Ep. 120: Key Insights for Overcoming Systemic Oppression - The Candle Effect

🌟 In Episode 120 of the Joyous Justice Podcast, during this season of short days where light becomes a precious commodity, hosts April Baskin and Tracie Guy Decker delve into the transformative power of light as a metaphor for change. 

This isn't just a conversation; it's a journey through the dynamics of personal and systemic transformation. Discover how uncovering and uniting our individual lights can overpower the darkness of systemic oppression and societal challenges. 

This episode tackles the profound idea that the energy required to create solutions is fundamentally different from the energy that perpetuates problems. 

It's a call to action, encouraging you to break free from internalized limitations and embrace the strength in unity. Learn why seeking help isn't a weakness but a strategic move to reignite your inner power, and how celebrating small victories contributes to significant change. 

Tune in to be part of this enlightening discussion – because when we change our approach, we can indeed change the world. 🔥💡 🌍  🕯️ ❤️ 

#JoyousJustice #IlluminateYourWorld #CollectivePower

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Discussion and reflection questions:

1. What in this episode is new for you? What have you learned and how does it land?
2. What is resonating? What is sticking with you and why?
3. What feels hard? What is challenging or on the edge for you?
4. What feelings and sensations are arising and where in your body do you feel them?

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Transcript

Tracie: 0:01

It's the final week of 2022. And we're thinking about our theory of change. Spoiler alert, the energy of the solution is different than the energy of the problem. And you and we are far more powerful than we've been conditioned to believe.

April Baskin: 0:29

You're listening to the Joyous Justice Podcast,

Unknown: 0:32

a weekly show hosted by April Baskin with Tracie Guy Decker.

April Baskin: 0:35

in a complex world in which systemic oppression conditions us to deny others and our own humanity. let's dedicate ourselves to the pursuit and embodiment of wholeness, love and thriving in the world. And in our own lives. It's time to heal and flourish our way to a more joyous and just future. I Tracy, April, hi, listener Hi, friend. Hi, kindred spirit. Thank you for joining us for this episode, we have a really wonderful one plant for you to hopefully illuminate the darkness that is often associated with December. And to add to the light that multiple holidays, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Christmas, perhaps other holidays as well, that I'm remiss in not mentioning, helped to bring the light. And it is my hope that our conversation today will too and will inspire more illuminated thinking for you. So let's dive right in. Tracy, you are interested in me, perhaps you just suggested that I share a bit about this recent metaphor I'm using to articulate joyous justices theory of change are part of it. And I want to full disclosure here, I just want to say that I didn't generate this quote unquote, theory of change in the way that one traditionally does. Where you sit down and have a strategic meeting, or you sit down with yourself and think, what's our theory of change, actually, that arose in a better way, which is that it just kind of organically arose among multiple thought streams that I've been thinking about. And multiple threads all coalesced into this simple, straightforward metaphor that matches a number of the themes this season. And so as I'm saying this, I realized, like maybe it's not the complete theory of change, but it's like the core of our theory of change, I believe. But actually, maybe I will build it out on this call and actually come up with a draft theory of change, because I realize it's like, what are about what we're about to share? Tracy is like the nugget. And I think our fuller theory of change is around us, weaving in joy and advancing justice as we do this product work. Anyway, enough said about this and talking about the thing, let's actually talk about the thing, which is, there's so much that's gone into it. And full disclosure, Tracy and I recorded a totally different version of this episode yesterday where I wanted to like I was endeavoring in real time to sort of like if you could envision this theory of change concept, being at the top of the mountain, and I wanted to take y'all on a journey, moving up the mountain, but I ended up essentially, like, getting lost in the desert or the forest instead. And it was like, and then there it is. And I was like, let's, let's just do this again. Also, I was super tired. As some of you may or may not know, Tracy and I had the honor of being invited to speak at a couple different events. Probably the week or two before you listen to this, or if you should hear this later, at some point in the past. Whenever you're listening to this. Do Tracy spoke at the Jewish badge Hanukkah Gala. And perhaps you can share a little bit about that. And I spoke on a panel with the King Center. And both events and I had the honor of being on a panel with amazing leaders. And I don't want to get off track here. But between both of those things, I was up till 10am The next morning, because I was just

Unknown: 4:39

so humbled and

April Baskin: 4:40

excited by the impact that Tracy and I were having from work that we've been posting publicly and also just doing privately in earnest for years now and seeing its impact out in the world. It just I thought it was just taking a couple hours to decompress. It ended up being a lot longer than that. So, all of that to say, out of love for you, beloved listener, and also out of love for our wonderful colleague, Sarah, who has to edit this episode. I was like, Maybe we should just record this. And thankfully, Tracy

Unknown: 5:17

in her abundant patience,

April Baskin: 5:22

and kindness was like, okay. We want to do but yeah, let's, let's give it a go again. So here it is take to the remix. Joy assesses theory of change around Okay,

Unknown: 5:35

that's my record scratch. Okay, so.

April Baskin: 5:41

So the basic premise is for me that I just I really believe, and Tracy may or may not agree with me on this. And you may or may not agree with me on this, that the more that I've come to learn, and yes, it's been a complex and intense journey. And part of the work with choice justice is that we want to make it less complex. And as much as we can less intense for all of you. I've come to see that even though we've been conditioned to believe a number of different things like some of the catastrophes and social justice issues and oppression and the enormity of individual and collective trauma, even though we've been taught to believe that it has so much power over us, I just the more I learned from various masters, and that I've taken time to study these subjects, the more it becomes clear and clear to me that we are just so much more powerful than that. And, and that we have immense power to affect change as people who care about justice. And so here's the basic idea, which is that as we talk about on Hanukkah, and likely in different holidays across different cultures, the year round, I want to center it around this principle of a candle in the darkness. And I believe that our, our collective power, like even just within a single person, your collective power, my collective power in terms of our spiritual, divine, emotional, physical, all the different abilities and insights we have, that are aligned and different for all of us. That that is like this, the fact can be represented by the metaphor of a candle or light or lantern. As I said in a recording yesterday, and all of that dysfunction of oppression, trauma, all of that stuff is the equivalent of the darkness, right. And as any of us known, we've been a room been in a room where there's no light, or if you've ever been out in the desert at night, when you're not near a city, or just in a place where there's darkness, darkness is dark, like it is all consuming. I remember a teacher of mine once saying that her teacher, I think it was her Naomi, let's say that one of her teachers in seminary, talked about biblical darkness, right? That it's not like at night where you can have city lights or something like that, like we've all been there where it's just pitch black and completely dark. And it can feel all consuming, let alone combined with our fear,

Unknown: 8:09

right. But as we all know,

April Baskin: 8:13

and as a number of our traditions teach certainly Judaism or on Hanukkah time,

Unknown: 8:17

that a single light

April Baskin: 8:21

can massively contradict the darkness, and take us from having no options to being able to see just enough far enough in front of us. Or even further out, if we extend it that we shift from being in a place of complete ignorance and vulnerability, to having enough power to get through to find the light switch to move to a place where we can feel safer, right. And then when we combine those lights right now, this isn't a new concept, per se, but I want to add some weavin some additional insight to this. So basically, to me, the situation we're facing in our world, is that, and I actually don't think it's all darkness. But I think this is the perception that people have that oppression. And all of these different variables that feel so much bigger than us is like the darkness that feels bigger than us.

Unknown: 9:09

But we do have access to light.

April Baskin: 9:13

The here's the challenge is that, through conditioning, through experiencing defeat when we were younger in our lives and not getting support we needed most of us nearly all of us have had this experience as a young person, in part because of the oppression of young people let alone if we have other identities as people who are raised as women or girls, as people of color people have any marginalized identity if you were heavyset, any number of different things right. If you if you were fat, when you were younger, or throughout your life, there are different forms of oppression and discrimination that start, like we carry throughout our lives that shift over time and also that start when we're young. And then there's just depression in general. All of these variables, one of their core influences that they have on us and then

Unknown: 10:02

is that they

April Baskin: 10:06

instill fear within us and often at times, which I don't have time right now to fully get into all of the theories and explanation of internalized depression. But often the impact of these experiences is that we internalize them in one way or another, that we didn't get the support we needed. And so rather than as young people thinking, like, Oh, this is a messed up situation, and these folks didn't help me, and that's wrong. Usually, there's some variation of something didn't go well, and I wasn't enough, or I didn't do enough, and it's my fault, and I'm unworthy or any number of different things. And this happens just from life. And then also it happens because of oppression. And often those things are combined, where life circumstances are impacted by oppression. And all of this to say, ultimately, what this leads to is, in one way or another, a lack of belief in our selves, our worthiness, or our capacity to change things. And so we all get the metaphor of the candle in the darkness. But I think what we miss at times is that nearly all of us, in one way or another, have been conditioned in a variety of different ways, for different reasons that I've tried to sort of briefly summarize, have been conditioned to think that to feel ashamed of our light, or to think that we need to minimize it, or that it's not good, and that it's unworthy.

Unknown: 11:29

Because of all these different,

April Baskin: 11:33

difficult experiences we accumulated without a compassionate witness, and without support, and comfort and compassion, to help us reframe those stories. And so, and all of this is in deep service of maintaining the status quo and remain and maintaining oppression. So what I'm saying here is that I believe in different ways, there's both things that just happen in the context of loving families where it's not meant to harm people. But in terms of systemic oppression, part of how systemic oppression operates is to intentionally conditioned people to internalize this and oppress themselves in different ways. And I actually think that this dynamic is more powerful in a number of different ways than structural oppression. And the structures that keep oppression in place, I believe the structures are relatively benign, their policies are different things that are dependent upon people to adhere to them, or and or to say, what are we doing this is horrible, we need to put this under review or, or, or, or in a situation where someone is, in some sort of official position as a gatekeeper, there might be something that's happening, but it requires people to operate it. So long as we're still in a phase where AI isn't controlling everything, which I hope will never take place. But we can talk about dystopian

Unknown: 13:02

possibilities later. So

April Baskin: 13:06

the basic idea here of this theory of change is that

Unknown: 13:11

we have immense potential

April Baskin: 13:13

to eradicate to shift the darkness to make substantial change. And as we know, from a single candle, one little birthday candle, won't do a lot. But it takes you from a room of total darkness, we could be tripping over things and experiencing all kinds of challenges to be being able to operate. And I believe that each of us have the equivalent of essentially a lantern to a bonfire, let's say, right, but we've been all taught to turn that lantern down. And we've gotten all kinds of messages around how it's not effective. And part of the work of joyous

Unknown: 13:44

justice, is to

April Baskin: 13:47

help facilitate healing and insight and awareness, that helps us still be mindful be right, because we don't want to drop the lantern and have it start a fire that it's not like this power is is not benign, in some ways, these flames that we have is potential that we have could be used in harmful and helpful ways. Right is, but it's to help people notice that actually, most of it is incredibly good, and can be used powerfully, to contradict the darkness and to bring in more light, and that it doesn't even need everybody with lanterns to do it. If we just got 20 of us together, that would completely illuminate a room that would completely that could completely shift different dynamics within a town. Right that are light is super powerful. So I'm trying to make it more sophisticated. Tracy, I think this is way better than I did yesterday. But I also feel like I'm making it more

Unknown: 14:43

verbose than it needs to be. I'm

April Baskin: 14:45

trying to convey the profundity of this and all the different teachers that I'm integrating when I say this from multiple sources. So I think that's the basic idea and I think there are also other elements of it that I forgot to name

Unknown: 14:59

as I'm in this sort of performance mode versus talking about

April Baskin: 15:03

this one on one with a few colleagues and friends like I have where I feel like I did a much better job. But it's okay, I'm still doing better than I did yesterday, one step at a time. Tracy, do you want to add in your voice perspective, some metaphors, some kitchen table logic here, what do you want to add into the mix?

Unknown: 15:21

More profundity? Yeah, thanks, April. Yeah, that welcomes a lot.

Tracie: 15:35

There's a couple of metaphors one that actually is, is yours, but I'm gonna share because you didn't say it about the dampening of the light. And the way that the early defeats kind of contribute to that, using the metaphor of like an elephant, a captive elephant. So when, when an elephant calf, can be restrained by just by a strong rope around one of its legs in a stake, if that elephant calf has that rope there. As it grows, even though the adult elephant could break that rope or pull up that steak pretty easily, the memory of its boundary keeps disempowerment keeps the elephant from from doing what it has the physical strength to do. Because the the mental and psychological scars of those early defeats, and that's a metaphor you have used, that I've heard you use before April that I think is really Yes, helps to make clear what you mean by the power of those early defeats in terms of dimming our light.

April Baskin: 16:44

And may I say something here really quickly. And I literally believe in light of what we're facing in society that we are like that elephant, that we actually are that powerful that as much capacity we have. But we have all these different little ropes that when we were younger, and or our peoples historically, it's not just when we were younger, too, it's also collective trauma. So multiple generations of people who actually had bigger things like literally chains and or were burned at stakes, or, you know, I don't, I don't want to get too much into triggering anyone's trauma. But like, there were actual major barriers that aren't here anymore. But the legacy the shadow of those things loom in our mind and in our heart and function like that rope, right. And it's just through the right interventions and healing and support. That often is about, it's less about adding there are some insights and different things to add. But a lot of the insights and coaching and tools that we teach in our programs, is to help clear the dissonance and the confusion so that people can access their truth, right. Anyway, all I basically wanted to say is that

Unknown: 17:49

I think that we are incredibly

April Baskin: 17:53

powerful, and it's mostly just our conditioning that has set us up to believe that we're not, please continue Tracy.

Tracie: 18:01

On that, um, the power piece and the the light metaphor, the vision that I often have, especially when thinking about this as a theory of change, I think a lot of folks who are working for change

Unknown: 18:19

start to face

Tracie: 18:21

we we start to feel isolated, and we start to feel really frustrated that more people don't agree with us or that it feels like no one sort of gets it and don't see the either What's wrong or what or that we have the power or whatever it might be. And there's this the overwhelm that you were talking about about how big it is, like many people working for change, part of the bigness part of the overwhelm of like, what is bigger than us is the sense that we need to convince everyone that we need to convert everyone to our way of thinking or our way of addressing whatever harms. And I think your metaphor, even you said it earlier about how we don't need everyone we eat 20 people and that would eliminate the whole room. I have this vision of like a stadiums worth of people, Billy in the dark. And then these like, kind of scattered throughout different folks who are holding up their light and the illumination then that falls around the whole like the whole perimeter of the stadium and and folks are attracted to it as well. Because part of the part of the experience of being fully in the dark, it's not that we can't move. It's not that we can't do anything. Just the effort. The effort is so much

Unknown: 19:50

bigger, it's

Tracie: 19:52

harder, it's more difficult. It uses different senses that uses them more and even. And those of us who are sighted, even in the dark, we're like straining

Unknown: 20:00

As if we could like,

Tracie: 20:02

squint our eyes just enough. And so and that would change, at least that's what I do. You know, and then I'm like working so hard to see even though there is nothing to be seen. And so then that introduction of light into that circumstance, all of a sudden, everything is a little easier, and a little more straightforward. And those, those pieces of the fact that we don't need 100% of the folks in our surroundings, to have the same light in order to change the entire circumstance that I find really heartening. And also, I really feel the change in the amount of effort in order to proceed when thinking about letting that light shine. And those are those two of the kind of pieces that for me, show up in this metaphor.

Unknown: 21:09

In terms of a theory of change.

April Baskin: 21:13

love this so much, it feels like an add an additional layer to the metaphor that we weren't even planning on it feels really cool that literally my power just went out. So for those listening in right now, so this might get edited out. But in the midst of our conversation, luckily, it was Tracy talking at the moment, so I didn't get cut off and she could still keep talking, but my power went out. And normally I have a backup generator here. But I'm the one from my office died. And so literally, the lights went off, it's daylight right now. So it's not completely dark. But um, it's just a, you know, I just I love it. I don't know that I want to unpack it right now. But I think it's really beautiful. And just adds to a little bit of what we're talking about. Occasionally, if for some reason, our light, which actually we mentioned in the first iteration of this was like it's I can bring that theme in at times of, let's say that the little if we can imagine it, but it's a lantern where you turn the knob a little bit and that makes the light brighter or more dim, right or reduces the light, that even if your lantern is temporarily unavailable for any number of different reasons, or you've had it turned down so low that's kind of rusted in that place. But we also have the option to leverage the light of others to help us which again, seems obvious, but it's also not because nearly all of us have been conditioned in one way or another heavily conditioned by toxic individualism, such that when I when I you know tracer, or I were to say what I just said that you can borrow someone else's light, right like ship, you have them share their light and help reignite your lamp or get some months help with the lever, get some additional help to get your lantern. The knob working again, so you can increase it right. Like everyone is sort of like obviously, and yet some of the greatest breakthroughs and coaching and healing come from the places where we've been hurt where trauma has occurred where early defeats have been registered, often deeply also toxic individualism has been deeply registered. So the obvious options don't occur to us. Yeah, no doubt.

