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Listened to a recent Dan Harris podcast with Zenju Earthlyn Manuel that struck a chord. In many ways, I thought I've nothing in common with Manuel, yet the words were felt too deeply for that to be true. Ergo, I got ahold of this on audio, read by ZEM, and did a deep dive. Granted, I need to relisten because it was at set at 2x speed, however, the gems that I needed to hear, stuck.

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel writes in a way that takes you alongside without judgement or lecture. However, I am far from a perfect human and have errored many times in letting other get away with bad behavior because I believed a narrative about "us and them and me". ZEM reminds me that these embodied narratives are to be reflected upon and understood for what they are...which is often not the truth.

The first listen offered me two takeaways to immediately reflect upon: the dangers of letting ancestral and societal belief systems "live" regarding race, sexuality, and gender [I'd add age too] & believing that one's outward appearance is who we are....or a reflection of who we are...and letting others set that as our "worth" is an imprisonment of soullessness (my interpretation).