90_Alix Klingenberg === Alix: This sobriety. Oh, gosh. I mean, it's, it's so profound that it's hard to even tap into, but I think really what sobriety did is teach me how to sit with my own darkness, with my own emotions, because what I was doing without alcohol, it was avoiding my feelings or avoiding discomfort or avoiding that feeling of emptiness or loneliness and what I have realized over and over again, and this comes out of my poetry all the time is the moment I sit with my loneliness. I'm not lonely anymore. It is just so ironic. I don't have words. Monica: That's so ironic, Alix: But it is so true. And so the moment that I got sober. I mean, getting sober is a very tumultuous thing. It's hard. But the thing I, I remember the most is I just didn't know what to do with my hands. And there is this feeling of reaching, like, that's what addiction feels like is reaching. And you just want to grab something just like a blanket, like put it over yourself and like hide. So what that allowed me to do is reach for. Spirituality was forgotten, reach for my own higher understanding of my myself. And I think, you know, I literally just started doing meditation at the same time. You know, you read all of these things and they're like, what do you do instead? And you, what I did instead was write and meditate. And I also, coincidentally, I don't, I hesitant to use that word because it was more. Destined than that I think. But I went to see a shamonic practitioner two weeks after I quit drinking too. I was called to it. Despite being I met, I was a pretty strong humanist sort of atheist before all of this. And, and so that's kind of an interesting thing for a minister, but that's another topic. Monica: Welcome to the Revelation Project Podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women, to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a revelation project and what gets revealed. He gets healed. Welcome to another episode of the revelation project podcast. Today. I am introducing you to Alix Klingberg. Alix is somebody I met about three years ago through a class we did together with Hannah Marcotti and it was such a fun class because it was kind of a way of. It was like unbecoming from a traditional marketing way of promoting yourself. And Hannah was all about giving us permission to really express ourselves in our unique creative way. And I, Alix was somebody I loved just hearing or reading about her insights and. As we each kind of like, again, kind of unconditioned ourselves from the elevator pitch and all of these ways that we're taught to have goals and market ourselves. So what I also love about Alix is that over the years, she's begun to share her poetry in a profound way. And I've just watched her just blossom in her own authenticity. And it's been a beautiful thing to witness. So here's her bio. Reverend Alix Klinenberg is a photographer, spiritual director and poet. She's been writing essays and blogs, the highly sensitive extrovert for several years, but only in the past year, has she begun to bring her poetry out of her journals and into the public? She self-published her first poetry collection secrets in stars. In November of 2020, Alix also leads online creative courses and lives in Massachusetts with her family, two black cats and a small dog named cricket. And she is a Reverend. Is that R E V Alix, Reverend Alix: Reverend. Monica: Oh my gosh. I want to start right there and congrats on the book, Secrets and Stars. Alix: Thank you so much. Monica: That is huge. You've publishing a book of your poetry. Alix: Yeah, and I did it really fast. It was one of those things where it wanted to be born. Monica: Uh, I love that feeling because what I make up about that is that it just kind of came like in contractions or something like you just had to kind of push it out. And of course, in my wildest imaginations, I imagine that that wasn't painful at all, but maybe it was. Alix: It was a little painful. And I think if I'm really honest with myself, it wasn't the book I would have chosen to put out first, if that makes sense, it came to me and I was like, really. This book, this is the book we're going to, we're going to write in, this is the one, Monica: What, so say more about that. I find that so fascinating because I can relate in a way as I'm also writing something. And sometimes I'm surprised what starts coming out and it's not at all. What I envisioned. Alix: Yes exactly. So I write I'm a Unitarian minister and what, you know, I don't work in a church, so I'm kind of just like fringy, Unitarian minister. So her work on the fringes of things. And so I imagined my first poetry collection to be like something you could read in worship service for a Unitarian Universalist church service. But instead it's like, This romance, essentially, it is this like weird extra marital romance book. So putting it out was this incredibly uncomfortable thing, because I don't think I'm alone in thinking like everyone else also thought my first poetry collection would be appropriate for a worst answer. Monica: So funny. And they were like, no, that's not what this elbow, so let me ask you. What's not necessary. What about it? Wouldn't be, I guess, welcomed in that setting. Alix: Right. Well, and that's, what's been surprising about it. Okay. Right. I wrote this thing kind of in the wake of it, like sort of intense non-relationship. It didn't ever happen. It never happened. Nothing hasn't happened with this relationship. And yet it triggered all of this cascading shadow work that needed to be done. Monica: Um, Alix: So while for me, it seems like it's about kind of like a specific person or an event. It turns out it isn't, it turns out that it's in fact much more relatable than that. And much more universal. And that, and that people do. In fact, you use pieces of it for worship and they do use it. It's poetry is one of those things where no matter what it is that you think it's about, it taps into the archetype and therefore is, is usable in many contexts. So ended up being mine, but it was very unnerving because I wasn't really out as polyamorous in, in my family circle, for instance, or. My, I mean, many, many people with who, anyone who knows me closely knew this about me, but anyone who just knew