Episode 318 - Change

Never before have I taken time after the spring workshop to get away from the internet, from people, and from modern life. And it did just what I said it would do - allowed me to take the time to process. Change is coming. Change is always coming, but this year, we have taken a special path and I want to share one lesson with you today.

• Saturday, June 27, 2pm: Caning basics, Pickles: https://www.livingfreeintennessee.com/2020/06/22/canning-webinar-pickles/
• Thursday Livestream from the Holler Neighborhood. Youtube

Tales from the Prepper Pantry

• We had rain so I hope to do a batch of beets this week
• Added lamb to the freezer
• It is time to do the now quarterly freezer defrost and audit - a thing that has been keeping me honest on using stuff up
• Still drying herbs like mullein flower and bee balm

Featured Forrage: Wild Raspberry

For berry advice

https://nicolesauce.com/2015/06/14/wild-raspberry-summer/

Herbal uses

https://botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/r/raspbe05.html

• Tea: high in calcium, iron, phosphorus, potassium, and vitamins B, C, and E.
• Excessive menstruation
• Antidiahrreal
• Reduces fevers

Operation Independence

• This whole show is about this topic, really

Main topic of the Show: Change

It is always there under the surface. Ready to push you just a bit further. Ready to get in your way when you are in your stride. Ready to show you opportunities when you are least ready for them. Always there no matter how much you wish to cling to today and yesterday. Change happens.

Many people fear it, hate it, resist it. But change is part of life and if you are living, change is simply something that you must learn to integrate into everything. Because it will happen whether you want it or not.

And yet we can guide change, we can shape it and shift it in ways that suit us. Yep. Change is hard but change is also good.

I haven't done our usual lftn spring workshop debrief episode this year. You know the one I speak of? Where I run through it session by session and talk about all the things we did and learned and how powerful the community is when we get together? A community of doers…

I haven't done this thing because this year was different. Now don't get me wrong, the workshop was fantastic, fun, hard, good, educational, and the community is why this is.

But unlike former years where the best outcomes of the workshop were on the surface, this year was different. It was more subtle. The group was both quiet and social and sometimes raucous. The sessions were usually focused and thought provoking. The group had a comfortable companionship about it and conversations tended toward long and deep over surface and short.

The whole time the event was happening I was worried that we would not meet the benchmark. You may wonder what the benchmark is. The benchmark for every lftn spring workshop is that at least 1 or 2 people figure things out. They find that it they have been missing. The thing that shows them a way forward toward building the kind of life they want. Usually, this happens quickly and obviously. But not this year.

The day after the workshop, Jenni stopped by. You know who I mean. Jenny of Word of the Year Jenni - to get her stuff and she said - I think we turned a corner at the workshop.

And she is right. There wasn't one or two "aha" experiences, but rather a more subtle shift for most of us there.

Setting the stage for the workshop, we have seen the following in six short months:

• A strong financial environment to start out the year
• A scary pandemic illness that brought along with it the following:
  • Population-wide acceptance of the top-down control of private lives.
  • An awakening that people seem to want a crisis really badly - so they won't let go when new information comes to light
  • Acceptance of politically charged narrative on a topic that should not be at all political - both sides have shamelessly used this pandemic to desperately further their agendas with no consideration for the impact on real people
  • A media meltdown - To this day, media is frantically reporting increase in cases with no context on increase in testing, or link to hospital beds needed - the more important measure of the impact of covid. Literally - Tennessee saw it's largest spike in cases the same day that they also finalized testing of all people in all old folks facilities, for example.
  • Government overreach in the form of shutting down private businesses - you can say what you want about if it was or was not the right move, but it was an overreach and court cases are starting to show this
  • Destruction of our livelihoods, retirement accounts, educational facilities, ability to travel, and autonomy
• Racially - charged, divisiveness in a world where I truly believe most of us want to coexist -- followed by rioting to further the clear division between a and b, 1 and 0, r and d, because that is the only way to control us
• A recession that very well may melt into a depression, especially if the masses continue to let the oligarchy that runs this country bring us to ruin lest they lose power

As a group, we had people facing sudden loss of jobs, income, business revenue - paired with people who are still doing basically ok, and even some who have seen growth as a result of the turmoil of the first half of this year.

Perhaps you can tell by how I have framed this what I was feeling at the outset of our event: scared, a little sad, and scared some more. I got to pair all the big picture angst we all share with other, more personal stuff and that all ramped up the week before the workshop. And there I was, supposed to be the positive influence, the coach to help others find their purpose and go there. The find your opportunity lady doing an event that is supposed to spark the kind of change that brings people up. Let's just say the weekend before the workshop I had a pretty intense meeting with myself about my attitude and the need to focus on the most important and let go of the crap.

Because when you think about opportunities and prosperity that we make for ourselves, much of it is SEEING that there is something there, but there is also the impact that a group of great minds can bring by deciding to make the change that will come into a positive change. And what better place to do it than here, in the Holler, where people come to rejuvenate?

As we navigated topics like how to work through grief, how to make sauerkraut, how to easily make a hoop house, phases of building a business, and talked about the ideas that some folks have for starting new things -- my internal angst got lighter and lighter. As people played cornhole together, sang karaoke, shared food and fun -- things got lighter still. And sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning, as Jenni said, we turned a corner.

We stopped talking so much about the