Nina: Hi, I'm Nina Endrst.

Anna: Hi, I'm Anna Toonk.

Nina: Welcome to How to Be Human.

Anna: A podcast that explores the common and often confusing themes of humanness.

Nina: In this episode, Anna and I discuss what this podcast is, and what it means to be human.

Anna: Take a seat, clear your mind, and let's chat.

Nina: [00:00:11] Hello.

Anna: [00:00:12] Hi!

Nina: [00:00:13] Should we just be ourselves right off the bat?  I mean, I just don't think we know any other way to be. I feel we should tell people who we are, so who are you? Who are you? Who am I? Who are you?

Anna: [00:00:28] My name is Anna Toonk, I am a tarot reader. I could list a bunch of stuff; I think it gets a little silly. Tarot reader, Reiki Master spiritual educator. But essentially I think I am a spiritual worker, whatever that means, and however that needs to show up. That's a lot more to do with my own boredom, I think with certain things than it is spirit telling me what to do. And I am a co-founder of The Soul Unity with you. And who are you?

Nina: [00:01:02] Me? That's me. I'm Nina Endrst, it's E-N-D-R-S-T, there's no extra vowel. Everybody always wants to add an O, or a fun fact that nobody probably cares about. I’m Czech, and so the original name is Enderstover, but they dropped the O-V-E-R because when you immigrate things get expensive, and so that's just Endrst.

Anna: [00:01:27] Things (indistinct) get expensive like last names?

Nina: [00:01:31] You never know (both chuckling) you couldn't afford the end of that I'm sorry. (both laughing)

Anna: [00:01:35] I must say we chop too, which is funny.

Nina: [00:01:41] I think that's something that happens, no, in all seriousness, American just couldn't handle it, the United States of America. So I am a reader as well, a tarot reader, I'm an intuitive guide, that's the name I go by. And the title officially I'm the founder/co-founder of the Soul Unity, which is something we'll talk about. It's a wellness membership platform that we're very excited to bring to the world.

And we’re here with our new podcast and it's called, How to Be Human, and we're really happy that you're here. I hope you're here, otherwise we're just talking into the abyss.

Anna: [00:02:13] We hope you're here. Oh my God, please be here because Nina's not going to be able to handle it. Because I get real in my feelings if I'm not received the I want to be.

Nina: [00:02:25] But not in a co-dependent way you guys.

Anna: [00:02:28] No, I like to be very dramatic about it.

Nina: [00:02:31] Are you there?

Anna: [00:02:32] No, we're just more it's that I'm a puppy and I'm like, "Hey, you want to hang out, let's hang out, and let's hang out in our own homes, but still together." (laughs)

Nina: [00:02:42] So why are we doing this podcast? And how did it come to be, without boring everyone who's listening, the millions of you that are out there right now?

Anna: [00:02:53] It's just the (indistinct) of people.

Nina: [00:02:56] You're in (indistinct) Madison Square Garden time, (both laughing)

Anna: [00:02:59] Yes, that is the vision, that's exactly what is happening right now. People don't even know this exists yet, (crosstalk)

Nina: [00:03:10] And you are holding a briar.

Anna: [00:03:14] Don't worry, we're going to deliver. But essentially, I think Nina and I were killing our phones, and done plans with how much we were talking about humans. So like "What the fuck?" That we just found we were having all these conversations, and even how our own partnership began, working together, of being like "Oh, you think like that too? Or like "You wonder about that, or you have feelings about that?"  We kept finding a lot of, I think it was exciting for us.

Nina: [00:03:42] Questions, to questions.

Anna: [00:03:47] Yeah. And I think it felt, I don't want to speak for you, but for me it felt really validating, and powerful, and inspiring. That at least, one other person was kind of going, "What the fuck?"

Nina: [00:03:56] Still does every day.

Anna: [00:04:03] And I do think like my mom and brother laughed. My father passed away when I was a teenager, so when you hear me talk about my family, it'll be in the context of just my mom and brother. I will bore you with grief another episode, but anyway, they're not like me.

So they don't really care for people. I always joke and say, so they don't really care for people. I always joke and say, "They're cats and I'm a dog." They're like, maybe I'll deal with you, maybe I won't, they're kind of aloof as people. And they always laugh and are like, "Where did you come from? You find human beings so interesting and fascinating. And we would rather not deal with them."

