Episode #34

Episode #34: Deanne Adamson Psychedelic Leadership Podcast.

Duration: 01:56:55

Laura Dawn: Awesome. Well, welcome Deanne Adamson, I’ve been so looking forward to this conversation. It’s so nice to circle back around with you after we first met a couple of years ago. I’ve been tracking all of your work in the space and I’m just so impressed with everything that you’re doing and especially just watching the growth of Being True to You. I’m just so amazed. I’ve known quite a number of people now who have gone through the program, including quite a few dear friends of mine that also had a chance to really look at your content. I’m just so amazed because this work is so needed right now, more than ever. And it was nice to kind of just have this little drop-in with you before we hop on the recording of the podcast.

And you said something that was really striking to me. And I always love the more intimate conversations that I get to have with people in this space where we’re not recording. That’s where just so much of really the real juice comes through. And I was sharing with you about my own process of what it’s really taken to come out with this name; Psychedelic Leadership. And you immediately said something about that related to Being True to You.

And so I’d love to just open up the space with just a little bit of your story, how you came to launch Being True to You. You’ve been in the space for eight years now, which is just incredible. And I just wanted to start by just asking you about this name and what this name has really meant to you as this sort of north star for you on this journey.

Deanne Adamson: No, gosh, what a good question. We’ve actually been in this space for about 11 years now. So I started Being True to You in 2010. I initially called it Living True to You and the reason was that I had such a tumultuous teenage upbringing. And also my twenties were pretty rough, not in terms of my family system, but in terms of my internal process and how I coped with the world. And so I had a big conversion experience in my late twenties and I developed this passion through that to help young adults and teens live or find their passion and find their mission in their path earlier life.

So I named the company; Living True to You. And then a mentor of mine said Being True to You would be a lot better and I was like wow, that’s it. And I knew right away that was a good name but what I didn’t realize was the journey that it was going to take me on. Because for every day moving forward, I had to actually think about that. “Well, what does it mean to be true to myself?” And I became very aware of the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be or what I felt was true for me. So it was actually more difficult than I thought because I had to constantly like self-reflect and look within and see all of my shortcomings.

And at the same time, I was in this emerging industry. I mean, I literally just landed at the nexus between all of these emerging industries and discovered that there was no preparation and integration industry. And I had a foundation, I had a starting point to actually step into that. So on the one hand, I’m putting the brakes on and questioning myself and having to evaluate the integrity within myself and the ability for me to show up. And on the other hand, that demand was just so high and people were coming to me for answers and I was able to provide some direction.

So yeah, the journey of naming my company Being True to You has been overall just magical because the other thing is that it really sits well with people, you know, working with people from all paradigms and psychedelics do, they call people from all paradigms in. And so you’re working with people of so many different backgrounds and so many different world views, but this idea of being true to myself really sits with people. So I’ve been very happy about the name that we initially chose.

Laura Dawn: Oh, I just so deeply resonate with that process. And you know, it’s been such a parallel journey for me to have this name, Psychedelic Leadership. I would say overall people have been so encouraging, but then there’s definitely been the critics of, “how dare you use this name?” And also it’s kind of been this like north star for me of creating this container for me to step into and receive my own healing, my own education you know. And I’ve been in such deep self-reflection around, “what does this name really mean to me?” and as a result of that, it’s birthing content and it’s birthing my own, you know, programs that I’m also teaching.

So I love starting at this place and I love that name; Being True to You. I mean, great job on landing that and you also had mentioned, you know, there are days where I don’t feel like I’m being true to myself but in that process of self inquiry, I think that’s what guides the real healing and how you show up as a leader in this space, in your own authenticity. And I really do think that you bring so much authenticity in the message that you share with people. And so I like that framing that it’s like, we’re not like this, you know hubris, “oh, I’m always true to myself” but it’s actually in the contrast of those days where I’m not being true to myself that actually, you know, that’s where the path emerges from.

Deanne Adamson: Yeah. It’s like both humility and confidence and that’s kind of what I realized. Because some days I was in my confidence like I was being true to the mission-oriented part of myself, the leadership part of myself and that kept me going and driving me forward. But then the humility part of it was the part of like actually having to get real and vulnerable and authentic about what I was going through. And so then you just kind of learn to ride that balance between, you know, humility and confidence to push forward.

Laura Dawn: I so appreciate that. And so you have a Master’s in Mental Health Counseling. And so, was that really your base and combined with your own, just your personal story of finding yourself at this nexus of all these different domains as you expressed it? You know a big part of the Being True to You program is around holistic addiction, recovery coaching which I think is so needed in our world today. A lot of the research around psychedelics really focuses on addiction, depression as well. So you are at this really interesting nexus point of a couple of different main domains.

How did you find yourself launching Being True to You that focused on psychedelic integration, addiction, recovery? What was part of your own story that allowed you to, you know including your education but why did you feel compelled to launch this program and this company?

Deanne Adamson: Well, you know, when I was 20 years old or whatever, trying to figure out what I wanted to do in college, I didn’t know that we really had a choice to invent a career. It was just kind of look at the blackboard and pick something that most fits and resonates with who you are and what you’re interested in. And I didn’t really know, I knew I wanted to help people. So I got a psychology degree and then I wanted to go back. I actually was living in Hawaii myself and I was like living the life and everything was perfect but there was a deeper calling inside of me, that’s like, there’s more to life than just sitting on the beach and getting a good tan and being popular.

And so I ended up going back to school and getting a Master’s in Counseling again because I didn’t know really that there was another option that I could innovate my own path. So I went through that whole process, it’s like a 10-year process, a quarter-million dollars basically to get through all of that only to discover I didn’t want to do that. And that was a very hard time in my life because I was turning 30. I was working as a counselor in a managed care setting. And I was basically doing paperwork and diagnosing people so that they could be medicated but there wasn’t passion behind it. There wasn’t like this real investment in one’s own personal growth. And I just didn’t see how it was going to be able to bust through that in the framework that I was currently in.

So I had to go within and I asked myself, you know actually, I had a mentor at the time that said, “what’s your passion?” And I said being a counselor. And he said, “what’s your passion?” I said being a counselor. And he’s like no, that’s not your passion. I said yes, it is. And after a couple of weeks of asking myself, “what’s my passion?” I thought my passion is to help people outside of the matrix. Not that I wanted to oppose anything in society but I knew there was more. I knew that we could evaluate our human experience on a deeper level than just diagnosing our pathology and working to rid ourselves of symptoms. Like I knew there had to be something more and bigger, and I wanted to explore that.

So I heard about coaching. This was before it was really trendy and I thought, this is perfect. I can do exactly what I want to do. I’ll have to create a new model and move away from the mental health system, of course, but I can still help people and I could create a livelihood around this. So I started a coaching business naively because I had no idea what it would take. I think if I had known, I don’t know what I would’ve done differently but I didn’t really realize that. So I started the path of entrepreneurship. It was not easy. I definitely made a lot of mistakes that now I can use in my training to help cut that learning curve for a lot of other people.

And initially, my focus was teens and then I realized teens aren’t ready to do the work typically. You know teens don’t want to do the inner child work and look at trauma and find their passion, purpose, and mission in life. And so it was a little bit harder than I expected. And then I met a friend of a friend who had an ibogaine clinic in Tijuana and that’s when it all started. And at the time there were probably 10 different opportunities I had. And I remember thinking if I go to Mexico and I actually check this out, my whole world’s going to change like I had that feeling and knowing.

And of course, you know, I have to run that by like my boyfriend at the time and my parents, I can go into Tijuana to a clinic that’s giving people ibogaine and detoxing them from heroin but do not worry about me, I’ll be fine. And the short of it is I went down to these clinics, I saw what was going on. And I was just amazed, I couldn’t believe that in one night people could detox themselves out of heroin or full advanced opiate addiction and come out the other side free of withdrawal, free of cravings for the most part. And not only that but like over-stored hope and vision and motivation to move forward in life.

And then on top of that, I saw again, there was no integration industry and I was like this is crazy, this is an amazing treatment. And then I started to reflect on all the amazing treatments worldwide and I was like, there’s no integration after anything. I was like, this is nuts. And so I just was really busy at work doing integration and then I discovered preparation because I was like, wait a second. When people sign with me before they do the detox, we’re having drastic results compared to those that I’m working with after. And so then I realized preparation and integration and honestly, Laura, I had never heard of this from anyone.

