Below is a transcript of the episode as generated by Otter.ai. (*please note, this transcript has only been edited to put in line breaks for easier readability and may contain errors where a word or phrase got lost in transcription.)
[0:13] Finding Light in Personal Transformation and Remembering Wonder
Aloha and welcome to Your Heart magic and illuminating space where psychology spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, Dr. BethAnne Kapansky. Wright, the clinical psychologist with a mystic mind.
Aloha everyone. Welcome to Your Heart magic. This is Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright. And today we are doing the podcast on talk storytime. And talk storytime is a new series that I decided to start a while back where I will be sharing some of my writing and telling more of the story behind it and what inspired it.
And our theme today is very much focused on hidden lights and finding the light and life's challenges. And finding that liquid gold that we can often discover when we are forced to dig a little deeper than the surface and do our inner work and really find the gems and the jewels and the lessons that can come from life. Sometimes finding a higher perspective doesn't always come easy, we have to reach for it.
And we have to be willing to like really get our hands dirty and our feet dirty and like be in the mud for a while before we're able to find the ingredients for transformation that allow us to transform or transmute challenge and to something beautiful or something light. So all of the writing today is inspired by some aspect of light and personal transformation.
So with that, let's just dive right in this first piece, it's not published. So whoever hears this will be the first Who's ever heard these words. And it's called a few good lights. And I'm just going to read it. And then after I've read it, I will kind of dial you in to where I was at when I wrote it and how I think this might apply to us now.
[2:31] Selected Reading 1: A Few Good Lights
A few good lights. Sometimes I worry that I've lost the magic. But then I reflect that you can't lose the magic. Some things always exist. love, beauty, magic. It's just our sense of connectedness to them that can wax and wane based on things like circumstance, or stress or perception.
When I remember that I know I haven't lost the magic at all. But what I do feel I sometimes forget, is to never lose my sense of wonder for the world. To always work on tending to the part of myself that desires astonishment, and who listens for the voices amidst the trees and still delights at Bright bouquets of flowers at the market. It occurs to me that the effects of stress tamper with our innate connection to the magic. However, we experience magic in our lives.
Whether that's through tapping into childhood delight, it's simple pleasures are always keeping a little space to believe there is so much more going on behind the scenes than we can see. And that miracles happen daily when we look for them. I don't like the jaded quality I sometimes feel, even as I understand aspects of it and know its existence is born from chasing a dream. And learning that living our dreams can look so much differently than we imagined. Especially as those dreams intersect with the real life challenges happening in our world.
We forget sometimes we're not living in a vacuum, untouched by what is happening around us. We are part of a greater web of interconnection and collective systems and energies that intersect with our experiences and creativities. I am also finding that the bigger the dream, the more opposition you can get, especially if your dream is invested and the creation of the light.
Not all forces in this place are benign. And often the more you are trying to stand strong. Put your stake in the ground and state your case for love. The more the darkness pushes back. Not everybody and everything can stand the sight. When our Sun shines and brightness and beauty. It is enough to make you Want to give up sometimes to live quietly and unassumingly and keep your scope in corner small.
And yet it strikes me that's not why so many of us have been called here at this time. We are here because humanity needs a few good lights. And we must learn to draw strength and inspiration from each other when our well feels dry. We all move in ebbs and flows. And chances are when you're feeling down, someone you look up to might be feeling up and have the capacity to help reinspire and reignite your light.
And when you're feeling up, someone else might be feeling down and here you are a lighthouse on a cloudy moonless night, helping remind them to stay in their hearts, and carry on with creative courage and kindness. Somewhere and that mix of ebbs and flows. And being both the inspired and the Inspirer.
We might realize that our innate connection to magic is ever flowing, ever, unfolding, ever waiting to remind us that for every hard edge that exists in this place, limitless love and grace is always available as a protective covering, helping us remember that the miracle is us. It is our illumination, our integrity, and our refusal to give up on hope. We remember ourselves in these moments, beings of love, who are here to serve and the capacities we feel called helping rebuild the world a kinder place through each act of kindness, bravery, and light.
