Lorena Saavedra Smith: I am a person who moved from a different territory, from a different environment, but I don’t have to change who I am in order to be in this new environment. And nature was the perfect example for me.
in this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Lorena Ra Smith. Lorena is a Pacha philosopher and ecos psychologist originally from Peru and replanted. That’s the word that she uses to describe her experience. We’ll learn more about that replanted in the United States. Lorena is a lifelong storyteller and keeper of Andan, ancestral wisdom and medicine. With Sounds True, Lorena Saavedra Smith has written a new book and created a new audio book. It’s called Awaken your Roots. Reclaim Your Ancestry and Sovereignty by Heating the Jaguar’s Call. Lorena, welcome.
Oh, Tami, so good to be with you. Thank you for, for the space, and I’m, I’m so happy to be here.
Tami Simon: Right here at the beginning, I wonder if you would bless us and our listeners and bring your native language to our conversation and start with some type of blessing, if you will, for this time that we’re gonna spend together.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: That will be, that will be lovely. And I think that’s, that’s the right way, the right the right way to do it for me. So thank you for, for that. So it says that every time that we open conversations. We have to salute the earth because that’s how we come together. That’s our common ground. And today, I would love to do that.
I would love to salute the earth, but also salute the elements. And I’m calling today my wind because that’s kind of like the element that I relate to the most. So with that, um. I am gonna blow three times calling the three different dimensions of the worlds in Andan philosophy,
and I am also calling the winds of everybody that is. Listening to this podcast later on to come together as the wind always go in certain in cycles. So I know that by listening they will also be connecting with my words and with your words. So may this time will be be fruitful.
The wind made the, the wisdom of their winds bring them peace and carry on so they can connect with earth.
Tami Simon: Beautiful. Thank you.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Thank you.
Tami Simon: Lorena, you came to the United States in your early twenties, and as I mentioned in the introduction, you used this language of being replanted. Tell us a little bit about that, what it was like for you in your early twenties, and then the re. Planting process. I’m imagining that there was some kind of transplant shock, if you will, the way it’s with plants at the beginning.
So tell us a little bit about your journey.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah, so like many other immigrants, I decided to leave Peru in my early twenties to look for a better life and, and my process of arriving to the United States at the beginning, everything was new, everything was like the, like the movies. And I wanted my life to be like a movie as well. Uh, I was, um, I was lucky enough to be in a, in a very cosmopolitan city like New York City.
I have my old ex, my everything that I could live in New York. I did. And through the years after I arrived here, I learned, I started feeling that I was disconnected and for many, many years as a, at least 10 years, I have to, I kind of push myself to be somebody else. Because obviously I wanted it to integrate with a new culture.
I wanted it to be treated equally. I wanted it to, um, I wanted not, I want my accent not to give me away, if anything. So for many years I disconnected from who I was and ’cause I wanted it to be part of it, part of the bigger culture. So when. I started doing my own reconciliation process. When anxiety started coming up, for many reasons, it started surfing up.
All the tools I was getting, I was getting, including therapy, conventional therapy, and all the other techniques that I was, uh, I was able to experience. Didn’t they give me some, some type of support, but it wasn’t until I realized that I was disconnected for something bigger. And in that moment I realized that what I was craving was the reconciliation, who with who left Peru.
And in that process, I started investigating. What does that look like? And there was not a lot of material for that. So in my own reconciliation process is where the methodology of the book came along, which I understood first of all that how could I not belong into this equation of this new culture that I am adapting to if I am nature in itself.
So I started finding a ways to connect with nature, and through that I found a sense of wholeness that I up to today. I cannot explain and nor I am supposed to explain. That’s what the says. The many of the indigenous, um, cultures and traditions talk about some of this knowledge. It’s not even for us to understand it.
Is to just receive it and to take it and just feel it. So that’s where the replanting came along because I understood, like I, I, I am a person who moved from a different territory, from a different environment, but I don’t have to change who I am in order to be in this new environment. And nature was the perfect example for me.
When I realized that a tree, when you take it out of the, out of an environment and you put it in a different environment, they, it doesn’t change. A pine will not be an apple tree if you change it from different soil. It will be still a beautiful pine tree. And so that’s where the message I, you know, started the, the message started right there.