And I'm like, "How can you not find what we are interesting?" There's so much there where I'll be one second I'll feel I'm learning or understand something. Or I'm like, "Oh, okay, so maybe the point is this, maybe the point of being a human is this."

Nina: [00:04:55] You guys are like that? Eureka!

Anna: [00:04:56] Eureka! I got it. I want to put it on a teabag and give you infinite wisdom." And then all the time I'll ask my therapist. I joke and say that I wish that God had customer service. And I asked my therapist all the time, self-sabotage; what was the point of that? Why was that invented? Why do we have the capacity for that? So I find something really fascinating that generally what works for us so much as humans is simplicity.

And yet we're incredibly complex, and we do everything within our power to avoid that simplicity. Why are we wired to constantly fuck ourselves over all the time, and have to re-remember our lessons all the time. So I just think we wanted a place to house those conversations in. What you can expect from us is to have a really open conversation between the two of us, of people talking to people all the time. Guiding people in their humanness, and how they want to live, and walk through this earth, and our feelings about it.

Nina: [00:05:58] And I remember the first real conversation you and I had, was about something that I needed advice about, but really I don't refer out often. Because I think it's important to practice what you preach, follow your own way. But I needed, and it was a vulnerable thing for me, it was a very human thing for me to be like, "Hey, I want to tell you about this, but I don't really know how, but I'm going to do it anyway."

And it was so wonderful the way, not only you received it, but also talking about what was happening without talking about the person. And I think so much of this podcast is about unwrapping and unraveling what it is to be human, so that we don't get into conversation with ourselves or with other people about other people. You know what I mean? Like, "Oh, that person was so shitty to me or that thing happened that really pissed me off."

That stuff is okay, but so much of our culture is built in venting. When the more we understand humanness and being human and ourselves in that, I think we could just be better people, and that comes with better; boundaries, and compassion, and courage, and understanding, and seen by somebody. There's just so many layers, but I think the simplifying is part of that as well. "Is this really about me? Can I just take a little setback?"

Anna: [00:07:23] Well, it's funny you say that, because what I was going to ask you for that is, I know for me, I'll say to myself all the time, "Being human." Was your humanness showing, in terms of, we put all these expectations. And I feel for me often focusing on the commonalities of being a human, is a way for me to not take something personally. And to reconnect to what is my own truth about the situation. And so, I love gossip, Nina's really disciplined, I fucking love gossip. And I've had to really reign that in, because it's not good. And the thing that I try to remind myself about gossip, is just the way we try to forge micro-connections but it doesn't really work.

So it's interesting, because I remember you reaching out to me and I was like, "I do try the best I can to affirm to people that I see them." And it's a practice, all the time I'll be texting with someone waiting in line to get coffee, and I have to go like, "Hold on Anna, wait until you get home and you can like thoughtfully respond to that or whatever."

I do think we get so caught both reaction or feeling, that we don't boil things down to the essential of like, "This hurt my feelings or that dah, dah, dah." What is the truth of it? And it's not they did this or they're bad.

I know for me sometimes I really struggle making things about we're human beings: Which means we're inherently flawed, which means we're inherently complicated, helps me separate and not take it personally, to just be able to figure it out. And I wonder for you, does it offer that as well? And it's not a buffer, I don't know how to explain it. It cuts through the quick of whatever the situation is for me. And not in a way that's dismissive.

Nina: [00:09:12] 100%, I think that there are so many stories, and what they're doing, what this always happens. Like, "I trusted someone, here we are again, blah, blah, blah."

And one of the reasons we started this conversation, and we had started How to Be Human on our Soul platform. We wanted in a spiritual context, in the spiritual world, we wanted to have really human conversations. When we set out on a different way of living.

For some of us, we name it spiritual. For some of us, we were just like, "I got to get my shit together." Or "I have to heal this particular wound. Somebody just broke up with me. I'm getting divorced, whatever it is." There's a lot of messiness in relationship to other humans, when you're figuring out how to be a human, I think like a different type of human.

