82: Elizabeth DiAlto on Getting Fully Rooted into Who You Are
Known for her inclusive, humorous, and uniquely transformative approach to spirituality and the healing arts, Elizabeth DiAlto has been helping people tap into self love, healing, wholeness, and liberation since 2013. The Founder of the House of E, The School of Sacred Embodiment, and Wild Soul Movement™, Elizabeth’s distinctive medicine weaves together mystical + erotic intelligence, sensual + embodied movement, and integrative healing + energy work. Her methods are a potent synthesis of various trainings as well as ancestral tools + practices from the mixed/multiple lineages of her Caribbean, Indigenous, and European heritages. From 2015-2024, Elizabeth hosted the beloved Embodied Podcast, currently co-hosts the Mystical Aunties Show, and is soon launching Heat & Honey with Louiza “Weeze” Doran.
Elizabeth is the proud owner of one of the most contagious laughs around (if you know, you know!). In 2018 + 2019, she did stand-up comedy for fun, performing on stages in LA and NYC. Her favorite social activities are salsa dancing and karaoke. She loves driving her Mini Cooper, is the queen of parallel parking, and most recently, she’s elated to be back in the “motherland”— NYC, where she lives in a cozy and light-filled Brooklyn studio.
Quotes:
I always encourage people to think: what are you rooting into? We're much more easily swayed if we're not rooted. Someone could push you over if you're not rooted. Someone could bully you. When you're rooted in something, it's deep and there's practice and devotion to back it up.
When something might upset folks, you can acknowledge these things. One of the most inclusive practices out there is just acknowledgement.
Grief is an emotion that gets masked by other things. More socially acceptable things. Anger is often such a great mask for grief, because anger feels powerful. The reason people don't allow themselves to feel grief is because it feels weak. A lot of people associate grief or sadness or depression with weakness. It is not, it is so human. It's the most human thing.
In a world that is so inhumane and so dehumanizing, we have to ask how do we be human together? How do we honor the humanity? How do we rehumanize if we're constantly being dehumanized? Grief is one of the ways. Grief is the great tenderizer. It softens us in the places where we're hard. When you let yourself grieve, it's connective tissue to your own self, your own soul, your own ethics, morals, and values.
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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.
“I always encourage people to think: what are you rooting into? We’re much more easily swayed if we’re not rooted. Someone could push you over if you’re not rooted. Someone could bully you. When you’re rooted in something, it’s deep and there’s practice and devotion to back it up.”
Transcript:
Welcome back to The Leaving Well Podcast. Um, I'm excited to bring you this conversation, which is not your typical conversation about transitions. We are gonna go a little bit beyond career shifts, and we're gonna talk a little bit more about soul exits and community relationships and the beautiful mess of being.
Untamed in a world that wants us domesticated. So I'm excited to bring Elizabeth Alto to this conversation known for her inclusive, humorous, and uniquely transformative approach to spirituality, growth, and transformation. Elizabeth has been helping people heal their deepest wounds across their highest, most soulful wisdom and live into the greatest potential since 2013.
Elizabeth is the founder of the House of E, the School of Sacred Embodiment. And wild soul movement. Her distinctive medicine weaves together mystical and erotic intelligence, sensual and embodied movement, and integrative healing and energy work. Her methods are a beautiful and potent synthesis of various trainings, as well as ancestral tools and practices from the mixed and multiple lineages of her Caribbean, indigenous and European heritages.
From 2015 to 2024, Elizabeth hosted the Beloved Embodied Podcast and currently co-hosts the Mystical Aunties Show, which is fabulous if you're not already listening to it. Elizabeth is the proud owner of one of the most contagious laughs around. It totally isn't if you know, you know you'll hear it at some point during this conversation.
I'm positive In 2018 and 2019, she did standup comedy for fun, performing on stages in LA and New York City. Her favorite social activities are salsa, dancing and karaoke, and I might add, I think now garden tending. You now have a little garden, ma'am? No, we can't. No. Okay. We won't add that to Bob. Maybe that that's on the aspirational list.
Okay, well that's, that counts too. Uh, Elizabeth loves driving her Mini Cooper. She's the queen of parallel parking, and most recently she's elated to be back in the motherland. New York City where she lives in a cozy, light-filled Brooklyn studio where she's coming to you today, Elizabeth, let's get into it.
