Beginnings #1

Eva Rose Goetz:

So how are you living in the world? What are the gifts you're bringing into the world? What are the gifts you're allowing to come in to you? I mean, that's huge. What do we allow in so we can give out differently?

Elizabeth Peavey:

This is written for everybody. You know, this is not my story. This is our story of how we part with those we love and the things that are left behind.

Gibson Fay-Leblanc:

So, but again, in talking about intentions and goals, you know, there came a point where I realized that if I was gonna ever reach this goal that I've had for a long time, I needed to do something different.

[Unidentified voice]:

It just inspired me and energized me, really. And it was like, it was soulful energy, it was intellectual energy, but it was just optimistic energy of the possibilities that we have in Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We begin our show as we always do, with a quote from the book Our Daily Tread, which was published in collaboration with Islandport Press of Yarmouth. Our Daily Tread was written in honor of our late friend Hanley Denning and all proceeds benefit her organization, the Safe Passage. Safe passage provides approximately 550 children with education, social services and the chance to move beyond the poverty their families have faced for generations at the Guatemala City dump. Visit them online@safepassage.org Today's quote is from Mother Teresa. If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to one another. Elizabeth Peavey is the author of out of My Way, An Odd Life Lived Loudly, a collection of columns from her Casco Bay Weekly Days and of Maine and 10 years of down East Adventure, which was awarded the Maine Literary Award for Best Maine Themed Book. Her essays and articles appear frequently in down east magazine, where she has been a contributing editor since 1997. Her monthly humor column, Outta My Yard, can be found@theballer.com Elizabeth has taught public speaking at the University of Southern Maine since 1993 and has served as guest lecturer of creative nonfiction at University of Maine, Farmington. Her latest book, Glorious Slow Maine Stories of Art, Friendship and Adventure, a collaboration with renowned Maine landscape painter Marguerite Robichaud, is due out in 2012. She recently performed her one woman show My Mother's Clothes Are Not My Mother to a sold out audience at the St. Lawrence center for the Arts in downtown Portland. Good morning, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Good morning.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I'm actually fascinated by this quite varied background that you've had. Today's show, of course, is our very first show ever for the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. And it's pretty amazing that we have you on because I've always considered you to be one of my fellow creatives within the community. But you're a little just a few years before me, ahead of me, and I used to read out of my way. So it's great that you're here and we're doing this New Beginnings thing and in your life you've had new beginnings. So tell me about some of these recent New Beginnings that you've been.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Well, it's been an entire season of New Beginnings. And ironically enough, it ended with an ending. I mean, it started with an ending when I lost my mom 2 1/2 years ago. That all coincided with some crises in my career as a print journalist, as a content provider. The whole world is changing. And I had a very lovely long run for many years, you know, doing my column writing for Downeys, traveling all over the state, doing commercial work in town. I was always busy. I was always happy. I had a community and things were fine. I was maybe a little bit on autopilot. It was not always my best work or my most challenged work. You write a column, a humor column for as many years as I did. You can get a little formulaic after a while and then slowly, surely all of these venues, sources that I was so tied into, changed or altered or used me less and my professional Life was kind of disappearing on the horizon. And the analogy that I use is that I had been on this, you know, subway car and going fast and going along and blur and happy and all that. And then all of a sudden, we're at our last stop, and I'm the one left on the train. You know, everybody's out, and I'm like, I don't need a business card. I don't need to join Facebook. I don't need a website. I don't need to do any of that because I'm me and I'm sitting on the train all by myself. So last January, and, I mean, it really was. I'm not a New Year's resolution person, but it was just more the turn of the calendar that I woke up one morning, I said, I got the rest of my professional life to think about, and what am I going to do?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And tell me how this coincided with this change in your personal situation.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Well, I lost my dad when I was 26, so I always sort of considered myself possessing a PhD in grief. I preceded all of my friends, except for the friends who lost a parent at a very young age. I was the first adult in all of my circle of friends to lose a parent. So I kind of stood as a the gate when one of them subsequently lost a parent and said, I've been down that road. You don't walk this way. And so when my mother's decline, my father died of a heart attack. Boom. Gone in an instant.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So he was pretty young then. You were six?

Elizabeth Peavey:

Yes, he was 64. I was the last child. The really last child.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How many brothers and sisters do you have?

Elizabeth Peavey:

I have two older brothers who are 10 and seven years older than I am.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Okay.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Yeah. So as I like to refer to myself in the show, the mascot, you know, by the time. By the time I.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We have one of those in our family, we call her the bonus baby. Yeah. Yeah. So your father died when you were

Elizabeth Peavey:

26, and then your mother lived another 25.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Another 25 years.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Yes. And her decline was gradual and slow. So in the back of my mind, I said, I'm. I know this territory. I'm. I'm mentally preparing for it. And she's not going to go now, but she's going to go. And I. I know the grieving process. And then, of course, boom, she dies, and I'm a mess. And you never can prepare yourself for that because every grief is different. And this, I think, because there was so much ambiguity at the end, we were making so many decisions Nursing home, assisted living, back to rehab. Can she go home? Can she drive? Can she not? It was a constant, constant decision making process. So we were all exhausted on top of everything. And I gave myself a good, solid, hard year of just grieving and letting myself mourn and restore. And then, you know, it took me kind of another six months or so to get my feet back under myself. You know, with any injury, whether it's mental or physical, it takes a while to put your legs back under yourself. And that's when I felt physically and mentally and spiritually capable of doing something about my life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And this. So is this how the January piece came in for you or.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Yes, that was, it was all sort of around that time. It's the, the first thing that I did. And as I tell my writing students, the only way to start is to start, right? I said website. You know, it's like, I'm just, like I said, my career was sort of disappearing into the horizon and I, you know, I've been in Portland for over 30 years. So, you know, I've been like, wow, it's Elizabeth Mead. It's like, who are you? You know, wow, it's Elizabeth Mead. Who are you? So I, you know, I had to eat my own words and I started working on content for a website. And that was a lot of work because it was, I didn't want it to, you know, I wanted to reflect who I was. And so I was very thoughtful and very careful.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And this is ElizabethPeevey.com correct?

