Today's Heartlift with Janell
Sometimes the story we tell ourselves is not really true. Sometimes the story others tell about us is not really true. On "Today's Heartlift with Janell," Author, Trauma-informed, board-certified marriage and family specialist, and Professional Heartlifter, Janell Rardon, opens conversations about how emotional health and mental fitness effects absolutely every area of our lives. When we possess and practice healthy, strong, resilient emotional health practices, life is so much better. Read Janell's newest book, "Stronger Every Day: 9 Tools for an Emotionally Healthy You."
Today's Heartlift with Janell
297. The Transformative Power of Gentle Hospitality with Liz Bell Young
Imagine a world where simple acts of kindness create sanctuaries of warmth and safety for all. Join me as I sit down with Liz Bell Young, the inspiring author of "Let There Be Havens: An Invitation to Gentle Hospitality." Together, we uncover the profound impact of "beaming"—a small yet powerful gesture of kindness that can make others feel valued and secure. As the United States approaches a significant Election Day, we ponder how fostering gentle hospitality can transcend political divides, nurturing understanding and unity within our communities.
Visit Liz Bell Young's website: LIZ BELL YOUNG
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Thank you. Learn how you can donate and support the podcast at heartliftcentralcom. Now settle in for today's remarkable conversation with Janelle. Wherever you find yourself today, may these words help you become stronger in every way.
Speaker 2:Hello, heartlifter, this is episode 297, Hard to Believe. I'm Janelle, your host for today's conversation with Liz Bell Young, author of one of my new favorite books, havens. Let there Be Havens. An invitation to general hospitality. Liz Bell Young is a writer, experienced designer and creative entrepreneur. She is the author of In the Wide Country of Love, the owner of Haven Creative Studio, a contributing author for Magnolia Journal, she has written the Havens Journal for Anthropology, the store and her really cool event is called Woman Camp W-O-M-A-N Camp. I just want you to go to lizbellyoungcom Her website is a feast for your senses and just camp out there for a few moments and read more about woman camp. I am so intrigued and so interested and I think you will be too.
Speaker 2:I wanted to start by reading from a beautiful little magazine that I received from Liz. It's called Beaming. She writes yesterday I picked up my new friend, Eni E-N-I. I think it's Eni, it might be Eni. She writes to see me. I thought this is hospitality. This is giving someone an immediate haven.
Speaker 2:To beam on someone is to make them feel safe in your company. I repeat To beam on someone is to make them feel safe in your company, fully welcomed, fully wanted, even if that beginning can't go on forever. When it serves as a greeting or is waiting at the door, it is a powerful thing. It's beaming on children when they first find you in the morning, beaming on a cashier and starting a conversation instead of keeping your head down. Beaming on your spouse, even if it's the 20th time you've run into each other that day. Beaming on friends, people who look lost, people who pass on the sidewalk, people who pass on the sidewalk. Think of the people who beam in your life. Who are they? Who makes you feel like the apple of their eye? Think about one of those people right now and imagine them beaming on you. Sit with how that feels, because you can deliver that same glowed upon moment to others. Beaming is easy and free. It is a peace offering an open door, a gift. It is a reminder that every one of us matters, even if we've done nothing to deserve it. Beam today, beam always. Heartlifters. Here in the States, as we know, we have one week until Election Day Well, actually, six days from when this episode releases, and so I released my conversation with Liz today because I feel like this is a very important week where we can do some beaming beaming on others. If we disagree, if we agree, we can beam on others. Yes, we can.
Speaker 2:This book, let there Be Havens, a Gentle Invitation to Hospitality, speaks to the importance of creating safe spaces for people to feel safe and in our communities, where we can use this opportunity, as difficult as it might be, to beam on others. Welcome, liz, to the show, liz, welcome. Oh, my goodness, I'm already on the verge of just weeping. Hello, thanks, janelle. You have written this new book. Let there Be Hadens. I mean just that I feel like I'm in Genesis 1, 2, 3. God is like An invitation to gentle hospitality. It's that word gentle, everything about it. So you started talking before I hit record and you were already getting so special and deep, so we'll come back to that in a minute.
Speaker 3:But where did? Was there that moment where it just went? There actually was, and, and so it makes me happy to get to tell about it because you know, it's one of those sort of goosebump holy spirit moments. But we were. You know, when I started I was just gonna I think I was just going to call it Haven. That was the book pitch. I had done the magazine and I sort of felt like, in some ways this was something of a continuation of that, but it also never quite settled right and I couldn't figure it out. I think I woke up one morning and realized it had to have an S on the end. I wanted it to be Havens, because it is an invitation and it's not mine. I'm not trying to control this, I just wanted to share it and I want other people to do what they want to do, to recreate these, you know, these spaces for one another and for themselves. And so I felt this, you know this oh, get that S on there.
Speaker 2:This is about multiplication.
Speaker 3:That's right, it's plural Um. And then I did dream the title.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Of course you did.
Speaker 3:That's so fantastic. You know it happened. It's happened just a few times in my life, um, where the answer came in a dream and thankfully cause I do not have a great memory, but thankfully it stuck with me when I woke up and so I knew that that was um and I and I the biblical undertone, of course, um, is probably the reason why I, why God planted that into a dream, and so I just followed it and yeah, so there it is.
