0:00:01 - Briar
there you go. Hello everyone, welcome. I am Briar Harvey. This is the Nerd diversity media network. Today we are here with the incredible Sam Fischer and we are talking about telling stories and changing stories and being our stories and embodying those stories, and it's a lot of work. So today, I think we wanted to talk about how story changes, that where we start isn't where we have to finish, and what we have to do to make those changes.
0:00:51 - Sam
Yeah, it's funny, we started off in a different story here before we started recording and I know last week I told that was two weeks ago. Two weeks ago I was started with my story and then you asked me, like where do we find our stories? And I got to think about like well, we hear them at home. I know I come from a long line of storytellers and it feels like we're kind of born into a story. Like you know, this is who you are, this is what you're going to be. Particularly, I was like the tease with a friend of mine that being born a debutante is like the ultimate ABA.
I had no idea that I was, that I was an autistic person until I was like almost 50 years old, until I had a coach say I'm not going to ask you if you're on the spectrum, I'm going to ask you how far I'm like thank you for seeing me. And because so much of the southern female training here in the United States is literally like that you get to go this far, get to be this big, you get to make this much noise. Okay, I get it. And it's kind of like when humans are such miraculous creatures and you give us an assignment man, we do it and.
But I was the little kid that's like, well, why, well, why, I'll do this story, but why? And being born a child in the 70s, it was always because I said so. Now I'm like, okay, but why are you saying so much to every adult around me? Chagrin. And so I was born into it like a very traditional home. You know the whole church thing, the whole God guns America, rah, rah, rah. Which is funny because that wasn't really a big thing, because it was the 70s. But here we are.
The whole country is now Tyler Texas well, parts anyway large swaths of at least the American south and you know, I should say the United States South, because you know, like there are other Americas besides this one and like I just like it feels even funny to say the United States now, like you know the states that are all under the flag, but like my parents have been married for 55 years. I had no idea when I went out dating that it actually took some work because my parents made it look like easy, which is kind of wrong because my uncle has been divorced three times. You know, blessed memory, john, but anyway. So they talked about being, oh, my parents story, so my parents story was awesome and that they met as being neighbors and I was okay, that's great, I'm a little kid. And then I came, came to learn they wrote my mother was actually dating my dad's roommate. Later on I thought like that was the story and then, like Ken goes back east because he was a Jersey boy and then I guess, apparently told dad to keep an eye on her. I don't like this story comes out, but here it is and he did. So mom had been hanging out with Ken but she really liked dad.
You know the kind of thing we think we know we want one thing but we don't, and so like there's the outgrowth of that story that my parents get together for Ken comes back. I'm not sure how they roommate work that out, because again I think it's from shame over that so that story never really gets told or I don't remember it because that was a little kid I'm now 53 years old but so I think there are a lot of times in our story where we think we want one thing. We actually want this other thing. We're just hanging around so we could be around that guy like you ever had the friend group, or that thing happens when you're young. I know I did. Maybe it's just because I heard that story my whole life. I think I want you but I actually want you.
I dated twins in the past and I was like I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to tell you that part of my story. So there's that. And then there was like the religious part of my story that I could. Honestly, this is truly the neurodivergence. I could feel that everybody's saying one thing but then doing the other stuff. It was a very small town and then I was like, yeah, y'all say this, but do you actually read the book? Because I read the book not to be I'm like seven, so it's not like on this finger wagging little kid, but I'm like, hmm, I feel you again. It's the 70s, so people are acting. For those of you don't know, the 70s are kind of the swingery time and and Tyler was a very wealthy small town, so people had the ability to say one thing and do another, and so it was also the beginning of the Satanic panic. You know what?
that is yeah, so and that's a dive into for those of you don't know what the Satanic panic is Satan was everywhere. He was gonna get you with your music. He was gonna get you through your TV shows, cartoons, everything. I didn't get to listen to the Beatles because apparently Ringo was so talented he could turn me into a communist and a Satanist at the same time, and so I went to go see whatever that movie was that came out, where that guy everybody in the whole world got shocked by some sort of supernatural thing. It's one guy remember the Beatles and he went all around the world playing Beatles music. And that was when I learned that Eleanor Riegelie was a Beatles song, because I had only heard Aretha Franklin sing it. And my son was like, wait, what you didn't know, so he's trying to find it on his phone so he can play the Beatles version for me. So I was like you know, it has real-world consequences when your parents are afraid of Satan and, and so I think this is where the start of shift, you know, happens.
Enough ragging on the church and Satan and my parents, because I love my parents, they've been together 55 years and it gave me something to run kind of rub against when I was a young person and then I learned when I was 21 like they both did this. They both went as far away from their homes they could get. They went to California. So at 21 I did the same thing. I'm getting out of here and I love that they gave me that example and my mother left cuz she. They were terrified. She's gonna marry a Yankees. She goes, fine, I'm going to the, going to the West Coast. Dad's like it's cold in Pittsburgh, I'm leaving. I'm sure they both had better reasons but again, those are the ones I gave me in childhood and I did the same thing. I'm getting out of Texas and married the first guy I ever found, but that's a different story. But it was because I was so programmed to get married, because that's because Jesus and like that part of the program hung in there.
