Tribal Expert: Indigenous Tribes Have EVERYTHING We Want! Is Modern Lifestyle Destroying Us?

Kids are being born into a world that they are not equipped for. In many places, it's 50% or higher of C section, and those are usually from women that have already had antibiotics. But even if they hadn't, they're going to have IV antibiotics during the C section. So when they nurse, the children are not going to get the same microbes that they would have before. They are what protect us from the elements. They are what make us feel happy. They are what help us bond.

Mary Ruddick is an ancestral nutritionist international keynote speaker and wr.

If you have a very tall male with a very short female, that is a recipe for a C section.

How so? When we depart from the really intuitive, natural ways of living with tribalism, the child is impacted at such a young age. They spend essentially the rest of their life just repairing because they came into the world in a way that they weren't designed for.

The places that I go, they're very traditional. They have not been colonized, they're not wearing T shirts, they are not dire, they're not hungry, are the highest version of us. There aren't divorces. I haven't seen cheating. I haven't seen drug abuse or alcoholism. And so they're quite happy units. We have a culture in less than 100 years that went to a group of folks that don't bond, therefore they don't have children, and a group of folks that can't, even though they want to. Can you imagine in a couple of generations what we're looking at?

Hey, it's Josh. Thank you for being here. Thank you for watching the Wellness and Wisdom podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, if you get value from this podcast, please do myself and my team a quick favor and click subscribe. Wherever you're watching this, wherever you're listening to this, it helps us rise in the YouTube overlord algorithms so we can get bigger guests on the show and bring them to you. So thank you so much for subscribing now. Enjoy the podcast. Mary, welcome to the podcast. We've been marinating for a minute. Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me.

I think about the ways in which we are all being birthed and renewed. And with your work in so many travels across the world, you know, I asked you in full transparency before we clicked record, I was like, what's top of heart for you? And people know you as a traveler in a microbiome specialist and anthropologist and somebody that's like, on camera around the world with tribes. But at the essence of it all, it seems like you're really wanting to. And I'm curious how you'd say this with your own words. You're really wanting to honor the fact that we come into the world and the fact that we live it and live on her and with her Mother Earth. So I'm curious, if somebody doesn't know you and they're just hearing your voice or they're seeing you, they're learning about you for the first time, how would you go about describing yourself? Besides the pre frame that I gave now?

Oh, I don't think about that very much. I usually, when people ask what I do, I usually say a lot because I have a lot of projects going at any given time. And I think, you know, coming out and being on this other side of illness for so long, I think Joseph Campbell really nailed it when he said that life is about the experience of being alive. And so for me, I kind of go where that experience is and what seems exciting. And so I do have. I wear a lot of hats. You know, I have a little boutique hotel. I do the research, I have the foundation, I work with the clients, I do the film work. So it really is all over, but it actually has quite a few common threads.

And the common threads seem to be a sense of care, nourishment, and acknowledgement of how we came to be, how tribes interweave into our actual way of being here in the West. Would you say that there's other threads weaved in there too?

I think understanding. I think with the breakdown of most of our societies, in our communities, people aren't validated and they aren't heard. And I really like to bring that. I would say that would be the other one.

What's the way that you think people, most people aren't validated or heard right now? Is there a certain group of populations or subgroup? What do you mean by that?

I'm sure there's a lot that I don't know about, but the one that I see the most are the chronic illnesses, folks. You know, very often we have these new illnesses now for the last couple decades where we just didn't have before. And there's reasons for that. And I can explain that on a scientific level with the microbiome. But the reality is, is that our former generations really don't understand what kids and adults are going through today with illnesses. And so what that often leads to is people really hiding most of what they're going through and only showing people the tip of the iceberg. But many people assume that that tip is over exaggeration. And so there's a lot of misunderstanding. So I really love when I speak to people, whether they're children who are healthy or people that are, you know, have been sick for a very long time, that they just have a space to be and to be able to be themselves and to be honest and not get judged for what they're going through and to get some validation for it. Because one of the benefits for being a practitioner is getting to hear all the stories. And something that I. I just am always astounded by, maybe one day I won't be so far, is that people with the same conditions always use these same words to describe it, but they always think that they're alone because it's not shared. So I love to bring that to them.

So it's like removing the veil of the things that people are afraid to share and talk about. And I wonder, from a psychological perspective, how did that even come to be? This shame dragon, you know, a lot of times we've talked about Hawkins Scale, which is the frequency scale on this podcast, and shame is one of the lowest, if not the lowest emotions we can feel. Yet it hooks people so desperately before they can walk the ladder to anger, then courage, then acceptance, then changing their life. So I wonder, in all your travels. So for y' all watching, you already know there's a globe behind Mary, but for y' all listening, just imagine a beautiful panel behind Mary with the entire. Looks like a. Almost like a geographical map. And maybe you've pinned all the places you visited. If you go around the world so much, which you have, what. What is the connecting dots on the psychology of why people tend to not share no matter where they live?

I think traditionally we have seen illness or difficulty in any sphere as a poor character rating. And one of the difficulties with that is that in our traditional model, kind of what we were rate. I'm 42. So when I was being raised in America, the idea that either you get sick for a week and then you get better, or you're getting something grave and you die, and there's not really much in between. And most of what we're dealing with now is in between. And so traditionally, even just when I was being raised, you did not talk about illness. If someone was ill, you didn't talk about it. And now if you walk through a restaurant, you hear almost every table, someone is talking about something they're dealing with. And so there's more in the communication sphere, but it's still kind of uncouth and with what we're going through. How do I explain it? Okay, you said I travel a lot. I do. And so when I come home, it's actually shocking. I was in a Home Depot parking lot. Parking lot the other day. I was looking for some things, and I pulled into the parking lot, and I just watched people as they started walking into the store. And I can't tell you how many people walked into that store, and I didn't see a single one who walked with health, not one. So we have a very different situation or stew that we're in at the moment. And so things are changing. But I do find that people tend to suppress what they're going through because they assume that at least this is what I've. I've gleaned. They assume that what they're going through is at some point of their fault, that it's their fault for not being able to get better, for not being able to surpass this challenge and those kind of things. And I. That just breaks my heart. I. I don't find it's anyone's fault. We often don't have the right tools.

