Life is full of beauty, even in adversity. In fact, sometimes adversity allows us to let go of stories that were ready to die, clearing the way for new ones fo emerge. In times like these, the support of loved ones and community can be irreplaceable.

In this final English-language episode of season one, Christine discusses her own painful and beautiful heroine’s journey with producer Sarah Selim.

Resources

• Music by Nick Mulvey
• Music by Passiflora
• Tell your story in a voicemail

I'm Christine Raine.

Welcome to the Heroine's Journey podcast, where we understand our personal stories of change with insight, compassion, and inspiration.

Welcome to our final episode.

Thank you so much for reaching this point in the journey with us.

This will be a space.

I just wanted to kind of comment on what we've learned from this first season, some of the highlights of these incredible conversations, and also to talk to you a little bit about my own story.

I mentioned throughout the season that I'm going through my own heroine's journey.

And so the three producers of this show, Sarah, Nandi and myself thought it would be interesting to turn the mic over to me and share a little bit about my own heroine's journey.

And to do that, I invited producer and my great friend, Sarah Salim, to help me go through these highlights and teachings and expansion that was this first season with me.

So, Sarah, welcome.

It's really a pleasure to be here and to be here in this form, sort of adding my voice to the conversation because it's been such a pleasure to be behind the scenes as the season has been coming into the world,

Unraveling.

unraveling, re raveling, taking us to places we never expected.

And before we start talking about...

The conversations and the interviews, I wanted to ask you to share a little bit about how you got involved with this project and how it's been for you.

Well, people who have been listening to these episodes will know by now that when you are passionate about something, you are a force of nature.

And you and I were lucky enough to meet.

We met in Greece last summer on the Isle of Patmos on a retreat that was inviting us to think about big questions about our own lives and about the world.

And that was where you first told me about this model that you had encountered.

The heroine's journey and I'll never forget sitting outside at a beautiful table at a little restaurant and you said, I'm going to launch a podcast and you should help me.

That's exactly what it was like.

And the name of the retreat was Journeying into the Common Good.

And it was a beautiful space for people to come together and think about their realities, pandemic, and think about how do we want to show up and be in the world after this huge shared experience that we just had as a humanity, and so I think it's not a coincidence that that spark of this podcast not only happened in that island in Greece but also in that space of holding these bigger questions of how do we wanna we kind of digest this whole experience and show up in the world.

And you were that incredible roommate that one can only dream of having.

i mean it was so magical.

When you opened that door of our shared room with your big curly hair pulled up in a bun and said, Hi, I'm Sarah.

And I was so terrified in that moment.

I was traveling alone for the first time in years, beginning what would be a separation.

It was the very beginning of my separation.

And that smile and your voice made me feel right at home immediately.

It was such a sign, such a magical sign.

I I remember that we just went right into conversation, even though it was already almost the middle of the night, and just stayed up for hours talking about life and our own journeys, both being bicultural and our own curiosities about the world.

And we've both started to talk about our own ruptures

Chris, I'm so curious for you, now that we're here at the final episode of season one, this was really a completely new medium for you.

What has it been like to have these conversations and to record people's stories and share some pieces of your own?

It's been a roller coaster ride.

I mean, from the moment of feeling that spark and doubting myself of whether I should do it, who would care, am I prepared enough?

Do I know enough about the heroine's journey?

To being an absolute joy and bliss, listening to people's stories at such a transparent, emotional, vulnerable level, it's such a reflection of the world I want to be a part of.

And so to kind of be having these conversations where I have moments that I realize that I'm inhabiting that world that I want to be a part of through these conversations has been really revealing and beautiful for me.

Also to just watch myself with compassion, from the very first episode where I was so nervous and I could barely speak or feel comfortable in my own skin I was so nervous, also talking to people that I really admire in different ways.

To just really opening up to the conversation and getting a sense as if we were talking in my own living room over tea about things that I wouldn't normally talk about except there's a microphone in front of you.

But you eventually forget about that and I think that's where it starts feeling really really comfortable and magical.

And you realise it's not about you as a person or you know, your personality or what you say or you don't say, it's about putting your words and your body and the space of conversation in service of what needs to emerge, and really trusting that whatever does emerge is what will accompany and somehow contribute to to other people's lives who are listening to us.

