She Quit at 16 and Came Back for Joy

What if the bravest way to win is to skate for joy instead of judgment? We sat down with hearts still buzzing after watching Alysa Liu light up the ice, and we followed that thread into a bigger conversation about self-worth, presence, and success without self-betrayal. Her story of leaving at 16, returning for the love of the feeling, and then radiating ease on the world’s biggest stage cracked something open for us. 

We trace a cultural pivot away from grind-and-ache ambition toward autonomy and aliveness. From Simone Biles’ boundary-setting to memories of Kerri Strug pushing through a broken ankle, we ask what we celebrate and why. Liu’s calm in the kiss-and-cry, her choice to train and live on her terms, and the way her joy moved a crowd highlight a powerful truth: technique impresses, but presence transmits. That transmission is available to all of us, whether we’re building a business, raising kids, making art, or healing our relationship with money.

If you’re ready to trade perfection for presence and make your life your own, press play. Then tell us: what’s one thing you’ll do this week for the sheer joy of how it feels? Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a spark, and leave a review to help more listeners find the show.

Transcript

Friendship And Grounding

Linda 0:02

Hello and welcome to episode seven, season five of the Woman Uncaged Podcast. My name is Linda Katz, and I'm here with one of my beloved besties and co-conspirators in all things women's liberation in the best possible way, Ms. Laura Gates Lupton. And I'm just so grateful to have Laura as one of my dearest friends. She is just um such a powerhouse, but also such a gentle, kind spirit and soul who really can, you know, we've said this before in the intros, but one of those wonderful and oftentimes rare friendships where you can bring your celebrations, where you can bring your difficulties, your tears, your rage about the state of the world, um, where nothing is off limits. And it's just such uh such a deep pleasure to be known in that way and to be able to have such a wonderful and dear friend in my life. So it's so wonderful to be here with you today, as always, Laura. Thank you, my dear Linda. Um, well, right back at you. I am always so grateful for all the things that we share. And I literally think about it multiple times a week. This, you know, because we we talk here, obviously, but we also box each other lots and just quite frequently all the things that we share from you know, really profound, important, vulnerable things that you share with me and that you're willing to hear from me, and then the really silly, mundane, sometimes just like, oh my God, I can't believe this person did this, you know, and then get it over with and out. And I just love that we can share all of that. And I love how you in particular just the way you reflect back to me, such, you know. I mean, you listen so deeply, but also you you are so helpful and that you reflect things back to me that I forget about myself. And I remember very well that when I was your client, you did the same. And it's very meaningful, and you're so good at that. You're so good at hearing all of this random stuff and bringing it back to something really important and meaningful and deep. And that's part of why it's such a joy to be your friend and to have you in my life. So thank you, Linda. Thank you. And what are we going to be talking about today? Well, speaking of joy, we're gonna talk about, and I'm sure everybody knows something about this by now, but we're gonna talk about Alyssa Liu. Liu, Liu? Liu, I think. Liu, yes, I think so too. Um, yeah, I think a lot of people are saying it wrong. But anyway, I watched the Olympics um with my partner, and not a lot of them, but what we could see, you know, um not having cable TV. But getting to see her skate, I have followed women's skating over the years, off and on, for a very long time. Um, and getting to see this incredible woman who, you know, she was a figure skater who was doing extremely well by anybody's measure in her teens. And, you know, like won her first competition, I think, when she was like 12 or 14, something like that. And then she was 16, was just doing amazing. But it wasn't for her, it had taken over her life and it wasn't giving her life. And so she dropped out at 16. She retired. She retired at 16, and now she's 20. And about a year ago, she decided to come back into skating. So she had it hadn't even been a full year. And here she is at the Olympics, just skating her heart out and talking about how, you know, I don't skate to win, I skate to ex to put my art out in front of people. This is my art. And she just had so much joy radiating out of herself as she skated that even people who normally don't talk about these things are talking about it. Yeah. And so we just want to talk about her today a little bit and just how she that applies and how we can find that for ourselves too. How does how does this apply to us in our own everyday lives? Yeah. Yeah. I rem I mean I was deeply moved. Me too. I I mean, I I've always enjoyed figure skating, like tangentially, you know, but this was I was invested. And there was something, and when I went on social media and afterwards, it was just everywhere. It was all over my feed, people um just also being like having a very visceral, emotional reaction to her joy and to her sense of freedom in her own body and her own experience. And it really felt like this fuck that, like more of that. And I just kept thinking also to myself, because we oftentimes hear, you know, like in kind of more standard media, you know, about all the things about Gen Z and Gen Alpha, and they're too much on their phone, and they're too this and they're to that. And I watched these Olympics and I was like, man, the kids are all right. You know, like they are bringing in these new energies that I don't think we've really seen. You know, I think of Simone Biles a few years ago making that choice when she was having the twisties to step away to protect herself. Yes. And again, this is something like it gives me goosebumps. This is something that we were not seeing before, where there has been this like, I am, I'm gonna treat myself and my body as a commodity, as something that needs to be, you know, constantly worked at and pushed through the pain. I think of, you know, from when I was fairly young, I think it was in the early 90s, Carrie Strug, where, you know, landing on her broken ankle at the Olympics, and you contrast that image, which was so celebrated too. And if we never questioned as a culture, like, is this is this something to be celebrated? You know, like that perseverance, yes, of course. But I've thought about sacrifice so many times over the years. And you know, it's one of those moments you remember if you were watching, it's just like, oh my god. Yeah, because she couldn't she had to land on one freaking foot. Like it was well, she had to land on both, but she couldn't really hit put the up foot down. I mean, she landed with a broken ankle, yeah. And it's just I think what that shows us too is this narrative arc and what we are valuing and what we're kind of all collectively tapping into is changing. And I think that was like one of these moments I also saw, you know, I can't remember um the woman who came in third. She was 17, she was from Japan. And when she won the bronze and Alyssa won the gold, there was just this dual celebration.

