081 - Nisha Moodley: Awakening the Power of Midlife
Welcome, dear listeners. Today I’m welcoming the visionary, deep-hearted, Nisha Moodley.
Nisha is an integrative leadership coach, the founder of Global Sisterhood Day, and a mother. As a mixed race woman with a background in health and executive coaching, intergenerational and energy healing and community building, Nisha has a unique understanding of the ecology of leadership and the ability to catalyze deepen growth for her clients.
In this conversation, we explore how in her years of holding councils for woman, Nisha has learned to celebrate difference and transmute conflict.
We also dive into the misconception that a woman’s mid-life is where she should begin to slow down and “be quiet” — and we explore what we have the power to do instead.
Tune in to learn more about:
How to cultivate safe spaces that aren’t conflict-avoidant
The meaning of “Eros” and how it relates to how we experience our lives
Why it’s essential that we honor the ripeness in a woman’s mid-life
Trusting our inner voices even if what they’re saying is unexpected
The power of widening our field of support to our environment and ancestors
If you enjoy this episode, I invite you to explore Nisha’s new course, Ripe: Awakening the Wise, Erotic Power of Midlife, which she’s co-teaching with our last guest Ginny Muir this September.
Connect with Sarah:
Connect with Nisha:
Episode Transcript
Sarah Tacy [00:00:05]
Hello welcome, I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, the podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together we share our grief, laughter, love and life saving tools. Join us. Hello and welcome to Threshold Moments.
Sarah Tacy [00:00:40]
My name is Sarah Tacy, and today we have with us Nisha Moodley. I'm going to start with a bio, as I often do. Nisha is an integrative leadership coach, the founder of Global Sisterhood Day, and a mother. She's been working with women for years, facilitating annual mastermind groups, several online courses, and nearly 50 retreats. As a mixed race woman with a background in health and executive coaching, intergenerational and energy healing, and community building, she has a unique understanding of the ecology of leadership and the ability to catalyze deep growth for her clients.
Sarah Tacy [00:01:29]
And I'm skipping to a quote that I think I pulled from Instagram, where you say my work primarily serves women in becoming the kind of people we'd want to follow into the apocalypse. Deeply wise, deeply trustable, and aims to support those women in becoming ripe, reveled, and highly resourced. We need our visionary matriarchical leaders to be highly resourced. Having time, money, energy and relationships welcome.
Nisha Moodley [00:02:01]
So grateful to be here and some now I feel like I wrote that bio like I don't know, like a blink ago and somehow it's now over 60 red streets, which blows my mind. That's one of my favorite. Like, wow, I'm really doing a thing over here. You know, we just kind of put, it's like parenting. You put one friend in front of the other and then you're like, wow, I've kept you alive for a decade. It's miraculous. Thank you for having me, Sam.
Sarah Tacy [00:02:26]
Yes, I had a feeling that this wasn't like the most up to date with the numbers, which is why I said walking with women for years. I was like.
Nisha Moodley [00:02:34]
I know it's been 12.
Sarah Tacy [00:02:35]
Years, I know.
Nisha Moodley [00:02:36]
It's been more than that. It's been many years, heading towards 17 I think now, but yeah.
Sarah Tacy [00:02:42]
Yeah, so beautiful. So I became aware of you first through Jennifer Asiopi, who last year said, you know, Sarah, if you're ever looking for somebody for a coach for business, I feel like Nisha has the depth and the breadth that would call to you. And so I started looking into you last year, and it didn't quite work out for me to join your counsel. And then this year, I've had the privilege of spending more time with Jeanine Yoder and then therefore meeting Ginny Muir. And it was so great that as I listen to them tell stories, I realize what a magnet you are for souls that were meant to meet at Janine's birthday.
Sarah Tacy [00:03:36]
There was a woman who stood up that said, I like the story that I've heard a couple times is we met at Nisha's Mastermind. We met at Nisha's council. And that then these women have stayed in touch for now. It's been 10 years and there's a group of them that meet every single Monday and they have for 10 years since being in your group. And I always think it speaks a lot to the person holding space when that type of richness continues to ripple out for lifelong friendships.
Nisha Moodley [00:04:07]
I think one piece of it is that I try to just be myself online, so if people really resonate with me, they're probably going to have some resonance with one another or like, you know, there's a kinship element that I feel like now in the online space. Yeah, there's a lot of people just being themselves. And there's also just a lot of posturing. It's like even just the fact that we can put filters on everything so we can present a really packaged version of ourselves. And I have the privilege and cringe factor of having been around online before there were any filters on my mouth or my face.
Nisha Moodley [00:04:55]
That's not true. I've always had some filter around, you know, being conscious of how I'm speaking, I think. But no, I mean, when I started my business, I didn't have Facebook. That kind of came sort of around that same time. And so I've always just been me.
Nisha Moodley [00:05:10]
I've talked about my political views and what I believe in and what I care about. And so I think that attracts a lot of resonate people. That's part of it. And I think also part of it is just cultivating spaces where people can really unfurl and be revealed in who we are, in the struggle, in the beauty and the hilarity without having to have any masks on and also at the same time be totally celebrated for the unique gifts, beauty, wisdom, personality, zest that we bring. And I think that combination of having complete space to unfurl and unwind and be seen and be revealed and at the same time be celebrated and encouraged and uplifted creates like a real relational intimacy that is profound. And so I see that with a lot of my groups that people end up having life friendships out of the space, which is really so satisfying.
Sarah Tacy [00:06:24]
I'm thinking in opposition right now. I'm like, do I, you know, bring this to the table or not? But I'll just say that with trauma Physiology, there's often this feeling of being in the presence of others, but having an experience, an inner experience that feels really isolating. And so it's this going into a helpless or without choice on my own. And what I'm hearing is that when you createspace, they can be all of themselves.
