The Beauty of Letting Go: Finding Peace in Uncertainty and Reparenting Ourselves

In this deeply reflective episode of Beauty in the Break, Foster and Cesar dive into the challenge of letting go of control and what it truly means to surrender. They explore personal stories of grappling with repetitive thought patterns, from childhood conditioning to parenthood and beyond. Cesar shares his current process of learning how to learn, breaking old patterns of fear and self-doubt, while Foster reflects on the lifelong lesson of surrendering to the unknown—especially through the lens of pregnancy, birth, and parenting. 

Together, they unpack the voices that shape our inner narratives and discuss how recognizing these voices can lead to greater self-awareness, healing, and grace. Whether you’re navigating relationships, personal growth, or parenting challenges, this episode offers a powerful reminder that true freedom comes from trusting the process.

In this episode, we explore: 

• Why control is an illusion and how it keeps us stuck
• The unexpected power of Foster’s single ‘Yes’ 
• How parenting can reveal our deepest control struggles
• The moment Cesar saw his inner child
• Why life’s biggest lessons keep coming back until we fully embrace them
• Why the ability to let go leads to a deeper sense of peace and freedom

Also mentioned:

The Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Jeff Buckley’s album Grace

Connect with us! We want to hear from you. Submit your Word of the Week via email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram. 

If this episode spoke to you, you will love Episode 1: Breaking Open where we explore taking a leap of faith. You can also watch the episodes on YouTube

Cesar Cardona:

• Attend his upcoming speaking engagements
• Listen to music from Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify
• Receive his monthly newsletter Insights That Matter

Foster Wilson:

• Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
• Learn about her postpartum services
• Receive her monthly newsletter Foster’s Village

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley 

Editor: Bessie Fong

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Beauty in the Break. I'm Foster. 

And I'm Cesar. 

This is the podcast where we explore the moments that break us open and how we find beauty on the other side. 

So whatever you're carrying today, you don't have to carry it alone. We are here with you. 

Thanks for being here and enjoy the show.

How are you feeling?

I feel pretty good. 

Yeah? 

Ready to do this show? Second episode. 

Okay. 

Welcome to Beauty and the Break.

That's right. Welcome. 

My name is Cesar Cardona. 

And I am Foster Wilson. 

And we are here to have conversations about the resilience in the moments that seem to break us. 

Yeah. What is in your life today? What are you working on? 

A ton, but I feel myself really, really working in my own mind lately. I think I spent a couple, about a handful of years, kind of getting, trying to get away from my mind, and it put me in a lot of bad places. 

By way of avoiding things, right? Technically I wasn't getting away from my mind, I was avoiding the things that's in my mind.

The traumas, and the things that I didn't think I could overcome, I was trying to distract myself with. And now I'm here at a place now that I need to face some things about the way I live and the way I think and one of the biggest ones for me The biggest challenge is learning how to learn. It's a huge one for me.

What about you? 

I think right now I'm trying to figure out it's embarrassing to say because I've been working on this, I think, my whole life, and I don't know why I'm still working on this. Letting go of control. It's like it's haunting me because I, I'm like, I did that already. I worked on that. I'm good.

And then here comes creeping back in. 

Wait, you worked on what? The letting go? 

Yeah. I was like, I did that thing. Check. I let go. I let go of all the things. I'm no longer in control. You know,

 That’s just hilarious.

So yeah, of course it's biting me right now. 

There's a really cool meme or funny meme of this monk.He's sitting there meditating and it's a four square mean, right? It's one picture, one, two, three, and four. And the first one says, ah, I've reached enlightenment. Next picture. No words. Next picture. No words. Last picture, now I'm better than everybody. 

Oh, down we fall. 

It's like, exactly. It's like the thing of like, and I'm not saying that you're saying you're better than everybody. Of course, it's the note of like, Oh, I'm good now. Everything's great. Everything is great. 

Well, I was just hoping to like work on other things, you know, I did that one. I did that like 15 years ago. And then again, 10 years ago. And then again, five, it’s still there. Yeah. So I could preach it all I want. I can tell you the lesson I learned about letting go of control and I can tell my clients and all of this, but I'm still dealing with it. That's the frustrating part. You have stuff like that. That's like, I already did that one. I worked on that. 