Love it. The first question I have for you is what expectations have you either joyfully or painfully unhooked from in your work and your community life? And I'm also curious like what happened in your body when you let them go? So, you know what's amazing? I love, I love divine timing of everything, or you know, synchronicity, whatever people wanna call it.
Just this morning, actually, a friend sent me an invitation to this like online day of action. She's co-organizing with some people for Gaza. And I declined. I declined saying. I'm gonna pass. I think this is amazing and I have learned from myself that, um, in-person things, which being now back, being back in New York, there's so much access to so much more in-person stuff.
That is just where I am much more effective. Yep. And it's just so much better for my life, my mental health, my nervous system, and also like unplugging from the need to let everyone on the internet know what I'm doing about everything all the time. And so that is just one example of this specific thing that I think is very unique in the times we're living in, that we kind of feel like, you know how they've always, and you say like, well if, if you didn't post it on Instagram, did it even happen?
And so this is my number one answer, and I know this might not apply to everyone. 'cause PE not everyone has like a social media presence or a platform or whatever. But even that is part of it, right? Feeling like you have to, feeling like you have to be on social or like you're missing out or that you don't care, or people are gonna call you silent or complicit if you're not showing up in a certain prescribed way, which often can be so performative depending on who you are.
And what's really genuine and authentic for you. So, so this is part of it. It, it really, I mean, I could list so many things, Naomi, but the biggest thing is being reactive, not responsive, right? 'cause responsive is, you actually take the time to pause and feel into things. And this relates to how did it feel in your body question.
Like when that text message came through from my friend, everything in my body clenched up and I was like, oh. I can't do this. Yeah, it's beautiful and wonderful and like props and I'm so, so glad they're doing it. But this is not, this is not for me. And, and so that, right, we're such a reactive people and we're, uh, because of cancel culture and these things have shifted over the years, but nobody wants to be the person getting called out, called in, posted, shared, tagged, whatever, as not doing the thing that people who share your values perceive to be the thing we all need to be doing.
Yep. And whether that's business practices, social action, anything like that, just giving myself full permission because I know who I am. I know who, what I stand for. The people that are actually for me. That I'm for. So do they. Right. And you and I have talked about this offline. Right. And any, anything that feels obligatory to me, I'm always gonna be curious about.
I'm always just gonna inquire, even if it feels obligatory, is it also genuine to me? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And if it's not, I can't do it because the way I have harmed myself over the years doing things out of obligation that took such an energetic toll on me or like just incurred some reaction or response that like I didn't have the spoons to like deal with.
Yeah. But then had to. I'm not doing that anymore. Yeah. So you mentioned at the beginning of your answer, you talked about knowing where you're most effective. I think that's so timely. I mean, it's timely right now, and it's timely always. What do you think you've learned about not apologizing for growing?
Or leaving and not having to give 1,000,001 answers as to why. Because I think that there's, there's this, there's one being curious, an inquiry around is this meant for me? Two, there's the decision around, okay, it's a no for me or I need to leave. But then there's always that like, and then we talk too much and we apologize and we like overextend.
Sometimes the person actually doesn't care if we're leaving the project doesn't need us to stay on. But just curious, what have you learned about like not apologizing for growing? So there's two things I wanna reference. The first one is something I know we also talk about and have referenced and have like just really, really appreciate, which is the social change.
Mm-hmm. Ecosystem map by Deepa I, which that helped me so much because realizing what is my lane? Mm-hmm. Or my couple of lanes, right? Because in that framework, there's a couple of things that I feel like are mine to do. Once I was able to root into that. I don't, I don't, I don't get pulled outta my lanes anymore because I really so firmly believe, and I, and I'm gonna answer your question more specifically, but the thing I'm giving is, especially from an embodied perspective, I always need to and encourage people, what are you rooting into?
Mm-hmm. That's the, that's the thing. Mm-hmm. That makes, that makes it easier to unweight because we're so easy, and this is a metaphor, but it's also real tangible. We're so much easy, we're much more easily swayed if we're not rooted. Mm. Right. But someone could push you over if you're not rooted. Yeah.
