The Fullness of Who You Are with Lana Holmes

Welcome to Mama Goddess. I'm your host, Alexandra J. Johnson. This podcast is all about rocking your goddess life, creating vibrant health and celebrating motherhood and family life. It's about living an authentically awesome life. Let's have. Hello and welcome. I'm Alexandra J. Johnson and today we have an extraordinary guest that I am thrilled to be chatting with and her name is Lana Holmes and she is an Earth Wisdom carrier and guide, an entrepreneur, an investor, a speaker, a farmer, and a renegade woman. She is currently the co founder and CEO of Timeless Earth Wisdom and Digital and Earth Wisdom and, and she has so many gifts in the high tech world of startups. She's done, I don't know, 40 startups, she's founded three companies. She is a renaissance woman. She's extraordinary and awesome and I love her. And she's also an investor of Entheos, so we're super grateful for her. And welcome.

Lana, welcome. Thank you. Received. Welcome to you.

Thank you.

On the same stage together.

Yes. Wonderful. Well, I am so excited to dive in with you and just explore so many fantastic ideas with you. And I want to start off with who are you? How did you become the woman that you are today? From the CEO startup Silicon Valley to the Earth Wisdom, give us a a story of who you are and how you became who you are right now.

Wow. That's a big question. So a condensed version. Wow. Remember Reader's Digest? That was when I was growing up. So there you go. I've already dated myself. Reader's Digest condensed version. I grew up in a very, very tiny town of about 3,000 in eastern Texas. Was convinced that I was dropped in the wrong location right from the get go. And even my mother believed that. She said to me often, you really on a text and all you. And I said, no, I'm not. You know, it's like I somehow just didn't fit in my entire childhood. And so as a result of that, I found myself almost constantly with my, with my grandfather and grandmother who lived at the edge of a wood. And I found myself almost. I would spend literally 8 to 10 hours a day playing in the woods. And when I finished elementary school, I would immediately baby back in the woods again. It was the place where I played and I had all these individuals and creatures that I enjoyed playing with out there and. But you know what? My home life was not all that great. I was raised in a really. My father was an entrepreneur as well, but he struggled and he was a World War II veteran and he had a lot of demons. And as A result of that. He didn't know what to do with children, I don't think. And as much as my mother would have liked to have protected us, it was just a harsh environment. And as a result of that, I continued always to go back to the woods to seek my place of refuge. And I found my comfort, my joy, my peace in nature. And I felt more at home in the woods than I did in my own bed at home. And I would often sleep out in the woods, like as a little kid. I'd just lay down on the floor. I would make these little homes out of. I would create these little homes out of pulling pine straw together and creating little walls. I have these elaborate mansions made out in the woods next to the creek. It was quite an ordinary affair. I left home when I was 17 and became a professional water skier in Florida. And I was playing tennis avidly. I was trying to become a professional tennis player. I did that for about six years. And then I went back to. Returned to college at Penn State and completed my undergraduate degree. And from there I actually got deeply involved in Christianity. And I went into Christianity big time. And like everything I tackle, I tackle with. And I was deeply involved in Christianity to the point that I actually went to seminary for a while. The church strongly encouraged me to get married. Even though I didn't want to be married, they strongly encouraged me. So this wonderful young fellow who I liked very much as a friend was really deeply in love with me. And so he seemed convenient. And I certainly didn't think about it that way at the time. But in retrospect, I did get married because I was really trying desperately to please those around me. I mean, they were my people at the time. They were my structure. They were my source of orienting in the world. So I did get married. And I was married for right at six years to a really extraordinary, sweet man. But right around year four, I became physically very, very ill. And by two years into the illness, I was enlisted in the oncology ward at a hospital. And I was dying. And they didn't know why I was dying, couldn't find a reason or result. I was bleeding internally. They couldn't find a reason. And I was very fortunate to have a really extraordinary woman in my life at the time who was a therapist. And she came and sat with me bedside, and I was not near death, but I was on my way. I was down to 90, I think I was 96 pounds. And she said to me, she said, lana, God wants you to know that God loves you. The person more than your commitment that you made to the marriage. And for some reason, I breathed a sigh and I said, really? God loves me, loves me like that. And so what ended up happening was it allowed me to consider the possibility that I could break the oath that I had made, not just to my husband or the church, but to God. Now, when you break an oath to God, that's a whole nother ball of whack. So I had to really wrestle with that. But once I finally made that decision that God loved me more than the oath that I had pledged, and that God wanted me to step into the authentic creature, the authentic creation that he, he had made me to be. Now I say he because that was my orientation in my life. God was a he and it was a Christian God. And I didn't know any other thing. So the way I look at it now, in retrospect is I was walking in all the light I had at the time. I was walking fully and completely in all the light that I had. So I left that marriage and I moved to San Francisco. And it took about a year before I regained my health. And I was fortunate enough to really be living with two women who took extraordinary, wonderful care of me. And I realized I just needed to dive back into making a life for myself. My first job was with Xerox, and that took me down a course. I became a senior sales rep for Xerox. I went on to become a VP of sales. From there, I went from being a VP of sales to an operations person. I became a coo. I then became. After being a coo, I realized I can do this. I can do my own company. So I launched my very first company. And I actually had owned a company back in college where I owned an orienteering company and I took people out into wilderness Adventures. That was my very first company. And I did really well with that. But it was just a college business, and I had a great time doing it. It was an excuse to get out in the wilderness with a bunch of people and have fun. But as an adult, I ended up launching my first major business, my second business, and it was an extremely successful business. And that was during the height of the dot com boom. I actually saw the close of the dot com thing happening. I knew it was going to happen because I was a salesperson and my sales dropped off significantly. And I said, significantly, and I said, something big's about to happen. And within three months, the bubble burst and the dot com thing, and I had already telegraphed it. So we had Closed. We were in the process of closing my company at the time and we had laid everybody off with huge severance packages. So we were able to really weather the storm quite effectively. I then took two years off and built an off the grid farm. I built one of my first off the grid homes. I personally built it personally myself and three other women. It was a blast and it was really extraordinary. It was 110 acres. We planted one of the first North American truffle farms in the United States and the people we sold it to just three days ago sent me an email and said look what we found. And, and they showed me they had a photograph of a truffle. So we were successful and it was just so fun to know that we were successful truffle farmers. So long story start. I've had this amazing career. I have been involved in over 40 something startups in the Bay Area. A lot of that has to do with the businesses that I've established and where we actually help businesses get started. And about five plus years ago there was a lack of integration between my internal world and my external world. I really longed for. There was this deeply passionate, deeply spiritual person on the inside which didn't seem to have an honest, authenticity presence in the world, especially in the business world where I wasn't really allowed to bring forward that part of myself. So I made a decision that I would begin to explore. And what came into my path was Earth Wisdom teachings and specifically the origin teachings of the Delicate Lodge, which is the lineage that I have learned. It comes up from the Mayan culture. And so for the past five years I actually stepped back, I completely stepped back out of corporate and I have self supported myself through this learning and growing journey. That's been an extraordinary privilege. Not everyone would have the privilege of doing that, but I have chosen to do that. And it has been a sacrifice on my part economically as well as my profession. But now here I am on the other side, five plus years later and I'm now a carrier and a guide. I've learned this Earth Wisdom tradition and will always be learning it. I will always be gaining and growing in it. But now I feel like I carry what we call a wisdom bundle within myself. So I carry a bundle of wisdom and I'm now able to say, yes, I have these extraordinary business skills, but I also now have this bundle of Earth Wisdom. And so what's interesting is I could never have predicted who I would become and who I am today. All I know is that I wanted to integrate my internal world with my external world. And I wanted to integrate my spirit with my intellect, and I wanted them to be more harmonious, and that translated to me to a more authentic self. So that's the best I can do on a reader's digest version. Here we are today.