I’m sure there were people on the planet doing it but I didn’t know about it. I hadn’t heard of it. And so that’s what we perfected; was the before and aftercare around the ibogaine detox. And from there, all industries started to call upon us; the Ayahuasca industry, Psilocybin, and LSD, now we’re heavily involved in the ketamine industry, you name it. And then we realized it’s not all about psychedelics either, there’s a lot of transformational tools that people are using. There’s a lot of retreats. There’s a lot of amazing things that people are doing, but it’s the longer process of cultivation, is what I call it.

Integration is when you’re integrating a specific event and cultivation is just in general, like spiritual cultivation, you know, personal development, our everyday duties to ourselves, and our human experience. And so that’s what I became passionate about, was not psychedelics themselves, I was intrigued about what psychedelics could do for people and how it could take someone from the abysmal; “I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t know how to even engage my faculties and get going in life again” to one journey and coming out the other side of like “I’m restored and I’m ready to go.”

I mean, I was amazed by that catalyst and that opportunity but I was more amazed about how you could take suffering and chronic suffering and use it as a catalyst for personal growth. And that’s really where my passion came into this.

Laura Dawn: Oh my gosh, I love it so much. I mean, you truly are a pioneer in the space and it’s only recently that we’re really starting to see the full sort of penetration of this word. I mean, you even see it on social media now, #integration. It’s like actually becoming a thing in our culture because of people like you. And even just two or three years ago, people were barely talking about integration and the importance of it. And in hindsight, of course, it’s so obvious, you know that the path is the ‘every day.’ It’s the space in between these psychedelic journeys.

And so, really just hats off to you for leading this way and it’s so important. And I love that perspective that it’s, yeah, the psychedelic journey is a catalyst. It’s one amongst many, there are others that we have to really learn how to integrate into the fabric of our everyday lives. I’m curious when you went down to Tijuana, did you journey with ibogaine as well as part of your training process?

Deanne Adamson:  Yeah, I had to. Interestingly enough, I didn’t right away you know. I did a lot of virtual work. I mean, I went down, I visited the clinics. I saw for myself, I met different teams of different clinics and I saw what was going on but I was living in the states. So I was doing mostly virtual work before and after like Skype calls at the time, but eventually, I got the courage to do it. And the thing is, I knew too much about it. So it was scary because when you’re doing a detox dose of ibogaine, it’s a little different than a psycho-spiritual dose. So the testimonials that were coming into my brain, I was like, oh my gosh, I was so scared to do it.

But then I thought, you know, to really understand what it is I’m doing, I have to go in and do the journey. So yeah, of course, you know, I went down and I did it one year on Cinco de Mayo I remember, with about four other people who were also supporters working in this space and it was phenomenal. I mean, I’ll never forget that journey, there’s nothing like it, there’s no way to explain it. I realized too when I did it, that I do think you can help people. I don’t think you have to have had every psychedelic experience to help somebody through a psychedelic experience from a coaching perspective. I mean, we’ve just seen that time and time again but there’s no way that I could have possibly understood what it was like without doing it.

So, yeah, of course, I went in, and then, I ended up doing all the medicines again. I started as a teenager. I thought those days were over. I thought those were my party days. I had no idea that that was going to reemerge my adult life. And there was a part of me that was a little panicked when I realized like, this was the reality. So, of course, you know I had to go in over several years and just journey with all the different medicines and see what they are and how they’re helping people and what the nature of them is and what it’s like on the inside because you can’t really explain that.

Laura Dawn: Right. And I loved what you said earlier and it did also strike me too that you said a lot of people sort of erroneously believe that you are a psychedelic advocate because you teach psychedelic integration training and I’d love to give you an opportunity to speak to that.

Deanne Adamson:  Yeah. When I first started working with addiction, I like had this block of, oh my gosh, there’s going to be a stigma around me of just working with addiction. And then I got really passionate about it and then I loved it and I was like all about it because I really saw the benefit of going into the depths of addiction and coming out. And I saw the phenomenon of it and I saw that it’s not what people think it is. And then the same thing with psychedelics happened where, when I got closer to it I thought, “okay, I don’t want to be known as just a psychedelic coach. It’s so much more than that.” And so then I kind of had like my walls up to that.

But you know, over time I actually did really soften and warm up to the medicines and really developed a deep respect and honor for the medicines. There were times where I actually wanted to stop doing psychedelic integration and I almost could hear the medicines, like “please don’t go” and like, “we need you.” And specifically, Ayahuasca and ibogaine, I could feel that. And then I just got clear of like, well, “okay, what is my role?” And I realized my role isn’t psychedelic advocacy, my role is integration and cultivation and helping people find the path of their true selves.

