Sacred Gyre: Recent Episodes
Emily Newberry
Creating positive change requires staying connected to your deepest values. This can be difficult when you feel under pressure. Let's have a conversation about how to do it!
In this episode I navigate through a recent knee injury, what it tells me about how we measure things, and about the ways life can be both certain and uncertain.
In this Episode of Sacred Gyre I think about my own reaction to the terrorist attacks on 9/11 2001, and how I think this helps me stay connected to my deepest values under challenging circumstances.
In this episode of Sacred Gyre I talk about an incident in which one of my personal "perfect stories" becomes obvious and how I am reacting.
I then offer some thoughts on how this appears in the larger society and what I think is our responsibility as we notice such "perfect stories."
In this episode of Sacred Gyre, I grapple with a decision by my health care provider to stop certain forms of care for transgender youth. What should I do as I feel anger, fear or sadness in response? And what, if anything should you do in similar circumstances?
In this episode of Sacred Gyre, I use an example from my own life to illustrate the ways in which well-intended language about social change can potentially create harm. In addition to my thoughts on this subject, I also use this podcast episode as a way to hold myself accountable.
In the last episode of Sacred Gyre, I read a collection of 13 poems from the newly released book Splitting Open the World by Carolyn Martin. In this episode 23 Carolyn and I have a conversation about the vulnerability of writing poems about your own life, and of her reaction to my reading of her poetry.
Today, I invite you to a reading of poems I selected from Splitting Open the World, By Carolyn Martin. I do this, of course, with her permission.
It was published in March 2025 by The Poetry Box a publisher working " To bring the joy of poetry to everyone," as they say in their mission statement.
If you listen to my reading until the end, I will tell you how you can purchase a copy of this book as a discount.
In this episode of Sacred Gyre I will talk about my learning experiences and think about to what extent they do or do not resonate with the experience of people who work in the medical professions. I've found that reflecting on my life at times so I can learn from my mistakes as well as from when I believe I did well.
But this also is a way of holding myself responsible. And doing it in a manner that you, the listener or reader, can use as both a potential inspiration in your own life, and to help you reflect thoughtfully on how well I live up to my own ideals in my two podcasts.
As always, I invite you to send me your thoughts on my work, and ways I could improve it from your point of view.
In this episode I use an example of a chance encounter with a book and article to highlight ways in which my sense of spirituality evolves over time.
I also reveal my thoughts that one's spiritual aspect need not be about religion per se, although, for many people, that is a very important aspect. But my definition of spirituality applies to all of us, I believe, whether we belong to or believe in a specific religion, are religious in a more general sense, are atheists or agnostics or don't care to specify any of these.
Then I go into what I think is the universal question we all must ask ourselves if we are to live morally in a thoughtful way.
Jeep Show, A Trouper at the Battle of the Bulge, by Robert O'Connor tells the story of Jim Hetzer who enlisted in the army during World War II and is assigned to the Morale Corps as an Entertainment Specialist. These soldiers went near the front lines in small groups to entertain the soldiers and help keep up their morale.
In this conversation with Bob we talk about where the idea for this book came from, the challenge of writing authentically from the ordinary soldier's point of view, the way he was inspired by Mark Twain's handling of old ideas in Huckleberry Finn, and the connection between writing this book and the life challenges that led to writing an earlier book, Gumptionaide, about overcoming difficulties.
Bob's website can be found at JeepShowBook.com and the book is available on Amazon.
I'll do it my way.
I imagine I am not the only person who has strong feelings after the recent presidential election. As an 80-year-old transgender woman, I have a lot of feelings around bathroom bills and laws stopping gender affirming care. I assure you that I have given myself time and space to be present with those feelings, but there have been moments when anger, fear and disgust have been present in my body.
I can't change the outcome of the elections. And I don't want my life to be focused on those negative feelings. So what should I do?
I have changed the name of my Substack website to WWII Baby. Yes, I am a World War II baby, born in 1944 when the war was raging on. My new logo has WW II Baby at the top, a spiral in the middle, and the words “Age Less, Grow More” at the bottom.
I interrupted my work on Butterfly Arose because I noticed myself having emotional reactions to the attempted assassination of former President Trump. I created this episode of Sacred Gyre as a way of helping myself stay connected to my deepest values so I can continue my writing on Butterfly Arose in a way that I will be okay with later.
A new Sacred Gyre post in which I offer myself the chance to deepen my connection with my own values before creating the next Butterfly Arose podcast episode.
The importance of spirituality in my own life, where mine came from and how it helped me stay connected to my deepest values as I work for change.
My new podcast on butterflyarose.com will be a place where I talk about my personal belifs on issues important to me, and thoughts on books and other peeole's podcasts whom I respect.
In this Episode I talk with playwrite Mikki Gillette about how she stays conected to her deepest values as she works for change.
How can we be bettter at organizational change. And how to we take ito account who we are given what we learned from Episode 7 The Adaptive Unconscious?