And that's been a really beautiful process for me.

So, Christine, you got to talk to so many interesting people during this season.

Are there any particular moments in your conversations that stay with you?

You know, Sarah Wu, the first episode of the Rupture, the first interview was one of the last interviews I did.

And her story was so striking.

Her journey with trying to conceive and how she was able to re signify motherhood after that, and after the really painful ruptures that she went through in the process.

And the day after I interviewed her, I had an appointment in the hospital with a gynecologist.

And I thought it was just going to be like a regular annual checkup, because I have all kinds of appointments with different doctors because I'm in close monitoring all the time.

And he was a gynecologist oncologist specialized in oncology.

And instead of an annual checkup, he ended up talking to me about my practically null possibilities of conceiving biologically, which is something doctors had hinted at in different moments of my process and the cancer journey, but not.

in such a explicit way.

And he also talked about the risks of becoming a biological mother in a very explicit, to not say violent way.

And I don't judge him for it.

I understand that that's how they've been trained, but you know, he made a reference of even bullets in a gun, trying to help me see the percentage of chance that I could become sick while I was pregnant.

And just tears and tears started coming through down my face and my cheeks.

And I thanked him.

And I walked to a chapel that is in this huge public hospital that.

In Costa Rica, you know, we have this amazing social security system, which I'm a part of, and I go to this hospital at least once a month to get ongoing treatment and appointments and whatnot.

And there's a chapel and I had only been into that chapel right at the beginning of my journey three years ago when I got diagnosed.

And I went back into the chapel and sat in a chair and, you know, kind of looked at Jesus and said, I don't know what to do, you know, I, here's this pain, I have this enormous pain of probably not being able to fulfill motherhood, at least not in the way that I envisioned initially.

And I just want you to have it.

I just want you to hold it with me, this pain, you know.

And Sarah's conversation was with me the entire time that I was sitting there, just about her process of resignifying motherhood, and seeing in the archetype of the mother, not just a biological mother, but a caretaker, a nurturer of the earth, a woman that with her honesty and loving assertiveness holds people accountable and the power that that energy has.

And I felt so sad and also hopeful in a way, like, like there was some reason why I had had that conversation the day before, and that I too could become a woman that was fulfilled in the mother archetype, with or without biological children.

So yeah, it was a very magical moment for me, in which creating the podcast and developing the podcast was so intertwined with my own personal life and what I've been going through.

And it was interesting because that day I had a rehearsal with Mariana and Marta, my two singing companions of the band that we're in.

And, you know, instead of our rehearsal, I just cried the whole time and they held space for me and helped me see other perspectives also were there willing to mourn with me.

And It was just such a beautiful moment of sisterhood and community, and, you know, just being like, yeah, life is really hard, you know?

And we also have each other and we can hold space for each other and feel connected and mourn together and laugh together and celebrate together and grieve.

And this is life.

This is the human experience.

Like Annette said, you know, at the end, when I asked her, Annette, in the second episode of the Descent.

I asked her, what, what would you, what do you want to tell listeners, you know, that may be going through a dissent?

And she said that it's okay to be human.

And that's kind of how I felt in that moment.

It's okay to be human.

And I think something else that came up in that conversation is that it can feel so lonely and that there is some truth to the fact that each of our stories is so specific, so individual.

And yet that a huge part of The purpose of this work of bringing forth the heroine's journey, of having these conversations was to help situate ourselves in a community of people who go through ruptures, descents, emergences, and returns.

And, you know, one of the things that was incredibly powerful for me was to hear Nathan speak about his journey.

And from the very beginning of this project, it was really important to us to emphasize that the heroine's journey is not just something that people who identify as women go through.

It is a journey available to all of us.

And though hearing Nathan speak so clearly and vulnerably about the journey that he went on I felt such a kinship with his soul, with what happens when one of the pillars of your life ,Maybe about something on the outside or maybe about something on the inside gets shaken, and how much courage it takes to actually do the work, to stay with it long enough to go through the journey.

And I'm reminded of a Maya Angelou quote, which is that courage is the most important of all of the virtues.

Because without courage, you can't practice any of the other virtues consistently.

I love that too.