I love that you said we don't have the right tools. It's actually something that I learned really early in my podcasting career. And even as a trainer, I was a train in fitness gyms for 10 years. And it wasn't that people necessarily didn't know how to be fit. I think we're all born innately healthy. Obviously, some people develop, you know, at birth, type 1 diabetes, or they're born with certain proclivities or preconditions. But for the far majority of us, it's like we come into the world really healthy, really well, and then we learn almost this pseudo health by taking pills and packages and listening to pharma and watching our parents. Because the apple doesn't fall from the tree unless you're conscious enough to move away from the tree. So it's like people say, we're the Smiths, we get cancer, we're the Thompsons, we're obese. But it's this psychological. It's this bent lens of psychology that's really. It's training people, for lack of a better term, to raise their children, who will raise their children, who will raise their children with the same bent lens. So in your travels, there had to have been maybe one or two tribes or one or two communities or probably a lot more. Where you think, here we, in the west, we could really learn from their way of being, not just from a biological and nutritional standpoint, but also the way that they think, the way that they feel with each other and be in community, like we've lost our way. And I think you can give us a glean of wisdom on this. Is there one tribe that, that comes up for you specifically where when you visited them and you. And you were really with them, that you thought, wow, I need to bring this wisdom back to the States.

I should preface it by saying the places that I go, they're very traditional. They have not been colonized, they're not wearing T shirts, they are not dire, they're not hungry. They are the highest version of us. And they're across the globe. There's not many of them, but they are everywhere. And I would say each one has really brought that from day one, from the first one that I went to, because they have everything that we're looking for. And it sounds like a Pollyanna speech if I tell you what it's like, but I can assure you that when you go, it's even more so. It was shocking to me and that's part of why I kept traveling. What they have is true confidence, true confidence. And they have it from competence. They're taught competence from a very young age. And so the adults trust them from a young age. They're given the tools where they can face danger, but at the same time in a place where they, they're watched. And so the children grow up with this sense of confidence. That's very rational. It's not this self esteem movement. And with that, they're also nourished very well. And they're very loving. I haven't been anywhere that is an incredibly loving. Both males, females, and the family unit is quite tight. Not in some of the unhealthy ways that we can have, but instead from a real appreciation of each other and respect and honor, I would say. And so there's a great deal of safety emotionally that they take in because there's not much that you could do to get, you know, thrown out basically. You know, there aren't divorces. I haven't seen cheating, I haven't seen drug abuse or alcoholism, these kind of things. And so they're quite happy units. So that, that has been very helpful as well. But the biggest thing I would say is the, the thing that I would like to bring in the most. Oh, could I give a couple? May I give a couple, please?

I was just curious. We all have like one where we know, like whenever, whatever, we, whatever field or work we're involved in, there's typically like one big energy or imprinting that you've received that is super wise. So I was obviously trying to do a shortcut. I was like, tell me the best one.

But.

But you can share whatever you want to share. Because, look, the crux of my question is how can we bring this really indigenous, innate, nature based, creator based wisdom to our broken system and broken family? And so many movements and things that have gone astray here in North America, really across the world. That's the crux of my question, right? How do we get that wisdom today in this moment? From you, through example, through story.

This is a tough one, and I'll be honest, because I, you know, when you know a little too much, I know a little too much. So if I were to distill it into one, it would be the care of our children. Very much so. The birthing practice, in addition to the rearing, the physical contact, the eye contact, the rough housing from the dads and the nurturing from the moms, the kids need a lot more nurturing. There's a lot of physical wiring that we have in our body and our nervous system, our hormonal system that requires very set things from the females in our life versus the males. And in our, I would say, the last four decades or so, children are getting much less of that than what they need. And when they get that properly and they get the proper nutrition and they get enough daylight when they face troubles, they aren't broken by them, they're actually stronger. And so it's a very important thing to bring in. So if I had to distill it, it would be the care of the children.

Where did you see that geographically play out the strongest?

Well, I've seen it everywhere I've gone, but I would say the Mayans and the Mongolians stuck out the most for me, I think, because the Mayans and the Toltecs, they do these ceremonies, these temazcals, where you go to be reborn. You bring children that are very, very young. And it's a very hard thing as an adult to go, how old, how.

Old are the children in the sweat lodge?

Three.

Wow.

Yeah.

How is that possible?

Yeah, that's how. Yes, it's been astounding. Well, in the Mongolians, well, the Kazakhs, So there's different cultures within Mongolia, but it's not uncommon to have challenges for very, very young children. But again, what that does is build character. And I think one of the things that we've kind of lost, you can see these big, kind of epic worldwide movements Right. And in the last 50 years or so, moving into this new age, so to speak, we've kind of gone away from much of our tribalism and our culture. And in that we've ditched our religion. But religion is how in the west we taught our virtues of character. Now in the places I go, they teach virtues of character through action. And so these kids are still getting it. And it's amazing. They do things that are hard for us, you and I, but again, they're three, so they get a very real sense of confidence that is sorely lacking in our world.

Wow. It reminds me, I don't know if you've seen the movie 300. You know, it's a very grotesque example at times, but it's hard. However, though, like I can think about my son, he was 2 years old and he wanted to go in the cold plunge, okay, this is like a year ago. He wanted to feed, he wanted to see what was making daddy breathe, essentially. So like you said, the neural tree and the neurology and physiology, how we're at such a young age, prepared to receive, I guess, for lack of a better term, micro adversity or microhormesis, which then has so many great beautiful things for the body. But I wonder, was there one thing that stuck out besides the temazcal, which by the way, at 3, I just can't even imagine that. That's just so incredible, so powerful. Was any other examples that you think. And by the way, how do we even practically bring that kind of training to the West? I mean, I'm not saying that parents should put their three year old in a sweat lodge or a cold plunge. What I'm saying is that my son intuitively wanted to feel he was only in the water for five minutes or five seconds. Five minutes. Five seconds. But he wanted to feel it, he wanted to experience it. I think that's innately inside of us to. To run towards learning experiences through physical adversity. So I wonder how you see that play out in any other ways.

Well, I can tell you one of the most impressive examples that I saw was in the Amazon. And of course, in the Amazon, it goes through several countries and there are countless cultures and communities there, even within a small area, very different cultures. But one of my favorite places to go, they take the boys hunting. And in this region, about four or five years old, you start to go hunting and you go naked at night, barefoots, in the jungle where there are, I mean, the bullet ants and the spiders alone are enough to get you let Alone, all the fleur de lis and the other just very deadly snakes. Of course, you've got jaguars there as well, which are more risky for children. And the list goes on and on of the dangers. But they go barefoot. And the thread that I see with all of these cultures bringing their children into the real life, adult activities that seem so dangerous is that whether it's for children or for us visiting, it's shocking to me as an adult and as an outsider to come in and see how relaxed I get almost immediately in real danger, because other people are relaxed. And so when you're surrounded by a community of adults who have been living in this environment and they're very relaxed, they give that to the children. When the children are trying things, they're keeping their eye on the children. And so when they're going through these rituals of, you know, kind of earning their character and building their. They are watched with a loving eye. It's never done with harshness, never. Quite the opposite. It's a different kind of energy than we tend to bring. Right now. We kind of have helicopter parents, then we have the kind of laissez faire. But this is different. This is more like. It's quite loving, actually. And so if the child gets into trouble, which I personally haven't seen yet, but if they were the parents and the adults from the community and the tribe are there to rescue the child, but if the child is able to make it out through whatever challenge that is, they now have this confidence that they're able to do hard things.

