Tamara 0:00

Welcome to the EnlightenPsyche Podcast, your resource for insight and inspiration in troubled times. These are conversations coming from the intersection of spirituality and psychology I'm your host, Tamara

Sarah 0:25

I'm your host, Sarah.

Tamara 0:26

I'm a psychotherapist.

Sarah 0:28

And I'm a shaman.

Tamara 0:29

And we are coming to you today from the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

Sarah 0:35

Yes, it's just another gorgeous day.

Tamara 0:38

So this is officially our first podcast episode, one in which we are just going to talk for a little bit about why we're doing this, who we are, what we're gonna be talking about over the course or the arc of our conversations.

Sarah 0:56

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 0:57

So when I think about, why do a podcast, there's a couple of things to me that are deeply needed in our culture that have to do with the quality of dialogue and conversation that we're not having with each other right now.

Sarah 1:17

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 1:18

And especially around things that involve our sense of wellbeing and our connection to one another and to our environment.

Sarah 1:29

Yes.

Tamara 1:30

And so I thought for a long time about doing different types of podcasts, but it wasn't until I met you and we started having conversations, Sarah, that-

Sarah 1:41

Mm-hmm

Tamara 1:42

I started thinking, "Here's some alchemy."

Sarah 1:44

Yes. We do have such interesting conversations. I think it's well worth sharing.

Tamara 1:49

So spirituality and psychology, there's some interesting overlaps, and there are also a lot of differences. And sometimes people who work in psychology and psychotherapy, like I do, don't feel comfortable dealing with spiritual matters. And often people do consult their spiritual belief systems to try to help them deal with psychological issues.

Sarah 2:15

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 2:17

When I think about, why do a podcast, a lot of it has to do with existential stuff, and that our sense of wellbeing is deeply tied to both of these issues.

Sarah 2:28

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 2:30

And at the same time, I feel, as I look around at how conversations are not going in our society to a large degree, or when, where they are happening, there's not a lot of collaboration or cooperation sometimes.

Sarah 2:47

Right.

Tamara 2:48

So one of the things that I'm hoping for here, one of the reasons our intro says insight and inspiration, is because we don't want to just get into problems and just wallow in the problems without there being something constructive about it.

Sarah 3:02

Absolutely.

Tamara 3:03

And also trying to find a way to elevate the social conversation about so many issues- Politics, society, environment, culture, and so many problems that we're facing in all of those domains, economics, et cetera.

Sarah 3:23

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 3:23

And doing it in a way that is helpful, illuminating, and potentially even hopeful.

Sarah 3:32

For sure.

Tamara 3:33

What is it, Sarah, that makes you want to be a part of this?

Sarah 3:36

Well, I would really like to be a voice for spirituality as opposed to religion per se. Uh, I meet a lot of people who have a lot of religious trauma that has caused them to move away from spirituality or the idea of spirit in any way, and our society in general You know, has these questions around people, what is the basis for existence? I mean, we're even seeing the question of, you know, can a person be replaced by a program? What is actual reality? What is the spirit at our core? I think is- Mm a very important question, and to me, there is absolutely a spirit at your core, and that is the voice that I would like to share. My experience is that regardless of religion, regardless of backgrounds, people exist beyond death. So what about you, Tamara? What are you hoping to bring to this podcast from your experience?

Tamara 4:33

Hmm. Well, I'm gonna come with two different pockets. Even though I'm gonna be talking from the perspective of psychology, I have a background as a journalist, and I worked in newspapers in my whole first career before I became a psychotherapist, plus a little stint in corporate America in between, and inevitably, I will be doing a journalistic turn as part of this in terms of bringing in stats or pieces of information or facts, if you will, facts, in this post-fact world, trying to do things to the best of my ability to keep our conversation based in the real world and factually based, informative, as well as looking at psychology and the psyche. You Where you're concerned with the spirit, I'm concerned with the psyche.

Sarah 5:33

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 5:33

And I have a very holistic lens on that as a psychotherapist. So it will come from a lot of different perspectives, which I can get into in a little bit, but my hope is to Because I believe that so much of what we are dealing with as a society right now, the polarization, the concerns about the climate crisis, the economic issues, the siloing that's going on, the fractured nature of our society, that we're all under a tremendous amount of stress-

Sarah 6:11

Absolutely

Tamara 6:12

and seeing the effect of that on people's mental health because when we're under stress for long periods of time, we have physical and emotional and psychological stuff that starts to go haywire. And so I also want to be able to talk with a larger audience than what I have in my private practice, to be able to bring the information that I have as a trained psychotherapist to help people find healthy, adaptive, meaningful ways to cope with the stuff that's going on in our society. People have often told me, "Tamara, you need a larger platform." Because of the things that I tend to speak with my clients about, or when I've given talks or led workshops, things like that, that's the feedback that I've gotten, is "Why isn't this more widely available?" So that's a piece of me bringing this stuff forward- Mm-hmm and starting to record it, and just making it available in the podcast universe.

Sarah 7:19

Yes, that sounds very valuable.

Tamara 7:21

So I think that for our listeners to really get a deeper sense, not just of what we're wanting to do here or why we've shown up to begin this, to understand a bit about who we are.

Sarah 7:37

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 7:37

There's a lot of intersectionalities that we have between the two of us, and there's so much that's going on in the backgrounds of our own minds and our own experiences, our life experiences, our professional experiences, our cultural backgrounds, our spiritual and religious backgrounds, the perspective that I come from within my psychotherapy practice, that lens. I think laying that out on the table for people, and having this podcast be one that people can always refer back to, and when they are like, "Who are these two? What makes them think that they're qualified to talk about this?"

Sarah 8:16

Right. Where do they come from? What's their, what are their stories?

Tamara 8:19

Exactly. So let's start a little bit with you, Sarah. Uh, the old journalist is coming out in me and will come out a lot in me, I'm sure, in terms of being a person who will more naturally be inclined to facilitate some of these conversations, or most of these conversations probably. As a therapist, I facilitate conversations. As a journalist, I'm professionally nosy. I- Right I guess in both-

Sarah 8:46

Yeah,

Tamara 8:47

yeah both fields, actually, you know? I've got questions.

Sarah 8:51

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 8:51

So what I know about you, on the basis of the spirituality and conversations that we've had in the past, is that you were raised Mormon, and somehow or another you became a shaman.

