0:00:03 - Briar
Hello everyone, welcome. I am Briar Harvey. This is the Neurodiversity Media Network, and today we are talking about how to have hard conversations. y'all. I am joined by the spectacular Dr. Melissa Bird, and today we are talking about nuance and non-binary thinking, and I think this is maybe the most important part of this conversation.
0:00:38 - Dr. Bird
I think so.
0:00:41 - Briar
How to come to a conversation without having to be right, right, how to participate and hear what other people are telling you without having to win. It's big stuff and it's hard, so let's talk about it.
0:01:16 - Dr. Bird
I have to tell you that I have all the conversations that we've had so far and all the ones I'm sure we have yet to have.
This one is the one that lights me up the most And I think honestly it's because I used to be so entrenched in this all or nothing win or die either, or way of thinking that if you can't be 100% with me on every single thing, that I believe you are nothing, and I cannot express enough how full and rich my life is now that I have given that up, the idea of realizing that life is not all or nothing, it's not a zero sum game, and most of the things that impact our lives directly are not a zero sum, all or nothing endeavor. Things are very messy and muddy and sometimes things aren't really clear until you're there, and I feel like, for so many of us, we actually muck about in the messy middle And with the, i would say in the last 20 years, with the advent of social media and these little computers in our hands and just this access to so much stuff, we've forgotten the fine art of debate.
0:03:05 - Briar
The issue is, and will always be, that if you turn disagreement into the enemy, then you have already lost.
0:03:22 - Dr. Bird
Yeah, i think that profoundly, what we are missing in dialogues and this has come about from you and I having many conversations about how scary it is that people are unwilling to engage in nuanced, delicate, touching, vulnerable conversations about things that are really complicated and difficult And I have practiced this publicly online for years with my friend, amy Wolf, who, in the very beginning of our relationship, we met in the ballroom because I was speaking and she was speaking and I was live tweeting this event. This is like in I think it was 2017, because it was right when I first moved to Oregon and we were the only two people in the room in this huge ballroom And I just went up to her and said hi to her and asked her why she was there and one of our girls was with her daughters and we start talking and I was like we should go to lunch or something, because I really liked her. I was like we should totally connect, have coffee or something. And she looked me up online and I had posted something about Plain Parenthood, about how awesome Plain Parenthood is or something, and she tried. This is how she tells the story and the reason I'm telling this is because I think it's really important in this conversation we're having. She says I tried to unfriend you because there was no way I was going to be friends with a supporter of Plain Parenthood and God told me no, no, no, you have to be friends with her. And I was mad That's what Amy says I was not happy about this, but she's a very, very deep Christian conservative woman and so and I didn't know that, and so we go to lunch and she's just freaking out because she's sitting, i'm, she's like I'm sitting with this heathen right, this outwardly bisexual, pro-choice feminist.
I wasn't going to church yet, and so she's like sitting with this heathen, right, and but it turns out we just love each other, like we are so connected, spiritually connected, to each other, and and so we decided, because we were having these really like talking about abortion and guns and sex and you know sex, ed and schools and gays and all the things, and just loving each other through these conversations, and so we started taking them online, unscripted, publicly. Now here's the thing that was really fascinating about this Her friends were DMing her saying oh my gosh, this is incredible. Thank you for so much for exposing us to perspectives from Missy. We would have never talked to anybody like her. Otherwise, how do we have bigger conversations with people like Missy, and my friends were coming into my DMs.
How dare you give her a platform? she is the root of all evil. She's dangerous. She's a terrible person. I can't believe you would sit in the same room with that woman and call her your friend, and Amy couldn't believe it. She's all what, and I'm all mm-hmm. So much for the acceptance of everybody right. And what that taught me, briar, is that people who identify as liberals and progressives are not ready to have nuanced conversations about things that matter to them, and I'm saying it out loud on the neurodiversity media network people who identify as liberal and progressive have an awful lot of work to do when it comes to tolerance, diversity and inclusion.
0:07:22 - Briar
It's 100% true, and it's uncomfortable because it's the space that we live in and occupy you a great deal of the time. It certainly still is where most of my beliefs live. I'm not changing my mind about the things that are important to me.
