Ancestral Medicine and Systemic Racism, a Conversation with Laura Rowe

Michelle Lasley 0:02

Hi. This is Michelle Lasley with balanced shared a space where I truly believe we are better together. Thank you for joining me today. Today I have my guest, Laura row. This is the third interview I've done with Laura, you may remember her and talking about an empath. And the other discussion we had was on the various laws with which we operate under. Laura created the vital spirit in Portland, Oregon, and she is an intuitive healer. And she created her business to be an instrument in the ongoing shift in human consciousness. She serves empaths and lightworkers through intuitive energy alignment and strategic business consulting. She aligns her clients with their true nature and their spirit led businesses and obviously uses the pronouns she her hers. Thank you so much for joining me again.

Laura Rowe 0:56

Thank you, Michelle, I always enjoy our conversations.

Michelle Lasley 1:00

This is like I think I started the podcast as a guise to be able to have super focused conversations with people

Laura Rowe 1:07

and fantastic.

Michelle Lasley 1:09

Laura Rowe 1:40

It's been an interesting year. Nothing though about it. Yeah, it's one of the things when you read my bio, and the why I created the vital spirit, this period of time is bringing up for me, what has always been my truth, which is we've lost our heart, in how we live as a human culture. And it used to be there. I believe that empaths are one of our roles could be if we choose to pursue it, bringing awareness back to the fact that we are all together here as one people. And what hurts one of us hurts all of us. And how do we get? It's not hard for me to see injustice. I'm wired that way. This is part of the Indigo package if you aren't familiar with that. Oh, so maybe that's what we'll talk about. So we'll get to that in a second. But I just I see justice on this on the universal scale, not the human loss scale. Because as we're seeing right now, there's a lot wrong with what we've created as our loss. So it is just I see people hurting and I see other people either enjoying that hurt or gaining something from that hurt. And it's just clear. This is this is a problem. This can't This is unsustainable. We can't as a culture sustain. And and that's what we're doing. We're falling apart ever so rapidly. Now, it was kind of slow, but now it's like, here we go. Military on the streets. You know, our president in hiding? Yeah, it's a good time.

Michelle Lasley 3:46

People every night for the past week, lying facedown on the Burnside bridge for nine minutes.

Laura Rowe 3:52

Yep. Pretty powerful. Huh? The imagery of that is something I won't forget.

Yeah. So how did we get here? Right? How

Michelle Lasley 4:05

Laura Rowe 5:03

That is correct.

Okay. break apart pagan societies, and many of them were like women like honoring the great mother. Yeah, honoring women. And I see that and and so then it becomes like all these other cultures, right. And so then then you fast forward 400 600 years and you enter the slave trade. And we've gone through the black plague and we've gone through different revolutions of, you know, land owner versus land worker, and we haven't broken broken through free from those things.

Correct? Correct. And it's actually a perfect setup for talking about ancestral, the ancestral part of this. Oh, yeah. Because what happened when the church smited out all of the other Earthbound religions was a disconnection to the dead. Hmm, you do not care for the dead in Christianity, and the way we care for the dead in indigenous cultures. And that is what has led white people to be so broke, I think is the word I want to use when it comes to understanding our hearts. We are we are certainly what's happening now. It's a great divide. There's the empaths, who are rising in numbers and loudness, who are saying Ouch, this hurts what we're doing is painful. Why are we living like this. And you've got the people who basically laugh at, at others expenses, who find joy or supremacy in in keeping other people down, harming them. And this is, I think, directly related to our inability to manage emotions at all. If it's not anger, or pride, men are not encouraged to have feelings at all. And women are subjugated because we are less willing to stifle most of our emotions, though, having said that, there's a great many women who do. But mainly, they do it because they're tired of the label of women being weak or emotional. And what the tables have turned, because what I see all around me are men unable to handle criticism, unable to even take the smallest slight, and let it roll off his back. They become violent, they become belittling, and their goal is to kill for this. And we we have this insell movement with white men. Typically, I was probably that's not necessarily true. But men who blame women and think they should, because they want to sex with them, that they that this is theirs, their pain and agony need to come to women because they're not getting any. This is very toxic. I mean, and it's also really hard to wrap our brains around. But we have so stopped our culture from just crying and saying, Oh, this is painful. can't show any weakness whatsoever. So this is the the era of the of the male narcissist, Father, the narcissistic father,

Michelle Lasley 8:57

one of the things I'm hoping we can take from any space we're in in the world and time in history. And a lot of people have had to, during this global pandemic completely shift the way they do their work like they're working from home. They're not traveling as much. And so I think a lot of people are experiencing like a great quiet. And I was talking to a friend the other day socially distanced in my front yard. And she commented how that quiet is giving room for these other things to be heard on a louder scale. So now we can talk about a mod. Brianna.

Laura Rowe 9:40

Yep.

Michelle Lasley 9:41

Yeah, yeah, I think the buisiness definitely ties into all of this, you know, the, the lack of space to process to reflect, to choose, you know, so many of us make decisions based on least common denominator or such a split second thought process to it, that they haven't looked at the long term ramifications. And not every decision is like that, but many have an R. And I love the spaciousness of this, I feel uninterested in going back to the way things were, if it means we lose this collectively, I have, I take this amount of space, because I can't function otherwise. But I feel guilty about it, or I feel less than, like, I'm not up to snuff. And I like that everyone's kind of come down to my place. Because this feels more doable, more achievable, more success oriented, then focusing on the career goal, so to speak, or the ones that are attached to money, instead of the ones attached to our bodies and our souls. Because that's a terrible decision to have to be put in a position of having to make

so our collective loons are coming out in the open. Are empaths and others people are saying out, yep. And we have a choice point. Do we go with the way things were in the before time? Or do we make something better? Yeah.

And what's interesting is that this whole uprising with civil rights, is pretty much saying there ain't no going back now. I hope. I mean, if we, I feel like we're, it's a snowball effect, it starts with the pandemic, which squeezes our systems into really pointing out what's broken. And then that is about how we treat the minorities in this country, blacks, particularly, but really all minorities. And now this is common saying we're done. We're not stopping. I mean, our mayor keeps asking pretty much every day, how can we stop this? How do we stop this? And I think it's an I think it's the wrong question.

What's the right question?

How can we help you?

Right?

How can we help you? And even better than that? Yes, ask the question. But also, I'm real sure that in the last 10 years, you've had a lot of commentary on this. You've had a lot of input from activists and your own city council. And why don't you say, we've been listening? Here's some of our suggestions. What would you like to

add? Yeah,

anything that looks like a conversation instead of playing the victim really, right. When will this end? Well, I don't know. When you realize that it's not a problem. You can put a bandaid on,

right. We're talking about a system. Yeah. And so it's not just changing one cog out and replacing it. Correct. It's an entire system with which we're living in a system that's lived for generations. So we've got layers and layers and layers of things embedded. I will link to this but I wrote my thoughts on what white people can do to help deal with what's going on. And I'll link that in the show notes. One of the images I shared which I probably got from you actually. was a simple timeline that starts with the picking a date the beginning of slavery to now. Yeah. So if we and I don't remember what that date was 16 something right?

I believe 16 Yeah, is when the first book ship of slaves arrived.

It's 401 years,

sorry, 401 years.

But the other part is how long we've been a country.

That's right.

And then I wanted to mention at the beginning of our chat about the layers of before slavery, then let that lead the path to that. That's right. Why don't we pause there and take a break. Sounds good.

I love aligning my days with nature's rhythms, and ameda tool to make it easier. I would like to introduce you to my moon deck. My moon deck is a perpetual calendar, a calendar that never expires. This 86 card deck with booklet will allow you to lay out your day, week or month and overlay the sun and the moon with the elements and the celebrations from the Wheel of the Year. This tool drawn and created by me Michelle Lasley will be your fun, whimsical and practical tool to see how nature and its rhythms can support you. If you want to learn more, and get your own deck today, visit www dot Michelle lasley.com slash moon deck. I can't wait to help you align your time with nature with my perpetual calendar, the moon deck. Welcome back. So we're having a conversation, just to kind of recap about our, our society and where we're at, and how our cracks are showing voices are saying no, we cannot go on this way. And I want to give some more understanding of kind of like how we got there. So you made a comment before about the Indigo package?

Oh, wow.

And I'm sort of baffled by this and always have been.

So not everybody had my mom, huh? Yeah. Well, and so I share that kind of quickly, because that was the one thing My mom always always said, You never judge someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes.

That's right. Yep. And they may understand that I'm sure they've heard that term. But they're very literal. Like, there's no like, they don't have that nuance that says, oh, if I just change tweak this one thing that you're saying and sit with that, oh then that feels better. It's like x, y, z. No. But if it's x x y, so that's perfect. That's fine. You're like, but Okay, why couldn't you have extrapolated from that?

So I'm kind of equating it to like, a term that was actually given to my husband. When he was he was like, oh, his manager and said, you're working on your soft skills. So soft skills or emotional intelligence? Is that like, a way to equate it?

Yes, I think I think so. And, and what's interesting is that some of these people have pretty good, soft skills, except when it comes to thinking about things that directly relate to them.

Oh, interesting.

So when they're looking out at so say, they're working in a job, and they're managing people, and they're understanding, you know, they're using tools to evaluate someone, and they're like, okay, using these tools, I can see how to work with you. But when it comes to dealing with something like race, and you know, how do they sit in their bodies with what they understand racism to be? That is far more complicated for them?

Okay, fascinating. And so you've observed this new classification, if you will, of people that work in the NGO package as a as a large group of people, it sounds like, yeah, who might be able to help bridge that gap?

Using that rebel energy to smash the old thing will link the most recent interview I did with Vanessa Kudo because we start talking about the astrological aspects of where that's making space to that. So, so yeah, different expert, different conversation, but all related, all connected. Okay. We only have like 10 minutes left. So I really want to have us, I always want a to do list or concrete that we can think about and whatever. So yes, we're in this space, we have this opportunity to continue to use a rebel. I was what held was I was. Well, I was in like seventh grade when the wall came down Germany, right. And it was a thing. We talked about it and I just imagine, you're like, Oh my gosh, how amazing to be able to be there and physically break. I mean, like Aries rising. I like

bright lights. Okay. Aries, Aries, Aries.

All over it. Get that right down,

burn it down. Start it over, you know. And,

yeah.

So now that we're burning things down, now that we're going to be the phoenix rising,

right?

Okay, I'm holding up a plant, my dear friend gave me a plant and I murdered it. And it came back to life. And so this plant is now named Phoenix, and he's the symbol of our podcast episode.

Exactly. Yeah. So where do we go from here? How do we constructively move forward? Right? Yes,

using our skills and knowing what's coming ahead and who's good and who we're giving this world to?

Yes. First of all, this is the first thing I want to say. And this applies to everyone across the board of every generation is the older generations having to let go and relinquish control of how they think it should be. And let the younger generations tell us what they see. Because that's the way evolution works. So that's step one. Step two, really comes from stop talking and listen. Listen to the people on the front lines who've been going through whatever it is. That's up right now, in this case, civil rights, listen to the black community, and what they see think is constructive and productive to to shift things because it's like the fox being in charge of the henhouse reform, white people can't do it, because we're systemically biased, not because we're bad. But because this is what we were taught, it's in our DNA back to the ancestral part of this, and we can't separate it out. So we need to listen.

And we need to pause there for a second. Sure. So what I mean when I say this, and I dare say you're gonna say this. So if you are white passing, and you're listening to this, listening means you shut your mouth, you do not say anything. Yep. And when that person is telling you, they experienced a thing, and you are tempted to contradict it, interrupt that thing. Do triangle right now and keep your mouth shut.

Yep. Bingo. Thank you. So that's step two, listen, step three, is investigate your own bias. We all have it. This isn't. This isn't about shame says about guilt. This isn't about accusing anything of anybody. But this country was built on white supremacy. It's in every system of government that we have, it's in the Constitution, it needs to be deconstructed, and we start in our bodies. So I say read all of the wonderful books that are out there right now. I don't want to single anybody out because I there's literally hundreds to choose from. Own it, pick one do the work. Don't try to be a hero and read them all honest to god pick one. And do the work. Reflect on your own bias reflect on your own inner thoughts. And then I'm going to add the second step which is heal. See healer, see therapists see black leaders who are choosing to work with white people on on that bias. So there are some who want and are willing to do this work with us. And, and he'll back in the generations because this is coming through us. So even though my parents were very liberal, and not racist, shall we say I put up air quotes, because we're all inherently racist. But you know, my dad who played tennis with my neighbor's dad, who was African American didn't think twice about it. I lived in very 16,000 people town, pretty damn racist in the whole town, in my car in my high school, three black people, that's it. And everybody had a slur or something to say, and I am not racist. I didn't even see this in my peers until I was a senior in high school. And then I was like, What is happening? I did not know this thing. Because my parents didn't do it. Right. So wasn't wasn't aware. But I have it. I have, you know, lock the doors. When you drive through this section of Lister, you know, cross the street, when you see these black people walking down the other side of the street, these things that you know, we look at a safety and that's the rub, right? We're fighting this bodily fear, this fear that comes up physically for us in our bodies, as fear of people of a different color. And we can heal that. And energy work is wonderful for that somatic bodywork is amazing. So that's those are my was that for?