me tangentially or through conversation or congregations. That's news. That's that's new information. So, yeah. Monica: Yeah. And so just for our listeners, so that everybody is kind of on the same page, how do you, how do you explain polyamorous in, I guess it's what it means to you. Alix: Sure. I mean, it literally means many loves, right? Yes. Monica: Which I, I love that. I love that. That language. Alix: Yeah, I do too. And I am actually thinking about writing another book that is more non-fiction that is more of like a prose book that is around the idea of using sort of polyamorous communication styles for any kind of relationship. So for me, it's about. It's about honesty. It's about being completely and utterly transparent with my husband, my partner, about who I am in the world. And I think that what polyamory means to people can be very different, but I believe that you can be sexually monogamous and polyamorous, right? You can love many people and still be sexually monogamous with one person. So I think it's a very like, I have a very specific definition of it. And you know, in my life I do in fact have two partners and it does sort of also involve non-monogamy. But I, I want us as a culture to start, um, just sort of examining our obsession with the singular love. Monica: Oh my gosh. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, me too. It's obviously, you know, there's so many layers to this conversation, right? Cause it, it involves so many complexities, but one of the things that I think is very true as we are awakening into this, what I'll call new consciousness or, you know, what I believe is kind of. A rebirth and the emergence of a new earth let's call it. I really believe that so much of our binary ways of being are falling away and leaving a lot of us feeling confused without a choice. And it's like, there's so much wisdom. However, in not. Choosing a side to stand on, right? If that makes sense, right? It's like you start recognizing that everything is forcing us to separate and divide. And then when you find yourself on one side, you suddenly find yourself against another side. And when I think about where wisdom stands, wisdom stands at the quiet. Center and suspends judgment and there's something so incredibly loving about wisdom and so incredibly liberating about wisdom and so beautiful about standing in a place where you just, where you don't have to make anything wrong. Alix: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. When I think about what creativity. Is when I think about what it is to be a creative person in the world, it is the rejection of the binary. It's, it's a break. That's what it means. It's to say. No, I don't think that there's just the two things. I think I'm going to mix those two things and add 14 other things Monica: Yes. Alix: Into the mix and see what Monica: Right. And have, and kind of like inhabit that wild card. Untamed territory that just kind of allows so much exploration. And what I loved most about what you said was. That polyamorous to you means like completely transparent, right? So you get to kind of explore and reveal these many facets of yourself that all get to be true. It's not this one or the other it's that they all get to stand side by side and it all gets to belong. And if that's not the definition of wholeness, I don't know what is and what else I loved about what you said. Was that it's true. Like, I think so many of us are. Polyamorous, but we wouldn't necessarily describe ourselves that way. But when I fall in love with somebody, obviously there's my, my husband and my sexual monogamy with him. But in so many ways, I fall so deeply in love with the people that I'm attracted to. And that relationship I have had. Incredibly deep, rich, fertile, long relationships with people that I just cherished. And it's just been like an incredible experience. Absolutely. Maybe I'm polyamorous too. Alix: Well, what I'm, what I'm positing is that we all are. I mean, if we can have, you know, two kids and love them equally. You know, fearing that having another child is going to diminish our love of our first child, then you can at least intellectually understand the concept. Monica: Yes. Alix: And so. While I think that, did you read Glenn Doyle's book? I did. I did. So there's this, there's this part where she's talking about sexuality and putting them in containers, little bottles and how we just keep adding letters to LGBTQ. Right, right. And how she's like right now we need the bottles, but like, hopefully over time, we're going to. Fewer and fewer bottles, like we'll just be the ocean will just swim in it. Monica: Yes. Alix: Yes. That is what I'm trying to say is that we have this eye on a monogamous person in, you are a polyamourus person and I'm like, Hey, it's not like I don't get jealous. It's not like, I don't understand the concept of like taking on the world with just one of them. Partner. There is no versus there's no who versus it's not me versus you or my concept of the world or how love can work versus someone else's that, isn't what it is, Monica: Right? There's no bottles here. I am being like it's complicated, but yet it's so simple. Really. I mean, I think. What we really are doing as we awaken. And as we become more kind of aware of just allowing things to like, just be what they are that there's so much more expansion. And like you said, there's with that expansion comes like, you know, that our love is not diminished. It actually grows. Yeah. Yeah. So now that we conquered solving that, you know, as one of the world's great problems, as we just embarked on this amazing conversation already, I would love to, I'd love to hear more about that. Why poetry, where that started for you? Was that like something that started for you as a kid? Alix: Yeah, it was actually, I started writing poems when I was eight and I used to get highlights magazine. And I remember Monica: I did , I forgot about that. Alix: Right. And all of these kids, poems were being there. And I remember this so distinctly I would write my poems down. Get them into an envelope and then refuse to send it. I would never send it. I never did like my entire childhood long. I would like write them and I would get to the point where I was about to send them and then I'd get scared and I wouldn't do it. Monica: Oh my goodness. That's so, and did you collect them all or did you just kind of throw them away? What did you do with them? Alix: I did know. No, we had this little white book. I think that's probably still somewhere, but. I think what happened is, you know, you get a whole lot of other interests. And then for me, poetry became journaling. Um, and I sort of stopped putting it into verse or into a rhythm and just be, it became more of a stream of consciousness over the years. And I had. I don't know, 50 journals that just are around from over the years. It, but it was sort of sporadic. It would be like I would get really into journaling for a while and then I would stop doing it for a couple of years. And then when I got sober, the, one of the things that happened when I quit drinking, one of the things that, the, one of the ways that I quit drinking, the thing that came the revolution, the revolution, if you will, for me, was literally a voice from the universe. Said to me, you need to quit drinking and start writing. Um, and I was like, wow, that was so clear. Like it was the weirdest, it was this extremely clear, just dumb command. Essentiallyfrom somewhere. But my higher self is a pallet felt at that time. Monica: Oh yeah. Alix: And so we literally did, it was like, okay, really abrupt. And it felt really abrupt. I was like, okay. Monica: Yeah. Alix: And so I stopped drinking and I started writing every day. Monica: What I love the most about that. Cause I have a similar, I have a similar voice where you're just like, Okay. Right. You know, it's so clear and it's, for me, it was like quiet and clear, but it was so distinct. Yes. That, and, and like you said, right. I think there's some part of ourselves it's like always searching, searching, searching, and like filling that bottomless hole, feeding those hungry ghosts all the time until we hear that voice of God. God, thank God. Whatever, whatever that voice is, that's kind of the true north, right? Suddenly feels directive and something to grab onto where we can kind of start pulling ourselves toward whatever is calling us forth. But it does, you know, like I love to go back to Glennon Doyle, right? Like the God of the bathroom floor. Like there's also. So many truths to when it is that we're finally ready, able, and willing raw enough to hear that voice. Alix: Absolutely. Yeah. And I, I mean, so I remember exactly when this was April 21st of three years ago, which 2018, 18-19. I woke up at three in the morning. I felt totally terrible because I had had way too much to drink the night before for like the middle. Time. And I was like, if I don't quit now, I'm not going to be able to quit. It was just this, like, it's not a problem yet, but it is a problem right today. It was just, I could just tell it was like, I can quit doing this now and it will be fine. Or I can ignore this voice. For another year and it's going to be so hard, right? Yeah. And literally at that exact moment, it was like, you should quit drinking and start writing. It was like three in the morning on that day. And then the 22nd I stopped drinking. I haven't had a single drink since. Monica: And Alix, is that when you started sharing your poetry in public or had you already kind of gotten past the highlights phase, Alix: No each other. Year and a half before I started sharing anything. Monica: Okay. So you've really only been sharing then for a year and a half. I've never been great at math, but Alix: No, it's been a year, basically a year. So in may of last year, I changed my Instagram handle from highly sensitive extrovert, which is, I was mostly writing about sobriety and about, uh, having a highly sensitive, nervous system. And then I just started. Sharing my poems instead. And I just, I just switched. I didn't didn't tell anyone. I didn't explain myself. And then I changed my handle to Alix Klingenberg because I was like, I don't know what the hell this is even going to be in a year. I'm I'm just, I'm tired of pretending, like I'm going to stay the same. So it's just going to be my name. Monica: Well, what, what I, the reason I was laughing though, is because it's like, here, you went from like highly sensitive ex to sharing my poems and status. It's like the true medicine. Right, right. Sharing of your soul out there in the world through your stream of consciousness, poetry. And obviously there's a tremendous amount of resonance for what you're right. Because your audience is somebody who's kind of like always really from putting my marketing hat on. Right. Like, I, I usually don't interview people based on their audiences, but I always know that. Yeah. And I noticed, especially since following you, because Alix and I did, we did Hannah Marcottis class together a couple of years ago. Right. Like that's where I initially, and I think at that time, actually, it was like three years ago. So it might've been while you were actually going through this transition. Alix: Yeah, I think it definitely was. And I would say Hannah's courses helped me be where I am. I mean, she's one of the people I consider her one of my. Most notable influences and mentors, Monica: She's something incredible. She really is. She's such a dedicated voice to her own transformation and sharing it transparently with the world in such a way that I'm like, oh, that's so brave. Alix: I know. I mean, the first time that my friend Mandy was like, you know, you should look into Hannah Marcotti. I looked in, so that was probably four or five years ago. I looked into her and I was like, This person is doing what I want to be doing. Um, I want to be this authentic. I don't want you to be showing up like this. How do I show up like this? And it was terrifying. The concept of that was so terrifying to me five years ago. Yeah. The idea that I would just say what was actually happening, that I would talk about my relationships that I, that would be, I mean, five years ago, I would never have imagined myself coming on here and being like I'm sober in polyamory. The dentist never. So that transition feels monumental in time. Like, it's just like, how did that happen? Monica: Ah, it's so good. Isn't it? Alix: Yes. So good. Yeah. There's nothing. There's nothing like it. It's such an it's. So connective, first of all, you know, I thought it would be disconnected. I thought I would share my real self and everyone would run. Mm. And it was the opposite. I know. Monica: It's, it's amazing. Those revelations, when you really do kind of just stop the charade, stop wearing the masks and just really stop armoring up and open your heart up to be more tenderized is when you learn who your people are as Glennon says, right? Alix: Yes. And that's poetry to me too. Monica: Yeah. Say more about that. Alix: Well, what's interesting about it for me is there's really, wasn't a huge amount of difference between what I wrote for highly sensitive extrovert and poems. Right. It's all the same to me. I don't really, there's maybe slightly more rhythm, but in general, my poems are just what I think about . Monica: Yeah. Alix: But I think the difference for me is it's what I think about things. And then. That piece of it drops away in the middle of the problem. And then the rest of the poem is a revelation to me. Oh, I don't know where it's going to go. I don't know what's going to come out. And then the last line of most of my poems almost feels like a gut punch or punchline. It's like, huh? Like I had no idea that was where that was gonna be. Monica: So, okay. This is fascinating. So maybe this, would it be a good time? Like, can you choose a piece to share with us that is a good representation of that and then kind of help me understand a little bit more. Alix: Absolutely. I mean, they're all like that. Okay. This one's great. So this one's called ellipsis. Like I said, this book is kind of about a person and kind of about an idea of a person it's sort of both. So this is after the leaving, You left me with an ellipsis, a cliffhanger, and maybe someday I'd say it's the not knowing. That's been the hardest part, all the stories I created about why you disappeared. But the hardest part is how I just playing this. You simple and pure as a baby reaching for a mothers face. Missing you is the sweetest water, the greenest field, the most beautiful bird call. It is nature at its most. Untainted love cannot be snuffed by removing the oxygen from the room. It is self-sustaining and sometimes I'm morning walks. I still talk. And sometimes you post the poems with the same words as mine in a different configuration. And to know that we are still connected and I rest in the assurance that there is nothing you can do about that. So it kind of runs like, like I can tell you where the turn is it's but the hardest part is how I just plain miss you. After that. I have no idea what's coming next. It's like water. It runs. Yeah. Through me. And I remember so distinctly the feeling in my body of, in a resting the assurance that there is nothing you can do about that. Because it is so simultaneously pissed off and hopeful. Yes. And I was just like, damn, I want to send that poem to that PR like, yes, that's exactly what it is. It's like, fuck you. We're still connected. You can't change that. But I had no idea that's where the poem was going well, Monica: And what I love about it is like, as. A Reverend, like, there's something for me here or about a call and response, but from your own, from your own self Alix: Yeah. Monica: Where we often are, like the call is out to the congregation. Alix: Yeah. Monica: And then the response is kind of like. How we're informed, but like you're doing it at a soul level and it's so profoundly beautiful and revealing even to yourself. And it's such a sweet spot, I think for communion, with your spirit. When we think too about language, I always love. And I'm recently learning that all of the great ancient works are spoken as the feminine voice of creation. And of course, all of that was omitted. And. Rearranged, which is another story altogether. But the reason that I bring it up is because when we think about the fact that in these ancient works, if you look at I never pronounce it, right, the, uh,Bhagavad Gita the how do you pronounce that? Uh, Alix: No make me do it. Monica: Whatever, whatever the name of it, the bottom. I have to look it up. Nope. Nope. I know. I'm like I have to look it up, but the point is this, that language is that. The masculine that we, that we use it for logic to separate, but, uh, but the, the directives are actually always to return to the feminine like that. The feminine is the, to return to wholeness, basically to use the masculine, but not to dwell in it. It's like it gets to be the sword, not the chalice. And what, the reason that I bring it into this conversation is because. I think about how we access that parts of our soul. It's like, it becomes like a portal into our wholeness. And like, if we can just trust that process that it does actually. Respond that it does actually inform us that it does actually co-create with us. Oh. And we, as our human side communes with our divine, it's like all of these words that I love using. So you can kind of like communicate, but then kind of returned back to the whole it's like this way of life. Getting really clarity, but then coming back to consciousness or something, exactly a fascinating dance. Alix: It's exactly like that. It's exactly a dance. And there is this sort of, I was just, I wrote this down before our conversation today. My life is essentially a conversation with the universe that I put on speakerphone. Right. I'm like, here you go. You can see how it's not like cute. It's not, it's not packaged. Well, it's messy. It goes in these directions. I'm not expecting it to go, you know? Um, Monica: Yes, Alix: Like having even a sort of, I, I feel like in this relationship that I raid right here basically broke my own heart. No one broke my heart. I broke it. And something about that had to happen. I had to break that part of my heart open so that I could hear. My own wholeness so that I could remind myself that no one else's validation or love of me can diminish my own wholeness. You know, like, that's fine, actually. Monica: That is yours. Yes. Oh God. Alix: And I wouldn't have known that I wouldn't have gotten there, you know? Monica: Right. Alix: And the writing was that, I mean, it's basically this, like, poetry is really no good. Unless you're writing the thing you least want to write. It's just like, you have to write the thing. You're just like, oh no. Why do I have to write this thing down? But I don't want to write this thing down, but if you try to make your poetry beautiful or you try to make it meaningful, it is instantaneously Ash. It is nothing. There's nothing there. The content is in this place. Of surrender to your own darkest pieces that then become your lightest pieces in such a strange, it's such a strange medium in that way. Monica: Well, and it, and it totally reminds me of our card and by the way, it's Bhagavad Gita. Okay. I couldn't, I was like, it sounds really pretty in my head and I, like, I know that I know how to say this, but I could not for the life of me pronounce it in that moment. Okay. But you know what it was reminding me, Alix of is we chose the card, the creator from the, the wild, Unknown Archetypes Guidebook that Oracle. And what of course it talks about is that alchemy, that inner alchemy that you just were pointing to is that the content is in the place of surrender. And there's a transformation that takes place from the shadow to the light that you literally do that work of alchemy within yourself, going from your human, into your divine, and then back out to your humanity. Exactly. It's just so beautiful. There's, there's so many ways to that. I find that we're allowing ourselves these mediums of expression that are poetry and podcasts and AR, and again, it's all of this return of this divine feminine. I think that is allowing us to integrate with. With the energy of the masculine. That, of course we, we all are kind of top heavy in a lot of ways. And as we kind of integrate and heal were making so many, I think revelations, you know, we're having so many revelations that are just so fulfilling. I it's just so cool. So, all right, I'm going to go back to. I'll I have a questions that I wanted to ask you. And I had, I had so many, but one of the things I wanted to really ask you about is how is, you know, like you talked about getting sober. When I think about who you are in the world as a spiritual director, how has that impacted or influenced your spiritual life? Alix: This sobriety. Oh, gosh. I mean, it's, it's so profound that it's hard to even tap into, but I think really what sobriety did is teach me how to sit with my own darkness, with my own emotions, because what I was doing without alcohol, it was avoiding my feelings or avoiding discomfort or avoiding that feeling of emptiness or loneliness and what I have realized over and over again, and this comes out of my poetry all the time is the moment I sit with my loneliness. I'm not lonely anymore. It is just so ironic. I don't have words. Monica: That's so ironic, Alix: But it is so true. And so the moment that I got sober. I mean, getting sober is a very tumultuous thing. It's hard. But the thing I, I remember the most is I just didn't know what to do with my hands. And there is this feeling of reaching, like, that's what addiction feels like is reaching. And you just want to grab something just like a blanket, like put it over yourself and like hide. So what that allowed me to do is reach for. Spirituality was forgotten, reach for my own higher understanding of my myself. And I think, you know, I literally just started doing meditation at the same time. You know, you read all of these things and they're like, what do you do instead? And you, what I did instead was write and meditate. And I also, coincidentally, I don't, I hesitant to use that word because it was more. Destined than that I think. But I went to see a shamonic practitioner two weeks after I quit drinking too. I was called to it. Despite being I met, I was a pretty strong humanist sort of atheist before all of this. And, and so that's kind of an interesting thing for a minister, but that's another topic. Monica: Well, I totally want to dive into that in a minute. I'm like, yeah, we're going to totally go there Alix: Well I am of a witch than I am. Any other kind of divinity, like divine being. Monica: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and what does that mean to you? Alix: Well, it means I worship nature and I believe very strongly in mystery and awe. Monica: Yes. Yes. Alix: And the unknown unknown. It's like the things that we can't know are so great, but I believe pretty strongly that everything is, is real. Like everything is actually part of our natural environment that it's not super natural, but rather it is, it is an unknown part of our nature. That I think is what I mean by that. Monica: I love that. And that is so much what the revelation project is to me. Yeah. It's like the revealing of the world we cannot see, but is here. What Alix: But it is here It, literally it is here. Yes. Monica: Okay. So back, so I'm sorry I interrupted, but I loved that. You just told us that. So go back to that, reaching, go back to that place that you were talking about. The S the sobriety, Alix: When I saw this Shaman and she did a soul retrieval on me would be amazing. I don't have, I don't know. There's very little. language around it and what I, what I am good at as a person who works with a lot of other humanists and atheists, I can make scientific, practically, anything that feels spiritual. Like I can explain it in terms that are psychological. So I can tell you that it was bodywork. It was breath work. It was storytelling. It was mint. I brought her a list of traumas and she helped me. Visualize letting go of those trauma. So I can, I can tell it to you in all of these ways that feel scientifically sound. And I can tell you that the experience of it was greater than the sum of all of those parts. That the experience I actually had was profoundly magical. It felt like magic. It felt completely. Out of nature out of my body, out of everything that I'd ever experienced. And in that moment, I was like, yeah, I really don't know what I'm doing. I really don't know. I don't know. It turns out, I don't know. It turns out that maybe there is like substantially more. Monica: Oh yeah. Alix: I was giving credit for lip service too. If you know what I mean? Like there was this agnosticism, like maybe, and now I'm like, no, no, There's so much more. Monica: Yeah. Well, what I hear underneath that too, is that there was, or maybe I'm projecting because I can relate to so much of what you're saying, but like, for me, there was a cynicism and then there was a wonder. Yes. It was like plugging myself back into one. Yeah, in a way that felt, I felt so reverent to suddenly to the unknown because, and allowing mystery to bring wonder back to me was like welcoming my spirit back home because there's this way that I often feel that again, back to all of the binaries, all of the choices, all of the ways we separate, I often talk about the fact that we as women kind of are always. Double-bind and often our way of coping is to literally leave our bodies and abandoned pieces and parts of ourselves along the way. And so the remembering process, sometimes we need all the help we can get and shaman. So I too had a really profoundly mystical experience with a sham and it was also deeply comical because, you know, I share in my first episode how, like I was. You know, expecting like this, swarmy kind of like, Robed cloaked, you know, like, and he had on like a Patagonia vest and like hiking boots. And he was like, yo, it was just like, what? And I had such a mystical experience and I too had a soul retrieval and it was, was so simple. And yet it was so profound and it was when I started coming back to life, you know, after really an eight, nine month depression and also a lifetime of numbing.. Alix: Right. I mean, I mean, it's so amazing that we both had this experience because I do, I do. Sometimes people ask me, like, why do you think it was so relatively, relatively easy for you to quit drinking? I do think that this had something to do with that. It was basically like I had separated out my selves over the many, many years, trying to please absolutely everyone in my life. Trying to be what my mother wanted me to be, trying to be someone my father would actually love. Like, you know, that's just, we all do this. This isn't like unique to me. This is most people have this experience of sort of sharding. To have someone say that's done now, you're all back together again. I was like, I'm not fucking this up again. Right. That was the feeling. And it was like, no, I'm not, I'm not messing with it. I'm not going to put toxic crap in my body anymore. I'm not going to let anyone else tell me that. Who I am isn't okay. ] Monica: Right. Alix: Anymore. Monica: Right. Like mess and all I'm gonna yeah. Claim it so good. Yeah. And it's what I call the breathing place. It's like here, I had been avoiding that messy feeling. And you talked about learning to sit with your pain with your, I forget what, how you actually said that, but it was like, it's this. You know, we have this experience as we're listening to people talk about meditation that we're somehow supposed to get above it. Oh yeah. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. It's not about actually bypassing it. It's about leaning into it. It's about getting really intimate with our pain. Yes and witnessing our own pain. And this is where those amazing archetypes start to become so powerful medicine for our remembering. Right. Alix: Exactly. I mean, it feels like we've been giving him, given a map for how to sort of orient ourselves in, in terms of a narrative or a story and, and what a gift that is to be like, oh, wow. Over eons and eons humans keep telling us that this is normal or that this is what it means to be human, to build these things. Monica: Yeah. Alix, I want you to read another poem was something that you, I don't know that you want to share with our readers. And I don't know something that has depth and meaning to you. That reveals more, I guess, about not only your art form, but how this poetry moves through you. Okay. Before you read it, tell me about the title of your book. Alix: Oh, Secrets and Stars. Yes. It's actually the title of the last poem in. In the book, which I can also read for you. Monica: Okay. Alix: But it just felt perfect to me because that is what the whole book felt like. To me, it felt like I was being gifted secrets that I could only share in these tiny nuggets like this it's this whole I'm given access to like the universe, the sky. And I can only show you. Or myself the truth in these like tiny little pieces. And so that's what this is. It's like a little, a million pieces of the secrets that I'm keeping that I get to give to them. Monica: It's like soul food. Sometimes the way you talk is also like a poem. Alix: You, my poems are literally my it's just, it's just me. Monica: Yeah. Alix: In CA I can just get to capture it every once in a while when I'm very lucky. Monica: You are very lucky every day just saying, Alix: You know, this has been the most wonderful experience. I keep trying not to cry. That's where I'm at. Monica: Awe Alix: In a good, in a good way. Monica: Yay. Well, we welcome the tears too. Alix: Okay. So this one kind of reminds me of some of the things we've been talking about. It's called dear one, Dear One. I see you there with your fingers clutching at life like a security blanket. Soften soften now to the possibility that you must let something go holding tightly will do nothing, but cut off the streams of love that flows. So tenderly freely, voluntarily around your Rocky outcroppings. You must surrender to the possibility of loss so that the reality of love can exist without restraints release your grip in your belief that you can control anything. Relax, unclench your fist. Let go breathe. Repeat. Monica: Uh, I love that. I love how poetry for each of us can evoke so many different things and that as an art form, it truly does express. In snippets, like you were talking about these images, these moments that don't necessarily fit themselves into another art form. It's just, it's why I think I love poetry so much and not all poetry, but poetry that really does speak to my own soul. Right. And there are certain poets that I think we all. Maybe have heard of, or no. Have allowed poetry to become more modern mainstream because I remember in school being forced to kind of read old poetry and odes and things and being so like unable to really relate to the language, right. The flowery kind of Victoria, whatever it was. And that there's so poets come up for me, of course, like more, more of the mainstream, like Mary Oliver or David White. But what I'm thinking of as you speak that poem is that moment that I stopped white knuckling the world. Yeah. Where I actually got that in order to get. I had to open my hands. Alix: Yes. That's the feeling rate, right? Like, okay. You guys got to let them be weird in the air, Monica: Right. And that there's nothing to fix, that we can stand there with our arms outstretched, needing, wanting aching, and it all gets to be there and it, and we get to call it beautiful and be whole. That those beautiful pieces get to stand side by side. Yeah. All right. Now I want to hear the poem of the title of the book. Alix: Okay. Secrets and stars. She left the room quietly secrets and stars in her handbag, absconding with the very best parts of the buffet. She sped away wearing velvet from another woman's club. She was called many names at thief of time, a gambler of hearts and a liar through and through to say she left them all broken would be unfair. She only took the pieces that held them back from being their best selves. The loot was really an afterthought. It was the silence that she took most delight in the moment when it all ended and she could drive away into the stillest of nights. Monica: Oh God, that's got so much beauty to it. Uh, and then, so it's like, where does that come from? Alix: Yeah, I wish I can tell you. I'm a very visual, human being. So a lot of it is literally the words create an image and then I write the image and then cycles. Monica: And how did you grow up? Because it's so, makes me want to know what your childhood was like, how those images worked in your, you know, just, just from your time. Origin. Alix: I grew up, my parents were divorced when I was two. My mom is a literature professor, but in Hispanic studies, latin, Latin American literature, actually. And so I grew up in a very intellectual. Household very wordy. We might Unitarian universalism is a denomination of poetry, in my opinion. Yes. You know, like half the worship service is just music and poems, if not more than that. So for me, poetry is Mary Oliver in particular is very deeply ingrained into my psyche. And so I think that there was an element of lik. The sort of masculine that, that logic brain, I was really, it was really raised in that environment of like, you need to be able to argue this, like bring a logical argument to the dinner table and you know, then you can have a higher allowance. And so my growth process was saying, I am so much softer than this, so much watery, or then there's so much more feminine than that. And so as I got older, allowing all of those edges that I was talking. Just often it's sort of been my, um, in my journey, Monica: It goes back to like that open your hands like that, the softening, right. I can sometimes call it even like that, where all the edges soften and you really start to allow yourself to you be Alix: Exactly. Yeah. Monica: Who you really are. It's exhausting the other way, isn't it? Yeah. Alix: It's so exhausting and it's so hard to stay soft. That's the thing that I think is so interesting is that every time I remember to be soft, I'm encouraged again by, you know, our society, capitalism, like all sorts of things to re hardened. Monica: You had an armor up Alix: or up armor up, that's it? Yeah. Monica: Yeah. It's the practice. And I think, you know, if, if I were what's coming up for me, as you're saying, that is like, to me, that is the spiritual practice. That is my spiritual practice is to. Re tenderize myself over and over again, that's it? Yeah. Yeah. I talk a lot about the process of unbecoming from all of the ways that we've been taught that the world is a scary, dangerous, fearful place where everyone's out for themselves and, you know, the busting, all of the myths and. Discovering some of the myths and archetypes that have been omitted that actually tell that bigger story and allow us as women, especially I think, to, to reclaim these parts of ourselves that are so needed in this world. And our ability to share them with others. You know, I talked about that resonance and seeing your audience really like gobble up your daily offerings, that like those secrets and stars that you were talking about taking off with, you know, taking off with the best. Buffet or whatever. However, you said that that was so amazing. Alix: Best parts of the buffet. Monica: It's just like so great. And really recognizing that, like that's such fulfilling your purpose in the world and also recognizing that you still have all of these aspects of yourself. Like I know you're also a photographer, you're a spiritual director. Fully permissioned in exploring more of the polyamorous and who knows what more will be revealed. And I'm wondering too, if you help others or how you help others. Cause I'm, I'm sensing that you're also. Probably a natural guide and helping others tap into their creativity. Alix: Yeah, that is, I mean, that, that's a huge part of what I do with my time. So in spiritual direction, I mean, I mostly work with other spiritual people. I mostly work with other Unitarian minister is actually for the most part and give them a place to. Work through whatever it is that they're dealing with and that moment in time, but a huge part of why people come to me is they say, I know you write, how do I write? Monica: Yes. Alix: You know, I call myself a spiritual director and a creative coach because at this point in my time, in my life, they're the same thing to me. My spirituality is creativity full stop. That is what divine is to divide his creation. Like they're not separable. And so a lot of what, I mean, I lead online courses in which I send out prompts every day, but mostly it's just a space. Device people just need permission and reminders. You know, really people just need permission. What I think is the most important thing. And one of the things that has been the hardest lesson learned for me is exactly how you think and speak is enough. You don't need to go and get your master's in fine art. You don't need to know how to write poetry. That's not a thing. We all already know how to write poetry. Every single person already knows you don't need to do anything except write it down. Yeah. You know, and stop censoring yourself. If, if you knew that, like I have notebooks and notebooks and notebooks of writing, and most of it is garbage and that's fine. That's the way it is. And what's amazing is that you just never know when it's gonna come through you. So you just need to have your pen on the page as much as well. Monica: Yeah, I'm learning this, Alix. I'm really learning this right now about my own writing and allowing the garbage to come through that the garbage is, you know, what actually gets me to the good stuff completely. Yeah. Alix: And then people go back a year later and realized none of it was garbage. That also happens. Monica: Yeah. Alix: Where I go back and I was like, I hated this. I remember hating this and now I think it's a genius. No, some of it is just who, you know, sometimes my writing isn't, even for me, I don't know that until I put it out there in the world, I will literally have a piece and I'll be like, I don't know why I wrote this, but I'll take a picture of it and put it on Instagram. And then it'll be my most popular piece for like a week. And I completely not expecting. But it wasn't for me, as it turned out, it was for someone else, you know? Monica: God. Yeah. It's so true. We can be so stingy stingy with ourselves God. And with others, like when we just refuse to share it and Alix: It's so it's so understandable. I have so much understanding and empathy for why we don't share it because people are so critical. Yeah. But I find that if I'm not critical of myself, I don't invite it. He doesn't even, I don't mind work does not invite criticism because I'm not inviting praise, if that makes sense. Yeah. And really not asking for anyone else's like take all my work. I did. It's just my work. Monica: Like I'm just going to share it and I'm not really attached to, right. I'm not seeking to be validated out there. It's like, it's just a form of my authentic self-expression for the day. Yep. Take it or leave it. If it has something for you. Awesome, great CSO. It's so powerful. Well, I love knowing that you lead online courses because I'm sure that there are so many of my listeners who are really indulging themselves, which I say all day long. That is part of the. Unbecoming process is when we allow ourselves, when we nourish ourselves, when we indulge ourselves, when we listen to ourselves and move towards the things that really intrigued us and call us. But we're like, you know, there's so many ways that we again are stingy with ourselves and don't give ourselves permission to like, just go for it, just give it a shot. So I'd love if you could share with. Our listeners today where they might be able to learn more about you and maybe sign up for one of your discovery. You know, one of your courses to discover more about how they can tap into their own creativity. That would be awesome. Yep, absolutely. Alix: The easiest way to find out what all is going on with me is probably my Instagram account, which is at Alix Klinenberg. I post all of my things there. I also have a mailing list, which you can sign up for on my website, which is Alix klinenberg.com and like to keep it pretty, pretty simple. And then highly sensitive extrovert is my blog. And it also always post any new courses. So those are the three easiest ways probably signing up for my newsletter is the most direct way to get information, particularly if I'm not trying to get more than, uh, you know, maybe 20 people together. I won't always post that on social media. I have a larger following there now, so yeah, which is wonderful. And also I can't have, you know, thousands of people in a course and actually give it the kind of attention and care that I like to give them. So they do, I teach them to keep them very small. I love that though. Monica: It's it's intimate. And I think there's so much to be said for those communities really, where we start to cultivate our creativity Alix: Well, and it's where I found my people. I mean, that's the only way I can really describe it. It turns out that people who want to make poems and create things. Just they're my favorite people. Monica: Mm. I love that. Yeah. Alix: So that's the best part about it? I shouldn't say it's the best part. Monica: I would love, you know, and my readers or my listeners. So funny, my husband always edits and he's like, you never say readers. Because we're talking about books and reading and writing. I'm like my readers. So my, my listeners know I'll put all of your links in the show notes, Alix, but I'm wondering if you can also, you know, leave us with a final poem and cause I would just love again and I would love for our readers to be able to invest in their own book, um, secrets and stars. You can get that on Amazon, right? Alix: Yeah, you can get it on Amazon. You can find it on Barnes and noble online grades. Get it there. Or you can do indie bound and get it at any of your own local bookstores and Monica: Indie Bound is great. Yes. Alix: Find. And if you go to dot com, I have one. To all three of those places. Monica: Awesome. Okay. Alix: So this one is called Soft Animals Because it's just exactly what we've been talking about. I am the softest animal jelly, fish, bones and rabbit eyes belly, open heart bleeding into the earth. I have learned to find shelter behind rocks and under shells to raise my arms flinching for the blow. Prickly spines have grown in places that need defense most often. Calloused fingers guard the edges from your constant barrages. I am the softest animal in my journey is always back to softness to remove the quills, to put down the shields, to stand in the open spaces this way so that I may do no harm in my attempt to survive so that I may encourage gentleness in those around me. There is a courage in disarming oneself and choosing love, emits the sharpest. Monica: Beautiful. Thank you. Alix: Thank you. This was really wonderful. Really wonderful time Monica: Sure was, sure was okay to our listeners. You know, all of Alix beautiful work and links will be in the show notes until next time more to be revealed. We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointherevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift. To our mailing list or leave us a review on iTunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always more to be revealed. .