AWARENOW
ISSUE 22
T H E AWA R E N E S S T I E S ™ O F F I C I A L M A G A Z I N E F O R C A U S E S
THE ROYALLY SPIRITUAL LIFE
SHAMAN DUREK & PRINCESS MÄRTHA
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
MERCY
WENDY MORGAN
THRIVE
KOBY STEVENS
THROUGH
CAROL ADES
PAUSE
KEVIN MONROE
STARDUST
LUKE GIALANELLA
NO CAPE REQUIRED
CRAIG GRAHAM
THE SCIENCE OF HOPE
KATHRYN GOETZKE
WHAT LIES BEYOND
PAUL S. ROGERS
THE ORIGIN EDITION R E T U R N
T O
T H E
B E G I N N I N G
SUICIDE IS A PREVENTABLE MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS. YO U C A N BE T H E O N E TO START THE CO N V ERSAT IO N . H F T D.O R G
THE ORIGIN EDITION
AwareNow™ is a monthly publication produced by Awareness Ties™ in partnership with Issuu™. Awareness Ties™ is the ‘Official Symbol of Support for Causes’. Our mission is to support causes by elevating awareness and providing sustainable resources for positive social impact. Through our AwareNow Magazine, Podcast & Talk Show, we raise awareness for causes and support for nonprofits one story at a time.
06 SEEKING ORIGIN
THI NGUYEN
70 LIFE GOES ON
TEAM BERTHO
120 NEVER ALONE
JOEL CARTNER
12 WHAT LIES BEYOND
PAUL S. ROGERS
74 DISRUPTIVE INVESTING
124 CONSCIOUS FEELING
16 THE PRINCESS LIFE
78 SWEET POTATO FRIES
126 A PIECE OF HEAVEN
24 THE SHAMAN LIFE
80 STORYTELLING
132 HOW TO HELP
32 THE ROYALLY SPIRITUAL LIFE
84 PAUSE
136 THE STREET SCHOOL
44 STARDUST
92 HOMEWORK
140 CREATOR’S CALLING
CHIEF OGIMAA
46 MERCY
96 LITTLE BLACK BOOK
144 BROKEN SYSTEMS
52 INTO THE ORIGIN
100 DEAR CORPORATE AMERICA
KERRY MARTIN
146 BEHIND THE LENS
54 THROUGH
CAROL ADES
110 NO SOCKS POLICY
SAGE GALLON
160 THE SCIENCE OF HOPE
KATHRYN GOETZKE
60 THRIVE
112 FOLLOW THE GOOSEBUMPS
164 CORPORATION EDUCATION
66 NO CAPE REQUIRED
116 WORTH EMULATING
SAHIL & SAGAR CHOPRA/TANITH HARDING
PRINCESS MÄRTHA
CARLY HARRIS/BTWF
SHAMAN DUREK
ELIZABETH BLAKE-THOMAS
SHAMAN DUREK & PRINCESS MÄRTHA
KEVIN MONROE
SONJA MONTIEL
LUKE GIALANELLA
WENDY MORGAN
ARIELLE CAPUTO
ARIYA/JACK MCGUIRE
KOBY STEVENS
NICK BOTTINI
CRAIG GRAHAM
AJAY DAHIYA
HEAVEN/EDDIE DONALDSON
LEX GILLETTE
HASAN & SHIREEN ZAFAR/TANITH HARDING
MATTHEW WALZER
KNEKT/AWARENESS TIES
MAX LIEBERMAN
LORI BUTIERRIES
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Always aware. Always free.
3
AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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or·i·gin: (noun)
the point or place where something begins, arises, or is derived
After celebrating Thanksgiving, we now celebrate our beginnings and how thankful we are for our origins. Origin is defined as the point or place where something starts. More than where it ‘starts’, I feel it’s where we rise from and the situations and circumstances where we begin to grow whether it be spiritual, physical or metaphysical, with our ability to adapt and to start from any stage a new mile of our journey. Each milestone is a new starting point and a new place to arise from. I would like to think that each day has the ability to be our ‘origin’ where we can confidently choose to course correct and redirect as needed, celebrating the magic of the moment. Every day serves as an origin for a new journey to begin and a new chapter to start. Embracing this opportunity without hesitation we commit to our creed and say,
“We will no longer ask for permission to change the world.” We invite you to join us in this mission as we work to raise awareness one story at a time. We’re more than an organization or a community, we are a tribe… an ‘Awareness Tribe’. Glad to have you here.
ALLIÉ McGUIRE
Editor In Chief & Co-Founder of Awareness Ties
Allié is a Taurus. She started her career in performance poetry, then switched gears to wine where she made a name for herself as an online wine personality and content producer. She then focused on original content production under her own label The Allié Way™ before marrying the love of her life (Jack) and switching gears yet again to a pursue a higher calling to raise awareness and funds for causes with Awareness Ties™.
JACK McGUIRE
Production Manager & Co-Founder of Awareness Ties
Jack is a Gemini. He got his start in the Navy before his acting and modeling career. Jack then got into hospitality, focusing on excellence in service and efficiency in operations and management. After establishing himself with years of experience in the F&B industry, he sought to establish something different… something that would allow him to serve others in a greater way. With his wife (Allié), Awareness Ties™ was born.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in AwareNow are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Awareness Ties. Any content provided by our columnists or interviewees is of their opinion and not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, political group, organization, company, or individual. In fact, its intent is not to vilify anyone or anything. Its intent is to make you think. www.IamAwareNow.com
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@AWARENESSTIES
@AWARENESSTIES 5
AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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At times I feel lost not fully understanding my own history. THI NGUYEN
NONPROFIT CONSULTANT, ENTREPRENEUR & PHILANTHROPIST 6
AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘GO GREEN DRESS’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY THI NGUYEN
SEEKING ORIGIN
SEARCHING FOR MISSING PAGES OF THE PAST With the one chapter comes the beginning of another…
A country at war for thousands of years, Vietnam located in Southeast Asia is situated along the China Sea bordering Cambodia, Laos and China. With rich resources and a prime location for import/export, the country has been targeted for invasion from many who want control of its fruitful land.
Born in Vietnam, I entered the world during a time of rebuilding into a fishing town called Da Nang. Part of Central Vietnam's thriving beach coastline, this city was once a mecca for Vietnamese citizens fleeing in search of freedom and a better life from a war torn country. Now, Da Nang is a booming city, with skyscrapers, golf courses and a hot tourist destination.
Vietnam is experiencing one of the longest periods of peace in history after war ravaged the country destroying its luscious land and killing millions. Although remnants of the war era still remain within the fabric of society through the immersion of language, food, architecture and lifestyle; Vietnam is finally able to thrive on its own.
However, much was still lost during that period, with some including myself still working on piecing together our history and gathering information to write our own story. A story lost through time, through fear, through experience and wanting to forget the trauma that war has bestowed on my parents, grandparents and ancestors. While my friends here in America have a family tree dating as far back as the turn of the century, I barely can piece together my origin after my grandparents.
At times I feel lost not fully understanding my own history, knowing the details of my ancestors or how they passed away, how long they lived and how many kids they had. Missing this information feels like you are missing a part of yourself and who you are. Not being able to understand your family medical history and not being able to prepare yourself through medical intervention for a long healthy life for the future of your own family is difficult to swallow.
How could I have any record of my medical history when I barely have a record of my birth certificate? Due to the remnants of war, my birth probably occurred at home versus in an actual hospital and proper documentation wasn't done. If it was, we lost it while fleeing the country in the middle of the night on a little fishing boat for 8 packed with 30 plus individuals.
I still question why my family had to split up (my father and two older sisters leaving first and my mom and I years later) during our escape. Why is it that we couldn't leave as a family and how, during a time when communication meant writing letters, were we able to reunite in America? I think about how life was like for my mom to escape with an infant and make sure I was safe for the long treacherous journey out at sea. From the pirates wanting to attack our boat to the island we landed on due to the boat breaking down and eventually being rescued and taken to the refugee camp in Hong Kong, it is a story that many can relate to but can’t really bring to light. I wondered how many days, months and years this whole process took before we were reunited with my sisters and father. What prayers were repeated? What atrocities were witnessed? How many lives perished during this journey?
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AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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THI NGUYEN
NONPROFIT CONSULTANT, ENTREPRENEUR & PHILANTHROPIST 8
AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
THI NGUYEN
NONPROFIT CONSULTANT, ENTREPRENEUR & PHILANTHROPIST 9
AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
…perhaps I can find the missing puzzle pieces of my life by helping others find theirs. THI NGUYEN
NONPROFIT CONSULTANT, ENTREPRENEUR & PHILANTHROPIST 10 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“Interesting that the end of something for someone could be the beginning for someone else.”
And yet, the stories when shared change with time. After all, memory is fickle. If not documented properly, the story will continue to morph and transform, mixing reality with fantasy and what once was is becoming only what may have been.
Through the trauma of war, it is extremely difficult for my parents to share the details of their past. Due to this lack of storytelling, I have to slowly piece together my own story and find a way to locate the missing pieces. Perhaps due to my experiences I feel within my core a need to help others, to be kind, to give back what I received during my arrival in this foreign land and to help others feel whole again in their quest for happiness.
Through these small acts of kindness, perhaps I can find the missing puzzle pieces of my life by helping others find there's. Sometimes I wonder if it is a coincidence that my birthday lands on World Kindness Day, or perhaps the universe just aligns me to my calling.
Although the memory of the first five years of my life is solely based on the recounts of my loved ones, I do recall receiving free clothes and the utter happiness I experienced from picking out a garment someone else discarded. To me it was the greatest gift of all. Perhaps this euphoria is what I hold onto and why I thoroughly enjoy thrift shopping and finding that gem in the rough. Hence the birth of the #GoGreenDress and its magical discovery in a little buy, sell & trade shop. I truly believe that someone's trash can be another's treasure and hope that you'll eventually find that treasure you are seeking for in your life.
Interesting that the end of something for someone could be the beginning for someone else. This dress has been the beginning for me to share my own story, my journey, my travels and a way to capture the audience through a visual storyboard. May you find your origin and share it with the world. ∎
Follow along with me on my adventures on Instagram at @gogreendress . And if you're in a giving mood during the season of giving please donate to my upcoming trek to climb Kilimanjaro benefitting a few organizations in Africa February 2022. Donations can be made via Venmo or PayPal (username simplicithi). Feel free to reach out if you would like to learn more ways to donate or if you have additional questions.
THI NGUYEN
Nonprofit Consultant, Entrepreneur & Philanthropist www.awarenessties.us/thi THI NGUYEN brings with her over 2 decades of non profit experience as a participant, advisor, board member, consultant, volunteer and research and development specialist. Her expertise combining technology to further advance the vision and mission for philanthropic causes has allowed her to serve as a trusted partner with many notable organizations large and small. Thi has experience working with organizations focusing on combating various global issues such as: human sex trafficking, homelessness, poverty, fair wages, global warming, malnutrition, gender equality, humanitarian assistance and human rights. She's currently developing an app to connect individuals and corporations to assist nonprofits in furthering their vision and mission.
11 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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We are all on our way back home. PAUL S. ROGERS
TRANSFORMATION EXPERT, AWARENESS HELLRAISER & PUBLIC SPEAKER 12 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘RELEASE THE GENIE’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY PAUL S. ROGERS
WHAT LIES BEYOND
A PERSONAL STORY OF CROSSING OVER AND BACK What lies beyond this life is something that has haunted humanity from the beginning. We have all come from “No thing” to “Now here” to return to “No thing.” Allow me to share my story with you, and what I can remember from my NDE (Near Death Experience) of what lies beyond.
My body had been broken to the extent that survival chances were no greater than 7%. I understand that I passed 4 times and that I was in a coma for 10 days and nights. For me, my life didn’t flash before my eyes and there was no huge light to walk into. Well, not as what most people think, as you will see….
It is dark. Ink black, but not the scary kind. It’s like a massive warm duvet over your body on those days you try to ignore the alarm clock between hitting the snooze button. Every moment under that duvet becomes the most precious and glorious before the next alarm.
There is an overwhelming sense of peace and love. A feeling of never-ending space, as normal physical bodies don’t exist here. I don’t feel alone; there are others also in this place. There is no need to worry as it feels like home.
I am so very tired and just want to enjoy the rest. It would be perfect if I didn’t keep being interrupted by these awful reoccurring dreams. They come in waves. One is approaching right now. It comes as a blinding, intense white light. It’s so bright it hurts my eyes. I try to scramble and hide, but I cannot escape and I am pulled into its blaze.
There is a deep panicked feeling that something is terribly wrong. My interface to the world is a small square screen with bright blue edges. It’s like holding an iPad really close to your face. The pain is so intense and radiant that it distorts and colours the picture, making it flicker like a badly tuned tv station. There are people, but I can’t clearly see or hear them. It’s so frustrating as I can’t move or speak myself. Everything moves in slow motion.
The dream passes and I am back in my thick darkness. The weight of pain and confinement has gone. The relief is tremendous. I feel extraordinarily happy, full of love, peace and joy.
There are other places the bright light took me to. One place was a space where, as far as you could see, in every direction, were endless intersections to other places. I visited a few of them. Unfortunately, the memories are really hard to hold onto.
Back in the darkness, I become aware of 3 male voices which seem to be getting louder. They appear as 3 soft yellow orbs. They have a warm trusting feel about them. They are talking about me, and it’s obvious that this is a conversation I shouldn’t be hearing.
13 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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AwareNow Podcast
WHAT LIES BEYOND
Written and Narrated by Paul S. Rogers
awarenow.us/podcast/what-lies-beyond SCAN TO LISTEN
The voices now address me, as they seemed to have reached a consensus; they tell me I have to go back into the light. The voices reassure me that they are there to help, and that I still have unfinished work to do and that I am never alone. Despite my protests, I notice that they are gently guiding me, as if being blown on a warm breeze in the direction of the bright light. I beg them to let me stay. I don’t want to go. It is painful, broken and I am terrified of it. All I want to do is rest. No more struggling or fighting.
Back through the light. It hasn’t got any better and my little iPad screen view of the world is still not working properly. I see my Mum and I think: “What is she doing here in my dream?”. I reach out between the bright blue edges of my little screen. I poke her. She is there. “Oh you’re real….”. I then realise with horror that if she is real, the nightmare is in fact the physical reality and the darkness is …
So began the journey from the safety of the dark to the challenging light. Let me share the gifts and lessons I have discovered. I have been allowed to remember and recount parts of my experience. It is my fond hope that my experience will help raise awareness that, despite our multiple and complicated journeys from and to the origin, the lessons learned will eventually make sense.
The 3 voices I heard I now believe were my Grandfathers. My “iPad” screen was so small because it was the life support machines that surrounded me. The edges of my screen were the reflected lights on the safety bars on the side of the bed. The medical profession has called my waking up a miracle. When I woke, something felt different in me. A burning desire to help others as best I could, and to finish whatever I am here to do. As a start, I channelled 5 self help books using a female guide who has helped me with my recovery and who I later named Kate Summers.
More importantly, I now know that pain does not exist beyond the physical reality. And you can visit there anytime you wish to. Lastly, what lies beyond is a loving peace and we are all on our way back home. ∎ PAUL S. ROGERS
Transformation Expert, Awareness Hellraiser & Public Speaker www.awarenessties.us/paul-rogers PAUL S. ROGERS is a keynote public speaking coach, “Adversity to hope, opportunity and prosperity. “ Transformation expert, awareness Hellraiser, life coach, Trauma TBI, CPTSD mentor, train crash and cancer survivor, public speaking coach, Podcast host “Release the Genie” & Best-selling author. His journey has taken him from from corporate leader to kitesurfer to teacher on first nations reserve to today. Paul’s goal is to inspire others to find their true purpose and passion.
14 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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SCAN TO
AD
I could actually speak my truth, and people would actually listen… PRINCESS MÄRTHA
PRINCESS OF NORWAY, ENTREPRENEUR & AGENT OF CHANGE Photo Credit: Victoria Kait 16 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH PRINCESS MÄRTHA
THE PRINCESS LIFE
PRINCESS MÄRTHA & HER PLATFORM TO EMPOWER A Princess who leads by example, empowering others simply by living her own truth, Princess Märtha Louise of Norway doesn’t bow to standard protocol or societal norms. Rather, she stands for what she believes, unafraid and unapologetic of her authentic self. As opposed to being defined by her title, she boldly defines the title in terms of her own as an agent for change.
Allié: Many little girls dream of being a Princess and dressing up in fancy gowns. Their dream, which was your reality, was very different from what you dreamed of. You hated getting dressed up and loved being outdoors. From the very beginning of you, did you spend more time being who you wanted to be or who you felt you needed to be? Or was there a balance in that?
Märtha: I think it changed a bit during my childhood and younger years. When I was a child, I was very free. I went to public schools like everybody else did. I was very outdoors-y. I played a lot with my brothers and his friends. I always dreamed... You know how you said that all children dream of being a Princess? One day their real parents will come and pick them up, and it's the king and queen, and they are Princesses and all that. I had the opposite dream - the dream that one day my real parents would come and they were dentists or teachers, for just a totally normal family situation. But I had a very free upbringing, in a way, because my parents have always let us be free as children
THE PRINCESS LIFE
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH PRINCESS MÄRTHA
17 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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I started opening up for my moment... more and more of my spirituality… PRINCESS MÄRTHA
PRINCESS OF NORWAY, ENTREPRENEUR & AGENT OF CHANGE Photo Credit: Victoria Kait 18 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“I felt this chasm between who I was supposed to be… who the Princess was out there and who I was here.”
Märtha: (continued) climbing trees, cycling, doing all the normal kids stuff that we do. But when we got older we had to be more in the public eye. From when I was born, I was in the public eye. So that's kind of been the limiting part of it where I had to present myself in a certain way and be a certain way. When I grew up, I thought everybody was like me, who saw things that nobody else saw, or who took in emotions from everybody else, or who knew where they had pain, or what had happened, or if they'd had a quarrel, or had an argument before they came and saw me or whatever... I thought everybody was like that. Obviously, they weren't. I learned that when I started school. I started feeling very different, not just because I was a Princess. I was different because of that, but also because I felt very lonely in that space of having that communication with spirit and taking in information that I didn't know where it was coming from and didn't know how to deal with.
Although I have many friends, I've always had many friends and been very social, I felt very lonely because of that. Through my teens, it became more apparent and I started being much more what other people expected me to be than being who I was. I had two states of mind. I was really, really happy and I was totally a pleaser for everybody around me, super happy. Everything was great. I loved everybody and had loads of friends... or I was really, really sad and had no idea why I was sad because I didn't have any of those emotions in between. I'd cut off all my emotions to fit in, to please everybody and to live up to everybody's expectations. I suddenly acknowledged and started seeing what I needed to grow up to and live up to. Also in that period, we started doing more and more official duties, and I had immense stage fright. My knees would chatter and shake like crazy. I wouldn't be able to go out. My heart was racing. My palms were sweating. It was horrible, and I had to do public speaking all the time because that was my role as a Princess and also being in the public eye, living up to a certain standard that wasn't me. I felt this chasm between who I was supposed to be… who the Princess was out there and who I was here. I never felt like I lived up to that as a person. I felt I wasn't good enough. So I tried to make this picture of everything so perfect out there, and of course that doesn't make anybody happy. That also started my search because I also started wondering why do I see all these things? Why do I know all these things? What is this? What is going on here?
My horses, because I was into horses from when I was eight, they helped me a lot in that process. With horses, you have this non-verbal conversation and communication both through your physical, with their reins, your seat and your legs, but also with this heart to heart communication that I really lacked with people. Being highly sensitive like am, I think for us, it's very important to have that heart to heart communication and not just that chitter chatter of everyday life that everybody has - that kind of superficial talk. It was very distancing for me. I also started distrusting people because, as soon as you say, "How are you?" People go, "Oh, I'm fine!" They raised their tone of their voice and all, and I'm like, "No, you're not fine." Why do you say that you're fine, when I can feel that you're angry or sad or all of these different emotions that you have? Why is the first thing you tell me a lie? So, I started really distrusting people because what else are they not saying when they're not saying that as a first thing? And so for me horses, because of that too, saved me because horses then as an animal, they don't lie to you. They're totally honest. They always meet you with love and they always look after you, no matter what and whoever you are. Having them in my life really made me come through that time. I started opening up for my moment... more and more of my spirituality, also through the horses and having that communication with them. I discovered having these gifts that I have and the powers I have and coming into more of owning those powers and standing up for who I really am. But that also resulted in breaking out of the traditional way of being a Princess. So, I was the first Princess to actually break out of the traditional way of being a Princess, not earning
19 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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…I am more who I am and can stand up for that. PRINCESS MÄRTHA
PRINCESS OF NORWAY, ENTREPRENEUR & AGENT OF CHANGE Photo Credit: Victoria Kait 20 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Märtha: (continued) money, getting money from the state you know, and doing your official duties... and that was what your life was about. I started a spiritual center in 2007, which was of course very criticized, because that's not what I'm supposed to do. I ran that center with energy readings and healings, and a touch method we developed for 12 years. I've written nine books on spirituality, on highly sensitive people, on how to come in contact with who you are and really come into your own and start listening to who you are, having communications with your angels that are around you all the time, doing healings, waking up to who you truly are instead of what people tell you to be... So I've done that for a long time. Having that balance and being older now, I am more who I am and can stand up for that. It is very balanced out. I'm an entrepreneur who has started five companies. It's a life that to me is very loving and fun to be part of. I also do my official work where I work with disabled people.
Allié: Spending a lot of the time at the stables as a young girl, you loved horses and were a competitive rider. Riding can be so freeing. What gait when riding made you feel most free? Walk, trot, canter or gallop? Why?
Märtha: Definitely gallup. A flat-out gallup preferably on a beach with the sun setting, huge waves breaking... a flat-out gallup. You have this part where the horse comes to certain speed, and they kind of go down. They go down and then they just shoot forward and it's just so amazing... to have the mane flowing in the wind, and you're just there with the horse - completely one. I love that oneness with the horse. Every moment I get where I have that oneness, where I have connection with the heart to heart with the horse is just incredible. It's such an amazing experience where you feel that you don't actually have to do anything with the horse. You can just think it, and they react. It's having that closeness of communication with an animal that's just incredible. To my second part, I did huge jumps; I was a show jumper. So I did the grand prix and the world cups and jumped the biggest jumps there are. Sometimes when I was riding those big jumps, it was also one of those times when you are totally in one with everything and time stops. And I was just like hanging in the top of this fence and everything just stood still. You had that moment where you were out of time, within time, but totally in the zone where nothing is apart from you in this horse. And you're part of everything. I've had that a few times when I've done that jump. You come really into that space, and then it doesn't really matter if it's walking or trotting or a cantor or a gallup. It's that connection with the horse and to have that, I think that's the most beautiful.
Allié: When it comes to ‘title’, there are pros and cons with every role we play in life. As a Princess, what is the biggest pro that has come with your title as a Princess? And the biggest con?
Märtha: The biggest pro is that I can actually make an impact... by just being me. Because I'm in the public eye, people see all the hardships I've gone through, and also that I've broken out of the box that I was supposed to be in. They can see that I've been brave in being me, which shouldn't actually be something you shouldn't be brave about because it should be totally natural. But in this world, it's not, unfortunately. I hope it will be someday. Just because I am a Princess, it makes other people dare to be themselves and to take that step too, to inspire other people to be more themselves. That, I think, is amazing and wonderful to be a part of. The cons are more the learning parts of being a Princess, which is basically the criticism you get all the time, which is a great learning arena I would say for both knowing how to set your boundaries. It's also learning... What part of me is letting this happen right now? What door am I opening for people to say that I'm no good? What door in me is still open for people to say that I'm not worthy of this or I shouldn't do this or whatever? It's a journey of exploring more of myself through all that criticism. Although it's really hard, it's also a gift. Like every teacher we have can be the most annoying sometimes.
Allié: With entitlement comes expectation, both internal and external. As a Princess, what do others expect of you? As a Princess, what do you expect of yourself?
Märtha: I've landed somewhere where I rarely live up to other people's expectations of me and don't even consider them. I try not to have expectations for myself either, because expectations are never truths. They are just a level of something you want to happen, and if you don't live up to those expectations, you're a failure. Basically, that's what expectations are, at least how I've been taught. For me, that's not a very loving way to be towards myself or other people. For me, it's really important to see people as they are and showing up as they are and in whatever way that is and accepting that, whatever that is so that I don't get disappointed... That has freed me a lot in my life because when I grew up, I was totally in for all the living up to all the expectations. I managed to understand that was not a way to live and that other people's expectations, there so many, you can never live up to them anyway... especially when a Princess growing up. Some people want me to be like this. Some people might be like that. Even though I tried so hard to live up 21 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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…the main thing is to unapologetically understand who you are and live that life. PRINCESS MÄRTHA
PRINCESS OF NORWAY, ENTREPRENEUR & AGENT OF CHANGE Photo Credit: Thierry Brouard 22 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
AwareNow Podcast
THE PRINCESS LIFE
Exclusive Interview with Princess Märtha
awarenow.us/podcast/the-princess-life SCAN TO LISTEN
Märtha: (continued) to everybody's expectations and just be this perfect Princess, there were still people who didn't like me and who were criticizing me. It hurts so much. So then I said okay... I'm just going to be me, and they just have to deal with that. And I'm okay with that. Of course it hurts when you get criticized from time to time, but after a while you learn that the press want to build you up and want to tear you down. That's how that they work. You just have to be you and go through that and be strong in who you are and show the world who you are. That's basically how you move through that.
Allié: You are of course so much more than a ‘title’, Princess Märtha; however, with the power and position you’ve been given, what are you proudest of giving back in service to others?
Märtha: I think my proudest moment is when I see my students light up and the lights in their eyes shine again when they choose to be completely them and can go out in the world and started changing the world because they have found themselves again. Those are my proudest moments. Also seeing my kids... Through all the traumas they've been through with their dad dying by suicide and having gone through that valley of sorrow and pain. I'm really proud of how we've all come through them.