Sarah Tacy [00:06:58]
You said the hilarity, the, I'm guessing the shadow and, and it all gets celebrated, not saying like, and then the light and then that gets celebrated, but that there is the safe space where everybody in the group gets to experience what it's like to be in a relational field where it's safe to be the fullness of themselves. And that is such a healing, beautiful thing that we often don't get. And I would imagine especially in the online space where one might have to be so careful because the attack can come so quickly. So to be in person or to be in a space that is purposely cultivating a sense of safety is to me such a necessary thing in these times.
Nisha Moodley [00:07:43]
Yeah, And I think for me, you know, 14 years of running councils, it's not like there have never been relational hiccups or challenges or things to move through in some ways, like the deeper we go, the more stuff can come up and we can rub against things in one another and have councils that have decided collectively to like do a second year together. And then the relationships get deeper and they mirror family relationships and family dynamics. More and more stuff can come up. And so there's more depth, there's more intimacy, but there can also be more complexity. And I think that a big lesson for me over the years has then it has really schooled me holding council intimate space with women, has really schooled me on how to cultivate more willingness to allow in some ways conflict.
Nisha Moodley [00:08:39]
But it's just difference in my space because growing up in a highly conflict, conflictual household, a lot of conflict with my parents. I was a super conflict avoidant kid, right? And we can go in one of two directions. You can go up, grow up in a household with a lot of conflict and be wired to kind of hunger for conflict, seek conflict, create conflict, generate conflict, or to swing the other direction, which is what I did. And be like really conflict avoidant, very uncomfortable around conflict to enjoy difference.
Nisha Moodley [00:09:14]
I'm a biracial person. And so difference is sort of like how I came in having two very different looking, acting culturally, different families. I like difference. It is when conflict would come into the space that I would find myself like imploding. And so I've worked so much over the years to lean in when difference shows up as challenge, as difference in perspective, as difference in an idea of how should we move in this moment.
Nisha Moodley [00:09:51]
And, you know, the more that I attract, like, really fully formed women who are strong and opinionated and passionate and live full lives, the more that there is not conflict in this space. Actually, there's less what I would consider conflict, but there is more difference. There is more. Oh, OK. Well, I have a strong sense of like how we could meet this moment.
Nisha Moodley [00:10:17]
I have a different sense. But the beauty and not resisting that difference is that there's a kind of moving together that it's like, oh, we go deeper and things are so much richer and there's so much more wisdom in the room because I'm not conflict avoidant and therefore the space is not held in conflict avoidance. And instead, there's like a real richness of wisdom in this space. And it's been like incredibly beautiful to hold council in the last few years, especially as like, there's a lot more mothers in this space. Folks are distinctly at midlife in different places.
Nisha Moodley [00:11:00]
But you know, in this sort of period of life, and we all really want to be together, There's a deep desire to be intimate, to support one another and fully going for it. And also not a shying away from bringing our gifts, sharing our ideas, leaving our wisdom in the space. And it's like together that we've we are so much stronger and the clarity that comes through for each person, for ourselves, but also as offerings to other is so much richer. So I could talk about council forever because I love it so much. Well.
Sarah Tacy [00:11:39]
You mentioned the differences in your household and I have the privilege of reading your timeline, which is fascinating and it sheds so much light. And I also think that I saw somewhere on there that you've done constellation work. And so to me that that adds so much interest for me. And I'm wondering if you would be able to share with the listeners a little bit about your father's background and your mother's background. And I will say, when I first read one of your BIOS and you talked about the things you talked about at the table, it was separated from like at your father's table and your mother's table. That was before I realized there was a divorce. And I was like, wow, like these two very different lives and experiences within one body.
Nisha Moodley [00:12:30]
Yeah, Yeah. So my parents divorced when I was quite young and had 5050 custody. So I spent half the time with my mom. Very much culturally embedded and not family, large extended family on my dad's side, you know, medium extended family, but still an extended family that's quite close and robust and culturally very different. So my mother is my family has been in Canada for several generations, not several actually, maybe only three generations.
Nisha Moodley [00:13:04]
European, mixed European, English, Scottish, Welsh, French, and not a very religious family actually. So I didn't grow up with the church, but you know, hockey and football and Yorkshire pudding and roast beef, maybe conflict avoidance too. And my mom was the deputy chief electoral officer for many, many, many years, maybe even decades actually, for our province, which essentially means that she was one of the highest in command around running elections for our province and administering elections for our province in Canada. And so she would design, run, you know, administrate these elections and, and, you know, work with this team of lawyers to interpret the Election Act. And elections are quite different in Canada than in the US and the places in the world.
Nisha Moodley [00:14:05]
But so her mother forfeited her right to vote in order to hold this position. You cannot be a partisan election official in Canada. And so my mom was just super passionate about her job. I grew up with a mom who was passionate about her work. She would come home and talk about her work.
Nisha Moodley [00:14:25]
She would bring work home, not in a way that I felt was negatively impactful. I just knew that my mom loved her job and loved what it would, what it represented, loved that, what she got to participate in. And essentially my mom's a democracy nerd. Like, she's an artist now in her retirement, but she would talk about passionately about democracy, about systems of government, about voting and human rights. And this was just like a big passion of my mom's.
Nisha Moodley [00:14:56]
And she also travelled a bit with the UN to observe elections, often in places where they hadn't had democratic elections before and were having their first attempted a democratic election. And so she would report to the UN on how are they doing and what's going well and did it work, what didn't work? So fascinating career that my mom had a passion that she carried on my father's side. My family came from apartheid South Africa. So my family is from India, South India, Tamil Nadu.