I just wanted to add that his humbleness in, you know, how he describes so candidly feeling like, of course, I'm this progressive dude.

Like, I'm this progressive man and I'm a musician and I'm sensitive and sensible and I know this stuff.

Like, I have the masculine and the female energies integrated.

I get it, you know, and just realizing all the ways in which patriarchy was Integrated in his way of thinking and being and relating with Ada, with his partner.

And being fully committed to her reflecting back to him, like the blind spots that he had and not taking them personally, but thanking her for that, you know, what a healing partnership for the world, right?

If we can lovingly show each other our blind spots so that we can heal those parts of ourselves that are missing, Wounded, regardless of whether we're men, women, or anywhere where we identify ourselves in the spectrum.

I completely agree.

And another part of this season that was particularly powerful for me was hearing Sof talk about the unexpected grief that she encountered as a part of the journey into motherhood.

And it was so moving for me because so many of the stories about motherhood that I have encountered are about the joys.

You know, people talk about how hard it is, maybe you're sleep deprived, but there's sort of often this narrative about how it has to be a part of the feminine journey.

And as a woman who is also not sure that life circumstances will bring children into my life, at least not in a biological sense, it was beautiful to hear and make bigger the narrative of motherhood.

And situate it in the idea of something emerging and something else ending.

Absolutely, I mean, speaking about courage, I thought it was so courageous of her to speak to that because I believe many, many women, if not all, experience that death when they become mothers, you know, that death of their old selves.

And I thought she spoke to it so.

So gracefully and so courageously.

And it was so interesting to see how, when she was able to identify that that's what she was grieving, that alchemized into a different perspective where she could hold the grief and the joy of being a mother, but that she all of a sudden being next to her daughter crying turned into this moment of joy where she was just so connected with the fact that You know, this is an opportunity, a moment in my life that will not be here afterwards.

And I want to sink it in completely, you know?

But but that moment of realization and grief needed to come for her to have that change of perspective where everything in her life remained the same.

But what changed was her perspective and that changed everything.

Chris, you talked a little bit about your cancer diagnosis and journey and even allyship and calling and support in your conversation with Sof.

And I'm wondering if, if listeners would like to hear a little bit more about that journey.

Well, I got diagnosed with, with mammarian cancer, or breast cancer when I was 36 years old.

And I decided to take on that diagnosis and the illness as an adventure.

Because an adventure and exploring is what I know to do best, what I know how to do best.

And at the time, my partner, Seas Tieng, and I really we decided to go through this process together and call in a support network that was absolutely essential to our being able to navigate this moment of profound uncertainty.

So much of my identity previous to cancer was about independence and the hero, you know, just being this figure that does things and gets shit done and executes.

And, you know, I have a vision, I put my arrow to it and boom, like I just make it happen.

And no matter what.

And I feel like cancer was such an important messenger of that's not sustainable in the long run, you know, you're, you're exhausted.

And I think that support network that we called in, a family of friends and And of healers of all sorts, and even people who just felt called to be a part of that, was a really essential part of my healing.

And I felt like all of those ideas that I had had of having to do everything on my own and of independence, being a source of, or the source of ultimate power just really shifted as I was able to kind of be held by these people that were there to support me.

Well, and you've talked about or just shared some of the pieces of the story that it sounds like died during that journey.

What was the story that emerged?

The story that emerged was that there is so much unexpected beauty in adversity.

I think going through cancer brought so many beautiful things into my life in unexpected ways.

Just the love and support I received from my partner made me feel a type of unconditional love that I had rarely felt before, I'd say.

Another story that emerged is that you know, we can't get too stuck with the form of how things happened.

I knew I wanted to heal and I knew I wanted to embark on a journey that felt congruent.

I wanted to feel an integrity with my beliefs and who I was.

But I also had to learn to be flexible, you know, I tried to heal by alternative methods at first and naturally.

And I did it in a very like structured, controlled way that my brother helped me figure out and my oncologist at the time like, okay, we're gonna try the natural way for three months and we're gonna.

do very close monitoring.

And if the tumor hasn't gone down in three months, then we're going to consider other ways.

And when after three months, the tumor had it hadn't grown, but it hadn't gone down.

