In this stirring episode of Elements of Community, Lucas Root sits down with Marisa Franco to delve into the heart of what binds us to nature and each other. Discover how Marisa's insights on kinship with our environment and relational healing can transform our concept of community and personal fulfillment. 

Join us on a thought-provoking journey to explore the unbreakable ties between the cosmos, our planet, and the human spirit. Don't miss this captivating dialogue on unity!

Marisa Franco: Thank you. I'm glad I was number one because we are engaged to be married. So,

Lucas Root: As I said, of course.

Marisa Franco: And he has such a beautiful way of, I mean, that's the kin centric view. That's the most ancient view of life that I'm sure we'll get into, but he has such a beautiful way of describing it.

Lucas Root: Yeah. Yeah, it is a good thing you were first. It's like external validation, right?

Marisa Franco: Totally.

Lucas Root: You should be first, but you don't know until somebody says, Oh yeah, by the way, you were first.

Marisa Franco: Yeah. And you don't assume you're first and then it's a wonderful surprise when you are.

Lucas Root: Exactly. Could you take a minute and tell our audience a little bit about yourself?

And that resonated with me because joy or happiness is one of the highest vibrations that I have experienced in my life. And that's when magnetism happens and when miracles happen and when you're in a place of gratitude and I'm incredibly connected to the ocean. When I'm not near the ocean, I'm like, oh my God.

And it's, if anyone's into gene keys, one of my life purpose, gene keys is transcending enslavement into liberation. So when I found that out, I was like, Oh, that makes so much sense. So that's a big part of my journey and part of my journey is what I share here. So liberation and the way that I became liberated.

I mean, it's a whole process, but it was about relational healing, which is the main work that I do here and it comes in different modalities. But relational healing for me is about learning how to relate to all aspects of the life, similar to the concentric view. Because we're not separate from Earth, we're not living on Earth, we're living with Earth.

And the message is always so unique for us because really everything around us is simply a mirror. And we just have to keep polishing that mirror until we can truly see ourselves. And once we do, it's like everything changes. Life becomes so beautiful. And we remember that it's a gift. It's truly a gift to be alive. So that's been a really big part of my journey and what I feel that I'm here to share is healing with joy and healing with, the earth around us.

Now, astrology is a weird and really complex language, and it's not for everybody but, everybody needs to have personal development, and they need to have a language inside which they can talk to themselves, about themselves, for themselves, and understand themselves. And so, 30 years ago the human design was invented and it pulled in a lot from astrology.

It was sort of a, it was intended to be a layer on top of astrology, although that's not the way it worked out. It worked out to be an entirely separate pillar inside which people can do self exploration. And human design's amazing. It pulls in some stuff from the vedics and some stuff from astrology and some of the sort of modern psychology that was put together by some of the really great psychologists of our day and age.

Richard Rudd created Gene Keys that was supposed to be a layer on top of human design. And yet again, he pulled in different modalities that weren't pulled in, and he went deeper in some places and shallower in others. And instead of creating a layer on top, he created yet a third entirely separate language inside which people can do self exploration.

And it's a beautiful thing. All of the ways that you, the listener, and you and I Marisa can work to understand ourselves are beautiful things, and we should spend time on that.

And that's how we,

Lucas Root: Beautiful.

Marisa Franco: Personalities and different sort of guideposts in our life or moments in our life that are really big or big shifts that are happening. And that, for me, made so much sense because I was like, oh, that's how astrology gene keys, human design, all these ways of really reading the map of the stars is the map of the stars is actually inside of us.

Like, you could change 1 person's life or help 1 person and that could be your entire mission or you could make a huge change and disrupt. This algorithm that we're in right now, that's already slowly, you know, crumbling in a beautiful way. And then on top of that, it's not just about what we do here, it's how we are here.

And how we relate to our life and that for me is like a big part about. The mission or the purpose, because our purpose could also just simply be being alive and being here. It doesn't have to be this big thing, although sometimes they work hand in hand together, and we can't get wrapped up in feeling like we need to do something, because I think we're human beings, we're not human doers, and remembering how to be is actually how we can do.

Marisa Franco: Yes I do. So food for me is the center of my life. And similar to a home, the kitchen, which another word to say kitchen is the hearth. And the hearth means the heart of the home. It is the original gathering space. It's a space where all people of all origins. Can come together and break bread metaphorically and also in real life we can break bread.

Everything was basically inedible, but I had that like. that passion for it. And it was the type of passion where you don't have to, feel it. It's just who you are. It moves you. And that's a really beautiful thing to remember as an adult too, because you, the, like the purpose, the mission, the passion that you have, it just comes naturally to you.

