Lynne Twist is a global pro activist, speaker, and author of the best-selling book, The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life. She is the co-founder of the Pachamama Alliance, a social profit organization that is an alliance between indigenous people of the Amazon Rainforest and conscious, committed people in the modern world, for the sustainability of life. Lynne has shared her passion on stage with some of today’s top thought leaders, including Oprah Winfrey, The Dalai Lama, Jane Goodall, and Desmond Tutu.

Sara Vetter is the Business Development Director of the Soul of Money Institute (SOMI) and is a coach, consultant, workshop leader, keynote speaker, and strategist. She is also the Major Gift Fundraiser for the Pachamama Alliance. Sara has had experience in advertising, marketing, and sales with the Disney Channel and several magazines including LA Magazine. She has been coaching, consulting, and leading workshops with Lynne Twist for more than seven years. Sara is an experienced SOMI facilitator of workshops, fundraisers, journeys, and retreats. She also leads several of the Pachamama Alliance Transformational Educational programs. Sara has held a leadership role with the Nobel Women's Initiative, co-led delegations to Dharamsala, India, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Liberia. As the major gift fundraiser for the Pachamama Alliance, Sara has led and participated in more than nineteen delegations and immersion trips to the Amazon Rainforest. She has raised millions of dollars for the Pachamama Alliance and the Nobel Women's Initiative and is a consummate fundraiser.

What if this is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?’ Watch Valarie Kaur’s speech, link below.

Show Notes:

• This is a time of deep rupture, but also tremendous wisdom.
• The 20th Century was dominated by war or the fear of war.
• We are experiencing a breakdown of governance and the rule of law globally that has been dominating and surpassing for centuries.
• We are experiencing a revealing (revelation) of the many systems of colonization, white supremacy, racism, and the systematic abuse of other human beings.
• The Soul of Money Institute has been working in the realms of economy and ecology with the goal of guiding our human family back into remembering our connection to mother nature and in building sustainability.
• The masculine energy of economy and feminine energy of ecology need to work together in harmony and find a way to integrate and work together.
• We need both the innovation and the production of the masculine energy but we need that energy to be tempered with the nurturing and the flow of the feminine - such as the elements of fire and water.
• The pandemic is a portal into the change we need to reflect, reveal, regenerate, renew, recreate. This is a magical time where we invite the feminine back into our awareness.
• This is also a time to trust nature and witness the regenerative power of our environment and see it as proof of what’s possible.
• The Kichwa People use the word Pachamama which means the earth, the sky, the universe, and all time.
• Lynne had an awakening experience through a shamanic ceremony and a vision and communication that connected her to an indigenous tribe called the Achuar people.
• The Soul of Money and The Pachamama Alliance have both been an integral part of connecting to the wisdom of the indigenous people and bringing it to the modern world so that we can transform our ways.
• The Remarkable Women’s Journey is a program offered by The Soul of Money Institute through a six-month journey and part of that is traveling into the Amazon Rain Forest learning how they can be of service to the world in a bigger way.
• If you are a woman, your role is way more vital than you have known before. Your job at this time in history is to own that and tune into what is calling you forward and to do it with full permission and passion. You are wanted, needed, and you are important to the future of the planet, not as a burden, but as an honor.
• This time in our history is happening for us, not to us.

Links:

• The Soul of Money Institute and Lynne Twist
• The Pachamama Alliance – Bridging the Indigenous and Modern Worlds
• Book: The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life: Lynne Twist
• Book: Silent Spring: Rachel Carson
• Book: The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible (Sacred Activism): Charles Eisenstein
• Video: What if this is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?’ Watch Valarie Kaur’s speech

Fast forward, and while I have been following her on social media for several years, I recently noticed that she was publishing an important book about race. I asked for a copy, devoured it, and felt deeply excited about its content. I loved it because Jenna doesn’t try to simplify or dumb down what’s happening in the world and why. In it, she calls out middle-class white women to recognize where we unconsciously keep the systems of oppression in place and why. She further argues that if we were to awaken to our power and our willingness to be with difficult truths, we could quite literally change the future for all human beings. Jenna asserts that white women benefit from the very systems that oppress us, and we use our voting power to keep these systems in place because we won’t face where we have been complicit in the oppression of ourselves and others, and where our inaction has determined the current trajectory of this country. This is such an important book, and a powerful conversation- please listen in- I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Jenna Arnold is the author of Raising Our Hands, an educator, social entrepreneur, activist, and mother who lives in New York City with her husband and two children. Jenna was one of the National Organizers of the Women’s March in 2017 and Oprah named her as one of her “100 Awakened Leaders who are using their voice and talent to elevate humanity." For her work as the co-founder of ORGANIZE—an organization focused on ending the waitlist for organ transplants in the US, Jenna was named one of Inc Magazine's "20 Most Disruptive Innovators" and the New York Times called it one of "the biggest ideas in social change." Jenna created the hit TV show on MTV, 'Exiled!' which took spoiled American teenagers to live with indigenous cultures around the world, and while at the United Nations, Jenna created multi-platform programming for MTV and Showtime with A-list celebrities like Jay-Z and Angelina Jolie. Jenna sits on the board of the Sesame Workshop Leadership Council and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her first book, Raising Our Hands, is about how white women can stop avoiding hard conversations, start accepting responsibility, and find their place on the new frontlines (published June 2020).

