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Ep 53: Navigating Ancestral Knowing
56 Plays5 hours ago
Hey y'all! Hoodoo Plant Mamas is back! For our season 9 premiere, we tackle the clairs---what they are and our experiences with them. We get into what Toni Morrison called the "discredited way of knowing" as well as the ethics and burden of ancestral knowing.
Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr
RESOURCES
- A Place to Wander (Dani Bee's YouTube)
- Leah Nicole YouTube
- "The Business Affair." Leah Nicole Whitcomb. Apple Books
- About the Boy. Leah Nicole Whitcomb.
- The Book of Juju. Juju Bae
- Sensual Faith. Lyvonne Briggs
- Apocalypse Still. Leah Nicole Whitcomb
- The Telepathy Tapes. Ky Dickens.
- "Unmasking the Meaning and Marital Disputes Behind Mumbo Jumbo." By Lakshmi Gandi. NPR.
BOOKSHOP
https://bookshop.org/shop/hoodooplantmamas
Apocalypse Still by Leah Nicole Whitcomb
About the Boy by Leah Nicole Whitcomb
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https://www.patreon.com/hoodooplantmamas
SOCIAL MEDIA
Instagram: @hoodooplantmamas
DONATE
Paypal: paypal.me/hoodooplantmamas
Cashapp: cash.me/$hoodooplantmamas
This podcast was created, hosted, and produced by Dani & Leah.
Our music was created by Ghrey, and our artwork was designed by Bianca.
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Transcript
Introduction and Season Announcement
00:00:01
Speaker
Hoodoo plants, mamas. Get your soul fed and your spirit red. This here in the trend, I possessed the power from way back when.
00:00:20
Speaker
Ancestors, they gather my urge. I conjure at my altar.
Life Updates and Achievements
00:00:26
Speaker
Hoodoo plants, mamas.
00:00:33
Speaker
We just out here trying to water our plants and mind our business, you know? Everybody from the deep south, man. Everybody can't have culture like us.
00:00:45
Speaker
Hey y'all and welcome back to season nine of Hoodoo Plant Mamas. I am your co-host Leanna Cole. And I'm Dani B. we have been gone for a while Dani B. What have you been up to during that time?
00:00:59
Speaker
Child. So right at the time of the year I got laid off. I don't even remember what the last half of last year was. It was just so much happening.
00:01:11
Speaker
But I have a new job now and I celebrated my birthday recently, as did you. So yeah, I'm excited to get back started with everything. Oh, I started a YouTube channel, me and my 10 subscribers.
00:01:27
Speaker
But we doing it. you know I'm just going to keep doing it. It's kind of fun. Or it can be fun when things don't go haywire with editing and all of that. But I'm finding my flow. So, yeah, what about you?
00:01:41
Speaker
and Same. We celebrated your birthday in Atlanta. It was a lot of fun to see you again in person. And then I celebrated my birthday later that week. Like you, I also started YouTube. I started it last summer.
00:01:56
Speaker
i and trying my best not to have mental breakdowns.
00:02:04
Speaker
it is It is very
Exploring the 'Clairs' and Personal Experiences
00:02:05
Speaker
difficult, but I am ah monetized on YouTube. This is my third time trying to be a YouTuber, my first time actually getting monetized, so very excited about that. I'm usually over there talking about book commentary and romance and things like that. I'm going to put our YouTube's in the show notes if y'all want to subscribe to them.
00:02:26
Speaker
Also, i had a book come out in January of this year about the boy. it is a book that I started on when I was 13 years old and I finally finished and I think it's a beautiful, amazing, wonderful book If you're interested in like young adult romance, highly recommend it. And then for my birthday, I did release a little erotic romance novelette.
00:02:54
Speaker
It's a fun, cute story. So if you're interested in that as well, I will put those in the show notes. Well, let's get into some gratitude. Leah, what are you thankful for today? I'm going to say that I am thankful for my friends.
00:03:10
Speaker
I don't know why my mama thinks I'm a loser, but she was like, oh my God, you have so many friends. Like, I can't believe you're leaving the house and you're seeing people and you're partying and having fun. I'm like, yeah, I have people that care about me.
00:03:23
Speaker
I don't know why she thinks I'm a loser and I have no friends, but I'm so grateful for all of y'all. My birthday this year was really special. My last birthday really sucked. My 29th. I am grateful to have celebrated my 30th with y'all.
00:03:37
Speaker
What are you grateful for, Dani? Love to hear it. I'm glad your birthday was but special. I'm also thankful for my friends. Like, I feel really blessed. And feel like occasionally I get really down about like, oh, a lot of my friends kind of live far away. But I don't know.
00:03:55
Speaker
the Even virtually just having such an extended community of amazing friends and just the ways my friends show up for me, even if we don't live in the same city, I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful for community now more than ever.
00:04:11
Speaker
so Yeah. Well, today and also this season, we kind of wanted to get into the different clairs and our experiences with them. For context, the different types of clairs are like clairsentience is the ability to feel emotions and energy. Like when you have a bad feeling about something and you end up being right, that's clairsentience.