Sarah 9:04

This is true. Yeah.

Tamara 9:04

And you're no longer, uh, identify as Mormon.

Sarah 9:08

No. Mm-mm.

Tamara 9:09

So that is an interesting journey. I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about that. Is that a good place to start for you?

Sarah 9:19

So as someone who really values nature, I can look back now and see that I was very lucky in the area that I grew up. It was on the Oregon coast. We had a couple of acres of doug fir and alder and cedar. Mm. We had a stream that ran through the front yard that I was always out in- Sounds lovely catching the tiny little fish. Yeah, it was very clear air, very beautiful space, and that was on purpose. My parents were actually-- They grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and when they were in high school, they were found by the, the Mormon missionaries, and they converted to Mormonism, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They decided that they wanted to raise their children away from the city. My father served his mission on the Oregon coast, and so that was his exposure. He was like, "This is so much nicer." So after his mission, he and my mother found a cute little spot, and that was where I grew up. Now they, as converts, they really just went all the way in. So we lived very close to nature. We had chickens and ducks and goats. I learned how to milk a goat. We canned every summer. We made our own bread. Kind of a homestead lifestyle as close as they could do. I mean, my father also taught English at the local school, so, um, we were integrated into the community that way. So it was very close to nature, and I definitely felt that in my spirit. I spent a lot of time outside just absorbing that everything is alive. Everything around me is alive. The trees are alive. The ground is alive. The air is alive, and just that exposure to nature as a living force and myself as part of that. And along with that, also spirituality as expressed through the religion of Mormonism in terms of we prayed morning and night. We fasted. When my, you know, when I got sick, my dad would bless me as a priesthood holder in his home. All of that was also part of my growing up, my formative experiences. And so I grew up in this space that I felt very supported by a heavenly father who loved me, and there were answers to my prayers. Like all of this was very much part of my existence, so that I had this natural grounding but also this spiritual grounding, religious reality that at the time, felt very supportive and very nourishing.

Tamara 11:59

So what changed?

Sarah 12:00

So really the place where I began to have difficulty was once I left my home, I was out in the world. In the Mormon religion, the men are the ones who hold the priesthood, and there is a whole kind of program where they learn to develop their skills and how to give blessings and all of those kinds of things. But it's very much a male-centered spirituality in that way. As a woman, you're being blessed by spirituality, those gifts, but you don't really develop them yourself. And so when I began to Go out on my own and have these spiritual, these negative spiritual experiences, uh, there was nothing really for me to personally do to protect myself.

Tamara 12:48

Negative spiritual experiences?

Sarah 12:50

Well, for example, so I, for some reason, I was very sensitive to ghosts, to spirits who have passed on in some kind of a traumatic way and are still here in this space. They would be either be drawn to me or I would just be able to perceive them where other people couldn't. So for example, in the school that I was working in, I went into the bathroom to use the bathroom, and there I could clearly sense, clearly see that there was this girl in the bathroom stall, and she was having a very, very bad day. Oh. And she was upset that I was using the bathroom- a stall that she was, 'cause- This ghost girl she was already in there. And yeah, so I could see with my physical eyes that there was nobody in that bathroom stall. Oh. But she knew that I could see her, and she was like, "I'm busy. This is my spot." So a few weeks later, I went back to that bathroom. I forgot, and I used that stall again, and she was like, "Didn't we already have this conversation?" You know "You're back. Like, can't you see? This is clearly my spot." So I asked around to the other teachers, and I found that everyone had this very negative feeling, this cold, dark feeling in that stall, and people avoided it as much as they could. So there was kind of that corroboration that other people were feeling that. Uh, and I had another experience where, uh, I was in my dorm room and there was a ghost boy that was pacing up and down the hallway, and he could sense that I could see him. And so he came over and he wanted attention from me. He tapped on my shoulder really hard, and I was like, "I don't know you, don't know what's going on." You know, I prayed for protection, and he left. So I would have these encounters. You know, later on, for example, I had this apartment where there was a ghost in the apartment.

Tamara 14:42

Hmm.

Sarah 14:43

And I could see it wandering around the different rooms, and I was following it around and being like, "Okay, this is my space now. I'd like you to move on." Putting scriptures on the walls, you know Hmm. Took my Book of Mormon, put it in the room where it was kind of thing. But there wasn't a lot that I could personally do, and so I had to ask my home teacher. When he came to visit, I told him the story, and so he offered to bless the space. And once he blessed the space, then it felt much better. But it was kind of that, that dynamic of I can sense this, but I can't really do anything about it. I can't help these spirits. I can't help myself really. There's nothing I can do. It was a few years later that I was introduced to the book, uh, Hands of Light by Barbara Brennan, and that became a very important book in my life. She was a faith healer that was from a medical background, and her third eye opened one day and she could just see all of this, the spiritual existence on top of her medical training. You know, it was just traumatic in a way for her, um, but added this whole dimension to her life. And so it was wonderful to read about that experience and just have it corroborate some of the things that I was feeling and sensing. In the process of reading her work and just realizing, oh, I'm not alone in this. There's these other people who are having these experiences and understandings. So in working with some of the materials that she had in that book, I started working on like my chakras, which maybe people are familiar with, like these energy centers in your body. I started working on strengthening those so that I would have more protection in my spirit from these incursions or from these, you know, these spirits around me, that I would be able to hold my space. And I discovered that as I did that In some ways I became more sensitive to these spirits around me. I could sense them more, but I could also indeed hold my own a bit better, and I could safeguard my space more. And I discovered that in one of my chakras there was a spirit that was attached to me that wasn't... I could tell she wasn't me, but she was attached to my spirit. Hmm. Okay? And she was this young girl who had felt some kind of affinity for me. I thought I was kind of vulnerable to her energy, and so she was attached to me. And so I was, "I don't know what to do about this," so I read some more books, and there was this, an important book that I read, uh, called The Spirit Releasement Manual by William Baldwin, and he talks about this situation. He was a therapist who found that a lot of his patients were suffering from these kinds of experiences, and he could help them release spirits that were attached to them in some way. And so I used some of his techniques, so a humane exorcism, if you will. Because you're not, like, hurting them. You're facilitating. You're helping them move on to somewhere else.

Tamara 17:32

Oh I see.