Nisha Moodley [00:15:31]
I have strong reason to believe I have some ancestors from Sri Lanka as well. And so regionally, South India and they migrated as indentured laborers to South Africa probably 6 or 7 generations ago now and, and lived under apartheid until my dad and some of his family left for Canada in the very, very early 70s, like 1970's, the year that my dad came over. And so I grew up, you know, we grew up watching Mandela on TV and talking a lot about my family was part of the resistance movement in South Africa. And so talking about resistance, apartheid, human rights, racism, structural racism, racism, not so much being was just an understanding that racism was like, yeah, you could have that person that's prejudice. But like actually these systems, that racist systems are structures.
Nisha Moodley [00:16:42]
And so that was a lot of the passionate conversation that and like cricket and so I just grew up in very passionate families, you know, with a lot of passionate conversation about elective well-being, collective movement, human rights and democracy and fairness and justice. Like these are all things that are sort of dyed in the wool for me and very much part of the fabric of my being. So when my friends seem kind of get riled up about a world event, they're like, here she goes because they know, especially if it involves kids or something like I'm about to not shut up for a while because there's a lot that I'm I care about and also that I'm kind of tracking or attempting to track. So yeah, I feel this deep passion for both structural change and systems change and also for personal change and how the personal impacts the collective and also how the collective impacts the personal. But yeah, that's how I grew up.
Nisha Moodley [00:17:54]
Fascinating between those two families and being the kid that brought, you know, Curry and my lunch kit one week and ham and cheese sandwiches the next week. This sort of trying to fit in, always, always kind of fitting out a little bit and also just being this passionate foot stomping. Give me the megaphone. I have something to say kind of kid my whole life because of how I grew up.
Sarah Tacy [00:18:24]
I have highlighted here haikus, flamenco dancing and fundraising for Hurricane Hugo, making money, doing what you love. And I have those highlighted as like. I wonder if this could encapsulate like moments where you're like, there I am, there I am, things that bring me alive.
Nisha Moodley [00:18:45]
Totally. Yeah, I think there's there was a strong leaning in both of my families towards aliveness in the sense for my mom, it was very public service and career oriented, like a go for what lights a fire inside of you and strong encouragement to like take leadership roles at school. You know, even as a kid, like I was class president in grade five, I was like, I'm going for it. Did a full campaign. Love that it was the only year that there existed like a presidency, but I went for it.
Nisha Moodley [00:19:27]
So there was just a strong like stand for what you believe in. I think is really like the collective message of my family. Both families like stand for what you believe in, but it also really meant like Orient to where you're passionate. Like we believe in something because it lights a fire in US, right? We could see something happening and kind of shrug our shoulders or we could see something happening and go that really light something inside of me.
Nisha Moodley [00:19:55]
And so I sort of see that stand for what you believe in weaving very closely with, like embrace your full aliveness. To me, like aliveness and leadership are not divorced from one another. And. And when we're trying to be in our leadership from a place where we're not also really embracing our aliveness, we're missing something in there. And then we're just trying to go the motions of leadership, like do the things that we think will move the needle around whatever it is that we're caring about, but maybe from a not the deepest place of passion and aliveness.
Sarah Tacy [00:20:37]
Right before we started recording you spoke to me a word or two about the idea of arrows and leadership. Would you be willing to say anything else? I mean I feel this is most likely what you just said, but if you wanted to include this word.
Nisha Moodley [00:20:57]
Yeah. So first of all, I just want to say talk about arrows because I think when we talk about arrows and neurotic, we go to sex and then we go to, I don't know, sort of like ***** liberated sex or something like this, this idea of sex that is raunchy or ***** or wild or something like that. And that's what the ****** is. I'm not saying everybody listening is doing that, but I'm just saying by and large we tend to go ******. OK, that means sex.
Nisha Moodley [00:21:30]
OK, that means and, and that kind of flavor, some flavor. Eros is, as I understand it, life force moving through US, life's longings for itself, rippling through our existence. And so intimacy with life, watching a butterfly, taking it in, dropping into deep eye contact with our children. That's a moment of Eros allowing ourselves to be moved by life, right? It's like when the aperture of the eyes open, you know, when the when the lower belly softens open, we can keep going and going and going.
Nisha Moodley [00:22:15]
So to me, Eros is like profound intimacy with life. It's allowing life in a deep breath in its own way is ****** because I'm welcoming life in cure my breath So a thing that I have a real bee in my bottom about like give me a megaphone and you got it. Gold sign over the highway. Here we go. Whether it's intentional or not, there's a massive conspiracy to have women at midlife feel like we are over the hill.
Nisha Moodley [00:22:50]
We have lost our beauty, we have lost our vitality, we have lost our interest and we we're no longer interesting. We are no longer, you know, vital and lush and fresh and we are becoming invisible. That narrative, it's not entirely wrong from the outside in. From the outside in the way that society treats women as we become more Gray, as our bodies change shape, as the breasts sag, society does treat us like we're more invisible. Society does treat women as we elder, especially elder women as invisible.
Nisha Moodley [00:23:32]
And if you know, at best, maybe cute, like all that cute old woman, but not potent, not necessarily powerful, fascinating, sexual, interesting, vital. It's a lie though, and the way that I see it is that actually the way that midlife is designed from a nature perspective is like, oh, OK, you've had your babies probably right by a certain point that we, we're pushing the limits on that now and having it later, which is fine and beautiful. I had my second at 42. So we're pushing the limits on that. But you know, midlife is also the goal post is moving a little bit.
Nisha Moodley [00:24:19]
We're saying now maybe midlife extends into 60, so we're having babies later, but we're also maybe living a bit longer. But the point being that we get to this stage in life where maybe we've had our babies, maybe we've done a lot of child rearing and now it's sort of like, wow, there's so much ahead if we're lucky, like there's so much life ahead. What do I get to do with it? That actually this is a time where with all of the earned wisdom, with all of the fire of perimenopause, with the surge of like heat and rage and, and intensity and emotionality in our bodies, that we've probably gone through the portal of having children perhaps, or at least reckoning with what it is to have children in this world. And we've gone like, what the hell, Like where is the village?