Speaker 2:It's so good. What is that word? Let? I mean each, each of those four words have such power standing alone, but when you put them together, but when you put them together, it's just so amplified. So it's like let, let right and I love, in our European countries, to let something is to rent it right, so it's like to rent a space. I mean be all there. There is so present, it's so mindful. It's the answer to everyone's anxiety, I believe. And then B come on, b.
Speaker 3:It's so fun to talk to writers too.
Speaker 2:It's so fun to talk to a writer Get inside your dream life. I know it's just so good, okay. So then this general hospitality Okay, well, I just started reading the book Number one, heartlifters. This is a book that is just a meditation to partake of Give yourself 30 days. A meditation to partake of Give yourself 30 days, give yourself three months. I don't know, but just the photographs, because you're such a photographer, and just the photographs. I'm going to just show this one. Oh, come back.
Speaker 3:There, you are. Oh, my dear friend took that one and she caught it who? Is the person that's my friend, stella, stella look at her face.
Speaker 2:You just have to watch this.
Speaker 2:She's phenomenal she's just the cuddle. It's like the cuddle, the look on her face, the look on your face, it's. It's just brain neurons to brain neurons of safety, which we're going to get to. It's a huge theme of the book, but even before you start reading, like in the very beginning, here's this quote All right, you ready? Heartlifters, if you're driving, you might need to stop.
Speaker 2:Okay, I believe we need to mother this world back into light. To mother this world back into light, to lift one another out of the darker edges and back into this gift song of existence, one by one. That's where you got me, because if we aren't nourished, we wilt and fight for scraps. If we aren't held and guided and studied, we eventually crumble. Well, I'm in a crumble right now. So Thank you for being here to be a safe space. If we don't have safe spaces to release our burdens and share our brilliant dreams, we turn to things that were never meant to hold them. Okay, where were you, liz Bell Young? Were you when you got this sentence? Were you just at your computer clicking away? I mean, what a paragraph, what a paragraph. It's so good, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you for like oh like. You're a safe place to have that paragraph, you know, to have it in your hands. I don't remember where I was, but I, I was on. I was actually on the road with our, with our family.
Speaker 2:I love that you have three, three children.
Speaker 3:Three, yes, two boys and a daughter. So fun. It's sorry, yes, and it is oh sure, uh, 15, 12, nine.
Speaker 2:And you're doing all this. I just that'll be down the road. I want to ask you, like that silly old question how do you do all this? Okay, so, you're on the road with your family Beautiful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I just um, I had a different beginning to the book. I can't remember exactly where it started, but it wasn't there.
Speaker 2:How about that?
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, and, and I think you know that, I think that does actually happen a lot, for you know, um, you need, you have to start somewhere. You work your way into it and then you recognize that it wasn't where you have to start somewhere. You work your way into it and then you recognize that it wasn't where you needed to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, either you or the editor. We want to put this in the front. I'm like, oh dear Lord, yes, that's hard, okay, yes.
Speaker 3:And then, sometimes, you know, it's I just, and I, I felt myself starting to compose it in my head and I knew where I should, I should take it.
Speaker 3:And I was, I was nervous, I was afraid to take it there because, um, you know, I have many friends who don't have children. I so, just using this word, mother, um, I have friends who have recently lost their mothers, you know just all. And so what? I? I didn't want it to, um, I, more than anything, I want this book to be for all and and not exclude anybody's heart in any way. And so, and yet, I also felt like it's the, it's what mother embodies and it's what, um, it's just that, it's just the truth that I felt that I needed to say, and so I felt like, okay, I guess it's a little bit risky to put this out there, it could potentially upset people, but the interesting thing is, I actually feel like it's, it's done, maybe the opposite, so people what way and tell me how a friend who's um, you know, real young lost her mom really young, and who has been so, um, hesitant to think about having her own children.
Speaker 3:What if I can't even, you know, I gave her. I just sent her the beginning of the book and I said I know this is tenure, but would you read it and would you tell me how would it? You know, just tell me, be a litmus test? And she said that she was also a little bit nervous to read it because she knew why I was asking her. And she just said that the truth is is I need people to mother me, I, even when it's not my human mother anymore. I, I need this, I want to be this for others. And so what? What took me a minute, you know, is actually, I think, like what I needed to hear.
Speaker 2:So when I love. Yeah, because, as I told you before we hit the record, I have been working for a while now over a year probably in my head, a lot longer than that a book on the matriarchal spirit, the maternal spirit. So when I read that I believe we need to mother this world back into light, I was like, okay, I'm not crazy, it is a natural progression, being the age that I'm at. So it is so beautiful to see it in a younger woman, so it really could say let there be mothers. Is that what I'm getting? Like? The haven is the mothering, maternal, matriarchal, beautiful spirit of something that only a mother can offer.
Speaker 2:You know, and so many people go crazy when you talk about the mothering side of God. You know they just go crazy and like you're just out of your mind. But he is very mothering in much of the words that are spoken or written in the Bible that we love and hold dear. And so you got that feeling very young when you're at the Chicago Institute of Art, which I love, that place I've stood there, been in the art store, go across the street to the museum so many times the Grand Lions. So it's so cool that you went there. I was like there, so would you share, because in the beginning you just put it right out there. You know you're in this college class.