And I’ve seen time and time again that through the psychedelic experience if held well in the right setting and a person, you know, doing the proper setup that they need to go into that space and really owning their own work that these experiences can be life-changing for people. So I am passionate about the work and I greatly honor all of those in the medical space and people that are carriers of medicine, administering medicine, curating, and harvesting the medicines. I mean, it’s so much work but myself, I’m not a psychedelic advocate actually.

I’m an advocate for the journey of the true self, however a person gets there is up to them but I don’t ever recommend psychedelics to people. In fact, I never have in 10 years, believe it or not. I’ve never actually told anybody that they should do a psychedelic experience.

Laura Dawn:  I love your perspective, honestly, it just resonates so deeply. Can you speak to how do you conceptualize this notion of aligning with your true self? What does that mean to you?

Deanne Adamson:  Well, you know, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that too because I feel like to have integrity in this line of work with transformational coaching, you have to have a solid foundation. I mean, right now we’re kind of in a world where it’s just a free-for-all in the new age movement which I’ve had to get really clear on. Everything is spiritual, right. So you’re taking all spiritual paths, all spiritual principles and teachings, and everything that’s ever been written in a metaphysical bookstore, and you’re throwing it into one lump sum. And then we’re using that as a foundation to guide people through the psychedelic experience.

And what I have seen is that we are almost opposing and negating the traditional spiritual pathways. And there is some yeah, opposition in people’s spiritual foundations in different paradigms. So I’ve actually had to think about that quite deeply. And what I always come back to is guiding principles, core values, and moral compass, ethics, things like this because when you get clear within yourself, then when you’re working with people or you’re working with groups, you have to stay centered you know. So that’s what I realized.

For me to show up neutrally and actually help other people through their process and not bring in my biases and not push my belief systems, I have to be pretty reassured on my own. I have to know where I exist, where my true self is, what my true north is, what I’m anchored into, what my center is. And then from that point, it’s easier to help other people find their center because if I’m not centered and I’m not grounded and I’m not anchored into anything, then really anything can enter the coaching conversation.

So I would say things again like a moral compass. What is your true north? How do you figure that out? Well, what’s most important to you in this life? Like what are your core values? How do you make decisions? How do you authenticate your own truth? Like what do you know is true and not true? And then the easiest way to put that is just guiding principles. I mean, I think that the guiding principles are really the stationary aspect of entrepreneurship and leadership, and being a coach or being any kind of, you know, guide or helper to people is knowing what your principles are. Because when you’re faced with conflict, when you’re faced with trauma, when you’re faced with really challenging situations, it can shake you.

And I’ve been in situations where I’ve been shaken really hard, even when I should have been prepared and should have had the skills, you know, I froze. I’ve been at retreats and things have happened like emergencies and it’s like you just freeze, right. But it’s like if you know how to anchor back into your true self and you have those practices or those principles, that north star for yourself, it’s a lot easier to just drop in, collect yourself and then again, guide other people.

Laura Dawn:  Yeah. There’s such a sweet similarity with some of the work that I do with people as well, you know, where it’s cultivating your inner compass and how to show up in a centered way to hold space for other people. And I liked this notion that you can really only take people as far as you’re willing to go yourself and the cultivation of daily practice is so important. So I just, I love that.

And I’d love to just go a little deeper into, yeah, just an invitation for you to share a little bit about the program for people who haven’t heard of Being True to You yet. And you have another cohort coming up quite soon. And I’d love to just hear a little bit more about what people can expect in a program like this.

Deanne Adamson:  Great, thank you so much for the opportunity really Laura, to talk about it. It’s a pleasure to share. We have two sides to the company, right. We have the coaching side and we have the coach training side. So for people who want to hire a coach, we have a directory just full of coaches which is so amazing. Because you can go in and you can actually look at the coaches yourself, or you can talk to us and we can match you. We have become quite the matchmakers. It’s kind of funny how we do that but it works really well so that you can come in and you can hire a coach that really relates to you and what you’re going through and the medicines that you’re using or not. And so we have the coaching wing and all these different pods that we specialize in on the coaching side of it.

And then we have the coach training. The coach training is actually, I have a book right here which is kind of funny. So the coach training is an 800-page textbook. This is part two. It’s part one, part two and part three. So the recovery guide is part one, and that’s all about understanding the addiction phenomenon, it’s not what people think. A lot of people that come to us are like I don’t want to learn about addiction. I’m like, it’s not what you think. It’s been so compartmentalized in our society that we just think of like drug addiction or sex addiction.

We don’t understand that the phenomenon of addiction is simply turning our problems and solutions over to the external world, and then continuing to do that. And then we get sucked into that and so really that whole process underlies all states of suffering. And it is a part of everyone’s process that you ever work with to some degree or another. So we jumped into the recovery guide and we go through the phenomenon nature of addiction. And then we look at transformational recovery; like how does that process look and how does that work? How do you guide somebody through, again, the depths of addiction or depression through that transformational process and what is the role of a coach?

So the first level is the recovery guide, the transformational guide and just looking at all of the do’s and don’ts in this, and the different pathways that people can take, and the ethics around this and so on. Then we move into the coaches guide which is part two, another 10 chapters and that’s where we learn how to be a coach. So that’s looking at coaching skills, coaching methods, coaching ethics, the coaching relationship, setting the coaching framework, working with individuals versus families versus groups.

And then of course the entrepreneurial side of it, and just like setting yourself up as a coach. And then we dive into the specialist guide which is the last 10 chapters and that’s where we get into the different states of suffering that people go through. And Dr. Dan Engle and I created our own nomenclature for this because we needed to have some way for coaches and people who are not licensed professionals to work with people who are suffering. And so we created the big five states of suffering and then we kind of unpack all of them and then how do you work with a client who shows up in these different arenas? We get into trauma and how to work with people with trauma.

We do a whole series on psychedelic preparation, navigation, and integration which is really in-depth. And then we also talk about different tools for catalyzing consciousness and addiction. I mean, in addition to psychedelics because there’s a lot of different methods that people are using. And I think it helps coaches stay well-balanced when they learn about all the different tools. So they’re not hyper-focused or pushing one particular thing on people. And then we end the training talking about the journey of the true self and really what is the bigger picture.

Because right now I see in our industry, it’s all about trauma and healing trauma, and it’s kind of taken over the industry but there’s so much more to look at, really, truly. And so what we look at is the journey of the true self and what is that universal pathway that we can all kind of agree on and how can we guide clients neutrally through that process without suggesting particular things or influencing their own worldview or faith, and rather just helping them to find more clarity in that. So it’s a really deep, profound training at just after about eight years of working on it and all the different experts and senior coaches that have been through that help us with it, it’s really become something quite profound.

So yeah, we do start soon. We have training every fall and summer and then we do like light trainees in the winter, in the spring but our big kickoff is in the fall. We start the 8th of September with some orientations and officially on the 13th of September. And it’s about a five-month process to get through the whole training. You can do it online, it’s really flexible with time. You can do payment plans. So I think it’s really affordable for an entire career at this cost. I think we’re probably the most affordable training I know out there and the most extensive.

And I just want to say too, in addition to the 30 chapters, we have experiential workshops with our senior coaches that have been with us for a long time like Anie Boudreau and John Bodine. And it’s so exciting because they kind of compliment the parts that I didn’t. So I’m very academic when I write and I’m very cognitive and I’m very logical and reasonable in how I process things. And then all the senior coaches kind of came in over the years and taught me the experiential part of it.

And so we have all these workshops where you can actually do hands-on coaching in real-time and practice using communication skills like heart-centered communication to work through really heavy stuff from a coaching perspective and how to maintain your own energy while doing it, so you’re not taking on other people’s stuff. So yeah, between the lectures and the experiential workshops and the practice coaching, and like the toolkit of forums that we give, it’s turned out to be quite a training. I wouldn’t say it’s kind of like going to college and getting an actual career certificate to do this work. So thanks for asking.

Laura Dawn:  Yeah, that’s amazing. One of the things that I hold a very similar perspective to you, I used to work a lot more in the realms of addiction; publishing a book on food addiction and did a lot of coaching work with addiction. And I actually feel like you have to be at such a high level as a coach to hold space for people who are moving through that kind of struggle. And I think what you spoke to is that, you know, there are varying degrees. I think it’s not this compartmentalized thing where it’s like, “oh, those people over there, they struggle with addiction and then there’s everyone else.”

