The Revelation Project - Episodes Tagged with “Grief”

Episode 130: Gina Clover - Our Lady of the Apocalypse

Monica Rodgers | Revelation Media LLC — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Meet Gina Clover.

I adore her for sharing her mind and heart through her substack writing by challenging the dominant narrative in our culture around money, capitalism, and business as usual.
Basically, she’s not buying it when it comes to consumer culture and the insidious ways that it undermines the fabric of our society. Join us as we take a deep dive into the disguised gift of a personal apocalypse and how it disrupts the trance as well as the mind virus that infects our culture with the toxic myths of scarcity. This episode will either piss you off or have you cheering, but either way - your response is welcome. Sometimes we have to get messy and real in order to reveal and heal what’s been ailing us.

In this episode you’ll hear Gina’s exploration of Capitalism and how it’s intimately tied to other systems of oppression.
Gina’s future vision and her invitation to co-create a better world.
What is animism and how to distinguish it from spirituality + her endeavor to build a community where people can co-create a future, grieve the current reality, and honor what they most value.
The story of her own personal apocalypse and what it taught her.
Why she decided to call her substack “A Girl Has No Brand”
Learn what “collapse-aware” rites of passage mean and how it applies to where we are now.
Hear about what Gina describes as life’s invitations to radicalize. Why humor, collaboration, and community are the keys to the future.

Gina is an animist witch and rites of passage guide who centers her work around anticapitalism and ecological re-enchantment. She offers radical presence and compassion to those who want to move into the seasonal reality of their lives in full awareness that the world as we’ve known it is disintegrating, bringing a collapse-aware approach to moving into maturity and relational leadership. She believes we break the spell of modernity by doing this work together. Gina is also a plant medicine integration guide who loves to help people bring animist enchantment into their lives. In the secular world, Gina holds an undergraduate degree in Critical Theory from NYU, as well as an MFA from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in Writing for Film and Television, and is a professional writer.

She currently lives in a 150-year-old Victorian Church in New York’s Hudson Valley, where she and her partner are creating a sanctuary called “Our Lady of the Apocalypse”, creating a community space for grief, skill-sharing, ritual, beauty, and unlearning, finding our way through the darkness together, awake in the burning forest of the world.

The ways in which the intertwining of capitalism and spirituality is actually at the very heart of the climate crisis and ecocide – the ecological crisis is a deeply “spiritual” crisis arising from the intentional erasure and destruction of ancestral traditions and animist relationships to land and earth– erasure and destruction that was very explicitly in the service of colonial capitalism. So what is needed in the face of these crises is a spiritual response/atonement/reconciliation, but perversely, almost all of what passes for spirituality right now occurs in a deeply capitalist, neoliberal framework that neuters and sublimates all spiritual impulse back into the patterns of hyperindividualism, commodification, consumption, and the society of the spectacle, perpetuating the root causes of the crisis instead of offering a potentially vital response to it.

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Episode 114: Amanda Star Kingsley - Speaking Light into Abortion

Monica Rodgers | Revelation Media LLC — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 00:15:00 -0500

At least a quarter of the women in your life have personally experienced one or more abortions. Most of them never say a word about it because of the subject's social stigma and politics.

Abortion is fraught with conflicting emotions, thoughts, religious baggage, shame, guilt, repression, and more. So many women suffer from keeping their experiences inside.

For the average human, the experience of terminating a pregnancy is far more delicate and complex than anyone is revealing.

People who choose abortion have dynamic lives. Their stories cross a wide spectrum–relatable, heartbreaking, inspiring, unremarkable, and incomprehensible. It doesn’t fit in any ONE box.

Amanda Kingsley is one of those women who not only shares her personal abortion story she also sheds light on long-overdue conversations that speak to the post-abortion experience. She assists women to reveal and heal from having to keep their silence in isolation.

Amanda reveals the unspoken truths that live beyond the experience- offering women a collection of love notes that consider the range of human experience. Her work and her book, What I Wish: 100 Love Notes to Help You Survive, Come Alive, and Thrive After Abortion, is a look at abortion through a pro-human lens, breaking down the walls that have kept far too many women isolated, disconnected and in pain.