00:04:34
Speaker
Clairaudience is when you hear things that aren't real, like hearing your name being called and nobody's there. Clairaliance is smelling things that aren't there.
00:04:46
Speaker
Claircognizance is intuitive knowing how you know
Challenges in Spiritual Interpretation
00:04:50
Speaker
information that you probably would not have known in any other way. But you know it. And then claire gustus, which is when you taste things or like when you have a certain taste in your mouth for something.
00:05:03
Speaker
And so for me, I experienced a lot of clairvoyance where I see images and it could be that images have the biggest impact for me and they stay with me the longest.
00:05:15
Speaker
But I would say my earliest experience I had with clairvoyance, I was about to go to the third grade. It was the summer before third grade. I was outside. i lived in the country. and my daddy's truck trailer, I was just like laying there looking at the clouds and daydreaming.
00:05:33
Speaker
And I was just like, I wonder what my third grade teacher is going to be like. And this image flashed in my mind of this white lady this older white lady with short brown hair and I had never seen her before. and I was like, oh, okay, whatever.
00:05:49
Speaker
And then I didn't think about it again until like a month later when that same old white lady was looking at me, except her hair was blonde when I started third grade. And I was like, am I witch? Yeah.
00:06:04
Speaker
But i think when I was younger, i was so upset. Well, I would say my entire family was so obsessed with Charmed because it's about these three sisters and me and my sisters.
00:06:16
Speaker
There are three of us as well. So we were obsessed with Charmed. You can convince me that I didn't have like lame superpowers that would kick in one day if somebody in my family died. But no, that's kind of the feeling that I got when experienced that. It wasn't so much fear. It was like excitement.
00:06:36
Speaker
So, Dani, I'm wondering which Claire do you experience the most and what was your earliest experience like? So this is a really like complicated question for me because I think as I've evolved since childhood,
00:06:51
Speaker
It's changed. And I've also been resistant to certain things. So I guess as a child, I experienced a lot of clairvoyance with things like deja vu the most. And there would be instances where I would try to manipulate the situation like, okay, I know if I do this, this is going to happen.
00:07:10
Speaker
So I'm gonna do the opposite and just see what how it plays out. And then sometimes I would just watch out of curiosity to see if the thing that I Feel like it's going to happen, it's going to happen.
00:07:21
Speaker
But I also had a thing with smell as a child specifically. Smell was something where sometimes i get ah I get a bad feeling about someone just based on how they smell. It was usually me. and It was almost always me. and
00:07:38
Speaker
So there's that. As an adult, I think I might be more clairsentient. Is that how you say it? which is like to be able to feel the
Dreams, Writing, and Cultural Influence
00:07:50
Speaker
energy of a space or of people and that kind of thing.
00:07:53
Speaker
But it's not something I'm good at controlling because sometimes I think I'm just the problem until you know we have like a debrief. If I'm with friends and I say, i don't know, y'all, just felt weird and just like felt like my mood was getting bad. And they were like, yeah, the vibes are off because this person was X, Y, Z. And I was like, oh my gosh, I thought I was the only one. So I didn't really want to say that anything. I thought it was just me being...
00:08:16
Speaker
weird and awkward. also feel like that's something I felt in certain ways in childhood where certain spaces for me, I just did not like to be in them. I could just feel something off.
00:08:28
Speaker
I want to talk about clear audience briefly. So I had this memory of one of Juju Bay's episodes. I don't know if she was talking about her experience or she was at answering a listener letter, but it was something about deciphering between your own voice and a spirit's voice.
00:08:45
Speaker
And that's one I struggle with because... I've randomly heard my name called over the years. It's still something that happens occasional occasionally, but also i still sometimes don't know, is this my voice or is this somebody else? When something comes to my head, when words come to my head, when images or stories come to my head about something, like I still struggle with trying to understand, is this my brain doing this or is this
00:09:16
Speaker
a download, a spiritual download or something like that. So I would say probably the biggest thing that I'm learning to develop is the clairsentience as an adult.
00:09:27
Speaker
I think a lot of times I'm in the same boat as you. Like I'll hear my name. And for me, it hadn't happened in a long while. but I want to say it was like last week or the week before i was downstairs and I heard my name.
00:09:40
Speaker
And so I walked upstairs to my sister. I was like, did you call me? And it's just the two of us in the house. And she didn't. And I was like, oh, it happened again. But like you, I also struggle between like my voice and spirit voice and trying to decipher like, is this my thought or is this a thought that you know, has been implanted. And I think it shows up in the other Claire's
Cultural Skepticism and Traditional Practices
00:10:00
Speaker
as well. Like I know in her book, in Juju Bay's book, The Book of Juju, she said that a lot of Black women experience clairsentience where we can just feel like something is off.
00:10:09
Speaker
And sometimes, and maybe it's me overthinking it, but sometimes I'll be like, is is am I having a bad feeling about something or am I being fearful? like Is it my own anxiety that's going on?