You just have to create this space for it. But as a child, you have so much spaciousness to explore that, and that's such a beautiful thing too about children. Like when you watch children, you can already sense who they are because they have the space to be who they are. And as adults, we just need a little bit of space to remember that and a lot of forgiveness and a lot of compassion for that.

And that's a wonderful concoction and remedy for menopausal symptoms. And I would find acorns and I would put them in the river and like, create a little like rock circle. So they wouldn't float away and I would let them sit there for a day. And then the next day I would come back and I would be able to eat them, which as a kid, I didn't know I had to remove the tenants, but I did know how to do that.

And so.

Lucas Root: You've just listened.

I was in tech. I was in finance. I was in the wellness industry as in digital media and every year. I would basically change careers and my family. It was like, what the hell are you doing? But some part of me just, like, knew that I'm an investigator. I have to learn through trial and error. And so I just kept flipping through, like, is it this?

No, it's not this. Is it this? No, it's not this. But simultaneously, they never felt like. Failures it truly felt like a success. One, because I was able to learn just a little bit of what I needed to support the space that I'm in now. And it also felt like a success because I was brave enough to say no more and change my life through changing different career paths or different cities that I was living in, et cetera.

Lucas Root: Fun.

And the time is now to make a decision. And so I made the decision to quit my job, sell all of my stuff and just choose a place to go. And at that moment, it was just Costa Rica. I was like I'm just gonna go there, which is a really great place to choose. Right? Good job, Marisa.

Lucas Root: Yeah. Yeah.

Marisa Franco: And, you know, the way that.

Lucas Root: Can say your name.

Marisa Franco: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Lucas Root: They have a hard time with my name.

And he is my adventure of,

Lucas Root: Continues to travel.

Marisa Franco: Continues to travel. Yep. Right now he's in Brazil and we're meeting each other in Peru in two days. for Christmas. So I met Ryan, who's like the most epic travel guide ever, and I went through this thing where I was imagining myself to be this independent female traveler, do it myself, like carve my own path, you know?

And we've had so many amazing adventures and the way that the adventures happened for me is I had to keep saying yes. And I was almost always uncomfortable during these years because I was going through a huge transformation, which I called in because I didn't want the status quo life. I wanted a life of mystery. I wanted a life of adventure, and I wanted to do something different than the people that I was around at that time. And so that's exactly what happened.

Marisa Franco: Yeah.

Lucas Root: And I applaud you. Marisa for being willing to make a change.

Marisa Franco: Thank you. Yeah. There's that saying it's more important to know what you don't want than what you do want. And that really resonated with me because how would I know what I wanted if I never tasted it? And so then throughout the travels, I started to taste different styles of life. We were living off grid jungle or like everywhere.

Lucas Root: I have an uncle who literally says, I eat to fuel the fire. And I go, I waffle on this, like, some days I'm like, yeah, that's amazing, like, I love how he says that, and some days I'm like, I never want to feel that way about my food ever. Like, ever.

Marisa Franco: Yeah.

And I, don't want it to be transparent. I don't want to miss the details of that path. I don't want to anymore at this point in my life, I don't want to not know the farmer that raised the cows that I'm eating. I don't want to not meet the cow like I've met the cow that I eat and I spend time with that cow and I put love into very literally what ends up feeding me

And I don't sometimes it's hard and it's a little bit exhausting and it takes mental energy and it takes emotional energy and I have to get in the car and go to the farm and like sometimes I just don't want to do that.

I want to sit on the couch and watch TV and I get that. But I never, take a bite of that steak and regret the amount of work that I put in to make sure that what I'm receiving when I eat that steak is such an extraordinary experience.

Lucas Root: Yeah.

Marisa Franco: And

Lucas Root: Yeah.

Marisa Franco: And food, any sort of commoditization of these sacred items. We can make a very simple switch by bringing in gratitude by relating to our food by tending to that relationship, whether it's the food. The animal, the farmer, the plant, whatever it may be, because now, like, you've had the experience where you can feel the texture difference of knowing where your food comes from. And

And boy, does it cost a whole lot more. And I was loving the experience of seeing, and now I was still going to the grocery store to get my beef, but I was loving the experience of really feeling the difference between the discount rack beef and the certified grass fed stuff. And my parents are coming over and I did a, I did two I was a professional chef.

I had four different crock pots in my house at the time. So I did two crock pots with two roasts. And one of them had the discount rack beef and the other one had the premium beef. My parents got there and everything else was otherwise the same. My parents got there and I fed them the discount rack beef and they were like, Oh my God, this is amazing.

And I think that's the thing that stops a lot of people. But when you start putting in that effort, you see how all the effort and all the love and care and attention that you put out comes back to you tenfold because the food that you get to know is really what is nourishing you on a dimensional level and that's why your food from the farm tastes so good. It has two secret ingredients, love and spaciousness, and the cows have spaciousness and they're doing their thing the way.

Lucas Root: Not just any love. It is actually my love.

And once you become a pillar in your own life, you can support an entire community. And I mean that in every level possible, not just with food, but since we're on food, let's bring it to that. You have a garden where you can grow for yourself and your family, and then you bring it out to your community and then you can start bartering.

It's really important. And we can peel back a lot of what we consume and what we think matters because so many people they have, like, let's say they have two cars and they have to buy new jeans or like new sneakers, like all these things. Right? But once we start to see, actually, what's really important in our life and what truly feeds us, not a quick fix, not a dopamine hit, but what truly feeds us in the long run. Then we start to see that, like, we don't need a lot of the stuff that we have in our life.

And actually, it's taking up a lot of prime real estate in our space, in our consciousness, in our mind. And we can kind of just do some spring cleaning and really focus on what matters in our life.

Here's what's interesting about that. Chickens, when you go to the grocery store and you look at, you know, a grocery store chicken, it'll say all vegetarian fed. Now, I have a question for you, you, the listener, you, Marisa. What does the early bird get?

Marisa Franco: The worm.

In a place where they are loved and cared for with the love that you would give to somebody you're feeding their healthy natural diet. The early bird gets the worm and I'm going to eat a chicken. It needs to have lots of bugs available to it. Now, most people have a backyard. And in your backyard, you could very easily put one, two, three chickens.

Why would I bring that up? Every single animal on a traditional farm, like when you conjure up the image of a farm, every single animal plays two roles. Not just one, but two. Chickens aren't just for laying eggs and turning into chicken meat. Chickens are, have a very specific and very important role on the farm and in your backyard.

So the result of this sort of beautiful miasma of animals and humans coexisting is that there's going to be a whole bunch of animal shit and human food waste and, you know, stinky things that encourage bugs to come and congregate around all of this stuff that's happened. We want the bugs. The bugs do good things and also we don't want the bugs because they're icky and they get in our face and they bite us and we don't want that.

And so, you actually need a pest control. And back before pesticides were invented as a thing that you could spray that would poison absolutely everything they touch, including yourself by the way, we needed to have pest control back then too and that's what chickens did.

Marisa Franco: Yep. When I was living on a farm in Hawaii, we had actually free range chickens. Like, they were just wild chickens that would come onto the property. And I can't tell you how many times I would walk up to one and there was a lizard hanging out of its mouth.

Lucas Root: Yes.

Marisa Franco: So then going into the store and seeing like vegetarian fed like it was some amazing thing like you live on a farm. You're like, oh my god, this is another backwards thing. And I mean, that's a whole.

Lucas Root: To do is flip it.

And not going out of ourselves to be reliant on something else. That's the whole thing with this like system that is not working for us anymore. Like we need the system to work for us, not us working system. Yes. And even going to the grocery store. I mean, this is why I love relational healing because food is just a metaphor and a metaphor is just another way for us to understand the meaning of life.

And it's similar to what we said earlier, too. Like you don't know what you want until you get it or you taste it. And then you can start making moves. Like that's why trying out different things is so vital for us. I mean, we're having a human experiment, not just a human experience. And in order to have an experiment, we need to have trial and error.

And the compass is inside of us. We, you know, just getting clear on what our voice, what the song in our heart sounds like will help us move freely in this world. Even in, thank you.

Lucas Root: Wow. So what does relational healing mean to you?

But the biggest moments of my journey have been in this sort of isolation that I felt was really a disconnection that I had to the natural world. And I had that connection as a child. I think many children do. And then you get disconnected because you, you're an adult and you forget and then you start to remember a little bit and then you forget again.

And if we can learn how to sit under a tree and listen, like a lot of people don't know that trees speak and it's not some weird spiritual thing. It's, but they don't speak in a human language. They speak by communicating with us either on a physical dimension, let's say you're sitting there and you're thinking and then an acorn drops on your head, like, what were you thinking about that matter.

Lucas Root: hmm

Marisa Franco: It comes as an intuitive thought that you think might be yours, but nothing is really yours, you know, my one of my teachers and holy. She,

The oaks can't seed. So I'm driving through the valleys out here looking at the trees communing with them and wondering to myself. And of course, this question was prompted somehow. I don't know how right. The way the trees talk to us wondering to myself how do they propagate. Like, how does an oak seedling happen?

Because I'm, you know, here I am in California looking at huge, vast oak forests where clearly seedlings are happening. But, 10 months out of the year, it's not possible for the tree to survive. And so even if it manages to just explode in growth for those first two months, it's still not gonna make it.

I went by a mother oak and I saw the little baby oak right next to it. And I could look up into the canopy of the oak the mother. And I saw that pieces around the baby had died off and fallen. Literally, the mother was making space for the baby to get the sun. And I was like, okay, like that's a piece of it.

That's how you allow it to sort of get the sun. But this still isn't enough. This is not going to get this oak through 10 months of dry season. For the next, you know, 15 years, while it develops a root system strong enough for it to be able to survive on its own. This doesn't do it. I still don't understand.

I was like, oh my god, like, these oak trees are effectively mammals. They have to nurse their young, and not for a couple of months, but for years, maybe even decades, before the baby is strong enough, deep enough connected enough to be able to survive on its own without its mother. Well, if that's true, if the mother is actually growing a nest, a marsupial pouch, to collect the baby and make it possible for that mother's baby to survive in that spot.

So I could go actually observe that. But if she's doing that, she knows which of those acorns is the one acorn that she wants to fall in that one spot to make sure that's the one that sprouts and survives and opens her family up to the next generation. So that's golden acorn. Now, when you mention if you're sitting under the tree and an acorn drops on you, what were you thinking?

Like, that really is not just coincidence. These mother oaks have the capacity to literally grow a marsupial pouch and drop an acorn into it. Yes, when an acorn falls on your head, maybe it's because Augusta Wynne dropped it off, but probably it's because she decided to drop it.

And really investigate, like, how is this happening and to see the mystery and the magic in it. And I'm also glad you mentioned this because that's a huge aspect of the relational healing that I offer is you go out into nature and you observe. And you bring back a story because that story is sharing where you're at right now in your life and I sense that when you went to this tree and you were looking at how aspects of the tree had to die for this new seedling to come forth.

Was that during a time in your life where that was actually happening to you where you were clearing the clutter and you're making space for something new to emerge.

Marisa Franco: And that's the mirror of the earth. You know, it's so beautiful because we have everything that we need. We have all of the answers and you seeing the tree was also you seeing yourself and the more that we can love. The earth or the environment, the more that we can love ourself. And the more we love ourself, the more that we can love the earth. They're not separate. That's why I shared at the beginning is we are healing with earth.

Lucas Root: They shouldn't be separate.

Marisa Franco: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we can try to separate them, but then that's where we see the disconnection happening. And the disconnection is this sort of like. Soul isolation, and that's for me, not where healing can happen at all.

And it's beautiful. And it's coming this trendy thing where a lot of the sacredness of the true quote unquote work that we're doing, which is just naturally occurring is kind of, it's losing its vibrancy. And so what I want to offer here is to look at ancestral healing, move and evolve it into ancestral celebration, starting to celebrate your life instead of focusing on just the healing, because where we focus our thoughts, where we focus our energy is how we create our life.

It's a lot of people will have an experience and want to be joyful. And then they'll bypass the experience that's happening, not realizing that difficult experience is actually the food for joy to emerge. And if we bypass it, then we can't go into joy. And the best thing that we can do and experiences that are really challenging or heartbreaking or transforming, and we don't know what's happening is to just be completely present in that moment.

And not bypass, but be with it and have the aim of joy, knowing that we are in the center of our life and joy is the circle around us and everything that comes into the center is feeding the circle. That's how we celebrate life.

Lucas Root: Ah, beautiful. Wow.

I see the beauty and the miracle of even the most challenging moments and I know that all of those moments are really just food for me to alchemize into the most beautiful life possible and I believe that every single person here has that ability to do it.

And transformational speakers out there, almost all of them have a very specific and almost identical premise, and that is the suffering and the trauma made it possible for me to move into the next phase. Like it wouldn't have happened, maybe it could have, but it wouldn't have happened without the challenge that he she went through.

Yeah, just allow the things to happen because even on a quantum level, we are vibrating energy and things cannot be held in our field or in our body unless we keep it with our mind. And I mean, that's a whole nother thing. Like karma only exists in the mind.

So when we can free the mind and just know that we're constantly vibrating and to keep our space as open and neutral as possible, like beautiful things are always happening and the suffering can be present, but we're not attaching to it because when we attach to it, that's when we co create with it. Attachment is a form of the co creation. And so we have to be very careful about what we quote unquote, attach to.

Marisa Franco: Yeah. That's duality for you.

Lucas Root: Yeah, wow, that, you know what, I'm going to be thinking about that for a while. Thank you, yeah, the 90s R&B song, Free Your Mind. It seems like they had it right, huh?

Marisa Franco: I think so.

Lucas Root: Wow. Marisa, thank you. I like to wrap up my interviews with three questions. You've heard them now because you listened to Ryan's episode but hopefully they'll still be somewhat surprising to you.

Marisa Franco: They'll be fresh.

Lucas Root: They'll be fresh. Yes, well said. First one is for the people who have been inspired by you, and my hope is that it's everyone who hears this episode.

Where can they find you?

Lucas Root: You're welcome to continue forward, but no, that's not the second question.

Marisa Franco: Okay, great. So I'll continue. So website. And then the way you can work with me is I have one, three and six month containers for the relational healing. And I have an apothecary. I have a substack that you can subscribe to for free or paid. That space is really about deep inquiry and actually a lot of the topics that we talk about here.

Lucas Root: Congratulations.

Marisa Franco: Thank you.

Lucas Root: Second question is intended to be a curve ball. So good thing you're sitting down. If there was one question you wish I had asked you, but I have not, what would it be?

Lucas Root: Oh. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Marisa Franco: Do I get to answer it?

Lucas Root: Please do.

Marisa Franco: The most beautiful future than I can imagine is bridging the ancient traditions of being alive and human with the new technologies where the new technologies are supporting us living the most beautiful life. And there's harmony around the world and humans have realized that war is absolutely ridiculous and we can actually share and the amount of resources that we need are not as many as we're extracting.

And our womb is connected to the cosmos and the core of the earth. And when we are at the center, then everyone thrives. That is the future that I imagine.

Lucas Root: I love it. I'm gonna do a little monologue on that. You've inspired me.

Marisa Franco: Nice.

Lucas Root: Okay, so first racism is so ridiculous. Anybody who has it needs to free themselves from that first. Whether, regardless of what you believe in, every single one of us has descended from one single woman. If you are a modern day Christian, then that one single woman was 5,000 years ago.

Modern technology is amazing. Any of you who don't know what a deepfake is, alongside googling what is happening with the Lyme epidemic in the United States, go google a deepfake. Here's why the deepfake is the most exciting thing I have ever bumped into. It's the reason why I think AI is like the answer to all of our questions right now.

All of a sudden, this tool that we use to manage all of our communication, which is also an amazingly powerful tool that I love a lot, the tool that is used to manipulate you all the time. This tool, the computer, the tool that you and I are talking to each other on right now, this tool is no longer a source of truth to you, because anybody can appear like your mother, your cousin, your son, at any time.

Marisa Franco: Wow.

Lucas Root: Those are a beautiful thing. So, racism, get rid of it. Deepfakes are amazing, they're wonderful, they're a gift because they make it so that this tool can't be trusted for anything. And if it can't be trusted for anything, the only place that I can turn is to the people that I love. And have direct connection with right now.

And the next step beyond that is exactly what you described, Marisa. The next step beyond that is that this tool becomes nothing other than a tool that we use to build ourselves up and support ourselves. And we have to return to community humanity.

Marisa Franco: Wow. That's actually a really beautiful flip too.

If we are routinely manipulated in that way, we're gonna stop listening to this manipulation box. It's not a source of truth anymore. It cannot be. If anyone can lie to me as my mother, at any time, then I can't trust anything that this thing brings me. And the only place I can turn is to the people that I love. So much that a deepfake couldn't fake me.

Lucas Root: I love that we're here now. I love to be a part of this and to get to witness it and play with it and be in it.

Marisa Franco: Me too.

Lucas Root: The third question is much more mundane. Do you have any parting thoughts?

So, if we ever feel stuck, just make a different choice. And if we ever feel that we are in a space of beauty, give thanks. So then that beauty keeps coming back. And if your cup is over filling. Bring that water to another relative or to a tree or to a sister or brother, whatever it is. So that way our whole planet is just enveloped with hands holding each other.

And that for me is the way that we're going to move into the most beautiful future possible.

Lucas Root: Oh, yes.

Marisa Franco: Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

Lucas Root: Thank you, Marisa.

Narrator: Thanks for joining us this week on Elements of Community.

Be sure to tune in next week for our next episode.