Someone could bully you. Yeah, someone could dominate you. When you're rooted in something and it's deep and there's practice and practice and devotion to back it up. You know what? It's a great example of that. So I live in the woods now and we have loved watching the storms come in. There are properties around us where when a storm comes in, there's trees down everywhere.
In fact, their trees coming down knock out our power. But what we've watched is the beautiful trees on our property that are. Strong and rooted. Yep. They, they blow with the wind. Some of their leaves fall off. Yep, exactly. But they are still there in the morning. The other thing that's beautiful about that is our, none of our trees are straight.
They have bends and they have bends back and they have, because they're looking for the sun. Oh girl, we don't even need to unpack this. It's there the layers and the metaphors and the beauty and the like. How much can we learn from just watching our plants in nature and the flora. Yeah. Of the land, right?
Which is why it's so important. And even that, right? They're curved. They're not linear, which linear can also be change our minds. You can change your minds, right? Yeah. And, and, and linearity also correlates to binary thinking, black and white, everything. Right? And it's also just because this is my lane now, just because this is how I feel now doesn't mean it might be not be something different later.
Yeah. But um, and also for me over the years, like as we grow and change and evolve, we do. So it's like there have just been so many times that I have let, here's the other thing I do, I no longer allow people. With jacked up nervous systems and unhealed, and I don't mean when I say unhealed, again, I'm not a binary thinker.
So to me the opposite of unhealed isn't healed. Right? Right. 'cause this is an ongoing thing, but I just mean people who are so clearly have the things that they need to address. That's not who I'm taking my cues from. Yep. Right. Because lots of times, and, and again, it doesn't mean don't listen to anything anyone has to say who's in a state like that.
It doesn't mean there's no value, but not who I'm taking my cues from. Yeah. So to answer the question, like I, I said several different things because for me it's like what am I rooting into? Why do I feel fortified in not having to explain myself? It's practice, Naomi, and practice. I'm not a person out here who just knows the terms.
Right? Right. And I think this is, we see a lot of this. That's also another thing. One of my favorite frameworks that I refer to ad nauseum along with the social change ecosystem map is Dr. Barbara J Loves Liberatory Consciousness. Mm-hmm. Love. That was one of the very first things I learned back in like 2017 from Desiree Attaway and her Freedom School.
And that thing has saved me so much because you could really see when you do have. Practice and Ana, not just awareness, but like analysis, integration, action. When you're like in the trenches of people, you can tell when other people are out here just tossing out the language and playing like the performative moral Olympics thing, which then makes it easier, I think for us when we're rooted and what you just talked about to the know if it's for us or not.
That's right. And again, and none of this is about judging anybody. It's just how are we discerning? Yeah. What are, what are our. What are our points for discernment? How are we deciding? Yeah. And so, so having these like anchor things to be like, this is how I discern, this is how I decide. That's my answer.
Yeah. You, you talked at the beginning about performance and being performative, so I would love to talk about like performative loyalty, um, that feeling of being trapped by past versions of who we are or who our clients or followers think we are, who our community Yeah. Be. Who would they expect? I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about that.
One of the things that prompted this conversation between us was you are shifting what you're offering to your community. It's not a drastic pivot, but you're letting something go that you've served and provided in the past, and you have something new that you're launching. People have expectations. How do you stay in integrity to yourself, to the work that you're here to launch without getting stuck in what you owe people or what you, uh, owe their expectations?
So, you know, there's a phrase that gets tossed around that I both, uh, I agree with in some context do not agree with in others, which is you don't owe anybody anything. Yes, sometimes you do. Yep. You know, like you truly sometimes do. We truly sometimes do and discerning when that is and what that is.
Discernment again, again, is discernment, right? It has to be what is your moral compass? What are your values? And, and as you're shifting also, like how are you communicating with people? Because here's the thing. I am, I am so transparent. Part of that I know is being neurodivergent, right? Like you just, there's certain things I can't not say.
Like I have to, I need to say the thing, right? Someone's gonna say it, but back in the day, a friend of mine used to say honesty without compassion is cruelty. Hmm. So something else that I just appreciate deeply and is very contextual to my own work. I do healing work. I've done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Akashic Records readings over the years, healing sessions with all kinds of people, workshops, retreats, like I've gathered with hundreds if not thousands of people all over the world, right?