00:10:23
Speaker
um and so sometimes I'll struggle with that. One thing I have noticed, and this happened to me when I was going to Atlanta a few weeks ago, everything that could go wrong went wrong. like I went to the car rental place, left my wallet had to come back to the house went back their system was down i had to wait there an hour to get the car and then when i finally left town the car that i got didn't have gas so i had to go to the gas station my car didn't work so i was like fine let me go to another gas station car didn't work there either like oh my god so went to a third gas station finally got gas and then as soon as i got into alabama the dress i was wearing the strap broke and i was like okay and i just had to pull off on the side of the road
00:11:07
Speaker
Take a breath. And I was like, everything is going bad today. But once I did that, the rest of the ride was very smooth. And I was like, maybe I was missing something bad that was going to happen down the road.
00:11:20
Speaker
That's what I was telling myself. See, I have to reel myself in because sometimes I'd be like, am I just not supposed to do this thing? Like when I was starting my YouTube channel, i was literally like,
00:11:33
Speaker
Do you not want me to do this? Just say it. Like, just say it then. But I think I just needed to take a step back because I was trying to move too fast and just sort of get a plan and write out things and figure out what I wanted to do.
00:11:49
Speaker
So, but I definitely be thinking I'm paranoid with the, particularly, I'm glad you said that with the energy thing, because I sometimes be places and I
Ethics of Sharing Spiritual Insights
00:12:00
Speaker
be getting bad feeling about people when they come in.
00:12:03
Speaker
And I'm like, girl, are you being paranoid? Because I'd be like, I don't know, this person look like they could just shoot shoot up this whole coffee shop right now, which is extreme, but it's not far-fetched. It's not far-fetched given um how frequent mass shootings happen. But yeah, and maybe the sense is valid in that there's something off with the person. But I do think that paranoia might I do think it's a mix of paranoia because it's like, okay, something off of that person, but you just creating a whole scenario that's taking it a little bit too far.
00:12:40
Speaker
Okay. But yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because I definitely be like, you tripping. Yeah. you I will say that there have been times where I've had a bad feeling about someone. And there were two celebrities in particular where I had bad feelings about them. And I remember people being like, if you hate this person, you're anti-Black. And I was like, I don't know, something going on with it. And then like two to three years later, they both came out as being like abusive to people.
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah. And I was like, okay, maybe that's what it was. But sometimes it is just like, i have a bad feeling about someone just because I'm not going to vibe with them, not because they're a bad person.
00:13:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment for sure. Like sometimes we just not, sometimes we just don't mesh with people. And I think that's a good distinction to make because that's a thing too with me, even with social media, Levine Briggs, who's the author Central Faith. And if you follow Jujube, you probably, she's been on Jujube's podcast. And if you just follow Spiritualist, you've probably come across her. She has said something about how You just need to unfollow people if you feel yourself like not having a good feeling about this, because sometimes you're unintentionally giving people evil eye and people be having protections around them, which means some of that stuff could get reversed back to you, even if you're not intentionally doing that, which is something I literally have thought about.
00:14:07
Speaker
And. I've had to do that because sometimes it'll be a person I've been following for a while. And then all of a sudden I'm like, what's your issue? Like, why you, what is your issue with this person? I'm trying to get a better practice of like, okay, I don't believe this is a bad person. I think that's why i struggle with divesting from certain people because I don't believe they are a bad person.
00:14:29
Speaker
But you work in my nerves. Like I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed. Every time I see you popping up on my timeline. And so, yeah, sometimes it's just like you fall out of alignment with people or you just not in alignment with people. And it's just best to take a step back. And it doesn't mean you're a bad person or they're a bad person.
00:14:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think something else that's important to remember is that a lot of times we're at like levels and depending on whatever level you're on, that's where you're at.
Developing and Trusting Intuition
00:15:00
Speaker
And something I think about a lot is like books, like a lot of times in the bookish space, people will be like, oh this person's a bad writer. But then that person has like thousands of people that love their writing i'm like i don't think they're a bad writer i just think their writing's not for you and i think the level of writing that they're at there's a lot of readers who are also at that level and it's the same thing with like the people we follow the level that they're at we're at that same level and if one of us moves a level it's like it don't work no more that's exactly right So a lot of where this episode came from, there was this clip of Toni Morrison who talked about believing in ancestors guiding us. And she said, my whole education was to make sure i didn't believe in things like that
00:15:45
Speaker
and i dismissed all sorts of things that were indigenous in my family and superstition you know the discredited information the discredited way of knowing. She went on to say that when she started writing, that was where the information and the images were.
00:15:59
Speaker
They were in the things that her education said didn't exist or weren't useful. And so I noticed this in my writing as well. Like I've talked before about um Apocalypse Still, my short story collection, it was based on these nightmares i was having and when I wrote them. But what I didn't talk about was like how some of those nightmares kind of came true.
00:16:23
Speaker
So after I wrote Entangled, i had this dream where this person, it was this man i had never seen before. and he wrote a phrase on a piece of paper. And I was like, that's a really weird phrase. So I woke up, i Googled it.
00:16:37
Speaker
There was one article that was about this car crash that had happened with these five white guys. Three of them died, two of them lived. And it happened in the county that I had grew up in.
00:16:51
Speaker
And i was like, what the fuck is this? I still don't know what it means. And I don't think I wrote down that phrase because I just woke up and Googled it immediately. So i don't, I don't even know where to find it or how to even look that up again. But it was just like, what are the chances that I have a dream where this weird phrase comes up and this car crash happened?
00:17:13
Speaker
That's like a mysterious car crash and they don't know how these boys died and things like, and the two that lived didn't talk about it at all And I was like, I don't know what's going on here. Another example of that is Antenna, which I actually did not write from a dream.
00:17:28
Speaker
i wrote that because I got really high. I got really high. And I was tripping. And I just remember every all these visions that were flashing in my head. i was like, I know for 100% that these things are true, but I don't know what they mean.
00:17:46
Speaker
And at the time, i thought that it was discrediting a lot of what I believe like spiritually. And so I pretended that didn't exist until December when Gray, who's a friend of the podcast, Gray sent me this podcast called The Telepathy Tapes. and she was like, it is this podcast that talks about mostly nonverbal autistic people who are having the spiritual experience.
00:18:11
Speaker
And as they were talking in the podcast, I was like, wait a second, this is the things that I had the time I got high and I wrote all these notes. And I was literally referencing my notes as they were talking. And all the things that they were talking about were the same things that came up in my notes.
00:18:26
Speaker
And I was like, I don't think I can keep pushing this down and pretending it doesn't exist because it's like, this is real. And it all started with like, getting high and and with the car crash thing it started with a nightmare that I had no idea what was going on but as you know i kept living it's like I figured them out one thing I do want to say about the telepathy tapes and we may talk about it later in this season but the more that I listened to it the more it seemed like white people were understanding African spirituality yeah
00:18:59
Speaker
And so they were like, wow, our spirit came here for like a physical experience and the things that happen in the spiritual realm influences what happens in our material world. And something else I thought was really interesting was that the parents of color more readily believed their autistic children when they were younger compared to the white parents who were their children was about autism.
00:19:23
Speaker
but I would say the parents of color, the children are about like eight 10. And they were like, oh, yeah, my child's telepathic. Whereas the white parents, their children were like late teens, t twentyies before they started to believe that their children could do these things.
00:19:38
Speaker
And so I thought that that was interesting too. But when I looked online and I was trying to talk about this because I was like, damn, I'm having this same experience that a lot of other autistic people are having.
00:19:49
Speaker
There were a lot of people who outright discredited this. They said it was propaganda about autistic people with superpowers, which like, yeah, I get that eye roll. But also it's like, we know that nonverbal autistic people are the most marginalized and we say we need to believe them. But when they say things like this, it's like, oh, but we don't need to believe that.
00:20:08
Speaker
And then we talk about how we need to center their experiences. But when they talk about this, it's like, oh, but not those experiences. So, yeah. I want to respond to the thing about discrediting this experience of autistic people.
00:20:24
Speaker
Because it also goes into this idea that people used to assume that if a person was nonverbal, that they had no consciousness. There are other types of experiences where a person is nonverbal for a host of reasons where they're not autistic anne they know what's going on.
00:20:48
Speaker
Like they have an awareness of what's going on. They react. They cry when someone dies, even if nobody told them. Like just an awareness of the energy around them. And so i don't really see why people think this is a bad thing or some type of bad propaganda because literally it was the medical cook community that were making these sort of claims that telling parents that their child was just like, oh, they don't know what's going on. They don't talk. They're just there. I feel like in a lot of ways, this humanizes that experience.
00:21:29
Speaker
But, you know, I think That's just kind of based on my beliefs of it's not some kind of magical, fantastical things for people to have these kind of gifts.
00:21:40
Speaker
like You can have this gift and not be autistic. So for this to be specific to a community, um particularly one that is nonverbal, because if you talk to people who don't have certain senses, they say that other senses get heightened.
00:21:57
Speaker
So why is this hard to believe that they've developed the sense that maybe all of us have and don't know how to develop? I don't know if that makes sense, but I just, I don't like that idea of just like trying to write off things because it seems unbelievable.
00:22:12
Speaker
Because you are you have bought into like a very westernized view of the human experience. Yes. I do want to say that a lot of these autistic people can communicate telepathically with their caregivers. So people who are not autistic.
00:22:28
Speaker
They're able to do that. Yeah, that makes sense. So, Dani, I'm wondering what you think about Toni Morrison's discredited way of knowing and how a lot of our education and socialization depends on that. Yeah, it's interesting how people are like so quick to discredit things that I say they see as like primitive. It kind of reminds me of the phrase mumbo jumbo, which derives from a West African word.
