Picnic On The Moon: Recent Episodes
Kirsten
Looking clearly and deeply at the world we have built. Finding new things to be amazed at and identifying old things that we want to let go of. Looking for connections and finding lessons. Rethinking what we see as sane.
Beautiful people, this episode is a reminder of the wonder that your body is. No seriously, an image whether on Instagram, in a magazine or our own image in the mirror can never be a representation of the biology we carry within ourselves. How do we expect our bodies to look a certain way and look the same over time when we are being remade, reconnected, are coming together and coming apart every minute of every day all at the same time? What if we became more intimate with the complex connected events that take place inside of us every day, in our heads, our veins, our skin? What if we became curious and went looking for weird and wonderful discoveries that have been made about our bodies? What if we remembered that we are part of a much bigger intricate ecosystem that goes through its own changes and cycles? How might this remembering change the way we look at ourselves, or feel in our bodies and the world?
DM me with any discoveries you make on @picnic.on.the.moon over on Instagram if you feel like doing so:)
And be gentle with your body as with nature. x
What lights you up? We tend to think of this space where we are lit up as a luxury that we will inhabit when we have dealt with all the annoying 'speed bumps' in the road to our joy. The thing is the speed bumps never stop. As long as we are alive, the speed bumps will keep coming. Sometimes they are all we see and that is o.k, but maybe you remember somewhere deep down - what do the speed bumps distract you from? Start inhabiting that space. It's there, even if in the form of an abandoned warehouse - it's there waiting to be used:)
Would love to hear what lights you up? If you want to drop me a DM on Instagram @picnic.on.the.moon please do.
As a child I used to think (and still think) that adults had a rather peculiar way of going about things. There only seemed to be limited options available when solving problems, imagination did not seem to play a big role and they all seemed rather stressed. What would happen if we held onto some of the skills we had as children instead of just dismissing them. What if our way into new ways of being is hiding in plain sight, within our imagination, and the problem is just that we don't spend enough time and energy activating it. I think as kids we had superpowers we no longer count on. Why not try them out again?
Many of us carry some form of the narrative of being a 'good' or 'nice' person around with us.
In this episode I am talking about how this works out mainly with a focus on our relationships, but since we relate in every area of our lives this desire to be a good person and how we deal with not getting the validation that we are, can have a big impact on our lives.
If we are trying to be a good person and are confronted with criticism from the outside or told we have harmed someone, we might double down and try to do better, especially if we care about that person, but what if us being attached to the narrative of being 'good' is what caused us to harm the other person in the first place? In that case isn't 'doing better' according to the same standards likely to cause more harm?
So, should we adjust our 'good person' definition with every piece of criticism we receive or can we possibly drop it altogether?
DM me with any thoughts, feelings, agreement, disagreement on Instagram @picnic.on.the.moon :)
Do you find yourself trying to wiggle your way out of what is? In this podcast I discuss learning some hard lessons. They would never have been easy lessons, but they were harder to come by because I kept struggling with what is. How can our acceptance of what is (for example someone else's truth, our power, our powerlessness) change the way we live and relate?
I mention the following people and accounts which have helped me and challenged me to further explore these ideas in the last months. They also helped by giving me better language to speak about many of these ideas and concepts.
James-Olivia Chu Hillman, @inquisitive_human on Instagram
Andréa Ranae Johnson, @andrearanaej on Instagram
I hope you enjoy listening to this!
Your thoughts, experiences and feedback are always welcome, just DM me on Instagram:)
Capitalism provides us with certain channels to get things done in our lives. It can be really hard to let our imagination fly in the face of what we see everyday! If we don't like what we see it is easy to feel stuck and powerless, but there are always small ways we can start taking back and owning our power.
Your truth, my truth has been a topic that I have been mulling over for a while and I keep finding more depth and power the more I explore this issue. My motivation for this mulling comes from the fact that this topic and the way we mostly handle it in our lives and relationships has caused me a lot of pain and I have caused others pain and I can see it causing a lot of pain to so many of us. We just keep bumping into this same issue. This has motivated me to want to learn more about how to work with, and not against, our different views and truths.
Sources and inspiration: This post was inspired by a passage which @decolonizemyself shared on their instagram page. The post also appeared on the facebook page 'Native Causes' and the passage originally appeared in a book called 'Seven Arrows' by Heyemeyohsts Storm. I have not read the book, but am definitely intrigued by the excerpts I have found so far and definitely want to read it. Check it out.
Also quoted @ebonyjanice - find her on Instagram or here https://www.thefreepeopleproject.com
I also mentioned a book called 'Gray's Anatomy' by John Gray.
I hope you enjoy this episode!
How much energy do you spend worrying about when or where to show which emotions?
There is so much more to be said on this topic, but here I share a few thoughts on us being emotional. It really should be the most normal thing in the world to have our emotions be part of what we do throughout the day. There is this idea that when we are in an emotional state we can't think clearly, but I would argue that in society we have taken it to the other extreme where we try to keep our emotions, especially the ones seen as soft, out of many of our daily interactions. So we sit there trying to do what we are doing while also trying to police our emotions according to what is acceptable in the social setting. What if allowing more emotion to flow through us more freely actually allowed us to make better decisions?
When it comes to living sustainably, do you feel that you are required to be on a strict diet of not buying, not consuming, not, not, not.....not having any fun basically? Do you feel you have to make yourself smaller and smaller to try and avoid the negative impact you have on the world? When faced with research or facts about how unsustainable our life is, do you often feel guilt or shame, but also exhaustion at the overwhelming task of actually making a change? In this episode I talk about a possible reframe that could help you leave this dieting mindset behind and shift to a place where living sustainably actually feels joyful. I am sure that this will be a topic that comes up again in other episodes, but this is one place to start:)
Compartmentalising is stopping us from having the difficult conversations we need to have. It allows us to live with a false sense of security, allows us to hide behind our privilege and keeps us stuck. When we compartmentalise we try to get away with saying 'That's another topic.', which is sometimes just another way of saying 'That is not my problem.', based on it currently not affecting me. It hurts others and ourselves and I think it is costing us more than we realise. Start observing when this happens and why you think we do this? Send me your ideas on Instagram @picnic.on.the.moon. :)
In episode #3 (the previous episode) I talked about what love isn't and the importance of practically defining what it is. I think this should be a conversation, but an honest and a brave one which aims to find a practical definition for love which we can actually use in day-to-day situations and which aligns with our individual truths and has room to accommodate what feels healthy and safe to each of us. Proclaiming love while doing harm does not make it love.
What would happen if we used the same inquiry when it comes to the topic of self-love. This word is used a lot these days, but that doesn't mean that is isn't confusing. It can be confusing and seem unattainable and we need a place to start. That is what this episode is about. Hope you enjoy it!
In this episode I reflect on what love might mean in a very practical sense. In other words, what can we learn about love that will help us not just proclaim it but practice it in our everyday lives.
I mention a book by Bell Hooks: All About Love: New Visions. The Kindle title includes the phrase "Love Song to the Nation", so you will hear me say that in the audio because I am reading it on Kindle.
In the audio I couldn't think of the first name of the author John Bradshaw who has written on toxic shame and, as Bell Hooks points out in her book, apparently also on love (Creating Love by John Bradshaw). Haven't read the book on love by Bradshaw yet, but it is going on my list:)
I recorded this episode as a voice note before I decided to go ahead and start a podcast, so in the beginning you will hear me talking about the process of figuring out the best way to share these thoughts and ideas with you. In the end the podcast seemed to be the best way to do this, so I am sharing this voice note with you as the first official episode.
I share some thoughts on getting our humanity back as part of the process healing ourselves and the world. For me this feels like an essential step, so that we (especially as white people) can stop projecting our lack of humanity onto others. I was prompted to share this after reading an Instagram post shared by Layla F. Saad.
I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Kirsten.
Growing up I found that there were a lot of guidelines about how you were meant to do things, apparently.
I look around as an adult and it seems to be the same thing. I once read a study about too many traffic signs causing an increase in accidents. I feel this way sometimes when I set out to do something new. Since this podcast is in part about rethinking what is sane I have followed none of the guidelines regarding what a podcast should look like while making it. I hope that you enjoy this offering which is probably more like someone leaving you a voice note on your phone:)