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Jul 17, 2026
Stopping the Shoulds | Bari's Story
Stopping the Shoulds | Bari's Story
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52:48
Transcript
0:00
[gentle music] Welcome to The Crone Stories. I'm Karen. This is a podcast for women in the middle of their lives, and each episode is one woman's story told with care. Before we begin,
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two small things. If you've not followed the show yet, please do that now wherever you're listening. It's the one thing that helps these stories find the women who need them.
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I'm also gathering stories for season two right now. If you are somewhere inside your own becoming or you know a woman who is, I would love to hear from you. You can find me at karenamy.com
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or check out the form in the show notes. And now, this is one of those stories. For many of us, there is a voice in our heads, and it has been there a long time.
1:05
It speaks in shoulds. It tells you what to feel and what not to feel. It tells you to be grateful when you are also grieving, to be okay when you're not, to be happy when something in you is asking you to be sad.
1:24
It runs in the background of almost every moment, and most of us never quite turn around and look at it.
1:34
Researchers who study self-talk say we have somewhere between six and 60,000 thoughts a day, and most of them are repetitive. Most of them are not new.
1:49
Most of them are not even in any real sense ours.
1:55
They were given to us by mothers and fathers and teachers and television, by a culture that taught us very early what we were supposed to feel and how we were supposed to behave.
2:10
By the time we are women, the voice is so well-rehearsed it sounds like the truth. It tells us we should be thinner, we should be calmer, we should be more patient, we should be more grateful.
2:28
We should hold it together. We should not need so much. And then something happens. A diagnosis, a loss, a doctor's appointment that does not go the way you expected.
2:46
A word that lands in your life like a stone in a still pond, and suddenly the surface of everything is moving. Cancer is one of those words. I do not need to tell you what it does to a room when it arrives.
3:06
You have probably been in that room yourself, or you have loved someone who has. The word lands, and the voice in your head does what it has always done.
3:20
It tells you to be brave, to be strong, to be grateful for whatever good news arrives in the middle of the bad, to not cry too long, to not be too afraid. Keep showing up the way you have always shown up.
3:40
The woman in this episode had heard that voice before. Most of us have. But somewhere quieter than the day of the diagnosis, somewhere quieter than the surgeon's office in a small moment in her own house,
3:55
she caught herself saying something she had probably been saying her whole life without noticing, and this time she heard it. What she did after she heard is the rest of her story. Her name is Barrie.
4:13
This is her story told in my voice, shaped from an hour we spent together and read back to her before anyone else heard it. Here's how it went. I met Barrie almost 16 years ago.
4:29
I was a vendor at a women's fair selling out of my booth, and I was supposed to be camping on the property.
4:37
I spent one night on the property with horses running back and forth and raccoons singing a song that was keeping me awake all night. And I lay there thinking, "I can't do this for another night."
4:53
Barrie was staying at a bed and breakfast off property, and a room just happened to open up, so I took it. By the end of the weekend, we were friends. 16 years later, we still are.
5:08
She's been my coach on and off through different chapters of my life, and I have kept her in my back pocket the way you do with people who tell you the truth without making it hurt more than it needs to.
5:21
This is her story, and she has agreed to let me tell it. Before we get to what she has lived through, I want to tell you what I know about her. Barrie is one of the most intuitive women I have ever known.
5:39
She listens to herself before she makes a decision, before she answers a question. She goes quiet and waits for something true to surface. What surfaces tends to be right. Not always pleasant, but right. She's warm.
5:56
She's funny. She's the friend who will tell you the hard thing in a voice so kind that you don't quite notice the hard thing has been said until later When you are walking to your car and it hits you.
6:12
She is generous with her presence and clear about her limits, which is a combination most of us are still working on. I want you to feel her in the story, the intuition, the warmth, the subtleness,
6:29
because all of it is what carried her through what comes next. Barrie was working at downtown Toronto. She was commuting from Barrie, two hours down, two hours home, eating dinner on the GO train,
6:47
getting home long after dark, doing it again the next day for five years. She was good at her job. She had been acting in a position long enough that the government was going to confirm her in it.