Beautiful. Amazing. There's so many wisdom nuggets in there. I'm curious, you know, I love your spirit of you're just gonna go for it. What is it in you that has. That has you do that? Because to be in the place where you were CEO and your professional life, to literally let that go, sell the farm, sell your stuff, and dive into an apprenticeship for. For five years, I mean, that is like courageous and bold. And it seems like you've made a lot of courageous and bold, like, I'm doing it. What is it. What is it about you that has you do that? What's inside of you?

Well, I'm going to respond to that a couple of different ways. First of all, as a wise woman, the way I've done it is unique to me. It is not everyone's. It's not appropriate for everyone. Not everyone should appropriate. You know, I think that. I think the way. I think the way the creator of the universe made me was to embrace life boldly. And when I see. When I see a path and when I hear, my heart resonate, my heart, my heart knows, my intuition knows, and I trust that deep feminine recognition of what is right for me as a human. And I thought. It's often presented to me like a fork in the road. You can choose death or you can choose life. And you know what? Life is always a better choice. So for me, sometimes it can appear to be death, and there is death. But that is the cycle of life. That's the beauty of life. Death has to occur to some part of us or some aspect of us in order for a birthing to occur. And the birthing is always going to be from infancy. You have to go back into the room. You have to go back into the darkness, back into the. And I've learned to love the darkness. I've learned to embrace and love the darkness. So when I'm in dark, dark, dark periods of my life, what gets me through the darkest periods is knowing that something wants to be born.

I love that something wants to be born. So I think we all have this, you know, and I have a similar story of just the interior and external, you know, just that this is who I am on the front, and this is who I am behind the closed doors and, like, bringing Those side by side. And I know talking to a lot of women, that's the case for a lot of them. Do you have any, like, recommendations or thoughts on how to step more fully into your authentic self?