[6:47] Trauma, Resilience and the Power of Love
I wrote that piece on May 15 2023, I actually have the date written over I did send an unpublished manuscript that I'm slowly working my way through. And I wrote it about a week after we had been attacked by hunting dogs while out on a hiking trail with our dogs, Rosie and Frodo, I told the story of that back in the summer on the podcast, so I'm not going to go into it again.
I don't even remember what episode it's and but I do remember that I talked about it on here and kind of shared that we'd been through this trauma. Rosie, our dog took the brunt of it, you know, we were mostly cut up and scraped up and had bites on our hands, but nothing, nothing serious and serious injury kind of way. But the emotional injury was there. And I think the injury that it did to kind of my sense of what I call ordinary safety, meaning like you can go out into the world and just be like doing your own thing and you're fine, you're safe, like nothing's going to happen.
And we had, you know, gone out for fun that day on the trail and ended up having this like horrific thing happen. And then the fallout from that was was really ugly. And there was a real kind of refusal to take any responsibility. And, you know, we got blamed for it, which is really ironic. I mean, it was really sort of this ugly, and there was a lot of cover up going on. And it was a real ordeal.
And I was pretty traumatized at the time. And I really felt like my light was really tamped down upon, there are these times where it's hard to connect to our buoyancy. And I think we feel like our candle is going out or somebody took like a candle snuffer like a acolyte used to do you know back in Methodist church and I was a kid they would, you know, kind of light the candles and at the end, they would sniff them out with the whatever the sniffers are called.
And that's how I felt really pressed down upon and really feeling the effects in my body as well and having the somatic response of feeling very kind of dull, and shocked and almost frozen. And so I wrote this about a week later, just reflecting on not only that experience, but there's been a whole string of things for us in the last 567 years, I've often said that moving to Kauai, in many ways has been like this beautiful dream.
[9:22] Finding Magic Even With Life's Challenges
And you know, we kind of moved to what people think of as paradise. And, you know, I personally have passed more trauma, hardship and struggle over here and more like crazy things happen like that traumatic things happen than at any other point in my life, and they've happened in more of a condensed period of time.
And so something that I really work hard at is fighting for my light, and it doesn't always come right away. I am not a spiritual bypasser I really believe in you have to truly feel it in order to reveal it and in order to heal it. And so we have to feel our feelings. As we have to work through what's there, we have to not be afraid to turn on the lights, and those dark spaces inside of ourselves and do a little bit of shadow dancing and deep sea diving and die for the light sometimes and really go through the wreckage of ourselves in order to find it.
But one of my processes when I am diving for the light is to write about it. And in my writing, use my voice to reclaim my light to reclaim like, this is what I'm here to be about. And I think I was having this moment when I wrote that where I felt like, some part of me was like, Oh, my gosh, I just want to give up and kind of go planned into my quiet corner, and not put my work out there in any capacity and just be like, very unassuming and make no waves.
And it was this reminder of okay, well, that's not really what any of us are here for, you know, of course, if we had been through something, there are times that we need to be in recovery. That's not what I'm talking about here. You know, in those times that we need to, like, turn inwards, or be still or be protective, I'm 100%. Behind that when we need that for our process. And that's very necessary at times. But it was more this like, after I've had that that cocooning, like, I'm not here to stay in hibernation and stay in that cocoon, I'm here to use my voice, and to teach about heart wisdom and connect with people.
And I'm here to write words of light, and to teach on authenticity, and being in our hearts and trying to be our best expression of self. That's why I'm here. That's the work I'm called to do. And throw in some magic and spirit in the process of that and have a little bit of joy and fun while doing it. So it was really this, like, you will not silence me, you know, we are here to be a few good lights. And the world needs a few good lights at this time. It needs your voice, your light and the capacity that you feel called to shine. And we forget that when we are kind of struck against or the darkness pushes back against us. And these kinds of things happen, that's the process and really kind of threatened to keep us down.
And that poem, I guess that prose piece was really me sort of putting my stake in the ground and being like, I'm not going to not believe because you know, we went through this thing like, I will find my way back to this. And the love and the beauty and the wonder of life. It's always there. It's never missing. It's just easy for us to forget sometimes. And it's hard for us to connect with, when we are in a challenging moment or in stress or in a circumstance like when you think about the word depression, outside of a clinical sense, and all the symptoms of what depression means.
