Stories That Move

Mindy Caliguire | Soul Care During Crisis

• DreamOn Studios • Season 1 • Episode 20

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What happens when your soul is as parched as the world around you? Join us as we sit down with Mindy Caliguire, founder and president of Soul Care, to unravel the profound necessity of soul care and spiritual formation in times of crisis.

Our conversation explores the shifting tides of spiritual formation, recounting the journey to integrate soul care into various organizational settings. From strategic roles and collaborations with the Willow Creek Association to the insights gained from the Reveal study, we explore the evolution of discipleship and church transformation. We also delve into the post-pandemic transition to digital tools, which has significantly enhanced our approach to fostering spiritual well-being. This journey underscores a long-standing vision to nurture individuals' spiritual growth, highlighting the increasing awareness of the need for soul care.

We also embrace the realities of 2025, acknowledging the challenges of burnout and the societal pressures that often hinder spiritual growth. Our dialogue emphasizes the importance of vulnerability, patience, and holding space for others' pain without the compulsion to fix it. With references to traditions like sitting shiva, we underscore the need for self-care to offer genuine support. As we share updates on future projects, including Whisper Ranch, and celebrate personal milestones, we invite you to explore the abundant resources available for your spiritual journey, reminding you that hope and renewal are always within reach.

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Speaker 1:

I believe the need for this and I want another hundred organizations that are doing similar things all to be. I mean, this is this. The need is so vast right now. Nobody should be going like, well, somebody is already doing that. It's like no, everybody, voice everybody. If you've got something to do that helps people in this stuff right now, get out there and do it Like it. Don't worry about like if one author's already done a thing and some other organization's done a thing. It's like no, the total addressable market on this is so big. Even if all of us 10x'd in one year, it would still be a drop in the bucket to the need of what's out there.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to another episode of Stories that Move. I'm Matt Duhl and, as always, I'm here with my co-host, Mason Geiger, and today's episode is deeply meaningful and we're honored to have a guest who's been at the forefront of soul care and spiritual formation for over 25 years.

Speaker 3:

Our guest today is my Caliguara, the founder and president of Soul Care and the author of Ignite your Soul. Mindy has dedicated her life to helping organizational leaders flourish by caring for their own souls and those they lead. She's here to share wisdom, comfort and perspective, especially during times of difficulty and loss, and the timing of this conversation is significant.

Speaker 2:

We spoke with Mindy during the outbreak of the tragic fires in Southern California, which has affected many friends and family close to us. Mindy and her family know firsthand the pain of loss, as they lived through the devastating Marshall Fire in Boulder, colorado, in December 2021. Today, she offers a message of hope for anyone walking through a season that feels like a desert, where hope seems hard to find.

Speaker 3:

This is a powerful and important conversation that will resonate with so many of us, so let's get started. Please welcome Mindy Caliguire to Stories that Move.

Speaker 2:

Hello friends, welcome back to Stories that Move brought to you by Dream On Studios. I'm your host, matt Duhl, with me here, as always, good friend, business partner, co-host, mason Geiger. Mason, how are you doing today? I'm doing okay.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's a little rougher start to the day than most.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I know it's a heavier day, heavier season, I mean anything you want to share, as we're kind of kicking that off.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean so as, again, I don't know fully when this episode will air, but, as of recording, right now we're kind of in the midst of the wildfires that are going through in the Palisades and Los Angeles, so got friends and family my sister and her family who are out there and it's just, yeah, been a rough 48 hours kind of watching all of that unfold and the unknowns and just watching that community just really be wiped off the face of the earth Structurally.

Speaker 3:

Luckily they are safe which is what matters, and a lot of people. They were able to evacuate, but I just know it's going to be a long road of rebuilding and. I don't even know what that looks like, honestly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, even as you and I were talking, I mean just thinking through that those moments of you trying to connect with your sister and it's like connection, and then hours of no connection and seeing what's happening on the news and through online I can't imagine the heaviness that that's been for you and your family.

Speaker 2:

But hey, we have a phenomenal guest and probably a divine appointment at the end of the day, in terms of just some of the things that you're processing we have with us here today. Author. Speaker, executive leader. The founder and CEO of Soul Care, mindy Caliguire. Mindy, welcome to Stories that Move.

Speaker 1:

Thanks Matt, thanks Mason. It's good to meet you and be with you this morning.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much. So where are you calling from today? Where are you calling from?