Nisha Moodley [00:25:13]
That whole thing is broken. What is wrong with this world that this is actually the time where all of that heat, all of that fire, all of that passion could have us completely on upend and rework the systems. It's like we've mastered or have done the work of how do I run this household effectively? But part of the siloing, even of households, part of the siloing of everybody has to be responsible for their own, you know, 21 meals a week. And everybody needs to buy a lawnmower and maintain it.
Nisha Moodley [00:25:45]
And everybody needs to have a blender. And we get so busy with just this one little nuclear family. But as we both change those systems and go, wait, we can share a blender with the neighbors or we can make family of our neighbors. We can do life together a little bit more. We can resource share a little bit more.
Nisha Moodley [00:26:04]
We can lean on one another emotionally a bit more. We can start to network and cross pollinate and act more like a web and create community with one another. So as we do that, it lightens that individual load. But also we have all this wisdom of I know how to run a household. Imagine if we took that to I know how to reorder my neighborhood.
Nisha Moodley [00:26:26]
I know how to change the way that the school is run. I know a shift the way that my friends do community together. I know how to enter into a role in government and change the thing from the inside out. Like, to me, this is actually a time of our most intense power and potency. We're actually in our ripeness.
Nisha Moodley [00:26:49]
It's not the fruit on the tree that's like firm and taught. I'm not quite ready to eat yet. It's the fruit on the tree that's like juicy, yeah. And has maybe like a little crack in it that's oozing some of that sweet juice out of it. Like we're in our fullness, is how I see it.
Nisha Moodley [00:27:09]
This is summer and edging into fall. Like there's a ripeness and to me it's like we could either go, I'm over the hill and I need to either fix myself to try to be younger, appear younger, whatever. I don't judge women who do any of that or just fade away. Forget about it. I'm done.
Nisha Moodley [00:27:33]
I did my job, I raised my kids or I had no and fade away. And I kind of want to shake us all and go. We are the revolution actually. And for me it started with watching Greta Tunberg give her passionate speech at the World Economic Forum and whatever year that was, 20/20/2019. And the response kind of split in two directions, like the dominant response split in two directions. What I heard was a lot of just negative garbage about whatever, judging this child who was brave enough to do this. And then I heard a lot of like the kids will save us. And I was like, wait, what? That is a not their job. Be their way too young.
Nisha Moodley [00:28:22]
Like I'm grateful for the courage of these youth. And also what they said, what Greta Thunberg said is essentially, where are the adults? Why am I giving my why are we giving our childhood to have to say that we care about something, that we want a future? Where are you? And I think who they're speaking to is us.
Nisha Moodley [00:28:48]
They're speaking to those of us at midlife who go, wait, I could actually keep filling this tank. I don't have to relate to my tank is empty. Let me keep filling this tank. Let me fuel this tank so that I can keep on going and let me use the vitality that I'm tending in my own body and my own being. Let me stoke the fires that are already lit inside of me, but let me stoke them and let me channel all of this energy.
Nisha Moodley [00:29:18]
Yes, some of it is going to have to go to tending children, perhaps for those of us who still have little ones. But also, let this be the fuel of my leadership. Let the juice of my aliveness be the fuel of my leadership so that we actually get engaged with creating the kind of world that we want to live in. That's what I feel really passionate about. I can tell.
Sarah Tacy [00:29:41]
I can tell by the way your body is moving and.
Nisha Moodley [00:29:44]
The Yeah. So when I say that Eros is the fuel of our leadership, I very practically mean that being in a relationship with a life where we are being fueled by life, lit up by life, animated by life, where we are not just going, man. It's going to be like, you know, wine on wine online and Real Housewives and just slowly fade into the night. By the way, I do like reality TV and sometimes I have a glass of wine. So like, I'm not judging, but I think we all know like that sort of archetypal invitation for us to just like now, just you, good job, you did your thing, made your kids just go to bed now.
Nisha Moodley [00:30:33]
And instead we go, no, no, no, I'm going to have community. I'm going to have aliveness in my body. I'm going to have sexual potency. I'm going to have a roar. I'm going to have passion and fire. And instead of relating to everything that's happening in my body and I'm going to relate to it all as this is my leadership, this is my potency revealing itself. I'm getting more powerful and let me channel that power in the direction that I want to see it go.
Sarah Tacy [00:31:08]
Thank you. I'm hearing this and I'm also simultaneously I'm remembering what you said about complexity and not shying away from hard conversations, which I imagine would be really important if anyone wanted to make positive change in this world, to not be a strong divide, but to be able to have space for difference. And maybe I'd say like without saying too much, even I can possibly see a little bit of how you described your dynamics. You have new partner and your child's father and past relationships that have made an impact on you. And what I see with that is this fine tuning of knowing who you are, what you want, what's important to you, and weaving something together that isn't necessarily simple, but that is true.
Sarah Tacy [00:32:07]
And that is honest. And I see and believe that. I see often where we might fall into simplicity and say, like, it's for the kids or it's or it's for like this idea that we have to keep dynamics in a certain way as we've seen them in the past or something like that. And as I observe from a distance you living your life, I perceive that there is room for nuance and complexity and conversations. And as are you now 45, yeah.
Nisha Moodley [00:32:51]
45.
Sarah Tacy [00:32:53]
And I'm wondering if you could tell me as you move into this midlife phase and are coming into, I don't know if it's new partnership over the last year or two?
Nisha Moodley [00:33:03]
Yeah, yeah. Over the last year.
Sarah Tacy [00:33:06]
How different that might look from partnership that you may have found when you were 22, like as somebody in midlife, Like what does that look like when you really are choosing? I would imagine with more consciousness from the beginning, more openness, harder, truer conversations. What is a relationship like that look and feel like?
