Ep 23: Musings: Good Grief Girl

Mo hit a point where she couldn’t tell if she was gathering insight or just collecting noise, so she pulled out the one tool she can’t escape: discernment. With the Pisces new moon overhead, she talks through what happens when astrology, tarot, and “readings” start to replace your own knowing, especially when you’re low-key trying to survive a breakup you don’t want to admit mattered. The emotions are honest and a little funny, because that’s the Pisces way sometimes: laugh so you don’t cry, and then cry because you can.

She unpacks the grief that isn’t only about a person, but about losing a witness to your life. The simple nervous system comfort of sleeping beside someone, having a built-in sounding board, and sharing the extraordinarily ordinary. She also names the weird loneliness that can show up when friends get back into relationships and you feel the lopsidedness. From there, Mo looks straight at avoidant attachment patterns, the tug of love that keeps pulling away, and how avoidance often isn’t about “the thing” at all, it’s about avoiding a feeling.

Then we pivot to creation and self-trust: making music by feeling instead of technique, learning to recognize the body’s unmistakable “this is it” signal, and facing a big decision about investing in space for art. Our hostess talks about crying as somatic release and nervous system regulation, why gratitude can bring tears too, and the idea that fear and joy may live in the same root system. 

Plus, there’s a Spotify playlist treat waiting for you called “Good Grief Girl.”

Download and listen here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/64ltGbMTWEC5nRgctaYhAg?si=gk86nAEfTdODrFmuZns9_A&pi=ahZyyYKyQkOUk 

If this hits, listen through, share it with a friend who’s rebuilding, and leave a review so more people can find it. What feeling are you ready to stop avoiding?

Instagram: @tiam.podcast &  @joyscout.mo 

For Guest Inquiries, collaborations, and questions:

Email Mo: mo@joyscoutstudio.com

“Don’t get Deterred, get Inspired” 

