Mark [0:00] Hello, Margie. Welcome to the Heart of Connection podcast. I’m your host, Mark Randall and it’s a real pleasure to be able to sit with you for the next 30 minutes to have a conversation about the heart connection. Just by way of getting started, would you mind giving a little bit of an introduction to your kind self?
My Connection Story ~ Margie’s Introduction
Margie [0:19] Hi Mark and thank you for having me. I’m a mother of three. That’s I guess my purpose in life is a mother and that comes first with everything. I’m a nurse by trade I guess. I worked in many areas of nursing, but I keep going back to mental health and I have a passion for perinatal area of mental health and substance use.
Mark [0:53] Is there a connection to it?
The Empowerment of Mothering
Margie [0:56] I think so. I guess I’m a mother, so for me, you know, there’s a bit of a mothering thing, but in mothering, what I really value about mothering is empowering. I think it’s really important to empower yourself and your children and family. To be able to take control and decide what they want to do with their life and how they want to get there. I think that’s really important, and I guess that’s why I keep going back to mental health.
Mark [1:33] And when you step away, what draws you back?
Margie [1:38] So – It’s that I can sit and be with people. It is not task oriented as in other areas of nursing. It’s just – it’s being with people. They allow you to come into their lives and they trust you and they value you and you see people change. Even if it’s just the slightest little bit, by helping them to empower themselves that change occurs, it’s rewarding.
Mark [2:13] As you’re sharing that with me, is there a connection in that process of change between you and the client or you and the person you’re working with?
Connections Help Understand Who We Are
Margie [2:23] Yes, there is because those connections are about helping them to understand who they are. I try to do that just through my observations and getting to know them. It is helping them to develop their awareness of themselves and how they react, how they respond, how they think about what’s happening in their world.
Mark [2:54] Is that introducing them to a connection to themselves?
Margie [2:58] Oh definitely. Yeah, because that awareness, it helps them to understand who they are. It helps them to manage their thinking and their behavior better. They see things in a different light. I guess a lot of the people that I’ve worked with, have felt very judged. They felt very criticized. They felt very disconnected from society, from, being able to feel like they are contributing and they’re being productive and their part of society.
Mark [3:52] As you’re working with them, are you mindful of your connection to yourself?
Margie [4:00] Think I am. I probably a lot of the time don’t acknowledge it. Definitely and working with mums and young babies, I try to use a lot of my skills that I’ve developed as a nurse, but I also use a lot of my mothering skills as well. I just really enjoy watching people grow. It’s very rewarding.
Mark [4:35] How do you keep a check on the connection to yourself? What do you have a process, or strategies, techniques to keep connected to yourself?
Reflecting Within Is My Teaching
Margie [4:51] I guess I do a lot of reflection lot of reflection of conversations, of situations, of interactions and how things make me feel. I guess if I became aware that something makes me feel uncomfortable or just doesn’t sit right or I feel all warm and gooey. I realized that I’m connected and that it’s actually – there’s something in me that is really wanting to be out there to support that person.
Mark [5:39] When you start to sense that, do you sense those connections within your body? When you reflect on things, do you reflect on it, not just from an intellectual mind level but do you drop into your body and is there a felt sense of the connection?
Margie [5:54] Yeah definitely. Yeah, definitely in my stomach and in my chest. That’s where I predominantly feel them. Funnily enough, I can get quite clucky. So there are other physical effects that I have from previously having my children that I recognize, and connect with.
Mark [6:27] What’s that cluckiness feel in your body? Can you describe what you experience?
Margie [6:32] Yeah so It’s like my uterus is calling out and I get the tingling sensation from the letdown reflex in my breasts. My stomach goes all like it’s in a sort of shirl-pool and just like my body sort of melts goes warm and gooyie.
Deep Love of Mothering
Mark [6:57] Is there a sense of love in that?
Margie [7:01] Oh definitely.
Mark [7:04] What happens to you in that sense?
Margie [7:09] It’s very joyful. Yeah, it’s really yummy. When my kids were little, I used to look at them and I just get the same. I’d feel the same way and I’d, just they were so yummy and I felt so yummy, I just wanted to eat them. I didn’t want to be a cannibal, I wanted to take them because I was so yummy. You know it was it was just a way of me, I don’t know, loving them.
Mark [7:37] Was it an extension of you? Just as you were sharing it-it’s like, do you and the child sort of a merging of one but you’re not one?
My Connection to Babies
Margie [7:49] I think is probably that connection with the child or with the baby. You know, there’s I don’t know, it some, just a connection. It’s, you know some of the little babies would be – they recognize me and they’d be happy to see me. They would want me to pick them up or want me to take them from their mum. The mums actually really responded so warmly and so positively to that-that their child took to me. I felt very privileged.