I'm glad you used the word authentic, because that's really what it is. So the backbone of Earth Wisdom. The very first thing you learn in the Earth Wisdom tradition. And this is the thing that was the hook. In my heart, I heard these words. You are whole and complete in every way. What? I'm whole and complete in every way. What does that mean? And so that took me down this journey of what does it mean to be whole? If I'm whole and complete in every way, then how do I respond to life? So this notion that I'm not imperfect, I'm not separated from God, I'm actually one with all of life, I'm one with you. The only reason that we feel separated is that we don't know one another. So it all. It becomes about relationship. And so my passion and my new energy is about relating. It's about every single person that steps into my life, every single being. Walking up to in the woods and touching a tree and realizing that tree is me. It's just another form of who I am. It's another expression of life. Or seeing a winged one, you know, seeing a bird or a butterfly or a dragonfly or a hummingbird, or seeing a beetle or an ant and realizing, how am I like the ant? Seeing a rock and realizing a rock is the slowest moving being on the planet. They move really slow. So how am I like a rock? You know? So I think this whole notion of authenticity is entering into a relationship with all of life. And stop comparing ourselves with other humans and realizing that we are much more than human. Human is the skin we walk around in. I mean, it's the body. It's the. You know. But the reality is that we're all of life and we're an expression. We're like the best. We get to have a composite of all of the. We get to have a voice, we get to have eyes. We get to have arms that are leaves. We get to have. I mean, we're just these extraordinary creatures. And then we get to be women. And women are in Earth Wisdom tradition. You're going to love this. There's only two laws. There's only two laws in Earth Wisdom tradition. One is that all things are born of woman. And the second law is that no law shall be passed that will harm the children. The women are the children. Because women are the source of life. So even if you're not of childbearing, I never had children, so I don't have to feel sad about that. I'm still the source of life. Things are born of me because I chose to be born as a woman in this lifetime. And that's the package I get to be in. And wow. I get to have the experience of being a creator. I am a creator in this lifetime. And so authenticity comes. This whole notion of being authentic is really finding it's not just our voice, not just the vocal cords. And it's interesting because the voice, you know, there's only what I can go down there. It's so hard because our throat, you know, the only other place that the same cellular structures of the vocal cords and the voice and the vortex is in our womb. And so there's a connection there, right? Of creation. So we have voice, we have eyes. So what is it that I want to create? And the way I begin creating is I begin speaking what I want into existence. Who do I want to be? That began with you. You made a decision in your life about where you wanted to go. And you began at some point to say to some of your girlfriends or whoever you verbally articulated, this is who I'm going to be. This is where I'm going. And all of a sudden, it began to manifest. We are creators. It's resonant inside of us. So this whole notion of embracing who we want to be, who do we want to be? It's our choice. It's extraordinary, the choice to make a decision. And I realized that in especially America, we have extraordinary privilege. Extraordinary privilege. Some of the women that we're talking to today or some of the women that we're engaged with in this dialogue are in really, really tough situations in their life. They are in tough situations. And the systems that are in place in America are tough systems to break through. They are hard economically, they're hard. We don't get help with our children. We don't get help economically. Women are not in the utmost position economically in our society. They're not given preference. They're not honored. There's so many things. It's hard. It's hard. And we still have choice. We have choice to believe that we're free. We have choice to believe that we're creators. We have choice that I'm going to choose today to be as authentic as I can. And that may not be well received, but you know what? I've got to be that way. I've got to be authentic, because I was born to be who I was. And if you weren't uniquely who you are, the world would be less of the unique place, beautiful place that it is. What if a tree decided it was like a little tiny acre, and it decided, I don't want to be an oak tree, I want to be a palm tree? What a fight that would be. But it embraces becoming what it is, and it's fully moves into it with all its heart, and it becomes this mighty oak, and it says, yeah, this is who I am, Yolk. But when it's a little tiny ground struggling, it's hard to see the mighty yoke. But we are the seed of whatever our authentic self is. I. Sorry. This is a wonderfully deep subject, Alexandria. And I, quite frankly, authentic self is one of my deepest passions.

I think it's so vital and it's so rich. As you were saying in your story, not expressing your authentic self, you were dying. I think so many of you're physically. But I think there's. We are physically dying if we're not really being authentic and having the courage to be the oak and to embrace all of it. But it's. It can be hard.

It's hard. It's hard. It's hard work. It is.

Okay, so I'm thinking, what.

Let's say that's why you need your posse around you, right? I mean, I think that's one of the greatest gifts that entheos is bringing to the world today. They're bringing this community of the Oasis, which is the community of. I mean, I'm just extraordinarily pleased. Yes, I'm an investor, but, boy, I am active on the Oasis. I love going in there and encouraging people to live life to their authentic self. We may not be physically seeing each other, but we're encouraging each other. We're. We're rallying each other to let's make it. Let's make this world a better place. Let's make ourselves the better. So, I mean, to me, that's the reason I became an investor and a Theos is because this is one of the best modalities I've seen in a long time. That is an active participant in the social revolution of engaging people in positive change, positive health. So get your posse around you. If you don't have people in your neighborhood, if you don't have people in your immediate circle, get into the Oasis and start finding your peeps, because they're there. They're there.

They're waiting for you.

Grow with them, there's all these amazing wisdom guides and teachers who you have access to all this amazing information. It's free. And if you want to buy it so you can have it cataloged in, you can. But you know what, it's amazing. It's like, what a cool service. And give back. And your posse is important. Yes, it's hard, but don't focus on how hard it is. Focus on the avenues of what, what can I do to shift the hardness?