And one of the things that have really informed my conceptual framework and my thought process around addiction has been Eastern philosophy, particularly Tibetan Buddhism where we look at this notion that we’re almost never present. We’re extremely inherently conditioned to constantly move away from the present moment and cover over how we feel. And that is this habitual knee-jerk reaction that is sort of like a root addiction for almost everyone at the core of not being able to stay present. It’s constantly, you know, moving away from constant distraction. And I’m curious, you know, has that played a role in your sort of framework of how you teach about addiction? Is that an influence for you at all?

Deanne Adamson:  Well, I mean, when you’re talking about the process of transformational recovery, there’s so much included in it. But are you saying is the power of presence an important aspect in the transformational process?

Laura Dawn:  Yes, I mean, that’s one way to frame it for sure.

Deanne Adamson: Yes, I mean, I feel like when we are suffering, we have a lot of burdens that build up in our mind and in our body, and those become attachments to some degree, either we’re attached to the desire to feeling good or were attached to the vice that helps us to relieve our suffering. And so that resistance to feeling that pain is what causes people to not be present. Right. So it’s like you try to sit down but there’s a voice in your head, there’s some kind of impulse that comes up in your body. Your emotions are tugging you this way or that way. And so, yeah, I would say learning to actually sit with the thing that’s coming up is a huge part of transformational work in general.

You know, you have to feel to heal and you have to be able to feel even to identify what’s going on. So yeah, I would say in our culture in general that’s kind of our programming, is to run, hide, escape, numb all of these different things. And we are jumping out of the present moment. So part of that is coming back into our body, centering, grounding, and building that resilience and that tolerance to just be and to just feel. And I feel like from that place of stillness whether people are cultivating that through meditation, mindfulness, breath work, journaling, coaching. There’s a lot of different things that people are doing, just being out in nature. You know it does help to develop that tolerance for stillness.

I will tell you working with people through addiction for so long, I realized that the biggest fear was boredom, that was the biggest fear. And then I realized that’s presence, right. Because everyone would always say — I would say well, what’s the hardest thing for you going home? And it was like being bored and I was like, wow, I just heard that over a thousand times. And I thought, what is that experience of boredom, like what really is that? And I realized, that’s the present moment where we have to sit with ourselves as we truly are. And we call it boredom because we’re not distracting ourselves.

And so then I kind of realized, okay, there’s two sides to the coin here when I’m helping people. On the one side, we are learning how to sit still and to be present. But on the other side, we are learning how to engage ourselves more productively because that space of boredom in presence is actually a really difficult place. So when you tell someone struggling with addiction, you know, just be present, just sit still, go within, it doesn’t mean that they can just do it. It’s something, actually has to be cultivated within somebody and ultimately you can’t just choose to be present and tranquil. You actually have to earn it.

You have to actually transform the things in your body that won’t let you sit still so whatever that is. Whether it’s a toxic body, a negative mind, you know, a traumatized body or a body full of blocks and burdens, regardless, whatever that dark matter is inside the body, a person has to actually get in there and transform all that little stuff to achieve tranquility. You know I don’t ultimately think like any techniques can achieve that process, they can maybe help in the interim. But I think a person actually has to get in there, clean out their mind and body and spirit to have that effect. So it’s quite an advanced topic really.

Laura Dawn: Oh, it’s super-advanced. Yes and I mean, even when I think about in the Buddhist tradition the three marks of existence, one of them is the root cause of suffering; is our constant pushing away from what we don’t want to feel and clinging to pleasure. You know it’s the push-pull with pleasure and pain. And that’s where neuroscience and Buddhism have a huge overlap, you know, we’re biologically designed to push away from what doesn’t feel good and to move towards what does feel good. And to sit in the center of that push-pull dynamic.

I think just coming back to your point that like this applies to everyone, that there isn’t this notion that there are some people who are addicts and then there’s everyone else. There are some core underlying principles that are really applicable to everyone in their everyday lives.

Deanne Adamson:  Yes, I mean, exactly. And I think that’s part of being a good coach or a good  facilitator or supporter you know, in joining this industry. It’s like recognizing that all of that work that people are going through often still lies within ourselves and that we’re all here as students cultivating ourselves and facing these things. We might just be facing them at different times and levels and different scenarios, but these same patterns show up across humanity, just in different ways. We just use different words to sort of hide from it.

Laura Dawn:  Right.

Deanne Adamson: You know?

Laura Dawn: