Noticing With Natalie

I Still Get Nervous About Putting Myself Out There + What Came Up As I Made This Podcast [S1 E4]

• Natalie Ross • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Natalie shares doubts and fears that came with creating and publishing this podcast, Noticing With Natalie, despite having years of experience putting herself out there.

In this episode she explores:

  • How the capacity for being seen does not happen overnight
  • How the final product does not always reflect the challenges and turmoil that go into putting something into the world
  • Some of Natalie’s personal internal stories that tried to shut her down
  • How the edge of nervousness and excitement can be a place of enormous healing and creativity
  • How the beauty and the pain of existence are inseparable parts of the whole
  • A recent dream of Natalie’s that 

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Mentioned in this episode:

  • Natalie learned the term nervouscited from Kat HoSoo Lee, who learned it from Danielle Obinger. Turns out, after talking to Danielle, that it's from My Little Pony! 

This episode of Noticing With Natalie was co-created by Natalie Ross and spirit. It was recorded and presented/channeled by Natalie Ross. 

The show notes were written and the transcript edited by Leandra Maria Gil.

Natalie is broadcasting from the land of the Awaswas, Amah Mutsun and Ohlone peoples in what is known as Santa Cruz, CA

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Listen to my other podcast about connecting with nature and intuition:
Earth Speak with Natalie Ross and Friends

Hello. What's up dear weird one, changemaker, whatever you identify as. Hello, hello. Welcome to Noticing with Natalie. This is a podcast where I help witchy weirdos share their expansive, big, beautiful, weird, intangible, tangible, everything gifts with the world. I'm Natalie Ross, I'm your hostess and fellow Earth loving animist. I hope that what I share here helps you feel more confident about trusting what you're noticing, and yourself and around you, in your relationships, as you engage with the seen and unseen worlds, so you can tap into more connection, creativity, community, and aliveness. Nothing I say or do here is meant to override your own best knowing of what's right or true for you. Please take what works, trust yourself and welcome to the conversation. You can hop on over to natalie.net to sign up for my free newsletter, where I talk about more stuff around like how to channel the expansiveness of your gifts into tangible offers and put them out into the world, or how my experience making friends with crows is really parallel to how I think marketing can be when we root it in genuine connection. I'm coming to you from the land of the Awaswas, Ohlone and Ahma Mutsun peoples in Santa Cruz California. If you're into it, I now invite you to join me in invoking your helping spirits. You can repeat after me or use your own words or completely opt out if this is not your thing. You do you. I welcome my well ancestors. I welcomed my spirit guides and helpers. I welcome the earth, air, fire and water. I welcome the benevolent spirits of the land I'm on. I welcome the divine. I welcome the little people. And I welcome the spirits of this podcast to protect, guide, and inspire me today. I ask for support that I may share exactly what people most need to hear in ways that help reweave our whole beings into this living web of wisdom with grace and ease. So be it.