00:22:52
Speaker
And became a term used to describe something that's meaningless or confusing. And I can link to an article that goes into more detail about that. But I mentioned it because there are all these big and subtle ways to discredit anything deriving from Africa or just Black culture in general. And it's interesting how effective it is that Black people can be Christian Invoke the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost, but then distance themselves from our indigenous practices.
00:23:22
Speaker
I'm to tread lightly when I say this, but as important as education is, it has also been weaponized through the Western lens because they get to decide what is legitimate knowledge and then it gets recorded as fact throughout these various articles and books through generations. like This is a systemic thing. so Not to like go on a tangent, but I think people have been talking a lot about fascism and anti-intellectualism and this attempt to quote unquote dumb down folks to better control them.
00:23:58
Speaker
But then on the other hand, there's a reason people find it easy to turn away from the work of people like scientists and historians and sociologists, anthropologists.
00:24:09
Speaker
All of these disciplines have been weaponized to discredit non-Western cultures. They pushed race science. They pushed the idea that certain groups of people are inferior.
00:24:23
Speaker
Essentially being used to push the agenda that whiteness is supreme. So I think it's all connected. And I'm not saying I agree with people who are saying a shit like vaccines cause autism. dot da da da They got wires in the mask.
00:24:35
Speaker
But I'm saying the blame of how all of this is playing out is by design. First, they say this is this knowledge is valid. then they manipulate you and say, actually, don't listen to these people anymore because there's too many Black people in the field now. There's too many people of color in the field, too many women who are trying to break open this thing, so now you can't trust it.
00:25:02
Speaker
I think that's what it's really about. Quote-unquote DEI, I guess, is the problem. The DEIs...
00:25:13
Speaker
But yeah, so i think I think that's where it started and in and why this is where we are. i don't know. I just feel like the people who want to keep this sort of racial hierarchy, they're always going to find a way to manipulate the situation.
00:25:30
Speaker
And they're going to find a new way, as Toni Morrison says, to discredit a way of knowing. They're always going to find a way to make it align with how they want the world to operate and where they want us to be on the hierarchy as far as like black people and anybody else who isn't an able-bodied white person. I'm glad that you brought up scientists because something that had been bothering me a lot was like information about traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture.
00:26:03
Speaker
i did acupuncture a couple years ago And for me, it was a last resort. I didn't really believe in it, but it was like, I was in so much pain. i was going to the doctor and they were like, um, we don't know what's going on. Good luck with that. And I was like, okay.
00:26:17
Speaker
So I was basically on my own and I was like, I don't know if acupuncture will work, but let's see. And it actually did work. It was the only thing that worked for me. And I remember so many people being like, well, it's just a placebo and I can't believe you're so naive and gullible to fall for it.
00:26:32
Speaker
And I think it's very important to remember that like the United States is 4% of the population, the global population. There is 96% of the world out there, right?
00:26:44
Speaker
Most of the world is in Asia. And a lot of Asia um follows traditional Chinese medicine, follows acupuncture. Acupuncture is a 2,000-year-old science.
00:26:55
Speaker
It is one of the oldest sciences and medical systems that we have. But ah when I was looking up, like, why do people discredit it so much? Someone made a very good point but of it's because it's Chinese and the United States hates the Chinese and they push forth all this propaganda that the Chinese don't know anything. They're not good at anything. They're not capable. They're actually poor. They're terrible country. And I was kind of happy with the quote unquote TikTok thing.
00:27:24
Speaker
um Because a lot of people got on red note and they were like, wait a second. Y'all said Chinese people are poor, but they all own the houses and the apartments they live in. And once they buy it, they don't have to keep paying taxes on it. And also their rate of homelessness is under 1%. And also, do you see how many groceries they have and how cheap they are compared to here? Like the price of corn in China is less than the price of corn in the United States. And the corn that they get in China comes from the United States.
00:27:54
Speaker
And it's things like that, like they are living much better lives than any U.S. propaganda tells us they are. And a lot of that is to push forth an agenda that, you know, we're the greatest country in the world. And they do that by not showing us how amazing other countries are. And i'm not saying China is perfect. i know China has its problems, but a lot of what we think about the rest of the world is heavily influenced by what the U.S. government wants us to think about them. it's such a good point to make, but you know, the thing that they do is they will discredit it and then they'll take the information and name it something else and then put it out under the guise of them discovering it. It kind of reminds me of the epigenetics thing.
00:28:38
Speaker
um Back when I listened to the friend zone and friend, it was when she did like a segment on health and self-care and different information and about how trauma gets passed down.
00:28:51
Speaker
Genetically, I guess, and how some people, she talked about how some people didn't really believe in that or saying is pseudoscience. But now the science community is getting on board because when Black people would say things like, we still carry the scars of slavery, get over it.
00:29:12
Speaker
But we do. It's probably one of the... most significant aspects of like issues happening within our community, like those scars, that trauma and it doing something to our brain.
00:29:28
Speaker
Cause a lot of us really have to work hard to unpack a lot of the shit that was normalized in our families, that was normalized within us that we now see is like, no, this is actually really terrible.
00:29:42
Speaker
i won't go on a tangent about that, but we could talk about it one day. Okay. ah Do you want to take a break? um Yeah, let's do it.
00:29:57
Speaker
Let's get is into some ways you can support the Hoodoo Plant Mamas. One is through our bookshop where you can buy the books that we previously discussed with our Writing the Spirit guests. We also have a Hoodoo Beginners Guide as well as our top reading picks.
00:30:10
Speaker
We also have our top tarot cards and oracle card deck section. So check that out too. You can also buy Leah's books. on Bookshop. Every purchase you make helps support our show. Check us out at bookshop.org slash shop slash Hulu Plant Mamas or hit the link in our show notes.
00:30:29
Speaker
Other ways you can support us include rating and reviewing the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Follow us on Instagram at Hulu Plant Mamas. We are no longer on the app formerly known as Twitter.
00:30:43
Speaker
So yeah.
00:30:47
Speaker
You can also check out our Patreon where we share exclusive video, plant, and spiritual content for only $3 a month. Shout out to our new patrons, k Crystal and Serena. We are so lucky to have you.
00:30:59
Speaker
If you prefer a one-time donation, you can donate via cash app, cash tag, who do plant mamas, or our PayPal, who do plant mamas at gmail.com. And thank you, Andrea, for your donation during our break. Let's get back to the show.
00:31:19
Speaker
Something that I wanted to get into was the ethics around knowing. And it's something that I still struggle with to this day. Like when you know something, especially about someone else, when do you decide to share it? Do you even share it? Like, what do you do with that information?
00:31:38
Speaker
And so I remember one instance in particular where this girl that I went to high school with, she was getting married. And in the dream, she was like, it was like me from her point of view.
00:31:54
Speaker
and she was like running away from her soon to be husband. And he was like hunting her down with his friend. And by the time he had like caught up, To me, he like attacked and then everything went black and i was like, oh my God, what does this even mean? But it it just gave me a really uneasy feeling about them and about this marriage that was coming up.
00:32:15
Speaker
And I remember telling you about it because you know the person as well. And you were like, even if you told her, she won't listen to you. Because we both know that like she is someone that really values marriage. She wanted to get married so bad.
00:32:29
Speaker
That dream ended up becoming true in a way. It wasn't so much like he's physically hurt. Well, I don't know if he's physically hurting her or not. But someone that he cheated on her with came to me and told me about it. and I was like...
00:32:44
Speaker
So I was like, dang, is this my dream? And a part of me felt guilty because it was like, I knew that this was not someone she should be marrying, but I didn't say anything.
00:32:55
Speaker
And I was like, but it's not really my fault, but also like, why would I get this information if I'm not supposed to do something with it And I ended up writing a short story to kind of process my feelings around that dream.
00:33:08
Speaker
But in the end, I still like, honestly, today, I still kind of feel guilty. And i it was like, I wish I would have told her about what was happening. And I didn't. So I just wonder if Danny, you experienced something similar where things have come up in your dreams about someone else.
00:33:24
Speaker
And can you talk about how you navigated that? Yes. First, I want to say, you know, when it comes to this kind of stuff with people in their relationships, sometimes it was the right thing to not say anything because that has blown up in my face several times.
00:33:38
Speaker
People don't want to believe if they don't want to believe something they're not. And then they'll flip the script on you like you're the problem. I feel like I've lost or almost lost friends over that shit. So I'm just like, you know what, girl, I'm gonna stay out of it.
00:33:53
Speaker
But for me, you know, i think I've talked about on here about the pregnancy dreams I've had. And usually how the dream happens is I am put as the vessel for the baby. Like,
00:34:10
Speaker
I am the one pregnant or I'm the one holding this baby that's supposed to be mine, but it's not. And I know it's not when I wake up, I know it belongs to someone. So usually I'll reach out to friends and say, Hey, just so you know, i had a dream.
00:34:25
Speaker
One of y'all are pregnant. Usually I'm right. Sometimes people just don't want to disclose. I found out when I may put out that message before I found out later from a person that was so was embarrassed about it for whatever reason. And you know,
00:34:39
Speaker
Had an abortion and there was some trauma around that. And so she didn't tell me until after the fact. And I was like, that's fair. you You're not entitled to it. note None of them are entitled to tell me if it's them. I just like to give people a heads up because it's like, just go get it checked out.
00:34:55
Speaker
If you're concerned, it might be you. On the other hand, I had a dream of myself being pregnant and getting an ultrasound And the doctor revealing that the baby was dead. It was actually such an intense dream.
00:35:11
Speaker
I woke up in shock. And then a few days later, a friend shared with me that they had a miscarriage. I did not tell them about that dream. First of all, there was no reason to. But even if I had known that it was going to be that person, I wouldn't have said a thing.
00:35:28
Speaker
First of all, my feelings around this whole having these dreams is complicated because it's not a gift that I've developed. I seldom know who the person is.
00:35:38
Speaker
There's been maybe two times where I was for certain who it was. Most of the time, I just wake up confused and annoyed. But with that said, I would never disclose to someone something like a miscarriage I've dreamed of people dying and that's something I never disclose either. In most of those cases, the person didn't die. usually means something else.
00:36:03
Speaker
Years ago, a friend of mine, one of their friends told them like, oh, I had a dream that something bad was going to happen to you and da-da-da-da-da. And I remember how anxious it made this person, but especially because they were already dealing with an issue around their safety, like their personal safety.
00:36:19
Speaker
And I thought that was so out of line because I thought it was irresponsible and it and really unkind. Like, you're not my friend if you do that. The person is fine. They're safe. But I think it's extremely unethical to share that kind of thing with someone without their consent.
00:36:35
Speaker
If someone comes to you for divination or spiritual guidance, then fine. But even then, there's a way to share things. The person could have simply gifted their friend something for protection or prayed for them.
00:36:48
Speaker
and I imagine it's harder to understand the dangers of disclosing this kind of thing if you don't understand the gift. If it's like, I don't know what to do with this. Or you feel there's a guilt where you feel like you should try to warn a person. You should try to figure out a way to prevent a thing from happening.
00:37:05
Speaker
And I get it, but I think it's really important to take a step back and think, is this something I need to share?
00:37:16
Speaker
And if I feel like I need to share this, Why? What could be the repercussions? You know what I mean? I don't know. I just think you have to be mindful of that. And you also have to be mindful of your relationship with that person as well.
00:37:30
Speaker
So yeah, for me, I just, I just try to be responsible. The pregnancy thing, all my most of my friends know that's a thing about me. It's been a thing about me since I was a teenager. So they want to know.
00:37:43
Speaker
Most of my friends who have sex with me and be like, please tell me. Sometimes they'll come to me and ask me before I can even tell them, have you been having dreams?
00:37:55
Speaker
And I'll be like, you know what? Now that I think of it, the ah maybe like two days ago or last week, I did a dream that a baby was da-da-da-da. So yeah, but when it comes to the bad stuff, no, I'm just not. Like, even no matter how bad I want to, because nine times out of 10, even if you tell them, there is nothing you can do about what's going to happen.
00:38:19
Speaker
If a person is going to die, you cannot prevent it. In fact, you trying to prevent it might actually make it worse. Or it might end up where now you feel like it's your fault because you shouldn't have been interfering with something like that. So, yeah.
00:38:37
Speaker
That's a really good point about telling people and and making them paranoid because a few years ago, my younger sister had a dream that I died in a car crash. And I was like, why would you tell me that? Because then I panicked the whole time because I was like, I'm going to die in a car crash.
00:38:54
Speaker
So, but also in that dream, she had talked about how like she had a voice in her head that was like, oh, now mama will know what it's like for me when I was growing up as a child. And at that time i was writing my memoir about that same exact thing. So i was like, are my ancestors snitching on me?
00:39:13
Speaker
And telling her all my business. But no, I ended up not letting my mama read my memoir. but But yeah, that did freak me out. And I was very paranoid about dying in a car crash. and i was like, you should have kept that to yourself. My grandma has called and checked on me before. it was one time that I remember and she was like, oh, I just went to see it was okay. You know, I just ah just had a dream.
00:39:37
Speaker
And I think I asked, what was the dream? She was like, it doesn't matter. but She was like, I just had a dream and I want to check on you. And it's funny because I believe during that time I was dealing with something like I was really depressed and down. So ancestors, somebody probably went and dropped something in her dream about me. But yeah, they be snitching.
00:39:57
Speaker
To put it to put it plainly, they do be snitching. Yeah. so before we leave, I'm just wondering if you have any practical steps to start trusting yourself and your intuition and your declares, you know. I believe that there are some gifts that require a mentor or like a spiritual guide.
00:40:22
Speaker
I think my dreams around pregnancy and fertility, that was something I needed support for and I didn't have it. I also didn't seek out support because a part of me didn't want to carry that burden. It actually at times was extremely stressful.
00:40:36
Speaker
But when it comes to tarot, you know, something I still kind of struggle with, but I'm getting better with. Sometimes you have to go with it, even when you feel like, I don't know, maybe I'm a fraud.
00:40:47
Speaker
Just go with it and see what happens. Because a lot of the times, you know what you know. You can feel it in your body. You can feel it trying to come out of you and you are letting that sort of shadow side of yourself convince you that that thing isn't real. Even though you hear it, like you hear it in your head.
00:41:08
Speaker
I can hear a message in my head and maybe I maybe i am clear audience. I don't know. But I'm starting to figure out who it is. i don't know. I feel like it's me. But you can hear it very clearly.
00:41:21
Speaker
And sometimes it's not even actually hearing it, it's feeling it. I don't know how to describe it, but sometimes I can feel the thing that I'm supposed to say. And I will still convince myself that like, no, this is just, you just making it up.
00:41:35
Speaker
So I do believe that you sometimes got to fake it till you make it until it comes natural. As you become more confident and clear on your gifts, I believe that strengthens them. But I do want to reiterate, sometimes you need support and that's okay. Like,
00:41:50
Speaker
Some gifts, I think, are too big to carry along when you don't got nobody in your life that understands. You might grow up in a super Christian family that's really rigid and believes that certain things are demonic.
00:42:05
Speaker
And it can be scary, overwhelming, debilitating. Like if you have, for instance, premonitions and you don't know how to control it. And now you just sitting here like, I didn't ask for this.
00:42:18
Speaker
I didn't ask. I've been there. I've been there. So sometimes you need to seek out guidance and figure out like, who can I talk to? Maybe find some books if you don't trust, if you don't feel comfortable for going to a person directly.
00:42:34
Speaker
But yeah, building your confidence and going with what your body is telling you, but also seeking support when you need it Because It's really important with certain gifts that you take care of yourself spiritually because it is intense energy work, even when you don't have no control over it.
00:42:51
Speaker
Energy is moving and you're being impacted and. What I feel like I'm learning is that some of that darkness that you might feel, that depression and stuff that comes up for you, especially when you can't pinpoint it or you can pinpoint it, but it doesn't make sense that it's affecting you that way.
00:43:12
Speaker
That is a gift moving through your body that you really don't know how to control and you haven't yet learned how to decipher and understand. And that could be a sign Number one, go take a spiritual bath, clock in my own tea with that one and find support.
00:43:31
Speaker
So yeah, that was very long-winded, I feel like, but that's that's my advice and some advice. I it's good advice. Yeah. And I'm working on my own advice. So please, I am not perfect at all.
00:43:44
Speaker
I think for me, what really helped with building my intuition and this was recently back in august i did tatiana tarot's annual read yourself to filth challenge and it's a seven day challenge where she like is help guiding you on how to read yourself through tarot cards and a lot of it is about trusting yourself like if you see a card And the first thing that comes to your head is a song. How does that song relate to the card that's there? And I think for me, a lot of times I'll be like, oh this song is just playing over and over in my head. It's there for no reason. But no, it is there for a reason. Like there was a song that was playing in my head over and over for like a week, a few weeks ago.
00:44:30
Speaker
And I just realized that that was about somebody in my life. And how I needed to reach out to that person. But if I would have just dismissed it as like, oh, a catchy song. is in my I wouldn't have reached out to that person and know that they were like struggling with something. But it's about when things come up in your body, in your brain, listening to it without judgment, without thinking I'm silly. What's wrong with me? why Why are these things coming up? And really believing it.
00:45:01
Speaker
um And it has helped me become a much better reader because sometimes I will pull cards and I was like, I'm hearing this word, but I don't know why I'm getting this word. And I'll tell the other person and they're like, oh, that word means this, this, and this.
00:45:13
Speaker
I don't know where this is coming from. I'm going to be so honest. But it has helped me to become a better reader just to be like, I'm getting this thing. I don't know what it means, but I'm just going to trust it.
00:45:24
Speaker
Other things that have helped me with intuition because i struggled a lot with anxiety and with like panic attacks and stuff.
00:45:34
Speaker
So different types of body work like massage, getting used to the way that my body felt, yoga, Helped a lot. Somatic therapy. I did EMDR, but there are many types of somatic therapy.
00:45:47
Speaker
Grounding, going, and sitting by the trees, sitting by the water, without your electronics. All of these things have helped me a lot to, like,
00:45:58
Speaker
when things come up to be able to listen to them and also to provide a sense of clarity. Cause I think sometimes, especially when I'm on my phone, my brain will be like six different trains of thought at once. And it's very hard to like think straight, but doing things like sitting outside by a tree without any electronics, just me and a piece of paper really does help to like clarify things and clarify like what's coming through.
00:46:24
Speaker
so that way I can start to listen and to believe it. No, I think that's solid and something I need to work on as far as like grounding. And I mean, I go to the gym. I think the gym and weightlifting, which I've become obsessed with.
00:46:41
Speaker
I told my friend, when men see me, I want them to choose the bear. That's how strong I want to look. Never missing an arm day, never missing a leg day. I'm trying to be out here. I want them to be scared of me so they can stay away from me, please.
00:46:57
Speaker
so yes So yeah, so yeah, I actually, I think there's all kinds of ways you can work your work energy through your body. So maybe that's the way that I'm doing that. But yeah, guess that's it for today.
00:47:08
Speaker
If you like this podcast, you can like, rate, and review Who Do Plant Mamas on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If anything from the show resonated with you, make sure to share with us on social media.
00:47:21
Speaker
You can find us on Instagram at Who Do Plant Mamas. Thank you for listening. We'll see you in the next episode. Bye. Bye.