Divining My Way To Acceptance With Rachel Wilkinson

All right,

Grief growers,

I'm so excited to introduce you to Rachel Wilkinson.

She and I connected in a group that's just for lady podcasters of the world.

And I'm just really honored to have her on the show to talk about her podcast life,

Nancy,

Which is about divining your life through witchcraft and the occult,

But also kind of using these other worldly spiritual elements to come back from the hardest moments of our lives.

So Rachel,

Welcome to the show.

And if you could please start us off with your lost story.

Well,

Thank you for having me.

My last story.

Okay,

I always need to take a bit of a breath before we get into this.

So okay,

I was sitting across the desk from my fertility doctor.

He had a piece of paper laid out in front of me,

And my partner and I have been trying to have a baby for well over a year.

And I had gone through a bunch of tests and some less than pleasant procedures.

And in front of me,

You know,

These were the results.

And it was a chart like a J curve along the bottom where the ages of women and along the left side where it started high.

This meant young women in high fertility.

And as you move to the right,

The lower women,

You know,

In the J curve,

It got less and less fertile.

And then next to that was a monitor with a blurry sort of x ray image.

And of course,

There was the look on this doctor's face.

And I was just like,

Oh,

Lord,

This cannot be good.

And of course,

You know,

It wasn't.

He explained with the chart how I was a 38 year old woman,

38 at the time.

But I was working with the body of a 55 year old,

That I was headed in a menopause and that if that wasn't enough,

This x ray like thing that he was showing me was that scar tissue had closed my uterus,

And was acting like an IUD.

And he explained that this was the end of the line for me that he could have done surgery to cut out that the scarring which you know,

Kind of was its own horror story,

But that it was likely if I got pregnant,

I just I miscarry each time.

And I remember him saying,

You know,

You need three things you need sperm,

You need eggs,

You need a uterus,

And and we had one,

My partner was fine,

But I had neither eggs,

Nor viral uterus.

And he said he wasn't going to try to extract eggs for in vitro because I just didn't have any.

So he left me the choice was with you,

There was adoption on the table,

I could spend 10s of 1000s of dollars,

You know,

Rolling the dice on donated eggs and surrogates,

Or,

You know,

To say goodbye to this life I thought I was going to have.

And in the end,

I did decide to say goodbye.

But at the time,

I had no idea the emotional ramifications that would have on me,

Just none.

So my last story is really,

When I had had an entire life planned out sort of around motherhood,

That was that was gone.

And I didn't know what to do.

I'm really picking up on this notion of when I made the decision when I chose that life,

I had no idea the emotional ramifications that were to follow because I think that runs so parallel to so many other types of grief is that we get into it.

And even if the grief is by choice or not by choice,

We never fully know the extent of how it's going to change our lives until it's changing our lives until we're living it.

So I'm wondering if you can get into a little bit of how making that decision for yourself has changed your life in ways you didn't expect?

Well,

I mean,

Immediately after I fell into a deep depression that I had planned this life or at least had envisioned it.

I had at the time,

Well,

I am a freelance writer.

And at the time,

I had this educational contract,

I had a writing contract with an educational company.

And I had this flexible schedule,

I worked from home,

I was going to be this mom.

And,

You know,

I had imagined things I had imagined Christmases with kids,

I had imagined growing old with human beings obligated to take care of me,

You know,

This sort of end of life.

There was somebody that was going to have to make decisions for me whether they liked it or not.

And I'm from Illinois,

Or originally from Illinois before I lived to Houston.

And before leaving Illinois,

I was from a very small rural town.

So ingrained in me was this sort of cultural expectation to have children because childless people are selfish.

You know,

And I had even had that thought I had looked at other people who weren't having children,

I thought,

Oh,

How selfish.

And it was this kind of cultural programming.

Plus,

You know,

You get into like the science side of me,

Which,

You know,

I kind of wanted to have this experience in life,

You know,

What does my child look like?

What does this little person become?