And so simplifying too of like, "I don't want to get into messy conversations or even like in-depth conversations with other people or shame them about anything. I'm not doing that anymore.” So if I ever was, it's not personal, you could do what you want to do, but I'm not going to do that.

And I think that's a huge part of this space too. For us is to be like, "Okay, what do you think about courage? What do you think about boundaries? What do you think about blah, blah, blah?” So that you can really stand firm in what you believe, about these ideas or these themes that we all struggle with.

Anna: [00:10:55] I talk about the book "All About Love" a lot. And if you listen to the podcast, y'all are going to hear about it I'm just warning you.  I not going to say one of my favorite things, yeah, I am, I want to say that one of my favorite things. She says really early on in it though, is "We have to define what love is."

People will always want to say, "It's undefinable dah, dah, dah," all this stuff. And she's like, "Well, then how can we know if we're experiencing it, if we don't define it?" And I think often, I think for me, is definitions are important. And I think people get confused between identity and definitions sometimes.

And I have found, in general, I would say when you make a big change, for me, I didn't think of it so much as I became spiritual, I probably always was. I defined it as I was going to live a more intuitively-led life. That I'm an incredibly intuitive person have been my whole life. And I just got really complacent in letting people talk me out of that.

And I think I found at first, and I've seen this with enough clients to see, and have been friends now, who have sort of joined me in the spiritual band. People are really excited for you at first because they think it's a hobby. They're like, "Oh my God, I'm so excited for you girl, you're going to My Yoga. Oh my God you're learning tarot, so super cool." Everyone's super pumped.

And then when they see it stuck, they don't like it. Because you generally, I think, have to start asking yourself, "What the fuck do I want? Who am I? What do I care about? How do I define these things? What does spiritual even mean? What does the divine mean? What does God mean?"

It's funny to me, my mom struggles with what I do. Because she's like, "We're Catholic." And so she sorts of, "We're not that religious, I never grew up that religious. And as soon as we moved to England, there's not a lot of Catholic churches, it was out the window."

So that's a little bit why I'm like, "Mh-hmm, okay, mom." And I'm like, "How do you not see that I'm still in connection to the divine? If you're so worried about it or about my soul, I literally spend my days, and I'm in service of helping people."

"Why is it so upsetting or concerning to you that I'm not doing that in a church, or that I'm not a therapist? Don't you see how meaningless that is?" And yet she talks about her funeral all the time, and plans it all the time. And I'm like, "How interesting, you don't see the metaphor that planning for what you won't be there." And I like to threaten her all the time, when she misbehaves. During the pandemic, she was like, "I'm going to drive to Atlanta." And I was like, "I will have mimes at your funeral, I will do it, test me." And that was what got her not to go.

So I offer that to anyone, figure out what your parents are afraid of and threaten them with it.

Nina: [00:13:57] How to be human.

Anna: [00:13:58] How to be human and a troll. But I find it so interesting sometimes, and we're speaking, I think, mostly to American culture, I did grow up mostly in Europe, but I don't know in any way claim to be European, but I do think it shaped, obviously.

Nina: [00:14:12] No can you be Dorit from the "Real Housewives."

Anna: [00:14:16] I do, it was funny, when I've been drinking, which yes, you can drink and be spiritual. One of my neighbors, Max, is always like, "Do it, do it." I'm like, "Do what? You want a little bit more; you want a little bit more rosé? She'll have a little bit, just a little bit." She loves it when I do a little bit of Cockney.

Nina: [00:14:32] So good.

Anna: [00:14:33] Just a little bit.  So I find it so interesting in American culture, that we'll be so preoccupied with youth, and death, and all this stuff. But how do you give yourself permission to just like experience more joy?  Some of these basics, I feel would really enhance our life, we spend no time on. And most of us, and I mean, I've said this to you a million times and we've laughed about it. Most people don't come to spirituality when things are great in their life, it's usually you've hit a wall of some kind.

Nina: [00:15:08] Big time.

Anna: [00:15:09] You usually are in pain and looking for greater meaning. But I think something, you and I toggle between is, how do you believe in these larger forces, these energies? How do we read tarot, do these things for people?

But you and I are both very committed to we're human first. For all the magic in the world, for all the energy, for all the reiki, for all seeing weird shit in meditation, it's all amazing and cool. But our job right now, what we have carnated as in this lifetime, and agreed through our soul contract is to be a human being in this time.

