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Series 2, Ep15: Being in transition, with Rebekah Ubuntu

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EPISODE NOTES

 

 

In this week’s episode of The Unmasking Unschool Podcast,

I am joined by Rebekah Ubuntu (they/them, she/her)

who generously shares their unique perspective on what it means to be in transition;

  

Refusing to be a finished product; a destination, a known self,

and being open to the mystery of being in process.

 

Rebekah articulates felt truths that have emerged inside the experience of not knowing, and not needing to know, who they are becoming next;

 

"refusal as an act of love"
 

“in honouring refusal, I am also visualising everything that is refused, not being rejected or thrown away […] Composting as a literal phenomena [that] I derive a lot of hope, not necessarily optimism, but hope that even in the face of life destroying forces, that nature has a way of bringing some kind of balance.”

 

I'm so grateful to have Rebekah on the podcast, and for the wisdoms they shared.

 

TRANSCRIPT:

 

[00:00:00] You are listening to the Unmasking Unschooled podcast. This is for visionaries, creatives, and changemakers who happen to be autistic, who are done with pathology paradigms, the masks and misinterpretations of the past and the burnout cycles that come. From trying to fit in with what doesn't work. You are here to create new aligned life structures, to innovate industries, to design liberatory solutions, and create new culture by becoming yourself.

[00:00:42] My name is Louisa Shaeri. I'm an artist, coach, and founder of SOLA Systems. This is all about you getting unstuck, reinventing and elevating your sense of self, having the social context and frameworks to make a life that makes sense for how you make sense. So you can finally experience who you're here to be in your fullness.

[00:01:02] Let's deep dive into it.

[00:01:10] Sibling, when you are in the process of becoming, when you are focused on the changes that you're wanting to make and the things that you want to create, The experience of your life that you haven't had yet and becoming the version of you that can create it. There is a temptation, especially in today's world, where there is so much focus on the finished product on showing only the destination, the recognition on the visible aspects of that journey.

[00:01:41] There's a temptation to devalue that inner experience of being in the becoming when That's what it's about. And so I'm really excited for today's episode because I'm joined by Rebekah Ubuntu. Rebekah's pronouns are they, them, and she, her. And we met while I was in process of working towards starting SOLA Systems, reckoning with my misgivings about the art world that we were both part of.

[00:02:08] And Rebekah also joined the The very first iteration, the very first version of what is now called the Unmasking Unschool. And so Rebekah has been witness to some of that messy, unsure, feeling out in the dark, not knowing what's going to work, imperfect process of being in a pivot, being in a transition.

[00:02:29] And so it's been a real pleasure to then also coach Rebekah one on one and witness their own journey of being in process and transition. This conversation is a glimpse into Rebekah's unique framing and perspective of being in transition, being in process. And as told from the inside, here is our conversation.

[00:02:53] So I am super excited to have Rebekah on the podcast today. And for the conversation that we're about to have, before we get into it, I want to speak about the decision to open yourself up to a transformation and how much that is a decision that requires courage. It's the decision to open yourself up to what could be, to who could I be.

[00:03:21] To what is within me and how my, the way that's expressed be transformed in such a way that I can live more in integrity with that. And some of that work was about refusing the received ideas, the past versions, the imposed agendas of others, the limitations that we might be experiencing in terms of who do I think I am, how am I being in the world, what is my relationship to myself.

[00:03:52] So that decision to open yourself up to the unknowns of some kind of transformation is one that requires a lot of courage. The SOLA system, 'solar', is a symbol of the heart. I haven't talked about that much before. The heart is where courage lives. So this is what it's about. And so, That transformation that someone is deciding to open themselves up to as they enter into coaching is a courageous one and it's not just the person who is being coached that is transforming.

[00:04:29] The coach is also opening themselves up to a transformation and that is because the person who's being coached is always bringing subjective systemic energy material. The transformation is of that material and is affecting both of us. So, what serves the person I'm coaching, the transformation that they're looking for, the type of space is always different.

[00:04:57] And so, I'm really excited to welcome Rebekah as someone who is courageous in being open to that transformation. But also courageous in coming on the podcast to share something about that and what the experience has been like, but also I also want to start us off with the impact that that's had on me, which is really being able to witness you as a verbal processor and as someone who has a strength in being able to articulate What I have experienced as felt truths, the naming of both injustices, but also possibilities, uh, spiritual insights.