And there was something neat about it,

This idea that I have one life and this is an experience that is a quintessential part of being human and a quintessential part of being a woman.

And then this one chart with this doctor was like,

No,

Not for you.

And I did,

I did make that choice,

You know,

I could have probably spent another couple of years trying all these different things and going through the pains and the challenges of that,

But it just,

It seemed daunting.

So on top of being sad,

I also felt a bit like a failure because or scared because I wasn't brave enough to go into surgeries and I wasn't brave enough to maybe consider having these miscarriages and,

I mean,

Because that just seemed like a horror show.

And so then you have my partner,

He was wrecked.

You know,

He was fine.

He was totally viable.

And he once said to me in the aftermath that being a father might be the only good or right thing he ever did in his life.

He used words like this would be his legacy.

And I remember one day he stood in my office and said that he'd be sad about this for the rest of his life.

And that that part of him was resentful.

So I told him he needed to go find somebody else to be with then because I wasn't going to be responsible for a lifetime of sadness.

And that added a whole new level to this grief.

And I kept trying to look on the bright side.

I had,

I've always wanted to write a novel,

So I thought,

Hey,

I have this flexible contract,

You know,

I'll work on a novel,

But I don't,

I don't know.

All I could say it was like a universal arm sweeping across the dining table and knocking all the dishes off with it.

And just saying like,

No,

This is not any life you're going to have.

Because even when I sat there and thought,

Well,

I had this contract,

I'll write a novel,

The educational company I was working with ended the contract even.

And that wasn't about me.

That was them.

They were trying to control costs because financially,

There's kind of an educational storm going on right now.

So at this point,

I had no child,

A partner who was resentful and was going to be sad for the rest of his life and no job.

And so this future that I had chosen essentially was a void of nothingness,

Which I saw,

I know that sounds a little melodramatic,

But I mean,

That's how I felt that there was just nothing.

And I thought,

Well,

You know,

All I'm doing is wasting more important people,

More important people's air.

And that's kind of,

Like I said,

I got really melodramatic about it,

But like,

I was just breathing for the sake of breathing and thought,

Well,

I might just,

I should just be done with all of this.

You know,

I couldn't see past this sadness because there was just,

There was no handlebars in it.

There was nothing to hang on to.

It was sort of like everything,

Every place I kind of turned to say,

Well,

I have this now.

It would,

It wouldn't be there anymore.

And I was so mad.

I just remember being so sad and so angry.

And I spent years there,

Four years of terrible decisions is kind of what I call it.

Cause I did four years of terrible decisions,

Just trying to feel anything except this sort of loneliness and isolation and failure.

And,

You know,

I just felt so alone and jealous of everyone else.

Oh my God.

Because of course everyone else was getting everything they ever wanted,

You know,

Whether that was true or not,

Or whether the,

That was the life they wanted to present,

But,

But everybody else was so happy and everybody else was so successful.

And I'm always embarrassed to say this,

But I was successful if I put a bra on that day,

It was just these like tiny little victories and yeah.

And,

And,

And I just was not prepared for the wrecking ball that all of that would be.

I wasn't prepared for,

Well,

I don't think I even knew it was grief at the time.

Actually.

I don't,

I don't know that I thought I didn't see it as grief because I saw it as my choice.

Like,

You know,

I had done this to myself and so I was taking personal responsibility and personal emotional responsibility trying to sort of be this strong person that said,

Well,

If you don't want to feel like this,

You should have made a different choice.

Not ever realizing that this baby,

This life,

This future was still,

Still a relationship in my life or still this,

You know,

This thing,

This dream that was now gone.

It was,

It was the death of a dream or at least the death of what I thought or who I thought I was going to be.

And it really wasn't until therapy,

Yay therapy,

I eventually got there.

You know,

Then I started to see it as grief and that,

You know,

If we're talking about coming back or we're talking about turning points,

I think that that change in perspective was probably the first step.

I want to get into,

Well,

First of all,

I just want to say that you just laid out the whole ball of wax that is grief,

Like everything from jealousy to despair to not wanting to be here.

