081 – Nisha Moodley: Awakening the Power of Midlife

Sarah Tacy [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to Threshold Moments. My name is Sarah Tacey and today we have with us Nisha Moodley. I’m going to start with a bio, as I often do, and please update or correct anything here. Nisha is an integrative leadership coach, the founder of Global Sisterhood Day, and a mother. She’s been working with women for years, facilitating annual mastermind groups, several online courses, and nearly 50 retreats. As a mixed race woman with a background in health and executive coaching, intergenerational and energy healing and community building, she has a unique understanding of the ecology of leadership and the ability to catalyze deepen growth for her clients. And I am skipping to a quote that I think I pulled from Instagram where you say, my work primarily serves women in becoming the kind of people we’d want to follow into the apocalypse. Deeply wise, deeply trustable, and aims to support those women in becoming ripe, reveled and highly resourced.

Sarah Tacy [00:01:17]:
We need our visionary matriarchal leaders to be highly resourced, having time, money, energy and relationships. Welcome.

Nisha Moodley [00:01:27]:
So grateful to be here. And somehow I feel like I wrote that bio, like, I don’t know, like a blink ago. And somehow it’s now over 60 retreats, which blows my mind. That’s one of my favorite. Like, wow, I’m really doing a thing over here. We just kind of put. It’s like parenting. You put one friend in front of the other and then you’re like, wow, I’ve kept you alive for a decade of miraculous.

Nisha Moodley [00:01:51]:
Thank you for having me, Sam.

Sarah Tacy [00:01:52]:
Yes. I had a feeling that this wasn’t, like, the most up to date with the numbers, which is why I said, walking with women for years, I was like, I know it’s more than twelve years. I know it’s been more than that. It’s been many years.

Nisha Moodley [00:02:05]:
Heading towards 17, I think, now.

Sarah Tacy [00:02:08]:
Yeah. Yeah. So beautiful. So I became aware of you first through Jennifer Asiope, who last year said, you know, sarah, if you’re ever looking for somebody for a coach for business, I feel like Nisha has the depth and the breadth that would call to you. And so I started looking into you last year and it didn’t quite work out for me to join your, I want to say, council, but I don’t know what you. Yeah. And then this year, I’ve had the privilege of spending more time with Janine Yoder and then therefore meeting Ginny Muir. And it was so great that as I listened to them tell stories, I realized what a magnet you are for souls that were meant to meet at Janine’s birthday.

Sarah Tacy [00:03:06]:
There was a woman who stood up that said, I like the story that I’ve heard a couple times is, we met at Nisha’s mastermind, we met at Nisha’s council, and that then these women have stayed in touch for now. It’s been ten years, and there’s a group of them that meet every single Monday, and they have for ten years since being in your group. And I always think it speaks a lot to the person holding space when that type of richness continues to ripple out for lifelong friendships.

Nisha Moodley [00:03:37]:
I think one piece of it is that I try to just be myself online. So if people really resonate with me, they’re probably gonna have some resonance with one another where, like, oh, you know, there’s a kinship element that I feel like now in the online space. Yeah, there’s a lot of people just being themselves, and there’s also just a lot of posturing, even just the fact that we can put filters on everything so we can present a really packaged version of ourselves. And I have the privilege and cringe factor of having been around online before there were any filters on my mouth or my face. That’s not true. I’ve always had some filter around, you know, being conscious of how I’m speaking, I think. But no, I mean, when I started my business, I didn’t have Facebook. That kind of came sort of around that same time.

Nisha Moodley [00:04:39]:
And so I’ve always just been me. I’ve talked about my political views and what I believe in and what I care about. And so I think that attracts a lot of resonant people. It’s part of it, and I think also part of it is just cultivating spaces where people can really unfurl and be revealed in who we are, in the struggle, in the beauty, in the hilarity, without having to have any masks on the. And also, at the same time, be totally celebrated for the unique gifts, beauty, wisdom, personality, zest that we bring. And I think that combination of having complete space to unfurl and unwind and be seen and be revealed, and at the same time be celebrated and encouraged and uplifted creates a real relational intimacy that is profound. And so I see that with a lot of my groups, that people end up having lifelong friendships out of this space, which is really so satisfying.

Sarah Tacy [00:05:55]:
I’m thinking in opposition right now. I’m like, do I bring this to the table or not? But I’ll just say that with trauma physiology, there’s often this feeling of being in the presence of others, but having an experience, an inner experience, that feels really isolating. And so it’s this going into a helpless or without choice on my own. And what I’m hearing is that when you create space, they can be all of themselves. You said the hilarity, the. I’m guessing the shadow, and it all gets celebrated. Not saying, like, and then the light, and then that gets celebrated, but that there is this safe space where everybody in the group gets to experience what it’s like to be in a relational field, where it’s safe to be the fullness of themselves. And that is such a healing, beautiful thing that we often don’t get.

Sarah Tacy [00:06:55]:
And I would imagine, especially in the online space, where one might have to be so careful because the attack can come so quickly. So to be in person or to be in a space that is purposely cultivating a sense of safety is, to me, such a necessary thing in these times.

Nisha Moodley [00:07:16]:
Yeah. And I think for me, you know, 14 years of running councils, it’s not like there has never been relational hiccups or challenges or things to move through in some ways. Like, the deeper we go, the more stuff can come up and we can rub against things in one another. And had councils that have decided collectively to, like, do a second year together, and then the relationships get deeper and they mirror family relationships and family dynamics, more and more stuff can come up, and so there’s more depth, there’s more intimacy, but there can also be more complexity. And I think that a big lesson for me over the years has been it has really schooled me. Holding council, intimate space with women has really schooled me on how to cultivate more willingness to allow, in some ways, conflict. But it’s just difference in my space, because growing up in a highly conflictual household, a lot of conflict with my parents, I was a super conflict avoidant kid. Right? And we can go in one of two directions.