[00:05:48] And so what has been able to happen because of that, and also because of a lot of what has been shared between us is a language of energetics, a language of symbolism. and really trusting that, that we've been able to traverse lots of different, um, planes of existence. And so some of those insights have tumbled forth in a way that I think has surprised us both.

[00:06:15] And so part of my role in coaching you, Rebekah, and I'll invite you on in a minute to let me know if, if this has felt true to you or not, has been wanting to reflect and feedback to the delight. In what is being transmuted what is being transformed in the energies that we're working with and sometimes those show up in the personal narrative and sometimes those show up as a systemic energy.

[00:06:43] But yeah, we, we traveled deep, we traveled slow, so it was a real honor for me to coach you and to also learn from the gifts of insight that you brought. Now, we've discussed how we might structure this conversation so that rather than speak to the kind of material, the systemic, the, the, the tangible real world aspects of your story, rather than.

[00:07:17] expose them and open up what has been a very private and very deep experience, that instead we want to share a perspective, share an experience of what, what is it like to be in transition? It's not a linear journey, there's no arrival, there's no A to B, but there might be patterns and there might be Uh, cycles, there might be phases.

[00:07:43] When I talk about the SOLA system, I speak to these phases as a spiral being willing to walk into, enter into the unknowns, the tunnel of un, that we don't know who we are. We don't know what the consequences of our decisions are. Sensing in that darkness, in the generative space of not knowing what is within.

[00:08:05] And then out of that comes new structures and this kind of phasing is always kind of cycling and repeating and, and holarchic and multiple it's happening in, in many different phases and arenas of life. And for you, Rebekah, I know that seasons. Seasons has been an important framing for you in terms of how you plan, how you experience.

[00:08:31] And we've also had the language of astrology be a very significant aspect of how we've coached together, uh, which is really a language of. of seasons, right, of planetary seasons. And so even though we might be returning to the same seasons, the same themes, it's, there's always something different. There's always something that's, that's shifted or changed.

[00:08:57] And I also know that, uh, you have two favorite seasons. So, we've structured this podcast around those two favorite seasons, autumn and then spring. And so let's begin. Welcome Rebekah. So let's begin with, with autumn. So if I think about autumn, I think about the leaves falling. I think about some kind of bearing of fruit, a theme that you've brought into coaching and a phrasing has been composting.

[00:09:30] aerating the past. So when it comes to autumn, the question I'd love to start us with is what are you composting? Thank you for the introduction. I value that. Thank you. Um, and hello to everyone that's listening. In the future. And I just want to acknowledge the incredible archive in a kind of audio and audio visual archival world making that is podcasting or audio casting or audio art.

[00:10:13] And. I think that this is my first appearance on an official podcast and so I'm grateful to be on a podcast with someone that I've been in a very personal and very private and very precious journey with. A kind of portal of incubation and reflection and being underground. And as I kind of call in a sense of underground ness, I feel like I'm also calling in Um, compost, I'm calling in soil and I'm calling in soil, not just as metaphor or figurative.

[00:11:24] I'm calling in soil as a literal energetic. I'm calling in all of the contemporary efforts to bring health and aliveness. and fertility and sustainability back to our soil systems all over the world. I'm calling in all of the incredible efforts to create life from desert lands, um, through various indigenous culture ways, way making.

[00:12:13] I'm calling in the shape of the half moon, which is a shape that is widely used now and is being used or accessed a lot more now to bring back life to the deserts all over the world. I'm calling in all of the greening, uh, efforts on desert lands, and I'm calling in all of the efforts to, um, regenerate and make sustainable, um, our soils.

[00:12:53] Yeah. So, for folks who know about permaculture efforts and indigenous waymaking efforts in terms of land, You'll, you'll know what I mean. And for people that don't, this may spark some deep dives. Yeah. So in terms of composting, yeah, I think that, um, in our conversation through our coaching, which has been a year long process, we've talked about many things and one of those things is.

[00:13:32] refusal. That word has come up a lot in our time together. Uh, and it shaped a lot of my thinking and dreaming and visioning and reflecting. And so in honoring refusal, I am also visualizing everything that is refused, not being rejected or thrown away. the word dispossessed comes to mind. It isn't a kind of dispossession.

[00:14:15] It's a kind of transmutation, like refusal as an act of love. Um, so with that in mind, a reference that I want to call in is this book that I have been sitting with and coming back to since 2021 titled Undrowned. Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Chapter 13 is titled Refuse.

[00:14:57] So I just want to read from this one segment that begins this chapter, and it begins like this. And then there are marine mammals. that have most effectively escaped observation. For example, the deep diving beaked whales, many of which have never been positively identified by western scientists. The Atlantic gray whales who disappeared during the slave trade and have just recently reappeared, and the Hawaiian monk seals who are regenerating themselves on military bases that have shut down in the archipelago.

[00:16:00] What becomes possible when we are immersed in the queerness of forms of life that dominant systems. cannot chart, reward, or even understand. What becomes possible when we are immersed in the queerness of forms of life that dominant systems cannot chart, reward, or even understand? I feel like this is a kind of philosophy meets a pragmatic application of world building, way building.

[00:17:02] And composting is, for me, both a philosophy, a metaphor, a kind of archetypal evocation and also an actual practical get your hands dirty kind of approach to regenerating and I will reference indigenous Ways of growing, of stewarding of, for example, the controlled burn is a form of composting. whereby accumulated leaves and bush that, unless attended to, create more spark for intense fires that cannot be contained and are ultimately not conducive to the forest and to life and to sustaining various ecosystems, including humans who are also part of that ecosystem.

[00:18:29] I think about permaculture design, not at the exclusion of indigenous ways, but rooted in indigenous ways. And indigenous to reference not only, um, Turtle Island indigenous knowledges and ways that have been passed down, also African ways. And this is an acknowledgement of lineages that live in my actual DNA, heritage, culture, and also that I have been, sadly, like most people in the world.

[00:19:15] You know, so called West, taught to devalue, taught to ignore, taught to undermine, taught to associate with, um, everything that is not of value. And to come full circle, what are you composting and to reference your tunnel of un metaphor. One of the greatest unlearnings is. To unlearn a kind of systematic and violent destruction, and to learn how to value, to learn how to be with discomfort, to learn how to be compassionate towards parts of self that have been violently colonized under a regime of life destroying forces.

[00:20:24] And how to acknowledge that those forces have shaped oneself. This is, I think, part of composting, rather than rejecting parts of self. Understanding that even parts that have been shaped by some of the most abhorrent horrors known to our species, that even in that horror, there is Something quite magic that occurs in nature, which is a kind of dust to dust, ash to ash, where everything ultimately goes back to the same place, where no one lives forever, where no empire rules forever, and where even sites of mass destruction can become sites of wondrous nature and a kind of nature restoration.

[00:21:37] I think about Chernobyl and how, despite humans being unable to Go back or rehabilitate that site, which was destroyed because of a nuclear disaster, a human made disaster. That wildlife is flourishing. This isn't to romanticize human made disaster. This is to say, That composting is a literal phenomena, and I derive a lot of hope, not necessarily optimism, but hope that even in the face of life destroying forces, that nature has a way of bringing some kind of balance.

[00:22:37] So those are my musings. Thank you so much for that. I'm curious about the process of, of trusting nature has a way, we are nature, and nature has a way, even as you said, in what is difficult, what is harm, and so for someone who maybe has felt the impact of the Material experience. and the framing of different forms of harm.

[00:23:23] Is there anything that you might say to someone who, you know, maybe your experience of who you are, your sense of self, though it may have been shaped by lots of different things, including what you've spoken to, to be able to, to perceive that in your own relationship with yourself, to be able to trust that.

[00:23:45] to be able to open up a space and carve out, to be able to reorient and give it the value, to pay the attention, to give it the time, the energy to no longer look away, to no longer turn away from what was difficult, what is difficult. Is there anything that you want to share about that? And I guess I'm, I'm, I'm thinking about, you know, what have been the supportive conditions that have helped you to trust and make that possible for you to be in transition, to be in composting?

[00:24:25] What have been the, uh, the conditions that have made that more possible? Yeah. Thank you for that question. Um, I wanted to reference a book by a social justice semantics practitioner called Stacey Haynes. The book is called The Politics of Trauma, Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice. In the chapter titled Embodied Resilience, There is an exploration of how to make tangible, resilient, building, way making, way finding, and way sharing.