But I think about all the stuff I did, even with that like I still managed to find because I married a Navy pilot. He was gone first three years of our marriage. He was gone a year and a half of it. So I had to figure out how to do like for myself because my family was nowhere around. I had to figure out how to be independent and and build a life alone and like I see, like my 20, I'm like talking back to my 21 year old me, I'm like good job, young Sam, you were recovering from a lot of stuff. And I still like right, what the 21 year old Sam do. Because I was like recovering from that Debbie Tauntmentale and because she was kind of a dick and talk about a lot of white entitlement and and trauma that's story for another day.
And they're and trying to build a life with just chronic, chronic illness and in a culture that's very different. But also, like, all those things are opportunity. It sounds so dis-cliché but it's like I was able because I had excellent community support for all the issues around the military and what they pay them and all that kind of stuff. There is excellent opportunity if you're able to utilize it like built-in support because you have lives that are also around, that are also going through similar things. You have like hierarchy, where the older wives come back and say you need to do this because I've been where you are and if you're smart enough, I was actually just so dumb that they kind of came along and went here. We see you struggling horrifically. Let us help you.
And because I was so exhausted I didn't really have the opportunity to say, sure, let me receive help, because I didn't know that was something you could do. I just had to take it and I knew just facets of myself started to kind of blossom, and I see that all over the part and parts of the world where women have to do things as single parents and you see, a lot of times I didn't have kids yet, but when I started to see you they should just come up when the men come back and women have made things of themselves in their absence and then the men come back and they want everything to be exactly the way they were where they left and they're like no stop and it's a good thing to then go back to the boat again. So there's this, like Evan flow.
0:10:00 - Briar
Listen the number of Career military folks that I know who ended up divorced After they retired.
0:10:11 - Sam
It's hi, yeah, I would. When we my first husband, when he he was in the military for, I think, active for like ten years, and when he got out, like our friends were laying like, okay, how many, how many years after you think it's gonna be? And it was, I think, before they were not easy years because he transitioned to the airlines and they kept him gone a lot. So he's always on the road, but like the minute he moved home and had like a job where he was in the house all the time, not long and yeah, and I think a lot of their lot bigger issues that him just being home with all the time. But and I think it's, yeah, there are a lot of there.
There are a lot of ways to digress on that one, but I think when you marry somebody who's doing one thing and is joy, joyfully happy in that position, and then they switch to do something, that is a very different idea than what they thought it would be. That that's very big. Also, it was after 9-11. There's a huge stressor there. That was right in the middle. All that that put huge stresses on both of us.
0:11:17 - Briar
But yeah, there's a whole other show, but oh yeah, that is because that was three days after the birth of my first child, at the beginning of my marriage, and let me tell you, it's amazing, I survived that. So we get, we get these stories and, and For the first 20 years of our life, this is what we have to work with.
This is the material that we are given, we do not have a whole lot of control over shaping or outcome. When and how does that change and how do we Make the most of it?
0:12:07 - Sam
Let's see first 20 years. Yeah, we're gonna, we're handed well, we, and we get them from many places. We don't just get them from our family, we get them from our culture. Like you know, it's the double dose of and I think there's this bit of like discernment, like where what is useful for me, like, like I said when you first started off, I was the why kid, like excuse me, excuse me, why am I doing this?
0:12:30 - Briar
and I think that ought to be an autistic woman.
0:12:36 - Sam
Pardon me, sir, I mean I still. But you know, like and I do this like to the day, like clarity please. Like somebody will send out a group email. I have one. Over the weekend I went to I go to the meetings early for everything, like okay, I know you said it like this, and I'm sure the rest not everybody in the community, but I know, like to group speak it means this I'm leading this meeting. What do you want that to look like? They're like okay, it's me, and I Feel that way. That's like my internalized feeling of having been this way for 50, over 50 years. But I don't think that that's just a. I'm Pudle myself, but I think it's.
It's not a bad thing to always be looking for clarity, to be curious about huh, how could I do this differently? Like this has been, these instructions have been handed to me. But what if? What if I did it like this? Or where's another way to like I'm the winner that drives that?
People are always lost in my Hometown when they go there with me, because I never drive the same way twice. It Like oh, that really lights really long, let's go this way. And so my husband's always getting lost. He's like can you just go the same way two times so I know where they, where we're staying? Oh yeah, I'm sorry, I've done this for 50 years and it's boring. But okay, I would go there the same way so you can find where our apartment is. And. But I've realized that because the landmarks all look the same but it's just a bit of strip mall so it doesn't look the same way to hit, because as the town's expanded, the charming downtown looks the same, but like as it builds out, it just looks like a bunch of stuff that looks the same. So that's not easy to remember. When I see the things that look identical to the way that looked when I was in high school, it doesn't look that way to other people that have not experienced it and have heavy, heavy emotional feelings about it. And so To take the stories that have been given to us and then ask questions about it, like I think about this, like Jewish people sit around and look at Torah like weekly and go hmm, what are new questions?
