Let Me Tell You This About That

Finding Balance with Connection-

• Delbert and Hess • Season 1 • Episode 32

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Delbert and Hess talk about connection helping them process and re-balance. Delbert shared what she and her daughter Sophie love to do—it is a daily exercise from the book the Artists Way by Julia Cameron—You do what is called Morning Pages, and you write—stream of consciousness, without any self editing, whatever shows up—  This is a great tool to help you balance, help get your creativity going, helping you get a great start for the day.   Hess shared the Liz Gilbert exercise from her Substack.  You ask Unconditional Love a question.  Any question that you are grappling with.  And then, you allow her the space for her to write back to you—you just start with pen and paper, or the keyboard—she is directly speaking to you—no edit, no stopping—let her say it.  It comes from your inner being full of love.  Delbert gives the listeners the scoop on how she become known as the "Darling" to her grandchildren, and how the "Darling Society" was born! 

Update on my friend José and his cancer treatments. After the first rounds of chemo, after new scans--the good news is that the tumor in the colon has shrunk, but they have increased in his liver. His oncologist has increasd the power of the chemo to help irradicate it elsewhere. Thank you so much for your support to Jose!
https://gofund.me/e6f61999

In addition to being a podcast host, Hess is also an LCSW--if you'd like to learn more about her work as a therapist, check it out at www.jessicabollinger.com

One of her mission's is for all of our lights to shine--when we see each other and allow ourself to be seen--and we can say to the person in front of us, There You Are! the world will be an amazing place!

Delbert is a realtor in Louisville, KY, and you can find her at Kentucky Select Properties

Her philanthropic work to continue her sister Carole and niece Meghan is Carole's Kitchen. Blessings in a Backpack helps feed the many hungry students in our schools. The instagram account is: https://www.instagram.com/caroleskitchen.nonprofit?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==
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Hess:

Hey pods, I'd like to welcome you all. Thank you so much for showing up and listening to, let me tell you this about that. This is Hess.

Delbert:

Hey Hess, this is Delbert. Don't anyone be alarmed. I'm not on the green couch today. I'm live from my big blue bed in my bedroom. I'm having a Jackie o kind of day. Gonna work from bed a little bit. Pulled my back a little and I'm on my heating pad propped up. Just told Hess that Jackie o famously worked from bed editing books and reading, and so I'm gonna, I'm gonna mirror that today as much as podsterssible.

Hess:

Sweet and folks, we started having these Sunday morning conversations about. Four years ago, five years ago, six years ago, and it would always make me feel better just talking to Delbert, we talked about, sad stuff going on with my weeks, stuff coming up, something I'm scared about, something I'm happy about, something I'm concerned about, and just having the conversation. Gives me, just gives me some balance to start the week. So I wanted to give you all, again, the background of that, how this all started. And so then last summer the end of last summer in August I'm driving back with my wife Cathy from a trip to New Jersey with friends and we're listening to podcasts. And I said, you know what? That conversation that Delbert and I have on Sundays, that could be a podcast. And Cathy said, yep. Need to do it. And I said, okay, text. Text Delbert.'cause I was driving text Delbert, tell her we're gonna do podcasts. And Delbert said, gave it a heart and a thumbs up emoji. Delbert, this week when I talked to you the other day, I said I was disconcerted and just talking to you made me feel better. And just that just. It does it, it gives me a witness to my life and makes me feel better, so

Delbert:

