The Bold as Love Podcast Karine Bell

Friends, this is the first episode for a new podcast called Tending the Roots, which is adjacent to what lives here. It reflects the conversations and explorations of the Rooted Global Village. We attempt to bridge the personal and collective in our reach towards healing (wholeness) and personal and collective liberation. We also have an exciting summer project we'd like to invite you to join! www.rootedglobalvillage.com 
I grew up looking into the night sky and the heavens above me.  Without concepts that defined the movement of planets and stars, or the mathematics to describe them, I would orient my head and neck upwards, captivated by the beauty of this cosmic mystery stretched out above my head. So expansive that it would take my breath away.  
For those of us who have been sold a narrative that there is only one way we can be in relationship with the heavens, only one way to make sense of it through Western scientific knowledge, we may have a disconnected sense of this vital connection. Much like a muscle that’s atrophied; it’s been neglected and underused for important reasons. Many of us have been force fed what scholar Arturo Escobar calls the “One World Story”; a story that has also attempted to eradicate other stories about who we are and our place in the web of life.  
This episode reflects one point in a journey that we’ve been on for a while now in Rooted, tracing an arc of exploration as it relates to how we might begin to reimagine relationship and belonging.  Here we consider how we might begin to enliven the seen and unseen strands that connect us to a broader web of relationships.  
This summer in Rooted, we're embarking on a project centered on rekindling a relationship that for many of us has been flattened; reduced to a specific thing that can only be known by experts with advanced degrees. We will reclaim the fullness of an experience of kinship. Let’s infuse this muscle of kinship again through shared practice, storytelling, and art-making.
We are bringing our full bodies to play with Venus this summer. Our friend, Bear Ryver, has referred to these celestial bodies as our cosmic ancestors. I am giddy with excitement for the journey and hope you might join us! 
 

On our own, the desire born from the challenges we’ve faced can be a powerfully transformative force in our lives.  
Our personal embrace of the Soulful Chainbreaker becomes a cultural force when we gather together, commune, share stories, and support each other to commit to and sustain the journey.  We do not disrupt and re/orient within a vacuum, other beings dedicated to this process become our co-conspirators and co-creators of new experiences and new future(s).  

Rooted in the experience of our non-separation we might find greater access to our creative life energy and imagination to become newly oriented in the world, to create new maps and pathways of belonging. 

Many experiences of trauma/oppression reveal where we’ve failed to belong authentically. The ways in which, as we navigate our social worlds, we come up against blocks and barriers to birthright dignity, authenticity, acceptance and belonging. That is, where we disappoint and fail to conform to the expectations of dominant cultural narratives. This rejection dampens our inner spark, disorients our desire, and erects borders and checkpoints in our interior world that prevents the wild rambling and roving that is our birthright and is necessary for wellbeing. This non-belonging is also a portal to a re/imagination of how else we might live. 

Often unconscious to us, our experiences within culture shape the ways we’re oriented in the world; influencing the neurophysiology of our bodies, our emotions, perceptions, and beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world. 

On this shared journey the Chainbreaker illuminates the borders and checkpoints - the chains - that limit the free expression of our own unique hearts. The Chainbreaker archetype offers a way to embody fire-based courage so that we may see clearly the impacts of dominant familial and cultural narratives and a path to liberate ourselves and the generations that will come after us.

What appears to us as evident in a field of infinite possibility is influenced by our early experiences embedded within family systems and culture.  

This email explores the spirit and science behind change-making and chain-breaking. And it asks the question: What can we learn from our bodies that the broader culture tries to bury? 

‍In this email, we’ll also offer guided reflection practice on what trauma has made way for in your life. 

Unlocked: When We Access a Desire Greater than Fear The Chainbreaker as archetype invites critical questioning and reclaiming. We are invited to consider disappointing our families of origin, and the cultural influences at large by rejecting narratives and dictates that reproduce harms.It’s risky, even, for those most marginalized in these narratives. Yet in this risk we open to a vital rebirth: the opportunity to access desire long hidden or dampened by chains and obstacles. 

If we imagine our inner and outer worlds as a map; not one shaped by imposed borders but rather a map that authentically reveals the contours we trace in our daily living and loving. What would we see? What is shaped by inheritance? How does desire move in this geography? Where are you located in this story of change that is both personal and collective? 

Desire as creative impulse roots in the energy and action of fire: warming, illuminating, consuming, and transforming. There is a font of desire - distinguished from forms of desire shaped by culture - rooted in a deeper order of life, residing within each of us, that is the fire that propels deeper-level transformation. 

Transmuting Intergenerational Trauma Through The Creative Principles of Fire  This is a story about what it means to be the one who steps out of line. The one willing to be the weak link in the chain.  The one willing to disrupt and disobey; to embrace disruption as a portal and disappoint some of the expectations held for us (and the people associated with them) in the service of another future. And how a shift in imagination turns our deviance into a dedication to life, love, and liberation. This requires courage, fierce love and a fire (in the belly) that sustains our commitment. 

In this email, we’ll include reflections on becoming the soulful chainbreaker, and what it might mean to and for you.  

Today I have something precious and beautiful to share with you. It’s a shared learning community called Rooted - A Global Village, Healing the Human Family, and Co-Imagining New Ways of Being. 
In a popular article for the Financial Times, Indian novelist Arundahti Roy, wrote about the time we’re in as a portal, she says:
 
"Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next."
 
What happens at that crossroads of experience for us matter, and I want to contribute intentionally to the world that comes after this.
 
I'm sharing all about this opportunity in the podcast today  - I hope you'll listen in, and if you'd love to join us, we'd love to have you.
 
Learn more about our global village, Rooted, here.