This is a soul-grounding conversation with Latina Healer & Licensed Psychotherapist, Christine Gutierrez. She is the bestselling author of I Am Diosa: A Journey to Healing Deep, Loving Yourself and Coming Back Home to Soul.
Christine offers private coaching, group coaching, and transformational retreats such as her annual Diosa Retreat in Puerto Rico, as well as the Diosa Tribe, a global community where like- hearted women come to heal, rise, and lead. She has been featured in Time Out NY, Latina Magazine, Yahoo Health, Ebony, Cosmo for Latinas, Huffington Post, and others. Christine currently resides in Puerto Rico with her husband, Fernando Samalot, and their pup, Bodhi. For more on her work, visit christineg.tv and follow her on Instagram @CosmicChristine.
We talk about a lot, including:
- Coming back home to our soul
- The seed of divinity that we all share
- How healing is repairing ourselves, and bringing our soul back to us
- How when we abandon ourselves, we disconnect from spirit
- How life is full of both the magical and the shitty
- How there is great power in humanizing our experience
- How we can recognize our soul voice…and more.
To find out more about Christine and her work, visit: www.christineg.tv/iamdiosabook and main website is www.christineg.tv
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To learn more about host, Kate Snowise, head to www.thrive.how
Episode 135: Christine Gutierrez on Coming Home to Soul (transcript)
Christine: When our soul is in charge our life is aligned, but often times we don’t want to face that uncomfortable part of the journey which is where we have to face all of those uncomfortable pieces, the challenges that comes with things crumbling before things become new, and so I really encourage people to, to start to see that the way of the soul always gives you lasting rewards, and though it might be harder in the moment it gives you sustainable success happiness joy, while the other way might give you temporary success joy happiness in the moment but it’s often fleeting.
Kate: That was Christine Gutierrez. She’s already been on the show before it you can find her first episode, it was episode 102, so go back and listen if you love this. But I brought her back because we’re talking about a different topic today. We’re talking about living from our soul and how we can love ourselves and accept ourselves and heal even when we’ve been through the hard stuff. Christine really is here to teach us how to live and remember our divine nature and ugh…I could just suck up her wisdom all day long. She’s a treat. She’s just released a new book called I Am Diosa, or it’s about to hit bookshelves I should say, and it’s already a best seller which is unreal. To learn more about her book you can go to iamdiosa.com has links to order and goodies that you can get, and to learn more about Christine he took ChristineG.TV.
A little bit about Christine that she is a Latina licensed psychotherapist and she talks more about that in this podcast because she mixes psychotherapy with so much more and I really see her as a healer. Now moving forward with season three all episodes are going to have a full text transcription for anyone who struggles in the audio format. If you want that text transcription to this episode you can head over to thrive.how/podcast135. I should note, there is some banging on this recording. I say that just in case you’re somewhere where you might think it’s around you. It’s not. It’s on the recording, so don’t be concerned. Without further ado let’s dive in to our divinity with Christine.
Kate (Introduction + Music): Welcome to Here to Thrive. I’m your host Kate Snowise. This is a podcast for people who are ready to step up and live a happier life. It’s for those of us who are dedicated to understanding ourselves and getting the best that we can out of this thing called life. It’s a mix of psychology and modern spiritual thought, always with a focus on practical advice so that you can take it back and apply it to your own life. I don’t believe we’re here to merely survive, I truly believe we’re here to thrive, so let’s get going.
Kate: Christine I’m so excited to have you back.
Christine: So excited to be here again.
Kate: This time we get to talk I Am Diosa which is your next book due to be released is it the twenty fifth of August? I didn’t check my dates.
Christine: Yes. Yes:
Kate: Yay. I feel like this is the year that needed it. We need this conversation about soul and coming back to ourselves.
Christine: Yeah this is ahhh…definitely been the year of shadows being revealed. I think that the shadows were always there but not only our internal shadows but the shadows of the world , and so it’s like the veils have been lifted and we are really coming to face a lot of things that I think were always there but that we have to come closer into contact with, and so, of course I felt like my book would have been (laughing) birthed during that kind of time because I I do consider myself not only a light worker but a shadow worker.
Kate: I feel like there’s so much to talk about in that little statement, but before we dive in too deeply, I would love to listeners to get to know your just a little bit better. How did you end up on this journey of a soul healer or spiritual therapist?