I'm thinking of the image in my head of Ray Liotta in the Many Saints of Newark. And he's sitting there and he's talking and it's Ray Liotta. So he has that intimidating look. And he's like, it's all the wanting, you know, the Buddhists, they say everything is all about wanting. We gotta let go. I think about that image so often because here's a man who was in prison bestowing wisdom, right?

You know as a murderer as he was in the movie. 

Yeah, 

I want to unpack that with you because one, it is the most effective thing that you can probably do in your life is letting go more and more. And every single day of your life, there's a part of you that wants to keep grabbing more. And that duality, that yin and yang, is what makes us in this realm of bipedal apes walking down the street. With technology, that you and I can have this conversation. And also, our innate animalistic nature is still worried about, what are we doing? What's going on? What's going to happen? What can we get away from? What can we get more of? Control. 

Yeah. 

Control. Control. 

If you become, you know, so enlightened, so peaceful, you just float away out of this realm, right? Like you still have to live in this tangible world and like to feel like I've grown so much that I know so much about myself and what I have. What I've worked on, what I've owned, as soon as I own it, it's back to bite me because I, I still have to exist in this physical plane and it feels like a, like I got knocked down a little bit, you know. 

Your thought of wanting to have control and wanting to grab and not letting go of things. What do you think? What is your mind telling you will happen if you let go? 

I think if I, well, that's very scary. I mean, right? We've talked about fear a little bit. That's very scary to let go of control. I think there was a time in my life when I thought I had control. I have control and everybody around me is like the society is gonna show me if you just do these things, you have control of your life. You get to plan your life exactly how you, how you want. We all know if you've lived a little bit of life, that's not really how it goes. So there's been these like life quakes that shake me and go, oh, I didn't plan that at all. And now here I am in the middle of something really tragic or really challenging.

I didn't choose this. I didn't pick this. This theme of like releasing control. I think it started for me, I really started to understand it when it, when I was first pregnant, I'm going to probably talk about birth a lot because birth and parenthood and motherhood are kind of such a vital part of not only my lived experience, but then also the work that I do.

And it's such a, it's such a great metaphor for everything. But here we are going into, you know, pregnancy and birth. And we have these things like a due date. Society is going to put a number, a date on when this baby's going to be born. We have a date and we're like, Oh, this is the date, February 2nd. You know, that's not when the baby is coming, like very, that this, the percentage of chances, the baby's being born on their due dates, like 7 percent or something.

I love, I want to stop you and say, one of my favorite things that I've learned about birth is you saying so many times. It'll come when that baby's ready.

When that baby comes. 

Whoa, what? Because i've been told so many times that it's a structure of thing. It's a level we have, it's going to be on this date, it's got to be this way. You're going to do it in this location There's all these things that set up to it because that is control 

We like control as a society and as an institution, hospital system. We like that. In reality, and uh, it's an estimated due date. We call it an EDD in the, in the biz, because we know that three weeks before, that's the 40 week mark.

So three weeks before and two weeks after, all of that is a normal time for a full term baby anytime in that five week period. And then there's babies that come outside of that too, right? Of course. Just the idea that we have to pinpoint it and get excited about a specific date shows that we don't, we don't know a lot about letting go.

So this begins, this I think in parenthood for some people if they haven't already experience this yet. It's the, just the baby steps into, you are not in control of this. You're not in control of your body in many ways. You're not in control of how long your labor is, what kind of delivery you have. And it's a real, It's a real surrender to nature, to the process, to whatever this baby has in store, whatever lesson they're gonna come and teach you, and I'm sure it's many, many, many lessons. 

So that makes me think, metaphorically speaking, bringing it back to you, what is the birth of the thing that'll happen? If you actually let go and don't have control, what do you think will happen?

Yeah, honestly, I don't know that it's anything specific. It's the fear of the unknown. That's endless possibilities, right? If I know what's going to happen, I can control my experience there, I think. I'm putting that in quotes because that's not true, but I think I can control that. If it's unknown, those possibilities are endless.

And then do I open myself up for unnecessary anxiety and worry about all these different paths of things that could happen? I mean, that can be endless and overwhelming too, right? It's a really beautiful book called The Surrender Experiment. Link it in the show notes, but it is just a beautiful exploration of surrendering and then surrendering again, and then surrendering again to.