And it also helped me to situate myself in through, in, through the whole cycle of my own recovery and my own, um, healing process in, if anything.
Tami Simon: You mentioned feeling anxiety and you started the book Awaken Your Roots, talking about how you loved running, and that running was a way that you could be in your body and if you will work with your anxiety in some way, and the discovery you had right
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Hmm.
Tami Simon: beginning of the book, that there was something you needed to stop running from.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah.
Tami Simon: And instead face and even further embody,
Lorena Saavedra Smith: I.
Tami Simon: you call it the jaguar. This is such a core symbol in your work. So tell us what does it mean to, first of all, realize you’re running from something to feel like it’s a jaguar chasing you, and then face and embody, share that process.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: that, that was very vivid and I’m feeling right now my body actually, because I love talking about this experience. I was going through a, a very nice, um, time and. I decided to engage into running. Running is not good for my knees because my knees don’t really don’t like it, but yet I knew that running was, it gave me what I needed to keep going in my days and in that particular day I was running so like fast and.
In, in, in the place where the, the treadmill is, there is a, a nice mask of the, we call it in, in the Andan philosophy, at that radiology that talks about the different worlds and the one that is in the middle, which is the world of the living. There is a huge jaw face in this kind of little stature that it was right across from me and I was just running and running.
And then out of the sudden I closed my eyes and I was like, why? What am I running from? It was like, because I really felt that I was running from something, and in that moment I felt like that job was talking to me. It’s like, no, I, you not running. You are running from me when instead what I want is you run towards me.
I wanted to run towards in the j again, on the triology, uh, of Andan philosophy and Pacha wisdom. It says that the, the Jer is the, the regulator of humanity. So me running towards the job where it become like, first of all, terrifying, how immense, how could I have this endurance to face? This creature, although it was everything was, and even my body was feeling like that feeling every moment, every step, every step that I, that I took, and it was like an epiphany.
If anything, once I, I did this process about running towards this J, which it happened to be a female j. I felt so much like peace because she, in this vision, I literally saw the Jer becoming a woman, and, uh, this woman who was an elder woman giving me her coat, like I was actually giving, like wearing the coat of the J In that moment, I said, wow, this is what I’m supposed to be doing.
I am not running to, I’m not running from the j I’m not running from. Fear, I am going towards fear. And from there something else is something magical, something extraordinary will come. And so after that, I did my whole investigation to find out that the, it says a lot of the, the stories that I ended up collecting from the elders is that.
The per a person who faces the J, it will never be the same person It will be, if anything, it will be a person who can change the trajectory of this person’s life and her community. I
Tami Simon: imagine people listening and I’m listening with this ear to fears that I have, things that I’m afraid of wondering. This, this notion, oh, I’m gonna actually run some manifestation of that and then I’m gonna be eaten alive, Lorena. And that’s what I want to hear more about. I, I, I, there’s this promise of transformation, but what about the being eaten alive
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Well, uh, and again, when I decided to, to use this, the. Image of the J and that particular day of that process, it was kind of like the ini to me feel, felt like the, the initiation of a long journey of investigation. So to realize that I already have done some of this process, I already have faced some of my most terrifying fears.
I already have faced the J, but instead. Instead of doing the reconciliation process, I cannot step it. I put it aside, right? So I keep it, I kept it a distance. So once I understood that, I’ve already faced some of the most incredible fears in my life, in my younger, in my, during my younger, um, years, in my twenties and early thirties, I went through with them already.
I already did that. What is missing is. How can I embrace this portion of the job work, giving me the strength to continue going?
Tami Simon: You’ve developed a method and you share this four step method in the book, Awaken Your Roots and you actually map it
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Hmm.
Tami Simon: to the Jaguar embodiment of power process, and I wonder if you can outline this method for us. You call it care, KARE, and how you came to it. I, I wanna understand how this was born in you.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah, this, and this is, thank you for this question because I didn’t, I didn’t realize I have this methodology until I started writing the book. And this is something that I have already been, uh, supporting others to do in, in my, in, in practice. And so when I start lining up the book, I understood that like, wow, this is actually a process that is.