I often think about like, what is it to like, press down upon something, you know, that is sort of like a pressing down of to me, that visual image of like being depressed, is really what it feels like when our light is snuffed. And again, during those times, we might not feel the magic and by magic, I mean our heart wisdom, our joy, our sense of wonder, our connection to nature, our sense of excitement over something innocent or small or delightful.
Our sense of interconnection with one another, our sense of generosity, whatever those things are our sense of synchronicity, and being open to the Divine and universal mysteries and our relationship with spirit. All of that's the magic. And it's always there, even if we're not able to connect with it. And then remembering that we are part of that magic, our light is part of it. And how magical is it, that when we stay in our hearts, and we just stay committed to staying with ourselves and following our path.
Even when we get like chased down by a wild pack of dogs attacked and like run off the trail, we find our way back to the light because we are living heart based. That to me is very magical. It is the hearts capacity for endless love and reinvention and overcoming obstacle and challenge. And that is truly beautiful. So that is a few good lights. And whoever listened to this, you're the first to hear those words. So inspired by that.
The next poem that I'm going to read this one's a poem and it is from my poetry book Heliotrope Nights, Starlight for the mind and soul, and it's called Light chaser. And when we talk about this idea of looking for lights life's life I say that like six times, seven times fast.
When we talk about that idea, I feel like often when I'm writing poetry that is me looking for the light in life and trying to find beauty, through writing about nature or human relationships or observations about human being, writing about spiritual connection like all of that, to me is taking sort of these ethereal qualities and these magical qualities and these experiential qualities that bring us like wonder and joy and connection and trying to put it into the stanzas of words to convey something.
[15:41] Selected Reading 2: Light Chasers
So this is called Light chaser.
Sunset brings its own form of magic, bright light to fluorescent pink, effervescent orange to cool magenta, soft sweeps and hushed streaks that make me want to go run into the seam. Even as I'm grateful for the comfort and warmth of homes window.
I was born chasing the light, raising my hands to each rise and set, pulling in as much of the beauty as I can. This world can be so harsh, who doesn't need all the wonder they can garner.
Dusk comes for Twilight winks. It's dusty purples peddled roses, mov tip to use. And you remember that grace is found and the in betweens, those moments where life holds our hand, and succard Hush, taking us from one passage to the next, reminding us we are never alone and the grand jury at this place.
Evening now in all its exquisite, darkened dignity. The veil is kissed with whisper of diamond dust and laughing stars and quiet silhouettes.
We dream we hope we roam we know we lift our hands to the light as each new day grows. yellow to blue today too soft to set to black tonight, there is magic and the change.
If you know how to look and see in sight. I found myself 1000 times and that sky. I was born chasing the light.
It's funny, I am kind of laughing I was just remembering a story really spontaneously. That's the idea of talk story. I'm not prescriptive on what I'm going to say. But my mom told me I was like a really happy baby. And that I was kind of like this like ball of sunshine or something like that, which is really interesting, because my brother was like more moody. And so he'd be bawling in the morning when she'd get up and you know, already be in his crib, I guess cribbing his head off.
And I would be like happy and like giggling and joyful. And so maybe there is something about that I was just kind of born chasing the light. And one of my earliest memories is like throwing a fit because I was dressed and like brown quarter rose and like a plain shirt. And I was like I want to wear rainbows. I want to wear something pretty, you know, this is like I was three years old or something like that. So I've always had this part of me that is really in love with not only bright colors, but just kind of feels driven to seek joy.
But I wrote that particular poem in December of 2015. I believe it was 2015. And it was right around Solstice and Alaska. And if you are an Alaskan, then you know what I'm talking about with the light this time of year. If you're not an Alaskan, then what I can share with you is that it is a thing to live in Alaska. And I suppose in any state that's like really far north or any country across the globe. But for Alaskans, there is such a lack of light as we near Winter Solstice. I just said we even though I live in Hawaii, no, I guess forever and Alaska and girl at heart can take the girl out of Alaska, but you'll never never take Alaska from my heart.