In this episode:

Amanda shares her personal story of choosing abortion after raising three children at home.
Hear about Amanda’s inspiration for the book and what she learned about the resources available to women who choose abortion.
Hear the life-changing power of the insights Amanda has collected and shared about the damage of cultural conditioning that keeps women struggling with needless shame.
Gain insight into the buried treasure that can be revealed when we peel back the layers of shame and guilt and look at the experience of abortion through a new lens.
Hear about how to make loving decisions about your reproduction and understand how to free yourself from the shackles of other people's opinions and judgment.
Claim the innate wisdom you carry and embrace your humanity with love.
Hear why it’s necessary to protect the right, improve access, and move beyond the binary of the pro-choice-anti-choice narrative.

Amanda Kingsley is a Certified Feminist Life Coach and Doula. She is the host of the Speaking Light Into Abortion podcast. And the Author of ‘What I Wish: 100 love notes to help you survive, come alive, and thrive after abortion.’ After her unanticipated abortion as a mother of three, she recognized the need for a wider conversation around the complex emotional landscape of life after abortion. She reminds her audience that it’s okay to feel all the feelings after abortion and that we can honor our decisions by living the life we made our choice for.

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Episode 86: Sarah Durham Wilson - Heartbreak as a Rite of Passage

Monica Rodgers | Revelation Media LLC — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 00:00:00 -0400

When I experienced my first dark night of the soul in 2008, it would have been so helpful to know that what I was experiencing was a rite of passage and a descent that would assist me in my ascent into greater awareness and consciousness.

What I was experiencing was a transition that had me face and heal my inner wounded maiden so that I could cross over into the mother archetype and change my life for the better.

When I stumbled upon Sarah’s work, I felt so deeply seen and nourished. In addition to the fact that she helped me understand my journey at a deeper level, she is also a wealth of information, teachings, and stories about the goddess, the divine feminine, the heroine's journey. She also mentors women on their own paths. What I love the most about Sarah is her potent story-telling and her raw authenticity. I hope you love listening as much as I loved interviewing her.

Sarah Durham Wilson is a women’s rites of passage leader and writer. She is the founder and creatrix of The MotherSpirit, which focuses on archetypal Mother work and resurrecting the rite of passage from Maiden to Mother. Sarah works with private clients and has taught courses and led retreats for hundreds of women over the past decade. She previously worked as an arts and music writer in New York City, writing for Rolling Stone, VH1, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Interview Magazines. In 2010, she launched the website DOITGIRL, which inspired women called to the work of the witch and priestess. She lives on Martha’s Vineyard with her daughter Avalon and her black cat, Odin.

Listen in as we explore:

Heartbreak as a rite of passage.
Why do women keep choosing the same type of men again and again - especially abusive or narcissistic men?
If we were raised in a patriarchal house, did we ever truly experience what love is?
Why does it feel like a death when you are rejected or left behind?
What is “the wounded maiden,” and why is she so thirsty for love and validation from the outside world?
What does it mean for us that we live in a matricidal and misogynistic culture?
Why is nature so essential to the unbecoming process and untangling from the clutches of patriarchal conditioning?
Why learning to love and accept ourselves in our full self-expression and for our whole selves is the deepest and most authentic love we will ever know.

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Episode 83: Bethany Harvey - Dipped In It

Monica Rodgers | Revelation Media LLC — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 00:00:00 -0400

In January of 2017, Bethany’s father passed away, and she was tossed into the deepest, darkest well she’d ever imagined—without warning or ceremony.

Something inside of her told her: “The only way out is to write.”
She started with a gratitude journal to remind herself of all of the people she should be grateful for in her life. She realized, however, that grateful people didn’t feel the way she felt — angry, anxious, depressed, confused, disillusioned, desperate (to name a few of grief’s cohorts).
Looking back, she realized that what she was actually doing was trying to avoid her grief.