S again, not only supporting me, but supporting others in, through the whole facing the j and i, I took the elements of Andan philosophy into this whole equation. And so first of all is, and the care is starts for, um, knowing, assessing, reconciling an
engendering. And so the first one is knowing, I wanted to know, first of all is knowing that I am nature in itself, that I, I carry the wisdom of the J but also to know what happened. I wanna know why do I feel stressed out? Why do I feel, um, anxious?
The second one is assessing and here is the most, the this part I is coming without judgment about some of the realizations that this, the way I’m feeling is it probably is not even mine and probably carrying some wounding that is not even mine or started with me.
Here is what I bring, the sensory part. I wanted people to really sensing what is in the body, how the body feels relating to, again, making it your own observation about how the body feels about part A particular wounding. And then the third Step will be the reconciliation, and this is kind of like the sweet portion of the process.
Whereas when you literally face the J and you allow the J care for you and you are calling all the little, the all the pieces that they are, you left. Because again, if I’m moving this information through the knowledge of Pache philosophy, it said that every time that we get. Some we get in, in, in situations where we feel ter, um, terrified or that something happened to, to us, our nuna or our soul is split.
So this reconciliation process is how can I bring and cold the pieces of my soul that have been spread out around places, around situations are in. This to get into this process. I say that we have to go the the first two because you first, again, you wanna know what happened. You wanna know, you wanna sense it, and then you wanna reconcile it.
You wanna bring it, bring the pieces back to you. Bring, let’s say bringing your soul back to your body and then the engine
Tami Simon: gendering part. That’s when, now that I accepted who I am now that I assessing, now that I am reconci, I feel reconciled. How do I move forward for the benefit, not only of me as an individual, but how do I move forward collectively? How can I be in, in this world as one off? The other brothers and sisters of Nature.
Can you give an example from your own life of this four step process and, uh, a wound, if you will, that you worked with that was transformed into a portal of powerGive us an example. Make it real.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Okay, I’m gonna make it real. So, for example, uh, I’m gonna bring my, my immigration process into this, right? So, so knowing that I was anxious because what was going on with my immigration status, that any health became a, um,
I understood that. I was anxious because there was a reason for it. There was a reason for that. Then I move it and I assess it. I put it into my body. I was like, wait, what’s going on? So I, I start feeling this anxiety is, is is living in my body. My heart is palpitating. I feel, uh, incredible. Um. I’m not at, I’m not, I’m not in the space.
I’m like living in the future regretting what happened in the past and where did I leave. But Peru, and I’m not in my body, so I need to bring it closer to my body. Now with a reconciliation process, which is. That’s the, I mean, it, it sounds, it’s like I say that it’s like a, the sweet portion of the process, but also can be very intriguing because that’s when you’re gonna see the jaw, you see the wounding, you actually feel the wounding and literally you like to surrender.
You surrender. So it’s like, well, I have nothing in my immigration process. I have two choices, right? So I can just continue moving forward based on what I have, and accept what I have and not let it go or let it be. But I only can control what, what I, what I am right now. So when I accepted that I can, I can be who I am in that particular moment, and I can, I can start bringing the pieces of my soul together.
I actually understood that my immigration process was, if anything, it gave me the awareness that I can bring the pieces of myself back together. The, the, this process allow me to. A step back, see from the, from above, what is the wounding, some of the wounding that, yes, it was initiated with the immigration process, but some of the wounding was actually initiated for other type of wounding that it was in mind.
It was the fear of being in a stranger in my own, in in, in a land. Right. And those wounds started way before me. So this, in the reconciliation process, I decided that I wanted to bring nature into the equation. And it was, it was, it was sweet to me to understood that I could be as wise as the trees and I could be as steady as the mountains and.
Yeah, I even, even just saying that it feels good right now. Uh, so then I move into what is called what the last stage where now I am integrated. Now I know what it is to feel this. Now what am I gonna do with this knowledge? Now I have to put it into practice and keep the sustainability too, because. What I want people to understand that this type of process and anything that is related with ancestral wisdom is not like a a quick fix.
This is an ongoing process, right? So this is the, this is, this is medicine that is, is given by nature, but this type of medicine was now created or, um, given to us. For individual healing, this is something that it have to be passed down in the collective, uh, with respect for sure. So once I understood that through my immigration process, the way that I acknowledge, uh, the care process, I was, I can pass this techniques or these tools or these strategies or this method to those who are into the, into the, into the same.
Uh, the same, um, issues. And I tell you that it have been, it’s very rewarding to see how people receive this because although it’s a methodology, it’s something that we know because it’s a cycle. It’s literally you are create, you are relieving the cycle of nature within your own body, within your own heart, within your own mind.
Tami Simon: You talked about how there are times when we can sense that part of our soul isn’t with us. It’s split off
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah.
Tami Simon: We don’t have, we don’t have it with us. And that this process that you’re describing is one way that we’re calling this split off soul part back, and that in the way that you describe it, we’re making ourselves. Hospitable, we’re making ourselves able to receive in our body this soul part back. And I wonder if you can talk more about that, because I sense that there’s a feeling nature
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah.
Tami Simon: in you that everything maps on in a somatic way
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yep.
Tami Simon: how you teach. And, and I wanna see if we can make that even more explicit.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah, so, and thank you for this question because I. When I understood that one of the, the, hmm, the key core teachings of Pache philosophy is that it teaches to be good humans for Mother Earth. It teaches to build relationship with nature. So when I understood that if I am nature. I’m, I’m part of nature. I, I’m I, me.
My purpose is to be here in this body. ’cause this is, this, this is who I am in, in this cycle of life. So some, the, the somatic experience that you’re mentioning is a, is something that I take very, I don’t take very lightly when it comes to calling the nuna back or calling, calling the soul back. Because we can do our process of calling our, um, our spirit or our anima that has been split up for many reasons.
And one of them I mentioned earlier could be when we feel moments of frightening, when we feel, uh, we call it elto. Uh, when you feel it, it, i, I will bring some of. My relationship that I bring that with trauma when there’s some trauma in there. Our soul detached from our, from who, from our energetic body.
But in order for us to call it, and in order for us to make that assemble in process, if, if anything, we have to have this body, this body that touched nature, able to. Receive it and I’m not talking about able to have our function is because it is, I mean, it’s not just that. It is that we know that we are in this body for a reason, that we are embodying this body, the body that is, that we are inhabiting right now for a reason.
So we have to care. We have to care for this body because we are a sample of the larger body, which is nature. So we are water, we are earth, we are wind, and we are fire. And we are the, the, uh, I call it the co, the consciousness of patch out time and space. So we are all the elements of nature. So our body, we ha, I don’t, I don’t wanna keep saying we have to, but ideally that recommendation is for us to bring.
The nature or let nature to be in our body, if anything.
Tami Simon: Yeah, it’s very beautiful. As you’re talking and I can sense into what you’re saying,
Lorena Saavedra Smith: sense how it’s the kind of thing, it’s hard to process
Tami Simon: conceptually. It’s more something it, it’s feeling into it. And in the book introduce this very interesting word. I’d never heard it before that.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yes,
Tami Simon: that
correctly
Lorena Saavedra Smith: go.
Tami Simon: and that part of your job in your work as a Apache philosopher is to be a specialist who knows how to safeguard and steward the cent of another is really inspired by this, but I wanna clarify my understanding of this word.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: So ante comes from, uh, from a Latin American thought. And why? Because when I was doing my research and I was, I, I talked to a lot of elders, not only in my family, but with different lineages and, and the whole region of the Andan and also Central America. Um, one thing that keeps coming back is that. The elders who were, who I, I feel very grateful that they choose, chose me, chose to relay some of the knowledge, keep mentioning about, we think with the heart, we don’t think with mind.
So there was not this split between mine and heart. So the more I talked to them, I was like, wait, so. When you telling me that you feel it? Yeah, I feel it with my, I feel it with my head too. And to me it was like a crisis because I was trying to understand what they were saying through, you know, like the western mindset about the, the split of the mind and the heart and so on, and I couldn’t process it.