What are you know to? What about this? What are new ways to you know? I think to to bring new life into old ideas. You know you can bring new life into the story that you've been given, like why I see my, it worked for my parents generation that way, or it worked for my grandparents, but that story doesn't serve me because, heck, month after month, we get new technology, new ideas.
Or why do we put Elon Musk on a pedestal? I don't think he deserves to be there. Why do we have a billionaires rule the world? What have they really done to serve anybody? It's like Bezos had a good idea, but now it's now. He's just hoarding money. Like it's not even personal. Now it gets to be cultural. And how do we undo and take our culture back from people that are just Hording all the money? They call it a hoard because back in the olden times, kings had a hoard for all this, all the money. Like how do we, how do we, the people, take a culture back rather than just sit around and go oh, yeah, because it's always been this way. Okay, not really, because nobody's ever experienced this thing like we're experiencing now. And how do we do that when we've got a bunch of people that are tired, scared and living in times that are, quite frankly, terrifying? When you look outside and I'm here in South Texas and you know, the heat's killing people?
and we talked about the weather.
And we've gotten to the point we're talking about. The weather used to be something that was like tried and trivial. Now it's important and the weather is deadly outside. It's now an issue and, like I never used to like to talk about the weather, it's always felt like I was it was just something to appease people, as they now, when you talk about the weather, it could start this fights, and so I was like where you know, changing your story, and is it? I think it's a decision, it's discernment and a decision to do something different, and I used to have a post it. I Used to have a lot more postage, but I used to have a post over my desk in my old house that said do something different. Because I was in a marriage that was Not killing me up in one of those, but that was slowly suffocating. And I looked up at it one day like what would be different? And I just I left him a note and I went out to a drum circle. I mean, I'm just giving a trail like an easy type of thing, but just like put energy in a different direction.
Like I started back, I did a yoga training, got the certification and then my mother got. My mother's dementia got worse, so I spent a lot of time then not focusing on teaching, but a lot of time. My yoga for that year then was helping my parents. Like my yoga was over near a mat and I finally, after kind of got them moved out of the house, I Was like physically I forgot my shoulder fix the bunch stuff happened, decided I need to get back on a mat because my hips are tight.
I did three classes in the last week. I was like, oh yeah, not teaching but from a student perspective, and I was just like I've forgotten how good this feels. My body was like just grateful. I was like it wasn't like 75, it was like a 30 minute class, but to just lay on the floor and breathe without you know for myself and do something like just kind to myself. I'd forgotten what it was like to do something kind for my body and Because most, most of my life, any activity I did was like a way of berating my body.
So to just do something kind, like I'm gonna go out and walk 45 miles, so to do something just out of kindness, like, oh yeah, I forgot how good this feels. And then like the next class I was doing like a lunch I was like, and I was very out of balance because I hadn't done it in a year. And to be able to just go oh, I probably should do this again, and to realize the difference. Like taking that year off, I Came back a kinder person to myself because I I would lie, I lost that part of me that was cruel, that felt that every time I moved it had to be punishment. Now I don't know exactly what I did in that year.
0:18:53 - Briar
But maybe it's cultural. This is not you and this is the story, because this is a free are overwhelmed, and if we are incapable of caring for ourselves, then we're not Rebelling.
0:19:12 - Sam
Yeah, and part of it too, was I. In my yoga training. We spent a lot of time Learning how to decolonize the view of the story of only a white, thin body is beautiful, only you know, only a thin person who sits like that story that I was taught so well at home in the culture of my childhood. I was taught hey, you really believe this? Do you really believe only this is beautiful? Like if you went to events and, nope, only the great hound is a cute dog. Is that something you actually believe? Or is this something you were taught and you can be in a? You can unlearn it.
So, like Having that like actually run through my head and then having time to go Whenever the thought like that would pop up, go, oh yeah, I don't actually believe I can just, you know, move because my body likes movement, and like, have it actually then live there, versus something I have to actively unlearn. That's a nice thing about any story. If you, if a story becomes something that lives in your brain, you can unlearn the story. It's like oh, it's kind of like. You know, I live with cats. Cats seem to be autistic people in cats.
0:20:27 - Briar
I have cats. I have cats too. Odd summer jam.
0:20:33 - Sam
I'm still waiting for the meditation version.
0:20:36 - Briar
Well, we're having problems with Spotify, because the US Spotify thinks that it's a spoken word hit piece and not a dance hit, clearly. So yeah. I'm working on it and. I Think that there's something here about the way in which we get to re-craft what it is that matters to us. So what's that look like?
0:21:20 - Sam
I think it looks different in a lot of ways to what your story like, what everybody's, whatever your story looks like. So I feel like I'm dancing around here. I've got cast stuck in my head, so I'm sorry. Cats, cats, cats. Also, I've got this hyper-awareness of what I look like on Zoom. I'm just going to put it on your head and there's a square right there. What I look like on Zoom is wrong. We'll start with that.
