The Magick of Truth-Telling

The journey toward transformation requires truth-telling— and I will go there with you, because our stories contain powerful magick and sharing them honestly creates pathways for healing and authentic connection.  Join me in daring to face what is hidden, what is vulnerable, knowing that when we keep the truth about our experience hidden, we block the potential for genuine growth, connection, and the ability to dismantle internalized systems of power and dominance so that we can be a part of collective liberation.  One truth is that we are relational beings, and everything we experience, from our earliest attachment experiences to our personal path and how we navigate the world around us, happens within the context of our relationships.  The path of healing then begins with honesty – and how the areas where we most passionately strive to support others are often the very places within ourselves that require the deepest attention. truth, and integration.  Thank you for being in-relationship with me as I strive to be just as honest here, as I invite you to be.  

Episode recorded on 6/6/25.

Chapters

• 0:26 Vulnerable Beginnings
• 9:24 The Illusion of Individualism
• 18:09 The Necessity of Relationships
• 25:34 Co-Regulation and Attachment Science
• 38:27 Daring to Tell Our Stories

Transcript

Erin: 0:26

Hello and welcome back. Get ready to dare together, truth-seeking in the depths for healing, transformation and collective liberation. I'm your host, erin O'Brien, licensed psychotherapist in practice for over 20 years, intuitive healer, relationship counselor and, dare I say, witch. I'm really excited for this episode. It has been a long time in the making about a week and this is my fourth attempt at recording it. My first three attempts there were apparently a lot more for me to learn around using this recording device and the software and the microphone and, yeah, all the things.

Erin: 1:28

And you know, it hit me actually this morning when I was not being truthful. I have been having a really difficult week. I got some information about one of our kids that really rocked me to the core and I should say that it's okay, our child is okay. So there's that. And I realized this morning, as I was, you know, kind of amused, kind of reflecting on wow, all these attempts to get this episode going and all the different like shape-shifting that it's taken with each iteration of each attempt I've made at recording it and just really grounding in. I have been using this very podcast to hide from my experience, from my grief, from my complex feelings and wow, here I am trying to create this space to dare to be honest, to go deep, to look in our shadow, to alchemize the difficult feelings. And you know, I'm wanting to offer this space and I was actually kind of deeply in touch with how much I need this space and how it's not really going to work if I'm using this to distract and avoid from the necessary deep places that I need to explore and be with. And, in fact, on one of the days where I had some space in my day which doesn't often happen, which doesn't often happen I planned to make another attempt at recording and I pulled some cards from one of my favorite divination decks Celtic Goddesses, witches and civilizations throughout our human history and I have a relationship with this particular deity. It shows up regularly for me.

Erin: 4:57

I did not heed that call, I did not listen to that divine guidance that was clearly showing up for me that day when I had all this space to be with my experience. And so I want to take a moment and read the prayer to RTO. The prayer to RTO, ancient One. May I know your strength and your bone-deep instincts when to act and when to retreat. When it is time to act, may I be strong and true when it is time to retreat. Cave dreamer, may I sink into the sacred darkness with you and draw your wisdom from the depths. May I rest in your warm embrace and be soothed and renewed until we can walk together. Strength returned, strong in tooth and claw, into the dawn. And that was the message for me and I really needed it, and I did not listen and my recording is not the one that you're listening to right now. It did not go well right now. It did not go well. Anyway, yeah, I just wanted to start there because it feels honest and vulnerable, and I also am thinking about how much I've been wanting to curate and be so intentional with every detail as I'm designing what I'm going to say, and kind of having this moment of awareness that I'm really working hard to not be vulnerable, to have it scripted even I had a script. I wrote a script, um, and just being humbled by the universe certainly by my you know, my spirit team and being confronted with the reflection in the mirror of I'm really working hard to not go there.

Erin: 7:36

Something that I've learned from a brilliant author and witch. Her name is Courtney Weber. She has no idea who I am, but I know who she is and I've read her books and followed her and her podcast, and she talked about in one of her books the experience of you know, becoming a magical person and really stepping into your experience as a witch and how the interesting thing about magic and the energy that you're putting out and when you're creating spells and you know rituals and trying to manifest something or call in something or heal something the universe is listening. The divine is awake and aware at what you're putting out there and invites you to be in even deeper accountability with that very thing you know and will lovingly challenge you on the ways that you are not doing that. So, yeah, I thought I would just start there and do a little free form and see how that feels and be honest that I was using this very platform to avoid my deep painful places and not be honest. So isn't that?