That's a beautiful phrase. Yeah, yeah. Can I do hard things? And how does the confidence that's imbued by those hard things make me more confident? I mean, literally, you know, think of a sword, how it's galvanized, Right. It has to go in and out of hot magma and pound it on an anvil. So it's the same thing with children. I'm not saying we need to be hard on our children.

No.

But I think based on what you're sharing, and tell me if I'm getting this right, what you saw connecting all threads from these tribes that you visited, is that the parents would actually bring the children along to do the hard things that the parents were doing themselves.

Yes, that's exactly it. Yeah.

And the beauty in that is so much. I mean, there's more layers to this beauty because it compounds into their microbiome, health, their physiology, the way they move, the way they think, which is really the five concepts, the five sides of the Pentagon, which We teach mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial ways that we sign up here to. To master life. But they don't necessarily focus too much on money where you travel.

No, no. Not until Papua New guinea did I come across a culture that used any kind of financial. Now in Papua New guinea, they have. There's over 700 different cultures there. They speak different languages and they. They have different belief systems, but they have a lot of different money systems. Like right behind me, actually, this. The boar's husk, that is on a seed chain. Sometimes it's shells. And that is a dowry. That's a wedding dowry. That's worth a ton there. You can get a really good mate with that one. And in different regions, they have different ones. Like, I have a beautiful. It looks like a coral necklace. That's how we would. We. For them, it's their money, and the women wear it. They take it to the market. They take off some to buy something. And so they have a financial system. But it was seven years of doing this work traveling to I don't even know how many different cultures and countries and regions before I saw any kind of financial system. Typically. It's so different than what we are used to seeing. They are, you know, like the Dave Ramsey here. The. Yeah, they're more like that in that no one does anything on debt and everything is kind of taken on together. So if I bring a gift, I usually bring, depending on where I'm going, if I have enough notice, I'll bring things that I know they might like, and then I wear them on my body. So it's not like a formal gift. So it might be different, like hunting knives or carving knives, or I might have, like, salt in my pouches, whatever it might be. But when. When I give it to someone, they immediately pass it to everyone. Nothing is one person's. It's a. It's a very different system. And. And I have not seen of debt like we have.

It's interesting because here in the west, and, you know, I'm in Texas, I believe in conscious capitalism. I'm open to another system coming along, by the way. So if another system proves itself, great. But in conscious capitalism and keyword. Mary, I said conscious capitalism, not just capitalism in its shadow, Conscious capitalism is such a great system because it really affords an energy exchange that allows people to learn on the job training to become whatever it is they want to become. I tell my teammates, for wellness and wisdom, like, I'm here to. To support you, and I want you to grow so big that eventually One day you leave. Like that's my intention, right? I want to give so much that you get instilled the values, the virtues, the intelligence to be able to meet the demands of this modern world. But this modern world, as you've so greatly said, it's like it's so different than these tribal worlds. This tribalism element of which you speak is fascinating because tribalism can be a double edged sword, right? It can be a way to be spiritually narcissistic or have ideologies that aren't serving because you're so much of the quote tribe. But then it also has a beautiful side because in the tribe there's a barter and check system that allows you to share and care and take care of everyone. So I wonder how you juxtapose the two. Tribalism in the west versus tribalism where you've, where you've seen across the world.

What I think is leading to the difference is the inability of people's microbiome and nervous system to make the feel good chemicals from our diet and from our lifestyle practices here. Because tribalism in the traditional context, from what I've seen, and granted there could be cases that I haven't seen, but from what I've seen is gorgeous. It is what we all want. It is a deep breath of life. Whereas tribalism in our cultures here in the west tends to be the opposite. It tends to be judgmental, exclusionary, a reason for violence and aggression, and an excuse based on a God as to why we can cause massive harm. And so it's a very different thing. And I really think a lot of it comes down to the ill health of the individuals building up that society, honestly.

So there's a lot there. Let's go piece by piece because what you just dropped on us, really, you had shared before we hit the record button, birth, how we are birthed impacts so much. I'll just give a few examples and I'm going to, I'm really interested to pass it over to you. So we interviewed Dr. Dom on the show, who's an organic holistic dentist, and he talked to me about when not only the baby can't breastfeed, how it impacts their microbiome, but more so, which blew my mind. And it was leveraged on some of the work from Weston A. Price, who traveled the world in the 1900s and saw how nutrition impacts jaw and teeth structure and breathing, by the way too. And it was so fascinating because he said when the baby actually sucks or nurses on the breast and the nipple, their Mouth begins to form. That suction is how their mouth forms naturally. And so there's so many things that we're learning about the leaving of the natural ways of birth, of nursing, of motherhood, of fatherhood. That's just one example. But I know you have so many other examples that you could share with us about when we depart from the really intuitive, natural ways of living. With tribalism, the child is impacted at such a young age. They spend essentially the rest of their life from a microbiome perspective and also from a mental perspective, just repairing, just repairing, because they came into the world in a way that they weren't designed for completely.