SPEAKER_02 7:05

Yes.

A New Athletic Ethic

Linda 7:05

And like this hug and just the joy that was shared. And it wasn't this like cutthroat, you know, it was it was collaboration. It was yeah, that moment that like the achievements that were shared between these these women that that were there to compete, but it was like a different energy altogether. You know, I think again of like going back to the my younger years, like the Tanya Harding and I was thinking about that too. What's her name? Oh, Nancy Kerrigan. Nancy Kerrigan, you know, where like the whole like swatting the knee out, you know, like such a different vibe. Like such, and I saw also somebody saying, like, in a joy-starved world, like how much we all needed this. Yes, yeah, and I felt that so deeply in my bones. Me too. I also just really loved how Alyssa just was doing it her own way that she said, I don't diet. I eat what I want to eat, I sleep when I want to sleep, I stay up late sometimes. Yeah, you know, she's like training in the way that she wanted to train. And you know, and just radiating that, like just you know, she didn't look like a skin and bones young woman out there. She looked like a healthy, strong, beautiful skater. Yes. And it was such a joy just to see somebody do that on her own terms. And then when she's sitting in the kiss and cry, she's like not nervous, she's looking around, she's laughing with people, just waiting for the scores. You see other people sitting there and they look so scared and so nervous, like so much is riding on it. For her, she's just like, that's fun, you know, we'll see what happens. Yeah, I love that. I do too. And I feel like she's become-I mean, she's such an emblem in human form of so many of the things that we talk about on this podcast, around what it means to be uncaged, giving yourself permission to stop doing something if it no longer feels resonant for you, feeling the freedom to be able to come back if you want to come back and do it in a different way. That sense of self-motivation. I think that piece too, like you were saying, around not being controlled by another person, not having the training schedule being controlled by someone else, not having your diet and all these other pieces that were so carefully being managed for her as a young woman and girl, to be able to find that, like, also I'm coming back to the sport and I'm doing it for me. Like, I you can feel that, you know, it's like one of the things that I felt in terms of with art and just that recovering from the good girl, where we do so much for the praise and we fear the criticism. You know, this is like any kind of sport, is especially something like this where you're being judged on your performance rather than, you know, it's not like you how many pucks you put in the net or whatnot. Right. Or your time, or yeah, it's like that it's so easy to let it become about the metal and to let it become about the praise or the fear of the criticism. And what you see here is somebody who embodies the freedom that can be on the side of, I'm doing this because I want to do it. I'm doing this as like my own inner motivation that's telling me that I want to do this, I want to share this art that I love so much with you. I she commanded that crowd, you know, just like, and you're transfixed by it. Like I was transfixed by it. It was just and it's so amazing to see somebody, I think, embody so many of the things that we talk about, and you're like, wait, that's it. Like, here's somebody who's actually living it, and you can see like more of that. Like, what if we all radiated that kind of a joy through our being with what we were doing? Yeah.

unknown 11:13

Yeah.

