrase it that things have kind of built for you and, as you say, you haven't looked back and things have built and grown and changed? Do you think it was ever because you shift your focus? And what I mean with that is that when I started this business I had to make a living and I started to do that. It was okay. But it really changed for me when I started to actually believe in myself but also in the community, and then it just kind of took off. It just grew, because I think that my focus had changed from having to make a living, from having to get those numbers, from having to get those Patreon numbers, to now sitting back and just going, whoa, look at all these amazing people coming into my life and guess what More did. So was it the same for you?
Speaker 2:I think what I couldn't have predicted or couldn't have been sure about was the degree of magic that people would bring when we got together. To this day on the Quilting Nook, I've had to do very little conflict resolution, problem solving, none of that. People just come with good faith, good intention and share with open hearts and open minds. And that's not me. All I did was be myself set the stage which indirectly set certain, I guess, expectations or qualities about the community. Those qualities resonated with people and those like-minded people started coming together and forming this thing that is so much larger than what I can claim any credit for.
Speaker 1:And I really see that, though, when I look at you and your community building. It is amazing, because when I first started talking to you, we really talked about memory quilts, didn't we? Which I know is still huge for you, but I think it's been really interesting to see your journey and how you've changed in your sewing as well. Do you feel that? Do you feel like you've discovered new areas?
Speaker 2:I kind of feel like an evil genius of sorts, because, in the best of all possible ways, in the holiest of all possible ways, because hosting the Nook not only nourishes me and feeds me as a human, as an artist, as a creative, but it also provides that pretty steady monthly income that takes away the bill. Insecurity and anxiety about finances Still there. I still met with my tax accountant yesterday and had a mini meltdown, but it's okay. Things are going to be basically okay, and when I first left teaching, I was conceiving of how I was thinking that a large part of the way I was going to make money was through the selling of quilts, right Through the selling of memory quilts, through the selling of burial quilts, and so I invested a lot of time in that. Those types of quilts dovetail very naturally with my interest in textiles. I also saw them as a potential financial viable way of maintaining some livelihood. As time has gone on, though and this is where the evil genius part comes in I don't have to sell quilts anymore, because I have all the support from the folks in the quilting nook, which is so beautiful, so now I can spend my sewing time making the work that I feel really needs to be out there in the world, and so in the intervening years, I've nearly completed one collection.
Speaker 2:I've just recently started another collection of work. The first one is called Southern White Amnesia and it explores the stories that Southern white families here in the United States tell each other about their own roots and their own origins, especially the origins of their wealth, and it's a collection that's heavily based on my personal narrative and my personal research of my family, and we can talk more about that if you'd like. And then just recently, in the last week, I've announced another collection that I've been really interested in starting. I've got all these ideas, and this collection is called the New Apocalypse at least working title, that's what I'm calling it right now at the beginning and that one had its spark because someone asked me to commit to an event the spring of 2025. So basically just a year from now, right. And my knee-jerk reaction, rachel, was oh, you're cute, cute. You think we're still gonna be around, you think civilization's still gonna be functioning this time next year. That's cute.
Speaker 2:And when I realized how quick that thought was for me and how deeply seated that, um, I mean almost I want to say anxiety, but it's almost more like a deadpan assumption that like things are going to come crashing down. Uh, then I realized I need to work with this energy, both for myself and then, when I started talking about on Instagram, I did a couple of reels, you know, just kind of like testing the earliest thoughts. They got this overwhelming response there's a lot of uncertainty about the future. People are feeling it, and so I conceive of this new body of work that I'm only able to do because I have the support of my community.
Speaker 2:I conceive of this body of work the new apocalypse as a way of providing images that can live in our collective imaginations, to reframe a positive way forward into the future, because my concern is that there are plenty of images that speak the counterpoint, that say things are falling apart, hell in a hand basket, all of that and so my concern is that those will become self-fulfilling prophecies. So, as an artist in this world, one of my functions is to help people see what doesn't yet exist, so that we can wrap our brains around it, we can wrap our hearts around it and we can begin to take active, pragmatic steps to make that thing exist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love that about you and I did actually message you, didn't I recently saying that someone had been watching your Instagram and they had seen the quilts where you were using words, as you've just said there, and she was so inspired and she has been diagnosed with ADHD, so she has found it now a great way to get words out of her brain and to focus by using them in quilting. So I do think what you're doing is very inspirational. You mentioned the anxiety there, though let's delve a little deeper into Zach's brain, Because on Instagram, you come across as this really very confident person who I wouldn't say is an anxious person. But do you have a low level anxiety, like you say? With that thought that first came into your brain oh, are we still going to be here? But are you an anxious person? Have you had to work on that or have you always had this? I would say you're a very curious person.
Speaker 2:All of that is true. All that is true, thank you. I would say that I have a healthy level of anxiety, considering the situation that we all find ourselves in. I think that anxiety, in some ways, is the only rational response to many of the things that we see happening around us. However, it does not serve us to stop there. We have to think of ways to work through it. We have to think of ways to work through it, and so that first piece that I made, the one that you referenced, with the text says collapse. We thought was certain, and what I'm trying to do there is one look dead in the eyes at the impending apocalypse and then envision a time beyond it where humans are looking back and we can say to one another oh, we really thought that horrible thing was going to happen. Yet we did X, y, z and we created a new future for ourselves.
Speaker 2:I'm working on a piece now that haven't even shared yet, so you're hearing it here first, rachel.
Speaker 2:It's called Apogee Jubilee, and apogee, for folks that might not be familiar with the word, is an astronomical term which refers to the farthest out point on the orbit of a moon or a satellite, and so what I'm trying to do with this piece Apogee Jubilee is to again look the situation dead in the eyes.