The moment of where you are, that hit me so deeply because it's saying, I do not know, and I'm okay with not knowing. I'm not going to live out all the different possibilities. That's anxiety and noise and worry that will keep me suffering. I'm going to just be right here. And here it is again coming up in me going, Oh, you thought you knew about surrender.

You don't. 

It's going to be endless. I think that voice is always there. What is control? Control is a viewpoint of something that took place in the past, and you were predicting it and expecting it to happen in the future. 

Yeah. 

I guess, yea. 

Let's first principle this. Let's bring it right down. Control is holding on to something. You viewed it. Your point of view is set for it. Because that's been based on how something took place before. Two things that have minimal to do with the phenomena of the future. So how can we expect predicting a future outcome, and I'm gonna get really heady here, based on an observation of the past that one, we have summarized, we remember differently, because the details of when it actually happened and how it all came together, we never know the full detail of a situation.

Our perspective of the situation at the moment was informed by a previous one, and one before that, and one before that. And we take all of that and say since we don't know enough about what happened in the past, let's remember it and make sure that's what happened in the future. 

Yeah, and that probably cannot happen.

That's literally the point I'm making. 

Like, it doesn't happen that way. And then to think that the external thing out there in the future is what actually is the defining cause for you being at joy or at peace. It's also hedging your bets. It's playing blackjack when you already have 21 and then saying, hit me again, future.

Hmm. If you want to like tie that down, the specific example that comes to mind is like when I was pregnant with my firstborn. I'm in the birth world, right? I wasn't at the time, but I was, this is my beginning experience. Being passionate about the world of birth and babies and pregnancy and all of that.

And I was like, I'm having a home birth. I'm going to do this, you know, in a tub and it's going to be so beautiful. And there's going to be candles. It's going to be amazing. And that was the plan. I had a midwife, we were just like all systems go. 37 weeks, which is a normal time you could possibly deliver, by the way, 37 weeks, ready to have my baby any day now, and we go in for an OB appointment.

And they're like, Oh, did you know your baby's breech? And I was like, I'm sorry, what? Uh, breech is meaning your baby is upside down, not head down, trying to come out butt first. And that is not ideal for a home birth. In some worlds it's possible, uh, under very specific circumstances and care, but it is a real bummer for somebody who wants a home birth to find out your baby is breech.

I was like, no, okay. This is devastating. And then the next appointment I find out I have a condition called cholestasis, which is a liver condition that is immediately putting my baby at risk. We ended up having to have a cesarean birth with her. There was no other possibility. And that was such a moment of grief for me of letting go of all these plans I made, you know?

And in the end, it was, it was exactly what needed to happen. If I had had a trial of labor, I had a vein that was along the outside of my placenta. She could have kicked that in labor and I could have bled out. We find this out days after. So there was a protective element in that. experience that I was not aware of.

And this was the first experience of like, Oh my gosh, my baby knows more than I do about what's right. That was probably my first idea of surrender. 

Do you feel like that has made you more aware of the challenges of letting go for today in this life? 

Yeah. I mean, today, again, I want to be over this idea, however.

You and I talked like maybe a month ago. You brought up to me, I was, I was being more short with one of my kids. I was being just like a little more irritable and I think I was wanting more control over the situation and, and it was an ongoing thing and for you to tell me that, it was like devastating.

It was true. It was devastating though.

It was really hard to say. 

Yeah. Well, it was true. It is. Why it was so hard to hear that I was just not. Being the person I want to be with my kids. I was just being a little short, I guess is the best way to put it. But more so than that, I was not, there were times I was not being as kind as I want to be.

And in the days after that, you and I had a really important conversation to me, which was, you said to me. That didn't sound like you. That's not the person I know. Whose voice was that? Whose voice were you speaking from? And that was a question I had never asked myself. 

That was my next question, actually.

And so you and I together really unpacked that, where that voice was coming from. And once I realized it wasn't mine, it allowed me. The freedom to say, is it my fault that I'm saying this, that I'm acting this way, but it is my responsibility to change and to sort of stop this behavior, I guess, or just kind of, you know, those moments where you get really flustered and you get triggered and you're tired and fatigued and you just aren't acting the way you want to maybe stop that and say, I'm not going to pass this down anymore.