Aw, I love that. I can do that for you. You're my. One of my oldest friends and I feel the same way about you. I can call you and share things with you and a lot of times it's good news. Sometimes I'm calling you and telling you I'm having a spiritual crisis. But I was telling Hess yesterday, I said I had the best conversation with my youngest daughter, Sophie. I've talked about this on the podcast before the artist's way. Sophie was reading that with some friends and, again, we started talking about how helpful it is to write a stream of consciousness or just write our feelings when we get up first thing in the morning, before you start listening to other things. Just listen to yourself and write that stream of consciousness. And I was telling her, I said, when I do that and I really get into it and I really put my feelings in it and get colorful it really not only helps me just get things out, but also helps me sort things out and it makes me feel better about the things that I might be a little bit more emotional about. I. And she was like, oh my gosh, me too. IJI didn't realize that. But yes, that is exactly how I feel when I really just get it all out and then there it is on paper, can sort it out and just, it just makes you feel so much more grounded and so much better about the things that might just be troubling you just a little bit. And so I told Hess, I said, let's do it tomorrow morning. We were talking yesterday, I said, when we wake up in the morning, let's do it. Let's write and then let's see how we feel about it and we'll share it with our podsters and we hope that maybe you can wake up tomorrow and do the same thing and feel better. Just a little bit, just a little bit of healing. Would you write Hess?

Hess:

Folks, I'm, I love some Liz Gilbert. I love what she does and she on substack. She has this really cool group that she does called Letters to Unconditional Love, and you just ask unconditional love a question, and then you just put your pen on the paper or your fingers on the keys, and you go and you allow unconditional love to write and tell you what she he thinks about that. What your question was. I started doing this about a year ago and it's just really wonderful and it helps get my head in gear I have some stuff going on right now. I. Our son is we got some stuff going on with our baby Lucas. Our son Lucas. He's not connected to us right now which has been going on for a while. That has me disconcerted and my dog's little eye. She, little Tessa, she got her cataracts taken out about six weeks ago, which then there's a journey of a lot of different drops in her eyes. And last week. A week ago, she got a retina detached in her right eye and her eye, right eye is swollen and all that. Anyway, with all of that, I ask unconditional love please. Unconditional love. Dear unconditional love, tell me about being patient for a podstersitive outcome. Thank you, Jess and Delbert. This is what she wrote back to me. She said, dear Jess. love to. She always says that, which I, which is cool'cause I always had trouble asking for stuff. So when I ask her something unconditional love always says, I would love to.

Delbert:

I love.

Hess:

right. Yeah. Waiting for a podstersitive outcome. It's a theme here. While you are in this earth body, let me say this about that. Jess has, it will always be a podstersitive outcome. All of the constant change here on this earth. The lunar phases rotation into different seasons, birth life, death. It all moves into a podstersitive outcome. That beautiful white oak tree on the hill next door that you stopped and admired every time you rode up that hill in the big field for 37 years. Yes, the wind did take it. The middle had decayed and it was weak. Now it will continue to decay. As it lays on the ground, it will become hummus, excuse me, humus, and contribute to the biodiversity of the

Delbert:

Yeah, we're not gonna eat it with a chip for sure.

Hess:

No even climate change, we are going to, we are moving into a deeper sense of knowing with every single thing that happens, the light from that star, however many millions of light years away. That light that you see in the sky right now began that long ago, now it is. Things take time is what I'm trying to say. And they turn out how they are, how they turn out. That love and intention you have for your little dog's eyes, meticulous care that you give her, all for the greater good for her, and for her eyes, for the universe. You and Delbert talk about the principle of doing the next best step, and that's how every great thing in the world happened, doing the next best step. Each drop of each medicine in her little eyes the next best step for their healing. It's already happening. Please breathe deep and be cognizant of that. It is already happening. Lucas is coming home. It is already happening. His healing is happening in this moment. This is the truth. Believe and have faith. You are wholehearted. You live to really live. connect, have fun, and play. Love you so much unconditional love.

Delbert:

Hess, that's so beautiful. Podsters Hess is such a beautiful writer. I hope she gets her book published soon so you can read all the beautiful things that she writes because I just enjoy listening to. Everything she writes, she'll send me a beautiful letter from unconditional love every once in a while, and I just enjoy it so much. So I it has, that was gorgeous. I loved it. We're simpatico, we say how we're in sync and we crisscross and it's like we're two boats crossing on the river all the time. My stream of consciousness is not as nice as Hess's. And it's a little disjointed, and I wrote all over the page in different disjointed

Hess:

Oh. Hold the boat. Hold the boat. That's something Dey would say, hold

Delbert:

hold the.

Hess:

Hold the boat. Hold the boat. Delbert, there is, living wholeheartedly, does not live in judgment. There's no self judgment. This is a no judgment zone

Delbert:

I'm just forewarning the listeners because yours is so eloquent. Okay. And mine's a big page with a lot of scribble. Alright. Okay.

Hess:

hey, Podsters you don't serve yourself by trying to make, trying to compare yourself to other people. It either raises you up or puts you down. So stop it. Okay. Go ahead, Delbert.

Delbert:

Okay. All right. So here was, I was sitting on the green couch this morning when I got up and the first thing I saw when I looked out the big window was my neighbor's pink tree. And so I just started writing about pink. I love the color Pink. Pink is always the color I think of first. It is so healing, and that's what I want my life to be. I wanna heal from the hurts in my life and heal the others around me. Sometimes the earth seems like a big hospital, and we're all in different departments at the lake. We're in water therapy at work, we're in occupational therapy. I find myself praying a lot for healing for others and myself. This week I was sitting at eighth grade graduation. Being a witness like Hess always says, showing up equals I care. I'm here. I told my daughter, life is 90% showing up. It's also about forgiveness, which is part of healing. Sometimes because I'm Catholic, I feel guilty about how happy I am when I see others struggle. I love the way that I grew up. I knew that it worked for me, but it didn't work for others. Music and dancing always make me feel happy and healed, and I really wish that I could give that to others.

Hess:

I love that. Wasn't that nice? Wasn't that beautiful? I love. We're each wholehearted, everyone, every single person in this whole universe is wholehearted. You are who you are you're, you give your gifts. We give our gifts of who we are to the world in our own way that we look at things. What struck me too about what you wrote Delbert, was that I feel like the. The world is a hospital, and we have these different areas where we heal. And you have the lake where you have your your occupational therapy. Is that what you said?

Delbert:

The lake is water therapy or aquatherapy. Yeah. And then work is occupational therapy for me, for sure. And just being outside is therapy, and being with your family. That's just a form of how we connect and how we, we're healing ourselves in every connection. So I just thought it was really cool that we both were talking about healing and we didn't know we were gonna write that we didn't talk about what our stream of consciousness or our letter to unconditional love was gonna be. But we ended up writing about similar things and so I. We encourage you out there listeners to, to do that. See if that helps. See if that helps you get your head around whether it's a letter to unconditional love, or just write a stream of consciousness of things that are on your mind.

Hess:

And putting it out on paper helps you connect it to yourself and helps it make sense to yourself. We all were wired for story. We have our stories, and when we put that story on paper, I. It validates it for herself. Just like when I have a conversation with you, Delbert, it validates you listening, helps, validate my thoughts back to myself. So put it on your paper or Word document on your laptop. It's a reflection back to you.

Delbert:

Exactly.

Hess:

Yeah. Yeah. And it's not it's not is in the book The Gifts of Imperfection. A way that Brene Brown puts it is that we're not moving, we're not already at the Star. We're always like moving towards the star. So it's always a work to realign ourselves to to get back to. The kind of feedback the wholehearted living, the connection that we need to have so that we just can feel better about ourself no matter what's happening and what we're going through.

Delbert:

Exactly. Exactly. And also when you know, one of the things we talked about and a few pods go, just color walking, noticing. We talk a lot about how we notice how green the grass is and how beautiful our state is that we live in Kentucky and we've wired ourselves for that, for recognition. If you can just rewire your brain to joy and to beauty. Just practice it just a little bit every day. You'd be really surprised at how much joy it will bring you.

Hess:

So noticing things like you did your color, walk across your front yard, into your neighbor's yard to Azalea that pink azalea. So being able to notice something and notice something with our senses is very connecting and rewiring and moving us towards better sensations.

Delbert:

Exactly.

Hess:

And one exercise we talked about in an early podcast, Delbert, since you brought up the visual of the color, a color walk is all of your senses. Make a list of all of your senses, seeing, listening, hearing taste, touch smell. Write down those five senses and write three things that you love in each of those categories. The lush green grass, white oak tree in the field. The way that the purple Martins fly in my backyard. So that would be three for my sight. And as, as I write three more things for each of those and go, just let your mind wander up and down your list looking and feeling, smelling, tasting, all of those things.'cause you can write down hot chocolate chip cookies and you can taste it right now. So it helps you be there in those beautiful things that make you feel good. So that's a really cool exercise to help ground yourself.