Nina: [00:15:48] Yes, and I think that is such a huge part of why we built, I know it is, why we built the Soul Unity, because it's never about trashing anyone. But I grew up around spirituality in many ways, but my mom was like anti-religion. Because she was raised Catholic, and I think it does the number on some people. I don't know if you guys have heard,

Anna: [00:16:10] I'm pretty pumped to that, I got out pretty early.

Nina: [00:16:15] So when I started re-entering the world in New York, in my 20s. I was an absolute kind of shit-show, who, by the way, was a very put together on the outside. I had a fantastic job, I had great friends. I was living really well on paper and internally just having fun, but also breaking down slowly. And when I started going to yoga again and pulling cards again, and all that stuff or pulling cards for the first time for myself. I didn't have a space that I went that I felt I could be human.

And in fact, I dated. this guy for a brief period of time, which was a low, low, low, who was low, low, low.

Anna: [00:16:56] We all have them, so before you judge her, we all have them.

Nina: [00:17:00] I think of him sometimes. No judge away, my track record is horrific, but my husband's amazing, but my track record. I often look at him and I'm like, "You're the gift, you’re the gift." Because I dated all the dicks, all of them, all of them. So this guy, I remember he was like, "But you're not a Yogi. You swear, you drink." At the time I smoked cigarettes, a lot of them, and I was like, "Fuck you." That was my response.

Anna: [00:17:28] Sounds about right. I think mine would have been the same.

Nina: [00:17:31] I was like, "Fuck you, I'm not spiritual. You've got a big problem." Well, whatever the fuck that means, and every day. And by the way, he'd just take his phone, and his laptop into the bathroom for an hour. And I would be like, "You're Satan." Only Satan could do something like that.

Anna: [00:17:54] You can't see me, I'm just rolling my eyes and shaking my head because people, man.

Nina: [00:18:00] Can I make the story better and tell you that at this time I had Crohn's disease. And so I would be in pain, and he would be literally in the bathroom for one hour on his laptop. And I was like, "Something tells me deep in kid this ain't it."

Anna: [00:18:17] I don't know what it is about this, that doesn't feel in alignment.

Nina: [00:18:21] I put my finger on it.

Anna: [00:18:23] Whether it's he blocks my access to what I need in a really bad way or that his preference is to do torture yoga? I don't know.

Nina: [00:18:37] What do I choose? Also, he had a dog and he'd be like, "Are you going to walk the dog?" And I want to say this is such an important message, because I'm a bad bitch.  I always have been, I'm a tough bitch, I'm a bad bitch, I don't take shit. Being human, I'm also really intuitive and that's not to say all the things that I really like about myself. It's to follow it up... (both laughing) my hair is pretty great.

Anna: [00:19:03] Sure, it's great hair.

Nina: [00:19:05] All of this to say that I have fallen into many terrible relationships or jobs that weren't for me or whatever. And I spent a lot of time, I think, feeling shame around those decisions, but they all were so human, they were so necessary. There were also so divinely-timed, I think as well.

Anna: [00:19:29] Don't you think it's interesting, I mean, I said to you before, that I think, being a human and having a body is just so embarrassing. It is, I mean, we produce gas, but farting why?

Nina: [00:19:45] I not going to talk about that, I'm not. (both laughing) I literally won't.

Anna: [00:19:55] Exactly, so we have that. So we have literally the bodily functions that are just awful. Then it's like, we do the best we can with the knowledge we have. And I think so much too about parenthood, and I'll get super mad at my mom. I mean, my dad's lucky he died, and somebody said, it's like, "He got out early," that I can't blame him. He only has like 16 years I can blame him of shit.

My poor mom had to carry on as the parent, and I'll get like so annoyed sometimes, because it's like, I love Brené Brown's video on, we're going to talk about Brené Brown a lot.

Nina: [00:20:31] I'm not, I'll talk about Oprah.

Anna: [00:20:33] I am, but I love the video she did about blame. She dropped coffee everywhere and she wanted to blame her husband, because he had like come home late. So she hadn't slept well, that's why she had the coffee, blah, blah, blah. She's like, "We really seek like a cause."