Elizabeth Peavey:

Yes, yes. And I also decided I have been giving away all of my professional life, public speaking coaching, manuscript coaching, writing instruction, and all of my friends who are actual professionals, you know, nurses and doctors and lawyers. It's like you have to start charging people when you do that. So that was part of the other aspect of the website, is to figure out how I would professionally put that together.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why do you think that you had given so much away over the course of your life?

Elizabeth Peavey:

A little bit of Noblette oblige that I had. I just felt that it was easy for me to give these things to people and because they're not tangible, you

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

know, it's not like the writing and the public speaking.

Elizabeth Peavey:

You know, it's not like I'm giving you writing a will for you or I'm not, you know, massaging your, you know, broken foot or something. You know, it's like I'm talking to you about writing. And so many people do that casually. I don't even think people who ask for help think of it as a professional service. I think it's like, let's sit down and talk about my writing. Because you're a writer and they think that it's fun because it's fun for them and don't necessarily consider it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

No, wait a minute. Who are you hanging out with? Because there are a lot of people I know that don't consider writing all that fun.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Right. Well, avocational writing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Okay. Oh, I see.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Okay.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So then you decided that you did have some value.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Yes. Well, I mean, I never, you know,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

did not have some value that maybe you should charge people for.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Exactly. Right. And, you know, and it's, you know, I'm of that, you know, filthy lucrative. You know, you don't want to talk about money. You know, it's always like, oh, I'd love to do your project. And then at the very end, it's like, oh, you don't have a budget for it. I mean, I just went that through that with a civic group who wanted me to come in and do this long memoir workshop. And so at the very end, it's like, so your budget is. Oh, nothing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes. That's a little discouraging.

Elizabeth Peavey:

It was a little discouraging. So, but, you know, part of it's my, you know, that should be the, you know, the question up front. I mean, you know, I charge for my work. Do you think that you can afford me, you know, not give the whole thing and then say, oh, by the

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

way, and this is actually a really important lesson for anyone who's listening to the show is that, you know, setting the expectations ahead of time is important and knowing your own value and asking for something back.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I mean, this is an ongoing issue.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Yes. And that's always been, always in my professional life, always been the worst and the hardest thing. I mean, and especially as a freelancer, the trick is not necessarily doing the work, it's how to charge for it. And it's a very secret society, and it's very difficult to find out who charges what and who gets paid what. And, you know, I don't know if I'm, like, up at the top of the heap or, you know, people are saying, when I give somebody an estimate,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

yeah, it's much easier to have somebody fix your furnace, and then you can call around and find out how much it's going to be to get your furnace fixed. That's right. Instead, you're trying to write. And this was part of your new beginning, was you deciding, okay, I'm worth this much. I'm going to Put this on my website and I'm going to begin again.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Exactly, exactly. Because at a certain point in your life, you feel like, I have spent 30 years training to do this and it is a valuable skill. And people don't. Again, you know, I don't go into my accountant's office and say, oh, you like numbers? You know, thanks for doing my.

Eva Rose Goetz:

Thanks for doing my taxes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, you know, as a doctor, I do understand this. Yes. I can't tell you I've looked at a mole in Hannaford, you know, by the way.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. Or somebody wants to talk to me about their transition. So, you know that I get this. And actually, Jen Morgan, who's sitting next to me from Maine Magazine, she does the same. She's also a writer and she has the same sorts of.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Yes, I saw her nodding her head.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is that not true, Jen?

Genevieve Morgan:

That is true. And actually, Liz, I wanted to go back to one thing that you said that I thought was so interesting. You said that you gave yourself six months to get your feet under you. And I don't think that people understand that there is that fallow period when you're starting something new and that I think people decide that they want to have a change in their life and then they think the change should happen. So I'm interested in that fallow period.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Well, as I always tell my students, my writing students of any age, even my public speaking students, is that all of these processes are muscles. And you don't decide, I'm going to start running today and do your marathon and you don't start playing guitar and go to Merrill Auditorium the next day. And once you even a fallow period, you need to start slowly and build those small muscles back up again so that you have some stamina and can go some distance. And you know, sitting down, especially something like writing, which is so solo and so focused and it's so easy to be neither of those things that you have to retrain yourself and rethink those processes and get your head back into that situation. And I was fortunate. I kind of just stumbled around for a number of months trying to figure out, you know, working little pieces here on the website, little pieces there on the manuscript for the show, working on a manuscript for my book that is coming out with my friend Marguerite. But it was all going in different directions because I was also teaching and I was running a household and it's so easy to be distracted when you're self employed. But I was given the greatest gift a writer or anyone, I guess, can be given a Friend in Bethel had a condominium. It was her mother's condominium, which was vacant. And she gave it to me for two weeks. So I was isolated, unplugged. No Internet, no radio, no phone, no friends, no husbands, no nothing. And I got up in the morning, I walked for an hour. I came home, I wrote for an hour. I ate breakfast, I wrote for three hours. I had lunch, I wrote for three hours in the afternoon, did chores, wrote again, or read in the evening. And all of a sudden, those muscles that I had been working at up till that point all came back into harmony. They all became one big muscle. And now as I sit down to work, I never have my email. The email is off. I never let myself Google anything. I unplug the phone, even if it's for an hour at a time. But it is that discipline that I was able to establish in that quiet. And not everybody, I mean, I'm, you know, 52. I mean, this is the first time that I've actually done anything like this. And I've been a professional writer all my life. Not everybody has the luxury to take that time and have that quiet. But that's where I got my momentum going again.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you were hitting the reset button, essentially?