It made me have to put my head down, you know, and say, Okay, I'm not going to necessarily be able to heal naturally only, you know, I'm gonna have to explore other ways of healing as well, conventional ways of healing.

And that was a really important process, like internal process for me also, of saying, Okay, you may have your conviction and you may have your way about of going about things, but remaining flexible in the form is a really important part of the journey.

And I do think that it was because I was flexible and accepted other ways of medicine, traditional medicine, including chemotherapy, which was a very difficult decision for me, that I'm here today, that I have the luck of being here today and being alive.

And one of the things that comes up in all of your conversations with, in this season, is death.

And listeners will know by now that death is a part of the heroine's journey cycle.

And it comes in many forms.

And it's not always...

The prospect of a physical death, but in your case, that was a part of this journey.

And I'm wondering how you make sense of that from where you are today.

You know, in retrospect, I see my body getting many signals of things needing to change in my life somehow, you know, needing to bring more balance and equilibrium into my life before I got diagnosed.

I was living a really beautiful life, actually, of a lot of purpose.

I was working so much on this non violent communication stuff, you know, facilitating, building an organization, the movement, creating community.

But I was so stressed all the time.

And I just felt like, it doesn't matter if you're stressed, you're bringing forth this vision of empathy in the world, you know, all the opportunities that are coming your way, you need to say yes, because this is what you always wanted in life was to help and to contribute in a big way, you know?

And I felt like I had given the privilege to be able to do that.

And it was happening and it was growing and it was more opportunities and more things and a bigger team.

And you know what I realized with that incredible way of life saying Stop, pause, examine yourself.

Is that our bodies don't know good or bad stress, they just know stress.

It doesn't matter if you have an incredible amount of stress from a good cause, you know, quote unquote, what I thought was a good cause, it's still stress.

And in that process of having that professional life that was so purpose driven, I had completely disconnected from my body.

I had disconnected from my intuition.

I had forgot to prioritize a lot of things that are now priorities in my life, such as pleasure and rest and self care and saying no, you know, having boundaries.

And so I think coming close to death in that way, in retrospect, I'm so stubborn that I can understand why life took me to that limit.

And I really feel like I wanna be in the world in a different way now, where I'm not just doing, but I'm also being, and that being is enough, that my sense of self worth is not attached to what I do and to what I'm able to create and bring forth into the world.

It's also, I'm deserving just because I am, just because I'm alive.

And that's, that's a narrative that I didn't have before.

In addition to the theme of motherhood that came up in this season, there's also a really strong theme about partnership.

And I know you've shared with listeners that there, that you've been In a journey yourself, and I'm wondering if you can share a little bit more about what's been happening for you as this season has, has been coming into life.

I feel my heart racing a little bit, a pulse in my chest.

It's been a moment of such incredible change and crisis and uncertainty for me the last couple of years.

And it's interesting because we've talked mostly about cancer and illness, and that was obviously a life altering moment that made me question so many things and allowed me to let go of many parts of myself and and identities that I was attached to and that needed to die in order, in order for me to survive, in order for me to live.

And one of the biggest identities that I've had attachment to in the last six, seven, eight years has been my partnership, my marriage.

I had this beautiful relationship with a man in which we, when we met each other, it was just this spectacular coming together of these two adventurous souls that wanted to eat the world, you know.

We wanted to just, we had We studied abroad, traveled all over.

We were so curious.

We were literally the epitome of the explorer archetype.

And the explorer archetype can be lonely.

And it was like these fireworks of finding each other, you know, living these really unusual lives of inhabiting different places around the globe, having friendships all over the place, just being really bold about what we want to do in life professionally, but also as a couple, as a family.

And I was in this beautiful relationship for eight years.

And actually, I got diagnosed with cancer three months before my wedding.

And I told Seras at that time, you know, if this isn't what you wanted, I completely understand, like, you can have out, you know, like, no one thinks their 35 year old fiance is gonna get diagnosed with cancer a year later.

And he said No, like this is exactly what I signed up for and we're going to go through this together.

And I have no doubt in my mind that I'm alive today in great part because of the love and partnership that I received while going through those three years of cancer.

From my broader community, but especially from him.

