Jenny Glick

We open a brand new season with a conversation with Jenny Glick. Born to teen parents who themselves were atheist despite having roots in strong religious traditions, Jenny’s first spiritual memory was of Mother Mary standing at the foot of her bed veiling her from the dark energy her father later confirmed had taken up residence in her childhood home. Perhaps because of the “innocent neglect” of her youth, Jenny developed an internal barometer of the edge of risk and knew, as a high school graduate that her wild oats era was over. What followed, however, was a period of longing which caused her much suffering. Her greatest learning, and the teaching she now offers others, has been to understand how the deep desire for safety influences the unconscious decisions and shadows of our lives. 

With a string of achievements including MA, MSC, LMFT, and CST, Jenny is now a retired marriage-family-sex therapist and current writer, torchbearer, and change catalyst for women and couples. With over 25 years of experience guiding women and men to shift out of old, unfulfilling timelines, Jenny’s uncommon approach has been the answer for thousands of people who are ready for rich relationships and lives full of satisfaction, nourishment, and connection.

www.JennyGlick.com

Substack: https://substack.com/@relationshipwisdom

IG: https://www.instagram.com/jenny_glick/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Freedom from unsafety has for me started with deep nourishment in really simple ways. And it starts by not throwing toxic thoughts at myself, of which there have been many.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Welcome back to the Alive and Kicking Podcast. I'm so excited to be back in the podcasting business. And as our first guest in 2026, I almost had 2025, is the fabulous Jenny Glick. Welcome, Jenny.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

It's so wonderful to be here, Kay, and in your re-inaugural debut, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Yeah, relaunch, I guess we I guess we could say. Yeah. I'm thrilled to have you here because as we were just talking before we came on, I feel like we both agree you could talk about anything. And I know a little bit about your um many professional accomplishments, but I don't know the full story. I don't have the the background of how you got from point A to point P. And so um I hope we can dive into some of those things. So absolutely, let's get started. Okay, so um I would love to hear about the first time that you uh had a spiritual experience that you were aware of, whether it was as a child or an adult or something in between.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

The first thing that comes to mind as soon as you ask the question was I remember as I must have been eight years old, sleeping in my bed at night and waking up in this sort of paralysis state. If you've ever had that experience where you wake up and you're awake but you can't move, right? Feeling frozen and having a rush of fear in my body and blinking my little eight-year-old eyes open and seeing a woman sitting on the foot of my bed, just the silhouette of a woman. And I didn't know what or who she was. I was raised in a largely atheist home. My grandmother was Catholic, and I would spend summers with her in Texas. So, and my grandmother had a five-foot-tall Mother Mary statue in her bedroom. She's of Mexican descent. So her love of Mary and Jesus was fantastic. And but I was raised by two atheist parents. So it wasn't part of my growing up, you know, as an eight-year-old child. But there was a woman there, and I knew her presence was peaceful and calm. And I knew that there was something really scary in my bedroom. And I had that memory as a child. And it wasn't until I was in my early 20s and my parents divorced, and my dad, who became, you know, my dad just wrote a book on Bigfoot. So he's way out there, way in the world of the other world. And in my 20s, I started to share with him about this memory as an eight-year-old. And my dad said, Oh, that house was so possessed. And this was in the 80s, early 80s, late 1970s. And he said, Oh, yeah, we did an exorcism on that house because the cabinets would open and close in that house. And as an eight-year-old, I didn't know, I wasn't paying any attention to any of that. And when he said that in my 20s, I immediately knew Mother Mary was sitting at the foot of my bed. I had this feel, this knowing, right? This knowing in my heart that wasn't my my mind. And that's some something that I've realized as I've entered and am now in mid squarely in midlife is that sometimes truth is a truth because I couldn't have made it up. It it hit me like a starburst in my heart when he said that. That's who that woman was that was putting her veil over me in a home that wasn't safe. And, you know, my dad went on to detail some of the weirdness that was happening in the house that I felt as a small child. So that's the first thing. And then in when I was about 10, you know, again, I had a uh a grandmother who gave me the King King James Bible. And I wasn't required to read it, but I remember reading it and feeling like there was truth in the words, even though the words didn't make sense. And I would sit at night and and trace the words with my finger, and I felt like there was some um indecipherable truth in there, but again, it was from this real innocent place because nobody was telling me to do it, and and I I hadn't developed a mind enough to know that's where you're going to find salvation or anything like that. There, it was just a magnet, a kind of pull.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Wow. I mean, when you when you said that um, you know, that the the the the Mother Mary figure came through in your your dad's acknowledgement of this this something going on in that house. I just I became breathless. I it was took my breath away, actually. So um that's such an incredible experience. And you you can, I mean, I always feel in my body whether something is true. Even if someone else is telling me their experience, I can feel whether it's true or not. And I'm really curious about this situation in your home because you know, was there was there any conflict between your parents and their parents over spiritual development? Or, you know, they didn't have a problem with that, or were they open atheists, or what was the deal?

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Uh, the deal was my dad was raised by Baptist parents. My mom was raised by shatholics and a police officer father. So very both of them, you know, church and religion, dogmatic religion, very heavy. They came together at 20 years old and surprise, pregnant. And so the my family lore is my mom discovered she was pregnant. And so they shotgun married, and they had $400, left Texas. They were living in San Marcos, um, San Marcos, Texas, where I was born. And they uh took off when I was six months old north, and the car broke down in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and that's where they landed. And, you know, at that tender age, I know you have children who are older than that. My son's 24. And by 24, my parents had a you know, a two-year-old and a four-year-old, right? And no college education and no family, and uh were making it on their own in Colorado at that time. And so, in terms of was there conflict, not outwardly, but quiet, stoic, Texan, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, right? A kind of uh uh stone hardiness, right? You take care of yourself, um uh kind of influence uh in me. And and so there was no conversation about the other world. Religion was seen as for you know, their dogmatic parents who maybe were feeble-minded, you know. I mean, I don't know that that would be the right word, but but you know, less progressed or something like that. Um, and then my parents split when I was 12 years old, and you know, they've gone very different ways for sure. And um, yeah, but there was no no other conflict in the home. The what I've learned now, having gone through lots of schooling to be a therapist and worked with, you know, couples and families and children for over 25 years now, is I never really honored the trauma of what I would call neglect. Neglect simply because they didn't know, right? At that, at those tender ages. They just simply didn't know to tend to a child in any different way than they could have in the 70s, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yeah, yeah. Wow. So um so your spiritual experience kind of went underground, I guess you could say. But I'm wondering if in hindsight you recognize that that experience was influencing or impacting you in any way.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Absolutely. I think it was formative. Um, looking back, I could see all these little nuggets that my my obsession, I wouldn't say obsession, my interest in the Bible when it wasn't required. I really loved. Um I grew up in Colorado Springs, which is the home of Focus on the Family. Most of my, which for those listeners who maybe don't know, in the 90s, Focus on the Family is a very fundamentalist Christian hub. And in the 90s, famously they were trying to pass an amendment to make it illegal to rent homes or to to provide business to people who were in the gay and lesbian community. And so it was a hotbed of controversy. And I remember being in my childhood friends' homes in that time who were ministers in that um world and them talking about this controversy that gay people are going to hell, and I had no religious training, and I felt like that can't be right. That doesn't make sense, that doesn't square in my heart. I remember feeling confused in my body, right? Not in my head. Again, I was young, you know, 10, 11, 12. And I think that my childhood friends' parents knew that my parents were splitting up, that we didn't have the means that most of my other friends' families did because we grew up in the suburbs and we lived in like the most affordable place, right? In in that area. And so I was taken under the wings of much more affluent families and um who abided by a kind of religiosity that didn't square with how I somehow understood God to be without having received any of the dogma, right? And so I think that that was uh formative for me and and that I really wasn't raised, I was kind of feral, right? Like there was there weren't any guideposts really on me. And I was a good student and I was responsible. So I, you know, was the responsible 80s latchkey kid and took care of myself and and made reasonably good choices and knew the edge of risk. So even though I was doing crazy things and sneaking out of the house and drinking and doing all of that, I I had an internal um barometer about what was too much, but no one was telling me, my parents weren't telling me what to believe. You know, they divorced when they were 34, 36. That's how old my husband was when I married him. You know what I mean? So they divorced and were like, sweet, we're out, you know, and I'm 12, 13, 14 years old, middle school, high school. And I had free free range. I was a free range kid figuring it out. So no one was forcing me to go to Bible study or church or synagogue or nothing. And in some way, I mean, it was the life that I had, so I'm really grateful for it. But I never fought against external beliefs because I wasn't given any. You know, it was this huge blank slate and well-meaning parents who were just doing their own thing. And like, great, you're not in the corner with a dunce cap on and you're alive. So we did a great job, you know, just keep going.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Yeah. Yeah, I I can relate to that so much. And I'm older than you, and I think that it was a, it was the it was more common than not that children were out on their own. And there's there's a there's a mix of the good of that and the you know what you're saying, it's can be felt as a little neglectful, um, you know, at times too. But I think this the fact that you grew up without any sort of religious influence in a town that was very heavily influenced by dogmatic religion, that it's an interesting foil. And I I think my my kids actually had a similar experience. I raised them in a very evangelical Christian community. I didn't even know it was when I moved there. And and my their dad and I were um kind of in between things, you know. We had both sort of been raised Catholic, but didn't really resonate with it. And I'd be interested to hear a little bit more about uh, you know, kind of how they how that worked for them. But I um, you know, I think it's probably like being a feral child, it has both benefits and problems attached to it. So this this um I'm curious how your whether your dad showed any interest in um let's say the invisible world or the unseen world when you were young and whether that kind of influenced you at all.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Certainly by uh his behaviors and his actions, he's a very um visionary kind of person and uh would have different books and things around. Um, after my parents' divorce, and I'd go to his house, and he actually wrote a series of self-help um hypnotic tapes called The Way of the Master. And when I was 17, he had a little audio studio set up in his basement and he had me get a microphone. You know, he set the whole thing up so that I could be the voice behind these subliminal tapes. So I still remember the five or six sentences that I said over and over again because I don't know if there weren't loopers or if we didn't have a looper, it probably cost too much. So I said, um, I love my healthy body, I feel so energetic, I love my healthy body just the way it is. My healthy body is full of energy. I love being healthy, I love myself. And I said that over and over and over and over again while there was music being played on, you know, what what the listener could hear. And so at that point, I think that's when I got like, oh, he's into other things. And he was reading all about um indigenous healers in Hawaii and um very interested in different um just indigenous ways of living, which he has continued to follow. Uh, you know, he's in his 70s. And uh, and as I've gotten older and realized just how compared to the regular world, he's like way can, you know, like super way out there. You can have any conversation with him about Atlantis, Bigfoot, the aliens, the whole thing. Uh, and and so, yes, I I started to see that for sure. And and looking at you know, Richard Bach books that were on uh his bookshelf and um you know all those 80s. I why can't I remember? It's right there, The Course in Miracles, right? All of those books were were part of his repertoire, though we never talked about it. I just knew it was in the field.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

That's awesome and cool. So when moving forward, you were in, I think you said you were 12 when your parents divorced, and so your father stayed in the area that you so you got to see him regularly and and be under that that influence. And then you go to high school. Was there any type of spiritual experience there? Or how would how did your spiritual experience mature for you?

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Was there a spiritual experience? No, there was a lot of in the backseat of cars, is what was pretty much happening in high school for me. You know, I actually think one of the biggest spiritual experiences was my high school graduation. I had three girlfriends that I was very close with, and we really walked each other through all of that high school, everything that happens, puberty and the first time of all the things, right? And when we got to graduation, I was an emotional mess. I was crying. And and you know, years later, I could see that I was so I wasn't upset. I had deep sorrow recognizing that chapter was done for me. That at that point, and we were drinkers and partiers and the fun girls, and they went on to do those things in college, and I was done. It was a very clear demarcation for me. Again, in my being, it wasn't, I wasn't thinking, oh, I'm above that or I need to grow up now. It wasn't that. But in all of my graduation photos, I am a red-faced, sobbing mess. I was just beyond, and I did not have words for what is this about, because I'm gonna see them next week. And you know, they all went to college together and I traveled in Europe um a little bit, and then I went to the college where they went, but I am it was clear that that path was done for me. And uh, and that's when I started becoming interested in yoga. I bought my first yoga book at a metaphysical store at 19, and I didn't know what yoga was. I just went to the bookshelf and it was one of those that you could open and lay flat. And I don't even know that there were yoga classes available in Fort Collins, Colorado, at, you know, in 1993. I just started doing these poses that this swami guy in an orange turban was doing on the pages. And it it was just of interest to me, and it didn't make sense while my girlfriends were going to frat parties, making out with the hot guys, doing that. And and there was something else blooming in my being, and I had nowhere to put it, right? It didn't fit, and I didn't have any friends who could talk to me about it. And so I think I spent several years kind of walking around with my little naked roots, like a tree that pulls up her roots, and it's just okay, I'm trying to find the earth that I can put myself in because this isn't it. Getting wasted at a frat party on Saturday night is not it for me. Um, and it took me a while to, you know, to really find my roots. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Did that period of separateness from the norm cause any suffering in you?

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Uh any huge, huge suffering. I felt I have so many memories of listening. There was a back in those days for the slightly younger listeners, uh, there was a band called Cran the Cranberries. And there was this like very morose album that I would just listen to over and over again in my tape deck, in my boom box, right? In my little basement apartment. Uh, I would probably have been diagnosed as depressed back then. And and I I have a lot of fortitude, man. I'm a water ox in astrology, Chinese astrology. And I'm a total ox. I just can bear the weight of the world. And so I trudged on. Um, you know, I would drop into Unitarian churches or unity churches and journal a lot. I used to write letters to Jesus. And I'm like, what am I even doing? This doesn't even make any sense to me. But but it was really um, you know, my way of grasping at something. And I did go through periods of suicidality, you know, where I and that started in high school, where I just I felt like I do not belong here. Like nobody gets me. My parents had moved on. I mean, they were young and they're like my mom was like 38 and hooked up with a wealthy, you know, engineer and they were flying all over. And I'm sure she was like, whatever, my daughter's 16. I don't need to deal with her, right? And and so I felt very alone and and very not sure what to do with all the feelings. And when it seemed like nobody could relate, right, to me in that way. So I think there were probably a good six to seven years in there. Um, and then I I walked with anorexia, you know, I danced with bulimia for a period of time. I experienced a sexual assault that I ended up stumbling upon in EMD. Clinic when I was 18, literally on a street, and it it said, you know, heal from trauma. And I walked in and had an e had three EMDR sessions over the next three weeks, which were life-changing and really put me on the path of being a therapist. Um, because I was shocked at how quickly something that was so woven in my body could uh um find some healing, some some place to rest, you know, rather than wake up and and my mind gnawing on it all the time.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

But yeah, but I I've interviewed so many people and I also have experienced this. And I think that this this unknown spiritual longing that that is unusual at a young age, but some people obviously go through, is very easily mistaken, even in the person as depression. But it's it's it's longing and it and it's this feeling that's it's not the conditions upon in which we're living are not right. Something is wrong, and it's not me, you know, like um, and I I just think that's such a um it's such a beautiful, horrible path, really. It's so solitary, and it also has beautiful, beautiful blessings because look at where you are, you are now. So let's talk a little bit about that. So talk to us a little bit about how you were, were you did you start to formalize your spiritual experience or seek places to put it other than you know, bad places, inappropriate places?

SPEAKER_02 23:47

Right. Well, that took a while, right? For sure. Humans, humans keep humaning. Um, yes, I went on to various colleges. I have a lot of fire and water in my chart, so I'm very mutable. I very, very enjoy changing. And in one of I lived in Ashland, Oregon for a period of time and connected with some women, and we were doing new moon ceremonies, and um, I have a degree in women's studies, and so then moved to Tucson, Arizona, got a graduate degree in women's studies, and those women were Wiccan, so I was very into learning about um being a witch and all the things with the different elements and calling in the directions. So that was all very new to me, devouring Starhawk, right? Um, so this was in the the mid-90s, 94, I guess, 95. And and so I I feel like I kept putting roots in different places, trying different things on and in liking some things, but um also not entirely feeling met. I think that part of my personality, I really appreciate the rigor of a spiritual practice, right? So I don't want to be told what to do, but I I I like feeling held, but not suffocated, right? So um I we joined Unitarian churches. I married my husband in 2000, and and he was game for different things. So we tried different open and affirming churches uh and and really couldn't find a home. Um, and then I discovered a group called the Centers of Light. I was living in back in Colorado Springs at the time, and went full bore, like how I do in everything. Uh, it ended up being a cult. And so I was in that for a number of years. It really met the part of me that wanted the rigor and wanted this kind of certainty, you know. And I again I can look back and see there was the magnanimous leader, right? And I was the good student, and I very quickly went from being an initiate to being ordained a deacon and on the path to be a priest in that order, and I met some incredible people who are still near and dearer to me now. And like in so many uh spiritual groups and I think religious groups as well, until you see behind the curtain, you don't see the totality of what's going on, right? And so as I moved up through the ranks, which I have a history of doing and getting a little bit closer to the leadership, then pretty quickly the the humanness is shown up. Not that there's a, I mean, we're all human. And so from my in my line of work, it's not about not being human, but it is about being aware uh of the our shadow parts and when when those unconscious bits become um shown up, which is what happens when we are teachers, we have students who come and they will shine light on our dark parts that we don't want to look at, right? And and if the teacher does not have the capacity to look at those places that bring up an ouch in them, then that pathway is no bueno, right? Like there have there has to be, in my humble estimation, the capacity to see what no one else can see. So either to have uh advisors around you who can say, here's what we see behind you, and you can't see it because you're human just like just like the rest of us. You're actually no more connected or divine. You have certain skills that might be more oracular in particular ways than others, but that um, you know, just having that that lived experience multiple times of of the leadership not seeing those shadow bits and then watching the shadow bits get played out on the students or ministers and training around them. And I have uh a really good spidey sense now about that. And I trust it. So in in that group that I was a part of, the centers of light, um, there's still a faction of it happening, and they're like holed up apparently in some Midwestern town, preparing for the end of times. I got out prior to that. Uh, and it's uh there was so much learning um that happened there for me and a lot of learning that prepared me for what's transpired in our own world over the last many years. So I'm deeply grateful that I got to really soak in that experience.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

You know, it seems like this let's call it spiritual distortion in in which these groups, which we are labeling as cults, give rise, like the conditions are right for that to give rise through, rise to. And I almost feel like it's a necessary component for you know, the people who have broken free or out of the established religious channels, they end up with nothing. You know, there's basically nothing there. And so, you know, it's it feels like a step to the freedom uh that we're headed toward. But I'm wondering if, from your perspective, that is confined to a specific era. In other words, are are people still at risk of joining those types of groups because they experience the longing and the desire for community and structure and leadership?

SPEAKER_02 29:49

What a great. That's a really complex question. So I'll enter it in one way and then we can take it another direction if we need. I I think in part, those of us who have a longing and we are such tribal people, we want to be in community. So we are we do want to join our hearts around something of meaning. And anything can very quickly become a cult, right? That's the thing about cults. And and I don't say cult with any animosity. In my world, like culture is a larger cult that has just taken off, and most of us don't see the cultiness in our culture, we just believe it's normal, and that's what makes a cult so culty, is that there's no more questioning at all, and that if one questions, one is um um on the precipice of exile. And so I don't know about uh large groups of people that become a movement. I'm very much a student of Carl Jung, and he has, I won't get the quote right, but he he really um uh warns people against being in any collective that will be an ism, because as soon as that ism starts forming, we have a kind of mass formation, and that's when we go off the rails. And and so it invites us to be really sober and aware and know that we have this longing and desire to join, and also having the maturity, which is what I think we lack for most of this consensus reality that we're in. We lack a kind of maturity to self-reflect and to recognize where it is that what I say, do, believe, how I show up uh isn't always the best way for other people and where it can be injuring others and being willing to reflect on that, which we don't learn in cultures where there aren't initiations, right? And so we just are basically adolescents running wild in and and in charge of the country and and corporations and all kinds of things without the balancing effect of being in deep heart relationship with with people who can mirror aspects of yourself that you're willing to see if you're deeply rooted in a mature place.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

Yeah, it's really a very high level of codependency, isn't it? Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

And and you can understand that because our codependency is rooted in survival. And as a child, you're necessarily codependent because you can't survive without your parents. But where's the off switch? I mean, like, I don't know. I'm still exploring aspects of my own codependency, but the one I have gotten over is the one between that that I need something to stand between me and God. Um, so I'm wondering how your journey moved um into freedom, and if you still are exploring areas of non-freedom.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

Freedom as it pertains to spirituality or freedom or anything, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Let's say even of thought, you know.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