Speaker 1:

Yep, I'm located out in Boulder, colorado, which is awesome. I love it out here. We've been here now for just over 10 years and we've lived a lot of other places, but we're really loving it.

Speaker 2:

Excellent, awesome. So to just start us off, yeah, give us a little bit of an introduction for our listeners. Tell them a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you're doing, what Soul Care is.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, it was a very unexpected journey for me at this point, but where I'm at now is Soul Care is an organization that provides resourcing and personal journeying and a lot of other different kinds of ways of supporting soul health in individuals and in organizations, and that's a big part. We really say we sit at this intersection of spiritual formation and leadership, and so it's how are we and it's this topic is having a moment, as we all know right now, because of the increased stressors and challenges that everyone in life and leadership are experiencing. And so, yeah, we have spiritual directors, we have coaches, we have online courses, we've got an online community. It's got I don't think, I think we might have crested over 4,000 people that are part of it now from all over the world, and they're not all active, daily user type people, but it just there's a hunger. There's a hunger to be connected to things that will help you stay grounded, and that's what soul care is all about Like how do you create a way of life that allows you to stay grounded, rested, connected to God and then let your life live out of that place of connection.

Speaker 1:

Connected to God and then let your life live out of that place of connection. So that's a lot of what soul care is. There's a team of people, smart people, coming around it, and I get the joy of building that team, of doing those kind of speaking and leadership things, partnering with some amazing organizations and ministries, just really loving it. So that's what that looks like right now. And yeah, the care of the soul just simply is like living your life in such a way that you remain in God, that you remain connected.

Speaker 1:

And there's different practices, ancient stuff it's nothing new under the sun, but how do we learn to live a life of attunement to God, awareness where God is at, no matter what the circumstances are around us? And that becomes a really important point along the way, because this isn't like how to just have less stress in your life and whatever. It's like. How do you stay alive to God so that you can become participant with Him in the good work that needs to happen all over the world? And it's not just about pulling away for a while, it's like how does that life integrate into the life of service? Anyway, I'm saying a lot, but that's what we do.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's awesome, and you've been doing that for 25, 26 years. Is that correct?

Speaker 1:

A long time. Yeah, I didn't set out to try to do a thing. I had a very hard season of really the bottom kind of falling out of my own life.

Speaker 1:

That was what introduced me again just by the mercy of God, not because I was smart to a way of life that could be different than everything that was so grindy and driven. That was more my past, and a lot of sort of ministry environments are kind of like that. So that happened I mean 30 years ago this year, so a long time ago. That whole bottom fell out. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:

But as I was recovering, as God was breathing new life and new willingness and new actual resistance even to these former ways of being, I just was shocked at how many opportunities came along to help other people with the same message and that it was unexpected. My whole background and everything I'd done sales and technology I'd done a lot of different things at that point. We were church planting in Boston and my degree in college was like natural resources, like environmental stuff. It was not business leadership. I didn't know anything about marketing or product development. I didn't know any of that stuff.

Speaker 1:

And yet ideas would come and ways to create resources for people that helped them know how to use a journal and as a way to care for their soul. That was how it all sort of started was with journaling and a little resource, and I just kind of kept walking through doors that God would open and all of a sudden this store wanted to bring them into their thing and things would just open. And then all of a sudden, willow Creek, where we had interned as church planting interns, my husband and I. They reached out and asked if I would be interested in candidating for an open position to work in spiritual formation with John Ortberg and I was like I didn't even know what spiritual.

Speaker 1:

I was literally on the phone call with their HR person. I said what's that? I was like do you want to hire somebody for a role that they don't even know what the thing is? And they explained it to me because I just didn't come at this from an academic path. I respect that a ton and I've learned over the years, but at that time this was my way of life, out of desperation, and I didn't know there was formal language around it. I didn't know there were all these other things. And so when they explained what they meant by that, I was like oh, so you want to talk to me about how to care for the souls and encourage maturity of the people at Willow Creek? And they're like, yeah, basically. And I was like, oh, okay, now that I feel more comfortable with I still am overwhelmed by the idea.