Elizabeth Peavey:

Well, I was pounding the reset button.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Pounding the reset button.

Elizabeth Peavey:

If it were as easy as a press, I think everybody would do it. It really is like it had to

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

be sort of thrust upon you somehow.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Yeah. And, you know, you hit your head up against the wall. I mean, I have so many pages that I just threw away. I mean, you know, it's. It's writing is about editing and, you know, finding your voice. I mean, when I used to write my column, I used to say it's like pulling, you know, pulling down a, you know, a big roll of paper towels is that, you know, I would have to write two or three paragraphs before I figured out what I was saying. So, you know, those. Those had to go. And then. Then I was able to get into what I was doing. And I think in this big picture stuff, I did a lot of stuff from my website that I'll never use. I did a lot of stuff for the book with Marguerite that's gone for, you know, this show, long gone. And this show is actually coming out of a book. So I have it in my, you know. Oh, I can use that in the book maybe, because I hate to throw anything away. I'm a very big recycler.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I mean, you've got this Maine background, right. We were very frugal Here in Maine,

Elizabeth Peavey:

we are very frugal. We don't like frugal things away. That's right. Exactly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And sometimes the letting go of things is the most important part, as you said.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Well, and that's, you know, now, I mean, coming back to the show and the things.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes. Which is all about letting go.

Elizabeth Peavey:

I believe so much about letting go. And the irony is that when, you know, when mom was living, when she downsized from her big farmhouse into the condominium, my brothers and I were just ruthless with her things. I mean, you know, of course, there were the nice things, you know, the jewelry and some of the furnishings. But, you know, the teacups and the milk glass and the silk flowers and, you know, you're gonna get that. You're gonna get that. You know, it's like, you know, all of this stuff is just so awful because you don't need the thing when the person's there that doesn't have, you know, any value. And then the minute she was gone, they become almost fetishes, you know, that it's like I'm pouring this emotion of losing my mother into this ridiculous bent can opener or, you know, this pie tin that she used to keep her thumbtacks in.

Genevieve Morgan:

I remember we did a workshop together. And you read a piece about your mother's fingernails.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Yes, yes.

Genevieve Morgan:

It was very early on.

Elizabeth Peavey:

And that's. Yes, that's exactly. This is from that. That's from.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Okay, wait, you didn't keep your mother's fingernails, did you?

Eva Rose Goetz:

No, no, no.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

That was very strange. I'm sorry.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Fingernail polish. Fingernail polish.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it is about the small things that we keep. Not necessarily body parts.

Elizabeth Peavey:

No. Gosh.

Eva Rose Goetz:

Oh, I'm sorry.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Did I just go in a weird direction with that?

Elizabeth Peavey:

I just think, okay, yes, and there's a little jar up in my office.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So In. In the play, though, you did talk about, I think you were telling me off air, that you were looking at various pieces. You were sorting through them and deciding what it is that I keep, what it is that I give away. And that whole process is just. It's psychological, emotional, intellectual. It's so many things.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Well, it is. And, you know, again, as I said, you know, the things that actually have monetary value. I mean, those were not. I mean, they've already sort of been absorbed into our lives. It's the weird stuff that basically has absorbed a memory, you know, that. Oh, there's that knitting bag that, you know. And she hasn't, you know, picked up a knitting needle. She hadn't picked Up a knitting needle for 20 years, but it was always in the den closet beside the sewing machine. And it had a smell that, you know, smelled of the den closet. And it's nothing I'll ever use. It's nothing that I'll ever, you know, take out of my house. And yet to put that in the garbage or, you know, to a box, to Goodwill, it's like you're saying, I reject you. I reject you. And that's where the trick comes in, is to say, my mother's clothes are not my mother. My mother's things are not my childhood. So when I get rid of the object, I'm not getting rid of the memory. I'm not getting rid of the person. I am just getting rid of a thing. And I think that the best analogy. I was actually thinking about this recently. My mother played piano. She took classical piano when she was a young girl. And I could always get her to play piano until she got older. And then she had a little bit of arthritis in her fingers and the fingernails. My mother liked to drink Knox gelatin. And, you know, especially in the 70s, she had these talons. So she'd say, oh, I'd love to play, but. And she'd hold up her, you know, her daggers, as I like to call them, and she wouldn't be able to play. So we had these two. We had a Steinway baby grand and a Wurlitzer upright sitting in the house for 25 years that went first silent and then out of tune hopelessly. And then what. What is a piano then? You know, when it goes a piece of furniture, it's a piece or just, you know, wood and strings and, you know, nothing. It's nothing because it doesn't do anything. It's not a piece of furniture. You can't sit on it. You can't. You know, it becomes nothing. And a lot of the leap I need to make is that knitting bag is just a thing and all of the life is gone out.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's like an unused piano.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Exactly. Exactly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So, but it's hard because these things, they do tend to become almost sacred. They are almost sort of icons. And if you get rid of them, then it's as if you're discarding your religion in some ways, indeed.

Elizabeth Peavey:

And it's that the finality. Because, you know, death is so final, holding onto something. You can always say, well, I can always get rid of it, but I can never get it back. I mean, I'm the type of person that has actually gotten up at dawn to go out to the curb to retrieve a bag of New Yorkers. You know, it's like, there might be one article in there I didn't read. If I can throw those away later,

Genevieve Morgan:

there might be a time when I

Elizabeth Peavey:

have to get back.