Speaker 3:Right, yep, and you know everybody is there, or from what you know, I gathered you know you're ready to be a serious artist. You've committed. This is Disney went there. I didn't even know that.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Um, I was just excited that they accepted me.
Speaker 3:Um and, yeah, I, you know. So it's just, it's so much talent, you know, it's just so beautiful. I'm, I loved being in that, um, that rich environment, and I'm also you can get that in many places. This does not have to be at the Art Institute, but for me it's, um, as a pretty multidisciplinary person, it's very like I like to write but I like to make, I like to see, and so it really fed me that way. And it wasn't perfect and things weren't always healthy and all of that kind of stuff, for sure, um, but I was in that class when um, a professor, our professor, who was, goodness, this beautiful woman who was I, I, somewhere in you know, in her seventies, had um, just a beautiful writing life and she asked us, you know to, to share. This was a memoir class actually, oh, how fun. And and she asked us what we wanted to be. I talk about this, but I, you know it was not a, it was not a facetious question. She was like I really, what do you want to be?
Speaker 2:Her heart really, really wanted to know, what will you do?
Speaker 3:What are you here for? So good, so rich it was. It was because we were, we were all taking it really seriously and I just you know, as it came around to my turn, you know I was at that point, I really wanted to be, I'd always wanted to be, a novelist. Um, I assumed I would be in the world of fiction. Um, and was.
Speaker 2:I can't wait to read that forthcoming it will. You've got a long life ahead.
Speaker 3:We'll see. Um, but yes, so it was just writing all these short stories. But I was not actually in a very healthy place at all Because I think even for me, working in fiction at that point was probably not good, I sort of admit, and I don't feel like the way I was writing was actually even going to be good for other people, and so I was feeling like a lot of conviction that I don't even know if I could have articulated that at that point. It's just I like things were at odds within me. That's right, and for a reason. For a reason for sure, we also. We did not. I was married at this point.
Speaker 1:We did not have children.
Speaker 2:You were married. That was my question, yeah.
Speaker 3:It came around and I knew I was going to tell, say the truth, and I was. You know, it's just like when your face gets blistering hot because you know like you're about to make this big admittance, and it's not the easy thing to say. I knew well. I didn't know how the response would be, and so when it got to me, I said I want to be a mother.
Speaker 2:When I read that I just was like what? I did not expect you to even say that, as I was reading it. I can only imagine the pounding of your heart and the atmosphere of the room because others want to be cinematic. You know big deals and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:And you're just like.
Speaker 2:I want to be a mother. Okay, yeah. What was the reaction?
Speaker 3:Quiet it was. Yeah, it was quiet and and so I just I just sat there and I knew Janelle, I also knew that I did want children. I wanted real children, this um, and so I didn't mean mother in that way and. I recognized that it was mother and in a in a broader, broader sense um, right, and I wasn, and I wasn't acting in that posture. I knew I didn't and I wanted to go in that direction.
Speaker 2:I wanted to create and take care of people in a way that was as a way to take care. You write that a lot.
Speaker 3:And to take care.
Speaker 2:You write that a lot and yeah is uh, to take care is a meaningful phrase to me you know, when someone says take care, it's like once again separate those two words take, take care.
Speaker 2:So I'm wondering if you probably didn't understand, because so much of our lives, especially when we're young, I don't know, it's all through our lives so much is in our subconscious, right I've learned that so much in my practice with trauma, and so so much is just sitting there in our subconscious that we've tucked away or repressed or it's been oppressed or all of those things. And so I'm wondering you know your conflict? If it was ego-based, it's kind of a difficult question to put into words. But was your conflict I don't really want it to be all about me Like you knew, maybe even subconsciously, that you were gifted, built, endowed with some special, lovely gift of general hospitality, but you wouldn't have known that then, but you put it in that word mother.
Speaker 3:Does that make any sense? It does, it does, and I feel like I'd have to. I don't really sit with that because I think you're right that a lot was was just like what was happening in my subconscious and what I was reacting to what I didn't want to recreate for others.
Speaker 2:Right, that would harm them if I wrote in the way that I'm writing, because I'm not writing from a place. You're not writing from your authentic self. You weren't in your essence, as we would say. So in a sense, you're saying in the world of psychology you're betraying your essence but you knew it.
Speaker 3:I think so, yeah, and I think sometimes it takes um, and even I would say not just writing, but like in, in in life in general, because I think all of the you know it's it's not just, of course, what you put on the on the page, but it's how you walk out your front door, but page, but it's how you walk out your front door. But, yeah, I think that I think I knew it. I think it does take a lot of journeying and for a long time I actually didn't want to do that. I didn't want to do all of that sort of like self-reflection. I, you know, like don't, don't put therapy in front of me, don't put you know none of this.
Speaker 2:I just don't want to have any part of that stuff.
Speaker 3:I didn't, I didn't.
Speaker 2:You know why I'm so curious. There's a lot of people, a lot of people listening a lot of people I deal with every day.
Speaker 1:They're like I'm good.
Speaker 2:I'm good. I just really don't want to do that, whether it's inertia, entropy, whether it's it's just I good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I mean, because who wants to dig up hard things?
Speaker 1:on earth Right.
Speaker 3:Um, and I think, and probably some people experience that in a way, that's not, that's not good, right, of course. Of course there are, you know, um, poorly trained or it's, it's not, it's done by people who actually aren't safe to do that with, and so always for sure. Yeah, that's right, and so maybe some of it was a reaction to that. Like I didn't want to to do, I didn't want to revisit things that maybe I was reacting against.
Speaker 2:Um, I love the way you put that sorry to interrupt, but I, I, I love the way you put that. Sorry to interrupt, but I really love the way you put that several times, reacting against, and so I just I think that's something I really would like my heart lifters to sit with, like in our own lives, like that inner conflict you were talking about. You know you're not in the right space, don't quite know, like you know you're not in the right space, don't quite know what you know, but if you're quiet and asked a sincerely beautiful question like who do you want to be, I just invite everyone take a few minutes, like, stop, pause, go find a senator, a tree, get a porch, do whatever, and just sit for a minute. I'm going to do this. What do I want to be? Be Okay, so you have this inner conflict? Yeah, did any of this have to do? And you know what you can say, not going here at all, but a huge part of my work, especially the past 13 years, really my whole life.
Speaker 2:My first book was a parenting book. I was trying to figure out how to mother. My husband and I came from two very dysfunctional alcoholic homes, and so I was like I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to mother, I have no idea Very complicated relationship with my mother, which I wrote down. Mother is a complicated word so, like you said, it can trigger beauty or woof. So do you feel let me frame it this way Do you feel that it's just really an unction, an endowment that you feel the God that you love has given you to mother? Were you mothered well, I was mothered well. Oh man, I'm so happy to hear that, wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and, and my mom and I are very different, but she's, she's an artist and she's very, um, yeah, she's, she's wonderful. And we're also very, very different. And I sort of took the more maybe sort of like the nurturing, and she was more like the big protector that you know the louder, the louder voice.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, but I also had really really good spiritual mothers in my life. Talk to us about that, that's so beautiful. Yeah, but I also had really really good spiritual mothers in my life. Talk to us about that, that's so beautiful. We were in fourth grade and because I was, you know, I just I had learned that art of disassociation, which I think sometimes is, is a wonderful protector right.
Speaker 2:It allows you and I you know so much more about this. No, we'll talk a lot more. It's on my list to to dig into disassociation. Actually, I just wrote my list yesterday of some key things and that's one of them. So this is beautiful. I'll add a little teaching in here, but yes, it does serve as protector?
Speaker 3:Correct, yes, Until I can't protect forever. And so she died. I pretended she didn't die, wouldn't face that she died, which I had also done with my grandfather when I was little but this was after he had died and Bivel, who was already a part of my life. So she was a very safe person. She led our whole youth camp. The whole youth ministry just did amazing things.
Speaker 3:She had a very traumatic past and what she recognized is how she could create these places for children, havens, havens, and just maybe my top hero in all of this, and she would get down on her knees to be eye level with us as children. She would gosh, tuck me into bed in the cabin. I mean, there were hundreds of us and she would at some point. After that she brought a necklace to my house, a bicycle necklace. Stop it. And I write that I was furious, I was so mad at her. Sure, you weren't.
Speaker 2:Do you know why? Have you figured that out yet? Go ahead, I love this. This is so powerful and I want to talk to St Sybil. No, you probably shouldn't.
Speaker 3:I was so mad because she was asking me to look at it, and, and and she had. She had earned the right. You know, she, she was a person who could do that with me.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's really key. That's super key, Just for anyone listening got to earn the right you do and become the Haven for that person. That's right. Yeah, safety and trust and prolonged love. Yeah, really, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so I, yeah, I just, I just couldn't believe it, and so I took the necklace and I buried it in my backyard.
Speaker 2:I did.
Speaker 3:I did. And way in the back by the fence line, I just, you know, brought my shovel out, stuck it into the ground, perfect sense.
Speaker 3:And and left it there. And then, of course, you know, I grew up, we moved, and I write about in the book that it wasn't until you know, decades later, that I was actually ready to take the necklace back out of the earth where I had buried it. And she gave me all that time, she gave me all the decades. She stayed with me my entire life. She's still with me, did she? She did, and she never pushed it. She just, she just gave that to me so that I could, so that I could look at it and so that I could, I think, begin the process of the awakening.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:And you buried it and then moved, so it's still in the backyard of that house.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it's. It's in a ceramic jewelry box, so I think it probably still there with a unicorn on top. How old were you? Um, well, I was in fourth grade.
Speaker 2:Okay, I forget how that makes you about 10 or 10, depending on yeah, I was in fourth grade, oh, okay, I forget how old that makes you about 10. Nine or 10, depending on yeah, that would have been mine.
Speaker 3:So she that goes back to you know, who led me into a lot of this belief in work, and Sybil is absolutely one of those people and you know, and I have peers who are those people in my life. Together we try to to do that mothering work together.
Speaker 1:So you know it just it can take.
Speaker 3:All of these different sorts of you know like. The way it unfolds is very, you know, unique and special and tender, based on who it is you're interacting with or what you need, because sometimes you do need. You know my mom to lift her arms and fist in the air you know, that kind of protection, yes, and sometimes you need, you know, a little necklace dropped off on your front porch.