Like many of us, she didn’t know that gratitude and grief are not mutually exclusive. She learned that she couldn’t skip over the emotions that make her uncomfortable and recognized that there is a complicated cocktail of emotions swirling inside each of us that makes us feel alive.

I talk to Bethany about the launch of her new book "Dipped In It," her odyssey into writing her book after the loss of her father, and the wisdom her emotions have brought to her life. Listen to her read a few excerpts and hear about how her daughters played a role in bringing her book to life.

In this episode we talk about:

Postpartum depression & how this shared experience brought Bethany and I together after the birth of her daughter Ruby.
The cracking open that happened after her divorce and then the death of Bethany’s beloved father.
How the expression “Dipped In It” came to be and what it means to her.
Our tendency to want to skip over difficult emotions or spiritually bypass the ones that have the most to teach us.
Grief does not have an expiration date. There isn’t a specific time in which grief can be completed. It doesn’t work that way.
Why sharing our stories with others is so vitally important and why daring to go within ourselves to dip into our own well of grief is where we can find the greatest treasures.
How allowing ourselves to be where we are in our darkest human emotions is sometimes the greatest gift we can give ourselves.
How normal it is for us to want to look like we have it all handled, but how much it can hurt us when we don’t tell people that we are struggling.
Sometimes being a good friend is looking more closely at those around us and asking, “are you ok?” - because drowning doesn’t look like drowning, literally or metaphorically.
It’s ok for us to normalize not being ok. We can’t always be ok. That’s not how life works.
Grief and gratitude are not mutually exclusive. Our human emotions can exist within us simultaneously; all of it gets to belong.

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Episode 82: Sarah MacLaughlin - Raising Humans With Heart

Monica Rodgers | Revelation Media LLC — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 00:00:00 -0400

Parenting can be so challenging, and it is the most incredible experience that I would not trade for anything.

Sarah MacLaughlin and I met through Megan Jo Wilson’s Rockstar Camp. Her work is centered on being a Rockstar in the parenting world, helping parents connect at deeper relational levels with their children. She is truly a wealth of insight and resources.

Sarah is also a social worker, parent educator, and author of another award-winning bestselling book, "What Not To Say: Tools for Talking With Young Children." Her new book, "Raising Humans With Heart: Not a How-To Manual," was written during the pandemic, when it seemed more important than ever for parents and children to have the tools and skills to communicate deeply and authentically.

She works full-time as a writer, trainer, and content expert for ZERO TO THREE, a national nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that all babies and toddlers have a strong start in life. Sarah writes the Parenting Toolbox column for Portland, Maine's Parent & Family magazine and her writing has been featured online at The Huffington Post and The Good Men Project

Truth exists mainly in paradoxes where situations can be both hard and soft, difficult and easy, and it’s great to remember to soften when we are finding ourselves in a polarizing place as parents with our children.
When we are raising humans with heart, we have to remember to open our own and model what it looks like to be vulnerable and loving. It’s when we stop being in our heads and get into our hearts and speak to our children from the heart.
Children learn more from who we are and what we model, not from what we say or teach.
Get curious about your child's behavior. Get curious about your reaction to your child's behavior. Get curious about the story you're telling yourself about that dynamic because there are always multiple things going on at any given moment that can be revealed and that give us access to tenderness, compassion, and love.
Do you know your ACE score? Aces Too High is an adverse childhood experiences quiz that can tell you a lot about your level of childhood trauma, even if you don’t think you have any- prepare to be surprised.
The more we can learn to tune into ourselves and the unaddressed wounds we might still carry, the more we can effectively guide and nurture our children in a loving way.
Practicing transparency and accountability with our children is key to raising humans with heart.
Learn how to foster creativity, inclusivity, and community with your kids with an eye toward eliminating bias.
Learn the #1 thing you can do when your very last nerve is shot and you want to center before you speak or act.

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Episode 80: Kathy Karn - For the Grace of Elephants & What They Can Teach Us About LOVE

Monica Rodgers | Revelation Media LLC — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 00:00:00 -0400

I met Kathy Karn through Seth Godin's digital writing program and we “virtually” fell in love. I became fascinated with her experience with Elephants and moved by her tender and compassionate heart.

Kathy is a visual storyteller, a photographer and conservationist. After 30 plus years as a trauma therapist, she instinctively sought images that reflected resilience, beauty and wholeness, she's primarily a wildlife photographer, although international travel images and people compose half of her image archives, including the iconic animals of east Africa, particularly elephants who have profoundly impacted her work.

Fueled with spirit she's attracted to the wisdom of indigenous cultures. She loves wandering off the beaten path and her camera allows her to focus on specific gestures, connection, or implied story. When she travels to make pictures, she pushes through her natural shyness seeking more. Differences and barriers melt away and curiosity and wonder reign.

She hopes her images are a reminder that there is goodness and beauty in the world. She believes people and nature are inextricably linked. She's horrified by the degradation of the environment and the threat to our planet. Photography is a way of seeing. Which can teach and inspire people to care. When we care, we're more inclined to protect.

If her stories and images inspire readers to take steps towards making the world a better place.
She believes if we take care of nature, Nature will take care of us. When we save wild places, we save ourselves.

When she’s not traveling, she's at home with her husband in London, Ontario, Canada, or on the shores of the Georgian bay, the sixth great lake. She's grateful for family and friends. They are the wind beneath her wings. Creativity is an essential daily practice and there is much to celebrate in her life.

We all have a unique perspective to offer the world. When we don’t judge our contribution or compare it, we realize it’s relevant and important, and our own life's work can stand on its own.
The divine choreography that led Kathy to the front lines of animal wildlife and led her to effortlessly find elephants who were often challenging for others to locate and experience.
Why photography is her medium for fostering compassion and connection.
Why animals have so much to teach us about our own humanity and the interconnectedness of life.
Kathy shares how she gives herself permission to travel and pursue her passion while her husband supports her in doing this from his home base.
How investing in “funding” your soul work gives you the biggest return on investment.
Hear about “A room of One’s Own” a metaphor for traveling solo into new territories to be with your own wonder up close and personal.
How conservation and climate change is a part of Kathy’s ongoing work.
How she came to meet and love Big Tusker Tim and what elephants have taught her about grief and love and connection.
Kathy shares about the loss of her own mother and how she came into the realization of her own grief.
Why the loss of the Matriarch is such a profound event and rite of passage both for humans and elephants.
Hear about the moment of Revelation that Kathy experiences as the veil between the animal world and the human world lifts and she catches a glimpse of what it means to honor and witness these profound moments of our lives through animal medicine.

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Episode 67: Carole Marie Downing - Tune to Joy

Monica Rodgers | Revelation Media LLC — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:00:00 -0400

I love this conversation so much because it’s about the transformative power of singing and music for healing and attunement to ourselves and others. It’s about creating connections and daring to use the instrument of our bodies to bring our voices more fully into the world.

How beautiful is that?

Meet Carole Marie Downing, a coach, song leader, and facilitator passionate about creating resilience through challenging times. Her initial career was in nursing, working in areas of hospice and integrative medicine. She then shifted to coaching after receiving a master's degree in psychology, emphasizing consciousness, health, and healing.

She utilizes both her professional background and personal experience to gently support clients to tune in to their capacity to thrive. After a loss and significant life transitions, her most recent work as a song leader and music guide encourages people to sing and learn music in a way that creates connection and cultivates the transformational act of bringing our voices fully into the world. Carole Marie lives in Portland, Oregon, and loves hot cups of tea. She enjoys making music out of everything life offers up and going barefoot in the sand.

** Carole believes we can use music as a way to create more connection and bring our voices to the world.**

Attunement - If we were to look at an instrument that was out of tune, we wouldn't say that it was broken or hopeless; instead, we would tune it, and I feel this is the same with people.
If life isn't going exactly as we would like, and we are out of sync with the world, it’s simply a request for re-attunement and noticing where we need to come back into alignment.
We can look at our relationships with ourselves and others as being out of tune or in harmony.
Initially, Carole experienced music as a way to heal from the grief of loss.
Sometimes, life experiences can’t be captured in words, and only music can help us express and move through our pain. When we allow ourselves to feel that deeply, we become wise to the fact that there can even be other emotions felt while we are in pain, such as beauty and gratitude.
Our culture influences whether we feel safe enough or confident enough to bring our voices into the world. Many people have this idea that they have to sound a certain way to sing, which is not true.
It’s so important that more of us access our voices in this way and that we look at a chorus as a metaphor for our humanity. Sometimes there is disharmony, and this is always true; before we have harmony together, it’s a necessary part of the process.

