09_believe_LaurieGreen
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[00:00:00] Hello siblings. Welcome to the Sensory Siblings Podcast. I'm your host, Louisa Shaeri, and this is beaming to you from the solar system, the liberatory framework, and unmasking unschool for creatively identified autistic folks who are seeking another way to see no and be yourself. This is a radical re-imagining of what's.

[00:00:26] Possible when we redefine ourselves from within by unlearning who we are, not making self connection. Our goal, activating the languages of our sensory oriented perception and creating the culture shifts to activate futures and cells, it all starts within

[00:00:49] siblings. I have a treat for you today. That I'm really excited to share. This is the very first interview on the Sensory Siblings Podcast, and it's with our very own sibling, Laurie Green. Laurie's pronouns are they them. Laurie is an artist and has been a long time traveler in the solar system, and in this interview we dive into their ideas on art as a relational co-creation of consciousness.

[00:01:18] What neuro querying means to them, permission to be in your body, initial barriers to being an artist, and where they were at the start of their solar system journey. And instead of the usual outro, you'll hear a short segment of a piece, a sonic piece by L, which is called Effective States one. Laurie says about this piece.

[00:01:42] I made this piece while in a state of withdrawal from the outside world, I had cut off nearly all social contact and was lost deep inside myself trying to find a way out. It contains trauma and the overwhelming bodily sensations that trauma can bring. It's rough and the sound is fuzzy and distorted like the world can seem when you're lost and confused.

[00:02:07] But it also contains some beauty. I think the endless pulsing static comes to an end and calm returns. In the interview, we also talk about one of the breakthroughs that Lori created for themselves while in the solar system and what it was that enabled them to bridge the gap between where they were and where they are.

[00:02:28] Now we end the interview with some beautiful words from Lori to anyone who is where Lori was. And in the show notes, you'll find links to all of Laurie's online presence. I encourage you to have a listen and then head over to the siblings Discord to share your response and your thoughts. I know you'll gain a lot from this episode.

[00:02:50] So without further ado, here is episode nine. Believe Your Body with Laurie Green.

[00:03:05] So hello Laurie. Welcome to the Siblings podcast. Uh, it's truly an honor to have you on. Um, and I've been witness to. Parts of your journey of self revelation and self permission into who you're being now. So I can't wait to get into all of this with you. And I just wanna say thank you for agreeing to come on the podcast and chat with me and share what I feel like is gonna be a bit of an insight, a bit of a blueprint for others who maybe are where you were a couple years ago, and to see that.

[00:03:43] If they're there, that transformation is possible for them as well. So thank you. Thank you very much for having me. Who are you today? Right now, this second. I am Laurie. I think I'm always Laurie. I think that's a constant. Um, I think what's contained within l fluctuates on a daily basis, um, according to the external environment.

[00:04:12] Um, what's going through my mind, what's happening to my body? Um, I see myself as, um, neuro queer, autistic artist at the moment. And yeah, I think, I think that that sums me up at the moment. For those who are listening who maybe dunno what, what neuro queer means or what it means to you and what it means to be autistic and neuro queerer and an artist, all of which are really difficult to separate.

[00:04:43] What does that mean to you? I think, um, neuro queering and neuro queerer is both a, a state of being and an action, a verb and a noun perhaps. In terms of identifying as neuro queer, I think it, it's really a, an application of queer theory onto the wider nervous system, the body as a whole. So, uh, referencing people who have used the term in the past, like Nick Walker, who I believe the term originated with, and, and Remy Yogo, who is.

[00:05:23] Which is where I came across the, the term first. It's this idea, to me it's this idea of, it's a, a state of subversion. I think it's a state of subversion of the dominant cultures, construction of what it means to be human and to have a human body where butler's gender theory or application of queer theory to gender shows how.

[00:05:52] Gender is a performance. I think what neuro queer being neuro Queerer is about is understanding and living in a way that shows that being human is also a performance of of some kind. And neuro queering is the practice. To me, it's the practice of. Deconstructing those models of what it means to be human, that have been created and constructed over time by a culture that doesn't recognize difference as beautiful.

[00:06:29] It doesn't recognize difference as, uh, something to be celebrated and of benefit to humanity. It sees it as a disorder, dysfunction, something to be fixed or cured. So neuro querying is a response to that in that it's a celebration of difference, a celebration of these divergences from the mean that are actually.