Because when I first saw this two weeks ago, I went whoa, yeah, okay, that's a perfect, we'll use that example. I saw it and I was like oh my God, that's horrifying. There's the story that is horrifying. I look horrifying on the. I can't, I'm going to have to like train myself in front of a mirror like Steve Martin. And then that was what I thought on Friday. No, that's what I thought on Thursday when I saw it. And then I went Thursday night and watched a jazz group perform. Those guys are in a zone. If you've ever watched jazz players perform, they make the weirdest faces you've ever seen. I was like and people pay great money to go watch jazz musicians make weird faces and like the more they're into it, the weirder they look and everybody's like so there's your story. It's like that's just my jam. I have a weird face when I'm very excited and I'm just going to own that and then, like then it was, I guess I was at at at leading a meeting this one woman was like we need to make sure that this person is well trained, and when they're on Zoom they have a, they have a professional presentation.
And I'm like do I really want somebody with a professional presentation or do I want somebody who's very good at what they do? Now, perhaps they can be the same thing, or do I want them to look lifeless and they just, you know, like I don't know, but maybe they can be both. But as someone who typically looks like a fraggle, I don't really I.
0:23:20 - Briar
Who defines professional Right? What is that mean, and does that apply to me? Often it does not.
0:23:33 - Sam
I was like there's a reason I work for myself, because and like and in many examples it was like on screen I'm the first one to go okay, burning, it looks like he's about to take off and I love that about it, so, and I think it could start to look. It could start to look sterile and not inviting if and it was like in that whole aspect of it they need to look professional. Also, directly like was an opposition to every other, every other aspect that they wanted this person to look like in the search criteria that we had. And so I'm like okay, no to self, if you look like this and you're all hemmed in on Zoom, then you don't look engaging and excited and happy to be there in all the other aspects that we're also like being looked for. So I found that to be a very interesting contrast.
0:24:35 - Briar
And that's true, I think, for a lot of us in how it plays out, our standards are so different, even within the same realm of cultural training, that it becomes a necessity to constantly reexamine this stuff.
0:25:00 - Sam
Yeah, like if you're going, if you have a story you want to change first, is it true? Like, is this true? Is it necessary? Like is this something that really is in my life, that's actively affecting my life? Like me living the life of the under the spell of the colonized white, thin body type that was actively affecting my life? So, yes, changing that story actively made my life better. But having a being a fraggle on Zoom calls really is just me being who I am.
0:25:42 - Briar
Lacey says you don't look like a fraggle. I just wanted you to know that.
0:25:47 - Sam
Thank you. I've come a long way since the very first Zoom and then I first got on. Zoom first started, however, many years ago. I was so horrified about being on a camera I mean, I was just given the phone. I can't even figure out how to. I was so afraid of the technology, I'm afraid of my camera. So it's come a long way, and it was also like bigger rooms. I think there were a few people like, all right, the woman who's waving her hands around, so it was.
It's been something that I've kind of learned that I have to just be myself, and so, but yeah, I think, first diving into the story that you want to change, like why are finding your motivations? Why are you changing it? Is it actively something that is necessary to change? Are you moving yourself forward by what is the new story you want to step into? Is, I think, the big one? Like what's, where are you going with the new story? And like, where are you going? Because I'm one of those people that's like, what's your five year plan? I don't know.
People ask me that, like, five years, I'm happy five weeks from now, and I think a lot of that is very much, not so much the autistic bit. It's the complex trauma stuff from my childhood that I learned how to kind of put those bins in the different bins from my youth and I was like, oh, that's because we would get excited about. Oh, we're going on a trip. And just as we walk out the door, some like somebody would do a golf swing in the living room for their back out so much for that trip. And that's like, oh, yes, hi, privilege, yes, I see that, but that happens in nothing.
Your childhood and you just put looking forward to stuff. And so I'm like, all right, I guess I'll go to my room and color. And so I was like I literally just thought about that, how I can remember when I got engaged the first time, like I've got to get married really fast so that something bad doesn't happen between now and we get married. And so like that whole thing about not having forward making plans was something that like deeply affected me until I guess till right now. Yeah, I just kind of like plan, like it's more like a survival piece where I am like thinking about the fact that it is something that I it is a edge that I work on right now and knowing that that's a story that I'm still very alive in my body.
0:28:25 - Briar
And I think that when it is so vividly visceral in your system, it it's a difficult thing to work with. You have to really consciously choose to handle this material right.
0:28:41 - Sam
Absolutely, and I think you know, I think when he, when he realized that all of us just came out of a very highly charged pandemic, you know, and being a lockdown, being separated, all this kind of stuff that you know, if you think about it, when we had patient zero, is that it just been like you know what all the world joined together, come by, I look locked down for two weeks, it's gonna suck, but let's do this. Perhaps that would have descended it and we don't know. But perhaps and people are people the whole world's never going to ever agree on anything. But the polyana in me is like you know things about. What would that have been like and where would our nervous systems all be today if we'd done that? But would we be very different people because we didn't live through that? And are we very different? How can we be very different people? For having lived through something Like like all of my grandparents lived through this main, lived through the pandemic of 1917.
None of them talked about it. None of them. And so I wonder I was like to just leave and they also looked through the depression. They all talked about that. None of them talked about the pandemic. So I think about the fact that I think it leaves a bigger mark on us, a trauma that we've all lived through, and I think when this rolls out a little bit further, we'll know more about what it really did to us collectively. Forget about the other trauma that we've all anybody's lived through. Because I have friends like I went to trauma, I'm like, yeah, they should flip and work them.
0:30:19 - Briar
They differ as the mother of. So he's six now.
0:30:23 - Sam
Oh, wow.
0:30:24 - Briar
And was turning three in March, april of 2020. Wow, and we weren't able to get his diagnosis because early intervention was happening over Zoom. And oh, wow, how do I get a three-year-old autistic boy to have a conversation with somebody on Zoom? It's not gonna happen. And he spent two years inside without much exposure to other people.
Oh wow, I think a lot about the fact that at this age my daughter was starting to talk and starting to really progress and the things that he didn't get to do between three and five because we were all indoors. Yeah is cannot be understated for his development, for the rest of his life.
0:31:24 - Sam
Yeah, oh my gosh Briar wow.
0:31:29 - Briar
So I think that we deeply underestimate the ways in which the collective story has impact on different people and the ways that we have to kind of tell that story over and, over and over again. So how do we, as a person who appreciates story, right? I like hearing other people's stories. I recognize, though, that that is somewhat unique and most people really don't wanna hear it. How do we start making telling our stories to each other an easier thing to do?
0:32:25 - Sam
Hmm, you know, I think you know like just when you told me that little bit about your son being three when the pandemic, when the lockdowns all started, like that, immediately my heart was like, wow, I wanna know more about that, I wanna hear more about your story and I think, again, you've got a sweet summation. You've got like deep impact about how, oh, wow, like you draw me in to a deep, real truth about you, your child and a lifelong matter now and what is very real for you, my husband and I got married during the pandemic. Like our anniversary is in, like I'll see what is, it's a joke, it's in about a week. And so cause we were like wait, I've never heard you say husband without X in front of it.
0:33:21 - Briar
You did what, and so what happened, so no one came, is what you're telling me.
0:33:28 - Sam
No, it was a yeah, it was pandemic. Like we were trying that. You know, he's got three kids I've got we're essentially the Brady's. So we were trying to coordinate all this and one day he was like we're sitting in the breakfast and drinking coffee and he goes what are you doing this afternoon? I was like, are you kidding me? I'm not doing anything this afternoon, cause I was wondering if you had like a Zoom meeting or something. I was like, no, I guess I'm gonna come by here after lunch. We'll just go down into the courthouse.
So we did, and at this point I had two of my kids staying here with us, cause I just wanted to break from Washington state. Like, please come down here. I'm like this is the worst place to come. They're like, well, we can't go outside anyway, so why not be in Texas? Fair point. So we'd gotten our. We'd gone and gotten our wedding Elizons, whatever you call it and so we walked down to the we walk over to, like we're walking. Now I do feel like a frugal.
So we walked down into the same courthouse and I'd gotten my divorce a few years ago and we walked into the place, cause all the signage is huge, cause they don't want anyone. You know, got our mask on. They don't want anyone like running into other people. And we go through the metal detector, like this is the most unromantic wedding. And so we've got our mask over there. So we, where he's carrying the license like, and so this guy comes up like he's a game show. I was like are you two about to get married? And we're like, how'd you know? And he goes do you want to get married inside or out? And I'm like we can get married in front of the fountain. Now. It's like one of the hottest days of the year and we're standing out there. We could take our mask off cause obviously we're living in the same house.
He stands about like six feet away and is like doing our vows, we're both drooping sweat, like we're whores in church. He's like where's your ring? I was like, oh, we forgot those. And he was like here she loans us his. And I was like this is very feels like it's an omen that we're having to borrow someone else's ring. And so we we say we do all the paperwork, we get back to the house and we're gonna be an hour and we get back and the kids are mad because we got married and we didn't tell them Like, well, that's a looping right. If we told you it wouldn't be the same. So is we've got to call your parents and tell them. I'm like I don't care, they're like they're probably gonna get. But so that was my pandemic wedding story and so I was like, were you gonna get married again? I'm like I'm pretty sure it took Like we've done all the paperwork. I don't feel the need Like we both had between the two of us. We've had seven weddings now. I don't think we need to have eight.
0:36:10 - Briar
See and there's something about that that's so tragic to me, like the party that I was also, in 2020, we were supposed to be renewing our vows. That certainly did not happen.
0:36:24 - Sam
I know that that's sad to me when you don't get to do those kinds of things.
0:36:28 - Briar
We are going to do it now, in 2025 or maybe next, I think 25, because it falls on a Saturday, it'll be great. Yep, but you know, it's these kinds of things and when we miss out on sharing our stories with each other, there's a lack of humanization, Absolutely Like. I turned 50 in 2020 and I was like it was like a. Labor Day it wasn't quite a Labor.
0:36:53 - Sam
Day, but it was gonna like have a Labor Day weekend. You know, 50 years, half a century of Sam. You know Also, it'll be fine, it'll be over by September. It was not over by September and so, yeah, like you're exactly right, like I never want to throw a party to you. I'm not gonna throw a party to you. I never want to throw a party for myself or anything.