Sarah 17:33

And so I kept reading more books and using these techniques so that when these spirits did show up in my space for some reason, I was able to do something to help them move on.

Tamara 17:45

Hmm.

Sarah 17:46

I wasn't seeking them out in any, any way, but I was able to do more for myself. And another thing that happened, at the time I was living in Japan and I was teaching English. So in Japan they believe in reincarnation. It's part of their religious tradition. And I actually had these memories. Like, when I met these people, they remembered lives with me before. Hmm. And I remembered lives with them. So we had this mutual recognition that, oh, this isn't the first time that we're meeting each other. This isn't the first time that we've had a life together. We know each other from some other place hundreds of years before in Japan.

Tamara 18:27

Were you guys out drinking sake when you- Discovered this? I mean, how did that conversation come out?

Sarah 18:35

Well, we were actually just, we were teachers together, but it was like, "Yeah, just you're so familiar." Oh. You know? It was like this previous lifetime where he- we'd actually been, like, sister wives or something. Like, it felt very familial that we had lived this life together before. So-

Tamara 18:53

Hmm

Sarah 18:53

and like I say, there's this very easy understanding of that in Japan. Reincarnation is not a, a new thing. It's just part of the framework, so people very easily accept the idea that you might have encountered each other before in another life, or you might have, like, past baggage or past memories or some reason to be familiar with each other. These were all things that I was adding in to my picture, but I was still Mormon.

Tamara 19:20

Mm-hmm.

Sarah 19:21

I was still going to church. I actually met a Japanese guy who I converted to Mormonism. We got married in the temple. I was very excited to find someone who- Could be spiritually aware in those ways and be accepting of Mormonism and all of its kind of unusual container. That was really wonderful. Eventually, all those different pieces got to be too much for me, and I, I wanted to be sure that what I was passing on to my kids was gonna be really helpful for them. And so when they were little, I started studying more about Mormonism. So it was a long, painful separation process from the Mormon religion, as I was still very spiritual, and I wanted a spiritual life, and I wanted a spiritual life for our family. And so-

Tamara 20:07

What happened that you had this long, difficult, painful separation? Or-

Sarah 20:13

Well-

Tamara 20:14

What'd you discover that made you say, "Oh, no, I can't remain in this religion any longer"?

Sarah 20:19

Well, the thing is that the Mormon religion sets itself apart as the only true way of spirituality, the only true way back to heaven, you know, the only true way to be a spiritual person. And-

Tamara 20:34

Don't most religions do that?

Sarah 20:36

They kind of do. Hmm. Yeah. And I, honestly, I think that's a big problem-

Tamara 20:40

Hmm

Sarah 20:41

from a spiritual perspective, is that people will, they'll grow up in some kind of religious tradition, and they'll think that there's something wrong with that tradition, then they can't be a spiritual person anymore. Hmm. Like, they separate from that, and then that means they're separate from their spirituality as well- Hmm through that, like, religious trauma process. Hmm. Which I definitely experienced. And so I went through a period indeed where, okay, there's problems with this religion, which I already had come across in various ways. There are some very serious things that are not true that were taught to me that, as it turns out, were true.

Tamara 21:20

Oh.

Sarah 21:20

You know, everybody has their own lines for things that they're willing to accept or sort of put on a shelf or whatever. And for me, one of those indeed was that I did some research and I discovered that in the early days of the church, women did hold a certain kind of priesthood, or they blessed people. They prophesied. They had dreams. There's, in the reli- in the history, there are these stories where these sisters would go, and they would give each other healing blessings, um, when they were sick. You know, if that's the case, and spirituality is the same yesterday, today, and forever, then why can't we do this now? Hmm. It doesn't make sense to me. So it felt like an artificial limitation of my spirituality that this was no longer acceptable.

Tamara 22:05

Hmm.

Sarah 22:05

And I went and talked to my bishop about it, and it was just like, "Yeah, that's just how things are now." You know? I didn't feel like I wanted to live that way anymore in terms of I was learning all these other, all these techniques, all these skills. They weren't in line with my religious tradition, but they worked. So why should I teach my kids, my little girls, that they can't have this, these spiritual skills, or that men are the only ones who can be close to God or whatever, those kinds of things- Mm-hmm if it's not actually true in my lived experience, and it wasn't actually true in the history of the church. So there are a number of things like that brought me around to I need some other structure for my kids to be spiritual and not accept the limitations of this particular religion. That's a little bit about where I'm coming from. Mm. And I'm curious about your background. How did that lead you forward to where you are now?

Tamara 23:04

Hmm. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is being born at an intersection of parents from two completely different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Sarah 23:15

Hmm.

Tamara 23:15

My dad was a descendant of Tennessee hillbillies. My grandfather served in World War II, and my dad went to school on the GI Bill and became an architect, and was very focused on career his whole life.

Sarah 23:33

Hmm.

Tamara 23:34

My mom was adopted from circumstances that are still somewhat murky. My grandmother came from a very wealthy Miami family. So there's this family that, like, lives with leisure and Catholicism on my mom's side, and this family that's hillbillies, moonshine, coal mining sort of background on my dad's. My grandfather walked barefoot out of the mountains of Tennessee and forged his daddy's signature on his military induction papers 'cause he was underage. He wanted to get out of that life. He wanted something better. He said it wasn't too much of a difficulty to forge my great-grandfather's signature 'cause it was nothing but an X anyway, 'cause he was- Hmm totally illiterate.

Sarah 24:24

Hmm.

Tamara 24:25

So I was born at this intersection with these kinda competing views of the world, and my mother was not concerned about money and making her place in the world. She was more concerned about who am I, where did I come from, knowing that she was adopted and not knowing anything about her story, and dealing with a lot of what I would say is kind of psychological drama around that. And then my dad striving, striving, money, cars, houses, the whole, you gotta look a particular way, success. Home had to look like it was out of Architectural Digest, all of that stuff. And that made for a v- actually a very unhappy childhood.

Sarah 25:16

Hmm.

Tamara 25:17

My mom had depression issues. My dad was a philanderer. I didn't understand everything that was going on at the time as a kid, but there was a lot of trauma. My dad was physically and emotionally abusive. My mother was often off in her bed crying- And my sister and I, we were the two oldest. My sister was 14 months older than me, and then we had these two younger brothers, one who's five years younger than me, and one that was seven years younger than me. And we spent a lot of time caring for them, and I really got a sense of what it meant to be responsible for other people and how they felt. And I don't know that I was a people pleaser, because I was also very willful, very curious, preferred to be in the outdoors away from the chaos of the household and things like that. Somewhere along the line, when I was in high school, my parents' marriage was constantly in conflict, and at some point my mom's like, "We all need to go to family therapy."