[00:06:55] As I say, very beautiful, joyful experiences, but the way that they're treated by the dominant models makes the experience of divergence difficult or painful. So it's an inversion of that pain and that difficulty into something constructive, emergent, and joyful. I love that so much. In your Instagram bio, you've written sensory broadcasts from embodied explorations of neuro queerer liminal space, deconstructing, reconstructing, seeking resonances and spirals.

[00:07:34] And you've also posted on Instagram, um, about. Some of your expressions of this, of this practice and this celebration and this inversion of that pain is, um, I'm thinking now of a post where you are really looking at, well, the way that the, the human is constructed is also. As man, right. And sharing your own experiences of, is it okay if I quote your Instagram?

[00:08:03] Yeah. So you've written, being a, being a boy and becoming a man, which are all capitalized, are often about not being a girl and not being a woman. Desires and behaviors are snipped and pruned through adult and peer feedback until the residual constructed man remains throughout childhood. My desires and interests.

[00:08:24] Were turned into fear, shame, guilt, anxiety by the social policing of gender. And you've also shared about wanting a Polly Pocket when you're a kid. Um, and I'll carry on quoting here, trapped by walls of intensity, built by the dominant gender ideology, enforced inward orientation of energy, a feedback loop constructing man.

[00:08:48] You go on to say, I found these permissions elsewhere emanating from the bodies of sensory siblings in the liminal cracks. My loving life partner gave me this Polly Pocket. After I shared this memory, I'm in a different feedback loop now. This one starts with the permission to be inside my body fully.

[00:09:06] The rewards of embodiment are joy and love, and the behavior it reinforces are caring, loving, and for a collective consciousness. Voluntary outward orientation of energy, peace, and calm, slither outta the.

[00:09:25] And I love this text so much. Um, and I really want to kind of ask you more about this celebration and this kind of inversion of pain and this inversion of that, um, enforced inward direction of energy then being transformed into this voluntary outward orientation of energy, but particularly in terms of what it means to you to be an artist and.

[00:09:52] That being something that you have really claimed. As something that maybe previously felt like it wasn't, wasn't available, and we'll get into the, to that kind of permission later. But I wanna ask you first of all, what, what pulls you to create, what does it mean to you to be an artist? I think, um, I think creation or the, the drive to create is, it's almost a kind of fundamental aspect of humanity and my experience of humanity, I think.

[00:10:25] Human existence or the, the evolution of, of humanity has been portrayed as kind of survival of the fittest battle of battle of wills. But I think if you look at it from a different perspective, you can also see it as a, a, an experiment in co-creation. Of consciousness. I think one of the kind of beautiful and joyful aspects of being human is the ability to experience consciousness and to self-direct the co-creation of consciousness.

[00:11:01] I think being an artist for me is about the co-creation of. Consciousnesses that are in some way healing, um, generative for the people involved in the artistic relation. So the, the, the artist who's, who's making a piece of work, but then also the people who view the piece of work or imbibe the piece of work in, in some way.

[00:11:31] The, the, the art then is in the space between those people, uh, in the relational space in between rather than any kind of physical object created. So I, I see art as a, a mode of healing. Um, a mode of co-creation of consciousness. And then through those processes, part of a, a feedback loop of collective liberation.

[00:11:59] Through the creation of new consciousnesses and through the healing of old wounds created by structures and systems that have been designed to dominate and to harm and to oppress this idea that you're sharing here of, um. Art is something that exists within relationships. So within the relation between, uh, those who are, uh, within that, within that artistic co-creation of consciousness.

[00:12:28] So art is happening in between rather than, uh. What feels like, uh, often in contemporary art and visual art worlds that actually art happens in the display and the consumption of, of something that someone has created away from where they are and outside of that relationship or outside of the context in which it was created.

[00:12:55] I'm wondering now also about, um. How has it felt for you to want to enter into, uh, that kind of role of being an artist and being presented with an art world that, uh, not only thinks in that way often, but also contains barriers or isn't necessarily transparent in the way that it, it functions in the way that opportunities are made available?

[00:13:23] Yes. I'm curious about. This concept of the self-concept of being an artist that, that you now have, that being new to you and, and what the barriers were both in the art world, in in your own self-concept, in your own kind of feeling that you could take, kind of take that on, and how has that then played out in terms of.