[00:25:13] So, in this chapter, I'm just going to read a little segment. We can explore what inherently supports resilience in us. Here are some of the key things and research that has shown to bring us resilience. Thank you Which of these do you relate to, and what would you add? Connection to nature, animals, and land.

[00:25:42] A deep sense of spirituality that is experienced directly, not necessarily religion. Art, music, creativity, dance. Helping and making a difference for others. Experiences of loving and being loved. Collectively, making music together, moving together, sharing purpose and practice, learning something that brings you joy or fulfillment, imagining positive futures, play.

[00:26:20] As you review this list, what other experiences of your resilience come to mind? elicit at least two more and remember them in detail. I love texts that help to create pathways of application, pathways of embodied. Engagement in a world that is at least in the so called West, very oriented towards language, which has its place and kind of systematically oriented away from being present enough to feel, to notice sensation.

[00:27:15] And this text invites a noticing of sensation for the direct purpose of cultivating resilience. Which, on a planet that is in a state of climate emergency, sensing, and feeling, and pausing, and remembering, noticing, and sharing all of this with each other with chosen, trusted confidence, can very easily be bypassed, skipped over, disregarded, and ignored.

[00:27:58] In favor of a type of top down mind over kind of dominant engagement with self and each other, which is how we got here in the first place. And so I appreciate these pragmatic, that is, ways of applying, making tangible, making accessible suggestions. for the cultivation of resilience. Resilience not only just for ourselves as human beings, resilience in terms of how we as humans engage with each other and our living, breathing environments.

[00:28:50] Yeah. And one last segment I'll read from this chapter on resilience is a suggestion that opens like this. There are three key ways to cultivate resilience. One is to purposefully find and do the activities that bring you resilience, daily, weekly, and monthly, while you notice the sensations and soma. The second is to notice moments and experiences of resilience and consciously feel, linger in, and somatically experience them.

[00:29:33] The third is to practice collective resilience with others. We can do this with our families, our communities, and our organizations. So I love what you shared there, Rebekah, because it speaks so much to the significance of relationship for resilience, the significance of coming together, of being in practice collectively and the types of noticing that become available when you are experiencing a witness, experiencing another's presence and being in the moment together.

[00:30:21] I'm wondering what your thoughts are in terms of relationship for practices that are involved in composting. You know, I want to acknowledge that when you and I started working together, I was in the very raw, immediate aftermath of a very big grief, um, having lost someone very, very, very close to me. And that loss and being in that grief process felt like it was a kind of parallel, a kind of multiply parallel process unfolding alongside, uh, a grieving of a life that I had, I hadn't quite come to terms with.

[00:31:17] Accepting or even knowing that it wasn't, it wasn't in alignment for many reasons. That a particular trajectory or a particular way of life or a particular direction or a particular idea of a North Star was no longer what felt resonant. And that is also a type of grief. And I think it acknowledges transformation.

[00:31:54] One thing I've come to appreciate as someone being in group containers, yours being one and being a part of a few others as well, as well as being in this one on one with you, is that there is a way in which the kind of The way that you and I were working together, it was on this weekly basis and this kind of weekly charting and weekly documenting of a transformation in process.

[00:32:29] And I feel that there's something really important about the in process. Witnessing, having someone witness you being in a process and reflecting that back to you. The way that I can describe it is like, if you imagine kind of traveling through some kind of portal so fast that you can't really take in what's happening.

[00:33:03] Things are just spinning and it can feel a little bit like a make or break. So I think that any kind of container that offers you a space to land on a kind of consistent basis, a kind of returning again and again and again, it offers some kind of rooting and stability, where, when your life is in a state of flux, for whatever reason, it may be a loss, a grief, or it may just be a kind of A questioning or a kind of existential moment of I've been on a route for however long I've been on it and now there are just so many parts of it that don't resonate.

[00:33:52] How do I make sense of this? I think that containers where you have people to support you to feel contained somewhat can really help to soften what can feel like a very harsh process. And I think that our working together is, is I think a reflection of a process that has been a place to land, a kind of consistent place to land.