Delbert:

I love that one. I'm gonna do that one tonight. I'm having a darling society sleepover tonight, so yeah.

Hess:

Oh, share that with them. Do that

Delbert:

I'll, I love that.

Hess:

Delbert, and we got a little extra time right now. Would you mind giving? Our podsters, the background about the darling and how that word came up for your little grandchildren club.

Delbert:

Okay. I just wanted my grandmother name to be, something special that signified my relationship with my grandchildren. And my oldest daughter's favorite movie was Auntie Mame. She'd have a bad day at school, or one going out with her friends on the weekend, we'd watch that movie together and I said, since you love that movie, I want my grandmother name to be something that has something to do with that, but I don't wanna force it. And so we talked about Maim or Mamie or but Maims best friend Vera, this actress, she called her Maim Darling. And, one day when my oldest darling was about nine months old, was real early talker. I was getting ready to leave their house and Nikki was holding my little sweet darling and said, say goodbye to Mame Darling. And so my darling just pointed to me and said, darling. So it was super, it was like they came up with the name, just didn't say Mame, darling or Mame just said Darling, and that was it. And so I was darling and then I said, at, we were at the pool one day when they were real little and I said, this is our club. We love to swim, we love to have sleepovers. We love to shop. We love Mexican food. We are the darling society. And here's our motto. And we'd say the three S's, swimming, sleepover, shopping. And anyway, it's our society and we always hashtag darling society when we make podstersts and things like that. So that is the story of the Darling Society. It has to do with Rosalyn Russell and a book by Patrick Dennis written about growing up with his Auntie Maim. She was super fun and unconventional. So he grew up when his parents died in this really unconventional, just fun, lots of different people from all over. So watch that movie. It's fantastic.

Hess:

Yeah, so her best friend called her Darling Mame. Huh?

Delbert:

No, maim darling. Maim darling.

Hess:

darling? Mame darling,

Delbert:

Yeah. Oh, maim darling. Yeah.

Hess:

I love that. And then, so when they, when the darling, when the darlings were a little bit older, you said, okay, this is what we love doing and we'll, we're, this is the Darling Society. It's got the three S's, it's got swimming, shopping, and

Delbert:

Sleepovers, which is what we're doing tonight. Yeah.

Hess:

Yeah. Cool, cool. Cool. That's so great. You were intentional and set it all up that way and it all happened, taking the next best step.

Delbert:

Yeah. Like I didn't wanna force anything and I'm like, I don't want it to be like, something weird like cat poop or anything. You know how some grandparents have really weird names and and I wanted it to be something that, yeah, I, I did, I intentionally set it up to where it was just gonna be something that would be like our thing, but I read a story when my daughter was pregnant with my oldest grandchild, I read a story about some little kid, they just said, whatever the first thing is that this kid says is gonna be, what we're gonna call, let them call you. And the kid said, cat poop. And that was like, and I'm like, wow, that is harsh. I do not want that to happen to. And I'm like, is that even a real story? Is that a cautionary tale for grandparents? Be careful.

Hess:

me, one of my, one of my friend's call him Grumpy

Delbert:

Oh, see, yeah.

Hess:

Uhhuh. That's

Delbert:

I'd be heartbroken.

Hess:

that's a little, those little people from sleeping Beauty, what were those little people called?

Delbert:

Oh, the dwarfs.

Hess:

The dwarfs. Yeah, he was grumpy. He's a wonderful, kind-hearted, big-hearted person.

Delbert:

And he might not mind it. It might tickle him. Yeah.

Hess:

Everybody have a beautiful day. Write down your story. Get feedback on your story. Your story matters. Who you are matters. You were born innately good. full of aliveness is your natural state. Peace and love.

Delbert:

Peace and love. We love you friends.