Transcript

Seeking Readings And Discernment

Mo 0:04

Okay. I think I've gone a little hardcore into getting some readings lately. Be they psychic or tarot or looking deeply into too close to astrology to even understand or comprehend anything because you're overwhelmed by data points of just feelings and ideas, you know, you can only This is where that classic discernment comes into play, which is just letting a little bit of that spiritual compass from some outside source help you direct yourself in a way that feels as though things make sense or that you're making progress on on anything that you're and you're figuring out internally or or working towards. And um today is a it's a Pisces new moon. And I was just trying to do some some gathering of insight before I reflected on what I thought that meant for me, because I just like I said, I feel like I have oversaturated that area of my life a little bit l recently because well I think it might have been because I was going through a breakup that I didn't want to admit was uh was me going through a breakup because I I refused to to really say that it had meant that much, if that makes sense. Um not that like I know deeply how much it meant to to me, but I going into it, I didn't want it to have any more power than I wanted to give it because I deeply felt and knew in my heart and in my and in my mind that it wasn't gonna be anything more than it was gonna be, and it was great, but there was no growth there. There was some healing there, but healing and growing are not the same things, and there was a lot that I healed, and I healed a lot of body stuff. Somatically, being in a a partnership with someone for a number of months was able to calm me down because I was able to like fall asleep with somebody and and tell someone what was like going on in my life, and I feel really fucking emotional when I say that because I god, I just I want that so badly, and I think I have and I'm I'm you know, I'm I imagine quite a few single people feel this feeling, which is that you don't have that one singular person to be that sounding board to, and like past a certain age, and I just mean the age of probably like high school into college, and I try not to categorize things based on age because it can be really unhelpful when I think it's limiting, but in this case, it is maybe a place for you to understand what I mean when I say that once you have shared your life with one person, be it dating them or living with them, or just having that that that constant that one person who has that way of absorbing and you know, absolving and or reflecting your day-to-day life, and you know, knows about the new job or knows about the fact that you want this to happen, or knows where you went to lunch, and it like has a favorite spot to go with you. And Saturday morning you check in with them first before you kind of check in with anybody else because you want to spend your weekend with them, and and then suddenly that that archetype of of an experience that human is no longer present, and then you feel that absence so much more, and it's and that's the part that you you grieve. You grieve that you don't have this this plug-in, this place to to upload and to download into and to be like help me with some of these feelings, or like you know, just show that you they're there, and I'm not the only one that that is caring and seeing and experiencing and sorting through and making sense, and like it's the same thing. Like you you plug into them and they plug into you, and you get to like you, someone calls you, and you get to hear about their day, and I am just so in love with it. Like, I'm so in love with hearing that's one of my favorite parts of of my friendships is when I get to hear about their lives and their days, and it's so meaningful to have someone to be able to call and someone to be able to like have your weekend coffees with or your weekday coffees with or to go out with in the evening. And you know, one of my one of my people in in my life um started seeing someone recently, and I feel, you know, you feel the lopsidedness immediately when your friend is getting back into a relationship, and what I feel is like happy for her because I'm you know, like that one of the that's that beginning feeling when you first start dating someone is one of the most exciting and expansive, and just like the whole experience is sometimes just worth it for that, you know. Whether or not you make it to forever or you you break up somewhere along the way, like that, just that beginning is such a tone to set for like why you showed up and you want to fall in love to begin with, because you're just it's so exciting to have this person who wants you as much as you want them. And I goddamn, today is forgive me, but today is gonna be a little it's gonna be moments of emotion, I think, that pop, which is good because I I need that, I need that. My podcast is like my partner right now. Like, I I have wonderful people to give me perspective and grounding and to hear about my life. But like when your people have their own person, there is always a little bit of like filtering because you know, you're like, wait, did I tell you this part already? And if you had someone who was there to witness you and like all of you, they know these things and they get to hear these things, and that's the part that you know it's really just me doing that right now, and and if you know, it's it's a lot of my friends who are just doing that right now, and it's and one and one part of the experience is like something that I would never trade because I know, gosh, I know myself and I know my friends, and I, you know, being out of a partnership and hanging out with a lot of my friends who are also not in partnerships, there's just such an enthusiasm for the day to never end if you are hanging out, which I adore because when people are seeing someone, they want to return to that person. Like you're like their little you're like their little treat into the outside world. And now they're like, okay, thanks for the last three hours or however long it was, and then they they return back to what they were doing and or to who they were doing. And and I can't blame them because I want to return to the person that I'm doing too. I want the person to come pick me up and immediately want to do things with me, to me, and for me. And the with me, did I already say that? And I think that this moon, as I as I get back to how I started this nine minutes later, with the moon and Pisces, I I was born in I was born February 21st, so I just experienced a birthday, and it was a fucking phenomenal time. And I I'm a Pisces. I'm a Pisces baby. And with the moon emerging with what I know to be an a Piscean experience, I always find Pisces to be some of the funniest people. And because it's like a juxtaposition type of humor, where you know, any comedian that you've ever met, they know some they know some stuff about life. They've they've had to carry multiple truths at any one point, and they turn it into a crafted humor. And I feel that Pisces is so much like that because they have to make sense through all of the perspectives that they're always feeling, and so much of it I think can come out as just like laughter, otherwise, otherwise you're you're crying, and and that part that has been a very intimate part of this past year where I would have these moments of being of being furrowed, like like my body is furrowing, you know, like a furrow between the brow, but like the whole body is holding on to this this tenseness, two things are pushing together, and between them is is me, and uh and it becomes this this dance of like avoidance and also of of inescapable truth, because you can only release that type of tension and that type of brushing up against yourselves in in a great release. And when let's say I'm with a partner, that great release is almost entirely just so deeply physical and intimate and and warm. And it's like just that that it's it's like you know, my body meeting their body, whether you're looking at this like two people getting it on, or you're looking at it like just having that presence of that very tangible, touchable realness to to find something else to press against, someone else's life to press your life up against. And and that pressure is something that I love, but it sucks when you're pressing that when you're pressing up against someone's life and they keep pulling away, and it's not in a type of pulling away that you can necessarily pinpoint because it's a feeling, and it's nothing that they're saying, and it's not necessarily anything that they're doing, it's just that they turn off the feeling because feeling is something that you do indeed get to control, and like whether or not you want someone to feel a certain way, it turns out that like love is something that you are is like energy that you're pushing back and forth into one another, and especially with some of these avoidant individuals. Man, I know it's a gross, it's just one of those terms that I I almost feel like it's like so prescriptive, but it's real, it's it's true. So many dudes specifically are so avoidant. And I and I wonder why I myself have been so navigated and pulled towards them in the last few years. Because I know that that means that that exists within me as well. And this this temptation to play with that tug and pull of that, like, you know, that that's that person's world against my world that creates that that that pressing against and that that furrowing, it can be such a distraction from I think the pain that I've spent the year allowing myself to feel, which is grieving something that can't quite be named, and and the frustrations of trying something that's very hard without any of the validation that one otherwise had lived off of for so long, um, and to be so isolated through my trial and error of starting a podcast and creating a mobile studio that I wish was ready for the mobile part and and coming up against again and again whether or not the decision is to keep going, or that the the the self and inner judgment that says that it should have already happened and maybe you need to let this thing go. And also let trying to let something go and it's just attached to you. So then there's that feeling too, where you're like, I couldn't even put this down if I wanted to put it down. And I think that it's the same as with another person, it's the same with that partnership, it's the same with that type of love. Like sometimes you just can't put it down. Like it's just it's attached to you. And when I talk about this, this furrowing of like the body, when I when I talk about working through pain points and like needing to cry to physically release tears, has been such an active part of my week to week where I'm like, oh, did you did you cry this week? In some ways it was like, oh, I think I gotta cry again. And at first I would get annoyed because I'm like, no, you just did. Like, can you not? But it was God, I look back on it now and like I thought it was just gonna be this thing that that I was gonna have to make so much room for just this innate sadness to always exist. And what was really happening was that I was getting comfortable in training, I was training my body to like understand when it needs to release that feeling, and that the act of crying is not always sadness, it's it's just it's just not. And it's the easiest way to get to crying, I think, because otherwise it's intense gratitude, and it's hard to to feel that type of gratitude. That is another that is another deep embodied practice that it could take a long time for you to get to, unless, unless you really deeply perceive your your world and your people and your choices, and you you fill you fill your life with that type of like love and knowing, then I think gratitude can be met with those tears. And um gratitude and grieving are similar. Okay, sometimes to be the most grateful for something, you have to admit that it exists, and that's really hard if you're avoiding admitting that you need help, and so you're grateful that someone is helping you, but you have to admit that you need help, and so you've been standoffish towards them, or you've been rude towards them, or you don't understand why you're short with them, and it's like because they're helping you, and you feel like you shouldn't need help, and that's that you should be solo, that you should be fine, but they keep showing up and they love you, and you just need to be grateful, and you just you're so mad, you're mad, or you're ashamed, or whatever it is, and so you're just kind of juggling these two these two feelings of and you're allowed to do that, like everything is things things contain multitudes, and it very much is the balance, it is that balance of I can hold both things, and they are both true, and if I juggle many things at once, that's also still true, and and I've been you know practicing that that release because it's so scary to keep showing up for things that