[00:34:35] And that has been really supportive. You've spoken there to rooting, stabilizing, a place to land, and it feels like a natural invitation to move to spring. And so I'd love to ask you, Rebekah, what are you seeding? I

[00:35:01] think that I'm seeding, um, several commitments that There's a phrase called, I think it's called staying with the trouble, like the cultivation of the ability to stay with moments of challenge, of conflict, of disturbance, of, um, edges. That is so real for me. The conflicts start with oneself, where there can be different parts of self, one part wants to run forward and another part wants to stay.

[00:35:51] One part is courageously and perhaps somewhat, um, I think about myself sometimes that's like these parts of like inner teenagers who are like, let's just go. And then there's other parts that feel really soft and sensitive. that are like, I don't feel ready. And so how do I actually have a consent based relationship with the parts of myself first?

[00:36:30] Because that's where it all begins. That part that wants to run ahead, if I kind of allow that part to be in charge, for lack of a better term, then that can sometimes and often does show up in how I relate with other people. And so learning to be with and notice, that's a lot of what I'm seeding at the moment.

[00:36:57] I've been taking several courses around consent and around being with conflict. Understanding that being with conflict or one of those skills that like permaculture that totally makes sense, but is not a everyday part of our enculturation as a world. Never mind in relationship with each other. So how, how do I learn to stay with the trouble?

[00:37:40] How do I cultivate the spaciousness within myself to stay with, not just to stay with, to tolerate and like put up with the trouble, but really to be with it, to be compassionate towards it. It comes back to composting. Nothing gets thrown away, no one gets thrown away, and how do we throw ourselves away first, right?

[00:38:10] Oh, you're an inconvenient part who's getting in the way of, quote, progress, you're slowing me down. Okay, I'm going to disregard you. Nothing is wasted, no one is wasted. Everything can form part of a regenerative whole and that starts with me first and my relationships and the way that I interact and that is also part of refusal, being able to say no, or not right now, or I'm not sure.

[00:38:49] Or maybe, and so I'd say that I'm seeding consent, Wheel of Consent by Betty Martin comes to mind. Um, the practices of conflict process and the work of Kai Cheng Tom comes to mind. And I would say that regenerative farming comes to mind, regenerative agriculture, regenerative growing comes to mind. Yeah, I want to thank you for staying with the experience of being in process, being in transition being with all of where you're at right now, in this particular moment that we're recording and giving us a glimpse and, uh, being so willing to offer up some of the wisdoms from your own experience.

[00:39:56] understanding of what it's like to be in that and be with it. It's been an honor to have you on the podcast, but before we wrap up, is there anything that feels left unsaid? That is present for you right now. I guess I want to say thank you for your belief in your own capabilities to be a supportive other for people who, you know, before 2019 you and I hadn't met, and you were building the SOLA system and the ecology of SOLA.

[00:40:42] Thank you And it didn't exist before then, which is really weird to say because having been in process with you in various different capacities and iterations, it kind of feels like it's always existed. And yet it hasn't. And so I think that there's a way in which way making is a form of magic and bearing witness and being a witness and trusting in our abilities to be a witness for each other is part of that magic and it's part of that process.

[00:41:23] And I think that being in process with someone who. is committed to being a supportive witness like yourself, and who's rooted in, you know, a myriad of intersectional justices, which we could, you know, kind of loosely name social justice, you know, I've really needed that. And I'm sure that other people that you've worked with both in group and one to one have really needed that.

[00:41:58] And there's a way in which when caterpillars go into their cocoons to transform, it's like a goop. It's a gel. It's a liquid. It's really hard to quantify. How do you quantify a liquid? I'm sure that you could, you could, you know, do harm, maybe for the sake of like, scientific inquiry of like, What is this goo made of and da da da da da da.

[00:42:25] But then there's this kind of surrendering to the mystery of transformation. And I suppose I just want to acknowledge the ways in which I'm still processing the labors of love that have unfolded in our coaching containers together. And that, that was really the motivation for me being on the pod. It's just to bear witness to a transformation in process, and to try to kind of give some pragmatic resources, because that's just who I am, while also honoring that there are some things that can't really be quantified.

[00:43:17] So that's what I'll leave on. Thank you so much, Rebekah, and thank you for offering up resources as well as philosophy and a framing and an imagination of what it is to choose to be in transformation and be in process and to trust the mystery, trust what is unseen and trust the unfolding of it. You're an example of it.

[00:43:44] And I'm so grateful that you have been willing to share that with me and with the listeners. Thank you, Rebekah.

 

 

 

 

 

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