Nisha Moodley [00:33:31]
Yeah, first of all, I think that it's sort of undeniable that there's just so much primal hardwiring in our bodies, right? We know this is true, but I think that also extends to when we're in a time of life where we're sort of oriented towards partnership with the question of children, Like will we have children together? There's just so much hardwiring in there. And I think that there are ways because nature wants us to procreate, you know, the species wants to do the thing that species want to do, which is make more of the species. And so I think in the past I've looked over a lot of what might be called like red flags.
Nisha Moodley [00:34:15]
I'm not necessarily saying the person red flags, but like red relational red flags, like, oh, we don't really fit together in this way or this isn't super synergistic. And I think some of that was probably just being younger and really idealistic and thinking that I and running patterns like maybe a lifetime of thinking if I was good enough, I would change my dad. And so if I'm just good enough, he will change. I can change him because if I can just be good enough, I can change him. Like a lot of that was gone by the time I sort of had two kids under my wings and was like, well, I guess I'm going to get on a dating app.
Nisha Moodley [00:34:58]
Some of the idealism and faded for sure, but also I didn't have the primal hardwiring really active of being a mate to procreate with because I knew that I was or I was pretty sure that I was done having kids birthing kids. Anyways, my laborers were really hard. I listen, I love hard. Actually, I probably have a cane for difficulty that I'd like to actually work on. But you know, they were like physically traumatic and my body is not great with birthing children, at least my children with their giant heads.
Nisha Moodley [00:35:43]
So even my OB was like, I, I would recommend you don't have more kids actually with this body. So I was pretty sure that I was done having kids. And so that wasn't an orientation. And I just opened myself to dating really clear about what I wanted and what I didn't want, but also pretty unattached. Like pretty unattached to I didn't need a partner.
Nisha Moodley [00:36:16]
I wasn't attached to any kind of timeline. I was like, you know, I let go of my relationship with my kid dad from a place of OK, this means I'm entering the unknown. And that means I have to reckon with I could be single for the rest of my life and I choose that over the partnership and that's OK. Like I can't. I had to come to a place of acceptance at every step, you know, and so and so entering the dating world.
Nisha Moodley [00:36:47]
I remember actually, I'll, I'll just tell you the story because it's kind of awesome. But I was laying in, I was laying in bed one night. And you know, when you're in that liminal, like between sleep and wake, you're fall when you're asleep, you're not all the way in yet. And, and I had this vision and I'm not going to describe the whole vision, but essentially, but I was offered in this vision that I saw was 2 packs. And one path was the path of like bitterness and resentment.
Nisha Moodley [00:37:19]
And I'm just going to like be mad at life and my ex for how things turned out. And the other was the path of the open heart, which was just like vulnerable openness, intimacy, availability, curiosity. And I said, OK, I choose that one. I choose the path of the open heart and then I sort of in this liminal space, sort of oriented my body down that path as if I was walking down a path in the woods and life. I heard this like very feminine voice that was like, you have to show your commitment. And I said, OK, what would you like me to do? And the voice said, get on a date again. And I was like oh option B like is there a different?
Sarah Tacy [00:38:24]
1 I feel like the voice. So those voices that are true guiding voices don't usually give us the answer that we're most like wanting to do so. Totally.
Nisha Moodley [00:38:33]
I was like, oh OK, sure. And I was like, which one? And the voice was like, I don't care. Yes, that's you've been giving essentially the IT was like, there's no more conversation. You've been given your assignment.
Nisha Moodley [00:38:53]
And so as I'm in this liminal space, I sort of feel myself going like, OK, I remember that for tomorrow, but there was this still waking part of me, right? That was that was saying, I'll remember this for tomorrow. That was also like, will I, will I do it tomorrow? And you know, when you get a clear directive, like there are moments where something feels so clear, like, Yep, that's the thing. I have this happen all the time when I'm what part of the work that I do is I commune with people as well, ancestors and ancestor and their line, who is deeply connected to their work at this time, to their emergent work and embodies the lineage gifts that are most wanting to come through in their work at this time.
Nisha Moodley [00:39:44]
And so often a really clear directive will come through or a few really clear directives from the ancestors. And I always say to people, you have to act on the directive. If it felt true to you deeply, you've got to act on it because they're trying to support you to create momentum and movement. But we've got to do our part. And so I think just as a little tangential side note here, part of what I see, because we're all trained to be consumers and to be very consumerist in nature, we can get into this sort of spiritual consumerism where we're like, whoa, that was so profound.
Nisha Moodley [00:40:19]
Yes, I felt that. Yes, I received that directive. Write it in a notebook and then get on with our lives and totally forget about the directive and don't do the thing. And then we're like, wait, I need another reading with another tarot card reader. I'm lost again.
Nisha Moodley [00:40:31]
Nothing wrong with the tarot card readers, by the way, but I'm just saying that we kind of go back into these cycles of getting lost because we didn't follow the directive. So in that moment I caught myself being like, OK tomorrow, which could have been so easy because I was fired, but I was like, no, I actually need to do this now. So I like hauled my body up a 1030 or whatever time it was and turned on my little bedside lamp and was like, I don't know, Hinge? Sure. And I opened this dating app.
Nisha Moodley [00:41:04]
I opened a couple dating apps, but I started there and made a profile and I just picked pictures that were like, this is totally me. Pictures where I don't have makeup on some of them. Pictures where I'm not smiling and kind of fierce. Not a bunch of photo shoot pictures, all recent. And then I just said things that were really true.
Nisha Moodley [00:41:23]
I think the sort of header line. It's one of those dating apps where it's like a photo and then a little blurb and then a photo and a little blurb. But I said that I was looking for another decolonial Dreamweaver that I could, you know, have like chats and conversation and said a bunch of other things, but I just put me out there totally. Like if one of my friends read it, I think they would be like, yeah, this is so Nisha. And so when I'm out, my partner Adam matched on the app two days later and he was the second person that I like connected really with.