Very. I myself am multicultural. Um, I've lived in many different cities, like I, you know, having exposure to so many different types of people and so many. Forms of diversity, not just like racial or ethnic, right? But across age, across place, across, you know, sexual orientation, relationship dynamics. Do they have kids, not have kids?
What kind of family do they come from? Like, so like all the freaking things, right? You're like, girl, we won't have time. You don't have to list all of it, right? But consideration to, and also I'm a relational person. Mm-hmm. So when you actually are relational with your people, not just transactional you, you know.
What's, what's gonna trigger folks or what might upset them, and you can acknowledge these things. Yeah. One of the things I, I always say is like, one of the most inclusive practices out there is just acknowledgement. Yep. Is just acknowledging, I know this might be da da da da for da da, da. Right. How easy is this?
To just acknowledge and, and that acknowledgement alone. Even like when I'm teaching a movement class, I know I have people with chronic pain. So if I'm like, arms up overhead, I'm like, and if at any moment this bothers you, put your arms down, do something else. I've had people like send me notes crying because of the being like, this is the only every yoga class I go to.
You know what, no one even acknowledges my experience, you know? And, and I'm left to feel like whatever. And going down that list of all of the. Things, religion, ethnic, racial class, all those things. Yeah. You also don't have to know everything about all of those things to acknowledge and witness someone.
Correct. And, and even just naming that things are gonna be messy or that things might feel painful or that we don't know where this is going. Like naming, acknowledging mm-hmm. Is so naming, acknowledging is so, and also like. Even just naming, I understand this is gonna be really disappointing for some people.
You know, I know some of you might have wanted to keep this forever and it's changing and I just, I honor that, you know, and this is where we're going. I would, and I would, I would love to have you come with us. You're welcome. You're invited. If it doesn't feel right for you, that's bless. So there's some, there's discernment, acknowledgement, and some releasing almost of like permission.
There's some permission, yeah. Yeah. And the permission, you know, permission is always an interesting term because I have no authority over anybody. But still, sometimes people feel they need permission, right? Because that goes two ways. If you're actually, if you've been relational in your work with your people.
Me saying, Hey, we're gonna do this thing now. Some people might feel obligated to come, even if they don't want to. So releasing people from their obligation to me, especially in that power dynamic, if I've been your teacher to be like, Hey, if it doesn't resonate, you know, I love you and I want you to do what's right for you above anything else.
Yep. Right. You don't have to please me. You don't have to support like. You are, do what you need to do. Yeah. So a lot of folks that listen to this podcast are either navigating a career decision, where they're leaving a thing, a project, a job, something they founded, maybe, or what have you. Um, other people that listen to it are needing to make a decision that someone needs to leave.
And I always draw the correlation. Like you, I've lived all over the place. I always draw the correlation to moving house like. Moving house is not fun. You have to pack the boxes. Someone's gonna be sad, someone's gonna say, they'll show up and visit you in the new spot, and they never do all of those things.
And when I think that when we navigate workplace transitions or decisions about what we're leaning into, all the unresolved shit from. Recent moves and breakups and change and transition all come back to haunt us. I'm curious. Yep. Because you have spent quite a bit of time kind of being placeless or untethered as you've moved and shifted around in locations.
This is a long way to lead up to this question. What have you had to unlearn, or what gifts have you brought into your learning about safety home and rootedness in order to navigate and, and move in the way that you have? So the first thing that's coming to mind is what makes me feel at home. Right? And you know, a lot of my work is very like mystical and spiritual.
So this might not resonate for people in that area. It doesn't have to, 'cause it can also be quite practical for me 'cause I'm just gonna give an example that does align with my, like spirituality. I love an altar. An altar makes me feel at home. Even if it's just like a little picture of something like a couple little ancestral herbs, like a little crystal or whatever a mini altar is like, I'm here.
Okay. And for other people it might not be that. It might be like what's in the fridge, right? What do you have your It could no vineyard badge from a conference. It could be a, it could be whatever. Like what is something, and I love a, I love a through line, right? What is something that like brings together or symbolizes, right?