Tracie: 23:24

I mean, we've all I can't I can't count the number of times that people sort of expressed some version of I should be able to figure this out, or I should be able to do this on my own.

April Baskin: 23:37

And it's like, it's literally not like, like, it's not like it's like, you know, I don't know your I don't know your machine or like this figment of white supremacist colonialism. Patriarchy, like, you know, it just doesn't. It's not if it's just an oppressive concept, right, but, or even us right now. Like when I think tracing I likely, I think Tracy and I were both likely thinking that the podcast was over right now. And then it slowly kind of dawned on us but we could I could lean on Tracy in this moment, and we could still do this episode. Yeah, for those

Tracie: 24:13

watching the video I'm actually holding my phone up to my microphones

Unknown: 24:19

to capture April's was right and so

April Baskin: 24:26

so I'm trying to remember where it was going before the power went out.

Unknown: 24:29

Um, so that's the basic idea is just I just,

April Baskin: 24:35

and for some of you, I think this may super resonate, and for some of you for whom we set a number of things that were stretched my takeaway for you is is that our light is powerful. And if there's any place where you don't feel that and you think that is not true, that is that is your opportunity to reach for additional light and help outside Have yourself. And it doesn't even have to be. Here's the thing that I've learned as I've been on my own healing and leadership journey, which fortunately, blessedly because of the people I've come, I've sought out and or who reached out to me for help, to help and support me over the years helps me combine those things, most people have them separated. But to me, it's critical as we do social justice, leadership and leadership in the world, that we integrate our healing and our liberatory vision and leadership because

Unknown: 25:33

we actually need both of them. And that's part

April Baskin: 25:36

of us being able to skillfully leverage our light in different ways. But um, where was I going? I'm trying to both turn on my computer and get back on the normal way. And also, where was I going with that? Tracy? Can you help me? Oh, yeah, that's what I'm talking about help. Right, is what I want to say here is that when we reach for help, also, I've found for me, at times, I really need someone say, to literally help me walk somewhere if my legs hurt. But often when I need help around a project, or something I'm working on or even something I'm chewing on. And often actually, it's just a few minute conversation, just to get a second perspective, or someone to add to add a spark to my flame, right, like my flame is, let's say a proverbial situational flame is a little low around something, and I just need someone to leverage a little bit of their mattress give me a little bit of a spark, that's enough to get my flower fire going, you know that when people say, Oh, I don't need any help. And, and I think in some ways, there's both, there's both some unhelpful individualism with that. But I think also part of it is perhaps an accurate representation that a lot of it you can do alone. And so I think at times, there's a bit of either or thinking,

Unknown: 26:48

or either you are completely dependent,

April Baskin: 26:51

or you are independent, as opposed to, you're an independent person who's also interconnected. And at times, needs to occasionally depend on some help. That might be a big help, and usually might be just smaller help. But that that's smaller help, can contradict our feeling of loneliness, and just give us what we need. So that's the other piece of nuance that I wanted to add to this Tracy, right, is that it doesn't mean when we reach for help, that we need someone to fully help us with something, it might just be that we need two minutes or three minutes, or maybe even a half an hour or an hour conversation with someone to help think through, say, for me, for instance, was a speech I was giving. I didn't need someone to write the speech for me. But I assumed that to talk to someone about my ideas, and I was afraid of talking about a national stage and have them say to me, oh, yeah, like I helped my mom in this situation. And she said some similar things. And that went really well. And just the affirmation was like, Okay, I'm onto something. I'm not about to hurt people, I'm being responsible. And that was a nice, she was able to share other ideas with her. And that was enough that got me going to get started. It's kind of like, I guess the metaphor of this would be,

Unknown: 28:00

you know, starting a car, right? It's not that we need the other car to replace our engine, it just, we need to hook up some one of those call Tracy, jumper cables to jumpstart.