And like you were saying, I love what you're saying, speaking it, because I think that's, you know, I look at my journey and a lot of it was like, okay, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. And I can look at all of the little phases that lead me to now be the chief goddess of Entheos. There's lots of little decisions and like declaring and being scared and like, oh, shit, did I just say that? You know, like, it's so cool to see that what happens when you stand in that space and you have your posse to say, yeah, you are that.

You are that. Do it.

Rock it.

But I think your posse doesn't only have to encourage you in the sense that, you know what, your posse is going to be there when you're there, thinking, I think this is who I am. And they're going to say, go for it, rocket, fall down, crash and burn. We're going to be right there, we're going to pick you up, we're going to help you get up, and we're going to help you start playing again. Playing to find out who you are. Because with every single time that you fall down, you get enlightenment and awareness of, okay, that was good, but not quite what I was anticipating. And, okay, I'm going to go for this again. And so what you do is you course correct and you kind of hone in. You hone in and you get more and more refined about what it is. And what's really fun is that as you mature in age and you grow, that's constantly changing, constantly changing. And so it's never a fixed destination because the reason it's not is because the world around you is not fixed. The world needs you to show up in your authentic self because the world needs uniquely who you are today. Who you were yesterday is not adequate. And who you were, what is needed in the future is not who you are today. So you have to constantly be moving and evolving and expanding, just like the universe expanding, constantly growing and growing. Stephen Hawking, brilliant mind. We are expanding we are microcosms. We are the micro version of expanding universe. Stars being born, things going off, planets being made, that's happening inside of us.

And so we just need to let it flow. Do you think we restrict it?

That's too simple. How do you really do it? How do you practically take it? How do you practically take it into everyday life? Is that your question?

Yeah, let's go with that.

Yeah.

I mean, yes.

It starts with daily practice, every day. And it's not listening to someone else's practices. I'm going to get up and meditate for 15 minutes, then I'm going to do an exercise for 20 minutes. It's like that's somebody else's practice. You need to find the rhythm that works for you. But there are things that you know that if you do and you do them on a regular basis, there's a way of eating that you know that is not only good for you, but you have to fall in love with that way of eating. Not because it's good for you, but because you feel good when you eat that way. It's choosing to maybe meditate. Some people are not meditators, some people are not yoga people, but whatever. Maybe it's a walk. Maybe it's a walk in the woods. Maybe it's a walk around your block. Whatever it is, do it with consistency. Because there's these practices that when we do them with consistency, they change our neural pathways in our brain. And our neural pathways are the things that need to be altered because we were raised to think a certain way. And we've been taught that we're not worthy. We've been taught that we're not complete. We've been taught that we're not enough. And those are all lies. And the way to break through the myths and the lies is by doing practices that cause us to feel good about ourselves. They give us a new story. A new story. And one of the best ways to tell a story is to be a part of a group of people where we tell our story truthfully. You know, I welcomed a young woman today. I loved her description on. I welcomed her into my Oasis community, and she called herself a prairie artist. And I loved that. I thought, oh, good for you. You're owning that. I'm a prairie artist and I think she might be a single mom. And she just. She owned what she was. And she quoted one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver. And I said, oh, and you quoted one of my favorite. I so love you. I so embrace who you are. And so right There she gets that verbal affirmation of being who she is. So. So it begins with a daily practice, whatever the daily practice is. And it could be that you can't get your daily practice unless you get up at 5 in the morning because the kids wake up at 6 or whatever. But you know what? If it takes Getting up at 5, get up at 5. Love yourself enough to invest in yourself. You'll find a place to nap later, or you'll get the extra enthusiasm, but the juice that you'll get in your heart to live life more authentically and fully. It'll be there when you're in this daily practice. In Earth Wisdom, we have a lot of traditions that people use. One is called the sacred 20 count, which is a map of the universe. And we recite the sacred 20 count. It's like this view of all of Earth and humanity's creation in relation to all of the universe. And it's just. We quote it, one is the sun, two is the earth, three are the plants, four are the animals, five is the sacred human. And it goes on and on until you reach 20. And it's like, It's a basic mantra. It's a. It's the remembering that you're a part of all of life. So start with your daily practice. Start with daily practice.

I love that. And I love that you addressed the worthiness, because I think sometimes we don't do our daily practices because we don't think we're worthy enough or we can't do it. There's just so many limiting stories that can limit us to really shining as bright as we could.

What is the one thing that you.

Do that I do? You know, my core is nutrition, exercise, and meditation. And I have found that I literally need 15 minutes of meditation. I don't need, like, 20 hours and 15 minutes of, like, getting my heart rate up. That could be dancing. But I'm also. As we were talking earlier, I had the warrior goddess. Like, I like. I like sprinting. I just. And it's only 15 minutes, and I feel jazzed and connected. So those are kind of in the nutrition. Just following what, like you said, what makes me feel the best when I do those three simple things, I feel unstoppable, connected to God. Like turned on, tapped in. Let's do this. If I don't even for, like a day, I notice it. The little gremlins of I'm not good enough, or, you know, those stories, can I start believing them? And it's like, no.