'cause this is about symbol who you have become and honors who you have been or where you have been, right? It could be a rock from a, the parking lot at the place. You know, like I really encourage people, again, regardless of any spiritual beliefs or anything, let things be sacred. Right. I gave, you know this, I gave a TEDx talk where my big idea was if to live in a world, my wildest of wild dreams, to live in a world rooted in sacredness instead of separation, it does not require any specific spiritual or religious belief system.
It's do you engage with the sacredness in all people, all things, all of life. And when we do. It makes it much harder to make choices that like violate, oppress and harm people and much more natural and automatic to make choices that honor, protect, respect people and that includes ourselves. And this is so important.
I, and this is why I love this question, honor who you are, where you have been, who you are right now in this moment, what nourishes you? Right. That's 'cause what is safety? If not, when do we feel unsafe? When we're undernourished, when we're under-resourced. Right? What destabilizes us more than anything?
Undernourished, under-resourced. So whether that's energetically, very physically, practically, like, do you have the food? Do you have the tea that you love? Like, you know what I mean? Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's such a good reminder. I always tell folks who are firing someone or doing a reduction in force, whatever it is, make sure that they're fed.
Make sure that they have a gift card. Make sure that you're sending them away with bread. Like something, something, something. Make sure that so beautiful is nourished, because then the rest of it can follow. And, and again, the relationality of it, because in inherently in letting someone go, even when it's the right thing and everyone agrees and everyone sees it, which isn't always the case, there's a rejection.
Yeah. And that sucks. So like, how can we put just be, have an ethic of care? Yeah. Like you're saying as we, as we release. Letting people know that they were valued regardless of how, what's happening now. Mm-hmm. Well, and it goes back to when we let, I was laughing earlier 'cause you were talking about when we stay connected to our morals and values and I was laughing because I think that's the biggest thing I see is that people aren't connected to their morals and values.
They're not operationalizing them in their day-to-day decisions. Mm-hmm. I'm curious, and this is a very specific question for you, partially because I know you, how do you build containers? Of impact that don't collapse under your bigness and your softness and your wildness, what does it look like then to, if you've built something that doesn't collapse under all of who you are, how do you leave it?
I don't know if that makes sense in the way I'm asking, but I need, no, I need, I need to ask for 'cause. What do you mean collapse? So I think that we fear that when we leave something that it will collapse, that when we close a program that it will be as though it never existed. So how do you build something on the front end?
And maybe you don't, maybe you don't. Maybe that's part of your answer. Um, but I just know that people are listening that may be a founder. They may be a founder of something, and they may be holding onto something too long because they're afraid of what not being there anymore. So my answer is I don't.
Uh, but when you really do bring your presence and your heart to what you're doing, you can't not. So I don't do it intentionally, but it's baked in because also, uh, and again, the nature of what I do, it's healing work. It's ipa, it's it's indelibly imprinted in people. The, the legacy is there. That's not why I do anything.
But even when I do feedback surveys and stuff, which I just did as we were doing this recent transition, and the way some people, like, even one of the questions I asked is like, how are you different? Like, what's different in your life? How do you respond differently to whatever? And one, one woman, you know, who's been with me for a decade, by the way, who signs up for everything I do was like, um, this, I can't, I don't really know that I'm different, but like, this is just my thing.
This is what keeps me on the rails. Hmm. So for some, and for some people it's like, I don't even know who I would be Yeah. Without this, right? So the nature of my work is so personal that I don't know that I'm the best person to answer that question for people who do many different types of work. Yeah.
But, but the overarching answer that I think can apply to anyone in any context is, is your presence. Yep. And again, your heart, your ethic of care. That's it. Yeah. Well, and going back to if we're talking about discernment, acknowledgement, permission, even though there's that term is loaded, there's also the asking of someone to feedback, and it's both reflection for them and for you.
Um, can we talk a little bit about grief? Yes, please. Grief. I mean, we all have a relationship with grief. A lot of us don't have healthy relationships with grief. Maybe there isn't even any such thing as healthy relationships with grief, but. What role does grief play in your healing work and in what you bring to unam?