April Baskin: 28:13

At times, we just need it, we just need a jumpstart. That's what I'm great. We just need a spark, or jumpstart, and then our engine works fine. But it's just around certain things a spark might not be going because of any number of different things. And I think that

Unknown: 28:27

the way people think of help, is they don't think of it as a jump. They think of it as thinking that they're hooking their car up to another person's car, right? Or they're not able to drive it at all

April Baskin: 28:40

right, right. Whereas it's like, no, it's just a tough, sometimes it might be longer. That's true. And that's also okay. But much of the time, it feels like we might need enormous help. And we're avoiding that. But what we need is just

Unknown: 28:51

to jumpstart just the spark, and then we might need another spark occasionally to keep our fire going. Tracy, do you want to add any thoughts to that? Well, I pick on

Tracie: 29:06

my brain is going in a couple of different directions. You know, one, like sticking with the car metaphor, and remembering that even machines need fuel and sort of figuring out what what our fuel is. And that's, that's one thing that's kind of rattling around. And maybe maybe it is actually related because one of the one of the things that I saw in the talk that I did for Jewish veg that you mentioned in the opening, one of the things that I was encouraging folks to do is to pay greater attention to the small. I mean, I called the miracles because it was a Chanukah. It was like a speech but just those small moments that the everyday moments of of power that we have Have based on small choices that we make, that I think often get overlooked by those of us seeking change. Because we compare that small moment, that small choice, whatever it might be, it could be about, you know, how you spend your money or conscious eating, which is what I was talking about with Jewish veg. Or whatever it might be with the enormity of the problems. And so and we see the difference there, and, and judge ourselves lacking. But actually, each of those moments helps chip away and should be celebrated. And the more we celebrate it, as you say, what you focus on grows, the more we celebrate it, the the bigger impacted, it actually has, and the more momentum we can establish. Exactly. So it becomes that snowball effect of growing. So that which I think maybe is actually related to the fuel metaphor for the car where you were that, you know, maybe needed a jumpstart, and does in fact, need fuel to keep going. You can't. You can't keep driving, even if you have the spark if you don't have the fuel, whatever that might be.

Unknown: 31:23

The nourishment, yeah. Yeah, recharge.

April Baskin: 31:28

And I think the you know, it was in a social justice leadership training once where they really encouraged us to avoid using machinery and technology as metaphors like bandwidth and things like that. But I think I have, I think it's, I like an interesting dynamic around it, because I like noticing at times that often when my phone is dying, and always, but particularly in moments where it feels really resonant. I'm noticing, like, my phone is dying, and it's a machine. And I am even on I am tired. And I'm not a machine actually, like I still think that that dialogue and the reference can be helpful, particularly at the bottom level, like at the baseline, ideally, we should meet our needs, the way tools and machines have their needs met, and obviously much more. But if we aren't meeting our needs in that way, right?

Unknown: 32:21

Then the map

April Baskin: 32:23

can be for me, as someone who is doing so many things and can get distracted at times, during a day, my phone's battery let's where it's harder for me to see my own self, like, Oh, I've been on the phone, I've been doing this much. And at times when it runs low on my energy spine that I don't think anything of it when I'm feeling exhausted, I'm like on my battery, it helps me notice like right, my bat, my energetic battery, which I can't just plug in, although there actually are a range of things that I can do like plugging in like sleeping, and eating and hydrating. That not immediately not in two hours, but in several hours can restore me like a night's worth of sleep did last night after staying up for 24 hours straight.

Tracie: 33:06

So my rabbi tells the story, I've heard her tell it several times, and I don't remember the source, sorry, Rabbi. But there's this story like a Hasidic tale. About, you know, a fella comes to his rabbi, because he's super scared of the dark in his basement, and he wants advice on what to do. And so the rabbi says, Well, if you're scared, you know if that if it's if it's bothering you, you know, go stand at the top of the stairs and yell at it. Of course, it scared away, scare it away. And of course, that doesn't work. So he comes back to the rabbi, and the rabbi was like, Okay, well, that didn't work. We need you need to get stronger, you need a more severe way of dealing with it. So find the biggest stick that you can carry, and take it down to the basement and beat the heck out of that darkness. And that will make it go away. Obviously, that doesn't work. So he comes back, and the rabbi this time says, Take this candle, and light the candle and take the light candle down into the dark basement. And obviously, that does in fact, illuminate the darkness. And, and to me, part of the point of that story is this idea that the energy of the solution is different than the energy of the problem like the energy of the problem was the fear and the and the discomfort. And so like, that was getting, like the the initial suggestions, which I choose to believe the rabbi knew when working with making a point about the problem, the energy, the problem and energy solution, but sort of in that emotional discomfort, these ways of dealing with discomfort and then changing that, that that changing the energy of the solution. So the It actually does dispel

April Baskin: 35:03

the darkness. The darkness.