Allié: For those young girls (or boys) who dream of being a Princess, what empowering advice do you have for becoming great regardless of the title you hold?
Märtha: I think the main thing is to unapologetically understand who you are and live that life. I think where you have the most power is where you shine the most. It's where you will be seen because that's where your truth lies. When people speak that truth, things happen. Everybody becomes silent, and they start listening. But I have spoken other people's truth alot because I had speeches that other people prepared. I was super nervous because I had to read them and live up to these expectations of what was expected from me and how I was supposed to perform. It was such a different experience than when I started being on stage speaking my truth. Then I became safe on stage. I wasn't scared of being on stage anymore. I could actually speak my truth, and people would actually listen. Before when nobody actually knew me or what I was standing for, it was easy to criticize me. It was easy to criticize me as well when I was standing in my truth, but then I was a force in myself. And so it was not as destructive for me. When we dare to shine with our light and let that shine into the world and be true to who we are, we're very strong. We are very powerful. We're more powerful than we think. And the more we dare to be who we are with all the different aspects of us and for us, ourselves to acknowledge who we are, I think it’s just so important because we're the first ones who criticize or the first ones to be negative towards ourself and to get ourselves down. When we start being good to ourselves and actually acknowledging all the wonderful parts of ourselves, we start changing and start being strong, grounded, and can stand our ground against anything. That's the power of being a human being in the light. ∎
Follow Princess Märtha on Instagram: @iam_Märthalouise
23 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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As we go through resistance, we're going through a state of healing. SHAMAN DUREK
6TH GENERATION SHAMAN, VISIONARY & AUTHOR Photo Credit: Victoria Kait 24 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SHAMAN DUREK
THE SHAMAN LIFE
SHAMAN DUREK & HIS LIFE OF SPIRITUAL SERVICE Through his no nonsense teachings, Shaman Durek demystifies spirituality by making it attainable and understandable for not only the layman, but also for the more spiritually advanced, and everyone in between. Shaman Durek is redefining what wellness means by putting the power back into the hands of the people, so that they may live consciously, authentically, and in alignment.
Allié: The healing you do is ‘ineffable’. I have no words to explain it. As a personal recipient of your work, I can say it surpasses what vocabulary has the means to convey. However, if there were words to use, Shaman Durek, how would you define your work?
Durek: I define the work that I do as an instrument of, of development, because it's never the same. It's always changing as I evolve the work evolves, right? And I'm going to say the understanding of what I do is both kinetic as well as visual and as well as integrative of both the understanding of old world brought into a more modern context, but also with a futuristic understanding of where we're heading in our evolution, right? So, being able to help people understand frequencies, understanding the development of energies and how they connect and what types of energies can connect and which ones don't actually is what allows the body to be able to heal. A lot of times, we don't understand that there are certain frequencies that we're not supposed to experience, that we're never meant to
THE SHAMAN LIFE
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SHAMAN DUREK
25 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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I cannot be who I am if I don't have a ritual connection with my ancestors. SHAMAN DUREK
6TH GENERATION SHAMAN, VISIONARY & AUTHOR Photo Credit: Victoria Kait 26 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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“…the process of healing is endless because as we evolve, we're going through a state of healing.”
Durek: (continued) experience. And those frequencies are considered very detrimental. They are both detrimental to ourselves individually, but also to the environment and our body is made up of the earth. We have earth all the elementals of the earth in our system, the water, the bile, the blood, the bone, the earth, the wind, the air, and the fire, which is what heats our thermogenic system. So my work is defined by being able to connect with the elements, but as well as understand the psychology of the mind and understanding the depths of how the brain works and the depths of how the emotions operate in this beautiful synchronicity of connection, communication, and really synthesis... really creating a strong synthesis. I think that a lot of times, when people think about a Shaman, they think drums and ayahuasca and iboga, and any type of plant medicine, that's going to be ingested and creating some psychosomatic response or some spiritual response that's gonna lead them to this. And there are those Shamans who do that. They're known as earth Shamans, but I'm a spirit Shaman. A spirit Shaman operates in the realm of the invisible, and we operate in the invisible becoming tangible and creating a bridge between the two. It’s not just that I'm doing healing on you, I'm actually teaching you, teaching your muscles, teaching your body, how to understand healing so that whenever you get healing from anyone else, or if you decide to use your own abilities, it becomes more pronounced than and more powerful.
Allié: Governors need to be governed. Police need to be policed. Teachers need to be taught. Do healers need to be healed? Through your work, you heal so many. Are there times when you need to be healed?
Durek: I believe that anyone who is operating in the idea of service for humanity, there is a lot of resistance and a lot of energies that we do not see that we pick up on. So even if you are the greatest healer in the world, we all need healing. This whole planet needs healing. And in fact, to give you the true definition of healing, I will never be healed until every single person is healed. The whole understanding is that, as one person once said to me, "Oh, I'm healed. I'm done. I've done it all. I've did it all." I'm say that there are still people on the planet suffering. There are still animals suffering, nature is suffering. Until that ends, you're not healed because we're a part of everything. The way I look at it is I'm always in the process of healing, and I'm always seeking more knowledge and wisdom to continue to learn from my brothers and sisters on the planet. I don't believe in hierarchy. I don't believe in you're the guru and you have it all figured out, or you're the Shaman and you have it all figured out. This is an act of humbleness, and humbleness doesn't mean playing small. It means being open and available to all resources that are available. I think if we as a species begin to understand that the resource development of healing that be it allopathic or holistic is an everchanging process of evolution, the process of healing is endless because as we evolve, we're going through a state of healing. As we go through resistance, we're going through a state of healing. As we meet a different energy that is contrary to our own, we're going through a of healing. If we can understand that, then the process of healing doesn't have to be so painful and so difficult. It becomes a part of evolutionary process.
Allié: You don’t have a standard 9 to 5, in fact nothing about your career is standard. I imagine, however, that life as a Shaman has its own set of standards. What are the top 3 that you hold yourself to?
Durek: For me, I cannot be who I am if I don't have a ritual connection with my ancestors. A lot of times, if we look back in the ancient times, there was a strong connection to ancestry, but then we started to drift away from that 27 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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I will never be healed until every single person is healed. SHAMAN DUREK
6TH GENERATION SHAMAN, VISIONARY & AUTHOR Photo Credit: Victoria Kait 28 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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“How do I get a person to recognize the power they have in themselves?”
Durek: (continued) connection. We started forgetting about the people who touched and inspired our lives. We stopped looking at the bloodline of ourselves and the people who have connected with us. So, for me ancestry isn't just my family from my mom, my paternal and my maternal side. It means the ancestry of the trees, the ancestry of nature, the ancestry of other people, the ancestry of culture. All of that for me is a connection of ritual. So every day I go and I sit down and I communicate with my ancestors. Everyday it's an act of understanding, how can I deliver a message or healing to someone in the most efficient way that is so easy that a child could do it? How do I simplify the spiritual context into something that anyone can understand? Where I don’t have to go into all of these different parallels of thinking, but really give people their own power. How do I get a person to recognize the power they have in themselves? How do I use my lexicon, my body language, the way that I communicate, the way that I look at someone to demonstrate that the power and energy and high vibe frequency is always present. Then the other aspect is how much and how deep am I willing to go into the places of truth within myself? How much will I dive into the deepest, darkest regions of my own human experience and humanity's human experience from a place of love and acceptance, not from a place of looking at it as this horrible thing. I feel that in order for me to do what I do, if I see the water's dirty and I focus on the water's being dirty and put my attention, because attention is an investment, what am I investing in my life? Am I going to invest that the waters are dirty? Or am I going to invest that there are people waking up on the planet who are going to clean the waters and make them clean again? A lot of times people think that they're doing the service of humanity by focusing on all that is not well in humanity, and then getting upset about it. It's one thing to get upset about it, and then to create a model of change that you can actually actualize into a human experience, where you can experience creating that change with other people and motivating and creating a movement. But it's another thing to sit and to focus on these things and draw your energy into them, which basically empowers them to become even more. I think the access of human development and the way we think is so important. So I spent a lot of time getting involved in quantum physics, science, learning about the human mind, the constructs of the body, why human beings think this way, what is the unconscious versus the conscious versus the subconscious? How do we differentiate the understanding of duality on our planet versus synergy? What does it look like? How does it feel? All of these things are part of my go to rituals every day that I spend thinking and processing to be able to be the best that I can be of service for humanity and for myself.
Allié: When you aren’t treating others, how do you treat yourself? Any guilty and/or non-guilty pleasures to share?
Durek: I wouldn't say I have a guilty pleasure in the sense of, I just do what I want to do. For me, it's doing art. It's being a kid. It's catching up on shows. I love period piece shows. It's nice for me to watch period piece shows because I always like to sit sometimes with Märtha, and we'll watch a lot of period piece shows. Then I'll be like, "So, that's your cousin and that's what you guys did? And why did you guys do this? And do you think that affected this?" I love to go and look at all of these different shows and then know how it connects to my girlfriend. Also, I come from a very old school, old way about me. I'm very chivalrous. I'm very about looking at human development and why human beings do the things they do. Why did we move from the 16th century? Why did we move from the dark ages? What were the different steps in our anthropology and our sociology? I do a lot of that on my free time. I really study humanity. I love people watching. I can go to a bench and sit and watch people for hours. I watch their body language. I watch the way they blink when they talk. And why do they blink two times versus three times? How many breaths did they take when they're saying this thing to this person? How do they walk down the street? Do some people walk where they're looking head up or they're looking down? These are my things that I do when I'm not being Shaman Durek... being this kind of a mad scientist meets a little boy meets a free spirit meets a want to experience what human beings experience. 29 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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The greatest gift that we've ever been given is consciousness. SHAMAN DUREK
6TH GENERATION SHAMAN, VISIONARY & AUTHOR Photo Credit: Thierry Brouard 30 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
AwareNow Podcast
THE SHAMAN LIFE
Exclusive Interview with Shaman Durek
https://awarenow.us/podcast/the-shaman-life SCAN TO LISTEN
Allié: Online you empower people with The Shaman School, The Healing Temple, and Ancient Wisdom Today. Offline, right here and right now, if there was just one piece of advice you could offer to empower those who feel powerless, what would that one thing be?
Durek: This is a very good question because a lot of times people will say, and I hear it a lot. People will say, "I don't feel power. I feel powerless. I don't feel empowered." There's no such thing. You cannot feel powerless. You create the idea of powerless as a way to hide from the power that you already have. Now giving you the understanding of that, let's just make it very simple. Take a person who says I'm powerless. Are they really powerless? Or is it that they're disempowering themselves because of the way they're choosing to think? The expectations create a lot of disempowerment. When people create expectations, they create an idea of what they want to happen, instead of trusting that there's an intelligent wisdom inside of them that knows what needs to happen. So, they go with what they want to happen. And when it doesn't happen, the way they want it, they start looking at "Something must be wrong with me. I must not be good enough. Maybe I'm not smart enough. Maybe I'm not lovable. Maybe I'm not this..." All of these things have no factual evidence to back it up. It's all based on the idea of being accepted. So most human beings idea of powerless is the lack of acceptance and the lack of understanding that the acceptance that they seek from the outer world is really what they seek from themselves. It's the idea that you haven't made a decision on who you are. So you're letting other people tell you who you are. I always say it's best that you know who you are before someone comes in and tells you something that they think you are. And you start to live from that definition, which has nothing to do with you. Most human suffering comes from malfunction in thinking; it's the ability to think against yourself. It means that you wake up in the morning, and instead of thinking the highest, most powerful things about yourself, you think the most low vibrational things about yourself. There's an interesting thing, and I'll share this with you. This goes for everyone in the world. The greatest gift that we've ever been given is consciousness. It is the ability to think and the ability to choose. Now, the greatest understanding is what do you do with this greatest gift. You see human beings focus more attention on the material possessions than they do on understanding that the most valuable possession you could ever have the most extraordinary, most immense power that you could ever have is to be conscious. Now what you do with it, it's up to you. ∎
Follow Shaman Durek on Instagram: @shamandurek
31 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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It all starts with how conscious we are, what we want in the world and living that life… PRINCESS MÄRTHA
PRINCESS OF NORWAY, ENTREPRENEUR & AGENT OF CHANGE Photo Credit: Victoria Kait 32 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SHAMAN DUREK & PRINCESS MÄRTHA
THE ROYALLY SPIRITUAL LIFE
AN ORIGIN OF REGAL SPIRITUALITY WITH SHAMAN DUREK & PRINCESS MÄRTHA When a Shaman who as a boy was told he would marry the Princess of Norway, one day meets the Princess of Norway who has given up her dream of finding the love of her life and her hope of truly being seen, this is when Shaman Durek and Princess Märtha met. The rest is history (in the making). With an unwavering commitment to social change and an unbreakable bond tested and proven, Durek and Märtha not only talk the talk, but walk it with pride and passion. The story of a Shaman and a Princess isn’t one you hear everyday - especially when it’s this Shaman and this Princess. This is a story we are honored to share and proud to support.
Allié: Shaman Durek and Princess Märtha, you both have bold and brilliant stories of your own. Now, comes the story that the two of you own. Please share the origin of this beautiful couple before me today. When did you find each other, and how did this all begin?
Märtha: So, we got introduced by a mutual friend of ours called Millana Snow. I had a session with her because I do energy readings as well, like Shaman Durek does his sessions in that way. We did a session together and she was like, "Oh my God, I've never felt this energy with anybody else, but Shaman Durek! You two have to meet. So, we organized a meeting - a lunch and I brought some of my friends. As I walked through the door, I looked into his eyes and I was like, "I met you before". It felt like meeting an old friend. Then he said, "Yes, we were destined to meet way
THE ROYALLY SPIRITUAL LIFE
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SHAMAN DUREK & PRINCESS MÄRTHA
33 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
It was like connecting with an old friend that I haven't spoken to in a very long time. SHAMAN DUREK
6TH GENERATION SHAMAN, VISIONARY & AUTHOR Photo Credit: Thierry Brouard 34 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Märtha: (continued) before we were born." And internally, because I'm a princess I'm very polite, so internally I'm rolling my eyes. You know, go on... another LA man, but then he started talking and it was like meeting an old friend and we've been talking and being together ever since.
Durek: Yes, for me, it was my friend Millana Snow. She was at my house. I was visiting from London at the time and I was working on a new TV show. She came over, we were doing healing work, and she said to me, "You have to meet this amazing woman." She didn't tell me she was a Princess. She just said, "You have to meet this amazing woman." And she's like, "Are you dating anyone? Are you seeing anyone?" And I said no. And she's like, "Well, I don't know if that's what it's about. I'm just getting this really strong feeling from Spirit that I'm supposed to put you both together. So, I was like, "Okay, well, let's see what happens. And she then told me later on the phone that she was a Princess. I go, "What do you mean a Princess?" And she said, "Oh, you know, she's a Princess. She has a father who's a King and a mother who's a queen. And I'm like, "Hmm, Princess... Yeah, well, I'm going to get back to you on that." And of course I didn't get back to her because I was thinking from the perspective of I had a different viewpoint about what the Royal family is like and the Princesses and the Princes. I'm a person who grew up in Hawaii and California, rode my skateboard, was chosen to be a Shaman. I live a very different life. I have many sides to me, and I didn't think that any person who's in the Royal family would be able to understand all the multifaceted aspects of who I am. Then my friend Millana kept calling me and I kept ignoring and dodging her phone calls. And then...
Märtha: It took some time.
Durek: And then I was talking to my friend, Selena, who was running Dave Asprey's company at the time. And she said, "I want you to really think about this. You are always saying you want love in your life, and you always saying you want these things. How do you know that meeting her might be a doorway that opens to love." And I was taken back by that a little bit. I'm like, why am I putting up a roadblock? Why am I creating some form of resistance? And then I realized maybe it's because of the fact that I think maybe she will not like me for who I am, or maybe it's not this type of thing. Then, I went into meditation and I thought about it. I thought maybe I should give it a shot. So, I decided to contact my assistant at the time and ask them to set up the meeting. But I told them to set it up as a lunch and make it a very quick experience so that I can get back to doing what I do at Shaman Durek. And that way it's not this long drawn out process, you know.
Märtha: This really boring meeting that he was going to have... (laughter)
Durek: When I was getting ready, I thought I'm going to go as the things that I like. At the time I was very much into kimonos. I had this whole idea of 'kimonos and cowboys'... I love rock and roll shirts from the seventies. And I wore a blue kimono and a rock and roll shirt. I think it was my Metallica shirt and a pair of jeans... and a pair of my cowboy boots. And I thought, that's what I'm going to do... And whoever she is, and however she is, and whatever it is, she's going to see that this is me... and all of my amazingness, wildness and freeness and so forth. So, she walked in the door. She was wearing a black skirt, a white shirt with two ravens and tennis shoes, to which I was like, "What? This is interesting. This is what a princess comes in with? A skirt, tennis shoes and a t-shirt?" And she had a friend with her, Haggai, who was wearing all red with these beautiful flowers on her dress that went all the way down. So, she walked in, and as soon as she walked in the door, I saw these piercing blue eyes. And I looked into her eyes, and all of a sudden I had an out of body experience. And I saw myself in another time as she was my wife in that time. And we found each other and I saw myself in Egypt and all of a sudden this voice spoke through me, a channel through me, and I didn't even realize I said it. And I said to her, "We were destined to meet before time, which there's a backstory to that as well. From that moment, I couldn't take my eyes off of her and I wanted to impress her with my abilities.
Märtha: Yeah. This is a really funny part because you really wanted to show off his abilities and his powers. So he started doing a reading on all of us, checking all our energies and everything during the lunch, because it was amazing. As I'm also a psychic and see things, because not everybody is authentic... Right? So, I was like, Okay. I'll check this guy out. How he doing? But he was really good, of course. Then after lunch he was like, "Okay, Märtha, stand over there. I'm going to show you something. And he put Haggai in front of him and he was like, "Märtha, look now, I'm going to raise her energy. Okay? And he was raising her energy, pushing electricity through her and doing all these kinds of things. He said, "Look, look, Märtha. Look what I'm doing. And I laughed historically. It was so funny. And I was like, "Is this guy's showing off to me right now?" (laughing) But that was really cute. I thought that was really 35 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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We really hold space for each other… PRINCESS MÄRTHA
PRINCESS OF NORWAY, ENTREPRENEUR & AGENT OF CHANGE Photo Credit: Thierry Brouard 36 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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Märtha: (continued) sweet. Because it is very intense when you meet your powers for the first time. And I didn't know that these kinds of people existed on planet earth anymore... that still have the magic, you know, that I've always believed was there. So, I would add that we had just crashed straight outside of the house, sat down, hugging, and we were just like crying on the street because she was so exhausted, and I was so happy that I finally found somebody with that kind of magic...
Durek: I wish I would've known she was outside my gates, crying on the street. I would have had her come back in, but I just went right back to work.
Märtha: Yeah. And then we continued calling...
Durek: We exchanged numbers, and we started talking on the phone. The conversations went from one hour to three hours to four hours. Most of the time laughing like children. It was like connecting with an old friend that I haven't spoken to in a very long time.
Märtha: It also felt like when you can never catch up. So you always have more to say or more to share or more to get to know each other better, but you already know each other. It was a very weird meeting. It was great and so wonderful to be back in my life. It just felt so safe from the side, like coming home. And then of course he remembered that his mother had told him that he was going to marry the Princess of Norway. He was told this when he was 15, because his mom is an Oracle. He didn't realize, he didn't remember all of this. All his friends started calling him like, "Do you remember?! Oh my God! It's actually happening. Do you remember?!"
Durek: Yeah. So, all my childhood friends started calling me. Then one of my friends in Sweden, who's a really big pop singer... I went to visit her and her dad. I'm good friends with her dad and her. I was jet lag from my trip to Sweden. Her dad was making me this homemade soup, I was falling asleep and he goes, "So, is there anyone that's going to be special in your life?" And I'm like, "I'm waiting for my princess. I don't even remember saying it. He brought it up to me and was like, "Don't you remember saying this?" Then all my friends started reminding me what my mom said when I was a kid. Then, it all dawned on me... I remember the day my mom called me on the phone. I was getting ready to go skateboarding with my friends. My mom called me and she said, "I spoke to the elders in the Valhall. The ancestors have made their point very clear. You can do whatever you want in your life, but eventually you're going to be with the princess of Norway. You're going to be married into the Royal family. You guys are you going to reunite and change the world." And I was so young. I was 14 going on 15. I just remember her saying that and being like, "So, you're telling me, mom, that the elders told you that I'm going to be with the Princess of Norway and marry into the Royal family. And we're going to be this power couple that's going to change the world... Mom, I'm not even thinking about getting married. I want to go ride my skateboard and go search for animal chin." Throughout my whole life, she kept saying it to me. She kept saying, "Well, it doesn't matter who you date because the Princess of Norway is the one you're going to end up with." What happened was we started building a friendship, and I come from a very old school way when comes to relationships. You nurture and you court the person that you're going in relationship with with gifts and outings and talking and sharing. I'm not a person who just jumps into a relationship. Plus, she has children, and I have this belief that when you are dating a woman with children, you need to get her to know her children without it being about her. Because when you go into a relationship with a woman with children, they're also in a relationship with you as well. So, if it doesn't work out, it hurts them as well. I wanted to make sure, because I am the type of person who believes in integrity and the way in which we show up in the world, that I wanted to show up in the right way. So it took some time, a lot of courtship, a lot of gifts, a lot of time together, and a lot of friendship. The kids didn't even know we were dating because we wanted them to meet me in their own autonomy. And the way in which they would perceive me is as her friend, not as her lover. What I found absolutely amazing and what made me fall in love with this woman is the amazing intelligence she has. She makes me laugh. She accepts all of my multifaceted selves. She also acknowledges what's going on in the world. I've dated other people... I'm very much an instrumental person in creating change in the world. Seeing someone who is just as inspired to wake up in the morning and the first conversation that comes out of our mouth is "What can we do to make change in this world? What do we need to do? Who do we need? What's the next step? What things do we need to look at in order to bring more wisdom and more value to the earth?" And also what an amazing mother she is to her three daughters. Watching a woman raise her children and with love and openness and education and empowering women... Powering young girls really inspires me. So, everything about her was absolutely perfect to me. And she is a pure heart. When I say pure heart, I'm talking like 'angelic'. She is... There's not a bad bone in this woman's body. She's pure, she's loving, 37 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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…walk together on the same path, but in your own footsteps. PRINCESS MÄRTHA
PRINCESS OF NORWAY, ENTREPRENEUR & AGENT OF CHANGE Photo Credit: Thierry Brouard 38 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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Durek: (continued) she’s supportive... She's open. You can talk to her about anything. There's no weirdness in any conversation we have. I can say anything to her and she will have a conversation with me about it. Also, what I love about our relationship is that she honors our responsibility to honor our own triggers. So, if I get upset about something, I know it's not about her, it's my trigger of something that happened or something I experienced that I haven't healed within myself. And so I take responsibility for it. So if she gets upset, I'm not going to argue with her and bicker with her. I just look at her and sometimes I smile and I laugh and then she can't even take it serious. If she gets really, really upset, I just kind of go, "Yeah, I'm here. I'm okay. It's good." Because I know that she's going through her own trigger. So, we share our triggers with each other so we can grow and we understand what relationship is about. It's not a power play. It's not this 'I'm going to trump you' kind of thing. It's more of the relationship we're having with ourselves. I learned that having a relationship with myself, being aware of myself, looking at the places where I need to grow and where I need to evolve, allows me to see the places where I show up in the relationship where I can take responsibility for things. She was that person as well for me. That was huge for me. I knew that this is the person that I could spend the rest of my life with, because I know that we're always going to keep growing. We're always going to use our resources to create change in the world and put the power back in people's hands and really bring about an understanding of the world.
Märtha: That's also so beautiful with our relationship that we really hold space for each other... We both take responsibility for our emotions, which is really very special because never nagging or accusing each other of things, because we know... If we do, then we both check each other in our life and remind each other it's not the kind of relationship we want. So, it's such a great thing for me to be in this relationship where we both grow together like that. I think that's so inspiring every day to know that he really takes care of my growth and I take care of his growth and I take care of my growth and he takes care of his growth. That's so great to have a person where you can actually walk together on the same path, but in your own footsteps. I think that's really, really amazing. Another thing I find that is really amazing is that we really are totally transparent and can talk about anything, have any kind of emotion and also show the very vulnerable sides. I think that's really important for men, that we women really hold space for the vulnerability of men. They can cry, and we're okay with that. We don't look down on them for being 'weak' because it's actually a strength showing that kind of vulnerability because it shows that that men can actually be safe showing their emotions which is really important to me to be that kind of person for you as well. Knowing that men grew up not having the ability as women do to cry and to be emotional. I think it's really important. It's also 80% of suicides are committed by men. That's also because, I think, because of the emotions not being allowed to come out and that you're not allowed to be that emotional being that you are. I think that's so beautiful too in our relationship. You actually let me see that side in you, and we are totally transparent and allow each other to be exactly who we are.
Durek: I think the idea of having a woman who I can still be the man and I can still be feminine at the same time... I can say, "Hey, I need to crawl into your arms right now and cry like a baby." And then I come out and I'm even stronger. Also for me as a man, being able to acknowledge, because I think a lot in society we don't acknowledge women's wisdom and we don't take the time to really hear what they're really saying and where it's coming from. And so in our relationship, one of my things that I love to do is just open space for her to be able to just speak and share her wisdom. And what ends up happening is it actually makes my life better because women see more than men do. She sees the blind spots that I don't see. I am so much about being an advocate for women's empowerment, yet there are places inside of myself where I will find these old male chauvinist behaviors that were passed down through my family of what a man is supposed to be. What she does is she points them out to me. She says, this is a male chauvinist behavior, or this is what you're doing right now. This is the issue that has caused this in the world. And then I go, "Oh..." Instead of being like, "Oh, you can't tell me that because I'm the man," I'm open to hear what she has to say. Then I go away and process that myself and then come back with a new person, with a person who's not operating in that perspective.