[00:13:46] How comfortable or willing you felt putting yourself out in the world or your ideas into the public realm, all of which also brings into, uh, these non-dominant identities or experiences that you, uh, also hold. So I think the. The, the original barrier to access for me came as a child with my experiences of creating art or wanting to create art and finding it frustrating.

[00:14:18] Within the container offered. The container was largely one that valued the ability to recreate something, uh, some technique or some method or some image or form within a kind of a specified temporal container. Again, and I don't think that is really how my creativity works the, the way my. The way I want to experience creation is through the experimentation with ideas and the, the, the creation of things that are not necessarily gonna be aesthetically interesting or pleasing to people initially, but that allow me to.

[00:15:07] Uh, express some kind of bodily experience, and I think that does lead to aesthetically interesting forms. But I need the space to be able to make mistakes and to get things wrong and to. Make things that aren't interesting to me or anyone else. And within the container, provided as a child, those would be a bad mark at school or someone saying No, do it a different way.

[00:15:39] Uh, a negative response essentially. So the way I was drawn to create was, was punished and this led me to. As someone who was seeking validation and approval and my own place in the world, this was discouraging and, and put me off making things. Um, and I then fell into a story that was the kind of maybe a more classic male autistic story of being good at certain subjects or being good at subjects at school.

[00:16:19] Being good at exams and like going through that kind of process of, of education for the sake of success in, in quotation marks in a sort of societal, societally, culturally defined way. And that led you to a range of different jobs, uh, vocations that are very different from now. Yeah, I ended up, I boxed myself in.

[00:16:46] To, uh, a kind of mode of, of existence and a, a story of, of existence, uh, both in terms of my gender. And then also in terms of, as you say, my, what I was doing with my life and like the ultimate box in a way. I was, I was stuck as, as an accountant for, for like three years and that was working in spreadsheets every day, um, with numbers that didn't mean anything to me.

[00:17:17] So I was kind of literally. Working within these boxes and metaphorically stuck inside these, these constructed boxes, these societally constructed boxes, without having any self-esteem or self-confidence that the creative ideas and the creative feelings that I had would be. Either possible for me to express or interesting to anyone because I'd put myself in a box that felt so alien to what my actual experience of life was.

[00:17:51] I didn't have any relationship with the people who shared that box with me. Like I didn't have any shared experience of, of existence. I didn't feel like I had, um. I dunno, I, I didn't feel like I had a community or access to a community that would appreciate or find useful things that I was thinking about.

[00:18:12] Looking back, can you identify a way out of that book with any particular moments of self revelation or self permission? I think the first, the first experience was one of unbearable and extreme. Pain, mental pain, a buildup of these feelings that were at some point unbearable. And it was a, it was a breaking point that was, that was either going to lead to a rejection of these boxes or something, something more serious in terms of my own health.

[00:18:50] So that breaking point led me to at least divest myself in some degree from the, the mental attachment that I had to. Following through these stories that I'd got stuck in. Then once I'd made that initial divestment, then it was really access to art that had healing effects on me and kind of revelatory realizations, and these weren't.

[00:19:17] Individual events, but over the course of years of experiences of, of artists who expressed similar feelings that I had been feeling. So there was, there was one significant show that I saw by someone who's autistic and non-binary that spoke to me in a way that I'd never been spoken to by, by art before.

[00:19:41] And I just spent the whole time, the whole show crying and. Releasing emotions and feeling things that I hadn't ever really allowed myself to feel before, and that didn't, that didn't lead to any immediate realization about autism or, or anything like that. But it, it was a kind of a step towards listening to my internal experiences rather than privileging external models foisted upon me by others with, with their own agendas.

[00:20:13] And then I think a lot of the realization came through. A lot of the realization about autism came through initially, the process of me trying to figure out like what was wrong with me in quotation marks, sort of self-research, self-analysis, trying to find the, the, the. The cause of what was going on and trying to fix it.

[00:20:39] So I was still within this kind of dominant culture mode of, of trying to resume the kind of productive journey that I felt like I was on the kind of economically, socially utilitarian route, you know, like reading about psychoanalysis, kleinian, psychoanalysis and, and stuff like this. And it was never very satisfying.