Nisha Moodley [00:42:13]
So that was pretty quick. And he's, I was like, he was very himself and I was very myself. And I think that's the foundation of our relationship is like a deep acceptance. He is much better at this than I am. He is like very deeply accepting of how he is and how other people are.
Nisha Moodley [00:42:36]
I am deeply accepting of how other people are. And I'm working on being more deeply accepting of how I am and not being like, why am I like this? Like he's just very accepting of himself and others. And I feel like because there is a baseline of acceptance of how we are and how each other are, it was OK to walk away. Like we didn't need this relationship.
[00:43:03]
But that allowed us to see like, oh, there is a tremendous amount of synergy. Oh, I want to keep spending time with you. And not because I'm afraid to be alone or because, well, I've been dating for a while and there's nobody else around right now or no one better so far. Like there was none of that stuff. It was just a genuine like, oh, I'm very interested in you.
Nisha Moodley [00:43:27]
And even though we've been together for a year, we took ten months before we introduced our kids to each other. We didn't need each other's kids until we've been together for nine months. Our kids didn't mean until we've been together for 10 months, even though, you know, the agreements with our Co parents were that we could have met each other's kids and could have met each other at six months. And it wasn't because we weren't clear that we were deeply intrigued and that we were in in it. But we paced in this way in our relationship that has continually brought us back to a reorientation with how am I, where am I and all of this so that we're not just going the motions, running patterns from old relationships.
Nisha Moodley [00:44:16]
And so in some ways, we've gone so much slower in our relationship, not because we keep pumping the brakes or we're really afraid, although there is some fear that we've talked about, but because we keep reorienting back to self and then noticing, oh, I'm still drawn in, I'm still drawn in. I'm still drawn in until we got to the point that we were like, OK, now there is still a nucleus, center nucleus of cell that has the children very close in. But also I share like you're very close in here as well, you and your children. Yeah. So I think there is this idea that like there's so many ideas, I think around dating and relationships, like, you know, if they're, if they're the right one, they'll be completely ready immediately and everything will just happen quickly or like, and then you can hear the opposite, like if they're the right one, they'll, you know, it won't have to go fast.
Nisha Moodley [00:45:20]
And I just think it's so it's so individual, like it's so unique to every relationship. It's like we show up with our baggage, we show up with our fears. We, you know, for both of us, we had distance between US and two kids each, but pacing and really honoring, if this is how you are and you don't change, does that really work for me, how I am if I don't change? And the answer has just continually been yes. And I think that's part of the beauty of entering a relationship in midlife is that we're not trying to grow each other up.
Nisha Moodley [00:45:59]
We will grow up together in some way because by the time we're 60, we'll be like those kids that had 44. But like, we're not going through our youth together and in so many ways feel like two adults who know themselves enough to really know if this is a good thing and enough to walk away if it's not. And that's OK.
Sarah Tacy [00:46:23]
What I perceive I'm hearing is an element of newness in that if you continue to check in on yourself and he continues to check in on himself, like it's almost like an agreement again and again. It's the idea of consent, that consent wouldn't just be a yes and therefore it's a yes forever. That it's just like, don't how about now and how about now? And Ray Castellino was a pre and perinatal teacher guide who had this idea. There were maybe 8 principles and one of them is brief frequent eye contact, which my mentor Bridget Vixman's changed to brief frequent attunement.
Sarah Tacy [00:47:07]
And he would say that in a household, if we often picked our eyes up from what we're doing and make eye contact with our child and then come back to what we're doing, make eye contact with our partner and come back to what we're doing. If we keep doing that, then we keep the sense of attunement within the family. And for me as a practitioner, the idea of brief, frequent attunement would be that I'm not, as an empath, going to just totally become the other person and all of their pain and all of their sorrow and all of their joy and all of their, and then the session's over and then suddenly collapse. But that there might be. Here I am. I'm responsible for my stability. I'm responsible for my center. I can attune to somebody else. I can come back to myself. I can attune to somebody else.
Sarah Tacy [00:47:59]
I can come back to myself. And so as I think about these ideas of creating conditions that allow us to grow our capacity to be with greater diversity and nuance, some of these conditions include very frequent attunement. They include choice, they include pause, they include these elements that I hear you speaking about in your relationship that I would imagine keep it honest and true. And also the new part being like, I wonder what tomorrow will bring First, just an assumption that if it brought this today, that it must bring this tomorrow because that's the agreement.
Nisha Moodley [00:48:37]
Without the instability of you could walk away tomorrow. Like, yeah, I know that that that is actually technically true for every human at every moment. But that's not going to happen because part of that it's I don't have, we don't have the assurance I'm going to be your partner forever no matter what. Even if this thing goes totally sour and, you know, we can't resuscitate it. Well, that's it.
Nisha Moodley [00:49:05]
We are stuck together. No, we don't have those assurances. But because there's such a commitment to intimacy and attunement and passion, really, if things start feeling a little off, we talk about it and we talk about it so that we can come back to intimacy. So the whole like the rug is going to get pulled out from under me at any moment. That feeling that I think a lot of us are trying to manage for in relationships, Like I don't want that thing.
Nisha Moodley [00:49:47]
So then we I'm going to cling to this thing. You can never leave. We can never go lock it down, seal off all the exits. Promise me that we're in this forever. Promise me no judgement to people who promise that they're in it forever.
Nisha Moodley [00:49:58]
A lot of people do that. Maybe when they we will do that, I don't know. But, but I think what I'm trying to say is it's the posture of almost, we don't even have to look at what's difficult. We don't have to face what's difficult because we just, we're not going anywhere. So let it be what it is, even if it's not great versus oh, actually I'm feeling a little off.