Speaker 2:Simple. That took a lot of courage for her to do that. How long was it after she dropped it off that you talked to her again?
Speaker 3:Or did, it was a little while, I think I was so mad.
Speaker 2:You're so mad.
Speaker 2:But sometimes mama and dad like I. Just that's just. I could go on for hours with that one story, so I'm not going to. I'm going to read this real quick. Okay, the bicycle necklace is still buried in the backyard of my childhood home, but I finally feel like I'm starting to wear it. How old are you now? 47. You're such a baby. I miss my friend Whitney. I wish she hadn't died. She was funny and loud. This is me, and she would cartwheel with me across the middle school playground, even though we were the only ones and we were wearing uniform skirts. Yes, yes, that's me Run back to class at the very last second, our hair all fuzzed and knotted, our knees speckled with asphalt, because Whitney always insisted we take things a little too far. Whitney always insisted we take things a little too far. Oh my gosh. The next page is who is this? This is your mom? Or is that Sybil? Who is this?
Speaker 3:That's Sybil. Oh, my God, shoes everywhere.
Speaker 2:You're brilliant. You're right. Is there anything you buried in in that you're ready to face? Are you a safe place for others to do their unburied work? Oh my gosh, that's what we're here to become, we want to become. That is the heartbeat of what I do. I just call us heart lifters. You call us havens. I love that. The bottom line is we want to be emotionally healthy, mentally healthy or becoming that way in order to be able to be brave enough to offer someone a bicycle necklace when they're in fourth grade. I mean that's just incredible. You write that havens are people who shelter us, places that hold us, experiences that lift us up, us experiences that lift us up.
Speaker 2:What really gets to me now that you and I are talking because I read it prior to beginning this interview was LaTosha, or you call her Tosha, and you just said that Sybil would go around with over 100 kids and tuck everyone into bed. Is that, maybe even subconsciously, what made you that evening go in and tuck Tasha into her bed? You're just going to have to get the book to read the whole entire story, but it is a foreshadowing of that time you had with this spiritual mother, sybil, that you would then come and do this to a friend who is at this event. You called Women in the Woods. You have inspired me. I do not like camping but I would do it. I would do it. You said we can start with 10, five women.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be 500, but Women in the woods? Okay, share that experience and then lead me into you talking Tasha into bed, sure. I think, an adult, I did.
Speaker 3:I think it was. It did inform, I think, sybil's the way she took care of someone who felt, I think I felt um has as so many of us can do, even if we're raised in a secure good, you know thank you for pause for that, yeah, because I I do like to always make that point that, uh, the distinction perhaps, uh, my goodness, liz, I could talk about a million things.
Speaker 2:You were raised in a secure, safe home, as imperfect as it was, because it will be imperfect None of us are perfect and yet still had a trauma happen, right, okay?
Speaker 3:And so I think, and also because I lived, I think, and also because I live a lot in my I'm a dreamy sort of kid and I've always felt like I was sort of half on earth and half somewhere up above that, and so I think Sybil recognized that's right, the liminal space. Sybil recognized that she identifies with that too, and so a lot of times you feel like you don't belong because you don't know where you are, um, and so I think that just her act of coming next to me to tuck me into bed made me feel I'm connect, I'm connected back to the ground, I'm here, I'm okay, I have someone with me, I'm not alone. And so I think clearly it had a profound effect on me, because I've just never forgotten it and we did do this event called Women Camp and still do.
Speaker 2:Women Camp. This is so good. I really want to be a one, okay.
Speaker 3:You're more than welcome to join. There are so many spots because we just keep, we just keep growing it. But Latasha was in, she was actually one of the leaders and still because, you know, not just because it's camping and that's, you know, that can be really uncomfortable for people, but, and that's not why we did it, honestly, we weren't trying to make people uncomfortable, we just wanted an affordable place that hundreds or maybe thousands could be a part of. I've never heard of anything like this Crazy. Well, there's a great church behind that work and so.
Speaker 3:But even being a leader, you know we're sitting around the campfire at night and she, she always goes to sleep early, but she bowed out extra early and just, you know, it was still lighted out, which is really hard when you're. You know if you're at a campsite, you're not going to fall asleep in the light. There's noise? Going to fall asleep in the light? There's noise. You know these are vinyl tents.
Speaker 3:Um, and I was sort of paying attention, I was paying attention to her from out of the corner of my eye and, um, after a little bit I I went in and, um, I say I had to, had to crawl and it was so, like I recognize this is awkward. Um, I mean, we were friends, but, um, but to slide in to your very small tent, um, I just, I just decided to tuck her in, and then I had to back my way back out, um, and zip it closed after after saying good night, and it was later that she told me that she had felt like she didn't belong. That's right, and so she. She needed that too, and you know, we didn't even talk about anything. I just went in and tucked her in.
Speaker 2:You don't need to talk when you do something so incredibly significant, and the fact that that was done to you is mothering it's. It's mothering it's. I see you, I know you, I love you, you belong, you know that's what it was you image to her secure attachment, you're safe. Yeah, I love that you did that and she didn't run away. I mean, she just didn't feel like she belonged. You write about it so beautifully so I can't wait for my heart lifters to read it. Did you ever talk about it, or was that that just a significant thing? I mean, this makes me think of Mother Teresa, like that's just what Mother Teresa did to people. You know she got them. I mean, goodness gracious.
