MEND Season 2 - Episode 44

Season Finale & Wrap-Up with Amy & Anne

It was a season begun with tea.

Sitting down to enjoy the art of conversation and contemplating what it might be like to move inside a world where we begin to value one another, this earth, beauty, thoughts, feelings, creative expression & simple self-determination - over the stingy value of a paycheck?

What would it look like to live inside a world that values it's people above it’s property?

That values it’s heart above it’s hierarchical standing in the larger world?

That values Nature above the supposed resources which it can provide us?

What would it look like to inhabit, move into, and begin to imagine a world like that?

Can we make it?

Can we find it?

Can we begin to converse & thereby imagine it into being?

These were some of the questions we set out to explore on this past season of MEND.

And so, we sat down - once more - teacups in hand - to reflect back on the conversations we’ve had.

To see what we’ve learned - how we’ve shifted - and how we can continue to move toward a future that is altogether different than the past - the present we now know.

What would it look like for two ordinary, inexpert people to begin to live differently - to uplift and inspire others to do so as well?

What if we believed these imperfect hearts and hands held some piece of the great MENDING that is needed in the world right now?

What if you belived it too?

What if we all jumped on board and rode that train to it’s completion?

Where would it lead?

Join us as we sit with these - and a few other questions - besides.

Here’s to the cups of tea we’ve shared inside this space.

And the conversations - visions - and movements - they’ve inspired - along the way

Cheers.

MEND Season 2 - Episode 40

Intellectual (Thread) with Anne & Amy

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write”

~Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf first shared this sentiment back in 1928, just as women were coming into ever-more visibility and gradual power in all areas of public life.  Since then, we've been searching for that mythic "room of our own".  The magic space that would make it possible for us to do work that we love, express ourselves, create & to leverage our unique talents and abilities for a living (or dare we even hope thriving?!) wage, to boot.  

In our first season, we looked to the origins of cannabis culture and the similar sentiment embedded there.  Move up to the hills.  Throw some plants in the ground.  Build your own schools. Grow your own food.  Create your own currency.  Your own (counter) culture.  We have also seen how that culture has been gradually (and almost wholly) taken over by the values of the dominant culture.  

In this, our follow-up chat to our talk with the lovely Sandy Connery & Jennifer Barcelos of Namastream & Soulful MBA - we tackle the space of the Internet as one for people's and particularly women's voices and empowerment.  

As more and more people flock to the virtual spaces to create their messaging, their own platform, and to create a form of livelihood - what are the dangers and pitfalls that we face?  Can we step into the digital space and keep our values, our attention & our cultural (or, better yet,  counter-cultural) values intact?  Or are we destined to a similar fate as the back-to-the-landers faced?  In striving to promote our own values and our own vision inside the unruly and noisy spaces of the inter webs... how do we stay sovereign?  stolid?  Sane?  

Has technology, indeed, created this hallowed Room of our Own?  

And, if so.. how are we to navigate and move about this space?

Thoughts on that plus some tools and resources we've unearthed to help us navigate this space.

We hope you enjoy.  

MEND Season 2 - Episode 33

Financial Capital with Bari Tessler

"Money is like love; it kills slowly and painfully the one who withholds it, and enlivens the other who turns it on his fellow man."

~Kahlil Gibran

This week we delved into a realm that was, admittedly, uncomfortable at first, and seemed perhaps counterpoint to the intention of this season.  It was, however, written into the framework that we have chosen to follow, so we forged ahead into the realm of Financial Capital. The resulting talk we had was far more inspiring and cohesive with our motivations that we would have thought even possible.  Bari Tessler, is a Financial Therapist, a Mamaprenuer and the founder of the Art of Money, book and year-long program described is “Financial Therapy for your Soul”.  

A large part of Bari’s work is helping people understand how money connects to our bodies and our emotions.  For her there is a direct connection between Financial Literacy and Emotional Intelligence. 

We spoke about our relationship to money…as women, as products of our educational and cultural system, as member in a partnership, and as mothers….and the importance of understanding this relationship.  She offers us a glimpse into the work she does with others by offering some advice and gems of wisdom when dealing with the ebbs and flows of our financial story.  She even manages to bring in a bit of Zen Buddhism and discusses how we can work through our own Money Koans.  

This is a money talk like you have probably never had.  So pour a cup of tea, grab a pen and paper for notes…and enjoy.  

MEND Season 2 - Episode 29

A Simple cup of Tea with Guisepi Spadafora

"...There is no problem on Earth that can't be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea.” 
― Jasper Fforde

Imagine walking down a crowded busy street, your eyes buried in your cell phone and the unsettling news of the day.  Scrolling through FB posts, belaboring one obstinate opinion over another.

Your thoughts percolating with lists of To-Dos.

People pass you, bumping shoulders without making eye contact.

When you hear the whistle of a tea kettle…

You look up to see the warm wooden interior of a white mini-bus and a sign that reads, FREE TEA

Inside is the thing you most need right now, something you haven’t had all day, or maybe even all week:  

Genuine human interaction, absent of monetary incentives.

A place to sit with others you’ve never met and make connections you never considered.  A man named Guisepi pouring tea for whomever enters, a man who knows RELATIONSHIPS to be of the highest value and speaks on the importance and necessity of a relationship-based economy.  Your feet, moved by a desire so innate you can’t name it, carry you to the threshold.

You enter.

Welcome to Edna Lu and the Free Tea Party.

MEND Season 1 - Episode 20

Pass It Along...

We were excited, this week, to speak with Siobhan, a 2nd generation cannabis farmer and one half of the YouTube duo The Grow Sisters.  She and her husband own Blessed Coast Farms, Humboldt’s first permitted cannabis farm, where she is proud to plant into the native soil along the Van Duzen River.

Legalization ended her days dodging helicopters on a dirt bike, and brought her a sense of liberation.  Now she can be honest about who she is, what she does.  She recognizes that being such a public advocate for her farm and cannabis cultivation may place her head on the chopping block, but the work needs to be done and she recognizes her well-placed position as an advocate. 

This is farming; practices and techniques are not secret, nor should they be.  Siobhan stresses the importance of sharing this knowledge, exclaiming, “This is how we survive!”  The coveting of farming knowledge is a black market thought and now we must grow into this new realm of legalization and transparency together.

Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties have been growing cannabis for decades, Siobhan describes it as generations.  No county is, perhaps, as known for its quality of cannabis as is Humboldt.  This is our strength and Siobhan urges us to get involved, step in and represent ourselves; suggesting, I believe, that as we move forward into compliance and legalization, our future lies in our history.  

To find out more about the resources we discuss, check out:::

Blessed Coast Farms

California Growers Association

Info on the Mendocino Appellation Project

MEND Season 1 - Episode 15

Looking Back to Find What's Next..

As I was sitting down to draft an introduction to this week’s chat, these words from Dante  Alighieri went flashing through my mind:

“In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. …...I cannot rightly say how I entered it. I was so full of sleep, at that point where I abandoned the true way. But when I reached the foot of a hill, where the valley, that had pierced my heart with fear, came to an end, I looked up and saw its shoulders brightened with the rays of that sun that leads men rightly on every road. …...It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was,.....but, in order to tell of the good that I found there, I must tell of the other things I saw there.”

Anne & myself have chosen to take this week to re-group to some degree.  

A moment to step back and look at where this shifting narrative has taken us thus far, but also to try to regain the larger thematic thread toward which we’re aiming overall.  

To that end, we sat down, on opposite sides of the country and asked each other some questions.

*Stuff like -

What is the larger story we are trying to tell?

Have we succeeded thus far?

What are some of the voices we have yet to hear from and that we feel, are needing to be heard inside this story?

And... After all is said and done… is this really about Pot at all??

We re-cap some of our favorite episodes to date.

And talk about the process of trying to share a larger, Universal story with a message and a deep, pulsing heart - using the syntax of the humble everyday.  

Can the personal truly reveal the Universal, as they say?

We talk about Commercialization - both in this industry and beyond - and the effects it has.  

About what we’ve lost.  And hopefully what we are un-earthing still.

We talk about the underbelly of this story.  The dark, shadowy bits we had hoped to move away from - and how they’re part and parcel to this whole tale.  

And ultimately - we come back to: Who is this For?  

And begin to shift our focus from the past - of what has been - and invite in Voices that are beginning to pave the way toward our collective Future - whatever that may hold.  

Enjoy.