He was my primary caretaker, he was my partner in crime, he was there at every doctor's appointment, helping me decipher all the complicated things about a complicated illness such as cancer, which is anything but black and white.

I mean, there are so many nuances, so many gray areas that we have to navigate when we're going through something like that.

And having such a intelligent, capable, loving partner by my side while I was going through that was invaluable.

I mean, many times I wondered how people could do it without that support.

And before I went to Greece and I met you and I had the idea of this podcast, I had been going through a six month crisis in my marriage that was extremely painful.

Very disorienting, very confusing because I didn't see it coming at first, you know, when I first realized that we were in a crisis, I didn't exactly know we were in a crisis.

I know that's a little bit hard to understand, but, you know, there were aspects about our relationship that were not working for Seras, and that were actually not working for me either, but it was much harder for me to think about a potential separation at that time because so much of my sense of safety and security and even survival was linked to being in partnership with this person.

And so we entered this phase of kind of figuring out how we could try to work things out, and to really try to give it our all to save the relationship because it had been such a beautiful relationship for so many years, and I thought, surely there must be a way that we can work through this.

We have tools, we have love for each other, we have, you know, all we've been through so many difficult things that so many couples haven't even been through in a relatively short amount of time.

Like, surely we can find the way out.

And also all the implications of being a 40 year old woman without children that.

has this form of cancer that is aggressive and wants to have a family, but if it's not with him, then who is it going to be with?

I mean, I had just all these fears of then what will happen with my motherhood?

What will happen with my dream of having a family?

What will happen with even finding a partner with my situation in the future, if we were to separate, you know?

And so when I met you in Greece, I was going through that crisis and that trip was the first time that we separated as a couple.

And we decided to give ourselves.

One or two or three months and check in at each of those times to see how we were feeling.

And so to me, to take a plane from Iceland, which is where we were guiding a trip together for a group of people, to Rome to see my dad, visit my dad, and then to Athens and arrive in the middle of the night, find a hostel, wake up early in the morning, get on a ferry for eight hours to go to this island in the middle of the ocean, when I was having anxiety attacks and panic attacks and I didn't know anyone who was going to be there was, I mean, it felt like I was on my heroine's journey, you know, it really felt like, wow.

And I had learned about the heroine's journey as a narrative arch, a few weeks before going to this trip in this course, this online writing course that I was taking.

And so when I arrived and when I met you, you were the first sign that I was in the right direction.

You know, like entering a room and finding someone like you and having the kind of conversations that we began having immediately and finding that safety was the first kind of light of oh, you can build that safety for yourself outside of this person, that it's a possibility.

Well, and one of the things we spent a lot of time talking about was my separation and divorce.

And

I think one of the most significant things for me that has happened as we have dived deep into the heroine's journey is really coming to understand something you've said in these episodes, which is that the heroine's journey is a map.

It helps us make sense of life experiences that we encounter.

And a map can be so useful, and also sometimes it can suggest that the experiences will be very neat and tidy,

Absolutely,

Yeah, and so this idea that in fact, we talk about, often you and I have talked about the fact that really it's not necessarily a circle so much as it is a spiral, because the rupture of what we once thought was the perfect world that leads us into the descent and the death and the emergence and the return, takes us to new ground that sometimes disappears beneath our feet again.

I'm so glad you said that because right when I felt that I was in my process of rebirth or emergence after death, which was everything I went through with my illness, all these parts of myself that needed to die in order for me to rebirth in a new way, this huge event happens and takes me back to the rupture.

You know, all of a sudden, that illusion of a perfect relationship was under deep questioning and examination.

And that made me feel more uncertainty, more pain, more disoriented and more confused than getting the diagnose of my illness.

Because that was the pillar of my life that I thought was secure, you know.

this is the part that is resolved.

This is the part that gives me safety and nurturance and all these things.

And what I realized later on, this is not something that happened immediately, is that the ultimate thing that I needed to let go of in order to continue living was the relationship that had helped me survive in the first place.

It was my marriage.

That was the ultimate letting go that needed to happen and surrender that needed to happen for me to continue on my journey and on my path.

And I would have, it's something that just took me by surprise.

Do you feel clear for yourself on the story that is emerging in the space created by the death?

I think the story is in formation, but I know that the root is embracing impermanence and accepting what is.

And as people will have gathered by now, this, a lot of this was unfolding as you were recording this season.

And I'm wondering if there's anything you'd like to say about how that has been for you.

You know, it's been beautiful and challenging.

it's been so rewarding to create a space to talk about a journey that feels so alive in my own life.

It's been so incredible, not just to have the conversations with the people that were on the podcast, but with so many women and people and friends who I see are going through the heroine's journey themselves.

I mean, I think in a way, as a humanity, we're going through a heroine's journey.

We're going through a period of time where so much is uncertain.

We're holding so many questions to which we have very little answers.

And a lot of what is being called for us to do is to develop that muscle of leaning into the uncertainty, that muscle of inhabiting the not knowing.

And this podcast was an example of that leaning into, as it was happening in parallel with my own life.

You mentioned how, how much it feels like the world is on a heroine's journey.

And as you say that, it strikes me that.

We seem to live in a world where modern life almost tries to mute the existence of cycles, you know?

Everything can last forever.

You can never age, you know, or we can at least give the impression of never aging.

Nothing should ever end.

We should just get more and more and more of everything.

And the heroine's journey itself is such a stand for or such a, an articulation of what can become possible when we let things end.

this place, what I'm hearing you say, In this reflection on, on your relationship, this pillar that you couldn't imagine not being there, but it makes me think of, of Rumi's widening circles that when the things which are unthinkable or unshakeable get shaken, Sometimes we get bigger.

And the heroine and the heroine's journey map itself, I think when I think about the conversations that you and I have had and the conversations you've had with others, what strikes me about how people respond to the map is this sense, because you just talked about how lonely, right, and how disorienting and how Unbelievably confusing and impossible it can feel when you are in the middle of the journey.

And encountering this map can sometimes help us realize that these things that are happening don't mean we have fallen off the edge of what it is to be human.

You know, we feel like something's wrong, and there's this strange paradox where it's like, yeah, something is wrong, something isn't working, something is, is, is something unexpected is changing.

But it's not wrong in the sense that that is an indication that you are somehow not human, or shameful, or, or have somehow fallen into an alternate reality.

It's like this map helps us Understand and be held in the collective journey where rupture, descent, death, rebirth, and return are actually exactly right.

And knowing that we hold the map lightly, I'm curious if you have a sense of where you are in the journey with this second rupture that you've been talking about.

You know, it's interesting, because if you had asked me this question a week ago, I probably would have said the dissent.

But there's something unexpected that happened, which is that My ex partner and I saw each other recently.

We needed to talk about different things and next steps and whatnot.

And I had been going through a really rough period of anger.

I just had so much anger at him and at the patriarchal systems that normalize certain behaviors or allow for certain things to happen that in my view, at least, are not honest, are not caring, do not reflect the kind of love and empathy and transparency that I'd love to see in the world.

And, and I think that in my case, with my separation, because of my love for this person and my tendency to invite empathy and compassion, I thought.

I could kind of skip through the anger, the anger part of it.

and I had been going through it.

It's really interesting because I facilitated this heroine's journey trip to India in February, and there was this moment of ritual in the Ganges which is the sacred river in India, where all of the women, we were there together, we take these little baskets of leaves that are woven together and have flowers and incense, and you offer the basket into the river with a prayer.

And I had been there the last time exactly four years before with Seras.

And we had offered the prayer of my recuperation together.

It was such a beautiful, intense moment.

And I did, in fact, recuperate from cancer.

And here I am, free of cancer.

In that moment, I decided to take off my wedding ring, put it in this little basket of flowers, turn on the incense, which a kind Indian gentleman helped me do because I was finding difficulty turning the flame on.

And with some of my close friends just being witness and touching my back and touching my shoulder, I went and put the basket with my ring into the river and offered it and said, I'm ready.

I'm ready to let go of this relationship with love and with grace.

And it was such a powerful moment.

to be accompanied and witnessed in this way and then to be able to cry and to be held.