Speaker 2:Here's another layer to this is that none of us have heard of Sybil. She's not on Instagram. I'm not sure. Back in the day she wouldn't. There's no public platform for her to go. Do I'm so great I'm doing this? Do I'm so great I'm doing this? Yeah, I think you correct me if I'm on the wrong trajectory. Trajectory. That is what is needed right now a million sibyls, a million sibbles.
Speaker 3:Who are doing the work of God without needing anyone to see them. Just tears in agreement. I, yeah, I think, I think it's so true and yeah, I don't know what else to say just agree, you know it's just such a challenge in my life right now.
Speaker 2:I'm three and a half decades into Christian publishing, into publishing and published before social media. So we're just going to go down a little bit of a writing publishing path here. But you can relate this to any aspect of calling career, whatever, calling career whatever. There's just such a lure L-U-R-E to have your 15 minutes of fame, I guess, and it's such a challenge. You know when I submit a book or whatever, or how many books have you sold? You know what are your numbers, how many followers do you have? Oh, my gosh, I'm exhausted. I am so exhausted and now, with five grandbabies here, four with one on the way, I'm being so challenged in my work, in my calling to take care of others and my calling to take care of others.
Speaker 2:The whole premise of your let there be havens is that gentle hospitality. It's not seen, it's not heard, it's not blasted out over. You know it's not. I work for Magnolia, it's not, I wrote for it's. All of those are amazing and I want to have greater influence, no doubt about it. But I think the premise of your book is so astounding at such a time as this, because I do know there are so many women that come to me and go, I have no purpose, I have no reason to get up in the morning. This person's doing that. Did you see this? Look at this on Facebook. My generation is more Facebook than Instagram. You know, it's like I'm just being nailed down.
Speaker 2:My hero, amy Carmichael, used to say children tie a mother's feet. I had to swallow and work on that one for decades, but now it's grandchildren tie a grandmother's feet, because a lot of the things I'm doing, like I said to you, just got a call from Belgium to read a book to sweet little Elena Rose Book, book, book. And I'm thinking that's 45 minutes of my day. I'm not, you know. So I'm sorry, I'm talking a lot, I'm preaching, I'm doing my thing. Sorry, sorry, sorry, no.
Speaker 3:I'm thankful that you're saying these things just transparently, cause it's it's a it's a tension.
Speaker 2:It's a tension, it's an inner conflict, almost like you felt at the art Institute of Chicago. So you're once again, I would think, asking yourself what do I want to be? Well, in this book, let's pick up, because I want to be able to honor your time. You write a lot about the women in the woods. I know, please, heartlifters, get this book. I am saying you must have, you must have it because you're asking us to give people their safety, give people a safe space. Well, that's just all that I do. But what does that look like today? As I just said, it's probably going to be the most invisible work ever.
Speaker 3:Right, because part of I think what feels safe is actually when it isn't visible, when you can just completely trust the authenticity of the offering. Yeah, um, and I think that, um, I mean I, I I tried to you know kind of in the midst of stories and ideas and that sort of thing in the book, but just give some like actual, you do.
Speaker 2:Practical, super practical, which I adore yeah, how to create a space, a safe space, in your home. This is what this is. When you see the video, my heart lift was no, I call this the breathing room.
Speaker 2:It was it was past tense where I did my trauma client work, but I have recently just needed to can I say the word, can I say it? I think so Retire From that work to do the new work of mothering In a broader scale. Somehow have no answers yet, but wow, so you do tell us how to have a guest space. Give us just a little bit of that, uh, of what you offer.
Speaker 3:Um, well, I, when I was starting to, you know, write this book and talking to, I, have three sisters, and they're so, they're so wonderful and they, they're all so unique and and like they're very good, and I think, you know, siblings can often do this, but they can play back to you things that, like, either we're totally outside your line of vision, or one of my, um, my older sister was saying well, liz, if you want people to, if you want to invite people into the type of hospitality that you do, kind of let me tell you what I have seen you do, and so she's like you, don't. You know, you put a sheet for a tablecloth. There are some beautiful sheets out there, though, girl, and it's, and sheets actually can be way prettier than tablecloths, way prettier the softness which is so nice the weight yes, yeah um, I love me a tablecloth.
Speaker 2:I just bought a brand new one in St Louis. I'm so excited.
Speaker 3:Oh, tablecloth brings joy. So I'm not anti-tablecloth, I totally. I have a chapter about placemats because they symbolize? I just yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I could talk to you for hours. Yes, read about placemats.
Speaker 1:I mean cause there's a ritual.
Speaker 2:I pull open the drawer, I pull out the placemat, I decide which color for that person Mix it up Right, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:And if you're in a place in your life where, like you, haven't been able to set out a lot of placemats which is where I was, you know, working full time and just feeling so torn and so like that that first time of getting out the placemats was like this is it? Oh, my heart is at home, yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:And this is what.
Speaker 3:I need to do.
