“The wound is the place the light enters you.” Rumi
In this episode, we discuss the verb awakening, and what it means to each of us.
Christina shares that her twins helped her awaken to a larger churning inside of her, one that inevitably invited her to accept her true nature as someone who can hold light easily. Then, her awakening deepened her spirituality and allowed her to accept life as it is, not as it should be. Becky relates this to the Buddhist notion of equanimity which feels spot on.
We note that Awakening is not a final destination but rather a process, a continuation of reorienting oneself, of flow. Of being like water, rising with crescendos and falling back into one’s humanity.
Each of us realizes through this convo that our awakening has to do with accepting our true nature and then inevitably sense what Thich Nhat Hahn calls interbeing.
Becky discusses two awakenings. One of a spiritual nature like Christina’s and more recently one of being with the incredible suffering in the world. She talks about how recent world events brought her into greater relationship with her natural tendency to witness the darker parts of our humanity in order to compost them. Awakenings are not easy. They require us all to accept who we are and walk fully into our lives as that, knowing that we are meant to be in community with others who have other roles we cannot hold.
This is a rich and vulnerable conversation that we imagine will land at a time when the world is calling each of us to show up as we are so we can seed many beginnings authentically.
You can listen to, or read, the full poem, “Please Call Me By My True Names” on the Plum Village website.
Episode Transcript
Christina: You know something I’m noticing that feels so refreshing? Is the older I get, the truer I feel to myself and the less likely I am to sit on something that feels very real and keep it to myself. Which feels like where I hope everyone gets. You know, like the ideas that you may have had when you were younger where you thought like, “oh, I don’t know”, and you sort of like chew on them for a little too long and then maybe they pass you by.
I just feel now that like if I have an idea or if I have a knowing about myself and something that wants to come through me, I don’t chew on it that long before talking about it openly. It’s so nice. Do you feel that way?
Becky: Welcome to Noticing: A Podcast About Nothing And Everything At The Same Time. We started this podcast as a way to reflect and be in community around Christina and my shared experience of what we call awakening. So in this week’s episode, we discuss it explicitly. What do we even mean by awakening? What has it felt like?
This ended up being a rich and vulnerable conversation that we imagine will land at a time when the world is calling us, each of us, to show up as we are so that we can seed so many beginnings, authentically. So we hope you enjoy. welcome to 2026.
Christina: 2026. I love 2026. I love 2025 too. Like, I mean, and it was a dumpster fire of a year for many reasons, but, um, here we are.
Becky: Here we are. Yeah.
Christina: So good.
Becky: I know. I feel like life has been busy. Like normally be between recordings. I feel like we’ve had lots of interactions and it’s been fairly quiet, just ‘cause the nature of the end of the year and
Christina: oh my god, the nature of having all three of my children at my house for 16 straight days.
That’s why we haven’t been talking.
Becky: I figured. Yeah,
Christina: it’s okay. It’s, it’s actually kind of nice because , we can connect here, which is really lovely. Like, sometimes when we’re really in communication, then we get on here and it’s like, huh, should we just recap what we’ve done?
Becky: Kinda.
Christina: Um, so I kind of love to see what this will be.
Becky: Definitely. Me too. Mm-hmm. Um. And we, so most episodes we come in blind and we just kind of show up and see what’s alive. The last episode we had a prompt, we had an intention, and, and this one we have a light intention prompt too, which has been really, that’s been really nice to like, have something to reflect on prior to showing up and then doing this practice of letting it all go and just showing up and, and seeing what happens, which is Yeah.
That’s like a good practice for life.
Christina: Yeah. And I think when we started this, uh, however many months ago, it was nice to just let our conversations take form here and now it feels really good to just have a little bit of an idea of where we might wanna go before we go there. Mm-hmm. And I think that’s just us meeting the podcast where it is.
Becky: Yeah. Yeah.
Christina: ‘ cause we deepen ourselves every single conversation. And so now it kind of feels like certain subjects are surfacing and ready to be discussed. And usually when you bring one up or I bring one up, we’re both excited about Yeah. Where we’re gonna go. Yeah. And this one came, a really good friend of mine wanted to talk to me.
She’s experiencing her own sort of awakening right now. And she said she doesn’t have a lot of time for podcasts. And so she has all of ours saved because she really wants to listen to them, but she doesn’t find herself in, uh, experiences where she can spend a lot of time really listening. So she said, I would love to hear actually about what your awakening experience was, um, and maybe you already talked about it
on a podcast episode I haven’t listened to, and I was like, oh no. We haven’t been so forthcoming, I don’t think.
Becky: No, it’s been like sprinkled throughout, I’m sure, but when you posed this question, it really gave me pause to even ask myself, what do I mean by awakening? So yeah, it’s definitely not something we’ve explicitly reflected on and talked about.
Christina: Totally. It also made me think about that because I have a pretty clear thought in my mind of how it feels to me, but especially in my friend’s circumstance, she has a different friend who also experienced what she called an awakening, and hers completely transformed her entire life, where a lot of things that she was already doing, she had to kind of let fall away and, um.
And begin again in a very big way. And I think that was a daunting example in a way. Mm-hmm. For my friend, yeah. She was thinking like, oh, shoot, does this mean that I have to, you know, flush my life down the toilet and be reborn? Um, so I think that was her impetus for asking, just to kind of collect different examples of what it looked like for her, um, or for different people.
But do you want to go first?
Becky: Not really.
Um, well, let’s start with the question. Um, when you, so you said you also, it came up for you of, what do we mean by awakening? Like that question surfaced for you as well. Is that what, what I heard?
Christina: Yeah. I was thinking, you know, first I think it’s our responsibility to define what the word means.
Becky: Mm-hmm. Um, at least for ourselves.
And what struck me as you were, you know, talking about the example of your friend is I think this is really worthy of reflecting on and speaking about because I can almost guarantee our experiences are gonna be very different. You know, your friend had another example. And I think it is important for me, it’s very important to always convey the message that there are very few things in life that are universal in your experience of them.
And giving people permission to, this is what we’re talking about, but by no means is it a universal experience.
Christina: Absolutely. And that’s why it felt like such fertile ground because you and I are so different. Yeah. And we hold these conversations with such compassion and love and respect for each other.
Mm-hmm. That. I, I can listen to you talk about what awakening means to you and realize that that is true for you. And same thing for you listening to me, because I know I’m certain they will be different. Um, which is why, which is why we’re here, which is why we’re exactly, we’re in this conversation is because we are, we are such, such different people.
So
I’ll just go. Okay. Um, um, you know, for me, I refer to the last two years as awakening years. Mm. I might stretch that to five, but the last two were very big. Um, mine began when I birthed twins.
Becky: Mm.
Christina: And, um, unintentionally named them both after light. Did not realize until a neighbor was like, oh, Sunny and Lucy.Sunnyy, obviously S-U-N-N-Y. She was named after my great-grandmother. But Lucy is based, uh, on Lucia, which, I mean, if you look, um, if you like look up meanings of names and you look up Lu, it goes then to Lucia or Lu Lucia. I don’t know.
Becky: I think it’d be Lucia. In Lucia. In Lucia, yeah.
Christina: Right. Lucia. Which is based in like the, the root word of it all is, is Loomis or light.
Becky: Oh.
Christina: So I didn’t know that until my neighbor was like, how funny, Christina, are you, you had twins? Did you do that on purpose? Name them for light. And I was like, well, no, because my whole life has been orienting towards this thing that I didn’t awaken to until about two years ago. But I think the twin situation was the most obvious thing to just magically drop into my literal womb.
And they pushed my sense of ease and lightness and um, just ability to move through the world pretty evenly. They pushed that to, they, I met my edge of that. Um, and so I could no longer say that mostly things were very easeful. Because twins are really rocking, like they really rock you. And I was ready to be rocked and I was, um, able to hold it.
And intuitively I just knew that I needed to turn inward in a very big way to be able to withstand the cacophony of my outer life and outer world, which looked like screaming babies all day, all night for a long, long time. Um, and that quiet, um, and that respite within myself then turned me toward what I felt was this, like massive churning, is what I describe it as.
And I may have already described it on here a little bit, but basically it was like this big feeling I had inside and it was like a knowing that I couldn’t hear yet and my intuition was unable to hear it. And, um. Then I just happened to go support a friend and go to Reiki for the first time, and the whole room filled with light and it was coming from me and I knew it.
And that was like, I remember slurping oysters with you and Tarra actually at a bar and talking to you about this. And, and I had, um, I had never openly admitted this massive lightness that I feel inside of myself. And one that was magnified even in the face of difficulty in twins, like it got amplified, um, twins that I accidentally named after light.
And, you know, I’d been consciously noticing light since having my first child. And, um, for me, that was the thread that went. That like brought me into this awakening experience. Um, the reiki experience felt like a huge, huge answer. Um, and then I also, I just found myself hearing the call to cultivate routine silence in different ways, and that’s what I did.
And awakening to me feels like awakening to myself as I am without judgment and without ego, um, brought into this world as something very pure that’s meant to be expressed. And like I’m in, I’m in relationship with that self now. Um, and it also looked to me like finally admitting and acknowledging that what I see is not all there is.
What I see with my eyes when they’re open in the world, because now I’m starting to see much, much deeper things in other realms and other dimensions that are, um, true to me. I believe true to all things. Um, and I think I needed another way in than church. So I, I was probably fed this, uh, um, I was offered, I don’t think it was fed to me.
I was offered, uh, a possible way into, um, other worldly things, um, through church and it just wasn’t my way in. So, um, awakening feels like an incredibly illuminated life because I am able to understand and see beyond the veil a lot of the time. And at the same time have much more direct experiences in my day to day with things that are in front of me, might be the way that I would begin talking about awakening for me.
Becky: Hmm hmm. So as I kept thinking of this word, awakening, you know, I always think of, so awake asleep. What, what were you asleep to before? Would you say it was what? Well, what do you like?
Christina: Oh, good question. Yes, yes. Um, I was asleep to big parts of myself and I would, I say that, but I also was aware of them. I just did not, um, I did not share them willingly. Or in
uh, how would I say this? I shared them cautiously with only certain people. I thought by being bright, it would make people who were not naturally this way feel bad that they could not be that way, and
Becky: which it might have to be honest. Sure, it might have, but that’s not your responsibility.
Christina: Yes, exactly. So once the room filled with light and reiki and I realized it was coming from me, I had to do a lot of shaking and sobbing in order to accept that truth and embrace that about myself and step into everything else in my life with that knowing, because it was irrefutable and, and I came home and I sobbed to Andrew.
I was just like, this is. Also sidebar. I wouldn’t have even said like this podcast, I’ve just promised that I would just be as honest as possible. This isn’t even something I would’ve admitted out loud to like a close friend at a bar. So that’s big steps for me because I believe I’m supposed to share this and um, it ripples out in incredible ways that are not my responsibility to see.
Um, but I came home and I did, I sobbed and I said like, I think I’ve just been trying to like, put myself in a really big shoe and like I’m not filling the shoe and I gotta fill the shoe. And it feels terrifying to fill the shoe because I could see, you know, like if I’m imagining little Christina in this shoe, it’s like a huge shoe.
And my job in this lifetime is to fill that shoe with myself. And I was already having an amazing life and an amazing time and it didn’t feel like anything was really missing until I heard this massive knock on the door and I couldn’t hear it. And then I saw myself fill the room with light so bright that it was, it was like brighter than any light I had ever perceived in those 38 years.
And it was me. And I got to see that. And to be able to see that is to know it. And I felt like the only choice I have after this moment is to be that then I was awake.
Yeah. Which is a relief. It feels like a relief to be able to express myself in the way that I always felt I should, but couldn’t see examples of in the world.
Becky: Mm-hmm.
Christina: And so I suppose, um, maybe this is like a midlife crisis. Maybe this is what people used to call a midlife crisis. Really, I think we need a rebrand of that
Becky: maybe.
I dunno. It also Yeah. I, I don’t think this is that. Um, I think to, I mean, it’s your experience. So who am I to be the expert? But when I associate midlife crisis, I always think of the Saturn return in astrology, um, which is usually like upheaval and, and this doesn’t feel like upheaval to, to me.
Christina: Totally. I, yeah.
But like Becky, none of my life has felt like upheaval. Do you know what I mean? The difficulty or the quote unquote initiations or things that I go through are actually, um, like this is what I think my friend was getting at. She needed another example of not a giant upheaval.
Becky: Yeah.
Christina: You know what I mean?
Um,
Becky: yeah. And I think the, the upheaval. Usually only happens if you’re living out of alignment. So it’s a, this, at least in the context of a Saturn return, which we can put some links in the show notes about if you wanna learn about Saturn returns. We’re not gonna go there in this episode. But, um, I take it as like, it’s a, it’s a re alignment and like you’ve lived your life in such alignment that of course it wouldn’t feel like upheaval.
Christina: That’s a good point. It felt like an expansion. Yeah. It did not feel like an upheaval. It felt like I’m already living a dream. How can I possibly expand beyond this? Yeah. And still be able to receive the understanding that I am meant to expand beyond this. Mm-hmm. And I’m already. Living in alignment, which I know a lot of people aren’t.
And so like, yeah, why, why then am I being asked to grow even further in an expanded direction? You know? But I, I can’t get, we’ve talked about this before. I can’t get stopped on the why’s because there’s actually, yeah, the why isn’t the point. But I will also say part of the awakening was once I really embraced this me, I was able to see all things as what they like as their essence.
Which when you can, like, I can walk around outside in the garden, I can meet my child in a tantrum. I can, I can be in the world as my essence. That’s what it feels like I’m doing. I’m awakened to my own essence and I am accepting and loving of that. And then I get to believe and, and know that in all things. Which makes everything easier in a way, because, um, like the tree is the tree, the flowers, the flower.
The seed is the seed. The tantrum is the tantrum. We are all where we are in our essence. And to perceive life from a place of being in your essence is. Such an alive feeling. That’s what, that’s a big awakening feeling. That’s another way I would explain it, I think.
Becky: Mm-hmm.
Christina: For me,
Becky: it sounds to me a lot like equanimity, at least in the Buddhist framework of like, everything explain Yeah.
So equanimity is, um, some people mistaken it as like passivity. Um, but it’s not, it’s, it’s accepting everything as it is and not being emotionally pulled in towards grasping or resisting. So, like, the way you talk about the tantrum, it’s a tantrum, right? Like the, the state of equanimity wouldn’t be toppled over by the tantrum.
Or like. Um, you wouldn’t resist the tr the tantrum, which you’re not, you’re just saying this is a tantrum. It is what it is. I interpret it as like a very deep acceptance of what’s happening. Yeah. But what a lot of people, I think mistake about equanimity is, um, it, it, it’s a precursor to action.
It’s not like you don’t take action so you, you feel equanimity. So you have acceptance. You’re seeing reality as it is, and then you take wise action. So you know, you’re not gonna just let your child throw the tantrum and well, there’s a tantrum happening. That’s it. Like, no, you’re going to take wise action, but not from a place of resisting that the tantrum is happening.
Yes. From a place of, yeah, there’s a tantrum. Okay.
Christina: Yes. Yeah. Or like needing to control it or Yeah. Needing for it to result in a certain way or being led by my own fear that my child is unruly and disrespectful and things like, those things don’t take hold on me as they once did. Mm-hmm. Um, and it took a lot of practice in surrendering, um, to what is so, yeah.
Yeah. What you’re describing feels like what I experience, and I of course have moments where I get rocked. I mean, I’m a human being, but on the whole, I think I’m able to meet what is with more ease and flow through the difficulty faster. Mm-hmm. Yep. And that’s because I had to re resist. Like I, I practiced, resisting and trying to control for so long, and twins will, will like, oh my God.
Just, there’s no, it just is such a helpful, I think many people might have twins and like immediately go into trying to like, control and, and, um, mold it, the experience into what it should be. But they helped me understand that actually I, that’s not my job.
Becky: Mm.
Christina: My job is to flow.
Becky: Flow. Yeah. Flow. I think flow is such a good word.
‘cause , as you were speaking, I was thinking like, you know, it’s, it’s awakening as like a process, as like an ongoing process. It’s not a binary of I’m asleep or I’m awake. And I think what we’re speaking of is like, um. Like transitional moments or like impactful moments or like crescendos of awakening where it’s more pronounced, but it’s not like, oh, I’m, I’m awake.
I’ll never react to a tantrum ever again. Like, right. No, it’s not how it works. Yeah. But I think there is this, this, this misconception when it comes to like spiritual evolution of like, oh, I, I’ll get to enlightenment and then I’m done. No, the great teachers didn’t even believe that. Like the whole go, the Bodhicitta vows in, in Buddhism anyway, is all about if you achieve, enlightenment and you escape the wheel of life, you come back until every living being is free.
So it’s not like some destination, it’s a, it’s like water. It’s a process. It’s a flow.
Christina: Yeah. That’s how it feels. Yeah. That’s how it feels. And it’s, and it also takes form in, in like a loving acceptance of the way that I am built and, um, yeah, just like loving all the parts, loving the angry parts, the frustrated ones, all the things, and just realizing like those are just as they are, like the joy and the patience and the more useful ones.
Um, yeah. Yeah, it’s nice to talk about this. What was your, do you feel ready?
Becky: Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I was really reflecting on first what did it mean for awakening? And I came to kind of what we just talked about is there really isn’t this like binary, you know, one moment.
But I did, I also came to the conclusion that I’m not the most reliable narrator of my own life. That there is gaps in my memory for different reasons. Um, and my. My view of the past is colored by how I’m feeling when I’m telling the story. So that was my first realization. Um, but I mean, I had to, so what I finally came to is there’ve been two major awakenings in my life so far.
So I had to go back to my early twenties when I met my first teacher. And that was an awakening from being asleep to even the possibility that there is something beyond what I can see. Like I had no, I was not offered really anything in the form of religion or spirituality. So this really was an awakening.
Into, um, there’s more than what I can see and that was huge and totally changed my life. And I would say that awakening for me probably felt a lot more like what you described, you know? Um, I didn’t have the twins to rock me out of it, but, you know, I had a teacher, I had a teacher who guided me into this world and of energy healing and um, and like I’ll never forget the, the first time I did a healing on someone else and it was, ‘cause it’s one thing to like think it in your own mind and to like experiment with it in your own life.
But when you, when you do touch someone else energetically and then they actually experience the same thing you are experiencing, like, it, it was just. I like, I saw his parents clearly, and I don’t get visuals, but I, I was able to like, just know what they looked like and I described them and he was like, yeah.
And it was interesting to watch a blossoming in him that I’m sure that is his blossoming, right?
Christina: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Becky: It’s not me. But to watch like that was one inspiration or one spark. Um, it was life changing. I mean, it, it was incredible. And it expanded my life in, indescribable ways. And, um, then I was kind of reflecting on, like most recently, you know, when we’ve been talking and, um.
My, I will call my second awakening. So I feel like the first awakening was awakening of the spirit. Awakening of that there is, you know, more to life than what I see. And, um, my second awakening, this is why I wanted you to go first, because I wanted to keep the mood light. Um, but my, but to be completely honest, my second awakening happened watching the genocide and Gaza,
so one of the core principles that I had held for so long after my first awakening was, our interconnectedness, or Thích Nhất Hạnh talks about inter being, and it’s so core to me, he has this poem, uh, that says call, it’s called Call Me by My True Names. And I’ve always held this poem dear and I won’t read the whole thing, but there’s this one line that I could never get through.
We’ll see if I can get through it today. But it always like felt like this just punch in my gut every time I read it. So the poem is call me by my true names. I am, you know, I’m joy, I am sadness. You know, that’s kind of the cadence of the poem. We’ll put it in the show notes.
But this one line is, “I’m the 12-year-old girl refugee on a small boat who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart, not yet capable of seeing and loving and I mean, I’ve been carrying this for so long, you know, and then to watch. To actually see on my phone day after day after day, the 12-year-old girl, it felt like I was awakening to, I’m not just connected in this theoretical, spiritual way.
We are one, I was finally ready probably to awaken to the very physical reality that I am connected to that 12-year-old girl. And I am, I am that pirate, you know? And just awakening to, in very real and concrete ways, my life is connected to what’s happening. Um, and we don’t have to go too far down this path, but I had to acknowledge that that was a huge awakening for me.
Um.
And it felt like an awakening to my physical body. And it’s, I also reflected on the Rumi quote. Um, the wound is the place where the light enters you. And it, that’s what this awakening has felt like. I mean, I would cry all day, every day, and it’s not about my tears, it’s, I’m, that’s not the point of the story, but it felt like, it kind of felt like the wound was always there because this poem always affected me.
You know, it felt like the body knew this deep connection and I was meant to feel this deep connection long before my. Um, consciousness was ready to hold it, to actually like, see it, confront it, feel it in my body. My body was not ready to feel the, this level of suffering. Um, but allowing that suffering of the world also opened doorways for me to look at my own suffering in my own journey.
And it’s only through feeling those feelings of suffering that we can set them free, that we can let the light in, you know? And so for me, this journey of awakening this, this awakening has been a rollercoaster to be quite frank. But, uh, but, but one, I very much welcomed and I knew I had built up enough capacity to stay on the rollercoaster and to not.
Um, because like, you know, I, I didn’t consciously invite the suffering in, the suffering was presented to me, and I walked through that door and decided to, or I just, I didn’t even decide. I had no choice. If I felt compelled to witness, I felt compelled to process this suffering. And, and I watched that journey of, um, wanting it to go away.
Like, even though something within me knew I was ready to hold that level of suffering and really look at the world clearly, and feel the world clearly, um, it took some time because at first , I wanted that feeling to go away, so I watched myself. Wanting to find a villain, wanting to find someone to blame, wanting to do anything I could to fix it, to make it go away, which involved like trying to force everyone else to see it, you know?
Um, and that was the, that’s why I say it was kind of a rollercoaster ‘cause it was like, okay, I am awakening to this suffering. Oh, I’m not ready. I kind of actually thought of, I was just editing our last episode where, um, you were talking about like opening, there’s someone at the door and you open the door and you’re like, not home.
Not home. It kind of felt like that, where it’s like, open the door a little bit, it’s like, Nope, not ready. And then when I finally opened the door and let in the suffering, um, things really shifted. And I came to a place where I can be with the suffering without. Shutting down without blaming. It’s like the tantrum.
You know? Like I can be with
both my own suffering and the suffering of the world because I’m so deeply committed to my interconnection with the world in a way that it, I’m not trying to fix it, get rid of it. I am just starting from a place of truth and the way I’m built, it means I have to feel it. I think my superpower is my sensitivity to really feel everything.
Um, and that’s my light. You know, that’s, that’s why I love these conversations because, um. Awakening can look so different, and it’s even been a journey to get to this place of recognizing, my superpowers as having the ability to feel so much and see things so clearly and stay steady. The more I develop that, that’s a real gift.
You know, it may look, not, look as, you know, uh, like when I think of you and your gifts of bringing light, like it, it, it, because of the society that we’re in, it would be easy for me to think like, yours is the superior gift.
Oh my God. No,
I know. Yeah, exactly. But yes, I know what you mean. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I’m just saying that was part of the journey, right? Yeah. Like, that’s part of the rollercoaster of like accepting. Our own unique gifts and, and believing no matter what, society tells us that we all have gifts for a reason. And now I’m at the point where I know it’s a gift and Yeah. Um, yeah,
Christina: it’s, um, oh, I just love you.
It’s so, so it sounds like for both of us awakening felt like accepting our true nature.
Becky: Yeah.
Christina: Because, um, that is difficult.
Becky: Why is it, I know why questions aren’t usually the most helpful, but like, why is it so hard? Like,
Christina: I know it shouldn’t be so hard. Um, even in. Yeah, different upbringings, like my parents supported my true nature and still, yeah, there is still like a deeper accepting of my true nature that I was asked to do.
Um, because yeah, sure. We live in a world where maybe like people that can bear light, like that’s a quote unquote better or higher calling. I don’t believe that because it, it really is like the awakening comes with an egolessness where you’re just able to observe things for what they are. And I observe you in your nature, able to hold all of this, and that is not something I am able to do.
Becky: Mm-hmm.
Christina: You can and you should. Yeah. And while you are doing that. I am spreading light like it is my job because it is. Yeah. So this is where I feel like our awareness of you being a composter and me being a gardener applies.
Becky: Mm-hmm.
Christina: And I don’t know if we’ve ever actually even talked about that here.
Becky: I don’t think we have.
And I, I want to, but before we do that, I wanna say one thing that struck me as you were saying, that um, it might not even be true, that society would favor or prefer your gifts, or that actually might be just my perception, my, my past perception of denying who I am, right? Like, ‘cause if, what a good trick to, I mean, yes, the world loves does not like suffering and does not like sitting with emotion.
So maybe it’s objectively true that people like the light a lot more than they like the shadow, but. My fixation on that or my even thinking that could have been me. Like what a great trick to deny my gifts than to value the opposite.
Christina: Yeah, that’s an interesting thought.
And it, and it makes me think about the fact that, I think part of the reason I hid it kept it safe, I would call it. Yeah. I, I hid it to keep it safe in me because part of me, a big part of me, I think worried that people wouldn’t believe it.
Becky: Mm-hmm.
Christina: So like, yeah, it must be nice, but you know that can’t be real.
That light can’t be real. Yeah. I even had a professor, oh my gosh, I even had a professor, a directing professor, this amazing person in college, and I went into his office for a random, ‘cause I have a theater minor, and I went into his office for this little meeting about. Like a play one act play I was writing or something, and he stopped in the middle of our conversation and he put his hands on the table and he looked directly across the table at me.
This is like, add this to the list of mystical experiences I’ve had in my life. And he looked me direct in the eyes and said, Christina, people in your life are not going to believe who you are, but you have to stay true to yourself. Yeah. And that’s just a wise elder recognizing some bright light in somebody and saying like, I will do that for others.
You know? Yeah. And saying, don’t, don’t listen to the haters. You are true.
Becky: And even if the haters are within your own mind, don’t believe them either.
Christina: Mm. Yes. Exactly. So, um, yeah, then 10 years later I had the reiki awakening and here we are. But, um, yeah, I, that is an interesting perspective and that, and part of that I think is probably true, um, but being someone who naturally can bear light, I’ll also say that even I.
I wondered if society could believe me.
Becky: Yeah. And it’s fair, like, I mean, light to someone who, um, has spent their life in the darkness feels painful. So, uh, like, it, it really, the point is I think I’m gonna take back my, statement earlier about society valuing your gifts more. ‘cause the comparisons aren’t important or helpful.
And it was probably just more my own perception. Reality is whatever you perceive it to be, so.
Christina: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah,
Becky: yeah. So my gardener friend. Yeah, I think this is, um, yeah, so we you can’t just mention it without explaining it. No, we have
to, yeah, go ahead. Because
it was pretty profound actually when we, I think when we started to sift through this, and I don’t know the, the origin or where we came to it, but we started Christina’s way more of a gardener than I am.
But I do have a garden. I have house plants, so I connect to it a little bit. But um, you know, we started thinking about like life in reality as a garden, as a metaphor for a garden. And clearly you, Christina, are meant to plant seeds for what’s possible for the future and use your light to help nourish and grow those seeds.
And me, like really with this awakening that I described, I really came to a place where I felt like. We can’t have a garden of the future without composting. The, the, um, I won’t even say the suffering because I think suffering is just a part of life. But I will say without composting the, um, oppression, the injustice, the, the structures upon which this current reality is built, that, is dependent on oppression.
It’s dependent upon extraction. This world needs to be composted and turned into the nutrients for the garden, for the seeds of the future. Because if we don’t compost it, if we don’t process what, what exactly is crumbling right now? This thing that we all feel. The clear indications that our societies are not sustainable based on the way the planet is screaming at us.
If we just plant seeds for the future, we will be just replicating harm. So we came to this realization that yes, we need seed planters and we need light bringers. Absolutely. And we need composters. Mm-hmm. And I’m sure there’s many other roles. Um, and I’ve seen this in activist spaces as well, where it’s like everyone has a role and activism can look very different.
Um, the most important thing is identifying your role and then really living from that role. So the way that I can look clearly at the systems as they are and compost them within my own system. Right. Yeah. Because that’s where change happens first. Yeah. If I don’t process and look clearly at the systems of white supremacy, especially as a white person
mm-hmm.
Then whatever I seek to build in the future is just going to be based on those same principles of white supremacy. I’m just going to replicate harm. Um, and then by the way that I can speak clearly and hold space for others to do their own exploration so the composters can, you know, find home in their composting and the seed, the, the gardeners can find their place.
Um, yeah, I think that’s all I have to say, but I’m curious to hear what you would add or change or subtract.
Christina: Yeah. No, it, it’s, it’s just, um, I think you’re spot on and it’s again, like. Noticing the difference in the way that we are able to hold different things. It feels I had to come to the conclusion that bearing witness to the awful atrocities of this world do not help me be as productive as I can.
And that is wrapped up in a lot of feelings of guilt and entitlement that I had to hold at the time. Um, and realize, like for me as someone who is so full of light, it is actually massively, um, it, it takes up so much of my energy to even understand how such darkness is possible, that I’m unable to crawl out of that, um, confounded mint, if that makes any sense.
Becky: Mm-hmm.
Christina: Um. Because it is so far, it is so far from my experience of this world as a soul, I think. Mm-hmm. Really, um, that I spend most of my time trying to understand it. And I don’t think that’s where my energy is supposed to go. So it’s comforting to me to be so close to someone like you who can bear witness to these things.
Mm-hmm. And can find a productive way to move through that feeling. Um, and I do hold curiosity about this, like is there a part of me that is supposed to actually be able to consume and, um, process and hold the things that you can hold? And I’m not sure I have an answer for that, but I will say so far. I feel correct.
I will not say the best because then that might be the wrong word, but I feel correct and in myself fully when I am actually holding a beacon for others.
Becky: Yeah.
Christina: Acting as a beacon for others. Um, to believe that there is a promise here. Yeah. And that we live in a benevolent universe. Um, yeah. There were times where I would, um, spend more time, uh, being fully, fully aware of the news, and I, it would, it would, um.
It was so troubling to me that I couldn’t find a way out. I just couldn’t. Yeah. And then I thought like, this is not what I’m supposed to be doing actually. Yeah. Like, I actually don’t think, um, I don’t think this is my role and that is a hard thing to realize when there is such immense suffering. Um, and just fully accepting that that was true for me was very important.
Yeah. ‘cause the work that I am meant to do here is, um, different.
Becky: Yeah.
Christina: So in the metaphor of the garden, I am the one that is using your compost and thanking you so much for doing that work so that I can nourish everything.
Becky: Yeah.
Christina: And, and know that it can grow and watch it grow and use. My gifts and my knowing to grow things.
Becky: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Christina: The right things because I’m not completely ignorant of what’s going on. No. I’m not, like, I’m not ignoring the world as it is, and I’m aware that I need to nourish myself as a light bearer.
Becky: Yeah.
Christina: In different ways than you do. Yeah as a composter.
Becky: Absolutely. So a couple things came up for me.
First I wanted to clarify. I can’t even watch the news. Like I was consumed by it for a while and it was important for me for a while. Um, and it’s even overwhelming for me. So to bring in, I just had this conversation with my friend Lea, who is. A lifelong activist, like what I would traditionally think of as an activist, and I wanna re, I’m redefining activist for myself.
I would consider the work I do an activist, I would consider the wor work You do? An activist? Yeah. Like anyone who is trying to move the world towards greater love and compassion and equity, whatever that looks like. You are an activist in my mind. Um, but my friend Leah is, I mean, just, she’s a warrior, right?
And we had this conversation, I was sharing that, you know, I kind of got to a place where, where you, you’re describing where it was too much for me and I had to realize. This isn’t the work for me either to keep up with everything that’s happening because I had to ask myself the question, what am I going to do with this information?
And for my friend Lea, she needs to know so she can go fight. So she can Yeah. You know, make those decisions and she can know, you know, what boycott to do, what protest to do, what information to share. And she is effortless at it. Like she is just so in alignment. And I have had awe her for over 20 years and that’s not my role.
So maybe she’s the true, maybe she’s the one who brings the compost to the, the garden. I don’t know. I don’t know. ‘cause she’s so action, you know? Um, so yeah. Um, and there’s this big difference between putting your head in the sand and actively. Denying or living in the dark when something’s calling to you.
And that’s not what we’re talking about. Like your head isn’t in the sand. You, you’re aware of what’s happening. I mean, what has always been happening, that’s the thing, is like, yes, you know, this suffering isn’t new. Even the, the oppression of the Palestinian people has been going on longer than my mother’s been alive.
Mm-hmm. And, and oppression has been going on since, probably since the beginning of humans. Who knows? You know? So, um, for me, I felt it was important to, to understand, um, kind of the, the, the truth of the world as I could, as I could hold it. And then it came to a point of like, same thing you kind of came to, is.
All of my energy is being sucked away by the media that is designed to put me in fear and reactivity. Yeah. So my, I’m constantly putting my nervous system in to activation, which I know how to regulate my nervous system, but how much energy am I using and what am I going to, I always come down to the question of what am I gonna do about this?
Christina: Seriously?
Becky: What am I? And for a while it felt like the whole world suffering was on my to-do list. And that’s not how we’re meant to grow. We’re meant to grow in community. And exactly what you said, you know, you are in community with composters and activists and that is how I think we’re meant to build the Garden of the Future is in community and whatever that looks like.
And knowing that it’s always an ongoing thing and an, and an evolution of our own awareness, our own capacity to see as much of the world as we’re ready to see without shutting us down. And, um, I mean, our nervous systems we’re not designed to comprehend the suffering of 8 billion people and yet we have access to it.
So, um, it’s a wild time to be alive, but then maybe it’s always a wild time to be alive. Who knows? Who knows?
Christina: But it does feel, um, it does feel like this is pushing people. Uh, the availability of being able to see so much suffering in the world on our phones and on the 24 hour news cycle and in the internet is, is waking people up to, yeah.
To just like what we’re talking about. And, and I think about this and I think like if I accept that my role is to be able to bear light and my job is to cultivate a life where I am constantly in relationship with light itself, which I am, through my work, through lots of these other things, through noticing it, being with it.
If that’s my role, then when the activist who is, who has lived their role for so long and reaches a point where they actually need to be replenished and to know that light itself exists, and we do live in a benevolent universe mm-hmm. They can come knock on my door and get refilled. Like I can fill them back up with it because I know it, you know?
Mm-hmm. Like. It’s like the doctor who spends so much time researching how to cured certain things, like light is my expertise.
Becky: Yeah. Yeah.
Christina: And, and I, I know it so deeply that I’m able to share it with such an understanding and assuredness that it is
Becky: mm-hmm.
Christina: That it’s an irrefutable thing for me. So, um, yeah.
And, and that can be shared and is being shared consciously. Yeah.
Becky: So, Thích Nhất Hạnh is probably my greatest influence. Um, and it’s because he practiced, um, engaged Buddhism, where activism was a core tenet of what he taught.
And I was just listening to, some of his teachings where he was talking about the, the importance, importance isn’t even a strong enough word, but the importance of joy
Yes. Of
cultivating joy. And this is, this is the same man who is writing about the 12-year-old refugee being raped and throwing herself into, the water.
Like he, he was awake to the suffering of the world and taught how essential, that’s the word I was looking for. Essential it is to touch joy every single day to touch light. Mm-hmm. And that this is like the, the, the lie, the myth of American individualism. You are not meant to hold everything in the community.
You are meant to be your essential self as part of a community. Yeah. So you hold joy and it’s not like, I’m not gonna touch joy, but I’m going to be in community with you, and you remind me of joy so I can touch it and I can hold suffering. Maybe that’s a little bit more my expertise. And you can be in communion with me as I hold suffering.
You know? It’s, it’s beautiful. It’s, yeah,
Christina: it’s, it’s absolutely, um, what I hope for everyone to realize just where their, or to, to finally accept. I believe we all know what our true nature is. I do. Yeah. And if you get quiet, usually it. It comes, it’s the thing that’s been trying to talk to you your entire life and whether or not you listen has been your choice or like what you’ve been made to do by parents or elders or your life circumstances.
Um, but yeah, there is, there is this deeper knowing and, and essence in all of us. Mm-hmm. And it’s different because it’s supposed to be
Becky: Yeah. It’s striking me. It’s, it’s called an awakening for a reason. We’re not calling it a transformation. You’re not changing into someone you weren’t before. You’re awaken, you’re awake waking up to who you’ve always been.
Like you’re waking up from a dream. Yeah. This dream of yourself that has been constructed by different parts of you by society, and you’re waking up to what was always there.
Christina: Mm-hmm. Yep. And like recognizing that and integrating it into your walking life daily. Yeah. Day to day life. Yeah.
Becky: Yeah.
Christina: The music was recorded live as a part of the Sound Service at 3S Art Space in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in January, 2025, where musicians responded to the changing light in the room that reflected and refracted through Christina’s suspended artwork. Andrew Halchak, the composer of this piece, is playing bass clarinet and Tomas Cruz and Katie Seiler are singing.
Becky: Oh, Christina, I’m at the park. Just picked up Juno from boarding. Uh, it’s the first moment I’ve had to, to like be, be, be, um, to be alone. Uh, I was proud of myself. I was sitting in stillness, um, last week, even at my parents’ house, making sure that I carved out that time. But holy shit. Christina, this it, I’m definitely riding your light tail.
Um, and things are moving at light speed. This trip home was like exponentially healing. It was crazy. Um, Hey, Juno, come, come.
Yeah. Hi. Good girl. Gone up off a hill in snow. Gotta start exercising.
Anyway, I love you. I’m excited to talk to you tomorrow. And yeah, life is good. Life is fucking full and alive and beautiful and flying over the, the country, both going out there and then coming home, it was, I was just struck with such awe to be alive, you know? And normally when I fly over, I’ve shared with you, be before, you know, I’m seeing these shapes, these artificial shapes in the ground and feeling the sorrow and feeling, you know, well, what have we done?
And this time I was like, yes. And look at what we’ve done. You know, look at what this one fragile species is capable of, you know? And it just really shifted and I’m really grateful for that. Really excited.