Speaker 1:

And then, as I got to know John, I mean he became a mentor in how I was thinking about these things and how it was kind of like my sort of PhD, you know, working for him. So anyway, yeah, I don't know, that's how. It was a very unexpected journey. And then God has led me into other sort of vocational assignments with organizations. But always there's been this through line of my deep passion for the care of the soul, which is always my own way of life personally, but then also what I feel compelled to bring wherever and however I can. So being able to work as John's kind of strategic liaison into the organization, like that stuff I can. So being able to work as John's kind of strategic liaison into the organization, like that stuff I love. Like I just didn't have the fancy, important but fancy language around all of it.

Speaker 1:

And he told me one of our first meetings. I've been thinking about this this week. I need to reach out to him and remind him. He said to me one of our goals, if we're successful in the spiritual formation role at Willow Creek, is that Christ is being formed in people and they don't know what spiritual formation is. And I've always loved that. His point was we're not here to make a name or an idea great, we're here to invite people into this life and allow Christ to be formed in them through that life. Not to it just was such a contrarian view. And, by the way, you probably already know this have you read any of John's books or heard him teach, or whatever I mean he's just a genius, an absolute genius, and so I got to be his like.

Speaker 1:

Okay, if this is how we think about what this is biblically, philosophically, he's a therapist, psychologist, so just from all the right dimensions, then it's like well then, mechanically, you've worked in a church before. How do you create systems and structures and pathways and expectations and language? How do you embed that into an organization such that five years after somebody got involved, you would have hoped they'd wrapped their minds, their experience around I don't know some set of things that starts to create a structure in their brain about what it means to be a follower of Jesus and how do we live that life, and anyway, I could go on and on about that. But I loved that strategic side of things, but then I ended up at the Willow Creek Association, took some time, years off. We have a mutual friend, a colleague for you, and she was part of a Bible study in our home that our sons were facilitating and part of leading, and I was mostly home with the kids at that time. I was re-engaged with the website, but I was never pushing into trying to get more retreats or speaking engagements. It was always responsive, sure, and so I just had it out there and I would go speak at a conference, do some consulting with a group, do smaller things while the boys were in those middle years of school.

Speaker 1:

And then the Willow Creek Association reached out in the wake of Reveal, which was a big body of research that Willow had published about discipleship and all these things. And I just started taking the findings of Reveal and incorporating them into my work with executive ministry leaders, because there was some really great stuff there to help make the case which I'm always case-making like why we should care about this. What does this need to? You know, how does this show itself up? And so then I joined the Willow Creek Association for a number of years was leading their efforts to help churches with transformation, and that got us into some digital publishing, into some online course creation, into some sort of unconventional ways of gathering people.

Speaker 1:

We had a non-traditional conference. You couldn't buy an individual ticket to it, you could only come as a team and it was all about we just called it the transformation intensive. I got to pull out my A-list players. We pulled in Henry Cloud and Dallas Willard and all these amazing people to introduce this framework about transformation. If you want transformation happening in your church. Here's these things and how they relate to one another that you'll need to think through. So we were building all that, and then some of the work we were doing got merged into, ultimately acquired by what was becoming Glue, which is a tech company based in Boulder that is working with churches and ministries all over the country. Okay.

Speaker 1:

And so I got in on the very early days of Glue. I was probably I don't know our team, me and my team. We moved out here and I think there were maybe 35 employees at the time and now they've got several hundred and are just like a rocket ship, which is great and I loved it. I loved being at Glue. I had a lot of proverbial seats on that bus, took a couple software, design things around growth and brought them across a finish line. It was just fun to use a lot of different gears. Always, soul care is the thing I care about, and Glue's stated purpose was to help people become all they were born to be and pivoted many different times toward that end, but that wasn't ever changing and I was like I can align to that any day and that's a vision of formation. And anyway, after the pandemic sorry, this is very long. No.

Speaker 3:

I love this.

Speaker 1:

It's what happens when you're this old. Somebody says, tell me your story. And you're like, well, you got an hour and this, just. But this kind of brings it up to the present. After the pandemic, the CEO and I just started having some new conversations. I was like this thing about the care of the soul has been burning in me for now 25 years and the world it used to be. I felt like I was always case-making, like guys, you got to pay attention to this. This is vital, this is central, this is a first-order priority, to use CS Lewis's words. But y'all often felt like a voice in the wilderness, like nobody's paying attention. And then, after the pandemic, it's like everybody knew they were struggling, like everybody knew they were struggling and I wanted to try to intersect this moment of awareness and so I stepped. For the first time in my life I stepped vocationally into soul care full time, like three years ago, three, three years ago, this February 1.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so you're telling me the story earlier about when you knew it was time to branch out from your former work and do something yes now decades of connections, you know gads of content that's been developed over the years, lots of favor, and so it's more, just like God, what's my best and highest use right now? How do I best serve this moment in your people? So, anyway, that's me. That's how I ended up in Boulder, colorado, doing soul care.

Speaker 3:

Such an incredible journey. How, man, there's so much to unpack there. How have you seen, I guess, in the evolution of going full-time now into soul care, like in coming through COVID and like I think it just like shined a spotlight on the need for this, how have you seen that evolve over the last three years?

Speaker 1:

I would say I think people were really quick to try to say, oh, we must be done with this. And they're not. I think, we're this many years later and we want to be done with it. We want it in the rear view mirror, we want to have things be feeling better, and people are even still almost more surprised to find themselves really burnt out. Yeah there was a flash of energy around this is important.

Speaker 1:

This is the biggest thing. This is all that, and I was like, yeah, I'm in on that. What I believe is happening now and I've been affectionately referring to 2025 as the year of the soul, because I feel like there was a lot of energy and then a lot of oh, we've got this and now there's a lot of deeper reflection on stuff is still not well and what does? That mean.

Speaker 1:

Where do we go? And this is actually the first time I've—your question is a good one, but I have been thinking about it and I've felt it even in myself, like my goodness, all of us want to just sort of kind of rev up and get back out there, and things are different. My goodness, all of us want to just sort of kind of rev up and get back out there, and things are different. And the care of the soul, in my view, is the only path to navigating from what was to whatever is emerging, because we can't go there in our own understanding, we cannot go there in our own strength, we don't know where we're going, and that's. I just think it's time that people are starting to realize this isn't just a nice idea. That is still in the optional category.

Speaker 1:

This has got to become a way of life. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

How would you encourage them? Right now, as we're looking like we're kicking off 2025? There's a lot of like hey, this is look at as a restart, refresh. You have all these like grand ideas for 2025 and it's like now that you're in it, and if they're having that like aha, like hey, I'm I don't know if I have the energy for this, or like I don't know if I've like got another year of it, like how, yeah, how would you encourage? Or like help someone walk through.

Speaker 1:

That's just real. That's, that's just real. And first of all, one of the first things I always would say no matter what the awareness is, you got to acknowledge, you got to sit with that, you got to let that idea land. And we're afraid sometimes to let a hard thing in, because then I have to deal with it, because then it's like more real. But actually acknowledging it is part of diffusing the power of it. When it's kind of haunting you but never goes named, it can actually have more destructive power.

Speaker 1:

But if you can pull out a journal and just say, wow, God, the honest truth is, this is how I am right now, and you don't have to solve it in that moment To just be with God in something that is uncomfortable but real, that becomes the path and that's, you know a lot of this. This book that just recently came out is the first time I've written a book in like 11 years or whatever. And, uh, one of the things I I learned in my journey way, way, way back when, and then in some hard circumstances that happened here now three years ago, was like the tendency to rush to the next thing is really high. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And I don't know, I'm not a clinical psychologist, I'm not, you know. I am an observer of people and my own tendencies of people and my own tendencies, and there is a profound discomfort that people in sort of our Western North.

Speaker 1:

American culture tend to have with when things aren't okay and learning to sit in that it's not okay place and not rush ourselves out of that, rush each other out of that, slap God Bible verses on it and try to make it a tourniquet that stops the bleeding. Those are not helpful ways to show up in the world and so I think, acknowledging that that might be the case here at the beginning of a new year, when you want to show everything being up and to the right and better, faster, stronger, harder there's just some rhetoric in our air that we breathe in this country.

Speaker 1:

And it's co-opted many times in the language of the Christian life.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

But you know God meets us in places of desolation and you know Jesus spent time in the wilderness and Paul did and did and Moses did. And you know wilderness is not to be resisted.

Speaker 2:

No, I mean, I think that is such a refreshing and encouraging thought and you know I'm thinking I mean selfishly right now, as someone who grew up in the church and you know that was a major part of my life and youth group and all of those things, so many great experiences that I'm grateful for but also this perspective of like just keep it all together at all times, like everything, make it look good, make it sound good.

Speaker 2:

I mean what you said a second ago putting a Bible verse on something as a tourniquet like, and just kind of getting to a place of of really not being okay with that, struggling and being like hold on a second, like this just isn't matching up with like what's really going on in my life and in my heart and being okay with not being okay and not everything is shiny and there's not a perfect bow to tie around things and there's not the perfect answer. And I think the freedom that can be found inside of that and I think the freedom of realizing like God can handle it right, the honesty that is required with that.

Speaker 1:

And I think that you. I think the discovery for me was we want to avoid those places. We just do. We don't like being there, and I wrote about some of this in this book. But it's like I had a mentor in my years when the bottom fell out, like in 1995 for me, and I was talking to her. In the midst of it I couldn't my neurological functioning, there was all kinds of stuff that was going wrong for me and I was talking to her on such an old phone I can remember in my mind's eye the curly thing, as it was a handset that was connected to a wall somewhere, which will probably someday be the new innovation.

Speaker 1:

But, in any case, I was telling her I just feel like I'm in this really hopeless, blah, blah, blah. And she said, oh, it sounds like you're in a desert. And I was like, yeah, how do I get out of the desert? And she's like, well, if God takes you to the desert, go to the desert and see what the desert has to teach go to the desert and see what the desert has to teach. Everything in me bristled at that.

Speaker 1:

And everything in me knew she was right and I yeah, I. We shouldn't be surprised when we look at the spiritual writers of the 300s all the way up till today, when we see the pattern. You guys are storytellers. Everybody's story has the backstory. That's what makes us who we are, and God's hand is very much involved in those things are, and God's hand is very much involved in those things, and we rob ourselves and our communities of the deeper life when we're so uncomfortable with pain that we can't endure suffering. Learn what the desert has to teach, but the truth is that that doesn't become an end. But the truth is that that doesn't become an end. That is the path to flourishing in the end. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

It is. I've been thinking lately about how Paul says to count it all joy and we're all like, are you kidding? But he might know a thing and he's inspired by the Holy Spirit, so maybe we should listen. And it wasn't like count counted all joy when you endure suffering because you know, suck it up and you're going to die someday, it's counted all joy because these things produce these other things. It is a path and that it's not hopeless. It's full of hope, but embracing the hard stuff is a critical step.

Speaker 3:

You can talk a little bit about your book, and you hadn't written a book in 11 years, you said. So what was kind of the genesis of that moment that led to Ignite your Soul?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, people had been after me like you got it, what's your next book? And I'm like there's a million books in the world, we don't need more books. And I had all my resistances. And then a few more people kept saying those things. I was like, all right, maybe I have a shred of willingness, because I knew I was going to move into this more full time. I was like, all right, and I still couldn't land on a topic Again. I've got decades of content at this point, ways. I've done retreats and things that are helpful to people, but I couldn't take it and synthesize it in anything meaningful.

Speaker 1:

And then, on December 30th of 2021, in Boulder, we had wildfires that ripped through our community very aggressively, very destructively and very much like what we're seeing. I'm seeing on the headlines. What is tragically. I haven't checked in the last few hours, but when I last looked in the middle of the night, it was still pretty uncontained and it is devastating when that happens in a community and we were in the middle of it. We own some land here that is on the road that the fire was named for, so it was right where it started. It was called the Marshall Fire and we have this land on Marshall Road and we had been building out the earliest stages of a beautiful place for retreat and rest for leaders to come and gather and care of the soul, all these things, and rest for leaders to come and gather and care of the soul, all these things.

Speaker 1:

And then we were also living in a community that was right, essentially a mile or two from where the land is, and that was devastated and our neighborhood, our street was devastated and it was so disruptive. To me personally it was the most disruptive thing that's happened since the bottom fell out in 1995. And I've been through a lot of organizational change, life change, but nothing had been as and my heart just goes out to these folks because it is it is very difficult to hold your bearings when, when you've lost everything and our house still stood but it was so badly damaged that we were displaced and ultimately had to sell it and move. And when all that happened I found myself sort of reengaging with like man. If I weren't caring for my soul right now I would really be in a mess.

Speaker 1:

Like that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1:

It's like when you care for your soul.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't prevent hard things from happening, but it allows you a way of staying alive in the midst of really hard things.

Speaker 1:

And then people who were coming to our property or whatever there was certain parts of it that I was just. I felt like God was speaking these words to me, these lessons to me, in the midst of the land itself, and so the idea came from other people to use the metaphor of the fires, or the story of the fires and my own burnout from so many years prior, as a way to weave through and tell the story, bring people into the story of how a season of burnout doesn't have to be the end of your journey. And so it's a beautiful like the book has turned out to be, something I'm just so excited about and so proud of, because it weaves together these stories in an accessible way, inviting people into metabolizing the pain, getting to places where they can acknowledge and grieve and then be introduced to what I hope are six kind of practices that help us stay grounded, stay alive to God, stay authentic to our true self in the midst of hard things. That opens up new doors in the end.

Speaker 1:

You can't know what those doors are ahead of time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay. So I have two questions off that. First, for our listeners who are maybe facing that situation in their life. They're at that crossroads like you were of. You're kind of entering the desert and your friend is encouraging you like, hey, lean in, and you bristled at that, but now you've journeyed through that. What would your encouragement be to those people who are facing any number of circumstances but they're at the edge of the desert?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, it's to be willing to notice your resistance we all have it. But to allow yourself to again pull out in the pages of a journal or talk with a trusted friend or a counselor or somebody whatever, is true for you today, like I have no more energy. I don't know what to do with that. I can't get out of bed in the morning. These are the things people have said to me over the years that they are high-performing people and they find themselves just done and they have no, they can't pull another gear. It's something is not working and it doesn't. You don't have to solve it in that moment, but the first step really is to acknowledge this is where I'm at, this is what it feels like to be me right now, and that can actually, paradoxically, open the door to whatever you might need to hear or receive or do or stop doing.

Speaker 2:

Next, Okay, and so then my next question is for the listeners, those of us who are maybe kind of on the outskirts of a friend, a family member, going through this season. Yeah, what would you say? The rules of engagement are there. How would you encourage us to lean in and lock arms?

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, I mean, think about what the story I showed you with my friend.

Speaker 1:

Like many of us, when a friend is telling us the hard thing, we want to strap on the tool belt and help them get to the six point process to exit the desert. And in some ways that's more about us than even them, because we're uncomfortable with their discomfort. And when you have a spouse that's flailing, when you have a kid who is struggling with their mental health, I mean we pull out the big guns because we're like there's so much at stake, what do we do? I'll do anything. I'll move heaven and earth. My friend didn't do any of that. It's not that she doesn't love me, but how do you be present with someone in a way that helps them stay where they need to stay is a different rule of engagement than many of us have been sort of trained, directly or indirectly, to go be fixers, fixers and, uh yeah, helping people own their journey and where they're at in it, creating space to just be with them in grief that that is really hard to do. The closer you are to that person, the harder.

Speaker 1:

It is because because of all the things.

Speaker 1:

I mean it's really hard, yeah, but I do think that is a vital way that we can serve people well and better than maybe we have in the past, by holding that space with them and not coming with judgment, not coming with timelines, not coming with. You know, and again, I am not saying this is easy I think one of the most difficult things and this has not been except for a couple shorter seasons for us, for us, our kids, it turns out, were struggling with some things that I was unaware of at the time, that if I had known, I would have probably not known how to hold this space really well, and the parents that I talk to who've got kids that are on the brink.

Speaker 1:

First of all, you've got to take care of your own soul, because you can get maniacally focused on what's wrong with the person who's suffering and then all the attention goes there and it's like wait, how are you in this? How are you holding your capacity to show up alive to God yourself and then having something of an ability to hold space, not out of your own anxiety, but out of love? To hold space not out of your own anxiety, but out of love so that is another rule of engagement is like check your own spirit and make sure you're actually coming out of an overflow place yourself and not coming out of your own desperation.

Speaker 2:

Reminds me of a tradition I heard out of Jewish community years ago that I found really beautiful, called Sitting Shiva, and you probably know this better than me, but it was the concept of when there's a death in the family, you go and you sit for just days on end and you just sit and you sit and you sit, and you're not there to make it about you and you to talk and you to process, but you sit with them and you allow them to process, you allow them to speak, and I think that's really what you're talking about is.

Speaker 1:

Well, I mean Job's friends, right? That's the classic example of they were great friends until they opened their mouths.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, oh, my goodness, tell us what you've got kind of on your horizon, some of the things that you're excited about coming up even this year.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, the year of the soul. Somebody said that to me and I was like, well, yeah, let's do this. We don't have a strategy plan around it or anything, but one of the things that I can name, a couple of things that I'm excited about, that it's almost scary to talk about, because you're like, oh, somebody's going to listen to this someday and go check out did they ever do it or not.

Speaker 1:

One is more on the personal front and one is on the organizational stuff we're doing with Soul Care, engaging a really beautiful organization to help us think through our I mean this sounds very businessy and not very soulish but our going to market, our understanding, how do we serve people and organizations best and how do we create I mean, I've created. It's the same problem I have with writing a book. I had so many things that we've created as resources. We have a great online assessment people can take that's actually been validated and shown to be reliable and it's like a big. It's a big deal and that's at varying stages of making it more useful for individuals and organizations. And then we have a soul care plan that people love and we have an online course that's that people love, and we have an online course that's free on burnout, and we have an online course called Strengthening Our Souls, and we have a bunch of resources and downloads and free stuff, but it isn't structured in a way that's helpful yet to individuals and organizations. So we need help in that, and so I'm really excited for their expert eyes in helping us think about how to better explain what we're doing and make it clear for how people can find the help they're looking for. So that's going to be a big project. I'm very excited about what that could turn into, and they've got some really creative, innovative ideas. And some are things we've thought about and dreamed about, and others are things that, like whoa, you got to be kidding, tell me more. So it's great, but we just need help getting there. So that'll be a fun thing, god willing.

Speaker 1:

I'd like that to be the case. I believe the need for this and I want another hundred organizations that are doing similar things all to be. I mean, the need is so vast right now. Nobody should be going like, well, somebody's already doing that. It's like no, everybody voice, everybody. If you've got something to do that helps people in this stuff right now, get out there and do it. Don't worry about if one author's already done a thing and some other organization's done a thing. It's like no. The total addressable market on this is so big. Even if all of us 10X'd in one year, it would still be a drop in the bucket to the need of what's out there. So, anyway, I'm very grateful for their help. And then on the story, the unfolding saga of this property. It's called Whisper Ranch. A new idea has emerged of a way to build what could be the main sort of house that would allow my husband and I to just live there, and it would be.

Speaker 1:

What we would be doing is, out of hospitality, to just create spaces for people, just like we did in our home in Illinois that we first met your colleague on. You know it's like that's what we love doing is creating space for people changed a lot since we acquired the land, and so the original house we had designed is unbelievable and is now like between two and three times as expensive as we initially thought and we did not have our personal reserves double or triple in those intervening years, double or triple in those intervening years, so we had been really quite locked in on this.

Speaker 1:

In the book I talk about a concept called scenario Q and you've got scenario A, b and C and it's the funniest thing that in the middle of this we never considered scrapping that original design because of the sunk costs and everything we paid to architects and everything else and to the city and to get permits and all that.

Speaker 1:

Abandon that original plan and do something at a different scale but that might actually fulfill all the things that we're aspiring toward anyway, which is if you haven't read it yet in the book, it's sort of towards the end. Is this whole idea of scenario Q which it would be the most like? Are you kidding me? What do you call that? Like, where you put something out there and then that becomes the thing that fulfilled the thing you were? I'm like how could the story of the land itself be a scenario cue, and getting this house built, anyway, so TBD on how that goes. Other fun things in my life are I turned 60 this year and the whole family, all our boys, all our daughters-in-law and our one little grandbaby are going to celebrate together on a really fun trip. Awesome that we'll be taking, so that is fun. And we have a grandson now, so that's fun. So it's just, it's a I don't know what this year will hold.

Speaker 1:

I was myself at the end of last year. I was so dirt tired. I was like I got. I was myself in the place of like it wasn't like. I couldn't get out of bed, but I was like man, I gotta I don't have much gas in the tank right now and it was the fall with the release of the book and my speaking engagements and consulting engagements. It was heavy and it's like I've just given myself these few weeks to just unplug and rest and stuff, like this morning. Oh, the time for our podcast has come and gone. What do you know? So sorry, just sitting right there. Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 1:

So that's how I am anticipating in my word for the year that God gave me weeks prior to New Year's Day and I'm still exploring, living into it. But it's the word arise and it is not a muscly term. For me, it's not like, oh, in your own strength, go figure out how to take the next hill. For me, it's not like, oh, in your own strength, go figure out how to take the next hill. It's more like when somebody Jesus is raising from the dead, or somebody who he's healed and says arise, take up your mat and walk. And it's like something from outside is going to provide what's needed for this year.

Speaker 1:

So that's kind of where I'm at, but we didn't talk about your family. How are you?

Speaker 3:

Oh well, I will say, coming out of this conversation, I feel like my soul has been cared for, so I appreciate this time. But yeah, family there, they are alive and well. We will go through the rebuilding process together, but they're safe and that's what matters most right now. So there's definitely a lot of unknowns still out there. I think last time I checked it was still listed at like 0% contained. Just with the winds right now. So there's going to be weeks, months, honestly years probably, of rebuilding, to take place.

Speaker 3:

Honestly to level set years probably every building to take place.

Speaker 1:

It is Honestly to level set and this is hard. It's going to look like a war zone for a few years and then it's going to look like a construction zone for a few years after that. The challenges are nearly overwhelming.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, the challenges are nearly overwhelming yeah.

Speaker 1:

So your desire to support your family and anyone else in that community you can. I have yet to check in this morning and see who I can as well be supporting at this time and in some ways it's hard because there's very little you can actually do or that they can even do right now because of the nature of the tragedy. And yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about that. You can reach out to me later if it would be helpful to you.

Speaker 2:

I appreciate that. Thank you for that, Mindy. For those of our listeners that do want to connect with you and the work that you're doing with Soul Care, what's the best place for them to go?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, everything is anchored at soulcarecom Awesome. So we're on Instagram, we're on LinkedIn, all those other things, but the best is to go to the website and we do have this free soul health assessment that you can. It puts you on our mailing list and you would get Friday check-ins that we put out by email every Friday. They go all over the world at the time zone of your morning.

Speaker 1:

So, wherever your morning is, it just it works. It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful thing. So we'd love to come alongside you, come check out what we're doing and see if there's anything there that would be of help. And I am hearing that the book has been helpful to people as well, and I don't know if it would be sort of too soon to somebody who's literally dealing with the aftermath of a similar wildfire right now or if it would in fact be helpful. We'll have to see. But there is hope. There is hope, and it's not because everything is up and to the right. It's because there is a living God who is good and can redeem even the hardest things, and can redeem even the hardest things. Rebuilding is hard, whether it's a life after some massive collapse of your interior or it's actual physical property. Rebuilding is hard. Our friend's home at the top of the hill our adjacent neighbors had burned to the ground and some of that story is in the book. They just moved into the rebuilt home two weeks before Christmas.

Speaker 1:

Wow so about three weeks or three years later, and there's just stuff you can't rush, whether it's in your own life or a whole community that needs to rebuild at the same time. You know those homes that burned were built by. You know people who mass produce that stuff. They run through a tract of land and they're building, building, building, building to go back and rebuild. It's a. It's a. The community is going to have to deal with all this stuff. It's very hard, but you see the best in people come out, builders, lenders, people start stepping forward as a community to restore things and there's I mean guys, there's messages for us in that, not only in the physical but in the unseen. Yeah, yeah, amen All right.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, that's how they can reach us.

Speaker 2:

Excellent Soulcarecom. Come say hi Okay, perfect, well, mindy thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for your generosity of time. So glad we hung in and were able to connect. This was awesome. Really appreciate you and the work you're doing. Thank you and the ways it just connects with so many. So, to all of our listeners, thank you for viewing, tuning in, listening to us today and we can't wait to connect with you next time on Stories that Move. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Stories that Move, brought to you by Dream On Studios.

Speaker 3:

Make sure to subscribe so that you don't miss the next episode. And remember, if you or your organization have a story you're eager to share with the world, Dream On Studios is here to bring that story to life.

Speaker 2:

Don't hesitate to reach out. You can find us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or visit our website at dreamonstudiosio. We understand how overwhelming it can be trying to bring your vision and story to life, but that's why we exist, and we've walked alongside hundreds of clients doing that very thing.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we believe every story has the potential to inspire, to move and to make a difference. Let's make yours heard.

Speaker 2:

Until next time, keep moving forward and keep telling those stories that matter.

Speaker 3:

Take care, everyone. We'll see you next time on Stories that Move you.