Hello.
How can we turn a sense of helplessness into connection, belonging, and purpose? How can we re-orient our being toward life with a sense of hope and inspiration?
It’s not easy but it is possible.
This is the goal of the new Heartbeats podcast, a place for us to have wholehearted conversations that refill our well, remind us that we’re not alone, and add to our collective courage.
Here’s a sneak peek of what you’ll hear in the first episode:
Strategies for soothing our nervous systems and tools for creating change (including blocking, building, and being)
How trees communicate through their root systems to nurture and protect each other
The power of storytelling and its ability to connect us physiologically through space and time, literally synchronizing our heartbeats
What it means to create a legacy of love and widen the safety net for everyone
Scroll down for the full transcript (only available on Substack) and show notes! 👇
I’m delighted to share these conversations with you as we learn how to synchronize our heartbeats with each other and all of life.
Make sure you subscribe so you won’t miss our next episode featuring Dio Oduwale, a musician, music producer, entrepreneur, and writer based in South Florida.
Please share this podcast with a friend and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Let’s create a world where we all flourish in harmony with life. 💗
Thanks for listening.
All my love,
Mariah
P.S. If you’d like to be interviewed on the Heartbeats podcast, please reach out to thebarefootbeat(at)gmail.com. I’m specifically looking for stories and conversations with folks who are charting their unique path in life with creativity, authenticity, and a desire to build community. Check out our Pathfinders series for inspiration.
Shownotes
We are the Great Turning with Joana Macy and Jess Serante– Episode 9: Live the Questions Now
The Gathering Room Podcast- Worth the Trouble
Trees Talk To Each Other. 'Mother Tree' Ecologist Hears Lessons For People, Too
People's Heartbeats Synchronize When They're Captivated by The Same Story
Transcript
Intro
They've done a study where they've had different volunteers listen to a story with their full presence and their full attention and they measure their heartbeats. They found that even if the volunteers listen to the story at different times and different places, a really beautiful thing happens where their heartbeats begin to synchronize.
Welcome to Heartbeats, a podcast where we lean into the power of storytelling with wholehearted conversations that inspire, connect, and create communities of care. Listen in to refill your well, gather courage, and remember you're not alone. I'm your host, Mariah, a former ICU nurse turned poet, community organizer, grieving daughter, new mother, and intuitive healer, listening for the heartbeats of life that lead us home to each other.
Mariah
Welcome to Heartbeats. This is our very first podcast episode and I am so excited to start this journey with you. I'm also a little nervous because the best things are often unexpected and sometimes you just have to begin. So this is the beginning of Heartbeats and I wanted to share a few stories with you that kind of set the scene for why I think this podcast is so important, how it came to be, and some of the things that have led up to me deciding to share these stories with you and these conversations.
The other day I was on a walk and I usually do a little loop in our neighborhood just to get outside and get some exercise. And I'll usually listen to a podcast or two. And this particular morning I was listening to a podcast that is usually more funny and lighthearted. And all of a sudden it took this unexpected turn where it started talking about some current events and just seeing things through a little bit of a doom and gloom or negative outlook.
And right away I could feel this shift in my body. The news is something that I don't engage with very often on purpose. And so I wasn't really expecting it to come up in this particular podcast but I just started noticing this feeling of helplessness and fear and not really knowing what to do with that, starting to feel my nervous system go into overwhelm.
Thankfully, I have a list of really inspiring podcasts and I turned to one that's co-hosted by Joanna Macy and Jessica Serante called We Are the Great Turning. In this particular episode, they were talking about different tools we can use to help navigate the world that we're currently living in, tools that help us engage with the world as it is, while also envisioning a better world.
So they were talking about three different tactics that can help us know what the next step might be for whatever season of life we're in. And the first tactic was blocking. So we can choose to block systems of oppression, we can choose to protest in the streets, we can choose, the more activist route that's a little bit more on the front lines, or we can choose to build.
And that might be something that's behind the scenes. While we're dismantling these other systems, we're also building new ones to take their place. And then they also talked about being as the third option. And these options you might do more than one at once. You might move in and out of them so there's no order, there's no right and wrong to it.
Being is returning to the essence of our true nature which is in harmony with the natural world which is focused on collaboration and sustaining life, which is more collaborative than competitive.
Their conversation took me back in time to a similar feeling time period that we're going through right now. It was a different election year back in 2016. And really, I was at this kind of pivotal point in my life where I had just broken up with my long-term boyfriend, I had been traveling, and I had decided to come back to the States, but I didn't have any prospects ahead of me. I was, I think I was 27, or 28 at the time.
I'd already quit my job working in the ICU and I'd spent the last few years just on this grand adventure of backpacking around the world and falling in love, doing what you do in your 20s. But I was at a point when all of that had come to an end, and I was really lost. But at the same time, I knew that I was kind of this blank canvas, right?
I knew that all of these things had come to an end and even if it was unexpected, it meant that there were new opportunities, and I wanted to see, what might be ahead? What might my future look like?
I was staying temporarily with my sister in Idaho, it was winter, I think it was February of 2016, and I was just crashing on her couch while she worked at a ski resort, trying to put the pieces of my life together, trying to figure out what's next, feeling heartbroken, feeling sad and also hopeful. So in this mix of emotions, I saw an advertisement for a soul reader in Jackson Hole, which was just across the pass.
And I thought, “That sounds interesting. Maybe now is a good time to get a little bit more information about my purpose in life and what my soul really came here to do.”
So I had this conversation with an amazing woman and one of the things that she really helped me see during our conversation was that there are two different paradigms that are happening in our world.
