Untethered: AJA BARBER on Sustainability, Identity, and Embracing Transformation PART ONE of a Tarot Special!

Hello all, and welcome to an experimental new format for Untethered (at least for this week).

Some of you will know I'm really into Tarot cards - both as a tool for spiritual awareness and also a tool to further understand ourselves and other people. For this week's episode of Untethered, my amazing friend Aja consented to me recording a Tarot reading for her to share with you all.  Over 90 minutes, we explored the depths of Aja's work in environmental activism and how it intertwines with personal identity and collective responsibility. The conversation was a beautiful look into the ways our upbringings shape our understanding of scarcity and fortune, urging us to consider the resilience and adaptability required to navigate life's complex tapestry. Over the course of this double episode, Aja shares her insights on crafting a fulfilling existence within the bounds of a capitalist world. As a result, you'll be invited to reflect on your own ambitions and the societal roles we each play.

This is the (shorter) half of a two episode arc, just introducing Aja and the parameteres of our conversation. Consider it a little taster. The guts of the episode will come out on Sunday, with me walking Aja through one of my own personally designed spreads:

B: The material bones of who Aja is in the world
E: The essence of why she is
S: The strength that informs Aja's work
T: The throat - or truth - that Aja speaks from
I: The imagination Aja holds for herself, a dream she wants to achieve
E: The elevation of how to make that dream come true

Let me know if you like this format. I know that tarot and this vibe isn't for everyone, but I am really embracing the stage in my life where I want to just really ENJOY what I do and make and lean right into it!

***
Aja Barber can be found across all social platforms on @ajabarber

Aja's book Consumed can be purchased here: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/9g65q5

Don't forget to subscribe to Untethered! 

Transcript

Clementine : 0:00

That is so weird. You know I've shuffled this deck as I've been talking to you and three times now the world card has bopped out, which is a beautiful portent. I'm going to put that actually in the centre because there is something that we're being reminded of here the world is like the culmination of everything, so it's just funny that that has. You know, when you start to learn tarot and do tarot, you pay attention to which cards want to be seen, and that one definitely was like put me out and pay attention to me, please. Hello everyone, and don't be put off by that somewhat cryptic opening to this episode of Untethered With me, your host, Clementine Ford. I am trying something slightly different this week.

Clementine : 0:42

Some of you may know that I am super into tarot. I think that tarot cards are a really amazing way to explore who we are, to you know, to investigate ourselves, to tell stories about other people and a really amazing interviewing technique. And I used that opportunity recently when my friend Aja Barber, who you will all know as a fierce and intelligent activist, writer and influencer in the sustainability space. When Aja Barber recently visited Australia for the All About Women Festival, I took the opportunity to record an episode of this podcast with her, but also read her cards. So I have separated this episode into two episodes because we actually ended up recording for 90 minutes, which is probably just a little bit too long. So what you're going to get today with this one is an episode of us straight talking, essentially introducing the episode for about 20 minutes, discussing where we're coming from as we go into the cards, and then on Sunday, I will be dropping the tarot card reading.

Clementine : 2:00

Now listen, if you don't know tarot or you're not into tarot, or if you just feel like it might be a little bit too witchy with you, whatever I get it, but I invite you to listen, because you don't need to understand tarot to understand the conversation that we have, which is really just using the themes of each card that come up to talk about Aja, who she is, what her work focuses on and our collective responsibility as a human society to make things better. So, with all that said, I hope you enjoy this introductory episode to my special episode with Aja Barber for Untethered, and if you did enjoy it and you would like to see more of this, please let me know on clementineford at gmailcom. You can also like, rate and review the show, share it with your friends so that you never miss an episode. They never miss an episode. And if you'd really like to get bonus content as well, then you can subscribe to me on my Substack account, which is at clementinef. Until then, let's get untethered with Aja Barber. I'm out.

Aja: 3:36

I'm one of those people where I always wonder if the good luck that's come my way is just a season. I do. I always feel like, and maybe this comes from like having a parent who grew up in poverty and this idea of scarcity. But I'm always like, what will I do if one day, everyone on the Internet hates me? And I think like I guess I could like teach yoga. I could you, you know, go back to babysitting. I was a babysitter for many years so I always have like 50 backup plans in the back of my head because there is this inherent scarcity.

Clementine : 4:11

I think that comes from growing up with a parent who grew up in poverty and I think a lot of people have that when you start getting into kind of the spiritual cosmos side of things. I was telling you yesterday that according to my astrology chart, my Chiron, which is my wound, my soul wound, is in Taurus.