And I find it fascinating, when something will happen that literally has nothing to do with my mom. I'm like "If she had taught me or whatever." But then on the flip side as I start to ease myself into being (indistict) and I have to decide like, "Am I going to have kids or not?"  It seems like a lot of work to teach a human being, everything.

Nina: [00:21:16] It's the best, you'd be a great mom, if you want that.

Anna: [00:21:18] Thank you, I appreciate it.

Nina: [00:21:19] I respect your choice either way.

Anna: [00:21:22] I appreciate that. And you also know then I really, don't like to get up early and it seems like kids do.

Nina: [00:21:27] And I can't even believe it, go on.

Anna: [00:21:30] I can't. All you moms, you have a whole life before I've even thought about fluttering my eyelids. I mean, I'm 40-years old and I'm super proud of myself that I get up by 8:00 a.m., every morning, y'all like for real. But as a self-employed person, I'm not, self-employed to get up early when I don't want to.

Nina: [00:21:49] Absolutely not, 8:00 a.m. is early.

Anna: [00:21:50] 8:00 a.m. is early to me. But I think about this a lot, it's like anything else, if you were like, "I want to be a pilot." You know what that is. You can go to school to train and you become a pilot. How is it with it being a human, our parents are our training ground, that seems like a flawed system.

No class

There's no class, so we're supposed to figure it out. But then in that process, every time our humanity, or it's not even our humanity, our humanness creeps out. We're like, "Yo, I'm so sorry my humanness did that."

Nina: [00:22:29] Especially women.

Anna: [00:22:30] And we're so mean for ourselves, especially women. And you're not going to like this topic. But I love what the youth is doing around periods, and how they're taking away that period shame.

Nina: [00:22:42] I don't mind talking about periods. I just don't want to rub it on my face in a moon circle and pretend that I love it.

Anna: [00:22:49] For the record that never happened. At least, I mean, I'm pro-moon circle, she is anti, and I just want to set the moon circle record straight. I never had to put my period blood on me, and if I had, I would have laughed, but anyway.

Nina: [00:23:03] Listen, it came to me in meditation and I'm sure that they're women...

Anna: [00:23:09] Listen, I've had women rip off their tops in the middle of a moon circle. I've seen some wild shit and it definitely would have made you uncomfortable.

Nina: [00:23:15] I like to read women who run with the wolves in my house.

Anna: [00:23:18] As a lone wolf.

Nina: [00:23:19] As a lone wolf, I like to talk to people through this. (both laughing)

Anna: [00:23:27] You’re like we're men who run with wolves. But I'd love though that the youth is de-stigmatizing the stuff. Yeah, it's a part of my body, I'm not going to collapse in shame. And I think about when we were young, like, "Oh my God."

Nina: [00:23:41] Tampon in the sleeve.

Anna: [00:23:42] Oh my God, and I would have been like, "Mom, we have to move."

Nina: [00:23:45] At work at work. Tampon in the sleeve, God forbid, by the way, I'm visualizing myself at a modeling agency, which was, I know this is shocking, 90% women and the rest gay men. Whoa, thunder, or as my son calls it "Funder." (both laughing)

Anna: [00:24:08] That's fun.

Nina: [00:24:10] That's funder. And putting a tampon in my sleeve and thinking like, "Really Nina, who the fuck cares." But there are these little memories, that I think stick out for a lot of us. I remember this one errant armpit hair that I had, okay, let me take you back to camp.

I was in camp, you guys, and I'm not much of a camper. And it was day camp, let's be real. And a boy that I liked, picked me. And I must have raised my arms, and he told everybody that I had an armpit hair. And I was like, "Bitch, I got tits when I was in fourth grade. I got my period when I was 10. I'm sorry, I'm not shaving in perfect symmetry."

Anna: [00:24:59] "Sorry, I'm 10 late."

Nina: [00:25:04] That's so much of what we receive being human for women is off limits on so many levels. So I think it's an act of resistance to even be here. Being like, "I don't give a fuck. I'm going to talk about whatever I want except for that F- word." And even though I have a little boy, I just cannot.

Anna: [00:25:23] I think that you just ordered a lesson from the universe coming in a couple of years.