Doing It On Her Own Terms

Linda 11:14

I mean, that's why I left you the boxer message about it because we hadn't talked about whether you were watching the Olympics or not. So I was like, Oh, I wonder if Linda saw this because I thought of you the whole time I was watching it. I was like, this is what we've been talking about. Yes. And right, like you said, in human form. And I kept, she could remind me of homeschooled kids that I had known. Um, because you know, kids who hadn't been in the school system and hadn't had a lot of that joy of learning beaten out of them, you know, metaphorically speaking. Um, she and I so I kept kind of forgetting that I don't know that about her. I don't know anything about her history because I just kept thinking of her as like a homeschooled kid. Because yeah, so many of the kids in our community, when my kids were growing up in homeschooled, had that same kind of joy, like the joy of learning and doing things and not caring so much about grades because they weren't used to being graded.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

Yeah.

Uncaging From Perfection

Linda 12:01

So, you know, it's just it's so different from when you hang out in a school, which I was a school social worker for a long time. So I well remember what that's like. Um, but that that kept coming up for me too, watching her perform. Yeah. And that that freedom to be able to come from one's own self, like the love of learning, the love of improving at something that you really enjoy, just for your own sake when you're not doing it for for someone else, when you're not doing it for a grade, when you're not doing it for the praise. Right. The love of sharing it, but sharing it on your own terms. No, yes, you know. I'm not doing it's a it's subtle, but it's it's such a different energy than I'm doing it because I'm gonna do it perfectly. Also, I think that was one of the pieces that really jumped out at me was her saying, like, oh, I mean, I could fall every jump and you know, so be it. Like, that's not it's not gonna be the end of the world for me if that were to happen. Like, I'm just gonna go out there and enjoy myself and offer, you know, what I can and offer myself in this moment to this performance. And I think that so often when we're focusing on the end result, it's we get stuck in those loops of perfection, we get tight. And it's easy, easier, I would say, to see with somebody who is like a pro-athlete or you know, such a kind of athlete artist combo. But it's at least for me, that's the same kind of energy that I can experience in my own life as when I start to get too focused on like, am I doing it right? Even something as stupid as like driving a car, you know, things that become automatic and muscle memory. When you get into your own head about it, all of a sudden you're like, uh, what what what do I do? Like, I don't know what's happening. You know, I feel like I have like giant hands. And it's um, yeah, so it's just it's just fascinating. It's so it was just so, so inspiring. So inspiring. Yeah, it's very inspiring. Um, so how would you like if you had a client who came to you and was like, I want more of that in my life, well, where would you want them to, how would you help them to start or to to look at that? I would probably invite them to go back into something that they loved to do as a child and you know, explore if there's anything still there from that and to do it outside of uh a world of grading or praise or criticism or anything like that. You know, I remember when I did the um in 2021, I had a program that was called Uncage the Wildness Within. And one of the there were four kind of modules, if you will, and one of them was art because I love art. And I remember telling a family of member of mine that there's, you know, we do things like art projects, but there's no praise or criticism. And this person was like, but then how will people know if they're getting better? You know, like that was there, it was always this point of like improvement and rather than the joy in the moment. And I think that when we can begin to tap into things like enjoyment that exists outside of those frameworks, I think we can help to remember those sacred, soulful aspects of ourselves that were often fully intact when we were children. If we were, you know, if we were lucky to have, you know, of course, there have to be certain circumstances that are present. And if we were lucky enough to have those, I would say many of us, probably before we, you know, went into school or took school very seriously, or you know, we were told to take it seriously. We're told to take it seriously. There are probably things that we just did naturally that we love to do that was not about, yeah, getting a gold star. And so refining that energy, however, whatever that may mean, whether it's like, oh, I'm gonna go ice skate or I'm gonna go for you know a walk in the park or whatever it is that brings you joy that isn't attached to this end goal. Um, because it's real easy to let that take over. I mean, I see that in KOIA, where it's like the the point of KOIA is just to be present in the moment and to listen to your body. And there's no, there's nothing, it's not about burning calories or getting your heart rate up, you know. But people want to make it about that. They want to make it about some kind of something else, some kind of improvement that we're doing to ourselves rather than a gift of presence that we're giving ourselves. What would you say? Love to hear your thoughts. Good question. Um, I'm so caught up in listening to you. I wasn't thinking about what I would say. It's because you're a good listener.

unknown 16:51

Well, thank you.