• Jenna Arnold's grandmother was one of 90 who contracted COVID-19 in her nursing home and is only one of two who survived.
• Mindset is so powerful and important when it comes to what we are facing in the world at the moment.
• All oars in the water - we all need to put our oars in, and row in the same direction.
• The title of Raising Our Hands was so difficult to get to, and yet, so obvious. It symbolizes the way Jenna wants white women to remember that we all need to raise our hands and be counted when it comes to being antiracist and volunteering ourselves for hard conversations, truths, and paradoxes. "I’m guilty, but I’m also willing to learn." That the constant contradictions of who we are, the raising our hand emoji is a great way for us to relate to all the ways in which we need to make ourselves available to be with the truth of what is, in all of it’s complexity.
• We need to learn how to allow paradoxes to stand together and hold “the sacred AND."
• There is a genocide in this country that we do not talk about.
• Abraham Lincoln is the victor and therefore he got to tell the story however he wanted. We have to be careful throughout history of who gets to tell the story.
• When marginalized people are systematically abused, ignored, enslaved, and destroyed, they don’t get to tell a story anyone is willing to hear because it’s not a story of “victory,” yet these are the voices that need to be centered when it comes to telling history.
• Middle class and above American white women need to sit down and be quiet AND stand up and roar.
  
• Middle class white American women have to say, "I’m willing to show up and be messy and imperfect."
• We spend more money on our prisons than our schools.
• The data related to the demographics of white women was not adding up to the psychology of American white women in the voting booths.
• Jenna formed listening circles of women around the country and for four years she asked them questions to have conversations that would give her insight into this paradox that had white women voting for someone that wasn’t aligned with their values.
• Our systems are broken, not our humanity.
• There are 480 sources in the book Raising Our Hands - the information Jenna included is well researched.
• There are billions of dollars lost in wages to the gender pay gap.
• There are exactly zero pronouns referencing “her” or “she” in the Constitution.
• What we have to be willing to be with is the ALL of this big mess. We have to be willing to see what’s not working and see how we have been complicit in allowing it to happen.
• We have to be willing to see that we have been the direct beneficiary of things that have been built off the backs of others.
• We have a desperation of qualifying ourselves instead of realizing that no matter what we have biases, and we have to move out of the binary and back into “the grace of grey."
• Perfectionism is the achilles heel of the country and white women are responsible for holding it up AND, we might not have known how bad the disease of perfectionism is, but it’s getting in the way of us making change happen.
• “There is blood on the hands of voters who voted Trump into office.”
• The founding fathers hated each other, they did not get along and they purposefully excluded women because they were too powerful.
• This isn’t going to be easy but we all need to put our oars in the water and row in the same direction. We need to be willing to be with hard truths and use our voices and our voting power to change the status quo that’s currently killing all of us.

Links:

• Raising Our Hands | Jenna Arnold
• Book: Raising Our Hands: How White Women Can Stop Avoiding Hard Conversations, Start Accepting Responsibility, and Find Our Place on the New Frontlines:
• ORGANIZE
• Inc. 35 Under 35: Organize on Ending the Organ Shortage in the U.S.
• Simon Sinek
• Book: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson — “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
• Facebook: Jenna Arnold
• Twitter: Jenna Arnold (@JennaArnold)
• Instagram • Jenna Arnold (@itsjenna)

We are the stories we tell ourselves and the cumulative stories we are told about ourselves. At some point, we may find that our stories form an identity that limits and constrains who we want to be. As women, we can find the challenge compounded by inferred gender roles that are not aligned with what we may envision for our own lives. As COVID–19 continues to challenge us to innovate, women, in particular, are stepping up, finding new opportunities, and collaborating in ways that serve the collective whole while also stretching us to imagine a new future that’s distinctly different from the hectic and unconscious way we have been living.  

Listen in as Jess Martin and I discuss the evolving story of identity and how we can reimagine what’s possible by choosing which parts of our story we wish to keep, transform, or create from scratch. We also cover a wide range of subjects including naked rock climbing, Instagram celebrities, Divine Feminine girl-crushing, and the neurobiology of trees. As usual, there is a fair amount of irreverence and swearing. I sure hope you enjoy the show.

Show notes:

• Identity needs to be fluid and adaptable.
• Women are congregating in circles of belonging and disrupting the narratives that keep us in isolation and competition.
• Going back to normal isn’t an option - normal was not working.
• COVID–19 is forcing us to see the inanity of our culture, and the hectic and unconscious ways we have been living.
• One strong woman can shift the narrative and help every woman around her heal.
• Trees are a powerful metaphor for the divine feminine.

Links:

• The Giving Tree: Shel Silverstein
• Facebook: Embodied Wellness Healing
• Alyssa Frances Neill, RDN🌙 (@alyssa_neill) • Instagram photos and videos