Little Gifts
Listen in as a millennial granddaughter in search of “more” picks her grandmothers brain about everything under the sun (and moon) like dealing with internalized patriarchy, how to work with dreams, finding your creative spark and so so much more. Sue Ellen Parkinson offers Savanna Wonderwheel (and everyone listening) wisdom and guidance through the gift of chat. Every conversation is a little gift and we believe a lot of little things add up. This podcast will give you a weekly dose of love and intimacy along with a little inspiration too.
It will help us a lot if you can rate us, leave a review or best yet: Follow us.
Find us on Instagram @littlegiftspodcast
Check out Sue Ellens art at www.sueellenparkinson.com
Send us a note at littlegiftspodcast@gmail.com
Little Gifts
138. Breathing Room
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We’re saying goodbye as we prepare to take a Little Gifts summer vacay!
We’ll be going on pilgrimage to Italy and France and can’t wait to tell you all about it in October!<3
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and leave us some stars over on Spotify. You can email us at littlegiftspodcast@gmail.com or find us on isntagram @littlegiftspodcast.
Find Sue Ellens artwork at www.sueellenparkinson.com or connect with her on instagram @sue.ellen.parkinson. And the same goes for Savanna! Find more about her practice at www.savannawonderwheel.com or connect on instagram @savannabeing.
I think it's just a good reminder in in all aspects of our life. We need room to breathe. We need to be able to have spaciousness. Welcome to the Little Gifts Podcast. This is Sue Ellen Parkinson. And I'm her granddaughter, Savannah Wonderwheel. And we're on a journey together to find deeper meaning and magic in the day-to-day.
SPEAKER_02We're so happy to have you join us.
SPEAKER_01Good morning, grandma. Good morning, Savannah. Oh my god, it's early. I know. And I'm in bed still. We both look like sleepy heads. Yeah. We usually go up and I've got a little spot in our attic that I record that's pretty sound dampened and everything. But today I was just like, I can't do it.
SPEAKER_00I just gotta stay horizontal a little while longer.
SPEAKER_02No, you do that. You look very sweet in your Betty Bye. Well, it's good to see you. Yeah, it's good to see you too. I've been struggling with a little bout of some sort of I don't know. Anyway, life.
SPEAKER_01Busy life, busy, busy life as we get ready to go on our big journey.
SPEAKER_02Big trip. And that leads us into our topic for today because we were talking about taking this break from the pod for a month. It sort of created anxiety in both of us. And so we thought it would be a good topic to talk about what happens when we stop feeding something for a little while.
SPEAKER_01I was thinking about it. You know, it's bigger than just taking a break from this for a month. It's taking a break from everything for a month. Everything that's normal in our lives, our normal routine, our normal way of working, our normal check-ins with seeing people and all the things we do, and this podcast being one of them. But yeah, it's a big, it's a big thing to step away for a month.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. There's almost this like magical belief that our continued attention on something, whether it's this podcast or a relationship or a job or whatever, is what keeps it alive. You think if I stop showing up, it will disappear. If I'm not nurturing this, I'm you have a sense of abandoning it almost. And with me, because I've got ADD, I have this thing of that I must complete. Whatever I do, it's like the way I compensate for my my own little chaotic way of moving through the world is I complete things. So it's like a sense of I'm letting go of this thing, and it's just going out in the world or something.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And when you say this magical thinking, do you mean like imaginary thinking too? It's like that thought process to me feels so the opposite of magical. It feels so binary and so boxed in, and it feels like a like a made-up process of thinking. Like to me, magical sparks something of excitement or like wonder or possibility. And that way of thinking feels very lacking in possibility, actually.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm thinking in terms of you're like casting a spell on it by giving it attention or something. That kind of magical. It's not like the imagination, it's a little different, I think. Yeah, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, there's totally this feeling of just keeping the wheel going. There's this thought that like if you stop it, it's never gonna start again. Yeah. And I think that's really tricky. I think that's really tricky territory to get in because it can really get you stuck in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_02Well, there's definitely this little unhealthy hyper-vigilance thing that's sneaking around in there somewheres, I think. The fear that things are gonna fall apart. But what's coming to mind for me as you're talking is this gardening metaphor. You know, you have this sense that, well, if you have a garden, you must tend to it every day. You have to water it, you've got to make sure the plants are okay, all this stuff, in order for things to take root. But in terms of the pod, our little gifts podcast, it I think it has taken root because we have been watering it for years now.