Christine: Yeah I mean from as early as I can remember I was always drawn to healing and to helping, and I always like to start off my story by saying that because it was rooted in in my childhood and you know I remember seeing people that were homeless on the streets and like begging my mom to stop and talk to them and ask them their story you know and I would joke that I was like this baby therapist in that I wanted to know you know where, where did this suffering start? What happened to you? Are you okay? I remember walking down the streets in Brooklyn in in where I grew up in New York and purposefully making eye contact with homeless people and because I wanted them to feel worthy. I wanted them to be seen, and my mom really encouraged that which I think was important for me as a child and so really that like heart space of where does suffering begin? How can I be part of stopping it? and I want to help people feel seen, loved, worthy, was really the seed that was planted in me, I believe by the divine, by you know my life experience and a combination of both, and then ever since that I’ve been on a journey to, to really coming into myself as a healer um, but also you know healing myself, and going on this journey of I also went through suffering so is this combination of – here I am. I have this seed of this like you know glimpse into the future of what would be my dharma over soul purpose, but then inevitably I was faced with my own dark shadows, my own trauma, my own abuse and so that combination really solidified for me that, you know, this work is needed. Therapy is needed, healing is needed. Mind body spirit approach to healing is needed. And so, ever since then it’s been step by step just walking me closer into finally it became a licensed therapist and I started to combine ancient healing modalities with modern therapy.
Kate: You touched on the fact that you had to go through your own darkness. I’m gathering this is in a straight line, it’s not like you have this knowing as a child and you walk this beautiful straight line to becoming a healer. What were the dark times like for you?
Christine: I mean I think that, you know, it’s interesting because I…I always had a combination of both love and abuse I would say. You know in my childhood I would, you know, deeply loved and I had a lot of things that a lot of the other kids, you know, growing up in Bushwick at the time didn’t have…you know my father was in the life, he was there, he was helping. They had gotten divorced at I was around three and a half I think? but or around that age. I was three and a half, four. I always forget. But, but there was also a lot of toxicity and there was also a lot of abuse and so I think that, that was that was that the first inkling into this is what happens when hurt people, right end up hurting other. And so this lineage of abuse and trauma that was passed down through many people, through generations because you know their parents and their parents didn’t have the space to have access to healing. They were too busy you know hustling, working hard, escaping poverty etcetera, and so not to minimize or to excuse bad behavior because I never do, but understanding and unpacking like, holy shit this is what happened in my specific ancestry, and so for me in particular verbal and physical abuse was where that dagger came in and then replicating the wounds of what that experience left me right because it was complex trauma, because it wasn’t just one time, it was continuous and so for me it was replicating that pattern until I realized…I need to heal, I need, I need something different right, What happened to me wasn’t my fault. And I needed support. And I needed to…to get a therapist which I ended up doing in in college when I had, I call him Mr M, and and he was like the results of all my early childhood trauma in the physical manifestation of this relationship and so that really toxic relationship had me face all the ways that my inner child was choosing that person. And so that was really the biggest ahhhh, the biggest trauma I would say that I had to face in my own personal life.
Kate: You use that word healing and you use that a lot in the book is well. What does healing mean to you?
Christine: That’s a really good question. I mean, I think that to…to heal is to repair, but for me it’s very specifically it’s about merging the soul back into the body and having a very integrated and grounded approach to saying, I get to still have those broken pieces right. I still got to have those parts of me that are tender, that are raw, that are exposed, and still feel worthy and still feel divine and still feel that I’m just learning new coping skills. And so for me healing those emotional wounds is about opening ourselves up to receiving spiritual support and support in the form of therapy, and that can be by learning better coping skills to deal with stress or anxiety or panic or abandonment. It can look like meditation. It can look like having community or peer led support, but essentially it’s this process and it’s a never ending process and I’d like to tell people that that shouldn’t discourage us because so long as we are alive and human we are on a process of healing, and remembering are more healthy selves. So essentially it’s becoming healthier but it’s not a eradicating our human emotions. It’s not getting to or arriving at this place where we say, you know, I I need to be happy all the time. I need to be perfect all the time. It’s instead saying I get to be with and sit with all of who I am, both the wounded dark shadowy parts of me and the parts of me that I deem more acceptable.
Kate: You use that would abandoned just then and I read it in the pages of your book, and you said you used to abandon yourself.
Christine: Yeah.
Kate: And it just, it struck me Christine because I was like ugh…I know is that feeling. I know that feeling of abandoning myself. What did that look like for you?
Christine: For me that looked like, doing everything that was out of alignment with loving myself, revering myself, honoring myself. It looks like choosing men that called me names. It look like having sex with people that had no business being in my body. It looked like breaking promises to myself. It looked like over drinking. It looked like hating myself. It looked like allowing in relationships without healthy boundaries. And so essentially it was ways that I was disconnecting from my spirit, disconnecting from my Diosa divinity, disconnecting from my truth, and again, a lot of those things were not my fault right. Like anyone that has gone through trauma, I always say that one of the biggest ways that we abandon ourselves by not having compassion for ourselves, and so I have deep compassion for myself and for you know all the things I want to because it was really hard, it was something that no one should ever have to go through. And at the same time I realized, that was a big aha moment for me, because I was running away from myself because my inside world was so fucking scary, it was so painful, and so ultimately I had to learn to face those parts of myself so that I could go on this journey to healing. Those are just some of the ways that I abandon myself but really I think that anyone that has gone through something painful can say you know, hmmm, what are the ways that I don’t love myself, right, and how does that show up in my life. And you can look at all these different parts, how you treat your mind, how you treat your body, who you will allow in your life.
Kate: Does that abandoning ourselves, is it an attempt at protection?
Christine: Of course, yeah. I mean protecting ourselves to from the overwhelm, and the overwhelm of life right, and what is it going to take to face those wounds. By the way if people hear like banging in the background just casually ignore. We’re fixing our roof (laughing).
Kate: (laughing) Christine and I were talking about that just before we got on the call. I had a tornado siren going off in the background and Christine’s like, don’t worry my roof is getting fixed.
Christine: Like this is what it is like in times of Covid.
Kate: I was just gonna say, it’s like 2020 people. Like just snapshot it. It is the year of the craziness.
Christine: Yeah, that’s it. Continuing on, I don’t even care, I’m like my roof is getting fixed, I get to do my podcast from home. It’s happening. So…
Kate: Oh and I get to talk to a friend about like my favorite stuff in the world, like soul healing and…all is well, all is well. You were talking, it was something you just said their though, it made me think of this word fragile because as I was reading the words in your book I was just like she’s writing this book to me, and so many other people like me, who have what I would describe as a fragile heart full of love, but I struggle sometimes to live in a broken world and and I know that sometimes my favorite thing in the world to do is numb, and as we’re talking about Covid right, there is a lot of brokenness that is being brought to the forefront like you said right at the start of this conversation. Do you think it’s triggering for us fragile hearts right now everything that is kind of, coming out of the woodwork?
Christine: Yeah I mean I think that first and foremost right, um, you know, there’s a difference right, between having a sensitive heart and then having a sensitive heart layered with if you’ve gone through of the kind of traumas that I mentioned right, and so it’s normal to, you know, like, I think it’s important for me and the therapist to normalize people’s experiences and how they cope right. Having…having moments where you disassociate right, or you disconnect from the yourself in an attempt to kind of, not have to deal with the overwhelm that’s happening in your nervous system is normal, because imagine if you’re a kid and you’re going through all this yelling or screaming or shouting in your house right, and you don’t have a safe place right, there there has to be some sort of way for you to protect yourself, and so even still right, there are those moments in life as adults where we, you know, especially if we have this history, where we are facing these life traumas or these, ah, ah, big T. traumas or little T. traumas but either way, there is a point right, where we say how, how dark right, or how healthy is this coping mechanism becoming? And I think that is the important thing, is to give ourselves the grace to stay you know it’s, it’s good to not face everything head on all the time. It’s important to have healthy coping distractions. Often times people think that, you know, it looks like, just you know, diving deep into the work and that’s a big part of it, but having moments where you totally just you know put on a Netflix and and and avoid a little bit is also helpful right? But it’s about for how long right. Like the goal is that we want to look at the things that are coming up for us both internally and in the world, and so going back to your question about you know, for those of you whether you’re in the camp that has a fragile heart and you’ve gone through actual trauma that you’re healing from, or if you have a tender heart because you’re a sensitive soul maybe you haven’t experienced trauma in…in the bigger sense right, a big T. trauma, but your heart is just really attuned to suffering, then of course right, we are living in times where …but I think to be honest we always have but because of social media we’re just seeing it more, but life has always been shitty and magical.
Kate: (laughing)
Christine: You know…It’s always been horrible and beautiful. There’s always been war and disease and also birth and life right. And so for me I don’t think this is anything new, I just think this is the incarnation of the way that life actually is, and this is what it looks like in our generation right. So right now some of the things we’re currently facing to pivot into like real is if you’re listening to this in 2020 right, then Covid, uprising of racial injustice, and both of these things are happening I think, at a time where we need it desperately right, to really see all the things that we’ve been ignoring, because it’s easy for us to ignore things just like it easy for us to ignore our emotional wounds. So many of us go through things and then we find ourselves in these toxic relationships but maybe you, you’re not lonely so you stay in a relationship. Or you know you have this big house or this manifestation on physical form of something that you always wanted but the content of that relationship is not aligned with you, so you end up staying because it is easy to ignore it. And so the same thing with the world right? If we’re not being faced with these things because we’re living in the comfort of our own bubble, and obviously this is not for everyone this is for those of us that have been privileged enough to not have to face some of the things that have been going on. Other countries have been facing pandemics daily right? If you are a black body person or trans person for example then your experience of injustice is going to be in your face daily, right. So all of these things are coming to surface like, yeah, that’s been there and so all the shadows have been there within us but now finally we’re getting the opportunity to say what am I gonna do different? Right. This is the the spiritual lesson that’s facing us in our time, so I see it as, a you know, a spiritual awakening and so the inner and the outer work for me go hand in hand.
Kate: Your book talks about the darkness and how, as you’ve just sort of said here, how the dark and the light, the magical and the shitty, I had coffee in my mouth otherwise I was about to just be like – YEAH – um, I almost spat it out if you go back and listen. Um the magical and the shitty, and the darkness that is in all of us, and the hurt and the pain and then the light in the magic…I think that makes you a little unique because I think we’ve been running away for about darkness a little bit too much, is it fair to say. What is your take on this?
Christine: In in general we live in a society that has been patriarchal, mostly white presenting and deeply fearful of both literal darkness in in in physical bodies, black bodies and also the darkness of our of our very psyche. And so for me I do see it as like this micro macro kind of mirror. That there has been a fear and I think that we’ve been feed that so that you know, we can perpetuate this kind of violence and so it’s so deeply intertwined. You know for me, I am Latina, identify as Latina. I was born and raised in Brooklyn my family comes a Puerto Rican background, um, and you probably have a mixture of indigenous roots and whole bunch of things right and um we have never been scared of the darkness per se because we were living it, right? And so for me I was actually way more comfortable in the darkness than in the light. I was much more familiar talking about wounds and pain and suffering because I know it so well right, and so that’s one. And the other is intuitively I was always drawn to healing modalities that went to the earth, that went to the to the lower levels of our body and so spirituality in many different traditions there is this concept of that there’s a different energy portals in our body right, and towards the lower energy or portals, towards our sex organs that represents home and security right, and so for me many of the spiritual traditions that you know, we were seeing in kind of mainstream spiritual books had to do about the heart and above. It had to do about opening up your heart and reaching the heavens, whereas my path was all about reaching the root and reaching the earth, and reaching the ancestors and reaching the darkness. And so even from a spiritual level it was a very different approach and so I think that some of that that comes from cultural kind of a medicine that I’ve always been drawn to and that has been removed from mainstream spirituality, so it’s unique and it isn’t. It’s there but I just don’t think that it’s been as publicly seen and so something that I am so passionate about is saying let’s go there, let’s go to the roou, let’s look at what what we’ve been scared of right, and so often that’s where, that’s where the the deep soul healing is, that’s weird right the massive breakthrough and the light can come shining and pouring through and then that integration can happen where you stay I am whole. I own all parts of me. There are no longer these abandoned or kind of, you know, secret parts of me but you call back all parts of you, and you know, this is, this is something that I think we’re gonna see a lot more I hope and pray that we see a lot more of this in our modern spiritual textbooks and our modern personal development books because for a long time there was an over glamorization of being happy all the time.
Kate: Hmm. Absolutely. I, I think we’re making that shift and I think you are one of the leaders at the forefront of it I’m just, ahh, alongside your release you know, my first podcast back is around toxic positivity and and how it can go into that space of being toxic and I think of some of the authors I’ve been drawn to her recently and this is Kate Bowler who wrote: Everything happens for a reason and other lies I’ve loved, you know, talking about the hard of being human. I think we’re we’re doing a slightly better job than we have for the last little bit.
Christine: Yeah it’s about humanizing our experience right, like I love saying that like, if I could boil everything down to you know, why is it so important to talk about you know the darkness and the light and why is it so important is because we want to humanize our experience you want to let people know you are crazy or wrong for being alive, and breathing and having fears and having feelings and that this work isn’t to avoid that, but instead to just turn down the volume on toxic parts of our personalities, by integrating better coping mechanisms and and ways of thinking and being. But essentially that’s the beauty of being human, is that we get to feel all the layered and beautiful and textured emotion, and you know there’s that there’s a line in the book that says something along the lines of – I’m living breathing woman and I rise and all like the tide, right, and we have all of these emotions inside of us and were rising and falling and there’s nothing linear and when we reclaim that we tap into that divine feminine beautiful nonlinear magic, and there’s so much power when we claim that again.
Kate: Hmmm. I have a line in front of me that I stole from your book because it just reminded me of having known you for the last few years, this line I was like that is, that is Christine’s work! And you said – “Your pain is welcome here. Your brokenness is welcome here.”
Christine: Uh ah.
Kate: And when you talk about that acceptance and about letting people be seen, it is such a crucial part of your work.
Christine: Yeah that that definitely is my main intention right. Like, I don’t I’m not obsessed with forcing a shift in perception. I am about holding space and rocking someone in my arms until the love, the spirit, the divine kind of moves them and overwhelms them with this energy of safety so that they can remember that they are whole, they are remember that even amidst the pain and the darkness and and whatever suffering they’re going through, and it is a very different approach I think and a lot of what we’ve seen and it’s important that we bring back that kind of approach because I think so many people, I mean I know for me so many people have come to as clients after being hurt by the toxic positivity that you were speaking of right. Because they were like oh my god, like meanwhile there like suffering from anxiety and all these things and it’s like a anxiety is a real thing right. Like if you’re facing social injustice or racial injustice in your life or for example if you’re living in a household that is really toxic, you have to talk about how not only the internal factors but the external factors impact you. I think that taking into account people cultures and experiences and socio economic status and all these different things that I think have been removed, slowly we’re seeing the importance of them coming back and I think it’s gonna be really powerful in terms of people feeling more loved, and even able to be human.
Kate: I I totally agree. I do think it’s part of why we asked saying such an increase and some of these mental health statistics because like you said, or your words, we’re abandoning ourselves because we don’t think our emotions are a okay. It just breaks my heart.
Christine: Yeah, and we. The beautiful thing about this right is that they’re listening to this work right now. If, if even that one line right like – your pain is welcome here. Your brokenness is welcome here – it gives people permission just break, right. Like so many times people are hanging on cause we’ve gotta be strong to live this life, and so you know I think it’s so powerful I know that like for me when my friends hold space for me when my spiritual guides make space and like you know I’m giving you the space is break down in a safe and contained way, because it’s there that I can put back the pieces where I want them and how I want them.
Kate: It’s that understanding that we can break can still be okay.
Christine: Oh yeah.
Kate: I Am Diosa. Can you tell us more about the title, and what it means to you?
Christine: Yeah, so Diosa is the Spanish word for goddess and I am for me is about owning my divinity as divine. I am Diosa. And it is an affirmation. It’s a statement and its a declaration. It’s an invocation, and it’s a remembering that we are divine and although diosa means goddess, the goddess doesn’t belong to a particular you know, kind of heteronormative, you know or or gender societal kind of context of the feminine but it is about awakening that universal feminie that belongs to all of us right, gay, straight, bi, trans um and those who resonate with that word and that energy are going to know it because they’ll feel it, and you know the subtitle of the book is a journey to healing deep, loving yourself and coming back home to soul. And so it’s a it’s I I like to say it’s like a deep spiritual retreat in a book. And it’s definitely hard work and definitely might take you time, but it is something that you can even bring along to your therapist’s office and kind of go through some of the questions with your therapist and just you know, unpack them. It it it really is like a guide book.
Kate: So you know I was flicking through the first few pages and I was just saying to Christine, I didn’t want to read the book until I had the hard copy in my hands and because I have known about this work and and I just want to read that in paper form that’s just me…
Christine: Yeah and I have the audio book I’m so excited to too!
Kate: I saw you yesterday that you’ve obviously recorded and you got a taste of a listen. Oh I can’t wait to hear it.
Christine: Yeah, it was it was hard as fuck to get through the whole thing, and there are some parts where I’m like – girl! But it was such a beautiful and powerful moment for me to be able to be the voice behind the book. For me was really important that my accent my energy my voice was the one reading it, so it was, it was really something that I’m excited about that people, especially for people that for many different reasons not able to read books, blind or different you know medical conditions, or that just are more auditory learners, so yeah, I’m excited that we have that as an option now.
Kate: I am super excited and it’s funny you mention that because I’ve just decided that I need to put…and for everybody else I will mention this in the season introduction, but that I’ll be doing full transcripts for all of my work moving forward for those people who can’t access it via audio for podcasts, so I will have full transcripts of everything on my website moving forward. But um, Christine I stopped at page number two….where you said, literally in caps, “FUCK HOLY SHIT NOT THIS AGAIN”, when you’re talking about the hard work that it is and I just laughed out loud I’m like how true is that right this journey back to ourselves. I feel like for me it comes in layers and waves I feel like that just sums it up sometimes when you’re like holy shit, not this, are we back, oh my gosh. (laughing)
Christine: And I gotta keep it real. For me this whole kind of like year, as you can hear my like dog in the background.
Kate: Is that Bodhi?
Christine: Yeah that’s Bodhi. That’s our dog Bodhi. He is going insane. Um this whole year has been like that I mean we had like a really magical start and then, not that you know it’s not necessary but it’s been so hard and I think that so many of us more than ever we need to really take the time to nurture to to take care of ourselves because the world needs, us we need ourselves right ,so it it it’s real right this work and this life is no easy feat sometimes right, and I love what they say in twelve step rooms where they say you know, life on life’s terms right, like we have to face life on life’s terms and it’s not that life isn’t gonna keep happening is just and we’re gonna hopefully do better um to be able to approach it in a way that that serves our highest good, and the good of all.
Kate: We’ve talked a lot about coming home to soul, and it’s one of the crucial elements of your book. You mention the soul call in the first few pages. How do we recognize that soul call within ourselves?
Christine: That voice is an ancient voice. It can be a still voice. It can be a voice that’s assertive and that says, leave that job, take a break you’re you’re breaking down. It’s usually a voice that is this internal kind of stillness right ,it shows up differently for everyone. Sometimes people can access at a meditation or prayer or journaling or something just in stillness right, and it it the voice that’s guiding you to the good. You know the voice, you know the kind of ahhh….that it’s the soul, right because it’s giving you directions that are leading you towards your betterment. tt’s never guiding you towards something destructive, and it is always leading you to your best self, your next step. And for me I see this voice is ancient. It’s kind of like a compass in life, and I find that I I hear that voice when I’m stillness, or when I’m you know, really needing help and, you can set the intention if you haven’t heard that kind of guidance to say: I want to hear the voice of my soul, this ancient voice, guide me. And literally setting that intention and allowing yourself to open up that kind of invisible bridge to spirit world will often surprise you because you then are able to access a whole new realm of guidance. And so when I work with clients I work not only as a therapist but also as a spiritual guide and that piece of that right, combining that soul voice, combining that ancient wisdom, that is where people get all their their I guess their their wisdom or their kinda map for their life if you will, and it’s beautiful because each of us has some unique voice within us that geared for just that person soul. It’s specific. You know there’s no right and wrong in terms of soul it’s just very unique for you, and so cultivating that relationship right, because it is a relationship with your soul, is one of the most important thing that we can do.
Kate: Have you noticed within yourself and with your clients that sometimes it is hard and scary to take the actions that are calling you from your soul?