Nisha Moodley [00:50:27]
And I gave myself a day and I noticed it's not just, I don't know my brain doing a thing, but actually something is feeling a little disconnected to me or I have a longing and I don't know how to how to have it met here. So we can bring that into the relationship and into our conversation and into our exploration. So that if at some point we ever did decide to transition our relationship into a friendship or something like that, it wouldn't, it would be after so much intimate care, connection, exploration. It wouldn't be one person just realizing I don't, I don't have anything and I can't talk about it and I don't know how to bring it here. So I'm out.
Nisha Moodley [00:51:15]
Yeah. So that that's one thing that I just wanted to say because I think that sometimes when people think about having these relationships where we are orienting back to self and noticing how's it going here and you orienting them, you checking in about what you need. I think for me as a person who has had, like, more anxious attachment in relationships, the fear was always like, I would watch him go into his, like, cave for a couple of days and I'd be like, oh, no, what if he decides that he's out and I'm going to lose him, you know? And so it was so powerful for me to, like, notice how there was an impulse inside of me and be like, no, don't take space. If I let the part of me rule, that part of me would be like, no, no, no.
Nisha Moodley [00:52:02]
I would have a tantrum about his desire to like not talk for two days, but instead I could be like, wow, this is really bringing something up. And because there's the fear is that he's going to peace out. And so I could say, wow, I have a fear that you're going to just peace out. And he could say, Oh, I would I hear that. I would I would not just peace out.
Nisha Moodley [00:52:28]
So if I noticed something in the in the time and space. So now, you know, he's like we joke he's like quite a cat. You know, if he didn't have kids, yeah, cat, if he didn't have kids, he would live like maybe a very monk like existence. And so at times he'll be like, I'd love to have like a really like low communication few days. I just like, you know, he wants to go like deep into his like practices.
Nisha Moodley [00:52:56]
Whatever, you know, he's doing, but he'll say, I want to have those few days, but I'm not doing it because I sense that there's anything wrong or I feel like there's anything wrong. I'm not looking for anything. This is why I want this. And I'm like, OK, great. And I'll share if I have stuff coming up around it and then we talk about it.
Nisha Moodley [00:53:19]
And then but there's no like, I'm going to not let you have the thing that you need, you know, including me. If I was like, oh, I haven't in here. It might not mean that we can't meet each other's need in the moment, but I'm not going to keep them from having his need and he's not going to keep me from having my need. So it's really powerful. It feels like the most secure relationship I've ever had. And also, I've been married before in long term relationships with the glue of kids before and we don't have the glue of kids and we don't live together and we're not married and there's no legal papers. And it's definitely the most secure relationship.
Sarah Tacy [00:54:01]
So beautiful, So.
Nisha Moodley [00:54:03]
In part, I think because of all the maturity and the growth that we've done, but I think it's also in part because of the real commitment that we both have to honoring each other's and our own natural way. Yeah, and supporting each other's needs. And I think there's one more thing that I kind of want to say because when you were leaving all of those beautiful elements, like consistent brief attunement pieces, it really made me think about facilitation and holding space as well and how, you know, and holding these councils over 14 years. Of course, there have been moments where I've looked around the room, you know, we've gone on retreat in Bali or Mexico or wherever. They're always like very beautiful, kind of luxurious, very comfortable spaces. But like, things come up for people. And it could just be like, I've been bitten by 7 mosquitoes and I'm or I'm really missing my kids or I feel like I don't belong here, right? Like stuff comes up for people. And so as I observe the space, sometimes I can kind of let my eyes move around the circle and sort of attune to each person briefly around the circle. And I might notice like, huh, I'm curious.
Nisha Moodley [00:55:27]
Like my sense is there's something going on over there. Or like, oh, I kind of pick up on something over there. And it used to be that it was very hard for me to stay here with me without being totally over there energetically with them, whoever I assumed was having a thing. And it would be hard to not be really an assumption about what I thought was going on with them, which, by the way, could be totally different. I could be like, Oh no, she's not having a good time. She doesn't feel like she's connecting with the group. And she could be like a mosquito bit my ***. And sitting on this, you know, bolster is like, really annoying me.
Sarah Tacy [00:56:10]
Right now, right, right. And.
Nisha Moodley [00:56:12]
You're like, oh, that's oh, wow. OK, well, my mind is really tricky. But what I've learned to do, and this has served me and my mother had greatly, is to allow that space for a person to be in a process like I attuned to them. But like you said, I'm not totally going into their experience. I don't know.
Nisha Moodley [00:56:35]
I'm not divorced of my own experience because I'm so in their experience, I don't necessarily have to stop the whole thing to make sure that that person is attended to unless that is called for. If that was called for, I would do that. But if it's just like, OK, there's my senses or something a little crunchy over there, but I also don't have to avoid it. And the thing that I really learned to do is to put my attention primarily on my own. Where am I, how am I, what's happening here?
Nisha Moodley [00:57:08]
The essentially the regulation of my own system, regardless of what's happening outside of me and also on the field, like the energy of the space. And to relate to myself as the tenderest of that as the primary, sort of, not that I'm the primary influencing force, but I relate to myself as holding the primary responsibility as the space holder or as the mother in influencing that. And I know that it starts first with my own nervous system in my body and then second with the field itself and relating to the space and sort of feeling like, can I energetically influence this field, which at home might mean, OK, it's really chaotic. One was having a meltdown. The other just threw his cereal on the floor.
Nisha Moodley [00:58:06]
That one's crying because he can only find one sock and wants to wear that pair of socks only today. And it's very important we find the other socks. And I go, OK, how am I? Am I like, spun up, tightened? I got a ton of that. Second of all, I'm going to go put a record on right now.
Sarah Tacy [00:58:25]
Yes.