Sarah 26:26

Hmm.

Tamara 26:27

Well, this was an abject failure because everyone was too terrified of my dad to actually be honest in the ways that therapy necessitates for actual healing.

Sarah 26:38

Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tamara 26:40

But I was intrigued, and I didn't think that I had the academic skills to be a psychotherapist, because that Dr. Fred had so many, what I believed to be, were diplomas on his wall. They turned out, in hindsight now I know, that he had just put his continuing ed certifications and- but I was like, "Oh my God, he went to, like, 40 schools. What the hell?" And this looks like a really intriguing job, but I could never go to that much college. I was from a very academically gifted and very intelligently gifted family, but I was not the one who was excelling academically. I was the athletic, outdoorsy kid who spent all of my time, as much as I could, in sports, swim team, et cetera.

Sarah 27:33

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 27:34

And at some point in high school, I was on the varsity swim team, and I had an injury that ended up sidelining me, benching me for such a long degree of time that I couldn't actually stay just sitting there at swim practice and doing nothing. So they were like, "Yeah, you gotta take a break from this, and you gotta be in some other class during when you would normally be in swim practice."

Sarah 27:59

Hmm.

Tamara 27:59

"So pick a class, any class. This is what's available during these periods. Just pick one of these." And I just literally blindly closed my eyes and wiggled my finger over the paper and popped my finger down on a, and it was a Introduction to Journalism class.

Sarah 28:17

Wow.

Tamara 28:18

At which point I didn't know I had the capacity to write, but I really liked the idea, even from the get-go, that there was some permission to ask questions. Because growing up as I did, I mainly wondered why- Why are we doing this to each other? Why is the world like this? Why are people like this? What are they thinking? What's going on in their head? Which is one of the reasons I was really intrigued by Dr. Fred's job.

Sarah 28:47

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 28:48

But so journalism was another path to asking questions and being curious about the world, and finding out what was going on in the world. And I had a facility for writing, and I went down that path, and I went to journalism school, and I had a journalism career. I loved it, actually. It was the funnest job that I can imagine having, actually. There's a funny old cartoon that I used to have. It was a wall that had all of these disparate subjects written on it: oil, vinegar, shopping, religion, healthcare, education, cops, murder, mayhem, earthquakes. And there was a little s- thing at the top that said, "Today I am an expert in..." And there was a line of people, and they were throwing darts at this wall. And at, the little caption at the bottom said, "How journalists start their day." And I love that cartoon

Sarah 30:00

Oh, dear

Tamara 30:01

Because it was kinda true, especially when you would do things like general assignments, although I did specialize over the years in environmental reporting and then subsequently healthcare reporting. And, I did my stints in the city hall, in the county government, uh, going to all kinds of horrible car wrecks and covering natural disasters. 'Cause I was born in the South, I had my childhood in South Carolina, and in middle school I moved to Texas, and got my undergrad in Texas, and then I got a job at a newspaper in California after I graduated. So I was working in California and covering the national parks there. All of that was a absolute blast. Mm. I had the funnest time until things started to change. The deregulation of the communications industry by the FCC that allowed corporations to come in and buy up all of the independent media outlets that we had. There used to be a law where a single corporation or business or person could not own multiple media outlets in the same service area.

Sarah 31:18

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 31:19

And that law, I think it was in the early '90s, went by the wayside, and corporations came in and just started eating up everything.

Sarah 31:29

Mm.

Tamara 31:30

And really turning media... Media was always sensational. Media's always been, "if it bleeds, it leads." William Randolph Hearst and all of the people from back in the day definitely made a lot of money selling salacious stories. So that's not, that wasn't anything new, but having the corporate American model of consuming the media outlets-

Sarah 32:00

Mm-hmm

Tamara 32:01

and watching all these papers be merged together and the corporate brainwashing trainings that we were getting sent to at the paper that I was working at when I left the field

Sarah 32:16

Mm-hmm

Tamara 32:16

that all left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Mm. And then the internet started to show up.

Sarah 32:22

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 32:23

And I thought, "I don't like the direction this is going."

Sarah 32:27

Right.

Tamara 32:27

This does not feel like a sustainable career to me.

Sarah 32:32

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 32:33

Then in 1997, my youngest brother, who I, like I said, I had cared for a lot as a child. I had a very parental relationship with him in my heart and my sense of responsibility for him. I was a really parentified child. He got into a very serious car accident. He got hit by a drunk driver when my brother was on his way home from work, and he was just 21 years old And I, things happened. Among other things, newspapers had that 24/7, gotta be churning out the news, there's a newspaper every day, sort of approach to things. I was literally in a situation where due to some staffing changes that were going on, including a new executive editor at the time, even though I was... I had a Pulitzer nomination at that paper, and at that point I had been promoted to a role as an editor.

Sarah 33:37

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 33:38

This new guy didn't know anything of me. He literally told me later that he thought that I was probably lying when I said that my brother was in the ICU-

Sarah 33:49

Wow

Tamara 33:49

and I needed to go to Texas-

Sarah 33:52

Mm-hmm

Tamara 33:52

to see him. And he told me that FMLA, the Family Medical Leave Act, well, it doesn't cover siblings, so unless he's dead, I can't actually let you go right now because we're a little short-staffed on the copy editing. I need you in your role.

Sarah 34:10

Wow.

Tamara 34:11

And that just about broke me. Journalists aren't paid a lot. It's not a glamorous... It's fun, but it's not good pay largely.

Sarah 34:22

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 34:23

And I couldn't afford just to quit my job out of the blue right like that and go see my brother, especially when he was in such critical condition. I literally didn't know if he was gonna survive the night. So I waited, and there was a time that they had said, "This is when these people are back from vacation, then you can go," or, "You can finish this project, and you can go." You know, there's a couple of little things. So while I was waiting for that and I was checking in on my brother every day, he suffered a serious brain injury while he was in the hospital.

Sarah 34:59

Mm.