This line,

I wrote down this line of I was using up other people's air and you say melodramatic,

But I'm like,

That's a real thing that happens in grief is that we feel without the dream,

Without the future,

Without the promise of that reality,

There is nothing.

It's like,

It's very much a,

The myth of false choice.

I see that as my future or nothing is my future.

And because the new quote unquote new normal,

The new reality has not yet been created.

And so it's like,

I see the void or I see the thing that died.

And those are both equally full of despair.

And they're very heavy.

I keep,

I keep getting this picture of you with like a pile of like logs or sticks on your back and people just keep piling on more and more.

There's like the grief of your husband.

There's the grief of being let go from this freelance job.

There's the grief of the fact that you can't actually physically carry children.

There's the grief that other people have children and you don't.

There's the grief of these giant cultural and hometown beliefs that are also dying.

It's like the whole city's crashing down around you.

It's kind of this,

This notion that I get.

And to,

And so many,

I love that you touched on this because so many people have all of this going on in their lives.

And yet just like you,

They don't classify it as grief because they think that grief happens either when somebody dies and it's out of their control or when something else happens and it's out of their control.

But grief growers who haven't been here for a long time won't remember this,

But in the very first season of coming back in an episode with Iris Rankin,

We talked about the griefs that we create,

Whether it's consciously breaking up with somebody,

Moving across the country,

Anything where one chapter of your life ends and you can never go back to it and another one is beginning is a grief event.

And this is a powerful space to be in because to acknowledge that we can create our own griefs or we can choose to step into them is really important.

It's really important to acknowledge that,

Yeah,

Some of the worst griefs that we ever face are ones that we instigate ourselves and yet all we do is blame ourselves for it.

Oh yeah.

I mean,

Which was all I was doing.

I should have done the surgery.

I should have done this.

I should have done that.

There were so many shoulds.

I had a list of them.

Did you actually have like a list like written down,

Printed out somewhere?

Oh,

Well,

Yeah.

Well,

Not originally.

Again,

I had to say thumbs up to therapy.

Everybody needs to get a therapist just to get through life.

But because that was the,

I mean,

All of the,

My recovery,

I don't even know if I should,

You know,

I don't know if that's the right word to use or at least,

You know,

My way out of this,

The first started with therapy and medication and I have three years still going strong with the stream,

Going strong with the same really,

Really patient therapist.

So kudos to him and excellent antidepressants.

But I had to get kind of past the,

That suicidal ideation first.

And to be fair,

I am too terrified of death to have actually done it,

But I couldn't come up with anything that made my life worthwhile.

Like you said,

Like I was breathing other people's air.

I was using other people's resources.

All I was doing was consuming.

And so I,

That's why I started to sit down and that's when I got the journal out and that's why,

And that's,

Yes,

When I started making lists,

I started making lists of what to do when I feel terrible and lists of maybe all the things that I should have done and the list of different futures I could have had.

And it was just a lot of writing and a lot of writing through a lot,

A lot of very dark feelings and a lot of feelings I'm not proud of too,

Because there was a lot of cowardice in it and there was a lot of embarrassment and there was a lot of shame.

So it makes so much sense that as you're working with this therapist and writing all of these things that never got to be,

Or the things that have died as a result of this grief,

That makes sense that that is your process,

Kind of being guided by another.

But I know that so much of your story revolves around kind of this pursuit and self guidance into a dive of the occult and the otherworldly and the intuitive.

So I'm kind of wondering,

I mean,

My question is really like,

Where the hell did that come from?

Because when did that translation happen?

Yeah,

Because,

Because for so much of us,

So much of us who are grieving,

We dip our toes into these places that might,

Might be spiritual.

So things like yoga or meditation or like,

Kind of these soft touch things,

But I get the sense just from who you are and how you show up in the world and kind of my knowing of your work.

I know it goes a lot deeper and more inclusive than that.

So where the hell did it come from and how did it start?

Okay,

So let's sit back.

This is a bit of a story.

So I went through about two years of misery.

I mean,

If you want to talk about the long dark night,

That was 2016 2017.

And then in 2018,

I was finally in a place to say,

Okay,

Now what?

I've got maybe 40 or 50 years of life ahead of me.

How are you going to spend them?

And it was a total blank slate.

And I guess what I've come to awkwardly appreciate is that it wasn't just blank,

It was also clean.

It was a clean slate.

And that came with its own terrors.

Because now choice,

Choice was overwhelming.

And I was,

I was a 40 year old woman who didn't know what she wanted to be when she grew up.

You know,

I had never really had a occupational dream.

I mean,

Beyond writing this novel.

So in 2018,

I knew I had to do something I had no idea what the future I wanted.

And so,

Yes,

I,

Yes,

I turned to witchcraft and divination,

Which I know sounds so weird,

But divination like tarot cards and pendulums and palm reading and reading tea leaves.

I mean,

That was all just to try to glean some insight into the future.

And witchcraft is an attempt to exert our wills on the future and to divine in many ways or to control and my life was out of control.

And that was terrifying.

And so,

Yeah,

So I turned to divination as kind of the gateway drug,

I suppose.

It was something I had used during my youth.

I cannot say that I was grown up in a tradition of using witchcraft and occult tools.

I was,

I was a Presbyterian Protestant,

But I was always kind of intrigued.

You know,

It was always kind of this mysterious place and it was always kind of this fun thing.

And I,

Growing up my entire life,

I have been someone who never quite fit in.

And so I spent a lot of time on my own.

I spent a lot of time reading books.

And one of my favorite things to do was to go to the bookstore,

Walden Books,

When there was still brick and mortar besides Barnes and Noble.

And I would go as a kid and I would pick one book out of the new age section.

There was like one little bookshelf.

And that would be my book for the week or two.

And so I kind of had just this,

Really just this interest,

Just a hobby,

Just something to turn to.

And this kind of fun little ritual of going to the bookstore and grabbing a book.

And I realized then in 2018 that I was in this strange middle ground where I wasn't witchy enough to get to hang out with the witches.

And I was not that deep into that sort of,

This is ironic because it's actually called the fertility tradition.

And it's just occurred to me in this moment.

Wow.

Yes.

So,

I mean,

A lot of the pagan traditions are fertility traditions.

The man and the woman come together and it becomes the creation of something.

And so it's a lot about the fertility of the earth.

And then there's this other kind of avenue where you go into the more occult side where they're all just,

It's just this really kind of stifling culture of needing to know all the things like crunchy,

Fiddly complexities.

And I can take a vacation in either of those,

But I don't want to live in them.

Then as you mentioned,

There's this flip side where you have this sort of new age light worker type vibe.

This is,

You have American yoga or you have crystals and angels and spirituality.

And it's a very easy breezy kind of just feel the higher vibe sort of place.

And again,

I am in this middle of all these things.

I like little bits of all of them.

It's fun.

You can learn about yourself.

I like the aspirations of being a better human and finding my highest,

Most positive expression of myself.

I even like getting naked in the woods when there's a time and place for everything and dancing under the moon.

And there's all these aspects that come together.

And I just thought I can't be the only one.

I cannot be the only person out there that never quite fits into anything.

And like I said,

That's just a whole other story of my life.

And I have just never been able to fit into a group of people.

So yeah,

As I was kind of trying to find out more about myself,

As I was trying to divine the future,

As I was trying to control the future and sort of make things happen for myself,

I realized I was creating my own sort of cobbled together version of witchcraft.

And this is when I got to the idea of life mancy.

And life mancy is,

I'm using mancy,

That suffix actually to mean the divination and it was life divining.

It is the opposite of necromancy.

If anybody knows necromancy,

It's about raising the dead.

And so I needed the,

In some ways,

There was an aspect of that because I was sort of having to come back from a sort of death.

But also I just,

I wanted to embrace that idea of creating a new life.

And creating a new life for people who don't quite fit in.

And for people who like the idea of magic,

But are also kind of science minded,

Who are curious about tarot cards,

But also want to know how the frequencies of sound work on the body.

Because I had had this,

I was sort of an academic science background,

But I also liked witchy shit.

Oh,

I don't know if I can say shit,

But.

This is absolutely a swear friendly podcast.

Okay,

It's a swear friendly,

Yeah.

And I also liked witchy shit.

And so I was this weird middle place because the scientists are like,

They're crossing themselves saying,

Get your superstitions out of here.

And the witches are like,

Don't bring,

This is not science,

This is art.

And here I was,

And I'm stuck in this middle ground and I'm like,

No,

Both of these things are true.

This is not an A or B,

This is a C,

This is a find the different path.

So sorry,

That was kind of a digression,

But I mean,

That was the spark.

That was when I started to kind of get serious about how do I create this thing and how do I build this thing and how do I use these tools of the occult and of witchcraft to bring myself back to life.

I really love this idea because I wrote down coming back from the dead,

Because I think that is what we do when we're coming back from grief and loss because the life we knew died,

The person that we were then died.

There were so many things like our ideas of religion,

Our ideas of home,

Our ideas of safety,

Our ideas of truth,

So many things die when a dream dies,

When a person dies,

When we make a major move,

When a pet dies.

A lot of stuff happens when we're grieving,

And so this notion of bringing yourself back from the dead is literally the process of coming back.

So I love how you phrase that.

I can't believe that no one has ever said it that way on coming back before,

But that just tickles me.

That makes me so glad.

I'm so glad.

Yeah,

I think that's phenomenal.

And I kind of wonder existing in this space,

I'm laughing because you talk over and over about existing in this space where you don't really fit in,

But in order to fit in,

There must be some kind of mold to be into,

And then if you don't fit in,

There is a mold that you do not fit into.

And this is such like a universal experience of grief is like,

I'm not with the rest of the humans,

I am with the grievers.

And I'm wondering kind of,

Okay,

So what does like an average day or an average week look like for you?

Like how does this come into play practically in all of your day-to-day functionings?

How do you divine your life in the everyday?

Oh,

There are so many ways.

It starts out with dreams.

In fact,

As soon as I wake up,

I grab my notebook and I write down everything I had dreamed about or anything I can remember about my dreams.

And I do that because dream interpretation is a way to,

Well,

We talk about it on the podcast.

Dreams can be the digestion of the day.

Dreams can tap into your hidden thoughts,

Hidden fears,

And even some victories you may not have realized that you had.

And they can also sometimes predict the future,

Which is a real complicated,

Funny place to go.

But yeah,

I mean,

Dream interpretation can lead to prophecy.

So it has dreams from a science standpoint are,

Again,

Consuming the sort of digestion of the day before,

Digesting the events of the day before.

They can also be what's called threat rehearsal.

The idea is that we as humans evolved with this threat rehearsal dream kind of skill and those who were better at it lived because they were able to practice threats and practice how they would react.

So you have some of those just kind of things in which they are good for us as people.

And then you get into this prophecy part.

And that's just fun.

That's how do you learn the language of your own dreams?

You can have something like the color red,

For example.

And red has some universal properties.

Red can mean passion.

Red can mean anger.

Red can mean blood.

So there are some very fiery things around red.

But I could have also had some very personal experience with a red car,

Let's say.

Maybe I got into a traffic accident in my red car.

And so when red shows up in my dreams,

Maybe that calls back to something,

Some sort of aspect of that experience.

Or I wore a red dress to some certain event.

Or the color plays out in some way in my life.

And so part of dream interpretation is also finding out what is your personal language.

And as you collect this volume of material,

You do realize that a number of these symbols come up time and time again.

In fact,

It's so funny when you go back into history.

And this is a small digression so I hope you'll indulge me.

But there are people who dream of falling out of airplanes.

That this is a common fear.

Or they have travel anxiety.

And so the night before they will dream of a plane crash.

Or they will dream that they fell out of an airplane.

And if you go back into the 19th century,

People were having the same dreams,

But it was about boats.

They would be in boat crashes,

They would fall overboard.

And there is this interesting connection with humanity and time and history and how we function where the culture in which we live in defines how we see the world and how we create symbols for ourselves and how we speak in this kind of dream language.

So all the way back to the original point,

My day starts with write down everything I dreamed the night before.

And then I kind of go about my day.

Sometimes I will do some meditation at an altar I have.

I have candles and a little altar set up to multiple entities.

I mix cultures,

I mix religions,

I don't care.

Very eclectic.

I've got a candle to the Archangel Michael.

I've got a little statue to the god Apollo.

I mean,

For me it doesn't matter because it's about tapping into a certain energy.

It's about connecting with ideas.

It's about,

You know,

Archangel Michael is a warrior energy.

It is a protector,

A defeater of evil.

And Apollo is related to the sun and it's about shining truth and also being brave and also he is a muse.

Well,

The muses come from Apollo.

So it's about art and music and things.

And so these kind of energies together help me try to tap into that for myself to be brave,

To speak truth,

To defeat evil,

To be inspired and to create.

So that is another aspect.

And I pull cards.

I pull tarot cards.

So if I'm about to sit down and make an episode of the podcast,

I will pull a tarot card.

And based on what that says,

I will sort of try to find that message somewhere in the podcast.

So let me see if there's an example I can think of.

Okay,

The three of swords.

Most people who have any familiarity with tarot cards know about the three of swords.

This is the,

In the Rider Waite,

It's the card that has the heart in it.

And then there are three swords,

One in the middle and the two come out from the sides.

And it is a card of heartbreak and separation and grief.

And so if I were to pull that card for a podcast,

Well,

Maybe I need to think about the listener who is grieving or the listener who is suffering heartbreak right now.

And how can I tailor my message to that person or what can I incorporate to help that person?

And it may not have been anything that I had thought about that day,

But it's just an avenue of inspiration.

It's just a way to get creative juices flowing.

It's just a way to think about a problem differently.

So those are the three,

Those are the three sort of main,

Those are always my go-tos.

Like,

You know,

Pretty much whether it's every day or a few times a week,

Those are the things that I do.

And then there's always creating actual rituals.

So less frequently,

I will actually do a ritual because I want something to happen or because I want to manifest some desire.

And instead of just,

I am not as good as the high vibe people out there who can just manifest their dreams.

I am still really cynical sometimes.

And I have this terrible,

Terrible voice in my head that says awful,

Awful things to me.

So part of creating a ritual is to kind of help get my brain into this space.

So if I want to accomplish something,

Maybe I will light a candle and write it on a piece of paper and then burn that piece of paper because the energy of that fire releases it into the universe.

Or maybe I tap into the timing of the moon,

Whether it's the full moon or the new moon,

To sort of align my intentions with where we are planetarily speaking.

And this starts to get into astrology,

But you know,

The new moon is for new beginnings and the full moon as it goes to the new moon is about releasing things.

So I can kind of tailor my ritual or tailor my intentions.

And that way,

When I'm driving in my car at night and you look at the moon,

You can be,

You can go back to that intention and you can go back to that thought because you're reminded with this celestial object that is always going to be there in the sky saying,

Oh,

This is what you're supposed to be doing today.

Don't get distracted.

Remember this is what you wanted to do.

So there's a lot of ways that I think it's practical,

But yeah,

That's I mean,

That's kind of typically how I use these tools for myself.

I love it that it shows up in this bits and pieces kind of way.

There's a podcast I love called Terrible Thanks for Asking that's hosted by Nora McInerney and she calls herself a cafeteria Christian where she kind of takes bits and pieces from Christianity and then makes her own thing out of it.

And this is like bits and pieces,

A cult.

It's like,

It's like cafeteria style divination.

And I and I love that idea because it's just choosing from the buffet of literally everything you can draw from like some nights where we're doing things to under the moon and other days we're going out naked and under the sunlight or whatever it is.

And then some days we're drawing cards and using them in our work to speak to people.

And sometimes we're talking about crystals or astrology or dreams.

And the longer you've spoken,

The more I'm like,

Oh,

I think my grief is a lot more a cult than I tell people it is.

And that's it's kind of like your realization at the beginning of our podcast where you're like,

I didn't realize that was grief.

And here's me I'm like,

Oh,

I didn't realize that could have been classified as a cult.

And what's really interesting is that so much of what I reached for in the aftermath of my loss was these things that kept popping up.

So like I did keep a dream journal for about probably 30 or 60 days.

It was a long stint and I noticed it was very based on the moon and kind of where that was in the sky.

And like my own cycles as a human moving in the world and what I was actively creating or not creating at the time,

And it was fascinating to just like,

Watch and notice patterns.

But then I've also used things like cards,

Like runes,

Like especially symbols from the animal world,

Birds mean a lot to me,

Especially dead birds.

And they show up actually quite a lot in the city of Chicago,

Because there's a lot of high buildings with windows and things.

And so I see a lot all the time,

I just never chalked it up to being a cult.

So you realize that there is a divination based on birds alone,

It's called a neuromance.

I have never heard that.

But I bet that I've don't doubt it based on our conversation.

And that would be absolutely incredible to just like,

Do a deep dive into because I think in the aftermath of loss,

Too,

We did an episode on this a couple of seasons ago with Sharon Prentice,

That talked about the weird,

Intuitive,

Unexplainable things that happen in loss to we're looking for these answers and whether or not they're given to us or we have to create them ourselves.

We're looking for something solid to stand on.

And it sounds like that's what you have been provided through pursuing these things that are a cult or divining or lifemancy or kind of whatever umbrella term you'd like to put on on the cafeteria on the buffet.

Well,

The future is terrifying.

You're absolutely right.

The future is absolutely terrifying.

Well,

And like we were saying earlier,

Looking at the life that just died or the void of nothingness,

Like none of those things makes us feel good.

So why not pursue something that will even if it's not and this is actually the next question I have for you,

Even if it's not quote unquote,

Real,

Which makes me lead you to ask how real is all of this for you?

Oh,

Well,

In practicality speaking in day to day life,

It's absolutely real because I just as the example of pulling the card,

That leads me to create something and that creation brings something into reality.

And I have two beliefs that kind of go along with this.

So science,

As far as science,

Now,

Sorry,

A lot of people say faith in science can't go hand in hand.

But I think of science as the study of God or the universal or source in action.

So it's this idea of having the spark coming from somewhere and the idea of science and literature and history in this academic side as to how do we understand that?

How do we get our heads around it?

And then if you take the idea of we are created in God's image,

I don't think that has to do with hands and feet and bodies and noses.

I think it is this idea of creating something from nothing.

As far as Christianity and the book of Genesis,

You have God saying,

Let there be light and there was.

And I don't know that I could call myself a Christian.

I could not.

I don't know where I am as far as where you would kind of put me in the religious umbrella because I have so many eclectic ideas about it.

But there is something in that idea of what I think becomes real.

And my inspiration can become this thing in the universe.

Your book,

Your podcast,

Those are things that came from an idea.

My podcast,

Eventually,

Hopefully my book,

Those are things that came from ideas.

And that to me is very,

Very real.

And so when you are using these tools,

Whether it's the tarot card that helps you create the thing or whether it is the ritual that aligns your mind in the right place,

It is all about honing this will to bring these things into reality,

To create from clay,

To create from notions,

To put things together in ways that you wouldn't have even thought to think about them.

And the only way to do that is by experiencing lots of different possibilities,

By being open to all of the weird things out there.

Like the weirder it is,

The more open you should be because it is going to move you in a different direction and it is going to show you a different perspective.

It's going to create for you a different angle to live your life very practically speaking.

And I mean,

So at some point you have to accept your grief.

Like if you go through the stages of grief,

I know this,

At the end there is acceptance.

And if you want to talk about a very practical way in which these things come together,

Actually it was just last month,

You know,

I was keeping a dream journal and in my dream,

And I wrote this down and I said,

I loved him,

I cared about him and he'll always be a secret part of the life we won't get to know.

And in the dream,

I was talking about that baby.

And that dream for me was this sort of sign of acceptance.

It was saying that I had loved him,

I had cared about him.

I don't know why I believe that he was going to be a boy in my dream,

But you know,

This is what it was and that he would be this secret part of life I wouldn't get to know.

But that was okay.

I didn't need to know everything,

Much to my own dismay.

I do like to know all the things.

And so it was a way for me to say goodbye to that and also acknowledge that I'm giving birth to a different kind of baby now.

Yeah,

Yeah.

In creation,

There is a birthing that happens,

Whether it's of ourselves or of something that's tangible out in real life.

And I love this,

I literally just got chills as you were speaking,

Because I think,

Say what you want about the five stages of grief,

Being real or not real,

I do a lot of debunking on those.

But acceptance in the way that means I acknowledge this happened,

So this is my reality now,

Not I'm okay with this.

Two very different emotions there.

But the one that says this happened and this is my reality now,

That is such a wildly powerful place to be.

Because when you live in that truth,

If this is true,

Then what else can be created from this?

As opposed to my eyes are only looking backwards,

I'm only seeing what happened,

What's behind me,

What I'm still stuck mind circling on or ruminating on,

Versus,

Okay,

If all of that did happen,

And I'm standing here in the present,

What is possible to create in the next?

Which is really,

Really fascinating to me.

And I got this image as you were speaking of divination and this cafeteria occultness and what have you,

Just being another doorway with which to enter the next life,

The next iteration of you that you're creating for yourself,

This,

Okay,

I'm definitely childless at 40 without a career,

Like what the hell do I do now?

With the rest of my life,

All of my hopes and dreams have crashed the ground,

I might be responsible for my partner's misfortune,

Don't have a job anymore,

Like everything,

The city is crumbling,

We've reiterated before the city is crumbling.

Well,

It's a call about it being in the in,

In a burning building,

With a little glass of water,

Sipping it,

Telling myself everything's fine.

It's like that comic with the dog,

Where the the dog is sitting in the burning room.

And he's like,

This is fine.

My favorite part is what you don't see is actually the the panels that follow that which are never posted online.

But at some point,

It gets way too hot in the room and the dog is like,

This is not fine.

And then he gets up and does something about it.

But most people use it to describe like,

I'm in such a state of crisis,

But it's such a crisis that I'm just gonna sit here and sip water because there's nothing really to do.

Right,

Like,

I absolutely love that.

And the door,

You know,

The door out is right there,

If you can see it.

And for me,

It was like,

I couldn't see the door,

Like all of my friends,

I mean,

Because I made some bad choices over the those years,

I mean,

You know,

Trying to distract myself trying to make myself feel better,

Lots of bad choices.

And all my friends have like vacated the building.

They're like,

This shit is on fire.

I don't know why you're here.

Why are you staying Rachel get out but I you know,

I couldn't see it.

There was too much smoke.

I was like the dog I was handing,

You know,

I had this mug in my hand.

I was just sipping I'm like,

This is good.

Okay.

So it was part of using the occult apart part of using that witchcraft and the divination was to clear the smoke out because I had to find the door again.

And it was probably a different door than you first came into the house.

Yeah,

Oh hell yes.

Yeah,

That's wild.

And,

And just so reflective of,

Of grief period.

I know,

Um,

Here and coming back,

We draw on a lot of different perspectives to talk about how we come back because it is so vastly different.

And even listeners,

If you're not quite resonating with the witchiness of the conversation today,

I hope you've stuck around and known that this pursuit of something that grounds us or something that guides us is universal in the aftermath of loss.

And that's really what I wanted to get at this conversation today.