Thank you for. . . that's you, listener. . . thank you for listening to this season and learning a bit about me. I hope it will help you discern for yourself whether I am someone who you feel safe with, who can assist you, inspire you, guide or  coconspire with you on your journey, and I trust you to discern what's right for you. I am putting myself out there not to prove myself, not to convince anyone of anything, but to offer information and expression that may help others notice what feels alive and aligned, or misaligned, to them so they may trust themselves as they choose to move into or out of relationship with others. As I wrap up the season, I thought it would be fun, and illuminating perhaps, to share about my own nervousness around creating this podcast and putting myself out there. Now even with all the healing and experience I have putting myself out there, this is still activating. This. . .  Yeah, I definitely did not get here overnight. To be able to share about myself like this or speak my voice or have enough capacity to handle the intensity or activation or anxiety that's arising, it's been years and years in the making. Years of speaking my truth to myself, in the privacy of my own journals, in the privacy of my conversations with spirit, speaking my truth in therapy, speaking my truth, sharing myself, revealing myself in small circles, with my friends and family, and witnessing others speak their truths publicly and privately and be witnessed in a more full spectrum of themselves. And revealing myself, allowing myself to be seen and witnessed by others, and noticing how they still cared and valued me as a person and still want it to be in connection and relationship with me, even as I revealed the not so pretty and controversial parts has been incredibly healing, and it's a path that's always unfolding. Just because I'm here talking about it and doing it doesn't mean it's not still hard for me. I had to build these muscles, these muscles and the ability to trust myself and to trust that I would be okay, no matter what came of me revealing more of my true expression in every given moment, any given moment. And that's what I imagine this podcast will help listeners do too, no matter what their timeline or circumstances are, as they face opportunities and challenges to reveal and express themselves. Each of us is obviously on our own journey, and I definitely feel there's no one singular path or right way. I offer myself in service of those who wish to live into more of who they truly are. People who are refusing when possible, because it's not always the best or safest option, people who are refusing to hide, stay hidden, stay small, appease, or try to control and dominate others, or act from whatever number of masks and facades and agendas one might take on. For people who are experiencing and exploring and experimenting with what it's like to just be themselves.

It feels really important for me to share how intense this has been, because all you're receiving as the final product, and it might look like it was easy for me. I think that's one of the most frustrating things of the world we live in, how much of the final product we see and we don't see the turmoil and turbulence and challenges that people have faced to create, to express, to connect, to heal, to put something out there, to share, to be seen, to be heard, to be witnessed and received, all these things. We see that shiny picture, that shiny product at the end and think "Wow! It must have been easy for them". And sometimes it is easy, I'm not gonna discount that, but I just want to name here and share a little bit behind the scenes, behind the veil that this was not easy. As I followed the inspiration to create this show, core wounds bubbled up, old trauma patterns that I'm well aware of: the patterns where feeling like my presence or my existence is responsible for others misery. They. . . these patterns came up and took on new stories and new faces and new fears and new, just. . .  just a new look to the same old pattern. And through this, just because I know that that's what's happening, and just because I've walked through it so many times before, it's still really hard, and the stories that my mind wants to tell myself feel so true. The fear paints such vivid pictures and then provides. . . the mind provides so much evidence that it's the truth and it's absolutely what's going to happen or whatever, you know, I don't know what your mind does, but my mind is pretty good at presenting all kinds of arguments for why something is going to happen or not going to happen or should or shouldn't be this way or whatever. Through this process I carried immense grief, grief that revealed itself as just how, you know, how unnecessary so much suffering and pain is in so many people's lives and experiences, and for how humans have extracted from and exploited from the lives of people and the planet, and how there's no immediate way out of participating in the systems that perpetuate these. Yeah, I felt just locked into it as perpetrator, rescuer and victim with no way out. Damned if I do, damned if I don't. I felt lethargic, uninspired and depressed because something as small as a podcast couldn't possibly take on these immense challenges, so why bother? I was definitely scared of how others might judge me, might accuse me of any number of things, cause. . .being the cause of distress in their lives, or they might laugh me off as a total idiot with delusional ideas.

And yet, despite all that, I was able to hear and connect with a part of me that was a total yes to speaking my stories, my noticings, and to creating this and being seen and heard in service to the possibility of supporting more connection in the world. In this I recognized an excited feeling and I felt compelled, not in an urgent way, but in a way that if I didn't create this, and speak my truth, and give this a go, I'd regret it. Something in me knew this was the scary dark cave I had to enter to find the treasures I sought. And even though I've published hundreds of podcast episodes, with millions of downloads, I've interviewed hundreds of amazing people, I've run a six figure online community business, I've held space for hundreds of circles, and I've been interviewed a bunch, I am still nervous to show up here and reveal more of who I am and share my voice, and I'm excited. And this is a great place, my friend Kat Lee calls this "nervous-cited". And I think there's always an edge of what has not yet been revealed that wants to be. And for me, that is a place where powerful creativity and healing happens, where I decompose old patterns of disconnect and trauma and reweave myself into the world, into connection, into relationship with myself, others, nature and spirit.