SPEAKER_01Well, and that was my first thought is I'm like, yeah, because I've heard that metaphor before too, but I haven't thought much about it. And I'm like, but is it actually a healthy garden if you can't get the root strong enough to let it survive on its own for a little while?
SPEAKER_02You know, it's like a baby. It's like being like a baby, there is a period of time, and and all babies are a little different, but there's a period of time where they just need a lot of attention until they can start kind of going off on their own. Something that's come up for me recently around this leaving, not leaving thing is in our community we decided we wanted to sort of institute this, a monthly grief ritual for people. And it's been a real struggle, as it turns out, to do it. It's taking more psychic time for the people who are putting it together than probably they they initially wished to sign up for. But we had made this agreement that we would do it for at least a year with the hopes that then other community members would take it up and keep it going. I think that's often unrealistic though. It seems like there are people that become established caretakers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I'm curious. You've been doing this now, this group for about what, nine months? The grief. And so, you know, with this thought, because I think that's a a pretty common thought of like, I'm gonna start this thing in the community and then it's gonna get going, and then other people are gonna come in and help keep it going. And I think to your point, like that doesn't happen very often. So I'm just curious, does it feel like there is a sense of like if those of you who have been kind of the main quote unquote leaders and like getting this going were to kind of step back, do you think other people would come in and kind of keep it going at this point?
SPEAKER_02Well, one never knows, but um my sense is probably not there's some kind of monthly or maybe bi-monthly grief ritual thing happening up in Leightonville, which is a little town right above Willet's. Well, it's about half an hour away. But they have a bunch of death doolas in that community. So these young women are taking it up and making it roll. Now the people in in our little group that are doing it are all in their 70s, and some of them in their late 70s. And I'm just seeing that, you know, energetically, even the movers and you might have been a long time mover and shaker in your life, but energetically you just do do less as you get older. So I I don't know an answer to your question, but I do feel like that's an example of something that I feel like I want to continue to commit to at least for a year. Just to to carry it through and to see what happens.
SPEAKER_01I think that's to your point of like committing to do it for a year, or kind of this metaphor of the garden or the baby and getting it going. And I think that's kind of what I've been thinking about is like there is a time there should, you know, we don't like we don't love the shoulds, but I think in anything, at a certain point you should be able to step away and come back and not have the thing crumble, right? But I do think that there is a period of time that's maybe longer than people think or want to acknowledge that you do have to keep the consistency of and you do have to commit to showing up for again and again and again before the thing has enough roots to stand on its own, before the thing is self-sustaining enough to not die if it's not given so yeah, fall apart, to not just no longer be able to go on its own. So one of the reasons that we kind of were inspired to take this break is because I have been meeting with this woman, Alyssa Zander, who's a really amazing woman. She has a podcast, the codependence codependency alchemy podcast, and she has a whole online community around codependency. That's kind of what she's built her whole business around at this point, is working with codependency and the shadow work of that. And that's awesome. Yeah. And her point of view is more so through the relational lens, right? In in the broader sense, through partnership or friendship or being or family patterns. Um, but she also does some business coaching and guiding on the side, kind of as a a support. And so her and I started doing a bodywork trade for some one-on-one coaching. And, you know, we were talking about it and I was talking about going on this trip and all the things and kind of some hopes for this podcast and things that would I would feel really amazing, would be really amazing if they kind of if this kind of helped bring in. And she was just like, Well, you know, when you're on your trip, what if you guys just took a break? And my first thought was like, What? And she was just like, Yeah. And this was like so bluntly put, she's like very blunt, which I love, but she was just like, You cannot call something successful if you can't leave and take a break and come back. She was just like, in my opinion, if you want to have a sustainable, successful business, it's not successful if you can't take a break. And I was just like, damn, that is right to the heart of it. And then she was like, you know, and if you want to get into the more brain heart side of things, if you want to get more into the nitty-gritty with it, she was like, We can talk about how codependency can show up in your work, especially as someone who is a solo, you know, an individual working for themselves as a solopreneur is the new kind of term going around. But she was just like, it's so easy to fall into these codependency patterns with our work, especially when we work for ourselves. And when there's this feeling of if I don't keep the ball rolling, it's all gonna fall apart. And she was just like, you know, and that that can be true. But if anything, if the ball stops rolling and it falls apart, that's just really good information for you for the ways that you haven't set things up sustainably. And and that needs to be kind of a reality check. And I was just really blown away by that, even as a as a concept, you know. And it's like, obviously, we should be able to take to take breaks. Obviously, we should be able to pause if we get ill or if something big happens in our lives, but to have it put kind of that succinctly and that bluntly, I was just like, Yeah, you're right. And so, you know, I brought the idea to you and was and you, it was, you know, same thing. There was a little trepidation at first, and then you were like, Okay, yeah, I hear where you're coming from. But I think it's just a good reminder in in all aspects of our life, we need room to breathe. We need to be able to have spaciousness. And it was interesting. It's always so funny to me the timing of these things, right? These little collective unconscious things that come up where we were having this conversation, and then I'm in a big text thread with a bunch of Pilates teachers here in Portland. And a woman dropped into the thread. You know, I'm really curious if anybody has any thoughts on taking breaks from teaching or stepping away from teaching for a while, or like, you know, pretty much exactly this whole idea. She was just like, I'm feeling burnt out, all the things. She had this whole big list of stuff that she's working with. But it was really interesting to see kind of the flood of messages that came in from all these different teachers and their different perspectives on how beneficial it has been for them to step away for a little while and come back. And the one thing that was consistent through each of the shares was that every single one of them was was like, I absolutely do not regret taking a break. Every time I've taken a break, I've come back and I've I've been better at my work, I've been more well received, I've always built back up to what I was at before, if not more, and that it was absolutely worth it. And that it was also terrifying. It was terrifying and it was worth it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, this is reminding me, and I've talked about this before on this pod. I can't remember in what ish what episode or whatever, but we but I remember when I first started taking little mini vacations down in Carpenteria. And just my idea was just to follow my own rhythm for a certain amount of time. I started with two weeks one year, the next year I was doing it for a month, and then I kept doing it. And I thought, there's no way I can do this. But in fact, you can. You can do it. But also something else I'm thinking about is sometimes we do get burnt out and we feel like we're, you know, something that we loved and we're we're very enthusiastic about becomes something that we're carrying and it feels a little burdensome. I think we've got to really listen to those, to those messages that we get.
SPEAKER_01Definitely. As somebody who didn't listen to those for a long time and then had a full-blown crash out that was, you know, more health-induced, that kind of like forced my hand. But I think it is really wise to listen to those. And when you start getting that feeling of, I don't know, for me, it's like my therapist jokingly calls them the the Ida wanas, where you just you don't wanna, you know, you're like, I just don't wanna, I don't wanna. And it's like for me, that's the biggest sign. If I'm, you know, trying to wake up in the morning to go to work and I'm just like, oh man, I just don't wanna go. Like, not for any reason other than simply I just don't want to. No, once I get there, I'll be, you know, all the people I'll see will be great. I'll probably have some good conversations, it'll be fulfilling all the things, but there's just this like overbearing sense of just ah, I don't want to get out of bed and do the thing. And it's like in that case, I just really feel like at that point I kind of know, like, okay, it's time, it's time for a break. And it's not often that I get to take a month break, but it is, you know, a good sign to be like, all right, I gotta take a weekend away, or I gotta go do a thing, or I have to tend to myself in some way.
SPEAKER_02Well, in this case, we're gonna be taking a break, but we're also gonna be working for a week in there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's interesting though. It definitely feels yeah, fun work. But to me, it definitely feels like it's different in a sense because we're gonna be doing something that we haven't done before together.
SPEAKER_02That's the fun part, I think. Yeah, that's the fun part, is we're gonna be figuring something out. It's gonna be creative, we're figuring out how to put things together and how we do this and how we do that. It's like uh gonna be awesome. I'm thinking about, you know, how I'll sort of get into a habit. Is it a habit? I think it's a really Taurus thing as you just sort of hang in there and are steadfast and go, go, go, you know. And I remember this woman, this woman telling me when I was breastfeeding my kids, she said she'd had four kids, I guess. And she said, when it gets to the point where you're no longer enjoying it and you sort of resent it, she goes, That's the time to wean them. And I thought, yeah, that's a really good rule of thumb. If you're feeling kind of resentful for doing whatever it is you're doing, it's time for some kind of shift in the in the procedure. Definitely.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I know. So, all that said, I'm still I do still feel like I'm gonna I'm gonna miss this little routine of ours. Well, we're gonna keep doing it though, yeah.
SPEAKER_02But you won't be putting it up and posting it and whatnot. But we'll be doing it in Europe.
SPEAKER_01How exciting is it? We'll definitely be recording some things, yeah. Well, it's fresh in the mind.
SPEAKER_02We're gonna see black Madonna's and oh my goodness, it's gonna be amazing. Yeah, I'm really, really excited, and I'm really looking forward to Italian gelato. Yeah, definitely. I think the Italians have the creamy down.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, it's gonna be so good.
SPEAKER_02Oh, so I'm still not quite remembering my little gift. I do remember thinking my little gift of marriage with Gary because I we recently had some friends over for dinner, and they were a couple guys that Gary had worked with for they had a uh landscape business together. And oh my god, there's something about living in a community for 40 or 50 years where there are all these stories and all these interconnected relationships, and it makes life really rich. So I don't know. I'm I'm grateful for those interconnections. And one of our friends, Louis Rolachek, had made up a song about one of the other men in this landscape business, Bruce Bryan, one of the partners. It it was so sweet just to have him stand up and sing this song about Bruce. Oh and full of, you know, full of all the characteristics of Bruce and of this group of young guys who were working together. And it was just very, very sweet, you know, because we've all grown older. And uh anyway, I guess I'm just my little gift is my amazing community here. Oh, cute. Glad I stayed put. I'm glad I stayed put. Yeah, so sweet. How about you, Savannah?
SPEAKER_01Let's see. I think my little gift this week is gonna be just the natural world. We had a really good time just watching the world this weekend. We went, I was out in tidewater again, and we got to see some seals going up and down the river, and we got to see some elk in the pasture, and we um me and my friend Summer, she was saying, she's like, I really want to see an otter. And we were in the river and we saw a water, an otter while we were in the water, which I've never had happen before. So that was exciting. And then um we got to well, and then also on the drive down, it was really sweet. I'll have to send you some pictures, but we there was a vulture on the side of the road that looked like it had, you know, passed away. It was a dead vulture on the side of the road, and we pulled over and it looked like it was it had just happened. It was very fresh, and there wasn't any, you know, it was just there. It looked like it had almost just fallen from the sky. There wasn't any obvious injuries or anything on it. I know it was really strange, but we we moved it off the road and we put some flowers around it. I'd had some flowers in the car with me, so we gave it a little memorial, but it was just so neat. They're just such amazing animals, and you know, we love we love vultures in this house.
SPEAKER_02Um yes, we do.
SPEAKER_01Everybody but Sophie, my dog, loves so that was really beautiful, and and then we were driving back up the coast and we've stopped for food, and there's this restaurant in Newport that's just above this place where all these sea lions go and pile up together, and we sat outside on the patio and they just are we they were just like watching a TV show, like they're just hypnotic and they're so noisy, you know, they're barking the whole time and making their noises the whole time, but we just sat and watched them for pretty much the whole meal, and yeah, I just was really appreciating all all the little critters that are still alive and well in this world, and it's easy to forget about them, but they're out there.
SPEAKER_02They are out there. I'm so glad that you were out at Tidewater. That's wonderful. Yeah, it was great. Well, well, I know you've got to get off to work.
SPEAKER_01I know I gotta go work. I got one last day of work before my my exodus.
SPEAKER_02Well, um, little gifters, we're gonna miss you for a month. We're gonna miss you, but you've got lots of past episodes you can listen to. Yeah, there's lots of good ones in there. And uh we'll see you again next month. Yeah, we'll be back. October, we'll be back.
SPEAKER_01First Monday of October, we'll be back in action. And I know, and to our little gifters who are coming on pilgrimage with us. I know you're listening, and I can't wait to see you in France. It's gonna be so great.
SPEAKER_02We've got little gifts for you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we do. It's gonna be so good. All right, well, I love you, grandma.
SPEAKER_02I love you too, Savannah.
SPEAKER_01And we love you, little gifters.
SPEAKER_02I know.
SPEAKER_01If you're a lover of the Little Gifts podcast, please share that love with the world. Leave us a review or give us some stars wherever you listen to your podcast. And while you're at it, you could send this episode to someone in your life that you know could use some TLC. Word of mouth recommendations are the best marketing a podcast could ask for, and every recommendation means the world to us. To keep in touch, you can find us on Substack or Instagram at LittleGifts Podcast, and we host a monthly community care circle on the last Sunday of every month that can be found through our Substack. You can also send us an email at LittleGiftspodcast at gmail.com, and as always, all of this info and more can be found in the show notes. And we want to give a special thanks to Robin O'Brien for gifting us her music to use through this show. Thanks for being on this journey with us.
