Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Elizabeth: Hello and welcome to the Intuitive Writing podcast, a production of the Intuitive Writing Project, a writing-based empowerment program for girls and gender expansive youth. My name is Elizabeth Perlman and I created this organization because it was what I wanted and needed when I was young, a safe, supportive space to speak my truth and have it heard.
Since the girl inside of us always needs to be heard, we also have writing classes for women, and this podcast will feature one of our amazing Gen X writers. If you are a woman who would like to try writing with us, know that the first class is always free just to see if you like it. There's so many things we have to do, we want this to be something you choose to do, purely for the joy of it! Also know that we use the Amherst writing method, one of the most nurturing and empowering writing systems I know of. You can read more about the Amherst method on their website and in Pat Schneider's groundbreaking book, Writing Alone and With Others. But the basic principles and the ones that guide all our classes are these: One, everyone is a writer with important stories to tell. Two, everyone has their own unique voice, a voice that needs to be heard. And three, our voice will grow stronger and clearer the more it is supported and positively affirmed.
And so we invite all women-identifying people to try one of our women's classes, which help fund need based scholarships for our younger writers. On behalf of all the young writers at the Intuitive writing project, thank you for listening.
May you always speak your truth and know that it matters.
[00:01:54] Elizabeth: Today I'm so honored and grateful to be speaking with my dear friend, a woman in our women's writing program, Gloria Min Synn, who is going to be reading an extraordinary poem that I feel like all women are going to resonate to as deeply as I did. I'm so excited to talk about this piece. But before I begin, I wanted to have Gloria introduce herself. If you would give us your pronouns, a book that you have read recently that you loved and your favorite kind of writing, the kind of writing that you do when you just get to be creative and do your own thing.
[00:02:34] Gloria: So my pronouns she/her, and some of my latest favorite books. I would say. I'm usually, growing up, I was a nonfiction girl. I think it was just me always wanting to pursue learning, getting better at things. So it was like all these business books, like "Good to Great," "Measure What Matters." I have switched over, finally got back into fiction. And "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," I mean, it was just a beautiful story that just touched me in so many ways. And "Untethered Soul" by Michael Singer. I tried reading it a couple times and I just was not ready. I wasn't ripe for it, I would say. And then last year I took like a week, went to Big Sur all by myself. It was kind of a spiritual retreat, and the book just poured over me. And I've been on this journey kind of since then. And then the last book I will mention, I'm currently in it right now, and I 100% believe it's going to change my life, is "The Artist's Way."
[00:04:00] Elizabeth: Oh my God, I love that book. That will change your life. It changed my life. And every time I read it, it changes it again. You can keep reading it.
[00:04:07] Gloria: I was like, oh my gosh, my sensor brain has taken over my life. I need get in touch with my intuitive, creative self.
[00:04:16] Elizabeth: That is a classic. And thank you for the recs. I mean, partly I asked because I'm always looking for book recommendations. I have been hearing so much about "Untethered Soul," I have not read it yet. That's next on my list then. Thank you for that. And it does sound like it has to be the perfect moment. You can't just read it in between something else.
[00:04:36] Gloria: No.
[00:04:37] Elizabeth: How would you describe the kind of writing that you most enjoy doing when you're free to do whatever you want?
[00:04:47] Gloria: I don't know if you call it poetry or not, but I like writing that where I don't have to describe everything that's going on, but it kind of is stream of consciousness. But yeah, I guess that's what poetry is, but it's not everything literal. And then what I love is, you're not dictating what it needs to mean or how it should make someone feel. Like they can adapt it to make it hopefully meaningful for them. And for me, when I read it in different phases of my life or moments, it speaks to me in so many different ways. And I think that's what poetry is, maybe. And I just think it's so beautiful. I've been touched by some amazing poetry that I've read. I think I'm just naturally gravitating towards writing more of that in that style.
[00:05:52] Elizabeth: That makes perfect sense. Especially since the piece we're going to be discussing today is a poem. It's an exquisite poem. And I feel the same way. It's funny. Poetry feels like the thing that people make fun of and or consider too complicated for a regular person to do. It's like you have to be Wordsworth or someone famous. But poetry, I think, is actually the most accessible and the easiest. And like you said, you don't have to describe every little thing. There are no rules. It's more free form. It's more emotional. But you can share as much as you want. It's metaphorical.
[00:06:35] Gloria: You don't have to explain anything, which I love. And as recovering perfectionist, I don't have to explain or justify or asterisks or… It allows me to just let it flow and just let it be. No matter however the words land. I love that.
[00:06:58] Elizabeth: And I feel like poetry is basically song lyrics without the music attached. And so music has that same effect. You don't have to explain everything. Everyone gets their own meaning. If everyone listened to the same song, there would be a million different meanings for that song. And that poetry is the same.