Nina: [00:25:29] But, he does really have a lot of potty humor. He wants to ask if everybody who comes here is going to go to the bathroom? And I'm like, "Yes, they're also going to go to the bathroom."

Anna: [00:25:36] That's really funny.

Nina: [00:25:37] Like, "Is he going to go to the bathroom? I'm like "Mh-hmm."

Anna: [00:25:40] He's learning how to make small talk, he's like, "Sir you're going to go to the bathroom?"

Nina: [00:25:46] No, he's actually very advanced, thank you. And he'll ask everybody, "So how was your day? How was your day?"

Anna: [00:25:53] Very good.

Nina: [00:25:55] So this is also a space of, I think, re-claiming, learning what it is to be a safe human too. To feel safe, to understand what it means to be here, and not feel weird about not knowing things that seem so basic, but nobody ever taught us. They taught us about algebra, who has used algebra, raise your hands? Madison Square Garden,

Anna: [00:26:20] Madison Square Garden, I see the lighters are still up, but no hands have accompanied them. They're not illuminating any hands. Careful, don't burn yourself, everyone lifts up phones now there we go, and they don't even do weathers anymore. Then now we sound like our parents.

Nina: [00:26:37] What was the first lesson you remember about being a human?

Anna: [00:26:43] Oh, I think, obviously as a child, I didn't understand it as such, I would say two stick out to me. As a child, I didn't understand it as such, but I was crazy empathetic. And I have almost sense memories of feeling something. My mom used to come and ask me, she's like "I used to put two Hershey kisses in your lunch or something." And she's like, "You asked me for more to give to this little boy that would sit alone." And she's like "You said to me, like, 'Mama, it hurts me here.' And you pointed to your heart." And that's when I was like, "I am in over my head with how to raise this kid."

Because my mom is an Aquarius and is overwhelmed when she has feelings. Or is like, "Yo, you just don't care, I don't know how to tell you otherwise." She's good at that, she can detach and would be able to be like, "Aw," but then move on.

But for me it was like physical like that. And who knows, I mean, the kid maybe was an introvert, I don't know. I mean, that to me really sticks out in terms of I think we so much associate our brains with being human. And to me, your brain has so little to do with it, it's part of what separates us out.

But we're related to monkeys.  Come on, it's like, look at Coco, the gorilla, who paints and would sign, and wanted a baby. But to me, it's feeling, I think, so there's that. And then seeing I went through puberty young and everyone was a little bit worried. So I think that to me sticks out because I got my period when I was nine.

So it was like being aware of bodies, and things, and stuff like that. I was like, "They seem a little concerned and I have to go to this specialist." On an emotional level, to me, I think so much of humanness is like this duality between our more primal, it doesn't have language type of shit. And then the literally very physical for me. And so I would ask you the same question.

Nina: [00:29:01] Mine is not really a happy one, but it's the one I have. Which is, I was abused when I was nine by my babysitter's son, which was so fucked up. And I remember feeling like, "Oh, you're not invincible."

My parents were always fighting, and home was not a totally peaceful place at all. I mean, I was very blessed to have a roof, and food, and two parents who loved me. But was everybody's fucked up, and so my house could be fucked up.

Anna: [00:29:38] But that also means that was your normal.

Nina: [00:29:39] That was all I knew, exactly.

Anna: [00:29:42] You don't know different in a way.

Nina: [00:29:44] Except for there's one memory before that, where I stood at the top of my stairs, because my parents would argue in the basement, as if that was a sound-proofed room. That nobody could hear you in our ranch.

And I'm like, "Yeah guys that's brill." So I walked on the top of the stairs, and I was like, "Shut up." Which we don't say at my house. And they looked up at me, and then as the story goes in my head. I'm pretty sure they then started fighting about who woke me up. And I was like, "All right, well, you guys are a lost cause goodbye, I'm going back bed."

But that and the abuse, physical and emotional, of feeling pain, watching people go through pain, and feeling it in my body. And I always understood there was something bigger, but it made me understand being human even more. Being spiritual without the name for spiritual or this bad thing happening to me. I was still moved by the piece on Nick News. I was like, "This is bigger, I felt that, I felt it was powerful." So I think that for me was my first introduction to being human, which it was kind of fucked up, but so is being human sometimes.