[00:21:01] It was always like, uh, it felt like someone had observed someone like me, but hadn't really fully understood what was happening. It was, it was, it was actually through. The work of autistic writers that I began to actually identify myself as autistic, actually understand my experience as an autistic experience.

[00:21:25] So this is, these are scientific writers and researchers like Damien Milton is a, is a key one for me. But then also artists and, and, and authors like Remy ago who I mentioned and your, your work as well, loss the ecology. These kinds of interpretations of my experience that felt like a shared experience and that felt like something that I could actually associate with according to the feelings inside me, rather than the kind of mental model that I'd created according to.

[00:22:03] Observations, I want to quote you again from your Instagram, uh, which is a different post. You write it. It is difficult to translate between my embodied and energetic experience of feeling constantly and in relation to everything fluctuating constellations of bodily responses to all internal and external stimuli.

[00:22:24] Ecological systemic experience of affect does not fit into the dominant model of linear universalized emotional labels. For some time, I thought this was a disorder Alexithymia. I was fine, good or bad. Subtleties of the language eluded me alluding to self depreciating deficits and developmental defects.

[00:22:49] Now I think it's a mismatch of salience, which is, uh, from Damien Milton. A difference in experience and modeling of, and communication between bodies, which is interjected into autistic mind bodies as our deficit to own and bear. How does one usefully communicate these phenomenological, abstract, fluctuating constellations of feeling though.

[00:23:13] So I want to ask you a bit more about this and this notion of affect and also shared affect, um, that you, you're exploring in your work and in this sense of. Within relation and also something that we've talked about before, this sense that to be fully embodied within public space often doesn't feel available.

[00:23:33] I'm really keen for you to kind of share some more thoughts about shared affect in your work. So I think affect to me is affect is a label. That you can use to describe the, the constant experience of fluctuating energetic sensations within our bodies, which have different descriptive es of feeling associated with them, um, and they occur in different spatial configurations as well.

[00:24:14] So there's this kind of constantly fluctuating energetic configuration inside us that is a response to both external and internal imagery. And I mean imagery in a, a broad sense, not specifically visual imagery, symbols, I suppose perhaps. And these, these various configurations of. Feeling they are associated with emotional labels, which are culturally, socially, relationally defined outside of our bodies.

[00:24:57] The language we learn to describe either the state that we are in. As in they observe us and they say, oh, you are feeling a certain way. And they use emotional labels to describe that, and that's reliant on an external interpretation of my internal experience. So there's a disconnect there straight away.

[00:25:22] There's also the possibility of observing completely third party interactions in media or in the other relations that you like within your family or between friends where you observe someone's external. Representation of their internal state. And then you would also observe some other third party's interpretation of that external representation.

[00:25:54] So again, there's a, there's a interpretation of internal states, either a, a primary disconnect or a secondary disconnect. There's like these levels of disconnection. And then again, you can, you can kind of learn the formal definitions of these emotions. But again, there's a, there's a disconnect between the description of what an emotion is and the internal bodily experience that elicits those or that is associated with those emotions.

[00:26:26] So. Affect to me, therefore is the feeling, the, the bodily experience without that social relational layer of emotions, which are a translation, an imperfect translation of, of those experiences. Yeah, this is really good because the, the mismatch between that internal bodily experience and the available tools for communicating them.

[00:26:53] I'm also wondering about your interest in costumes and this idea of regalia and rituals and, and the celebration of. And this reversal of imposed ideas that shared affect. Yeah. So how did costumes and rituals and regalia facilitate that in your, in your, in your thinking? I think of the three, I think rituals and regalia are really the two that, that address the, the idea of shared affect most, um, costumes I see as kind of like the, the stealthy garb that, that we can, we can don as a, as a performative aspect of self according to circumstances required.

[00:27:41] I see Alia as a symbol of self and collective exaltation. So shared effect occurs to me when two or more bodies, and this doesn't have to be human bodies either. I think this can be other, other non-human, non-animal. Bodies when this new arrangement of material matter. So making these arrangements of of matter with consciousness in between, in the relational space, in between this kind of new created, co-created consciousness.

[00:28:22] The affect that the individuals experience are channeled into a kind of collective power, um, which is then also reflected back into the individuals. So, so to me, the, the ritual can be a process of the channeling of. Bodily affect into consciousness, into power and collective liberation, I suppose. So ritual is the method by which this kind of loop, this feedback loop can occur.