7:02
They wanted her to stay. They also offered her a bio package as part of a restructuring, and they made clear that taking it was optional. She did not have to leave.
7:17
She was walking down University Avenue when she read through the package paperwork. She walked and walked, and somewhere on that walk, every cell in her body said the same thing at the same time: "Take it."
7:36
She called her husband, Ken, from the GO train, told him she was going to take the offer, and asked him to wrap his head around it before she got home. She was forty-three years old.
7:48
The summer before, she had gone to Grail Springs. That's where I met her. She did the passion test that weekend with Janet Atwood, and something cracked open in her that did not close back up.
8:02
She held that spark through another year of commuting and then went back to train as a facilitator the following August. When the package came down in the fall, the spark grew brighter.
8:18
The year that followed felt like freedom. She started a coaching business in January. She joined BNI and the Chamber and went to every networking event a person starting a business is supposed to go to.
8:31
She added Big Brothers and Big Sisters, a cause that had lived in her heart since she first heard about it as a teenager. She got up at six in the morning to do P90x before anyone was awake. She felt good. She felt well.
8:49
She trusted her body the way you trust a friend who has never let you down. Then the cancer was found. Breast cancer, stage two. Ken had lost his first wife to cancer.
9:05
She had become ill not long after Cody was born and had been sick for the first three years of his life. Cody was three when she died.
9:16
That was the history sitting in the house when Barrie's diagnosis arrived, so when the words breast cancer came through the door, the first thing Barrie thought was about them. "I can't die." That was the sentence.
9:34
Not, "This is unfair," not, "Why me?" "I can't die." Not after what they had already been through. Ken and Cody surprised her.
9:47
Ken was the first to hold her and tell her, "If it's a cancer you have to get, this is the one. The treatments have come a long way, and yours was caught early." Cody, in his own way, said the same.
10:03
Both of them held the room steady. She walked into the next part of her life with their belief carrying her. The lumpectomy was in June.
10:16
They removed the small piece of her that carried the disease, sent it off to pathology, and waited. The pathology came back. The cancer had been downgraded from stage two to stage one. The news was good,
10:34
better than they had thought. By any measure, this was something to be grateful for. And then a morning in the shower, standing in the water with the body she still had,
10:52
she heard herself thinking that she should be happy about it. "I should be happy." She said it again almost out loud, "I should be happy. Wow, I'm telling myself I should be happy, and I'm not happy."
11:12
The voice telling her to be happy did not sound like her. It sounded like something installed, something borrowed,
11:22
something that had been running quietly underneath every decision and every moment for as long as she could remember. She had been into personal development since her teenage years.
11:36
Byron Katie, Louise Hay, The Passion Test, so many voices. The ideas were familiar to her. The words were familiar.
11:49
She knew in the way she knows things from books that she had been hard on herself. By standing in the shower with the water running, she heard it differently. She heard how punishing it was.
12:08
A woman had just been told her body had cancer in it. And the voice in her head was telling her that she should be grateful that the cancer was less bad than it could have been.
12:21
The voice was not making space for the fear, for the grief that was coming, for the body she was already losing. The voice was telling her to be happy.
12:37
And she heard for the first time that this was something she had been doing to herself her whole life. In October, she chose what she wanted.
12:50
She sat with the same knowing that walked her down University Avenue and into a coaching business, and she chose to remove both breasts. Both. Not just the one with the cancer in it, both.
13:07
Her surgeon supported her decision, her body, her frame of mind, her call. The first day after surgery, she was at home at Lake St. George. Her sister had come up to help.
13:22
She was on heavy medication, major drugs after a major surgery, with expanders placed inside of her chest, the first step toward reconstruction.
13:36
A young home care nurse came to the house to change the drain and check in. She did not know what surgery Barrie had had. Barrie told her, "I just had a double mastectomy and expanders put in."
13:52
The nurse paused, and then she said, "Oh my God, my girlfriend had that done. She said it was the worst experience of her life." Barrie's sister was sitting there. She heard it too.