Eva Rose Goetz:

I want to clip that cartoon and

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

send it to a friend. So with all of these, the fallow period, the new beginning, the website, the book that you've just written and completed, the play that you're doing, tell me what things look like for you in your next beginning. Because you really. It's a series of beginnings that it sounds like you're going through.

Elizabeth Peavey:

It is. One of my favorite words is recrudescence. And I just sort of feel like I had been a husk, a little seed, you know, and I had to. I mean, I had to be quiet and I had to. I had to mourn. I mean, I, you know, everybody does it differently. And there was. There was so much involved in mourning my mother. As I said, you know, the end was sort of difficult and ambiguous, and did we make the right choices? Did we not intervene soon enough? Did we take too much freedom away from her? So I had to process, as we say, all of that and think about that. We were exhausted. I mean, the last six months of her life required everyday care, even though she was in facilities. I, you know, you gotta be proactive and be there. And so, you know, one of us was there all the time. We were exhausted. So, I mean, just sheer exhaustion of grief and then really letting go and healing and mourning and, you know, the difference between mourning and grieving. And I allowed my. I gave myself the luxury to do that. And I, again, was fortunate enough that I have a husband who has a real job as opposed to a freelance writer job. And also, you know, there was some money in the estate. And, you know, it wasn't the first time mom supported my writing career. And I just gave myself a year and I said, you know, for the rest of my life, if I don't do this now. And I know that the grieving process doesn't end when you say, boop, okay, a year's over. I mean, but it morphs and it's different and it grows more tender. It's less jagged. And so, you know, when I'm sad about my mom now, it's actually sweeter. It's not, you know, oh, I did the wrong thing, or, oh, I wish I could. You know, I'm going to go back and interview that nurse. You know, was she giving her her pills? I don't trust her. And now it's, you know, it's gone. But with that, my age, you know, being 52 is an odd time, especially for a writer, because, you know, everybody wants new and fresh and. But I feel as though I have always created a place for myself in the world. I never had a job, per se. I never was given. Oh, you're gonna be perfect for this. I always went out and found a place for myself. And because I did make a place for myself, I kind of forgot that. And so when there was nothing there, I said, okay, the only way to

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

start is to start. Right. And you began making a place for yourself again.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Again. And, you know, with the show, I mean, the response to the show has just been overwhelming. I mean, the first one sold out well, thanks to Bill Nemetz. He wrote a very nice column in the Sunday Telegram, and that certainly spread the word. But it's the response, the emotional response. Everybody of my age group, and not necessarily even that, has a story to tell or an armful of clothes in the back of their closet, or a weird. A friend of mine on the west coast, when he heard about this, said, I didn't keep anything from my mother's stuff except a purple velvet cord around her neck that she used to keep her keys on. You know, so we all kind of take and pick what we want. So my goal is to take this on the road. You know, probably small venues in New England first. But I, you know, if I get this up and on its feet enough, then I love performing. I have a background in theater, so, you know, why not? You know, I still can't believe I'm doing this, so why not that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why can't you believe you're doing this?

Elizabeth Peavey:

It's. There's going to be 125 people staring at me tomorrow.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Okay, all right. But. But if you're a writer, you have potentially a lot more people staring at you, just in a different way.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Yes. You know, if I forget what I'm writing, I can hit delete, delete, delete, delete when I'm standing in front of an audience.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So this takes some bravery.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Yes, yes. And I'm as brave as I have ever been in my entire life to do this, and I can't believe that I'm doing it. And I am so glad that I am.

Genevieve Morgan:

And what a wonderful way to translate your grief.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Indeed.

Genevieve Morgan:

Yes.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Yeah. And let's translate. I think it's to share, you know, because as I said, you know, I was so thorough in my grieving and my mourning. This is Written for everybody. You know, this is not my story. This is our story of how we part with those we love and the things that are left behind.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, that is, it's, it is. It's great. So we've been very privileged to talk to you today, Liz, Elizabeth, pv. I still haven't come up with a new name, a new Dr. Lisa name for you, but how about inspirational? Inspirational, Liz, is that a little bit too much for you? But it's been great to have you. We really appreciate your coming in this very, very first our infant episode of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. And it's perfect. You're absolutely perfect for us.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Well, I had a wonderful time. I love talking to both of you. So thanks.

Genevieve Morgan:

Good luck. Liz.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Thanks.

Genevieve Morgan:

Thanks.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Thanks.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, this morning is a very exciting morning for us because we are beginning our doctoralisa radio hour. And in the studio, we have a group of very talented, talented individuals, including Jen Morgan, who's the wellness editor for Maine magazine, and also Chris Kast, who, who works with Brandco and Maine Magazine, Maine Home design, has many, many talents of his own. And we have John McCain, who you're not gonna hear from, but believe me, he's providing genius in the background. This segment in the future is going to be more about food and nourishment and the things that we do to nourish ourselves physically, spiritually, emotionally. But we're starting with how we're nourishing ourselves as a Dr. Lisa Radio Hour group. And I have apples in my hands, apples that I bought at the whole food market down here in Portland, and they are one of our sponsors. We will talk about food as a physical sustenance, but we're going to talk about other types of sustenance, such as spiritual and emotional sustenance. And Chris and I and Jen in spirit because she wasn't physically present. But Chris Kast and I, we were at the TEDx conference over the weekend and talk about sustenance. What do you have to say about that, Chris?