So for the longest time, I've thought that it's not a big deal, you know? Well, for all the people who don't know me, which is probably most, I would say that I like to focus on what we can take control of, what we can be responsible for, and to not. Not look at what we can't. I work with very sick people. I came out of a very big illness myself when I was young. So I found that you get more power when you focus on what you can. And so in this world now, people get prescribed antibiotics for a sinus infection, which is typically fungal, and all sorts of things. And I used to take it as like, listen, don't worry about what you've done in the past or what happens. Let's just work on what we've got right now. But. But what I found very recently is very different. There are many actions that affect our microbiome and that affect childhood bonding, really, infant bonding to humans and to other things. Those things are incredibly important and those I've known about for a while. But I made a new discovery very recently that's very relevant for our conversation. Usually children, until they're about five, they will bond with oxytocin, whether they're male or female. Oxytocin is the more female bonding hormone. Vasopressin is the more male. But until they're about five, they'll bond with that. And what's interesting about that is that in a traditional society, even in our culture, not that long ago, you would have your aunts, your uncles, your grandparents around, right? Lots and lots of love. Well, children, and I want to say too, before I say this, y', all, no one knows about this. So please don't feel shame or guilt or anything else once I tell you this, because nobody knew. And no one knows now, so. Or very few people do. So there. There was nothing we could have done. But the the bonding of infants happens very differently with the males and the females in life. So a bonding, let's say I have a child and I'm obviously female, right? Whatever you're born as. So when I nurture that child, that child produces oxytocin, which wires its nervous system and relaxes it. It's going to go into deep sleep. It's going to sleep well. It's not going to have temper tantrum. I see zero temper tantrums in the tribes. I know y' all don't believe me, but it's true. Just go. And then the. With the males in the family, it could be the uncles or the dad or the grandfather.00 Oxytocin is produced when they snuggle. Instead, it's when they play. So for me, if I try to play with my infant or my child, no oxytocin. It's a lovely experience. It's still good to do. But no oxytocin, no bonding, no relaxation of that NERV system. So it's very different with the males versus the females. Now the way that we're doing it now, children don't have much of their nuclear family around at all, right? Especially the extended. The aunts, the uncles, the grandparents that tend to be that unconditional love. And also consistency kids need. Humans need consistency, to be frank. So being out of this ritual, when we study the nervous system of children in daycare, it is totally. It's totally different. It's totally different. They don't have all the bombing circuitry. So that's one aspect of it that's pretty massive, I would say. But beyond that, that I've known about for a while and I've talked about that, and that was my plan to talk about at the Weston A. Price conference actually this upcoming month. I'm really thinking about if they let me to change my topic because I've discovered something else for all my, you know, let's focus on what we can. What we can change. There's something going on that's actually pretty dire. The traditional birthing practices were always done really until about the 70s. Now antibiotics were found about 1928, if I remember right, but they weren't really commonly used until after World War II with the public. And even then it wasn't like today. Then we went to C section births around the 70s because those require antibiotics. Right. And here's the problem. So I have been diving into. I am. I'm a real research nerd and I really like these microbes because they're Cool. They give you a lot of power, right? The let's say you have C diff or you're prone to UTIs, or. Yeah, we'll take those two. That indicates to me I already know what good bacteria you're lacking in your microbiome because there are good and bad guys. It's like Star wars in our body. And so for every path, you have something that protects you. And as we get into this age of more and more pathogens coming out and being epidemic, that is not an issue for needing to hide in the house. That is an issue for where did our good guys go? Where are they? And so what I did, I actually sat down. This just happened last week. I've been mapping out the microbiome in terms of what epigenetic genes get turned on when you don't have certain bacteria and what vitamins you're lacking. Because it's really our bacteria that eat our food, we eat theirs. And so we need very specific bacteria to be able to assimilate certain nutrients and feel good chemicals. And they really do most of our work for us, right? That we think we do. We take the credit. We're like that bad boss. But it's really them. And so for many of these, you can't get them through food or through dirt. They are from the birthing process. And I started to see these patterns. And so I made a new chart very recently on mapping out all the birthday bacteria that are given through the vaginal canal by a mother who has not had antibiotics. Because I was seeing the same microbes missing in condition after condition after condition. And these were all the birth canal microbes that you do not get. And so in less than 100 years, we are on the verge of definitely endangered. I would say, if I may be so bold, bacteria that are our life force, they are what protect us from the elements. They are what make us feel happy. They are what help us bond. Right? Look at our culture today. I just read a report that many of the cities in the states have a 1 in 22 autistic rate. Now, autism, whatever you want to say about it, oxytocin is very low, very low, sometimes non existent. Now there's very set bacteria that you need for that oxytocin to be produced in addition to other things like the way that you're raised, if you get enough snuggles and play and those kind of things. But you do have to have the bacteria and the building blocks, those come from your diet. Now we have that, but we also have extremely high Rates of infertility. So we have a culture in less than 100 years that went to a group of folks that don't bond, therefore they don't have children, and a group of folks that can't even though they want to. Can you imagine in a couple of generations what we're looking at? These are our birthright, right? These are things that get passed with us for us from the eon of man that are now disappearing. And it's in the tribes that you still actually see this because we didn't know. So we didn't know we were harming ourselves. For the record folks, I'm not anti medicine, so if you need to take antibiotics because you're dying, please do so. But the. Please, Yes, I really, I'm not a rigid person. But it is something that we're not aware of. And yet there are still C sections that are scheduled for holidays. So it's a bit eye opening. These kids are being born into a world that they are not equipped for. And now we're getting two, three generations in. So it's the small things, the things that we thought so inconsequential are actually the most important.

So often in the vein of shining light on what we can control. I love that you said that. It's also really important to illuminate what is dark or illuminate not to bathe in the pain body of it, not to get stuck in it, but to shine light on it. Because darkness cannot survive in light. I don't know who said that. Probably many masters. So I wonder. And just on a personal note, my son, he was born cesarean. It was not the plan. We took him to the nicu. I don't wish that experience on anyone. I mean, Mary, I was in the belly of the beast. I was in there wearing a mask, taking off the mask. This is in the middle of the shmandemic, right?

Wow. Yeah.

And it was so traumatizing because I thought, wow, there's so many things that my son is missing out on. Now, of course we are committed to being in play with him, Nurturing, co sleeping. He's three, he's still nursing on the regular. He plays in the dirt, right? We take him to the water, he jumps in the pool and swims like he's doing all the things. Yet I wonder how you feel about this, both from a anthropomorphic perspective, but also just from a developmental perspective. Can you contrast both? If a child has been born by a cesarean, seeing all the wisdom that you saw in the tribes how they were born naturally and they live naturally. How do we course correct that ship? Because that's in the light of controlling what we can and knowing the wisdom to realize there are things we can't change. I can't change how my son came into the world, but I can change the way in which we impact his nutrition, microbiome and physiology. These are things we can control. So I wonder how you begin that conversation. I'm sure it comes up quite a bit because all the illnesses that you talk about start from birth and the microbiome and these bacteria. So it's so pivotal, it's so powerful, yet we also don't need to have a conversation that shames parents and makes them wrong for doing the best that they could. So how do you begin that conversation? Of course. Correction.

Yes. Because we're also. We're in a time of. It's a really hard thing to go to the hospital for any reason, because you go in knowing that it's an area that you don't know, and so you're looking towards authority. And authority itself also has a limited scope. Everyone does. No one can know it all. And so you know, many of the things that we used to do that I do see in traditional societies to lead to a healthy birth, we don't have one. Thing is that people were usually matched by height and body size, as funny as that sounds. And so if you have a very tall male with a very short female, that is a recipe for a C section. But no one knows that in the public. I would say most of the medical community wouldn't know that either.

I'm sorry, hold the bus, hold the bus. I have to interrupt you. What do you mean by that? If the man is tall and the woman is short, it'll percentage wise lead to a C section. How so?

Yes, because the baby will be too big for the woman to birth. Yeah. So the body size is important, actually. Now, granted, most of the societies I go to are pretty. They don't have the extremes that we do. Right. We have a lot of culture mixing in America and Australia and Europe, we have a lot of culture mixing. So maybe someone's grandparents were Finnish who are very tall or Dutch. Right. And then someone else has a little adorable Italian woman. So when those two match up, it can be trouble for the female. Now we have modern medicine for that. And so that can be a saving grace. But what we didn't know and what we so often don't know, with our kind of medical arrogance, thinking that we know so much when so often we know so little and continue to do so is that it's actually a problem for the child and for the next generations. And so now we're in this area where, you know, in many places, it's 50% or higher of births or C section. And those are usually from women that have already had antibiotics, but even if they hadn't, they're going to have IV antibiotics during the C section. So. So when they nurse, the children are not going to get the same microbes that they would have before. And many of these microbes, like I said before, cannot be gotten through soil and through ferments and food. So what I've been working on is trying to get these all in one place. I don't sell things, folks, but I'm mapping it so that we can save these and get them to people because they can be replanted. And some of them are very easy to get. Like, ramanous GG is so important across the board in so many conditions. And that's on Amazon. You can get that on Amazon for 20 bucks. Right? And there's BB536 is another one that I see a lot, whether it's cancer or mitochondrial issues or oxytocin issues. It's a big one as well. And that you can also get on Amazon. But where we struggle are with the. There are many. I'll use the layman's speech for this because it gets a bit complicated, but there are many that as soon as they're exposed to oxygen, they die. Now, those are very hard to get to anyone outside of a lab. Extremely so. So I. After two years of searching, I just found one in Japan that's on its way to me right now. And it is the right family. What I'm waiting to find out is if it's the right subspecies, because bacteria. Let's take a planterum. Many people know Lactobacillus plantarum as an antihistamine probiotic. Well, kind of. A plantarum is like your last name. Okay. And then the numbers afterwards are your first name. Just like if you had 16 siblings, you would all be wildly different. So where these bacteria within the plantarum family. So there's very different ones. Well, that's all to say I just found a microbe. It's not a planterum. It's not one that's in any of the books, but it's one I've been looking for because it is a very important one given from birth Earth. And it's one of the ones that dies with oxygen. So I'll let you know if it ends up being the right subspecies. But, yeah, I think the best that we can do is replant. That's what we can do. And so I'm working on making it possible. And also, I think the education, what you said about shining light on the dark is so important. Light always gets rid of the dark. The dark is never a power, it is always a lack. And so I think if parents and communities and societies in the medical field, which doesn't know as well. Right. Because it's quite segmented, they're not studying the microbiome. So. Sure, yes. So if everyone had the knowledge of the dangers involved or the glory involved in and what needs to be done and how we can get there, and then we replant. And I think really, the replanting is going to be the biggest piece, because who hasn't had antibiotics at this stage, you know? Sure, yes.

You mentioned earlier about sinus. I had a lifetime of sinusitis. Lifetime. And I've taken probably every single antibiotic that's on the market. All three. I had three surgeries, Laser. Laser cut surgeries for my son. I mean, just all the way down the gamut. And it wasn't until last year that I really realized this was actually a bacteria and a fungus issue. It had nothing to do with, oh, you have allergies or, oh, you should have an air purifier. These things help, they help us, but they don't necessarily get to the root. And I wonder, with your own health journey, was it tied to antibiotics, by the way? Selfishly, I want to talk so much about what you just talked about, but we only have one podcast. Okay. So we'll have to have another podcast in this studio here in Austin to go deeper into the ways in which we can shine light on the medical system. We've done a lot of content on that. Just know, y', all, that what the medical system says and its intention is not always for your highest good. It is for profiteering. And you all know that if you're part of this community, obviously, duh, it's like, dong, of course. So that's a whole nother podcast. And we have much content about that that y' all can learn. If you just go and search Big Pharma or the medical insurance triad, you can do that@joshtrend.com the real question that I'm asking you is on a personal level. So I shared a little bit of my journey with sinusitis. Can you look back now with wisdom on just, just obviously your scientific training and traveling across the world. And can you connect the dots with more wisdom now as to why you got sick in the first place? And what is the, I guess you could say spiritual meaning of why you got sick?

Yeah, thousand percent. Well, on both, on both accounts. And I, and I imagine I'll have different answers as I get older too, because I keep getting new illuminations. But yeah, in both areas. But the. I was lucky, right? You can tell someone's microbiome health by their dental health. And I never had braces. My family lights up like a Christmas tree. It's embarrassing to walk around for these huge smiles. My mom had never had antibiotics, nor her mother. So it was quite unique. And I was a healthy kid. My siblings are healthy. I was the last of five. But as I got into high school, I was a competitive diver, a high diver. And when you dive down, you can get, get a lot of inflammation here and you can get sinus infections. So that coupled with the 90s diet that I in Ohio.

You mean like Cheetos and Funyuns, like are we talking that kind of depth.

Or middle school Cheetos and Taco Bell.

Were my little Debbie snack cakes. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. Yes. Because we didn't think that these things affected us. And so, and so between those. And then I had some antibiotics in high school and then I was over training. I always have been a bit ambitious and I was training for an Ironman, so I was working out three to four hours a day. And at the time I had moved to the Bahamas to study and I was on a remote island. So don't think hotels and tourism, it's quite the opposite. It was beautiful, but it was rustic. And the. Our microbiomes are meant to be where we are and what we're eating. Right. And so in traditional days of exploration, take Lewis and Clark. They were transitioning over a swath of land very slowly. And so their microbiome had time to adjust. Now we jump on a plane and we go from Ohio to the tropics. Not great for the microbiome. Now that coupled with the fact that the place I stayed was a field research institute that was involved with sustainable development. Wonderful thing. But that meant they imported all the food. I literally lived on peanut butter and jellies. So in the combination of those things, I had had some antibiotics for the sinus infection infections and then that, you know, and then a tropic infection. Right. And what I had worked on, cytokines and cytokine based illnesses just frankly are different. You need one folks that get long Covid or long Ebola or what I did. The damage to my nervous system was from both the fever, I had a 106 for six days, they couldn't bring it down, plus the cytokine damage. And so I, I've been very familiar with cytokine illnesses from the onset. And these, it tends to happen to those of us that are actually healthier. So you need to be have a pretty strong immune system plus a B1 deficiency which at the time I was not eating any pork. So I don't know where I would have gotten B1 from. So the combination of that led to kind of my downfall. And of course from there I caught everything. And so then I was on a lot of antibiotics and three years in when they found the tropic infection that I had, they treated me for two years with antibiotics every day, very high dose.

Sorry, what is a tropic infection? I've never heard of that before. Tropic infection?

Yeah, there's tropic, there's subtropic. There's different infections that live within different realms. Mine was in the water supply, I wasn't the only one that got it. But different infections have different natures. So like with viruses, like take polio or what we just dealt with viruses classically present in a percentage. So 1 to 3% of the population will get the disabilities, will get the death, the very, very bad badness, right. And then maybe about 10% will have a very significant interchange. It might be a month to three months where they're recovering. The rest of the people that get it won't even know they have it. And that's classic for viruses. That's how most viruses work across the board. Now what I had was a bit of a mix between a virus and a bacteria. And those little suckers are a bit harder to. Now there's, there's a way with nature, like the Russians use phages and all sorts of things and really if I had enough B1, which may have been gone from my lack of bacteria then, then that wouldn't have been a problem. But I did personally end up healing on a microbiome diet after trying lots and lots of different things. So starving out bacteria and that will work if you're born with a good enough microbiome, which I thankfully was, but many people are not and so starving out at this point. You know, 100 years into the game of damaging your microbiome, it's not always enough. We sometimes have to go in and plant it. So on your question for the branch of how was that involved, that that would be, like, the most succinct, I think I could say it in. But on the spiritual side, I feel it's actually shocking, I have to tell you, like, the. I always felt, especially as things started to turn and for your audience, I was sick, disabled, for 12 years, and no one had recovered from the illness that I had prior. Now, lots of people have. Thankfully, I'm trying to help out some more. But when I started to recover, I didn't know that I would recover, but I knew that I was starting to feel better. And at the time, I felt so grateful for having gone through that, because I felt like it really harnessed my character, and it gave me this inner calmness and this inner joy that I didn't ever know before. And I was not an anxious, depressed person before, but this was, like, different. It was like this space and an ease. And so while things can rile and, you know, upset and that kind of thing, you don't stay there. It's like 20 minutes.

Minutes.

It's. It's much. It makes all of life good, regardless of what's going on. And so I was always very grateful. It really wasn't until this last pandemic, honestly, where I felt like there was a purpose, because for anyone going through anything major, whether it's a physical pain or an emotional or financial or anything else, you never feel like there's a reason, you know, but there's this kind of mystical dance that's going on, and you can see it when you look at the forest. I've always loved nature. The forest never has a weed or a plant or a stem that it doesn't need. There's a perfect mathematical equation if you map it out, and it is beautiful. We are the same. We may not know why we're here, but there's a reason if we are. And even if we're going through the tortures of whatever stressor that is. It was 10 years into remission that this big pandemic hits. And this pandemic was causing the very, very condition that I got after my illness, the dysautonomia, the extreme dis. Imbalance of the autonomic and sympathetic nervous system. And so it was pretty amazing. I flew home from Africa and I spoke in San Diego on a stage at a huge medical conference, teaching thousands of doctors how to reverse this condition that I had learned how to do 10 years ago. And it felt, for those of you listening, with that condition, you can't stand. I would have had a seizure if I tried to stand. So the fact that I could stand on stage for an hour was really beautiful and felt like there was a lot of deep purpose there.

Well said. And I think about the analogy I gave earlier with the sword being forged, that's you. I mean, 10 years of going through a healing process. There had to have been moments, though, though, where you would meet the darkest part of yourself and wonder, will I ever get better?

Oh, I would say I lived in that. I lived in that until the. Really, the last couple of years, yes.

So then how do you. So this is the question, right? And this goes for anyone experiencing their own individual process around healing, whatever it is. There's many lanes of healing. When you met yourself in one of the darkest places, what was the narrative? Was there a connection to God? And how did your soul rise to the occasion of healing?

I'll be honest, there were quite a few things that kind of came in at the same time. There was one year in particular. I had to move back in with my parents for care, and my weight loss was extreme. And I was on this breathing machine, and I was just in this white room. I didn't have a TV or a phone. I couldn't really talk, talk like it was hell. And the pain was through the roof. There was no medicine that worked for that. And so I had no escape from the pain. And this was, at this stage, eight years in to the illness, you know, and my kidneys were getting worse, my liver and my thyroid and everything else. And so I felt like the biggest burden that you could be. You don't want to be a burden on your family and your loved ones, and you want to bring good things, and when you're disabled, you can't. And that's an awful thing actually to receive at that place. And so I. I suddenly realized what folks like yourself and many of the people that you. You have on are now really putting into the public consciousness, and that is that no one was going to do this for me. I've really believed at that time someone would come up with something in a lab and I'd get back to my old life. And I really loved my old life. So I had to. I did this exercise. I just taught it to someone, actually. It's weird. So, guys, judge me all you want, but I did this exercise where I imagined my entire funeral and my death and everything else and everyone afterwards. And I don't know why this worked. I really don't. But after that experience, and, I mean, immediately after I had all this space, peace, I was happy. I didn't have the pressure of, oh, I should have been getting married and having children and getting this house and these advanced degrees, and I need to be, like, giving to my parents, not taking. And all of these kind of societal pressures that feel like joyful things when you're well, but when you're sick, they're pressure because you can't catch up. And so I kind of had this freedom where I just kind of looked upon the world with these open eyes, and I saw things from a different point of view. That was honestly beautiful, really beautiful. It's like. It's like that exercise that the Buddha explained of looking at the flower and getting that smile. It was that with everything. And so from there, a space came in and things started to shift, and I started to see all the good and feel the life rather than the death in the body. But I. I think all of it has a place. And so what I would advise anyone going through the thick of it is go in, go through, feel it. Because the resistance is actually the harder it makes it last much longer. And so if you can really go into it and. And see, and also to see yourself from the eyes of someone that you love, like a grandmother figure, I had to picture, like, an Aunt Jemima type character, you know, looking at me, because I did, and it was really successful. But, yeah, because we're often our harshest judges. Right. And so I needed kind of to think of myself from this really loving, joyful, kind of giggling place. And that was incredibly helpful as well. We often and think we're so awful. Have you ever heard the dialogue of children? They could be, like 10 years old, and they think they're the worst human that's ever been born. And it's adorable when you're an adult, right, because you see this and you're like, oh, you are so cute. My goodness, let me bake you something. You know, like, let's make your day better. But. But we kind of have to do that for ourselves when we're in this situation and when we're adults, and it's. It's a really good thing to do.

Wow. So beautiful. Thank you for sharing. Sharing that. You know, I could really feel what you're. What you were sharing in my body. I could actually feel it in my heart, and I know everybody else did, too. The one thing that I got from that. Well, I got many things from that. The one thing that I got from that, that was most Powerful for me was. It's in the acknowledgment in the surrender of our own death that paradoxically, the joy and the light can truly shine in. And it may seem like a. I'm waxing poetic, but life is a poem, so write it. And the way in which you describe that in the lowest of the low and the hardest of the hard, moving back with your parents after eight years and just being faced with pain, it really galvanized you, this analogy of the sword. Like, that's what I. There's a reason that's come up so much in this conversation. Because there's a beauty to you, right? And if somebody didn't talk to you, they may just judge you by the scale skin and say, oh, it's a beautiful girl. But there's the beauty on the outside that you're showing. That's really an emanation of the beauty that has been forged in you. I mean, there's no other way to describe it. The beauty on the outside. And we wear, by the way, our inflammation. We wear our beauty, we wear our emotions. It's in our facial muscles, it's in our skin. It's. It's the way that our C reactive protein grows when there's something's off, right? And so we get a blood test and it's like, where do we go from here? One of the biggest pieces I got from you was just this. And I've heard it from many masters, both contemporary and ancient, and they all say the same thing with different words. They say it's in this acknowledgment and the surrender. Not a helplessness, not a learned helplessness of surrender, but in the surrender of what is here, whether it's an illness or a hardship. There's so much wisdom in just letting yourself let go and just be in it and go through it. Because the platitude of the only way out is through is so true. Yet the embodiment of that wisdom and actually gleaning the lesson from being in it is where all the magic is. That's the magic. That's the magic. And that's. That's the micro of the macro of what you went through. Because to cap it here, you mentioned this, that I am sharing and you and I are sharing this one key piece. No one is coming to save you. You. And isn't that the most beautiful gift? Because what if you're the one that's been chosen to save you so you can share that with other people? What if that's the Whole purpose of it all. Just like you're a mycelium connecting in the German forest. What if your role is actually to acknowledge that you will die, you are alive. And so the only thing you can choose right now is just to be in it, just to go through it. Because at the end of that, if it's in God's will, you are here to share, just like you did on stage with thousands of doctors. I think that's so beautiful. I think there's so much we can all learn from that.

Yeah. A thousand percent. And I think one of the reasons why it was effective, if I can pass something on, if I think back on it and I could be wrong, but was because there was not an out. I think as long as we're resisting, we assume that there is an out and we put a timestamp on it or we put needs or requirements on it. Like, I'll give this three months. I'll. You know, I'm going to do this for six months. Then we feel angry if something doesn't work or if we're not back to our other lives. And I would say the biggest lesson I got was to die to yourself a thousand times over. And that it's the rebirth that gives you what you're actually trying to hold on to. It gives you the real version of it. And. And you're right. I think there's no greater analogy than the hero's journey for all of this, because the hero, as Joseph Campbell stated, it's so apt. He has the sword, but he doesn't use it. Right. So you get these skills and you can protect, but that. Plus I'll tie one other thing in, and I hope it's not too disjointed, but I think it's so beautiful. I love that. In all mythology, at least all mythology as far as I've studied, I really like to study across the traditions. The hero and the villain always have the same backstory. They always have the same backstory. And so you can choose. Right. But you can't. You can't escape the. The pain. It's what harness. It's. It's the fire. The fire is against thing.

Yeah. I was on the beach in Maui a couple months ago, and my mentor Margo gave me a roomie book. And I opened this page. It was this beautiful artwork. And it said, the cure for the pain is the pain. Yeah, the cure for the pain is the pain. It's not actually you seeking to get out of the pain. There's so much of a Gift in the pain.

Rumi gets it.

Rumi gets it on such a level. One of the best quotes I ever, ever read from roomie is beyond these concepts of right and wrong, there's a field. I'll meet you there.

Yeah.

So there's such crazy things that happen. You know, look at what happened to you and your health journey and look at what's happened to so many people and even child trafficking. Just these terrible things, these crazy things in the world that if we. If we wanted to understand why they happen, you're going to buy a ticket to insanity and you're just going to live there. But if you can be with this current of hardships and adversity, and this is where it really comes to maturity, right? Maturity is forged in these spaces that we actually take ownership of our own solution and our own healing, and we acknowledge and surrender to the fact that no one's coming to save us. And there's such a radical empowerment and gift there. But that's not the case on social media. In where we are is partying guided guidance, because we could explore so much. But we're just going to pause here because we have to get to our days and so does everybody listening and watching. Think about, think about the way in which social media empowers people to bifurcate and to argue with one another, with cancel culture and all the different ways that that really, subversively and unconsciously. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, these platforms are essentially using an AI to reward disempowered, to continue the bifurcation and the illusionary war that exists between men and women, pro and con, Republican and Democrat. It's just absolutely ludicrous. It's such an atrocity that's being waged on our youth. This is why my children will never own phones or pagers. Pagers. I just dated myself.

Oh, no, I did those too.

So I had a clear. I'm 44, so I had a clear pager back in the day.

You're cool. You're cool.

But the question I'm wondering if you can end this on. It's so profound. So y' all stay. Stay with us right now. How do we understand what is happening with the illusionary war and social media training through AI and all the dark side of tech? How do we see this as for us? And what is the wisdom and the lesson here to be learned from that space of empowerment? Because no one's coming to save us. It's like, I'm here to protect my children and my family and myself. But no one's coming to save us. AI and technology is going to continue to create, grow. How do we make meaning of this darker side of technology, and how do we see it as for us and have it be empowering?

Yeah, I think, you know, you mentioned Rumi, and Rumi is one of the mystics, and all the mystics, what they're excellent at is dancing in the both and. Right. They don't do black and white. They do both and every single time. I think my greatest lesson has been that everything. You can change the entire universe by changing your point of view, and that there can be many points of view that are true on paper, absolutely true, like black and white true. But when you're able to hold space for both and. And when you're able to release the need to be right, that is where you get the goodness and the magic from the same thing that might be someone else's downfall. And finally, I would say don't be afraid of the downfall. It's very often the soil for what sprouts us into a beautiful new life. So when things are dark, when they are scary, think of yourself like a seed in the soil. It's supposed to be alone. It's supposed to be cold. There's supposed to be mystery. What might be coming might be so beautiful. So just hang in. Go day by day and keep going and live in that mystery dance, in that mystery that Rumi speaks of so poignantly.

It's so mysterious, isn't it? When I have guests here in the studio, I always say there's a space right there for mystery at the table. Always let mystery in. Because the moment that we get rid of curiosity and mystery, and y' all could have heard this a thousand times times. Here's. Here's 1001. When you choose to welcome in mystery and welcome in at times, confusion and really welcome in curiosity, it's curiosity and mystery that are just the juice. That's when everything can shift. But the moment that we block out curiosity or block out mystery, in other words, our unconscious, our ego, has to know the answer. Why is this happening, happening? Why is this happening, and how did it happen? And it's one of the downfalls, I think, of the kind of modern psychological movement where it's like this cause and effect or even behavioral therapy where we have to know exactly why something happened. Sometimes. A lot of times. Most times, things happen just because they happened and they're essentially neutral. It's the meaning that we make from these events. Otherwise, you wouldn't be Sitting here, we wouldn't be talking to people across the world, world. Unless you had developed this wisdom. So at this nexus point with all your travels and everything you've been through, this question that I've been wondering, my whole life is about well being and wellness. How do I live my life well? Ever since I was a young boy, I would ask myself this question, how do I live my life well? And why are these adults so angry at each other? Like, what is this all about? What is this existential tension that I feel? So from your travels and from just your travel into the darkest part of yourself with your health journey, gosh, you've been on some travels. You are a freaking traveler, Mary. You are a freaking traveler.

I like to travel.

You go the distance. Maybe on another podcast we can talk about the way in which we structure our heart, our mind, our microbiome for travel. I'm sure that's something people are really interested in, right? How do we prepare for the journey, take care of ourselves on the journey, and then nourish ourselves when we get home? And that's for any journey that we have. But the real question I'm wanting to ask you is that this nexus of your wisdom that you've gained, gathered, and of the definition of wellness or well being, how do you define that? You know, what is a life well lived for you and what does wellness mean to you? How do you define that?

Wellness to me is flexibility and resilience. Those two things. I think a rigid mind is unhealthy, A rigid body is unhealthy. If you have to be in, if you're an orchid, you're not healthy, right? You have to have everything just set. So that's no, that's no.

Orchids blow over with like a breeze. They just follow.

Exactly, exactly. They need. They're very particular. And so I think flexibility, if we think, if we think of the people we love the most, like I often talk about my dad, I just think he's the most amazing person ever. He's so jovial and if something happens that's really, really awful, his first line of thought is to, let's make a plan. Can, right? It's flexible. I think that's a real sign of health in all areas. Flexible, meaning if you eat something, you don't get sick. If you travel, you don't get sick. If you, if a catastrophe happens, you don't end up in bed, you know, thinking the world is over. So flexibility would be my answer.

It reminds me of the bamboo reed, right? It bends so far are. And it only breaks in like the craziest of storms. And I think we as people, we decide which storms we enter sometimes. A lot of times we don't. But I've really enjoyed this. You know, there's so many different directions that we could have gone. And I think this was most of service because it was weaved in this tapestry of your own personal healing of traveling to the darkest part of yourself and also sharing about the wisdom from traveling around the world. Where can people learn more? More? I mean, we really scratched the surface of the tip of the iceberg for you, but where can people actually go and learn more of this wisdom from your travels inside yourself and through the world?

Just go to my website. It's maryruddick.com and from there I link everything else. I. For years and years, I haven't had much up online because I've been out of WI FI zones, but I have moved back to America. So I will be putting things out. Stories and videos from my travels, as well as all the microbiome and health stuff. Yeah, that will link to anywhere. Just good.

It feels to me like you're on phase three of Campbell's Journey. Right? Separation, initiation, return. And it's in the sharing everyone wants to skip, right? They get separated. They're like, let me return and solve the issue. This is where. This is where a spiritual bypassing comes in, right. They haven't actually allowed themselves to sit in the muck. There's no mud, no lotus. Right? No lotus. So you're sharing in this space of the return turn. One thing that comes up for me that I'd love to share as we say goodbye is there's. There are times where I. I will catch myself entertaining a fear of the future, which is essentially anxiety. Will I get sick? Will this happen? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Gosh. With everything you. You've been through, I have to ask you one more question. I cannot let you go without asking this question. With everything you've been through, how have you dealt with anxiety or a fear of the future or rumination of the future? Future? Because I feel, and I wonder how you do that, really. It's just a lack of trust in self to be able to handle whatever comes. It's not that anxiety is a fear of the future. It's a lack of trust. It's a distrust in self that we can't handle whatever comes.

I have to be honest with you, and it's not a good answer, but it's the honest one. I don't have it. I don't have it at all. There's a thing that I imagine happens to many other people who go through a fate like I did, and that is that that the future disappears. I don't think of the future at all. I really don't.

Amazing. Amazing. Yeah.

I really don't. And so I would say, if I was talking, if I was going back to my old self, I would say, focus on right now. Whenever you get afraid of the future, focus on right now. Because the future is so unreal now. I think there's realistic times, like when I've been. I've been in real life, Pickles, overseas, you know, like, there's quite a few times where it gets real dicey, but the. It goes to the immediate of action, like, okay, contact the embassy or get this out or drop this thing so someone can find you kind of thing. But it's not going to, like, a week from now or a year from now. So, yeah, I would bring it back to the present is what I would do.

Okay, well, let's unwrap the present. Mary, thanks for coming on the show. What a great conversation.

Thank you for.

This is wonderful. Welcome. You're so welcome. Okay, y', all, look, share this podcast if you're on a journey deep in yourself, which of course you are, if you're here, there's no way you could not be after this conversation. And also, if. If you really feel like this is worthy of sharing, please share this with a friend. Like, share this. That little act of generosity where you share something inspiring with a friend could literally change their life. I don't say that lightly. I get messages all the time that say, I heard this person talk and it made me feel something, which then course corrected my life. You don't know your little act of generosity. Just share the podcast with somebody that you think this will help. Mary, until I see you again, I. And we are both wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk with you soon.