Think about starting your day regardless of what time you have to get up to do it. And it's so easy to hit the snooze, you know, it's so easy. But there's a cost to that. And you have to love yourself enough to say, nothing is going to get in the way of me becoming the authentic, extraordinary human being that I am. Nothing's going to get in the way of that. Not even sleep or a need for sleep. Amen.

Okay, so I'm curious. What are yours? What are ways that you connect and tap in and turn on and stay plugged in?

One thing I do is, I know this sounds odd, but, you know, I get enough sleep. I am notoriously bad about not getting enough sleep. So I have to really watch that. I have to say, okay, I need to care for myself and make sure I get down by a certain time so that I can rise up at a certain time. The other thing that I do is I do meditate every day. And I studied Buddhism for years. And even when I was a involved deeply in Christianity, I was a meditator even then. So I've been meditating for more than almost 35 years. And it started with simple meditations. And my meditations have become much more sophisticated. And now I meditate for sometimes anywhere, a minimum of 30 minutes, but sometimes up to an hour a day. And I'm blessed to have that privilege to have that hour a day. And I don't always do it, but I meditate for at least some time every day. And sometimes it will take the form of a walking meditation. I try to get my feet on the earth every day, and I'm not just talking about in my sandals. I literally try to walk barefooted upon the earth every day. Even if it's walking into the backyard to look at the garden. I need to get my feet on the earth. There's something about my physical feet connecting with the earth, just feeling the earth, feeling the belly of the mother life. I need to do that. And that is a practice. I do that as a practice at least once a quarter. And usually on either the solstice and or the equinox or something, I actually will set up my tent and camp out on the ground outside. And it's just because I want to be able to step out in the middle of the night and look up at the night stars. It's not uncommon that I go out and look up at the night stars on a regular basis and realize I'm a star being I'm a part of the cosmos. I'm part of the carbons that stars were created from. And here I am, a human. And this is my assignment during this lifetime, is to be a human, to learn and grow. This is why I'm here. So my practices are many and varied, but I do them consistently, and they're sprinkled throughout my life. And what they do is they validate me. They validate me, and they give me the inner confidence that I am here for a purpose. I am here for a very, very specific. And I don't always know what the specific purpose is, but the number one thing I know I'm here for is I'm here to serve life and all that brings life. I'm here to serve life and all that brings life. So that's my response to having the gift of life. I'm here to serve. So that can take many forms. It can be making the breakfast for my people who I live with. It could be having a dialogue with Alexandria. So the service that I bring comes in many and varied forms.

I love that. So I would love to hear more about that, too, because I think that's so the purpose. I love what you said your purpose is and that it shows up in many forms, because I think there's working with a lot of women and talking with a lot of women. There's this feeling of I need to find my purpose. Like, what is it I need to be do, you know? And it's like this specific thing that you're supposed to be doing for the rest of your life. And I just find that anytime that I've tried to do that just stressed me out. So I love that you just state that of, like, so can you just talk about more of that? Like, how do we embrace purpose and our purpose and do what's ours to do as you. As you say?

Well, I think Western culture. Western culture is really. From the time we're little kids. Little kids, Little kids. Who are you gonna be when you grow up? What are you gonna do? Who are you gonna be? What college are you gonna go to? What school are you gonna go to? What's gonna be your major? Oh, my gosh. It's like, just, let me play. Yeah, let me play. And, you know, play. Play is the essence. That's the essence of creation. That's where when we get to play, I mean, truly play. I used to have a friend that laughed at me because I used to call sex adult play. Because it's in that moment of that intimacy, right? That deep intimacy where we really allow ourselves to deeply play. And truly Be seen and be really authentically vulnerable. Healthy sexual exchanges. It's adult play. It's the primo of adult play. But I think that as children and as adults in the world, we don't play enough. It's demanded of us that we have this. I don't know about you, but I remember the first time I'd been a CEO for a long time, and someone said I wasn't a CEO anymore. And I said. They said, so, who are you? What do you do? And I said, hmm. And I didn't have a title. It was, like, really discombobulating to me. I didn't have a title. It was like, well, I'm Lana. And I just sort of started down this road of saying, this is who I am now. This is what I'm doing. And. And I realized that society puts these inordinate, unhealthy structures around us, and we're forced to say something that not only makes us feel comfortable, but makes our audience feel comfortable. Because when you don't have an answer, they feel uncomfortable. Oh, my God. And they become worried for you and concerned, oh, my God, are you going to be okay? And I'm just like, yeah, fine. You know, you don't have identity. Yeah, totally. And so. And, you know, I love saying to people, I'm in this wonderful. I'm in this wonderful conduit now. I used to be this. And now I'm moving towards something. And it's so exciting because I don't know exactly what it is. I said, I feel like this little kid. It's like, I don't know what it's going to be, but I can feel it inside of me. It's really exciting. And I think that we need to have the courage to say, I don't know who I'm going to be when I grow up. But you know what? I'm really something extraordinary now. Right now. I'm this extraordinary being. And here's some of the things that are so great about me. I can give you a whole litany of extraordinary, amazing about who I am, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's like, that's okay. I'd rather talk to that person than hear somebody tell me about what's going on at their job and the complexity of all the relationships and the political issues of work. I don't want to hear that. I want to hear who you are. What's moving in you? What is your authentic self. So. So I think as women, we have to have the courage to create those environments for each other. Where it's okay to not have really clearly defined definitions of who we are, especially when we're in these transitional places. They're transitional places. We're not going to always be that. And, you know, it's funny because when you were reading my bio, the reason my bio has all those things, I'm a farmer, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm an investor, I'm a CEO, I've been a coo, I've been a water skier, I've been a racquetball player, I've been a tennis player. I've been. You know. See what I mean?

Yeah.

It's like we're an amazing composite of a million things and we can't possibly articulate all of them, but it doesn't make us not be that still all of those things. So it's so, so critical that when I meet you, I remember the first time I met you. One of the things that was most important to me is that we had this practice called, we call it stringing the beads. And the whole backbone of that practice is to hear the voice of the person authentically. And I love that because I don't have to hear all this superfluous stuff that really I don't care about and they don't care about either. We get to hear each other's hearts. We get to hear each other's hearts. That's how the world is knit back together. In earth wisdom. The world is knit back together and made whole again when we see one another, when we hear one another from the heart, when we step back into our authentic purpose and meaning. That act alone heals the world. It's one of the first, most basic intrinsic steps of healing the world and making the world healthy again because we see each other. And I would. I couldn't imagine harming someone that I see.

Right.

So, in fact, I become their greatest cheerleader.

I love that. I love that for so many reasons, and especially because there is the, like, just the real truth of heart to heart connection. And you're saying relatedness and connection, and there's this. This armor I think that we as women can put on. And like, I am going to be successful. I am going to be an expert in this. I am going to be whatever it is that you want to be the top of your field and do it all. And then at the end of the day, it's cool. But who. It doesn't matter. That does not connect us to our heart. You know, it's like those interactions of stringing the beads and what's present for you and what are you longing? What's really in there? That's where the juice is. But we don't go there a lot of times.

Well, I think we don't go there, Alexandria, because we really don't have women's circles anymore. Too much we don't have. In the indigenous cultures, they have what was called the woman's lodge or the women's lodge. And the woman's lodge was where things were birthed. It wasn't where a bunch of women got together and gossiped. And, you know, they got together and they spoke about things that mattered. You know, they spoke about the issues of the world and the thing. How are the children going to get fed? You know, how are we going to keep these kids healthy? How are we going to heal this part of our land that has been ravaged and torn up? You know, it's not about fighting against, it's about finding solutions for. And I think that one of the things that's interesting is it's not unhealthy to want to be at the top of your game and to be an expert. That's not an unhealthy goal or desire. I think all of us want to become masters in whatever it is we're doing. And yet when that desire to become a master supersedes authenticity, it supersedes being seen and being known for our authentic self and our hearts, then that's an imbalance. That's an imbalance. So I think at the deepest heart of all of us is that we just simply want to be seen and we want to know that we're loved for who we are, just the uniquely amazing, authentic self that we are. And a few days ago, I was walking with a young woman who was just completing a vision quest. We do vision quests for people for eight days here on the land in Northern California. And she said the first morning that she met me, when I came down to visit her at her site, she said I was this radiant, happy person who walked into her camp, and she said, I couldn't believe how happy and radiant you were. And she goes, all I could say was, I want that. How does she do that? And she knew that it wasn't something that was manufactured. I wasn't this person from this corporate entity called Timeless Earth Wisdom who's coming down to give her an experience. She knew that I was showing up authentically to meet her authentically, and I could really be happy about that. And that, to me, is like, you know, whenever you and I engage, you Know, you're going to get an authentic person every time. Even if I'm sad, you're going to get somebody authentic. Right. So that's the ability to not to have the courage to be authentic and yet still be mature, still be disciplined.

Right?

I'm disciplined. I have a rigor about my life. I have an authenticity, and yet I'm a human just like everybody else. Mm. Yeah, I love.

You know, as Lana was saying, she came to our house and we had an amazing dinner and we did the stringing the beads and. And just sharing what was present for us. And it was like. So, I mean, she left. And I mean, we have amazing dinners with awesome people. We meet extraordinary people all the time. But there's like, just that what you bring, that connection and smile, spaciousness and heart centered listening. There's nothing like it, like feeling truly seen by you. Just meeting you and we were just like, buzzing. We're like, oh, my gosh, she's so amazing and just. It's so great. I just love that you're bringing that into the world of time, you know, that earth wisdom and that listening for people's greatness and their authenticity and their. Their process. It's beautiful.

Thank you for that. And I am modeling what we all have the capacity to do. And I think even you now, you understand what stringing the beads is, and you practice it and you know how to use it. And so you. It's like, once again, enlikesh Alakim, you are another me. And it doesn't have to be solely up to me to be that presence in the world. And, you know, I'm going to copyright that. I'm going to patent it. Who wants to do that? I don't want to do any of that. I want to give as much of this away as I can.

Yeah, totally.

I want to teach others how to do this because I want to knit us back together. I want to knit us back together and make us into this extraordinarily beautiful cloth, beautiful shawl, or this blanket that covers us in the wintertime. And that's a good thing. Mm.

We'll take it. Fantastic. Okay, so there is something. And it's been in my space since you came to meet with us.

Okay.

And you said something because you're having an adventure with two other people that we know. And you said something like, when was the last time that you did something. I don't know what words you use, like unexpected, radical, adventurous, crazy. You can tell me what exactly you said, but that's what I heard. When was the last time you did that? And that's been in my space. And I'm like, when was the last time I did that? So let's talk about that. Because I feel like you really bring that sense of adventure and play and like, just play. Let's talk about that.

So Eleanor Roosevelt is one of my heroines. And the reason she is is she was the one who made the statement, do something that scares you every day. Now, I don't know that you can do it every day. Pretty tall order. But I think there's something really enlivening about pushing ourselves to the edge of the cliff or stepping to the edge of the cliff. And if we can't jump, at least we can feel the wind that comes up, really hits us in the chest and makes our heart flutter and goes, oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. This is what it feels like to be alive. This is what it feels like to be alive. And I think that there's a way in which we can get into these patterns of our living. Now, we talked earlier about the need for consistent practices, daily practices. The practices should never take us into a mundane ness. Get up and do my practice now. But every day it's more of a mindset. It's like I wake up every day thinking my life might radically change today. I mean, I know my schedule, I know who I'm going to be talking to, but I don't know what they're going to bring me. I don't know what questions they're going to ask. I don't know what I'm going to discover. So it's kind of a mental mindset of being the exuberant explorer. Amelia Earhart was another one of my heroines. This whole notion of the unknown and how I embrace the unknown. I go, wow, I'm going to learn something today that I may never have known before. And so this whole notion of doing something that scares you, of pushing yourself, it could be as radical as taking a different street. You go to work, just do something different, change it up, be open to what might surprise you, right? And it is true. These two women, I just recently met them on an email exchange and we had this incredible, amazing thread going. And so my medicine name is very odd, but my medicine name is Renegade Law Dog. Now, that's my Earth Wisdom medicine name. So up in the subject line, I put a renegade's wild notion and I threw down the gauntlet in the first sentence. I said, when was the last time you did something that was radical, extreme, extraordinary, where you broke the rhythm of your daily routine or your monthly routine. Most of us are booked a month or two out. When was the last time you said, I'm just going to do that? And I said, I propose a girls spa weekend. Within seconds, one of them wrote back and said, you so had me. I was at the spa. So any of us actually engineered our calendars, and within six weeks, we scheduled a date. And actually, I'm leaving this coming Wednesday. All this took place about four weeks ago, where we literally engineered our entire lives to make this happen so that the three of us could come together. Because we had a sense, we had a knowing some part of us, a deep knowing that each of us holds a little piece of. Of what the other might need to know or hear or experience in order to provide us with the next clear step of our journey. And you know what? Worst case scenario, we have a great spa weekend and we'll encourage each other, but it's just healthy. It's good. It's good to do something radical and fun and silly and totally.

I love that.

You gotta play. You gotta build in. Major play.

I know. Just because this has been in my space, you know, one of my strengths is playfulness. Like, it's. It's like. It is part of why I'm here. And yet I still. And I've said this on other interviews, but it's still sometimes challenging for me to play. Like, to just play. And so the other day I was like, I'm gonna search for a race or something. So I searched for a race and I found the color race. Have you heard the color race? No, I haven't. So the color race, I guess it's the happiest race on the planet or something like that is their tagline. You essentially have to dress all in white, and there's music and dancing and it's like, you know, in India they throw colors and do that whole. I don't know what it's called. So that's what it is. The whole. It's a 5K and it's dancing and you throw colors, and by the end you're just painted in color.

I'm all over this.

First I was like, is the color toxic? It's cornstarch. They said it's not toxic. So anyways, we're gonna do it. Yes. And I'm taking Emerson.

Yes.

And then I asked Brian, because I'm usually the crazy one, and I'm like, do you want to do this? And I thought he would be like, no, I'm not Gonna do that. And he's like, that sounds awesome. Let's do it. So we're gonna do a color Rafes.

Yes. There you go.

Inspired by you. Your question.

Excellent, excellent. I think it's important. It's important to say, and you know what it'll do. It creates a memory. It creates a moment. It creates a lifetime of building on, saying, remember when we did that? And it was like, you know, and that's the weaving. That's the weaving of our lives together. It's not mundane. Our life is exciting. Our life is an adventure. And believe me, your sweet boy will remember it. He'll have some little catalog memory of. This was this weird thing my parents did. They were so hippy, dippy, and they were so strange. And he'll have this great memory. But I think that, like I said, even if it's taking a different street, if it's stopping at a diner or stopping at a store that you've always looked at, and you simply stop at the freaking store, go in. You may not buy anything, but just change your behavior. Make it an adventure. Life is an adventure. And it's tough when you're a mom and you have work, you have all these obligations. It's tough. It's tough. And yet you can find it. There's places to have adventures.

And like you said, it's a mindset, too, which I love. You know, it's a mindset of, like, I love that you shared how you wake up. You know, like, we can all wake up and say, no matter. Because I think for me, there's been the motherhood of. There is a lot of mundane. And I was like, whoa, okay, we got laundry, dishes. I don't have as much time to go on adventures and go to the spa as I did.

Whoa.

It's a transition for me, but you to have that mindset of, you know, okay, great. Yeah, there's dishes to be done. But what's something different we could do together? I know that my son needs to take a nap. I got it. Because I'm like. You structure your life around naps when you have young children. But then like, okay, great, then you can still go on adventures. But it's. We just sometimes get into little ruts. Ruts. And we don't want to rock the boat or something.

I'm just going to tell you that my grandfather, who was one of the wisest men in my life, he used to say this to me, and I think this was really an indelible memory. He said, a rut is the grave with the ends knocked out. And I went, oh, I don't want to be there. I don't want to be in the rut. A rut is a grave with the ends knocked out. I thought, that is yucky. I don't want to be in a rut. I don't want to be in that, you know, that grave because it brought heaviness to me. And I was thinking about this whole notion, like, you and I have mentioned spa several times. Well, that's a really privileged position to do a spa. I remember there was a time in my life when I was really, really poor, and I had this wonderful friend who came and we did spa day together, and we did it at my house, and it was just great. She prepared a tub for me with all these candles, and then she prepared it, and so I took a bath. And then when I came out, she gave me an oil massage, and then she gave me a facial, and it was like, wow. And at the end of the day, it was like, it didn't cost us anything but our time. But you know what? I felt like a million bucks. And I. It was just what I needed. It was just what I needed then. And I just think that we need to realize that some of us live extraordinarily privileged lives, and not everyone has the same privilege. But if you allow the not having to keep you in a mindset of sorrow, defeat versus adventure and discovery and choosing to love life, whatever life has on your plate, you don't have to settle for it, but you also don't have to be drugged down by it. So earth wisdom is about living in the present moment, the present moment, and truly relishing and embracing the love of life, all of life, and remembering that you're whole and complete in every way. You don't have to do anything to get better. You're perfect, just like you are now. And it's remembering that we're whole and complete. It's all about remembering. It's a life of learning and growing. That's the reason we're here. What if that's really what it was all about?

To learn and grow?

Just about to learn and grow and to find out just to discover these extraordinary people we are and to share that with other people. That's a pretty good. That's a pretty good adventure.

Yeah, I'll go on that adventure. I'm on that adventure. That's great. And I also love the wholeness and the complete. Like, we're perfect as we are, you know? And there's as you were saying that. I think as women, we can want to try to striving to change ourselves. Our looks are this, our that. You know, there's so much. And it's like when you accept that you're perfect and whole, you just naturally do things that are good for you.

Like there isn't the inside.

Yeah.

You really have to believe that you are beautiful and whole and complete. And then it begins to radiate outward. It doesn't start with outward in, it starts inward out. That's the change. Change occurs from the inside out. Yes.

I love that. I just posted on the Oasis today a picture that I saw over in the storefront here in Ojai. I just thought it was so great. It said this morning. What did it say this morning? This morning she woke up and decided that she was beautiful.

Oh, yes.

And I was like, yeah. Like, what if we woke up every morning and decided that we were beautiful? Like, we're beautiful.

I am.

Yes, you are.

Yeah, you are. You're beautiful.

I love that. Fantastic. So is there any other closing thoughts that you have? I mean, we have covered lots of juicy, delicious goodness.

We've meandered through many things, and I trust that whatever we've meandered through and whatever has been spoken has been just the rich thread of what is needed, at least for this segment of our journey, and that the seeds that we've cast will land on the hearts that need them and will grow extraordinarily beautiful fields of what is needed in the world. I'm confident of that. Thank you for the privilege of this exchange and of having a relationship with you. It's such a joy and a privilege, and I'm deeply honored.

Thank you. Thank you. Lots of love. So, people, if they want to find more about you and, you know, your vision quests and the programs that you do, where do they find out?

Well, I can honestly tell you, first of all, Timeless Earth Wisdom is a young company. There's not many of us involved in it, but we're young, but we're growing because Earth Wisdom carriers are few and far between. So you can find us on timelessearthwisdom.com we are soon to launch our digital version, which is called Earth, or it's called Digital Earth Wisdom. And there's going to be a whole new URL for that shortly, and that's going to be a place where we're actually going to be doing online free, a lot of free online stuff, so people can have access to us if they can't come physically see us in person, then they can have access to us online. But you know what? You can always find me on the Oasis. You're going to be able to find me in 2015 on the Academy. And I think that anytime, if you really want to get to know me, you'll figure out a way. It'll be an adventure way to get to it. I will respond.

That is like the best ending ever. Awesome. Fantastic. Lots of love. Thank you. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mama Goddess. Sending you lots of love and blessings. If you'd like to connect more, go to mamagoddess.com until next time. Keep rocking it and have an awesome day.