But then I got back to Costa Rica and India was a delight in general but when I got back to Costa Rica and I I found myself flooded by these feelings of anger and resentment and it was our 4th year anniversary, or it would have been our 4th year anniversary exactly the day I got back to Costa Rica and it just kind of dawned on me how alone I was in that moment, how painful all of this was, and I just went into the space of so much anger and resentment and sadness and I could tell because of, I was recording interviews as all of this was happening, I knew that I was in the descent in that moment, but I was like, but I had that beautiful ritual in the Ganges River with my friends and I let go with love, like, why, why am I here again?

But I was just like, give in, you know, like, feel it, feel it, feel it.

And I noticed that something that was missing for me was a ritual for closure.

And I had tried to ask my ex partner for that ritual of closure, and he was not able to create the space.

I was so angry about everything.

And a week ago we saw each other in person because we needed to talk about all these things and unexpectedly the meeting turned into this very open, honest, raw conversation about how much hurt and having meelohance we were going through.

And we cried and we laughed and we ate together and we hugged each other.

And I could just feel in my cells and in my bones how much this person loved me and how much he had loved me.

And that was something that I had begun to doubt, and it was eating at me.

I had begun to doubt our whole relationship.

But having that moment where in my body, I could feel the love that we had for each other, regardless of us separating now, regardless of the painful things that happened in certain moments of our relationship.

was liberating.

I can't even say healing.

It's more connected to me, to freedom.

I mean, there's something that got unlocked in me in that moment.

I'm so glad that you had that experience.

And you mentioned feeling liberated.

And when you said that, I felt, right, it's not being liberated from the heroine's journey.

It's being liberated To allow the journey to really continue.

And as I think about what use the map can be, right?

Is that sometimes the fear and the uncertainty can produce the sense in us that somehow we should be getting out of the cycle.

You know, we should close ourself off or, you know, there are lots of ways we learn to do that.

Whether it's by fixing it or denying it or all of these coping mechanisms that we can turn to.

And having the support of this map sounds, or it feels like having the support of this map can be a way that we learn to get closer to the possibilities that can come out of the cycle.

Because as I recall that conversation, when you were entering that space, you were really, there was no possibility in your mind that that type of closure could happen on that day.

Exactly.

And I think to answer your question, I'd say I'm beginning to inhabit emergence again, and yet I've been inhabiting emergence and even the return.

with this podcast.

And I feel like I'm kind of like this newborn bird that's kind of still all sticky and wanting to kind of spread her wings and explore again and fly again and learn again and fall again.

And realizing that In that space of reassembling ourselves, as you said once, I have the strength and the resilience to be there now, I think.

Everything changes so frequently, so who knows where I'll be by the time this episode launches, but that's...

I think the important thing is not so much where I am today, but just being able to exemplify what you were saying about the journey being a spiral, and it being messy, and it being the possibility of inhabiting different spaces at once, even.

I love that image of the baby bird, and it's been such a pleasure to be a part of this flight.

One of the things that was perhaps unusual about this project was the decision to Do it in both English and Spanish, but not to make it a direct translation.

And that was really important to all of us.

And now that we're at the end of season one, can you speak to both why that was important and how it's been?

I love that, thank you for asking, because that was such a hard decision.

I mean, I think we spent months talking about it.

We couldn't decide, right?

On one hand, it felt really important to do it in Spanish because that's where we're situated.

That's where our communities are.

Because there's something about a pride of this being Latin American.

Also, a recognition of my ancestry and where I come from.

And at the same time, part of my ancestry is English speaking.

And we know that English can have a certain, can reach more ears.

Let's just say that it can reach more ears.

And so it was interesting because we got told that making it in English and Spanish would just make it doubly complicated and harder.

But I actually feel so happy about deciding to do it this way because it just feels in integrity with our beliefs, with our biculturalism, with our ancestry, with who we are, with the objective of this podcast also.

And also the conversations and the threads that have come up in the Spanish episodes and the English episodes are very different, so complimentary to each other.

So I'm extremely happy that people who only speak English will have a whole beautiful thread to listen to.

The same with people that speak Spanish.

And if you speak English and Spanish, you'll have two incredible conversations that went in very different directions about the same phase of the heroine's journey.

And I just think that adds such richness and depth.

Thank you to the conversation.

Well, as we come to a close of the season with this episode and this conversation, is there anything else that you want to share about this journey?

I want our listeners to know that while our society is very much focused on a hero's journey, in other words, external successes and achievements and accomplishments, most people are going through these.