And so I share this because, yeah, it isn't just a pretty journey of rainbows and butterflies, and if you're walking this path it probably isn't just a pretty journey of rainbows and butterflies for you either. I don't know, I don't want to put my experience onto you or assume things, but just want to name that if that's your experience, you're not alone in it. And also, I love rainbows and butterflies. Rainbows come after a storm, butterflies emerge after the caterpillar's body melts into the mush of metamorphosis and unknowns, and one is not better than the other, each is part of the greater whole, the rainbow or the storm, the mushy metamorphosis, the caterpillar, the butterfly. I think this journey for me is and always has been about facing the beauty and the pain of existence and navigating each step of the way. Honoring to the best of my ability and capacity what I'm called to devote my attention, creativity, energy and care to, and all without denying the spectrum of experiences that can come with life on Earth.

I dreamed last night that I was in a forest. I was showing friends some crispy, brown, curled up plants that live on the branches and trunks of trees. These leaves, these plants were not the trees themselves, but cohabitated the. . . they just live there, they're air plants, and their crispy leaves looked dead. We came back a little bit later, and they were drenched with water and had softened up, but they still looked brown and like they were still dead, like there was probably no chance of survival or revival. But I said to them "Look closer", and I tenderly cupped a leaf in my hand, and right before our eyes the leaves began to turn green and come to life and take shape into these tiny fern leaves, vibrant, beautiful, alive. And even though I knew they would do this because they were resurrection ferns, I was still in awe, and my friends were blown away with how unbelievable it was that they would come back to life like that. What looked like a mat of dead crispy leaves turned into a luscious green paradise vibrant with aliveness. I share this because I think this is part of my walk in this world. This dream speaks to one role I play, one way I show up in the fabric of interconnectedness and belonging. I've been reflected back by others, both humans and spirit, that I am a bringer of water to places that appear lifeless or parched beyond repair or revival, and that part of my. . . who I am is that I bring the water anyways, I bring the water without expectation. I bring it with a curiosity to see what might emerge from these places, from these places being tended with just enough care to come alive again. I share that because I just want to speak to hope, I have hope. I think that's something that carries me through, even through the nervousness of sharing myself and all of the scary possibilities. And this is not a hope that hinges my survival on an unlikely expectation of miracles or a hope that denies my responsibility and agency, but rather a hope that believes in wild possibilities without any certainty that they'll happen. This is a hope that moves me to bring the waters despite not knowing how anything might turn out.

So yeah, thanks for walking this journey with me. I'm excited to see what unfolds, where this goes. And before I close, I must acknowledge that I haven't walked this journey alone, nor have I done anything of value in this life without immense support from others, I'm so grateful. I have not arrived at any present moment without the influence and support of my families, my friends, my teachers, my guides, seen and unseen, my peers, communities, caretakers, and my students. I'd like to thank and acknowledge each and every one of you, I would not be this version of me today without you. Thank you. And thank you, dear listener, for being here with me. I hope that our connection in the space may facilitate your own journey into greater connection and aliveness through trusting yourself, and through growing your capacity to reveal more of who you truly are, and to take the risks of being seen, heard and received by those who witness you. So be it. If you would like to stay in touch beyond the podcast, I invite you to check out my newsletter, go to natalie.net, N A T A L I E dot net N E T and sign up for my newsletter. I talk about all kinds of stuff, stuff I don't share on the podcast and stuff around other noticings that maybe are a little bit out of the scope of what I'm talking about here, but still relevant, connected and inspiration for helping listeners, readers, like my people who witness me, see more about themselves and their own paths and possibilities for stepping into more of who they are, expressing themselves, bringing their gifts out to share with the world, putting themselves out there. So yeah, natalie.net that's a fun. . .I think it's fun, people reply to me and share their noticings and reflections and I really enjoy that. So sign up for my newsletter, hit reply anytime and just start a conversation, say hello. Thank you so much.