Depending on how you grew up in your family system and what was modeled for you in terms of dealing with feelings and emotions? Grief may be an acceptable emotion. It may not be, but what is often the case for people is, um, grief is an emotion that gets masked by other things, by more socially acceptable things.
Anger is often. Such a great mask for grief, 'cause anger is also like hot and fiery and feels powerful for a lot of people. The reason why they don't allow themselves to grieve or feel grief or acknowledge or whatever, or certainly grieve with and among and around in front of other people is it feels weak.
A lot of people associate like grief or sadness or depression with weakness. It is not, it is so human. It's like the most human thing. One of my favorite passages in the book, the Prophet by Khalil Jabon, talks about how your grief, uh, your sorrow and your joy sit next to each other. Sorrow being truly another term for grief, right?
So I, that changed my life many years ago when I read it because it's like, oh, everyone wants to be, have more joy, right? But if you can understand that your capacity for joy. Is indirect response, like, like exists on a spectrum of your capacity for grief. There's the incentive you need. Yeah. Right. You're capping if you don't allow yourself to grieve, you're putting a cap on how much joy is gonna be possible in your life in or in whatever experience you're creating.
And it's, I'm just so big in a world that is so inhumane and so dehumanizing. Part of like that TEDx the sacredness is just how do we be human together? How do we honor the humanity? How do we rehumanize if we're constantly being dehumanized? How do we rehumanize? Grief is one of the ways, and I, I wrote a substack recently where I said this.
I'm like, grief is the great tenderizer. It softens us in the places where we're hard or rigid or whatever, like when you let yourself grieve. It's so, it's it's connective tissue to your own self, your own soul, your own ethics, morals, values, whatever. And then among people. Yeah. You know, it's so, and to invite people to grieve and, but, but more than anything in my work, it makes most, it makes sense.
But I can see this can be possible anywhere. I just model it. I cry with my people. I'll be on calls. I'll be like, y'all, I can't gimme a second. Like, I need to cry. I've cried on my own podcast. Like I can't, I, I allow myself, I had an ex who was like, you're like a bait, you, you're like an infant. Like one second you're like laughing or whatever.
The next second you're crying. That's great. And it's, but this is the point. I don't deny myself a single emotion, and it's not like emotional instability or whatever. It's like, oh my God, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I'm crying. Oh my God, this is the most hilarious thing I've ever seen.
I'm also crying, but the tears are different. You know, like I don't, this is being alive and again in a world that is really trying to kill us. Yeah. You know, in so many ways. Kill our spirits. Kill our bodies, whatever. How do you live? You? Oh, I can curse. You told me. Yes, you can curse. You feel. Yeah. I also love, I've never witnessed you hold back a curse word.
And that was wild to me. I was like, wait, you're not, you're holding back good work. Why don't you have, you have people in like different, like professional type of Well, if you're listening on the podcast, Elizabeth quoted professional. I did air quotes for professional. We need to probably do away with because let's be real, like we all do.
Exactly. Listen, whatever. Yeah, it was fun. What's interesting about what you just said, so you're talking about tenderizing and the best of us comes from when we allow ourselves to really be seeped in with our emotions. I, I made something the other day. I was cooking for the family and I used a new salt on the meat that I was cooking.
The way it opened up that meat just by putting the salt on it. And I was like, oh my God. This is like, we call it salt on a wound because of, yes. Things, but it opens us up and I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. Like more salt, please. The other thing that's interesting about, when you talked about Khalil Deon's, like the sorrow and joy.
Mm-hmm. I just read the Daily Stoic. My, my reading for today was actually talking about we assume that joy means cheerfulness or chippiness. It does not. So why do we. Hold, especially women. I love that. To this thing that we're supposed to be cheerful. Joy can be stoic and joy can be sad and joy, all the things.
So I just, I think that's so beautiful that we, well, I love it. And there's a reason, right? It's like the joy of dot, dot, dot. You could say the joy of grieving. Yep. Absolutely. And grieving comes into play. I talk about this all the time with my clients. Succession planning. I mean, this makes, you know, quote unquote professional boring talk, but succession planning is the act of planning ahead for something that you know you're going to grieve.