Tracie: 35:05

Yeah. And with it. It's also I don't know, there's something about that story too, that feels sort of empowering to, like, it wasn't about being strong or being loud. You know, it's about having the right solution, which is actually relatively

April Baskin: 35:26

humble. Yeah. And support, right, that wasn't this case, it wasn't a person, but it was that, that candle, yeah, I'm gonna get something additional additional to support me, right, you know, like a safety blanket, or a cane, or, or glasses or things that I've been thinking about that lately, because I noticed, while we were in the live launch mode, at times, were a couple times where we were doing things that were a little bit different than how we would normally do them on a business day, and I misplaced certain things that I realized my notebook, I actually don't write in it that women also write in a lot, I fill them pretty quickly. But to a certain extent, in meetings, I don't actually write that much down. But it's like a safety blanket. For me, it's just something that having it there helps me I've, I've come to believe that me having my notebook near me means that I won't miss important things. But if something is important that I have the option to, but I was like, this is basically a little bit like a safety blanket like sometimes it does actually keep me warm. But sometimes it's just an emotional support object. You know, and I think I was thinking about as you're telling that story, Tracy to write, in the context of what we teach them Shamar is that in addition to that candle, something else that he could hypothetically do is that person could do is also reached for a friend and talk with them and think like, what's it really about my fear of the dark and, and take some time to process that and start noticing like, oh, it's actually this specific story from this time, and I was a kid Ben. And I didn't have all the things I have now. But that's again, that's for a longer conversation. So with that, I think we'll cut to the outro I did yesterday, and sending y'all much love.

Unknown: 37:11

So all of this to say,

April Baskin: 37:14

as we move into 2023. Yes, a number of us are facing daunting challenges. And I would say often, almost always a significant, a significant portion of the overwhelm we feel, is illusion, that is created and generated by oppression, and unhealed harm that's often really old and intergenerational for us. That actually is finite and healable. But in the abstract, it starts to take over a whole system, it shows up as panic attacks that seemingly happened with no reason it shows up as different physical ailments and challenges in various moments. And those are worthy of taking very seriously and addressing in any number of ways. But I've truly come to learn and believe that I'm happy and excited to be teaching this to other folks that a lot of it comes down to trauma, and histories of harm, and internalized oppression. And there are tools and insights we can use to get clarity. And I invite you to pursue those things, whether it's through offerings that we offer through joyous justice, or to offer things literally directly toward this or from other teachers, leaders and healers, who with whom you resonate, in addition or separately, right, but that these things are not actually that much bigger than us, especially in the collective, we have immense light. And so depending upon wherever you are on your journey, I want you to really hold that that this isn't just a simple metaphor, but I actually think it's strategic insight. And that as you experience different challenges in the coming year, I invite you as much as you can to give yourself as much grace as you can give yourself and reach whatever help feels appropriate and know that the energy of the problem and the energy of the solution are foundationally different. And that with a bit of help, we can usually get to a solution and help much faster than we think we can. And immense impact and joy. And collective power is much closer within reach. But a number of us realize, like heck, I often even forget it at times. But we are incredibly powerful and we are in this together. And I'm so excited for us to journey into 2023 Not because I know that the conditions or circumstances are going to be the greatest likely there will be a number of challenges. But increasingly the more I learn More I am absolutely convinced that we are profoundly divinely and pragmatically powerful. And we do have everything we need. We just need to reorient to how to connect with them and leverage them and increasingly reduce the shame and fear we've been conditioned to hold around them. All of us to say, I believe you got this. I believe we got this, especially if we're working together and I'm so excited to see all of the justice and joy that we can bring to ourselves in our world in this coming Gregorian year. Much love.

Unknown: 40:43

Thanks for tuning in. To learn more about joyous justice LLC, our team and how you can get involved with our community. Check out the info in our show notes, or find us at joyous justice.com If you enjoyed this episode, show us some love. Subscribe wherever you're listening. Tell your people share what you're learning and how your leadership is evolving. Stay humble,

April Baskin: 41:07

but not too humble. And keep going because the future is ours to co create