Speaker 2:I totally interrupted your beautiful sister telling you Okay, so you put out sheets.
Speaker 3:Interrupted your beautiful sister telling you, okay, so you put out sheets, you put out sheets, you, you take, you take coffee out to people who are outside. Um, it's this whole idea of hospitality with what you have, um, and I recognize that I, you know, I'm even in a world where there's products connected to it and stories that I write, you know, magazines, all that kind of stuff. There's always um, or creating events and I, I love for things to be beautiful and I think it's if you, if, if that is in your resource and you can get new tablecloths and placemats, do that and love that and enjoy it. And if you don't have that, you do still have the ability and we need you to be a part of hospitality for taking care of other people. So many people just block themselves off from it because they don't like what they have, they don't think it will be received.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of shame involved in opening your door. There can be shame. How many times do you walk in someone's house? I'm so guilty Every time. Just don't look over here, don't look over there. I mean, you know, I've been so busy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all the caveats I know, and so then you just don't do it or it makes you too anxious. I used to be, really. I was like, well, we can't, we have little kids and it's. I can't give you a peaceful place in the morning, I can't, we don't have an extra bed. I try to go through a lot of that stuff just so that it feels like we actually all can do things. And sometimes it's not, it's, you know, it's just opening the door for somebody, wherever you are, or standing next to somebody when they look like they feel a little bit lost or awkward and not saying anything to stand next to somebody.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, you know handsome.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's something that we can do. When you say that I think it's something we must do, I'm from a generation where we did that. We didn't have social media. I feel like I say that I'm 90 years old. Well, back in the day we didn't have a computer dial-up, I actually wrote my first manuscript on paper. I love that, I know, with a candle. I made it a ritual. I mean my fountain pen, it's just I. Where did she go, me? Where did that go? And I think that it fortifies our faith. It fortifies our capacity to mother well, fortifies our capacity to mother well.
Speaker 2:And so much time is taken with Instagram and social media and all the digital distraction. So I feel like you're calling us back to a simpler life, of course, where we do open our door and say come, have a cup of coffee, and I got this beautiful teacup at an antique store. And then our 40th anniversary was Sunday and we went to this place We'd never been in Virginia and we went into this antique store in this quintessential little town and I bought a $10 crystal I'm going to, I'll get it and show a picture Little etched vase. And the owner was like oh yeah, this woman just brought all this in from her mother's estate and we're just selling it out cheap and I'm like, give it to me.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, I know I'm trying to think what I'm going to put in Idalia or whatever. Yeah, okay. So it's all about an unction, a call let there be havens and invitation to general hospitality. I feel is a call from our loving God to each one of us to slow it down, make a haven, make your home a haven, make your heart a haven, because it is what is going to actually make the greatest change.
Speaker 2:One by one, one by one, you say that. You say that I don't want to pass over this key, and then I probably have to let you go. But you write that we're not the saviors here. And for me, I do everything in overland Like over. I live in the land of over and I'm moving out of it. And you write I have done a lot of over serving. I've put others' needs too far in front of my own and even my family's. I've gotten too deep into the emotional needs of people I shouldn't have, and then I've backed myself into corners with no capacity. Heart lifters there's that word. We've been talking a lot about our capacity or limited capacity there, or guardrails in place for people who thought I could be everything to them when I was never meant to be. We are not the full rescue, we are not the saviors here. So there's the I think, the tension, and I love that you bring that out and let there be havens so that we can guard against over-caring, over-serving right. Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:Where did you?
Speaker 2:find that in your life Was it just last year, has it been an ongoing thing.
Speaker 3:When did I learn it? Last year, I think it'll be. I'll be fine tuning this my entire life, okay, um, just because I think I am, I am wired in that direction, and so I just have to be aware and have people around me who are very aware of that, you know who will pull me back and say you know um, you know um, and that takes a lot of honest conversation.
Speaker 3:But I I think it's so important because, well, you would be able to say all the reasons why it's important to know, but, like I know, it's not like this, this book or this you know, I think it's a movement, I do meant I do.
Speaker 3:It's not just like about going outward, it's like we have to. We have to believe, and it's taken me a long time. You are worth havens and so in part of being part of that is knowing when to like. I think I say like close, close your door, take a nap, lock it, go away. That person's not even the right person to let in your house. Like this is all very good.
Speaker 2:We can go down that road. Oh, now I haven't read front back, front to back. Is that in the book?
Speaker 3:Oh about not letting everybody boundaries? Good, okay, I haven't read front back. Front to back, is that in the book? Oh about not letting?
Speaker 2:everybody boundaries. Good, oh, okay, I haven't read, I'm gonna.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I haven't read it front to back, but it's, it's certainly no, no pages yeah yeah, learning.
Speaker 2:I like to say love is tough, love is tender. It's both. You have to hold tough and tender love and holding tough love. For me I'm an Enneagram two, uh, with the real strong three and four. You know it's hard for me to not help somebody.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, and then, and isn't it like and that's where I think that all that unsteadiness comes from? Oh yeah, and and that is, it's not, um, it's not healthy for the giver or the receiver, and so I'm supposed to do no harm.