Linda 16:53

I think I would also, I love your suggestions. I think they're great. I think I would look for places where there's just joy in everyday things. Um, so whether that's like cooking a meal and enjoying the process or lounging about on the couch on a Sunday morning, or you know, just something where it's like kind of what you said, it's not attached to any particular outcome. I mean, cooking a meal is, but but you know, if you're just enjoying the process, if you're like enjoying the smell of the food, if you're enjoying chopping things, if you're enjoying sort of the rhythmic aspect to stirring or whatever. Um, I happen to like cooking, so that's why that comes up for me. Um, or just, you know, when you're doing something that just generally feels good for you. Like even sometimes when I'm doing work, if I sit in the chair over in the sun and I feel the sun, it feels good to me, like just things like that, where it's like just things you're doing that don't have a particular outcome other than to please you, other than that feel good to you. I think paying attention to those things, because I think we often have them, but we miss them because we're so busy trying to get from A to B and also multitasking and all these things that we're told we're supposed to do. So I think that's part of it. Also, I would want to talk about how our sense of worth gets so tied up in what we're producing and you know, and and and what we're what we're what we have to show for it, basically, what we have to show for ourselves, which I think is also highly problematic. And one of the things I loved about her was that it was so clear that her sense of worth was not tied up in how she skates.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Yes.

Linda 18:35

That hits the nail on the head. It's sourced for somewhere deeper. Yeah. And therefore, there's this like it almost seems like out, like otherworldly level of centeredness and you know, just coming from the center of herself. Yeah, and freedom.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Yeah.