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Episode 52: Sage Polaris - Work, Life, Love

Monica Rodgers | Revelation Media LLC — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -0500

Patriarchy stress disorder, pandemic parenting, and creating a wildly successful and profitable business from a place of pleasure and desire - these topics are just the tip of the iceberg in this incredible episode with my esteemed guest, Sage Polaris.

Many of you may already know that I am a lover of language, words, naming “it," synchronicity, and mysticism. I knew that the name “Sage” already intrigued me, and so of course I had to go digging below the surface, feeling into the deeper essence of what it means:

Sage.
noun

a profoundly wise person; a person famed for wisdom.
someone venerated for the possession of wisdom, judgment, and experience.

adjective, sag·er, sag·est.

wise, judicious, or prudent:
sage advice.

It did not take me long to recognize that Sage is aptly named, but then the name “Polaris” also had me Googling!

Polaris: Also known as the North Star. Polaris lies nearly in a direct line with the Earth's rotational axis "above" the North Pole—the north celestial pole—Polaris stands almost motionless in the sky, and all the stars of the northern sky appear to rotate around it.

I mean, can you stand it?
Sage Polaris.

Her name got me thinking about what it takes to be "sage." What I know about wisdom is that it's often gained by having faced tremendous trials, difficulty, and extreme challenges.

There is a reason for instance, that Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, has the companion totem animal of the owl. An owl is a symbol of wisdom and is known to “cleave” through the darkness, able to view things from a higher perspective.

I am loving the wisdom, perspective, and “Sage" offerings delivered in this episode. Listen in as we dive deeply into work, life, and love, and what Sage is doing to invite women to join her in seeking higher perspectives that bring more love and pleasure to our businesses and lives. I think you'll be amazed by what you hear.

Thank you for your time, Sage! You are a gem!

Sage Polaris has written high converting copy for more than 350 clients earning them millions of dollars. She helps personal brands and service providers sell more of their service or offer with the words on their website.

She has worked with Chrisette Michele, James Wedmore, Rick Mulready, and Amber McCue. Basically, she makes money for the “internet famous” people we all look up to.

*Show Notes: *

Sage has created her business by design, "If you share my values, I can work with you.”
Pandemic parenting + entrepreneurship has meant that Sage gets to show up authentically, sometimes with kids crawling all over her, while knowing that she's chosen to work with the clients who understand that this is part of where we all are in this moment.
Women are showing up for work differently, and not just during the pandemic. We have been evolving towards more work-life balance and honoring each other in this duality, of women who are out in the workforce and mothering at the same time and bringing that together in a way that feels supported.
Sage takes 4 months off each year, consistently doubles her revenues each year, and she does so unapologetically.
Sage writes “copy that converts” but really her job is to create “resonance” using language and words, and integrity to communicate the essence of her clients' offerings which she also calls "the sixth sense of copywriting."
Using this method, Sage has had upwards of 1.2, 5 million in revenues in a single launch for her clients.
All industries have a gritty and sleazy side, but if you are aware of your values aligning with your clients' values, it can be a magical marketing experience for both you and the customer.
Valerie Ryan is the author of the book, Patriarchy Stress Disorder and Sage has all of her students read it as a reminder that we are in a system that was built to oppress many people, particularly women, and that this is at the core of how we “work” and do life.
As women, we have to be aware of how we burn ourselves out because when we do that we can’t affect positive change in the world.
We have to pay attention to how we place conditions on ourselves as women, even withholding love from ourselves because we don’t realize that we’ve loved ourselves with conditions based on how we “perform” in our business.

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