Tami Simon: Hello, friends. My name’s Tami Simon, and I’m the founder of Sounds True, and I want to welcome you to the Sounds True Podcast, Insights at the Edge. I also want to take a moment to introduce you to Sounds True’s new membership community and digital platform. It’s called Sounds True One. Sounds True One features original premium transformational docuseries, community events, classes to start your day and relax in the evening, special weekly live shows including a video version of Insights at the Edge with an after show community question and answer session with featured guests. I hope you’ll come join us, explore, come have fun with us and connect with others. You can learn more at Join.SoundsTrue.com. I also want to take a moment and introduce you to the Sounds True Foundation, our nonprofit that creates equitable access to transformational tools and teachings. You can learn more at SoundsTrueFoundation.org. And in advance, thank you for your support.
This episode features Rachel Macy Stafford. Rachel Macy Stafford is a New York Times-bestselling author of the books Hands Free Mama, Only Love Today, and Live Love Now. She’s a certified special education teacher whose personal strategies are universal invitations to embrace life with urgency and cultivate connection despite the distractions of our culture. Her blog is a source of inspiration to millions of readers. And with Sounds True, she’s published a new book, it’s called Soul Shift: The Weary Human’s Guide to Getting Unstuck and Reclaiming Your Path to Joy. With Sounds True, she’s also created a seven-hour audio series. It’s called The Soul Shift Sessions. One of the things I love about engaging with Rachel Macy Stafford is that she gets right to the bone, right to the core, right to what really makes our blood run warm with life, what really matters the most to us. Here’s a penetrating-right-to-it conversation with Rachel Macy Stafford. Rachel, welcome.
Rachel Macy Stafford: Hello. It’s so good to be here.
TS: It is, as I said, a terrific honor. And I want to start by sharing with our listeners a way that I learned more about you that really struck me. Which is, like many people, I went onto your website, and I said, “OK, let’s go to the section that says About Me. I want to learn more about Rachel.” And you wrote then a section About Me and you said, “If you want to know me, let me tell you what really matters to me.” And then you proceeded to talk about what really matters to you, and we’re going to talk some about some of those themes. But right here, how did you think, “I want to introduce myself by talking about what really matters to me?”
RMS: Well, if I think about what I want to know when I meet someone, it’s not the superficial details about their lives. I want to know what makes you feel alive? What’s broken your heart? Do you get nervous in certain situations like I do? Because I feel like when we really want that true connection and belonging, we have to just cut through the superficial stuff. And so I thought if I really want people to know who I am and hear my voice and to know where I’m coming from, I want them to know those sacred parts of me. What really matters.
TS: I love that. I mean, you’re the kind of person, if I found you at some party where there was a lot of superficial talk, I would definitely be like, “Rachel, let’s go outside on the porch and let’s talk.” OK. So when you introduce yourself about what really matters, I’m reading this, you talk about your daughters, and I’m sure we’ll talk about them more in this conversation, and I kind of thought to myself, “Yes, check, her daughters matter, her husband matters, yes. Writing really matters to her, yes.”
I’m following, and yes, I’m interested. Functioning as a teacher in the world. Teaching really matters to you. OK. But then as you kept going about what really matters to you, I started getting thunderstruck, if you will. What really matters to you is encouraging other people, and even recognizing angels, other people functioning as angels, and you being an angel in the life of other people. And then I had to take a moment and really take that in. So I’d love to know more. When you talk about recognizing someone as an angel, tell me a story about that. Who’s an angel for you, and how do they play a role in your life?
RMS: Well, so as we’re going to probably delve into tonight, my daughters have really brought me out of my comfort zone of just being a person who really likes to have things planned out, and to know what’s ahead and just be able to predict. And having Natalie and Avery in my life, and different parts of their personality and their journeys, have really brought me out of that security, that feeling that I need to know what’s coming. And I’ve learned to trust through being their mom.
And something that this past couple years, like many parents of teenagers, the pandemic and the isolation of having to be learning through the computer, it kind of created this perfect storm for my younger daughter. And she was diagnosed with scoliosis when she was 11. And so a lot of body-image issues were already coming into play. But then she went through this pretty devastating time with some friendship issues, some body issues.
And it was interesting because when we would drive to her physical therapy appointments, and she would ask me, “Why is this happening to me? Why are these bad things happening to me?” And she would even say like, “I’m praying, but I don’t think anybody’s hearing me.” And what I told her was, when we were just at the physical therapist’s office, her physical therapist was really the only person that I feel like Avery could really open up to because her physical therapist also has scoliosis. And when I was watching the two of them connect, and someone was relating to Avery in a way that I couldn’t because I’m not experiencing that, I thought to myself, “This is an angel that has been put on our path.”
And even though we don’t know if surgery’s coming, whatever’s going to happen, we don’t know. But I said to her in the car, I said, “Do you think about the way that you just connected with Sue, and how she made you feel in that moment?” And I said, “I think that is in a way an answer to prayer or to knowing that you’re not alone in this experience.” So that’s off the top of my head, I think about her physical therapist a lot and just how she, over the span of time of her working with Avery, really helped her to think “Something’s not wrong with me and I can get through this.”
TS: And then this associated notion that it’s possible that we can be angels, angelic humans in other people’s life. I mean, I found that so inspiring. And I thought to myself as someone knocked on the door and I was in the middle of the meeting, and I thought, “I’m not being an angel in their life right now. I’m going to have to try a little harder.” Tell me what that means. How do you actually invoke that for yourself so that you can have that kind of impact on others?
RMS: Well, I have learned through this soul shift journey, which is all about listening to the guidance that’s inside you, that when I feel a nudge to reach out to someone, or to speak to someone that I feel like they really could use a little bit of encouragement, off the top of my head, I think about this beautiful cashier that I met at the grocery store when I was going through a hard time. My cat was at the vet. I didn’t know if he was going to be OK. And she came around and she hugged me. And I thought, “I’m going to go back and tell her what that meant to me after Banjo was OK.”
Well, we ended up developing a friendship. Her name’s Miss Sunna, and over time she got so she couldn’t work at the grocery store because of her health. And she invited me to her house, and I noticed that she would just barely open the door. And she said, “My face. I’m having surgery on my face. You can’t see me like this.” Well, after six months, her face did not heal. And finally she opened the door, she said, “Please come in.” And she cried because she said, “I needed someone to come and remind me that I am not alone.”
And I thought, this is why I want to keep listening to that guidance. Because probably five or 10 years ago, I never would’ve gone to a stranger’s house. I would’ve said, “Well, that’s not safe,” or, “This is a bad idea.” But that’s not what my heart and my soul were saying. “Go visit her.” And I know now that her daughter is very far away from her, so she feels like I’m kind of a surrogate daughter to her. So I just feel like being an angel in someone’s life, it’s not doing a special miracle of any kind, or a big grand gesture. It’s just trusting when your heart gives you that nudge to say, “Here I am,” and then be open to whatever it is that you’re there to do in their life.
TS: All right. So here we are. We’re not the small talk types, you and me. So we’re just going to keep getting right to it. In your introduction of yourself, what really matters, then you went further beyond recognizing human angels and being that type of presence. You said, “What really matters to me is my faith.” And I thought, “I really want to understand more about that. What is Rachel Macy Stafford’s faith?”
RMS: Well, it’s something that I keep very close to my chest because I don’t really fit into a category of to say, “I’m this,” or “I’m that.” To me, I believe in something bigger than myself. I call that God. But to me, God is love and God is everywhere. And I find God mostly in those experiences of trusting my heart is telling me to go somewhere. I find God when I’m out walking in the sunshine. And that’s when I hear what I feel like I am supposed to do with the gifts that I have been given.