Speaker 2:We are really far out in our orbit right now, but there's also natural precedent in this world for things turning around and coming back. So therefore, there's the cause of the jubilee, the anxiety is the apogee. The cause for jubilee is the fact that we can turn around and do something different, something different, because I feel like looking at things with rosy eyed glasses doesn't serve any of us right. We have to look at a thing and know it for what it is. We can't be afraid to look at it, we can't be afraid to deal with it, and yet we can't stop there, and so it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of work, but I feel like that's what one of the roles that artists are here for, and I use artists in the largest possible term to include so many people.
Speaker 1:When to use artists in the largest possible term to include so many people. When you said that you want to work with the community and get them thinking about these things, these thoughts, these ideas through your pieces of art, how do you want to affect people? Do you want people to start creating and expressing themselves, or do you want to bring people together as a collective to make change? How do you see your work affecting people?
Speaker 2:Thank you for that question. I think my first pass at an answer to that question would be I want one if people haven't acknowledged it in their own mind for them to acknowledge the level of anxiety they have about the future. Two, for them to know they're not alone. Three, to empower them to question all the messages that they're taking in about where humanity is headed, why things are the way they are. And then four, realize their sense of agency. So I'm not trying to start a specific project for anybody. I'm not trying to create a determined outcome for anybody. What I am trying to do is recalibrate our collective vision so that, on the individual level, people can feel equipped to do what they need to do to make this world what it can be.
Speaker 1:And I think one really important word that I take from that that you just said is to make people realize that they are not alone, because that is something that is so key to this world and anxiety levels rising is loneliness, it's feeling alone. I mean, as more and more technology is brought into view. You know, you see people losing their jobs in shops now because they're bringing robots into servers and a lot of people I mean I. I went out yesterday and I just went to grab, I got some new glasses and then I went to grab a coffee, simple things and you know, when I left the house I was feeling a little bit isolated. I'd been on my own for a few days.
Speaker 1:So I walked into town and then when I got this coffee this girl I was trying my new glasses she went oh, I really like your, I just bought them. She was wearing glasses, she was wearing glasses, she was talking about her glasses. We were laughing, we were giggling as I walked out. She went have a great day, which is not. We're not Americans, so that doesn't happen. It was a real, genuine thing. And then, you know, I went to the dry cleaners and his granddaughter was there. She was pretending to be Hermione from Harry Potter and I was going. You look like so much like her and we had this wonderful interaction. It was great. This is what life is about is people and interactions. But more and more we are losing these interactions and that is where you and people like you are so important to bring communities together to take away that low level anxiety. So I take that from your work, that that's something you're doing is bringing people together and then just getting rid of the loneliness. So is that a key thing for you, do you think?
Speaker 2:It makes me think of a quilt I made two years ago now, I believe. I made it for the Folk School in Western North Carolina, which is the state where I'm from, in the mountains. In Western North Carolina, which is the state where I'm from in the mountains, and the Folk School is a century-old institution that every fall has a huge festival, draws tens of thousands of people, and they've done it without fail up until the pandemic. They took two or three years off and for the first fall festival post-pandemic, they invited me to make the Festival Quilt banner, which is the longstanding tradition of the folk school, the festival quilt banner. And I was so honored and I began thinking about what does it mean to have the fall festival now? What does this mean to make this quilt and how can I capture all that?
Speaker 2:And I began to think that in the earliest days of the pandemic spring 2020, what I found myself missing the most wasn't friends and family, because I had ways to keep in touch with them. Right, we had Zoom, phone calls, facetime, all that. What I found myself missing the most were the soft touches, the little one-off encounters, the kind you were just describing the checkout person at the grocery store, the person that you always see walk into the subway in the morning, even though you never talked to them. You just know they're there, they're part of your world. And I missed all those small connections. And what's interesting is psychologists have actually did a study about this right after the pandemic. Funnily enough, that said, one of the best indicators of our personal level of happiness is not the number of close ties that we have, but the number of loose ties that we have to one another. The more loose ties a person has, the more embedded they are into a community, into a culture, into a network, and therefore the more support they have theoretically.
Speaker 2:And so I took all of these ideas and I made this big red quilt for the fall festival and it just said in giant pink letters good to be together. And it was tied together with over 3,000 hand-tied little tiny knots that are so dense on this quilt it forms almost a whole floating layer on top. I mean it's so many ties, but those are the soft touches, those are the loose ties that mean so much to us, even when we don't realize them, and I wanted to capture that somehow in the quilt and I think I did a pretty good job. I did something else on that quilt that I'd never done before, which was I made a life-size line drawing replica of Good to Be Together on a white bed sheet. So I just took a black Sharpie marker and traced out the letters and everything.
Speaker 2:As people were coming into the fall festival barn, they were invited to sign this copy.
Speaker 2:We had over 10,000 signatures on that small piece of fabric relatively small piece of fabric, but what I love about that is, in a world where it's so easy to connect digitally, like you and I are right now and like folks who are watching us talk there's something really special.
Speaker 2:We know about sharing physical space, being in physical proximity to one another, and so to sign the quilt, you had to be in a place, you had to touch a utensil, a tool that someone else had just touched, and you had to put your name down on a physical object, and so it created this semi-permanent record of attendance that now lives on the back of the quilt. It just kind of buttons on the back like a curtain, and so they have it hanging up in a space. That's really beautiful at the folk school, where you can see the red side when you walk in the door and then when you walk to the back, the folk school where you can see the red side. When you walk in the door and then when you walk to the back, you can see the over 10,000 signatures and it's just such a beautiful testament to why we need to be together.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that. And do you know what's really interesting? When you said about the loose ties and the, you know the psychiatrist saying it's the amount of loose ties that you have that is perhaps more important than you know the close friendships that you have. In a way it helps you to build that connection. That's really interesting because I, you know, I am, like you, involved in this community and I open my Zoom window every Saturday and all these people flood in and the only interaction we have in that three hours is showing our work off and little comments and bits of praise and say hello, and then you say goodbye and you close the window. And I have been thinking for so long why is this working so well? Because it's electronic, it's a window. We're not having deep, meaningful conversations, but what we are doing is we're just touching each other's lives and we're strangers and strangers and strangers, and then, of course, friendships are made. But it is those little touches. I love that. It's fascinating loose ties.
