Gender Stories

Companion in Shadow: a conversation with Sam Lofgren

November 07, 2019 Alex Iantaffi Season 2 Episode 29
Gender Stories
Companion in Shadow: a conversation with Sam Lofgren
Show Notes Transcript

Alex Iantaffi interviews Sam Lofgren. They are the owner of Companion in Shadow and are dedicated to helping folks in transitional times find clarity and affirmation. They offer services as a 20+ year professional tarot reader and educator; death, abortion, and loss doula; shadow work specialist; and jewelry artisan, exploring the intersections of divination and death. Sam is the author of Tarot of Little Secrets, and the column "Death Needs a Bureaucrat" (on the paperwork involved with end of life planning). Their call to action is for folks to complete their end of life/advanced planning paperwork, to ensure their decisions about their care are honored and respected. You can find out more about Sam's work at companioninshadow.com or follow them on Instagram and Facebook  @companioninshadow 

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Hosted by Alex Iantaffi
Music by Maxwell von Raven
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Musical Intro:

There's a whole lotta things I want to tell you about. Adventures dangerous and queer. Some you could guess and some I've only hinted at, so please lend me your ear.

Narrator:

Everyone has a relationship with gender. What's your story? Hello, and welcome to Gender stories with your host, Dr. Alex Iantaffi.

Alex Iantaffi:

Hello Gender Stories listeners and welcome to another episode with more of my excitement because I always have amazing guests on on the show, and I'm so grateful to each and every one of them for giving their time. So today I'm going to have a conversation with Sam Lofgren, who is the owner of Companion In Shadow, and they're dedicated to helping folks in transitional times to find clarity and affirmation. Some of her services as a professional tarot reader and educator, deaf abortion and loss doula with over 20 years of experience, They are shadow work specialists, and jewelry artisan exploring the intersections of divination and death. They're also the author of Tarot Of Little Secrets. And the column, Deaf Needs A Bureaucrat on the paperwork involved with end of life planning. So welcome, Sam, thank you so much for joining us for gender stories today.

Sam Lofgren:

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Alex Iantaffi:

Sam, I want to talk a little bit more about your work, I was kind of looking around on your website. And I love the way you talk about transitions. And that yes, your focus sometimes is kind of more on death, but you really work with people on all sorts of transitions. So maybe you can share a little bit more with the listeners about what the work is about.

Sam Lofgren:

Absolutely. So death I take from both an end of life but an end of any kind. In tarot, the death card is really a card about change. It's a card about endings and beginnings. Nothing is immortal. No one is immortal and no relationship is immortal. No state of being lasts forever. I'm a huge fan of the idea of embracing impermanence, whether the culture does or not. So the vast majority of what I do is really, as a friend of mine gave me the metaphor, I'm really kind of out in the darkness that people experience in their lives, handing out candles and pointing the way home andthat looks like a lot of things that looks like tarot readings for clarity or casting readings for clarity. That can look like helping folks, especially around issues of access. In bureaucratic systems, where I live, there's an amazing amount of social services and support and, and that sort of thing. But getting in and getting over the paperwork, especially if you're dealing with dysphoria, or anxiety, or, frankly, better things to do, than fill out giant piles of paperwork to get the help you need. It's that system is very overwhelming. So anything that's in there, or any kind of boss, I'm an ordained minister, and a lot of my training and certifications are around endings, a ton of people who want to, you know, help bring babies into the world. And I'm glad those people are necessary, but I'm really here to help people get out either of life altogether, as we understand it, or even just the relationship there. And I'm a divorce celebrant, you know, I'm, I'm a celebrant of the closing of a chapter so that you can write a new one. And that appears across my work in counseling and tarot in doula work, and in my writing.