Yeah, I you know, I think currently the freedom of thought is really around not even so uh a bit of questioning all of my own beliefs, right? Is that so? Did the regular things in this world that we just say must be the case, that I must work in a particular way, that I must have a particular amount of money in order to retire, that I must have health insurance in a particular way. Is that so? Is that so? What where are the places where I'm self-governing through fear, of which there are many, right? And where I'm self-governing through can unconscious conditioning, and where it is that I'm I'm really sovereign and free, right? And I think the last six years has been a freaking initiation for so many of us in that regard, and and taking that magnifying glass for those of us that like intensity at so many aspects of our life. But I what I am very awake to is the kind of pressure I have put on myself for my entire adult life and even before, in order to secure safety by constructing an existence where I'm I'm holding myself, like I'm safe now, am I safe now? And really seeing how for me, midlife, the mennow portal that I think that it is, this portal for us, um, has been a grand revealing of all the ways that I've placed safety outside of myself. Whether it's I'm a good student in a spiritual practice and I'm doing all the trainings and the certification, I have the most people in my circle, right? I'm doing all the things, I'm being a good girl, right? All of those places that my story was I'm doing that because I'm I'm a good student. I'm type A, I'm a perfectionist, like many of us liked to say, which was a way of both um amplifying our goodness and then also simultaneously garnering pity from someone at the same time being a perfectionist, and now recognizing I'm part of a generation of women that don't feel safe. That's it. We just don't feel safe, right? And it's not my fault that I don't feel safe. It's not, I'm not broken, it's the conditions, to your point earlier, the conditions in which I was born, I was raised, you know, the the teat we've all been sucking on for our entire lives in this particular culture in the US, there's not safety is baked in. And so freedom from unsafety has for me started with deep nourishment in really simple ways. And it starts by not uh throwing toxic thoughts at myself, of which there have been many, many, many, many, many, many just subtle little drip of toxic thoughts, of not enoughness, urgency is unnourishment, malnourishment, right? There's so many ways. Um, and so I don't say that to say it's overwhelming. The exciting news about recognizing all of the unsafety is there's so many ways to just click, click, click to you know, safety, nourishment, right? Um, whenever I feel urgency in my body, I invite breath and coming into my back body, right? Because front body is urgency and we need urgency sometimes, like to get up and get the door, to go get that email, like that urgent nature. Most of us live here, right? Like up on our phone. We're very out, and so we're not living in this back body, right? With the exhale, your sit bones on the chair, your spine pressed against the back of your chair in this real exhaled state, in a supple state that is deeply divinely feminine. We don't live there because we're in this dysregulated urgent state that we should only be touching into periodically as humans, right? So really simple micro shifts like that, like listeners here can just practice what's it like to come into your back body? And I learned that from one of my many teachers, Whitney Lowry, who's a somatic sex therapist, and she's incredible. And just that practice of coming into a backbody and exhaling and noticing all that front body push has been transformative. So there's there are many, many little practices like that that we can weave into our lives as women in order to start cueing safety in our bodies.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

Yeah, I I feel like we need um session two because I have so many questions. But before we move to our lightning round, I want to ask you about you mentioned earlier the shadow. And I I was wondering if you could describe that for us so we can recognize it in ourselves and talk a little bit about your shadow and how you how you moved out from behind the shadow.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

Okay. Kay. Kay asks, is there anything I can't ask you? That's what she says before you get on a podcast with her.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

So tell us about your darkest shadow. Let's say that. Okay, sure. Um, so my definition, and there are others, by definition, shadow is what you cannot see. Right. And so for me, I can be judgmental. Being judgmental is not my shadow because I am telling you about it. So I see it. It's in my purview, right? Like it is there. I'm aware of it. It used to be in my unconscious, right? And it has been pulled into my conscious view. And part of how I believe much of our shadow gets pulled into our conscious view is through intimate relating. And so marriage, intimate partnership, uh, raising a child, elder care, right? That's where shadow comes forward. So I could be a very patient, loving, kind person. And then I got married, and the judgment of my husband, who then all of a sudden I'm like, why is he so slow? Why doesn't it da-da-da, you know, move a little faster? And noticing that in myself, which took years of therapy and all kinds of things because we deflect our shadow, right? And so if someone, you know, 20 plus years ago said to me something about maybe my husband's not slow, he's just moving at his pace, I would defend against that. And so that defense, so any place where we're defending, usually we're saying back off from my shadow. I actually don't want to see that. I am not interested in that. And so you can't see your shadow. You will feel your shadow. Signals of our shadow are things like defense, wanting to hide, uh, wanting to disappear around something, some kind of interaction that happens with another person. But in general, other people are going to show us back our shadow. It's why I'm amazing by myself. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm incredible, right? I'm so good. And then my husband comes home and chews loudly. And I'm like, why would you eat so loudly? And he breathes even louder. Why would he do that to me? Why is he aggressively sleeping at night? Right. So all of those things are about me, are about me. And so that's how it is that we can access those parts of us. Um, yeah, so that's how I see, and that's how I work with Shadow. And I try to work with it in this kind of light way because when we can integrate those parts of us. So Carl Jung says that the aspects of self that we can see that are conscious are the size of like a wine bottle cork. Okay, so that's the approximation of what we can see in an ocean of the unconscious. So most of our self we cannot see. We do not see. And so through dream interpretation work, through working with active imagination, those are two, you know, Jungian ways of working with people, um, my way is through this. What I think of sometimes through marriage is like being awake on an ayahuasca journey, if you want to do that and just really be aware of all the things that are coming up with your partner and how it is that it's showing you aspects of your light and aspects of your shadow. And one is not better than the other, but it is about how it is that we integrate those parts of ourselves. So I could give you a list of shadow that I've been integrating, um, but I think you're getting the picture there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

Yeah. I I just for courage's sake, I'm wondering if you can tell us what what are the rewards of moving into and through the shadow.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Yeah. Well, I suppose it it depends on uh what it feels rewarding to someone. I think a lot of people are uninterested in this kind of work. I certainly know a lot of people who are uninterested because they they would just want to have a good time. Like, why do I don't want to talk about shadow, Jenny? Like, I'm not interested. I want to stop having the same argument with my husband and I want to move on, right? And I understand that. However, to me, the reward of getting to know greater aspects of self and integrating them is then I can actually move through the world from a state of real embodied acceptance and love. It that's I'm not trying to do something in my head, right? Like being trained as a therapist with couples, it's very cerebral, right? It's very, you say this and you do that, and let's co-regulate each other in this way. It's very up here, right? Like neck and above. And shadow work in my experience helps us access our body, our because we're in these bodies. And so we can begin to integrate. Where is it that I'm holding my breath? I'm clenching my buttocks, and all of that is unsafety. I'm holding myself up. And so So by by being willing, having the courage to see the parts of ourselves that I'm not that we're not seeing, we can bring that forward, um, marry that with the body in some unique ways that I help people integrate that. And then there's more, I don't love the term flow state, but there's there's more ease in your life. You're not trying, your life doesn't become having to fix something. You're you're simply become growing your capacity to be with all of yourself. And when you can be with more of you, you can be with more of other people. Other people are less abrasive to me because I recognize that pretty much usually whatever is coming up in them that's annoying to me, it's in me too. Oh, okay. That's that aspect of me that I just haven't been with. So, all right. So there's a suppleness that is a huge reward, a huge reward.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

Huge. I I I feel like I can echo your sentiments on that because I also, and I actually find um abrasive people kind of amusing a lot of times. It's like, oh, that's cute. Um, you know, it just doesn't get under my skin anymore. So I think that that is a huge, a huge relief in terms of you know, always being like, uh, you know, vigilant and and whatnot. And and I just want to say that, you know, we all this the the word freedom has such an air flowing through it, so much space. And it's it's it's true, but getting there is probably the densest work you'll ever do. It's it's really hard, hard work. So courage, courage, everybody. Okay, so would this be a good time to switch over to our lightning round? Yes. Okay, are you ready? I think so. Let's do this. Okay, sometimes the lightning round questions are pretty deep, so we'll see what happens. So, okay, number one, if you could get a new gift or skill, what would that be? And why? The first thing that comes is I want to fly. Why is this such a common one?

SPEAKER_02 46:14

Are we meant to fly? Are we? Maybe we're meant to fly, and maybe because we're earthbound, or maybe because we're angels in disguise and our little wings are coming out right now. Um yeah, to have that experience of being up in the air. What was interesting was that answer came before it hit my mind. So uh I've heard people say that that question about a superpower, if you answer it by saying, I want to be invisible, it means you're like a dastardly person who wants to go. Because some people will answer that question saying, I've never heard anybody say that.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

That's interesting. Okay, all right, awesome. Good to know. That's probably a question we should be asking more often. Um, how has your relationship to time changed in the last few years?

SPEAKER_02 47:06

Um, most recently I've recognized that time is for me, that it's not limited. I don't need to be in a hurry. That one of the most damaging things I can do to myself is to believe that I need to hurry because there's not enough time, but to come into relationship with time with this sense of massive infinite abundance, which has provided so much suppleness and space because there's enough time. And and when my time is up, my time is up. And I don't need none of that is my business.

SPEAKER_00 47:41

Yeah. I I I was telling a friend recently, she was planning a big event, and I said, one of my favorite strategies is to have six things on my list that it doesn't matter at all if I get them done. It's not gonna have any impact on anything, and really that's the way it is in life. Like, it does it, you know. My question always is, does this really matter? Does it? Because usually it's no for thing doing things. So um, okay, number three, do you remember living any other lives?

SPEAKER_02 48:16

I had my first past life regression when I was 18, and I remembered um looking at my feet that were brown and naked on a beach and in the past life regression. And again, I was I had this was all new to me. My my then brand new stepmom took me to do all the weird stuff. Um, and so I remembered this life where I uh ended up being a wise woman in a cave. And maybe I made it all up, but it's hard to imagine at such a young age that I did because I'd never known about this. My stepmom was like, hey, let's go do past life regressions. That'll be fun. We'll bond through that. Um, but that I was a wise woman and I saw my death and I was up high looking at myself in this cave, and there were people around me singing as I was dying. And the woman who was taking me through the past life regression um uh sort of was partnering with me as I was watching myself, and I said to her, um, oh, my next life is going to be harder because this life was so easy. It was so blessed and easy. So whether my psyche just came up with that at 18, but it gave me a balm for what felt like a bit of a bumpy and lonely childhood that, oh, I chose it. So at 18, I had this awareness that I somehow chose this life in order to gather more grit. So whether true or not, it provided a little bit of meaning for me that um provided a bit of an exhale.

SPEAKER_00 49:59

Wow, that is quite valuable. Yeah, beautiful. Um, have you had imaginary friends either as a child or an adult?

SPEAKER_02 50:11

And I love imaginary friends as an adult. That's so great. I don't know. Can we call Ascended Masters Imaginary Friends? I was just thinking that.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

I was just thinking that.

unknown 50:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:24

True, true.

SPEAKER_02 50:25

Yeah, in that case, I have loads of them, yes, and images in my house. Um, as a child, I remember actually, I don't remember imaginary friends. I remember talking to like trees when I was very little, things like that. I do remember looking in a mirror, sitting on in my bathroom. I was probably like six or seven with my feet in the sink. You know, you could just crawl up there as a little one with my feet in the sink, and looking in the mirror and saying, I know that's not you. Like, I know that's not you. Like I just had this, I this some sense that whatever I was seeing, there was something behind the mirror. And and I it it was weird, of course. And my mom would open the door and be like, get off the sink! What are you doing? You know, I'm trying to connect to my soul.

SPEAKER_00 51:23

Oh my God, that is incredible. Wow. Wow, how meaningful. Okay, the last last lightning round question. What makes your house feel like a home?

SPEAKER_02 51:34

Oh, well, I had the good um grace of having you here at my home not too long ago. Um, so I feel like it feels so peaceful to me here. Um, and it's it feels like a sanctuary for me because of the quiet and the peace and that there's not strife here. And so it feels welcoming. Um, I'm also very particular about who comes over because it feels like my belly button. Like not everybody's gonna stick their finger in my belly button, right? Like it's very, and so to only have people here who who can show up to use a phrase you and I know in a good way, right? In in a good way to um to meet the energy of the space. So we've lived in a lot of different homes, my husband and I, and some very, very humble homes. And they always there's a kind of safety that I feel like I have been able to create in them, regardless of our means, that feels very relaxing.

SPEAKER_00 52:47

Wow. I I I guess I should have known that before I invited myself over. Thanks for letting me come.

SPEAKER_02 52:54

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 52:55

Did you bring a question for me today?

SPEAKER_02 52:57

I did. I did, of course, okay? Come on. How would you suggest that a young person, say in their 20s, early 20s, who's interested in spirituality, how would you suggest that they go about creating a relationship with the divine?

SPEAKER_00 53:21

Wow, um, that is very interesting. I often find myself in the position, in that very position, but I also want to acknowledge that uh in my experience, young people are far more wise than I was at their age, and they have way more connection to a non-traditional, nonlinear uh sense of divinity than I ever had, certainly at that age. And I often find myself learning from them, but having been through a difficult trajectory spiritually speaking, I think that what has been most profound for me, and you alluded to it earlier, is curiosity. What the hell is going on around here? You know, like I mean, you don't have to look very far to find examples of things that don't make sense. But those are the very doorways into the truth of what actually is happening. So I would say get really curious and don't be afraid to ask questions about your very existence. You exist, you're here. You you're your skin, your bones, your mind, your heart, and you're more than that. You're something eternal. So you don't need to be afraid to explore because exploration will not kill you. You may think it will, it may feel like that sometimes, but it will, it won't. So that's that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 55:06

Thank you. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00 55:08

Thank you for bringing such an awesome question. And also thank you so much for sharing your time and experiences with us. I know that people are going to be super curious about your work as a therapist and a coach and all of these amazing things that you're doing right now. So we'll have all that in the show notes. And Johnny Glick, I just want to thank you so much for joining me today. It's been such a privilege.

SPEAKER_02 55:32

It's been such a pleasure and what a delight and what a delight that you're such a heart-centered, authentic, beautiful human being, both here on your podcast and what you do, outward facing, and also behind the scenes. But I have the privilege to know you. So thank you. And for all your listeners to know that Kay's just a gem of a person, even behind the scenes.

SPEAKER_00 55:53

Oh my goodness. Thank you, Jenny. I appreciate that. Same to you, same to you. Bye now.