Nisha Moodley [00:58:26]
I'm going to open a window right now. I'm going to like call on the spirit of my great grandmother right now. And So what can I do to tend the field, to tend the space, to tend the environment that like the energetic field of the environment, because that's what we're all held in. And doing that work, I think, has revolutionized my work, my mothering everything, and also my own anxious attachment. Because it's no longer this little girl's job to be good enough in order so that I can make that make daddy happy or fix the guy or make everything or make everybody get along.
Nisha Moodley [00:59:10]
But instead it's the attunement to myself and to the field and then my tending of the field that I am held in that we are held in. Now I get to do hold this role of being responsible for the experience largely of 14 grown *** powerful witches, powerful women and also be held at this point totally not avoidant, totally not anxious.
Sarah Tacy [00:59:42]
There was a phrase when you're OK, I'm OK and tell Darden said that as she was describing moving into the place of fawning. But when she said I'm OK, when you're OK. And I was like, wait, that's not just universal truth. What you're telling me. That's out of the range of resonance like.
Sarah Tacy [01:00:05]
And so it was very interesting to start to notice how dependent I was on making sure everybody else was OK so that then I could be OK. And as I worked on it, it was. So beautiful to see that it didn't mean that I needed to divorce myself from attuning to people or caring about people or caring how they're doing. But how I see it is almost like if I were a child, I would want my older person to be steady and not become UN OK because I'm not OK. Like I'd want them to be like, oh I see this.
Sarah Tacy [01:00:45]
I know this is a pattern and I'm here for it. And I can feel it and Ouch. And they're not spinning like, oh **** my child's having a major problem. So I'm having a major problem. Like, you want that person to see a bigger picture, to hold a bigger space.
Sarah Tacy [01:01:00]
And when I was in Scotland with Jenny, I called home and there were a number of things that were happening that were really hard at home. And it was just so interesting to oh God, that sounds so hard. And recognize that I was, you know, a continent way. And then also be like, oh, and I'm OK, you know, like nobody was in the type of danger where it was life threatening. But it was like I could really feel for that person and for my family unit and go, oh, and I'm still OK.
Sarah Tacy [01:01:35]
And that for me has to do a bit with that brief frequent attunement with that desire. And as I hear you calling in the field and I think I, I heard you say the energetic field. So if anybody listening is like, is she talking about a football field? Is she talking about then you say you said energetic field, you said environment, this space that holds us all. So it's not like I must be stable on my own while everybody else gets. It's like, oh, I actually get to be fed by the field, by the energetic field.
Nisha Moodley [01:02:07]
My favorite parenting tip? Well, that's my favorite, but like just playing the music that suits the kind of vibe that I want to create in the space at the time has been totally game changing, especially as a single mom. You know, it's like I don't get to tap out. There's not another pair of hands to help when like 1 is climbing on me and I have to make breakfast and the other one's looking for the other sock. So like in that moment, it's like I if I have to only rely on me, I feel like I'm going to crumble.
Nisha Moodley [01:02:38]
But if I'm also relying on the ancestors, the field, the field of my ancestors of Stevie Wonder singing to us all, you know, of the feeling of the warm lighting in the home of the incense that's burning in the corner. Like I can lean into all of that and then I'm not doing it alone. Actually, Stevie Wonder's doing it with right. My great grandmother is doing it with the incense that the hand rolled, beautiful like rose sandalwood incense, which is like, oh, these are ancestral scents. My children have ancestry.
Nisha Moodley [01:03:16]
Maybe there's something in their system that responds to this ancient remembrance in the temples of our people, you know? And so as I relate to the whole environment, as this is all holding us like it's an animate world, so everything around me is actually holding me. Also, as I'm relating to and holding and regarding it, it's holding me collectively. It's holding me and my children. I feel so much less alone in my mothering.
Sarah Tacy [01:03:48]
I think it's such a beautiful place to close up is this idea of when you're saying I'm not doing it alone, Stevie Wonder is doing it with me, My ancestors are doing it with me, The smells the and I feel like that is such a beautiful thing. I often talk about resources and the power of resourcing ourself with what's already there, what's already, you know, that doesn't necessarily cost more money and what you just and ended with there or offered us. There was an example of the way that resources can for me, the way I see it as a like widens our field of support in all directions and through all senses. So I will do an intro to this, and I'll say a little bit more about Rife. But I would just say that through listening to you and this conversation, I would say that it feels so clear to me that what you and Jenny are offering, which we talked about in the last podcast with Jenny Muir, is this program called RIPE that talks about the arrows, that talks about relational health that I imagine would talk about the field.
Sarah Tacy [01:05:02]
And if you had like one minute to say one other thing about RIPE, is there anything that you would want to say that I might not name if I were reading it from the website?
Nisha Moodley [01:05:16]
I'm just here. We are just here for the revolution of women at midlife, fully embodying and embracing our ripeness like our full tilt, all in ****** passionate, devoted aliveness because it actually is available to us. And it is. So. We are so much more powerful than society's lie that we're creeping over the hill. And so, yeah, anyone who wants to be in that conversation with us, we're really, really excited.
Sarah Tacy [01:05:52]
I will be there myself. I signed up. I'm excited and I actually have a few friends who are talking about it at my daughter's birthday the other day. We're like, oh, I want to sign up. I'm so excited. So there are women I know who will be joining us as well. Thank you so much for your time.
Nisha Moodley [01:06:06]
Thank you so much.
Sarah Tacy [01:06:14]
Thank you for tuning in. It's been such a pleasure. If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome. It's very easy, it's very helpful. You can find it at sarahtacy.com. And if you love this episode, please subscribe. And like, apparently it's wildly useful. So we could just explore what happens when you Scroll down to the bottom subscribe rate, maybe say a thing or two. If you're not feeling it, don't do it. It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.