Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

It’s easy to judge and berate ourselves for getting distracted, especially when we find ourselves on social media rather than attending to the things that matter most to us - the projects, conversations, commitments that we know are most meaningful in our lives. But when we see that our distraction is a result of something very tender - our attempts to not feel grief at how little control we have...

We're conditioned to think of ourselves and other people as in need of fixing, and it makes it so difficult for us to open to one another's beauty and mystery. So what if we could cultivate eyes and hearts of wonder at the luminescent half-moon of one another's presence, and receive one another as rivers do as they give their power and beauty to one another? This week's Turning Towards Life is a c...

Sometimes we catch a glimpse of ourselves that shows us that we are not as small as we think, and we start to see the shining beauty and brilliance that we are. Knowing ourselves this way can open us up to a deeper appreciation of the beauty of others, and offers us a vibrant, compassionate path towards the generosity and creativity that is available to every one of us.  This week's Turning Toward...

Language is a doorway through which we can step into new relationships with the world and with one another, and as such our ways of speaking and listening are a profound kind of power. We are changed by what we say and by what others say. So how do we find ways with language that honour its power, and that open up possibilities and understanding for one another? And how might we be ones who, by ou...

Can we learn to live with the certainty that we'll lose the ones we love, and they will lose us, without tuning out, avoiding, denying or imagining that it's some form of punishment? Can we learn how to bring together the fullness of the joys of loving as well as the sorrows? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might find ways to help one another enter into the fierce g...

We easily forget that we are quite literally born of the Earth, which is itself the cradle and origin of the life we call our own and the life of everything around us. And in our forgetfulness, we easily forget ourselves and the wonder and mystery of a life we were born into without our say-so and without any instruction manual. Sometimes, it's necessary to shift our attention so we can rekindle o...

One of the characteristics of being human is that we have the capacity to transcend ourselves - to grow beyond narrow conceptions of ourselves, to imagine and live into new possibilities, to unfold creatively into ways of living and knowing that give us a chance to bring our own gifts to others. It can be painful when we try to resist this happening, or when we try to walk the path of our own deve...

Genuine communication is a kind of intimacy in which we let ourselves be changed and affected by the gifts brought by the other person we're communicating with. In this way it's different from other forms of speaking (convincing, making a point, offloading). And it requires of us a certain kind of receptivity not just to the other, but to what's going on with ourselves as we speak and listen. This...

Are feelings like objects, like forces, like waves, like eruptions? The metaphors we use for what we feel profoundly shape how we'll respond to them. Should we let them pass, push them away, be overwhelmed by them? Or, as we consider in this conversation, perhaps we could treat them as beings in their own right, with their own kind of intelligence, sensitivity, commitments, and ways of relating to...

Many of us have grown up immersed in a culture that teaches us to be anywhere but 'here'... to feel an emptiness we imagine we must fill from outside ourselves, to pursue what takes us far from our most genuine needs, to hide from one another the effect that doing so has on us. Turning back towards our own lives isn't easy, but it always begins with a choice not to continue to abandon ourselves an...

We're mostly told that our job is to be in control of life - that's the whole narrative of 'self-improvement' and 'progress' and 'optimisation' that permeates much of contemporary culture. But it's an interpretation of life that barely meets life's real conditions - that we're always in the middle of things, and that many things keep on falling apart and coming together quite without our say-so. S...

If you sit long enough, and still, the world might reveal itself in ways you had not, yet, imagined. If you'll dance with the people and things of your life, you might find they come forward and dance with you in return. Because the world is always offering us to our imagination... and our capacity to be in the world 'as if' is one that we don't always remember to draw upon. This week's Turning To...

We're taught by our culture to think in polarities - something is either good, or bad; worthwhile, or a waste of time; valuable, or worthless. And because of this we often judge ourselves and our lives in polarised terms too - we're broken, or whole; empty, or full - which in turn leads us into efforting to 'get' the side of the polarity we judge as the right one. Where does this polarised thinkin...

We've all selected parts of us that we present to the world, while other perhaps wilder parts of us have been pushed to the margins, as a strategy we chose earlier in our lives so we could belong, or be safe. In our adulthood, though, there's an opportunity for those precious exiled parts - with their many gifts - to be returned to our lives. They can do this with our own help, when we discover ou...

What would happen if we could see that the many 'young parts' of ourselves, with their fears and worries, with their plans and advice, are doing their best to take care of us - even if the information they have is partial and, sometimes, applies only to a much earlier time in our lives. Could we come at them with kindness, appreciation and welcome instead of trying to dominate and suppress them? C...

We go around our lives hiding much of ourselves from view, 'setting out a stall' that we've learned to set out through all that's happened for us so far. There are gifts behind the face we present to the world, gifts that could be brought for the benefit of many.  But often we run from the very truthfulness about what's peeking out from the shadows, what's waiting in our messy, beautiful selves, b...

It's natural that the process of our growing into adulthood results in our leaving a whole lot of ourselves behind - as we navigate what it takes to belong, to not be shamed, to stay safe, to build a life with some measure of predicability in it. But alongside all of that, what gifts and wonders, what song and words, what works of the creativity that is uniquely human might we bring to the world i...

Many of us avoid ever really saying what we think is true because we're afraid it will rupture the relationships that matter to us. But it's our truthfulness with one another - especially about our experiences, our values, our promises and commitments - that's so often called for if we're going to step forward into the unknown future together. So what about learning to be the ones who, in the face...

Even if we're doing work we really care about, many of us are steeped in a narrative that our work should always be 'busy' and that it is only 'work' if it profoundly depletes us. But in exhausting ourselves, in living in the 'heroic' narrative of always more and always faster, can we really say that we get to bring our width, and depth, and wisdom as a gift to others? And what is the cost to the...

What does it take to let go so that something new that is calling has a chance to be freed up in our lives? And what does it take to be the ones who can support others - especially those we love and want to cling to - to let go when it's called for? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about hope, grief, leaving, and letting ourselves be changed, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and J...

As Maya Stein writes in her beautiful poem this week, our lives aren't 'a stage rehearsal where you skip the high notes to save your voice'. So this week we wonder together about what it is that has us hold back, and hold others back, from bringing ourselves fully into our lives... 'the songs we could be singing while the light takes its own sweet time to change'. This week's Turning Towards Life...

It can seem so difficult to connect to one another and listen to one another, but when we soften and open and quieten down it's not beyond us to know others and their worlds with enormous depth and sensitivity. As Lizzie says in this episode, we're made for connection, because we were never really as separate as we feel to begin with.  This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about our s...

We return this week to our exploration of relational power and ask what would happen if we gave up using our power to control people (and in doing so our attempts to get what we want) and instead used our power to liberate the creativity and contribution of others? And how would this shape our parenting, our leadership, and our friendships? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about...

It's easy to use whatever power we have in the world as a way to make ourselves feel safe and in control. But what if we used our power not to reinforce being in a position of 'power-over-others' but instead to cultivate the conditions in which mutuality, emergence, and reciprocity between us could be born - in our organisations, with our life-partners and romantic partners, in friendships, as par...

It can be so hard, and so painful, to apologise sometimes. But what would happen if we saw that rupture and repair were an inevitable part of every relationship? If we knew that it is the very act of repair that knits us together into something more real, more durable, more connected? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about a loving, mutually respectful, dignified path we can foll...