Tamara 35:00

And that was the last straw. He ended up living, and I'll get into his story in- inevitably in some future podcast, but he ended up living for another four years, nearly four years, uh, with a very severe brain injury in a mysterious state of consciousness that, I don't know, today we might say was somewhere like a minimally conscious state, which was not a classification that existed at the time.

Sarah 35:30

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 35:31

And I was so bereft and disgusted, angry with myself and angry at the newspaper and the editor and all of it. Eventually, I did quit my job without another job lined up.

Sarah 35:44

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 35:44

I, 'cause I, I kept getting offered jobs in journalism, and I just, it, everything in my body was like, "No." Mm. "I can't do... I don't wanna w- I don't want to work for this paper, that paper." Much, much bigger, better newspapers than the one I was, uh, that I was working at, but I just couldn't find it in myself to accept any of them, and I also couldn't find it in myself to keep working at that paper for that editor.

Sarah 36:10

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 36:10

So I up and quit, and I moved up here to the Pacific Northwest. My parents finally divorced when I was, like, about 19, so my mom and her husband were living up here in the Portland area, and I picked up and I moved up here, and they were a stepping stone for me starting a new life over here in the PNW. Yeah. That's how I got here, and-

Sarah 36:36

To this area- This- and this-

Tamara 36:38

Yeah

Sarah 36:38

kind of frame of mind or something.

Tamara 36:40

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I promised my brother last time that I saw him before he died, and he was in a nursing home, and w- I don't know what he understood, but I said to him, "I'll live a life worthy of both of us." Mm. Which was, like, a pretty big promise to make- Mm to anyone because as I've subsequently found out, it's hard enough to live a life worthy of oneself.

Sarah 37:04

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 37:05

But to me, what that meant in that moment was I'm going to do something meaningful. I'm gonna do something that helps people. I'm gonna do something with what's happened to you and what I'm learning from being here in this with you, and I'm gonna do something with the rest of my life that is honoring and reflecting upon this thing which changed everything for me. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that's how I got here.

Sarah 37:39

Wow. That's a very profound transformation.

Tamara 37:43

Well, I mean, so is going from Mormonism to being a shaman. So I'm curious, how did that happen? Like, how did you become a shaman? After you left the church, what happened?

Sarah 37:55

Yeah. Well, so I did go through a period of looking for some kind of religion. I had this moment when I was leaving Mormonism where I felt like there was no spirit out there for me. Um, very low point in my life, and I can only... You know, it was sort of like the saved experience, if you will. Like when people say they've been saved. Mm. Where it was like Heavenly Father kind of reached down and was like, "I love you. Just use your gifts and enjoy your life." That experience gave me the strength to leave that tradition- Mm and move out into the world, and because it was like I have these gifts, and I'm not able to use them in this setting. I'm not able to develop myself spiritually in this particular spot. But I still, yeah, I wanted to find some kind of religious container that my kids, that I, that we could be together in as a family, 'cause my then husband left the church with me. Uh, and so there we are in the world looking for some kind of focus together. So I did a lot of church shopping. I went to a lot of different congregations, a lot of different traditions and backgrounds, and I found that all of them had a particular spirit. They all had spirit. They all had their own container. It wasn't necessarily something that worked for me, but it was definitely spirit. But just moving to another culture that didn't have these elements that spoke to me didn't feel like the right step. So there was a period of time when I was doing a lot of exploring, doing more with the idea of chakras, working on my energy bodies, if you will, like doing space clearings. Um, I was also doing massage therapy, and energy healing, like reiki and polarity therapy and things like that because, and this is kind of a backup, but during this whole time, so I said that I was interested in Barbara Brennan's Hands of Light, right, and her work, and so I originally wanted to go to her school and become an energy healer in her, kind of her tradition. And so in order to do that, you had to have some kind of medical background. Mm. And so the very basic level medical background was a massage therapist background. And so I went to massage school, and I got my massage therapy license, and I continued getting more CEUs around the energy therapy side of things, uh, and did massage and energy work during that time. So that was also my background. So along with those other trainings, I became exposed to shamanism, and shamanism is about nature-based spirituality. Mm. And it's about the elements.

Tamara 40:53

Hmm.

Sarah 40:53

S- And everyone having this basic element of spirit. In fact, in shamanism, there's seven directions for the elements, and the seventh direction is it goes inside us. Each of us has that access to spirit through our very own spirit And when I read that, when I, discovered that, it was just a revelation to me that what I knew all along basically was in this other package, in this other... The elements of nature also connect us to spirit.

Tamara 41:27

When you say seven directions, you mean like the cardinal directions? Like north, south, east, and west are associated- E- with those elements? Is that what you're saying? Mm.

Sarah 41:36

Yes. Sorry.

Tamara 41:37

Oh, okay.

Sarah 41:37

So yes. East is the breath, south is the light, the sun, uh, west is the water, and north is the, is stone. Um-

Tamara 41:47

I see. Okay. Thank you.

Sarah 41:49

And the ancestors and things like that.

Tamara 41:52

Okay.

Sarah 41:52

So it's this very handy container for spirituality. And in that container of shamanism are all those traditions in terms of shamans being very connected to the spirit world, and being the people that the spirits come to in order to move on. So all of a sudden it made a lot of sense that these spirits were coming to me for help, and that I was able to help them.

Tamara 42:15

Mm.

Sarah 42:15

Even before I had any sort of container to hold that space in, I was doing it the whole time. Really since I was a child I've been doing journeying. So it just made a enormous amount of sense that, uh, this is what I'm here to do.

Tamara 42:31

And so when you say journeying as a child, you weren't using psychedelics as a child, like- Oh, no. finding mushrooms in the Oregon forest and just...

Sarah 42:40

No. Okay. It's like, journeying is like traveling to the inner realms, you know. It's traveling to, like, the spirit world.

Tamara 42:47

It doesn't require drugs, uh-

Sarah 42:48

It doesn't require drugs oh, I see. No, no. If you're kind of... I mean, everyone can do it, but some people do seem to just have a gift for it, or it seems to be part of their nature and, and that was definitely the case for me. Hmm. So it's very nourishing at this point to have these skills and to be able to help people if they have some kind of a connection, they're suffering because a spirit has attached to them in some way. 'Cause sometimes when someone we love, someone we care for very much, when they die, they, if they don't go on successfully to the next stage, they can attach to us if they're feeling scared about the next step, you know. They- Yeah,

Tamara 43:30

I can't wait till we do a podcast on ghosts that's gonna be interesting.