[Unidentified voice]:

Wow, that's a big, big and heady topic. It was interesting. The TEDx Dirigo that was this past weekend was mind blowing. Mind blowing in that it nourished the right side of my brain in ways I never thought could be nourished right here in Portland. The ideas and the discourse and the thoughts of what we can do here in Maine, from harnessing wind power that really theoretically and practically could power the nation, to the healing power of just simple touch.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And there was a nurse that came in and talked about work that she had done internationally, and how important that

[Unidentified voice]:

was and how we forget as human beings that really one of the best ways we can nourish ourselves and other people is just a simple touch, a gesture of healing that was pretty powerful. And even the figures of speech theater and how they use theater to bring nourishment, if you will, in life to inanimate objects. The puppets that they had there, they became alive. They came to life with their touch. So it's still now, just a week later, is resonating loudly in my head, and there's all these themes, and it just inspired me and energized me, really. And it was soulful energy, it was intellectual energy, but it was just optimistic energy of the possibilities that we have in Maine. It was pretty great.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And we were talking about this, and Jen has also been part of this conversation that when we talk about the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour, we're talking about wellness in a much broader sense. We're talking about, again, physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual. Jen writes a column for Maine Magazine and. And profiled me, I believe, in April

Genevieve Morgan:

for the inaugural wellness series.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The inaugural. Exactly. I was inaugural.

Genevieve Morgan:

Every year there'll be a wellness edition now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Oh, very nice. So you actually, Maine Magazine is all about wellness. And in fact, you're going to have an entire issue that is all about wellness, which I love. And you are on an ongoing basis, talking about how to nourish and how to nourish with locally grown people, places, foods. So the apples that I hold in my hand, we have a gala and we have a honeycrisp, and they're both from the Ricker Orchards in Auburn, bought at the Whole Foods Market. In this last issue of Maine Magazine, you talked with Alexander Petrov, who works with TEDx Dirigo. So he's working locally to bring these great ideas into the state. Also, we're soon going to be talking with Dr. Richard Maurer, who is a naturopath, and he deals with food and nutrition.

Genevieve Morgan:

And that will be next week's broadcast.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But we. But you interviewed Dr. Maurer for the September issue.

Genevieve Morgan:

Oh, yes, I did. Well, really what I did was

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

all

Genevieve Morgan:

summer long, when I was up on Mount Desert island, people would stop me in the grocery store and ask me what to eat. They knew that I was the wellness editor at Maine Magazine, and they thought that if anybody should know, I should know what they should be having for dinner. And I thought, I don't even know what I should be having for dinner. So I mulled that over for a little bit, and then I decided to ask my Friend Richard Maurer, who's a naturopath in Falmouth. What should I have for dinner? And the article is about his answer, which you can read about and we will talk about on the next Dr. Lisa Radio Hour.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I think the interesting thing for me as a physician in my own practice is that it is all very individual. And what feeds us physically is very as individual is what feeds us emotionally and intellectually. And that what we need to start doing is looking at sustenance as exceedingly personal. And making friends with our food is something that I think most of us aren't doing. In fact, I have the apples in my hand. And Chris, who's from New York, said, you mean apples grow on trees?

[Unidentified voice]:

Yeah, when I was a kid, apples came from the key food or the A and P. And you know, being in an urban area, you never connect the fact that, oh, this stuff that I'm buying in the grocery store actually grew in a natural environment. And now with corporate farming and one of the things at the TEDx thing, they were talking about how we're being impacted by corporate farming. And really, we should really pay more attention to buying local organic farms. And it's the garbage in, garbage out mentality.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, and Dr. Maurer will say that he believes that we actually do know how to eat. We just have to look to generations before us and eat more like our grandparents did before apples came in Styrofoam trays wrapped in cellophane.

[Unidentified voice]:

Yeah, exactly. It's the thing about advertising. We were victims of advertising in a certain relationship because food is advertised to you and it comes in, you can have it your way. And, well, the right way is not necessarily that way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, and I think that that's. And when you talk about making friends with your food and eating locally, it's also about choosing food you can actually recognize. So, you know, I have an apple in my hand. We can tell that an apple looks like an apple. Or, you know, I talk to my patients about eating whole grains because whole grains look like whole grains. It's not whole grain bread that's been processed to the point where you can't actually recognize it. So you make friends with your food. You choose food as you would your friends from things you recognize because you wouldn't really make friends with people that you can't recognize. And you wouldn't. Also, you want to know where it's from, and you also want to know how it makes you feel short and long term. You wouldn't be friends with somebody short term if they Made you feel sick. Well, maybe you would. That's a different show. We'll talk about that later. But long term we all have to be thinking about how the food makes us feel. And also when we're with our friends and I feel like I'm getting into a little bit of Mr. Rogers here.

[Unidentified voice]:

But you're not wearing a sweater.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When we're with our friends, I'm not wearing a sweater, but next week I'll bring one in, then I'll really go there. But when we're with our friends, our food that we want to eat mindfully and joyfully and enjoy our foods the way that we would our friends. So I know it sounds a little bit silly, but really it's very similar. I mean, if you are putting things into your body that you don't recognize or that you're not feeling friendly with, then it's the same as hanging out with people around you that are not part of your quote unquote tribe.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, I think you and I were talking about it a week or so ago about food that's packaged food that's already pre digested for us, that our body doesn't have to.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Doesn't that sound delicious?

[Unidentified voice]:

Yippee.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Right? And that's true. And I talk with my patients a lot about this. And in fact I teach a Dragon's way class. It's called Dragon's Way. It's qigong based. And qigong is a movement based. It's similar to martial arts, but it moves your chi or your energy. And nowhere in the Dragon's Way eating program is processed food because your body, it's kind of like eating baby food. If you're eating everything that's processed, it's like some big mother machine has mushed it all up for you and then you put it in your mouth and that's like being a baby again. So we should actually have to work a little bit for our food. We should actually have to eat an apple, which takes a little bit of effort because otherwise our bodies are going to do what baby bodies do. And you know, kind of.

[Unidentified voice]:

I'm not ready for depends.

Gibson Fay-Leblanc:

No.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Okay. I wasn't going to go there. But thank you Chris for that. Lightening the mood. Really appreciative of that little piece of wisdom spit up. And it's also the interesting thing is I've talked recently with people who talking about feeding ourselves and again feeding ourselves emotionally, physically, spiritually. I mean, it's about treating ourselves with kindness and compassion. I think that one of the things that happens With a lot of my patients and people that I know is that we beat up on ourselves a lot. We spend a lot of time talking about what we don't do, how we don't go running and we don't go biking. And I recently had a patient who came in and said, you mean I have your permission not to go to every yoga class there is, every running group there is, every biking night there is. I said, yes, you have my permission. Because sometimes it's a little bit. It's too much, it's overfeeding. So I don't know. Thoughts on this, Jen and Chris?

Genevieve Morgan:

I think she's talking about me.

Eva Rose Goetz:

I don't know.

Elizabeth Peavey:

It could be anyone, right?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

No.

Genevieve Morgan:

I'm only saying that because I can relate to that. Sometimes even the best activities can be exhausting if you overdo them or you overexert yourself. And just in the way you're talking about how you have to make friends with food, you have to make friends with your own body and treat your body as a friend and not something just to whip and lash at the gym.

[Unidentified voice]:

And that's a really big thing. And it's funny, making friends with food and getting to know food and full disclosure, it was a Dr. Lisa Blogg. It was earlier this fall, and it was about garlic scapes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Oh, yes, I remember this.

[Unidentified voice]:

And you had garlic scapes. And I was like, those things look great and I'd never seen one. And I cook a fair bit. I was like, okay. So I followed your advice. I went to the farmer's market and I asked the farmer about them. He said, you can do this, you can do this. I got home and I looked at them, trying to make friends with them, and had a momentary lapse of total panic.

Elizabeth Peavey:

It's like, why do I do strange things?

[Unidentified voice]:

So I called Dr. Lisa. I was like, so about these scapes. And just that ritual and that process helped me almost enjoy them more. And I introduced them to the family and they're like, what is that alien looking being? Well, it's a garlic seed. And this is what we're gonna do with it. And people got involved, we talked about it and talked about where they came from, and it was really this great thing. So I introduced one small child who basically the food can't touch and very specific eater to something new and enjoyable. So that was really. That's what this is all about, you know, discovering and nourishing and that's part of it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And it's appropriate because garlic scapes are actually the shoots from the garlic Bulbs. So they are the new beginnings. It's been great to have you both here today. You are part of this new beginning of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We honestly couldn't do this without you, without Jen Morgan and Chris cast, and couldn't do this without John and Kevin Thomas for Maine Magazine. And we're so excited to have everybody here. So thank you very much for coming in today and talking with us. Thank you for having me.

Genevieve Morgan:

Thank you, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Really great. Yes, it's been. I feel truly blessed to be amongst such a creative group of individuals, and I know that we're going to send this message out into the world and people are going to listen and join our community and become part of our tribe. And all good works will be done. I'm so happy to be joined today by Maine Magazine wellness editor Genevieve Morgan for a segment we call the Maine Magazine Minute.

Genevieve Morgan:

Hi, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Hi, Jen. How are you?

Genevieve Morgan:

I'm fine, thanks. Thanks for having me on today. I am thrilled to be here today because I am talking with Eva Goetz, who is the owner of pachoworks in Falmouth, Maine, and a wonderful healer in our state, as well as a shaman. And my column in the October issue of Maine magazine is all about energy medicine. Now, energy medicine has probably been one of the lesser known and lesser understood modalities of alternative and complementary medicine, but Eva is here to tell us a little bit more about it, what she does and how it works. Welcome.

Eva Rose Goetz:

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you, Dr. Lisa. Thank you, Genevieve. It's a pleasure. Yeah. Pleasure to be here. So how can I help?

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, I think we're all wondering when somebody talks about energy, it's a very loose term. And I know that when I talk about energy medicine, I get a lot of rolling eyeballs and cuckoo signs around people's foreheads. And I'm wondering if you can tell our listeners, what do you do and how does it work?

Eva Rose Goetz:

That's a great question. Wonderful question. Everybody I work with differently. But I want to go back to the question you're asking about energy and energy medicine. First, let's give a little bit more, maybe understanding about that and credibility. That would be great. Okay. Many people in our culture understand acupuncture now, right? Yes, I do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As Dr. Lisa, I do acupuncture in my practice.

Eva Rose Goetz:

Exactly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Firm believer.

Eva Rose Goetz:

So when you're working with those points, they're not exactly physical points. They're as much energetic points. Is that correct?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes, that's right.

Eva Rose Goetz:

That's right. So when somebody is blocked in a certain meridian. What you're going after with those needles is to clear those points. Correct. And those are different points. They can be linked to the kidney or to the heart or different ways of flow. The energy paths I'm working with are the chakras. The chakras are larger. The little points that Dr. Lisa is working with are actually chakras. They're just smaller chakras. But we have seven main chakras. We have one that's linked right around the perineum, called the first chakra to our grounding. The second chakra is right around the. I'd say about two or three fingers below the navel. And it's your creative center. It's the second chakra. And we're going really, I'm just giving very, very sketch here. The third chakra is the solar plexus, and I call it your personal sun. How are you shining in the world? And the fourth chakra is the heart chakra. How are you loving in the world? What is right? Loving. Unconditional loving. And the fifth chakra is your throat chakra. I'm sitting here pointing to my chakras as I'm going up.

Genevieve Morgan:

We're all using.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We're all using that.

Eva Rose Goetz:

And the sixth chakra is the third eye. The place, the seat of a different kind of seeing, your intuition. And everybody right now is really working on giving permission of strengthening intuition because that's so important in healing. Right. Dr. Lisa and Genevieve, you all know that. And the seventh chakra, and we're just going to go through the seven, is the crown chakra. It's the way that you're able to access spirit into your whole body. Okay, that being said, so if we start up through the chakras, the first three chakras are around the physical matter. The heart is what bridges matter to spirit. So I'm going to leave it there. It gets a lot more complicated. But what we're doing as energy healers is we're actually cleaning the pathways and clearing the pathways to your original self. Not the self that's been conditioned by society, not the self that's been conditioned parentally or through the generations. But what are those seeds, those beautiful seeds that you yourself are carrying that are just ready to shine and bloom in the world? So that's what we're doing.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, that's fascinating because as you know, we're talking about new beginnings today on our first show, on our first Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. And we're all here starting something new. So how can People use energy work to shift their perspective and start something new.

Eva Rose Goetz:

Well, one of the main locators of energy is the earth. So one of the things that you can do this is so simple is if you get up in the morning and let's say it's a beautiful morning and you can, if you can get your feet on the earth and just breathe that energy from the earth all the way up through your ankles, up through your knees, up through your thighs, all the way up through your hips, all the way up, up, up, up through the whole skeletal system, through the crown of your head. You're already intentionalizing and clearing because that's our connection, our original connection. That's something so simple or breathing. Getting up in the morning and just sitting quietly and breathing, taking five good beautiful conscious breaths is already a way of clearing the system. You don't have to sit and meditate for 20 minutes, although that's a whole different kind of meditation. But simply taking the moment to consciously clear is a beautiful way of starting the day and also strengthening your energy system. You have that daily just with breath. The minute you inhale and exhale, it's all about energy.

Genevieve Morgan:

So Eva, tell us about Pachaworks and what you're doing.

Eva Rose Goetz:

I'd say around a good 10 years ago, Pachaworks has been now working and established. And so I work with privately with clients to come in. And I work with emotional needs, physical needs, spiritual needs, working across the board. And I also have been, I've running, I've been running groups and I also have done some trainings in shamanism.

Genevieve Morgan:

And so tell me a little bit more about shamanism because I think that's another one of those words that immediately people have preconceived notions about.

Eva Rose Goetz:

Well, basically shamanism is about being in connection, connection with the planet, connection with your environment. Classically it was the one who could travel between worlds to access information that would be valuable to you in this world. I think the modern shamanic practitioner is, is so varied right now. Yes, there are those with gifts who can travel between worlds and using the journey technique so precisely to bring back exactly what's needed in order for your puzzle to fit back into place. So you have a more grounded, more whole way of looking at life that does happen. A lot of us are doing a lot of hands on work now too.

Genevieve Morgan:

When you say travel between worlds just

Eva Rose Goetz:

for our listeners out there, because that's

Genevieve Morgan:

where I think people start to think this sounds really far out and not accessible to them.

Eva Rose Goetz:

Exactly. Well, I like to bring it back down a little. Can we ground it a little?

Genevieve Morgan:

Let's ground it.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Let's go to the earth.

Eva Rose Goetz:

Ground it. And I know other shamanic practitioners out there are going to shoot me, but let's ground it. I feel that one of. We talk about the lower world, and I like to think of the lower world as how are your feet on the ground?

Genevieve Morgan:

All right, that makes sense.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah.

Eva Rose Goetz:

You know, and how are you accessing your past? All right, so we can travel down into that world. You can do it therapeutically for years in therapy. Right. You can do it acupuncturally, if that's a word. You can also do it shamanically through talking with somebody. You can. So it's really gifting the client with another story, another story that will serve them better than the old story they've been living. So that's the lower world. That's the lower world. The middle world, or the world of heart in classic shamanistic terms. Is this world the earth world? I like to look at it as the middle world is the world. As we were talking before, it's, how do you bridge loving? So if you clear out the lower stuff, if you clear out the gook and the lower stuff, and you bring that up already, how you love is very different, right? Yeah. So. And how you can access information is different. So how are you living in the world? What are the gifts you're bringing into the world? What are the gifts you're allowing to come in to you? I mean, that's huge. What do we allow in so we can give out differently? So that's the middle world, the middle world of bridging the upper world. The upper world is how are you accessing your intuition? How are you accessing your beliefs? How are you accessing the spirit, however you decide to live spirit? Because that's very important. There's so many people walking around in spiritual devastation. They don't have anything to hold on to. Faith or whatever. Faith can be simply in a tree, but it doesn't have to be as big as oh, my religion or what have you, which is really good too, for people. It feeds them. But I think if we're fed on all levels, if we're fed from the relationship level, which is your heart level, from how you're grounding and how you're feeding yourself, which is the bottom level or the lower world level, and how you're accessing spirit and feeding you on the intuitional level, then you'll be healthy. You know, that's health. So that's A really grounded way of looking at it.

Genevieve Morgan:

Shamanism. Yeah.

Eva Rose Goetz:

You know, in shamanism, it's very grounded.

Genevieve Morgan:

Now, I also know you mentioned that you were doing some healing through movement, so tell me about that.

Eva Rose Goetz:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Trace Marshall, who is an amazing journey dance person, we're just now in the very beginnings of seeing how we can use journey dance more intentionally as a clearing tool for people. So we actually can take one problem that maybe somebody's working with and actually have them dancing all the way through. Now, dance classically through the ages and in the traditions and many traditions, and mainly in the shamanic traditions, has been a way of bringing in energy and also releasing energy. So it would be a perfect way of just bringing things down in a way that a lot of people could understand it.

Genevieve Morgan:

And you're doing that at the studio?

Eva Rose Goetz:

No, right now, this is really forefront. We're just working on this right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll keep you. We'll keep you informed about that.

Genevieve Morgan:

And then tell me about 108 angels.

Eva Rose Goetz:

Oh, 108 angels. It's such a wonderful project. The other hat I wear is I'm an artist, and I wanted to infuse my healing more consciously into my art. So I created these grids of angels that individually, each one of them is. Is just beautiful and alive, but when they come together, they make something new. And I'm really seeding with 108 angels right now that individually we're terrific. But when we come together, especially around one problem, we can solve it. And I don't think enough of that is being fed into the collective right now. We're so involved in all the disparity and fighting each other, rather than saying, hey, let's take one issue. That's what 108 Angels is about. Let's a look. Take, take it. And we create something bigger than ourselves. 108 Angels is to be used in hospitals. Hopefully, this is what we're seeding as a way of not only bringing a beautiful piece of art, but also a way of helping that institution fund bring in funds, because each angel in the grid can be sold off like you would sell off a brick in the building.

Genevieve Morgan:

And why 108?

Eva Rose Goetz:

Oh, 108 is a very magic number. It's the number of both creation and destruction and transformation. There you go.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Perfect answer right there. Earth and death and rebirth.

Eva Rose Goetz:

And rebirth. And it's also the number of beads in Amala.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Very nice.

Genevieve Morgan:

Well, thank you, Eva, for coming today. It's been so interesting to talk with you and thanks so much for joining us. There are so many people doing extraordinary things in our state. Find out who and where they are every month in the latest edition of Maine Magazine and each week here on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. Our most recent edition is available at your local newsstand or contact us for a subscription@mainmag.com.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Gibson Faye LeBlanc's first collection of poems, Death of a Ventriloquist, was chosen by Lisa Russ spahr for the 2011 Vassar Miller Prize and will be published in 2012. His poems have appeared in magazines including Guernica, the New Republic and poetry northwest. In 2011, he was named one of Maine's Emerging Leaders by the Portland Press Herald and Maine Today Media for his work directing the Telling Room, which where he still occasionally teaches writing, Gibson is the poetry editor of Maine Magazine and is at work on a novel. Now, as we've been talking about new beginnings, I know you've had a lot of new beginnings in your life. You've had a series of of course you have children and you're constantly writing new things and you're doing new things and being part of the Telling Room and other things. Tell me about your understanding of the power of intention. Setting intentions to setting. Some people call it setting goals. But how do you how do you work that into your life?

Gibson Fay-Leblanc:

That's a great question. Well, over the summer I stepped down as the director of the Telling Room, and part of that was one of the things we always tell kids at the Telling Room is you have to go where the story is, you have to go where the heat is, where you feel the most passion and interest and for me, I had this novel idea that had been kind of kicking around for years, and I'd been working on it here and there. But I came to a point where I realized I was never going to be able to sit down and finish it without some a big block of time, and that I couldn't tear myself away from the work that I love at the Telling Room if I was there every single day. So, you know, I had to sort of live up to my own advice that I gave to kids, which was, you know, to make a hard choice and pull back and work on this other creative project. So. But again, in talking about intentions and goals, you know, there came a point where I realized that if I was going to ever reach this goal that I've had for a long time, I needed to do something different. Liz Gilbert is a great writer who we brought to town a few years ago, and she has a great little story that she tells about saying no.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And she's the Eat, Pray, Love.

Gibson Fay-Leblanc:

Yes. The author of Eat, Pray, Love and many other great books and just also wonderful person and great supporter of the Telling and great supporter of the Telling Room. And she talks about saying no and how it's really not easy and you expect that when you finally get up the courage to say no to things that people will respond and just pat you on the back and say good for you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, they do respond. They just don't respond in the way that you might like.

Elizabeth Peavey:

Yeah, but they don't.

Gibson Fay-Leblanc:

They sometimes are upset and it's hard. It's hard to choose the things that you're going to do. But we all have to do it. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, we really appreciate your coming in to talk to us today, Gibson. It's been great, and I think it's wonderful to know that people are out there doing what they can and using their own talents to further the talents and the opportunities of others in the world. So we appreciate your giving back.

Gibson Fay-Leblanc:

Thank you. Yeah, it's been my pleasure to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Each week we take a post from our bountiful blog and consider some of the bigger themes that we grapple with in our lives. Today's post is Recently I met with a dear friend and longtime patient who has in the past year known the blessing of a great love. This patient and her love are a bit older than me. They have each had prior marriages. They have each experienced the trials and tribulations inherent in being human. They have been party to illness and death, pain, heartache. They might have become easily bitter and wounded, but such was not their fate. Such was not their choice. They each chose instead to live and love fully, regardless of past hurts. Upon finding one another, each fit well into the life of the other. Well, but not simply. Each had had a prior life, after all, each had family and friends. Each had a background of complexities to meld with the complexity of the other's background. And recently there has been a new illness with which to contend, an unforeseen wrinkle introduced into a relatively new relationship. Some might question the fairness of this, bemoan the situation, not my patient, nor her love. Instead, they are moving forward, accepting the wrinkle, acknowledging that life will always and ever have its challenges, that most relationships, new and old, bring with them complexities. An important lesson this that ultimately it is up to us to decide only one thing. Whether we are willing to love. Whether we are willing to work for this love. Whether we are willing to risk the uncertainty involved. Whether we are willing to risk the possibility of loss. Whether we are willing to join with another despite the almost certain fragility of union. Whether we are willing to continue through, participate, submit, be present. Whether we are willing and able to be blessed. Read more of our blog posts on www.bountifulpath.com thank you for joining us today on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. Genevieve Morgan and I have appreciated spending time with you this week. We spent a lot of time talking about new beginnings and the transitions that we each face in our lives, and I encourage each of you to spend a moment thinking about your life and the patterns in your life that continue to make sense for you, as well as the patterns in your life that no longer make sense. This is Dr. Lisa wishing you a bountiful life.