Right now, the majority paradigm, or the majority culture is based on fear. If you think of it like a bicycle wheel, the hub of it is fear. So that's what's turning everything else. And so we might look at these different systems that we're trying to change, these broken spokes on the wheel that we're trying to repair. And no matter how much effort or work we put into repairing them, the center of the wheel is still going to be fear.
Instead, what we need to do is create a new bicycle wheel where the hub of that bicycle wheel is love. And so all of the other spokes, all of the other systems are coming from the center of love instead of fear.
And it wasn't the first time I'd heard that concept, but it was a really powerful metaphor, and one that has really stuck with me. What she said during that conversation, or maybe I came up with it, I can't remember, but basically we came up with the phrase “Unite the light.”
I had told her about my work in the ICU, being in a really intense, chaotic life or death environment, and how that had really drained me. And I had been burned out by that. I've been traumatized by it. But at the same time, I still wanted to help, I still wanted to serve. I still wanted to do something for others because I saw, all of the need and I wanted to make it better.
She said, “Instead of going in with your little flashlight into the darkest spaces and trying to shine your light, the alternative is to hold steady your light and attract other light to you.”
And so “Unite the light” came into being and it's something that has stuck with me this whole time. So I wanted to share that as a little backstory. And just to offer the idea that perhaps we can spread inspiration instead of fear.
Perhaps we can share and spread love instead of hatred.
And so that's one of the reasons behind this podcast is to unite the light. Another reason I wanted to start this podcast and the inspiration behind my newsletter Heartbeats comes from my dad. Before he passed away from a fatal heart attack at the end of 2020, we used to take a lot of walks together in the forest.
He was someone that I would call whenever I was having an anxiety spiral about the state of the world or my dating life. And we would usually meet up at one of our favorite hiking trails and no matter the weather, we would go on a walk together. And on those walks, we would talk and mostly I would talk and he would listen, but it would be so calming for my nervous system.
And I would feel like, okay, all is well. And even if all is not right with the world, here in this moment with my dad, everything is okay.
One of the things that he shared with me on one of our last walks together was an article he'd read about trees and how their root systems are connected to each other and how if one of the trees in a nearby, area is being attacked by bugs, the tree will alert the other trees and it'll say, “Hey, put up your defenses.”
And the other trees will have the opportunity to release chemicals that will protect them from that pest in a different way. They can also send each other nutrients through the network of roots via fungi, which is just the coolest thing. He thought this was the best thing that he'd ever heard.
We've always been taught that nature is competitive and it's survival of the fittest. That might be true in some instances, but nature is also collaborative and connected and there are these systems of care that help and respond when there's a threat.
When he passed away, I thought a lot about the legacy he was leaving behind. My dad wasn't what you would call the most successful in his career. He had many different jobs and different skills, but he wasn't someone who prioritized climbing the career ladder. After he and my mom divorced, he never remarried. I think he went on maybe one or two dates, but he didn't really find another partner after that, and when he passed away, he didn't even own his own home. So from an outside perspective, it might not look like he left much behind of value. But in my heart, I know this isn't true.
I know who my dad was, and I know that the most powerful thing he left behind was a legacy of love.
He left behind his laughter, and his capacity to listen with the full presence of his body. He left behind the capacity to, at just the right moment, know how to crack a dad joke to lighten the mood. He’s another reason I created Heartbeats and why I want to start this podcast. To continue his legacy, share the love he left behind, and keep it going in my heart and the hearts of others.
So, connected to the story about trees and how they communicate through their root system, I also learned a study after he passed away that's about people and the power of storytelling. They've done a study where they've had different volunteers listen to a story with their full presence and attention and they measure their heartbeats.
What they found was that even if the volunteers listened to the story at different times and different places, a really beautiful thing happened where their heartbeats began to synchronize.
And so I think that's amazing. I think the power of story, the power of storytelling is really that miraculous. Those are the stories that I want to tell. Stories that are rooted in love, that are rooted in compassion, that are built on connection.
So at Heartbeats, we are going to unite the light while remembering that darkness is a part of the human experience too. I want this to be a place where we create our own legacy of love and networks rooted in compassion.
Where we choose to arm ourselves, not with weapons, but with stories of hope, inspiration, and resilience. Where we listen and gather courage from the collective well of hope. Where we fill ourselves with sacred connection.
My goal is to have and share wholehearted conversations about what it means to be human in all of our messiness so that we can create spaces to move through our grief, celebrate new life together, and envision communities of care where we all begin to thrive.
I'm so excited for you to join me on this journey. I look forward to having conversations with people from all walks of life on different topics. But those are the things that are going to be connecting the dots for all of these conversations, our shared human experience.
I would love for you to tune in next time for a special conversation with Dio Oduwale, a musician, music producer, entrepreneur, and writer based in South Florida. He's also the author of the newsletter, The Thriving Artist. I interviewed him for our Pathfinder series, Conversations with ordinary folks living extraordinary lives, and we chatted about moving from selfishness to being of service when we're creating our art, the challenges of our dopamine culture, the importance of silence and how we can go from being a starving artist to a thriving one. Don't miss it. I can't wait to talk to you next time.
All my love,
Mariah.
Outro
Thank you for listening to Heartbeats. Please share this episode with a friend or leave a review to help others discover this podcast. Let's widen the safety net of love together.
Heartbeats is a community for spiritual creatives, mothers, and messy humans who believe in the power of community. By financially contributing to Heartbeats you are saying yes to collaboration, connection, and creating sacred spaces where we can heal, learn, and honor each other with care. Thank you for your presence here. 💞
Introducing the Heartbeats Podcast 🎧💗