So when I found out that. This line of thought that comes from the la very Latin American process is, is literally we cannot split it. We feel scent. It is, it is automatically. And yes, there might not follow, again, they might not follow the tradi, uh, the current, um, school of thoughts that we are. Many people who are in, in, in, in, in, in this fields will take it.
But that’s how I found it, uh, that it made sense to all the knowledge that I was receiving from the elders, heart and mind together. They don’t split. You have to feel it first. You have to, not even first you have to feel it, feel it, and think it all together. Uh, so once I. Once I, um, I found a framework that a little bit help to understood that and to embody that.
It was easier for me to keep doing the more research on, okay, how am I gonna put this into practice? To find out that one of my maestros when I was working in that and, and, and one of the, the villages in Peru and deep in the mountains, he told me, you know, you already been doing it because you are not, you are not thinking or questioning.
You are nuna or you’re soul. Just, you’re doing it. You’re as, if anything, it could be kind of like the listening that intuition, but it’s beyond that. And some of this not, and I wanna acknowledge this because, um, not only just for the purpose of the book in our interview together, but in general for when we talk about recuperating ancestral wisdom,
I wanna invite people to, to take this with a different point of view. Not to understand that with the head or the mind, because that’s not imposs. It’s, I wouldn’t say it’s impossible, but it is. It’s very hard to reconcile this type of wisdom. Yet it works. But when we trying to find ways to encapsulate, okay, this, this process give birth to this process and this process that is so hard to do.
So my invitation is. What if you are gonna invest time and effort into, get into any type of wisdom, uh, ancestral wisdom, leave your mind alone. Let your bodies feel it. I say this to my clients, um, a lot of times I need you to be an essence connecting with an other essence. Because you are an essence. You are water, you are fire, you are earth, you are, um, wind.
So when you do that process, I want you to be that you are in essence connecting with an other essence and language in the way that we process sometimes doesn’t fit. So I want you to be the wind. I want you to move like the wind, right? I want you to move like the fire. I want you to sing like the so, uh.
Sing and do stuff that are, that are not necessarily coming from the conscious mind. If anything,
Tami Simon: now. I think another example, healing example from your own life that I think would be very useful. For people, and this is in the context of understanding healing process that you outline the care process. You talk about an early near drowning experience that you had in your life and how that was a type of split, a part of your nuna, soul left at that moment and you called it back now in your life.
Tell us about that.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah, so in my, in my whole reconciliation, reconciliation process, um, that I work with a different, different maestros in maestros, there was a, there was something that was missing and it was my connection with the waters and through the, the reading of the coca leaf of, from one of my maestros. We, I said we, but he’s the one who said to me that there you have, there’s something happened when you and I, that memory was burning in my, in my, in my, in my, in my brain.
For the longest. I couldn’t, I didn’t even remember it. And so when he,
Tami Simon: so Lorena, let me ask you a
Lorena Saavedra Smith: yeah,
Tami Simon: through the reading of a cocoa leaf, and I was like, do I don’t know what that is? I don’t know what that means. What, what, what’s the reading? What was he doing?
Lorena Saavedra Smith: yeah.
When I decided that I basco, I, I was going to really take to heart. The knowledge of my aita and my grandmothers and so on. I decided that I was going to look for a teacher that can teach me this, this wisdom. Although I came, I came from a, a lineage from both of my grandmothers who are very wise women who they used to heal with herbs and so on.
I wonder if something different I wanted, if I wanted to learn more. Uh, in this process I found this teacher who was, uh, able to, he reads the coca leaves as a way if, uh, like an oracle like many other, teach many other traditions. You use different elements and the andan and Apache philosophy. We have a specialist who happen to know the wisdom of reading the coca leaf as it, and it tells you.
What is happening in the spiritual world? So when that happened with this teacher of mine?
Tami Simon: Is the reading of the leaves, like tea leaves in a cup? Is it like that or is it. It. How do you what? What’s the
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah.
The process for that, and it really depends of each lineage. Although we all belong, I wanna say we all, people like myself belonging to the Andan region, each community have its own codes on how to process the, the, the philosophy or the thought in itself. You know, the culture or the traditions. So in this particular tradition.
In this particular lineage, this teacher of mine, uh, have a way to reading the coca leaf. And basically he, he picked three coca leaf first, very similar to what I did earlier, which I called the, called the wins, right? And, uh, for, called the three different stages of the, the, the worlds because. Andan philosophy.
We talk about the three different worlds. The word of the, the sentient beans, the word of the J, which is Alice, and the word of the, the underworld and the world of the ancestors. So he did that, and then he take a bunch of coca and coca leaf, and then he is just spread that coa leaf into, uh, we call it the mischa or the the, or the, the mantle.
And based on that, he start reading He, he, and obviously before that he does, he have done his own process to connect with the elements, to connect with the world, the word of the dancing world. So when that happened is when he found, kind of find out that, or made me remember if anything. That there was a, something happened when I was a kid.
Where my, my salt kind of split up and it was because I initiated it. This, so it wasn’t a, an uh, it was an accident, but it was also a personal responsibility. And yes, she did because I lived closer to the water and in, in, in Lehman, Peru. And my grandmother, uh, she always say, you know, if you go to the beach, I mean, we used to go to the beach by myself ’cause we live like literally walking distances from it.
And she said to me that day, don’t, don’t mess with the beach that day. Don’t go. I don’t know, maybe she knew, but I didn’t listen and I just went straight to the water and the waters were very hungry. And here I was. The waters almost took me and I was, I was very young. I was 10 years old. So through this, um, support with this maestro of mine.
I, I remember it. That, and he, the process for me was, okay, I need now to call the, the nuna that was split, that was left there to bring it back to me. And for that we did a, we did a, I call a sacred contract, which is, or a ceremony. That it took now to get there. And I wanna make sure that people understand this.
This is not a quick fix or this was not a one time thing. I’ve been wor I ha by then I have been working with this maestro for three years and I have been doing my little as a little, but my work here and there to being, collecting my nuna step by step from different places. So by the time that we decided to do this, this, um, ceremony.
He supported me and I called and asked permission to those waters to return the my, the nuna back to me. And when we find out, um, again, through the coca leaves and through his knowledge of reading and, and listening and dancing world. Was the sum of the, my nuna will never, the, the nuna that was there, that was there will never be returned back to me, and it’s okay because that day I decided to give it to it and instead of, and instead of the ocean taking it back, then I decided to give my, this piece of my soul back to it.
So. I wanna make a reference of what happened then, because I didn’t know how frightened I was from of the water until, and why I was frightened of the water until that day and I didn’t know. And that was, you know, that created a piece of, of knowledge for me on how to address my trauma to the water. So when I understood that I could make peace with this, um.
Event that had happened in my early age, I give hard heartedly my, that piece of my nuna to the waters. And from that moment on the water became my, my,
my guardian. Yes. But more than that is my confident. So now every time that I, I feel. That I have, that my heart is so heavy and that I can know that, that I need some extra support. I call the energy of those waters, and I, I, I talk to that water. I, I give the secrets, the most dark or the most heavy secrets.
I give those to the water, be to those waters because I know that they, part of my nuna is with them and they save guard. That piece of me that I know will never come back, but it’s okay.
Tami Simon: Well, it’s very interesting. I think I had this idea that we’re supposed to call all of our soul parts back. We’re not supposed to give that, that’s what it means to be quote unquote whole. And yet you’re, you’re something different that’s, uh, breaking that open.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah. Yeah. And so, and I understood that from this, uh, from this point of view that again, through the lens of Pache philosophy and Andan thought we are embedded into nature. And now how cool is that? So. We’re embedded, like part of going referencing the event that happened when, oh, I almost drowned and then I given part wholeheartedly giving it back to, or giving it to the ocean.
Now I know that my nuna resting there, so yeah, we supposed to call our nuna back, but if I am also. The ocean. I am also part of the ocean. My salt is already in, is embedded to it, so, so there’s not necessarily an split, if anything.
Tami Simon: Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of the points you emphasize throughout Awaken Your Roots is that the individualistic.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Mm-hmm.
Tami Simon: Framework that we have in Western culture is not the framework that you are coming from in Pacha philosophy. It’s not about a separate individual healing in their own contained separate world. I think that’s a very important point, and you make another point that really got my attention, and this is a quote from the book in this context of not seeing healing as individualistic, you write, we’re meant to alternate. Between being the healers and the ones being healed. And I thought, you know, isn’t that how it actually works in life?