Speaker 1:Yeah you will yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we'll all be fine tuning forever the balance of self-care which prickles so many people loving self. Putting the oxygen mask on first, it's just the only, this clearest way that I know that I remind myself just got done. Traveling again. Every time they stand up and they say it every time, or it's on the video. Be sure to put it on before you help anyone else. And I'm like gosh, I don't think I would do that even to this day. It's hard.
Speaker 3:I know, I know, so, okay, I know.
Speaker 2:Close this out. Dear one there's I do. Let me pull this up real quick in the book Create little scenes. If we could just maybe close with that practical beautiful. You're right. I often start I just love this that you're so artistic and imaginative and it comes out so beautifully. Create little scenes. I often start by making a little scene and that's in a good way not making a scene, but making a little scene. I love this so much. Will you just help us? Maybe this is our action step.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think if I can tell you this is not in the book, but I'll just tell you what I think taught me this. So I said, my mom is an artist and I used to and I have always loved to draw, but I would get overwhelmed. I would want to replicate a photograph and I just couldn't. It was so much and I wanted it to be so good. And so my mom just taught me the grid system, which she is when she was teaching art, where you just put, you know, you put grid lines literally over a picture and then you just do a square, and sometimes my mom would even turn the photograph upside down so that I could really, you know, that breaks you out of what you think it should be or look like.
Speaker 2:That's like cognitive dissonance right away.
Speaker 3:That idea, this, this whole, like you know, you could, you could look at this sort of idea of like oh, if I bring somebody into my home, or if I'm trying to create an experience for women in the woods, if I'm trying to do this or that, there's, there are so many, it's, it's a big scene in front of you, right? Yes, um, life is a big scene, that's right, and you, you just cannot tackle it all at once.
Speaker 2:Um, so good, oh my gosh so yeah.
Speaker 3:So I think it's the, it's the making little scenes for me that always like it. Just then I could step in, then I could do something, because it was not overwhelming me anymore. It was not chaos or wildness, it was just this chair with a lamp, with the books, it was just this patch of grass. You know that I was setting something up on. Or you know, when you write, start with one teeny moment, you don't have to figure out the entire book first. Those are scenes.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a goldfinch lands on my bird feeder out the window. Oh hello, they're always my little sign of I got you, I got you. Oh hello, he's there, Always my little sign of I got you.
Speaker 3:I got you. Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 1:You're so bright.
Speaker 2:You're magical, he's so bright yellow and he's just like. He just showed up right at that moment. It's like that's it Create a little space. So I, that's what I did outside my window, Cause I sit, this is my, my, where I sit and write, and I do want it to be an ocean or river or lake outside there, but it's not there yet and maybe there he's back. He's like it's going to be. I promise it's coming, girl, but it's a beautiful. I splurged on this beautiful planting hook thingy, Shepherd's hook. It has a bluebird little iron on the top and I have a beautiful flower. And then I have this highfalutin bird thing that supposedly is good for the birds so they don't get mold.
Speaker 3:And so, yeah, that's what you did. You created a little scene.
Speaker 2:I created a little scene outside my window that would stop me from all the over over stuff I do. He always shows up it's the male, because why does the male get the bright plumage?
Speaker 2:you'll never know plumage have you said it's like whatever and so okay, so we're going to pencil, sketch a grid over the thing that we want to do and choose one square to focus on, and you end that with begin. This has been life changing. I've had a prayer the last few months of my life that you know, when the student's ready, the teacher appears and then it ends with, when the student is really ready, the teacher disappears. And so I have needed you personally, liz, in my life, and I can't believe you said yes to my little engine that could podcast and heart lifters, I know, are going to also have a significant life change. I don't say that lightly, um, but I needed you today and, uh, I'm gonna choose my one square and I'm gonna open my home tomorrow night to nine women, that anyway and set beautiful places for them With your new tablecloth.
Speaker 2:Okay, heartlifters, this has gone longer, but oh, how worth it it is. I pray you carve an hour out of your life to listen and listen again, because I do believe that this movement Let there Be Havens parallels our movement as heartlifters, and it is ushering me into a new phase of work in my life, and I wanted to encourage you to get this book. And on page 117, liz writes a closing and I think it's really important to read it here as we close. Sybil has been my safe. I had a chance to be LaTosha's safe, and LaTosha has been Kenesha's safe, andrea's safe, jenny's safe, because this is how it happens we learn to repeat the meaningful things that are done for us and we start to see more ways to do it, and more often than not, they are so simple to do.
Speaker 2:You see someone stuck or awkwardly waiting around or struggling to figure something out, so you join them. You ask them to help you so they have something to focus on. You do something ridiculous to make them laugh. You give them extra firewood and tell them it's because they're the most deserving person in the world. You give them your jacket or take out their trash or deliver a handful of flowers. You give them a cart. Deliver a handful of flowers. You give them a cart. You stay with them until they seem ready to be on their own again.
Speaker 2:And I'll add, you took someone into their sleeping bag in a pup tent because someone tucked you in decades beforehand, and that's where you learned what it meant to be mothered. We all need to be a mothering presence in the lives of others. That is what I'm pounding the table over from this point on. So, please, please, meet me. Let's mother together.
Speaker 1:In Jesus' name going. Please share today's episode with a friend and invite them to become stronger every day. Heartlifter, always remember this you have value, worth and dignity.