Mark [8:28] I could imagine that would build up so much trust.
Margie [8:32] Yeah, because the baby trusts me, so mum trusts me. I think also, you know, mum had already started trusting me. I try to be conscious of not being judgmental or critical. I really try to be mindful of empowering people through you know, getting them to take responsibility. To think about how they are affected by things but in turn, how things affect them.
Mark [9:09] Wondering, just out of curiosity whether there’s – it’s like you’re mirroring the connection to the mother?
Margie [9:18] Yeah I think so. Yeah, and it’s, I think to the other thing is that the Mums – it does mirror how they want to have a connection to their child. So it’s helping them to help their relationship with their child.
Mark [9:43] When there is a disconnect what do you notice? What do experience?
Margie 9:54
Bluntness, there’s underlying anger, hostility, and there’s just that dismissiveness between both the mum and the child. Then you see the child so wanting their parents to connect with them.
Mark [10:25] The tactile connection?
Babies Expressing Their Need for Connection
Margie [10:26] Not just that. It’s their behavior, it’s their facial expressions, it’s the voice they use or the cry they use. Yeah and the tactile and you’re just watching the disappointment, the realization that again they’re not connecting. Mum’s not listening, Mum’s not hearing, Mum’s not seeing. It’s heartbreaking.
Mark [10:59] You touching it now as you’re sharing the story?
Margie [11:02] Yeah. It’s sad to watch but at the same time, you know, you can see where Mum’s at as well. You know what’s driving that, what’s causing that.
Mark [11:24] Is that a disconnect in her life somewhere?
Margie [11:26] Oh very much so yeah. Disconnected from her own emotions and not being out of help or role model to her baby, how to sit with emotion. How to just be with it and it is okay.
Our Emotional Health Underpins Our Mental Health
Mark [11:46] From your experiences at the emotional health that underpins our mental health?
Margie [11:51] Definitely, yeah.
Mark [11:55] So the disconnection to our emotional health in that, can facilitate a mental health process later in life?
Margie [12:06] Yeah, because you avoid anything that’s unpleasant. Anything that makes you uncomfortable, that upsets you. People avoid, you know, that’s part of that-that survival mechanism. The fight and flight response. Yeah. If you can’t connect with emotions, how do really connect with the world? How do you connect with other people? If you can’t connect with your emotions, how do you understand what other people feel, what they experience, you can’t – you can.
Connecting To Our Emotions Develops Our Empathy
Mark [12:51] Sort of a deficit in the ability to empathize, to have empathy. If they’re not connected into their own emotions. Yeah, then how can I understand or sense, or that felt a sense of the empathy of another person’s emotion.
Margie [13:05] Yeah, they can’t from my observations of working with people. If they’re not connected to their emotions, they really don’t have a clue about what other people are experiencing, particularly their children.
Mark [13:22] How important is that emotional connection, for our connection to each other?
Margie [13:31] Well, if you can’t connect, you can’t connect. So, therefore, it’s like you’re living in a silo. So you might able to touch each other but you can’t – it’s like, it’s cold. There’s no, a lack of interaction. There’s a lack of warmth, there’s a lack of lots of things humility, love, understanding, and compassion. How do you empower people?
Describing the Essence of Heart
Mark [14:07] The word sitting in my consciousness obviously is, there a lack of heart or a lack of connection to the heart?
Margie [14:16] What do you described the heart as?
Mark [14:20] In the Eastern philosophy, when they point to the mind a point to their heart. In the West, when we point to our minds, we point to our head. I guess for me, from an Eastern perspective the heart is the emotionality. It’s the emotional center. The heart chakra is the emotional center of the humaneness. Yeah, how do we embody into that and connect to that?
Margie [14:51] Well people have to learn to tolerate emotions, whether they are pleasant or not pleasant. If you know, a lot of what you’ve experience particularly as a child growing up is unpleasant, then what are you gonna do? You’re going to avoid it ain’t you. Then you’re not going to know, what to do is pleasant emotions because you haven’t really experienced them.
Mark [15:21] How do you then, move that out to broad connections to others? When you’re talking about the love of children just wanting to eat them (LOL). There’s so much joy and it was like you were radiating – it was beautiful sense. Does that go out to the broader friends? Are you mindful of that sort of – when you are connecting into others?
Sharing Pleasant Emotions Is Just Part of Me
Margie [15:56] I think, I’m not sure that I’m mindful. I think I am just that. I like those pleasant emotions. I like those pleasant sensations. So they’re just part and parcel now of me. I don’t try to hide them. I don’t have to push them or get them out of the cupboard or anything. They’re just there-there always just there.