And this time of year, it's rough. You know, a lot of times the sun doesn't rise till I don't know 10 3011 It sets to 230 in the afternoon. Some places in Alaska further north is a lot less than that. I was in Anchorage. So this is my experience there. And even when it's in the sky, it doesn't get like as high as it does in the summer. So it's sort of like this half like sunset type light, but the light during that time of year, there are shades of pastels and reds and peaches and golds that I've never seen since except for December and Alaska.
You know there is something about this magical quality. And so at the time One of my ways of trying to keep my spirits up and just sort of do like good therapy with myself was to write about the light. And so I have a lot of poems where I wrote about the sunset or the sunrise or the stars or something like that. And I really took joy and what will the sunrise look like this morning like what color is the sky today, and for me, since I am like such a nature lover, even when I used to live back in Alaska, I always still got outside, I, you know, would just dress for it and take walks or run in the cold.
Even in the winter time go to there was this place called the I call it the duck pond, it's by the Loussac Library. And I, you know, walk around the duck pond, take the dog for a walk and do a lot of thinking do a lot of reflecting. And I would find myself under that sky. I think there's something about being out in a wide open space and just looking up and receiving from life receiving from the wisdom of the sky, receiving from the upper realms, just being in this receptive space, where we're able to recover and reclaim pieces of ourselves and just receive from something bigger than ourselves.
So that particular poem is one that's close to my heart, because I feel like it really embodies some of what was best for me about December and Alaska and something that I love to do with the light.
[21:29] Selected Reading 3: Sunshine In Winter
So speaking of December in Alaska, and kind of staying with our theme here, the next passage that I want to share is called sunshine in winter. And this is from lamentations of the sea 111 passages on grief, Love, Loss and letting go. And like the rest of these. I'm going to read the passage first and then I'll share with you a little bit more about the words behind it. Sunshine and winter, beautiful things can come from an immense space of darkness.
It is my observation that most people value the beautiful, the light, the sunshine, while missing the value that darkness has, and helping us break and grow and stretch in ways we never did before. There was a reason when I created a blog that I called it sunshine in winter, and not just sunshine.
For I found the winter part is just as important as the sunshine if you want to learn to shine bright in this world. Winter is our losses. Winter is our heartbreaks winter is what happens every time we put on our Charlie Brown go sheets, optimistically head out the door to go trick or treating, and life throw stones into our bag, leaving a shouting, no fair, I got a rock.
Winter is what we do with those rocks. The times we cry over them, grieve over them, suffer over them, and then learn all we can from them. Learn to face them, examine them tend to them, mine them for all they are worth, hold them up to the light than polish them. So they become diamonds of darkness that make our lights brighter. Winter is where I learned to carve out a holy space inside of myself, and fill it with the things that nourish my soul, love and bravery and finding the courage to do the right thing.
Every time my heart knew the right thing to do. Peace, connection, kindness, and the belief that we're all standing around the same sphere, looking at it from different points of views. And the some of that is called humanity. I fill that space with what is sacred and what is mundane.
Having learned that magic is found in the simplest of places, starting with our ability to take a breath and experience love. I feel that with the idea that life is a gift and we are here to experience, care for and turn to this gift and the ways that call to each of us. We are here to save her life and find our light, even in times of sorrow.
And every night I kneel in this holy space, light a candle for my brother and let the Love I hold towards him strengthened me remind me of what is most important in this world. Remind me what it means to be real. Winter is where we find the truth of our soul. Sunshine is simply what comes from that.
[24:43] Personal Growth and Resilience
Back in 2011 I believe it was 2012 I had a blog. I think it's it's still alive. It's not I'm not active on it anymore. And it was called sunshine in winter. And at the time, that was sort of my first foray into the writing world and publishing in a way that I was like sharing my voice actively on the internet for whoever happened to find it. And as the years went by the blog grew, and I cleaned it up a lot. And I stayed with it, probably until I move to Hawaii.