Alex Iantaffi:

I love that you said kind of regardless of what dominant culture thinks, right, because I don't think that at least where we live in what is currently called, you know, the United States and currently known as Minnesota on Anishinaabe land. I don't, I don't think that really the dominant culture does very well with impermanence, in my experience, like I deal with a lot of clients who don't have a good relationship with the idea that we have a finite time in this form, right? That we're all gonna die. That's the only thing that we can be certain about. And I think there's part of dominant culture that doesn't want us to think about endings or even death and that makes it really challenging for folks. I think a lot of it has to do with ongoing settler colonial project and white supremacy, my experience, but I just wonder if you have thoughts on that, you know, just an easy question that I'll throw to you that right there on fly.

Sam Lofgren:

Except I have an actually easy answer, which is to be devoutly anti capitalist.

Alex Iantaffi:

That's great. Tell me more.

Sam Lofgren:

So I, and it shows up in my work. And I've done a lot of work around the decolonizing death, and pulling apart the strings of capitalism and patriarchy that would tell us that if we just buy the right gadget or the right face cream, or what have you that somehow we can not only live forever, but that we can be young forever, because we value youth more than we value the wisdom that comes with living a life. At this point in my career, finding space for the wisdom that can only show up when you have experienced a road kind of a rebellion against that culture that says, no, don't worry about it, you're never going to die as long as you buy the right toothpaste. You know, there's a lovelyfolk artist, musician that I ran into very early in college, and my absolute favorite song was, You're Still Going To Die. Now this delightful thing that it doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter. What you buy, doesn't matter how fit you are, you will experience an ending. And at the end of your life, that ending is death. And we can either embrace that, my practicing Buddhist and so a lot of what I my personal practices that support my work are around learning how to die well, without fear, without the terror that somehow this is going to end. Because we don't address that in the culture, we don't address anything that would allow us to experience death in a less traumatic way, whether it's our own or someone else's. And we teach our children when that first pet passes away, that death is a natural part of life, and then refuse to live that way. As though the cycle applies to those who we see as smaller or lesser or weaker than us, but not to us, somehow we're above it or beyond it. And that that shows up in the culture all the time when we see how death is treated in the media. There isn't kind of a calm acceptance, it's always presented in almost always presented in media as this big traumatic event. And sometimes it absolutely is. But it doesn't have to be and the notion that we only expose ourselves to traumatic experiences of death, where there isn't a family celebration of that end of life, is damaging and it helps feed the machine honestly.

Alex Iantaffi:

Absolutely. I mean, I consider myself so fortunate and privileged to have been brought up in a culture where, you know, I feel like that was all around you know, my grandmother and pictures of all our dead people and candles and talk to them every day, you know, and, and in Sicily, they have the dead is a big thing, and that the ancestors bring like toys to the children and their sweets. So there's kind of celebrations around they're similar yet different than other celebrations. The lots of other folks heavier in, in the US and, and moving here 11 years ago, I think that's when I realized that much kind of poor relationship with death is part of kind of white supremacy. And that that kind of ripples through and sometimes people not only have a really bad relationship with death, but also a poor relationship with transitions and endings. I love what you said about celebration, right? Kind of sometimes ending something frees up space for something else. But that's often not how people approach it. So what would you say to your clients who have a really hard time with any kind of ending any kind of transitions that mean, it's the end of something, whether it's whether it's death or some other kind of transition?

Sam Lofgren:

Absolutely I agree with you 1,000%. So many other cultures have death as a part of everyday life. And American culture, particularly based on the capitalist medical model treats death as failure. And that's a conversation I have with my clients a lot, but the ending is not a failure. You didn't make a mistake, even if you made a mistake. Even if we went back and you wouldn't date this person again, you wouldn't have this experience again, you would have come out earlier, you would have done things differently. Hanging out with all of that space is assuming that an ending is a failure.

Alex Iantaffi:

Yes.

Sam Lofgren:

And it is isn't, it's just an ending, and the culture heaps, so many additional layers of thought and anxiety, and fear, on top of what it is to end a thing and so we have all of that performance anxiety that we carry around all the time. Now, the first time I gave a public reading, Was I nervous? Sure. But I got to the end of that very first reading, and went, oh, and now it's done. I didn't actually grab the mountain of anxiety that is, but what happens if I never get another gig? What happens if I can never help another client? That's a lot of me working with my own stuff. And being very counter to to the culture, because I was quite young at the time when I went through all but the notion that somehow the ending of your day is acceptable, you know, especially in in a capitalist culture of like the the ending of your work day, you know, Friday, the ending of your work week is to be celebrated. But Monday is to be hated as the end of your weekend, the calendar days are kind of arbitrary. And so we treat one of them as tragic and the other one is celebratory. But in some sense, like you said, in order to get enough space, enough time enough internal space for something new, you have to let something go. And that's not failing, that's life moving forward, whether we are along for the ride, voluntarily or involuntarily, to be able to approach it as part of the rhythms and part of the cycles. Now, I we live in Minnesota, but leaves are changing, they'll fall, the snow will come. And we all do that kind of simultaneously looking forward to the spring. And that's where the piece about the shadow work of it goes, the less you reject as radically as possible, the less suffering you're going to have. Because you're not resisting this notion wrapped up in the idea that somehow you failed, because something as simple as your day and as complex as your entire life has ended. That that's not failing, that that's the rhythm of the world is we actually understand it when we get quiet about it.

Alex Iantaffi:

I love all of that, as you were talking about this image, you know, when you were talking about people having difficulties letting go, you know, capitalism very much encouraged us, us to hoard things, you know, even like hoard experiences, hoard as many work hours as we can, hoard as much fun as we can in our weekend, right? Hoard as much summer as we can. And this is really part of anti capitalism, is being able to like, let go of things and be with kind of what is in this moment, rather than trying to grab on to things and, and it is very counter counter cultural in many ways, not just when it comes to death, right? I just see it so much in my work, you know, not enough hours in the day, I'm not working enough. I'm not resting enough. I'm not taking care of myself enough. And I'm like, wow, this is a lot of pressure we all put on ourselves because of the world we live in.

Sam Lofgren:

When will we find enough?

Alex Iantaffi:

Right?

Sam Lofgren:

We should be defining enough. That's this idea that we're not doing XYZ enough. I have helped hundreds of people and something very significant to them, up to an including the end of their life. The literature is accurate. Nobody says on their deathbed, I wish I would have spent more time at the office. No one says I wish I had more money. What they say is I wish I had a greater legacy. I wish I had a better way to support those I'm leaving behind. It's the only time anything remotely touching capitalism comes up. And it's actually a process that I work through with clients when I begin some of the planning process for how they'd like to leave is to stop and imagine what that life looks like to really imagine in a felt sense. What memories they would like their people to have of them and if they don't feel like they've created those my memories, to then spend that time going and creating them, because that's what people talk about at the end, is the memories that they have in the community that they fostered. They don't talk about whether or not they had the right toys, or the the good car or the house. He told her stuff when you boil down something important enough to really get what people value.

Alex Iantaffi:

I love that. Because what you're what I'm hearing really is that you're talking about how do we have a good life so that we can have a good death, right? And the having a good death is there is this kind of mutual relationship, I'm thinking about my friend, Colleen Cook, or was interviewed for bespoken bones, you know, my friend have any mores podcast, and it was, you know, Colleen was just amazing, and just so much love. And one of the things I loved about their death or Colleen knew this was coming right for all the years after the diagnosis. And, you know, every, you know, every year was kind of define the odds, you know, and another miracle and every day was a miracle. And what Colleen really focused on was this idea of what is my legacy, building more community, trying to leave more justice behind them in the world. Right. And, and I wonder what all of our lives would be like, if we focus more on what is it that I really want to create in the world rather than what is it that I'm afraid of losing? Am I making sense?

Sam Lofgren:

Or, and a, for example, a kind of getting into the shadow work piece of it? The workshop that I run starts there, starts with what? Don't Don't worry about how we're going to get there but what does that life actually look like? We can build a plan to get there. It changes, I shouldn't say it changes your values, I should say changes the expression of your values, it pulls that much more forward. And Colleens a beautiful example of that, knowing that the end is coming. From the moment of diagnosis, she knew she wasn't going to survive. Yes, and everything. And every moment that was possible to fill with love and community and legacy was a deliberate choice was a deliberate effort. And ultimately, shadow work. Once we get past the initial rejection of ourselves And that more than anything else, you you'll find a spot, but it is an appreciation of shadow and appreciation of tougher times and voice and ending. Because you cannot have a new beginning of everything's running in perpetuity.

Alex Iantaffi:

That's, you know, I was thinking as you were talking about that, I was also thinking about the way in which so many of us in like trans and non binary communities relate to gender, right? And sometimes I wonder if because we do have that experience of liminal spaces of the ending and beginnings of kind of looking almost at the Borderlands of gender for one of a better word, you know, if that kind of gives us a different relationship to gender, that then we bring back sometimes into dominant culture, or at least that's what I'm trying to do. I kind of tried to eliminate that actually, we all have a relationship with it. So what do you want to do with it? What kind of really intentional, awakened aware relationship do you want to have with this big kind of construct and also identity and experience, right? And I wonder how that shows up in your work if at all? Like because you were talking about this, I can imagine multiple ways in which gender probably shows up in your work.

Sam Lofgren:

I will let's start with mine, because it informs all of that work. I my pronouns, are they them. I am absolutely envy but I'm relatively gender apathetic. My pronouns don't carry weight for me. And so my relationship with gender has always been really fluid. the moments that I did were extremely intense, but rare. And so there's kind of this, this range of knowing when it's really important to get the identity piece of it right. And that shows up in the value. And so when you're hanging out at the edge, I don't care why you're hanging out at the edge, but gender in particular, because it's so focused in this culture that, you know, it beyond just a pink is for girls, and blue is for boys. You know, when you look at from the very beginning, reveal parties, before you even get here, people have made assumptions about who you are. And you have to decide to accept or reject that. And it's so common in shadow work with my trans and NB clients, to find that the moment where they realized that they had internalized society's rejection of their own expression of such an important part of themselves. Now, my, my gender apathy, when I really sort of step back with it, is important to me, the fact that it doesn't matter to me is actually where it matters. And, definitely to bureaucrat is coming from is ensuring that those wishes and those identities that are so important, that have been so worked on, you know, all the way out, kind of under the edges, and then all the way back into the culture are honored and respected. So that you don't have a moment, that is just because you got sick. Now everyone's calling you a name, you haven't chosen for yourself, regardless of what that is that people are ignoring boundaries or identity. In a moment, you didn't necessarily control more than anything. You know, it's one thing when you have a chronic diagnosis, or you have a terminal diagnosis, and you have time, but a lot of my work, especially in the the Andean trans community is around understanding that that moment can be whenever you won't have control of it, necessarily. And in ensuring that your paperwork is in order actually gives you the opportunity to maintain control and identity. So that it's not coming down to folks that have that same cultural value around longevity, or around who you are, you've done so much work in accepting yourself and walking through your own shadows around gender, that it's deeply important to me is kind of my cultural landmark, my my little flag somewhere that I'm waving around, that that work, be honored. Just because you got sick doesn't mean it's not still worth honoring that it's worth respecting. And the paperwork gives us the legal protections to ensure that fact, especially as folks, farther out in the margins around gender have more complicated situations with children and possessions and work and marriage and the legalities that present themselves in times of crisis or end of life.

Alex Iantaffi:

And I love what you said about like, the role of community. I'm imagining, in my experience, actually, community is almost like a buffer for a lot of trans and or non binary folks, between us and maybe family of origin, or folks who hold more dominant cultural values. And it sounds like part of your work is also making sure that there is paperwork in place to strengthen the buffer, right? To give to make sure that people are honored in the way they want to be honored and, and it's kind of coming up to the month where in this part of the atmosphere, different traditions kind of celebrate death and are in relationship with ancestors and also this transgender day of remembrance that I think a lot of us have a lot of complex feelings around right and I wonder if that shows up in your work at all kind of what is this time of the year like for your work?

Sam Lofgren:

This time of year is extremely busy in what I do. And a lot of that you is reading for folks who, you know, the nights has gotten longer and we're starting to see it now. And it's in the dark at night when we're alone, when we're curled up on our house and not distracted with are everything else that's light and bright and shiny and kind of worrying around that we encounter ourselves really in a head on sort of, of way. And this time of year, you know, I have my own, my ancestral shrine is up all year long. Given what I do, this time of year, I actually covered it so that my focus can be on helping other people honor their ancestral backgrounds, honor the fact that they will be future ancestors. That ancestors don't necessarily mean logical lineage. Now, especially when we talk Transgender Day of Remembrance, those are my trans ancestors, those are all of our trans ancestors. And honoring them and remembering them. No, I have the names of everyone that I encounter in the community. That's what goes up on my, my ancestral altar this time of year. And a lot of the work that I do this is one of the only acceptable times as the year to talk about that, because we talk about ancestry, and you can't talk about ancestry without talking about people who've died. And so that opens a doorway to have these really important conversations about what happens when you're an ancestor.

Alex Iantaffi:

And that those are amazing conversations, right? Those can be life changing. I remember one of my good friends and, and sibling, an elder, Donald Angstrom Reese, does this exercise in one of the classes that the Donald teaches about, you know, imagining ourselves as ancestors, and what kind of ancestors do we want to be? Which is very much I think, connected to what you were talking about kind of imagining our legacy, right? What is the kind of life that we want to have? And, and I think when it comes to, to gender, for me, it was so complex is that it takes so much work because of what you mentioned that predetermination, right, that anticipatory predetermination of you're gonna come into the world, and other people have already decided which box you're expected to fit in. Which is also fascinating, because actually, the person who started the gender reveal party really regrets it and wrote about our please, people stop having those, our child is actually non binary. And we didn't know what a big mistake we were making. And now that would suffer because of this choice we're making, right? I lost my thought a little bit, but I'm sure I'll find it again. So this idea that, in some ways, when it comes to gender, we have to sift through all of this stuff, to even figure out what does that mean for us, right? Because there's just so much debris for one of a better word from the culture that needs to be kind of dusted off.

Sam Lofgren:

Kind of dusted off and sorted through, you know, finding it finding what's valuable in what has fallen. And when I think about it, I always think about, I always start readings around dysphoria with the tower card. I always sit with readings around gender in general around that lightning bolt moment. And now you're sorting through the debris, your debris, the cultures debris, That is okay. So we didn't know. And now we know, from Caros perspective, one of my favorite narratives about the tower is that that lightning bolt comes from the fool because that tower was something the fool built before they knew better. And so that shroud of insight, that moment of insight of Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this isn't how this is, causes that power to fall, and you have the choice, you can fall with it or jump. But that doesn't mean that once that tower is found, there isn't a tremendous amount of little bits and big boats. And where did that stained glass window go is still intact? I liked that window. And you can keep the window and not you know, the West Hall that felt awful and at least in areas, you do control that you can write that narrative in a way that's affirming to you. And then how much you can do to really support that narrative against the culture that would make determinations otherwise, you know. I especially updating the podcast a little but the you know, the title seven cases that are in the Supreme Court right now are going to have dramatic impact on the community. But being in a spot where we can do what we're able to do, kind of hanging out in that circle of influence, that sort of, if you think about it, like concentric circles, I'm borrowing Stephen Covey's language here, the circle of influence is almost always smaller than that wider circle of concern. If you work in that smaller circle, and that has a lot of power in it, that circle gets bigger, you know, finding out that the influence the gender reveal parties, you know, they, she may not have gone back on that the child wasn't non binary. And that's got to be brave as daylight. Right.

Alex Iantaffi:

And, and it's fascinating, right? Because while we experience changes us, right, that experience, change that person, and think about that circle of influence also makes me think about our ancestors influence us, right. So I'll kind of how, what, what we know about our ancestors influenced us and so in, in some ways, in trans and non binary communities, we have this legacy of systemic violence, which is really something that we connect to right? Every transgender day of remembrance, we're basically honoring people who often have been killed at the end of systemic violence, whether that died at the end of somebody or died by completing suicide because of all the systemic issues that our communities phases. And so kind of really thinking about that legacy and those ancestors and then thinking about how that influences those that come after us. Right? And I was just thinking about how do you feel ancestors can support us in tearing that tower down in tearing that cisgender is kind of binary, cisgender tower down? How can they inspire us or teachers or be with us in that process?

Sam Lofgren:

A lot of it is just to me is knowing who they are. who lived real lives, just like you. Now it's easy, especially if it's the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. It's easy to vote those folks out of their everyday lives under the systemic pressures that they're under at the time.

Alex Iantaffi:

Yeah, I love that because they're, you know, when we think about Marsha P Johnson, or Sylvia Rivera, or new Brenda, who started the first Pride, their lives were so much bigger than this moment when the word like enough is enough, right? This was not a moment that when looking for this was a moment where they knew they, you know, they're defending themselves, they're defending their lives and defending their community. You know, and that kind of enough is enough. And I think that's a beautiful lessons in terms of ancestors, right? And then I'm thinking about when we go farther back, you know, I had this experience with ancestors a few years ago, around this time, where I think for a lot of trans or non binary folks, the either rejection or difficult relationship with current family members can really influence the way we feel belonging to our families. And I had this experience where I felt connection to much farther back ancestors, who were actually I did feel a sense of belonging, and that there were other people limit living in this liminal space, even though maybe the word trans definitely probably didn't exist in my in the area where I come from. And but there was this very clear sense of belonging, right? And I wonder if that you ever experienced that in your work, either within your own lineage or with clients, helping them connect to a sense of belonging through relationship with ancestors?

Sam Lofgren:

Absolutely, and especially this time of year. The idea that For example, as a Anishinaabe my ancestral culture has a spot for me. My ancestral Haitian culture has a spot for me, my Midwest, Lutheran at a summer picnic culture doesn't really. And being able to reach back in the same way that, like I said, once we accept the premise that nothing is forever. Nothing is forever in either direction, in any direction, really. It's the times not binary either. And finding spaces where you can at least conceptually. You know, my, my own genealogical research is tumultuous at best. Now, though, the written records from oral traditions are not something I can find. That doesn't mean those people aren't there. They're absolutely there. Even if I don't know their names, even if I don't know when they lived. That energy is in my lineage, that blood is in my bones, and I carry it with me. It's up to you. So do we all in a world that is fascinated by quantum and lineage and 23andme and ancestry.com. And I would make the argument that that itself, is the system. Now having having folks so that I have served who are descended from those that were stolen, to then have to pay for the privilege to find out what country they were stolen from sounds oppressive to me. Yeah, no. But that doesn't mean that there aren't up people back home. And that that's not valuable. I don't want to malign folks for whom that's been really helpful in in recapturing who their ancestors are, but it's not necessary. At the end of the day, there's a space I hold. For folks who don't know, who have suspicions, but don't know, because they can't know. Because we are raised to those, the victors erased that part of history for them. And so holding space for journeys, energetic journeys, that are about reconnecting in a really intensely personal way, to this community of folks who've come before, whether that's ethnic lineage, or ideological lineage, and I tend to lean toward the latter, that our people like you, people who value what you value have been here, they've done this ask. They know. And from a skeptical perspective, I don't care if you're talking to the inside of your own brain and your own subconscious wisdom. The collective unconscious knows too. And, and we have good science to support that sort of journeying as how we experience the past, how we experience belonging, how we experience the future before it ever happens, assuming time is linear. And I'm not convinced.

Alex Iantaffi:

I love that you mentioned the skeptical part of your work, which is I saw that on your website. And I was like, I love this skeptical aspect. Because sometimes people really get lost into this place of like, am I making this up? Is this all in my head? And I said, Well, I don't know. But what difference would it make? Right? And one of the things that so you talk about on your website, when you talk about the skepticism is no division between like the mundane and the sacred, right? The mundane or what we might consider kind of the mystery and, and the mundane, dark, there isn't this binary once once again, which, to me, it's very appealing, because that's how I experienced it growing up that, you know, the way you like clean your house or make your bed is just as important and mysterious, as kind of praying or lighting the right candles or talking to the ancestors and and I wonder if you can say a little bit more about that piece for people who really struggle with their own skepticism when it comes to connecting with ancestors?

Sam Lofgren:

Absolutely. I so I'm both a skeptic in the sort of traditionally understood English language sense of yeah, maybe. But also a philosophically trained caronian like high academic skeptic. My, my thesis in undergrad was about how I'm not convinced forgiveness is real. From a skeptic point of view, I'm not sure that that's something that exists because of how how a whole bunch of philosophical nonsense operates in the English language. But from a skeptical point of view, the thing we seem to all agree on is that energy makes up reality. The slightly more radical take on that is that that reality is a co created hallucination that we all just kind of agree on. At the end of the day, I'm with you. I'm, I'm a pragmatist at heart. And so if it's useful and not harming anyone, go for it. But how you clean your house, whether you clean your house has just as much mystery in it as ritualized, acceptable, there's some pretty big air quotes there, acceptable forms of engaging with mystery. And they see it in the answer for work that I do I see it in the limit all the limit of work that I do, which includes a great deal of taro. I see a lot of skeptics, the the meetup I run is actually called seekers and skeptics, skeptics welcome. Because from a pragmatic point of view, if we accept the idea that energy is reality, it's all everything is made up of energy. And that our thoughts are how we experience reality. Those two in conjunction mean that how we think about things is what actually makes them real to ourselves. Now, if we are kind of Cocreating an understanding of reality, if you're reaching for the part of yourself that you want to call your ancestors, you want to call divinity, you want to call your subconscious understanding. Cool, please do. Is it helpful? Do you live a better life because of it? Call it marshmallow fluffy bunny, if it makes you feel better like, which isn't to, which isn't to take away from people for whom these are really deep experiences in their traditions, in their ideas, so much as it is to open the door to being able to accept the possibility that the everyday mystery is really where it's at. Without everything needing to be perpetually significant, in the exact same breath, that sometimes I just need to scrub my bathroom. There's no mystery in that. But whether or not I choose to do that out of respect for how I talk to myself about that is very similar to to pull this back to gender. How do I talk to myself about that? Yeah, how do I talk to myself about what I'm honoring? What's important what I value, and I'm not scrubbing the shower, for the sake of because some outside force somewhere my you know, my ancestors, my parents, my society at large, something I read on the internet, Good Housekeeping, whatever says that I need a clean shower so much as that somewhere for me to be clean and present myself in the world the way I want to. And pulling that around to working with working with ancestral energy. No one is going to tell me that they don't have ancestors. I can pretty devoutly prove that that's fact, you didn't get here without somebody preceding you. If you accept that for the premise of education, that there are people who know more than you that there are people you can learn from. Why do those people have to be currently physically walking around or have written something in a book you can access? Don't because that energy was still expended and it's still something that people pay attention to. And anytime you have people paying attention to a particular energy, there's power there.

Alex Iantaffi:

I love that because it in a way, it is so simple and so accessible, right? When I work with folks who are like, I don't know how to get in touch with my ancestors, I don't have practices because they've been stripped by the ongoing settler colonial project and assimilation into whiteness. One of the things I always say is like, It's okay, just sit and invite whichever ancestor has something to share with you that it is for your benefit to like, talk to you. And then the answer is always like, well, what if it's in my head, I was like, Well, that's okay, you know, what are the same, then we can pay attention to that. And I wonder if there are particular practices that you think can be helpful, especially at this time of the year, at least in the north, the northern part of our globe. I love that also in the southern part, you know, they're celebrating Beltane at the same time, because equilibrium and all things right. But in our parts of the world as we're getting, you know, the nights are getting longer and we're getting closer to the ancestors. Are there practices that are easily accessible for people who may be don't have a strong sense of, of lineage in any direction, whether it's blood lineage or whether it's spiritual lineage who doesn't feel yet called to any particular tradition?

Sam Lofgren:

What is the skeptics easy take on how to connect to your ancestors?

Alex Iantaffi:

Yeah, that's the that's the much shorter question much better question. Yeah,

Sam Lofgren:

Sure I understand what we're what we're asking for.

Alex Iantaffi:

That's what I'm asking.

Sam Lofgren:

Honestly, I would say more than anything else, the most accessible thing I teach, and the most successful thing that I use is breath. Care with you, you're not even thinking about it. But it's the same air your ancestors were breathing. And it's a very simple thing to just stop and watch. Now to to hold some space with a part of you that is capable of watching your own experience. Three breaths, five breaths, an hour's worth of breaths. It's up to you. But five minutes of just sitting and breathing, particularly, or lying down or walking through the woods or however you, you want to work with that. provided you're doing so safely, please don't do this at a stoplight by eight, you know, the ability to just sit down and okay. I invite those who have something to say that is ultimately for my benefit or informative, or helpful. Now, that keeps us out of that sort of love and light without solidarity and action, sort of spiritual bypassing space, you're not saying what they have to is necessarily pleasant, no, but of benefit. And to just sit with that intention, and even repeat it in your head as a monitor just for the next x window of time. And I do recommend putting a time window on this and using a timer because it's very easy to get lost in that liminal space and kind of float around what you're going to do automatically. That's unless you have a tremendous amount of mind training. Being able to drift off is the natural and reinforced habit. But deciding where that drift is going to go gives your brain something to do. Because it will immediately get bored and try to do something. But if you tell it what, what you want it to do, is to help encourage you to focus on your breath, relax as you're able. And that those ideas, those memories, those energies that are of benefit to arise. And then just hang out with that. Thank it, let it go. Take a few more breaths to kind of come back into your quote unquote, mundane, everyday experience. Now mostly for your safety, let yourself sort of readjust to the idea that there's a roof over your head and walls and find a find a way to ground yourself back into your body. And then how you handle that information is really up to you. But basic setting practice with a lot of intent. Again, it's sitting practices what is called my tradition, but it's not you don't have to necessarily be setting is an excellent way to open that liminal space while giving it a strong enough container that if something shows up that is unexpected or kind of spooky, for for a variety of reasons. And I've had some really powerful experiences with just this very basic practice. It doesn't have to be some big involved thing. Sit, give yourself a few breaths. Invite that ancestral wisdom. Take a few breaths and reorient yourself. Get up and go about your day.

Alex Iantaffi:

I mean, that's a beautiful, beautiful and very easily accessible practice for anyone of any ancestry or any lineage. So thank you for sharing that. Well as ever, I feel like I could talk with you for hours and I want to be respectful of your time. So one of the questions I always ask as at the end is, is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you really wanted to talk about on the podcast?

Sam Lofgren:

You know, I think we've said what we need to say and I am glad for the opportunity to talk about parts of my work I don't normally get to know I, other than the usual call to action of please do your paperwork. If you if you need help with that, that's what I'm here for.

Alex Iantaffi:

Great and if people do want support with that, where can they find you?

Sam Lofgren:

So the website is companioninshadow.com and I'm also on Facebook and Instagram, both of them at companion and shadow, and fairly Instagram has more more of my work right now, the website has the most.

Alex Iantaffi:

That's great. Thank you so much. And thank you for listening Gender Stories listeners. I hope that you found this conversation as engaging as I have.