Mark [16:30] What’s that like to have them always just there?
Margie [16:34] It’s good.
Mark [16:36] What happens the well-being? Can you describe what happens to your well-being?
Margie [16:47] I don’t know. I think I’m more, I get – I think, because I like and I enjoy having my emotions right there when I see that other people are struggling, or inhibited, or obstructed from experiencing those emotions, I get frustrated. I try to advocate in whatever way that might be, whether it’s really subtle with it’s really obvious. Yeah, so I guess maybe my well-being, is just I don’t know, just there.
Mark [17:33] Is there freedom and peace in that space?
Margie [17:37] Oh yeah. It’s good.
Mark [17:42] Do you center in it?
Margie [17:44] Yeah, I think I do.
Mark [17:51] When you’re triggered out of there, to unpleasant experiences, unpleasant emotions. Do you then take the pleasant emotions, to nourish the unpleasant emotions? How do you bring it back?
Margie [18:08] So for me, I guess I try to find out. Think about reflect, figure out what is driving those unpleasant emotions. What is it that’s that’s triggered them and I think about my past experiences where I’ve felt you know those similar emotions. What is it that – what is it, how is it making me feel and then once I’ve sort of done that, and that can you know, be a very short process or it can be a really long process. Then I’m able to sort of step back from it and be able to look for the things that make me feel positive and happy.
Mark [19:08] When you’re stepping back, are you observing, witnessing the unpleasant emotion?
Learned to Observe the Unpleasant Emotion & Step Back
Margie [19:15] Yeah, definitely. I’m able to, I’ve learned how to step out of it and observe. Which is, you know, that’s been hard going. That’s been you know, taking a long time to learn that. It’s good to be at a do it now. Sometimes I can do it at a quicker time, at a quicker pace than others. Depending on what it is that I’m feeling and what’s triggered me and what’s it’s brought up.
Mark [19:49] When it gets triggered the unpleasant emotion, there, by stepping back and observing are you then just able to observe the sort of the story that goes with the narrative?
Margie [20:03] Yep. Which is interesting, but it’s also powerful. It’s powerful because it helps me understand everything that shaped me in my life. You know all those interactions, situations, events, words spoken, actions, inactions and how they’ve impacted on me and how they still do.
Mark [20:33] It sounds empowering.
Margie [20:35] It is. Yeah.
Mark [20:37] And that’s what you want to share in your work with?
Margie [20:41] I think so. Yeah.
Mark [20:48] To broaden it further, how do you connect to the “All That Is” – whatever that is for you?
Connecting the World of Mother Earth
Margie [21:00] I believe there is a higher being. I guess the thing that I really want to feel connected to is nature. It is very sad and seems to be lost in the world is our connection to the to the world in which we live in. To the planet, to the animals, to all the creatures that are here. We are part of a cycle, we’re part of a whole being, yet for some reason, our species seems to have disconnected. We think that we’re not a part of this life cycle. And that we can just treat it with such disrespect and such meanness and just be so unkind and so ungrateful of the beauty within the world. It makes me really sad.
Mark [22:08] What do you experience when you do connect to that beauty in the world?
Margie [22:12] Joy, happiness, just awareness, and appreciation? And, you know, it builds my curiosity and I, you know, it just amazes me. The way nature is and the way nature works. It’s just so amazing.
Mark [22:36] Do you become part of it?
Margie [22:37] Yeah, I think so. Yeah, definitely.
My “I” Dissolves In my Connection to Nature
Mark [22:40] When it becomes part of it, what happens to the sense of “I,” the sense of “self,” Does that?
Margie [22:48] Well, it’s not. I’m just, I’m part of it. So, I’m connected to it. My, what I do, how I behave, how I live effects and impacts on nature. So, I try. I’m doing, I’m trying little things. Like not to use bottles. You know, use plastic, I beg your pardon. To try and recycle and be really mindful of the products that I’m buying. How it’s used and how it’s broken down. How it’s going to impact you know, the long term looks, I guess.
Mark [23:35] When you connect to nature, could you describe what you experience, at the full realms of their psyche, the physical, the mental, emotional, spiritual?
Connecting to Nature Brings Calm & Balance
Margie [23:48] Emotional, I feel really joyful, calm, balanced. I guess psychologically, I feel, you know, it makes me realize how everything is so interwoven and how important it is, that we, you know, care for it and physically, you know, I love walking on grass. I love getting out in the dirt and feeling the dirt and smelling you know, the dirt and all those sorts of things.
Mark [24:38] And when you do that, what do you notice? What does experience happens in your mind and your mental health when you?
Margie [24:44] Oh, much calmer. Much calmer my brain rests I guess. I’m not busy. I’m not thinking all the time. I’m just at that moment. I’m just in that, you know, in that environment. I’m in the dirt, I’m in the wind and the sun and, you know, aware of the sounds around me. I notice the little, the little bugs and yeah, it’s just, it’s nice, it’s really good.
Mark [25:22] I’m just reflecting back on your conversation before about how we become so disconnected as, us as human beings from nature. I’m wondering, is it the busyness in our mind that is disconnecting us from our connection to nature, and to who we really are. We are animals, we’re mammals?
A lot of subliminal propaganda and advertising for Disposable Society
Margie [25:50] I think it’s more than that. There’s a lot of subliminal propaganda and advertising and this idea and attitude that everything is disposable. It’s, gives me what I want now, and it’s all very money oriented, very consumerism, it’s very wasteful, it’s very materialistic and it’s very fake.
Mark [26:32] If we become an experience, the empowerment that you experience with yourself, if we multiply that, raise the consciousness out there, what impact will that have on Mother Earth?
Margie [26:53] How will it everybody does a little bit and things shift and awareness grows then the impact that’s occurring will hopefully slow and reduced and Mother Earth can start recovering and restoring herself. We can actually learn to appreciate and look after her. In turn, look after ourselves but that attitudes gotta change. There’s got to be a shift in thinking in attitudes and in expectations.
Mark [27:29] Would it bring more compassion to Mother Earth?
Margie [27:33] Yeah, definitely bring more compassion to each other.
Mark [27:42] Can we do it?
Margie [27:43] I hope so. I really, really hope so. Yeah, I worry about my children and their children and their children’s children. What’s going to happen? The world can only sustain us for so long and if we’re abusing it, you know, it’s gonna decide to retreat in whatever way that’ll be.
World Heart of Connection Day – September 4, 2019
Mark [28:10] I’d like to have a World Heart of Connection Day.
Margie [28:14] Oh, that be a really good day. Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.
Mark [28:18] Where it reminds me of the Boxing Day tsunami and/or the energy that was in the world. I don’t know whether I was reading correct, but all I could feel on that Boxing Day was compassion, worldwide compassion. It was unpleasant but the compassion that came to the unpleasant held that unpleasant experience. If we can do it in that space, why can’t we choose to do it in other spaces? What’s stopping us? What’s prohibiting us?
Margie [29:06] Media, propaganda? So.
Mark 29:07
Yeah, no, yeah.
Commercialism and Materialism Are Stopping Change
Margie [29:14] You know, this is not going to make money, is it?
Mark [29:20] No, we can’t market it. Content marketing? (Laughter) How do we market it? Oh My God, it’s free. It is free and we can share it.
Margie [29:30] Yep,
Mark [29:32] yep. And we can share it.
Margie [29:34] Yeah. Yep.
Mark [29:36] Very, it quite simple really.
Margie [29:39] It is yeah.
Mark [29:41] It’s sad that we’re going down…..
We, Human, Have Disregard for The Planet
Margie [29:47] Yeah, it’s scary what the world’s become and what it’s becoming. People just, I mean, my personal view is that humans are the most hideous species on this planet, because of the way we just, disregard and destroy what’s in nature.
Mark [30:14] There is an arrogance.
Margie [30:16] Absolutely, absolutely.
Mark [30:18] Self-righteous. arrogance or…How do we, and I’m wondering in that if we disconnected from our bodies, and disconnected from our hearts and our emotions?
Margie [30:32] Yeah, we’ve just totally disconnected. Yeah. I guess if you reflect over history, there have been different generations and different cultures that are connected with nature. Those people are connected with themselves.
Mark [30:57] When we’re in nature, there is a simplicity in nature.
Margie [31:04] There’s not perfection. There are not straight lines. There’s not formalization, it’s just what it is and it’s beautiful and we don’t appreciate it.
Mark [31:18] Is there any advice that you would like to offer young women growing up and mothers growing up and fathers, young boys growing up into the world, around the Heart of Connection?
Work Out Who You Are & Be Honest
Margie [31:37] I think you need to work out who you are. What you believe in what your values are and live by them. Be honest with that, be honest with yourself because that is one of the most empowering things you can do is, to be honest with yourself and a lot of people aren’t they are too scared to.
Mark [32:00] That’s a powerful connection to yourself.
Margie [32:02] It is yeah!
Mark [32:05] Thank you for the opportunity to connect with you in this conversation.
Margie [32:10] I thank you for having me. That’s great.
Mark [32:11] Namaste.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai