When the wolves are hungry, let them feast
There is an old Native American story about how two wolves live inside of us, one evil and one good. The adage says that the wolf that we feed is the one that wins. Often, this story is used to encourage us to be positive and not entertain the evil wolf with negative thoughts. Kathy and Michelle have some thoughts about these wolves, and think that even sadness, anger, and “negative” feelings have something to teach us about life. In the end, Kathy and Michelle think that maybe both wolves need at least a snack, a nap, and maybe a little fun in their lives, like most of us do. We’re reminded that we aren’t our thoughts, we aren’t our emotions, but how we respond to the experiences and our stories about them leads to how well we live our lives.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Start your week smiling with your friends Kathy Zant and Michelle Frechette. It’s time to get ready for some weekly motivation with WP motivate.
Happy Thursday, Kathy. I had to stop and think what day. It was.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Always a good sign you’re lost in the flow.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: Don’t know what day it is. Yeah. So overwhelmed, it doesn’t matter.
Yeah.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Anyway, first day of though, we. It is through January.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: That’s right. And tomorrow we find out if punk Satani Phil sees his shadow and we get six more weeks of winter.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: I live in a conversation with Phil.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: I live in Rochester. There’s always six more weeks of winter, no matter what. Probably more like ten more weeks, but who’s counting?
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Anyway, it is 70 degrees and it is finally good weather here.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Well, it got into the 40s here last week so that five or six inches of snow we had before didn’t have time to melt slowly and absorb into the ground. So my town was flooded a little.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Bit last week, but oh, jeez, it’s dry now.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: That’s all that matters. That’s all that matters. Anyway, sometimes we usually tell people we talk for a few minutes before we get recording and we usually talk about what our topic is going to be. But I didn’t tell you what the topic is today because I just had an idea and I think it should be good. Okay, so first I want to read something that very many of us have heard before. So here’s a little cherokee thing. And one evening a cherokee man told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, my son, the battle is between two wolves inside of us. One is evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self pity, guilt, resentment. Gosh, that’s a long list. Inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. The grandson thought about it a minute and then asked his grandfather, which wolf wins? And the old Cherokee simply said, the one you feed. Okay, so that’s a good one, right? And then it reminded me of those little cartoons when we were growing up, like the Elmer Fudd type, that kind of cartoon where the person would have the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other whispering into the ears about and trying to say, which one should I do?
So I want to be real about this and tell you that sometimes I feed the other wolf and sometimes I listen to the little devil on my shoulder because, damn it, it’s more fun.
It just kind of is.
I want to say there’s nothing wrong with balance. Right? So it’s okay because I’ve been dealing with a lot lately with the house I’m living in and trying to come with agreement with my family about finally purchasing it and what it’s worth and just all of that angst and nothing will get between a family faster than money, for sure.
But also, we’re shutting down our office and I’m going to be working from home. And I have a lot of emotions about that because I feel like I shut in when I can’t get around places, that kind of stuff. So I have all of these feelings and emotions and I thought, yeah, you could listen to just the angel one and be like, oh, it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be this, but it’s not honest to yourself when you only try to just.
I was talking to my mom today and she’s like, oh, but you’re still going to have a job, right? I’m like, yeah, you still have a job. And she’s like, well, then I don’t understand what the issue is. I’m like, mom, the issue is it’s change. That’s a lot of work. It’s overwhelming.
I’m not angry, but I don’t know if that’s not the right word, but it’s not happy. It’s not happy to have to take ten years worth of office and try to fit it into your life, your home office. There’s not enough room, and so what do you give away? And we talked about some of that last time. We talked about purging and that kind of stuff. And that’s because I’ve been going through this. But I want to talk about the fact that it’s okay to visit those places of grief and unhappiness. It’s okay to visit those places of disappointment and even, like, depression and anger as long as you don’t live there. Right. There’s balance. It’s okay to have to feel the emotions that come along with things like, you and I have talked so much. Right. You’ve gone through a lot. I’ve gone through the last few years with Mark and his stroke and everything that you’ve gone through trying to basically single parenting, but also kind of parenting your husband, too. Not just your kid and kids. Sorry. You have one at home. I think of her more than him.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: As far as my other kid is actually more of a friend and he’s very responsive. I’m so proud of him.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Yeah, he’s an adult. Yeah.
We’ve dealt with so much. And everybody’s always like, look on the bright. Like, I’m sure. How many times has somebody said to you, well, at least Mark’s still here. You should be happy you still have him. Right? Like those kinds of sentiments. And everybody means well when they say those kinds of things, but gosh darn it, couldn’t you just throw punch them? Sometimes when somebody says that?
Yeah.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: Well, they mean well. Everybody who gives me advice that I don’t have the right to cry on the floor of my closet. That’s where I go when it’s like, okay, Kathy’s going to break down a little bit. Let’s just let this happen. It’s either in the shower, on the floor of my closet, those are my cry places.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: It’s cathartic, though.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And the thing that I’ve noticed, and when I have those really deep, hard emotions, if I really allow myself to feel them and thank them for just being there, I’m not my emotions. Emotions like people say, oh, I’m angry. No, you’re not. You are feeling anger, but you are not angry. You are not your emotions, and you are not your thoughts even. All of these things are just kind of like visitors that come into sort of like the house of yourself and some of them trash the place, know Mick Jagger at a hotel, right? We’re partying here.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Mike Tyson was in there.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: But you are not your emotions. But your emotions are there to know. Having done tons of therapy, especially over the last couple of years, my emotions are markers.
There is a gift to show me where my healing is, to show me where I get to let go of something I don’t need to carry around with me either. It’s a belief about myself, a belief about the world, a belief about how safe I am or not. So those emotions come in as really a gift. And I’ve dealt with a ton of really hard ones.
And just like, just knowing my, it leads me to a place of knowing who I really am.
A recent experience that I had, recent therapy session, all these things popped in about my very young. It started with preschool and then it went back, and then I was like, popping memories of stuff that happened when I was like, toddler maybe. I don’t remember any of this stuff, but it’s popping up. So obviously my unconscious has something to say about it and it’s like explaining why I am reacting in a certain way. Like, okay, well, now I know more about myself and I can let the emotion go a lot better when I know that it’s not me and I can understand what it is there to show me what I get to let go of.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Actually, you made me think of something when you said that you are not your emotions. You have emotions. It’s like I took a class on the five basic emotions or something my pastor was doing a million years ago, right? And one thing he said was, we have triggers, or they push by buttons.
When you’re a little like my brother, he knew exactly how to get under my skin kind of thing. And the one thing the pastor said is, well, but you let him. And I have a couple of thoughts about that. First of all, we don’t always know what our buttons are until they get pushed. Right?
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: And then when somebody discovers that something is upsetting to us and they keep pushing, pushing, pushing and poking the bear kind of thing, there is some level of I’m not going to let him get to me anymore. But also, there’s a level of who the hell does he think he is to keep picking at that wound? Right? So I don’t know. I don’t always agree with these quote unquote scholars that tell us, like, well, if you owned your responses, then it wouldn’t get to you. Well, it’s still going to get to me. Whether I have an outward anger response or not. It still hurts. How do you decide just to not be hurt? You can’t really. You can work on getting through those emotions and getting through the pain. I don’t think you ever get over a lot of those kinds of things. Not the deeper hurts. Oh, you’ll get over it. It’s like when somebody close to you dies and somebody says, oh, time heals everything. Like, no, that person’s never coming back.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: You just forget about it more often.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: You really do, right? Like, do I think about my dad every day anymore? No, not really.
But then something will happen, obviously, like those Facebook memories. And I’m like, I got caught the other day. Like, I’m scrolling through it. I was like, oh, my God, I burst into.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: Oh, that was me.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Here we go.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: I have to show mark videos and pictures of the way things were a lot because his memory is gone in a lot of cases. Oh, he’ll remember his ex wife, he’ll remember that. And Victor, what about the one that’s dealing with all this?
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: That kind of stuff. But really, I want him to remember certain things, especially if it was our daughter, I want him to remember. So I was showing videos of this one video he took. He was making a video, and so he wanted a video of our dog running through the meadow in Mount Shasta.
And Claire was like.
And I was there. He was taking. I’m in the video. Alex, our old golden retriever who passed away, is in the video. My meadows in the video.
And his voice the way it used to be. And I was just, yeah. He’s all like, yeah, I remember this.
But I’m just slayed because I just miss it. All of it. Just like, get me back there in that meadow, the water and everything was just, yeah, I’ll never be over it. I’ll never be over the fact I can’t go home.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it’s hard, isn’t it? And we have to learn to be okay with it, at least at a certain level, right? We can’t live in the grief of not having those things. But it’s okay to have those experiences where we miss things and we maybe regret things. Whatever it is, like, whatever emotion it is, that is that evil wolf, it’s okay that they come to visit.
You don’t want the good wolf to kill the evil wolf. Because we need balance, we need the highs and lows to really understand what is meaningful to us in a lot of respects.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think also, too, you don’t want to be the good wolf either. You don’t want to be the bad wolf. You don’t want to say, I’m angry and I’m happy. Because if you just distance yourself from all of your emotions and you’re just like, just be, then there’s never any search for this. I have to find my happiness, or I have to find whatever it is. I have to go back to my meadow. By just being okay with the now and being okay with nothing, with just that empty.
That’s really us. That’s the core of who we are. I was talking to a friend of mine, actually, in Shasta, who would just talk about all kinds of spiritual stuff. And he’s like, I can’t meditate anymore. I just can’t get there. And I’m like, ooh, I’ve been doing this breathing thing, and we unpacked breathing, and I’m like, well, it’s like the yin and the yang and the breath work of the in and the out, but in between the breaths, that’s like, you’re not yin, you’re not yang. You’re just like the nondual self. And that’s who we really are. And we’re both just like, whoa.
Yeah, I’m not the good wolf. I’m not the bad wolf. I’m not the yin. I’m not the yang. I’m just here to enjoy it all and cry about it all and then come back to who I really am, which is just peace.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: Yeah. And the fact that good and bad happens, whether we choose to listen to one or the other, it doesn’t change the fact that this world has both of those things in it. And I think a lot about who I am and who I am in our WordPress community and things like that, too, and the messages that I have to share. And I think back to that article that I wrote, that five days without a shower and the experiences that I had as a disabled person who was not having their accessibility needs met at word camp. And it was frustrating. It was hard. But being who I am in the community and being the person that I have with the struggles that I have allowed me to kind of forge a path that others would then find it easier to attend those things because now people are paying attention to that. And if I hadn’t gotten angry and been hurt and just burst into tears once or twice that week, would those same changes have happened as quickly as they did? And I’d like to say, no, they wouldn’t have. That. I was actually a catalyst for some of those things. And so it’s okay to.
As much as that week sucked, I mean, there was good stuff in that week, too, right? Like, I got to see people, I got to hang out with people. It wasn’t all bad, but it wasn’t all good either. And the fact that I just experienced some real lows during that week really allowed me to find a way to not only advocate for myself, but others, too. And I think that that’s really important. And if you only listen to the thing about only feed the good wolf, then you aren’t being able to use that indignation to be righteous. You aren’t able to use those negative experiences to help yourself boost up and help others. And so I think there’s a lot to be said for it’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to be mad. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be an asshole sometimes.
I’ve not Mary sunshine all the time. It’s funny. People are afraid. They hear me swear. I’ve had somebody say they listen to an episode of this, like, oh, my God, I didn’t know. Michelle Frichette swore. I’m like, I fucking swear all the fucking, like, that’s my favorite word, right? Exactly. Little example.
But, yeah, I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Not that I think anybody thinks I am, but I’m also so superhuman. Not superhuman. I’m so very human is what I mean.
Trust me when I tell you that I have these lived experiences and that it’s not all easy, for sure.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
Have you heard of the emotional scale?
You’ve got happiness at the top and despair at the bottom and there’s like this scale. I don’t remember.
It’s been a while since I’ve even looked at it. But one thing I remember is that if you’re angry, you’re up on the scale. You’re higher than despair. Anger is movement. And my husband used to always joke, he’s like, kitchen is a mess. Do I need to piss you off?
If he got me mad about something, this house would be like, clean in a minute because I love that I’d be angry. Cleaning is like, it’s my jam, man. I’ll get mad about something and the house will get cleaned.
I must be happier.
This little area, I just cleaned this up, but over there, a lot of the stuff from back here got moved over there.
The kitchen is a mess and oh, my gosh, I have to go to word camp next week and I have got to clean because I’ve got people coming to the house to take care of.
So I feel like I have to clean for know they have to deal with.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: Say something to get me mad. Get me mad. Michelle.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: I need help. I got to clean my house. Piss me off.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: The WordPress community.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: Help me attack Kathy on Twitter so she’ll want to clean her house.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: That’s what I need. Yeah. Just rile me know. Come on, somebody get into a fight or something. I’ll get mad about something.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:17:58] Speaker B: I was going to call a name, but I won’t.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Everybody’s safe.
She’s not naming names today. At least not when we’re recording.
Just wait till afterwards, Kathy. I’ll tell you who I’m really mad.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Perfect.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: Perfect.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: My kitchen will be clean by the end of the day.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. But seriously, sometimes it’s the menial tasks that are. I mean, they matter, right? Like having clean house matters, whatever. But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t. It’s not one of the things that matters the most, but it’s those menial tests. We can dig ourselves into that we can do those things with our hands to keep our. And then just think things through and sit down afterwards and breathe, like, okay, I feel a little bit better now kind of thing. Some people run, some people clean, some people sleep. Like, whatever. It is, right? To get yourself through those things. Anyway, so I say, feed both wolves. Just be careful which one you’re feeding more, that’s all.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And make sure you feed the part of you that isn’t a wolf at all and is never good or bad. And just like that centered self. Because then you can just play with the wolves, right? Maybe they’re like little dogs. You can throw them a ball.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: Maybe they are.
Maybe they could play with each other, too and just be a happy family. I don’t know.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: I’m making up porn and just watch the show, right? The drama. The wolf drama.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: That would be a TikTok channel I would subscribe to.
Did you see the.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: I said you had the squirrel guy, right?
[00:19:44] Speaker A: The squirrel guy was awesome.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: He cracks me up.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: He’s got names for them all. There’s a squirrel named Maxine and she’s going to have babies. And his friend comes over and says, well, that squirrel’s fat. And he’s like, don’t say that to her.
Part of squirrel culture.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: And he’s like, why’d you guys tear up the road?
[00:20:05] Speaker B: How are you going to get your mail?
It’s the funniest stuff. I’m sitting here laughing my butt off watching this guy with his squirrels. He’s the best.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: That’s the one you sent me. And he’s like, look what you did to this road. How are you going to catch your mail.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: Hood rat Raymond? Oh, my gosh. There are so many intelligent, funny creators out there right now. Entertainment has never been better. I just hope that we’re a little bit there, too. Like our podcast is making someone laugh.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: I hope so, too. I do hear from people every once in a while that they listen to things. And somebody told me they dm me the other day that the episode we did last on purging and cleaning out really inspired them to start to clean through things themselves and declutter. And I thought that was really cool. That made me happy. Like, hey, at least we got one person that listened and took something from it. And maybe there’s more. We don’t always hear from everybody, but it’s kind of cool when that happens.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: That makes me happy. And whoever that is, I hope they could share some inspiration with me because I still have a garage that needs so much help.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Oh, I have so much stuff. Tomorrow we’re going to leave the office, close the door for the last time. And there’s still so much in there to box up and move. And I have to say that I have the best coworker in the whole freaking world. Jeff Bettencourt has, like, I sit there and point to stuff, and we’ve just partnered up on getting this stuff shut down and get know moved out. And he’s just absolutely a wonderful human being.
Thank goodness, because I never could have done it alone.
Yeah. Anyway, well, whoever’s listening, if you’ve made it this far, I think I say that a lot on the show. Tell us about your wolves or chipmunks or squirrels or whatever it is. If you have coping mechanisms that might help us, we’d love to hear them.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Or I’m looking for the funniest creators on Instagram. And then who makes you laugh?
You’re just happy to see you get on your scroll and it’s like, oh.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: There’S a new squirrel video.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: Who’s your squirrel video guy?
Drop those in the comments because I’m all about hilarious.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: Absolutely.
Well, thank you again, Kathy. I always smile, and no matter where I am in my moods after we talk, I’m always a little bit happier. So thank you very much.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Thank you. Same. I value these conversations so much.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Me too. And I would keep doing them even if we didn’t record them and put them out for the rest of the world. But I kind of like that we can like that we get to share them, too. So it’s all good. Anyway, we’ll see everybody else next week. Bye bye.
This has been WP. Motivate with Kathy Zant and Michelle Frechette. To learn more or to sponsor us, go to wpmotivate.com.