Sarah 43:34

They, yeah, they-

Tamara 43:35

Wow

Sarah 43:35

Stick around, you know. Sometimes they stick around with someone that they love, but obviously that's not very healthy. So sometimes you need someone to help you with that, facilitate that- Mm-hmm and help them move on successfully. Mm-hmm. And so it's very satisfying to be able to do work like that. And I feel like it's very important for all of us to be reminded of these things, that it doesn't matter what religion you're in, it doesn't matter what background you're from, that basic spiritual peace is there, and we can all benefit from understanding that about ourselves and about our world. So I really wanna make sure that I'm bringing out that voice, I'm speaking from that perspective. And-

Tamara 44:21

It's cool.

Sarah 44:22

Yeah. Yeah. It's been really, really fun. Okay, so, so back to you. You were talking about from your journalist perspective, but now you're a psychotherapist, so how did that happen?

Tamara 44:35

Hmm. Well, like I said, I promised my brother I would do something meaningful.

Sarah 44:41

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 44:41

That's what my intention was, but I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know what that would be I hadn't thought about Dr. Fred in a long time, and I started a very intentional exploration of making a career change. I had found work up here as a graphic designer and a marketing communications person, very easily transferable skills from journalism into corporate life. I was already working for the corporate overlords anyway. Why not go get paid better money and not have to work holidays, and get the weekends off, and- Hmm you know, get a 401k and all the things. All the cool

Sarah 45:23

things.

Tamara 45:23

Yeah.

Sarah 45:23

Yeah.

Tamara 45:24

But I found that to be incredibly soulless work, and it was really just a placeholder while I was waiting during those four years with my brother passing. I just was paralyzed, suspended in inaction.

Sarah 45:39

Hmm.

Tamara 45:39

Not sure. I felt like until he died, I really couldn't do something else. That's a whole other thing. I'll look forward to doing a podcast at some point on ambiguous loss-

Sarah 45:51

Hmm

Tamara 45:52

because I think that paralysis is not uncommon.

Sarah 45:55

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 45:56

And after he died, then that suddenly I had some traction under my feet, and I started exploring different career paths that were of interest to me. I had the suspicion that there was a fine furniture maker in me, that I could be a good woodworker. So I went to Oregon College of Art and Craft, and I took woodworking classes, and it turned out that, yes, actually, I make really beautiful furniture.

Sarah 46:22

Hmm.

Tamara 46:22

But I didn't wanna be in the shop all the day getting splinters in my fingers and wearing headphones like we're wearing right now, and like I wear in telehealth. Hilarious.

Sarah 46:35

You're still wearing headphones.

Tamara 46:36

Right. But those were to dampen the sound of the buzz saws, right?

Sarah 46:41

Hmm.

Tamara 46:41

And sign language interpreting was something that was of interest to me, and I had a deaf coworker and friend who was an incredible teacher of sign language, an actor who does performance storytelling in ASL and things. And he taught me sign in the years that we were working together. And at one point I was interpreting between him and our boss, and I started to see the communication go awry. And I... And now I should say I was not formally interpreting. I never became an interpreter. I was still a graphic designer at the time. So I was not bound by the code of ethics of interpreters, and I was really annoyed by what I was seeing happen culturally between the two of them, not understanding each other's cultures. I took a step out of the role of interpreter, and I started to explain some aspects of deaf culture to our boss. I was just kind of going into this whole cultural thing with him and trying to set a different sort of understanding between the two of them. And I thought, "Oh my God, I cannot do this. I cannot be an interpreter. This would drive me crazy."

Sarah 47:48

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 47:49

I would feel compelled to meddle. Like, my urge for people to be in more collaborative and cooperative, compassionate and kind relationship to each other and to one another, largely with society, I thought, "I, I need to help people with this stuff

Sarah 48:12

Mm-hmm

Tamara 48:13

And I didn't know at that point that I would also naturally be inclined to do work around grief and ambiguous loss and things like that. My thought process in going to grad school was, why can't we all, in the words of Rodney King, why can't we all just get along? And how can we all get along?

Sarah 48:35

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 48:36

How can we all feel better about our lives and understand ourselves better and stop being such assholes to each other, frankly? You know, 'cause that's what I was seeing go on there.

Sarah 48:46

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 48:47

And so I went back to school. I enrolled in grad school, and I went down that path. While I was in grad school, there was a yoga studio just across the street from me, and I was looking for some kind of activity that would be flexible and indoors in the winter here, and I'd had some serious injuries that had really sidelined me. When I was working as a journalist, I ended up having a, a severe broken leg and severed Achilles tendon and things. And so I was no longer doing all of the lovely outdoor and intense sports and things, and I was looking for something that was at a different pace. And I happened upon yoga, which there's gym yoga and body sculpting yoga kind of approaches that exist in American culture, and then there's yoga that's rooted in yogic traditions. And there's different t- types of yoga that are much more activating in terms of the chakras- Mm-hmm and things, and that's the focus of them. And I happened into a kundalini class-

Sarah 50:07

Hmm

Tamara 50:07

which is very powerful yoga. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And you bring up religion. I didn't mention I had been raised Catholic. I'd gone to parochial school. Very young, I had a falling out with Catholicism over whether dogs go to heaven or not.

Sarah 50:25

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 50:26

That's a whole story for another time, but I was very turned off by religion, and I didn't have a sense of spirituality. I had had some numinous experiences, but, you know, my mind, I kind of explain them as interesting things that my psyche was doing, you know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Or coincidence, or I'm just putting things together, you know, that I'm making loose associations from this to this- Mm as opposed to kind of embracing them for what they actually, in hindsight, I can see what they actually were. But when I went into this kundalini class, after I'd been practicing it for a few months, I started to have really unusual experiences. And I said something to the teacher, and the kundalini story in the United States involved some unsavory characters and issues back in the '60s and '70s, and people suggesting that there was some cult-like aspects to it. Hmm. So I think that my teacher was very sensitive to this, and when I said, "Wow, this is really the spiritual practice of yoga, isn't it?" She said, "No, this is the scientific practice of yoga." And I was like, "What? I'm having weird experiences that I would not call scientific in the least." Hmm. You know, I'm pretty sure that this is something that awakens spirituality.

Sarah 51:54

Right.

Tamara 51:54

And she was like, didn't wanna-

Sarah 51:56

Touch that with a 10-foot pole

Tamara 51:58

kind of, yeah I think she was concerned that, you know, like was I one of the cult people? Or what was it? Mm-hmm. You know- Mm-hmm or was she was? I don't know. So I did end up talking to somebody who was very deeply involved when the, that yogi brought kundalini to the United States, and she was in his inner circle. This was a professor of mine in grad school, and I was like, "I'm having these weird experiences." And she's like, "What are you practicing?" And I was like, "Kundalini." It's just her face kinda went white, you know? She's like, "Oh, man. Well, don't drink the Kool-Aid, whatever you do." Mm-hmm. "But that's a, that's an excellent practice, it sounds like, for you." Mm-hmm. "But if you, don't go that other direction. Just be forewarned."

Sarah 52:41

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 52:42

So I was always a little like, "Okay," after that, you know? But it made me really curious what was going on. Mm-hmm. And I did notice that doing a lot of the kriyas and the meditation practices associated with kundalini, and a very vigorous yogic practice, very energizing. So that really opened my eyes to something larger there. Then I started to reconsider some of the earlier experiences that I had, and I started to work with a yoga therapist, Minga Lily, who then... I was already working. I'd finished grad school, and I was working in this clinic, and I said to her one day, I'm like, "Oh, I kind of am re-envisioning the DSM and all the symptoms that are in the DSM," which is a diagnostic and statistical manual that psychotherapists and psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illness.

Sarah 53:39

Right.

Tamara 53:41

I was like, I'm kinda seeing this laid out in this kinda more holistic light, like this, that there's physical symptoms, there's energetic symptoms, then there's these symptoms that seem to be about the quality of the state of mind versus the content of mind and narrative and belief systems versus what, I don't know if this is, like, spiritual or what over here- Hmm you know, around depression or trauma, et cetera." And she goes, "Oh, my friend, you are talking about the koshas, the five koshas, the five bodies." And I was like, "What is that?" And then I described some of the spiritual experiences that I'd had, or the strange experiences, to me, that I'd had, and she said, "I think you need to read about Vedanta, which is the philosophy that underlies yoga, and you will see some interesting alignment between the things that you're saying to me and that philosophy."

Sarah 54:39

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 54:39

And so I did actually read that, and reading that stuff really changed my psychotherapy practice and my perspective and my understanding about what I was doing.

Sarah 54:51

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 54:52

And that's definitely when I say that my work is done in a holistic lens. The backdrop of it is Vedanta philosophically.

Sarah 55:01

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 55:01

What is a human being? What is the experience of a human being through these five koshas, or these five bodies? Mm-hmm.

Sarah 55:10

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 55:10

And how, in the case of Western psychotherapy and the constructs of mental health, do these bodies come into play?

Sarah 55:21

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 55:21

So, uh, that brings me pretty much up to date where, where I am.

Sarah 55:27

So you do have a very kind of spirit-based, would you say, to your practice as well? It sounds like there's some definite spirit, um-

Tamara 55:35

I would say that I'm spiritually conversant, but not spiritually fluent.

Sarah 55:40

Hmm.

Tamara 55:41

Like, I'm not a Hindu, for example. I don't ascribe to Vedanta as if a religion.

Sarah 55:50

As a religion, right.

Tamara 55:52

You know? Well, Vedanta is not, it's a philosophy-

Sarah 55:55

Mm-hmm

Tamara 55:55

for starters. Mm-hmm. And it, it's not the dogma. Hinduism is the dogma that comes out of Vedanta, if you will, right? Right. Mm-hmm. Um, and to some degree, then I would say that Buddhism has a branch off of that-

Sarah 56:09

Mm-hmm

Tamara 56:10

as well. And I think even Christianity perhaps has been influenced by that, way back, thousands of years ago. Thousands. But I find that it's a very useful frame for holding the whole human being, as opposed to thinking of someone as a diagnosis, or thinking about the problems or the troubles that they're having as something- Mm which is endemic or that is weird or that is wrong, that is illness.

Sarah 56:46

Right.

Tamara 56:47

And thinking of it more in the lens of communication that's occurring from within and from without. A, a relationship to the outer world.

Sarah 56:58

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 56:59

The inner and the outer world of the psyche.

Sarah 57:02

Right.

Tamara 57:03

And I believe that that really lends to and informs my practice as is in doing somatic work, in doing narrative work, in doing cognitive work, and in doing work that's based in mindfulness practices, and as a consequence is that the pranic body, the chi body.

Sarah 57:22

Right.

Tamara 57:22

And spirituality is something that I'm comfortable discussing with clients. Deeply comfortable discussing. But not something where I have Like, you have a frame, you have a very well-defined belief system for yourself.

Sarah 57:40

Right.

Tamara 57:41

That, that's your spiritual center.

Sarah 57:43

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Tamara 57:44

And I wouldn't say that I possess something that is that well drawn or, or tightly knit at all.

Sarah 57:52

I see.

Tamara 57:52

Yeah. So when you think about what we're going to be delving into and what excites you about having these conversations, you and I together delving into different types of issues, what are you looking forward to talking about? What are you excited to bring to our listeners?

Sarah 58:13

I'm looking forward to bringing the spirit focus, to whatever we talk about. Because I feel like it's missing. I feel like we have a very kind of secular-based society at this point certainly not spirit centered.

Tamara 58:28

I mean, I feel like there's a lot of religiosity that's actually deeply influencing our society, and sometimes in very negative ways. So you're talking about something different here. There seems to be, like, at the core of a lot of the conflicts that we have, these ideas about, "My religion is the right religion. My dogma." Mm-hmm. You know, "My way or the highway." People worried about, is this country gonna turn into a theocracy at some point? Is a handmaid's tale gonna come true at some point? So it's interesting to me that you say that this society is so secular.

Sarah 59:04

Well, there are a lot of people who have indeed left those traditions, right, that you're talking about, who are just like, "If that's spirituality, I'm out." Mm. You know? "I d- I'm not interested in any of that." So those people are the ones who are like, "Well, then maybe there's no spirituality at all," right? Mm-hmm. "Maybe I don't have a spirit, because I'm rejecting that idea of spirit, rejecting that idea of power or connection. And so I'm gonna be over in the group that says no spirituality." So what I like to speak to is a much more kind of healing approach to spirit that goes beyond that dogma and goes beyond those sorts of frameworks to embrace the spirituality in everyone, regardless of religious persuasion, regardless of how we show up in these cultures that are formed from spirit, but we shouldn't be limiting spirit by those ideas.

Tamara 1:00:02

Hmm.

Sarah 1:00:03

So that's the kind of thing that I would like to speak to, that you may have been injured, you may have this trauma from religion, but you can draw from this deep spiritual base. And that's the kind of culture that I would like to see.

Tamara 1:00:17

That's- individual birthright to have a spiritual practice, even if they've been-

Sarah 1:00:25

Even if they left some kind of religion. Hmm. Yeah, yeah. I can still have a spiritual experience.

Tamara 1:00:29

Hmm.

Sarah 1:00:30

I can still be connected to my world in a spiritual way. Mm-hmm. I still have chakras.

Tamara 1:00:34

Yeah.

Sarah 1:00:36

Anyone with a spirit can do a yogic practice- Hmm like you talked about, and have a spiritual experience, and you don't have to be part of that religion in order for that to work for you, because you have a spirit. Hmm. And you can be connected to nature and the spirits of nature regardless of whether or not you are part of the religion or any religion that draws from nature, because you have a spirit. So it's kind of a taking back of that kind of power, and reframing it to, "I can be a spiritual person regardless of any of those other things, and I can benefit from being a spiritual person." And I think the more that people pull back from these religious traditions and reclaim their spiritual power, the more healthy we can be as a culture.

Tamara 1:01:23

Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sarah 1:01:24

So that's sort of what I want to offer. So from that point of view, what are you gonna be offering to these conversations that we'll be having?

Tamara 1:01:32

I'm gonna be offering a lot of I'm a salad bar of offerings. A lot of anecdotal stories, for sure, case studies and personal experiences, things that I encountered as a journalist. It's all a particular kind of alchemy, and an idea that I want my clients, and I want all of humanity to be stewards, stewards of their own wellbeing.

Sarah 1:02:04

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 1:02:05

That we have all kinds of internal resources, that the mind is a very powerful tool, and it actually needs to be not controlled so much as mastered, influenced, cared for, regarded with compassion. Because a lot of times people are very hard on themselves, and have really intense expectations of themselves and other people.

Sarah 1:02:34

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 1:02:34

And then a lot of anger and resentment and bitterness that's associated with disappointment. Mm-hmm. Both disappointment in oneself and disappointment in others. And I'd like to shine a light on how we can get away from that sort of mentality and move toward things that are more adaptive, caring. What does self-care look like truly, especially when you're overwhelmed or when the world feels like it's going off its rocker? People are dealing with existential terror

Sarah 1:03:11

Mm-hmm

Tamara 1:03:11

around a lot of things these days. So I'm excited to delve into trauma, uh, grief and loss, existential issues, the climate concerns, things that my clients are bringing to me on the daily, the crisis of meaning that we have around our work, how AI is affecting us mentally even before the full promise of it has yet to materialize.

Sarah 1:03:38

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 1:03:39

Uh, and it's shaking people to the core.

Sarah 1:03:42

Absolutely.

Tamara 1:03:43

And it has the potential to completely overhaul our society in ways that make us wonder, well, what kind of role is there gonna be for me in that world?

Sarah 1:03:53

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 1:03:53

Do I even wanna be a part of that world?

Sarah 1:03:55

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 1:03:56

And helping people shape meaning and find ways to calm their nervous system down and be in deeper connection relationally with other people and with themselves and with the natural world, and with the artificial and urban world too. Like, how do we be in deeper connection with everything that is here?

Sarah 1:04:24

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 1:04:25

Those are things that I'm really excited to get into- I have a complicated relationship with hope, which we'll have to do an entire episode on.

Sarah 1:04:36

On hope.

Tamara 1:04:37

Yeah. But I would like to see our listeners going away from every episode with some sense of hope for something they can do, some way they can be- Mm-hmm more, I hesitate to say adapt, 'cause even when I was in grad school, I asked this question repeatedly. If we are helping people adapt to a maladaptive world, are we actually doing them a service?

Sarah 1:05:12

Hmm.

Tamara 1:05:13

Or are we causing harm?

Sarah 1:05:14

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 1:05:15

You know, so I don't wanna help people adapt to this maladaptive world. What I'm hoping that we can inspire in our podcast together are finding ways to change it.

Sarah 1:05:27

Absolutely. Yeah, I would agree with that, too. Like, to reclaim. Reclaim the place of spirituality. Reclaim the right to have your own experiences, and have those experiences be true for you. And be able to strengthen your personal point of view, your personal experiences, uh, your personal growth.

Tamara 1:05:51

Without doing it at the expense of everyone else.

Sarah 1:05:54

Well, and recognizing-

Tamara 1:05:55

Harm

Sarah 1:05:55

that growth, yeah, recognizing that growth is collective.

Tamara 1:05:58

Mm-hmm. That we are here having a collective experience, and reaching out to those connections and strengthening those connections in a very community, supportive way, which we have definitely been losing sight of, but that's where the power is. The power is in our own evolution and growth, and then moving out to embrace other people and their evolution and their growth, their spirit, which is very connected to our own. So yes, I agree, and I'm excited to share these conversations and share new points of view, new skills that can really resonate with people- Mm

Sarah 1:06:35

and help them change, and help them have more confidence and more hope-

Tamara 1:06:41

Mm

Sarah 1:06:41

for the future

Tamara 1:06:43

Well, that seems like a beautiful point to wrap up our conversation on, Sarah. Thank you so much for being a willing participant in this podcast experiment we're going to be doing, EnlightenPsyche, and thank you to our listeners. If you like what you hear, please like and subscribe, and we will be coming to you with all kinds of subjects. It is gonna be a salad bar-

Sarah 1:07:11

Smorgasbord

Tamara 1:07:13

of subject matter that's gonna be looked at and picked apart from these perspectives that we've started to share today.

Sarah 1:07:21

Mm-hmm.

Tamara 1:07:22

So look forward to more from us, and in the meantime, have a beautiful day and keep a beautiful heart.

Sarah 1:07:30

Yes, take care. We'll see you next time.