You can listen to the full episode here: Listen to Carrying the World's Pain: Collective Grief & Community Healing
As we transition into autumn, many of us find ourselves slowing down and reflecting not just on our personal lives, but on the heavier currents of the world around us. From climate anxiety to political division, the weight of collective pain can feel paralyzing, often mingling with our own personal grief and burnout. In this bonus episode, Blaze is joined by Liz Moyer Benferhat, a guide who helps people navigate the intersection of personal sorrow and global crisis.
Together, they dismantle the myth that we must save the world alone or perform our activism for an audience. Instead, they explore how finding ease in our daily lives (through gardening, sharing food, and engaging in honest community circles) can be the most generative form of change. This conversation invites you to drop the burden of perfection, trust your body's wisdom, and discover how small, local acts of care ripple outward to heal both ourselves and our communities.
🌿 In this episode we explore:
- The relationship between personal grief and the collective pain of the world.
- Why "fixing" everything often leads to burnout and how to find nourishment in local, tangible actions.
- The power of community circles and somatic tools for processing complex emotions safely.
- How to move past the exhaustion of social media performance and find real connection face-to-face.
- The importance of trusting your body's wisdom over the noise of the news cycle.
- Practical ways to hold space for divergence and differing viewpoints in healing spaces.
- Why social change happens through us as we embody our values, not just through grand gestures.
Blaze: Okay everybody, welcome back. I wanted to record a bonus episode for you guys this week and I'm going to be joined by Liz MoyerBenferhat to explore the question of what it means to be not only with your own life and your own stuff and what's going on with you, but also holding our awareness and the pain of what's going on in the world right now because I think as we're moving into the autumn season in particular,
A lot of us are finding that we're slowing down. We're starting to reflect on everything that happened in the year, not just with us personally, but just in the world.
And I find as a woman and just a person, a human on this planet, there's so much going on that if we tap into that it can sometimes feel really overwhelming.
I was so happy to meet Liz because she works with this particular issue and helps people to understand what's going on when we're feeling that kind of weight and ways to carry it that I find really complement and are somewhat different from how I handle everyday pains in the way that we go through finding ease in our lives on a day to day and moment by moment basis.
So welcome to Liz. I'd love for you to introduce yourself and talk a little bit about what's going on with you and... we can talk about all this stuff.
Liz: Thank you so much. It is such a pleasure to be here. And like I was saying before we hit record, we had met briefly and coming into this conversation, I was feeling such a sense of comfort and resonance with you and with your community and really grateful to be having this conversation.
Blaze: Oh, thank you so much. Oh my goodness. It's interesting. I find that as conversations like this come up, sometimes your own life gives you a direction to go in and to discuss and as we're recording this, I'm coming in after a week of traveling down to visit my brother's memorial bench that his friends put up, so I have a lot of my own personal grief I'm resonating with right now, and you hear it in my voice.
And when I'm touching into that in moments like that, it is very easy for me to tip in to what feels like the bleakness of the world and society and the climate and everything else. And I don't feel like those two things are separate. It feels so intertwined and I'm really curious, Liz, how you approach topics like that or when people are feeling like their own stuff, (and) then it either amplifies or mingles with... I don't know how to describe it really well.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, thank you so much for sharing that and I want to just honor your brother's presence here with us too and even you sharing that so thank you for that. No, I think you're absolutely right that there is a really interesting relationship and dynamic between emotions more generally.
I think of emotions a lot of times as water, right? The archetype of water, even the metaphor of water, and how you can think to times being in the car with it raining and just window... Your window being covered in raindrops and how the raindrops can slide and glide and also morph and merge with each other. You know, separate raindrops can easily become this larger thing.
Emotion is very much work like this too, right? They're very shape-shifty. They're very... Wild in that way, but I use that word in the most beautiful sense, right? The most beautiful sense. And I just appreciate you naming at the outset here that for so many of us. It's not just the everyday stress, not just burnout from life in our jobs.
We are also carrying and in tune with a larger weight related to the times that we live in, related to the world at large and related to this more intimate, up close and close relationship that we have with it all. Even for those of us...Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.
Blaze: Oh, no. No, I think I love the metaphor of the water on the windshield. And as you were describing it too, I was thinking, you know, water, it does, it morphs to change its shape, but it also picks up what's around it.
And sometimes we're carrying it longer than we intended to or we didn't even know we're picking up stuff along the way and that really resonated with me particularly we were driving through crazy thunderstorms so I was like oh that absolutely happened on this trip.
Oh my goodness. Yeah. You can't pull it apart. It's just we all of us have our own pains and our own rhythms and it cannot truly be separated. But it might be easier to handle for us to small little humans, right, to just give it little places to exist and not hold all of it up at once.
Liz: I think that's right. And I think that what you and I are doing right here together right now by just naming and acknowledging that that is a layer of our human existence and experience these days.
I think especially in hyper-individualized cultures like the US, which you and I are both sitting in right now, there can be a bit of a blind spot, sometimes a cultural blind spot, that we are part of collectives.
We are part of collective bodies, whether it's our family system, our community, society at large. And again, these days where we have a computer in our back pocket or on our wrist, we are so much closer to what's happening on the other side of the world, what's happening to our atmosphere and ecosystems than ever.
You know, every generation has been up against challenges and crises, but we are definitely the first ones to have such a front row seat to it all. And there's a real need to just start by acknowledging that and then taking steps to figure out what that means for us and how to work with it in constructive ways that are actually life-giving, right?
They can actually be generative and actually help us be the people that we're feeling called to be these days.
Blaze: I loved talking with you when we first met about how nourishing it can be when you find something that's tangible in your own personal life space and life that makes you feel like you are contributing to the care of the world or your own community.
Particularly because like you said, we have a front row seat to every bad thing that's happening anywhere on the planet constantly it is always in the feed no matter where you look, someone's going to parrot it back to you or tell you. And then there's the scariness of: Some of it's made up. We're not even sure what we're consuming anymore.
So there's so much fear and doubt on top of what we already are anxious about that we do see playing out in our life. And I remember feeling like the most nourishing thing that I could do is be in my yard, do something with my hands, create a garden, share seeds with neighbors, and then contribute to the food bank that's down the hill for me and to think of that and go, I'm actually helping some people not the whole world.
But it's what I can physically personally do here, and I'm getting to know real people, and I'm in those moments pulled out of the feed in a way, where just for those hours what I'm doing matters to somebody right in front of my face, and I needed that so much.
I didn't realize how much that was kind of missing or there was this big hole there because it seems like, in my own life, There's always a newsletter, sign this petition, call your governor, do whatever, and that felt like I get no feedback on that. I have no idea if I'm screaming into the void or not.
If I'm putting food in a box and giving it to someone who needs it, I know I'm doing something helpful, and I personally need that.
Liz: Yeah, that's so beautiful. And I also heard in it is that it was something natural and useful and life-giving to you. I think so often social change work in a traditional sense, and even it's something...
I'm reflecting a lot on what it is to be a giver these days and which I do think is just a natural orientation that some of us are born with, and how to really actualize that gift.
How to get really super skilled at it. Because the world just desperately needs it, and we, and we, look at me, the giver in me was just like immediately other we're in. I put the world just at the center and
So anyways...
Blaze: I really want to get into that in a minute because I'm doing the same thing. And I find it almost destructive at a certain point where I'm like, why do I have to give everything about myself away?
Liz: No, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And so instead what I heard, and I think that that is...
It just creates an uphill battle when it comes to thinking about changing the world or being of service, right? It's such an "ugh."
Like I just feel it actually being pulled from the center of my chest right now.
Where what I heard you describe is you're like I was in my yard. I was in a peaceful, beautiful place that feels so generative and life-giving to me and then I, there's just like a natural energy towards connecting that to your local food bank.
And I would even actually say that even just creating that space of living your values.
Of being in nature, of growing your own food, whatever that looks like for each and every one of us is the work too, right? It's ways that we are co-creating. culture and embodying the values that we want to see more of in this world.
Blaze: Absolutely. What I want to say too is that it's important that we recognize that it doesn't have to be huge to have impact, and I think I've come up against that so much thinking (that) I need to be bigger and I need to shout it to the rooftops and it needs to like a thousand people need to see it; a million people need to see it; like I need to help everyone...
And at the very beginning of any journey like that, it can just feel so crushing to be like... I am a speck in the wind. Nobody knows I exist. I'm working really hard. It could be the greatest thing that I've ever created, but if nobody sees it, it just feels like it doesn't matter.
And I want to speak to the reality of the internet as it is right now, where all of us seem to be like, if you don't have a digital presence, if you're not out there spreading your word, no one ever will see it.
And I'm really battling that personally right now and going, "Is that even really true?"
I'm living as though that's true, I'm feeling as though that's true, I'm reacting as though that's true and yet...
When it comes down to it, the people in my life that matter are people that matter, and like, I'm seeing you face to face, through a screen, but I'm talking to you.
I have my neighbors that are hanging out with me and my daughter and we're like exchanging flowers and talking about life and just hanging out with each other. Those things are more real. And in that environment, everything I do matters. If I'm out talking to the ravens and I'm talking to the little tailless fox that comes through (my yard), there's a relationship there that I have that feels very good and natural and fine. And it's only when I think that it needs to be seen, witnessed, discovered, and somehow turned into a profit.
Liz: Right. Right. Right.
Blaze: by society. And I feel like that's the message I keep getting, is everything we do needs to somehow be in a social media feed, inspire somebody else and it just feels really exhausting.
And I don't know if you found that with the people you work with too, that we're all just exhausted from feeling like we have to show up as superheroes every moment of our lives and show off constantly. It's exhausting.
Liz: It's so exhausting. Yeah, and it's such a hallmark feature of Moderna era these days or post-modernity, whatever you want to think about times as being.
Yeah, absolutely. And just listening to you, I could feel shifts in my body as I was relating to what you were saying, just that, you know, this idea that everything we do is a means to an end instead of just an end in and of itself.
And even this idea, I know it's not for me as being like, oh I feel it sometimes with pictures.
Like if I go and do something, if I don't take a photo of it, I'm like, did that even exist?
Blaze: Yeah! Like did it even happen if I didn't recorded it on my phone? And oh my gosh, okay, I'm gonna get really personal here.
With my brother's death. Looking back, I felt like I wanted to have every photo that we ever took.
And I remembered me thinking in moments when I hung out with him, because he lived 12 hours away, so I didn't see him all the time.
When he would come up to visit. Sometimes I would not take photos, and I would consciously think, like, just be present with him. Like you don't need to record every moment for it to have existed.
And then finding after he died and like I wish I had a photo to prove that we were hanging out and then simultaneously remembering like, There's an entire... like decades of my life, where I didn't have like a camera in my pocket constantly, where I never would have thought to have to document like the food we ate, the place we went and whatever.
Like that's not necessary. It didn't actually need to happen, but it is uniquely modern to have that sudden regret to look back at your phone and be like, "Why don't I have all the photos?"
I also want to say like...
It didn't take anything away from my relationship with him to not have a photo of everything. So, it didn't take away my memories.
It was just like one of those grasping things that I think that we do. It's just interesting how much life has become a performance. And we think a lot about how we would present it or look back on it, as though we just don't have...
Maybe it's like we are being trained to lose our trust in our own senses, in our own memory and our own ability to create a life that's meaningful if it isn't left in a box for someone somewhere.
Liz: Yeah, no, I think that's exactly it.
And then what it made me think of is within the social change space, social justice space within this really exciting time that we live in where more of us are feeling called to or politically activated in some kind of way and again it looks so different for each and every one of us. I did...
Something that I do through my work and that has been such a source of learning for me is offering circles, circles space that uses meditation and storytelling and an embodied empathy practice to support people to process changes with themselves, changes going on in the world. And it really is about what you just described there.
Regaining trust and connection with one's own sense and sensibilities and even learning how to sit in the questions that don't have clear cut answers in this world and in these times that we live in.
In particular, it made me think about I did a circle series in 2021 around racial justice and anti-racism, specifically for white women and women and white bodies.
I had one woman at the end of it came up to me and she was like, "I wanted you to tell me what to do but I found something so much deeper."
And that kind of like
We want to be told what to do because we don't want to mess up. We want to be on the right side of history. We want to know that
We're like a good guy, which all kind of hides into very normal and beautiful intentions, right? I don't want to knock that, but also it's tied to this performance piece...
It's tied to also giving away our power to others or not trusting our own ability, which again, you know.
Within any kind of learning process, within any kind of self-development journey, just in journeys in general.
There is always a time and place to talk less, listen more, to turn to others who have been walking longer than us for advice and guidance and all this other stuff. And then there is also a time that I think is less carved out or less named in our culture and society for,
because I think this is also just a product of our culture is it's a lot of consumption, right? We take things in, we take things in.
But we don't have opportunities to actually process and make sense of it and allow our own intelligences of our bodies and of our intuitions, our minds, our heart to reveal things to us that we can then bring into our lives and just experiment, right? Practice, play, let it be.
Just kind of this iterative ongoing dance.
Blaze: Oh my gosh, I love everything you just said.
I feel like so much of our lives, like you said, has become consuming.
And on the other side of it, we feel like we need to produce something constantly. So we're always in my--
My understanding of how my own personal cycles work, it feels like we're in continuous Spring.
Society just wants us always to be producing, taking it in, producing, taking it in,
And there's no time for digestion. And maybe there's time for summer to just like steam roll and do a lot of stuff.
Liz: Right, right.
Blaze: as we are meant to, we should have time to just sit and be.
To have our own thoughts. And because we're so unused to having that time or space, most of us freak out.
Like I see it in my daughter. She's just turned 10. And I see it in myself, too, where whenever I have a question, concern, and uncomfortable feeling.
My instinct is to want to go look it up immediately online because that's what we do now. I'm going like, "Is this normal?"
How should I be feeling? How can I fix it or make it better?
And I've really, really been... wanting to lean more inward and go, I can answer that for myself.
I don't need a robot, or an AI to tell me the collective wisdom and recycled garbage of humanity says this is because...
Who cares about that? It's not me.
It doesn't know what's going on.
And even asking other people in my life to answer that question feels like I'm just racing through very quickly and being unwilling to just experience discomfort.
To experience that not knowing.
And as you said, when people are allowed to be with it and no one gives them that straight up answer (to) do this, be that, think this way about it. It turns out we do have a feeling about it.
And our body is half that wisdom.
And it's actually really comforting to turn into that.
And I think that's something that both of our philosophies really share is that we are selves in our bodies, in our lived experiences, and we have so much wisdom and it really just takes some quiet. It's always there. And it's okay to trust there.