Mm-hmm. It's like estate planning for your body. When it dies, you're planning ahead. Yes. For what you know will be grief. And we don't know how to do that. And so no one wants to do succession planning. No one wants to plan for their funeral because it means people will be sorrowful. And what if we. Had the joy of grieving.
Ah, my gosh, I love it. And then what it creates, because I remember friends of mine, we were talking about this, they recently did estate planning and they're young, like they're both, one of them is 41, the other is 31, they're a couple. And they were just going through all that and they were like, we were crying.
We were like, ah, we have to answer all these questions. It's, it's brutal to think about, but now you're prepared. And that preparation is one of the most loving things you could do for the people that are going to be there. When you're gone, you know, like that is such an offering. Of, again, we said ethic of care.
Yep. And it's an often, what more caring thing can you do than set people up? You know, people always assume too, with estate planning that it needs to be only if you have children, only if you own a home, only if you have quote unquote wealth, you know, bank accounts. And it is not true. And it's the same with organizations that you founded, or nonprofits that you lead, or businesses that you run.
It doesn't matter what your. Annual budget is, or how many staff members you have no ethics of care come into play. Yeah, yeah. Because again, too, like, you know, and in some of these things, like very realistically, and I'm sure that you have people listening to this, that we probably share some values and like even like political, uh, beliefs or leanings and like anything I could do to make sure the government isn't getting more money outta me, I'm gonna do it.
Yeah. Well, and that's, that goes back to morals and values. What matters to you, and then do it from that op, that lens. You know, it, it can be the same subject, the same topic. We can talk about grieving and if you come at it from what your morals and values and what your true north. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It'll look different.
I think that's the other thing, grieving joy, sorrow, all the things look different and we don't know how to hold that for each other because where we're coming from, our perspective and our lens is always different Cultural upbringing, ethnic a thousand percent, how we were fed when we were kids, like all of those things impact all of the rest of it, and we don't, I don't think we honor that enough.
Yeah, no, and, and I mean, I know we're coming up on the time, but, um, and this, this goes back to my point about sacredness. One of the, some of the most beautiful things I've learned about grieving come from rituals, from other, from cultures that I am not from. There's a beautiful book. Have you ever read Francis Weller The Wild Edge of Sorrow?
No. Highly recommend that for everyone around grieving ritualizing grief grieving together. So potent, so powerful, so beautiful. My last question for you, and I laugh a little bit as I say this. Um, the question is, if you could whisper one thing to folks who are afraid of leaving, whether it's a path or on a plan, a partner or persona, whatever.
The reason I'm laughing is because I don't think you whisper anything, but I I you are right. I don't have an inside voice. What would you tell someone as a person who has left so many things? Who you become in the process of walking away from something that is hard to walk away from, for all the reasons that make it hard.
You're afraid what's on the other side, you're gonna hurt people's feelings or whatever. It's, it's so self fortifying, soul affirming. And more often than not, when you are afraid to leave, you're afraid because you're afraid of disappointing or letting down other people, but you're a people. And staying means disappointing and letting yourself down.
We literally, I mean, we do talk. Mm-hmm. On and on. And so that could happen with this conversation too. Please. We'll maybe have to have you on again to talk more about this. Great. Love it. Yeah. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. I think it's, I'm, I'm hoping that as you listen to this, that you bookmark it and listen again, because each one of the little topics that we talked about is so rich and can be so deep.
Um, I really encourage you as you're listening also to. Let it be a mirror to things that you might not have thought was something that you needed to navigate and address and share it with someone maybe who you've been having these um, kind of peripheral conversations with. And ha have it be an opportunity to go deeper with your conversations and your relationships.
Elizabeth, thank you. I appreciate you and I love you. Thank you. Love you. Bye. Okay, bye.
If you are an organizational leader, board member, or a curious staff member, take the leaving while assessment to discover your organization's transition readiness archetype. It's quick and easy, and you can find it@naomihadaway.com. Slash assessment, that's Naomi, N-A-O-M-I, hattaway, H-A-T-T-A-W-A y.com/assessment.
To learn more about leaving well and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace. You can also see that information on my website. It is time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system. We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide to shift culture and to create transformation.
Until next time, I'm your host, Naomi Hadaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a Navigation Guide for Workplace Transitions.