Artist Misty Sol speaks of the WARRIOR'S JOURNEY

Okay, so we're here with Misty. And how are you today, dear?

Good, good.

Yeah. So you wrote something on the forum today. It suggested to me that you're having a pretty interesting experience with the Warriors Journey course. I was impressed immediately, and I just kind of wanted, would you share with us what happened, what was going on?

It's almost hard to put into words because it just involves so much of my experience and just pieces of myself that I hadn't even planned on involving in this process. You invited me to the course because of a confrontation I got into with a woman. And I've kind of. I don't know that it's kind of almost that situation. It just pales in comparison to, like, what I have been able to address. I guess. There was so much underneath that needed to be addressed.

So tell us, if you'd be so kind, would you please introduce yourselves? We know who is this lovely lady that we're talking to here today.

My name is Misty Soule. I'm an artist from small town, Pennsylvania. I'm from Bucks County. I live in Philadelphia now with my two children whom I homeschool. I'm a full time artist, full time homeschooling mom. And I'm also an alkaline vegan. And I say these things because all three of those things require a level of personal discipline that society doesn't always support. So I've had to build a lot of my own structures, you know, to support my lifestyle. But it's been incredibly rewarding and, you know, I wouldn't change it. Money has been something I've struggled with a lot and just a lot of grief. I lost my mom when I was about 25. I lost my dad, like two years after that. And then the other matriarch in my family, who is my auntie, I don't have any grandparents. And so, yeah, I've been doing a lot of healing work over the years. There's also the fact that I grew up around a lot of domestic violence with my mom and my stepdad, my sister and her boyfriend, aunts and uncles. It was just around me everywhere. And so I myself always thought about myself as a passive sort of person. But recently I realized how much of that cultural baggage I carry. And so I was going through the work of week four. And at one point, you have us, we're exploring what we would die for or what we would be willing to kill for. Right? And you're having us go around the room and look for different things that we could protect ourselves with, create a Barrier, create a distraction, inflict some sort of injury to create space. And I was taken back to a conversation with my mom. She did almost the exact same thing with me. And she was talking to me about defending myself, but she was talking specifically about if I had to fight a man. I guess it helps to have a little bit of cultural background here. My mom and my grandmom were from the deep south. Very world, very rich cultural experience, but. But poverty on the tail end of slavery, for instance. When my mom was born, my grandmother still lived in a plantation style home in a sharecropping situation. You know what I mean? And so reading the works of Zora Neale Hurston recently, her short stories in particular, I realized how much of the culture I grew up in was rife with domestic violence at the time. It was just how things were. Your man would come home beat down by society, and he would take that out on his woman. And Zordon Hurston has a character who is this wiry, strong woman, and she like, totes an ax to stop her husband from cheating on her. And, you know, it just talks about how common it was to have, you know, to be silenced. And that was what was expected. You were a woman, you and your man was cheating on you. You had to be shut up about it. If you went and spent all his money, you know, because he was upset about how his day went at work, or gambled it away or drank it away, you were quiet about it, or you got, you know, unless you were the type of woman that was this heroine in Zora Hurston's book, whereas you stood up for yourself, right. And were called sort of masculine because you could confront a man in this masculine way.

What was the name of the book?

Hitting Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick.

Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick. Sounds like a fantastic book.

It is. And it's a new collection of short stories.

Oh, it's a short. Short stories, yes.

Yes.

Great.

And so my mother was this type of woman. She came from a tradition. Whereas when your man wants to go upside your head, you use whatever you can to defend yourself and you fight back, right?

Yes.

But I realized how much of that I carried into my relationships, into my adult sense of what safety is, you know, And I was talking to a friend of mine about an argument that she had with her boyfriend. And our mothers come from similar backgrounds. And I suddenly realized how much of this idea of confrontation I'm going to have to defend myself now, you know, even in a situation where I'm not tied to a Man, because of poverty, I'm not in a domestic violence situation where he's putting his hands on me, but because of what I've experienced, any show of masculinity that is somewhat aggressive threatens me.

Yes.

And I was talking to my friend about how upward mobility for us, how our education, our economic status affords us level of femininity that our mothers weren't allowed to embrace.

Yes.

So I realized that I don't have to, like, this internal fear that I have. I've talked to my male partner about how. How I can be triggered sometimes, and there was. There was no ill intention or aggressive intention. It's just that masculinity to me, aggression to me equals violence in a way that it doesn't in my reality. That's my baggage, you know? And so I just said to my friend this morning, like, we can relax. Like, we can. You know, like, we can be soft in a way that our mothers weren't.

You know, I can't even begin to tell you how beautiful that is to me. You honestly feel that the Warrior's Journey course helped a little with that? That. That was actually.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Just the conversation, like, with my. With my child self and my. My adult self. Like, I can't help see my. But see my granny, you know, And I do a lot of ancestral work, whereas I have pictures and I think about what their lives were like, because I know that affects the experience that I'm having.

Yes.

You know, like, all of that that I saw as a child, like, one of my biggest fears is to be controlled by a man. Like, I remember seeing my aunt, like, my uncle, just saying, like, bitch, get in the car. And like, how it, like, crushed her spirit to have to have us children around and see her like that. And she. And I knew how strong she was, but at the time, she couldn't stand up to him in front of us.

Right.

And so just that fear, even though it hasn't come true, is so strong in me. Like, you know, like, sometimes I'm combative in a conversation, and I may be wrong, but I don't want to be told what to do.

Right.

Because I know what that leads to. You know what I mean?

Yes, I do. Yes, I do. I am profoundly grateful that there was something that was a resource for you. You know, people hurt people hurt people. You know, frightened people try to give other people fear. People who feel like they have no control will try to take control over anything that they have around them, even the people they love. And frankly, I think that every woman that stands up and takes her power back actually makes room for men to put some of that false strength down and recognize that they have their softness, they have their needs, what they really want, what he really wanted more than anything in the world, every single one of them, was to be held by the woman he loves who looks in his eyes and tells him he's okay. And when you damage that, you create codependency. One person hurting somebody else, submitting to somebody else, who then becomes a monster and hurts somebody else in an endless chain of humanity. You're breaking that chain. I'm so proud of you. I'm so happy to have been able to serve you in any way. I mean that.

And I hope it makes sense in the way that, like when. When a student, a fellow student asked me how. How I'd have this breakthrough, it's not easy to explain because it is so personal, you know, and the. The tools that, you know, were coming to me are, for me in particular, like that Zordon Hurston story might not have meant anything in combination with this for someone else.

We're surrounded by potential tools, by potential allies, by things that help. Once we see a direction to go in and start believing that we can and should go in that direction, everything changes. You start. You know, it's like when he said that, look around the room for objects you can use as a weapon or an obstacle or to distract you. Start looking around the world for resources. Once you get it. Once you get it. And you just got it. So you'd say, honestly that you would recommend this course to. Who would you recommend it to?

Me for? Anyone that's willing to do the work, to heal, to grow, definitely. To discover yourself. I've gotten some tools here that are just worth everything to me.

Fantastic. Thank you very much, Misty.

Thank you.

Okay, I am stopping the recording.