Practicing Joy In Daily Life

Worth Beyond Performance

Presence That Moves Us

Linda 18:57

Because it doesn't matter how she does. Like she's totally free to do whatever the hell happens out there on the ice because she already knows her worth. I'm just like I'm floored because of course, and it's like my mind immediately goes to oh my gosh, how wonderful. How wonderful that would be, and how wonderful it would be if we could live in a world where that was true for more people. Yeah, no, I you know, obviously I work with women around money, and the struggles women have with money are directly related to their sense of self-worth. And it and it it's a circle lobe, you know. So it's like if you make some progress with the money and you're working with somebody on it so that you're growing your identity at the same time. It's not just about the numbers, then your sense of self also blossoms and grows. And then the money gets easier and then you know it goes back and forth. It's not one or the other. Um, I know I've read a couple of things where people have said, you know, if you grow your sense of self-worth automatically you get better with money. I don't see that. I've never seen that. It's it's both. You have to kind of address both, but it's sort of in a give and take flow back and forth. It's not like a linear thing. Does that make sense? It does, yeah. And it's like in this case, we could substitute money with ice skating. Right. You know, like that sense that just growing your sense of self-worth isn't enough to make you great at ice skating. Right. Like she needed to come back and start training and falling and falling and jumping and training. But when when it was coming from a different energy that was not from this, I need to prove myself or my entire sense of being is tied up in how and if I perform in this one four-minute moment. Right. Then you can also see like exactly what you described with money, which is that then the skating flowed more freely. Like the it, there was just, it was the freedom in her body. There was a flexibility with it. And I think that many of us, I can at least speak for myself, when I do have those moments, whatever it is, it's like I can approach the whatever I'm doing with with a different I keep using the word energy, but from a different place. Yep. Yeah. And well, and one of the things she said was the reason she went back to skating is because she wanted the feeling that it gave her. She talked about going on that skiing trip with friends and that the rush of flying down the mountain and how she was like, Oh, yeah, the last time I had that one was I was skating. And then she's like, Oh, I'd like to have that again. So her motivation was about the feeling that it gave her, not prestige, not praise, not Linda's having a freak out on the other side of the screen. I'm like, yeah, yes, yes. Again, living embodiment of so many of the things that we've spoken about. Yes. Yeah, it's not how it looks to others, it's how it's how it feels to her. And it just it happens to look amazing to the rest of us too. We're lucky to get to go along on this ride that she's on. She's clearly enjoying. And the joy that she's radiating. You know, but all of that was so internal. That's the part that kind of blew me away, is that so much of what we all appreciated was really her internal experience. It wasn't just her technique on the ice. No. No. It invited it invited us into a different way of being, I think. And invited us into a shared space of joy and freedom. And um, you know, on the the heels of the the Chinese New Year, the lunar new year, and shifting into the fire horse, the year of the fire horse. There's just there just felt like that energy that she was inviting us into. And to know that that's possible for all of us, in whatever, maybe not with ice skating, obviously. I took ice skating in college and I was amazing until they told us we had to skate backwards and then I was done. You're like, I couldn't go anywhere. I was just standing on the ice. It did make me want to be like, I want to strap on some ice skates and see how this goes. Me too, but I have memories of what that class was like. There was one girl in the class that was skating circles around the rest of us, and she was always showing off. At one point, one of the boys leaned over to me and said, She's trying to get a P plus because the class is past failed. Those are my memories of ice skating. But I agree with you. I think we we all have the possibility of finding that and the things that matter to us. It could be anything, it could be parenting, it could be walking, it could be driving, it could be reading, it could be whatever it is, but finding things that light you up internally and enjoying them for how they make you feel, not necessarily how it looks to anybody else. No. Because even if she hadn't like nailed all the technical parts of the performance, I think we still would have felt some of that that same energy, you know. Like it was it wasn't about a perfect, you know, double axle or whatever, you know, it was it was about something else that that I think many people watching it were like, more of that, please. Yeah. I've seen this in the world of dance when my daughter was a dancer. Um, the dancers who were having clearly having fun up there were such a joy to watch, whether they were the most technically skilled or not. Often they were were quite good, in part because they're enjoying it so much. They're putting all this effort, you know, like their energy is so big that it's like, you know, it shows up in the dance, but not necessarily the best up there. You know, you could have a really technically good dancer who just was concentrating so hard that they almost look like they weren't actually there. They're not nearly as fun to watch as the ones who are really in it. Yeah. Well, there's also there's this, it's I mean, if that's why I use the word like otherworldly, it feels like there's that moment where when the body, like there's been so much work, right? I don't want to minimize, like, there's been so much work on the technique and you know, all of those things, but then in the moment and in that sense of presence and openness, it's like something else can come through that is not about the technique. It's like that divine energy that just comes flowing in and through and beams out through your body, through your face, through just your sheer presence and being. And I think those are the moments that we all end up kind of, you know, jaw on the floor, tears in our eyes, goosebumps on the skin, because we know that we've been in the presence of something that is deeply moving to us. And somebody can be extremely technically proficient and not move you. Yes. But it's the move being moved that is just like one of the freaking pleasures of being alive, in my opinion. Oh, yeah. I mean, even just as we've been talking about it, I got tears coming up because just I'm remembering what it was like to see her and just it's just lovely to see somebody so alive.

unknown 26:33

Yes.

Realness Over Homogenization

Linda 26:34

You know, she was so alive and she was so alive in front of all of us. You like you got this sense that she was holding nothing back. Yeah, yeah. And how often do we see that in people anymore? I mean, you see it in young kids all the time, but in adults, how often do you see that? Far too rarely. That spark, that spark of aliveness, of vitality, of joy, of presence that is just mesmerizing. And I think when we see it in another, for me, it's like you know, we have the mirror neurons, so we feel it in ourselves too. We're like, you know, that it's it's this reminder of again what is possible. What is possible for all of us, yes, to have those moments of presence and aliveness, and they may they don't have to be on an Olympic stage for some of us, like you were saying, it might be like chasing that like that adrenaline, that sense of aliveness that comes through challenge, or it might be just that like I'm reading a really good book, I'm sitting in the sun, and there's just this like presence that is uh, it just it's all the things that make life worth living, and remind us of what a joy and what a privilege it is to be here. Yeah. Well, I feel like we've talked about this ourselves. I don't know if we've talked about on the podcast, but podcast does that for us, right? It's like we get a chance to connect with each other and talk with each other. And we love that people are listening. That's really fun to see the numbers grow, but that's not necessarily why we're doing this. It's like we're doing it because we love to have these conversations and we want to connect with other people who are interested in these same things that we're interested in. It's like for the it's really for the pure joy of it. It's not not because we're trying to get somewhere. No, and I think that's why it's been so joyful and how so often we're like, man, I want more of my life to feel like this. I want more of like my quote unquote work to feel like this because it doesn't feel like work at all. It's just it is about connection and joy. And um the other stuff is like it's like you said, it's nice, but it's not that's never been the goal. It's never been this like we're gonna strategize on how we do this and like right because we've done no strategy. We've done zero strategy. I don't know if everyone can tell that we have no strategy. We just we hit record and we're like, and here we go. But I think that's the thing, right? Is I think we want more and more of that. Yes. And I think what you see too is like sometimes that can be messy and human, and sometimes it can be really polished and beautiful. And like it doesn't matter which one it is, you know, like it doesn't that's what the point was. The you know, if she had fallen on her ass, it wouldn't matter. It's like because it wasn't about that, it's just about the presence and the moment and being real with one another. Yes. Yeah, which I think I wish it weren't true, but I feel like there are so many forces that don't want us to be real. And it seems like yeah, or or very alive, it's true. And and they're they're growing. Those those forces are growing. The the the AI movement, you know, this force from us to all look more alike, um, with these weird faces that they plastic surgery and all of that stuff, just all the ways in which we're meant to be more productive all the time and yeah, to be using tools to for efficiency. And it's just it's so not human. And there's also just that piece around individuality. You know, like we that article that went around a while ago, and I can't even remember now what it was, but it was it was basically, I think you sent it to me. Tell me if I'm wrong, um, about like how you can only choose so many colors for cars now. Like they only have they're only making so many colors now. And when I was I had an orange car in high school, you know, I mean the high school college. And back when I was a kid, there were all kinds of colors for cars, and you just don't see as many now. It's all like the palettes are getting smaller, like all those kinds of things that you know that I find really disturbing in general. But it's when you look at her, for example, she has her very much her own sense of style, yeah, and she didn't care what anybody else thinks. It's just like this is me. She's just being, she's just fully 100% being her.

SPEAKER_02 31:21

Yeah.

Linda 31:21

And how refreshing it is to see somebody confidently embodying herself in that way. But but there's so many forces telling us not to. Oh yeah. Yeah. And it's uh, I think that makes it difficult. It can make it difficult to do that without hardening, like without you know, forming kind of a protective shell as part of you know, becoming our authentic selves, is there can be a little bit of like a what are you trying to like, you know, like are you coming at me? You know, because understandably, because of exactly what you were just saying, that there are these forces. Like me and my husband joke that before you sell your house in our neighborhood, you better freaking paint it white. Like every frickin' house that has gone on sale is either white or gray. Oh god. And they've all been painted. You know, there are these in houses that are from the 70s, they have these different colors of brick, and all of them are starting to look exactly the same with that San Sarah font with the, you know, for the numbers of the house. Like I hate that. I it's just it's so crushing. And I think, you know, but apparently that's what sells, you know, our next door neighbors. They painted the house white and it's it's sold pretty quickly. It's like people it and in that article, and I'm I'll see if I can find it for the show notes. I'm not sure if I can, but there was a um, I remember them, or maybe it was a a friend of mine who was saying that with millennials, like basically I'm an elder millennial, the millennial generation, a lot of times they'll buy a home and they won't put up any art, they won't paint any rooms because it's all for it's like the exact opposite of what we're talking about. It's all for resale value. So every decision is made with the next person who's gonna live there in mind. And are you gonna be able to sell this place? But you're not really living there, you're not living in it, you're never making it your own. And it's like, how often do we also do that to our lives in general? And to our bodies and to our fashion and our expression and what we're doing in the world. It's like, how often do we really make our lives our own? Great question. I mean, that's I feel like that's been my whole life is wanting to help people make their lives their own.

unknown 33:45

Yeah.

Make Your Life Your Own

Results Without Sacrifice

Linda 33:47

One of my favorite books actually is up on the bookshelf over there. I was looking at it the other day. I I don't even know when I got it. I must was probably in college, but it's called Composing a Life. And that's what it was about. And I was, I I remember getting it and reading it, and I'd understood like probably 10% of it at the time, but I wanted so desperately to understand it because I love the idea of being able to create your own life, something that's just yours that's not like anybody else's. Yeah. It does feel harder now. Yeah. And I think there's just there's there's so many forces, there's so much, you know, the internet and social media and the phones and all of these things, you know, that have definitely had benefits to them. But I think that there can they can also be this engine of homogenization. And not to say that there wasn't that pressure to conform back in the day, you know. That I'm sure, like, look at the 1950s. I was just gonna say the same thing. It's like that that was the same then too. And now it's just taking a slightly different form. Yeah. That, but there is still this kind of um, and I think there's that's part of part of being human as we go through these stages of wanting to belong, showing up as conforming without realizing that that's you know, we sacrifice true belonging in the process because we're not actually there. But I think that might be a, you know, maybe that's a developmental phase. I think the problem is just that we we're not growing out of it anymore. You know, like there's we don't we don't have those older women who are showing us a different that a different way is possible where we we see less and less of them. We see more older women doing the same things, doing the same plastic surgeries, like, you know, same fillers, same things to look younger rather than as I age, let me just get weirder and weirder because I'm getting more and more of myself. And so to somebody else, it's gonna look weird because I don't look like everyone else. I don't act like everyone else, and that's the freaking joy of it. Yeah, there's a great line in a novel in the Mitford series, which I read a very long time ago. But the there's a minister and he has a secretary's hat for a long time, and he comes in one day and she's dyed her hair red and he says, Emma, is that you? And she said, This is more me than you've seen in a long time. And I love that. I think about it all the time because it's yeah, that I want that. You know, yes. Uh-huh. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks, you know. It's like find the things that are you, you know, find the things that really represent you. And even if you don't know why, sometimes you see something and you just really love it, you know. I and you don't have to know why. No, it doesn't have to be this justification. It could just be like, this sparks to borrow the Marie Kondo, this sparks joy. This sparks joy in my body and my heart. And yeah. Yeah, and that could be anything, it could be a coffee mug, it could be an earring, it could be clothing, it could be a book, it could be a pillow, it could be anything. But I think bringing those things into your life when you find them without questioning them, you know, like some whatever for whatever reason, this thing resonates with me, or this this routine resonates with me, or this way of being resonates with me. And so therefore, I'm gonna cultivate more of it in my life. Even if it doesn't fit, right? Like I think that with what you have already, I can imagine, I think, yeah, as a metaphor, it's like, oh, I bought this really vibrant shirt, or you know, whatever it is, but it's like I have nothing else that will go with it. And so often we talk ourselves out of the emergent and the new that wants to come in because we're like, well, it doesn't really fit with the old me. And it's like, well, of course it's not going to. But you can build around the new thing that's coming in, right? Like we cut ourselves off so frequently and easily from like, oh, well, that doesn't really go. Like, or you know, buying something for your house, and it's like, oh, but where is that gonna go? It doesn't quite fit with my aesthetic, but I just love this item. Oh no, I'm not gonna do that, you know, where it's like instead it becomes not consumerist, but it becomes symbolic. It becomes symbolic of the the fool energy, if you will, from the tarot of the new and the emergent that is breaking through. Yeah, and I I think that we can get so caught up in what's practical as opposed to what's real. You know, and we're not here to be practical. We really aren't. And I feel like that's so much of what we're taught, you know, it's the productivity, the efficiency, the practicality, all of that is, you know, the perfectionism, it's all part of that. But that's not what we're here for. We're here for the connection, we're here to be real, we're here for the messiness, we're here for the inconvenience, we're here to live. Yes, essentially. But how many of us can really say that we're fully living?

SPEAKER_02 38:57

Yeah.

Choosing Aliveness

Linda 38:58

When you talk about it in that way. Yeah. I think that's such a good point. It's and it kind of brings it back around to what we were saying. Like so often, that just joy of aliveness that we see in small children. I think practicality is part of what beats it out of us. Because those wild joys usually aren't very practical. Like they're not the ones that are like, oh, that's gonna look real good on paper. And then we wonder why we get bored with our lives and why we lose that spark. But it's because there is, again, it's like we collude with this system that says that this is what it means to be good and this is the only way to do things. And I think that the fact that Alyssa Liu won gold also shows you that, like, there are more, there's more than one way to do this. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? It's like of course it would have been fine if she didn't end up on the podium and it would have still been as inspiring to see. But there is also something about that, like, oh, the practical, very managed way that we've been taught that you need to do it if you want to succeed. You can do it and be some weird, wily old woman who, like, you know, doesn't, you know, do have any impact whatsoever. But what she showed us was that, like, oh, you can do it your own way. You can actually be self-motivated, you can stay up late when you want to, you can eat what you want to, you can go trek to Nepal, you can take breaks, and you can still freaking do it. You can still succeed, you can still be relevant and all of these things. Like, it just shows us that there's more than one way of doing this thing. Yeah, well, and also the it was the first time that the women have won gold since what, like 2002, something like that? Like before since before she was born. She was born in 2005. So it also speaks to that too, is that the old way wasn't working. Yeah, right. And then this new vibrancy shows up and it just takes over. So there's that piece too. When you want to, if you want to talk about like results, you know, I don't think it's about the results necessarily, but there is that piece as well that that shows up there. Because I think we've been taught the split, right? It's we've been we've been taught that you can you can do it that way, but then you won't get the results. Like you'll basically, it's like the starving artist story. It feels related to that, right? Or you can do it the practical, kind of machine-like way if you want to succeed. And we feel like you have to sacrifice one for the other, right? And it again, it was like she didn't sacrifice anything. Right.

unknown 41:38

Right.

Linda 41:38

We're so told, like, be a graphic artist. It's close, you'll still be doing art, but you can make some money, right? Instead of like painting your genius. Yes, yeah, not the same. I will tell all the children, not the same. Don't buy into that shit. It is not true. Turns out making graphic design and schlocking shit you don't believe in not does not feel the same as like putting your soul on canvas, strangely enough. And often probably for people and causes you don't believe in, you know, it's like things you know that are completely out of alignment.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

Yep.

Linda 42:13

Um, but that's the practical approach. And it's very rare that you look at a piece of graphic design and you're like blown away.

unknown 42:21

No. Right.

Linda 42:22

But you know, I went to a a local art show the other night and I was just blown away by some of the pieces. And these are like, you know, people who have other jobs, but they're doing art on the side, and it's just some of it was so breathtakingly beautiful. Like the talent was astonishing, and like, and it just makes you wonder. I hope the person is I gets to do it enough, you know. I hope that their life allows for them to get to do this enough because clearly there's there's something here.

SPEAKER_02 42:49

Yeah.

An Invitation To Carry This Forward

Linda 42:50

Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Uh thank you, Alyssa Liu, for like welcoming in and giving us a visual, tangible example of so much of what we're talking about and so much of what we want to move towards. And it's just so fucking inspiring to see it in the body of a young woman who's just living it. It just it really just filled me with hope. It filled me with joy, it filled me with hope. I was like, this, yes, please. Oh, thank you. Same here. Just her her aliveness alone was just breathtaking and astonishing. And it's kind of sad that it is in a way, but at the same time, so unusual. I know. I'm gonna go for the joy part though, of just like her hutzbah and getting out there and really being herself was just so inspiring. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Yay, listen, congratulations on the gold, too. Yes. Oh, well, this is such a joyful conversation. As we had a sneaking suspicion that it would be. And we would love to hear from our beloved listeners to hear, you know, did you watch the Olympics? Did you see this performance? How, you know, did you feel as moved by it as we did?

SPEAKER_02 44:14

And what does it mean for you?

Linda 44:17

Yeah, how can we all carry a bit more of that energy with us through 2026 and beyond? And beyond, yeah. Boy. We and we need to right now. I think we really need to in this culture and with all the things that are happening and all the ways that they're trying to shut us down. Let's not let them, let's, let's come alive. Yes. Yes. Yes. Ah, such a joy as always, Laura. Thank you, Linda. Absolutely. All right. Until next time.