So I gave myself grace. You gave me grace. Actually, you gave me grace to say I don't blame you for you know that but where's it coming from? And knowing that it just wasn't mine gave me, I gave myself forgiveness. Not something I do very often. I don't think 

Yeah. 

Yeah, it could be very very heavy to express that I mean, it's two things at once. Once, I don't think anybody wants to be told they're doing something that they're making a misstep in life.

Maybe it's threefold because secondly, they really don't want it when its about their kids and then three I'm asking you who is that in your head telling you that you need to do something a way a certain way or a better way or the right way. This monk told me once if you ever meet somebody who says I found the way run a way Yeah, right like cuz that's not how life works.

Yeah, 

And because that's not how life works, we can't hold on to control of something it with an expectation of the way it's supposed to be. It's our job to instead of trying to figure out that test is going to be given to you in life? Your job is to be testable. 

Mm. Mm hmm. 

I'm not so particularly worried about externally what happens, what comes my way. I'm more focused on how can I be rooted, stable, flexible to move with the wind? Like a palm tree, perhaps? Deeply rooted into the ground, but moving with whatever weather comes. I can shed a frond or two if I need to. For any person listening here, can have the thought to themselves, What am I scared of happening?

What do I think will happen if I actually let my biggest fear occur, which is control, right? Releasing control. And then most importantly, whose voice is that in your mind? 

Yeah. 

Telling you that. 

That's so helpful. 

You can find that voice. Then you can do a multitude of things with it. I'm a big proponent of every voice that's in your head has a job, and if they are attacking you, that means that they don't feel fulfilled in their job.

They're coming back to you saying, give me more boss. And now you have to find a way to put it to work. So there's that, you know. 

But that's the idea of you get to ride in the car with me. You don't get to drive. You're not, you're not even in the passenger seat, actually. 

Nope.

Directing here in the backseat, giving me that information.

100%. And I'm thanking you for that information. Your hands will never touch the steering wheel. 

Yeah. 

They just won't. The letting go is such a huge thing in this world. To boil it down to the simple principle, we want to hold on to something because we like the way it is. It is inevitable that life always changes.

So you're gripping onto something that is subject to change you are doing the exact opposite of the laws of nature. There is no same moment from here to here. So our job is to participate with the flow, to not try to predict the winds but to adjust the sails. 

Yeah, 

Because the fear that you give yourself over not letting go or holding control is way more damaging then whatever could happen out there that you're worried about.

Yeah, 

It might not even happen but you spent where you are now and the result of the situation, you spent that entire time being worried stressed fearful 

Yeah, you know what?
 
That's the real thing. 

Do you know what I get triggered about the most with the kids? Triggered is, you know, maybe too strong of a word, but it's always technology.

It's like, you know, the children, they would like to watch the television all the time, phone and iPad and all of that, and I've been very cautious about screens and tech and all that, but they are growing up. So their needs change. They're not toddlers anymore, right? They're, they're eight and 12 by saying no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

To screens all the time, right? Is a very rigid way of being, but I would love to just be no, the no person all the time. It's very easy for me. So the bending of it a little bit is the hardest part and to give a little and to be like, yeah, we will. We're going to watch a show tonight as a family. I kid you not, last night, our youngest said something casually like, could we?

And they always go, could we, I mean, I know you're going to say no, but, um, uh, could we, could we watch a show? And I, I've been practicing. I'm not telling you times one through seven that I said no, but this time I said, yeah, probably. I think we will, probably, after dinner. One beat later, they go, Oh, thank you, mommy.

And they hug me so hard. I was like, wow. I know what I'm good for. But it was so sweet and tender because it wasn't the, it wasn't the show. I mean, part of it is, we are, it's the show because we are all sitting together as a family. Cozy, cuddly with a blanket and enjoying something together. That actually is part of it.

And the other part was I very casually said yes to something that I often say no to. And that was the most rewarding part I will hold in my body because. I'm probably gonna say no in the next seven times. And then, you know, it can't be all the time. Yeah. But where do I have flexibility? Mm-hmm . To flow.

That's the flow in the form of things. Also, you say yes more often, that's gonna make the No’s a little more firm. 

Yeah. 

You're really good at that. 

They said themselves like, I know you're gonna say no. 

Yeah. 

They asked anyway. No. They still participated anyway. 

If you said yes a million times and you say no, something in them is, in my opinion, this is going to be like, this is probably a reason why they're saying no.

That letting go is a huge thing. I reiterate what I'm saying to the listeners, find out who that voice is, what's, what's going on. Because I found my version of it when I had to learn how to learn. 

Going right back to what we're talking about here. When I was younger, anytime I needed to learn something, if I didn't learn it or if I didn't get it right, I would be reprimanded. In a very unsavory way, in ways that were not fun, in ways that hurt physically, emotionally, mentally, a lot of times. It still hurts me today to think of that. So instead of giving me space to be wrong, to get it incorrect, to say things like I don't understand, and to mess up. Instead of giving me space, it was, if that happens, there's problems here.

Yelling, hitting, so on and so forth. This is not a blame on anybody. This is just understanding the cause of where I am today. Again, not blaming. Understanding the cause of where I am today. Where I am today is the person who has so much trouble learning. Taking information in. Anytime someone explains math to me, particularly, instructions about something that's outside of my comprehension, and it took me 30 something years to notice how I was doing this, by the way, I would just look them in the eyes.

Nod at the rhythm of their voice, but I wasn't listening to, I was not listening to a word they said. When they finished, I would say, got it. And then I would go and figure out my way to do it on my own. Imagine doing that for 32 whole years. Because you were scared that any person, psychologically, and this is irrational, but my subconscious told me, if you get this wrong, they're gonna yell at you, they're gonna think less of you, they're gonna hit you.

And I ran that option into my head. Constantly. So I was self taught and everything. I get to a point now in my life where I've done really well and I want to take it to another level. That means I can't continuously rest on the laurels of just teaching myself something. There's history of rules and, and observations about the way life works that are waiting for me to discover because that history of, of, of people are saying, this is where we are so far, take it, add to it, instead of me just saying like, well, I'll figure this out.

Well, I'm going to ask you something hard. When you heard that voice in your head, where did you feel it in your body? 

There is a tenseness that happens in my legs to prepare to back away. Someone's gonna hit me. Also, I've been boxing for 10 years now. There's a tenseness in my legs to just prepare to dodge the punch and respond that I wouldn't ever do that as a nonviolent person. As a Buddhist, but my body still my body doesn't care about Buddhism. My body understands the trauma from before 

Yeah 

Again Grabbing a memory from the past To use it to predict a future that we don't know 

And my body still does it. It's in my legs mainly and then I feel hot hot hot hot wind in my chest. 

It's your fight or flight coming on. On board 

And it's apparently it's both.

Yeah Fight and flight 

Fight and flight. 

Have you you might if I don't think you've read the book, the body keeps the score. 

No, I know a ton about it. Uh, I should read that book though. 

Yeah, I think on your journey, you said before on your journey to understanding your body, getting your body on board here and here in this day that might that book might be of service to you.

Yeah. Yeah Yeah, it was a part of the class that I took when I got certified for mindfulness. So they gave a good outline of it, but I would want to just dive into the book. 

This is another part of it. Reading books, learning the information in the book. I would just skim through a whole book and I wouldn't realize what I was reading. I'd have to read the same sentence 12 times. 30 times And I put the book away because I just couldn't do it. Because somewhere in my head I felt like there's a voice that says you're too dumb. You can't do this. See? You failed again. 

You're not listening to that voice now. So how did you feel safe enough to start questioning that voice? 

It's a tough question. Sometimes when I get asked questions like that, how did you get to this other stage?

I feel like it's like how did the flower just bloom within this pattern? 

Yeah, how come five leaves, leaflets on the sunflower instead of six. It's hard, but it occurred. 

Mm hmm. Well you had to have awareness. 

I had to have awareness of it. That's, that's Buddhism for sure. Meditating. Okay. Thank you for breaking that down.

You're right. You're right. Buddhism. Watching my thoughts more and more. Realizing that my thoughts and my actions, and at a lot of levels my beliefs, are not me. I have taken them on. Who I really am is the consciousness, the awareness of the being living in this vessel, that came with all the stuff that happened to it.

So when I got that awareness. I, I had about a sliver between self, capital S, self, and thoughts, experiences, trauma, so on and so forth. 

It's just putting that little, little bit of space.

 It's as small as a grain of rice, but the entire universe is living in it. And then going to therapy. A lot of therapy took a lot of time, a lot of crying, a lot of saying out loud, speaking for the five year old, six year old, seven year old Cesar, saying out loud, Why doesn't anybody want me? Why doesn't anybody love me? Why am I not good enough? Because if I was, you wouldn't hit me. 

That's got to affect a whole lot more than just learning. 

Yeah.

That belief. 

That's how I'm able to be so gentle with all children in the whole world. My main thought is what do I wish would have happened for me? And then I go and do it. 

You do this with our kids. Our kids came into your life not that long ago and there was a time recently when the youngest one spilled a bowl of lettuce all over the floor. Big mess. 

Huge mess. 

What was going on for you in that moment? 

First off, they are adorable and they were showing us I think a dance move or a twirl or something physical.

And you had tossed a big bowl of salad on the table and they twirled and they hit it and they knocked it down and it's lettuce. So not only is it, if it was cereal, it rolls, you know, and you can kind of scoop it, but it's lettuce. You try to scoop it, it's going to stick in the ground and get matted and you know, so it's just a whole thing.

But when it fell, the first thought that came to me, the first thought. It was make sure they don't feel scared of what they did, make sure they don't feel ashamed of what they did, and make sure they're not scared of how you're gonna respond. Set the tone, set the tone immediately make sure they don't feel what you felt. And I went ah oh, and then they grabbed their hand and before we even went to picking up the stuff we told them to put their hand in ice and we checked if they were okay, and They're so precious. They hurt their hand and they still turned to go clean up after themselves. You and I both said, don't, it's okay. We'll do it. We'll take care of it. And then you tended to them and I started cleaning up the lettuce. And it was in that moment that I played back what just happened in my own thoughts. And when I played back in my thoughts, I immediately went to what would happen to me.

Yelling, physical belittling, so on and so forth. There are instances where stuff like that happened. I couldn't swallow vitamins once I ate and I got smacked in the back of the head because of it. The vitamins and the liquid went all over my legs because I was sitting down. Me sitting in that moment thinking about that I could feel the hot wind in my chest.

I could feel the moment of like here's what's going on for me, you know, your young self was there was literally present right there.

I actually literally feel like all of the children of us still living within us. And so I turned to them, I cleaned up the lettuce, turned to them and said it's quite alright, no problem, and we kind of slowly moved on.

And then once I knew that they were fine, and once we kind of got away from it in conversation, the thought came back up. And this is where I can realize the beauty in the break, you know. I could take my drama, turn to this kid, and let them know. That the trauma that lives within me is not being shown here.

And I turned to both of you and I said, I just want to say that I have a lot of emotions going on because what happened a minute ago would have happened to me. I would have gotten hit for it and yelled at.

And I want to say, I don't remember exactly what I said afterwards to them, but I, I think I wanted to express to them that they were safe. That they were okay to make any kind of mistakes, missteps, anything like that. Um, I believe that's what I said. I feel like at that traumatic moment, I probably checked out even then.

Yeah, it sounds like you have some, you have some gaps in your memory. You got emotional and you, and you said you thanked them for like allowing you to heal basically, because in that moment you were making it safe for them and you were healing that little boy at the exact same time. And that is also, that's the benefit of awareness.

And that responsibility, the same responsibility I have to be aware of what I'm repeating. And to put a pause in it, have grace for myself and also responsibility moving forward that I'm not going to continue that cycle. And you are doing it in that moment, which I think is really difficult for people to do in that moment.

You've had already done a lot of work on yourself to be able to be that aware. Cause oftentimes. That stuff doesn't come up until those kids are in our faces and you're going, oh, yes, my, my childhood. So that was really beautiful to witness. 

Thank you. So where I am now with that sort of stuff is especially when it comes to learning how to learn, learning how to respond to a new situation like that and taking in new information when I'm teaching myself something.

I give myself a ton of space now to get it wrong. And I say that's okay. That's okay. You can, you can not remember this, the thing that you just learned 10 minutes ago. It's okay. That way it just dissolves pretty quickly. And then the other side of the coin is when I get it, I validate it. 

Yeah 

I say it out loud to myself.

I'm proud of you for doing that. And then I'll relay it back to you. You also work with me through so many things. I've sat with you and had you explain something to me and you've seen me have to like take a deeper breath and I'm just staring through you and I'm like, I'm sorry, could you say it again?

My body just shuts down and you've been so patient in that way. And you've been so nurturing in that way. You've been the archetypal mother womb to kind of keep safe, myself. 

Yeah. And now I get to see you, I get to see the fruits of that labor too, for you and for me too, because I get to see you, you are a deep intellectual.

You love learning, actually. I don't know if you know that about yourself, but you love it. You. You geek out over really random information, history and stories and myths and metaphors and all, you're just, you love it. When you find a passion, a subject that you're passionate about, stories you can tell, a recounting you can do.

And now you're, I see you seeking, it's like this, it's a new beginning for you of learning how to learn. I got your certification in mindfulness and I could see the pride in your body and your face that you actually, you completed that you got the certificate and everything that was, that was a real exercise for you.

It was hard, man, hard. It was hard. That first day was so hard. That could be a whole episode that first day.

It's a, it sounds like, okay, an easy class. It was not, I can tell you there was. Lots of reading and lots of exercise. Anyway, but, but now there's like a playfulness about learning for you. And I see you seeking opportunities to learn and to find little ways you can learn about things that maybe you're not even, maybe you're not even that interested in.

Here's my favorite. Not too long ago, our youngest, once again, took a class, a club after school, really, really into learning American Sign Language and especially the letters. And they have a real fun time just spelling things for us instead of saying them out loud, if it gets too, like too much or too much pressure, they'll just start spelling, fingerspelling letters for ASL.

You know, it's, it takes a while. It's slow, but that was happening. We were around you. You're like, I don't know what you're saying. I don't speak ASL. And, you know, we had to kind of figure out some ways three, four days later, we were all together and you started spelling words to them and the whole alphabet.

And I was like. What just happened? And you had taken an entire day to learn ASL, just the letters, let's be real, just the letters, A through Z, but you wanted to connect with them. You want it. You could see that it was so important to them and so fun. And there was a disconnect there. So you went and learned that thing that I'm sure otherwise would not have been top of your list to learn.

You know how many red lights I was at in my car? 

Yeah. 

Sometime I was like, should I put this thing on autopilot and just start practicing now? 

And then they could correct. Oh, let me correct your form here. It's actually face the letters this way, that way.

That's the second part of it too, because I don't ever want to feel authority figure on them.

I want them to know that they can teach me things also. So when they tell me, I'm like, Oh, okay, tell me that. That's cool.

It just made, it made me, it just made my heart so warm that you did that. 

Thank you. Thanks for saying that. Thanks for putting that together. In my head, I was like, I'm gonna learn it because I want to connect with them.

And I also learned how to learn in there. 

You did. You really did.

 Thanks. 

Okay. Deep breath in. That was a lot. Your legs okay? 

Legs are fine. Chest is good. Air is great. You know, the Sanskrit word for air is Prana. It means life source. 

Hmm. We like to wrap up each episode with a word of the week. What's your word of the week?

My word of the week is okay. As in, it's okay. It's okay. 

That's very forgiving. 

Thanks. What about you? 

It's a pretty, it's a similar feeling. My word of the week is grace. Giving yourself grace. Okay. I didn't know that. That's all right. It's a bit, it's a bit similar. It's kind of similar theme. Um, but like it makes me think of putting my hand over my heart.Being like, all right, grace. I tell my clients that all the time. Give yourself grace. This stuff is really hard. It's all really hard. And you are doing just great. 

Jeff Buckley has a great line interview. He named his album grace, and he says there's grace in everything. You gotta just find it. 

I’m paraphrasing, that's a beautiful one. Thank you for sharing that. 

We'd love to hear your word of the week. Please send it to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com. The link is in the show notes below. We'd love to hear from you. Until next time, thank you for listening to Beauty in the Break. 

Don't forget, as always, please be kind to yourself.

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Beauty and the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona. Our executive producer is Glenn Milley. Original music by Cesar + the Clew.