Speaker 2:Look it up so meaningful and that's why, to me as a person, it's important when I go to the grocery store to talk to the person who's ringing up my groceries, not to have my headphones in, not to be typing on my phone. If I can help. I'm not saying I do it perfectly, but I'm saying I recognize that it's important to me and I recognize that it can be important for the other person in that situation, and I also recognize that the inverse can be very alienating. And so I just try to be aware as I move through the world about the importance of loose ties and what an?
Speaker 2:impact they can have. They might tell you have a great day on the way out the coffee shop, and it just sets the tone for hours, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:Well, it does, because when I left that coffee shop then I went to the dry cleaners and I was in such a good mood that that little girl was there. And then she was there with a Harry Potter wand and I could have just ignored her and had a talk with the cleaner, but I just I was so. So then I was excited with her and then I said are you actually, do you know Harry Potter? And she was like yeah, I do. And I was like, wow, do you speak Harry Potter? And she said I talk to snakes. And I was like, and you could see the joy in this little girl that someone believed that she was part of a Harry Potter land, and that was because that girl had been so nice to me in the coffee shop and I had the interaction with her. It's paying it forward, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's not about necessarily being like upbeat, happy and chipper. That's not the point. The point, the power and the energy behind I think those encounters that you just described, is just the connection.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, two humans realizing they're in a shared space, together, yeah, and finding a thing that they have in common, even if it's just for a brief and passing moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know I always get my guests on these podcasts to talk about breaking the blocks and things that they've overcome. But I think we've just hit on something together there which is a generalized for the world breaking of the block, which is to go out there and just say hello and mingle and just open yourself up. That's breaking a block. The block is technology and not being part of a community. I love that. This is something I've always seen in you, zach, and, like I said from the very beginning, there are lots of people out there who are making a living in the quilting world. They are selling their patterns, they're selling their fabrics, they are artists Fantastic. But there was something in you when I first saw your work. I do think we're drawn to like-minded souls and there was always something in you that was like, okay, this guy is a great quilter, yeah, but there's something else and you've really developed it.
Speaker 1:But do you ever feel like you were asked to make that quilt for that festival? You're bringing these communities together. You've got your nook. There's a level of responsibility there, I think. Do you ever think about that responsibility? Does that ever weigh heavy? Do you ever think, oh, now I've got to take care of these people, I have to come up with something new for them. Or are you a person who can just go with the flow, which is the best way to be in life? How does that responsibility lay heavy on you?
Speaker 2:Well, there's so many things I could say in response to that. I would say one part of the magic of the Nook community is that there's so much built-in support that I don't feel that I have to do a lot of the personal support work. Where my energy comes in is planning things for us to get together and do together. And yeah, like this year, we're doing a phenomenally successful quilt along called destroy this quilt, in which we're not actually destroying quilts. I mean, it is a quilt along, so we are making a quilt together. Each person is making their own quilt and they're getting a different prompt, one every two weeks. One prompt asks you to add something to that quilt. Two weeks, one prompt asks you to add something to that quilt and then one prompt asks you to transform something you've already done, ie destroy it. Right, and that's been so successful that I do feel a level of stress going into 2025 like, oh my god, I gotta do something as good as that, I gotta think of something as good as that. But then I take a deep breath and I say the same great brain that thought of that destroyed this quilt and the same stew that you're swimming in cosmic stew that you're swimming in. That helped you think of that idea will also provide another idea. So that kind of helps me like chill out a little bit me.
Speaker 2:The thing that can weigh the heaviest and this is where I feel like it's not so much the community piece I do take that very seriously but it's working. It's kind of like it supports itself the thing that weighs heaviest on me is that with my work and my life I'm digging into some really heavy questions and really deep energies, which brings up a lot for a lot of people. And people want to share that with me, which I understand. I in some ways tacitly invite or directly invite. But that's a lot for one person to hold, right Like. One person is not evolutionarily designed to be a community member with 60,000 people, right Like it's.
Speaker 2:Anthropologists assume that or have believed that the average human tribe or clan when we were hunter and gatherers was around 200 people and that feels like the number of ties that we can sustainably maintain, right, not 60,000. And so I'm having to find ways, as one little singular human being who wants to stay in the center of these questions and dark energies, to also find ways to have boundaries and force fields. And a large part of that was the visualization that I shared earlier this week on Instagram about how, like okay, I just needed some spiritual support. So I'm like, guardian, please step forward. I was in the middle of doing a mindfulness thing and out of the spiritual mists emerged two deer, two big bucks with these massive protective antlers, and I was like, okay, there's my help, there's my help. Eating well, sleeping well, taking the pauses, letting things go, all those things, because I can't do the work the way I want to do it if I don't take care of me first.
Speaker 1:You come across to me, Zach, as a very calm person. Is there anything that really makes you angry? Is there anything that really makes you?
Speaker 2:angry. I don't know how much I experience anger, but I do experience a lot of frustration, which I think is similar, and when I experience the highest levels of frustration is when, often, I feel like I can't communicate. I'm not communicating clearly, I can't get my point across, or the inverse I'm not communicating clearly, I can't get my point across, or the inverse I'm not understanding what someone's trying to tell me. That feels makes me feel really helpless.
Speaker 1:I can't see you not being able to communicate. So what stops you from not being able to communicate, because you're such a great communicator?
Speaker 2:Yeah relationships are complex, aren't they?
Speaker 1:yeah histories are long let's talk about you, talk about history, because I did read on your um instagram about this question of privilege. Now I was talking interestingly to an artist recently um called tim. He's an amazing artist in minnesota and he has been he said in his own words battling with the privilege, because he feels like he's come from a very privileged background. Both his parents are very artistic and loving and giving and supportive and he's had this wonderful life and so he's been thinking about his privilege and what that means. Now you've mentioned that in your Instagram. So what's your take on this? Because you said, I've been thinking about my own privilege. So let's delve a little bit deeper into that and what that means for you.
Speaker 2:Without a doubt, I benefit from a large number of privileges. I am white, I am male. In a world where white males have been dominant for centuries, there are other parts of who I am that don't get to exist so easily in this world. Right, being a queer person, for example, being a self-employed artist, might qualify as well, and so if I take myself as a microcosm of the world, I can see what it's like to have to identify the privileges that I benefit from. Then I also understand what it feels like to have to just fight for self-existence, right. Just to give you a very small, daily, inconsequential example, but I think we can blow it up to a larger scale afterwards.
Speaker 2:I often walk around my neighborhood here in Brooklyn, flatbush. It's a beautiful neighborhood, lots of century-old Victorian mansions. I don't live in one of those. I live in a 900-square-foot one-bedroom apartment but the homes in this neighborhood are beautiful, so I enjoy walking around, and these homes often will have wraparound porches and I covet so deeply the fact that they have access to outdoor space like that. I don't have that, and it was.
Speaker 2:It had gotten to a point where it was eating me up, passing one porch after another that was uninhabited. I told you this was a small example, but it was eating me up and it got to the point where I had to realize, okay, this is not serving me, this response is not serving me. So now, when I notice that response myself, I say there's nothing wrong with them having a porch. May we all have porches. May we all have porches. May we all have porches if we want porches.
Speaker 2:And so I think we can scale that up by saying there's nothing wrong with having a good job, there's nothing wrong with having financial stability, there's nothing wrong with being able to move through the world in the way you want to move through the world. May we all be able to do that. That's how I envision, or at least that's how I understand, how I live with my own privilege. It's not so much a matter of I may rethink this later, but I don't think it's so much a matter of me shedding my privileges. I don't even know if we can do that so much, but what it is for me is opening up access for other people to enjoy the same privileges.
Speaker 1:But how do you do that, though? Because not everybody is going to get that porch.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Did I just say porch? That's what you said, didn't you? Yeah, yeah, because we call our porches is literally a kind of a bit over the door, but yours is the wraparound thing.
Speaker 2:That's right. Also, that's what we call a stoop.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, stoop Right, we call it a porch. I get what you're saying. May we all be privileged to have the porch. So many people won't get that porch. I was just going to say so. Explain that for me a little bit further.
Speaker 2:Well then the question is why won't everybody get a porch? And that gets at much larger systemic issues that we need to talk about. Right, so we could also shift and talk about, like college education, for example. I had a college education. There's nothing wrong with that. May. We all have college educations if we want them.
Speaker 2:So if people don't have access to a college education, for example, then we have to ask ourselves why don't they have access? And there are many, many reasons, but one of them is our society chooses not to provide that kind of access for people. Why do we not choose to invest our financial resources that way? Because, fill in the blank, history right, like you can keep peeling it back, and it comes down to a matter of values, and so I I want to point people back to the values that are at the root of our decisions, as opposed to um.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's helpful to frame conversations around privilege in ways that make people feel bad, because guilt does not get us very far. Maybe we should feel a little guilty, I don't know, but I just don't think it serves us, and my ultimate desire is to get somewhere in this world to make change happen. And so I have to think about what works and what doesn't, what serves and what doesn't, and so I have to think about what works and what doesn't, what serves and what doesn't, and so I want people thinking about the things they enjoy in their life. What are potential reasons they may enjoy them and how can they help other people access that same joy.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think that's key how to help other people. I was reading recently, zach, that if you have a passion in life, it may not work out for you because it's your passion, but if you find your purpose in life, that will probably help others. You'll be able to carry out your passion because you'll know what your purpose is. And usually the purpose I think if we have a purpose in life, I think it does involve other people. I think it is giving to other people. So, yeah, I think, I think definitely.
Speaker 2:I think that's key is to how to help other people access those things and to and to give to other people definitely I think so, because otherwise passion, our passions, could very easily become exercises and navel gazing, yeah, where we just kind of turn inward and we just do this beautiful thing. That is beautiful and should exist on its own, no doubt about it, but then it just stays in this little. I just picture, like this little tide pool, this little eddy, this little self-contained thing, when it could be so much larger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now you mentioned you know the meditation. I mean, do you, is it a regular thing for you? And meditation, do you? Do you do it every single day? It's just a thing that you need to do, as you say, for self-care.
Speaker 2:I intend to do it every single day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sometimes it doesn't work out. I know I'm with you, I'm with you.
Speaker 2:I don't get myself too hard time, but I just figure I do it when I really need it and then if, when I don't, I get lazy or whatever, then that's just what happens. That's just what happens. But recently my thought this is 2024, year of space. I don't know if you can see in the video, but right there is my banner 2024 year of space. I have it there at the foot of my bed. So I remember this is the year where I'm creating space, because last year felt very full for me.
Speaker 2:This is the year where I am creating space, because last year felt very full for me and I began to see that sitting down for 18 minutes I don't know why 18 minutes Sitting down for 18 minutes doing nothing but breathing was a way of saying I have so much time, much time. I have so much abundance of resources in my life that I can choose, I can opt in to doing nothing for 18 minutes, and so for me it's more about like for me in 2024, it's more about that mindset of saying, yes, the to-do list is long, but I truly am rich in time and I can choose how I want to spend it, and I'm choosing it right now to do nothing. Ie space, creating space right and that's feeling really good.
Speaker 1:Do you know a word that's coming through about you now, zach, that I'm really beginning to see about you is reframing, reframing. Reframing people's ideas of what they are, who they are and what they can achieve. Uh, reframing the word community, which I want to talk about in a second reframing. Like you said, that that's really fascinating to me because I have sat there and meditated. But what a great way to look at it, that that when you do it, you are telling yourself you see, I have the time to do this, and that is creating calm, that's creating space. How brilliant.
Speaker 2:Like a life hack. Right, it's just a little thing, but that's the value in it for me at this point in time, Not so much. Am I doing it right? Is the posture right? Is the breath right? Am I focused enough? None of that. It's just I can sit here for 18 minutes and the world will not come crashing down.
Speaker 1:Which reduces the anxiety, because if we just keep on that machine all the time, that's when the anxiety hits. Do you know what else I think it does, though, as well. Meditation for you, zach, is it gives you self-worth, because you are telling yourself that you are worth that 18 minutes, you're worth spending time by yourself, and we all need to have that self-worth. So let's talk about community, because obviously you've talked about working in your community and building the community. What does the word community mean to you?
Speaker 2:what does the word community mean to you? I think there's a few ways that community gets used. One is kind of this throwaway, lightweight buzzword and one is what I think it actually means. I think a lot of times you'll hear brands like you know, nike or something, say join our community, when all they really mean is buy our stuff and repost our things so that we can sell more stuff to other people. That use of the word community is grating. Grating is not exactly the word I want to use, it's just thin.
Speaker 2:I think we see through it. I think most people see through it when it's used that way, the way that we you and I, for example use the word community literally thinking about its roots. It is with and it is unity. We are coming together as one to do this thing and I have found that we just need the merest of excuses to come together and so much can come out of it. Similar to your Saturday morning get togethers right. You just need someone to set a time and a day to open up the Zoom room and the magic will happen. And some days the magic looks like groundbreaking, insightful aha moments, and other times the magic looks very daily. It just looks like logging in, sitting and sewing together for a while and then logging out. But it's all magic, it's all good, it's the coming together that matters.
Speaker 1:I remember, actually, one of the ladies in my who was a regular for a while. I think she's now with you, zach. I think the times were better for her. Sparrow in flight is her handle. I know. I know and you know she was one of my sort of first regular Americans that came on my classes and it was in COVID and she used a direct message me during the class and she was just saying you know, you're providing a space for me and it's so important for my mental health and I've been really struggling and you know she's put all this stuff out online, so I'm not saying anything out of turn there, but you know it was wonderful to see the difference that these, this setting had made for her and and given her that space.
Speaker 2:So it really is important now shan is my community moderator right like I know so well that shan helps me keep the nook ship all right.
Speaker 1:I could not do it without them yes, yeah, I've seen that she's very involved, yeah, which is lovely, and it's so good for her because she's got this great purpose. There's your word. She's got that purpose, which is brilliant, so you've helped her to do that. Now, I was reading also about you, zach, and you were talking about your family and your family history, and you've been looking into that and your two sides of your family are very different.
Speaker 1:Um, interestingly, I've just been doing the same. I've been doing a family tree. Um, because I knew I had some jewish blood in my family, but my, I knew it was on my dad's side and he's gone now, and so I thought, okay, I've got to find this out for myself. But it's actually been really interesting to see what these people did with their lives, and there has been quite a big difference between my dad and my mom's side, which helped me to make sense as well of some things within me. So has that? I know that you said in your Instagram that there was quite a difference between one side of the family and the other side of the family. So what has that meant to you and has that brought any new meaning to your life and your trajectory or your personality, your roots?
Speaker 2:I got like five things I want to tell you all at the same time, so I'm hoping I can keep all the thoughts straight. Tell you all at the same time, so I'm hoping I can keep all the thoughts straight. I would say that, as white folks, genealogy is really easy for us, right, because documents follow money and white folks traditionally have had the money for the most part, and because it's so easy. Here's a we're going to touch on privilege again for a second. Privilege comes with responsibility, right, and so, because it's so easy, I would encourage every white folk watching this, listening to this at the moment, to consider researching their family history, because there are a lot of people out there who would love to do that but don't have the historical documentation to even make that feasible.
Speaker 2:Past three or four generations. Past three or four generations, because when we understand how we and I'm saying we here is like our family lines how our family lines intersect with larger historical trends, we have to divest ourselves of the illusion that says I'm just this one little atom bopping around this universe. You are not. You are the culmination of generations of actions, generations of decisions, generations of intentions. They have all come and landed on you and that means something.
Speaker 1:I have trauma as well, I would say Ancestral trauma, all of it All of it.
Speaker 2:There's this fascinating scientific experiment. If you read the Body Keeps the Score. I believe it was or maybe this doesn't start with you, I get the two books mixed up in my mind but there's a scientific experiment where scientists had taken lab mice. They would spray some cherry blossom scent into their cages and then they would shock them a mild electric shock. They didn't have to do that too many times before the mice began to realize oh, if I smell cherry blossom, I'm about to get shocked. And so they developed this knee jerk reaction. Even when they didn't get shocked, just smelling the cherry blossom, they would tense up. Scientists were able to detect that trauma response in the third generation, after the shocks had stopped. So that would say in human terms that something happening to our grandparents could carry on and have an effect that we're still living out, even if we don't know why those poor little grandbaby mice don't know why cherry blossom scents makes them so tense.
Speaker 2:They have no idea, but it is in their genetic disposition somehow. And so when you hear people say versions of, when we think back on history and the inequities of history, you hear people say, oh, but that was so long ago, which I just have to laugh, especially in a young country like the United States. Nothing was that long ago, but it wasn't. It wasn't. My grandmother's grandfather grew up with slaves.
Speaker 2:I knew my grandmother and I love my grandmother. My grandmother knew her grandfather and loved him. That's how close we are, that's how close I am to the slavery days, and so I think that when we now I'm going to talk about all of humans when we understand how we fit into the original world wide web, we understand why working for social justice is not an abstract notion. It is a thing that, like the trauma of the cherry blossom scent in those mice, is embedded in us and that we have to work it out, not just for the good of, in this case, let's say, people of color in the United States who are dealing with the aftershocks of slavery and Jim Crow, et cetera, et cetera, but also for ourselves as white people.
Speaker 2:And this is something that I don't think that we think a lot about or talk a lot about. But everything that happened during slavery, let's say, didn't just cut one way right. It also hurt the white folks who are inflicting the torture and the enslavement and all of that I'm not trying to say those white folks are worthy of a pity party Absolutely not, don't get me wrong. But what I am saying is there came a point in my research when I'm looking back at how many slave owners there were in my family tree and when I was thinking I wouldn't be capable of enslaving another human being because I don't think I would be. What would I have to turn off in my mind, what would I have to turn off in my spirit to get to a place where that makes some kind of sense, where that antisocial behavior, where that sociopathic behavior makes some kind of sense.
Speaker 2:So all of this made me wonder in my family tree with all those slave owners, it's not out of line, it's not far-fetched to think of all of them as sociopaths. And now here I am, just a few generations later. What degree of me is sociopathic? It's in there somewhere. It's in all of us somewhere, right, I don't know, but the point is, rachel, and everyone listening, is that we can't begin to uncover the, the, the world that we want, without first looking dead in the eyes of the trauma that exists all around us and the history that exists all around us, and working squarely with that, not just for the benefit of other people, but for the benefit of all of us, because the knife has cut both ways and I'll rest my case, I'll step on my soapbox yeah, but that's explained perfectly the whole thing about ancestral trauma and how it is.
Speaker 1:It goes through the ages and the. What's happening now I think more and more because of conversations like this around the world and our communities etc is that, um, people are breaking those ancestral traumas and it's, I think it's had to come to that point somehow. I mean, I think you know, we think about the world, you talk about it. I can never say apocalypse, no, apocalypse, apocalypse. I think it's come to a point in this world where everything is building and built, this pressure cooker of all of this trauma that has just been carried through and carried through, and nobody now knows where the trauma is coming from. It's just within us and, as you say, now you're discovering, well, how much of a sociopath are you, because that's in there somewhere. So I think that's where people are now starting to break these trauma bonds, this ancestral trauma.
Speaker 1:It's fascinating, isn't it? Once again, you've made me look at something in a new way, because I've read, I've been reading a lot in the last year about ancestral trauma and how there's always, it's hoped, there's always one child in the family that is here to break it, to break those patterns. What patterns. Do you think you're breaking in your family? I mean, obviously you're not a full-blown sociopath.
Speaker 2:I'm breaking the vow of silence in my family.
Speaker 1:That's interesting.
Speaker 2:Which this whole southern white amnesia got started, both as a concept and as a project. Because I first started my family history research, uncovering records that my ancestors had enslaved people, which was something I had never heard of in my family. No one ever talked about it. And so I went to a member of my family who is fairly well plugged in with family history and I said did we ever enslave people? And they said no, real fast no. And then, after a pause, I think we would know. And that response I think we would know just set off a torrent for me of thoughts, which was how many other Southern white folks, how many other white folks because it's not all the South how many white folks walking around the world are thinking, oh, if I were somehow benefiting from the system, I wouldn't know about it. But at the same time I don't really want to know because I'm not going to ask the questions to find out, I'm not going to do my family history research, I'm not going to seriously investigate whatever out, I'm not going to do my family history research, I'm not going to seriously investigate whatever. So in my family, if you were to go back, you don't even have to go back a century, you go back like 75 or 80 years there were still people alive in my family that knew that a lot of our wealth came from slavery, exploited black labor, came from slavery, exploited black labor. But in that time, in that lapse in between 75 years to today, all of that knowledge was allowed, deliberately or not, to slip away. And so now, when you look at my family, we're just nice, white, middle-class folks, but we're not. And when you look at I mean we are nice and we are middle-class, but you see what I'm saying. And when you look at a piece like Silver Dollar that I recently talked about, where the two sides, the two branches of my family had very different historical experiences in this country my dad's side, my mom's side what I saw in my own family that was so fascinating was that my dad's side was a long line of subsistence farmers who, if they had any money, it wasn't getting registered on the census Right, like it was often. That little square was often blank Right, whereas on my mom's side, where all the enslavers were, was also the side that had access to higher education. And it's stark and clear.
Speaker 2:My dad, first generation college student back in the 60s, first out of his entire family tree. First, my mom came from four or five generations that we know of that had access to higher education, and that access was bought with the money earned by the exploited labor of Black people, and so that's important to know, not to make people feel bad. That's not the point. The point is to say that the reason I was able to go to college in some part because all of that wealth trickled down to me right To some degree. Some part of the reason why I was able to go to college was because I have this lineage that dates back to that, to slavery times, and that wealth and the access that it bought and the expectations that it was able to purchase have created this culture on my mom's side of the family. This is just what we do. We go to college. That culture did not exist on my dad's side of the family because he didn't have access, because he didn't have wealth, and so I was making a really good point there, rachel. I was getting somewhere.
Speaker 2:And so you ask what am I breaking in my family, the vow of silence which says, yes, we are nice, white, middle-class people and we got some of that wealth and some of that access and some of that culture from slavery and that needs to be reckoned with. And we can talk about a hundred ways to reckon with it. I'm not saying we got to do one or the other, but we got to do something with it and we can't pretend that we did it all ourselves. We can't pretend or assume or believe that we're just blessed because God likes us a little bit more than he likes other people Like I. Just this is what I hear in my family. This is what I hear, and I'm not casting shade on my family. My family knows I love them, but I hear this.
Speaker 2:It's just in the ether when white folks talk about why they have what they have, why we have what we have. You know, it's like optometrists say that staring at our phone screens too much hurts our vision because our field of vision narrows because we're so close to seeing this thing all the time. I think we're myopic historically speaking, and we only see, especially in America. I don't know about other places, but we're myopic in the sense that most of us can know our parents' full names and maybe can give you our grandparents' full names, great-grandparents. Forget about it. That says that we believe ourselves to be unattached individuals, random atomized people bopping through the universe on their own. And that's not the case actually. We come from a long lineage and we're embedded in a huge community, and that comes with responsibilities.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and actually every single one of us is connected on this planet. Can I ask you, though, what does your family think about you breaking the vow of silence? The vow of silence.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm in the middle of breaking it, so stay tuned. But to this point, the vow of silence and I'm going to say more, just like I don't want to say ignorance, naivete, I'm just going to call it the not knowing. The not knowing in my family is just so entrenched and so deep that it's going to take a lot of work to unravel that. And partially because we live in consumers, capitalists, united States, where folks move around a lot, we don't have the closest ties. I don't always feel like I could just pick up the phone and call my aunt or my uncle and my cousins, right. And so a lot of what I'm doing now behind the scenes, that I consider part of my creative practice but also just part of being a good human being on this planet, is strengthening those relationships so that one day down the road soon, we can have more fleshed out conversations about our roots, because I do believe it's important for all of my family to understand how we fit in.
Speaker 2:So now what that looks like is I have built a website with a lot of the research that I've found. I've been sharing that. I've got a family email group going for the first time in years, right, all the aunts and uncles and cousins around, like things are happening. I'm, you know, I'm encouraging, we're getting together for dinners and things like that, like it's happening. But I choose to believe that the richest work and the realist change happens inside of strong relationships, and to try to accomplish that same thing without the support of those relationships it doesn't sound very effective to me.
Speaker 1:It's a good point. I think so often when we are trying to break the vow of silence, you can see it as a solo expedition. But if you try and do it as a solo expedition, you are going to make it so much harder for yourself and without that support, you're not going to break that silence because everybody else is just going to be quiet. They're going to make sure that you stay quiet because they're going to make sure your voice is not as heard. So it is really important, as you say, to to try and help other people to understand and to try and work with them. I think that's fantastic that you're doing that. What gives you the bravery, zach, to do all of this? Because you did. We started the interview by saying that you'd made that brave move to. I know you saw the exit door and you took it, but you know you didn't have to take it. You didn't have to take the exit door. Yeah, it was looking at you, but you could have just turned around. And you saw the exit door and you took it, but you know you didn't have to take it. You didn't have to take the exit door. Yeah, it was looking at you, but you could have just turned around and looked at the other door, so you know you took that exit door. You left teaching.
Speaker 1:You make these statements, you're breaking the vow of silence. You put yourself out there in the community and you take on a lot of weight and responsibility, as you say. You're obviously an empath and that can weigh heavy on you. You do all these things. So I want to know two things. What is it that drives you? There's something driving you. It's interesting. You mentioned about the sociopath, so there's something driving you deep inside of you. Is there any part of you that wants to be really accepted, understood, wanted, needed, desired? Is there anything of that? Or is there something else? Is there a deeper meaning? What drives you that? Because you are such a driven person, you have causes. As I said to you before we started the recording, I'm just so impressed with your journey and what you constantly come up with. Where's it come from? Who are you, zach Foster, and can I take some of your medicine?
Speaker 2:There's a lot of threads there, rachel. There's a lot of threads, and I think one of them is I mean, the first answer came to mind it's just that life is just so beautiful. Life is just so beautiful that to not spend it in its fullest it's just a tragedy. Like I just and I don't spend every minute to its fullest, of course, right, but I feel that when I get to the end of my days, I want to feel that I understood what it meant to be alive and to be in this world. And for me, at this point in 2024, at the age of 43, that means working with the energies that are swirling inside and somehow transforming them so that it's not just an airing of grievances. Or For me, it's not enough just to take in the dark energy and put out the dark energy. What I'm trying to do is to act as the crucible. The artist is crucible Take in the dark, turn it into something that's actionable.
Speaker 2:And I think another thread of that comes from the fact that I come from, on my mom's side, a long line of ministers, pastors, missionaries, people who were invested in the social good, and so knowing that about my family has helped me see more clearly in myself my own pro-community, pro-social inclinations. I get them, honestly. I also think another thing I inherited is I'm a workhorse I don't know like, for I don't. I don't understand downtime, you know like just like chilling. I, I don't get my day looks like I call work what I do.
Speaker 2:When I'm sitting at a computer, right, like that's like responding to emails, that's work. And when I'm not doing that, I'm not like fixing something to eat for me and my sweetie, or I'm not going on a walk or a bike ride, then I'm sewing, and that might be hours a day, but that's, that's how I want to spend my moments here on this earth. While I have them, I'm not watching tv, I'm not shopping, I'm not what. What do people do? I don't. I don't know what people do because I don't do them, but like that's just how I spend my time. So I think when people say, oh, you get so much done, I guess that's also just how I want to spend my life.
Speaker 1:And then here we are, but I think you have a great, great balance. I think that's why you get so much done. I think you have a great balance there because I I think it's because you're not doing meaningless things. It's you know, your downtime. I do. I think you do have downtime, but your downtime is never meaningless. So when you said I don't really have, I think that's what you said. I think you do, but your downtime is always. It's like sewing. So you are, your brain is constantly. It's going to. As you say, you're in that soup and something out of your personal sewing is going to go oh, libel. And then just the fact that you said with my sweetie oh my God, that's so lovely, but that's also not meaningless. That's giving back Once again giving, giving, giving. This is a reoccurring theme with you. You're giving, you're striving. I love the fact you said you had pastors and things in your family, because that is so apparent. You know ministers and so you.
Speaker 2:I wear his ring ring, by the way. He graduated from birman university in 1904, yeah, and then, when he got married to his wife and they had their 25th anniversary, I got her ring as well, and so I wear this as a way of keeping all of them close, in gratitude for everything they've given me, but also with a reminder of working for justice, for everything that was taken from other people so that they could have good things to give to me yeah, and it's connection once again you wearing that ring.
Speaker 1:I mean, I know you were very, very close with your grandma, weren't you? Um, oh, you know and this was her dad and mom yeah, yeah, yeah, you were so close to her and uh, that was. I mean, how are you coping with the loss of her because you had? Such a beautiful, I know I mean, wow, god bless her. It's still a loss, though, for you, zach, because you were very close to her and actually the fact that she lived so long meant that you did have this huge deep relationship with her.
Speaker 2:And I only got to know her better and better, like I was so fortunate to get to know her as an adult when I was an adult as well, not just a kid.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:She is truly a role model.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what lesson do you think she gave you? That was, you know, what do you think was her biggest lesson she gave you?
Speaker 2:Be good to people. Don't complain too much. If you can do something about it, do something about it. Don't take things too seriously.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:All of that.
Speaker 1:Lovely. So when you have gone, which will hopefully be when you're 107, or maybe try 108, but when you have gone and you've left behind something in the world, I mean, you will have left your quilts, clearly, and I'm sure you're going to be wrapped in one that you're already thinking about or have made.
Speaker 2:What would you like people to say about you or remember about you? If there is a difference there, zach, help me see some beautiful things in this world.
Speaker 1:How about that Perfect?
Speaker 2:Perfect.
Speaker 1:Well, you've helped me see some beautiful things in this interview and you've helped me see some beautiful things from, like I say, from the very beginning, when I was a little baby starting this and you were starting your journey, and I was so grateful that you said you would be interviewed when you first met me and that gave me a huge confidence boost. It's like, oh, this person is interested enough to say yes and just to sort of leave this as well with anybody listening to this. I did say to Zach before we started this interview, that at one of my retreats, a lovely American guest came and we all have these moments where we doubt ourselves, and especially me, because I'm not a quilter. I absolutely respect it, love it. I think quilts are some of the most beautiful things and I love the variety that you get. You look at the quilt con and the pieces people were showing. It's just incredible what people can do.
Speaker 1:She was talking to me and I said to her so you've come all the way from America on this retreat, you know you've put some money into this and you've had a leap of faith. Why, you know? And she said well, I just saw you on Instagram and I thought you were so warm and engaging and I said, oh, do you know? I look at people like Zach Foster and I think what am I doing? He's so amazing.
Speaker 1:And she said, thank God, you're not Zach Foster. And I jumped to your. I was like I love him. She went oh, I love him, I love him, he's him. You are you, and we all have to be ourselves and be our best selves. And when we are our best selves and we're being authentic, if you were trying to be Zach Foster, you would be a fake because you're not him, and if he was trying to be you, he would be losing something of him. So you have to be your authentic self and you have to believe in yourself. And it was one of the most beautiful things that anybody's ever said to me and that's something that I think you give to people, zach, is you give people a voice, you help them build their self-worth, you take care of them, you inspire them. So I think, absolutely, if you want people to say that at the end about you, you're on the right path. Thank you.
Speaker 2:I do firmly believe that the unique blend of genes that makes you you and me me has never existed in all of human history and will never exist again in quite this way, and what that means, practically speaking, is that I am the only person who can do what I do. You are the only person who can do what you do, and the world needs you to do that thing, not to be a facsimile of what someone else is doing. They've got that covered. You got to do that thing, you got to say that thing, you got to make that quilt, whatever it is that only you can make. That's what the world needs. I mean no pressure, but that's what the world needs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, you keep being you. I'll keep being me and every person listening out there. You keep being you and keep being a part of this community. Keep talking, keep listening, keep your heart open, even though there is lots of opportunities to get bitter and scared and cold because there are some hurtful things and people in the world. Just, yeah, keep open and keep striving. Yeah, Thank you so much, Zach. It has been a pleasure Again. Let's not leave it four years.
Speaker 2:Who knows, we're going to be here four years. You think we're still going to be here four years.
Speaker 1:I knew you were going to say that.
Speaker 2:With an E-lock.
Speaker 1:Fingers crossed. We'll keep positive. Yes, we will. Just before you go, lovely listener, can I ask you a favour If you have a friend who you think would enjoy listening to this podcast, would you mind please telling them about it?
Speaker 1:It helps me to spread the word and, you never know, they might get a life lesson out of it or, at the very least, just have a lovely 40 minutes of relaxing time for themselves. The second thing to say is that if you have enjoyed this, it would really help me if you would give me a little quick like or a comment, especially if you're listening on one of the podcast platforms. It just means that when anybody lands on the page, they can see that people have reviewed it, they've liked it, enjoyed it and got something out of it. So if you wouldn't mind leaving me a review, that would be amazing. And the final thing to say is that if you are a business and you're thinking how do I get my message out there? Well, you could do it on this podcast. All you have to do is reach out to me, rachel, at breakingtheblockscom, the details are below in the box.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much to everybody for listening and enjoying and saying the lovely things that you're saying.