And from time to time, I have posted something new on there, I still keep it up. But I shifted a lot over to my own website at this point, but out of fondness for sunshine in winter, it's still out there. And I call it sunshine in winter, because at the time, you know, I was an Alaskan girl. And I started after my divorce back in 2011. And I was trying to find my voice again, and find myself and I was really learning that lesson that we have to learn how to make our own sunshine, that we can be inspired by other people, we can absolutely be inspired by the beauty around us.
But I was really learning that idea of happiness being an inside job, and learning to truly just take accountability for myself and realize that if I wanted a life of beauty, I was going to need to take responsibility for creating a lot of that. And I was going to need to develop mindsets and ways of looking at the world that helps support that I was going through a paradigm shift, sunshine and winter really represents the shift in paradigms from how I understood myself.
And then how I was understanding myself kind of post spiritual awakening, and post awakening of self and sort of this contrast of the before and after. And I have, again, a lot of fondness for it, because a lot of my lessons are in it. So that's what sunshine in winter initially was. And in this particular passage, this was written sometime in the immediate months after my brother Brent died in 2016. And so it was when written in winter, Alaska 2016, probably February of that year.
And I was really reflecting on like how much I hated what I was feeling I was in the middle of grief. And I had been through enough rites of passages of hardship and heartbreak at that point in time that I was like, Oh my gosh, the only way out of this is through, and I don't want to be in it in the first place.
You know, I been through some really painful things. So at that point, at least for me, at that point in time, they felt like painful enough. And it was sort of this like forced breaking open by life. And it just happened, right? Life happens we are here and people that we love pass on and not everybody, you know lives a full life and lives the whole lifespan, and Brent died at 39. And I was just really dealing with that reckoning of self and reconciling like, oh my gosh, this is awful, like anything but here but it was also unavoidable. Like I couldn't not feel what I was feeling. And so this was a reflection piece on how much beauty can sometimes come from even a very dark space.
And that sunshine like true sunshine, some of the most like joyful, optimistic, hopeful people I know if you really sit down with them and hear their story. They've got a story. It is not necessarily coming from a place of having a really great life and they've not experienced hardship. And they're just a natural optimist.
Like a lot of times like they learn those perspectives, through the fine art of choosing to find the good in life and choosing to find a better perspective and choosing to find something that helps them take the high road and help them rise above a challenge or learn the wisdom from a painful life lesson instead of descending into a place of perpetual self pity or negativity or victim mode or something like that. I think that's one of the reasons that so many of us are like a sucker for an inspirational story and somebody who overcomes the odds, these things happen all the time.
[29:17] Hope, Light and Inner Work After a Difficult Event
And we don't have to have a story that can be made into like a book or a movie. To be inspirational. I often think about how many unsung heroes are walking around. And maybe they're dealing with a mental health issue and it's one that's invisible, so nobody knows. And it's a struggle for them just to make it through every day but they are showing up and they are working on themselves and they are trying with all their might.
Or they've got something going on in their extended family or something going on with their children or some hidden story there. And they maybe keep it private because it doesn't feel appropriate to go around talk Thinking about it and again, keeps showing up. And they're secretly dealing with the struggles or challenges.
Like there's so many things that real people have, where they are just doing their work and continuing to show up and be one of the few good likes. And my observation of that is, is that winter really is where the growth is found. And that's such a tough, tough pill to swallow. I hate the fact that the things that have shaped me the most, and that have probably, like helped me grow and character and have tested my character.
And like really helped me realize what I made out of like, hate the fact sometimes, that it's all the stuff in life that was like really hard, all the mistakes, or things that were challenging, or things that didn't felt fair all those times where if you've seen Charlie Brown's Halloween, you know, he goes out trick or treating with all of his friends. And they're all like, I got chocolate, you know, I got gummy bears, or I got whatever. And he's like, I got a rock, you know, and Charlie Brown just keeps getting these bags of rocks. And it feels so incredibly unfair.
And sometimes we do get rocks. And I have absolutely found that many individuals on the path who are called to being a light worker or a healer are called into some capacity to truly serve, you know, humanity, oftentimes, they get a lot of rocks. And sometimes, there's not a good rhyme or reason why we got Iraq, there are some things we are not going to understand on this side of things.