Nisha Moodley [00:08:29]:
You can grow up in a household with a lot of conflict and be wired to kind of hunger for conflict, seek conflict, create conflict, generate conflict, or to swing the other direction, which is what I did, and be, like, really conflict avoidant, very uncomfortable around conflict, to enjoy difference, biracial person. And so difference is sort of like how I came in, having two very different looking, acting culturally different families. I like difference. It is when conflict would come into this space that I would find myself, like, imploding. And so I’ve worked so much over the years to lean in when difference shows up as challenge, as difference in perspective, as difference in an idea of how should we move in this moment. And the more that I attract really fully formed women who are strong and opinionated and passionate and live full lives, the more that there is not conflict in the space. Actually, there’s less what I would consider conflict, but there is more difference. There is more.

Nisha Moodley [00:09:45]:
Oh, okay. Well, I have a strong sense of, like, how we could meet this moment. Oh, I have a different sense. But the beauty in not resisting that difference is that there’s a kind of moving together, that it’s like, oh, we go deeper, and things are so much richer, and there’s so much more wisdom in the room because I’m not conflict avoidant, and therefore, the space is not held in conflict avoidance. And instead, there’s, like, a real richness of wisdom in the space. And it’s been, like, incredibly beautiful to hold counsel in the last few years, especially as, like, there’s a lot more mothers in this space. Folks are distinctly at midlife, in different places, but, you know, in this sort of period of life, and we all really want to be together. There’s a deep desire to be intimate, to support one another and fully going for it, and also not a shying away from bringing our gifts, sharing our ideas, weaving our wisdom in the space.

Nisha Moodley [00:10:53]:
And it’s like, together that weave, we are so much stronger. And the clarity that comes through for each person, for ourselves, but also as offerings to other, is so much richer. So I could talk about counsel forever because I love it so much.

Sarah Tacy [00:11:12]:
Well, you mentioned the differences in your household, and I have the privilege of reading your timeline, which is fascinating, and it sheds so much light. And I also think that I saw somewhere on there that you’ve done constellation work. And so, to me, that that adds so much interest for me. And I’m wondering if you would be able to share with the listeners a little bit about your father’s background and your mother’s background. And I will say, when I first read one of your bios, and you talked about the things you talked about at the table, it was separated from, like, at your father’s table and your mother’s table, and that was before I realized there was a divorce. And I was like, whoa. Like, these two very different lives and experiences within one body.

Nisha Moodley [00:12:03]:
Yeah. Yeah. So my parents divorced when I was quite young and had 50 50 custody. So I spent half the time with my mom, very much culturally embedded in that family, large extended family, my dad’s side, you know, medium extended family, but still an extended family that’s quite close and robust and culturally very different. So my mother is. My family has been in Canada for several generations. Not several, actually, maybe only three generations. European, mixed european, english, scottish, Welsh, French, and not a very religious family, actually.

Nisha Moodley [00:12:45]:
So I didn’t grow up with the church, but, you know, hockey and football and Yorkshire pudding and roast beef, maybe conflict avoidance, too. And my mom was the deputy chief electoral officer for many, many, many years, maybe even decades, actually, for our province, which essentially means that she was one of the highest in command around running elections for our province and administering elections for our province in Canada. And so she would design, run, you know, administer these elections and. And, you know, work with this team of lawyers to interpret the Election act. And elections are quite different in Canada than in the US and good places in the world. But so my mother forfeited her right to vote in order to hold this position. You cannot be a partisan election official in Canada. And so my mom was just super passionate about her job.

Nisha Moodley [00:13:52]:
I grew up with a mom who was passionate about her work. She would come home and talk about her work. She would bring work home. Not in a way that I felt was negatively impactful. I just knew that my mom loved her job and loved what it represented, loved what she got to participate in. And essentially, my mom’s a democracy nerd. Like, she’s an artist now in her retirement, but she would talk about passionately about democracy, about systems of government, about voting and human rights. And this was just like a big passion of my mom’s.

Nisha Moodley [00:14:30]:
And she also traveled a bit with the UN to observe elections, often in places where they hadn’t had democratic elections before and were having their first attempt at a democratic election. And so she would report to the UN on how are they doing and what’s going well, and did it work? What didn’t work? So, fascinating career that my mom had and passion that she carried on my father’s side. My family came from apartheid South Africa, so my family is from India, South India, Tamil Nadu. I have strong reason to believe I have some ancestors from Sri Lanka as well. And so regionally, South India. And they migrated as indentured laborers to South Africa probably six or seven generations ago now, and lived under apartheid until my dad and some of his family left for Canada in the very, very early seventies, like 1970, the year that my dad came over. And so I grew up. You know, we grew up watching Mandela on tv and talking a lot about my family was part of the resistance movement in South Africa.

Nisha Moodley [00:15:53]:
And so talking about resistance, apartheid, human rights, racism, structural racism, racism, not so much being was just an understanding that racism was like, yeah, you could have that person that’s prejudiced, but, like, actually, these systems, that racist systems are structures. And so that was a lot of the passionate conversation that. And, like, cricket and. And so I just grew up in very passionate families, you know, with a lot of passionate conversation about collective well being, collective movement, human rights and democracy and fairness and justice. Like, these were all things that are sort of dyed in the wool for me and very much part of the fabric of my being. So when my friends see me kind of get riled up about a world event, they’re like, here she goes. They know, especially if it involves kids or something, like, I’m about to not shut up for a while because there’s a lot that I care about and also that I’m kind of tracking or attempting to track. So, yeah, I feel this deep passion for both structural change and systems change and also for personal change and how the personal impacts the collective and also how the collective impacts the personal.