14:10
And Barrie, drugged and tender and just hours out of surgery, decided something in that moment. Whether she said it out loud to the nurse then or only later to herself, she said it. "No,
14:28
this is going to be the best experience of my life." That was the decision. Not a hope, not a wish, a decision made on a day she had every reason to lie down inside.
14:47
Barrie had given to so many people for so long when she was the one who needed it. Everyone showed up for her.
14:56
One of them started a chain of texts and funny videos and care packages and small mailed surprises that just kept coming. I sent her a bag of CDs and books that summer, things I had loved and wanted her to have.
15:11
She still has them. She told me that seeing them now reminds her of how held she felt in that season. Not the surgery, the love around it.
15:25
For a woman who had spent her life as the one taking care of everyone else, who still to this day will answer, "How are you?" by changing the subject and asking how the other person is. This was a new thing,
15:41
the unfamiliar thing. Accepting it, letting it in, letting other people carry some of it for her when she had spent 45 years carrying it for everyone else.
15:56
That too was part of the becoming. The tamoxifen began after she had healed enough to start it. Tamoxifen is a hormone-blocking medication, the standard aftercare for the kind of cancer that Barrie had.
16:13
The protocol was 10 years. She was supposed to take it every morning. What the pill did biologically was block estrogen. What estrogen blockade did to her body was throw her into menopause at 46.
16:29
The hot flashes started, the dryness, the loss of desire. Her memory misfired. She would get out of bed in the morning and find her knees and her joints would not work properly for the first few minutes of the day.
16:43
She felt in her body like she had aged 20 years overnight. But that was the body part. The harder part was quieter.
16:57
Every morning, she swallowed a pill that was there to keep her cancer from coming back, and every morning the pill reminded her that the cancer might come back. The pill was her vigilance.
17:13
The pill was her insurance. The pill, she eventually realized, was also her belief that she was still inside the disease. "I still had cancer," she says. That is what the pill made her feel.
17:33
She made it three years. She talked to her oncologist. She said she was done. The oncologist said they would recommend she continue. Barrie said no. Every cancer is different.
17:49
Every woman's path through it is different. What was right for Barrie was not a prescription for anyone else. Her cancer had not reached her nodes. Her body had told her what it needed.
18:03
She had been listening to her body for years by then. The morning after she stopped taking it, something lifted in her. "I'm cancer-free. I'm good
18:19
That fast, that clean, she had decided, and she had been listening to her own knowing long enough by then to trust what it told her. The question that arrived in the shower stayed with her. I should be happy.
18:37
Why am I not? She started turning it around. Instead of asking what she should feel, she began asking what she did feel,
18:52
and underneath the feeling, she began to ask one more question, the one that became her mantra for the years that followed. How can I show myself love in this situation?
19:10
She asked it about everything. Eating, the texts she did not answer right away,
19:18
the work she was not yet ready to return to, the anger that rose up sometimes hot and fast that she had spent her whole life pushing down because she was supposed to be the peacemaker, the good one, the calm one.
19:36
"Be fucking angry if I want to be angry," she told me. That was the permission the question gave her. But the becoming did not stop there. What she has come into now, slowly and on her own,
19:55
is something quieter than the question. The question was the doorway. What is on the other side of it is the awareness that she is more than her thoughts, that the voice telling her she should is just a voice,
20:13
that underneath all the shoulds and all the noticing of the shoulds, there's something steadier, the witness, not the ego,
20:26
the one who sees the thought go by instead of the one who lives inside the thought. She uses tools every day, music, affirmations, a quiet listening,
20:42
noticing what she is telling herself when something in her body tightens or her chest goes hot, reminding herself that she does not have to believe every thought that visits her. The shoulds did not disappear.
20:57
She did not transcend them. She got better at noticing them, at asking one more question after, and at remembering that the voice saying them was not the truth and was not her.
21:12
This is the part of her becoming that I find the most useful watching her live in it. She's not finished. She's still in it. Every day, she says, is new moments and new opportunities to come back to herself.
21:27
Then there's the matter of her body. Bari has always been modest, not in a religious way, in a way of a woman who grew up understanding that her body was sexual, and that being seen as sexual was something to manage.