And I just add those to the list of like things to talk about with spirit. After I'm done with this leg of my journey, and I'm on the other side, it's like my WTF spirit list. But there's often times that we get a rock and we are just kind of devastated because it isn't fair. And here we've got this bag of rocks, the dog attack that I started out talking about that was a rock that was just this, this awful thing to go through.
And it really was a setback to us emotionally, really hurt our dog, we're lucky that she lived through it. When I've told that story, I've said that it was both my knee and my husband and the two dogs and one of the dogs was off leash and ran away and kept kept himself safe. But you know, Rosie was getting attacked so badly. I really think if I wasn't there, because when I came upon the scene, Eric and Rosie were down on the ground, and there was dogs pile and both of them and it was it was bad. It was bad.
And we've often kind of said, If it hadn't been both of us out there that day and had just been one of us, I think that you know Rosie would be gone and whoever was with her would have been severely harmed. So it was a gift that we were there as a family but it was also a rock. And it is often during having to search for the beauty, the light, what's good, even if the light is just ourself and we say well, I went through this awful thing and I did not give up on myself. That is often what allows us the growth and it allows us the wisdom and it ultimately helps us to shine brighter.
[33:20] Selected Reading 4: Lighthouses of Hope
I want to close today with one last piece it is from my book heliotrope night Starlight for the mind and soul you had a couple of those to share from here today. And this feels like a beautiful way to kind of bring things full circle for talk storytime today where we're talking about a few good lights, lighthouses of hope when I get discouraged about the world.
When I pull up a news feed of angry words and angry fist and angry faces. Feel my mind, fill in clutter with all the vast chatter that makes me want to fix everything all at once. Even as I know I can't fix any of it. Feel my energy leak for me in small blue pools of tears and translucent size of sad and a frenzied, spinning mind that won't get off the insatiable merry go round of anxious desperation.
When I get like this. I am reminded it is time to lay it down. Turn it off, let it go. Breathe, look up, shift-- shift my focus to all that is right and all that is joy. And all that is the distance I've come my repository of recollections and collections of good becoming my lighthouses of hope and the huge sweep of life's storms. They light my way with words of grace.
Keep walking. You haven't quit yet. Don't start now. Keep on with joy. There are still Much to be found. cry when you need and laugh like you must, for a laughter will always be the true magnetic compass that leads you out of the last forest of despair. Breathe, my dear when breathe, we are nothing without breath. Stop looking to the world to set your tone, you were never meant to be well-adjusted to a maladjusted system.
Instead, bring it back to the only world you can control the space inside your heart, be still be you be peace be real. And let the energy of love flow from there.
That was written in the fall of 2017. Not super long after the wait 2016 because I wrote it not that long after the 2016 election when I was just observing not only the frenzy and the world, but the hatred and division and so much of the fallout that was happening. And again, as always writing for me is this like ride thread that kind of helps me find my way back to what is real and what is true.
And then anchors me into grounded wisdom. And I think that is what it is to be a lighthouse of hope. It doesn't mean we have all the answers. It doesn't mean we don't feel the hard things or do our inner work or go through the same challenges that everybody else is going through. But it means that we find a way to continue to cultivate the well of hope and light inside of ourselves to be in our hearts, to draw on inspiration from each other when we're in need. And we need reignition of our light and a little bit of kindling to stay in our spiritual connection. And to never, ever give up on ourselves. Never give up on our journeys and never give up on hope.
[37:04] Coming Up Next Week
All right, thank you so much for joining me today for talk storytime on your heart magic. We have some fun episodes coming up before the end of the year, we will be finishing the year at least with another archetype of the Tarot. We'll be talking about the hermit. We will be doing a Energy Update and I'm going to do a little bit of a Akashic roundup and kind of talk about the Akashic records.
As we get ready to move into 2024 and sort of a reflection on what do they say about 2023? Where are we now and what's coming for us and I will be doing at least one more talk storytime that might be a little bit around like Solstice holiday themed. So I don't know in what order all those are coming. But that's the lineup through the end of the year. Lots of good things to look forward to thank you so much for joining me today. Have an astonishing week. And be well. Be Love, be you and be magic.
You've been listening to your heart magic with Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright. Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your life