Nisha Moodley [00:17:27]:
But, yeah, that’s how I grew up, vacillating between those two families and being the kid that brought, you know, curry in my lunch kit one week and ham and cheese sandwiches the next week, this sort of trying to fit in, always kind of fitting out a little bit, and also just being this passionate foot stomping, give me the megaphone. I have something to say. Kind of kid my whole life, because of how I grew up.

Sarah Tacy [00:17:58]:
I have highlighted here haikus, flamenco dancing, and fundraising for hurricane. You go making money doing what you love. And I have those highlighted as, like, I wonder if this could encapsulate, like, moments where you’re like, there I am. There I am. Things that bring me alive.

Nisha Moodley [00:18:18]:
Totally. Yeah. I think there’s. There was a strong leaning in both of my families towards aliveness in this sense. For my mom, it was very public service and career oriented, talented, like a go for what lights a fire inside of you, and strong encouragement to, like, take leadership roles at school. You know, even as a kid, like, I was class president in grade five. I was like, I’m going for it. Did a full campaign.

Nisha Moodley [00:18:54]:
Love that. It was the only year that there existed, like, a presidency, but I went for it. So there was just a strong, like, stand for what you believe in. I think is really, like, the collective message of my family. Both families stand for what you believe in, but it also really meant, like, orient to where you’re passionate. It’s like we believe in something because it lights a fire in us. Right. We could see something happening and kind of shrug our shoulders, or we could see something happening and go, that really lights something inside of me.

Nisha Moodley [00:19:28]:
And so I sort of see that stand for what you believe in, weaving very closely with, like, embrace your full aliveness. To me, like, aliveness and leadership are not divorced from one another. And I think when we’re trying to be in our leadership, from a place where we’re not also really embracing our aliveness, we’re missing something in there. And then we’re just trying to go the motions of leadership, like, do the things that we think will move the needle around whatever it is that we’re caring about, but maybe from not the deepest place of passion and aliveness.

Sarah Tacy [00:20:11]:
Right before we started recording, you spoke to me a word or two about the idea of arrows and leadership. Would you be willing to say anything else? I mean, I feel this is most likely what you just said, but if you wanted to include this word.

Nisha Moodley [00:20:31]:
Yeah. So, first of all, I just want to say, talk about Eros. Because I think when we talk about Eros and the erotic, we go to sex, and then we go to, I don’t know, sort of like kinky, liberated sex or something like this. This idea of sex that is raunchy or kinky or wild or something like that. And that’s what the erotic is. I’m not saying everybody listening is doing that, but I’m just saying, by and large, we tend to go erotic.

Sarah Tacy [00:21:03]:
Okay?

Nisha Moodley [00:21:03]:
That means sex. Okay? That means. And that kind of flavor, some flavor. Eros is, as I understand it, life force moving through us. It’s life’s longings for itself rippling through our existence. And so intimacy with life, watching a butterfly taking it in, dropping into deep eye contact with our children, that’s a moment of Eros allowing ourselves to be moved by life. Right? It’s like when the aperture of the eyes open, you know, when the. When the lower belly softens open, and we can keep going and going and going.

Nisha Moodley [00:21:49]:
So to me, Eros is like profound intimacy with life. It’s allowing life in a deep breath, in its own way, is erotic because I’m welcoming life in through my breath. So a thing that I have a real bee in my bottom about. Give me a megaphone and you got it over the highway. Here we go. Whether it’s intentional or not, there’s a massive conspiracy to have women at midlife feel like we are over the hill. We have lost our beauty. We have lost our vitality.

Nisha Moodley [00:22:26]:
We have lost our interest. We’re no longer interesting. We are no longer vital and lush and fresh, and we are becoming invisible. That narrative, it’s not entirely wrong from the outside in. From the outside in, the way that society treats women as we become more gray, as our bodies change shape, as the breasts sag, society does treat us like we’re more invisible. Society does treat women as we elder, especially elder women, as invisible. And if, you know, at best, maybe cute, like, oh, that cute old woman. But not potent, not necessarily powerful, fascinating, sexual, interesting, vital.

Nisha Moodley [00:23:23]:
It’s a lie, though. And the way that I see it is that actually the way that midlife is designed from a nature perspective is like, okay, you’ve had your babies, probably right by a certain point. We’re pushing the limits on that now and having babies later, which is fine and beautiful. I had my second at 42, so we’re pushing the limits on that. But, you know, midlife is also. The goalpost is moving a little bit. We’re saying now maybe midlife extends into 60, so we’re having babies later, but we’re also maybe living a bit longer. But the point being that we get to this stage in life where maybe we’ve had our babies, maybe we’ve done a lot of child rearing, and now it’s sort of like, wow, there’s so much ahead, if we’re lucky, like, there’s so much life ahead.

Nisha Moodley [00:24:16]:
What do I get to do with it? That actually, this is a time where with all of the earned wisdom, with all of the fire of perimenopause, the surge of, like, heat and rage and. And intensity and emotionality in our bodies, that we’ve probably gone through the portal of having children, perhaps, or at least reckoning with what it is to have children in this world? And we’ve gone like, what the hell? Like, where is the village? The whole thing is broken. What is wrong with this world that this is actually the time where all of. Of that heat, all of that fire, all of that passion could have us completely upend and rework the systems. It’s like we’ve mastered or have done the work of, how do I run this household effectively? But part of the siloing, even of households, part of the siloing of everybody has to be responsible for their own, you know, 21 meals a week, and everybody needs to buy a lawnmower and maintain it, and everybody needs to have a blender. And we get so busy with just this one little nuclear family, but as we both change those systems and go, wait, we can share a blender with the neighbors, or we can make family of our neighbors. We can do life together a little bit more. We can resource share a little bit more.

Nisha Moodley [00:25:38]:
We can lean on one another emotionally a bit more. We can start to network and cross pollinate and act more like a web and create community with one another. So as we do that, it lightens that individual load. But also, we have all this wisdom of, I know how to run a household. Imagine if we took that to, I know how to reorder my neighborhood. I know how to change the way that the school is run. I know how to shift the way that my friends do community together. I know how to enter into a role in government and change the thing from the inside out of.