[00:29:03] So we've been talking very abstractly, which I love. Um, but I want to ground it now in something, um, that you've created recently, which is a series of live broadcasts over Twitch and Yeah. I wonder if, I wonder if you could just share what, what that was. Yeah. So Twitch is a live streaming. Platform that is largely used for people streaming video games, um, but is also.

[00:29:36] It is also a platform that people use for various artistic projects and just conversation or, or discussion or a variety of different things really. But it's a public forum that anyone can, can stream on and interact with a chat. I used it to stream nine iterative. Performances over the course of about a month.

[00:30:03] So every three days, I, I did a, I did a performance and I, I viewed it as an iterative experience whereby the, the performance changed each time according to. The experience that I'd had the previous time making, the performance, and also anything that had happened in the, the three days in, in between the performances.

[00:30:26] So it was, it was responsive and reactive to the, the reading that I was doing in between the experiences that I'd had in between the relational interactions that I'd had in between. And it was really about making a space for me to express these experiences in a public sphere, a way of learning about myself through performance in a public space.

[00:30:58] I will link to those in the show note, but I wanna speak about the significance of those and the act of giving yourself that framework and that space to do that exploration in a public way and how that came out of a journey that you were going on within solo siblings as well. I've been able to witness, um, you go on this kind of transformation and with how confident and comfortable you felt.

[00:31:27] With being on camera. So some of our, um, our live coaching calls in, so siblings are done over Zoom and they're recorded, and anyone who's in so siblings can then, if they weren't able to attend, can, can go and watch them. There's a, a guideline that everyone who's there can be present in whatever ways work for them.

[00:31:49] So there's no obligation to. Speak or to have your camera on, but something that that was happening a few months ago is that, that the trend started to become, that, that cameras off was the, was the norms of letter workshop around, you know, this question of visibility being also a question of trust and also a question of facilitating connection together.

[00:32:11] But also up until that point, we hadn't seen you. I'd never seen you visibly. And very quickly from then on, you took that leap of courage and ran with it to the extent that you went in, in a matter of months from, you know, not having your camera on to then performing publicly on Twitch through recorded video stream.

[00:32:41] And I, I want to celebrate you really for taking that journey and. Taking those leaps of choosing yourself, choosing self-acceptance, choosing not to be concerned with, you know, the thoughts of what other people's interpretation of you might be, and taking that on as, as something that, that you can own.

[00:33:04] And, and that is a, is, you know, can even be part of your, your self-expression. So I'd really like to ask you. Have I done justice to that, that journey? What was your experience of it? Yeah, I think there's a little bit to add at, at the beginning as well. Probably. I think the, the, the state that you found me in or that I presented myself in to you of not being on camera and not speaking was kind of like the.

[00:33:39] The the end point of a process of retreat, I suppose, that I had been going through for several years, several years previously, really since I left full-time employment or since I left employment. My experience had been that my anxiety around. Being present was an accurate anxiety. It was a, it was a, a useful message that my body was telling me, that I was putting myself in situations that were unpleasant, uh, painful, difficult, and traumatizing and damaging to me, and therefore I started to cut off and to, to remove myself from those situations.

[00:34:30] Uh, like, I haven't, I, I think I, I stopped using telephones for example. I gradually started seeing, I started seeing people just in general and interacting with people in general less and less over, over the years. And then the, the pandemic created a situation where I was able to insulate myself almost completely from the outside world.

[00:34:57] And I, I became kind of relat and didn't interact in, in nearly any way with the external world. Even my own family who, who lived fairly close by, like I was just cut off completely from the, from the social existence. So that that process of insulation and isolation was a kind of defensive reaction to, to these psychological traumas I had been experiencing.

[00:35:30] And they were a response to the anxiety that was an accurate method of, of determining at the time what was gonna be bad for me because everything at that point was bad for me because of the context that I'd placed myself into or that I'd ended up in. But then after that, that process of revealing myself and becoming more visible, I started to experience the anxiety and then a great joy, a great feeling of connection, like a reconnection.

