Intro/Outro Music : 0:13

Aloha and welcome to your Heart Magic, an illuminating space where psychology, spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, Dr Bethann Kopansky-Wright, the clinical psychologist with a mystic mind. Aloha, everybody.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 0:35

Welcome to your Heart Magic. This is Dr Bethann Kopansky-Wright and I am choosing today to take a break from the archetype of the tarot series that I was going to do. We were going to be talking about judgment in today's podcast and I wanted to do a different episode instead because my book launched today. I am making this podcast on Tuesday, november 19th, a couple days before it will drop on Thursday, and my book came out and in the busyness of life this last season, I have mentioned my book on the podcast. I've done a little bit of sharing and my business pages and all of that, but it has been one thing in the middle of all of this chaos and busyness that's been going on not only in my life but in the collective around me, and so I thought, take your own advice today and just have a moment of stillness and gratitude and share in this episode what this book means to you and take a moment and appreciate it. Don't let this moment pass you by where you blow over it and do the podcast as planned and drop it right at the end that oh, ps, my book is out. Instead, take a moment to focus and share a little bit more from the heart, and I think that this speaks to just something that I try and live by, which is the fact that life is constantly evolving around us. There are always things going on, and I really think we have to keep teaching ourselves and training ourselves to find ways to slow down and appreciate and be grateful in a moment and not let a moment pass us by, and so I'm choosing to share this moment with you today.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 2:27

On this day after the book came out and, of course, the launch has been so imperfect it always is I found out that there are some shipping issues to Hawaii with one of the places that's selling it, and it is a really busy week. I'm coming off of a weekend where I was the choreographer for SpongeBob, the Musical on Kauai, and our show opened this past weekend, which was amazing to see. It also means that the week before, I've been at the theater every night. I was there every day over the weekend, and so I kind of launched into this week without any extra time under my belt, and I was laughing to myself today because I thought, oh, this is just life, isn't it? It's messy and it's complicated, and we make our best laid plans and we expect or want something to work out a certain way and we envision it, and then life just kind of keeps lifing and we, instead of having it work out according to our expectations, we surrender to the greater flow. So I'm surrendering to the chaos this week and not quite having things be as perfectly lined up as I wanted, and just learning to go with the flow on all of it. And I thought what was so perfect about sharing that little backdrop, that tiny vignette of a slice of where my life is at right now, is. I think it really speaks to the heart of Small Pearls.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 3:57

Big Wisdom 365 Reflections on the Heart of being Human, because the book itself is a wisdom book. Each passage, each reflection is somewhere between like half a page to a page and a half. They're pretty short. It's meant to be something that if somebody only had less than five minutes to read something, this could be it, and they might pick a passage randomly and just flip the book open and say, lead me to whatever I need today, or maybe find a chapter, a section that speaks to a theme in their life and just go in order or read whatever calls to them. That was the whole idea behind it.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 4:38

But the book itself is on the imperfection of being human and it's about taking the messiness of life and finding the gold and finding the moments in that and finding what is sacred about things not necessarily lining up as we expected. But when things don't line up, what happens? It kind of creates some jagged edges and some cracks in the timeline that we expected, but in those cracks there is treasures there, there's gold there, there is the light, the proverbial light that shines through in the cracks, and it's learning to train our eyes to notice those moments in life and to notice the beauty and the imperfection and to notice the gifts that come when life does what life does and teaches us that, though we are in many ways in charge of our own path and there are absolutely things we can control, we are also asked to continually surrender to the path and surrender to the flow of life. And somewhere, at that intersection of where life is happening and we are happening, a relationship is formed. And when we open ourselves up to our heart, wisdom and to the transpersonal, to the numinous, in our relationship with the energetic world, the spiritual world around us, that adds another dimension and in that alchemy we create, that adds another dimension and in that alchemy we create and we work with those ingredients to weave them and to create and make meaning of our path the best we know how.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 6:13

And ultimately, that is what every passage in Small Wisdom, big Pearl, speaks to. It's some aspect of how do we understand our journey, how do we understand what we bring to the table and what is at our disposal, how do we feel empowered to work with our heart, to be more authentic, to recognize the gifts and talents that we have to learn to see, gifts and talents that we might not even give ourselves credit for, but we have resourcefulness or cleverness or resilience, or something that we're so used to. We haven't even put a label to it, and so we don't see it as a gift that we have. We dismiss it, and yet it's part of our abundance. How do we work with that? And then, how do we take those things and intersect with what's happening with the world around us? What does that mean for our relationships? How do we dance with life? How do we be both a commander on our path and point ourselves in the direction we want to go, and the one that is following and being led by the path before us?