The idea that that even crossed my mind and my father was hilarious. He's like, yeah, you get to throw a party where you don't get married at the end of it. That'll be awesome, be like the first time ever. I was like, yeah, because I already am. And so, yeah, you're exactly right. When we can't have those celebrations, like for how many times in humanity we get together usually and now that we've gone through something like this to celebrate the fact we're still here and they haven't gotten this yet, whatever the day is, I was discussing with someone yesterday that one of the things that's missing in the corporate hierarchical structure is the storyteller, that there's no one in most businesses who is responsible for remembering where we've been and helping to direct where we're going in the future, Because everything about business, especially in North America, is now it's shareholders.
0:38:23 - Briar
It's what can we produce, and so there's no legacy or anything that grows or progresses long-term. I think this is one of the biggest flaws I see in how we're having a conversation now. Nothing is long-term or built to last.
0:38:46 - Sam
It's all 30 seconds.
0:38:48 - Briar
It's all short-term, it's all ephemeral. How do we deliberately build in the deeper stories into our lives?
0:39:02 - Sam
It's interesting you say that about everything is short-term. I can remember going to my grandmother's house in the aughts. She still had appliances that had the cloth wrapping on them. She didn't throw stuff away because it's still worked. Like why do I need a new one, samantha, this one works just fine? And I'm like the metal fans with that. And they did. They were. She took immaculate care of everything and so the shit she had from the 60s still worked and I was like, wow, you can't even buy those kind of things now. Like everything is meant to. They ever drop an EMP anywhere. I was headed to Graham's house because all that shit's still gonna work.
They're not a chip in anything has nothing to do with how stories work, but it just made me think about other than that was a story. Culturally, we've all become goldfish. Our brains, everything do not have the ability to hold on to long stories and that can be learned. I think it's. This makes me sound conspiratorial, but it's like the ability to sit through long things with focus and like not doing two things at once, like watching a movie and not having a phone in your hand, like it's.
0:40:25 - Briar
Guilty, so guilty.
0:40:29 - Sam
I purposely make myself put my phone in the other room so that I don't do that, because it's almost like doing yoga for me. It's like how do I do this? Where I keep my focus on one thing, and it's not hard, it's a skill, it's a practice to keep your attention on one thing, because we have been so inundated with just material and I believe it's totally purposeful so that we lose the ability to stay focused in one direction and think that we need to be knowing where our attention is, because attention is currency, which is why I think they keep our attention. They are billionaire overlords, keep our attention In so many different places that if we ever could keep it focused, we're then more focused on each other as a community and in our culture, the culture that we can create as our fellow humans, versus on consuming more shit.
We would then go y'all are stupid. This is where the real currency is, is in our stories and in each other, and if we had storytellers, they would be like these guys are dumb. I think that's why the magic dust of the giant corporations they don't want us remembering, because then we remembered there were times when we actually knew things that were useful and how to go out and create meaning in our lives other than sitting around and buying. It's Prime Day, go buy some more stuff. I was like wait, it is Prime Day, but I don't need any of this stuff. One of the upsides of decluttering a parent's home is you're like I don't need anything.
0:42:19 - Briar
Can I get fewer stuffs Please?
0:42:22 - Sam
Thank you. Can I get a declutter monkey? Do you have one of those? Because that's what I really need is less of your stuff. Because even advertising I think that's the story is, please buy our stuff, please buy our stuff. And like, no, I need someone to come take away some of my stuff, because I bought into that too. For years I was like, oh, I bought into it and now I don't, because it still tickles really badly and I still have too much crap in my house Because it's such an edge and it's scratchy, it tickles a lot.
0:42:56 - Briar
Even when I'm filling it with stories, because let me tell you how many bookcases I have full of stories. I collect them. I do, too. I can spell with shiny things. Yeah same, which is not the same as consuming them and incorporating them into my life. There is.
0:43:20 - Sam
Into the body, where then they become knowledge. It's like consuming, digesting of them, integrating it, and then it becomes wisdom that you push out into the world Versus just hoarding it in I think about like a dragon's hoard or the king's hoard or then it's not useful, it just sits in one place and it's not available to the community. Much like Jeff Bezos. But I promise I'm not going to shit on Amazon anymore.
0:43:55 - Briar
But there's something there, right that what we're missing when it comes to building the long term together is an overwhelm from consumer culture and needing to have more things, so that we're not talking to each other, and that's cyclical, it just continues.
0:44:27 - Sam
Well, I mean, I think there's a big difference between commerce culture where like, oh, I need to get some grain for my animals and I need some this, where you have like, there's commerce. And then there's capitalism, where you have venture and you have this and you have all this other stuff. That started off as a great idea I never have to have things in my warehouse, I never have to have this. This is great. And then it just became like a dragon eating the planet. I'm thinking for dragons today. I don't know where that came from. I'm feeling mystical, but I think we're using now the resource. We're treating these resources on a finite planet as if they're infinite and that we can just keep buying our way into the future. But I think what we're starting to see with some of these supply chain stuff is that they're not and like much. Going back to our weather issue earlier, it's like it's now we're paying that piper and how do we put that GD back in the bottle. I don't know.
This is not the story that I think some people tell. Is that, well, we can just keep doing this forever. We'll just go dig up the rain forest. I don't know if that's the story I want to run with, but perhaps we find some new ways to do old things, because there are some really really smart people on the planet doing cool stuff and there's some really other stories that don't get listened to because people really don't want to hear it.
Like all this stuff going on in France, like there's a whole lot of story that's a whole show in itself. But I think as a species we have great ability to overcome mighty things with like visions and great stories, and then we have just we're cruel and deplorable at the same time Like that's the great paradox of humanity, right? We have this ability to rise to great heights and to sink to horrific lows. And which angel of our nature do we follow and how do we inspire and then hold the paradox of that to know that I have this capacity and this one in me, and sometimes I'm going to need to use both of them?
0:46:49 - Briar
So that brings us very tidally full circle. So how do we find those stories in ourselves, what we started with, what the base kind of cultural story that we were given? How do we start pulling those out in a way that we can meaningfully interact with them?
0:47:15 - Sam
I for me, like I write a lot, like when I left my my last divorce. When I left, like when I moved out, I took like a bag of journals, because I've had my journals you know journal pages way out of context used in a divorce court. It's like when I moved out I had like a double bag full of journals. Okay, I don't know what this guru had to do Fortunately he was lazy, wouldn't do anything but they meant that much to me Like they were my thoughts, they were all my things. I was like sometimes it just takes some time and scratch around what's in your head. You'll surprise yourself. It doesn't just write nonsense, right, poetry, right, just whatever you know. Sit on a porch.
I used to love to sit in coffee houses or bars or anywhere where there are people and make up dialogue between two people that are sitting there. Like that was my favorite thing to do. I'm still like getting around, still learning how to people again. So it's kind of fun to go and do. But when I was single and I had a whole lot more like alone time, it was my favorite thing to do in the evening was go sit around, drink, you know, drink something and make up dialogue between all the other people in the place. It was, or I do that. It would do that at airports when I flew a lot. And yeah, it's a great way to just entertain yourself and to see what's moving around in your own head, because what you're making people say is what's crawling around inside the rain.
0:48:35 - Briar
Yeah, and there's a freedom there, right Because? That doesn't actually belong to you that belongs to these other people? I think there is. If writing is not your bag, I deeply encourage people to explore improv in some way.
0:48:53 - Sam
Oh yeah.
0:48:54 - Briar
Physically move all of these stories out of your body when you're on a stage trying to make shit up Trust me these stories will come.
0:49:10 - Sam
Oh yeah, I love improv. That's a fun way to do to move some stuff up. You'll open your mouth and words will come out that you're like I didn't know that was living in there. Or even movement. Make a playlist, throw something on and just move your body and see. That's another fun one. Back when I was doing a lot of movement teaching, we would move around like for, make a short playlist on and then write what came after. Another really surprising thing about what's living inside you, either through movement or through words. Or make a date with a friend, y'all share stories with each other. It's kind of like this is very liberating getting to share stories with Briar. Sometimes, having a buddy that you're going to get to share stuff with is very useful, because we spend a lot of time in isolation in this culture, much more than we do in others. Having somebody that you're willing to share your heart with is a really good thing.
0:50:08 - Briar
And I deeply encourage people to explore therapy if that's what they feel like they need to get to these depths of story. But it doesn't have to be that hard. It can absolutely be a joyful act and I think the more time we spend cultivating the art of it the easier it becomes to not just move through it, but also let it go.
0:50:39 - Sam
Oh yeah, I've gotten to the place now because I've moved stories for several years with my body that something will come up physically when I'm moving my feelings and sensations in my body. I don't know what to deal with. I'll just know that after that dance class they'll be gone. And I almost prefer that now because it's like some sensations are rising when I'm on the dance floor and then I don't go. Oh, this was supposed to be about that time in third grade when Steve Dyer hit me. And as long as I don't stick a story to the sensation arising in my body it'll just move. But if I sit and kind of chew on it, or sometimes maybe that's what you need to do, but for the most part I just let it come up, it exits. But really, if you're Steve Dyer and you need to work on that, then but it's one of those things I think is very intuitive.
I think a lot of this comes because I've had more and now trained psychiatrists from sitting on this side of the couch, that where it starts to be like oh, I need to dive deeper and talk with someone about this who has letters after their name, or I need to just go and talk with a friend or I need to.
You start to get to where you feel there's more thread to pull at this, versus, oh, I just need to maybe go take a nap.
I mean, your body starts to be like Martha Graham says the body doesn't lie. And if you really get to where you kind of let the monkey mind go, oh, let me be quiet for a minute and just feel what the body's story is and you go, oh, okay, I think I think I'm tired, maybe I'm hungry, and, as an autistic person, sometimes that's a really that's a newsflash Like, oh, have I eaten today? I have not, and so that was something I had to really train myself. Like, oh, I probably should go have a snack right now, or maybe I should go find something that at least sounds good because I don't feel hungry. And so, yeah, there's just a lot that Like the story that, oh, I don't eat food right now, and that's a story that I think, being just female bodied in the world, particularly if you live in the US you don't need to eat your fine, which is a ridiculous story, and one that's, but I think it's yeah.
0:53:01 - Briar
And one we're going to unpack two weeks from now, Because that re-parenting piece is absolutely vital to working with our story and how we move forward in the world. So you wanted to talk about telling the story to your younger self and that's. There's so much interplay there right. How do we talk to our inner child? How do we have conversations with ourselves? How do we forgive ourselves? There's a lot here to move through.
0:53:42 - Sam
Well, there is, I mean like. For me it's even recognizing, like, because I saw when I was a young person, I idolized like I think we all do Like they're gods. I mean like they're huge people, even if you know, even if your parents did a less than stellar job and I give my parents like they did the best they could do and I love my parents very much but like you look at them and it's just like what? Because you're a tiny little person and they're big. And even if they're doing everything wrong and I'm not saying, I'm just saying it, even if they do, that's the situation you found yourself in. They're these huge people and so, and as a tiny person, you know you're depending on them for everything right, either your food, your shelter, your, you know, medical care, everything and like this kind of hit me recently and it was coming.
Wow, because when I was in treatment because I had migraines, I was like they were, they were trying to figure out what was going on with me. So they're taking me to medical trauma we only talked about, but so they were doing their best because they were also afraid and I finally hit me though this adult. I was like, oh my god, that's it. They were terrified. They were doing their love of this because they were parenting from a place of fear and from guilt which you've never been a parent and you've been to those places regularly. You're doing like what feels like your best. It's terrifying, sometimes to the child, because what the energetic you emit is also fear and guilt, like I was doing this to my cat the other day and the cat was like where, what's the case?
0:55:07 - Briar
What's the cat Can at least have such good mirrors for our souls.
0:55:13 - Sam
Oh my god oh, my god, my cat. She just looks at me like, oh rare, what's wrong with you? I was like, oh, thank you, I'm on a ride, bitch, sorry. But then I was thinking at 16, when they're like, what's your parents? This is coming from your relationship with your parents, and I could remember, like, walking across the group and I was about ready to slap the woman with my parents are perfect, because this is what my mother would say about hers. And I'm like, oh and so, like, going back as an adult, going your parents are not perfect. You watch your mom fight with her mom all the time Like this is you needed them to be perfect because you were helpless, and it's like they did their best, they were and that was, and you're still here and that's you know like. And right now, that little, that little one that lives inside you, has you and you're definitely not perfect, but you get it because you are. You are you.
You've done a lot of work to get past what you lived in and yeah, so it's like it's that taking the acknowledgement of what you lived through, like yeah, it's from the outside, it probably you know, because you know we had, you know we had I never had to worry about, like when my food was coming from all this, and so it was like the traumas that I dealt with were different from other people's kind of traumas, but it's like I had you know, I was the first kid born of like five miscarriages, which no one ever talked about like that kind of trauma, because my mom was like, oh, it's just something that happens.
I'm like, no, it's not so, like she was dealing with a kind of trauma that was invisible but it certainly emotionally came out and so, yeah, so like there's the world of medical trauma and the terrible, visible fear that I felt but I couldn't name, and so like going back and going, okay, you live the one. And, of course, like there's stuff like it sounds like this one people, but other people have been. They seemed to have an birthmark and mom, I think that's like the picture behind it.
And especially with my corners this one people take out. They help my RF every day. When they come home they end up trying to get me under the sun.
0:57:26 - Briar
And showing me family. I told her that they had 90 percent. Mom, you deserve to. You know, not everybody gets to come here. Grandparents like, oh wow, look at all of this neurodivergence everywhere that we just didn't acknowledge or talk about, and that's why this is such an important part of the process. We have to know our own stories and we have to be able to deal with them.
0:57:56 - Sam
Right, right, my family like my, my like. Why are we the ones that could never get anything organized Like? Our offices always looked like the trash dump. I was like, oh, that's why neurodivergence is a thing.
0:58:10 - Briar
Right.
0:58:12 - Sam
We were the family that everybody had migraines, everybody had you know, food stuff, nobody's house, like if we didn't have someone come and keep our house, we wouldn't have found anything. And it was like oh, because we were the neurodivergence family.
0:58:27 - Briar
So two weeks y'all, it's going to be an amazing time. Sam, this was delightful.
0:58:34 - Sam
Thank you.
0:58:36 - Briar
I always appreciate being trusted with your stories and with everyone who comes and sits in this space. There's, there is healing here. It's circular, it takes time to integrate into your body and this is how we do the work. So if you have not subscribed to the neurodiversity media network, please do that. It's neurodiversitymedianetworkcom. We'll make sure that you get sent the next episode directly via email. This is how you stay in the loop and we will be back in two weeks for some inner child healing. Come on, it's going to be a great time.
0:59:24 - Sam
Fantastic, we're on the house that neurodiversity built.
0:59:29 - Briar
Thank you for being here, y'all, Sam, thank you. We'll see you all again soon.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
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