Clementine : 4:27

So, a lot of that is this deep kind of cosmic fear of a lack of structure and a lack of stability. So I relate so much with this sense of like 50 backup plans and I'm always thinking like what if? What if this doesn't work out? Yeah, but I actually think that's a really healthy attitude to have you know to not put all of your eggs in one basket, to use a cliche this is so true, but at the same time, I really envy people that are like it'll just work out.

Clementine : 4:53

I want to be one of those. Well, I think that you can be the kind of person who's like it will work out, because if you have a number of different backup plans, what you have is a I hate to use this term because it's so enmeshed in capitalism and productivity but you have a work ethic, and the way I like to think of that is less about like a work ethic to produce for this, for the system, but more, like you know, I want a nice life.

Aja: 5:20

That's really it.

Clementine : 5:20

I want a nice life and I want to be able to be well, you're not afraid of of of doing things that are different, you're not afraid of pivoting, You're not afraid of starting again, and I think that those are all really important skills to have, kind of on Torian as well, I I'd have to say, yeah, I feel, think I'm such a classic tourist. I think you're a classic tourist in lots of ways, but I I like nice food, I like you know yeah, sex and clothing we're very grounded things.

Clementine : 5:50

You know earthly and material well that's the other thing.

Aja: 5:53

Even though I do like material stuff, I also love like digging around in my yard and weeding and stuff like that I love. Yeah, I just I love a lot of different things and I think the only purpose of the work that I do is one I want everyone to have a nice life, and I think my message is an important part of that too. I just want to have a nice life. I work so I can be generous and so I can care for people in this capitalistic hellscape that we live in.

Clementine : 6:26

There's a kind of a conflict, I feel sometimes that has to be worked out and reckoned with, at least within myself, of thinking, okay, well, I, I want to work towards everyone having a nice life. Yes, does that mean that I can't enjoy nice things? And I feel like there is. There are, those are important questions to ask because you're like, is this nice thing that I'm enjoying, actually something that I need, which is something your work has really taught me about? Like, is this nice thing, is it a nice meal? Or is it like, well, I'll just buy this nice dress that actually someone yeah, else labored?

Aja: 7:00

to make. But this is this is the thing, though. I think that we could still have nice things without exploiting other people. We can have nice things by going to mutual muse, as we did yesterday, and buying some beautiful secondhand clothing and engaging with the people that work there, and that's a job market, you, you know, and so everyone should have access to everyone should have access to nice things.

Aja: 7:24

It shouldn't be that, you know, only certain people of certain income level can afford a nice dress from a nice brand, and in shopping secondhand that is the only way I've been able to afford. If you look out there those dresses, all of them are from a brand that I formerly could not afford when I was in my 20s, and all of them have been purchased secondhand, every one of them. That one was eight pounds, that one was 25 pounds and then the one that's hanging on the other edge, that was probably like 35 pounds, but, like those dresses, were hundreds of dollars full price.

Clementine : 8:00

I had a really frustrating conversation with someone recently. This person I'd never met before. I just you know it was one of those kind of work events and they ended up at the table and she was so rigid about she had a real chip on her shoulder about growing up poor. This was a, you know, white woman from whose family was from background, was eastern european, I think, which, by the way, like my mother's yeah, mother was eastern european and poor. Yeah, enough to be in a concentration camp.

Clementine : 8:32

Yeah, so I got frustrated with her because she was acting as if somehow she was the only one with, and I was like honey, you don't know everyone's story. You don't know everyone's story, you don't know everyone's experience.

Clementine : 8:41

But she kind of flipped to this other direction where she was so rigid. I was talking about this need to share and like reimagine stuff, and she was like, what's her like communism? And I was like, well, yeah, maybe, if that's what you want to call it, you know basically everyone, everyone being looked after. And she was like, well, what if people can't do anything? And I was like, then you, look after them.

Aja: 9:03

You look after them exactly. It's not about leaving people behind or flinging them off the island. It's about community care.

Clementine : 9:11

Well, the really interesting thing I thought about it was that, for all of her devotion to this idea that, well, everyone needs to produce and everyone needs to contribute- in order to be taken care of. I was, like you, strike me as one of the most deeply unhappy people I've ever met in my life, and so, for all of your resistance to looking after others, yeah, it hasn't brought you anything exactly. It might have brought you, like, some kind of financial stability, but not anything real, certainly not joy.

Aja: 9:40

You know, I think about like my happiest moments. We moved um a few years ago and place that we live in now has um pear tree and that first year the pear tree was so abundant that like there was just no way we could. We also have a quench tree and the quench, the quench tree, is incredibly abundant, which is so funny because there's very few uses for quench, and my greatest joy was walking around and meeting my neighbors and saying, would you like some pears, would you like some quench? And it's this beautiful gift that costs me nothing, essentially, except for having this in my, in my backyard, that I can share with other people and like there is something beautiful about giving something to people and asking nothing in return and forming community in that way.