It doesn't have to feel amazing. I think that's like a big message for me is everything doesn't have to feel wonderful to have value and we probably will not always feel terrible and that's something I definitely have been riding these last few years.
I've had a lot of moments of feeling terrible. And it doesn't last forever--
There's always going to be a wave and there's going to be really wonderful blissful excellent moments too, so you can trust that things change.
You're never going to be caught in a terrible moment forever. And I want people to recognize that in themselves.
Because I think like you said, there's so much collective pain going on that when we touch it, it's so scary.
It feels like it could last forever. Or that we're responsible for everything. And we're actually only responsible for the part that we're feeling right now.
We don't even have to fix it. We just have to live it.
Liz: Yea. We just have to live. And another place that I have gotten stuck that I've seen others get stuck too is thinking that we have to process it all on our own or hold it all on our own.
It really makes me think about the water droplet metaphor and the grief that you brought up in the beginning.
Personal grief, collective grief.
And what I've also found it, and again you know process and work with what we're feeling and the experiences in the world and in our own lives in all sorts of different ways.
But what I found particularly powerful is these group spaces, these circle spaces, these community spaces where things that just are too much and too heavy to hold on our own actually has more of a container to be held.
And these collective issues need collective containers. And what's cool too is that
I've had experiences where I've come into circle and I'm feeling really frazzled.
I'm just feeling frazzled and frenetic by the state of things kind of in like a wired up, you know, confusion state and I'll come into the space and hear a story from someone across from me that is just filled with grief.
It's down in the lower pit in the lower heart of her body.
And it brings me into that part of myself and helps me touch into something that I didn't even know that I needed to touch into, right?
And actually helps that move even though you know, her story is about living on the Pacific coast and she's, you know, 20 years my age, it doesn't matter because in this circle space
In particular, it's about listening below the surface of what the person's saying and really attuning to that more emotional resonance.
That emotional energy, which is our shared humanity, right?
Part of our shared humanity. And so there's such a cool experience that can happen in these group settings where, yeah, there's like a contagion effect of emotions, but because we're using these healing centered tools, we're using these somatic relational tools,
to actually support that energy to move within ourselves and between ourselves. there's a really cool flow that happens.
That's really cool. You know, like I don't have to carry all the grief.
But then we ended up carrying and moving the grief together.
There's something quite beautiful about that.
Blaze: I think something that you're tapping into there is how we're such relational beings as humans.
Like we do need a group. We need a place where we feel like we belong.
And I think sometimes part of our collective grief is feeling like we don't have community to rest in. We don't have anywhere to share these feelings and experiences.
And automatically when we do, there is this residence and we find that things are meant to move and they do it all on their own.
Just by us being together and being able to have that...
I've been through, I don't even want to say push and pull, it's like kind of like being in an ocean together and everybody's experiencing like you said the same up and down in waves.
We all have it in our own bodies. We feel it somewhat similarly, but it doesn't have to have the exact same personal impact.
We're all in our own spot floating in this ocean, but we're all together.
I love that. It's something that I explore in my seasonal gatherings as well, where we get together and we're feeling, "What is the energy that we're all personally experiencing through this season?"
And we bring in the wisdom of What's going on in nature? What are we actually meant to be doing right now? And again, it's not providing, here's your answer and your solution to it.
It's saying, here's some lenses to look at it with and to hold it together, and as we share what's going on suddenly, you have your own clarity about what needs to happen next.
Or suddenly you find that you're given that permission to feel or make the choice of what you already wanted to make anyway.
And it isn't it so interesting, I think, when we're in community spaces, no matter who I'm talking to, even one to one...
As you bring something up, In your heart you already know what you want your answer to be and you're looking for someone to echo it back to you.
Liz: Yeah. Absolutely.
Blaze: And I think that's part of being human. So we want to be in these spaces. We want that confirmation. And when you're with a bunch of like-minded people, or they're in that resonance together,
You are getting that nourishment that you need. You're getting the permission to be able to drop whatever weight you were carrying, even if it's only for that moment. And then suddenly you realize, "Oh, this is possible. It's a thing that can happen. I don't need to do it all by myself. I don't have to carry this forever."
It changes things very deeply, I think, for people.
Liz: Yeah, I think so too. And I think some of the key ingredients that I found for that too, because it brings me to the question of, okay, what makes...
'Cause we've all been in group settings too where that doesn't happen.
Whether it's a dinner party or a work meeting or whatever it is.
And it makes me think of key ingredients around safety. It makes me think about at least these, again, just in my own humble experience that I found.
It's made me think about, and in particular, and safety can be such a loaded word, but really, you know, what types of things do we know from the Healing Centered Sciences around how emotions work and the mind and body really make a space as constructive and supportive to as many as possible, etc.
And then the other one that I think about a lot, especially when it comes to processing changes in the world and collective grief. And like you brought up early on too, just this, you know, age of disinformation and this kind of post-truth era where all of us are having so many different experiences. We're tapped into different echo chambers of conversations, etc. etc.