21:42
She did not wear V-neck tops. She would not skinny dip. She kept herself covered, even with her closest friends. After the surgery, this changed. What Bari has after reconstruction is not what was there before.
21:59
They are implants, hard as a rock, she says. They are not in any honest sense hers. They were built to look like breasts. They are not the breasts she was born with.
22:15
And the breasts that she was born with had been the thing she was protecting, the thing she hid because they were hers, and therefore tender and therefore exposing.
22:27
The thing she covered because they were sexual, and being sexual in a body had felt all of her life like something to manage. The implants were not that. "They're not a sex object anymore," she told me.
22:42
"I needed to hide what could be sexy, but these are not. They're not really me." She found herself in the months after surgery and in the years that followed fascinated by them, curious, like protective.
23:01
When friends asked, she would show them. When friends were curious, she'd let them feel. The woman who once would not wear a V-neck top is now a woman who lifts her shirt to a friend without even thinking,
23:14
not because she became fearless, because the thing she was hiding stopped being the thing it was. Losing the body she had been protecting taught her something about what the protection had been for in the first place.
23:31
And whatever it had been for, she does not need it anymore. Bari and I have talked over the years about the language people use around cancer. She has a front row seat to it. After her diagnosis, she was vocal.
23:48
She wrote about her experience publicly. She watched her Facebook feed fill up with language other people use to talk about this disease. Fight it. Eat it. Fuck cancer. War metaphors, every single one.
24:03
Battle, soldier, survivor. She noticed how that language felt in her chest, heavy, adversarial, like she was being asked to be at war with her own body.
24:19
She did not want to be at war with her own body. "Realizing how much we fight our body," she said, "that gave me the gift of sending love to my body, sending love to me, being more gentle with me."
24:39
This is not a small thing. Barie's careful here, and so am I. She is not saying that love cures cancer. She is not saying that you can think your way out of a disease.
24:50
What she is saying, gently and from inside her own experience, is that the way you talk to your body affects the way you live inside your body,
25:01
and that when you are sick the worst thing you can do is treat the sick part of you like an enemy. Since then, she has connected with women who received their own diagnosises.
25:16
She tells them to notice what they are saying to themselves. What I notice when I was feeling something in my body was because I was saying something in my head. That was her own lesson, and it is the one she passes on.
25:35
She tells them to be conscious of that voice, to ask where it came from, to ask what love would say instead. She tells them it's okay to be happy when things are hard,
25:51
that their happiness is not a betrayal of their suffering, that they can hold both. My mother used to say, "You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar." Barie did not say it that way. She lived it.
26:06
She lived it inside her own body. She lived it when she let herself feel what she actually felt instead of what she was supposed to feel.
26:17
She lived it when she stopped covering a body she could no longer recognize and started showing up freely because it had stopped feeling like something to hide. The word she used for who she was before is driven.
26:33
The word she uses now is peace. "I maybe would've gotten there in my 50s or 60s," she told me. "I just got there quicker." That is the gift she names, stopping the shoulds sooner.
26:50
Sitting with her for this conversation, watching her laugh and pause and laugh again, watching her find the language for things she has thought about for years,
27:00
I noticed something underneath the gift she named, something quieter, something she might not say about herself but that I've watched in her now for 16 years. She does not perform anymore. That is what's different.
27:19
That is what the sh- shower undid, the performance of happiness she didn't feel, the performance of strength she didn't need to prove, the performance of a body she had to manage, the performance of being the peacemaker.
27:36
She isn't performing. She's just here. If there's one thing I want women listening to this story to take from her story, it's this.
27:46
The voice that tells you you should be happy when you aren't, that you should be okay when you aren't, that you should be grateful when you are also grieving is not a voice you have to obey.
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It's not even necessarily yours. It was given to you probably without you knowing it. You can hear it, you can name it, and you can ask it where it came from.
28:11
And then you can ask the question Barie has been asking herself for the last decade, "How can I show myself love in this situation?" Barie is 58 years old. She line dances. She golfs. She listens to her body.