And when I’m in my public writing spaces and they want to know, “What are you? Are you a Christian? Are you this? Are you that?” And I never like to put myself in a box because I don’t want to put anyone else in a box. And that’s one of the things that I really love about Sounds True and why I decided to publish with Sounds True is because I want people to be able to read my work and feel like they are included and it can apply to their life. That you don’t have to believe a certain way. Because if you believe in the power of love and the power of connection, and you bring that into the world, I just think we’re all going to be so much better off if we could all just lead with a loving heart, whatever that looks like to you.
TS: I think my question about faith is when really difficult things are happening, whether it’s personal to you or it’s in your daughter’s life with the severe scoliosis, or in your community, or in the world at large, how does your faith play in? How do you draw on it?
RMS: Well, I know that when I got some very devastating news about my younger daughter, as I was saying, it was a perfect storm with the pandemic and her physical body and her emotional state. And she started doing things that were very self-sabotaging, very damaging. And my instinct was to, one night, just to check, and to check on her. And that is when I discovered just how severe the problem was. And I remember going into my room and saying, “I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think that I can walk through this with Avery. It’s too painful.”
And I don’t know if it was a prayer or a plea, but I just remember looking at that ceiling fan going around and around, and I felt the tears. And a little voice inside me said, “But this is what you’ve been preparing for on this very journey, this soul shift journey of listening to these painful, uncomfortable feelings and being able to sit with them.” And that little voice said, “You are the best person to be able to walk beside Avery.” And I feel like, really for me, God is inside me. And I need to just listen, to access that because I spent so many years just trying to please the world, to do what I felt like the world wanted me to do. And that’s how I got so far off my authentic path. That’s how I got so joyless and depleted. And when you’re just spreading yourself so thin, you can’t possibly do what it is that you truly feel called to do.
And so for me, every day it’s a matter of getting quiet. Whether it’s lighting candles, I have so many candles around my house because candles for me, they just instantly calm me, they bring me to my heart, they point me to the inside rather than the outside. And I just really get quiet. And I say, “How should I show up today? How can I be love in someone’s life?” And I find myself making care packages a lot. It’s like, I will think about someone in those moments and I think that I should make them a care package. It’s just something that I have just become known for is getting a care package from Rachel. But I find so much joy in putting specific little items, writing little notes, and letting someone know you’re not alone. And I feel like that comes from something much bigger than me. Because every time someone gets a care package, they say, “How did you know?” And I think because I’ve been listening, I’m paying attention, and I’m trusting.
TS: Have you ever had the experience of being quiet and not hearing anything?
RMS: Definitely. If I feel very anxious about how something’s not going the way that I want it to go, or the answers are not clear, I know that the controlling part of me that I relied on for so long, I leaned on control. Because I thought I need to have a handle on this because otherwise I don’t know how this is going to go. So my default, my unhealthy coping mechanism, is to try to control. And then I can find I’m trying to get quiet, but my brain is going, “but what if, but what if,” and that interferes.
So if I can’t be still and quiet, which I feel like is the most challenging to be still and quiet, I will do something physical like go outside. I love to walk. I will not turn on music. I will just listen to the trees and the wind. And I won’t necessarily force myself to be like, “Oh, what am I hearing? What messages am I supposed to be picking up today?” I just try to get lost in the beauty of what’s going on around me. And to look at the sky and remember I’m this little small speck here in this great big world. And just to be as present in that moment and hear those sounds. I will come back from that walk, and I might not have a tangible answer or direction, but I’ll have a feeling of peace that says, “You can let go of this. You can just give yourself time to see what comes up.” And so it’s kind of a surrendering type of feeling that happens.
TS: And that brings me to the last what really matters to Rachel in her About Me section on her website, being hands-free. How did that phrase come to you and what does it mean?
RMS: So as I was mentioning, there was quite a few decades of living in a way that I thought I was supposed to live. I’m supposed to be a teacher and I’m supposed to be this really great organizer. I’m supposed to be this go-getter, this person who gets things done, the helper. I had all these roles that I did really, really well.
But what got lost was that little uninhibited part of me. That eight-year-old Rachel who filled notebooks day after day. I made mix tapes. I took care of the stray cats in the neighborhood. That uninhibited, joyful part of me kind of got lost through that period of just thinking that my worth was based on how much that I accomplished, how much I pleased and accommodated and fulfilled expectations.
So when I got to the point in my journey that I was like, “Wow, is this what it’s going to be? Where every day I wake up and I feel so stressed and overwhelmed and sad.” And I thought, “Is this how it’s going to be?” And I was out for a run, actually, that day. And I thought about a question that I was getting quite a bit, which was, “How do you do it all, Rachel?” And it was just really, it was an accolade. It was something I could be proud of. And I thought “If I was to answer that question honestly, what would I say?”
And the answer was, “I can do it all because I miss out on life. I miss out on the playing, the laughing, the memory making, the connection, the rest. And what I’m missing, I can’t get back.” And I felt the pain of that truth so hard that I literally did become emotional. But at the same time, I also felt like, “Wow, well, there it is there. At least I’m saying I don’t want this, and this does not feel like how I want to spend the rest of my life.”
Well, I got back to the house. I was doing what I usually do, which was multitasking. Computers open, phones buzzing. I’m thinking about everything that I have to get done. And I look up, and I see my then four-year-old daughter, Avery, on the couch watching Lion King. And a little voice, that little voice said, “There is nothing more important than going to her right now.” And because of that painful truth of “I am missing my life” that just happened two hours before, I thought, “I’m going to listen to this nudge that’s just telling me forget about the sandwich. Go.”
And when I sat down, she pulled up next to me like a magnet pulls up to another magnet. And she picked up my hand and she kissed my palm. And I thought, “There it is.” How do we grasp what really matters in our life? We let go of what doesn’t matter. And that kiss-on-the-hand moment, it revealed to me that these little opportunities to connect to the things that make our heart feel alive are literally right under our nose. But if we are so distracted and we are so caught up in the pace of the world, we are going to miss those opportunities. But they are right there.
TS: I wanted to ask more about the metaphor of the hands because there’s being hands-free, and then you also write about living with an open hand. And it feels like there’s something important that has to do with letting go of clenching or something like that. And I’m wondering how you experience it, why you focus so much on this notion of the open hand, the free hand.
RMS: Well, and when I did begin to realize the cost of living so distracted, for me, the things that I noticed were distracting me the most were the things that I was holding in my hands. Physical things like the phone, the to-do list. Just always being so busy, always cleaning up. I couldn’t just sit. Everything had to be productive. So I focused on the hands for just for me to say, put it all down, let it all go tangibly.
But then it was very interesting because, as I started having these pockets of going, literally hands free, I began to detect, there was a lot of distraction going on inside of me. And it took me a while, years, to figure out why am I always so busy wanting to be doing and proving my worth, and proving that I’m capable when it was all about my worthiness.
And so realizing when I sit down to connect with my loved one, I might be completely free of any tangible distractions, but if I’m still berating myself and saying, “You’re a bad mom,” or “You don’t deserve to have this rest,” if I’m saying those things to myself, I’m not present. I’m not going to be able to enjoy this moment.
So understanding that going hands-free was so much more than putting down the stuff. But it was also looking inside and saying, “What baggage, what beliefs about my worth and about this idea that things have to be perfect, that I’m not enough, this is basically removing me from my life. This constant self-judgment is turning me into a critical observer of my life rather than a joyful participant.”
And so remembering that hands free isn’t just about putting down the stuff. It’s also about learning to accept and release these beliefs that told you somewhere along the line that you are only worth as much as you accomplish.
TS: Of course, listening to you, it sounds like the transformation process you’ve been through and are in is quite dramatic. And yet one of the things you emphasize is changing in small actionable steps. The journey to becoming hands-free, the journey of soul shift. And that you learned this through your work as a special education teacher. And I’d love to hear more about that. What did you learn in the classroom about small actionable steps that then you took to your inner growth journey?
RMS: My specialty, I guess you would call it, was working with children who had such severe behavior disorders that they would end up, my classroom was like the last chance. So they had run out of options in different schools of different levels of support. And by the time they got to me, they were so beaten down and believed that it was useless. “This is who I am. My teachers say I’m bad, my parents say I’m bad. I’ll never amount to anything”. And the people in their life were saying, “Why can’t you sit still and do this work? Why can’t you pass this grade?” And I realized, we’re not going to go from where they are now, which is a pretty, pretty low point. We’re not going to go from that to, all of a sudden, they’re the model student. They’re doing what the school wants them to do, the parents want them to do.
So I realized for these particular students when I was in Florida, I realized the first thing that they need is connection. I was like, “I’m just going to push aside the curriculum.” We’re going to start really small with just a connection, a human connection so they will know I’m worthy of having another chance and there is good inside of me. And there is a chance that I can become what I want to be. And I thought, has anyone ever asked them what is their goal? Who do they see themselves in five years? Where do they see themselves?
And so that really helped me, that concept of showing my students that we’re just going to start here with a very small thing. For one student, it might be, “You’re going to ride on the bus and not get in a fight.” And we talked about, what can you do when you feel angry? And we would practice in the classroom. And we would also do things for the nervous system. But the starting point of knowing they were worthy of having another chance and taking a small step in the direction that they wanted to go, it was the only way to reach these bigger goals. And by the end of the year, the principal would say, “Well, how did you do this? What did you do?” And I said, “I just treated them like human beings. I just loved them and cared for them.”
And I think that’s what we need to do for ourselves, which we feel like we get to a place in our life we’re like, “Well, I’m not happy with how I am. I’m not living the life that I want to live. I feel joyless,” or whatever it is to condemn ourselves and say, “You’ll never change.” That’s not going to be a motivator to have compassion. And then that one small step, which for me, and which I teach in my workshops, is that 10 minutes going hands free, you push away the phone, the to-do list, the computer, the guilt, the inadequacy, the fear, just for a few minutes every day.
Just make yourself available to be loved, to connect, to experience life around you. That was my building block was that first 10 minutes of going hands free. And that little 10 minutes of feeling like, wow, I feel peaceful. I feel OK. Even though I didn’t accomplish something, I feel a sense of fulfillment just by being here in this moment. And that was how I started my journey. And then of course, as you know, it built the practice of presence, which was going hands free, led to other practices.
TS: And you described this whole sequence of practices in Soul Shift. What do you mean by that umbrella phrase, soul shift? What’s the shift?
RMS: So the soul shift happens when an uncomfortable feeling surfaces in our body. It could be from something that someone says, or it could be a look on their face, or it could be a memory that we feel. But when that uncomfortable feeling comes up, and it could be painful, it could be fearful, it could be anxiety, just worry. Instead of pushing it away, you allow yourself to feel it. To say, “Oh, I’m feeling scared right now,” or “I’m feeling worried about this.” Or for me it was when I realized how my controlling and taskmaster ways of being were damaging the spirits of my children and their joy for life.
For me, it was looking at those faces and saying, “Oh wow, I just lost my cool when my daughter made an innocent mistake of spilling the rice on the floor. And she’s scared of me. She’s scared of me because she made a mistake and she knows Mom expects her to be perfect.” And so in that moment of that happening with Natalie, for me to not push that away and say, “That’s so uncomfortable,” and “That’s so painful, I’m not going to deal with that because I want to make her a responsible person.” And I could come up with a reason why that was OK.
But a soul shift happens when that uncomfortable feeling arises and we say, “Maybe I should listen. What is that trying to tell me?” And I can tell you that the biggest transformations, the most positive shifts in my life happened as a result of listening to one of those painful truths or acknowledgements that this hurts or this is hurting someone else. And I need to think about what is happening here instead of dismissing it and not feeling it.
And that’s when I really learned the gift of self-compassion. Because as I accepted that there were some really hurting parts of me that were causing me to hurt the people around me. I had to be compassionate with myself, just like I was with my students, and say, “Hey, you got to start somewhere, and you can. I believe in you. You are not a waste. This is not over.”
TS: What have you learned in terms of working with yourself when self-criticism arises? How do you interrupt that?
RMS: Well, when I first started, that rice incident with Natalie, that was really an awakening moment for me.
TS: So you got really upset that she spilled rice on the floor?
RMS: Well, I didn’t, but I saw her face, and she thought I was going to get very upset. And so it hit me that my children were scared to make mistakes, and that would be the last thing that I would ever want for them in their life. I want them to be able to take risks and learn. So in that moment when I acknowledged that I am so critical to myself that I bully myself, that it tends to spill out. And then I tend to be cruel and harsh with my oldest daughter.
And so I was having my practice of presence in the mornings. And the very next day I was sitting with, I like to read the letters that my grandmother wrote me through high school and college because my grandmother was one of the people that I could go to if I messed up. And I felt safe in telling her because she loved me unconditionally. And so I find great comfort in reading my grandmother’s letters. And I was looking through them, and this phrase came to my head, which was, “only love today.” And I thought, wow, only love today. That’s really beautiful. I don’t even know what that means, but I’m going to write this down in my journal.
And that day I was standing in front of the mirror, and I could hear my inner bully revving up because the mirror was always a pretty triggering place for me. But the inner bully was saying, “You can’t go out like that,” or, “What makes you think that you have something to contribute today?” And I thought about that, only love today. And I used it in that moment. I thought, “Only love today. I’m only going to treat myself with love, and this is not loving.” And only love today became kind of a stop phrase for my inner bully, and that’s really what I needed.
I wasn’t to the point where I could look at that, take an impartial view of myself, and say something compassionate. I was not there yet. But just identifying when my inner bully was talking was a huge step for me. It was a huge start to changing that dialogue. Because once you identify it, and it’s kind of alarming once you start really listening to the way you’re talking to yourself, and you’re like, “I had no idea I was so critical.” I was so judgmental. And when I became aware how often I would judge myself or doubt myself, I would just write then and there, “only love today, only love today.” And I wrote it on Post-it notes. I stuck it up all over the house. My family knew “Only love today. That’s something Mom’s using to try to be kinder to herself.”
Because one thing I realized was telling my daughters the truth about what I was working on was a way for them to know that they were not the cause of my anger. Because I know that Natalie had started to internalize the anger because of my stress that I was just not dealing with things in a calm, reasonable way. I was reactive. And so getting to be able to see only love today, and why. What was only love today? What was that about? Being human with my children allowed them to start being human with me. They’re 19 and 16 now. And there’s not a day that I don’t think about where we would be if we hadn’t decided it’s OK to be human. It’s OK to say, “I’ve got some things I want to work on, and this is what I’m doing.”
TS: Now, Rachel, let me share with you, if it’s OK, my reaction to the only love today, because I have a multifaceted reaction. Some part of me as you were talking, I noticed, I relaxed. And I thought, “God, Tami, you could respond to yourself with only love today.” That’s very relieving. And then another part of me when I read about that, working with that phrase in Soul Shift, and I could even feel it some in talking to you now, I had the big “I think I’m going to shoot a finger at a little Post-it that says, ‘Only love today.’ I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s not the mood I’m in. That’s not how I’m feeling. Screw you, only love today.” The Post-it, of course.
RMS: Yes.
TS: And I’m just curious if that ever comes up for you in working with the phrase like that, or, I’m sure you’ve heard this brought up by other people and what you suggest.
RMS: Yes. So I’ve learned that forcing myself to really just put on a happy face or something like that, I was really, really good for a lot of years at just smiling through pain. And for me, only love today could possibly come off as, “Oh, well, you’re just dismissing your feelings.” But why only love today, it was a bridge really for me. It was a bridge, first of all, to stop that critical dialogue. Because it wasn’t like I was going to suddenly deem myself worthy of showing up where I was telling myself, “Oh, you’re not worthy of showing up.” Only love today.
We know that this type of dialogue takes you further and further and further down a damaging path. So I agreed only love today is a stop phrase. It’s going to stop that from spiraling. What happened was over time was I could say to myself, “Wow, I’m standing in front of this mirror. I am telling myself that I should have prepared better for this vacation that I’m going on, and I’m not suitable to put on a bathing suit,” or something like that. And then I was able to say, “That is an old belief talking, that your appearance makes you worthy and people want you to show up because of how you look.” And we know that is completely not true.
And so being able to step back and really question that critical statement and say, “Is this true?” When you meet your friends, are you judging how they look? No, of course not. You’re just happy to see them. So only love today, it wasn’t a dismissal of feelings. It was really a way to get control over that inner dialogue. And then to shift over time, which again, I like to emphasize that this was months, years of learning how to replace those self-sabotaging statements with more compassionate soundtracks. Which is kind of rewiring your brain when it was like, “Oh, this is where you get your worth and your value.” And then you can say, “No, that actually is an old damaging belief. That’s not what I believe now.” And to be able to push back on that.
TS: Now, you mentioned, Rachel, your daughter’s health challenge. And you’ve also talked about how the soul shift comes when we’re able to be with ourselves with difficult experiences, difficult feelings turned towards ourselves in those states. And for me, one of the things that is the most challenging is when people I love, or the animals that I live with, are suffering. That’s the feeling, it’s really hard for me. It’s a kind of like, I don’t know, it’s such a vulnerability that feels like a brokenness or something. I feel helpless. And I’m curious how you were able to navigate through that for you and what you learned in the process.
RMS: Well, I’ll be honest, I did not start off doing what was a healthy response. Because as I said, it was extremely traumatic, and she was in a lot of pain. And my default response was to fix it. Get this pain away from her, ease this pain. But it wasn’t one of those kind of situations. And I realized, “You know what, this is going to be a long, very tough road.” And for a couple months there, I was throwing anything that I could at it to fix it, to heal her. And something that my mom said to me, which I’ve learned to listen, because I think sometimes you can get insight into your own behavior, into damaging things that you’re doing by listening to the people that you trust.
And my mom who knew all the details of what was going on, she said, “Rachel, the person I’m most worried about right now is you. Because you are doing everything you can to try to heal this. And you can’t. That’s not your job in this. That’s not your role.” And being able to admit, that was an uncomfortable truth that my mom said to me. And I thought, “Oh wow, that would be really easy to try to push this away.” But I thought, “This sounds like something that my soul’s been trying to tell me. I am going to burn myself out.”
So what I did was I went back to square one of my journey, which was practice presence. That is my home base. And I thought, “OK, what small 10- or 15-minute increment can I do every morning to fill myself up?” And I started walking again, putting that back on the priority list. I started doing more stretches and things with my body because the stress and the tension in my body was very high. And so then as I was realizing that, showing Avery my healthy coping mechanisms for stress was a gift to her as well. And being there because I thought, “I can’t support her if I’m depleted.”
And so being able to admit to myself what you’re trying to do is, actually, it’s not working for you and it’s definitely not working for her because this is her journey. Not your journey. And the best thing you can do is be in your healthiest state of mind to walk beside her. And luckily, I did have the support of my family, my parents, and my husband, to be able to accept that what I was doing was really reverting to what I used to do before I went on my soul shift journey. And to accept that, I need to change course, I need to start taking care of me so that I can help her take care of her.
TS: That’s a terrific and very clear story. Thank you.
RMS: You’re welcome.
TS: Soul Shift covers a lot of ground. As you mentioned, you start with the practice of presence. You talk about discovering true self-worth, letting go of perfection, self-kindness, authenticity, self-forgiveness, looking after yourself, an important section of taking care of your own health needs. And then the final section of the book is offering your gift to the world. And you end by putting in front of the reader a very powerful question. Very, very powerful question. “What is it I must do or I shall die? What is it?” I don’t know why this, maybe it’s the mood I’m in, your personality, us together, very cut-to-the-bone kind of conversation that we’re having together, Rachel, but what is it I must do or I shall die? Tell me how that question came into your awareness, and also your response to it, and how we, the listener, can work with that question.
RMS: So I love the book, Life is a Verb by Patti Digh. And when I held that book in my hand, I don’t know when it was published, but it must have been at least 15 years ago, but I’ve never felt so inspired by a book in my whole life. And it was all about just seizing these really simple, ordinary moments of life, and finding what makes you feel alive. And it was not these big, grand, “I’m going to move to a new country” kind of things. It was everyday things that everyday people could do. And it was just this gorgeous book. It’s all in color. And I read this passage about this to-do list was just so long, it was pages. And I thought, “Oh, I can relate to having a really long to-do list.”
And what happened, Patti tells the story is how the person was like, “Wait a minute. I’ve got 50 things on this to-do list. What is it I must do or I shall die?” And then it came down to two things. And that person said, “If I’m not a writer, I would die. And if I wasn’t a present loving mom to my kids, I shall die.” And I had read that many, many years before my journey started.
But when I was starting this idea of going hands free, I kept thinking about that passage. And I said, “Well, why don’t you do it, Miss You’ve Got a Typed To-do List Over Here. Why don’t you do it?” And I came to the same conclusion. I’ve got to write. If I don’t write, I shall die. Because I had set writing on a shelf for 30 years. And also, I thought, “I want to be a part of my kids’ lives. That’s what I want. I want them to know me and I want to know them.”
And that was it. Two things. And that it was so powerful to realize, “What must I do or I shall die?” Because then, when you have this onslaught of demands and requests and things coming at you, like we all do, you have something that you can kind of hold that up against. And you can say, “Hmm, I’m getting asked if I want to run the book fair at school. Now let me look at my life list. That’s what I call it, my life list. Does it align with those goals?” Because here’s the thing, your daily to-do list makes up your life. And if your dreams and your passions and your interests and things that make you feel alive are not on your to-do list day in and day out, there’s a good chance you’re not going to do those things that you know I must do or I shall die.
And already, I’d gotten a glimpse of that shriveled part of me that was like, “What am I not doing that I need to do?” And as a special education teacher, I didn’t have time to write my creative stories in my notebooks. And when I got back to that 11 years ago, I thought, “Oh, there it is. There’s that part of me that’s coming alive as I’m watching these words come onto this piece of paper.”
And so I tell people, I want you to think about it. Don’t overthink about it. Just write down. What is it you must do or you shall die? And with those one or two things, because it’s amazing how then really it narrows things down. You don’t have all the extra stuff. Then you can say, “Now I’m going to start discerning how I use my time and energy by holding it up to this list.”
And it is a way to really get pretty focused and serious about, it’s such a cliché to say, “Oh, we don’t know how much time we have,” but we all know that’s a fact. And that’s one of the things that I decided to include in the Soul Shift book was there was this very powerful book. It was The Seven Top Regrets of the Dying. And one of those regrets, from this palliative nurse that took care of people on their death bed, one of the overwhelming regrets was, “I didn’t say how I truly felt. I didn’t talk about what my true interests were, what really made me happy.” So they didn’t get to know themselves. And just to be your authentic self, that is where the joy is at, is what I’m discovering on the soul shift journey.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Rachel Macy Stafford, and I think you really bring to life in your own way this meditation teaching that I heard many, many years ago, which is “practice like your hair’s on fire.” And I always thought, “What does that mean? I’m sitting on the cushion like my hair’s on…” I mean, I had a sense of what it meant. But you really bring that to life in the way you describe the soul shift journey and the heart intensity that we can bring to it. She’s the author of the new book Soul Shift: The Weary Human’s Guide to Getting Unstuck and Reclaiming Your Path to Joy, along with a seven-hour audio series with Sounds True called The Soul Shift Sessions.
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