[00:07:18] Gloria: That's so true.
[00:07:19] Elizabeth: Yeah. I love that. It frees people up. I hadn't thought about that. That poetry liberates everyone to have or gives everyone permission to have their own experience. Yeah. I'm with you on poetry. I love poetry so much, and I'm so excited to read your poem. But before we start, I wanted to ask you if you could share a little anecdote—because it's kind of like how people always want to ask when a couple comes together, “how did you meet?”—what was your “meet cute” with writing? Can you remember a time, it could be more recently, or it could be early childhood, when you first realized that writing was magical?
[00:08:01] Gloria: Yes, I remember the class. I think it was in high school. And again, English was not my first or even second language. And being Korean, like, math, was supposed to be my jam. And I think I was fairly good at it, but it didn't express the creative side of me. And so I finally took this creative writing class.
And in that class, I felt safe that there weren't as many rules, and the goal was to be creative. And when I started writing again, these fictional stories, I found myself just when you lose track of time because you're just in the flow. And that's when I got the taste of that. And I remember I was so proud of this thing I did where I would start a story with just the specific scene with these people. They're, like, inside a trunk of a car, and you don't really know what's going on, so it draws you in. It's like the hub, and then by the end of the story, it would close the loop on the clues that were given and whether it's like a twist ending. There was always kind of this big moment of closure that gave me such satisfaction, and it was so fun to create that. That's when I just fell in love with writing and how, again, between the sensor brain and kind of the artist brain, I was able to tap into that space that I didn't know I had because I didn't have role models.
[00:09:52] Elizabeth: I love how you just said that you didn't know you had it. And I feel like that's the ultimate magic of writing, is that this stuff is inside of us. Latent. Sleeping, like sleeping beauty. Of course it's already there, but we don't know it's there until we write, until it comes out of the page. And then I love the image of you, like, reading back a story and being like, “oh, my God, I invented this. This came out of me!” I don't know where it came from, but it was absolutely from you. Was this a mystery story? It sounds like a really clever plot. Like, you had to figure stuff out.
[00:10:32] Gloria: You know, what's interesting is, without getting to all the details, I would find, like, dark moments in my past, but I didn't want to talk straight about it, and so I kind of made it into a movie for some reason. I had a knack for it. Maybe it was a cathartic for me.
[00:10:58] Elizabeth: I bet it was cathartic.
[00:10:59] Gloria: Write about those things through the lens of, like, I'm watching a movie.
[00:11:05] Elizabeth: How old were you?
[00:11:06] Gloria: This was in high school.
[00:11:08] Elizabeth: That's amazing. I mean, that's when we need it the most. Of course, that's why The Tntuitive Writing Project is for teenagers, because it's like you don't have the words or the context to understand what's happened to you at that point… except through storytelling.
[00:11:24] Gloria: Right. It made it accessible to revisit those memories without it feeling so scary.
[00:11:31] Elizabeth: Right. And if you're telling a story, then people can't criticize. It's just a story. I also love, my favorite thing about writing is there's no right or wrong. It is what it is. Math: there is a right and a wrong answer. That's much harder. Although I do think there's a lot of people fear writing for that reason, because it's safer to have a right and a wrong answer. You can figure it out.
[00:11:59] Gloria: Right. Or I think they don't want to write because they don't want to get it wrong.
[00:12:05] Elizabeth: Right! I think it was Matisse or somebody like him who said, “to be creative, you must lose your fear of being wrong.” And we get the fear of being wrong from things like math, where we can get things wrong, where we are told that we have gotten it wrong. And then you realize, actually, no, you can't mess it up. Whatever comes out—we talk about this all the time—whatever comes out is great. It's what needed to come out. But I love that you did that in high school, that you intuitively figured out how to create your own catharsis. Nobody told you it would happen if you did this, but you figured it out, right!
[00:12:52] Gloria: But it was that class that gave me that space. And again, even the third Thursday of the month, it gives me that space to write structure and almost permission sometimes to get started. So I'm so grateful for that class and that teacher.
[00:13:12] Elizabeth: Oh my God. Space. It’s the hardest thing to be creative if you're trying to squeeze it into something else. Sometimes I think about, well, everyone says fewer and fewer people are religious, more people identify with spiritual, but spirituality doesn't really have a church or a temple to go to. So I feel like any kind of creative class becomes like the modern temple where we connect to our spirit, because you do need a space. Otherwise, creativity, you can't squeeze it in on the side. It needs presence. And that's what you experience when you write. Okay, I want you to go ahead and read your poem. This piece is so magnificent, so take your time and read it slowly so we can savor every word. And I just want to let the audience know that the link to this piece will be underneath the podcast so you can read it as well. But yes, Gloria, go ahead.
[00:14:13] Gloria:
Wild.