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 7:18

And so the book has 12 different sections. There's 365 passages. I wrote it with the idea that it doesn't necessarily need to be a day-by-day book that takes one through a calendar year, but it could be if somebody wanted to use it that way. And as I was putting all these passages together, I didn't originally start out with the idea to make a 365-page book. The book actually originated from a Word document that I had where, years ago, when I first started writing, before I had any kind of a venue to really share my voice on.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 7:57

I think even before I started my blog, I just decided to start sharing posts on social media, and this is back in the day before social media had turned into what it was now. It felt a little bit more organic and authentic and there wasn't as much inspirational content as there is now, and so it felt a little bit novel to share these deep thoughts and these wisdom reflections, and people started really connecting with them in my immediate circle and I was drawing on my experiences as a psychologist. I was drawing on my experiences going through the life stage that I was at I was recently divorced and really following my true self and following the path of the heart and learning a lot about love and spirit and love the heart's way and relationships and authenticity and coming to life in a new way, going through a spiritual awakening in my early 30s, and so I had this rich treasure trove of experiences to draw on and write about and a unique perspective. We each have a unique perspective and vantage point on life and a slightly different twist of wisdom that we bring to the table, and for me, mine was my who I am as a person, my experience base and then everything I'd learned as a psychologist. And so, as I wrote, I eventually started to put all of those things into a Word document and over time I remember I had a lot of people saying this would make a beautiful coffee table book or a wisdom book or affirmation book, and those were nice things to hear. I didn't really do much with it and I went on with my life and was writing poetry and ended up putting poetry books out first and kind of tuck this word document away, and I think at one point I even tried to cross-check the word document with my memory timeline on Facebook and make sure that I cut and pasted anything that I ever wrote that felt like it was at all wise and that it was in that document.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 10:04

And then a lot of years went by, where I don't even know it was buried in the recesses of my computer. And what happened was this past January in January of 2024, I was going through old Word documents and doing a search and looking in like old files on my current computer that said things like old computer. It was data and Word documents transferred from the computers that came before this one and I stumbled on this document and it was called Transformation Tuesdays, and Transformation Tuesdays is what I used to kind of call these kinds of posts. I did on Facebook. That's where I had started writing them.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 10:47

It was this idea that on a Tuesday I would write something transformational and of course that metamorphed into all sorts of days of the week, but I called the document Transformation Tuesdays and I thought, oh, what is this? And I opened it up and there's about 300 pages worth of these reflections and they'd been cultivated from not just those posts, but I cut and pasted things from my blog, evaded from not just those posts, but I'd cut and pasted things from my blog. I had some half-formed writing in there from different things that eventually made their way into books. And that is when this idea began to spark in me, because I was going through something in my life at the time and as I was looking through these passages, one of them really helped me. I don't even remember writing it, with some reflection on relationships that I must have written years ago, but it helped me with something I was going through at the time and I thought this might be the time, bethann, that you take this and you do something with it. And so that was last January, and over the course of the last 11 months I allowed that seed to kind of blossom into this intention of I'm going to make this into a book and, of course, the beginning of that dream and having that idea to this completion of publication.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 12:05

A lot changed over time. I drew on a lot of other pieces and previous publications to round it out to this 365-day reflection. Since I had so many passages, that was just this idea that popped in my mind somewhere that was perhaps divinely guided make this into a 365-passage book. And as I was doing that, I began to think, well, how do I divide this up with so many passages? And I thought, well, just mimic the calendar, the 12-month calendar, and come up with 12 sections. And so there's these 12 sections that range from following our hearts and authenticity to how do we speak our truth. There's a section on relationships and love, a section on self-love and self-trust in our relationship with ourself. There's a section on grief and loss, one on finding hope and happiness and creativity and meaning. There is one on navigating challenges and life transitions.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 13:09

So there's all sorts of ideas in this book and, as I said, the origins of it to where it's at now changed quite a bit. But all of it goes back to me sitting down in these quiet moments in my life and taking the messiness, the disruption of life, the moments where I thought, boy, that didn't go the way I played it in my head, what just happened here, and trying to make sense out of them through words and doing my process work and then shaping those into pieces of writing that help give a framework to work with life's complexities and life's nuances and life's gray areas and to find a way to kind of map out these questions that I had for my own path, that I discovered through my work. A lot of other humans are asking as well there's a lot of relatable themes in here, and how do we take these questions that we have about how to live well, how to find happiness, how to be our true self, how to be in an authentic relationship with those around us, with our hearts, with our spirituality? How do we make meaning out of things that feel meaningless? How do we find the light in grief? How do we find our way through grief? Those are my questions, and I know there are a lot of questions that other people have on their hearts as well, and so the act of writing, if not the answer to the questions, how I was making meaning of those questions and finding some it I haven't seen it yet.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 14:43

I've still yet to receive my copy. I hopped online today and ordered a hardback copy from Barnes Noble that I am eagerly awaiting, and, of course, I'll get some copies from the publisher. They just haven't shown up yet. So I am just so delighted, though, that it's out and it's flowing, and despite the fact that it is a very busy day in the middle of a busy season and what feels like a kind of a quiet, subdued launch, because life is just so busy right now and I personally feel, post-election that people's attention is pretty distracted right now, and so it's not necessarily the time to announce this big thing.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 15:32

This book came out anyways, and in so many ways, I feel like that is so perfect for the intention behind this book and the idea that life is imperfect and we make the best of what we have to work with and we ascribe the meaning. We are the ones, ultimately, who decide what something means to us. I'm the one who can either attach a meaning to the circumstances around this book releasing and make it into something where I could tell some story about how nothing went right and this and that, or I can attach a meaning of beauty, which is what I'm choosing to do, and say how perfect and how fitting that, in this complex stream of life, this book entered into the complexity and is a parallel example of what it is to move our energy forward despite life's chaos and to take steps towards our dreams, even when life isn't exactly going the way that we thought it would. But we still move our energy in a way that takes steps towards what is in our heart. And so, with that, I want to share a passage today to top off the end of this podcast. It's from the book and it's called the Things Dreams have to Teach Us, and I feel this just speaks beautifully to the heart of Small Pearls, big Wisdom, and to the heart of what I've been learning on my personal journey.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 17:04

If you stay with a dream long enough, you will begin to find that there is an incredible difference between contemplating a dream and actually living the dream. Like anything else, dreams often look very different in the living than in the dreaming. So, like any truth we find in dream time, they require a bit of shape-shifting and adaptability in order to make sense of them. They require a great deal of surrender, trust and flexibility. They ask the dreamer to hold on to the essence of the dream while continually letting go of exactly how the dream will shape itself and what the final product will look like. They require faith and fortitude, as well as continually coming back to a still space inside of ourselves and checking to make sure that our dream still feels authentic to our current understanding of ourselves. Often we are asked to release a fantasy of how we thought something might materialize so we can embrace what is presenting itself to us and find the ingredients for our dreams within the scope of our lives.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 18:16

Big dreams are not for those who shy away or turn back or give up easily. They are for the wild hearted and those who dare to adventure into soul terrain and keep the faith when the path goes rocky and dark. Our dreams are vital. They move, inspire and spur us to push beyond how we imagined ourselves. Though some dreams are grand and inspire us to lofty ideals, dreams don't have to be grand to change an individual's life. Sometimes they are humble in origin a space to call our own, more joy in our lives, a heart that feels more uncluttered and free. A dream will dance with you and not always reveal its full self to you when you begin to follow its threads, but I have found that over time, if we allow ourselves to become part of the interweaving of our dreams, they have a way of taking on a life of their own and create something brighter and better than even we could have imagined. These are the lessons we begin to learn when we dare to make the leap from dreaming our dreams to choosing to live and become our dreams.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 19:34

If I could travel back to 2012, when I first started writing and I wondered is this, am I saying anything worthwhile? And I had all these questions about my journey and my heart and my path and my future as a writer, and all of that I would just tell myself. Keep dreaming your dreams and keep writing your dreams. And no, they're not going to look anything like how you thought they would. They sort of will, but they sort of won't. The essence will be the same, but the form will look very different than what you might be envisioning now, because your life is going to change and your life will look different.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 20:11

But believe in what's in your heart and write your story and write your truth, and know that someday, even though it might be polished up, the original pieces of this truth, like you, will publish them. You will do something with them. They will travel beyond this little room that you're in right now, where you're just on your laptop or in your journal, writing your heart out and trying to make sense of your life. This is going to grow bigger than you, and so do not give up on yourself, and that is what I would share with any of you today. No matter what your dreams are, no matter where you're at in life, do not give up on yourself. Stay with yourself. Thank your younger self for traveling to where you are right now and for helping you get there. Bless your future self and trust that your future self knows what you need to keep going on the path. And these questions that you have in your heart your future self knows the answer to, and they are doing a beautiful job navigating things from the future point of view, and so you are free to be in the present and to be in this moment and to be grateful and mindful of wherever you find yourself in life.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 21:23

Thank you so much for joining me today and for pausing and having a moment of celebration with me. It is a pleasure to share that Small Pearls Big Wisdom is officially out. You can find it on Barnes, noble, amazon, thrift Books and other major retailers online. I will be back next week and we will continue our archetype of the tarot series then and talk about what is card judgment and the tarot deck, what does that archetype mean? And in the meantime, have an amazing week. Thank you again for being here. Be well, be love, be you and be magic.

Intro/Outro Music : 22:09

You've been listening to your Heart Magic with dr bethan kapansky right tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your light.