Märtha: So, 'as' a new person you mean, not 'with' the new
Durek: Not 'with' a new person 'as' a new person.
Märtha: We don't come with a new person... (laughing)
Durek: No. Not 'with' a new person. And that's the thing between us. We joke a lot, and you see how she corrects me. And instead of me getting upset about it, I'm excited about it because it's only making me a better person. It allows me to go out in the world and perceive and understand things differently by the way that our relationship develops in its 39 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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We're always going to use our resources to create change in the world and put the power back in people's hands and really bring about an understanding of the world. SHAMAN DUREK
6TH GENERATION SHAMAN, VISIONARY & AUTHOR Photo Credit: Thierry Brouard 40 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Durek: (continued) evolution. She has so much wisdom and so much power. And it's so beautiful to sit and listen to someone correct you and make corrections so that you can go, "Wow... This is what God gave me. God gave me a woman who is able to see my flaws so clearly and so directly that she's able to pinpoint them and reveal them to me so that I can be a better person.
Märtha: But that goes both ways. I mean, we have growth in both ways like that. You pinpoint me; I pinpoint you.
Durek: Yes, and I enjoy it.
Allié: On the path you’ve walk together, you’ve been challenged by royal tradition and societal stereotypes. Jack and I are a bi-racial couple. We know what it’s like to walk in a room where the not-so-nice looks begin and the not-so-quiet whispers start. Please share your experience with racism and what you’ve done to address it.
Märtha: Well, I've definitely had a journey within this realm because I was brought up with white privilege without being knowledgeable of that. I was blind to racism. I thought racist people were these evil people who killed black people, and that's not me. That I think is a fault of many white people have that we don't see, or we're blind to the racism around us because we don't know we're part of the system. To me, it was so eye-opening meeting Durek and having that all pointed out... I knew this, but I haven't experienced it. I think that's also for so many white people the case that racism doesn't exist because I don't experience it. But other people do... That's when it was so eye-opening to me... to see all the small details where it came out in so many different ways - some obvious, some very not obvious at all, but it's still there. I think it's really important that white people stop being the ones defining what racism is. We have to acknowledge and know and understand and put ourselves in the perspective of other people's way of seeing it - the ones, people of color, who actually do receive that kind of treatment. We need to start listening. This changed my whole world perspective. I'm really grateful for that transition and that growth that I've had in that.
Durek: I think having a powerful woman, such as princess Marta, who is able to adjust into being open and being willing to be educated about what it has been like for me as a person who is melanated of color, being brought on the planet, because when you have color, when you're born with color, you look at the world and you don't see any reflection of where you belong. So, then you start to realize that every type of incident that takes place, if it's the cops throwing you on the roof of your car and putting a gun to the back of your head, because why? Because they said you ran a red light when you really didn't? Or every day they're profiling... You go into an elevator, a woman is holding and 'crushing' her bag tighter because she thinks you're gonna rob her because the identity and the way that the systemic value of humanity in color has been dialed down to thug, to liar, to whatever comes out of your mouth... It's an immediate disbelief. So you spend a huge portion of your life learning how to exist, just to exist, just to basically say, I have a right to exist. You don't know what that means and where that shows up, because there's nothing there that gives you a foundation or a grounding of where you fit in society. So you start ripping yourself apart. You start to tear yourself apart. You start to not want to be the color of skin that you are. You start wondering if your life would be better if you had lighter colored skin. And then you go through that self hatred. You go through that internalization, and then you come out of it. I think it was good for me that I had already gone through a lot of that in my life. I have been very educated with a very educated family and the arts and music and poetry and theater and understanding of black history, where our roots come from, what struggles we've had to go through in our family to be where we are and why the search and modalities that exist within society are still operating. So, coming into her life, coming into her family and the Royal family learning that people are still... there are some people who are still not able to perceive me without looking at my color and looking at the stereotypes that go along with my color and how do I appropriate the situation at hand when you're in the midst of some very intense racial comments coming out of people's mouths people who had had a long history in enslaving your own people... having this very broad scope of the bigger picture of where I am and where they are. For me, it was about being able to stay in a humble place, but also stay resilient in power, but respectful in nature and to be able to hold that level of honor for my people... for all people of color. I am stepping into an echelon of people who have been put into a mindset that they have been since their ancestry from the time when they were enslaving people of color... And now here's a person of color standing in front of them who's dating someone of their own social class and their own graces...
41 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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AwareNow Podcast
THE ROYALLY SPIRITUAL LIFE
Exclusive Interview with Shaman Durek & Princess Märtha
awarenow.us/podcast/the-royally-spiritual-life SCAN TO LISTEN
Durek: (continued) also monitoring me to see if I am valuable enough to even stand with her, and then dealing with both the backlash of people of color who have an issue with me being with someone in that lineage as well, and then dealing with the racism that comes from the people who don't have the education or the understanding of what Princess Märtha so eloquently described.
Märtha: And how we deal with that is... Well, I've written posts about it. We share our story. I think it's important that we all speak about what we experience on both sides. I mean, we've had death threats. There's been quite bad things going on, but still it's really important that we move through that because racism is also based on fear of something that's not what you know.
Durek: The unknown. It's a fear of the unknown. It's a fear of not having the education of cultural understanding and how human beings are. It's also the fear that someone's going to take what you have away from you. Therefore, you're threatened by not knowing what their action or their behavior will be. I think Princess Marta being so eloquently speaking out about it in the press, talking about it on her Instagram, sharing it when she's sitting on these dinner tables to people and educating them in that echelon of this is what my experience has been. And this is what we need to start looking at. And for me, as well as educating people and helping them understand that just because someone is being racist in front of me, doesn't mean I have to be a victim. It doesn't mean I have to be angry. It doesn't mean I have to sit in this place of wanting to retaliate. The education of theory is always based on the action in the moment. If we look at that as a precursor to change, we realize that if we have the education of knowing why someone is the way they are, then we have a choice to be able to shift ourselves in a way that brings a little bit more understanding, compassion and empathy for the delicate situation of ignorance and lack of knowledge.
Allié: You both are dedicated to creating positive social change in this world. To others who have the same dedication but don’t know where to begin, what advice do each of you have for where to start?
Märtha: I think each change in the world starts with us. I think there's no change that is ‘out there’. It all starts within ourselves. It all starts with how conscious we are, what we want in the world and living that life and changing our internal selves…
Durek: …You know Dr. Martin Luther king said that it was his anger that motivated him to see what needed to change. And then it was the anger turned into passion and purpose that dedicated him to become a civil rights leader. You cannot create change if you are not affected by something. And the effect is not to sit and wallow and be in misery, but to actually see it as an opportunity that spirit is giving you to able to forward your path with precision and focus with the passion to see something different.
Märtha: Do you understand why I love this guy? ∎
42 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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I can see a glimmer
in the night
Shining like no other,
Attuned to our
frequencies. LUKE GIALANELLA
FOUNDER OF GOVLEARN 44 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
ORIGINAL POEM BY LUKE GIALANELLA
STARDUST
A GLIMMER ATTUNED TO OUR FREQUENCIES This month I chose to do something a bit different than what I normally do for AwareNow. I wrote a poem that to me tells the story of the creator of a movement bringing together a large group of people to follow their cause. I can see a glimmer in the night
Faint but not invisible,
Attuned to my frequency.
I wish I could see how others see it
They say it looks different
Yet the stars beg to differ.
Tsunamis rupture from the ground
But they can’t see them.
I was frozen,
Burnt,
Tarnished
By the blades of a million men
When I arrived on the mountain.
It was true, real,
Not something one can simply
Brush off like dust on a jacket.
This is permanent.
This will be forever.
Fires burn and burn
And yearn
And we don’t listen.
I saw a balloon floating in the fog
And it told me to follow.
Why can’t they see me,
It said to me.
I can see a glimmer in the night
Shining like no other,
Attuned to our frequencies.
LUKE GIALANELLA
Founder & President of GOVLEARN www.awarenessties.us/luke-gialanella LUKE GIALANELLA Founder & President of GOVLEARN Luke Gialanella founded GOVLEARN when he was 11 years old, in the summer after the 2016 presidential election. Finding that there was a lack of substantive civics education for elementary and middle schoolers, he went on a mission to correct that. Creating a website and YouTube channel, Luke is obviously extremely passionate about government and politics and has participated in many mock governments, Model UN, and debate programs outside of school.
45 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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Change can only happen if everyone is heard and understood. WENDY MORGAN
DIRECTOR & ACTRESS
46 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH WENDY MORGAN
MERCY
SCENES & SYMPATHIES OF THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE In the powerful docudrama titled Mercy, British actress Wendy Morgan makes her directorial debut. In the film, she unveils the truth behind the devastation caused by animal agriculture, told through the eyes of a pig named Mercy and those involved with and trapped in the factory farming industry. Morgan, an accomplished actress, discusses her reason for making the film: “I even tried not to make this film, for fear that it might simply prove too difficult… I did try, but thoughts of Mercy kept bursting through and rather than me writing something else, Mercy seemed to write me.”
Allié: In your award-winning career as an actress, you’ve been in many films, Wendy, but never made one of your own. Despite the fear of difficulty, you made Mercy. After a friend’s suggestion to write something you aren’t as passionate about, you said, “Rather than write something else, Mercy seemed to write me.” Please share your personal story about how Mercy came to be. In what way did it ‘write’ you?
Wendy: In 2011, Animal Aid did an investigation into 9 abattoirs in the UK. 8 were found to be abusing the animals.(If what happens in a slaughterhouse isn’t bad enough!) One of these was near where I live. I saw the footage online and was shocked. Many people began standing outside this slaughterhouse while the case was going to court and bearing witness to the pigs who went through the gates. It was before there the vigils were coined I believe, but we met the
MERCY
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH WENDY MORGAN
47 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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I wanted to draw the audience in, weave a spell, & take them on a journey. WENDY MORGAN
DIRECTOR & ACTRESS
48 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“I was wondering how I could give the animals a voice… how I could perhaps portray their experience.”
Wendy: (continued) pigs going in through the bars of the trucks, we took video and photographs and shared these images online. All of what I saw online and outside the slaughterhouse seared into my soul. It was so upsetting and disturbing. I found out that it wasn’t just there at that place but everywhere and in these hidden settings... where an animal is going to be killed anyway – their welfare doesn't seem high on the priority list, but it is a business, to get as many killed as possible. It is a hell on earth, without any extra abuses added to that. So my eyes were opened to the sights and my ears to the screams of the slaughterhouse and it was so vivid and so shocking something I had kept on the periphery of my thinking – was now centre stage. Perhaps a kind of PTSD but I needed to do something, I needed also to process it all and the best way I could think of doing both those things was by writing. I did try not to write it because it was all too painful to recall. So, I would try to ignore it but it was insistent. Something drove me. I played Toine, the friend of PIAF in Pam Gems play with Elaine Paige and I remember Pam saying that Piaf kind of wrote her too. That she almost felt possessed. This experience with Mercy reminded me of that.. a kind of possession.. as if I was the mediator. Sometimes through all the difficulties that have arisen throughout the process – from conception to now – I felt that the spirits of all those animals were somehow calling to get their story told. In the toughest moments of this I remember them…and carry on. There was one pig, that you see in the film that my character Jeannie meets – I filmed on my phone back in 2011. We named him Mercy – and that is what eventually the film was called. It took many forms, at one stage I wrote it as a play for many characters and it was called MEAT which we had a reading of. Then it became a one person show that did a live performance of me playing all the roles… and then the screenplay for the film.
Allié: As bold as it is brilliant, the artistry delivered both visually and verbally humanize pigsVin a way I’ve never seen or heard. To create the parallel between that you did between their reality and our own is unprecedented. How did your idea to craft this story in this way come to you?
Wendy: Thank you, Allié. That is kind of you to say. I was wondering how I could give the animals a voice… how I could perhaps portray their experience. Pigs are commonly slaughtered between 3-9 months old which is apparently the human equivalent of 17/18 years. So, I found actors of this age group and decided that voice over might be the most eloquent; and that the language may be heightened. What happens to pigs is harsh and gross and yet we couldn’t have one and a half hours that were harsh and grotesque. I wanted to draw the audience in, weave a spell, take them on a journey. Peter Hall spoke of the ‘Greek Mask’ as a form of medium to express the huge emotions and without the mask, the actors of the time would have found it too grueling. I used the form of the language as a kind of ‘mask’ to enable the huge and troubling topic to find an expression that could at the same time be somehow pleasing to the senses. Sir Peter also taught me the form of Shakespeare’s verse and prose as Hamlet says in his advice to the players, “Do not tear a passion to tatters.” Inspired by this, I set to work. It was a subtle thing, directing the actors, physically to find the delicate balance between human and animal… and in the passion of the spoken word some of which is so emotional, to keep a ‘smoothness’ to it for the audience. I think together between us.. we found our own unique form to tell this story, inspired by the greats. That was and is the hope. 49 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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Allié: Instant regret for past pleasure found with bacon wrapped anything and everything, paired with remorse for the enjoyment of family dinners featuring pineapple topped ham, this was my immediate response to Mercy. While I know longer eat meat, having given up my carnivorous ways, I still feel regret. Not only for the pigs, but for the people who essentially did my dirty work in the slaughterhouse, a sentiment your character in the film shares. Tell us about why you felt it was important for the empathetic lens of this film to not only be focused on the pigs, but the people as well.
Wendy: I hear you – the guilt once we become aware. It is a painful process making the connection. I am sorry that you feel remorse, it is an unpleasant emotion. The regret… it is powerful isn’t it? I think when I began I was just thinking about the pigs, all animals. But that is where it seemed to write me... for as I went on, I heard the voices of the other characters. They began to speak and they all had hearts. They all had feelings and points of view and so it was important that I heard all their voices and understood all their vulnerabilities. Change can only happen if everyone is heard and understood.
Allié: Film is a powerful medium to fuel change. Mercy is an incredible example of this. What is the change you hope to see as a result of this film? Beyond the awareness you provide, what actions would you like to inspire?
Wendy: The change I would like to see is for people to make the connection as the phrase goes, with the animals we share this planet with, but also actually between each other, to see the other as different but in many ways the same. Human and Animal. Human and Human. All equally deserving to have a good life. To feel empathy towards every single living soul. Love, if you like. It is a feel good factor to feel love for another being. The actions I would like to inspire would be that people would talk about these matters; make the connection – to realise that we are ALL equal and to treat everyone, how they would wish themselves to be treated which would change what they consumed and crucially to help those who work in the animal agricultural industry to transition into a plant based industry.
MERCY
OFFICIAL TRAILER
50 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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Allié: From actress to activist, after producing this film, do you see yourself producing more films to fuel change?
Wendy: I think perhaps where Mercy is concerned I am more an ‘actorvist’! (Ha!) Well, I am so occupied with Mercy post production and distribution that my head is too full to think of anything afterwards… Yet, I do have a short that I want to do about dairy farming. I have also written a screenplay about wild cold water swimming in the UK that became the craze during lockdowns. It is about community really as much as cold water swimming, so not about animals. Mercy for me is a kind of allegory, I suppose, in that a pig could be any and every animal… and each character represents a way of thinking. I never intended to make a film, but this is what has happened. I guess if something becomes as passionate to me as this… then my pen might bleed again. ∎
MERCY
In her hidden world, those who Mercy encounters, on her journey from factory farm to slaughterhouse, are changed forever. Teetering on the verge of ecological destruction our world is now confronted by a global zoonotic pandemic. Empathising with all on Mercy's journey, a warning siren sounds on our uncertain times, calling for universal change.
www.mercyfilm.info
@mercyfilm
51 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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ARIYA
ARTIST & AWARENESS TIES OFFICIAL AMBASSADOR FOR LGBTQ+ AWARENESS 52 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
ARTWORK BY ARIYA & ORIGINAL POETRY BY JACK MCGUIRE
INTO THE ORIGIN
GROWING, BREATHING & BEING
Inspired by the artwork of Ariya, Jack McGuire speaks to the beginning and ending of things with ‘Into The Origin’. Cheers to art that begs you to pick up the pen and begin again…
To grow
from the very thing that burnt you ,
To dive
into the origin of being ,
To breathe
the fire of life directly into your soul into all you know,
To never settle
to never surrender,
To know a new beginning
can come from any ending.
ARIYA
Artist & Awareness Ties Official Ambassador for LGBTQ+ Awareness www.awarenessties.us/ariya I am a creative intuitive artist sharing the universe I see and experience beyond the boundaries of our planet. My creations come from inner awareness that is heart centered and does not rely on analysis or head-based questions. It is a way of creating that reflects the connection into your emotions and responding to what feels right. This intuitive space is a place of trust that opens doors to my imagination that I would never find by reason and sensory perception.
53 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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It’s really my only outlet where I can be totally honest and totally with myself. CAROL ADES
SINGER & SONGWRITER 54 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH CAROL ADES
THROUGH
THE ALBUM & ANTHEM FOR GETTING OUT The therapist you didn’t ask for but needed, Carol Ades is a singer and songwriter who embodies raw emotion with all honesty and complete vulnerability. Brilliant lyrics and beautiful vocals are paired up to produce an emotive experience that comes most recently in the form of her newly released album entitled ‘Through’. Get ready to get real with a talent the music industry needed more than it realized.
Allié: It was a combination of the verses and the vocals of ‘Unlearn Me’ that made me pause. I sat still listening to words that resonated and reverberated. Your songs and style are so raw and so real. You break barriers by being boldly vulnerable. Dying to hear the backstory of the ‘bleeding pen’ referenced in ‘Unlearn Me’ from your new album, ‘Through’. Please share.
Carol: It's one of the only songs that I've written just by myself. I really love collaborating with other people, and I can't play instruments that well. I love being around other people when it's the right collaboration. Rarely do I start and finish a song just by myself. I was so heartbroken at that time. I felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest. I had been in a relationship where I was constantly chaotic. I was on the other side…making a mess out of things that weren't really messy because I was trying to make sense of it. That whole song just came out sort of as an accident.
THROUGH
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH CAROL ADES
55 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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…that song just poured out of me. CAROL ADES
SINGER & SONGWRITER 56 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“You can feel perfect one day and feel like a total mess the next day… I didn't think too much about the lyrics; they were just coming out… That's the paper and the pen thing.”
Carol: (continued) I was working through this relationship that was ending because I wanted to end it, but I didn't really want to let go of it. I just felt like I needed to be forgiven, but I didn't really forgive myself yet. He was a blank piece of paper. He was ready to be written on. He was good, and I was the thing that was uncontrollable and it felt really bad. I almost felt like I needed to be punished for it, but no one was trying to punish me. It's like the classic self suffering. It was too painful almost to fathom and maybe it’s just a growing up thing that you can be good sometimes and bad sometimes. You can feel perfect one day and feel like a total mess the next day. And that song just poured out of me. I didn't think too much about the lyrics; they were just coming out… That's the paper and the pen thing.
Allie: ‘The only way out is through.’ This excerpt for your album’s title track ‘Through’ speaks to finding a way through situations, regardless of the circumstances surrounding them. No around, above or below about it, you share in this song with confidence and conviction that the only way out is through. Is this shared as an invitation for others to deal with circumstances in their own lives, a recollection of your own experiences or a bit of both?
Carol: I think it's a bit of both. I definitely wrote it for me. In the moment, I really needed it. It was during this time where I was trying to get this relationship back and flew across the world. They lived in London and I was like, “Okay, I'm going to go to London. I'm going to get this person back because now I know what I want.” I get there and they're dating someone else. Obviously, I'm just devastated. I’m riding around the tube and walking around London feeling so sorry for myself.
I love London. I wanted to be there, but I think it was still a bit of that self suffering thing. It didn't feel good, but I couldn't bring myself to leave, even though I didn't get what I wanted by going there… Then a lockdown happened in London. I was stuck there… I had to get through those next three weeks.I didn’t have to get totally better. I didn't have to accept it. I didn't have to anything. I just had to get through those three weeks.
Even though I was walking around London by myself with my headphones and sobbing while listening to Adele on the train trying to navigate it. It was written from the perspective of, “You know these things, Carol. You know that this is how you get through it. You've been through it before.” I just needed to hear myself say that. And so that's where the song came from.
I made it with my friends in London and then I listened to it. I mean, 300 times until I left. I mean, on a loop all day. And it's been really cool to see how other people have responded to it because obviously it's such a universal feeling. I wanted it to feel like that because I know that there will be a time again in the future where I need it again. I feel like that about all my music. I want it to walk the line of being like specific to me but still vague enough that in 20 years when I'm making all these mistakes again in a different way, I can still listen to it and say, “Oh wait, you're so smart. You're really smart. You know what to do. You wrote it down and recorded it. Stick to it.” 57 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Every song I write
I've written it because
I needed to hear it. CAROL ADES
SINGER & SONGWRITER 58 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“If someone is listening to it and it makes them feel less alone, it also made me feel less alone.”
Allié: When someone hears your verses and your voice, what is it that you want them to know about you and your intention as an artist?
Carol: I would want them to know this… Every song I write I've written it because I needed to hear it. That’s why I make them. That's why I was so okay for so long with not releasing them because they served such a tangible purpose for me. And I would never put something out that didn't actually help me or move me forward in my own life and journey of trying to be nicer to myself… trying to figure out what kind of person I want to be and what kind of person I am. If someone is listening to it and it makes them feel less alone, it also made me feel less alone. Even just hearing myself sort of come to terms with certain kinds of behavior… It’s really my only outlet where I can be totally honest and totally with myself. So… that’s what I would say. ∎
Follow Carol Ades on Instagram: @carolades
UNLEARN ME
CAROL ADES - OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO
59 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
…every 11 seconds there is a traumatic brain injury. KOBY STEVENS
PROFESSIONAL ATHLETE, FILMMAKER & TBI AWARENESS ADVOCATE Photo Credit: Name 60 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH KOBY STEVENS
THRIVE
TO SURVIVE IS NOT ENOUGH Through the eyes of the world’s best athletes, paired with groundbreaking scientific insight, THRIVE introduces a new era in brain injury detection & treatment — allowing those who suffer from head trauma to not just survive, but to thrive. The documentary film features Koby Stevens, Owen Wright, Sidney Crosby, Mick Fanning, Daniel Carcillo, Kevin Pearce, Tyler Wright, the USWNT, Ian Boswell, and Paddy McCartin. Co-produced and co-directed by former Australian Rules Football star, Koby Stevens, THRIVE will challenge its viewing audiences’ beliefs about a human being’s ability to heal their brain, mind and spirit.
Allié: Your career cut short at the age of 28 after suffering 8 concussions as an Australian Rules football player, Koby, your story wasn’t and very much isn’t done. Rather, a new chapter has started. Tell us about your mission to raise awareness for brain injury detection and treatment and the film project, THRIVE, that came to be.
Koby: It’s really been a combination of the last 3 years of my journey since I retired from professional sports. Obviously, my dream career in football was cut short at the tender age of 28. It was quite a big deal, especially here in Australia with yet another young sports person’s career being cut short because of TBI which is becoming a really
THRIVE
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH KOBY STEVENS
61 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
I knew that I had to make a pretty radical change, and that I was masking the problems that I had deep down. KOBY STEVENS
PROFESSIONAL ATHLETE, FILMMAKER & TBI AWARENESS ADVOCATE Photo Credit: Name 62 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“How many more people are dealing with this issue and just don’t know where to go?”
Koby: (continued) common issue. I think in the states, every 11 seconds there is a traumatic brain injury. I went through a range of really bad problems, whether it was physically with my balance or speech… I couldn’t hardly get out of bed because my heart rate would skyrocket as soon as I stood up. I don’t know if it was the determination or the competitive nature of being an elite sportsman, but growing up and doing all sorts of different sports, I didn’t want to see myself stuck in that hole.
I travelled the world trying to find the best treatment. I was lucky enough to be pointed in the right direction by some incredible neurologists in the states. It was about after 6 months that I started to get healthy again. That’s when I retired. I think I was quite lost because I had no purpose. I escaped and I went overseas to Indonesia to try and run away from this lack of purpose and the anxieties I had around the future. I went to Indonesia and I just surfed. I knew that I had to make a pretty radical change, and that I was masking the problems that I had deep down.
I met a young kid who was introduced to me by a friend. He had been really struggling with TBI issues for 3 years. He tried to take his own life. He pretty much told me that he didn’t want to be here, and that really rocked me. I told him that I thought we could find him the right help, and within 3 months he was back to living a normal life. I remember he came up to me, hugged me and cried. He told me, “You know, you saved my life.” For me, that was an epiphany… I did really nothing. I just got this kid the right help. How many more people are dealing with this issue and just don’t know where to go? Myself, being a creative my whole life, the only real way I know how to do this is by storytelling. So, I set on this journey to shoot a feature film. This is where we’re at now, and we’re finally about to kick off production for what will be incredibly rewarding and incredibly helpful for millions of people around the globe.
Allié: In your words Koby, “Our end goal is to provide an incredible cinematic experience that offers the keys to revealing the sweetness of life at the worst and best of times through an emotional film that reveals how it is now possible to positively rewrite one’s life script post traumatic brain injury.” It’s easy to see the ‘sweetness’ of life when it’s at its best, but when it’s at its worst, it’s a bit more difficult. Please give a personal example of a win you were able to find when things were at their worst.
Koby: I think TBI is a huge issue, and a range of issues come from TBI. A lot of things that TBI sufferers experience like mental health issues, be it anxiety, depression or whatever it is, just trying to get back on their feet, they aren’t just TBI issues. They’re everyday issues. That’s what people deal with.
I’ve been lucky enough to become really close friends with Kevin Pearce and Owen Wright. Both went through a lot worse than I did. Kevin Pearce was one of the best snowboarders in the world in 2011. He hit his head on the pipe while preparing for the Olympics. Kevin was in the vegetable state for a couple years. His film, ‘The Crash Reel’, showed what he went through. At the end of that film, the glory for Keven was just being able to stand on his snowboard again, but he wasn’t really well again. For Owen, he went through a similar thing. He hit his head on a pipeline in 2015. He was in a way worse condition than I was, but he’s come back to win an Olympic medal this year which is just an incredible feat. 63 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
You can show a broken arm. You can show a broken leg… but with TBI, it’s a hidden issue. KOBY STEVENS
PROFESSIONAL ATHLETE, FILMMAKER & TBI AWARENESS ADVOCATE Photo Credit: Name 64 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Koby: (continued) This film is a culmination of those 3 journeys, bringing myself, Owen and Kevin together, coupled with incredible science and incredible doctors from neurology and alternative medicine that are really bringing together a film that is not only going to help TBI sufferers… It’s going to help people who are going through hard times. For Kevin, one of the biggest things that helped him was mindfulness and meditation; it was really about being able to let stuff go. This film is really a combination of an incredible journey of 3 guys who eventually become friends, going through a similar thing and winning at life again, along with incredible insights from doctors and the neurology behind how our brains are able to heal. The last 15 years of science shows that our brains can heal, and a lot of people still don’t know that. You can change the way your brain works and the way it heals. I think that is going to be an incredible feat for anyone to be able to watch it, see that anything is possible and how incredible it is that we as humans are able to do that.
Allié: With the trauma you sustained, Koby, when you first received your diagnosis, what was the first thing that gave you hope then? What is it that gives you hope now?
Koby: I didn’t have hope for a long time. For a good 4 or 5 months, I was going from doctor to doctor, and things were getting no better. It was when I met an incredible doctor by the name of Brett Jarosz, who also treated Owen Wright. He was able to show me through different technologies exactly what was going on with my brain and where it was injured. We were able to work out a really significant plan for me to heal my brain and get back to an elite athlete. That took time, and it took a lot of hard work. I remember when he was able to show me exactly what was going on with my brain, I knew I wasn’t going crazy. The one thing with this injury is that you can’t see it. You feel embarrassed. You can show a broken arm. You can show a broken leg. You can show that to people, but with TBI, it’s a hidden issue that has taken people’s lives. Without the right help or the right guidance, it can be really devastating. That’s why I think it’s important to be able to show people that there is something that you can do.
Allié: Being an advocate for yourself as a patient, to seek not just treatment for the symptom, but a cure for the trauma, what advice do you have for those who haven’t yet found an answer for their condition?
Koby: Look, you’ve got to be open minded. I’m very open minded in life, and I’m a big advocate of just seeing people be successful and living an incredible life. Whatever makes you happy, go after it. Issues like this are stopping people from living their purpose. I think I was very open minded and determined to get out of the hole I was in. I know Kevin and Owen were exactly the same. Whether that’s the competitive nature of sports people, I don’t know, but I was very headstrong about getting well again and wanting to live a fulfilling life. I think you have to be open minded. I saw a lot of different doctors. I tried lots of different diets. I even tried alternative medicine. I found what worked, and somethings worked better for others. That’s the whole thing around this film. We’re not saying that one thing’s right, but here are some tools that we’ve used to get through it. We’ll show the world that. One thing with medicine, alternative medicine and everything these days is that you have to be very careful. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone has something different to say. We’re looking at this from that perspective also, but we're just trying to tell the story of those who have gone through something bad and been able to get on their feet again. I think the world needs it right now. ∎
Through the eyes of the world’s best athletes, paired with groundbreaking scientific insight, THRIVE introduces a new era in brain injury detection & treatment — allowing those who suffer from head trauma to not just survive, but to thrive.
The documentary film features Koby Stevens, Owen Wright, Sidney Crosby, Mick Fanning, Daniel Carcillo, Kevin Pearce, Tyler Wright, the USWNT, Ian Boswell, and Paddy McCartin.
www.theworkshop.tv/thrive
65 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
…they needed me more than my usual clients,
and I became aware that I needed them. CRAIG GRAHAM
PERSONAL TRAINER & FOUNDER OF ALT MOVEMENT 66 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘ALT MOVEMENT’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY CRAIG GRAHAM
NO CAPE REQUIRED
WAKING THE SUPERHERO WITHIN Every superhero has an origin story… No, I’m not comparing myself to a superhero, but being aware and having the capability to see something through somebody else’s eyes is, without a doubt, a super power. This isn’t something that we are born with, some of us are lucky enough to inherit it from our parent’s behaviour, just like The Incredibles, but for others, there is a moment or incident that instantly sparks awareness. Like Peter Parker, we are bitten by the radioactive spider and the trajectory of our lives or at least perception is completely altered forever.
It was summer of 2016, and I was entering my 6th year as a Personal Trainer. I was confident and felt good within my practice, believing that I had a fair amount of knowledge and, if all else failed, a charming personality to help any client that I came in contact with. My customers were mostly men and women in their late 20’s, early 30’s, who had let the busy-ness of life get on top of them, adding on the extra pounds or getting out of shape so fast that they didn’t realise what had happened until it was too late. I would write programs, give nutritional advice and, the hidden aspect of a personal trainer, be someone to talk to; it was all routine to me. Then on that hot summer day, I decided to do something a little different, I agreed to run a disability club for a local college.
Complete transparency here, I was under-equipped to run this class. At this point in my career I had little to no experience or awareness about being in the same space or interacting with individuals with physical and/or mental disabilities. In terms of health and safety I had all the necessary skills, but mentally I felt like a fish out of water. So in the two weeks before the class was due to start, I poured myself over every book and website I could get my hands on, absorbing as much information as I could to best prepare myself to deliver an engaging and effective session.
On the day of the class I drove to the college and sat in the car park, sweating under the heat of the sun and the prospect of failing. I reasoned with myself to just complete the sessions that I had agreed to and then never accept to do anything like this again. As I entered the sports hall the centre assistants were pulling back the net dividers; the individual courts opened out to reveal one big, open hall and to reveal my nervousness to all the class participants in front of me.
My spider bite moment came almost immediately after this. One of the participants, a young man in his late teen’s with downs syndrome, full of life and enthusiasm grabbed me by the hand and immersed me into the excited group before us. ‘What are we going to do?’, ‘What sports are we going to play?’ And most importantly ‘What is your name?’ were the questions that all bubbled out at once in excitement, his enthusiasm eroding my nervousness with each gigantic grin.
In this moment, I became aware that the perception that I had previously held of those with disabilities was a complete fallacy. The only way that they were different from my usual clients, was the extra joy and vivacity that they injected into everyday life. I became aware that they needed me more than my usual clients, and I became aware that I needed them.
67 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“Awareness… if we give it the attention that it needs, it can become one hell of a power to have.”
This moment redefined my career, my life and created my company, Alt Movement. Over the next few years I agreed to every opportunity that came my way to work with those with disabilities, despite the bargain that I made with myself in the car park on that hot summer day. With each new client my awareness has grown and I continuously strive to open both my eyes and the eyes of others to how wonderful it is to work with those who are not able bodied or who are neurologically diverse.
Like Uncle Ben said to Peter, “with great power comes great responsibility” and for me having these new found super powers, I felt it was my responsibility to not only help those with disabilities but also to help other trainers and fitness professionals gain the tools and knowledge to do the same and spark their moment of awareness.
Like a fledgling hero trying to harness their powers, awareness can take years to fully develop, it needs to be nurtured and tended to to truly form and come to fruition, but if we give it the attention that it needs, it can become one hell of a power to have. ∎
CRAIG GRAHAM
Personal Trainer & Founder of Alt Movement www.awarenessties.us/craig-graham CRAIG GRAHAM is a Personal Trainer based in the UK, as well as the founder and creator of Alt Movement, which aims to provide individuals with disabilities alternative and adaptive ways of exercising.
68 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
WE WILL NO LONGER ASK
FOR PERMISSION TO CHANGE THE WORLD,
BUT WE WILL AS FOR YOUR HELP.
HELP KEEP THESE STORIES SEEN & HEARD:
WWW.AWARENOW.US/SUPPORT
I have a traveler’s soul where I find piece in movement. SABAH ELAHI
35, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Photo Credit: Team Bertho 70 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘BERTHO’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY MURSHIDUL ALAM BHUIYAN
LIFE GOES ON
A LIFE LESSON SHARED BY SABAH ELAHI I have a traveler’s soul where I find peace in movement. I always have this feeling that I have somewhere far to go and there isn’t enough time.
I used to struggle with insomnia as I just wouldn’t be able to shut down my mind or would keep waking up in the middle of the night. Whilst, I would sleep like a baby in planes, cars, trains, or anything that moves, as I would feel like I was going somewhere. When Covid hit and we couldn’t travel I would literally make myself imagine that I was in a plane and we would be landing somewhere beautiful when I woke up, to trick my mind into getting some sleep.
Since the last year, I have been working on finding peace wherever I am instead of constantly running. It hasn’t been easy, as it doesn’t come naturally to me. Covid made me stop and look around to see where I had come so far or if I was even going in the right direction and I started my journey inwards instead of outwards.
I trained as a Hypnotherapist and Wellness Coach to help others as well as myself. But again, I started this race to get there at lightning speed, by reading all the possible books and taking any course I could. I would get so disappointed when I wasn’t able to apply these learnings to myself and felt like I was in some way being left behind in the race.
LIFE GOES ON
BERTHODOLER CARAVAN | SEASON 3 | EPISODE 5
71 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
We have to get up and keep going no matter how hard we fall. SABAH ELAHI
35, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Photo Credit: Team Bertho 72 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“…each win is to be celebrated and each failure is a lesson for a better tomorrow.”
My biggest lesson so far is that there is no quick way of finding inner peace or fulfilling outward desires. Life is a journey and not a race, each day is special, each win is to be celebrated and each failure is a lesson for a better tomorrow. We are human and we will get triggered and be tempted to fall back to old habits and patterns that have been created over years. However, we have to accept ourselves for who we are, we have to get up and keep going no matter how hard we fall. ∎ Life Lesson:
Enjoy the magic that lies in the journey as there is no promised land waiting at the end.
Sabah Elahi, 35, United Arab Emirates
“Team Bertho” is a youth-led platform, hailing from Bangladesh, delegated to the course of education and community build-up through spreading human wisdom. Founded in 2016, Team Bertho creates narrative projects by using myriad of art forms like creative writing, painting and illustration, graphics designing, short filmography, photography and presents them through socio-digital media, publication, and webconference. Here, we work on documenting the stages of understanding life through people’s learning and pass them on as innovative, creative & effective solutions for everyone to live their best life.
www.teambertho.org
MURSHIDUL ALAM BHUIYAN
Founder of Team Bertho & Official Ambassador for the Human Cause
www.awarenessties.us/murshid MURSHIDUL ALAM BHUIYAN is the Founder and Director of "Team Bertho", a Storyteller, Advocate, Filmmaker, Actor, Dancer, Scout & a Wisdom Historian who is highly motivated by a passion to make a difference in the lives of the people all around the world. Murshid is an educator whose life is dedicated to collecting human wisdom and educating the rest of the world on it.
73 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
…our sweet spot is to invest in people that have the passion to address real world problems and also the talent to execute it. SAHIL CHOPRA
GENERAL PARTNER AT SIMSAN VENTURES 74 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘GLOBAL GOOD’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY TANITH HARDING
DISRUPTIVE INVESTING
FINDING DIVIDENDS IN DIVERSITY & SOCIAL IMPACT Sahil and Sagar Chopra are two brothers on a mission to unearth, invest in and partner with the best underrepresented business founders, and support them in creating industry disrupting businesses via venture capital firm Simsan Ventures. They understand the innovative value that comes with diversity and seek to empower entrepreneurs who want to positively impact the society we live in.
Tanith: Simsan ventures is different from other venture capital firms, tell us why that is?
Sahil: When we first started this company, we looked around the UK and we didn't think that there was another micro VC fund out there that embodies what we're trying to build in an institution. The mix of only investing in underrepresented founders and diverse teams is truly unique. I mean, the bigger institutions out there are releasing new initiatives, but they're not doing it from the ground up from early stage companies, especially in deep tech and fintech. We think that this is quite a unique proposition that we're doing. Also when we look at emerging venture capital, which often includes first time managers, there’s no face to that scene right now. So not just us two brothers, but Simsan Ventures professionals in the future also. We want those people to be the face of the UK emerging VC scene and also other people to look at us so that other first time managers can come forward in the future and use us an example. Also which other fund is founded by two brothers. I don't think you can pick one.
DISRUPTIVE INVESTING
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SAHIL & SAGAR CHOPRA
75 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“It's a proven fact that diversity yields performance and innovation…”
Tanith: Diversity is at the core of your business. Why is diversity specifically so important to Simsan?
Sagar: It's a proven fact that diversity yields performance and innovation in business as well as other areas such as sport, for example - we don't think anybody can dispute that. And of course business values come from the founders at first. So diversity has always been important to us. We love the UK and London but the two of us kept seeing the same profiles and the same faces winning funding, contracts and even jobs. This needs to change because there is a lot of overlooked and ignored talent and this could prove detrimental to this country.
Tanith: You recently invested in ethical and sustainable marketplace and B2B supplier Beyond Bamboo, what was it about this business in particular that made you want to invest?
Sahil: When we first announced that we were investing in Beyond Bamboo, everyone in our friends and family circle were shocked that we had invested in this type of company mainly because we never took it seriously. Not just as investors but as individuals and obviously that's wrong. It just shows the power of founders where they can educate investors and show them that there are real world problems that need to be addressed and that they can be if those with access to capital are truly passionate about it. We met three fantastic ladies who actually educated us about these issues, whether it was from the b2b side or the b2c side of the business they were working on. It’s quite simple to ethically source products from around the world and offer them to consumers or businesses. It's just that nobody's been doing it right now. So here at Simsan, our sweet spot is to invest in people that have the passion to address real world problems and also the talent to execute it. We believe that we found the right team to do that, so that's why we invested in Beyond Bamboo and we urge anyone else who's reading this right now to look them up along with Phoenix Rising, The Global Youth Awards and RoundTable Global to see what they're about.
Tanith: You are also planning on supporting the Global Youth Awards next year with sponsorship and I know you hope to work with some of the young people in the future. Why do you think it is important to attract them to VC early?
Sagar: We believe that investing is everybody's right. It's an inevitability in life once people start earning now but what's becoming more important is developing the skills in fundraising. At the end of the day access to capital is a right, so the next generation needs to be on top of this. Further to this, imagine what young founders and investors can do if they learn how to fundraise from a very early stage. Look at the USA for example, people are starting funds in college and dropouts are forming unicorns, so we're lagging behind. Younger VC managers are a huge potential for this country. We keep seeing the same demographic representing UK venture capital and this needs to change or at least be equalised. There is no need to go through the traditional investment banking route to become a venture capitalist. We as two brothers believe this is complete nonsense. So Simsan will invite the winners from these awards to join our institution to prove this as well as giving others a chance to learn life skills which are important for the future. 76 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Tanith: Simsan is just at the beginning of what sounds like an exciting journey. Please share your hopes and dreams for the future.
Sahil: Over the next decade, I think we have decided to launch three funds across three different continents. The first one is starting in the UK because we want to build our brand out here. This is our home and our country. We believe that the entrepreneurship scene here is booming, there's a lot of technology which is going to define the next decade and beyond. Then the second fund that we have decided that we're going to go for is in the ASEAN region. We're being flown out to South Korea soon to meet some potential investors and make this happen in the medium term. And also in Asia, as everybody knows, there’s incredible talent right now and there can be a lot of synergies if the UK made a relationship with another fund cross border in that region where portfolio companies can share knowledge and the UK can benefit from technologies which are being built out there. So that's one dream of ours.
Sagar: I guess another one is to start this network of international founders and investors from all over the world working with people who they never could have imagined working with. We believe that diversity is going to be a strong point for driving businesses forward in the future, and there's no better way than being at the forefront of it.
Learn more about Simsan: www.simsanventures.com
TANITH HARDING
Director of International Development, The Legacy Project, RoundTable Global www.awarenessties.us/tanith-harding Tanith is leading change management through commitment to the RoundTable Global Three Global Goals of: Educational Reform, Environmental Rejuvenation & Empowerment for All. She delivers innovative and transformational leadership and development programmes in over 30 different countries and is also lead on the international development of philanthropic programmes and projects. This includes working with a growing team of extraordinary Global Change Ambassadors and putting together the Global Youth Awards which celebrate the amazing things our young people are doing to change the world.
77 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Love makes light,
and we absolutely rise by lifting others. CARLY HARRIS
CHANNEL KINDNESS CONTRIBUTOR Photo Credit: Carly Harris/Channel Kindness 78 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘CHANNELING KINDNESS’ FEATURE BY BORN THIS WAY FOUNDATION
SWEET POTATO FRIES
SERVED WITH SUNSETS & KINDNESS I worked at a restaurant for a little bit during my sophomore year of college. It’s a nice dainty burger place right by the capitol in Madison, WI, where I would serve and host whenever I could. I remember it was a Wednesday, I was making literally no money, and soaking in the boredom of folding napkins and waiting for a table to come in.
I felt lucky when an older woman showed up for two, she said that she was waiting on her friend who worked at the capitol. She sat alone for a little bit until I approached her and asked what I could grab her. She laughed and said, “I just hope it’s 2:30 on Wednesday,” referring to when her friend and she had scheduled to meet up for lunch. I laughed it off with her, but my heart sank for her at the thought of her anxiously sitting around at a random restaurant alone waiting for a friend that wasn’t showing up.
I ordered her my favorite cocktail on the menu from me, and she got herself sweet potato fries. Her friend never showed, so she gave herself a time limit as to when she would stop waiting for her.
Every time I stopped by to check on her and see how she was doing, we would get lost in conversations about little things like tattoos and sunsets. At this point, I had gotten a couple more tables to take care of and was the only server, so I told her I would be back to sit with her and show her some photos of my favorite sunsets when I had a couple of minutes.
When my free time came, I sat myself across from her in a little booth. We rambled on about what tattoos I wanted to get and how my dad would probably want to disown me, just like hers did at first when she got all of hers. I showed her photos of the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen in my life. The pinks, blues, and oranges of the sky created new colors with each other that I didn’t know could exist.
She sat in awe, we sat in awe. I told her I thought it was a beautiful thing that we could be brought so close together by just a picture of the sky. Her smile was ethereal and contagious. This moment felt so real to me, and it began with my choice to make this woman feel seen. Little did I know, in making this lady feel seen, I myself would also feel seen. I felt validated by her happiness, it wrapped its arms tightly around my soul, tighter than the physical hug she gave me with her warm open arms before she left the restaurant.
My boss told me that what I had done was “super cool,” and I felt cool. I felt empowered to do it again, to help more people feel seen, all the time. This moment occurred because of kindness. I had the choice to show up for this woman, and by doing this I also showed up for myself and showed myself how powerful I am and my ability to impact others. What a beautiful moment.
Love makes light and we absolutely rise by lifting others. I welcome these moments of courage with open arms as I enter the new school year. I vow to be present and inclusive with everyone around me, I want more moments like these, and I can and will create them by continuing to choose now to be kind. ∎
Submitted by Born This Way Foundation (@btwfoundation) & Channel Kindness (@channelkindness),
Sweet Potato Fires & Sunsets is by Carly Harris. Follow Carly on Instagram: @carlyhharris
79 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
We are all storytellers, capable of sharing messages and impacting those around us. ELIZABETH BLAKE-THOMAS
STORYTELLER, PHILANTHROPIST & OFFICIAL AMBASSADOR FOR HUMAN TRAFFICKING AWARENESS
80 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘MEDICINE WITH WORDS’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY ELIZABETH BLAKE-THOMAS
STORYTELLING
THE ORIGIN TALE OF MY AWARENESS “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” - Barack Obama
Ever since I was little I loved being told a story. It could be one from a book or one made up on the fly. As long as it was something that engaged me. So many stories we are told as children have long term effects on us. Whether it be a moment from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory '' where I realised I shouldn’t eat so much chocolate, or Aesop’s Fable "The Tortoise and the Hare” where I learned the fastest doesn’t always win the race. Not only do I love hearing and watching stories, but I also love telling stories. Telling stories is the natural way ideas, concepts, and moments of history are passed onto future generations. Stories help educate us. They teach us, often through emotional and colourful descriptions, with language that allows us to feel something. When an audience feels something, they tend to be more inclined to react to the things a story says.
We are all storytellers, capable of sharing messages and impacting those around us. I use several mediums when telling stories, but being a director, my favourite is film. “A picture is worth a thousand words”. With each film I create, I decide what message I want my audience to receive. The story of one of my latest films, a romcom titled “Just Swipe”, came about due to my own personal experiences dating during the pandemic, how that looked and felt for me at the time. I thought it would be interesting to share these experiences and engage other people in similar circumstances. This story’s message for the audience was how we need to be happy with ourselves before we look outside for happiness.
A past family Christmas film of mine, “Evie Rose”, is based on a true story about my daughter’s best friend who lived to be 100. This story’s message was about how important the older generations were and are, and how we must stay connected to them.
Stories can have simple messages or more complicated lessons. The popular medium of film can easily be used to further messages and create widespread impact by promoting a positive social change. One of the most important social change films that I’ve directed and self-funded was a film about child trafficking awareness, “UNSEEN”. The film came about after my initial origin of awareness. I had been aware of human trafficking through awareness campaigns sprinkled throughout my life, but it wasn’t until I was made aware of a true story about a young girl trafficked through social media, who escaped her captors after years of being trafficked, that I was awakened to do more for the cause. Considering the various movie structures I could follow, I chose to shine light on child trafficking in a way that is typically not done. Rather than focus on the often traumatizing details post initial trafficking, or the day to day of someone being trafficked, I chose to shed light on the lure tactics that traffickers often use prior to finding a new victim. Many child trafficking films may seem too dark for younger children to watch, yet with the rise in technology, kids younger and younger are on social media apps unsupervised, more likely to be prey to traffickers scouring the apps for targets. “UNSEEN” focuses on a young girl who through social media goes to a modeling audition in hopes for some extra cash, only to find out too late that the audition is a trafficking scam. My film ends just as the young girl is being trafficked, as opposed to following the often gruesome next steps for trafficked victims, so that the film can be shown to vulnerable younger audiences to raise awareness. While appropriate for younger audiences, the film is still poignant for all ages, especially adults and parents who can look out for more signs with their kids or those they know through an increase in awareness. I made the point of telling the story in the way I did to bring awareness to a huge demographic to make a social change, to hopefully make a difference in someone’s life. UNSEEN is also free on YouTube (https://awarenow.us/film/unseen) in the hopes that it will be shared with as many people as possible, increasing the reach for crucial awareness. 81 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
In order to make a positive social change, we need to keep telling stories. ELIZABETH BLAKE-THOMAS
STORYTELLER, PHILANTHROPIST & OFFICIAL AMBASSADOR FOR HUMAN TRAFFICKING AWARENESS
82 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
UNSEEN
AWARD-WINNING SHOR FILM
Through the origin of UNSEEN, I was sparked to use my filmmaking talents to bring awareness to a variety of causes. The latest social change project that I’ll be turning into a short film is a story about an attempted suicide. The way I received this story was oddly enough when my 1969 VW bus broke down. AAA turned up and the driver Miguel drove me home. We chatted on the way back to my home and he told me the most engaging, inspirational, emotional story about his life and attempted suicide. I couldn’t help but feel like I was meant to be the conduit to tell his powerful story. With Miguel’s approval, I wrote a script and now am finding funding, in order to bring awareness to this incredibly important subject. This film has the power to make a positive change. If it helps even one person battling with suicidal thoughts, showing them that they are not alone, then the film has fulfilled its purpose.
The origin of my awareness with child trafficking, to creating the film “UNSEEN”, to using my voice to raise further awareness to not only child trafficking, but also to other vital causes, is my awareness story. I intend to continue exploring my path of spreading awareness through filmmaking, using my storytelling medium to make a difference in someone’s life.
How can you make a difference? How can you have an impact? Tell stories of others, or your own. Use words, pictures, articles, films. Whatever your chosen medium is, make this article your origin if you don’t already have one. In order to make a positive social change, we need to keep telling stories. As the saying goes, “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow”. ∎
ELIZABETH BLAKE-THOMAS
Storyteller, Philanthropist & Official Ambassador for Human Trafficking Awareness
www.awarenessties.us/elizabethblakethomas ELIZABETH BLAKE-THOMAS is a British award-winning storyteller and philanthropist based in Los Angeles, having recently directed her latest feature film during the COVID-19 pandemic. Will You Be My Quarantine? is a romcom starring Full House/Fuller House star Jodie Sweetin and is set to release in 2021. Elizabeth’s recent film Evie Rose, starring Oscar-nominated actress Terry Moore, is premiering on Christmas Eve 2020. Elizabeth is the founder and resident director of entertainment company Mother & Daughter Entertainment, whose motto is “Making Content That Matters”, putting focus on each project starting a conversation amongst viewers. Through MDE, Elizabeth established the MD Foundation Initiative, a campaign to mentor and employ undiscovered filmmakers through fellow philanthropic pledges.
83 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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In my journey, I’ve discovered that gratitude is a way of seeing… KEVIN MONROE
FOUNDER & HOST OF ‘THIS EXTRAORDINARY LIFE’ GLOBAL COMMUNITY AND PODCAST 84 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN MONROE
PAUSE
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THANKS AND GRATITUDE As a child, Kevin was taught to be polite—to say “please” and “thank you.” You could say that he learned a cursory form of gratitude at an early age. Years later, a mentor recommended that he give thanks for three things he was thankful for before his feet hit the floor every morning—a slightly deeper experience of gratitude. On most days, he complied. However, it was during a bout of depression in early 2018 when Kevin began to discover the true power of gratitude and embrace gratitude as a lifestyle. He realized that his early expressions of gratitude were anemic and bordered on robotic. As such, they failed to tap into the power of gratitude that neuroscientists and positive psychologists talk about. As he adopted gratitude as a lifestyle, he began incorporating gratitude into his work. Whether that was speaking engagements, training or coaching sessions, or his podcast, he started sessions by asking people to pause and express gratitude for something.
Allié: According to Merriam-Webster, ‘gratitude’ is a noun that is defined as a feeling of appreciation or thanks. Kevin, I’d like to hear your definition of the term for which you’ve made a movement. What is ‘gratitude’?
Kevin: What is gratitude? It’s interesting how far we may go through life without ever asking that question. And yet, most of us would think we ‘know’ what it is…at least, until we stop and ponder. For decades, I operated under the
PAUSE
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN MONROE
85 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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Gratitude is how we come to experience everything that comes our way in life. KEVIN MONROE
FOUNDER & HOST OF ‘THIS EXTRAORDINARY LIFE’ GLOBAL COMMUNITY AND PODCAST 86 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Kevin: (continued) assumption that gratitude and thankfulness were the same thing… that they were synonyms. I no longer think that. They are definitely related, but not the same thing. Think about the last time you said ‘thank you’ to someone. Did you say it today? To the barista at the coffee shop? To the cashier at the counter? To the person at the drive through window? Did you even SEE the person you thanked? I mean really see them as a person? Did you think about everything and everyone involved in the chain of events that led to the barista handing you a cup of coffee and you saying ‘thank you’ without thinking anything about it? I get it. I lived like that for years. I said thank you automatically. Perhaps even robotically. You reach out your hand to put something into my hand, something I may have paid for, and I say ‘thank you’ as a courtesy. As an automatic response. But am I grateful? Too often our saying thank you is transactional. If I don’t pause to look you in the eye and to see you as a fellow traveler on this journey of life, did I really thank you? Being grateful, now, that’s transformational. Recently, I received a gift. It’s a beautiful gratitude journal my friend, Patti Blackstaffe, created. She created it on her gratitude journey to help her process and record her gratitudes. In it is this beautiful definition of gratitude:
gratitude: (n.) appreciation for all that we have, all that we are, and thankfulness for our ability to show love and kindness to others
This is from ‘It’s Not All Strawberries and Cream, But There Are Some Wonderful Moments’, by Patti Blackstaffe. This has become my new favorite definition of gratitude. It’s all-encompassing. Gratitude isn’t just about being thankful for our things. It definitely includes appreciation for ALL that we have. It also includes appreciation for all that we ARE. Which then includes everything and everyone who contributed to our process of becoming who we are today. PAUSE! And ponder that for a moment. Gratitude also includes being thankful for our ability to give and receive love and kindness to and from others. In my journey, I’ve discovered that gratitude is a way of seeing -- seeing ourselves, the world around us, and our place in it and our relationship to it. Gratitude is how we come to experience EVERYTHING that comes our way in life. When I did a deep dive in the origins of the words (the etymology), I realized that gratitude is lingering longer in the spirit of thanksgiving. Allié: From a state of personal depression to a state of public conception of gratitude, please share the story of how you shifted from one state to the other.
Kevin: As you noted, it began in a dark place…and it wasn’t an overnight success either. I vividly remember that morning, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. I was at a point of desperation and despair. I struggled to drag myself out of bed… didn’t want to get up…didn’t see the point in getting up. Some of you know that feeling.
Now, I’m a guy who’s usually up between 4:30 and 5:00 am without an alarm clock. That morning I awoke several times, peeked out from under the covers and thought, “Why bother?” Around 7:30, I slithered out of bed and stumbled my way into my office. I grabbed my prayer journal and — because I have morning routines and rhythms — I was going through the motions. I opened my journal, scribbled out my despair and sat down on the floor with my journal in hand. Here’s what I wrote:
87 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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Kevin: (continued) As I sat on the floor, I was in what they call liminal space — that in between space — neither fully awake nor asleep. In a daze and haze, forty-five minutes later, I sat up. An idea! Perhaps a creative one. At the time I wasn’t sure but I was glad to have an idea and a direction in which to move. The idea was to host a 90-day journey and call it The Extraordinary Experiment. To find people who felt like I felt (and still feel) ORDINARY. But, who also like me have this longing deep within to live an extraordinary life and be an extraordinary person. Over these 13 weeks, we would invite people into a sequence of weekly challenges each inviting a little more investment and risk. I remember Week One was ‘The Awareness Challenge’. Simply asking people to get their heads out of whatever they are usually in — phone, newspaper, magazine, or book — and notice the people and places around you. Right in the middle of these 13 weeks was 'The Gratitude Challenge’. That was the first time in my life that I remember pausing to ponder if there was a difference between being thankful and grateful. I guess you could say that was my awakening and where this journey got its formal start.
When we hosted our first ‘Extraordinary Experiment’, 274 people from 28 countries joined me; and 247 people completed the 13 week journey. The gratitude seed was sown in my heart. Then, on Monday, June 17, 2019, in that same early morning time of day, I was in my prayer and meditation time and heard this four word question or invitation, “Host a gratitude challenge?” Now that was an interesting idea. I had never given it any thought. However, over the years I’ve trained myself on how to respond to inspired ideas when they arrive. It’s a two-part response:
1) Say Yes 2) Take Action I instantly said, Yes. I don’t remember saying it out loud. But I said, Yes! The action?
I had become friends with Steve Foran who authored a delightful book, Surviving to Thriving: The Ten Laws of Grateful Leadership. Steve was set to join me in two weeks as a guest on my podcast. I grabbed my phone and called him. He answered! (Pause and ponder that — it doesn’t happen often anymore).
“Hey Steve, I’ve got an idea. Want to join me and host a gratitude challenge?”
An idea was ALL it was. I had no thoughts on how short or long it would run. What we would do as part of a gratitude challenge. And I was prepared for all kinds of responses…
“What would that look like?”
“Where would we host it?”
“Who would come?”
“How would we market it?
I was prepared to hear those questions. Not answer them — because I hadn’t thought through it. Seriously, I called him within 10 minutes of having the idea. I wasn’t prepared for the response he gave.
“Sure, count me in!”
“Okay, what’s our next step?”
Then, I called Christy Kern who had collaborated with me to host The Extraordinary Experiment. “Hey, Christy, Steve and I are collaborating on a Gratitude Challenge (it was now a thing and so I capitalized the letters -ha!) want to join us?” You can guess what she said, “Sure, count me in!”
Later that day, the three of us connected on Zoom for an hour and sketched out the minimally viable plan — decided that 10 days was long enough to make a difference and short enough for people to complete. (I did learn lots of things hosting a 90-day challenge the previous year!) We set July 2 as the date that we would announce The 10-Day Gratitude Challenge (amazingly creative title we came up with) and start it on Monday, July 8, 2019. Two days later, at the same time of day, a thought arrived: “there’s an artist who will join and create/contribute original artwork for the challenge. Hmm, but I don’t know any artists. But, I knew Twitter, so I composed a tweet.
88 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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Kevin: (continued) By the end of Wednesday, June 19, Cat Hase had signed on and would later become our Artist-inResidence. That’s a sidebar story of its own merit. There’s another amazing story of how we recruited people over the 4th of July week to crawl our way to the 100 people we wanted to have join by Friday, July 5. Then, on Saturday, two friends learned about the challenge and asked if they could spread the word. Spread the word they did. Over a 46hour period we attracted another 190 participants and started our first challenge with 290 people. We structured it as a closed cohort so we could collect pre- and post-data to see the difference 10 days of gratitude made. That meant no one could join after we started on Monday, July 8. By Tuesday, July 9, we had a problem. Well, not really a problem. It was more of an opportunity. We had 100 people on a wait list. The problem was we had never considered hosting more than one session. After all, the inspired invitation was to “Host a Gratitude Challenge?” I thought that meant one session! Now, I’ve hosted 20+ sessions. Fast forward to Thursday, September 10, 2020. (I don’t always remember dates…however, I do remember ALL of the dates I’ve listed here as they are all significant.) I was out on my morning walk (can take you to the side street I was on). I was listening to an audio book, The Lost Secret when suddenly a thought formed in my mind. Yes, it arrived as a question. Now, before I share the question, it might help to know that according to StrengthsFinder, I’m a LEARNER. I’m a lifelong learner and always geeked out with new books and new ideas. There’s a dark side to being a learner. I’m easily bored and abandon ideas to go on to the next shiny object.
That’s why the way this question piqued my interest in a special kind of way. “Of ALL of the things that energize and excite you, what is the ONE thing that has the broadest appeal and greatest impact?”
Immediately, I knew my answer. You know it too. GRATITUDE.
At precisely that moment, I made a commitment to grow gratitude globally. The thing that seemed easiest and most immediate to do was to take the Gratitude Encounter I had developed and delivered the month before for my friend Traci Fenton and WorldBlu and make it “a thing”. I looked at my calendar and realized that I could host a Gratitude Encounter the first Tuesday of every month. I set it up as an event on Zoom and Eventbrite. Later that day, I told Christy you might see something called a Gratitude Encounter on the calendar and that I scheduled a few. She asked, “How many?’ I checked. I looked and realized I had committed to host Gratitude Encounters each month for seven months through April 2021. Then, and only then, after sticking with it for seven months whether anyone showed up or not, would I make a decision if it was worthwhile to continue or not. Well, you know the answer to that question. I’m still doing it. Since then, gratitude has become the single focus of my work and the portfolio of activities and events we host to allow people to explore, express, and experience gratitude keeps growing. About this time last year, I realized that “Gratitude experienced is way better than gratitude explained.” That’s what I do. Create opportunities for people to experience gratitude because Gratitude Changes Everything. 89 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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“We’re always responding, rarely choosing, perhaps unaware that a choice exists.”
Allié: “Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” This is a powerful quote by Viktor E. Frankl. Regarding this concept, you ask a question, Kevin. What if we pause and we notice and we look for something good and we express? A concept and statement for the embodiment of gratitude, you say, “Pause, notice, express.” Please share the power of the pause.
Kevin: The power of the pause. WOW, for so much of our lives we live on autopilot or worse… going through life as a zombie or in some state of stupor, slumber, or semiconsciousness. Dazed. Confused. Shuffling from one thing to the next…and never noticing the awesomeness around us. Did you catch how many times I've invited you to PAUSE in reading this? Life, for most people today is one mindless and endless series of events…one thing leading to another and another. We’re always responding, rarely choosing, perhaps unaware that a choice exists.
When I say pause, I’m not talking about 5, 10, 15 minutes or more of monk-like mediation, lotus pose, or chants.
I’m talking about milliseconds or micro pauses at first. That moment that Frankl wrote about, that moment between stimulus and response. What if, in that moment, we PAUSE — step out of autopilot and racing from one thing to the next and TAKE a moment — literally a moment. In time, those moments might become minutes — but start with moments.
Allié: What do I do when I PAUSE?
Kevin: Ah, that’s when you simply look up, down, around or look within and NOTICE something…anything that’s a gift. Something you didn’t create or make happen. The air you breathe, the blood flowing through your body, your gift of senses — sight, sound, smell, touch, taste. The gifts, talents, and abilities you have… The opportunities you have. The agency you have. The freedom to choose. Birds, flowers, trees, music, children laughing or playing. The ocean, the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars. When you PAUSE…and NOTICE…then EXPRESS gratitude. Say ‘thank you’.
Say ‘thank you’ to the barista…and pause to think of everyone involved in the sequence of events involved to make that cup of coffee or tea. This little slice of infinity that we now occupy. That’s gratitude! ∎
Learn more about Kevin and his work: www.kevindmonroe.com
90 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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SONJA MONTIEL
CO-FOUNDER OF THE DECIDED HEART EFFECT 92 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘THE DECIDED HEART EFFECT’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY SONJA MONTIEL
HOMEWORK
LEARNINGS FOUND IN NIGHTTIME ACHIEVEMENTS It’s homework night. What, aren’t you excited?!
Whether you are the parent trying to get your kid to understand Algebra before dinner, or you remember being that struggling kid, memories of “homework night” usually end with dread, fear and frustration. No one is smiling at the end of the night, and the dinner got cold.
I have always been curious about how homework nights became emotionally painful for many families. The student and adult arrived together with good intentions, but something happened, a disconnect, between the optimistic beginning and the tearful end.
Sure, we can talk about homework policy concerns.
We can talk about how and why learning in today’s traditional classrooms became linear, sequential, and targeted for a specific kind of learner.
We can talk about our society’s obsession with being busy and the confusion that busyness equates to worth, like it’s somehow a badge of honor to have 5 hours of homework each night.
We can talk about the fear that seeps into our parenting styles that lure children to feel obligated to achieve so we can sleep at night and worry less about our child (who is currently 6 years old) living an unhappy and failed adult life.
We can talk about our biggest cultural mistake in misleading young brilliant minds to believe that counting the number of trophies, A grades earned, and recognition certificates mean everything when it comes to their identity and worth.
But not today.
Rather than ruffle our feathers pointing fingers at educational policy, curriculum development, and cultural influences, let’s go back to our origin story – the story that can create trust and belonging on a homework night between you and the person looking to you for help.
I remember my origin story of being an educator for the first time (aka parent). I was 25 years old when I had my first child, feeling naive, nervous, and insecure. Yet, I felt so driven to have my daughter rely on me, fully trusting that I would protect her. While it was easier to pull off before she turned four years old, I began to notice that trust was something I needed to earn by the time she turned 5. Not having 100% control when I found myself negotiating with my growing child, I started to question myself. Was I a trustworthy person?
As a reaction to my self-doubt, I needed a way to measure that I was doing okay raising this kid. Instead of looking internally for confidence, I was desperately looking out. That’s why I totally bought into how society celebrated achievement in all areas of my daughter’s life. 93 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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The first days of school, full of photos and daily reports…
The first time she received a Student of the Month certificate that had a MacDonald’s coupon for a free sundae (we went that night). The first time she had an award ceremony (I teared up). The first end-of-the-season for youth soccer where she held her first trophy (for participating).
With a camera in my hand, I documented all the achievements. I told her how proud I was of the things that she earned. Instead of looking at her, I looked at the gold seals, shiny hardware, and coupons. During those young parenting days, I was unaware that I was relying on my daughter’s symbols of achievement to validate that I was a good parent.
When homework got challenging, she began to ask me for help. It was frustrating. I felt responsible that I was supposed to know, while my daughter felt less than. The more homework nights we had, the more I felt the disconnection with my daughter. I was losing her trust. We were losing our sense of belonging.
It was the day when my daughter didn’t ask for homework help, clearly struggling, that I knew I had work to do. I had to recognize that I was raised fixed-mindedly when it came to achievement. Many of us in my generation have been. Whether we got paid for every A grade earned or treated to special outings for every certificate we came home with, we got something tangible for learning well. I remember how good the validation felt too. Being labeled a “highachieving student” meant I was on some mountaintop open to only a few. As a result, I kept chasing symbols of achievement to convince myself that I was an intelligent person. Yikes.
As I learned more about where my educational baggage was coming from, I learned to be quieter in my parenting. Silence became an ally. In that space, I guided myself through detaching my experience from my daughter’s. In that detachment, I learned that my daughter’s experiences were completely her own. Interrupting her emotions, taking away her challenges by trying to fix it, was simply disrespectful.
This is what The DH Effect calls “Companioning” – walking alongside another person to help guide them through their own experience while letting them know that they are capable of critical thinking and problem-solving. Another way to put it: people become the heroes solving their own struggles.
The more I practiced, the better I became at Companioning. I let go of the expectation that I had to know most of the answers. Instead, I just needed to learn how to offer good open-ended questions:
What do you know about the problem?
Where else could you learn how to solve the problem beyond your notes?
How would you feel if you tried your best tonight but didn’t complete your homework?
What would your teacher say if you went to her tomorrow and asked for help?
There are five Decided Heart steps to reaching a full cycle of Companioning represented by our acronym HEART:
Hold Space
Empty Yuck
Action Step
Review Decision
Thankful Thoughts 94 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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AwareNow Podcast
HOMEWORK
Written and Narrated by Sonja Montiel
awarenow.us/podcast/homework SCAN TO LISTEN
“…the experience begins with building trust with one another so that the exchange of knowledge happens in the name of curiosity.”
Each step involved some training and lots of practice. It took patience for me to learn and apply the Companioning cycle. During that time, the one decision that kept me determined to work through this skill was this: My daughter’s identity as a human would no longer be influenced by whether or not her homework was right, perfect, or done.
My daughter is now 21 years old, thriving during her third year of college. I also have a 13-year-old and there are no drama scenes with homework. Instead, evenings are filled with pondering about what the homework wants her to learn. We recognize homework as a tool, not an outcome. In my work as an educational consultant these days, too many young people are continuing to chase the symbols of achievement, and I use Companioning to help them adjust their mindset and quality of learning…and living.
When you think about it, deep down in the origins of learning, the experience begins with building trust with one another so that the exchange of knowledge happens in the name of curiosity. Each person is contributing without obligation, guilt, and in the case of homework nights, expectations of knowing. Rather, the room is filled with H.E.A.R.T. where learning truly happens. ∎
SONJA MONTIEL
Co-Founder of The Decided Heart Effect www.awarenessties.us/sonja-montiel Sonja has served more than twenty-one years in the college admissions profession, having extensive experience in the areas of freshman, transfer, and international admissions. During her time working with thousands of teens and young adults worldwide, she began to witness many societies creating an unhealthy college-bound culture that misguides our young people in their pursuit of living a life of fulfillment. In 2021, Sonja met Hilary Bilbrey to begin something amazing. They created The DH Effect – The Decided Heart Effect with a mission to guide individuals, schools, and organizations to build high-trust relationships and belonging through self-discovery and personal accountability.
95 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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How can I take all this really dope information and put it in one small space? ARIELLE CAPUTO
AUTHOR, PHILANTHROPIST & OFFICIAL AMBASSADOR FOR HEALTH & WELLNESS 96 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH ARIELLE CAPUTO
LITTLE BLACK BOOK
SECRETS SHARED FOR A HEALTHIER, HAPPIER LIFE While a ‘little black book’ is typically an address book, especially one in which the details of previous lovers are recorded, ‘The Little Black Book Of Secrets’ addresses the need for alternatives required for living a healthier and happier life. Here Arielle Caputo discloses details on the best brands and products to trust.
Allié: If sharing truly is caring, then you must really care about providing access to healthy alternatives to have shared as much as you have in ‘The Little Black Book Of Secrets’. What was it that inspired you to publish this book?
Arielle: It was such a fun project to work on quite honestly. Let me first take you back a little bit on my own personal journey. I would take a look at my girlfriends in my life. A couple of them have super glowing skin or seem incredibly magnetic or full of bubbly energy. And I would just sit there and wish I could be a fly on their wall so I could see what they actually were doing with their skincare routine, with their food? What are they drinking? What kind of chemicals are they using in their home to clean or are they not using chemicals?
People seem to have sustainable energy. I’m also trying to eat healthy. And so I started to ask questions and to collect data, and then incorporate the answers into my own life.
I battled really bad cystic acne in my twenties. Really, really painful where I had cysts all up and down my cheeks. And they would explode, popping randomly when I was at work. And I would just sit there crying because they would be bleeding and it was really, really painful. It was very intense.
This was about 10 to 12 years ago. Back then in dermatology, they would insert a needle and kind of withdraw the pus to bring them down. It was really painful, which led to a lot of scarring. Anyways, I ended up being put on Accutane, which is a very strictly regulated drug where you have to go in once a month to have your blood drawn to make sure your white and red blood cells are correct. You have to sign paperwork every month agreeing to being on it.
And I just kept thinking to myself, this doesn't seem right. Our bodies are naturally made to heal themselves. Why would I need to put such a harsh man-made drug in it to fix this? Like there has to be other systemic issues. And we just felt like that was the band-aid. So I asked myself, how can I get to these root causes to address the skin issues, asking questions like what are you drinking? Are you having celery juice every morning? Or you're doing apple cider vinegar shots, you know, all these kinds of questions.
And then one of my best friends is an incredible showman and he's really good at not lecturing me, but he would always just kind of drop this little ball and be like, “oh, have you heard of this plant?” And have you heard of this? And kind of giving me all these secrets. And so, like I said, I started collecting them and then it got to the point where I would be traveling. While I was out and about, people would say all the time, you have glowy skin or you're super magnetic or you're so vibrant. And it wasn't, you're beautiful. You're pretty, it was these very specific words.
97 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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“The more I researched, the more products I kept finding, or the more companies that were just out there doing really incredible things…”
Arielle: (continued) It was an energy that they were picking up on -- glowy dewy -- that's something beyond the surface level. And so they would ask me like, what is it that you're doing that's different because any girl can go get Botox and fillers and you can kind of fix that. And so I realized people were picking up on an energy or a frequency. And so I was like, what is it? What are people seeing here?
So I started asking my friends, have you tried sea moss? Or recommending that you should put crystals in your home and put salt lamps in your home next to your WIFI router. People would come into my home and comment, it's so peaceful and Zen in here. They are thinking it is the white couch or white floor, you know, but they're not realizing, it's the energy.
You can't see it of course but you can sense it and they did. I have a whole forest of plants in here and a bunch of crystals. So all of these little things are adding to your personal life because everything in this universe is energy. Everything is vibrating at a frequency, which can be measured in Hertz. So then everything you're putting on your body, in your body, or in your environment is contributing to the Hertz, the vibration of your physical body. And so when you start to look at the different things that you're eating and drinking, you can see why someone would appear or come off as glowy or vibrant or dewey. And these are words that we love to hear right now.
So this has been my journey. People would comment that I have really nice skin or I have a nice tan, asking how do I not burn? My response is you're a plant. You need chlorophyll. You need the sun. You have greens in your bloodstream. Wait, what you mean greens people would ask? Are you taking chlorophyll? Are you taking spirulina? How much in the way of greens are you taking a day that contributes to how your body processes sun and makes melatonin and all this kind of stuff.
And then I realized as I kept copying and pasting all this information all the time over and over, this just needs to be in a book so that I can just give people a link to all the things I recommend. So a book it was. I went hardcore at the top of this year and just started asking the doctors, the shamans and all these people that I would look up, asking what they were doing. And it was crazy how many people had all of these really insightful gems that you wouldn't know unless you engaged in this fun and common conversation that we're all having. And I was like, people need to know about these products. They're really, really cool.
The more I researched, the more products I kept finding, or the more companies that were just out there doing really incredible things. And I was like, it just kept leading to a bigger and bigger book. And it got to the point where I was like, okay, I just need to get the book out there because it could be never ending. So I'm definitely working on another version too, but in this one I just wanted to kind of cover the basis of the different categories and show people how beneficial a non-toxic way of living is and what it's doing not just for your energy, but your physical body and how it could be easily implemented in your home by just making different choices. That's all it is: making different choices. You still get to use toilet paper. Can you use a bamboo one? You're still going to have cleaning supplies. Can you use a non-toxic one? I believe if more people knew about these products, their adoption would be more mainstream. 98 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Allié: In addition to sharing what you’ve personally learned about healthy alternatives for living, you wanted to share what others know as well. That said, this little book has a lot to offer from a number of resources. In collaboration with Pranna, Shaman and Dr. of Divinity, you sat with doctors, shamans, healers, naturopaths, nutritionists, moms, innovators and scientists. That’s a lot of conversation resulting in a depth of content to do so much for so many. How long did this take? What was your favorite part of this process?
Arielle: Honestly, I would get so excited when I found a new company, because I know how much work it takes to launch a brand and launch a product. And then I would find one, like Toodaloo, which offers nuts and snacks, and it's mixed with these incredibly powerful herbs Ashwagandha lions made. And I'm like, nobody knows about this. Another really good example is Dr. Gonzales and his incredible podcast and Instagram where he gives up all of these really juicy details. And so I listened to his podcast, but it's so overwhelming and not everyone has an hour to sit there and to listen through the whole podcast interview where he talks about which hummus to choose and why. And I'm like, it would be still nice to flip a book and just be like, here's the three top ones. These other ones are not so good so stay away from them. So I was like, how can I take all this really dope information and put it in one small space? So, yeah, I would say the exciting part was stumbling across new companies that meet certain criteria. They are an alcohol substitute, all plant botanical elixirs, and do a very good job at their packaging. The taste is phenomenal and I'm like, nobody knows about them. I don't promote drinking alcohol. I don't think it's a good choice, you know, but there are other good alternatives out there where you can still have an enjoyable time and it could still taste good. So, yeah, the process was a lot of fun.
Allié: Of the many secrets you share in your book, do you have a personal favorite?
Arielle: Good question. I feel like I'm going to go with skincare. I just feel that as a woman, our faces are very important. That's the first impression we give to the world. Our skin says a lot about our bodies, so I'm gonna lean towards it. I would say that it's all love products or basically all the sea moss ones that I put in there. So sea moss is one of the highest frequency plants on the planet. It also contains 92 out of 100 minerals that our body needs in one plant. So if you can not only consume it, which is incredible, but like I said, your skin is your largest organ so by putting it on your body, you're absorbing all of those incredibly nutrient minerals. And raising the frequency of your body. People always comment I have glowy dewy skin, asking what I attribute that to. I'm like, honestly, my diet plays a factor, but sea moss oil, cream, and scrubs to name a few are my favorites. So yeah, I would probably say that's one of my favorites just because I notice a personal difference and I use a sea moss lotion that makes me just feel shiny or dewey. You know that nice and lovely feeling? It’s so nice.
Allié: For those just beginning their healthy living journey, finding alternatives and advice can be overwhelming. Your book offers a great place to start, but where do people go from there?
Arielle: So it's doing what works for you financially and start with the one that's most exciting to you. Like I said, for me it was my body. I love to have nice soft skin. I wanted to start there. And then you work your way into other categories in your home. And then I did try to put lots of links to people on Instagram who are actually well versed in this space who give a lot of information or I put links to podcasts and other types of research so people can learn more. I tried as well to add links to recipes, particularly to women crushing it with their vegan recipes. I can't give advice on all of those, but they are well rehearsed in that space. So I tried to drop gems that would be ongoing because we're still learning. We're always learning. And that's one thing I mentioned in the book. I might recommend a company now, but once I've learned more three years from now, there may be better options. So it’s a constant learning process. It's being open to learning and bettering ourselves as we go. ∎ THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK OF SECRETS
Get your copy & give a copy:
https://awarenow.us/book/little-black-book
Unsure of which brands are actually healthy? Which ones are truly clean or plant based?
With all the misinformation and false marketing it can be difficult to know where to start. Enjoy this simple guide to help you choose the right alternatives to creating your healthy life. We cover all the basic categories from skincare, body lotions, supplements, detergents, household cleaners, coffee and alcohol substitutes and more.
99 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
We want to feel worthy. KERRY MARTIN
PHILANTHROPIST, MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCATE & OFFICIAL AMBASSADOR FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION 100 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
PERSONAL STORY BY KERRY MARTIN
DEAR CORPORATE AMERICA
YOUR LACK OF EMPATHY IS MAKING IT DIFFICULT FOR ME TO STAY ALIVE — LITERALLY TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE
If you’re thinking about suicide, are worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, the Lifeline network is available 24/7 across the United States. Call 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
On behalf of those with a serious mental illness (please read: serious brain disorder, per the American Psychiatric Association), I respectfully request that you lean in and listen to my story. And, that you do so with an open heart, understanding mind and empathic soul.
Please know I am not asking for your pity or apology. I simply want you to think about how you can build a corporate culture on a foundation of empathy, caring, compassion and kindness so perhaps the next person who works for you in the throes of a major depressive episode (or, for that matter, someone who simply needs mental health support), whether it be someone with a bipolar, depression, or anxiety diagnosis, does not go through what I did.
I’m not presenting herein the business cost for a lack of empathy albeit I could easily do so. This is perhaps a harder story, the human cost for the lack thereof.
Those who work for you with a serious brain disorder, much like anyone with any other serious physical disorder such as brain cancer, want to feel included, not discriminated against. We don’t want to have to quit because we can’t face another day working in an unsupportive environment with leaders and colleagues who don’t understand or support us. We don’t want to be laid off or fired because we are too depressed, too manic or too anxious to work.
“We want to be able to contribute our creative and unique talents.”
We want to feel valued. Understood. Supported. We want to feel worthy. We want to be able to contribute our creative and unique talents. You see, we have a lot to offer. And, by not providing us with an environment to do so, it is quite frankly your loss.
Putting aside the highly-persuasive and common-sense business case for keeping the likes of someone like me employed, someone who has had a successful career and is one of the lucky “highly-functional” members of the bipolar community, please allow me to share with you the human case, a reason I hope makes you want to read on.
But first please allow me to share that 50% of those with a bipolar diagnosis will attempt to take their own lives at some point, with up to 11% dying by suicide. Sadly, for our community at least, some studies indicate the suicide rate is closer to 20%.1 1. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/help-bipolar-community-get-billions-millions-we-deserve-kerry-martin/
101 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
What I needed was grace. KERRY MARTIN
PHILANTHROPIST, MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCATE & OFFICIAL AMBASSADOR FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION 102 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“I was one of the lucky ones…”
Yes, we lose approximately 25,000 from the bipolar community a year in this country. Most of us, 80% science suggests, fight with these irrational thoughts telling us we wish we were dead or that we could die. This is referred to as suicidal ideation. We have a brain disease or disorder, as the American Psychiatric Association per my earlier important reference, I wouldn’t wish on my own worst enemy. As biomedical research has proven, chemicals in our brains are misfiring and misinforming us that the world would simply be better off without us. These thoughts are hard to ignore and, at times, as implied by the suicide statistics, are impossible to fight off. Some of us act on them.
Please allow me to explain where you come into our lives and, at times, make it harder if not impossible for us to stay alive. Despite our brain disorder, we would like to feel of value to society. Like everyone else, we would like to go to school, graduate with degrees in hand and go to work for you. Sadly, most of us don’t make it very far.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 83% of “cases” are considered severe, with 51% not even receiving healthcare treatment.2 I was one of the lucky ones. I did pretty well… initially. I got a Bachelors from University of CA, San Diego, and a Masters of Public Policy from Harvard. You would think I would be set. Good to go.
Herein enters Corporate America and the challenges of having a bipolar disorder and working in an environment that does not support us working alongside employers and employees that, more often than not, simply do not understand us. Not calling them out. You out. But this is our reality. And I’m talking about it because we have to try and live in it.
This reality makes it not only almost impossible for us to work but literally almost impossible to survive. Please let me explain by providing just one example, without naming any names, from many I could offer up of the lack of empathy and caring I have encountered in the workplace.
In this particular case, this workplace drove me to a suicide attempt. Yes, working in a stigma-infested workplace without empathetic support (or any other needed mental health programs and supports) can literally kill people.
I was working at a start-up technology company and was excelling as many who have a bipolar diagnosis tend to do. Some know us as rock stars, as we stand out as creative geniuses. But, stints of innovation, sometimes driven by a culture wherein we are pushed to work at what is quite frankly an inhumane pace, can come at a cost for us: an ensuing depression. It’s called bipolar for a reason. After I scaled one department and was quickly promoted to build another, I stalled.
You see, when people with bipolar disorder are in an environment without work-life balance, we don’t tend to do well. We need to take time for self-care. It’s critical for our well being. If we don’t stay in balance, that’s when we veer off course. This was an environment wherein work-life balance was thrown out the proverbial window needless to say, along with caring about anyone’s mental wellness. After all, we had a company to build.
After being driven to work, work, work and work some more, I found myself in a world of hurt and pain, having to force myself day in and day out to go to work. I would sit in front of my computer in my office staring off into a black, lonely dark void. I was unable to say a word to anyone about what was going on because mental health was not something that was ever ever discussed in this highly-productive “happy” go-getter environment. Far be it from me to upset that. An IPO was on the line.
2. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/help-bipolar-community-get-billions-millions-we-deserve-kerry-martin/
103 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Suffer I did… KERRY MARTIN
PHILANTHROPIST, MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCATE & OFFICIAL AMBASSADOR FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION 104 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“I simply needed someone, anyone, to care.”
Fast forward about a month. No change in my status. No one seemed to notice. My condition had deteriorated. A new Department Head is hired and meets with all the team members, asking us, what do we do with our days? I was mortified. I was about to be found out. Sure enough, two weeks later, he comments to me, “I don’t know what you do all day.”
Little did he know the one silent word that ran through my head: Nothing. Their rockstar was no longer a rockstar.
You see, I didn’t want to do nothing all day. I wanted to work. But when you’re severely depressed, you simply can’t. You’re unable to string two coherent thoughts together. Your brain literally stops working so you simply can’t work.
But what you do need to work is other people’s empathy. You need someone to realize that you’re in trouble. Why didn’t anyone notice I was acting out of sorts?
What I needed was grace. I needed empathy. I simply needed someone, anyone, to care. I needed somebody to listen. Somebody who was willing to listen without judgement. The very last thing that I needed was for the new hire to call me out on doing nothing. To not even bother to enquire what was going on with me.
When your very best people are all of a sudden not performing, shouldn’t management wonder why rather than making you feel even worse about yourself? I already felt about 1 cm tall. Understatement.
Perhaps it would have been better if I had brain cancer instead of an invisible brain disorder and was undergoing chemo treatment. Yes, my productivity would also have been severely impaired but I would have been given empathy and grace as my physical disability would have been visible to the naked eye. But, in my case, my depression was not. That is not to say however that I did not suffer.
With invisibility comes a complete lack of empathy and grace which in turn causes incredible sadness and utter despair. Suffer I did.
If we made the invisible visible by creating environments where we felt safe to talk about our mental health without fear of stigma or shame -- or worst case, fear of being fired or let go -- this narrative would flip and empathy would enter the story. But this was not my reality.
Two weeks later, I was in the first group of people to be laid off. I was relieved in a sense but I was also now out of work. And, that caused me to spiral into even more of a deep depression, a darker and more lonely place.
Because of the financial bind the layoff put me in, I had to then turn to my family for help paying my mortgage. And to top it off, I had to endure listening to a brother-in-law telling me how disappointed he was in me because “you have a Harvard degree, and I just have a B.A., and here you are asking me for a loan? I’m disappointed in you.”
Expressing to people that you are disappointed in them — as my family member did and my employer indirectly did by laying off their former rockstar — is a silent killer for those of us in the bipolar community. Is it any wonder what happens next?
105 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“…I have to fight hard to stay alive.”
This double whammy of disappointment, or judgement really, would later lead me to try and take my own life.
So, I say to you, as someone with a bipolar disorder or a serious brain disorder or an invisible disability or whatever you want to call it, I have to fight hard to stay alive. I don’t need a lack of empathy and caring in the workplace to make it that much harder for me to survive.
Please allow me to direct you to but one of a plethora of articles speaking to how empathy, according to the research, is the most important leadership skill:
www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2021/09/19/empathy-is-the-most-important-leadership-skill-according-to-research
I know many talented, creative and giving individuals in the bipolar community who have left Corporate America because you have not created a safe place for us in it. And, I’m thrilled to report that they have started their own thriving solo businesses, nonprofits, podcasts or successfully freelance.
You see, we can’t afford to work for you. Our lives are at stake. Our mental wellness is too important to us.
There is a quote by Elisabeth Kubler Ross that deeply resonates with me as it speaks to my heart and is so true of those I have worked side-by-side with in the bipolar community, fellow mental health advocates, or those I have had the privilege to led, manage, mentor or work with who have lived experience:
“The most beautiful people are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not claiming I’m one of the beautiful people. But I am a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), as many who have a bipolar diagnosis tend to be, and I am part of the 1.5% of the population that is INFJ. Scoring as an INFJ on the Myers-Briggs means your personality type is best described as Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Judging. Sometimes referred to as the "Advocate" or the "Idealist," people with this personality type often feel misunderstood.
As such, it’s no surprise, I find myself drawn to helping people and am committed to fighting for causes. And yes, I do often feel misunderstood as I am someone with a bipolar diagnosis and we are very misunderstood by not only Corporate America but by society at large.
With that said, I do feel that I deserve as much as the next Tom, Dick and Jane without a brain disorder to have a seat at the proverbial table. I have as much to contribute. I want to contribute.
But because of the current state in Corporate America and because I value my life and my mental health, I have now chosen to contribute outside of Corporate America by starting, as many with a bipolar diagnosis do, my own company. I work for myself as a Social Good Accelerator, Pro Bono Strategic Advisor and Mental Health Activist. I surround myself with people who understand and support me, who make me feel like I belong in their tribes, and who make me feel worthy. You see, I deserve that. We as members of the human race all do.
106 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Our mission at my consulting company, Accelerating Social Good, is to build a world where the mental healthcare system doesn’t let anyone down and where we all can flourish. We are all worthy of love, empathy, and grace; and, we are all worthy of belonging.
Yet, many work settings -- employers and employees alike -- do not make us feel any of these things.
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, the authors speak to a new era for mental health at work:
“One silver lining amid all the disruption and trauma is the normalization of mental health challenges at work.”
https://hbr.org/2021/10/its-a-new-era-for-mental-health-at-work?ab=hero-main-text
I would follow up by commenting, however, it is one thing to normalize a conversation but another thing entirely to take action.
We are currently in the midst of the Great Resignation. American workers are burned out. Nearly five million have resigned and sixty percent of Americans are looking to change jobs. There is a total lack of not only empathy but, in my opinion, a lack of gratitude on the part of leadership that is driving this and, in turn, causing a deficit of hope.
At Accelerating Social Good, we are combating this with a new cause-advocacy initiative: ‘Accelerating Mental Wellness.’
To create stigma-free workplaces and rebuild our corporate cultures on a foundation of empathy and caring, we must amplify the voices of those with lived experience, offering them a seat at the table whether virtual or in-person. A key to ending systemic discrimination is to humanize stigma with storytelling.
Further, I believe that if advocates collaborate, we can interweave a more inclusive story both persuasive enough to change society and powerful enough to shine the light on what the future should look like.
Together, we offer the corporate world an alternative stigma free story with an empathy plot. A story of hope.
Accelerating Mental Wellness is our new global grassroots cause-advocacy campaign now underway galvanizing mental health advocates and concerned citizens from around the globe, with Chairs in Australia, Canada, India and the United States with more countries hopefully onboarding soon. Given our unique lens and lived experience, we can shift corporate cultures and change the corporate world in ways other stakeholders can not. Our voices of insight, pain and suffering can influence and shape understanding on a truly deep level.
Per Patrick Kennedy's insight regarding suicide, we don't need to intellectualize it, we need to humanize it. We need to do the same with mental health stigma and discrimination in the workplace. But, we can't do this alone. If mental health advocates are reading this story, we need your help.
This is a rallying cry to other mental health advocates to come together. To share our stories in a coordinated, collaborative effort in order to accelerate social change on behalf of those who are suffering in silence and shame. We must step in and step up, a calling more salient in light of the Great Resignation.
Whilst it is easy to build a business case for corporations to integrate mental health programs and support as a workplace benefit, let's come together to do the hard work.
Let's all stand up together and build a wall of solidarity in place of the wall of stigma. Let’s share our stories and build the human case for creating stigma-free workplaces built on a foundation of empathy, caring, kindness and compassion. And, let’s together be so loud that eventually Corporate America must listen. 107 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Our lives are at stake. KERRY MARTIN
PHILANTHROPIST, MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCATE & OFFICIAL AMBASSADOR FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION 108 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“…I do hope after reading this, that you have already started listening.”
Be a stigma-fighter superhero for our children. Let’s leave them a world we can be proud of. Stand alongside other mental health advocates, nonprofit founders, best-selling authors, politicians, podcasters, and concerned citizens on our Wall of Solidarity by uploading your selfie.
Let’s build up this wall to finally tear down the wall of stigma that is burying far too many under its weight, forcing those suffering to stay in silence and in shame.
LINK TO UPLOAD SELFIE: www.acceleratingsocialgood.com/support-with-a-selfie
LINK FOR WALL: www.acceleratingsocialgood.com/wall-of-solidarity
In closing, to those from Corporate America, I do hope after reading this, that you have already started listening. And that our dialog can continue. If you’re willing to continue listening, our global Accelerating Mental Wellness Campaign is willing to guide you and help you create stigma-free workplaces. I hope you do for the sake of our children.
With gratitude and with hope for all. ∎
P.S. Dear Corporate America, I don’t presume to know what thoughts you have when your head hits the pillow at night, but please allow me to share some of mine. I sometimes do wonder as I tip out a pill, what would happen if I just tossed the entire bottle in my mouth. Yes, I do sometimes still get the urge. So many of us do. Yes, I still wonder if the world would be better off with me dead. Without me in it. You see it’s just the voices in my head. How can you help? What you could do to help calm them, is to help create a stigma-free world so that these voices are quieted, not made louder, so when I walk through the world, it’s easier not harder for me to stay alive.
KERRY MARTIN
Philanthropist, Mental Health Activist & Official Ambassador for Suicide Prevention
www.awarenessties.us/kerrymartin KERRY MARTIN is a suicide prevention and mental health activist and former CEO and Founder of a nonprofit dedicated to preventing suicide and optimizing mental health outcomes in the bipolar community, Kerry continues pro-bono work in the field of mental health. She also took a time out to address a glaring social injustice, inequitable access to mental health care and an alarming increase in suicide rates in the bipolar community, taking her case all the way to the FDA with an esteemed group of colleagues.
109 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
It was only $14 and 10 minutes of my time, but it was a moment that would change my life. SAGE GALLON
ARTIST, AUTHOR, ACTIVIST & AWARENESS TIES OFFICIAL AMASSADOR FOR HOMELESSNESS AWARENESS 110 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
PERSONAL STORY BY SAGE GALLON
NO SOCKS POLICY
PROVIDING FOR OTHERS A PAIR AT A TIME I was dining at a restaurant on the East Side with a dear friend. We had finished our meal, the server picked up the check. My friend had to run to the restroom. While I was waiting for his return I noticed a man, middle aged, a bit disheveled, walking past the restaurant.
This man had no shoes or socks on his feet.
It’s winter time in New York, cold.
Our check with tip came up to just over $100... But here was this man who was barefoot walking on the hard, cold New York sidewalks. I had to stop him. “Hey, sir!” I called out. “Can I please talk with you for a second?” I asked.
The man stopped and asked me for a cigarette, I gladly obliged.
My friend was coming out from the restroom.
I handed the man a cigarette.
I asked my friend to keep the man company and that I would be right back.
I ran across the street to the Duane Reade. With urgency, I asked where I could find socks. The associate directed me to the lower level. I took the slow moving escalator to the designated location, grabbing a 10 pack of socks, paid and flew out of the store.
I ran back across the street, delighted to see my friend, who had no idea what was going on.
He had kept the attention of the walking man.
I tore the plastic packaging off the socks and handed the man two pairs.
I asked him to put them on right there so he would not get sick.
It was only $14 and 10 minutes of my time, but it was a moment that would change my life.
I now try to never leave my house without at least one pair of socks on my person… I know that here in New York there are a pair of cold feet that may need them.
I truly believe that if enough of of us do one small thing a day, we will make a big difference. ∎
SAGE GALLON
Multi-Media Artist, Author & Official Ambassador for the Homelessness
www.awarenessties.us/sage-gallon SAGE GALLON had his debut in the art world with a group show in 2013 called Nebula. It was held in an Airplane Hanger in Santa Monica, CA and was attended by some 500 people. In early 2014, Sage was named in, NBC's The Grio as One of the 40 Artists to Watch and Sage has not disappointed. From interviews in the Huffington Post to The Examiner with successful shows in both Los Angeles as well as in New York, Sage was one of the featured Artists at Miami's Art Basel 2016.
111 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
It was society’s education and support of musicians that was broken… NICK BOTTINI
AUTHOR, SPEAKER & COACH 112 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘MUSIC FOR MENTAL WEALTH’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY NICK BOTTINI
FOLLOW THE GOOSEBUMPS
A MISSION TO SERVE THE UNSUNG MIRACLE WORKERS If you stop and think about it, professional musicians do so much more than merely creating the audio wallpaper we consume on the daily commute or at the gym. Music speaks from the soul, to the soul, in a way that no other artform can. Music is the most visceral. It’s the most enticing, inviting, embodied art. For as long as humans have walked the earth, they have made music because at some level we all recognise music’s otherworldly power. Humans have used the colossal power of music to influence, to celebrate, to perform mating rituals, to form tribal units, to rally troops, to ritualise, to worship and to access the transcendent.
Through music’s use in advertising, it is musicians who help influence the sales which drive the global economy on a daily basis. Musicians heal our traumas. Musicians can help us unwind, reconnect, and fall back into our mental health. They are magicians who wield an almighty force of good that can transport us back to a more innocent time in our lives. Musicians offer us hope. Musicians stir something ineffable in us. Musicians invite us to discover who we truly are. Musicians challenge us to create a better world. Musicians can be the catalyst for our social interactions. Music is magic. Magic is miraculous. And musicians are the unsung miracle workers. So as you may have already suspected, music tugged at my heartstrings from an early age. As a toddler, as soon as I heard music, I danced and wiggled. Immediately I was hooked. Though not professional musicians, when I first saw my father playing a guitar or my mother playing the piano – I wanted to be in on the action. At school I seized all opportunities I could to learn to play musical instruments and over time I ‘followed the goosebumps’, as Jacob Collier puts it, and before I knew it, I was a competent little violinist, saxophonist and pianist. It wasn’t long after that that I started to pursue my dream as a professional musician. But, like so many aspiring professional musicians, I really struggled. Many musicians hit obstacles in their careers. Some earlier, some later. Some struggle with crippling performance anxiety. Some with addictions. Others with writer’s block. Many musicians find building a fanbase or a sustainable income an unsurmountable challenge. My bête noire, however, was unbearable physical pain. I had picked up some bad postural habits early when I learnt the violin and as I gradually practised 4, 5, or 6 hours a day they quickly spiraled into a major overuse problem that cruelly reached its peak at precisely the same time I was trying to excel and prove my worth (or so I thought) in my final recital. Needless to say, my performance suffered and not only did I feel that I had failed to do justice to the true music I had within me, but I also started to question who I was without an outlet for musical expression. To have my dreams crushed felt like my life had no meaning whatsoever. At the time it felt like a merciless joke to seemingly have my musical future stolen from me, but in hindsight, more than 20 years later, I now see the bizarre gift in all that suffering. I say ‘gift’ because rather than taking my own life, or completely giving up on music altogether (both of which I seriously considered) I settled on an alternative path, a path that would evolve into my life’s work. After still managing to graduate as an (albeit injured) performance major with a decent final grade, I embarked on a career as a music educator. But not merely as a means to live out my musical dreams vicariously – instead – I spotted a learning opportunity. Maybe it was possible to study my way to feeling happy again.
113 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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“…I wanted to work miracles for the miracle workers.”
At that time, I believed something in me was broken and perhaps it was still possible to correct whatever had gone wrong. So, I turned my classroom into an experimental learning laboratory. I wanted to deeply understand what made the difference between musical success and musical failure and so I poured myself into understanding the psychology of musical learning, and expert skill acquisition. Both of which I studied in the library, and at the chalkface; in the classroom with the young people I mentored. I devoured every book I could on teaching and accelerated learning, and I made it my mission to help every child in my classroom uncover the music within them in the hope that their journey towards self-expression would also teach me something. From the copious reading and courses I took I collected obscure educational theories and methodologies and experimented with everything from Dalcroze Eurhytmics, to the Kodály Method, to the Feldenkreis Method, to Alexander Technique, to speedreading, to memory techniques and even more seemingly tangential explorations like personal development, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and Eastern mysticism and spirituality. My own urgent need to ‘heal’ my own musical traumas made me a voracious, if somewhat desperate, musical learner. After spending around a decade on this path, deeply immersed in my own personal and professional development as a musician and educator, my own life transformation was palpable and my healing process was well underway. I was seeing increasingly magical results with my students and mentees, and my saxophone playing was now becoming a professional side career in its own right. I was also making more money and was happier in my personal relationships than I had ever been. It was at this point that I began to get deeply curious about the future. On the weekends and evenings I had been training as a life and business coach with some of the best coaches in the world and there was a moment in one of the training weekends where suddenly I felt completely overwhelmed with gratitude for the new path I had been following. The more coaching I received and the more I coached others, I saw just how valuable this kind of transformative coaching would have been to me back I was at my lowest ebb. Coaching was no longer just a niceto-have, it had become a way of life. This realisation stirred something in me. This was something I simply couldn’t ignore - I had to do something about it. And it was at this moment that I finally realised that it wasn’t actually me that had ever been broken. It was society’s education and support of musicians that was broken, because it was too heavily biased towards acquiring skills and not focused enough on the personal, physical and spiritual development of the musician themselves. I could now clearly see how musical excellence and wellbeing (including mental health) went hand in hand. And as someone with a music education and coaching background I was uniquely placed to help change this. So that was the day I first became aware of a new calling in life – to lead an empowerment revolution in the way musicians are treated by society, from their early education, to the support services that they can access. I was being called to pay my debt of gratitude to the music industry and now I wanted to work miracles for the miracle workers. Another goosebumps moment. In the years following that life-changing insight, I’ve gone on to write a best-selling book, and I’ve supported artists at practically every level of the music industry: I’ve coached rock stars, Grammy winners, conductors, classical musicians, multi-platinum-selling artists, hip hop artists, child prodigies, producers, composers, competition winners, jazz musicians, college professors, DJ’s, music industry people. And, perhaps most meaningfully of all, I’ve been fortunate enough to coach university and music college students at precisely the same stage of their careers as I was when I was at my lowest point.
114 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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When I first started studying music, I thought it was my job to learn how the world of music worked. To adopt that world’s beliefs about music and musicians and to fit into that world, no matter how much I needed to contort myself in order to do so. But now what I realise is that that was never actually my job. My job was to investigate for myself and question that world any time there seemed to be a discrepancy between what I suspected to be true and what was being claimed by others.
Was it really true, for example, that a person needed to start playing a musical instrument at the age of 6 in order to be respected in the world of classical music? Is it true that musical excellence is only about talent, or was persistent mindful, deliberate practice the real secret that no-one wanted you to know about? Is there really something broken with the post-Napster music industry, as many people claim, or does the education of our musicians just need to adapt to meet the needs of the Twenty First Century? Does ‘he who pays the piper’ really have to ‘call the tune’, or can the modern, self-aware, entrepreneurial musician design their own life? Are musicians actually more prone to mental health problems, or is there simply a gap in their emotional and spiritual education, made worse by society’s long-held beliefs about what a musician ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ be? Was it really true that the only factor that matters is how well a musician can play, or does their level of self-awareness and emotional education provide a much better predictor of whether they will be able to create lasting success as a professional musician?
Experience has shown that when musicians explore these kinds of questions in coaching sessions and they mentally slow down for long enough to deeply reflect on the answers for themselves, what they find is empowerment. This selfawareness, to me, looks like the bright new future of the music industry – a world where we train professional musicians not as servants (as they were treated in Mozart’s day), or as tortured geniuses (as they were treated Tchaikovsky’s), or even as entertainers (as they are often treated today) – but a world where we train musicians as not only the healers of society, but also as our emotional and spiritual leaders. A world where we honour them as the miracle workers that they truly are. ∎
NICK BOTTINI
Author, Speaker & Coach www.awarenessties.us/nick-bottini NICK BOTTINI is the author of the number one bestseller Just Play: The Simple Truth Behind Musical Excellence which was endorsed by Grammy winners, music industry professionals and mental health experts. Nick is also a speaker and transformational coach to the music industry and for over ten years has worked with musicians at all levels from competition winners, child prodigies, entrepreneurs, conservatoire students, sports people, to aspiring professional musicians and international rock stars. For more info about Music For Mental Wealth visit: musicformentalwealth.com
115 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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I wanted to be just like her when I got older… LORI BUTIERRIES
AUTHOR, NAVY VETERAN & MOTHER OF 2 WITH SPECIAL NEEDS 116 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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‘SCARRED NOT BROKEN’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY LORI BUTIERRIES
WORTH EMULATING
A MOTHER PROUD TO PARALLEL Growing up, my mother was my hero. I wanted to be like her when I got older.
One day, when I was a teenager, I told her as much.
I didn't expect her to get upset and say, "Don't be stupid," in response.
I instantly shut up.
The conversation ended before it could even begin, and long afterward, I struggled to set aside my hurt feelings to figure out what she had meant.
At first, her words stung- I remember the feeling of my face burning with shame & embarrassment. It didn't subside until I realized my mother's response had nothing to do with my intelligence but instead with how she viewed her life and accomplishments.
I assume my mother wanted something better for my future. If that was the case, then it is apparent that we weren't looking at the path she walked through the same lens.
To start with, raising six kids while serving twenty years in the United States Navy was no easy feat. She served eleven years enlisted as a Radioman (RM) and nine as a Communications Limited Duty Officer (LDO), which was an extraordinary achievement, especially for someone without a college degree and back in those days.
All the while, my mother somehow maintained the delicate balance between her demanding career and equally challenging family obligations (steadfastly & without complaint) until she retired as an O-3 and got a civilian job to repeat the process all over again.
My mother made sure my siblings and I: ate three square meals a day (often homemade) with plenty of snacks in between, kept the house clean, ran errands, came to our various extracurricular events, and never let the ironing or laundry get backed up. If that wasn't enough, she helped my siblings and me with homework late into the evenings after working hard to provide for us daily.
She also went out of her way to make birthdays and holidays extra special, even if only the eight of us were celebrating (i.e., my Mom, Dad, five siblings, and me), especially when stationed overseas. Living in a foreign country, we didn't have any friends or family nearby to join in the festivities, but it was easy to overlook their absence because of the fun we had together- Those are some of my happiest childhood memories.
While on active duty service, my mother did all that and more in between regular PCS moves, staying within strict weight standards for the military, holding her own in a male-dominated field, and standing 24 hr duty like everyone else. My mother's entire life revolved around sacrifice and service, with little to no thanks or recognition for her outstanding work ethic and tireless efforts. 117 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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It's not easy becoming a woman worth emulating. LORI BUTIERRIES
AUTHOR, NAVY VETERAN & MOTHER OF 2 WITH SPECIAL NEEDS 118 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“I'm proud of you, baby.”
Of course, there were times when my mother struggled, and life got overwhelming, but she was good at pretending that everything was okay. My siblings & I believed her because our mother took care of us and made us feel safe no matter what happened behind the scenes.
However, I don't think my mother knew that I could tell when she had been crying, but I noticed even if I never pointed it out, and I secretly admired her strength and ability to carry on despite the pain or strife she felt.
Anyway, when I turned eighteen, her inspiration gave me the courage to join the Navy. I told myself, "If my mother can do it, then I can too!"
That train of thought became a repeating mantra inside my head during my five-year enlistment, and something I still tell myself today when life gets tough as a special needs parent and I need a boost of encouragement.
One of the best conversations I ever had with my mother as an adult was during my deployment to Afghanistan. As I stood dirty, scared, and clutching the satellite telephone to my ear (after another intense engagement with the enemy) in the middle of nowhere, I cried when our 15-minute phone call came to an end, and she brokenly stated, "I'm proud of you, baby."
That was not something I ever thought I'd hear after the life choices I made; needless to say, those words of praise meant EVERYTHING to me, and I've never once regretted following her lead.
Twenty-one years have passed since I left home.
Looking back with the perspective of a veteran, a woman, and a mother, I confidently stand behind my original determination; my mother is my hero, whether she agrees with me or not is irrelevant.
Her story motivates me to strive for a similar legacy to pass on to my daughter. To the little girl looking at me with trusting innocent eyes who thinks that her Mommy can do anything, like move mountains to ensure she leads a happy, fulfilling life despite her disabilities.
I guess, in time, we will see if I succeed.
It's not easy becoming a woman worth emulating. ∎
LORI BUTIERRIES
Author, Navy Veteran & Mother of 2 with Special Needs www.awarenessties.us/lori-butierries LORI BUTIERRIES is a full-time caregiver to two children with special needs, one child being terminally ill and physically disabled. Lori uses her life experiences and the medical knowledge she gained while serving as a Hospital Corpsman in the United States Navy to help others facing similar hardships. Lori focuses primarily on advocating for and educating others about the special needs, mental health, and veterans communities. Her long-term goal is to reduce the stigma associated with disability by talking about it with people of all ages, thus minimizing the fear and the mystery attributed to the unknown in this regard.
119 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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We are not Superman.
We are Clark Kent. JOEL CARTNER
LAWYER, AWARENESS TIES OFFICIAL ADVISOR & COLUMNIST 120 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘UNYIELDINGLY HUMAN’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY JOEL CARTNER
NEVER ALONE
AN EMPATHETIC MALE MANIFESTO I cannot tell you precisely why I find it so difficult to write about men’s mental health…
And I’m a guy.
I can give you all of the heart-stopping statistics about men’s mental health that you could ever want.1 But ask me for much detail as to why those statics are so astronomically bad, or even “what does it mean to be a man?” as a baseline for that conversation, and I have a lot less intelligent things to say. I can say that most men that I know deal with some combination of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and/or imposter syndrome.
Strip away what chronic pain and fighting two lifelong disabilities does to my mental health, and I would still be an anxious, over-thinking, imposter feeling man with depressive tendencies, and I cannot tell you why.
It’s pretty well established that societally men are taught to bottle up our emotions and that seeking help and expressing vulnerability are things that were not ok for men to do. But my policy analyst brain kicks in and goes, “well, that’s an awfully broad answer to what, by its very nature, has to be a nuanced problem on an individual level (no individual’s mental health is the same).
There has to be more here systemically than just repression….” So, then I went back and broke out some old work I’d done on the opioid crisis and deaths of despair and was fully prepared to come at this that way,2 but then I stopped myself.
I stopped myself because I do not yet understand the monolith of men’s mental health to speak on it well; I will leave that to the professionals. However, I wanted to leave this digression in because talking about men’s mental health more broadly and systemically is still really important. So, if you’re looking for a baseline, go take a look at those statistics, read “deaths of despair,” and think about the men in your life. Then talk to those men. As for this article, I’m going to pivot to the personal now because the other side of the coin is the individual contexts of a person’s mental health, which are also very important. Hopefully, somewhere in all of this information, you can find something useful.
One of my least favorite sounds on this earth is the sound of a heart monitor. I’ve heard all of its sounds, and I’m intimately familiar with what they all mean: grief, pain, joy, relief, etc. All are contained in a single ceaseless tone, and it always takes me right back to some very unpleasant experiences. Unfortunately, the sound in my head in the morning feels a lot like a heart monitor, except that instead of a “beep,” it’s an “owwwww.” I’ve written before about “the guy behind me in line” as a way to explain chronic pain, but when I wake up in the morning, he’s not awake yet. It’s just the primal hammer blow that I have to readjust to every morning.
The second I wake up, my brain seizes the opportunity to tell me that, “yes. It is still, in fact, overproducing acetylcholine,” and my body then chimes in to voice its displeasure about that fact. Sometimes my internal heart monitor is just a “flatline” of pain, and sometimes it’s an erratic rhythm, pain interrupted by sharp waves of spasms. Under the weight of that noise, there has never been a morning that I haven’t considered just going back to bed. My reasons for getting up in the morning are as varied as the days themselves, but here are some stories about them. 121 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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When I was in law school, one of my best friends would come to pick me up in the mornings, and a lot of the time, he would end up driving me home at the end of the day. At the time, I lived on the third floor of a walkup (a dumb decision, I know). I would open the door, he would put his arm around me, and we’d walk down three flights of stairs talking about anything and everything, and no matter how hard it was to get out of bed that day, my day would get better. He was 100% my reason for getting out of bed, because I couldn’t have him drive out of his way to me and not be ready to go, there are so many mornings I didn’t Skype into class, I went to class because he was picking me up. On the nights when he drove me home, particularly in Connecticut’s perpetual winter, those three flights of stairs might as well have been Everest, and some of those climbs, when I was less physically ok, were haaaaard, but in a lot of ways, those climbs were the best part of my day. They were the best part of my day because no matter how complicated school was or how bad the pain was, we did it together.
Recently, I spilled some soup, and so I got down on the floor to clean it up, and somehow or other I ended up lying on the floor of my apartment staring at my bookcase quite as an unable to move at that moment as I am most mornings. I was pinned to the floor. I was trapped there by the pain I’ve been in recently (and particularly that day), I was trapped there by the fact that I’m in a job I don’t like very much, and despite my best effort and many near misses, I cannot seem to get a policy job. In short, I was out of hope, and the pain was keeping me right there on the floor. But, I had a volleyball game to go to where I would again be around friends. So, I dragged myself up and got myself to the gym, and seeing those people did make my day better.
Afterward, my friend and I walked to the metro, and some of the pain just kind of slipped out verbally. He was right there and just in it with me in that moment. He would later tell me that I was a good person who didn’t deserve “this,” and I swear I almost burst into tears right there. That’s not a sentiment I let myself feel very often because it’s a very slippery slope from “I don’t deserve this” to just getting steamrolled by the condition and again not getting out of bed. The whole thing reminded me of something my first therapist told me, “You are not Superman. You are Clark Kent. You need to stop protecting people all the time.” My biggest fear in life, bar none, is both that my circumstances will cause pain to my people and that they will see my pain and they will not come to me when they need help because of it. In that moment, my friend reminded me that it was ok to admit that this whole thing sucks, and he reminded me that I was not alone and that his whole perception of me did not radically change just because he’d seen some of the cracks. If I had to guess, I’d say people in general, but because of societal pressures, men particularly, avoid showing genuine emotions because they want to be unquestioned in their ability to protect their people. Here again was my reminder that everyone has cracks. We are not Superman. We are Clark Kent.
Men need empathy and support, and they especially need it from other men. I know I prattle on in these articles, and a lot of where I tend to land is “this gets easier when there are other people in it with us,” and trust me, that frustrates me plenty. I’m a fan of solid, actionable answers. But here, it's so important to just not be alone. That’s where despair has its deepest roots.
You are seen, you are loved, you are not alone… ∎ JOEL CARTNER
Lawyer, Awareness Ties Official Advisor & Columnist www.awarenessties.us/joelcartner JOEL CARTNER is a lawyer and public policy professional with Cerebral Palsy Spastic Diplegia and Retinopathy of Prematurity. Cartner has a background in public health, disability, and education law and policy. He received his J.D. from Quinnipiac University School of Law and his B.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Cartner currently lives in Washington D.C. where he works as a Document Review Attorney while seeking legislative employment.
122 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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To develop conscious feeling is not an invitation to become swept out to sea in the current of your emotions… AJAY DAHIYA
CHIEF VISION OFFICER OF THE POLLINATION PROJECT 124 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘POLLINATING WITH PURPOSE’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY AJAY DAHIYA
CONSCIOUS FEELING
AN OPPORTUNITY FOR GROWTH AND FREEDOM About a year ago I had surgery. I was fortunate to have a wonderful team that, even all this time later, I still recall with tremendous gratitude. Under their skillful care, the difficulties I faced for some time were healed.
Lately, I’ve been thinking in particular of the anesthesiologist, whose job is to put the patient into a state of unconsciousness. While I am an advocate for conscious living, in the setting of an operating theatre unconsciousness is welcome on the part of the patient. Why? Because in such a state one is no longer in a state of wakefulness and therefore one can no longer feel.
To truly feel is only possible when we are awake. While unconsciousness is welcome when we do not want to feel the pain of the surgeon’s blade, in the realm of social good, compassion, and activism we want the polar opposite — we want to be as conscious as we possibly can.
To be conscious means to be awake, alive, and aware. An alternate definition is to be deliberate and acting with intentionality. Weaving all these thoughts together, then, we can surmise that to feel requires us to be awake and intentional.
Yet the world is awash in unconscious feelers; those who form strong opinions and become emotionally reactive, clinging to a particular position without ever really examining the identities, fears, and emotional underpinning of those assertions.
So often, we beat back the feelings we deem “negative,” disallowing ourselves the opportunity to examine or learn from them. In doing so we deny the intelligence of our emotions and create the conditions for disconnection. Unconscious feelers are numb; it is easy to become apathetic and deny injustice if we are continuously training our hearts to reject that which is uncomfortable.
To develop conscious feeling is not an invitation to become swept out to sea in the current of your emotions. Rather, it is an opportunity to sit with your reactions, impulses, and predilections so that you can see them clearly.
As Victor Frankl famously wrote: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ∎ AJAY DAHIYA
Chief Vision Officer of The Pollination Project
thepollinationproject.org AJAY DAHIYA was born in the outskirts of London to a working-class immigrant family. Growing up in a diverse and disparate environment his childhood was immersed in a variety of cultures. From early on in his life, Ajay felt a great spiritual calling. While in pursuit of this deep calling Ajay became ordained as a monastic in his late teens. As a monk for close to a decade, Ajay had the honor of serving diverse communities across the globe. After transitioning out of monastic life would go on to hold executive leadership positions in a variety of missiondriven organizations
125 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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SHADOW OF YOUR SMILE
HEAVEN
126 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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‘THE WRITING ON THE WALL’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY EDDIE DONALDSON
A PIECE OF HEAVEN
A CONVERSATION WITH JUAN CARLOS MUÑOZ HERNANDEZ So this is Eddie Donaldson, GuerillaOne, with AwareNow Magazine ‘The Writing On The Wall', and we're here with the world famous Triple OG, multifaceted graffiti and fine artist, Juan Carlos Muñoz Hernandez, aka Heaven.
Eddie: When I started writing graffiti, Rage from The Chosen Few gave me my name. He gave me my name because I was always on time. So, my name is Sync from synchronicity, because if I told you I'll be at your house at noon, I'm there at 11:54. Hopefully.
Heaven: Yeah. You got your early on. That's cool though. That's dope.
Eddie: With that said, did someone name you or did you come up with it on your own?
Heaven: As a writer, I went through several names, Goldie and Seeno back in the 80's & 90s, during the decade of death in LA. Then when I turned 17, experiencing first hand the violence around me, Something just told me to write Heaven, you know what I mean? Give them some kind of positive note.
Eddie: How long have you been writing graffiti?
Heaven: I started tagging as Carlos, just using my name so I think it was like '84 or '85. One of The first pieces i created was “surgery” at the LA River. It was two colors and bubble letters, and that was my first, little @ss piece.
Eddie: When you look at cavemen, there was writing on the wall. When you look at aliens, they were leaving their crop circles. There are all these different methods of communication by other beings or older means. Do you think graffiti is going to be one of those forms and in a thousand years that people will be pulling it, conservationists digging up walls?
Heaven: Oh yeah. It's communication and it’s a tool... part of our DNA. our ancestors left evidence, with a DNA déjà vu coding. It's like the Egyptians carving out numbers and codes, Definitely, it's a way of communication. I think we have tagging inside our body, You know, the cells are tagging each other communicating and sending Codes. That's what tagging and carving sculpture is, you send messages from the gut to the chakras.
127 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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FAMILY
HEAVEN
128 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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“It’s like humming...
It’s a frequency that I feel like I’m still exploring.”
Eddie: Do you have a spiritual practice?
Heaven: I was raised Catholic, and was an alter boy in Boyle heights at Delores Mission when I was young. but I went to a pretty dark place in my life after the projects where I grew up were demolished and I moved Venice, There was a lot of violence and I needed healing. At that time I was introduced to the sweat lodge learning about my Aztec and Native American culture. I started meeting people from all over the world. We'd go to the sweat lodge, and before you enter, you speak “to all my relations”. meaning we're all related. Everything that has eyeballs is related. If you're asking me if I have a religion, my religion is a personal connection with the creator of the universe (love).
Eddie: What about the plants and the trees?
Heaven: Them too. You know, when I'm here by myself here at the studio, there's some plants right over there. I'll talk to the plants. We communicate and I know we vibe off each other. They're our elders. They've been here for a minute... a long minute.. Look at the trees. They are grounded. They're solid... It's simple, and a powerful thing. Just like earth and just like life, delicate.
Eddie: The last piece that you just did with AXIS is called ‘Communication With Nature’.
Heaven: To me, art is a reflection of nature and vice versa. When you create art, you’re communicating through nature. So, you pick up the tools giving you game on how to paint, evolve and grow.
Eddie: The piece you did. Explain what the style is.
Heaven: It’s actually going back to me coming out of the womb. Coming from my mother, before I knew how to say mama or papa. It’s a sound. It’s like humming... It’s a frequency that I feel like I’m still exploring. When I don’t plan the result, my work has controlled chaos...that’s when the magic happens.
Eddie: Let’s talk about this style. When I first saw this, I thought of music notes, sound, frequency, a heartbeat… Your work gives off a frequency that you can’t capture as a still image.
Heaven: It’s a universal language to relate and feel a part of. The vertical and horizontal lines create a landscape of frequency rhythm and murmuration.
129 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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PREEN
HEAVEN
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“My advice is listen to your heart…”
Eddie: So, it’s a lovely studio here where we're at. I mean, it's amazing. You shared with us earlier about the juxtaposition in your earlier life. Tell us about that.
Heaven: I was living in Boyle Heights and I was dealing with a lot of darkness over there and how to move out because they were literally going to knock this place over… a thousand families. I had to move out of LA. So, I moved to Venice. My job was over here. I was one of the main ones, but when I moved I was homeless. I was living in different cars. I lived in many streets here in Venice, and one of the streets that I lived on was Vernon, which is across the street from the studio. That was 25 years ago. Now, 25 years later, I'm across the street in the studio, making magic, making life better, and appreciating the life I imagined within that setting.
Eddie: With that and coming full circle, what would you tell younger artists out there that are struggling? What would you tell those who want to give up?
Heaven: My advice is listen to your heart. Stay focused. Have discipline, passion and persistence. If I could tell you one thing, for sure stay positive. ∎
Follow Heaven on Instagram: @heaven_k2s
EDDIE DONALDSON
GuerillaOne x The Seventh Letter www.awarenessties.us/eddie-donaldson Louisville, Kentucky native Eddie Donaldson moved to Los Angeles in 1986 and became involved with the graffiti movement as an alternative to the turbulent gang activity of his generation. Immersed first as an artist amongst diverse L.A. crews like TCF, AWR, and The Seventh Letter, Donaldson had the vision to develop their homegrown graffiti movement into something beyond the streets. His loyalty and business sensibility transformed the graffiti scene and he evolved into the point person for producing art events and exhibitions that inspire and spread the stylistic of southern California art into the world.
131 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Even though you might believe I need a bit of assistance, trust that I know what I’m doing. LEX GILLETTE
5X PARALYMPIC MEDALIST, 4X WORLD CHAMPION & KEYNOTE SPEAKER 132 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘NO NEED FOR SIGHT WHEN YOU HAVE VISION’ BY LEX GILLETTE
HOW TO HELP
TWO QUESTIONS YOU CAN ASK TO REALLY SHOW KINDNESS One of the challenges of living life with a disability is coming in contact with people who automatically assume that I need help.
Take this for example.
You may see me walking down the sidewalk headed directly for a telephone pole. The natural reaction for someone watching would be to run over and stop me before hitting the pole.
But, looks can be deceiving.
I might be headed for the telephone pole, but the path that I walk is intentional. Once my cane hits the telephone pole, I know to take a right hand turn and continue my journey toward a local pizza joint.
A lot of people watching might believe that I’m going to injure myself, but that pole serves as a landmark for me. It helps me understand where I am and confirms that I’m staying on the right path.
But, oftentimes someone runs up and says “Let me help you!”
I politely respond with “Thank you but I’m good.” And their response “But, you’re about to run into a pole.” I certainly don’t want to be rude so I politely let them know that I in fact know exactly where I am. I’m totally fine.
“Thanks for offering to help.”
Recently, I’ve been doing a number of speaking engagements for employee resource groups that focus on disability awareness, and a question came up recently.
“Lex, there are times that I feel someone with a disability needs some help and I want to help, but how do I offer assistance without coming across as being offensive?”
Well, I’m glad you asked. Here are two questions that will go a long way in identifying whether or not we need assistance as well as identifying the type of assistance we desire.
“Do you need help?” This is the first question.
Using the prior example, a person ran up to me because they believed that I was going to run into a pole. Instead of assuming that I need help, ask the question, “Excuse me, do you need help?” That throws the ball into my court. I can respond with a simple yes or no. If the reply is no, then there is nothing more that you need to do. You naturally might want to ask “are you sure?” But please don’t insist much more than that.
I totally get it. You don’t want me to be harmed in anyway, but the truth of the matter is that I don’t need any help. That pole informs me that my right hand turn is near. Independent achievement is empowering, and if you continue to insist on helping, it feels as though I’m being thought of as incapable. Beyond that, it makes me feel as though my independence is being stripped a bit.
Trust that if I say no, I truly am fine. I don’t need help. 133 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Now, if I respond with a yes, I’m throwing the ball back on your side of the court. This is when you ask the second question or the followup question: “How can I help?” You throw the ball back to my side of the court and now I can let you know what exactly it is that I need.
This question is really important because there are so many ways for us to assist each other. Let’s say that my response is yes, you’ve asked how you can help, and now it’s my job to let you know how you can help. Let’s just say I’m a little disoriented and I need to get back to the intersection of J Street and Ninth Ave. There are many ways to assist. I need to get to that intersection. I might ask to grab your elbow as we walk. I may even ask to put my hand on your shoulder. Sometimes I might ask if you can give me verbal feedback on where I am so that I can understand my location and determine which direction to walk next.
“How can I help?” Is an important question because you don’t want to assume, and we all know what happens when we assume, right? You might grab my arm and begin walking with me toward the intersection. But, what if I don’t want to be touched? Hey, COVID is real. You might offer an elbow or shoulder to hang on to, but I may only need you to verbally let me know where I am and what my surroundings are. That goes a long way in helping me get oriented again. There are many blind and visually impaired people on this earth. Just because I might want to put my hand on your shoulder doesn’t mean the next person living with blindness will prefer that sort of assistance. You might have previously come in contact with someone who is blind. Although there are suggested methods to help us, the reality is I might want to be assisted “this” way, and the next person living with blindness may want to be assisted “that” way. So, make sure you ask the followup question to be certain on the type of assistance that is desired. And, it’s going to make your life a lot easier because the person is giving you clear direction on how they want to be helped. You don’t have to scratch your head and wonder how to help because the person has told you with their own mouth.
Lastly, there are times when these questions need to be ignored. Let me explain…
If I’m walking down the sidewalk and inadvertently walk into the street and a speeding car is headed my way, no questioning is needed. My life might be in danger. Help me! If there is a construction zone ahead and I’m headed toward flimsy caution tape surrounding an open man hole, please stop me immediately. That could be dangerous. As you can see, physical well being is in jeopardy. If you truly feel as though something terrible could happen, please please step in to assist. You can explain to me afterwards what prompted you to run to my aid. We all need assistance at some point in life, but there are those times where we don’t need any help at all. There are a lot of times when we want to be independent. It feels good. It’s empowering and uplifting to know that you’re achieving something on your own. And, we know that you might want to help. Simply put, sometimes that help is unnecessary. Please don’t impose by confidently saying things like “you need some help, let me help you.” That could be offensive because I might not need, or want, the help. Even though you might believe I need a bit of assistance, trust that I know what I’m doing. If you really do believe that I need guidance, tap into those two questions.
“Excuse me, I don’t want to be rude or offensive but do you need some help?”
“You know, I appreciate you asking. I actually do.”
“Great, how can I best assist you?”
“It seems like I am a little disoriented, do you mind helping me get to the intersection of J and Ninth?
“Sure!”
“Can I hold onto your elbow as we walk?”
“Absolutely! Not a problem.”
See how easy that is? Commit to kindness by keeping these two questions in your back pocket, and don’t forget to use them when the time calls for it. ∎ LEX GILLETTE
5x Paralympic Medalist, 4x World Champion & Keynote Speaker www.awarenessties.us/lex-gillette LEX GILLETTE has quickly become one of the most sought after keynote speakers on the market. Losing his sight at the age of eight was painful to say the least, but life happens. Things don’t always go your way. You can either stay stuck in frustration because the old way doesn’t work anymore, or you can create a new vision for your life, even if you can’t see how it will happen just yet. His sight was lost, but Lex acquired a renewed vision, a vision that has seen him become the best totally blind long and triple jumper Team USA has ever witnessed.
134 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
FIND STORIES, STATS & SUPPORT
FOR THE CAUSES THAT TIE US ALL TOGETHER
WWW.TABLEOFCAUSES.COM
From a young age we used to think about how we could change Pakistan in a positive way… SHIREEN ZAFAR
CO-FOUNDER OF THE STREET SCHOOL 136 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘GLOBAL GOOD’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY TANITH HARDING
THE STREET SCHOOL
SIBLINGS CREATING POSITIVE SOCIAL CHANGE IN PAKISTAN Teen siblings Hasan and Shireen Zafar started working with street children when they were just nine and twelve years old when Shireen was shocked to learn that they had no access to education. In response to this they set up The Street School in Karachi which runs alongside the slums to support the children who roam the streets selling tissue papers and begging. The Street School was one of the first of its kind in Pakistan and they join me now to tell their story.
Tanith: Hasan and Shireen you started working with street kids at such a young age. What inspired you to become so passionate about helping these children?
Shireen: From a young age we used to think about how we could change Pakistan in a positive way, like what can we do to make Pakistan a safe and better homeland. I'm such a person who always wanted to contribute in our society for good and for positive change, but couldn't find any platform for that. One day me and Hasan were both passing by in the street and one girl came up to us and instead of asking us for money she asked us “Can you please teach me because I love to study? I can't go to any school because my parents will not allow me to go because I live here on the street and was born here”. That was the start point at that time.
Hasan: So that's how we started ‘The Street School’. There are more than two million street children here in Pakistan. 2016 was the best time to start something like The Street School so that we can start to decrease the numbers. There are countries where the population is two million with that many street children you can only imagine what it’s like.
THE STREET SCHOOL
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW BY TANITH HARDING WITH HASAN & SHIREEN ZAFAR
137 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“Starting a school on the street was itself a challenge for us because when you try to convince the parents of these children they usually think that you are taking away the breadwinners of their family.”
Tanith: The Street School has been running for a while now but I know you faced challenges in the beginning. What was the hardest thing about setting up the school?
Shireen: Starting a school on the street was itself a challenge for us because when you try to convince the parents of these children they usually think that you are taking away the breadwinners of their family. They say things like, "Why will we send our kids to your school and give them two hours break a day? Instead they can go on the busy street and earn for their family”. We decided to go and talk to their parents and try to convince them, both me and Hasan.
Hasan: It was actually quite hard because these parents are used to surviving on the money that their children earn. So it was actually very difficult for us to get them to let their children study, but we came up with the concept of giving cash incentives and helping them on a financial basis. So that's how they allowed us to teach their children in our school. People think that the reason that Pakistan has a high number of street children is due to the fact that there are no government schools, but that's actually not true. There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands which are totally free, and although the education system there is not great, it does exist and these children are still not going to those schools. The biggest reason for that is their parents, because their parents actually don't want their children to be in school and study, instead they just want them to earn money for their family.
Tanith: Talk us though a typical day at the Street School, how many students do you have and what activities do they participate in?
Hasan: The Street School starts at around 4pm until 6pm because it's the busiest time where the streets are almost full of children who are usually begging for money or selling stuff on the street. The class starts at four and we have a total of four different classes including English, Maths, Pakistan studies and Islam which are the basic subjects which are common in other schools and common in my school as well. We have around eight different teachers here and around 80 students, sometimes the the number increases to 120 or 200 because at the Street School we don't usually disagree if anyone wants to come and study they can. Even if they have not been a part of The Street School in the past. So the number increases and decreases but we have a consistent of around 80.
Tanith: Its so wonderful how much you have achieved to date and I know in the beginning it was purely funded by friends and family - has that changed now and how can people support the school?
Shireen: The school is still funded by our parents and family with a little bit of support we get from outside but still the main support system is from our family and friends.
Hasan: We had plans for expansion in 2020 but then this pandemic hit and now we're slowly recovering from it and trying to get back to where we were in 2019. We do have plans to expand the school to maybe two more areas of Pakistan and for that obviously we'll be needing funding. So we do have plans to set up funding in the near future.
138 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Tanith: What are your hopes, dreams and ambitions for the future?
Hasan: At most I probably just want to become a good human being and then let's see where life takes me. If you’re talking about The Street School we have big plans, the primary plan is to get the children off the street. There are two million street children and we want to get them admitted to schools and change the future of Pakistan, because if these children get educated they will obviously make a change and the country will get better.
Shireen: Most of the people think that these kids are only good for begging or becoming part of a mafia. That's not true, these kids are really brilliant and they are the future of Pakistan. It's hard you know, but we have plans to get every single child off the streets of Pakistan and into the schools. ∎
Follow The Street School on Facebook for updates www.facebook.com/ThestreetschoolbyHasanShireen
TANITH HARDING
Director of International Development, The Legacy Project, RoundTable Global www.awarenessties.us/tanith-harding Tanith is leading change management through commitment to the RoundTable Global Three Global Goals of: Educational Reform, Environmental Rejuvenation & Empowerment for All. She delivers innovative and transformational leadership and development programmes in over 30 different countries and is also lead on the international development of philanthropic programmes and projects. This includes working with a growing team of extraordinary Global Change Ambassadors and putting together the Global Youth Awards which celebrate the amazing things our young people are doing to change the world.
139 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
Connections to the constellations… CHIEF OGIMAA
ANISHINAABE KNOWLEDGE KEEPER, CHIEF OF FOOTHILLS OJIBWAY ON TURTLE ISLAND 140 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘FROM THE BEGINNING TO NOW’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY CHIEF OGIMAA
CREATOR’S CALLING
FROM THE BEGINNING TO NOW: LESSON 11 Let me introduce myself as I always do in my own language speaking to you here where are people are part of the world he called Turtle Island. I just want to thank you all who are listening.
We are a structure like a puzzle.
There is somebody higher than us.
He gave us everything we need in this world and we should cherish what we are given.
We are given everything we could possibly need that by somebody higher than us.
I guess I'm trying to say it is God Himself.
We call him creator because he gave us life… gave us everything we need.
And used pieces of himself as he put together everything that is us and about the world.
The water, the air… everything.
It is one world and there's one way to be born into this world…which is through our mothers.
And everything we need is already together from the first of his creation.
We are part of that origin.
It is something we should cherish… the world we should look after.
Because it does look after us. It does take care of us.
We grow food… our food sources so much… everything we need
He created this world… even the constellations that are up there.
The mountains, the land, they all have a purpose.
Those constellations above us are part of it…
All the stars are part of the sun… we're part of everything.
We're part of the land where we're given the medicines that we need in this world.
God has put together all that is necessary.
God doesn't create over and over.
He put the puzzle together in the beginning of creation and everything is the way he put it together.
We are part of the water… Not separate from it.
We're part of everything. We have all we need. It is all here and we must take care of it.
141 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“We must respect this Spirit because it is not just a puzzle. It is a structure.”
Wherever we may be,
if we destroy some parts of the puzzle
we're destroying this life and spirit of everything.
God has given us… connections to the constellations…
to himself to all of his creation.
We are connected to everything…
Everything at this time it's been going on for year after year.
Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring to rotate around the sun…
It still comes the way he put it together.
Wherever our own origin comes from….
we are connected to this world.
We must take care of the environment.
We must respect this spirit because it is not just a puzzle. It is a structure.
It is a connection. We are a part of it… If we don't take care of it and we can't change
Ourselves without changing the big part of the ecosystem as some people call it…
If we destroy this all, what is there going to be for future generations and ourselves… right now.
Thank you.
OGIMAA (ACHA-KOOH-WAAY), JIM
Anishinaabe Knowledge Keeper, Chief of Foothills Ojibway on Turtle Island www.awarenessties.us/ogimaa I am Ogimaa (Acha-Kooh-waay), I begin with words from my own language to say hi to everybody. My identity… which is… because God put me in this part of the world is my Annishinaabe language and name. That means “leader” for people and environment here. So I am not saying I am the leader of Turtle Island but that’s what that means. It is an individual’s name, which is a spirit name that we carry on from our traditional culture and lineage in this part of the world. We were put here on this Turtle. This Turtle Island is massive.
142 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
AD
…if we don’t speak up, no one else will. MATTHEW WALZER
PUBLIC SPEAKER, ADVOCATE FOR UNIVERSAL DESIGN & AMBASSADOR FOR DISABILITY AWARENESS 144 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
‘TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN’ EXCLUSIVE COLUMN BY MATTHEW WALZER
BROKEN SYSTEMS
REQUIRED FIXES AND RESULTING FRUSTRATIONS To Whom It May Concern:
Since the events of what happened at the DMV in October, there has been one overarching question in my mind: why was I treated so poorly by someone who had worked at the DMV for over 40 years? Surely in all that time, she had encountered at least one other driver with a disability. As you can imagine, I want to make sure that no one else gets treated the way I was that day. Unfortunately, I’ve come to realize that the systems we have in place to protect, advise, and advocate for people with disabilities are utterly broken.
Disability Rights Florida is my state’s protection and advocacy group for people with disabilities. It is designed to help those who feel they have been discriminated against. I gave them a call recently and explained what transpired. The individual on the phone could not have been more indifferent and arrogant to my situation. They repeatedly kept saying, “I know it’s frustrating,” and offered little in the way of guidance or assistance. They even went as far as asking me what services I was looking for from them. I would seriously like to know the point of having these “systems” in place to help one of the most vulnerable minority groups if the person on the other end of the call can’t be bothered.
The sad truth is that so many people, including those whose job it is to support and advocate for people with disabilities, don’t know the first thing about treating us with the dignity, respect, and empathy that we deserve because they have never gone through what we’ve had to go through. Yes, I understand that there are rules and procedures for things that must be adhered to, but goddamnit, show some respect, have some kindness. Instead of talking to me like I don’t even belong at the DMV, explain what’s going on, why another driving test was needed, don’t just tell someone that they’re weak. Instead of asking me what kind of services I’d like from an ADVOCACY GROUP, tell me what my options are, empathize with the situation that I’m explaining to you. The person I spoke with from Disability Rights Florida was no better than the woman at the DMV, and that’s truly shameful.
It may seem like I’m coming across as someone who’s pissed off at the whole world after a few terrible experiences. Am I? No, there are so many good and kind people in the world who want to be an ally when possible. Still, there are those who just don’t know the first thing about interacting with people with disabilities. (Another powerful example is Season 2, Episode 6 of the Netflix show “Atypical”).
I know many of you share the same frustrations as I do, but we must not be afraid to hold these organizations, services, and individuals accountable and seek change in our broken system; because if we don’t speak up, no one else will.
Best Regards,
Matthew Walzer MATTHEW WALZER
Public Speaker, Advocate for Universal Design & Ambassador for Disability Awareness www.awarenessties.us/matthew-walzer Catalyst in helping Nike develop and design its FlyEase line of adaptive footwear. MATTHEW WALZER is a strong public speaker and advocate for universal design and the disability community. Having accepted numerous awards for from organizations such as The ARC and United Cerebral Palsy, Matthew has also spoken at the White House at an inclusive design event under The Obama Administration. Matthew currently serves as an Official Columnist for AwareNow Magazine and an Official Ambassador for Awareness Ties where he works to raise awareness.
145 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
BEHIND THE SCENES
ON SET FOR ‘THE ROYALLY SPIRITUAL LIFE’ 146 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
FEATURE STORY BY AWARENESS TIES
BEHIND THE LENS
A LOOK BEHIND THE LENS OF THE STORIES SHARED There’s what you see and what you get… Please know that what you get from the stories you see here are a manifestation of dedication from a number of talents who believe in the power of storytelling with many roles required to translate. Allow us to provide a few introductions…
For every story told, there is time and talent dedicated to translate with the words you hear and the style you see in the stills captured and the footage filmed. From video editing and interview scripting, there are many people who produce with truth, committed to content that is raw and real. At AwareNow, we’re rated ‘O’ for original and organic content. This commitment is mirrored by KNEKT TV who is devoted to producing cause conscious media. It only makes sense that a partnership, KNENTNOW, should emerge. And it has. Stay tuned for so may exclusive interviews and personal stories that will be shared to raise awareness and support the causes that tie us all together.
For now, allow us to give you a look behind the lens to see the talents that bring each story to life…
147 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
KENT SPEAKMAN
PRODUCER
148 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“I approach story as a unique opportunity to connect with people from different backgrounds and situations with others have been through things that they haven’t seen, so focusing in the energy that is the lens of connection is the fundamental element that brings it all together.” KENT SPEAKMAN
www.knekt.tv
Speakman is an innovative producer, entrepreneur and philanthropist pushing the boundaries of technology and creative story telling via Film, Tv, Live Broadcasting and video. He founded www.KNEKT.tv as the socially conscious streaming platform on Apple TV, Roku and mobile apps connecting content to audiences across the far reaches of the globe, making it "Cool To Care”. During the lockdown in 2020, Kent pivoted and produced over 300 live / virtual events including the 320 Music Festival which was the #1 Billboard concert to watch at home for 3 weeks, the CovAID business festival, MAYDAY mass meditation to over 54 Million people, The official Kentucky Derby "At Home" Woodford Reserve Special, Frank Sinatra's Bday celebration with Jack Daniels, Endangered Rangers 3.5hr African Wildlife Live Special hosted by Josh Duhamel, culminating in the Snoop Dogg celebrity friends & stunts for his NYE Live Show and many more. In 2018 while in person shows were still happening, his live broadcast strategy resulted in 3x record viewership of the Daytime Emmy Awards. He has won the iAward for "Most Influential Producer of 2018", "Campaign of the Year" 2016 - iMedia, "Best Entertainment Marketing Campaign" 2009 - iMedia, "Best Mobile Entertainment Startup," 2012 - iMedia, and he was awarded Evan Carmichael's "Top 100 Entrepreneurs to Follow" in 2013 preceded by the "iMedia Top Ten Digital Marketers" in 2009. He writes for trade publications, speaks at conferences and film festivals, and has interviewed on media outlets such as Variety, Rolling Stone, KTLA News, The Los Angeles Times, Inc. Magazine and The Huffington Post.
149 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
VICTORIA KAIT
PHOTOGRAPHER
150 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“My purpose is to look into your soul and show you that you can trust me. I want to know your deepest secrets. Now that is a picture worth a thousand words.”
VICTORIA KAIT
www.circumpunctstudio.com
Victoria was born in Dobrivlyany, Ukraine and began her photography journey at her father’s darkroom. An awardwinning painter and sharp-eyed designer, Victoria follows her artistic sensibilities and instincts to create dramatic, character-driven portraiture. Her storytelling is propelled by exploration light and human connection.
151 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
THIERRY BROUARD
PHOTOGRAPHER
152 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“From my first photos, what I love about photography is capturing emotions and telling authentic stories. Transcribing and capturing people personality and essence.
That’s also why black and white always been my favorite form of photography - there’s less space for distractions.”
THIERRY BROUARD
@premium_paris
Thierry Brouard is a self-taught Photographer and Cinematographer from Paris with a background in Science (Master degree in Molecular Biology and unfinished PhD on microRNA). Thierry career in LA started with still photography, covering Fashion Week, getting published in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Playboy, before working on Film, TV, commercial and high end events for streaming (Netflix, Amazon) & cable TV (FashionTV, PBS) on projects with celebrities such as Snoop Dog, Tina Guo, Ray J, Wiz Khalifa, Alessandra Ambrosio, Serj Tankian (System of a Down), etc.
153 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
AURORA GRACE HETTEGGER
VIDEO EDITOR
154 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“I let my heart and mind work together to thoughtfully and respectfully edit each story to remain aligned with the core message.”
AURORA GRACE HETTEGGER
www.knekt.tv
Aurora Grace Hettegger is a conscious video editor for KNEKT tv. Recently certified in AVID Media Composer, she used the pandemic to reorient herself professionally by gaining the technical skills required to present a story through video consciously. Her mission is to bring consciousness to the post-production industry through curating uplifting, inspiring, and growth-inducing stories for the world.
155 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
MAGGIE ALAVA
PERSONAL STYLIST
156 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“My styling vision and approach is very personal and marries the individual with what visually excites me. A natural born quaintrelle, poised attitude and passion will complete your look.”
MAGGIE ALAVA
@maggiealava
Exclusive Personal Stylist to Princess Märtha Louise of Norway and Shaman Durek. My mission is for my clients, family and friends, to have a metamorphosis into becoming and expressing who they want to be in all occasions, while feeling confident and fabulous.
157 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
TANYA KHANI
PUBLICIST
158 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
“If you’re driven by heart work and leading a conversation of progressive change then your story will be heard.”
TANYA KHANI
@soulful_publicist
Tanya Khani, otherwise known in the wellness and holistic media world as the Soulful Publicist is a mission-driven PR specialist representing some of the most enlightened and inspirational leaders of our time. She’s a champion for soul centered leaders like Shaman Durek and Princess Märtha Louise - helping them expand their voice through various forms of media. She’s a stand for challenging societal norms and pushing through messages that uplift human consciousness.
159 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
We need to not just talk about hope, we need to activate the ‘how to’ of hope. KATHRYN GOETZKE
CREATOR OF HOPEFUL MINDS 160 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
www.IamAwareNow.com
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH KATHRYN GOETZKE
THE SCIENCE OF HOPE
A FORMULA FOR CONVERTING HOPE TO HEALING What if we could operationalize hope with science? Guess what. We can. Kathryn Goetzke shifts the narrative of ‘hope’ from a desired feeling to a required fuel for positive social impact. With her book, podcast and multiple projects, Kathryn is fueling change with hope.
Allié: Since I’ve come to know you, Kathryn, I’ve come to know there’s a lot I didn’t know about hope. For starters, hope is ‘measurable’. I’m sure neither tablespoons or inches apply here. Please, Kathryn, explain how hope is measured.
Kathryn: Hope is measured through a few different scales, yet the one I use the most is Snyder’s Adult Hope Scale, and there is a Children’s version as well. I prefer this scale, as there are a lot of outcomes that can be predicted in health, workplace, and school as it has been studied broadly. You can take the hope scale at www.ifred.org/hopescales We don’t score the scale, as hope is flexible and can be improved. The importance is that a person is aware that they have power over their hope, starts measuring it, and works actively to improve it.
Allié: Another thing I wasn’t aware of is that hope is ‘teachable’. What is Hopeful Minds and how is it used to increase hope, reduce anxiety and improve emotional regulation skills in youth?
Kathryn: Hopeful Minds is a program we developed eight years ago based on the research that hopelessness is the primary predictor of suicide, and a key symptom of depression and anxiety. A key to preventing suicide is teaching the ‘how to hope’. I personally never understood hopelessness. I just knew I felt horrible and often suicidal, yet the real underlying issue was my learned hopelessness.
There are a few ways to describe hopelessness, yet I most resonated with Abramson’s emotional despair and motivational helplessness. So it seemed obvious to me that to get out of hopelessness, I had to learn how to get out of despair and take action. So we developed the first free global program to do this, initially called Schools for Hope and then renamed Hopeful Minds.
It is free, available online, and is to help K-6 graders learn about hope. It utilizes the Five Keys to SHINE for Hope -Stress Skills, Happiness Habits, Inspired Actions, Nourishing Networks, and Eliminating Challenges -- which are generally thought patterns like internalizing failure, negative bias, rumination, and worry.
We just launched Hopeful Mindsets on the College Campus, a program that incorporates the Science, Stories, and Strategies for hope at the University level. As this is a very challenging time in life, with great change, it is important students are proactive about their mental health, and get support before they actually need support. If we wait until times of crisis, it is a much longer and harder road back to health.
161 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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Allié: In addition to measuring hope and teaching hope, you talk about it. Let’s talk about ‘The Hope Matrix’ and the value of stories shared on your podcast.
Kathryn: I think we learn most by sharing stories, so I started The Hope Matrix Podcast. I’ve taken the framework of how I teach hope through the Five Keys to SHINE, and started asking for real-life examples of how people use these strategies to deal with challenges.
We often think ‘it is easy for that person to hope, yet nobody has had to deal with what I’ve had to deal with’, and while that is true at the individual level, it is also true that people have had to overcome really significant challenges in life. And, it is through listening to stories and sharing experiences, that we can make different choices that lead us to better futures. Yet it is not enough to just hear about the challenges. It is important to get very specific about strategies that were used to overcome them. So in the interviews, I work to ensure people have practical ways to deal with hopelessness no matter what life brings, by drawing it out of people that have overcome some very significant difficulties. I’m always inspired talking to the incredible variety of guests on the show, and it further informs my work.
Allié: In your line of work, you’ve heard a number of stories about hope, Kathryn, what is your favorite? That is, what story has personally inspired you most?
Kathryn: I am inspired every day by stories of hope from others so it is so hard to choose just one. Every day I meet people that have had different experiences, whether it be health, relationships, school, or just life. And how people can take themselves out of the darkness, back to the light again, continues to amaze me.
The BBC did a documentary called Teens on the Edge in Northern Ireland, where they featured our program, and there was a young boy on it that really wowed me. He spoke of how the program helped him not just manage his own upstairs and downstairs brain, it also helped him recognize others when they were in his downstairs brain, and it helped relate to others. I found that incredibly powerful, as once he started managing his stress response, he had totally different and positive experiences with family members.
Understanding the stress response isn’t just about us, it is about others, and being more compassionate and empathetic. It is amazing what happens when we allow for the grace of others. This young boy learned it at a young age, and it will serve him for the rest of his life.
Allié: For those who have lost hope in the world, what advice do you have for how to find it?
Kathryn: The best way to gain hope is to teach hope to others. I always suggest people download our Hopeful Minds program that is available for free, and get out in the community and start teaching it. Or take the 10 Day Global Hope Challenge, or start a Hopeful Cities campaign in your town.
We need to not just talk about hope, we need to activate the ‘how to’ of hope. As hope isn’t just a wish, it is a positive feeling and inspired action. No matter what life brings, despair is only temporary, and there is always a way to get from helplessness to action. We just need the roadmap. That is what we have tried to create and provide. ∎
Learn more about Kathryn and her work: kathryngoetzke.com
162 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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AWAKE YOUR
INNER BODY SECRET CERES IS A WELLNESS WAND DESIGNED
FOR WOMEN TO NOURISH AND HEAL THE BODY.
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U S E C OD E ‘ AWA R E N O W 1 0 ’ F OR A 1 0 % D I S C O U N T
I want to make sure everyone else who has a disability has an opportunity to come to a workplace where they feel safe and accepted. MAX LIEBERMAN
FOUNDER OF LIEBS & CO 164 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH MAX LIEBERMAN
CORPORATION EDUCATION
A MISSION TO EDUCATE EMPLOYERS ON DISABILITY When Max graduated college with a degree in Sports Management, he was ready to take on the corporate world. However, he quickly realized that many companies lacked the knowledge on how to accommodate people with disabilities. Many companies refused to accommodate his learning disabilities, which made it difficult to climb the corporate ladder. He realized there must be other people facing similar challenges. Max created Liebs & Co. to ensure people with disabilities are better understood and given fair opportunities in the workplace.
Allié: A person’s mission in life usually begins with a personal story. What’s yours, Max? What’s your personal story behind the purpose you are serving with Liebs & Co.?
Max: The story behind serving with Liebs & Co. really starts from when I entered the workplace at 17. I never fully realized that my own learning disability would affect me in the workplace. I thought it only affected me in school where it's accommodated and I felt comfortable. But upon entering the workplace, I started coming to the realization that it affects me everywhere. And I needed to ask for accommodations. I didn't know if there were any rules behind it, I thought it was the same as with school, and I didn't think much about it. But, as I disclosed, I would ask for an accommodation or two, but nothing ever came about. Sometimes my managers didn't understand how to accommodate me or ask how they could help me. But when I did tell them what I needed to be successful, they would say, “Oh, can’t you do it yourself?" because it seems very easy for them. But for me it's very difficult, like breaking down tasks into subtasks.
It all came to a boiling point in 2019 when I didn't disclose after obtaining a job and licensing promotion company. Two weeks in, the manager and owner brought me into his office and asked me to talk. As I'm sitting there, he says to me, “I want to fire you because you ask too many questions and you’re annoying.” I responded, “Well, I have a learning disability.” To this he replied, “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you disclose?” I said, “Well, it's my personal prerogative.”
I've had managers who didn't accommodate me because they didn't understand how to accommodate me and I felt like I wasn't being supported. So, why would I disclose if I don't feel supported? He said, “Well it's 2019. Everyone has a learning disability.”
I sat there thinking to myself, I gotta get out of this place. I'm not going to be accommodated. He's bunching me in with everyone and not realising how my disability affects me, and how it's not similar to everyone else's. Right then and there, I knew I wanted to help people with disabilities because I must not be the only one going through this. After he said that to me, he asked, “Do you have a plan?" I said, “Of course I have a plan. I need to have my to do list broken down for me.” He responds, “Well, you do it yourself… everything.”
I learned that there was a big lack of education and that's why I started Liebs & Co. I want to make sure everyone else who has a disability has an opportunity to come to a workplace where they feel safe and accepted. 165 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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“There’s a lot to learn. It’s not just one combination or one size fits all…”
Allié: Max, when it comes to educating corporations about accessibility and inclusion for those with disabilities, ‘education’ is not the only requirement. Empathy is needed. Max, how can corporations take steps to cultivate empathy in their culture? Max: Organizations can take steps to cultivate an empathetic workplace in their culture by doing numerous things. One, when they hire people with disabilities or a disabled person, include them in your processes. For example, from the beginning, in the sense that any procedure or practice you develop, get their advice and their two cents worth on it, because it will help make your culture and procedures more inclusive and usable for everyone. In addition, it will help you be more innovative and more understanding of other people's needs. Another thing is always to have your accessibility statement on your website to show to other people who live with a disability that you are thinking of them. That includes being included on your job applications and also having an accommodation statement and providing the contact info of your hiring manager, so that if someone applies to a job who has a disability, they can contact that person to get the requested accommodations they need and that goes throughout the entire hiring process. Finally, I would ultimately say getting involved in learning about disability culture. There's a lot to learn. It's not just one combination or one size fits all, people learn differently, people have different needs. We have to realize that when we're training and bringing people into our workplace culture, that the best way to really make that impact on our workplace is to ensure we cater to our needs on an equity point of view and not think one size fits all.
Allié: The benefits of practices that support inclusion in the workplace are many. What do you feel are the top examples?
Max: My top examples are providing the interview questions to all candidates to help them properly prepare for the upcoming interview and asking every candidate during the interview if they will need accommodations as it shows you are thinking of them and what you can do to help. ∎
Follow Liebs & Co on Instagram: @liebsandco
166 AWARENOW / THE ORIGIN EDITION
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THROUGH THESE STORIES WE SHARED
I AM AWARE NOW.
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R E A D , L I S T E N & WAT C H
T h e M a g a z i n e , T h e P o d c a s t & T h e Ta l k S h o w