have yet to necessarily manifest in a way that would show me both literally and and emotionally, and like that I would feel as though progress and changes have been made. And that's what I'm thinking about on this moon. Like that that's what's coming forth. What I'm I'm thinking about, and I've gotten a lot of help from a lot of uh phenomenal astrologers who were here online, and and you know, many random card pullings that I find sparked something inside of me, whether it was like a thought or feeling, and I and I tucked those away, and I've been juggling what that means. Like, what does this mean and what do I want to do with this? And sometimes there's nothing to do. Sometimes there is nothing to do. Like every single day you could say something astrologically is happening. I know it's very exhausting. Um, but today it is for me a very big deal, and I have been wondering why that is, and I've been trying to shape it for me, and and I think it's because it is so much about the feeling part of my identity, um, and of anyone's and of anyone's. Like if this if this speaks to you, the feeling part is so pivotal in if you can understand and navigate the feeling of something, like what happened, like where do you feel it in your body, if it feels good, bad, exciting, if you can navigate a decision based off of like how you're gonna feel when this happens, how you're gonna feel when this happens, and and whether or not one feeling is worth all the other feelings. And if you can decide whether or not you want to commit and show up to someone with two feet all in, and and that the feeling of being with them is worth all the other feelings of being hurt by them or abandoned or scared or or not feeling good enough. If that feeling, you know, and you're navigating feelings, and like if they put two feet in too, like, can you navigate what it is that you think that they're feeling and or what you feel that they are feeling? Because I just think so much can be solved, so much unsaid, does not even have to be said when you can really feel the world around you. And there are we're all such mind beings, and we're so cerebral, and it's absolutely beautiful and complicated and and stimulated, but first there is just this this feeling, and with this this year of of processing and and feeling excitement and and sorrow and fear so much fear. I so so so want to feel the joy. And if joy is the same as the muscle that I've been, you know, putting the work in as far as releasing that pressure as far as like crying, then I have to like practice joy. And at a certain point, because when you are processing how you're feeling, it's really quick to just be like, okay, why do I feel this? What is this? And if something, if there is a catalyst for feeling that way, then maybe you can kind of navigate like why it is that you feel that way based off of something that happened, something someone said, you know, a trigger point that comes up, and then you feel this way, and then you do this, and then it compounds, and and so that's super helpful to to do that and to experience that and to to get comfortable with how you respond to different outside triggers. Um and then, you know, to to cry if it's gonna get you back on track because like you're you basically I'm basic basically regulating my nervous system, really trying to get this thing back online because it's been through just been through it. And and the last couple of weeks, it hasn't been. I have felt a deep calm. And so I was at the keyboard the other day, I at the the musical keyboard, and and one of the ways that I've been experiencing intuitively about writing chords is is really just singing what I know of the song that I'm creating again and again, and not being attached to how it goes and changing my mind a lot along the way, but also hitting keys. And there's a certain moment where you hit something and you start building on it, and there's a pattern that you're playing that this emotion will hit you, and and and that's the thing that's like this is it, this is it, and because you feel it, you feel it, you feel it because it's you cannot deny the feeling that you have, which just says that this is it. And like if you haven't had that feeling, then you haven't had that feeling, and there could be different ways for you to to get to a certain type of certainty in your body. But when it comes to this type of trying to make music, when it comes to me not technically knowing how to play people. You know, what I'm doing is going at it from a feeling standpoint. And um then one has to ask themselves, do you trust yourself enough to make something like this and to show it to the rest of the world? And you know, I have only had little bits of that so far, so I don't know. But at the same time, I think I do. I feel that I do. And it's just like that with life. It is this feeling of is this the right thing? And I have a a choice to make. I have a couple choices to make that I want more options. And at the same time, I'm wondering if I want more options because I don't want to make the decision yet. And I think that that might be it, saying it out loud. Because I'm afraid that if I that I'm afraid that I'm gonna set myself back longer if I if I make the wrong choice. You know, I've been working at I've been looking at workshop spaces to to finish out my art collection. Um I should not even finish it out. I don't even know why I'm saying it that way. That's such a that's such an old story. I'm gonna put that story down too. I'm not finishing anything. I'm beginning something. I'm really getting into a space to get as weird as possible in and to make some of the biggest, loudest art I've ever made because I'm deeply longing and yearning for it. And and I am revving up this call like again and again. I get inspired by something, and I'm like, okay, like just tuck, not not save it for later, but like tuck it into this, this, this certainty that this is what you want, you know? And so I'm like collecting that feeling because I know it's the next step. And yet, once you're in a space, sometimes it's like it there's other stuff that comes up, and I'm just like, am I prepared for that stuff to come up? And like, what if at the end of this, you know, this lease or this experience, like I just set myself back again, or I get deterred, or like I start a thousand things that I don't finish, and all of these, all these things that have happened in the past. And and yet there's a part that's like, you already did those things, so this time might be different. And this time is really different a lot of ways because I've never I've never been in a space like this, and it's a space that I've wanted to be in. Is it exactly the space? No, but it is definitely a step on the staircase, and um, you know, and it's just it's big money stuff. It's big, it's big investment stuff. And when I think about that commitment, I'm like, this is the type of person that I want to fucking be to just totally invest in myself and what I'm doing, and to show up and do the work that lights me up. And yet there is there is fear, and and I'm not ignoring the fear, but also I am I think I'm ready to play, I'm ready to play the game again. And I'm ready to I'm ready to make some risks, I'm ready to take risks, I'm ready to be risque, and I've always been ready to play that risk when it comes to different types of love, you know, and this is this love is is deeply just with myself and my talent. And that is something that I think I used to say, but I didn't feel it because there was so much stuff to work through, and I feel in my throat a little bit too just now. Um the gratitude of knowing that when you are doing a creative thing and you haven't done it before, you just keep showing up. And that is probably if I were to look at season one of this podcast, I think showing up is one of the things I have said the most. And because like that is that is great love. Great love continues to show up. And when you're and you're making something and you have never done it before, you have to just even if it is to witness, even if it is to be frustrated, even if it is to be mad, even if it is to just weep and to feel sorry for yourself, that is that is you being present and like how this process is is becoming you and how you're becoming it. You can tolerate the unpleasantries, but you can't avoid them for too long because when you avoid something, you innately go in the opposite direction of what it is that you want. Like if you're like, oh, I'll go over here because this is unpleasant, but you're if you keep doing that, then you'll you'll sort of train the muscle that gets aggravated during the annoyance to avoid anything that aggravates this muscle, which could be a whole plethora of things. And you thought it was just this one thing, but like it's now the feeling of of annoyance that you're avoiding, or it's the feeling of love that you're avoiding. And so you meet this person and you are in love with them, and you spend a number of years with them, and then they end up um cheating on you and and betraying your trust. And you bought a ring because you were gonna propose to them, and you thought that that was love, and you thought that that was love, and you thought that that was love, and now love does not feel safe, and it makes you feel betrayed, and betrayed makes you feel foolish or scared, betrayed makes you feel alone, and these are all under the umbrella of of love, and now you have spent a number of years away from this person and you meet someone new, and you don't want to fall in love because love is betrayal and it is loneliness and it is pain. And so when you start falling in love with them, you have to avoid the things that are making you feel as though you love them. They did this thing that makes you feel loved, and you're like, okay, let's not pick that up, and then you get excited that they call. Okay, let's not. I don't want to get excited that they're calling. Now I'm annoyed. Okay, let's avoid this. And then it starts compounding, and now you think the feeling altogether is this person that you have fallen in love with, but love is unsafe because of all of these points, and now you have avoided the path that actually gets you to what you wanted, you know, four four or five years ago, which is love, and um it's just like that with business and with art and with the pursuit of anything that you love, man. Anything that you love, anything that you're trying to figure out, anything that isn't that is scary or uncertain, it will press up against these parts that you forgot why you were avoiding them, because really you're just avoiding the feeling, and then you have to sit with the feeling to understand what it was that you were avoiding. And I am excited about this moon because I am so done with being afraid. Like, there's just there's a lot of fear, and that's my fear, it's my fear, but I am not it, it belongs to me, but it is not me, and I can't pluck it away, you know, because once you start identifying all the things, there's just this one little node that seems to be like attached to your person, to your body, to yourself, to your concept of like life. There is this little nodule that is like the fear nodule, and there's a little nodule that is the happy nodule, and there's a little nodule that is the sad. And it was the sadness nodule that made me realize that like once you start naming all the things that make you sad and feeling sad when you are sad, you will get down to the bottom of just that sadness nodule, like the little button that says this is what sad feels like, and you think that you're supposed to pluck that nodule out, but it is you, it's yours, it's there for you to shape the things that don't feel so good or the things that feel so good, that the complexity of it is that of like great, great gratitude and and joy and fear, same nodule, man. Like they are these two, like, in order to have that type of fear, you have to also have the the endurance and the aptitude for that type of great joy. And so the truth is that I have been exercising so much fear, and because of that, I'm so ready to experience so much joy. I'm gonna go cry because I feel grateful. So fucking grateful. If you've made it this far, I have a little treat today. It's gonna be found in the description. There's a link to Spotify playlist. Sorry if you're an Apple music person. I'm just I'm just not. But it is a playlist of songs that I just couldn't put down this week. Um, a couple at the end of songs that have just been staples in my wanting to dance and move and feel things. But the beginning are just they're just some new sounds, and they, you know, they might not be new to you, but they're new to me in the way that sound and music can be timeless in that way, and it will find you and move you when the moment is right. And I've wanted to do this for this podcast since the beginning. I wanted to close out an episode with a song, um, but I'm doing it now. So go give it a listen. It's called Good Grief Girl.