Anna: [00:30:59] Yeah, I mean, I think in general, it's interesting because I was abused by a male babysitter.

Nina: [00:31:08] You were? I didn't know that.

Anna: [00:31:09] Yeah, I was around five. Which is, again, a strange overlap for you and I to share, I mean, slightly different.

Nina: [00:31:15] It is, and then you get your period really early.

Anna: [00:31:18] So it's interesting hearing you talk about your story. So as I've already mentioned, I was 16 when my dad died. And something I really pinpoint about that was this loss of innocence, of bad things can happen, there's no guarantees your life can fall apart.

And I blame my mom for lots of shit, but the way she handled that I don't blame her for.

Nina: [00:31:42] This one, you're off the hook.

Anna: [00:31:43] But witnessing her process that, at 16 I thought it was terribly adult, and I was a child and that's really emphasized to me. So I think also too a real revelation of we are mortal beings is when something bad happens to you, I think. Or when the story we've been sold of this is what it is. You have a mom and a dad, and we do this and we do that, and you go to school and dah, dah, dah, dah. If there's any deviation from that, I think is when we're a little bit like, "Wait a second?" And because you're a child, you don't know what to make of that or how to process it.

You don't know how to be like, "Oh, well this is a bad person, or this is a this or whatever.

Nina: [00:32:33] And they're not talking about it at school.

Anna: [00:32:36] God, no. And I think it's interesting sometimes though, when I think about some of the things I did that I'm like, "How did my mom miss that?" But then on the flip side, I think about she was also really busy, and taking care of two kids. And she'd put a real dinner on the table every single night. Pretty much my entire childhood, my mom cooked dinner, no bottle dressing, I mean, she was really, really good be care.

And, as an adult, I obviously have an appreciation for that because I struggle with self-care. It's hard, I mean, being an adult, I think we can all commiserate, it's hard to stay on top of everything, so I have patience for that.

But I just think it is remarkable, how many people, and also I think about, sometimes when I'm being hard on my mom, I think about like my grandparents. And my grandfather literally went to war. My father went to Vietnam, never went to therapy, never, and we think nothing bad is going to happen, it's just of crazy to me. I don't want to be a cab, I don't want to please people, I don't want to live in a police state. But I'm also like, "What the fuck are we doing? How are we not giving more resources? How do we not know to look for the science of trauma?" It's different.

Nina: [00:33:59] Well that's the resistance with adults.

Anna: [00:34:01] I think with adults, if someone's acting out or abusing drugs or whatever, we're like "Something's wrong, something happened to them. They're trying to regulate." We may not interfere, we may not know what it is. But we know that generally, if people are in pain, they do some wild, dumb shit, we know what to look for in an adult.

But with kids, I think about once again, name checker. Y'all can start, I don't know, make a drinking game out of it, every time I talk about Brené Brown, take a shot. But Brené is like "Think of a future, where we don't have as many traumatized adults." Because we're getting into it. We're raising better people who are then raising better people.

And isn't a big part of that, just grappling with the fact that we're not superheroes, we're literally just human beings? We're slightly evolved monkeys doing the best we can. And we think that because we invented fire, we've solved it, but there's been a lot that's happened. Look at the U.S. we're referring to a document made hundreds of years ago to govern and rule us.

Nina: [00:35:04] It was never good to begin with.

Anna: [00:35:06] It was never good to begin with, yeah.

Nina: [00:35:08] Also I'm going to take Brené Brown and put Oprah on the table, because that's how we're going to round out this first episode.

Anna: [00:35:16] You've seen my Brené (crosstalk)

Nina: [00:35:19] With her new book that I love, which is called "What Happened to You?" And it's so good, and it's with a psychiatrist, I can't remember his name, but, he's smart. And it's that question, I will say that no one has ever asked me that question. Not a therapist that I went to when I was a child, nobody, not a teacher, nobody. It was labeling and that's what we're so accustomed to, and that's what happens to a lot of people.

Their parents, even being a mom and I'm not in mom groups, I really fuck with that shit. I never read anything related to mom, I'm very intuitive with my parenting. But there's a lot of conversation about terrible-twos and crazy shit. The child is just expressing themselves, they’re trying, they don't have the language to tell us.

Anna: [00:36:10] It's fascinating to be around a 15-month old, that's starting to have more feelings and doesn't have language. I know people will be like, "God, she's so prone to tantrums or whatever." And imagine you're moving, especially in New York, I'm really tight with my neighbor, who has a three-year-old, but I'm in the city.

And I feel really lucky, I got to really be close and on-hand for the development, think about it, imagine you're having all these things happen, and someone’s basically telling you what to do all day and you literally cannot say anything. What would you do? I would throw myself down and scream too.

Nina: [00:36:46] I'm not here to have a parenting podcast, I want to be very clear about that. I'm giving you no parenting advice, zero don't add me. What works it's a hot topic, but I will say that my child is incredibly sensitive and also has had a very limited amount of quote-unquote "Tantrums." Because I believe that he is listened to and always has been from birth. Whatever he needed.

So the point is this, we're going to talk about all of it. We're going to talk about it in a simple way that is not watered down, we're not reinventing the wheel. We're not even presenting you with information that you don't know already. You know all of this, it's just in different context. Brené Brown isn't telling you anything you don't know.

Anna: [00:37:38] No, she's just saying it in a way that, I think, it’s simplified and boiled down. I think there's kind of two types of people. And there's people, who I think love really flowery language. They want it to feel really complex.

And then there are the people, who I think, that prevents their brain from latching on. And essentially we want you to come for the ride with us. And we want to help empower you to do what we're doing of just trying to figure out what your own definitions are. What do you think about these things so that you can then embody it, you can then live it and it can play a role?

We're a big believer in working on yourself also works on the world, and it makes it better for us all to be in and inhabit. But we understand it's like not easy, it's not that easy to find the right people to have these conversations with. It's not easy to carve out the time in your life.

So we're hoping by us doing these, I don't want to sound cheesy, and be like, "We hope we inspire you." Because honestly I don't give a shit. I want you to get out of this what you want out of it. If you're like, "Huh, I've never thought about what being human is."  Cool, I hope it sparks something that you at least give a second to think about it. So at least, you know for you, that's ultimately what the goal is to me. I want everyone to know who they are for themselves. Because then you can be in deeper connection with me the more you know you.

Nina: [00:39:09] Yes. And "Guides not gurus" is one of our mantras for the Soul Unity. And that's what we embody, we're guiding, we're talking and discussing, but we're not here to preach and we're not here to be on our soul box. We're here to just tell you what we've learned and hopefully it will inspire you to learn something about yourself and the world around you. Because I don't know if anybody's heard, it's fucked up out there and we need all the help we can get.

Anna: [00:39:40] It's wild, it's wild. And we want to give you a break from some of the wildness and you can just join two wild women.

Nina: [00:39:47] Wild women and two wolves to be exact. (both laughing)

Anna: [00:39:55] But yeah, we don't claim to be experts, and we don't think we're therapists. We think we're people who grapple with people's really deep experiences and wounds, and trying to figure it out, and we try to do that for ourselves. And honestly, we, I think just wanted a platform to be able to share that with other people. I think we feel a bit on the front lines of humanness, we're just dealing with it all the time.

You can find us on the internet, The Soul Unity,

Nina: [00:40:27] It's the worldwide web.

Anna: [00:40:28] If you might've heard of it, the world wide web, thesoulunity.com. Or you can follow me on Instagram Anna Toonk. Nina divested from social media, which was smart. You can follow The Soul Unity on Instagram as well. And if you want to connect with us or suggest a topic, feel free to email me at anna@thesoulunity.com

Nina: [00:40:55] And you can, and also do that on our website at thesoulunity.com, there'll be a little box for you to fill out. So happy human people we'll see you next time. Well, we won't see you, we will though in our minds looking in the crowd, see you at MSG, thank you and goodnight.

Anna: [00:41:17] We will, see you at Madison Square Garden, goodbye.

That's all for today's episode. If there is a topic you'd like us to discuss, please submit it on our website at thesoulunity.com/how-to-be-human. If you want to connect with other thoughtful humans, please join us at The Soul Unity. Listeners get two free weeks by going to our website and using the How to Be Human option in the drop-down menu. Thanks for listening, and remember, we're guides, not gurus.