I was always a good girl
I followed the rules
I got good grades
I was kind to others
I caused no trouble
I stayed quiet
I stayed small
It was the least I could do
To make my mother happy
To make her sacrifices worthwhile
The secret tears
She thought she hid from me
The bruise on her face
As she drove me to school
I saw them
I felt them
I vowed to be
A good girl
She could be proud of
Her reason for happiness
Her reason for living
Wild
Was a foreign concept
A frightening place
To be out of control
Irresponsible
Inconsequential
Loud
and Big
It was inconceivable to me
Now in my 40s
I see the word
So differently
So longingly
Now I long to be wild
Like the wildflowers growing where they may
Like the wilderness and its changing leaves
Like the deep blue ocean and its crashing waves
There are no apologies
No judgements
No consequence
Just acceptance
And being
Now I long to be wild
To not control things
To not be responsible for all things
To fail
To feel
To be big
To be free
All I have to be
Is me
This whole time
This is how my mother saw me
Wild me
This is why my mother loved me
Wild me
True me
All along
She was with me
And forever will be
In the crashing waves
In the glowing sunset
In the sweet scents of the forest
My wild and loving
Mother. Nature.
Reminding me
To always be
Wildly me
[00:16:37] Elizabeth: This is such a magnificent piece. It feels like another feminist anthem for all womenkind of all ages. But it feels especially resonant in middle age to read this piece. Every single line, I resonate to every line and every word. So, as you know, in our classes, we always go around and share, everyone shares what they thought was beautiful and powerful and authentic. So I want to say every line, but I'll try to just call out a few things.
I love how the piece starts with, “I was always a good girl” and what that looks like, and this is why I feel like pretty much every woman alive is going to relate to this, and I deeply relate to this, this pressure and this expectation to be “good,” which equals quiet and often silent and small. And I love how the writer expresses this so beautifully, the felt sense of duty and responsibility to one's mother and to others, to be worthy of this world around them, of the sacrifices that adults are making and how this young narrator sees and feels everything.
I feel like that's something that women don't give ourselves enough credit for, that we track everything, and there's usually not an outlet for it. We're just, like, noticing everything, feeling everything, observing everything, intuiting everything, and then we don't have any place to put it, so we don't give ourselves credit for it. But that is, I believe, part of our powerful intuition is that everything is felt, everything is held inside of the body. And then I love how we introduce, how the writer introduces the word “wild,” and suddenly the story starts to pivot. There's this, there's this larger concept that we're exploring, how it started out, seeming like a foreign concept and a frightening place.
And, of course, this makes me think about just our entire society, how basically western culture exists on the graves of indigenous peoples everywhere who were connected to nature, and then we just killed everyone. And now it's so weird how we have really, for the last, I don't know, 200, 300 years, we have managed to live separate from nature, not really, but to have the illusion of separateness and to call wildness… to think that it's dangerous or out of control.
What makes this poem so massively important is I feel like the writer… one of the things is the writer is recognizing the core wound of all people and all women. Is our disconnection from the earth and from our own wildness.
[00:19:53] Gloria: Yes.
[00:19:54] Elizabeth: And then we get connected after seeing that. I love, this is the middle aged piece of us saying. Now that we're in our 40s, we long for our wildness. We see it differently now. And I love—could you read it again?—the stanza that starts, “now I long to be wild…” And then the next stanza. The stanza that starts there and then one after it.
[00:20:24] Gloria: “Now I long to be wild. Like the wildflowers growing where they may. Like the wilderness and its changing leaves. Like the deep blue ocean and its crashing waves. There are no apologies, no judgments, no consequence. Just acceptance and being.”
[00:20:48] Elizabeth: So incredibly beautiful. And I feel like the writer is describing what we all used to know. This peace and oneness. We were talking about this before we started. We are one with the earth. It's a poetic idea, but on the level of quantum physics, we ARE the earth. And it's so interesting, too, how the writer brings up the “no judgment, no consequence, just acceptance in being,” because that's the opposite of western civilization… which is constant judgment and non-acceptance. And if you think about every spiritual teaching, it’s actually the teachings that this writer is expressing, about being in a place of pure awareness without judgment. And that's what is our true nature, right?
[00:21:55] Gloria: And I feel like the word “wild,” there's so much judgment around it, right?
I was such a quote unquote “good girl,” Elizabeth. I never drank until I was 21. I went to school, UC Berkeley. Never tried weed. I did everything by the book. And to me “wild” was like whether you're sexually promiscuous or you're just like irresponsible, out of control wild woman. Now it's so crazy that I see the word “wild,” and I'm just yearning for it. And wild, you're like, okay, the wilderness, the wildflowers. There's nothing crazy about it. It's beautiful, it's free, it's powerful. And I was like, fuck, I want to be wild.
[00:22:39] Elizabeth: Yes!
[00:22:42] Gloria: I've never seen a word that I had so much judgment around, totally take on a whole new meaning for me.
[00:22:53] Elizabeth: This is 100% a feminist piece, for exactly the reason, for everything you just said. It really comes down to feminism. Because when you think about women, I mean, oh, my God, our ability to—our bodies basically mimic the earth. I mean, like, the full moon and the tides show up in our menstrual cycle and our emotions, everything. We're so connected to the earth. And pretty much all indigenous cultures for millions of years understood the woman was the embodiment of the divine feminine, the goddess. Because when they looked around— before science—people were like, “oh, the babies come out of the female. The female must be the goddess, that must be the great, powerful one.” And I feel like… and it's not just my feeling… I've read many things people have talked about… one of the most potent ways that we disempowered women is we made women feel shame for our nature, our wildness. And it's like, I mean, if you just look at the Garden of Eden, the Bible story, as soon as they became aware they were naked, “oh, the shame, the shame!” I feel like everyone is shamed a little bit. I think it's mainly women who are shamed… because a man who's wild and crazy is “cool.”
[00:24:20] Gloria: Yeah, exactly. It's a completely different definition versus a wild women.
[00:24:28] Elizabeth: Right, exactly. And also, of course, there's so many interesting books talking about this more eloquently than what I can say. But one of my first feminist books that I read, actually, right after high school, a childhood friend gave it to me on not even knowing what it was. And it turned out to be life changing, was “Women Who Run with the Wolves” by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I mean, you've basically written a poem that captures her entire book, so you don't need to read it. You got it. But, I mean, this is what she talks about, is the wildish nature of women has been shamed. I mean, how insane is it that women are expected to be good and nice and quiet, but we don't expect men to be good and nice and quiet, right? So crazy.
Okay. And then I love how this piece… is the heroine's journey. In the heroine’s journey, you always start in everyday life, and then you're challenged by something that you have to wrestle. And at some point, there's a dark night of the soul, and in the end, you don't give up, and you emerge wiser and whole. You reclaim your wholeness. And that is exactly what the narrator experiences in this piece. We start out in the everyday world and then we go into the wilderness. I love how it comes back to that initial idea of the narrator wanting to be good and honorable in honoring of their mother and recognizing the greater mother behind it.
“This whole time. This is how my mother saw me. Wild me. This is why my mother loved me. Wild me. True me.” I love that idea of being loved for your true wild nature that is so moving. And then we go back to the description of the earth in “the crashing waves and the glowing sunset in the sweet scents of the forest.”
And I have to say this out loud because readers will not know the way you read it, but it will be when people go to this piece on the blog, they'll see it. The last stanza, where it says, “my wild and loving,” capitalized “Mother,” period. Capitalized “Nature,” period. And that's like the mic drop to me. That's like the heroine reclaiming her wisdom and power is she's recognizing the greater mother. Gaia. Earth. Could you read the last stanza again?
[00:27:23] Gloria: Yes.
My wild and loving mother Nature reminding me to always be wildly me.
[00:27:36] Elizabeth: I feel like this is the journey that all women are on right now.
We can't articulate it as well as you have articulated it. That's why we need this poem to remind us, to remind us of the innocence and the purity of just our true, authentic, natural self.
I was going to ask you to share again because we talked about it beforehand, and it's so beautiful, the mantra that you say to yourself when there's stress and chaos around you in which you identify as the ocean.
[00:28:18] Gloria: Yes.
I close my eyes and I repeat to myself, I am the ocean.
I am deep, I am vast, I am calm, and I am powerful as the ocean.
This storm will pass through me.
Or this is his storm that is passing through me. This is her storm that is passing through me.
I am the ocean.
And it really helps to just center myself and not get swept into emotions.
[00:29:11] Elizabeth: It’s interesting, too, because in light of this poem, I think a lot of people might say that the ocean is wild and uncontrollable and scary and dangerous. So I love how the writer is truly owning her divine feminine energy and recognizing her oneness. Like I said, it's not even oneness. It's like… I AM the ocean. Whatever you put after the word “am, I am,” that is owning your power at the ultimate level.
[00:29:44] Gloria: Yes.
[00:29:45] Elizabeth: I feel like there's a book here. You need to write a book about this mantra. This is brilliant. Sorry, go ahead.
[00:29:51] Gloria: It's just like I remember when I was learning English, my favorite word was phosphorescence because I was so proud that I knew how to spell it. First of all, it was a very.
Difficult word for me to spell. And then, just like the shining, the glimmer of the water when the sun is there, I just thought it was the most magical, beautiful word in the whole world. And I think, obsessed with the ocean since then. And I think the ocean can be so powerful and quote unquote “frightening” with the storms, yet it's like people go and they look in the ocean to find peace and calm in the waves, the ocean, the sunset. So it's unapologetically like what it is, wild, and it's beautiful and it's powerful, and it's like all the things I was going to say, I want to be, but all the things I know that I am, I'm rediscovering that in myself.
[00:31:00] Elizabeth: That is it. I mean, I feel like you had that understanding and that mantra before you wrote this poem, I think. But I think the poem flowed out of that awareness that you have when you connect with the ocean that you are. Because this whole poem feels like the ocean in a way. It's flowing and it's powerful. Like you said, the unapologetic. I think we should talk about that for a minute, because that is—we've talked about this before—but all women, at least in western countries, have been conditioned to apologize constantly. I'm one of the worst at that. I apologize a lot. And then people are like, “stop apologizing.” And I will literally say, “oh, sorry!” But it's so ingrained. And I think it's because we've been made to feel we SHOULD apologize. It's not like we're doing it on a whim or it's just a weird trend. It's culture really driving it in. And the ocean doesn't apologize. The ocean just is. Also, I think, everyone just, if you consider how many throughout time, how many millions of humans have perished in an ocean, whether it's drowning in a storm or whatever, the ocean takes no prisoners. I mean, the ocean, you do not mess with the ocean! And so the ocean doesn't have to apologize. And I love the idea that we, as women, claim that for ourselves.
[00:32:40] Gloria: Yeah.
[00:32:42] Elizabeth: Also, I have to go back to the mother piece, because you and I have talked about this before. But what's interesting about this piece, I have to mention another book, because I'm always reading nonfiction myself, and I just read a great book called healing the mother wound, reclaiming. It's called “Rediscovering the Inner Mother, Healing the Mother Wound: by Bethany Webster. It's incredible. I highly recommend, I, like, underlined every line in the book. It's so good. But she talks about ALL women in western societies have the mother wound and the mother wound—some wounds are deeper than others, depending on your mother's upbringing—basically the mother wound is “the trauma of patriarchy.” Just growing up in a society where, and this is hinted at in this piece, where the mother is abused, the writer mentions the bruise on her face, which the daughter recognizes but doesn't say anything about. She just carries it inside of her. But our mothers, especially people who are now in their forties, like us, our mothers grew up in a totally different generation, and it was so much worse for them. Of course it's still bad, but they were denied, or they just didn't have the cultural resources to stand in their power, as we're beginning to do. And so we carried our mother's trauma in us. Their unlived lives, their frustrated potential, their unexpressed rage, because, you know, of course they were enraged, but they couldn't express it. So I feel like this piece expresses the healing of the mother wound…
[00:34:35] Gloria: The whole idea of being wild and how beautiful that is. Like, my daughter is such an inspiration for me. That line I wrote about this whole time, this is how my mother saw me. Wild me. This is why my mother loved me. Wild me. Like, this is exactly how I feel about Juniper, my daughter. I love her. Wild her. And it's almost like having her help me realize how my mother sees me.
[00:35:11] Elizabeth: Wow, that's beautiful.
[00:35:13] Gloria: Yeah.
[00:35:15] Elizabeth: What's so cool, too, is you're seeing the quantum leap forward from one generation to the next. Like, what your mother wasn't able to process, you can process, and therefore your daughter won't need to process it. She can just immediately just remain in her wildness.
[00:35:34] Gloria: Well, I mean, as much as we will protect that, right?
[00:35:40] Elizabeth: I mostly work with Gen Z most of the time, and I truly believe by the time they're our age, this world is going to be so much better, because there's all the people—like our generation will be old, and we'll have worked through all of our, hopefully work through most of our baggage—and then there's the younger generations who won't. They'll be so light, they'll be able to just be who they are and create an authentic world.
[00:36:10] Gloria: Right.
[00:36:12] Elizabeth: I have great hope for it, but. Okay, going back to your piece, I really believe that the writer has created a map for every woman to heal their own mother wound which is the reclamation of both the true mother the sense of the mother that she really was before society got their hands on her. And then also the greater mother and also the mother. In ourselves, we nurture our own bodies and lives. The mother archetype is so deep.
[00:36:52] Gloria: Yeah.
[00:36:55] Elizabeth: And then the wildness. It's funny because the writer also reframed wildness as to not have to control things, to not have to be responsible for all things, to be allowed to fail, to be allowed to feel. I love the alliteration of those beside each other. To be big and to be free. Like, oh, my God. If we had understood as children that that is what wildness was and we had been given permission to be that way… it's amazing. It's a completely different reality.
[00:37:35] Gloria: Yeah. And it's almost like, to me, it's like, oh, my gosh. How am I going to do that? How am I going to be big? No, I don't have to anything. I just have to be me.
[00:37:50] Elizabeth: Right.
[00:37:51] Gloria: And there, that is the work to get back to me feels so much more doable than having to become something or change something. It's like, oh, no, it's a homecoming. It was a lot of work to get there, but all I have to be is me.
[00:38:16] Elizabeth: Oh, my God. That is profound insight. And that I feel like it's a deep misconception in our culture, this idea that we have to go become something else.
[00:38:27] Gloria: Right. To get enlightened. And it's like, get back to your true self, your wild self, and that.
[00:38:39] Elizabeth: It's so simple, really… It's not a performance. We can just be. There's so much freedom in that. That's like the biggest liberation of all. To just know you can just be. And I also love that the writer wasn't prescriptive in this piece and didn't say, like, “here's the secret.” The writer just said, here's the map, and these are the guideposts, and you can figure it out. Like you said earlier about poetry, everyone can find their own meaning and their own truth in it. And I feel like you've perfectly guided us. It's like a lighthouse being like, look, there's freedom here. Come as you are. Come however you need to come find your own path. But there's light ahead.
There's so much freedom in that. That's like the biggest liberation of all. To just know you can just be. And I also love that the writer wasn't prescriptive in this piece and didn't say, like, “here's the secret.” The writer just said, here's the map, and these are the guideposts, and you can figure it out. Like you said earlier about poetry, everyone can find their own meaning and their own truth in it. And I feel like you've perfectly guided us. It's like a lighthouse being like, look, there's freedom here. Come as you are. Come however you need to come find your own path. But there's light ahead. That's what it mean.
[00:40:24] Gloria: I have to thank you for the prompt. It was interesting, like, when I read it, Elizabeth. Oh, my. Just. I was, you know, I didn't have time to know that day, but I knew it was, like, simmering and it was, like, boiling over. And then I think the trigger for me was when you sent kind of the follow up email to encourage me with the podcast or whatever. I was driving home from work, and “I was always a good girl.” It was stuck in here, and I started, you shouldn't text and drive. But I was, like, texting while driving home. I didn't want to lose it. It was just pouring out. And at some point I pulled over because I didn't want to lose it. I just want to jot everything down. And I swear, more than half of this poem, I literally just wrote it all down on my home from work. And I felt like I was this ten month pregnant woman way overdue. I needed to unleash it.
[00:41:48] Elizabeth: It was building up inside of you that needed to be released. I love that. That is the best. I feel like… Okay, that perfectly embodies intuitive writing, which is you just start percolating on an idea and then it just flows out. It's like when the baby needs to be born, the baby is coming out, and there's no stopping it, and you just have to let it come. That's why it's so powerful. You can feel that in the writing that I mentioned before, it feels like it was channeled. But when I say channeled, I mean it just, like, flew out of your soul. Your soul was speaking.
I love that. And also, this is another part of our wildness, that it's really hard to schedule creativity, like, sit down at a specific time every day and generate something genius. I feel like for women… okay, in another book, “Meditation Secrets for Women,” she talked about how women meditate and are most attuned to the universe while we're in motion and doing things, and I feel like it's so perfect. Driving is moving. You were in motion, things were going on, and the female brain is really able to… Well, I feel like our intuition is constantly cooking. It's like a hot pot in the back of our psyche all the time. And when that baby comes out, we just make way for it. That's what you did. I love that.
[00:43:12] Gloria: It was powerful. It was probably the most powerful experience I've ever had when it came to channeling something to wanting to just.
[00:43:23] Elizabeth: It's so funny, too, because this is the collective unconscious. And I'll post the piece that I shared that sparked the prompt. It comes from, actually, from an Instagram account I follow and love @WildWomanSisterhoodOfficial. Like, talk about wild. I was drawn to this piece because it's what I'm wrestling with right now, and so I wanted to share it with all of you. And it's so cool that it was like, by the magic of intuition, it plugged into exactly what you were processing. 100%. I love that. It seems to happen all the time, too. We all are kind of processing.. we all have different lives in different cities… and yet we're all on the same page somehow.
[00:44:13] Gloria: Yeah, I don't doubt that at all.
[00:44:15] Elizabeth: It's like the ocean. There is only one ocean. It's funny, we have different names. There's the Atlantic and the Pacific, but there's no wall between them. I always wondered, how do you know where's the line between? It's one ocean and we are women, one woman. So I was going to ask you about your process, and I always ask people about their process. What you just described is the most magical process I've ever heard in terms of writing a piece. How it just came to you and poured out of you.
I wanted to ask you about what do you do—this is advice, dvice for other writers, because we're all on the path figuring stuff out together, and there's no right or wrong, but there are things that are helpful or not helpful—so what do you do if you want to write and you just can't come up with an idea, you're stuck. How do you get yourself unstuck? Do you just wait till you feel it? Or do you push through and have yourself write something weird? How do you work through blocks.
[00:45:25] Gloria: Again, I don't have that much dedicated time for writing, but I think what has been helping is, again, this is what I mean by it's going to change my life. The morning pages. The whole about the morning pages is. It's not meant to be good or a piece of art or some amazing masterpiece that you're writing every morning. For me, it's just a brain dump. What's stuck in here? What am I worried about? What am I mad about? How am I feeling? I have nothing. But when I let that flow without judgment, often I surprise myself with some wisdom coming through when it wasn't planned.
And so it's almost like the way the book describes it is you have to kind of create that outlet to even see kind of your sensor brain, all the things you're worried about controlling. And then it makes way for your intuition and your artist's brain to flow through. And I can literally see that in my writing sometimes it starts out with, like, oh, I'm not feeling great, or this person is stressing me out at work. And then as I keep writing, kind of like, again, the intuition, the wisdom always somehow finds its way there, whether it's during that time when I'm trying to write two to three pages or hours later or even days later, because it's almost. I started that process of unpacking it.
And it's great because, again, I'm always so wary about presenting my work and making sure it's exceptional. And no one's ever going to read this. I don't even have to read it again. So it's like, I find that to be really helpful for me.
[00:47:26] Elizabeth: I think that's so wise and yeah, Julia Cameron knocked it out of the park with that. It's like we get, like, a crust of linear, sensory based thoughts that block all the other stuff, and you got to get those out to make so the water can flow again. Or maybe it's more like ice gets frozen and you got to keep the pipes running so that intuition always comes through after that. And I think the hardest part, and this makes me think again about your piece, is we were talking about, what does wildness look like? And I think it's exactly what you just described. Is it sitting with kind of the yuckiness of everyday life long enough to weed whack through the everyday to make room for this ocean or river of wisdom to flow through you. That's your wildness.
[00:48:26] Gloria: Yes.
[00:48:27] Elizabeth: But it's hard because for a million reasons, one of which is the critical mind, the perfectionist. I love how you called yourself, you're recovering from perfectionism, which is very much targeted at women, by the way. I think most perfectionists are women because of society, patriarchy. But I feel like all of those, all the, what's the word, all the junk, all the block-of-schlock that gets piled up, we have to have the courage to push through it, to not escape, run away from it, but face it straight on. Write about feeling crappy. Write about being annoyed about blank, blank and blank. And then underneath it, there's our wildness.
[00:49:15] Gloria: Right.
And honestly, like, taking a walk around the block doesn't hurt either. Just being in nature, like smelling fresh air and putting yourself outside of wherever you are, where you're feeling stuck. Man, nature is healing.
[00:49:33] Elizabeth: That's it. Yeah. So what I'm hearing you say is the secret is giving yourself time and space and also letting yourself connect with the larger world. Nature, your own nature.
[00:49:48] Gloria: Right.
And be okay with it being messy, especially in the beginning. You don't have to be like, I'm going to write. Okay, how do I make this perfect? I think that's what the morning pages are. For me, whatever is messy, I don't judge it. You just let it all out. And then kind of the wisdom, creativity kind of just seeks through.
[00:50:12] Elizabeth: Yes. And that's funny, because that's another thing that I feel like women are expected to be, is clean, tidy, organized, controlled. And if you look at, it's so funny how, I mean, my God, the ocean is the perfect metaphor for everything. Because talk about messy! It's like, oh, my God, everything. It contains everything… It's so immense and messy, and yet there's this underlying order to it. And you can't get hung up on having anything perfect or tidy. You have to let things flow out of you. Just whatever it is, trust that it's going to lead you to the next thing and you're going to surprise yourself.
[00:51:00] Gloria: Yes.
[00:51:02] Elizabeth: That's incredible. Okay, so I wanted to ask you about two more things, last two questions. One is your favorite part of the poem. Having read it over a couple of times now, what feels most powerful for you? And also, did you notice, or, of course, now that we've been talking about it, maybe even more so, but do you feel different on the other side of having written it than you felt before you wrote it?
[00:51:34] Gloria: Oh, yes. Again, it was in there. But to give birth to this was very cathartic.
And I think going back to your original question of my favorite part of it is very personal for me, and it's going to feel awkward saying it, but it's the part, and I'll read it here this whole time. “This is how my mother saw me. Wild me. This is why my mother loved me. Wild me, true me. All along she was with me. And forever will be in the crashing waves, in the glowing sunset, in the sweet scents of the forest,” that gave me this sense of peace that I think I've been searching for, for so long. Because again, I have this obsession around my mother and how unjust her life has been. And she's given so much, and she's 70, and instead of enjoying life, she's, like, in so much pain. And I think I have this, I don't know, I worry if she passes, what was her life for? How will I remember her? And it just gives me this peace, knowing, like, she's my mother. And my mother is Mother Nature. They are one. And so no matter where I am or where she is, every time I see the crashing waves or the glowing sunset or smell the forest, I will know she's with me. And look, she's still here. But it just gives me this peace in my life, knowing her life has so much depth and meaning and will live through me and my daughter and every person I can try to touch. And being in nature will always be a reminder of that for me.
[00:53:56] Elizabeth: I love that. It's so beautiful. I think, oh, my God, could the mother of this poem understand the magnitude of this poem? And I don't know that she could. And it doesn't matter because the writer has been healed by it. I feel like this was a self-healing poem is what you're saying, that you found. What's so hard about being human is we're here for such a short time and we have to watch our loved ones pass. But the larger truth, I believe, like you, I believe the soul is infinite and it's mirrored in nature. I love that idea that you can see and feel your mother's presence anywhere on earth because she is the earth, because you are the earth. Because your daughter is the earth. And actually, I remember reading that recently. I can't remember the name of the book. Oh, maybe it was… Did you ever read “Braiding Sweetgrass?” It's been talked about a lot recently. It's a more recent book. You would love it…. The Author is an indigenous woman by birth, but she's also a modern biologist. And so she weaves science and indigenous wisdom and, of course, how indigenous Americans, indigenous people all over the world, figured stuff out way before, quote, scientists confirmed the truth of it. Indigenous people had it cracked that code early on. And one of the things that they had that we don't have is this understanding that they are one with everything and connected to everything and there is no end. It's just a continual, this infinite journey of life taking different shapes and so they had no fear of death. And I feel like what you just described is that wisdom, like you've come back to it yourself, which is so powerful. And I think the greatest gift of writing, I believe, I mean, this is why I do this work, is that we all find our own answers and our own healing through ourselves. That's amazing, right? You don't know what you know until you write it!
[00:56:17] Gloria: It's like all those self-help books I read, searching for knowledge. It's like the wisdom is like here.
[00:56:26] Elizabeth: Yes. And I think the magic of writing is—I know we've talked about this before, too—but that language is actually in the left hemisphere of the brain, the linear brain. But emotion, well, emotion is a lot in the right brain. It's all over the brain. But I think the power of taking something linear and logical, like words, and using words to describe feelings, it allows us to harness our wisdom in a way that… we need the words to understand the depths of our wisdom. You were walking around, I mean, I've known you for, I guess a year now, you've been walking around with this poem inside of you the whole time. But I didn't know it was in there. I didn't know you were pregnant with this poem. Only you knew.
And now it's like wisdom personified. And then the gift of that is not only your own healing, but you put it out in the world. And every other woman who reads it can find her own resonance and realize something else. In fact, your piece could also be an amazing writing prompt for a future class. Like, let's read this poem and use this as the inspiration. And what comes up for you, it's just endless ripples of intuitive wisdom that search with you.
[00:57:50] Gloria: Ripples of waves.
[00:57:52] Elizabeth: Waves! Actually, we could say, actually, the poem started in your mother, but she didn't know how to write it.
[00:58:00] Gloria: Yes.
[00:58:03] Elizabeth: Right. So you've actually carried it… That makes me think, too. Okay, so they have those nesting dolls, but I honestly think that is the nature of women… because you were inside of your mother when she was inside of her mother. So it's like thinking about infinity. It's hard to wrap your head around and I don't know how far back it goes, but you were for sure in your mother when she was in the womb of her mother. So technically, this poem came from your grandmother. The power of women and the power of nature, I believe, is now finally, after millenniums, it's finally being reclaimed. I think our Gen X is leading the charge, and then Gen Z is carrying it forward and Alpha even more. So this is how the world changes, through writing like yours.
Thank you, truly. I could talk to you—this could be like a ten hour podcast—so I'll let you go. But I love talking with you about this stuff. Gloria, you are such a wise, intuitive, profound writer. Everything you write. We just now started publishing women’s writing on our blog, but honestly, every single thing you've ever written has blown me away and moved me deeply. So it is truly an honor to talk with you. And I hope that… I know you will keep writing… but I hope that at some point, there will be a book that will emerge with all your wisdom, because you have a lot of powerful insights and LIGHT to share, that the world needs.
[00:59:52] Gloria: I think we all do. But thank you so much for bringing it out of me.
And you are such a blessing for me in this journey.
And I don't think it's an accident that we found each other. And I asked you if I could be one of the girls in your program!
[01:00:13] Elizabeth: (laughing) I forgot about that. Oh, my God, I forgot, “a 40 year old girl.” That's right. No, I think about it all the time when I'm in class with the girls, too. I think, “oh, my God, if I was in this class as a 15 year old…: But we're doing it now at 40… plus 15. It’s never too late. Thank you so much again.
[01:00:38] Gloria: Of course. Thank you.