How can we actually create spaces that can hold also divergence and diversity of thought?
And because I can also find that sometimes healing spaces, community spaces can get the rep of being like, "Oh, if we're not all you know, harmonious if we're not all agreeing with each other then somehow we failed,
or somehow you know things didn't, didn't go well. I don't know if you found this too. But in this-- Yeah. Yeah, go ahead.
Blaze: Yeah. It's so hard. If you have people across purposes, I think one of the ways that I find goes go better is to be very clear about what the gathering is or what it's for.
So that we're clear about what's expected of everyone maybe. Because I think if people come in and one person comes in and wants to get one thing, and someone else wants something else and they're very opposite of each other, then you find that there's conflict between people. But if it's apparent from the beginning: we're not trying to fix each other. We're not trying to change anybody's opinions about anything. And all of it is stated up-front.
Like all of your experiences are valid. It's okay if you disagree with people and I honestly expect it a lot of the time. We live in a huge world and we all are living a different experience. There's no way that if you have 100 or 1000 people, they're all going to have the same experience or becoming from the same society even.
Like we just have such a different cultural expectations. What I try to remember or hold in my heart, and I think that's something that's so important in big gatherings is like what's the heart intention I guess of the meeting.
We're all here because we want relief. We're here to find a common ground or to be able to share what we're feeling.
And that means nothing that someone shares is wrong. It's about having the space to say this is how I feel.
And I think it also is important that the leader of the space is able to step and say, "Okay, what you're experiencing is valid and what this other person is experiencing is valid. But the point here is not for us to argue about it."
It's to just two human beings and go, OK, if we strip away the actual context of what's happening here. This is a person who is hurting, and this is a person who is hurting. Now, how do you feel about each other? If this is what you're experiencing, how would you help that person or support that person?
And take away context. Like if it was a little kid and they just said, "My tummy hurts, what would you do?"
Suddenly there is so much common ground because we're all sharing the experience of being human.
Liz: Thank you so much for saying that in such a beautiful way, because that's exactly how I hold it too.
Using intentionality, using community guidelines, using relational and somatic tools within community spaces like that.
Because I think when we're also talking about collective pain and collective wounds that are alive in society it can really make feelings safe enough or even being like, "Am I gonna get kicked out if I say the wrong thing?" Am I, you know, there's such a...
There's such a divisiveness that's in our world these days and so I think it's...
When I talk about creating support and processing the world's pain, really naming how collective wounds related to past, related to the present, related to the future,
Can so often drive political narratives, drive even ideological takes, and what it sounds like happens in the community spaces that you offer and what I've seen to be really important just in this spirit of collective healing and bringing more healing-centered support to just processing and making sense of what's going on in the world, is exactly it, dropping below the surface of the narrative and meeting people in that more human space.
Blaze: I think that we need to do that more, because I think that we're very used to hearing narratives and even interpreting our own lives (in) the way that we've been shown.
And it's to say someone's right and someone's wrong. Someone did this to someone else, someone's a victim.
(But) we're all a victim right now. Like I guess that's it. I don't even want to say that either because that feels so disempowering but...
What if we're all just experiencing what is some shitty stuff? All of us. And it doesn't matter if your ancestors did this, and your ancestors did that...
There's so much guilt being flung in every direction and no one knows who's responsible for what anymore.
And I think that's part of the grief too, is like, I want to take responsibility but I can't take responsibility for all of this, but so much happened out of my control before I was born. It's happening around me. I'm trying my best.
Did you ever watch The Good Place?
Liz:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Blaze: Yeah, yeah. And I loved the takeaway of like it's so hard to be a good person at this point, like you just can't because every decision you make has so much that went into it before you even knew it existed as a question to make a yes or no on, that there is no good choice anymore.
And I think that's the freak out that we're all having is like, well, how do we make it better if no matter what we choose, something bad has happened?
Liz: Yeah. It is really tough.
Blaze: Making it known that we understand that it's like that for everybody and that we're here in good spirit, here to support other people as fellow humans and to just say like, "I'm here for you. I believe in your pain. I believe in yourself. I believe in what's happening. I'm not going to say you're wrong for having it or you shouldn't have it because X-Y or Z happened."
And let's just get rid of that. Let's just look at each other with compassion. We're like, wow, we're all here. We've all been living through some really tough shit.
Liz: That's right.
Blaze: And it's an addition to just your regular everyday shit.
Liz: Yeah, it's in addition to your everyday regular shit. That's right, you know.
Blaze: And if you have that, you can have so much more compassion for yourself.
And I think that's so important too is you realize like, I can be kind to everybody but I have to be kind to myself first.
Otherwise, it's always that pushing away and being angry at other people for also being upset and not helping you.
Liz: Yeah, yeah, it's just a lot of trauma. It just makes me think and like trauma within the definition and sense of, you know, an experience happened in our lives and the life of society and the collective body that was too much too fast for the people in the body at that time to process digest and integrate.
Right, so instead it gets stored away, it gets exiled, it gets pushed to the side until there are the proper resources internally and externally for that to resurface, for that emotional energy, which you know
Turning to physics, is just energy at the end of the day. It cannot be created or destroyed. It needs to be experienced. It needs to be felt in order for it to be processed.
And in some ways when I look around these days and look at all of the collective pain and really sit back and wonder like why is it up in our faces in such an intense way?
Sure, we can look at media. Sure we can look at political breakdowns. We can look at you know the rise and falls of civilizations, you know, like cycles of civilizations, etc. etc.
But there's also a curiosity I hold around this, like, trauma informed and healing centered lens of being like, maybe this is actually kind of
Bear with me for a second, but maybe it's kind of cool. That's so much collective pain is up in our faces these days. Maybe it actually points to us being resourced enough in a way that enough of us have enough bandwidth, enough capacity, enough safety in our lives.
And of course not all of us, they're still much, much work to be done, but there is enough of us where, as a collective system, this stuff is coming to the surface.
And now it's about equipping each other, supporting each other to work with it and actually turn it into something adaptive and useful.
Blaze: I love that. I think about this a lot myself. Wondering if I have the capacity. to handle what I'm handling on whatever day. Up and down, right? But generally...
What is that allowing to be possible now?
Because as you said, healing happens when everything comes to the surface, like the wound needs to flush itself out in order to heal. And if that's what we're all experiencing...
Like, it's painful and it's gross and it's sucks and we don't want to have to scrub out the wound that's actively bleeding. It just sucks.
And yet as we do it, we have the opportunity to set a bone and move things back into a functional working space.
So much of what I really believe in is living a more sustainable existence, recognizing that we're all...
We exist and we exist in an ecosystem, like we're not just one person alone in the world doing our own thing, even if Western society seems to have told us all that we're individuals doing everything by ourselves.
We're not that. We're actually attached to so many things, so many different moving parts.
So realizing that as we find our own center, when we feel like we're capable of facing what we feel and feeling it. We're mirroring to everything that we talked about.
It's safe to feel, that it's safe to be upset and it's not going to destroy anything.
That sometimes you can use your upset to move something big. And when you realize that we all have this much outrage.
We're capable now of imagining something better. And that's why we're so angry, I think, is that we all--
have such better vision for what's going on with each other with the planet, with the climate, with everything.
And we're angry that it seems like the people in charge are doing nothing.
Liz: And they're doing the opposite.
Blaze: Yeah. And then I go, is that actually true?
Does that have to be true on a large scale? Because again,
What I see in my personal community and when I distill it down is people are showing up and making a difference and making choices. And when I do talk with people, yeah, we all want clean water and clean air and we would rather have better things.
There has to be a shift at some point where all of us go, yeah, we're just not gonna take that anymore from people.
If you're going to say that you care more about destroying forests than like, you know, getting rid of carbon, like, whatever it is. Then say we say "No" to you and we're going to take back over, because all of us want something better.
For each other for our selves, and for our kids.
So I think there's so much commonality there that isn't discussed enough, and I think it's important that people like you and movements like this are letting people hear that it is happening.
We are making a difference that we are showing up that it isn't the only story in the world. What's on CNN or whatever when you turn on Fox News, that's not the reality that a lot of people are living.
That's one thing that you can tune into, but there's something out there that you can let change your radio station and tune into the people who are making space to be human and reconnecting on a more personal level and being mindful about what we buy and the food that we eat and making choices to work with local farms. And just small things and it actually is enough.
And we need to hear that more. I think people are thinking that no matter what they do it isn't enough. Like everything you do is great. Keep doing it.
Liz: Yes. Which comes after that compassion piece thatI heard you bring up earlier. Just really just such compassion for ourselves.
Compassion for each other as we're all being pushed and pulled by the whims of the times that we live in. And then, you know, yeah, there is collective power that we have.
And, you know, we can all feel very isolated. I know I can feel isolated within this world and within our own efforts and it actually feels like it ties back to this kind of visibility thing.
Like oh if I'm not right showcasing it in some kind of way or being seen by it, you know, somebody else. But again, there's a real need to be seen and witnessed is you know, a valid thing, but you know, just embodying the values that we want to see more of in the world does help to co-create culture.
Like culture change can seem like it is and systems change right it can feel so abstract
so far away, so out of reach, but really culture changes through us. It doesn't change around us. And it does change around us too. But you know, culture changes through us.
Blaze: This made me think of coming back from a trip being gone for just one week. And most mornings I spend like the first half an hour to hour of my day with my garden. And I look at each little plant to see how it's doing and I only started this garden this year so everything started out very small.
And it took me being away for a week to come back and go, "Oh, everything massively grew!" But I felt like nothing was ever happening when I was here every single day.
And I think culture changes like that as well, where we're living in it. It feels like we're doing so much effort. I'm watering these plants. Why is nothing changing?
And part of it is just recognizing that when you're in it, you don't see how big the shift is because you're with it. You're just part of it.
Things are changing around you all the time. Sometimes they really, Ah, this is actually perfect for Autumn is realizing that...
You need to look back to see how far you've come. You need to have that moment to sit and reflect and go, well, wait, where was I at the beginning of the year or five or 10 years ago?
And could I have made the decisions that I'm making today then? How much has gotten better? How many skills have I gained? How many people have I impacted in that time?
And suddenly you realize, oh my god, it's massive.
But living in it felt like I did nothing. Because right now today, there's always like this emptiness of wanting more or more feedback from everything.
And we just worry, like, what is it that watched pot never boils? - Right, right, right.
But these are changing and I think what was life like a hundred years ago for my ancestors and stuff and like, well, women couldn't own a credit card or buy anything like on their own they couldn't have a house they couldn't own a business.
And here I am. Just as a matter of fact, I have my own business and I've done it multiple times.
And 100 years ago, that would have been un fricking heard of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
There's massive changes happening and they're always going to feel maybe less big than they actually are or like it's still not enough and I think that is
It's important that we always have desire. That's kind of what drives everything, right? Is this big existence experiment.
What do we want to create? What's going to happen next?
It's really beautiful. So thank you for bringing that up, that social change happens through us.
And it doesn't feel like it's happening fast enough, but then really it can be remarkable how much actually is happening if we take a moment to really experience it and not just hear what we're being told everywhere.
Liz: Yeah, yeah. And listening to what you're saying too, made me think that I feel like one of the homework invitations of this time too is building our capacity for complexity as well.
Because what I heard in everything that you're sharing is just this
And I even heard it in what you were describing around having really low seasons, having high seasons, feeling bliss, feeling dread, how there's this balance and even again this like capacity that I feel like the times are asking us to cultivate within ourselves of where we do hold the progress.
We do hold the ways that some things do work in our world. Some things do work in our lives.
With the sober reality that there's plenty that doesn't work. There's plenty that is either breaking down or maybe even falling apart.
And this itself is a capacity of emotions, of morality. This is a capacity of imagination to really you know, bring in this kind of bigger picture view that we can hold in order to navigate what we see, navigate what we sense.
I think it also even applies going back to the conversation around the divisiveness of our times and even thinking about collective power and collective agency.
Like how do we actually move the dial at this more policy society level? It is about people coming together. It is about finding those common interests and
It is in my humble view also about then doing this really beautiful and super challenging work of seeing beyond the narratives that we're all using to make sense of the world that
You know, I'm thinking about family members right now who, you know, are very politically different from me.
And there are some rabbit holes that they go down that are absolutely abhorrent to me. They're abhorrent, they're painful, they're beyond offensive, they're what could be called harmful, and although I'm not loving that word right now, but
For me, it's been such a practice of learning how to stay connected, learning how to stay in relationship with people who have very different political views from me in order to connect with my values, the values of connection, the values of relationship, the values of family, whatever it might be, and even my own values around what social change really means.
You know, in my view and my own philosophy, social change needs them both to come together and needs a big tent philosophy to have compassion piece, and collective trauma that's up in the air, and how it can really breed such guilt because we're all pointing fingers at each other because we're all just in a lot of pain and trying to make sense of things.
How to work with what we feel, right? To take care of and tend to the specific threads of pain, right, that are present for each of us, in order to get to a point then where we can start to have compassion and understand and see other people's pain.
And not to excuse bad behavior or excuse actual harm or injustice or anything like that.
By no means, it's actually to get clearer on what our hard yeses and nos. What are our boundaries when it comes to relationships when it comes to even knowing when it's time to turn up the dial and really kind of bring on mama bear energy versus be in the more kind of diplomat role, etc.
Blaze: I love it. It's so interesting. I feel like in Tai Chi classes too in qigong, there's a lot that I've learned there, saying discernment is so important.
That you recognize that sometimes you need to just roll and turn away from something and it's not the time to engage and other times it is the time to engage.
Sometimes it's really easy to just like turn something into something else. But you need to be aware and I think it all just comes back to like being present enough to be able to make that good discernment in the moment.
I say discernment because it's different from judgment.
It's not judging that the other person's bad, it's not judging that this whole situation is whatever, but it's discerning like, for me, I need to do this now.
And I think that comes back to in my experience, it's really listening to my body.
Body awareness about what, like when a feeling comes up I will feel it somewhere in my body.
I've learned to interpret things that way first before trying to label it. Oh, I feel angry. I feel scared.
Instead, I''' be like, "Oh, I feel like I want to walk away right now or I feel like I want to punch something." I'm like,
Those give me a lot of information about what my spirit, I guess, is calling me to do in that moment. I think we all have that wisdom within us.
And to a varying extent. People are aware or unaware of their emotions or their feelings or how that's playing out. And I think my work is so much about helping people connect with that and find their rhythm and learn what's true for them.
I think so many people have accommodated a great deal.
And I think that's what this time is calling for as well, right? The collective pain of realizing that we've all just gone with things a lot in our lives or we've been taught that this is the way things are.
And yet our emotions and our bodies are really calling to us saying, "Not true. Not true." What are we gonna do, because it's not true? No.
We don't know what to do with it. And I think for all of us, like, I love that you hold circles helping people be able to feel into it and not give them "this is what you should do."
That you say, "Well, what do you feel and what wisdom do you have from your experience?"
Because that's where real connection, real change comes from, and it helps people find where do they have the most impact or feel that they most belong? And it's very different for each one of us.
Like I can hear in the way that you engage and speak. You're comfortable working with big groups of people and commanding a space and helping direct that.
And it's interesting. I feel like on the podcast, I can talk really clearly and do this stuff.
But in person I'm so overwhelmed by crowds (that) I don't want to be a part of it.
Yeah, yeah like in my actual engagement I find is so very focused and small, but that doesn't mean it's not powerful.
And I think I love meeting other people that resonate with that or feel like they want to do something, they feel like they wish it was bigger and saying, "Hey, you have a huge impact even if what you're doing is very like, it's with your kid or with your partner or it's in your yard or just like in your job."
You are affecting the people and the stuff around you always. And when you come to it...
feeling really solid and good about yourself, projecting that energy and not pretending anything.
Because I find when I'm my most real, I can say, like I did at the beginning of this episode, I can say, "I'm grieving, I'm sad."
And then, you know, what are we? 20 minutes later, 40 minutes later. I'm not feeling that sad anymore, like things move in waves.
It's okay to show up like that and be authentic.
When other people feel that way too, my goodness we're capable of so much. We're capable of supporting each other so much because we're not pushing away any experience that anyone's having and we're certainly not pushing away our own experience and my God,
That's so healing, and I'm so tired of people pushing away their own experiences thinking that it's not important for that no one cares or... like, we have to care and give ourselves that permission.
Liz: Yeah, 100%. And I so appreciate the work you're doing and feeling the resonance with it because, you know, there is a lot of great cultural progress we're making around emotions and feeling emotions.
But, we're at the very beginning of it right, to feel, to have emotions has been very taboo for very long.
Right, very misunderstood. And what's so cool is we live at this time where the fields of clinical psychology and neuroscience are really helping us understand what emotions are.
How they work in the mind and body, everything that you describe there right?
That emotions are really just bundles of physiological sensations in the body. Right? Because our nervous system isn't just in our brain, isn't just in our head, it's tied to our entire physicality our entire body, and that emotions evolutionarily speaking...
This is the evolutionary perspective on emotions, aren't here to overwhelm us and to bring us down, they're here to help us adapt.
They're here to help us survive at the very least and then also to thrive in the best supported conditions.
And so just what you were describing there, right, living at this time when
There's so much emotional energy in our collective nervous systems. There's so much that we're feeling from the state of the world. That's not here by accident, in my humble view.
You know, it is here as an intelligence we can tap into. It's here to get things to change and to move.
And now we just need the right tools and support to be able to tap into those gifts and into those adaptive tendencies and really bring them into our lives.
Blaze: I am so thankful to have met with you and been able to share your voice and your work with everyone today.
I definitely would love to talk with you again because I feel like this work is so... relevant, important, and your view on everything so resonates with mine.
Liz: I would love that. Yeah, and I equally, I've been really enjoying this and so always grateful to find people who are walking similar paths and you know that's also right the power of coming together as a collective, right, the kind of connecting of nodes and communities and all that good stuff. I'm very grateful.
Blaze: Liz, I would love for you to just let people know where they can find you and I will of course put that in the show notes as well.
Liz: Thank you. Yeah, people can find me through my website. It's wehealforall.com.
Blaze: Wonderful.
I am sending out so much love to you and to our listeners today and to the world honestly.
I think that as we speak about emotion more. As we meet each other and say, "You know what, it's okay that you feel bad or scared or angry or...sad."
And it's equally okay if you feel great and inspired and like blissful right now. All of that, like you said, it's the complexity that we can hold both things. When we're able to just be with it, paths kind of appear.
And I do feel like maybe that's part of what we're living through right now in these times is just saying, "Hey, if you're willing to be present, if you're willing to feel. That's going to give you guidance and you'll know what to do next. Or people will show up that will help you out and move things along."
Don't be afraid of how you're feeling.
And it's okay to share it with other people because I think we're all looking for that connection and that support with each other and we can be that for each other, and I'm so grateful to share that with you too.
Liz: Me too. Me too. Thank you so much.
Liz Moyer Benferhat has spent nearly two decades in sustainable development, where she kept witnessing the same thing: burnout, grief, and an inner toll nobody talks about. What she found wasn't a problem unique to activists or policymakers. It was a human problem. In 2018, she launched We Heal For All to address what she saw as the missing piece in social change work: the emotional lives of the people doing it. Through her teaching, she demystifies emotions, what they are, how they move through the mind and body, and why understanding them changes everything. You can see more of Liz's work, (including a book!), at WeHealforAll.com.
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