Those are my four things. Let go. Yep. Stop talking and listening. And listen. investigate your own bias. And then he'll, yeah. Yeah,

that's that those are my marching orders. I can't do and, Okay, I'm gonna add the fifth. Speak out

and use your privilege. Yes. I call it interrupt oppression. Oh, I like that. Yeah. And I got that through the community lines of tenants. What do we did hotline training, both as a participant and a leader of and we'll link them so you can you can go learn to be on the hotline.

Yeah. It's not just it is imperative. We do our in our work, but it's also crucial that we support the change that needs to happen and use the white privilege that we have as a leverage to the black community.

Right and you have to be So this is linked to all of these, and I'm going to link it specifically to checking your own bias. So it's really important that we let people have their stories, and we don't become the white Savior. Yeah. And so this is, again, checking your bias, seeing what your motivations are, and what your intentions are. So you can show up authentically and with love to create the change that we want. And so if you're in the presence of a black friend, and something is happening, and they are defending themselves, and you feel called to defend as well, you might need to check in with them first, before you work on erupting that oppression that you're witnessing could be witnessing. Yeah. If you're in conversation with your other maybe white neighbors, and somebody says something, this is absolutely where you want to interrupt it, name it, call it what it is, right? So that it's out in the open. Yep. And this is sometimes really difficult for me, because like, I get so riled up with the rebel and the justice, right. And there's some things that I just I like, I go right to anger. So in my own healing and my own checking, it's like we do better when we can show up with love and curiosity. Yes. So that, because if we piss off that person that we're trying to ultimately align with love correct, then we're not going to go as far as maybe we'd want to. So that's like, again, our own healing work to

Yeah, and we're doing more harm than good in that situation.

Yeah, great. Yeah. I love this list. Because it's like, it's it's great.

It starts it, it always starts with us, you know, individually, we can't, you know, act. Low think global act local, is about everything. Yes. Not just the environment, literally everything. We want to change the way the United States operates. Talk to your city council. Talk to your local police. Yes. That's where it starts because I have very little influence about the FBI or the military or our federal government. But I do have influence I am constituents of life. City. Yeah. And their job is to listen to me. Yeah. And

there's my power. Yes. All of ours. Oh, my gosh. Well, that was again, a very easy half hour to fill. We're gonna pros. I'm going to W my empath expert, and you're gonna just have to keep coming back. Love it. Sounds good to me. Okay. So that's it. This is heavy, are talking about really heavy things. And I want to share that some of the tools that I've used during that conversation, because as my Facebook cover page has said for like the last year full Whoo, right. So I'm holding my rose quartz, and my rose oil, and I've been applying the rose oil on my heart. And I've been holding a palm labradorite in my hand and also just keeping these energetic symbols close to me.

Perfect. Yes.

What is one tool that you would invite our people to listen to or use or whatever,

I invite people to do a grounding and a clearing of your energy field. And I have I'll give you the link. I have a link to very quick, five, but less than five minute meditations apiece. I use this every day, all day. If you are sensitive, you want to keep your energy field clear of everybody else's garbage.

Yeah. So that you can show up protected and healed and be the light that you are to do that work that you're called to do things. Thanks everybody for joining us.

Thank you.

Balance shared is produced and edited by me Michelle Lasley, the instrumental music grass by Silent Partner is from the YouTube Audio Library. If you've enjoyed today's episode, leave a review, especially on Apple podcasts. If you've loved the messages of CO creating a better future and digging into ourselves, maybe you'd like to become a supporter. Email Hello at Michelle lasley.com to get your sponsorship guide. Thank you for listening to this podcast. This is Michelle Lasley with bounce shared a space where I truly believe we are better together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai