Ayana Young  To listen to the extended version of this episode, support us on patreon.com/forthewild. Hello and welcome toFor The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today we are speaking with Rachel Cargle.

Rachel Cargle  That we aren't just this unfixable thing. We are a soil that can be replanted and nourished and the more we put our energy and effort and show up in community to do that for others.. who we see it in. I think we can really take the earth as a muse.

Ayana Young  Rachel Elizabeth Cargle is an activist, entrepreneur and philanthropic innovator. She is the founder of the Loveland Group, a family of companies, including Elizabeth's Bookshop and Writing Center, a literary space that celebrates marginalized voices, and The Great Unlearn, an adult learning platform that centers the teaching of BIPOC thinkers. In 2018, she founded the Loveland Foundation, offering free access to mental health care for black women and girls. Cargle, as a regular contributor to Cultured Magazine, ATMOS, and The Cut. And her work has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times and The New Yorker. Her new book, A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir and Manifesto on Reimagining comes out in the US May 16, 2023.

Ayana Young  Oh, Rachel, this is just such a good day because I get to talk to you, I woke up with a huge smile on my face. And just really appreciate your work and am inspired and feel really grateful and blessed to have some one-on-one time with you. So thanks for joining us and sharing with all of those out there listening and tuning in.

Rachel Cargle  Thank you so much for having me. I, too, woke up with a smile thinking about the chance to be in conversation with you and also just to be part of this incredible project. So thank you.

Ayana Young  Yay. Gosh, this is something I absolutely love about the podcast has been able to speak to people that move me and yeah, I feel very lucky for my job right now. There are so many places I could begin. So it's really hard to even pick a place on the map of Rachel of where to dive in. But there is this really beautiful article that that you wrote that struck me so much. And it just feels like such an important guide for life on Earth. And that's an article you wrote for Atmos called "Rooted in Blackness" and direct quote, "Do you see the texture of the blackness is rich and thick and elaborate? It is a tapestry woven with ancestral knowledge and generational wisdom. This too, is where the power of rootedness comes in. Now more than ever, is a time to tap into the guidance of the most tangible form of our roots, our ancestors, those who lived on this earth and the years, centuries and generations before we arrived. They tended to the earth so that we could reap their knowledge, harvest their dreams for us, connecting with their wisdom leads us to a truth we can be grounded in. Truths that affirm things like our inclinations, our robust community, our prides and even our sorrows." End quote. Whooo, yeah, so I just would love to hear you reflect more on this sense of rootedness and the very physical aspect of finding and maintaining connection and truth.

Rachel Cargle  I really enjoyed writing that piece. I was writing it around Black History Month, I believe. And it was a piece that really invited me to consider the truth of Black History of my own Blackness and how that relates to how I exist in the world today. And oftentimes, as I'm trying to, you know, figure out my way forward, I have found that I get the best insight calibration from what I like to call this like ancestral intellect or this ancestral knowledge that offers clues. As I said in the piece that, you know, it's some, it's the seed that they have planted in their work and in their joy and in their intention that we too have to do the work of cultivating it, of seeing what was planted and then going out to tend to the land ourselves as well. And I found it to be a major part of my wellbeing... to feel rooted, to feel grounded in a number of things, whether it is in my culture, in my understanding of this country, and my understanding of my womanhood. That this intention of understanding what ground I am coming from means something. It's not just an interest in what has happened before. It's not just a curiosity about what existed. It's gathering information that lets me know who I am and where I'm going. And particularly as a writer, and looking at all of my intellectual ancestors who have put down information on the page. It's such a gift, it's such a gift to be able to go back and look through their words and their thoughts. And I think in that piece, and in my work, I want to encourage everyone to remember that we have information, and sometimes even answers that were offered to us in previous generations. And it's worth the time to walk that landscape of our ancestry of history, of past generations– both those that aren't here any longer. And those who are still here, people we can be in conversation with about what they experienced, what they know, what they can guide us through. It's been a definite cornerstone of my own living and my work.

Ayana Young  Thanks for starting us off like that. And this work feels so important. This rootedness work, because I feel in this time particularly, there's so many reasons why so many of us feel unrooted. And I think the consequence of that is really dangerous for us. It manifests in so many ways that threaten our survival, our way of life, our knowingness, our joy, our ability to sift through the grief. You know, I think back to a time when us humans, you know, are many of us humans felt a sense of belonging, and what type of secure attachment that must have given us, and how that guided our truths, even what truth meant to us. But I feel like in this postmodern dominant culture, we even question what truth is because of a lack of rootedness and belonging, and so it's really hard to make good decisions. It's really hard to take care of ourselves and each other, when we don't have something connecting us back down to the core of our, our ancestry, our belonging to this planet. So yeah, I just really appreciate your work on this and, and very lovingly and gracefully in your writing, bringing us back into that remembrance. And, you know, I guess, too, I want to go back to that article because you write, quote, "I never knew how much my ongoing relationship with earth, soil, and things that grow would intersect with and influence my work and adulthood. As a black woman who often writes and teaches on the topic of blackness. The Earth has been both a classroom and a muse." End quote, I love the word muse, by the way, I love that whole, the world of musing and yeah, I guess I'm thinking about rootedness as an inter-ecological and generational connection. And I'm wondering how this framework recognizes our dependence on one another and on the more-than-human world, both of this worth and spiritually beyond it.

Rachel Cargle Yeah, yeah, I agree with that desire to be curious about those actions. I think that is part of my writing. And my work is well. I think that there's There's so many ways that we're distracted. These days, whether it's distracted with the obvious things like social media, or even the less obvious things like the way we are pushed towards an individualism that insists that we turn away from perhaps our shared lived experiences and be more focused on just our personal lived experiences. And I grappled with that so much, because one, I am deeply believe that being our best selves is our highest service. And that there is a necessity for us to be reflective, personally, internally and thoughtful and coming to some conclusions about what we know to be true for ourselves. And at the same time, there's no way that we can have an understanding of ourselves without the act, and the experience of being in community, not only with those who we like, but also those who we disagree with those who we don't know or don't understand. This, this idea that someone of an opposing viewpoint or experience is something we don't want to deal with, can't be true. It can't be true at the same time as dealing with an understanding ourselves. And so that line that you read about the earth being a muse, it truly is looking at the ecology of the Earth.. what works, where, you know, where there are conflicts in what or who can be well, at any point in time, the change of the seasons, the way that it's not always good. And there has to be a place for rest or even destruction, thinking about how fires are necessary to pour into the health of agriculture. So I am very inspired by and particularly tuned into the way that Earth offers us many examples of what showing up with ourselves and with each other, could and perhaps must look like.

Ayana Young. Oh, yeah. I want to stay on this topic of rooting a bit more. And yeah, I guess what I'm wanting to explore with you is what it means to root into our choices, and find clarity and confidence both within ourselves and through affirming communities. And this idea or concept of choice has come up for me a lot in myself and those around me. I have a dear, wonderful friend visiting right now, Nuskamata, who I've had on the podcast a few times, an incredible Nuxalk Indigenous leader from so-called British Columbia. And we were having, we were feasting last night on seafood and the fat of the land. And she had said something like, "I made good choices to be here." And we kind of started talking about what it means to follow, not just intuition, but the call of our purpose. And, and that's a choice. And I know that's also a challenging choice for a lot of us, is how we can trust ourselves to follow that deepest calling. And where that then leads us to more choices and how it opens up the world and our communities and how we walk through this world. And so yeah, I would just love to hear more of your thoughts on rooting in our choice to find our clarity and confidence.

Rachel Cargle  Yeah, I am so jealous. I wasn't at that table. To have this conversation because it's that I to think of often. You know, as a black girl from the Midwest who grew up with a disabled mother, we were fairly poor. I didn't really have exposure to what was the world and what was possible in the world. And so something that is very central to, as we all continue to heal and discover what it was in our childhood that has made us the way that we are, that has pushed us towards particular choices. The option to have choices, the base to consider my preferences or my desires, the opportunity to say, "This is true for me." And with this truth, I will do good. That wasn't always an option for me. It's not always an option for many people who are simply trying to survive, under various oppressions like the patriarch has a deep, deep, both luxury and privilege.. one to have choice, but even more so to move confidently with have really taken up this mantle of reminding people that there is possibility in this lifetime for them that they have the chance to sit there and ask, "What else is possible? What else am I capable of? How else can I show up for myself and for the community." And referring back to that quote, I mentioned earlier of our best selves, being our highest service.. often, we're constantly trying to fix ourselves to, you know, be more of something. And oftentimes, what we in the western world understand as quote unquote, "more or better" is really an approximation to whiteness. It is, you know, if my hair was straighter, if my house was bigger, if I had more power, if, you know, I fit more squarely into this understanding of what is right, or what is well, and in my own life, I really had to take a moment and say, "Wait. Is this intention is this desire, something that is rooted in a truth that I understand about myself and those that I see as family, those that I see as comrades, those that I see as people who inspire me? Or is this something that was insisted, by a society that actually doesn't align with my values at all." And so this work towards self understanding, and knowing ourselves, is not just a personal, you know, in our heads type of moment. But it also is one of the best things we can do in community for our community towards our collective liberation. Toni Cade Bambara, wrote, the way that revolution has to start with self. And so this work that we put into coming to terms with our truth, and I say, coming to terms, which sometimes has a negative connotation, but it really is hard sometimes to say, "Wow, my truth is this, this is what feels best for me, and how can I work with this to serve my community?" This idea of being reflective, of coming out what our values are, and living in those is where we find so much power, so much motivation, so much fervor for how we can show up. And so I am a huge advocate of the work that when must do to find our highest values, because I think that is what puts the tools in our tool belt to really show up.

I just wanted to tie that into choices, because with our, you know, making these informed choices based on our values, based to be confident, like you said, to calibrate towards our confidence, and how we can show up. One way that this shows up, this has showed up for me a lot over time. And what I talk about often is my decision not to have children. And my decision to be child-free is rooted in a lot of self reflection, and me saying, you know, am I feeling pressure to birth a child because I really want to ...like I'm going to really be able to serve this human and it will be a contribution from me that feels aligned. Or am I doing it because I was told that since I was born in this body, it is the highest way to show up? And when I really thought about one, the fact that I had a choice, and two, what that choice really meant. It allowed me to say: You know what?... The more I'm able to not have to deal with the conflict of whether I want to be a parent or not, knowing that it's not really something that's coming to me with much joy or ease... the thought of being a parent. Instead, you know, what would it mean for me to put that energy and effort into doing what aligns with me? Like, you know, supporting parents in the way that I can. Doing the work that I do to get the income to do things like help support with summer camps or have some free time in my world to support with childcare. It's really special when you can be thoughtful, make a choice, then move confidently with that. It really is, I find, one of the best ways to serve community.

Ayana Young  Absolutely. And I'm happy, we're still teasing out this topic, because I mean, I know I need to hear it. And I'm sure a lot of us listening are in the complexity and the muddiness of how we come to these choices with confidence and a deep sense of knowing. And I also want to hear your thoughts on how do we recognize the difference between real life-altering and affirming choices, versus the so called choice that is marketed to us under capitalism.

Rachel Cargle  You know, one really easy way to do that I learned from a friend of mine, her name is Dana Suchow and a while back, she used to do a lot of work around body empowerment. And I really did learn some so much from her. And one question she invited us to ask every time we're coming up on a decision that gives us pause just doesn't feel good, or shows up with some of that residue of... is this a societal expectation, or something that I actually want to do is to ask the question of 'Who benefits from me making this choice? Who is either making money from this choice of mine, who, you know, wins with the self doubt that I'll have, because of this choice?' It makes me think, in particular, it makes me think of, you know, let's talk about something as you know, as casual as shaving our legs. And the feeling that we have around whether it's 'Uh. I don't feel I get.' or 'Why do I have to do this? Or why am I rushing and getting all upset about getting this thing done?' And saying, "Is this something that I want to do?" And who's winning? Is it the, you know, the producers of these products that are insisting that this has to happen as often as possible in order for them to keep making revenue? Or is it something that feels good to me? And what that does, it puts us in a position that reminds us that nothing is inherently bad, but everything can be manipulated, and oftentimes, capitalism's biggest role is manipulating the mundane in order to make us feel pressure in one way or another, to continue to feed into the mill of capitalism. And it also can be a question asked in bigger ways, you know, maybe even in something like the decision to have a child... "Who benefits from me having this child? Is it me and the joy I'll find in parenthood? Or is it the pressures my parents have had about having grandchildren? Or the pressures of, you know, maybe a friend group that insisted it? And while we can be considerate of the people in our world I think that as I said, when we make decisions that are best for us we can show up in the world with a calmness a groundedness a presence that isn't clouded by a ton of decisions that never even really aligned with us

Ayana Young  I'm thinking about when, well, let's just say that we, as a case study, if maybe we weren't in our confidence or in our truth and we make a decision that doesn't serve the earth and ourselves or our community, and maybe we become hurt or even anxious over this choice. I know I've been there many times before where I can ruminate and fixate on, quote, 'bad choices I've made' and the consequences that come with that. And a lot of some are, you know, sometimes the internal consequences can be even more severe than the external consequences. And so I'm wondering, how do we move beyond regret? How do we move beyond that fixational, anxious feeling? Or, of course, the consequences that do happen externally? I think there's so much in this that is necessary for our healing, because ultimately, we are imperfect. And I'm imagining even as good as we get at following that inner compass, and listening to the earth, and to our community that affirms us, there will be times that we slip. And I, you know, I want for all of us to be able to move through and not feel so stuck and stagnant in that regret of a choice that may not really serve us and the ones we love.

Rachel Cargle  Wow, what a big consideration. It's 100%, something I struggle with as well, this idea of regret, or feeling like we can't recover. And you and I, before we started recording, we were talking about the seasons, and it's spring right now. And I mentioned how in awe I am that the earth comes back alive. Every time, every year. It doesn't fail, its loyal, it comes up, it reminds us that there is always opportunity for rebirth. And this is making me think of the ways that we often feel inadequate. Even sometimes when we feel like we made the best decision for ourselves, but especially those times where we recognize that we might not have made the right choice. And I've been contemplating a lot with myself about what healing is... you know, it's kind of a buzzword in the wellness industry, in the industrial complex of wellness, I should say. And it alludes to a fixing of things as if something was broken. And it pushes me to reconsider what I understand as the makeup of ourselves. Not as being this like porcelain that breaks but as being like the earth that can be replanted, that can be tended to ,that can come alive again in conditions that are nurturing. And sometimes even not, we see we see how things can grow even in the most unlikely spaces. And when we recognize a space of regret, I'm thinking of a few regrets that I have now. And it's the visual that I'm having is the difference between showing up with a wound that are, with a scar, that is healed over and say 'This did happen. It's true. It's forever part of me, but here's how I will move move forward.' As opposed to feeling like we have to walk around the world as like a bleeding wound that can no longer be cared for. And I think letting go of this idea of 'I must be fixed. This must be right.' In order to be worthy of moving forward, a feeling whole, of rerooting and finding ourselves again, finding our grounding. That we aren't just this unfixable thing. We are a soil that can be replanted and nourished and the more we put our energy and effort and show up in community to do that, for others who were we see it in.. I think we can really take the earth as a muse like we were talking about before to remind ourselves that this can be healed over and it can grow again. But that takes work. It's not going to just happen. And yeah, I'm really grateful for you offering that contemplation of regret because we often, we get into the good sides of choices, what we can do, what we will do, but sometimes we don't do those things and I hope you all give ourselves the grace to tend to and offer some nourishment so that we can show up, bloom again.

Ayana Young  Yeah, I think it's nice to I don't know if normalize is the right word, but kind of take some of the weight off making bad choices, too, and releasing some of that judgment. Or I know for me the feeling that a bad choice can get so heavy that I, sometimes I can feel the what's the word I'm looking for? Like, I can't quite get out of the regret feeling that, that stuckness. So, yeah, I feel good about being able to talk through that with you and allow some of that to move through with more lightness and not feel so weighed down by it. And when you the last thing you said about blooming, what it reminded me of was your new book "A Renaissance of Our Own." And the word bloom and renaissance feel like they have a relationship together in some way. This budding energy, almost it feels like spring, like we were talking earlier, When it's, you can feel something coming. And I just want to, yeah, I guess I just want to explore why we need a renaissance right now. And what has led us here? And how did you dream of a renaissance? And what does that look like to you?

Rachel Cargle  I think collectively... I'll start with a collective and perhaps move into my more personal story. But I think collectively, we are at the point of Renaissance, not because we want to but because it's absolutely necessary. What is happening is not sustainable, literally, for the earth, for our bodies, for our communities. And technology has offered us a tool amongst all the tools we've had over all of time to reimagine and reinvent ourselves as hopefully, a better collective a better people a more nurturing and nourishing. And this renaissance that is necessary, is coming from, you know, as I mentioned earlier, the way that we bring fire to the fields in order to clean them in preparation for the next season. It kind of feels like that to me right now. And so, you know, in writing this book, I wrote it over the course of four years. And in those four years, there were some of the heaviest, most intense work done around race. There was the murder of George Floyd, there's uprisings in 2020. There was the murder of Jaylen Walker here in my hometown of Akron, Ohio. You know, this deep craving for something, anything that's different, and new from this feels very present in me. And I think that the reason why I would even write to it or even hope for it is because I experienced a bit of it personally in my own life, in all the ways that I have looked at what was there and said, what could be different. And in my book, I speak about it from a place of all of my personal renaissance over time. I talk about the ways that I was invited to reimagine reimagine feminism, reimagine education, reimagine relationships and rest. You know, I, the arc of my life has been studded by all of these moments of me taking, like a literal pause and saying, Wait, is this actually what I want? And if it's not, what must I do? Who must I be? What community must I build in order for it to be much more aligned to what I know to be true around my values, my intentions, my lineage, what service I can do to my ancestors to those I am on the earth with now and to those who will be here in the future? And I hope that through my book, it invites everyone to be curious and critical about how we're showing up and what role we might play in our collective renaissance, but also the renaissance that we will have inside of us as individuals.

Ayana Young  It feels time, right? It's time I think, so many of us are craving that. There's been such, gosh, there's just been so much. And we're bombarded every day with more and more, to process and grieve and be perplexed by. And I really feel like so much of that doesn't allow us to blossom into these beautiful creatures that we are, and dream into the solutions. I don't really love the word solution, but dream into another way of relating and living. And so when I hear the word renaissance, it feels like a breath of fresh air. It feels like the wind that clears out that stagnancy and yeah, I really want that for us. Because I see, you know and I think about humanity in general and the earth, and what would it take for us to embody a renaissance? And I guess, yeah, I wonder about that. I like hearing about it on a personal level. And of course, like what you just mentioned, we need to start there, you know, we can't really control much outside of us. And even that is questionable at times. So how do you see maybe a more collective renaissance? It's hard for me to ask about a global renaissance, because that just feels so huge, and maybe even unsurmountable. But yeah, I just want to maybe expand the vision a bit and hear your thoughts on that.

Rachel Cargle  Yeah, well, one thing that's been so on my mind is the necessity for more intergenerational conversations. I think that that key component to our renaissance, and I say that because there's so much exchange of not only information, but tools and understanding between generations, not just the wisdom that the older generation can offer us, but also tools and information and insight that younger generations will be able to offer people who are much older. And I think that that intention, could really be powerful. I recently was at my bookstore, and I got to sit in on the poetry group there. And we were studying a poem about protest, particularly as it applied to a protest that was happening there in the in the city that weekend. And a really special moment was when we were reading the poem. And in the poem, it mentioned the common chant, 'No justice, no peace.' And while we were discussing the poem, there is an older black woman there who kind of was like, "Oh, I've never heard that chant. That wasn't a chant that we would say, while we were out marching." And I said, "Oh, that's so interesting. Tell me about some of the chants that you remember, and that felt powerful to you." And so we took some time to listen to a few people from a few different generations, kind of share the language that we use to express our pain and our expectations. And it was really powerful to have that linguistic exchange, but also to see kind of the way, the older woman felt incredibly inspired by that concept of 'No justice, no peace,' and how all of us who are much younger than her felt like we had all of this new material to take to the streets with us when it was our turn, again, to go ahead and call out these chants of expectation and justice. And it really reaffirms my idea that this renaissance is intergenerational. This isn't something that's for the new kids, it's not something that will only benefit those who will come later. If it's ours, it's all of ours. And it's now. And I think that I have so much excitement and so much expectation for what some intentional intergenerational conversation could offer us as we all you know, sit, hopefully we'll be able to sit back and watch things bloom and say, Wow, we all did our work, we learned we came together, we came with intention and we're ready to keep doing that for as long as we can. I feel so grateful for the people who I have in my community who are much younger. Even children who say things, notice things, that we don't always in our adulthood who dream of things and imagine things that we don't always have the quote unquote time to do as adults. And even kind of older people who are over it and who kind of don't have a filter anymore because they've just seen so much and they're giving a different perspective. And I'm I'm very moved by and excited by what intergenerational conversations look like and mean for our collective revolution and renaissance.

Ayana Young  Absolutely. Gosh, I feel like I need many more hours with you because there's so much to explore together. But I would be remiss if we didn't get to talk a bit about recognizing capacity of our dreams and learning to trust them as guides for the future. And I just really appreciate how much this conversation is about trust. Because that word feels big and complex. But also I feel like we can get to a place of more simplicity with it potentially or or maybe not. But yeah, you wrote an article for Atmos called "Dreaming Awake" and you write, quote, "A critical conversation about dreaming has woven its way into popular culture. Yet this concept and practice is not new. We are witnessing the uncovering of a sacred tool that has been employed generation after generation for existence beyond. Beyond oppressions, beyond scarcity, beyond enslavement, beyond desertion, beyond an accessibility, beyond an inability to claim ourselves." End quote, goodness, yeah, so I kind of have a two part question-thought process for you. One, I'm wondering, how do we learn to trust dreams as guides, bring them into the fold of our lives rather than just casting them out as pure fantasy? And then a second part is... what if this current moment is not suggesting a nightmare, but rather, is the beginning of a dream and one that moves outside of extraction and exploitation?

Rachel Cargle  I like this question. I think, you know, my relationship to dreaming, goes back to childhood. And I think it might for all of us, whether we think about our dreams. And I'm talking about the actual dreams like when you're asleep and then you wake up and remember what was going on in your mind. As well as the daydreams that come to us while we kind of dissociate and start to consider what else, start to consider what could be. And as I began to talk more about my dreams, I got more and more feedback from people saying that they hadn't really taken the time to either be in relationship with their dreams and their dream world.. that they didn't allow themselves to dream either because it was something that they got in trouble for when they were a child for daydreaming too much or for having silly ideas. And it feels like something childish, that couldn't really be meaningful to us as adults. And then also in the world, now, it feels so on fire, the thought of dreaming of kind of getting away from what's here, and going into this space of imagination and possibility feels, feels not accessible. And so, I've been putting a lot of intention and effort and energy into this conversation of dreaming. Because, again, considering place in space, in our dreams is one of the few places that we have so much agency. And it gives us so much information about ourselves. And when we have more information about ourselves, we can move with more strategy and intention. And yes, sometimes it does feel like a nightmare. Many things feel like nightmares. And I find such beauty in the way that dreaming is free. Dreaming is immediately accessible. You know, at some, we don't have to go anywhere for it. We don't have to do anything to get to it. It's this stepping out of what we know to be real and tangible and true right here and right now. And allowing our minds to kind of melt and expand and shape shift and bring us new ideas, bring us things that feel very impossible. But we think about for a moment, which might lead us to constructing something that is similar to that, but that can exist on this earth. And I'm often heartbroken at the idea that we have that our dreams are these silly things, because they really are powerful. They really are powerful. And again, with the option of generational intergenerational conversations to ask someone what is something you've dreampt of that came true or that you made manifest? Or what is something you're dreaming of now. These are really great conversation starters for our collective work towards liberation. Because what if our dreams were the the raw material we use to start considering what a renaissance or a reimagining might look like? What if we didn't say "Okay, how can we make capitalism look better," but instead, "what else is possible besides this capitalistic space that confines us and kills us in so many ways?" I hope people will continue to move toward what has, as I said in the article, been true for so long. That dreams are raw materials for our renaissance, our reimagining, and our revolution. If we think about think about all of the well, I should say, I think often about people who were enslaved in America, my ancestors and the types of dreams that were absolutely necessary for them to stay alive. There's no way that they would still be living and breathing, if they only took their reality as what was true. They had to believe that their dreams were possible, or they would be hopeless. And that power to know that for hundreds of years, we were fueled by dreams of what else could be outside of enslavement that they were experiencing in that moment. That really moves me.

Ayana Young  Yes, yes, yes, yes. Now I'm feeling all riled up. Like yes, I'm just feeling really energized. And gosh, Rachel, this whole interview has just felt like balm, like honey for the heart, and also like a rallying cry at the same time. And I just appreciate you and the potency, but the gentleness that you bring to these really big topics that I just feel like it's so it's so nourishing to talk with you about these things. And I was, gosh, yeah, I wish we could talk longer. But I also as we come to a close, I'm just thinking about circling back to the beginning of our conversation and returning to the idea of rootedness and alignment, and I just think you express it so well in your book. And I want to read another quote. In A Renaissance of Our Own you write, quote, "Aligning how I moved through the world with these highest values, and with knowledge, empathy, and action, completely changed how I showed up in my relationships at work and for myself, and made space for me to live based not on expectation, routine, or the traditional markers of success, but on what I value most. Encouraged by this clarity, I experimented with new and inspired ways of existing, working, playing, resting, and loving that it didn't always line up with what was expected of me." End quote. So, yeah, I just want to end with some thoughts on how do we find our values? And what is the shape and texture and form of alignment? 

Rachel Cargle  Yeah, in my book, I kind of walk through the kind of like, the exercises and the thoughts and the journaling that I took to to find my highest values. And it's funny, because so much of the way I got the answer of what my highest values are, are were being observant of my dreams. Being observant of what I was daydreaming about, what I used to daydream about as a child, what feels both impossible and exciting for me in my adulthood. And one of the special things about finding your highest values, and for me, mine have shown up as ease, abundance and opportunity. And with those three markers for me, those three lens that I look through to decide how I move through the world, it has, it has invited others to communicate to consider and communicate their values as well. Inside of my company, I ask my team what their values are, because it allows me to engage more meaningfully, I asked lovers what their values are, it allows me to engage more meaningfully. And I share mine because it allows me to say, "Hey, here is the road I'm on. Is this something you'd like to join me with?" And you know, if if anything pulls us too far off of the path of our values, we know that that it wouldn't be right for us. And I think it's a it's a necessary exploration of recognizing those values, considering when they change and shift and being in relationship with them because there's a beauty and self knowing that, you know, coaxes us to say, you know, what's possible, what's possible, how can I show up? Even more authentically? How can I show up with even more fervor and passion for the things and the people that I care about without the questioning of whether it's true, because when you know what your values are, if the thing aligns with your values, then there's truth to it. And if it doesn't, then it's something you can leave for someone else who might align. And I feel really grateful for that path that discovering my highest values clears for me. And I'm really excited through my ongoing work, but particularly through my book to invite people to find theirs as well.

Ayana Young  Well, Rachel, thank you. Thank you so much for all of what you've shared. And yeah, I have to just stay more deeply connected. And yeah, I'm excited for the future of our weavings.

Rachel Cargle  Yes, yes. Thank you so much. This was as special as I thought it would be. Thank you.

Francesca Glaspell  Thank you for listening to For The Wild podcast. The music you heard today was by Eliza Edens and Mikayla McVey. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glaspell and Julia Jackson.