0:07:55 - Dr. Bird
And that's not what's being asked of us when we embrace nuance And when we get out of this binary all or nothing thinking, this extreme thinking that it's not an invitation to give up your values and your beliefs and the things that you think are critically important. It is an invitation to get uncomfortable and to sit in that discomfort and to realize that you're not actually triggered because triggered is a trauma response But that in many conversations we're just really uncomfortable with hearing how somebody else feels about things that matter to us. And that's what creates all this divisiveness, i think. I think it's that lack of willingness to be to squirm. I was. I had my husband watch the lovely and fabulous Robin Wall Kimmerer, who wrote Grading Sweetgrass and Gathering Moss, which are two of my most favorite books on the planet, and she's an Indigenous woman from. She teaches in New York And but her roots are here at Oregon State University, which is right by my house, and so she gave a talk in the Department of Forestry about disrupting and dismantling monocrop thinking.
0:09:20 - Briar
So that sounds perfectly benign unless you actually know what's going on here.
0:09:30 - Dr. Bird
Yeah, so she's taking the application of Three Sisters Farming which is a very, very old, tens of thousands of year old tradition of growing bean, squash and corn, which is better for the soil, better for the plants, better for all the things, right, and it's a regenerative way of farming which was totally dismantled when the colonists came and, you know, annihilated all the things. But she's talking about how, in this talk, she's talking about just completely getting rid of monocrop, thinking that there's only one way to think about the earth and about the forest and about the plants and about nature and the waters and the land. And I was watching my husband visually squirm because she is completely disrupting white supremacist masculinity in this conversation, and it is. I mean, he was like I was like are you okay? He's like like what's happening? And I was like I think she's hitting on some buttons. And he was like I don't know if I can get through this. And I was like, oh, you're getting through it. You have to listen to this because it's important for us to move forward in our conversations about our farm, in our marriage. Like I'm like this is good stuff for you to get on. And he was visibly squirming Breyer And I was like this is going to be so good, and it is. It's what has happened to that man just from listening to that. One conversation that made him so visibly viscerally uncomfortable has been an opening. I could not have done it better myself, honestly, and this is why I think it's so important for your listeners and the people who are watching this to think about this. Like it's okay for us to have a visceral reaction to something Like when did that not be okay?
I learned speech and debate in the 80s and 90s. Right, like I'm a middle-aged woman I'm not afraid to admit it. Right, i'm turning 49 this year. We learned how to debate about stuff that was hard, Like it was. The goal was to. The goal was to get to state, to go debate at state. Why don't we do that anymore?
0:11:57 - Briar
Not only that in high school forensics and college forensics, there is now an increasing number of judges who will not hear arguments or will not find four arguments that they do not personally agree with.
0:12:17 - Dr. Bird
That is not okay, right.
0:12:20 - Briar
That is not okay. That's not how this works.
0:12:23 - Dr. Bird
No, i don't and I don't. Really it makes me like, yeah, I get all screechy, like I don't get it because I don't want to be friends with someone who thinks exactly like me. Like, my favorite thing about Jim and is that when I met this man, i'm coming out of a lesbian relationship, out of a marriage with a woman I've been with women for 12 years Like Mr Man was very unexpected. I was like hoping for another cute little baby dyke, like that's what I was shooting for. I was not expecting a pro-life, pro-gun military army sergeant Republican No, no, no, no from Orange County, not what I was expecting In our conversation.
What he has done for me and what I have done for him is we've moderated each other And the people I am friends with do not all agree with me And what I have found is that that has brought a richness to my life And a richness to my business. Like the people I work with aren't always in alignment with me spiritually, politically, socially either, but they come to me because they know I can help them bridge that right. And why aren't we seeking to be the bridge instead of the army? Why are we continually trying to scream and yell at each other?
0:14:03 - Briar
So Liz Gilbert, who is an incredible author I think one of my favorites recently announced that she was shelving the production of her new novel, because it is about Russian dissidents fleeing Russia And some people are uncomfortable. The issue here is that the people who are uncomfortable don't seem to be Ukrainian or Russian dissidents. They seem to be people who only care about appearing a certain way, and I have a problem with people shelving creative bodies of work because it might make someone uncomfortable.
0:15:19 - Dr. Bird
The whole purpose of art is to disrupt. It is to make people I mean literally. I have a vision of the Virgin I can't I'm opposite Who is shaped like a vagina, because I mean hello, all of you, just for funsies, google search statues of the Virgin Mary. Do you know how visceral People? it is disturbing for people. They are so uncomfortable with this piece of art that I have behind my head. Pussy Riot is another great example. Pussy Riot putting on their baklava and going into Russian Orthodox churches to perform punk rock and then getting arrested as a form of artistic uprising against the dictatorship of Putin. I almost said Stalin. The purpose George Orwell's 1984, most of the books on my shelf about witchcraft and magic and religion and Native American teaching, like hello. The purpose of writing is to disrupt. The purpose of novels as a form of art is to disrupt. When did we become a space where we could put the pressure on artists to stop?
0:17:00 - Briar
So I think the answer to this question is when did we start prioritizing? and I'm going to answer your question with the question When did we start prioritizing safe spaces?
0:17:18 - Dr. Bird
Oh, this is really interesting. This is really interesting to me as a public speaker and someone who provides workshops, right So fascinating because I noticed that for some facilitators have moved away from saying this is a safe space to saying this is a brave space. One of the things I find really fascinating is that I can enter a room of grown ass adults Breyer we're talking 60 people who all have jobs, who all pay rent or a mortgage, who all pay bills, who all have to go to the grocery store to go grocery shopping for themselves, who may or may not have a car payment, but for sure they've got a big person job, like an adult job, and the expectation is that I walk into the room and I tell everybody that they can get up any time to pee. Now listen, i taught preschool for years, years. I taught preschool for years. Never did I have to tell a four-year-old they could get up and pee, never, never. They just got up and peed. But I have to say it's okay for you to get up and eat. It's okay for you to get up and drink. It's okay, if something makes you uncomfortable for you to leave, which I actually don't agree with, but I like getting paid. So sure, i'll set that. If you're uncomfortable, it's okay for you to leave.
But why do I have to tell adult human beings this? Because, let me just tell you, when I was teaching preschool, if something made one of those kiddos uncomfortable, two things would happen. One, they would freak out on whoever was making them, un-bugging them. They'd be like, leave me alone. They'd scream, they yell, some of them would hit, because when you're four, that's what you throw your toys and have a moment, exactly. And then they just get back to the process of engaging again because they're like well, i'm done with that. Great Want to go play. Sure, okay, right, but for some weird reason, as adults we have come to expect that the facilitator of a workshop, a training, a speech, is supposed to make us feel more comfortable about being there, when actually y'all chose to walk in the room And this is the thing that I find so fascinating about where we're headed to the country. And I talked to other people outside of this country and they're like what are you doing over there? I don't know, i really don't know. But why do we have to tell grown adults how to engage? I don't get it. And the change. I don't think it's a change for the better everybody Like. Can we just like think about this for a minute I don't know everything.
I wish I did, like I put Dr Melissa Bird by my name because I want people to think I know everything, but I really just don't. I don't know everything And in fact, i want you to teach me more of things. I want to understand more of things. I want to have deeper, more robust, more beautiful conversations about all of the issues that affect all of us. I don't want to hyper focus on the fact that I'm a member of the LGBT community. I don't want to hyper focus on the fact that I am a woman. I don't want to hyper focus on the fact that I have a PhD Or that I'm a witch or that I'm a preacher. Right, there's a lot of different ways that we can describe each other and describe ourselves. I want to be the entirety of this big giant mess. I think where I went with that. But there we go.
0:21:06 - Briar
That we? we have a choice here. Are we our affinity groups Or are we part of the human race? Are we humans?
0:21:23 - Dr. Bird
being. This is something that has really been coming to me a lot lately, but like I'm a dream about it, i've been writing about it. I just wonder what would happen if, all of a sudden, we just all became humans being. What would happen if we recognized that we are all part of these identities? for sure, and I love all of my identity. I love everything about who I am, which is also quite refreshing. What a lovely place to be in, by the way, for all my messiness. I love how messy I am. Sometimes I'm really destructive and loud and angry and mad, and sometimes I am tender and juicy and squishy and lovely And like all the things. Like what if we could just be humans being, like, if we could just engage in the action of being present? What would change for all of us if we stopped yelling at each other and just were present in the mess?
0:22:37 - Briar
So how do we get to be okay with being in the messy middle?
0:22:52 - Dr. Bird
I think the very first thing is well, i'm just going to call this out how this whole conversation came. So I was on the Twitter, which I'm not on anymore because I got kicked off. I was on the Twitter And there was all the controversy over JK Rowling and people calling her a turf And all this anti-trans activism a lot of violence and anger on both sides. By the way, like there's a lot of violence and anger going on there And you and I started talking about it And you and I listened to a couple podcasts, watched a whole bunch of videos. I mean, i think you and I have dedicated some serious hours to this work, and one of the things that very profoundly came up for me is that we can no longer threaten physical violence against people that we do not agree with or that we feel are threatening our bodies.
To respond with threats of death tells me that we are not honoring our shared humanity anymore at that point. Having been with some I live with someone who used to kill people for a living. When you live with a veteran who has served overseas and deployed and experienced that, it's a very different like the mindset is totally different, and I believe that the first step to addressing the fact that we are cohabiting as humans and that it's okay for us to not live on these all or nothing fringes is to stop threatening to kill people, and I have had my fair share of death threats online, especially on Twitter. I think if we took a step, just one little tiny step back and went okay, i can see that these debates are not debates anymore. They're physical threats of violence. People are threatening violence. How can I step back and look at the entirety of this picture and recognize that? there's somewhere in the middle, and I think that's the second step. The second step is to engage from the disengage from the online debate and do your homework.
0:25:08 - Briar
Okay, but that means I can't walk around saying I'm going to punch a Nazi anymore. No, that's correct And that's, i think, that's for especially liberals, where this started.
0:25:27 - Dr. Bird
Yeah, yeah.
0:25:32 - Briar
But threatening violence for words is what got us here, yeah.
0:25:40 - Dr. Bird
Yeah, And I think we cannot. We cannot continue to condone violence against other people's bodies. We don't. I don't want people enacting violence against my body. I have had that experience. It's really awful. I don't. I don't ever, I don't want to ever make another human being, no matter how much I disagree with them or how threatening they are to me, Feel like that. That. That is not love, And I believe that we are love and we are loved at our core, at the very center of our humanness, no matter who we are. we are love and we are loved energetically. Even the Nazis have a soul inside that body. Okay, but there's a promise has a soul inside his body. I'm unclear what his life lesson is, but boy, howdy Do? I hope he figures it out.
0:26:40 - Briar
The step, though, from punching Nazis to Nazis are love is is rough.
0:26:50 - Dr. Bird
That's not. That's not what I'm saying. I am Right. What I'm saying is part of the reason there is so much hate and racism and violence, and I'm saying this as a Native American person. Part of the reason for that is because we immediately go to violence. We don't allow ourselves to be to to think where did I get these messages? How did I learn this information? whose legacies am I carrying? Where did I think that feminism is supposed to be angry and violent? How did I get that message Right?
0:27:35 - Briar
Like that's. That's certainly not what I got from Bell Hooks or Germaine Greer or any of the great second wave feminist authors.
0:27:48 - Dr. Bird
It's not about violence. It's not about it's not. It's about connection and seeing our shared humanity and understanding that that we all have. We all have views that are shaped by our upbringings and our ancestry. And can we change our minds?
0:28:13 - Briar
Oh, hell yeah, but we're not going to change minds If we're screaming and yelling and fighting and threatening violence because if I feel as though my safety is impacted, we are not going to be open to listening to anything that you have to say.
0:28:36 - Dr. Bird
Same goes for Nazis, because it's all about their safety. They think they're unsafe because of people like me. Yeah.
0:28:54 - Briar
So right, How do we pull this back from the brink?
0:29:06 - Dr. Bird
I think. I think we have to acknowledge our our fear is sometimes misplaced. So I think it's really helpful And I can't remember if you and I talked about this or five just been randomly talking about it on my own podcast or whatever. We are not constantly in a fight or flight response. We have got to give ourselves permission to stop using that word fear as if it is an actual beast in the room Right. I have I been in violent situations where I had to fear for my life most days. Yep, i invite you to my entire childhood Like that, like we have all had. Once you get past the age of five, we have all experienced some form of violence and trauma. It's just a fact. And and when we do the work of healing, when we do the work of therapy, when we do the work of embracing our mental and physical, and emotional and spiritual health mental, emotional, physical, spiritual health What happens is we realize that we do not have to live in a fight or flight response 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Now some people do. I would submit to us that if we started to look at the majority of humanity, many of us don't, and we've got to give over to this idea of releasing the fear so that we can start to talk about healing.
And you know, i was very nervous to talk about this prayer. It actually makes me almost physically cry, like. And then I started reading the words of Martin Luther King. The people don't read once a year. I started reading the words of bell hooks, and, and and. Oh, what's his name? Baldwin, james Baldwin. Oh, y'all have not read his stuff, right? Whoo, it is not about violence and hate, it is about love, love, love, love, love. And I thought that is the cheesiest ass shit I've ever heard. But you know, it's exactly what I am saying. I just say it in a different way. I I think we have to start thinking about the idea that it is okay to create relationships with people that are both challenging and graceful. I just wrote this down in my journal. You know, if you don't understand each other at a human level, then you don't get to attack them because we don't know their stories.
This actually was a really great Ted Lasso episode for the last season. I think it was episode nine, pretty sure. Yeah, there was this whole scene where they were talking to the reporters and they were like I don't know his story. It's not my place to judge, because I don't know what's happened for him in his lifetime. We don't ask those questions, right. So people are looking at Dr Melissa Bird, phd in 2023, going damn she's got it together And I'm sitting over here going y'all should have seen the first 48 years Like it was a disaster area. But we assume that people who we know right now, this minute, are who this is who they've always been. And, briar, you and I have lived long enough to know that we are not, though. We are not who we were in our twenties, thank God.
0:32:37 - Briar
Thank God Truly, so glad to not be who I was in my twenties I think about. have you read The Gift of Fear? Yeah, yeah, ravinda Becker, yeah, and the message there is about learning to read and understand fear when it is a valuable tool. But the other part of that that I think a lot of people skip from that book perhaps is the messages of not fear. What does that mean? The opposite of fear isn't safety. So what does not fear look like?
0:33:22 - Dr. Bird
I think we have this false belief that somehow we're always supposed to be safe. I've seen this particularly in the LGBTQ community growing up in Utah, right, like I had this experience a lot. Like we have to create safe spaces And I'm like that's just for anybody, that's unrealistic. Like where did we get that? Somehow it had to have been just pushed. I don't know if it was pushed by politics or churches or maybe it was all, maybe it was all the things right.
But like this idea of safety I find to be so bizarre because and I think this is from my own philosophical standpoint like when we are present, we don't have a need for safety. When I'm in this moment with you, like I knew that from 11 to 12, this was going to be my day, right. What I didn't know was that I was getting a quarter zone shot at 8.30 this morning, didn't know that, didn't see that coming right. When we are present in the present moment and we are 100% connected to our presence in this moment, then the need for safety evaporates And the need for safety it kind of goes away because we're in it. We're in the moment And once we destroy that mythology of needing to be safe, we can create connections, relationships, plans, ideas that get us to the place that makes us feel safe for us. So my idea of safety is not even the same as my husband and my children. You know this. you live in a house. with how many people?
0:35:20 - Briar
Four other people.
0:35:21 - Dr. Bird
Yes, yeah, i live in a house with three other people because the oldest one ain't coming home. Lover, lover, but we've decided we don't live together. well, You know like, each one of us has a different idea of safety and we're supposed to be a nuclear family. Oh, come on Like. if we acknowledge that all of us have a different level of safety, then we acknowledge that safety is actually, maybe it's just a construct. And boy does that push us into non-binary thinking.
0:35:53 - Briar
I think truly the most effective thing I learned in EMDR for my therapist was the idea of well, what if I am safe right now? Safety is so ephemeral, It is so difficult to quantify, that the only time that I can ever speak to my own personal safety is right now. That's it. Not tomorrow, not yesterday, not at any point along the way. What if I am safe right now? But the other side of that is well, isn't that a relief. What if I'm safe right now? Well, what if I am? Look at how great it is.
0:36:51 - Dr. Bird
I think that this, really I think what you're bringing up is such an important piece of why so many people who are able to invest in mental health, like a good therapist, benefit so well and do so well, and I think this actually speaks to the mental health crisis we have in this country. You want to talk about a pandemic. The minute someone has the capacity to do EMDR and do good therapy, most of the all or nothing binary thinking goes away because you disrupt those brain synapses of terror and fear. And I spiritually, from a very spiritual perspective, i wonder if that's why we do have a mental health crisis in this country, because we don't invest the time and the energy and the resources into creating well-trained therapists who have the capacity to do that work for everybody, and I wish we did.
0:38:03 - Briar
I don't think healing is profitable And no, being healed certainly is not profitable.
0:38:13 - Dr. Bird
No, it's why I got out of being a clinician for in the field of social work, because it's a machine. Look at me, i'm just going today. It's a machine And the social work machine is a disaster And I don't think social workers should be doing clinical work. I think we're filling the app, but the whole entire field of social work is bent on justice and action And that doesn't make a good clinician, that makes a good activist And it makes a good community builder, but we don't. And that's important. Yes, we need that Absolutely. We are social workers engaged in that kind of work because that's really actually what we're trying to do. But I think we're filling that clinical need because there's not enough clinicians. And I also really wonder what would happen, briar, if we stop trying to force people in this perfectionist boxes and just let ourselves just be. Maybe that would prevent our need for all this mental health crap.
0:39:22 - Briar
So my question would be and I can't answer this but do we actually need more clinicians Or do we need clinicians who are willing to graduate for lack of a better word their patients, their clients, do I really need to be in therapy for my entire life Or do I need it at certain points in time in my life to heal and then go back about my business?
0:39:52 - Dr. Bird
Yes.
0:39:53 - Briar
And that's not just therapy.
0:39:55 - Dr. Bird
I mean yes to all of it. right, like this is where I think This is where white supremacy has done such a fabulous job. I truly What we did on this land is all these people came in and said pull up your bootstraps, decimate everybody who's here. We have permission from the church to just annihilate all the humans. We know better. We're going to do it our way And we're going to own people and we're going to kill people and we're going to just take it all, right, and for the people that were here, we're like huh, like, what are y'all doing? Like that's not how this works, try it this way. And they're like nope, we're going to do it this way And if you don't like it, we're just going to kill you.
I'm very much simplifying this. right, i think what you are bringing up, and then you know you have all of the freed slaves who, all of a sudden, were like, okay, good luck. And they're like huh, what? Like what am I supposed to do here now? I don't know why we thought any of this, any of that. I don't know why we in 2023 can't see that that's part of the problem. right, like we're applying 2023 things to 1896.
That's not helpful, right? I tell my kids this all the time. They're like well, why blah, blah, blah? And I'm all well, it doesn't, it didn't work that way in 1974, you guys Like that's just not. we didn't talk about this stuff, right. But I wanna say, before I get too distracted to your point, i really I feel so cheesy saying this, but I really think if we just had more compassion and love for ourselves, self love, self compassion and love for other people, perhaps it would change the way we think about community, families, connection, friendship, neighborhoods, cities, counties, states, nations. If we just loved ourselves a little bit more, forgave ourselves just a little bit more, owned our imperfections not as weaknesses but as strengths, then perhaps prayer, we would find a good therapist for that moment and then move on and then go back if we had to, perhaps when we were responding to things like child abuse and gun violence and violence against the LGBT community. perhaps if we were more forgiving of ourselves, we could be more forgiving towards each other.
0:42:54 - Briar
Personally, i think the primary issue here is that we are so inculcated in the belief that, as Americans in particular, that we have it better than anyone else in the world, that there is nothing better than what we have here which allows us to have conflict with each other instead of attempting to overthrow the owner class, but the 99% of us who don't benefit from that system end up fighting each other instead.
0:43:47 - Dr. Bird
We're just eating our own Mm-hmm. It's just what we do, mm-hmm, while we're scrambling to try and get to the top, to get to that content. That's correct, because we bought the lie Mm-hmm. And I wonder what would happen if we decided I'm not gonna engage in this binary thinking anymore. I'm gonna really explore and be uncomfortable and be curious and ask questions for clarification. I had a beautiful professor who he would say questions, comments, complaints, concerns about the last 10 minutes of our class And he talked community. He actually talked communities and organizations And so we had the opportunity for the complaints and the concerns as well as the questions and the comments. Right, questions, comments, complaints, concerns. I wonder what would happen if we deployed Dwayne Wilson's just those four questions, comments, complaints, concerns And if, at the same time we did that, we focused on what lights us up instead of what keeps us in the dark and keeps us down.
One of my most favorite things about learning to read the Bible never words I thought would come out of my damn mouth. Let's be clear. It kind of makes me go ah, gross, it's learning. It's learning the idea of lightness and dark, and learning that in the Torah and the Quran and in Buddhist teachings and in Hinduism, in every sing in paganism, there is always light and dark. You cannot know lightness without dark and you cannot know darkness without light.
And what would happen if we were more willing to shine the light in the shadows? What would happen if we asked people questions and we were curious about why they think that way, why they behave that way? Where did you learn that from? How did you come to believe that that is the absolute truth? Cause, let me tell you, breyer, there are some things I used to think were the absolute, damn truth. One of them is that there is not a cold day in hell that God will love me, because I'm a big old feminist queer. And guess what It turns out? I am love, and I am loved because that is the essence of the core of our humanity and our soul.
0:46:16 - Briar
Wow, we have to be open to asking and answering those questions.
0:46:23 - Dr. Bird
It's one of the most beautiful things I think about nuance There's. You know, the podcast Pantsuit Politics started out that way. The two women that started that talked about nuance, like nuance is their thing, because they just didn't want to yell at each other anymore. They wanted to be in sisterhood with each other and to care about each other. And I think we have to recognize the need for deep connection. Deep sisterhood, deep brotherhood, deep otherhood, like deep human connection is what we're craving. We are not craving the split apart And it's okay.
You know, my teacher, my mentor, said to me in one day there is absolutely nothing on this planet that we have to control, and that is a dangerous sentiment to many people And I got a lot. I brought it up in a training I was doing a couple of weeks ago. I was like there's literally nothing on the planet we have to control. And several people were like, well, i have to control my emotions. And I'm like do you, do you have to control your emotions, or can you allow your feelings to move through you and in you and around you and on top of you and below you? Do we have the capacity for self love and self compassion to allow those things to take place, so that we don't end up hating ourselves and other people. How revolutionary is that? What if we stopped our self loathing? Because self loathing only perpetuates hatred towards others, because we want everybody else to feel as shitty as we do.
0:47:57 - Briar
Right, and that's the crux of it, right. If I'm miserable, then I am going to inflict that misery on everyone else. I can't help it. Misery is contagious. I want people to be in it with me. It's important for us to choose the way we're bringing ourselves to the table.
0:48:32 - Dr. Bird
Yeah.
0:48:33 - Briar
That's the only choice we really get is how am I coming to the table?
0:48:41 - Dr. Bird
Well and we can keep fighting with each other. I mean, like you know, the human condition is war. It has existed for time and eternity. Mm-hmm, and I wonder if what we're being really invited to is to think about a different way. And all the greats, the people we look up to, the artists, the disruptors, the creators, the preachers, the revolutionaries they've all said that same thing Ever since we started writing things down. They've all said the same thing. What if there's a different way? What if we can use nuance and non-binary thinking to connect with each other in a whole? nother way.
Now listen, 20-year-old doctor Melissa Bird would have been like that is some horseshit. Whatever, i'm just going to go in and pump my fist and kick your ass. I'm going to take my steel-toed boots, get in a mosh pit and try and beat up as many human beings as humanly possible, because it's not okay for me to do that in any other circumstance, but in that pit, right, i watch it in. My daughter put 14-year-old Gwendolyn Alice in a mosh pit and that girl, she is violent. It is the human condition. But you know, what's really incredible is that girl gets out of the pit, gives everybody a high five and a hug and she's back to being cute little Gwen with her fairy. You know her fairy wings on making beautiful art. Imagine if we gave ourselves some room in the pit to get it out and then went back to making beautiful art.
0:50:28 - Briar
Well, i think that's another problem that we have. We have no pits right. We do not in any way allow for or make room for anger to exist outside of war.
0:50:44 - Dr. Bird
It's so fascinating because now you've got all these rage rooms where you actually can pay to break shit and I'm sitting here going go to Walmart, buy a pack of plates and go to the dumpster behind the Walmart, throw them at the dumpster, make them all break, sweep it all up, move on with your day. That's what I used to do with my clients when I was a therapist.
0:51:07 - Briar
Because commercializing rage. Why are we paying for rage rooms Right?
0:51:14 - Dr. Bird
Why can't you just take a knife and stab your own damn pillow and then go buy a new one? But seriously, i think that, as we are wrapping up this conversation, the most important thing to me is that, when you are paying attention to the vitriol online, i challenge everybody who's listening to this to pull yourself out of that all or nothing binary thinking and ask yourself what is the nuance in this. Because I'll tell you. When you do that with really controversial stuff, it stops feeding the beast of hatred, and I really think that's what we're being called to do is stop feeding the beast of hatred.
0:52:06 - Briar
I don't have time for hatred, and I think truly part of the reason that I chose to build this, part of the reason we're having this conversation, is that it was really important to me to start asking those questions and then listening to the answers. It's not about me here, it's not about me being right, it's not even about what we're building as an entity. It's about having the ability to ask questions and listen to the answers without any implicit bias, and that's a hard thing to do.
0:52:48 - Dr. Bird
It is a hard thing. And what if there is no right or wrong? Right, because right or wrong says I'm trying to control some aspect of this conversation, like what if there just is? And I can't believe I have these big, huge philosophical discussions for your living. It gets so bizarre to me. I'm like sitting here going. But what if it just is Briar And I'm sitting here going? that's rad, because if that is the case, then everything I know about this planet, about this world, about my interactions with other people, everything I know about it, it just is, and that is not the absence of pain and suffering and sorrow, because we are human beings giving our souls an experience on this planet. Every single one of us, billions and billions of people on the planet, are here to have an experience of living in a human body. And we're going to screw that up 375 days to Sunday, like we're going to mess this up all the time, and that's rad.
Yes it is. It's not bad, it's rad.
0:54:09 - Briar
So I think what I'm walking away with here today, Missy, is that nuance comes from choosing to have an experience.
0:54:27 - Dr. Bird
Oh, yes, yes. Choosing not to walk away from discomfort, choosing to understand the difference between triggering and being uncomfortable.
0:54:49 - Briar
And the more that we can allow ourselves to be uncomfortable, the more we are comfortable, regardless of the situation.
0:55:01 - Dr. Bird
Yeah, because that creates compassion, right For ourselves and for everybody else.
0:55:07 - Briar
Yes.
0:55:12 - Dr. Bird
Really good.
0:55:14 - Briar
So good Man never going to get tired of these conversations, ever, ever Y'all. If you have not yet subscribed to the Neurodiversity Media Network, you can do that at the neurodiversitymedianetworkcom. This is what we're here for. We're having these conversations, we are exploring the edges, and I want to do that with as much joy and compassion as possible. I think that we get to choose. I think that we get to occupy the space the way that we want to.
0:55:55 - Dr. Bird
Thank you, Briar.
0:55:56 - Briar
Thank you so much for being here. Y'all have an amazing time. We will be back in two weeks, and what are we talking about? We are talking about how accessibility isn't enough, like this one wasn't challenging or anything. How accessibility is not enough. It's going to be fun. Y'all Looking forward to it. All right, people, we will see you next time. Thank you so much for being here. Have an amazing day.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
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