28:29
She notices her thoughts and changes the ones that aren't working. She tells me she is a work in progress. Every day, she says, is made of new moments and new opportunities. I have known Barie for 16 years.
28:45
She is one of the most peaceful women I know. [gentle music] That is the story as Barie gave it to me.
28:55
After I shape each woman's story and read it back, I ask her to sit with me a little longer and answer a few questions in her own voice, not to retell what you have just heard,
29:08
just to speak to you directly from where she is standing now. Barie, thank you for trusting me with all of it. All right.
29:19
So welcome back, and we have Barie, whose story you've just heard, and she is going to be answering our three reflection questions. So welcome, Barie. Thank you. Glad to be here. [laughs] Good.
29:35
So the first question is what was it like to hear your own story told back to you? Hmm.
29:41
Well, as I said to you in the email when I first read it, I, 'cause I read it when I was doing something else and I was in a, a public space and I started to read what you had said, and tears started to well up in my eyes.
29:54
And I'm like, "Oh, oh, I gotta turn... I gotta shut this down [laughs] and read it later." I wasn't expecting that. And so it was kind of an interesting, um... It was a, it was interesting to hear,
30:07
one, somebody's el- else's perspective of me. Like, we live in our own head of, you know, the thoughts in... Let's just say the thoughts in our head are a little, are less kind than what other people say. Yes.
30:21
So that was, um, that first part especially was really, like- Yeah, it was, it was, it touched my heart when, you know, the things that you said about me and who I am and things. And then hearing the story, um, you know,
30:37
was interesting as well. It was like being seen or something, and I think even, um, one of your other stories, um, that's what she said too, and it was like, yeah, that I connected with that.
30:49
It was like, yeah, being heard. And yeah, it was, it was... Lovely is the word that comes up- [laughs]... for me. So yeah. That's good. Thank you. And that was, um, I- I've said this before I think, um,
31:06
that was kind of my hope, right? In, in that is that you're seen in your own story almost, like, looking above it and- Yeah... seeing differently, right? Yeah. Is to be seen and heard within your own space. So- Yeah...
31:23
um, good. I'm glad that that came across for you. Yeah. And, um, you are all those things [laughs] From, you've, you've been a coach and mentor for me for all these years, so yeah, it's, I, I love that you're in my life.
31:35
Yeah. Well, I feel the same about you. And then number two, what is alive right now in your life? So is there anything that sort of... And it can be related to the story, not related to the story.
31:49
Whatever it is that's alive for you right now in your life. Yeah. Well, when I read that question, um, and, and kinda heard that,
31:57
heard you ask that, um, the first came, the, the first word that came to my mind was peace. Was, like, um, peace and calm and happiness and joy and, um, yeah, just settled.
32:15
And, uh, you know, like I said in the story about that, you know, being a work in progress, it's not like I'm happy every day and that, oh, I got joy, joy every day or something. But, um, things are, um...
32:30
I no- I notice my, my thoughts quicker. I still have those emotions and anger and, uh, whatever, like, reactions to things, but I'm quicker to get to the, "Okay, what's going on here?
32:47
What am I, you know, what am I saying to myself? And what, what do I really want?" And you know, blah, blah, blah. And sometimes I'll let myself sit in it, and other times it's like, uh, "Nope.
32:59
Okay, I'm recognizing here's what I'm doing to myself." So, um, I, I'm also, like when it comes to the peace and the joy and all of that, I'm also more accepting of that.
33:12
Like, it's like it's something like before where, you know, maybe I wasn't allowing myself to be okay with it. Right. Um... Would it be sort of like waiting for that next shoe to drop? Like- Not really...
33:29
peace means that-... not. Because I've heard other people say that, and I'm like, "Okay, is that what's happening to me?" Um, but it's more of like,
33:36
"Oh, that person's not happy or that person's got something going on in their life, so I really shouldn't be." Mm. "I need to, like, dim the light or dim my whatever it is, because this is what's happening over there."
33:52
And so whether it's a world issue or it's a somebody close to me issue, um, yeah, it, it's, it's that. And so then
34:04
I'm, I'm quicker at recognizing that I can be compassionate and acknowledge what somebody else is going through, and then, and then be, "Okay, it's okay, Barri, for you to be happy. It's okay for you- Mm...
34:20
to enjoy what your, what's going on in your life right now or where you are at. You don't have to hold that for them." 'Cause I think the, I think that's one thing that I've noticed about myself, that I'm, uh,
34:35
yeah, I can maybe take on other people's emotions or feelings or whatever. So being able to recognize when, "Okay, here's what's happening here," right? Yeah. And then e- even with that, going, "Okay, you know what?
34:50
I, I, I need to sit in that, and maybe I need to hold that," and there's a time for that or whatever. And then it's like, "Okay. Okay, enough. [laughs] I've held it long enough. Now it's heavy in my chest," or whatever.
35:01
I gotta wipe it off. I gotta mm, whatever. Yep. Yeah. Yep. So. Well- Yeah... yeah, I agree that, and, and the world is very big right now. We're very connected to the entire world.
35:12
So I think that that can be, you know, micro and macro in our lives, right? Yeah. So yeah, so finding that peace is important. Yeah. And you have retired. Have you noticed that being a, a piece of your peace?
35:27
[laughs] Um, because you don't have that full nine to five. I know you have a lot of structure in your life still. Yeah. But that full nine to five, having to go to work, has that changed anything in your life right now?
35:42
Uh, well, it's interesting you say that too, because when I first did retire and I had made that decision, like, I was, I was happy with that decision.
35:51
Um, but there was things that were going on in my life at the time that, again, it was almost like this permission of it's okay to enjoy- Mm... this, right?
36:02
Because of my age or whatever, that it's like, "Oh, am I supposed to be?" And oh, like, get, you know, those stories you tell yourself in your head about, um, you know, "Oh, these people are still working," or this.
36:15
You know, it's like, "Oh, I'm not supposed to," and it's like, okay, wait. Mm, no. You know what? It's okay. [laughs] Yeah. It's okay to be happy. It's okay to... You know?
36:23
So, um, I can't remember who I was just talking to, but I'm like, God, they, you know, they ask me how I are, how I, how I am and-... what's happening or whatever, I'm like, "I'm great."
36:34
[laughs] Like, I'm like, I'm line dancing and golfing and, you know, just like waking up and going for my walks and, you know, um, doing whatever. I got puppy yoga tonight.
36:47
Big Brothers Big Sisters is having a volunteer appreciation thing. [laughs] I've never done puppy yoga before. [laughs] Yeah. Or goat yoga- You need it... or one of those things. Yeah, so, um- Oh, that's good. Yeah.
36:58
So, um, yeah, I, I, I, you know, I think, I think it's almost like stages or something that you go through. It's like- Mm-hmm...
37:07
so now I'm into the stage of, okay, let me let this sink in and be okay with it and be happy about it, and I'm...
37:15
It's okay to be a happy, retired person and not, you know, one of these ones that wishes they were still working and, you know, and then when they retire, dies in every, you know, three months or something. Like...
37:28
[laughs] Yeah. So, yeah. It's important. Well, that's great. That's great. Yeah. Good to hear that. Yeah.
37:34
So and the last question, if someone was three steps behind you, she's listening to this now, and she's three steps behind you on a similar path- Yeah... what would you want her to know?
37:45
Uh, well this one, this question I went specifically to the breast cancer. Mm-hmm. And so that journey, and, um, it, I, I...
37:54
It really comes down to the whole noticing your thoughts and being kind to yourself and, um, loving yourself fully and the not fighting with your body. Like, really, um, you know, sometimes it's
38:12
hard to notice our thoughts. Sometimes it's like, like you, you get thousands of them every day, and you don't know what's happening. And so w- what started happening for me is I would notice how I'm feeling.
38:27
So it's like, okay, I've got this heavy feeling in my chest. So it's like, so then I would stop and go, "Okay, I've got this heavy feeling in my chest. Um, what am I thinking about right now?" [laughs] Right? Yeah.
38:39
Or, like, when we talk about menopause, like you're, you know, um, you talk about supporting women, you know, in their 40s or 50s and older, et cetera.
38:48
It's like, and with the menopause, it's like I started to notice when I would have a hot flash, then I would say to myself, "What am I thinking about right now?" Mm.
38:58
And it's like, oh, I'm usually stressed about something, or I'm giving myself shit for something, or I'm, you know, whatever. Like, so I got in the habit of asking myself, "What am I thinking?" Oh, good.
39:10
And so, you know, whether I read it somewhere, I can't remember if I read it or heard it on a podcast or whatever, the way it was asked of like, um, is this story, whatever I'm thinking, is it making me feel good, or is it making me feel bad?
39:26
Well, if it's making me feel bad, then let me change the story. So it's like, let me use my imagination to create a better feeling story, and sometimes that's not easy. Sometimes,
39:39
you know, I gotta like, whatever, play a funny YouTube video to get, get my energy changed or whatever. But I would say to somebody, start listening to your thoughts.
39:51
Start asking yourself what you're thinking about, and start being kinder to yourself. And the, and, and allow the shoulds. Allow, I- you know, if you're
40:02
not feeling good and you don't get out of bed to do your walk or whatever, then don't give yourself shit over it. Be, "I'm okay with it. Today I need to stay in my bed," right? That, you know...
40:14
Or, "Today I need to eat the," you know, whatever, "10 cookies," [laughs] whatever. Like, that, that was for me. Yeah, so that's, that's what I would say. Start listening to your thoughts. Start being kind to yourself.
40:26
Start showing yourself more love. That's awesome, and I think that's wonderful information for people to take because I think that sometimes no matter what we're going through, whether it's...
40:39
Whatever it is, is that you can get on the spiral into the depths of, you know, and if you're not kind of every once in a while taking a check and going, okay, I, you know, that you have the ability to turn, to turn it, even if it is just a little turn.
40:56
[laughs] Yeah. It doesn't have to be... Right? But yeah, and allowing that, "Hmm, I'm not getting out of bed today." Yeah. And, uh, allowing that to be part of what's going on. So I think that's great.
41:08
It's something else that came to me was, like, when it comes to the breast cancer, and I, I think you said this in my story around Louise Hay, you know, I looked up what the breast cancer meant, and it was, like, about self-love, right?
41:20
Like, and as women, and often men too, but m- m- women, I only talk to, you know, myself, but it's like we're always giving to others, right?
41:28
And, and I notice in your marketing too, you talk about that, and it's like we're always giving to others. So sometimes even in the cancer diagnosis it can be, and, and especially specifically breast cancer, um, is like,
41:42
okay, are, are you now concentrating on yourself and feeling guilty about that? Mm-hmm.
41:49
And can you notice that and then step out of that role of thinking about everybody else, and now step into the role of, okay, now I gotta concentrate on me, and like,
42:03
uh, okay, what do I need, as opposed to, okay, what is e- what's happening around everybody else, and being concerned about, you know, their needs. Yeah, coming back to you. Yep. Yeah.
42:16
And that, that especially, and as I... Well, I think women in g- general, but yeah, I think that that's, that is such amazing advice to give, is that, like, are you feeling guilty for, for now needing the care? Yeah.
42:30
Right? Yeah. Yeah. So that's big. And then being able to accept it, right? Mm-hmm. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah, to accept that care from others, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, soak it in. Yeah. Feel the uncomfortableness of it.
42:43
Like, you know, I said to you, like, it was like, "Oh, uh, I don't know. I don't want everybody talking to me." Like, no... Or, you know, sending me things. It's like, "Okay, no." Okay, my chest is heavy.
42:53
Why is my chest heavy? Oh, oh, because I'm like, they're showing me love. Oh, okay, this is new. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Well, not new of somebody showing me love- No...
43:02
but new to actually taking it in and going, "Okay, I'm deserving," and yeah. Yeah. Receiving that love. Receiving it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Versus just sort of going, "Oh, yeah." Yeah.
43:14
I think one of your statements in the story was, like, as soon as a compliment would come in, it would be turned around to that person. Exactly.
43:22
So receiving the love that people are there to give you, especially when you're going through that time. Yeah. And, and I think that's, that's part of the messaging for women, is that we get into the
43:35
idea that we have to do it all on our own, and we aren't actually seeing that there is people trying to help, but just, we just don't know- Exactly... what that looks like. Exactly. So yeah. Yeah. It's beautiful. Yeah.
43:48
Well, thank you so much. I appreciate that you allowed me to tell your story. Uh, I was really happy when you [laughs] said, "Hey," [laughs]
43:58
because it was a story that I wanted to tell, um, because I find you very inspiring just in, in how you live your life. So- Thanks... thank you so much, and I think that it will be a benefit to many people who hear it.
44:09
Well, thank you, and thank you for telling it so beautifully. [laughs] Thank- you're welcome. Love you. All right. Love you, too. [gentle music] Thank you, Bari. Before you go, stay with me for one small piece.
44:25
I call it the sitting, a few quiet minutes to carry something with you. The thing I keep from Bari's story is not the diagnosis, and it's not the surgery. It is the question she found in the shower
44:41
on a hard morning, the one she's been asking herself for the last decade that has quietly changed the way she lives. So that is what we will sit with, the voice that tells us we should
44:55
and the question we can ask instead. Find a comfortable place. You do not need to do anything but listen. This is the sitting, a few quiet minutes just for you.
45:15
Wherever you are, let yourself arrive. You do not need to do anything for the next few minutes. You do not have to fix anything. You do not have to figure anything out.
45:33
You can just be here. Let your eyes close if that feels all right, or soften them towards something still in the room,
45:50
a window, a wall, a space on the floor. Let your shoulders drop. Let your jaw unclench.
46:05
Let the space behind your eyes get quiet. Take a breath in and let it out.
46:25
Take in another breath and let it out. And one more.
46:42
There is a question that Bari gave us: How can I show myself love in this situation? Notice what comes up when you hear that.
47:01
Some of you will hear it and feel something soften. Some of you will hear it and feel something tighten.
47:13
Some of you will hear it and immediately think of someone else you would rather show love to first because that is what you have always done. Whatever rises up, let it be there.
47:32
You do not have to choose anything yet. Think of one thing in your life right now that feels heavy.
47:50
It does not have to be the biggest thing. It does not have to be the hardest thing. Just something that has been sitting on your chest, something you have been carrying.
48:06
Hold it gently for a moment. See if you can name it without judging it.
48:24
Now ask yourself the question: How can I show myself love in this situation? Listen for what comes Not what you should do.
48:42
Not what would be the most efficient. Not what would make other people happy. What would love itself, the love you've spent your life giving to other people,
48:58
what would that love say to you right now?
49:03
[instrumental music] It might say rest.
49:20
It might say ask for help. It might say something so small you almost miss it. Whatever it says, let yourself hear it.
49:40
[instrumental music] If you have been telling yourself a should today, even one, see if you can let it go for the next few seconds.
49:59
Just set it down. You can always pick it up later. But for now, just set it down. You do not have to be happy when you are not, or brave when you're not.
50:16
You do not have to be okay when you are not. You can just be here in the body you are in, on the day you are having,
50:31
with the love you are slowly learning to give yourself. [instrumental music] The voice in your head is not the only voice. There is another one underneath it,
50:48
quieter, steadier, kinder. It has been waiting for you for a long time. You can start listening for it now.
51:00
[instrumental music] When you are ready, begin to sense your fingers and your toes.
51:17
Allow your body to feel the chair that you may be sitting in. Begin to come back to the room.
51:34
You can open your eyes. Carry the question with you today: how can I show myself love in this situation? Hmm. You are not finished.
51:52
You are in progress. Every day is new moments, and every day is a new chance to come back.
52:03
[instrumental music] Thank you for joining me today for Bari's story. Thank you for joining me. If today's story moved you,
52:22
send it to one woman you can name. That is what helps these stories find the women who need them. I will be back with another woman and another story in a couple of weeks. Until then,
52:39
in love, light, and laughter, Karen. [instrumental music]
The Crone Stories
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