[00:36:04] Um, the reverse again, of that kind of inward process that, that, that outwards expansion of self. So it was like a rebounding of reopening myself back up, experiencing positive reactions both internally and externally. Creation of these good relations internally and externally. That meant that I could start to interpret the anxiety in a different way, not as a, not as a useful way of seeing what to avoid, but as a method of identifying what might be an interesting experience to experiment with.

[00:36:44] And I know that, that, that kind of, um, pressing of a reset button on. You know, ways that we exist with other people will be something that, uh, I think a lot of listeners will identify with. Like, you have this, uh, kind of sense of, oh, it's, it's not something wrong with me. Um, there are other people like me, I've been kind of agreeing with all of the ways that I've been taught to exist with other people that don't work for me, that don't fit my body, that create anxiety.

[00:37:17] Create harm. And so a necessity of undoing or withdrawing from the given social contracts and given ways of relating in order to then reconfigure it. Um, and I also wanna ask about, because there is, in that reconfiguration and that kind of unlearning who you want. Unlearning all of these kind of external ideas about yourself and misinterpretations that other people might have had, that you've then internalized kind of going through this process of unlearning those and then rediscovering or refinding or, or recreating new ways of social belonging and, and communicating.

[00:38:01] There is that desire then to be seen. It's like a human need that we all have to be seen, to be understood, to be. Real in other people's reality. But there's a, there's a gap often between that desire and the, the kind of intellectual knowing that it, that that is something that could be possible and the actions that are required to make that then a possibility.

[00:38:29] So I'm really curious to ask you. How you bridge that gap? What did you have to, um, unlearn in your thinking, or what were the thoughts that changed that interpretation of that anxiety into something that could be joyful? I think, uh, a, a phrase that that really stands out in my head is the, the idea that I don't even need to think about what other people are thinking about me.

[00:38:56] Like I just don't even need to do that. It's not something I have to do. I think I'd always been, I'd been the opposite. I'd been like, I need to think very carefully about what other people think about me. So having that flipped in my head made a huge difference initially in terms of the, the courage to do anything, um, in terms of revealing myself publicly or, or, or being seen or heard.

[00:39:29] I think previously the, the kind of guiding principle of social interactions had been how to shape what other people think about me into, into something that means they will like me, or, or, or want to have some kind of relationship with me. I think it was really just someone else saying it, just someone else giving me the permission that I didn't have to do that.

[00:39:53] That, that was not necessarily the best way or the only way to engage in a, in a relation with other people. The experience of them turning on my camera in the spotlight call was like, it was a, it was a kind of revelatory experience because of the way that anxiety changed into. Pleasure. I suppose it was so different to any experience I've had before where anxiety continued being anxiety or some other form of pain and.

[00:40:35] You know, I'd been told by therapists, like the anxiety peaks and then it follows a graph, like it follows a pattern. It, it declines over time. And like that was never really my experience. My experience was always anxiety peaks and then it stays peaked. So experiencing the, the reverse of that was, was a kind of shock to my system of understanding how this could actually work and.

[00:41:04] How relations didn't have to be continued Anxiety. I remember the call, actually, and I think you shared in the chat the, the 'cause I invited everyone to kind of share what their, what their feeling was at that moment. And you and yours was that you were, you felt like you were ready to fight a bear, that you were being invited into something that, that required adrenaline and um.

[00:41:31] And repositioning that as something that it, to be invited in and to be part of the experience of stepping outside of, uh, previous modes and habitual ways of being with other people into something new where you don't actually know what the result is gonna be. You don't know how you're gonna feel because you've never done it in that way.

[00:41:54] And shifting the interpretation of that, so the anxiety itself not changing or the, the kind of, uh, embodied experience of, of being full of adrenaline didn't itself change, but your thoughts, your interpretation of it changed into This is something that indicates that I am stepping into more of myself and that I am allowing myself to be seen.

[00:42:16] I'm giving myself permission. And then having that be embraced by the other people who are there as well. The other, the other siblings. I want to ask now, what has been the impact of connecting with, uh, other people inside siblings? The presence of the other siblings and the invitation from you and the other siblings?

[00:42:40] For me to share myself created the kind of welcoming environment. That that was in contrast to the hostile environment that I'd found myself in previously. So the relational response to my visibility, the positive relational response to my visibility, it helped to make the connection between the desires that I had for relations with other people.

[00:43:15] And the, the mental thoughts, the intellectualized thoughts that filtered those desires. Mm-hmm. So your thinking was aligned with what the desired result was for you. I wanna ask about what has been the impact of coaching for you, especially for someone who might be new to the idea that coaching is something that could be relevant to them.

[00:43:47] Yeah. So for someone who might have preconceived ideas of what, of what coaching means, what has it meant to you? What has been the impact of it to you? So I, I think I talked earlier about how the containers that I had for artistic creation in my childhood were kind of inappropriate for the way that I thought and the way that I wanted to create.

[00:44:10] And I think coaching provides a different kind of container for artistic and self-expression. Um, I think having someone who, having someone who has a somewhat, at least somewhat shared understanding of the experience of living and a somewhat similar model of existence, uh, an internal, a somewhat similar internal model to, to reflect back and to.

[00:44:51] Investigate and to challenge, I suppose, the kind of assumptions that I have built into my own model of existence over time, according to or having adopted from people who didn't share any experience of existence, didn't share many aspects of internal self model. Provided and provides a vessel, like I said, a container for the investigation of what is possible.

[00:45:27] Encouragement, I think, and permissions to do things that I didn't think I could do for, for really invalid reasons in the past, but someone who's also. Caring, and again, without the sensation that there's this ulterior motive or an observation and an external observation of my body, that that means that that provides this kind of intimacy that I was, that I was referring to the the intimacy of being understood.

[00:46:05] That I've never had from a therapist. The, the intimacy of being treated in a kind of respectful and consensual way in a, in a partnership, I suppose, in a, in a kind of partnership of co-creation. I think, like I wasn't really aware of, of coaching as a, as a concept like I'd always thought. Therapy from therapists or or counselors before, again, within this context of trying to fix what was wrong with me or trying to analyze away what was, what was a, a disorder or a deficit or a, a maladaptive response to reality.

[00:46:48] But coaching provided this, this space for emergence. We've got a couple more questions to finish up, but I really want to just, um, honor you and celebrate you for all of the, the courage involved in taking those leaps and being visible, but now also the way that you are taking up space and insisting on no longer hiding, no longer retreating, but fully embracing and, you know, being a lighthouse to other people who.

[00:47:19] Maybe share those experiences and are, are seeking, are looking for some kind of affirmation of their own experience. In the, in the ways that you are putting your yourself out there are going to have ripple effects in the same way that when you encountered artworks in which you felt seen and and you felt healed, that is gonna now be possible for other people.

[00:47:40] And that is. Is the work that you are doing, and I just want to really celebrate you for that because it's, it's not easy. What would you say to anyone who wants to own all of who they are, wants to take up more of their creative power? To be more visible, but is in the day to day feeling stuck, feeling anxious, not knowing where to start, feeling demotivated, um, feeling fearful of being seen.

[00:48:11] What would you say to them? I think, um, on a practical level, I think I would say, to believe the messages that you're getting from your body, what it's desiring and what it's rejecting. Pay attention to that. Try to understand that and try to notice the, the social filters that are overlaid on top of those experiences.

[00:48:37] I, I would seek community that will elevate you and celebrate your differences rather than trying to cure or cover them up. Take in as much information as you can that inspires and excites you. Collect the data that makes you feel good, and gently, carefully experiment with ways of being and ways of.

[00:49:05] Acting that feel right. And then I think I would also say I've, I've mentioned permissions a few times. I think for me, permission to be myself was always something that I sought from the dominant culture and, and never found, never received those permissions. So I don't know if it will make much difference, but I think I would like to offer my permission, my consent, and my invitation to whoever's listening that uh, you can be yourself and you don't have to adopt these models that are harmful and oppressive.

[00:49:49] That was so brilliant. Laurie, thank you so much. Uh, it's really, truly been a pleasure and an honor. Thank you so much for sharing your story and, uh, and, and so vulnerably as well. Where can people find you online who wanna stay, um, kind of in the loop with what you're creating and what you're putting out in the world?

[00:50:09] You can find me on Instagram at liminal resonance, and I have a website@laurie.hot glue.me, and you can sign up for a mailing list on there. Fantastic, and I'll put all of those in the show notes. And thank you so much for listening, everyone, and thank you, Laurie, for being here. It's been truly amazing.

[00:50:33] Thank you for having me.