Nisha Moodley [00:26:16]:
To me, this is actually a time of our most intense power and potency. We’re actually in our ripeness. It’s not the fruit on the tree that’s, like, firm and hot and not quite ready to eat yet. It’s the fruit on the tree that’s, like, juicy and has maybe, like, a little crack in it that’s oozing some of that sweet juice out of it. Like, we’re in our fullness, is how I say, see it? This is summer and edging into fall. Like, there’s a ripeness. And to me, it’s like we could either go, I’m over the hill, and I need to either fix myself to try to be younger, appear younger, whatever. I don’t judge women who do any of that, or just fade away.

Nisha Moodley [00:27:05]:
Forget about it. I’m done. I did my job, raised my kids, or I had my and fade away. And I kind of want to shake us all and go, we are the revolution, actually. And for me, it started with watching Greta Thunberg give her passionate speech at the World Economic Forum in whatever year that was, 2020, 2019. And the response kind of split in two directions. Like, the dominant response split in two directions. What I heard was a lot of just negative garbage about whatever, judging this child who was brave enough to do this.

Nisha Moodley [00:27:46]:
And then I heard a lot of, like, the kids will save us. And I was like, wait, what? That is a, not their job. B, they’re way too young. Like, I’m grateful for the courage of these youth. And also what they said. What Greta Thunberg said is essentially, where are the adults? Why am I giving my. Why are we giving our childhood to have to say that we care about something, that we want a future? Where are you? And I think who they’re speaking to is us. They’re speaking to those of us at midlife who go, wait, I could actually keep filling this tank.

Nisha Moodley [00:28:28]:
I don’t have to relate to. My tank is empty. Let me keep filling this tank. Let me fuel this tank so that I can keep on going, and let me use the vitality that I’m tending in my own body, in my own being. Let me stoke the fires that are already lit inside of me, but let me stoke them and let me channel all of this energy. Yes, some of it is going to have to go to tending children, perhaps, for those of us who still have little ones. But also let this be the fuel of my leadership. Let the juice of my aliveness be the fuel of my leadership so that we actually get engaged with creating the kind of world that we want to live in.

Nisha Moodley [00:29:12]:
That’s what I feel really passionate about.

Sarah Tacy [00:29:14]:
I can tell by the way your body is moving.

Nisha Moodley [00:29:17]:
And, yeah, when I say that Eros is the fuel of our leadership, I very practically mean that being in a relationship with a life where we are being fueled by life, lit up by life, animated by life, where we are not just going, man, it’s going to be like, you know, wine on wine on wine and real housewives, and just slowly fade into the night. By the way, I do like reality tv, and sometimes I have a glass of wine. So, like, I’m not judging, but I think we all know, like, that sort of archetypal invitation for us to just like, shh. Good job. You did your thing, made your kids just go to bed now, and instead we go, no, no, no. I’m gonna have community. I’m gonna have aliveness in my body. I’m gonna have sexual potency.

Nisha Moodley [00:30:13]:
I’m gonna have a roar. I’m going to have passion and fire, and instead of relating to everything that’s happening in my body, and I’m going to relate to it all, as this is my leadership, this is my potency revealing itself, I am getting more powerful, and let me channel that power in the direction that I want to see it go.

Sarah Tacy [00:30:42]:
Thank you. I’m hearing this, and I’m also simultaneously, I’m remembering what you said about complexity and not shying away from hard conversations, which I imagine would be really important if anyone wanted to make positive change in this world. To not be a strong divine, but to be able to have space for difference. And maybe I’d say, without saying too much, even I can possibly see a little bit of how you described your dynamics. You have new partner and your child’s father and past relationships that have made an impact on you. And what I see with that is this fine tuning of knowing who you are, what you want, what’s important to you, and weaving something together that isn’t necessarily simple, but that is true, and that is honest. And I see and believe that. I see often where we might fall into simplicity and say, like, it’s for the kids, or it’s.

Sarah Tacy [00:31:57]:
Or it’s for, like, this idea that we have to keep dynamics in a certain way as weve seen them in the past or something like that. And as I observe from a distance you living your life, I perceive that there is room for nuance and complexity and conversations. And are you now 45?

Nisha Moodley [00:32:25]:
Yeah, 45. Wow.

Sarah Tacy [00:32:26]:
And I’m wondering if you could tell me, as you move into this midlife phase and are coming into, I don’t know if it’s new partnership over the last year or two.

Nisha Moodley [00:32:37]:
Yeah, yeah.

Sarah Tacy [00:32:38]:
Over the last year, how different that might look from partnership that you may have found when you were 22. Like, has somebody intimate life, like, what does that look like when you really are choosing? I would imagine, with more consciousness from the beginning, more openness, harder, truer conversations. What does a relationship like that look and feel like?

Nisha Moodley [00:33:05]:
Yeah. First of all, I think that it’s sort of undeniable that there’s just so much primal hardwiring in our bodies. Right. We know this is true, but I think that also also extends to when we’re in a time of life where we’re sort of orienting towards partnership with the question of children. Like, will we have children together? There’s just so much hardwiring in there. And I think that there are ways, because nature wants us to procreate. You know, the species wants to do the thing that species want to do, which is make more of the species. And so I think in the past, I’ve looked over a lot of what might be called, like, red flags.

Nisha Moodley [00:33:49]:
I’m not necessarily saying the person red flags, but, like, red relational red flags. Like, oh, we don’t really fit together in this way, or, this isn’t super synergistic. And I think some of that was probably just being younger and really idealistic and thinking that I running patterns. Like, maybe a lifetime of thinking, if I was good enough, I would change my dad. And so if I’m just good enough, he will change. I can change him, because if I can just be good enough, I can change him. Like, a lot of that was gone by the time I sort of had two kids under my wings and was like, well, I guess I’m gonna get on a dating app. Some of the idealism had faded for sure.

Nisha Moodley [00:34:34]:
But also, I didn’t have the primal, hardwiring, really active of seeking a mate to procreate with because I knew that I was, or I was pretty sure that I was done having kids, birthing kids. Anyways, my labors were really hard. Listen, I love hard. Actually, I probably have a kink for difficulty that I like to actually work on. But, you know, they were, like, physically traumatic. And. And my body is not great with, with birthing children, at least my children with their giant heads. So even my ob was like, I would recommend you don’t have more kids, actually, with this body.

Nisha Moodley [00:35:23]:
So I was pretty sure that I was done having kids. And so that wasn’t an orientation. And I just opened myself to dating really clear about what I wanted and what I didn’t want, but also pretty unattached. Like, pretty unattached to. I didn’t need a partner. I wasn’t attached to any kind of timeline. I was like, you know, I let go of my relationship with my kids daddy from a place of, okay, this means I’m entering the unknown, and that means I have to reckon with. I could be single for the rest of my life, and I choose that over this partnership.

Nisha Moodley [00:36:11]:
And that’s okay. Like, I can’t. I had to come to a place of acceptance at every step, you know, and so. And so entering the dating world. I remember, actually, I’ll just tell you the story because kind of awesome. But I was laying in. I was laying in bed one night, and, you know when you’re in that liminal, like, between sleep and wake, you’re falling asleep, but you’re not all the way in yet. And I had this vision, and I’m not going to describe the whole vision, but essentially.

Nisha Moodley [00:36:44]:
But I was offered in this vision. What I saw was two paths. And one path was the path of, like, bitterness and resentment. And I’m just gonna, like, be mad at life and my ex for how things turned out. And the other was the path of the open heart, which was just, like, vulnerable openness, intimacy, availability, curiosity. And I said, okay, I choose that one. I choose the path of the open heart. And then I sort of, in this liminal space, sort of oriented my body down that path as if I was walking down a path in the woods and life.

Nisha Moodley [00:37:33]:
I heard this, like, very feminine voice that was like, you have to show your commitment. And I said, okay, what would you like me to do? And the voice said, get on a dating app. And I was like, oh, option b. Is there a different one?

Sarah Tacy [00:37:58]:
I feel like the voice, those voices that are true, guiding voices don’t usually give us the answer that we’re most, like, wanting to do.

Nisha Moodley [00:38:07]:
I was like, okay, sure. And. And I was like, which one? And a voice was like, I don’t care. That’s. You’ve been given, essentially, that it was like, there’s no more conversation. You’ve been given your assignment. And so as I’m in this liminal space, I sort of feel myself going, like, okay, I remember that for tomorrow. But there was this still waking part of me, right? That was.

Nisha Moodley [00:38:41]:
That was saying, I’ll remember this for tomorrow. That was also like, will I. Will I do it tomorrow? And, you know, when you get a clear directive, like, there are moments where something feels so clear. Like, yep, that’s the thing. I have this happen all the time when I’m ahead. What part of the work that I do is I commune with people as well, ancestors, and the ancestor in their line who is deeply connected to their work at this time, to their emergent work, and embodies the lineage gifts that are most wanting to come through in their work at this time. And so often a really clear directive will come through, or a few really clear directives from the ancestors. And I always say to people, you have to act.

Nisha Moodley [00:39:27]:
The director, if it felt true to you deeply, you’ve got to act on it, because they’re trying to support you to create momentum and movement. But we’ve got to do our part. And so I think, just as a little tangential side note here, part of what I see, because we’re all trained to be consumers and to be very consumerist in nature, we can get into this sort of spiritual consumerism where we’re like, whoa. That was so profound. Yes, I felt that. Yes, I received that directive, write it in a notebook, and then get on with our lives and totally forget about the directive and don’t do the thing. And then we’re like, wait, I need another reading with another tarot card reader. I’m lost again.

Nisha Moodley [00:40:05]:
Nothing wrong with tarot card readers, by the way, but I’m just saying that we kind of go back into these cycles of getting lost because we didn’t follow the directive. So in that moment, I caught myself being like, okay, which could have been so easy because I was fired, but I was like, no, I actually need to do this now. So I, like, hauled my body up at 1030 or whatever time it was and turned on my little bedside lamp and was like, I don’t know. Hinge. Sure. And I opened this dating app. I opened a couple dating apps, but I started there and made a profile, and I just picked pictures that were like, this is totally me. Pictures where I don’t have makeup on some of them.

Nisha Moodley [00:40:48]:
Pictures where I’m not smiling and kind of fierce. Not a bunch of photo shoot pictures, all recent. And then I just said things that were really true. I think the sort of header line is one of those dating apps where it’s like a photo and then a little blurb and then a photo and a little blurb. But I said that I was looking for another decolonial dreamweaver that I could, you know, have, like, deep chats and conversation and said a bunch of other things, but I just put me out there totally. Like, if one of my friends read it, I think they would be like, yeah, this is so Nisha. And so when I met my partner Adam, we matched on the app two days later, and he was the second person that I, like, connected, really with. So that was pretty quick.

Nisha Moodley [00:41:49]:
And he’s. I was like, he was very himself, and I was very myself. And I think that’s the foundation of our relationship, is, like, a deep acceptance. He is much better at this than I am. He is, like, very deeply accepting of how he is and how other people are. I am deeply accepting of how other people are, and I’m working on being more deeply accepting of how I am and not being like, am I lick this? He’s just very accepting of himself and others. And I feel like, because there is a baseline of acceptance of how we are and how each other are, it was okay to walk away. Like, we didn’t need this relationship, but that allowed us to see, like, oh, there is a tremendous amount of synergy.

Nisha Moodley [00:42:42]:
Oh, I want to keep spending time with you, and not because I’m afraid to be alone or because, well, I’ve been dating for a while and there’s nobody else around right now, or no one better still, like, there was none of that stuff. It was just a genuine, like, oh, I’m very interested in you. And even though we’ve been together for a year, we took ten months before we introduced our kids to each other. We didn’t meet each other’s kids until we’ve been together for nine months. My kids didn’t mean until we’ve been together for ten months. Even though, you know, the agreements with our co parents were that we could have met each other’s kids and I could have met each other at six months, and it wasn’t because we weren’t clear that we were deeply intrigued and that we were in. In it. But we paced in this way in our relationship that has continually brought us back to a reorientation with, how am I? Where am I in all of this? So that we’re not just going the motions, running patterns from old relationships.

Nisha Moodley [00:43:50]:
And so, in some ways, we’ve gone so much slower in our relationship, not because we keep pumping the brakes or we’re really afraid, although there is some fear that we’ve talked about, but because we keep reorienting back to self and. And then noticing, oh, I’m still drawn in. I’m still drawn in to and still drawn in until we got to the point that we were like, okay, now there is still a nucleus, center nucleus of self that has the children very close in, but also, I share, like, you’re very close in here as well, you and your children. Yeah. So I think there’s this idea that, like, there’s so many ideas, I think, around dating and relationships. Like, you know, if they’re. If they’re the right one, they’ll be completely ready immediately, and everything will just happen quickly, or, like. And then you can hear the opposite.

Nisha Moodley [00:44:50]:
Like, if they’re the right one, they’ll, you know, it won’t have to go fast. And I just think it’s so. It’s so individual. Like, it’s so unique to every relationship. It’s like we show up with our baggage, we show up with our fears. You know, for both of us, we had distance between us and two kids each, but pacing and really honoring. If this is how you are and you don’t change, does that really work for me, how I am, if I don’t change? And the answer has just continually been yes. And I think that’s part of the beauty of entering a relationship in life, is that we’re nothing trying to grow each other up.

Nisha Moodley [00:45:32]:
Yeah, we will grow up together in some way, because by the time we’re 60, we’ll be like those kids at 44, but, like, we’re not going through our youth together, and in so many ways feel like two adults who know themselves enough to really know if this is a good fit and enough to walk away if it’s nothing and that’s okay.

Sarah Tacy [00:45:57]:
What I perceive, I’m hearing is an element of newness, in that if you continue to check in on yourself and he continues to check in on himself, it’s almost like an agreement again and again. It’s the idea of consent, that consent wouldn’t just be a yes. And therefore, it’s a yes forever, that it’s just like, oh, and how about now? And how about now? And Ray Castellino was a pre and perinatal teacher guide who had this idea. There were maybe eight principles, and one of them is brief, frequent eye contact, which my mentor, Bridget Vicksman, changed to brief, frequent attunement. And he would say that in a household, if we often picked our eyes up from what we’re doing and make eye contact with our child, and then I come back to what we’re doing, make eye contact with our partner, and come back to what we’re doing. If we keep doing that, then we keep this sense of attunement within the family. And for me, as a practitioner, the idea of brief, frequent attunement would be that I’m not, as an empath, gonna just totally become the other person in all of their pain and all of their sorrow and all of their joy and all of their. And then the session’s over, and then suddenly collapse.

Sarah Tacy [00:47:21]:
But that there might be. Here I am. I’m responsible for my stability. I’m responsible for my center. I can attune to somebody else. I can come back to myself. I can attune to somebody else. I can come back to myself.

Sarah Tacy [00:47:34]:
And so as I think about these ideas of creating conditions that allow us to grow our capacity to be with greater diversity and nuance, some of these conditions include brief attunement. They include choice. They include pause. They include these elements that I hear you speaking about in your relationship that I would imagine keep it honest and true. And also the new part being like, I wonder what tomorrow will bring, versus just an assumption that if it brought this today, then it must bring this tomorrow, because that’s the agreement without the.

Nisha Moodley [00:48:12]:
Instability of, you could walk away tomorrow. Like, yeah, I know that that is actually technically true for every human at every moment, but that’s not going to happen because part of that, it’s, I don’t have. We don’t have the assurance I’m going to be your partner forever, no matter what. Even if this thing goes totally sour and, you know, we can’t resuscitate it. Well, that’s it. We are stuck together. No, we don’t have those assurances. But because there’s such a commitment to intimacy and attunement and passion, really, if things start feeling a little off, we talk about it and we talk about it so that we can come back to intimacy.

Nisha Moodley [00:49:09]:
So the whole, like, the rug is going to get pulled out from under me at any moment. That feeling that I think a lot of us are trying to manage for in relationships, like, I don’t want that thing. So then we. I’m going to cling to this thing. You can never leave. We can never go. Lock it down. Seal off all the exits.

Nisha Moodley [00:49:27]:
Promise me that we’re in this forever. Promise no judgment to people who promise that they’re in it forever. A lot of people do that. Maybe when they. We will do that. I don’t know. But, but I think what I’m trying to say is it’s the posture of almost. We don’t even have to look at what’s difficult.

Nisha Moodley [00:49:48]:
We don’t have to face what’s difficult because we just, we’re not going anywhere, so.

Sarah Tacy [00:49:52]:
Right.

Nisha Moodley [00:49:54]:
Let it be what it is, even if it’s not great versus, oh, actually, I’m feeling a little off, and I gave myself a day, and I noticed it’s not just, I don’t know, my brain doing a thing, but actually something is feeling a little disconnected to me, or I have a longing and I don’t know how to have it met here. So we can bring that into the relationship and into our conversations and into our exploration, so that if at some point we ever did decide to transition our relationship into a friendship or something like that, it wouldn’t, it would be after so much intimate care, connection, exploration, it wouldn’t be one person just realizing, I don’t, I don’t have anything and I can’t talk about it, and I don’t know how to bring it here. So I’m out. Yeah. So that’s one thing that I just wanted to say, because I think that sometimes when people think about having these relationships where we are orienting back to self and noticing how’s it going here? And you orienting and you checking in about what you need. I think for me, as a person who has had, like, more anxious attachment in relationships, the fear was always like, I would watch him go into his, like, for a couple of days, and I’d be like, oh, no, what if he decides that he’s out and I’m gonna lose him? You know? And so it was so powerful for me to, like, notice how there was an impulse inside of me to be like, no, don’t take space. If I let that part of me rule, that part of me would be like, no, no, no. I would have a tantrum about his desire to, like, not talk for two days.

Nisha Moodley [00:51:41]:
But instead I could be like, wow, this is really bringing something up. Because the fear is that he’s going to peace out.

Sarah Tacy [00:51:51]:
Right?

Nisha Moodley [00:51:52]:
And so I could say, wow, I have a fear that you’re going to just peace out. And he could say, oh, I will. I hear that. I would. I would not just peace out. So if I notice something in the spit in the time and space. So now, you know, he’s like, we joke. He’s like quite a cat, you know, if he didn’t have kids.

Nisha Moodley [00:52:13]:
Yeah, cat.

Sarah Tacy [00:52:14]:
Yeah.

Nisha Moodley [00:52:14]:
If he didn’t have kids, he would live, like, maybe a very monk like existence. And so at times he’ll be like, I’d love to have, like, a really, like, low communication few days. I just like, you know, he wants to go, like, deep into his, like, practices and, yeah, whatever, you know, he’s doing, but he’ll say, I want to have those few days, but I’m not doing it because I sense that there’s anything wrong or I feel that there’s anything wrong. I’m not looking for anything. This is why I want this. And I’m like, okay, great. And I’ll share if I have stuff coming up around it and then we talk about it and then. But there’s no, like, I’m going to not let you have the thing that you need.

Sarah Tacy [00:52:59]:
Right.

Nisha Moodley [00:53:00]:
You know, including me. If I was like, oh, I have a need in here, it might not mean that we can’t meet each other’s need in the moment, but I’m not going to keep them from having his need and he’s not going to keep me from having my need. So it’s really powerful. It feels like the most secure relationship I’ve ever had. And also, I’ve been married before in long term relationships with the glue of kids before. And we don’t have the glue of kids and we don’t live together and we’re not married, and there’s no legal papers. And it’s definitely the most secure relationship that I’ve ever.

Sarah Tacy [00:53:35]:
So beautiful.

Nisha Moodley [00:53:36]:
So in part, I think, because of all the maturity and the growth that we’ve done, but I think it also in part because of the real commitment that we both have to honoring each other’s and our own natural way. Yeah. And supporting each other’s needs. And I think there’s one more thing that I kind of want to say, because when you were weaving all of those beautiful elements, like consistent, brief, attunement pieces, it really made me think about facilitation and holding space as well and how, you know, in holding these councils over 14 years of course, there have been moments where I’ve looked around the room. You know, we’ve gone on retreat in Bali or Mexico or wherever. They’re always, like, very beautiful, kind of luxurious, very comfortable spaces. But, like, things come up for people and it could just be like, I’ve been bitten by seven mosquitoes and I’m. Or I’m really missing my kids, or I feel like I don’t belong here.

Nisha Moodley [00:54:39]:
Right. Like, stuff comes up for people. And so as I observe the space, sometimes I can kind of let my eyes move around the circle and sort of attune to each person briefly around the circle. And I might notice, like, huh, I’m curious, like, my senses, there’s something going on over there, or like, oh, I kind of pick up on something over there. And it used to be that it was very hard for me to stay here with me without being totally over there energetically with them, whoever I assumed was having a thing. And it would be hard to not be really in assumption about what I thought was going on with them, which, by the way, could be totally different. I could be like, oh, no, she’s not having a good time. She feel like she’s connecting with the group, and she could be like, a mosquito bit my ass.

Nisha Moodley [00:55:40]:
And sitting on this, you know, bolster is, like, really annoying me right now.

Sarah Tacy [00:55:44]:
Right, right.

Nisha Moodley [00:55:45]:
You’re like, oh, that’s. Oh, wow. Okay. My mind is really tricky, but what I’ve learned to do, and this has served me and my mother had greatly, is to allow that space for a person to be in a process like I attuned to them. But like you said, I’m not totally going into their experience. I don’t. Now, I’m not divorced of my own experience because I’m so in their experience, I don’t necessarily have to stop the whole thing to make sure that that person is attended to unless that is called for. If that was called for, I would do that.

Nisha Moodley [00:56:24]:
But if it’s just like, okay, there’s my senses or something a little crunchy over there, but I also don’t have to avoid it.

Sarah Tacy [00:56:30]:
Right.

Nisha Moodley [00:56:30]:
And the thing that I really learned to do is to put my attention primarily on my own. Where am I? How am I? What’s happening here? The. Essentially the regulation of my own system, regardless of what’s happening outside of me, and also on the field, like, the energy of the space and to relate to myself as the tenderness of that, as the primary sort of. Not that I’m the primary influence and force, but I relate to myself as holding the primary responsibility as the spaceholder or as the mother in influencing that. And I know that it starts first with my own nervous system and my body, and then second with the field itself and relating to the space and sort of feeling like, can I energetically influence this field? Which at home might mean, okay, it’s really chaotic. One is having a meltdown. The other just threw his cereal on the floor. That one’s crying because he can only find one sock and wants to wear that pair of socks only today.

Nisha Moodley [00:57:45]:
And it’s very important we find the other socks. And I go, okay, how am I? Am I, like, spun up, tightened? I gotta tend that. Second of all, I’m gonna go put a record on right now. Yes, I’m gonna open a window right now. I’m gonna, like, call on the spirit of my great grandmother right now. And so what can I do to tend the field? To tend the space, to tend the environment, but, like, the energetic field of the environment, because that’s what we’re all held in. And doing that work, I think, has revolutionized my work, my mothering, everything, and also my own anxious attachment, because it’s no longer this little girl’s job to be good enough in order so that I can make that. Make daddy happy, or fix the guy, or make everything, or make everybody get along.

Nisha Moodley [00:58:43]:
But instead, it’s the attunement to myself and to the field, and then my tendon of the field that I am held in, that we are held in. Now I get to do hold this role of being responsible for the experience, largely, of 14 grown ass, powerful witches, powerful women, and also be held at the same time, totally not avoidant, totally not anxious.

Sarah Tacy [00:59:16]:
There was a phrase, when you’re okay, I’m okay. And tell. Darden said that, as she was describing moving into the place of fawning. But when she said, I’m okay, when you’re okay. And I was like, wait, that’s not just universal truth, what you’re telling me, that’s out of the range of resonance, like, huh? And so it was very interesting to start to notice how dependent I was on making sure everybody else was okay so that then I could be okay. And as I worked on it, it was so beautiful to see that it didn’t mean that I needed to divorce myself from attuning to people or caring about people or caring how they’re doing. But how I see it is almost like, if I were a child, I would want my older person to be steady and not become unokay, because I’m not okay. I’d want them to be like, oh, I see this.

Sarah Tacy [01:00:19]:
I know this is a pattern, and I’m here for it, and I can feel it. And ouch. And they’re not spinning. Like, oh, shit, my child’s having a major problem. So I’m having a major problem. Like, you want that person to see a bigger picture, to hold a bigger space. And when I was in Scotland with Ginny, I called home, and there were a number of things that were happening that were really hard at home. And it was just so interesting to go, oh, God, that sounds so hard.

Sarah Tacy [01:00:48]:
And recognize that I was a continent way, and then also be like, oh, and I’m okay. Nobody was in the type of danger where it was life threatening, but it was like, wow, I could really feel for that person and for my family unit and go, oh, and I am still okay. And that, for me, has to do a bit with that brief, frequent attunement, with that desire. And as I hear you calling in the field, and I think I heard you say the energetic field. So if anybody listening is like, is she talking about a football field? Is shedden talking about then you. So you said energetic field. You said environment, this space that holds us all. So it’s not like I must be stable on my own while everybody else gets.

Sarah Tacy [01:01:36]:
It’s like, oh, I actually get to be fed by the field, by the energetic field.

Nisha Moodley [01:01:41]:
My favorite parenting tip. Well, that’s my favorite. But, like, just playing the music that suits the kind of vibe that I want to create in the space at the time has been totally game changing, especially as a single mom. You know, it’s like, I don’t get to tap out. There’s not another pair of hands to help when, like, one is climbing on me and I have to make breakfast and the other one’s looking for the other sock. So, like, in that moment, it’s like I. If I have to only rely on me, I feel like I’m going to crumble. But if I’m also relying on my ancestors, the field.

Nisha Moodley [01:02:15]:
The field of my ancestors, of Stevie Wonder singing to us all, you know, of the feeling of the warm lighting in the home, of the incense that’s burning in the corner. Like, I can lean into all of that and then I’m not doing it alone. Actually, Steven Wonder is doing it with. Right. My great grandmother is doing it with me. The incense that the hand rolled beautiful, like, rose sandalwood incense, which is like, oh, these are ancestral scents. My children have ancestry. Maybe there’s something in their system that responds to this ancient remembrance in the temples of our people, you know? And so as I relate to the whole environment, as this is all holding us like it’s an animate world, so everything around me is actually holding, holding me also as I’m relating to and holding and regarding it, it’s holding me collectively, it’s holding me and my children.

Nisha Moodley [01:03:18]:
I feel so much less alone in my mothering.

Sarah Tacy [01:03:21]:
I think it’s such a beautiful place to close up. Is this idea of when you’re saying, I’m not doing it alone, Stevie Wonder is doing it with me. My ancestors are doing it with me, the smells. And I feel like that is such a beautiful thing. I often talk about resources and the power of resources ourselves with what’s already there, what’s already that doesn’t necessarily cost more money. And what you just ended with there or offered us, there was an example of the way that resources can. For me, the way I see it is it widens our field of support in all directions and through all senses. I will do an intro to this and I’ll say a little bit more about ripe, but I would just say that through listening to you and this conversation, I would say that it feels so clear to me that what you and Ginny are offering, which we talked about in the last podcast with Ginny Muir, is this program called Ripe that talks about the arrows, that talks about relational health, that I imagine would talk about the field.

Sarah Tacy [01:04:35]:
And if you had like 1 minute to say one other thing about ripe, is there anything that you would want to say that I might not name if I were reading it from the website?

Nisha Moodley [01:04:50]:
I’m just here. We are just here for the revolution of women at midlife, fully embodying and embracing our ripeness like our full tilt, all in erotic, passionate, devoted aliveness, because it actually is available to us. And it is so we are so much more powerful than society’s lie that we’re creeping over the hill. And so, yeah, anyone who wants to be in that conversation with us, we’re really, really excited, folks, into the session.

Sarah Tacy [01:05:27]:
Thank you. I will be there myself. I signed up. I’m excited. And I actually have a few friends who are talking about it at my daughter’s birthday the other day. We’re like, oh, I want to sign up. I’m so excited. So there are women I know who will be joining us as well.

Nisha Moodley [01:05:40]:
Thanks.

Sarah Tacy [01:05:41]:
Thank you so much for your time.

Nisha Moodley [01:05:43]:
Thank you so much.