Christine: Oh yeah. I mean many reasons right like for some of us it can be because comfort right, there’s a trap of comfort. We might not actually be comfortable in our soul, but we might be comfortable because it’s easy, it’s familiar right. And often times we confuse familiar with what is actually good and right for us. And so a lot of time the way of the soul requires you to be uncomfortable, and step into the unfamiliar and unchartered territory, and so because people are so used to clinging to what we know, what we can see, we often stay trapped by the illusion of security, by the illusion of stability, by the illusion of you know, I don’t know what is there and it can be something like, you feel the call to write a book but you’re scared, because you’ve never written a book and who are you to write a book. Or you know it can be you’re supposed to move to another place, but your whole family in the place where you live, and you have a house and everything makes sense, so why would you do that right? And the rational mind will fight a tiny war with with the soul. And so inevitably I believe that the soul is the only way. When our soul is in charge our life is aligned, but often times we don’t want to face that uncomfortable part of the journey, which is what we have to face all of those uncomfortable pieces, that challenges that comes with things crumbling before things become new and so I really encourage people to to start to see that the way of the soul always gives you lasting rewards and though it might be harder in the moment it gives you sustainable success, happiness, joy, while the other way might give you temporary success, joy, and happiness in the moment, but it’s often fleeting and you know this is something I talk a lot about with women who are single and are in unfulfilling relationships and they’re too scared to leave because they’re scared to be lonely, they’re scared to go on their own, but really they have this dream version of what they want, but their fear keeps them trapped. Their fear of being abandoned or being alone keeps them trapped and so they just stay stuck right, but ultimately you become soul sick and you feel like, wait a minute something’s gone wrong, I’m dying. You know. And one of my favorite authors that I that I love, and I got to study with in person, Dr Carissa Pinkola Estees who has deeply impacted my work, she talks about this in her book The Women Who Run With the Wolves about you know, we can’t leave our soul home for too long because we become famished, we become desperate, we become women that have no flesh on our bones because we need our souls skin. We need to be nourished by the things that really light us up and so inevitably we can’t lie to our soul, right. So our soul will constantly constantly be reminding us of what we need to do, until we heed the warning or don’t right, but hopefully if we’re here we’re here we’re here because we want to listen to our soul we want to make decisions that are aligned with her.
Kate: How you absolutely got me when you said we become soul sick and we know we are dying. Wow. That’s it!
Christine: (acknowledgement)
Kate: We’ve talked a lot about not being afraid of the darkness, and allowing our brokenness to be a part of us, but you mentioned the light a little bit. What about the light? How do we turn towards that lightness and bring that magic into our lives?
Christine: The beautiful thing is that as we start to those dark corners of our life, our addictions, our pains, our wounds, our fears, we naturally uncover the light, and so there is a principle that I love in Jewish mysticism called kipput and essentially there is this idea of the tikkun and the tikkun is that thing that we came to repair right. We believe that the concept is that we come into this physical body, we have a spiritual mission, a spiritual mission, and we are meant to repair that thing, that lesson, and the same goes for the spiritual lesson in the world and so our personal tikkun can be something like oh well I always faced you, know date men that are unavailable, and so that you know, the tikkun is I have this fear of abandonment and so I I constantly subconsciously choose these men that are going to abandon me. I you know how the self-fulfilling prophecy and I and I feel all over again and I’m scared right, and I’m settling. And so then your mission, the tikkun that you came to repair is that lesson, and until you get it you’ll keep facing it right. But the cool thing that happens is that as you start to make steps to heal that tikkun it’s like a shell that is called the klipput and that shell, has that shell is whatever block is in your life, and as you start making small changes you start chipping away the shell and you start accessing the light, you start accessing the soul growth, you start accessing your soul , your truth, and you start realizing okay this is my lesson and I came here to to tackle this, and so for me for example a great practical example was I have a very addictive personality and so one of the addictions, one of my coping tools, was binge drinking and so for me when I handled that tikkun, I got to break free that klipput and all of a sudden more abundance came into my life, because you never know all the blessings that are gonna come when you break open or break free from whatever, wound, fear, obstacle you’re facing in your life, and so sometimes it surprises you and it catapulted right I need more money, I felt more self love, I not only was my internal condition changing but also my external choices were changing because I was loving myself more when I removed that block of alcoholism, and I got support and you know, I got sober, and so all of these things that we have in our life I believe our simultaneously packed with your soul grow which you can equate to light right. Light equals soul grow. And so getting excited about the fact that when you’re doing this work it’s always worth it, because this is what it means to be alive in these human bodies on the spiritual experience, is to grow, to learn, to heal, to rise, to come more close to our spirit, so it is. It’s beautiful we can see holy shit, okay this, okay cool you’re here again? Let’s face you. Right…and each time hopefully gets better and better as you learn and you apply the new tool that you’re learning.
Kate: And then the light just kind of flows on into those dark crevices that you weren’t looking at. I love it. Well wrapping up today Christine, what would you say if you were to give the listeners just a few words of wisdom to carry us through right now?
Christine: One…be very gentle with yourself and maybe create an inner dialogue with how your inner child is you feeling. If you haven’t done any kind of inner child work before ,that can simply be taking a pen and paper and saying you know my name is Christine right. So hi little Christine, how are you feeling? Are you scared? Um is the world making sad right now? What feelings are coming up for you? I’m here for you. I wanna hold you and really just nurturing that inner child within you so that you can really show up as your adult-self, because of our inner child is coming up which often times it does in moments of crisis especially if you have a background with abuse or trauma or are really you know like you said having a sensitive heart, going to that space of nurturing your inner child who really allow you to be grounded and present in this moment as an adult. So I think that’s one wonderful kind of actionable tool that anyone can do. The second thing I would say is to develop a conversation with your soul, and to invite in a conversations with spirit and ask your soul, this wise wise ancient part of you, to guide you to what to focus on right now to ground you. Because amidst so many changes and uprising and revolution, we need to be really rooted in spirit, we need to be really rooted so that we can show up for ourselves in the world in powerful ways. We need to be strong right now more than ever. It’s like we’ve been preparing our whole lives for this and so getting really rooted in spiritual connection is important. And then last but not least is reminding yourself that you know, this work is worth it because hope is always really important as we’re going through all of these things it’s so important to remember that this is worth it I get actually works. Your life gets better when you put in the hard soul work. Your life gets better and other lives get better so know that there is a there there are blessings, that you’re not doing this for no reason right, and the same thing when we’re showing up for like injustices in the world it’s not for no reason. There is a very big reason and I’m there there is massive change that happens just by all of us showing up for ourselves and showing up for others, and I believe this is a very powerful spiritual time and so that we are alive during this time then let’s make it our mission to do our work to get spiritually fit, and to show up for the changes that are occurring so that we can really live in a life that has more harmony in it.
Kate: So good. I, I feel like I am I feel like I’m spiritually cleansed after this conversation. I feel reinvigorated. It’s so good. Christine wrapping up today, if you leave us with just one single thought, what would it be?
Christine: You are worthy.
Kate: I feel like I want to add to that, and I Am Diosa.
Christine: Yes you are.
Kate: Thank you friend.
Christine: Thank you my love.
Kate: (music) That conversation really warmed my soul and I hope you’re feeling that same warmth inside you. Christine’s new book is called I am Diosa. You can find more information about that wherever you buy your books or you could go to Iamdiosabook.com. To find more about Christine go to ChristineG.tv. She does retreats, coaching and all sorts of other things. You can also find her on Instagram @cosmicchristine. I think I mentioned that she has been on the show before so if you want more Christine right now, go and download episode 102 of Here to Thrive. She also mentioned Jewish mysticism in this episode, which I personally am mesmerized by. You can listen to the episode we have with Monica Berg where she’s diving more into Jewish mysticism also on this podcast, and that is episode 127. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for being back with me. My next guest it will be talking about technology addiction and hey, I recorded this one before Coronavirus, but in reality holy moly I’m pretty sure that technology addiction has probably only skyrocketed during the lockdown and this strange period in our lives, so that will be the next episode for you’re after I have released one on toxic positivity so stay tuned for all of the goodness to come over the coming months. Here to Thrive is back, and it’s wonderful to be back in your earbuds with you. As I mentioned in the season update, it means so very much when you take the time to leave a rating or review. I notice them all and it is what helps Here to Thrive and be seen by others, and thank you for sharing Here to Thrive with your friends. it means so much to know that we can spread the light and love just a little bit further. Until next time beautiful people it’s keep thriving.