Mark Nepo: Make Peace With Your Past & Heal Your Life

A poignant and deeply moving, personal conversation with spiritual teacher, brilliant poet Mark Nepo on the power of letting go, forgiveness, love and rejection and accepting what is. As well what it's like to be human, being present, who we are in our heart and discovering authenticity.

Transcript

I am Anna Seewald and this is Authentic Parenting,

A podcast about personal development in the context of parenting,

Where I explore how you can find more calm connection and joy in parenting through the process of self-discovery and inner growth with a trauma-informed lens.

Today's guest is one of my personal heroes,

Spiritual teacher,

Philosopher and poet Mark Niebo.

Mark Niebo has been immersed in a path of spiritual inquiry for more than 40 years.

He is the author of 20 books,

Including the number one New York Times bestseller,

The Book of Awakening.

He has traveled the country with Oprah Winfrey on her sold out 2014 The Life You Want tour and has appeared several times with Oprah on her Super Soul Sunday program.

In this conversation with Mark,

We go into his childhood.

He talks about his difficult relationship with his parents,

Particularly his mom,

How he always wanted to get her love but was faced with rejection and how the theme of rejection played out in his life until he learned to let go and made peace with it.

Also,

How he discovered his oneness with the universe,

What he learned from his dad who was a master woodworker.

What it's like to be human,

Being present and who we are in our heart and so much more.

Mark has the rare ability to communicate profound truths directly to the individual heart.

He's a captivating storyteller.

In fact,

He's a walking library of amazing stories from different times in history,

Places and religions.

I can listen to Mark for hours.

What fascinates me about him also is that he knows the definition of every word in the dictionary.

And in today's conversation,

He talks about the definition of authenticity and shares a remarkable scientific fact.

Listen to the very end as there is a treat for you,

A little surprise.

Mark reminds me of my dad actually who is a poet also.

He's an amazing human being with a sweet soul,

A kind heart and the warmest and softest hands.

Please enjoy this wide ranging,

Deeply moving conversation with brilliant Mark Nepo.

Mark,

Welcome to Authentic Parenting.

Oh,

It's great to be with you.

Thanks for having me.

Yes,

I'm very delighted and honored to have this opportunity.

And of course,

I met you in person,

So this is even more special.

Yeah,

No,

This is wonderful.

I was so glad you were able to be there at Garrison Institute.

That was wonderful.

Yeah,

That was wonderful.

I want to know a little bit about you as a child.

The way you write,

The way you talk,

It's so profound and wise and your metaphors,

The way you perceive the world is just so fascinating and phenomenal.

It's different.

And the way you write,

Of course,

Touches everyone's soul,

At least mine.

Thank you.

It's like somebody plays like my soul is a violin and when I hear like you're playing on it,

It touches me very deeply,

Your writing.

Oh,

Thank you.

You know,

As a child,

And I think as I look back,

I'm 67 now,

But before I had any language for poetry or spirit or metaphor or anything like that,

I remember even as a small child,

I felt like the way the universe,

God,

Whatever name you want to give to everything that's larger than us was always speaking to me through metaphor,

But I didn't even know what a metaphor was.

I just felt even as a little boy that if I happened to be alone,

I was never really alone because everything else started talking to me.

So I just knew that like if I was outside and the wind would move through the trees,

It was like they were talking to me.

They were saying like,

This is a pattern,

The wind,

Something unseen moving,

Moving all these branches.

What is it like?

Pay attention,

Pay attention.

What are we trying to say to you?

And so,

You know,

As I started to go to school and grow and everything,

You know,

Into the world of relationships,

You know,

I think that I always had that company of everything invisible whenever I was alone.

And you know,

In my teenage years,

And when I first went to,

Well,

This is interesting.

And when I first fell in love and had the first love experience and the first love lasted for a while,

You know,

A year or so.

And then she broke up with me and broke my heart.

And that happened,

Of course,

To everyone.

And so that's when I started writing because I wasn't a loner in school.

But I didn't have I hadn't discovered intimate friends,

What real friendship was about till I got to college.

So at that point,

While I certainly was always in a crowd of other kids all the time,

I didn't have anywhere to go with that heartache.

So I started writing as a way to talk to myself and hear myself.

And then I realized after I did start to heal in time,

That I wasn't just talking to myself.

In that space,

I was began a conversation with the universe.

And in that space,

I started to feel similar to the things I felt as a little boy when I would be alone and everything would would talk to me.

So that so I think also as a young child,

You know,

My parents were now both gone,

But they were,

You know,

They were very intelligent.

They were Jewish immigrants,

The first born in this country.

And they grew up also in the great in the Great Depression in the 20s,

When they were born and so in the 30s,

20s and 30s of this last century.

And so they were very much focused on survival and making sure we would have enough to get by and,

You know,

For my brother and myself.

And they were very like literal,

Very surface and reality based people,

You know,

All the all their reading was nonfiction.

And so as I look back now,

You know,

I didn't realize it then.

But you know,

We never really spoke the same language because,

You know,

Here they were and really rooted in the physical world and they get a mystical poet for a son.

And so I especially in the year,

You know,

They've been gone four or five years now,

My mother about two or three and my father about five.

And I look back and I realize that,

You know,

I don't think it was easy for them,

Especially because,

You know,

I was always asking questions and questions that didn't have the answers.

And so,

You know,

I think that so there was a certain amount of I did kind of feel on my own kind of growing up.

How about your brother?

Was he similar to you or different?

Were you friends growing up?

Well,

We were we were kind of we were certainly involved with each other.

I think we had our own circle of friends.

And my brother was very he's very gifted also as an artist.

So I think he he had that sense of creativity.

And I should say both my parents were very creative,

Even though they were very rooted in the physical world.

Yes,

I remember the opening story of the The One Life We're Given book you write about your dad who used to be a woodworker.

And the way you describe it's very poetic.

And maybe you can talk about that a little bit.

What you've learned.

You say that you've learned things now that you look back,

You realize that he taught you so many things.

Well,

I think that,

You know,

When I look back,

I realized that while we work in a different medium,

You know,

He was a master woodworker and he also loved the sea.

And so he built actually a 30 foot wooden is before fiberglass wooden sailboat that we spent a lot of our youth on.

And so I learned a lot about I think my first experience.

In a good way of true solitude with nature was as a little boy with by in the front of the boat with my feet hanging over the bow,

Just watching the waves endlessly come as the boat moved forward away from everyone else in my family.

You know,

They were all in the back of the boat.

And I had these moments and in which I again would recognize or felt this oneness with everything larger than me.

But in terms of creativity,

I didn't realize until,

You know,

Again,

After he was gone,

That there were several things that I learned from him while he worked with wood and he didn't know he was teaching me this and I didn't know I was learning it.

You know,

I mean,

One thing,

For example,

Is that he taught pattern making,

Which was a really very skillful form of woodworking in Brooklyn Tech High School in New York City.

And in our basement,

He had his own wood shop and he would just be so happy down there.

And I would sometimes sit on the basement stairs,

Just he wasn't always aware of it,

Just watching him work.

And,

You know,

He had six,

Five or six vices are long,

This L shaped wooden workbench.

And those vices were always filled with projects.

They were never empty.

And he would work on one like he sand one thing and then he'd go to another vice and glue another piece and then he'd go to another one and chisel this.

And it's only years later that I realized that's how I work on books.

I've always worked on more than one book at the same time.

I let them cross pollinate.

And then when one gets to a certain depth or point of no return,

Then I focus on that completely.

But I know that I picked that up from him.

And another thing that's very,

Was very kind of important,

But again,

I think he taught by being who he was more than telling me about it was I remember sitting on those basement steps and watching him because after he built the boat that we spent a lot of my youth on,

He would build exact replicas of like he would get blueprints for sailing ships from the 1800s.

And he would make in scale these detailed half models that you can like hang on the wall of the of the sailing ship,

An exact replica of but just in smaller scale.

And so I remember watching him so immersed in using tweezers and putting rigging on this small replica of this sailing ship.

And I write about this in Finding Inner Courage.

It's a chapter called The Secret Life of Detail.

And I think what I've learned come to understand is that,

You know,

I didn't learn just excellence from him.

I learned immersion.

And the difference is that,

You know,

We could strive for excellence,

But never really connect with the rest of life.

But when we immerse ourselves,

The chances are what we do will be excellent.

But the reward for immersion is that we are suddenly in felt relationship with other life and other time.

So when I watched him make this tie,

This rigging on this replica of a sailboat,

He was so immersed in that that in that moment,

He was in the moment of everyone in history who ever built a boat.

Yes,

Poetry.

He was being poetic.

Yes.

Right.

Poetry has different forms,

Not only words,

I think.

Yes.

And I agree.

In fact,

I think of poetry not as the I think the words are the trail of it.

The real poetry is just what we're talking about.

The real poetry is when we can give ourselves completely to whatever's before us.

And we can,

You know,

And you know,

When you do that with a child and you're at one with their growth,

When you do that as a gardener,

You're at one with whatever you've planted in the ground.

And so with poetry,

Really,

For me is the unexpected utterance of the soul.

The words are just the trail.

Yes.

But you have a way with words.

You are a wordsmith.

Oh,

Thank you.

The way you use the same English words is it's available to everybody else.

Right.

But some people just know how to string them together,

Weave them together,

That it's almost completely different language.

Well,

I think that,

You know,

Everyone,

I believe everyone is born with a gift.

And our job is to discover that gift and be true to it.

And because it will be life giving to us.

And,

You know,

In medieval times in Germany,

There was a medieval mystic,

A female mystic,

Mechtild.

And she said,

A bird will not fall from the sky and a fish will not drown in water.

Each creature must find their own God given element.

And what I love about that,

Especially in what we're talking about,

Is that for human beings,

You know,

For a bird,

It's pretty easy.

The sky is its element.

For a fish,

It's the water.

But for human beings,

We're so multifaceted and we have so many possible ways to be in the world,

Which is our gift and our curse,

That it's not so clear for us what our God given element is.

And so we all have to kind of try each life has to try things on and try things out and experiment.

And when we find that thing that is so life giving that we just light up,

You know,

Like my father with his woodwork and sailing,

Those were the two things that just lit him up.

And you know,

Then we've discovered our gift and then we need to let it be our teacher.

Yeah,

So many moms,

Especially after giving birth to their children,

They struggle,

You know,

To find their own authentic self.

They sort of they sort of merge with their own child and they lose themselves into this journey of motherhood.

But then they start to seek who they are,

You know,

What are their passions.

This is so relatable.

This can be applied to parenting and motherhood,

Too.

Absolutely.

And,

You know,

I think like who we are is in our spirit,

In our heart,

In our soul.

Imagine like water filling a glass.

Well,

The water is who we are.

The glass is our identity.

And that water magically,

Spiritually will never disappear.

And like the shape of the glass may change throughout our life.

And we sometimes if the glass breaks or if our identity shifts or changes,

We understandably are afraid,

Oh,

No,

I've lost who I am.

But that water is just waiting,

Just hovering,

Waiting to be put into another shape glass.

What does it take to put it into a different shape of vessel?

Well,

I think I don't know entirely,

But I know from my own experience,

I think it's this is what involves our following,

The courage to follow our heart,

To follow what we are drawn to.

And,

You know,

This is like it just ties back to my father and mother when growing up and one more story about that.

And this ties in with what we're talking about is,

You know,

When I was and again,

You know,

They grew up in the depression.

Well,

I was,

You know,

The first in our family to go to college.

And I came home from as a sophomore in college.

And that's when I knew that I was a poet.

Though I hadn't written anything yet.

I knew I knew inside that I was a poet.

And I came home all excited on a break from school.

And I had one of these classic arguments with my parents over dinner.

You know,

I came home and I was excited to share with them that I was a poet.

And my father was like,

Well,

How are you going to make a living?

And I don't after a lot of arguing and not feeling seen and them worrying like,

You know,

You're the first one to go to college and this is what you want to do.

And my feeling like I brought this thing home that I was so excited about and they didn't hear that.

They not only didn't hear it,

They rejected it.

But somewhere in that conversation,

I found myself saying I'm not going to make a living.

I'm going to live a making.

And even,

You know,

As a 1920 year old,

I knew that what came from me was truth,

But I didn't know what it meant.

I've spent I spent many years learning.

What does that mean?

And so this ties into how do we find that gift and how do we fill that water into the glass that fits it is that all human beings,

The truth is we have to do both.

We have to make a living and live a making.

So what does that really mean?

Well,

I think the make a living part is about surviving.

We all have to have a place to live and be able to feed ourselves and our loved ones and pay the bills and all of that.

So that's surviving.

But living a making is about thriving.

So we need to do both.

Because if all we do is survive without thriving,

What's the point?

Yes.

And we have to be in the world.

So we can't just thrive and forget about surviving.

Because if you and I were to have this deep conversation,

Like while we're walking and we cross the street and we don't look and we get hit by a truck.

Well,

That's surviving.

That's pay attention.

Yeah.

Like you always say,

It's you know,

There are things that are paradoxical in some way,

Right?

In life.

You got to do both.

You got to open your heart,

Let the truth come through your heart and follow that truth and trust.

Right.

Also,

Trust is big element.

Well,

And the word trust literally means follow your heart.

So this is very,

It's not just poetic.

It's very helpful because when we are lost or we are feeling hurt or afraid or out of touch,

The one thing we have to do is have the quiet courage to follow our heart.

That means if I'm struggling and I look out the window and suddenly there's a bird I've never seen before and the light suddenly is on it.

And I need to give myself over to that piece of light and that bird.

Or if I am listening and all of a sudden I hear on the on the radio,

A chord of music and a song that touches my heart.

Well,

I need I need to find that.

I need to follow my heart because there are a thousand little angels ready to guide us in any moment.

But we have to not just note it and pass by.

We have to have the courage to hold nothing back and follow that because it will lead us back to clarity.

Aliveness will lead us to being alive.

Yeah,

So true.

I know I when I allowed that to happen in my life,

I can't say it's there is this ease with that.

Right.

You're being led to someone is taking care of you somehow.

It feels very it's okay.

I think when we interfere,

When our thoughts or our ego interferes into that process,

Then we are sort of misaligned.

Well,

Yes.

And so I think,

You know,

Being human,

We will interfere with ourselves and we will interfere with others.

And the practice is individual,

Personal spiritual practice is then how to recover and how to return.

So when I do interfere,

I own it and I step back and I listen or I make a course correction.

And this is so much that,

You know,

The times we need to lean in is when we feel pushed away.

The times we need to listen are when we feel like we must speak,

You know,

And this this takes again a quiet courage to say,

No,

No,

I need to listen.

You know,

There's an old Zen saying when in an argument,

Never side with yourself.

So good.

So good.

But how do you personally course correct?

Like when do you how do you catch yourself?

You have the awareness,

Of course.

When do you recognize that you are off the track and how do you go back?

What do you do?

Perhaps maybe you have rituals.

Yeah.

So I think the first thing and this is what the I think is the journey of self aware and the work of self awareness for all of us is that,

You know,

The things that I struggled with growing up are in my 20s and my 30s.

We don't get rid of those things.

But I think the more self aware we become,

We become aware when it's happening and we recognize it sooner and it doesn't last as long.

So if I'm feeling insecure,

You know,

When I when I want to go again,

Going back to my parents,

You know,

Growing up,

I think that my mother,

Especially I always had a difficult relationship with her and I was always under the influence of her rejection.

So she was very withholding.

And so not being aware,

Not having self awareness other than that,

That hurt as I started to become,

You know,

A writer and as I started to in my 20s,

Start to send poems out to try to get published in magazines,

I wasn't aware.

But I was playing out that pattern of acceptance and rejection by sending all these things out and then going to the mailbox and seeing whether I was accepted or rejected.

So I did that for a long time without ever realizing,

Realizing what was going on in me.

And so what I realized and so this will lead to a ritual.

So one of the things that triggered my awareness,

This is just an example that I wanted to tie into my experience as a child and growing and then gaining self awareness.

So somewhere in my late 30s,

I came across this story from ancient China about how they capture monkeys.

It was one of the first no kill traps,

Actually.

So they would monkeys love rice and coconuts.

So what some clever hunters did was they got a coconut,

They put a little hole in it,

The size of an extended monkey paw.

They hollowed out that coconut and they put rice in it.

And then they strapped the coconut filled with rice on the path where the monkeys would go.

And then they come back a week later and sure enough,

Every coconut had a monkey trapped in it.

Their paw was in it because what happened was they would slide their paw in the hole,

They would fist the rice and even though they couldn't eat it,

They wouldn't let go of the rice and so therefore their fisted paw couldn't get out of the coconut.

So they were trapped.

All they had to do was let go of the rice.

Well when I heard that story in my late 30s,

Maybe 40,

Immediately,

Immediately,

I knew that that was the story of my trying to get my mother's love.

That I would do anything and try to hold on to it.

And like the monkey,

Even though I couldn't eat it,

I wouldn't have it,

I wouldn't let go of it.

And so I was a prisoner of that rejection.

And so what does it take?

What would it take for the monkey to let go of the rice?

Well,

What it takes is to realize that that's not the only food in the world.

And in order to experience,

I had to realize that was not the only love in the world.

And as soon as I could let go of that,

I was free to look for love elsewhere.

So in ancient times,

This story very quickly by philosophers was appropriated as a teaching story because it became,

You know,

What's your rice?

What are you holding on to?

Even though you can't eat it,

Even though it won't nourish you,

What are you holding on to that is keeping you a prisoner?

So once I understood that,

I was very in a very different place about help with self awareness around acceptance and rejection,

Around my mother,

Around playing that out.

And so,

You know,

Even though,

You know,

Now fast forward and I'm,

You know,

67 and my mother's gone,

But I can still,

Depending on what happens in the day,

I can encounter someone let's say,

At a party who's like my mother,

Like that personality that's kind of not really forthcoming,

But withholding.

And all of a sudden I start to feel that old familiar withholding and I start to feel insecure.

Well now I'm the work of self awareness is I pretty quickly,

Almost immediately recognize,

Oh,

Oh,

I know what this is.

I can't stop it from happening,

But it doesn't last as long and I'm aware of it.

And it doesn't take over who I am.

That's what self awareness does.

So the ritual is what do I do when I recognize those feelings,

Whether it's associated with that trigger or if I'm just all of a sudden,

You know,

I wake up some days we wake up and we don't,

We feel like,

Gee,

I just don't feel so secure today.

Or what do I do is I take my hand and I make a fist and I open it like the monkey that can be free.

I open it and with that I can feel my heart opening.

So this is just an example,

An extended example.

And I share that because you know,

What I share out of my own life are examples,

Not instructions so that if you or anyone who's listening,

If that speaks,

If what we're talking about speaks to them,

Then you or they have to figure out what does that look like in your life?

What is the self awareness?

What is the story?

This is the purpose of story and ritual is to increase our self awareness of heart and free us,

Free us in order to find love wherever we can.

Yes.

Well,

Thank you for sharing that.

It's really profound.

And I think what a,

That's a great ritual,

You know,

It has a physical element that you can actually look at your hand and you know,

The story,

I think if my listeners are paying attention,

This could be adopted.

I think this is a really fantastic example.

And a lot,

A lot of people did struggle with this rejection that you're talking about.

Did your relationship ever change with your mom after you gained that awareness?

Yes and no.

So in,

You know,

As we get to the later part of,

Of their lives and she lived to be 89 and my father was 93 and I did become close with my father again in the last six,

Seven years of his life.

And I only really saw my mother actually,

You know,

We were estranged for many years and I finally saw her for the first time when my father,

He was 92 was the last year of his life.

He had a stroke and was in the hospital.

And so in order to see him,

Of course I had to see her and you know,

It was,

You know,

I'm sure other people who are listening may have experienced this,

That I think I walked into that hospital room and of course for all the things that truth is I hadn't lived with my parents since I was 18.

So you know,

Whatever buttons they installed,

I maintained for a lot longer than the years I lived with them.

So I walked into that room and she was a little old woman.

She was a fragile,

Fragile little old woman.

And so the tension was gone,

Related fine.

Although I have to,

You know,

To be honest,

I don't think she really had any interest in knowing me more deeply.

And I didn't feel,

You know,

I felt very,

You know,

I was very moved to,

My father had a much greater central presence in my heart.

And my mother,

For whatever it was that we were or were not with each other,

And I didn't wish her any ill and,

But I didn't,

You know,

After he died,

I would call now and then to connect with her.

But I didn't also didn't really feel like I wanted or needed for it to be more than whatever it was.

And so,

You know,

One of the most profound moments in that part of the journey was when my father was moved from one hospital to another.

And we were met my brother and I met my mother in the waiting room.

And I was sitting next to her and she was staring off.

And I felt more compassionate for her as this woman who had been a partner of this man who might die for 67 years than as my mother.

And I looked at her and I said,

You know,

You must be tired.

And without looking at me,

She said,

No,

I'm afraid.

And in that moment,

My heart did something that was amazing and instructive.

So in that moment,

My heart took everything,

All of the struggle for all those years between us.

It didn't say,

Oh,

That's resolved,

Or it doesn't matter.

But it simply put it aside.

And and then I just held her like I would a stranger.

And so that was really amazing.

In an instant,

My heart said,

Well,

You're not going to resolve this.

And it does matter.

And it doesn't.

But right now,

We're just going to put it aside over here.

And so I came out of that moment and very grateful for it.

And I run up writing these lines about parents about having parents and that that having parents is being born to gods who crumble year by year into human beings.

Wow,

I have tears.

So true.

One,

How could we how could how could our parents not be gods to us?

We're so small.

And as parents,

We are so big,

And everything our lives depend on them.

And then,

Of course,

As we grow,

And we become in the world,

And they are,

Of course,

Human.

And then,

You know,

At first,

We're shocked.

What do you mean they're human?

They're not Zeus and they're not,

You know,

The great gods of the of up in the Olympus.

No,

They have pains and doubts and fears and things they struggle with in their own self awareness and insecurity.

And so I think a lot of our lives that you know,

What happens between us and parents,

Whether close to your parents or you have struggles like I did.

But I think that that over a lifetime,

Our relationship with our parents is the practice ground for humility and acceptance.

You learn how to accept each other and what it's like to be human.

Yes,

So true.

How about when you went through your cancer journey,

Did your parents,

Were they involved?

Did they know?

Were they part of it?

Well,

They were.

Again,

They were and they weren't.

At that time,

I do remember,

You know,

That there was a moment where my parents came to see me and when I was just entering the cancer journey.

And I remember getting up before everyone else was up and my and this was I was in a previous marriage and my former wife and and it was where we lived.

And before everyone got up,

My father was up with me.

And it was the one time,

You know,

That he,

You know,

He cried and he he said,

And I think he was probably in his 50s that and I was in my mid 30s.

And and he said,

You know,

If I could take your place,

I would.

And you know,

That was so tough.

That meant so much to me.

And yet,

A year and a half later,

I was in a very difficult spot in the journey.

I was just outside of New York City.

I had had this is after I had a rib removed from my back surgically.

And two weeks later,

I had very aggressive my first chemo treatment,

Which was botched.

And so I was in my former wife and an old friend of mine,

Paul.

The three of us were in a holiday in room after I had this terrible chemo treatment.

And I was very sick and was getting sick every 20 minutes.

I was getting sick and we didn't know whether to go to the emergency room or not.

And this can't continue.

And then it did.

And early in the morning,

We did eventually go to the emergency room before that,

You know,

Being distraught and where I grew up,

My parents home was only a half hour away.

And so my former wife and called my parents and my my father was out and my mother was home and.

And they they didn't come.

They didn't come.

And nor did they ask us to come there.

And you know,

I can I have since I think they were frightened.

I think it frightened them of their own mortality.

But whatever the case,

Whatever the reason.

And at first,

You know,

I,

Of course,

Was,

You know,

I was very I felt like something very deep and primal.

A cord had been cut because they wouldn't come or wouldn't reach out in some way.

And from that point on,

We there was a language of heart we didn't share because they weren't along on the journey.

And so I felt at the one hand,

You know,

My father had felt all that.

And at first I felt like my mother because of my history with her rejecting a lot of my hurt went toward her.

But then as I was with it,

You know,

I thought,

You know,

My father didn't get home and say,

Where is he?

Get out of my way.

He's my son.

You know,

He never followed up.

He never called himself.

He never responded.

And so I felt like they both,

You know,

That old saying like you they did the best they could.

I don't know.

They did the best they could.

I think they did what they could.

And and I'm also at peace with it.

Yeah.

After all these years,

You know,

I think their fear had to be pretty great not to reach out to their son.

Yeah.

And then and God knows what their history of trauma.

Exactly.

Right.

As you mentioned,

They were immigrants,

You know,

Of Jewish descent and depression era.

I can assume like from the sound of it,

They had their own hurts and unresolved traumas that,

As Mark Woolley says,

Blocks the flow of love towards their children.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So,

You know,

All of these things.

And again,

I would back it up and even say like that happened to,

You know,

Like I always say about my cancer journey,

I think like every person in life will be given the opportunity to be dropped into the depth of life.

And it doesn't matter what drops us there.

So you know,

It could be something difficult,

Like having a life threatening disease like I did,

Or it could be something wonderful,

Like being fully seen and heard or beauty or surprise or wonder.

It doesn't matter.

And similarly,

Every child that is born in a particular circumstance and part of the individuation process is how do we move through our individual growing up to understand that our experience isn't the only experience and that humanity and being human encompasses so much more.

And the metaphor for this for me is imagine in a river where fish are being born,

You know,

On one side of the river,

You have this fast current,

This kind of eddy that's swirling and a fish is born there.

Well,

Its first experience of water is this swirling fast current.

So the first way it learns to swim is how to get through that and join the normal current of the river.

Now,

Imagine on the other side of the river,

A mile further up,

There's a still place,

A pool that's protected,

And there's no current and there's just light and clarity and a fish is born there.

And its first experience is it has to learn how to swim from that stillness into the normal current of the river.

So it doesn't matter.

You could be born and have parents that are suffocating,

Or you could have parents that are abandoning.

And it really,

It matters to you because you're going through it,

But it doesn't matter which it is,

Each of us will have to individuate and learn how to grow from our particular place of birth into the larger current of humanity.

This is a passage,

A threshold,

An initiation that everyone has to go through.

Yeah,

But what a powerful way of explaining it.

Yes,

It's amazing how you have a way of explaining things.

Yes,

Yes,

Yes,

You do.

It's so vivid.

Yes.

I still remember the old stories that you told,

The way you tell them,

It's just phenomenal.

Oh,

Thank you.

But you know,

One thing,

One thing,

Let me just,

As we extrapolate from that story about the fish and where they're born to our,

To what's going on in our world today is one of the most difficult things and the challenging things is when we are not self-aware in heart,

Then we take our circumstance and we make the whole world like,

You know,

The fish that was born in the rough current,

Where that's being suffocated.

And that child says,

Oh,

The whole world is suffocating.

Rather than realizing,

Well,

You're,

My experience is suffocating and there's more than just my experience.

I wonder what other people's experience are.

And this is a lot of what's happening today.

I feel is that people out of fear and pain are painting the whole world,

The color of their fear and pain rather than saying,

What's it like for you?

I know this is what it's like for me and I need to be true to my experience.

What's it like for you and what can we learn by sharing our stories?

Yes.

This is why I do this podcast,

You know,

To share stories like yours,

To give people hope that no matter what adversity,

You know,

No matter what kind of family you grew up in,

You can choose to have a different life.

You can choose to swim in that mainstream part of that current that you were describing.

You know,

You don't have to be on either extreme.

Well,

You know,

One story,

Let me share one,

Another story of parents and children.

And this goes,

You know,

My latest book is about community and it's called More Together Than Alone,

Where I've gathered stories from all different traditions and throughout history of times when we've worked well together and the lineage of that care.

And so this is this is from the Holocaust.

And I had a dear friend who recently a couple of years ago died at one hundred and two and he was a child of the Holocaust and his father,

His father was an elder in the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania,

Which was forced by the Nazis and he was made in charge reluctantly to deal with the Germans.

And eventually that ghetto was terminated and all of the people in it were moved to Auschwitz.

And when he his father came aware of that,

This was going to happen.

You know,

They all tried as much as they could to have people escape and do things.

But they had in that ghetto,

Even though it was outlawed,

There were so many talented musicians that they created a symphony and he asked them to play Beethoven's Ode to Joy in the ghetto before the ghetto was closed.

Just remarkable resilience and belief in life.

And the other part of this story is that then at the last minute there were children,

Young children who were thrown over the side of the fence of the ghetto in potato sacks and carried away to try to save them from certain death.

And one of those little boys that survived in that potato sack eventually wound up landing in Israel.

And he grew up to be Aron Barak,

Who was the chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court and who was instrumental in the Oslo Accords between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

Unbelievable.

Just amazing.

It is.

It is.

Wow.

Yeah,

I like that phrase.

We're more together than alone.

More together than alone.

Yes.

Very profound.

You don't have children,

Right?

Yes,

This is correct.

We don't have children.

Just a spoiled yellow lab.

What inspires you in life?

Well,

What inspires me in life is what we're doing here is relationship and care and love.

I feel like the word art literally means the craft of fitting things together.

And I think when we care,

It doesn't matter what the art of living is just that.

It's the art of loving and putting things and fitting things together.

And I think that we are all instrumental when we find those gifts that are ours and we can care for them,

Then we do our part at keeping the web of life whole and unified.

And so what inspires me is,

It's interesting.

Again,

In my 60s,

I go back to,

I think all of my poetry and my teaching is to enter those moments that I did as a child in conversation with all of life.

And I think my teaching is wanting to be in spaces where I can share that with others.

Yes.

Would you read something for us?

Oh,

Sure.

Sure.

I would be happy to.

Here,

Actually,

You know what I'll do?

Let me,

Yeah,

Let me read a poem I actually just wrote yesterday.

What a treat.

Yeah.

It's called In the Interim.

In the interim being that time in between,

Come sit with me.

I know you're busy.

I was busy too.

Come,

This won't take long.

There's something I want to show you.

Look,

I found this spot of light under all my wounds.

I thought it was mine,

Something I'd earned,

But it was there long before we were born.

Oh,

Don't rush off.

I know you're late,

But all these appointments open like petals to the same nectar.

And what if your heart and my heart are fed by the same lake?

What if your heart and my heart are like a hundred-year-old cello and that spot of light I found is trapped in its hollow,

Waiting for each of us to play our song?

Which one's played reveals,

Oh,

Oh,

I see,

You have to go.

I understand.

Just put your hand on my chest.

It's all right.

I want you to feel that spot of light.

I'd give it to you if I could.

Like a candle,

It flickers under everything I know,

Which is why I can't keep up.

If I move too fast,

It might go out.

Wow.

Very beautiful.

Thank you.

I think one of the things that is so humbling about this journey is that no one gets to bypass being human.

Wisdom doesn't create shortcuts.

Wisdom just supports each of us in facing and going through everything that everyone who ever lived has to go through.

And it's the most messy and magnificent and beautiful journey we could ask for.

Yes.

I can't listen to you without tears for whatever reason.

Wow.

Thank you for your open heart.

Yes.

Yes.

You speak to me in a very profound way from the time we met,

From the time I discovered you.

Every time I read your books,

I have them way under the way on my nightstand.

Oh,

Thank you.

And I always read poetry before bed.

And I just randomly open a page and read and reflect.

It always brings tears to my eyes for whatever reason.

Well,

I just offer to it.

You would know what the tears feel like for you.

But the tears aren't just tears of the water of life surfacing in us.

And when we can be authentic with each other,

That water of life comes forth to nourish us.

I mean,

There are tears are not always about sadness.

There are times when we are sad,

For sure,

And grief and loss and pain make us cry.

But that tears are much more than that.

Yes.

Yes.

Do you cry?

Yes,

I do.

And,

You know,

And it's interesting because I think I cry more easily and at the oddest things the older I get.

And there were also times when I feel like I cry,

But the tears don't quite reach the surface.

And the way the image that I kind of feel for that is that,

You know,

Living in the deep,

You know,

When a fish jumps in the deep,

It doesn't make any ripples.

Yes.

So,

Both I cry,

Cry without tears quite making it to the surface.

And I cry also where there's tears very quickly and easily.

Yes.

And as usual,

You make everything sound very poetic.

Even the ordinary little thing.

The way you look at the world is just fascinating.

Yes.

It's not ordinary.

Well,

You know,

I think what I'm looking at is ordinary.

And I think just like our gifts,

I think everybody has a way through their heart to seeing exactly what I see.

The way that I talk about it may be particular to my being,

This spirit in this particular body this lifetime.

And that's where,

You know,

I'm,

What's why,

You know,

And when you've when I'm teaching,

When I'm holding that space,

I'm always trying to open a heart space to support people to finding their own way to drink from that,

That one river of light that we all have access to.

Yes.

Yes.

What does it mean to live an authentic life?

This word authenticity.

I'm sure you even know the meaning of it,

The root.

Yes.

Yes,

Absolutely.

The word authentic comes from the Greek word authentes and it means mark of the hands.

So that's very powerful because to lead an authentic life means to live and live an embodied life.

And it's not by accident that the hands and the arms are actually biologically and anatomically physically connected to the heart.

In fact,

When a child is growing in as a fetus,

The first thing is there is the heart.

But the next thing to grow,

I learned from a retired doctor is the arms start to grow out of literally out of the heart and their tiny little vestiges are first known as arm buds.

And so what it means to live an authentic life is that a congruence and integrity between what goes on in our heart and what we do with our hands in the world.

Well I'm extending my arms to give you a big hug for this time that we spent together.

Thank you so much.

Well,

You're welcome.

A joy to journey with you this way.

Yes,

I can't wait for your next book.

Oh,

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome and thank you for your good work too.

And that's it for this episode of the Authentic Parenting Podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I have.

The show notes for this and other episodes as always can be found at AuthenticParenting.

Com forward slash podcast.

Let's continue the conversation in our private Facebook group as I would love to hear your takeaways.

Do you like the on-air coaching episodes?

If you would like to be considered for an on-air coaching episode,

Please apply today.

Send me an email info at AuthenticParenting.

Com and I'll be in touch.

Also I would love to share with you exciting news.

I'll be hosting a live one-day conference here in New Brunswick on May 18th,

2019 and I would love to meet you in person.

I will have more details,

But for now,

Please mark your calendar for May 18th.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already and of course rate and leave a review.

Next week we will be talking about authenticity,

Identity,

Finding your authentic self with the capital S and I can't wait to share that conversation with you.

Until then,

Connect to the present moment to yourself and your children.

I am Anna Siwold.

Thank you so much for listening.

Reviews

I love Mark Nepo too. He’s been on my podcast and such a inspiring human!

Most enjoyable talk🫶 Thank you for sharing. 🙏💓💐

2019 interview with Mark and it is profoundly relevant for this day in 2025
-Susan

I could listen to Mark Nepo every mi Ute of everyday. Beautiful interview ❤️

Amazing, inspiring, informative and a pure gentle deep look into life. Thank you Anna and Mark 🦋

What an interview with Mark! I was moved to tears as well several times. I could resonate deeply with the parents situation. It helped me to to see things with my 92 year old mama a little differently. My Dad passed away 4 months ago the day after they were married 70 years. 5 days after the funeral she fell and broke her hip and went from the hospital to rehab to long term care as of January 4, 2021 and I haven’t seen her due to covid since October 1, 2020 and don’t know at this time if I will or should see her again. I’m an only child and I stayed around because of my Dad. So happy I chose this podcast today. 💜

Love Mark his words are connecting and healing 🙏🏻❤️

Just lovely, thank you 🙏 🤗☺️