Erin: 9:10

You know my Chiron, which is an asteroid, and it's related to the cosmos and astrology and I am a follower in astrology and also, you know, an earnest learner and by no means someone who knows a ton, but I want to learn a ton and so what I've come to understand about my Chiron placement in my natal chart and Chiron is this beautiful asteroid that is pretty well known. Chiron is the wounded healer in mythology and it's sort of this key, this pathway of understanding what your wounds are and then also the journey to heal them. So it offers insight into both. And so my Chiron is retrograde, which means I got a long journey ahead of me, and is also in my 12th house, which is the place of hiddenness and you know, the subconscious and the realm of spirituality and mysticism and, um, deep trauma wounds, and it's also a karmic house. So I'm working out past life experience.

Erin: 10:34

So I'm just amused by this and also it hit me kind of like a light bulb this morning when I was just reflecting on wow, I really thought this experience might be a little more seamless or something, and I really got like an intense download of awareness of, yeah, it's not really going to be easy if you're working against the very thing you're trying to create by using it to hide from your own pain. So I I'm going to be really vulnerable here and share what is going on for me on this end and try not to get too caught in the details, because it is Gemini season, we are officially in June and it is also Pride Month, which is the time of year that is dedicated to queerness, to holding complexity, to being in the liminal space of becoming, to being with the gray, with the expanse a really incredible time. And I have some significant Gemini placement as well, it's one of my big three. So I, you know, have gone through, like I said, four different iterations of this episode, and what I want to move into now is talking about relationships.

Erin: 12:20

You know we do not exist outside the realm of relationships. We are in relationship to ourself, to our inner world. You know, certainly, our body, our mind, our heart, our soul, our higher self, our divine spark and our magic to all the dimensions and extensions of the self, and how essential it is, especially when you're on the path of a therapist, of a therapist, especially on one spiritual path, as a witch, I mean the path of being a magical practitioner or someone whose path and purpose feels aligned with the work of creating healing spaces, relational spaces. You have to know yourself, know thyself right, and I know for me, I love to create that space for others to deepen their awareness of their self, invested in another, as a way to not go into me or where I need to be and how, in my journey of what I've focused on over the years in my um, the space I provide others.

Erin: 14:17

You know my expertise. If you will right, it's the trainings that I feel really called to go into. Those are things that I need. Those are places that are in my shadow, in my blind spot inside of me. The traumas that I seek to help others integrate are the very places that I have not fully integrated. Want to understand something, how I inevitably return to a place of more consciousness and humility. That, oh right, that's the very place that I need to go into more deeply and I can get really. I love to go into another's deep realm. Oh, my Scorpio, it's like let me perceive into you what you're trying to obscure, let me help you illuminate it, let me help you see it, and all the while, it's the very thing that I need to see in me. So there's that Now, moving into relationships with others and with everything around us, right to the people around us, to our closest beloveds, to the strangers passing by us on the sidewalk, to the natural world, to the land, the trees, the animals, everything that inhabits our home, the earth.

Erin: 16:23

We're in relationship to the planets, our solar system, the cosmos, the energies around us that are unseen, that flow, unseen that flow. We are in relationship to, oh yes, our ancestors, to spirit, to ether, higher consciousness, the great ones, deities, higher power, creator, to divine source, right, right, the all and all and other names out there, and also we exist most definitely in relationship to a social, legal, political, national, global, a set of systems where laws, policies, practices, where laws, policies, practices, beliefs create and perpetuate dominant culture, right, and these hierarchical power structures are constantly impacting us. You know, believing that we are just individuals moving around without existing inside this systemic context of relating to everything and everyone in every moment, is actually a deeply dangerous deception, is actually a deeply dangerous deception. We have to talk about individualism here, which is the belief that I, as a single person, am more important than the group right and therefore entitled to own things, extract and hoard resources for my own advantage, no matter how this disadvantages or destroys all life around me. This is a deeply dangerous practice. This is a deeply dangerous practice.

Erin: 18:47

And what must one believe in order to do this? To be this, I have to believe that I am more worthy of life than you, than others, because they are less valuable, I have to devalue so I can dominate. Otherwise I would experience enormous dissonance Because, ultimately, I know on a deep level that we are all interconnected. What happens to me happens to you and what happens to you happens to me. It ripples out. How can it not? In a sense, I have to override the parts of me that know that know in my core, in my heart, that your humanity is interwoven with mine, in my heart, that your humanity is interwoven with mine. As I dehumanize you, I dehumanize me. Oh, I feel that, like in my body right now. It makes me want to cry. And we have seen what this does, how this operates all across the world and the obliteration life is utterly devastating.

Erin: 20:49

I'm breathing into that wave of grief that moves through my body right now Because we are also in a moment where we can shift the tide. You know, as this wave of grief moves through my body right now and the waters of awareness are sort of washing over me as I speak this truth, I also simultaneously am feeling into the space that is now open to something else that can exist alongside that, how we can strive to leave the world better than how we found it, what that opens up in me, when I feel into the grief, the emotion that can then make a way, is hope, right, an energy of purpose. When we can feel our grief, we can also connect to the joy and the life and the purpose. It can energize us. We can transform it in the moment, we can breathe into it and expand it. We can be in a place of feeling into what's possible.

Erin: 22:55

Let me name here that I am in no way bypassing the horrifying genocides and loss of life to human beings, to our planet, that is happening right now, right now, right now, and has been going on for forever and has been going on for forever. What I'm striving to hold in this experience, in this moment, is the complexity that my body can feel, can be with, and not my breath. I want to hold the complexity and not my breath, not my choice, to breathe in and make space for the life that is here and needs us now. Because we are that life. We need to be with the loss so we can make space for life. Lilla Watson said it best. I'm going to say her words here now. If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come, because your liberation is bound up with mine. Let us work together. How brilliant, how deeply true. So let's move into more of what is true. More of what is true, and there are dimensions, many dimensions of truth all coexisting, and our work is to make space to be with it. One truth is that we actually really need each other, actually really need each other. We need relationships and communities that affirm our experience and resonate with our humanity. We need affinity groups where we can feel a sense of belonging and celebration for who we are. I am so present right now, with it being Pride Month right now, and how powerfully healing connecting to queer folk has been in my journey and my identity development as a queer person.

Erin: 25:51

When I came out, I was 27. And I remember experiencing this kind of light bulb, this kind of awakening that happened in my consciousness and I was. I'll never forget it. I was at a club and I was there as a friend to someone who at the time was one of my best friends and a fellow therapist and a co-worker, and I was there at this lesbian queer bar in Philly called Sisters of All Names, and you know I'm there right Like for her, you know to support her because she's lesbian right and I'm, you know, her friend, her ally. And I'm there dancing and all of a sudden I have this lightning moment of realization as I'm dancing and something happened in my body and I just felt this opening up, this deep awareness of my attraction, you know, to her. But it really took me by surprise how, in a second, your awareness can just quake open and bring you to your experience of yourself that is utterly new and had been up until that split second, utterly unknown, completely in my shadow, for many reasons which I will go into. And you know, it was like a door that opened and my whole life changed from that point forward, my whole experience of who I was and what I felt, and it was quite a journey. So, you know, finding my queer people has been life-changing from an interpersonal, neurobiological perspective, because I'm a therapist here, so I'm going to be talking a ton about relational science and integrating that in our deep dives.

Erin: 28:40

We actually need others so we can experience an essential process called co-regulation, which involves reciprocal interactions and synchronized regulation of physiological and emotional states between us, between individuals. A wonderful theory that goes into this is polyvagal theory, both an interpersonal process of interaction and a neurological and biological process where the nervous system of one individual influences the nervous system of another. In early childhood, we really depend on our trusted adults to provide us with a relational environment of co-regulation and secure attachment, because our little bodies and nervous systems are literally underdeveloped and unable to self-regulate on our own. Our prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until we are actually in our early 30s, so that's really important for us all to know. It's through the process of co-regulation that we internalize the magic of those early interpersonal experiences that wire our brains and bodies I'm going to say that again that absolutely shape and form our brains and bodies and nervous systems, so that we know how to generate self-regulation as we develop and mature into adulthood. There's so much to explore on this and we will in future deep dives in future deep dives.

Erin: 30:38

But if you want to take a quick dip, there is someone named Dan Siegel who developed the concept of interpersonal neurobiology, which is essentially an interdisciplinary framework that explores the interconnectedness of mind, body and relationships, framework that explores the interconnectedness of mind, body and relationships. He has a book called the Power of Showing Up, which was co-authored with another researcher, tina Payne Bryson. They've written several books together the Whole Brain Child, the Whole Brain Teenager, I believe which really goes into interpersonal neurobiology and how the brain develops in childhood and the deep impact and influence the trusted adults have in creating secure attachment. The book, in particular, the Power of Showing Up is written for adults, right, who want to create secure attachment with children in their care, but I actually encourage folks to read it from the perspective of the child as well as the adult. The book covers what they refer to as the essential elements, or the four S's, which contributes to a child's healthy emotional development and secure attachment.

Erin: 31:55

So safety, right, the experience of feeling safe, of being safe. This involves protecting a child from harm and avoiding becoming a source of fear or threat. Caregivers need to create a physically and emotionally secure environment where children feel safe and protected. And I'm quoting a bit here the experience of being seen this gets at the heart of truly understanding a child's internal state, their thoughts and feelings, and responding appropriately and effectively with attunement. So you're attuning to a child's inner world and making them feel felt. I love that. Feel felt, feel known, feel like there's that resonance.

Erin: 32:45

The next experience is the experience of being soothed when a child is distressed, a caregiver's ability to soothe and care for them can help shift that negative experience and help that child integrate it, help that child metabolize it, if you will. And this involves attuning to the child's distress and providing comfort and support. And again, attunement. And then the culmination of these first three S's right Letting a child feel safe, seen and soothed, develop a sense of overall security and trust, not just in the caregiver but in the world. Because what we experience with our trusted adults really creates an internal working model, an inner map of our expectations for the world on a deeply unconscious level. So if I have the deep privilege in my early experiences of feeling like I can safely rely on and depend on the adults around me to respond to my emotions in a loving, consistent and attuned and available and available way, then as an adult I'm going to be able to have this kind of inner belief system, if you will, that close relationships are dependable, they're a place that I can reveal my innermost experience and vulnerability and that the people closest to me that I trust with that, with myself, really are going to respond with empathy and availability and respond in an attuned way. And that doesn't mean perfect, right. So take what you will for now and we will explore, like I said, much more on this. You know I want to say one more thing about this Most theories about attachment, research and practices right pertaining to the field of attachment science as it relates to both children, going all the way back to Bowlby, and also adult attachment.

Erin: 35:17

There's a whole field around adult attachment experiences and how to assess that and all the things. It really has blind spots and growth edges, bots and growth edges, if you will, on how the field fails to acknowledge issues of systemic trauma and depression and dominance. You know the hierarchical power structures that be, how all this impacts the context with which a caregiver is able to provide that secure attachment environment, or how partners are able to show up for each other, quite frankly, right. Or if they have the resources and support and community, if they have the capacity inside their body, if their community, if the people around them have the support inside their bodies to attend to the little loved ones, the adult loved ones, right, needing them for co-regulation and you know, and the ways that they showed up for me. So what else is true about relationships?

Erin: 37:13

Here's one being truthful and authentic with others is vulnerable. Being truthful and authentic with ourself is vulnerable. You have to dare to know yourself, and I know for me. You know I love to help other people know themselves and when it comes to me, I can often really use that to obscure what needs to be known in me. That's kind of my, I guess, lower vibration, or lessons that I continue to return to, because words matter and are powerful, magic right.

Erin: 38:21

Stories matter. Our stories, my story, your story. So, as this podcast continues to transform and as it transforms me in every lesson I'm learning especially since I started it not that long ago that this is not just going to be a place where I'm helping you dive deep. It's going to be a place where I am also going to go there with you, because we're in this together and it's going to be about our. Our stories are a powerful spell, they're a powerful path to heal and we have to be willing to tell our story.

Erin: 39:24

So I'm going to tell mine, not right now, because I think this episode is already pretty long. I hope you tune in to the next one, because I will be there telling my story. So thank you so much for being here today with me while I went a little free form and went into some realms of relationships and social location and those aspects of our bodies and how we need each other and the dominant systems that impact us, and it being Pride Month and how it's magic and a spell to say what's true. So thank you for being here while I said what's true. I'm your host, erin O'Brien, licensed psychotherapist in practice for over 20 years, intuitive healer, relationship counselor and, dare I say, witch, queer witch, queer witch. As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe. So the soul, bye for now, thank you.