Clementine : 10:28

Well, I am, you know, a practicing witch and I have a beautiful spell book by a witch called Phyllis Kirkott and she's all about, you know, natural ebb and flow, like.

Clementine : 10:41

One of her spells, for example, is go for a walk in the woods and find a tree and ask the tree if you can sit with it for a while and sit there and think and then, at the end of the thinking, thank the tree and walk off. Now some people will hear that and be like well, that's not a spell, that's just some hippy-dippy bullshit. It's like it actually is a magic spell Going and sitting in nature and communicating with animals and plants and trees and then saying thank you, the spell is worked on yourself because it makes you realise that you're part of this big ecosystem. And she also recommends, as one of these you know, magic that we can do every day, magic spells we can cast every day. One of them is giving people things you know, giving people quencers, giving people a croissant, like bringing a coffee to someone, all of these things if we actually get rid of our assumptions about magic and witches and spellcraft and actually think we're part of this you know, living, breathing, ecosystem of life.

Aja: 11:43

Yeah.

Clementine : 11:44

And we all have. We can all get so much out of it. If what we think about is worth getting is what we put into it right? Yes, I.

Aja: 11:55

It made me think of um right before I had my fibroid operation. I was, I had an open myomectomy in october and it was quite an invasive surgery but I was fine. I did better than anyone possibly could in that situation. I woke up feeling so happy to be alive. But the day before I was walking past another neighbor that I hadn't met and she was pulling these vines, these invasive vines, off of her tree and just trying to prune her yard a little bit, and then with the vines she twisted them into these amazing reefs and she just left them for people to take. And I remember taking one and I don't know.

Aja: 12:33

It felt like it was symbolic of this era of my life that was ending um, which you know it's autumn, so it obviously started to dry out and whatnot, and a new beginning, you know, because I had been living with these invasive fibroids for years, close to a decade even, and I hadn't managed to get the surgery before COVID and then during COVID, it wasn't going to happen, and then during that time period, they grew and they grew and they grew, and so I was in so much pain which I now realize I was bleeding a lot. It was really not good and I think you know women were like I'm fine, I'm fine. Meanwhile, you can't leave your house for two days because you're practically like hemorrhaged it's like that scene from um monty parthen and the whole oh, yeah, just nothing but a flesh wound, just a flesh wound yes, exactly so.

Aja: 13:33

that was basically me when I would get my period, um, for the last, like five, six years maybe. It just got worse and worse and, um, I was very afraid of the surgery. I was quite convinced that I was not going to survive it. I'm quite afraid of a lot of things now now, and I felt like that re-symbolized this new beginning. It was lush and green and then it turned and now it's in my compost, but I feel like I've emerged from that new beginning. As a matter of fact, this year is like it feels like a year of hard things, because I did this surgery that I had been fearing for years. I got on the plane and went farther away from home than I've ever been, than anyone in my family has ever been, and but I'm someone who hates flying. Everyone else in my family is fine with it, not me.

Clementine : 14:21

Well, I think that stuff is all really important things to be proud of as well. You know that, the way that we challenge our fears, and you know I've said to you and this is helpful for anyone out there as well who struggles with flight anxiety because for a long time, weirdly, out of the blue, I'd always been fine with flying and then I just suddenly became afraid and I know for me different fear for you, but for me it was just a lack of control, which is always like it's more like a lack of control in your life. And then you're on a plane and you literally have no control.

Clementine : 14:51

Yeah, but one of the things that helped me was and someone else had given me this tip was to trick your brain by writing with your other hand. So I would start like writing letters to myself as the plane was taking off with my non-dominant hand, because it kind of like distracts your brain. It's almost like EMDR in terms of how it's like using parts of your brain.

Aja: 15:15

And I would just write letters to myself saying how brave I was. I'm gonna use that in a few days, by the way, you told me, and I was- too like yeah to do it, but I'm gonna.

Clementine : 15:20

I'm gonna try I think there's something. I mean this is another kind of form of magic spell too.

Clementine : 15:26

Yeah, okay, objectively speaking, it's not brave to to be on a plane you know object, objectively speaking, you're slightly afraid of, exactly, and if it helps you in the moment of, of being gripped by a completely irrational, illogical fear, to say I'm so proud of you, to be talking to your like higher self, your younger self, your inner child, your fearful self. Whatever it is to say I'm so proud of you, you're so brave, you've done this so many times and you're, and you're still. Even though you're afraid, you still get on the plane and you still keep doing it. You're, you're amazing. All of that stuff really helps. And then eventually I just actually I'm completely fine with flying. Now the plane takes off, I feel no anxiety at all. The only time I ever feel marginally anxious is if I'm really hung over, which makes sense. Yeah, I want to find out, asha, what is your birthday and year?

Aja: 16:19

may 19th 82 all right, so 1, 9, 10, 15, 16, 25 I do not know the time of day I was born. I've been trying to figure that out for years. It's not my birth year, 33, 35.

Clementine : 16:34

Well, this is really interesting because your birth year reduces to the number 35, which added up, comes to 8. And in tarot, that's my favorite number. Well, there you go. In tarot, the number 8 is a magical number. It's a magical number. It correlates in the major arcana to the strength card, and the strength card is this I'll show you in my deck.

Clementine : 17:01

The strength card is this beautiful image of traditionally in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, which this one is based on, it's an image of a woman with a lion, and in this one it's a beautiful black woman with flowers in her hair, a simplicity of like a sheet wrapped around her, which I feel like represents you to like, use what you have, and the lion next to her.

Clementine : 17:18

I'll post a photo of this as well. When I post this episode, the lion next to her has a similar wreath of flowers around their neck and it's meant to represent, and this moment that you learn, the eight is the beginning of the body part, sorry, the mind part. So one to seven in the major arcana is body, eight to 15 is mind and then the rest is spirit, and it's this transition from into the middle part of your understanding of life. And the lion represents not just your strength and how you've, kind of you know, developed your strength over the years, but also this understanding of strength as vulnerability. So she walks with the lion, knowing that the lion could hurt her, but trusting that the lion won't. Not because she's tamed the lion, but because she's learned to work with the lion. And so there's something really beautiful about the fact that that's your birth year, that's your number, and also you do this incredibly important work that suggests that your life is informed by this strength you know, not mentality, but the strength, energy.

Clementine : 18:25

And the eight as well, is the infinity symbol. So it's this idea as well that life never ends. Tarot, for me, has taught me about endings and beginnings, and the wreath that you mentioned Similarly. The wreath is an infinite circle. Nothing ever really ends, because everything that ends signifies a new beginning. Even if you believe that when you die there is nothing, your body just becomes worm food.

Aja: 18:49

Yeah.

Clementine : 18:50

That's still a beginning of something.

Aja: 18:51

You're still a part of this planet, which is why we have to take better care of it.

Clementine : 18:56

The energy is still there. So you are joining me for this. You know, this initiation of this new beginning of a project that I want to work on, which is talking to people that I love and doing tarot readings for them so that people can learn more about them, but in a different kind of way. I have this tarot readings for them to so that people can learn more about them, but in a different kind of way. I have this tarot spread that I've designed. I'm going to just pass you the cards now to shuffle them.

Clementine : 19:21

I've got this tarot spread that I've designed, called Bestie and for the benefit of the listeners it stands for the B is the bones of who you are, the E is the essence of who you are, the S is the strength that you have, you know come to in your life. The T is the throat, how you speak your truth. I is the imaginings that you have. What is the dream that you maybe are not even willing to admit to yourself. And E is the elevation for how you can make it happen. And and that concludes the introduction to this very special episode with Aja Barber A combination of exploring who she is as a person untethered in the world, untethered from capitalism, untethered from, you know, obsession with fashion, etc. Etc. All of the things that you love Aja for, but with the special twist of finding out exactly who she is through the medium of tarot. And you can tune into the second part of that episode this Sunday, coinciding nicely with Easter, where you will get to find out even more about your favorite sustainability influencer and writer and activist and all-around excellent human being. Aja Barber's book Consumed can be found at the link in the liner notes of this episode. You can follow her on Aja Barber on all of social media, wherever you find her, whatever you use, she is amazing, she's wonderful and we should all seek to emulate more of who she is in the world.

Clementine : 21:15

I hope that you join me for the deep dive into Aja Barber with my tarot cards and, as I said, let me know what you think. Email me on clementineford at gmailcom. If you like the show, you can subscribe to it, download, never miss an episode, rate and review it, please. Podcasts really do get out there by word of mouth and I am so grateful to everyone who has been downloading and sharing Untethered so far. I would really like to do some different, fun, cool things with it. You know I am at the stage in my life where I am really just seeking to bring joy and pleasure to my work and truth, so I hope that you will come on that untethered journey with me. Tune in on Sunday for part two of this episode with Aja. Until then, stay untethered, baby. Thank you.