It's really deep, intensive processes of questioning and of confusion and disorientation and chaos.

It's just not visibilized.

And it just feels so important for me that people know that we're in it together and that the more we can talk about these things and embrace our heroine's journey, in other words, The journey into ourselves, into finding that validation that we've seeked for externally inside of ourselves.

And recognizing how being interconnected to each other far from making us weak, just makes us so strong.

You know, instead of a tree, we're this forest.

We're this beautiful forest.

We just need to talk to each other and create safe spaces for each other to be.

And I think that's a lot of the humbleness and the teachings that the heroine's journey give us.

Speaking of being a Forrest, I know that you and Nandi and I would like to extend an incredible amount of gratitude to all of the people who have conspired with their time, their energy, their attention, their resources, their skill, their ideas to the birth of season one.

Absolutely.

I mean, this is such a example of I love how collective forces are so much stronger than an individual force, and I want to say some names because it feels important.

I want to mention you, Sarah, and thank you so much for guiding us in this beautiful conversation.

I so admire your way of seeing the world, integrating ideas, creating threads, weaving.

You're such an incredible woman and I admire you deeply.

And I'm so blessed to have had you in this path right next to me.

As, as I've been so grateful to have the company of Nandi Adina, of Diana Chavez, of Annalena Castillo that did all of the beautiful art around this.

And Nick Mulvey who is lending us a beautiful song for the podcast.

He also, with his lyrics, has been someone that has accompanied me tremendously these, these years that I've been going through this journey and to be able to have one of his songs on the podcast just feels beyond magical and generous on his part.

So I'm really thankful to him as well..

Sarah, is there anything you want to say about the journey as someone who's going through the journey herself or highlights something that stuck with you about this first season before we go?

I've spent a lot of my life talking to people about their stories, about their journeys.

And even so, when I listen to this season, my breath is taken away by how much depth there is in every human journey.

And I am so clear that this map, this heroine's journey is something that I want to be in relationship to over decades, over a lifetime.

And it feels like the gifts, are that there are so many that are right here and so clear and that we're hearing in each other's stories and in the stories of these guests.

And I feel so connected to all the traditions that have understood cycles, that have understood that, ooh, the aliveness that you talked about, the force of life that moves through us and projects and the world.

And it delights me how much that's been a part of this first season, and I can't wait for more.

Thank you, Sarah.

Thank you for being a part of this conversation.

I'm so glad your voice was heard in this first season as well.

It has been a huge pleasure, and I have a huge smile on my face.

When I'm wrapping you and all of our listeners in one gigantic consensual hug.

This episode is made possible by Berle, an empathy, movement, and organization based in Costa Rica that has taught nonviolent communication to over 7,000 people.

Find them at Instagram, Berle cr.

This is our final episode of the first season, but we have some exciting news for you.

First, we wanna hear your stories.

Let us know in a five minute audio where you are in your own hero's journey, your personal myth, or anything else you'd like to share about listening to this first season.

You can share anonymously or not by simply going to christineraine.org/contact and clicking on a record button that you'll see there.

We've been so moved by your testimonies and anecdotes that we'll be compiling a little between seasons of your experiences as a community listening to this podcast.

If you've been moved by any of these stories and interviews, please consider sending in your own story.

We can't wait to hear from you.

A lot of people have asked us how they can deepen further in their own journeys.

I'm super excited to share with you that I'll be offering one-on-one sessions starting September.

We're also organizing an international retreat at the idyllic Retreat Center.

Blue Spirit in the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica You can expect this in the spring of next year.

Please sign up to our newsletter at christineraine.org to receive information about both of these offerings as well as upcoming activities.

Also, remember to stay connected on Instagram at the Heroines Journey Project.

If you enjoyed this episode, please recommend it, share it, and consider rating it so that others can find it more easily.

Remember, you can find this and all episodes at christineraine.org/podcast or wherever podcasts are found.

This first season has original music by Passiflora and Nick Mulvey.

Thank you so much for being a part of this community and listening to us It has been an absolute privilege to share these stories with you and accompany your own processes of change.

Although the first season ends here, there are many new things coming, so don't be a stranger and stay connected via our newsletter and Instagram.