I mean, with your friends
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah.
Tami Simon: uh, and your, and for me and my marriage, and I mean, we alternate. That’s how it actually rolls.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah. So, and let me tell you, how did I get into that?
You talk about this, the, you know, sometimes we alize the way that we move into life. Especially in modern life, right? So I am this person and I do this, and this is my role and this is my, well, and this is not just a, a andan thought. This is, this is, this goes deep into, um, a lot of indigenous, in a lot of ancestral wisdom where we take roles to be the ones who care for the community.
Yes. There isn’t a specific. Designated role for, uh, for the person who carries the medicine. A particular medicine either is through plant, either is through minerals, either is through, um, eh,
nature, if anything. So, but when I understood that I have also the role of becoming. The one who can give what I learned and the way that I learned how to heal myself to others. The other person who is next to me in this case, let’s say my partner or my fa, even my family members, I am taking the role to be with them as the companion for their, for their walk into recuperating their soul back or their animal back, or their nuna back.
So we take, we take roles and it’s, it is beautiful because it’s like I have seen that growing up. I have seen my family members as my elders going to different places, communal, different communal places where they really heal each other. Where they, you know, sometimes, uh, the one who is talking and talking about their problems, talking about their, what’s going on in life.
They go to, they go to the plaza de So they go to the pla to, to the, to the market. They go to play sports. They, and they talk to each other. They become their own. They, they become their, the companions into. The way that they are living life and they take turns. I have seen that and I know that it works.
And growing up seeing this, especially in, in communities that are made out, uh, uh, out of women, my mom, my aunts. People in the neighborhood, I was like, wow, this is is great. Why are we not doing this more often? But you know, we, in modern society, we are very, we, we live in our own little silos and we not open up to it.
And my, my, the, the awaken call that I want for people to get in with this book is that we can become the person, the companion. The emotional companion person for the other, for the, the one that is next to you. Again, your family members and eventually your entire community.
Tami Simon: You. At the end of the book that you are honoring with this writing committing to the matriarchs
you see them on the horizon, and I as, as you’re offering the book, and, and I wonder, tell me who you see, what you see, these matriarchs.
Oh gosh. It makes me, I feel, um, it’s, it’s in order for me and my heart actually is beating faster right now because to me, this is, this is the goal. There are many women who happen to have this type of knowledge who have been put aside for many years. Sometimes centuries, if we’re talking about from grandmothers and so on that are waking up to this, there’s a lot of curiosity and some people, some of the clients that come and look for my, you know, for my companionship, they like, I don’t know.
I just feeling this call and I’ve been, I’ve been feeling this way and I don’t know what to do. It’s like, that’s the call. Just take it. Take it. Because we are in the prime time for this knowledge that has been put aside for many years and many, and sometimes decades and centuries to wake up. And I hope, I really believe that the knowledge is coming.
I mean, it will pass on, but it is our time as. A person who em embodies a woman body is our, is our responsibility to keep passing this knowledge to the one that comes after us to our legacy. Because otherwise it will fade away. And this is for those, this is for my nieces. This is for the, the, the daughters of my friends who are out, who feel that they.
They live in two different worlds in modern world, but they also are feeling the call of nature. The call is like, I have a friend, and I’m gonna summarize it with this. I have a friend who haven’t have a, uh, I think she’s 10 years old, and she comes to me the other day and she says, I don’t know what to do with her.
She just, like, she’s in in, they have a big backyard with trees and so on. She’s in the trees. She’s not like, she’s wild. She, I feel like she’s losing it. I was like, why? Because she’s talking to the tree and I laugh at her, and I was like, only if you know that, that’s exactly what I used to do when I was a kid.
I used to jump in the tree, jump in top of the trees, talking to the trees, talking to the aunts. It was it. I didn’t know it Then. But now it makes sense the way that I’m living life now. It makes sense. So I, I, I su I suggested it and it’s like, you know, just maybe just let it be, let her be, let, let and ask if anybody in your family have this gift or talking to nature, because we need her.
We need a people, we need a, we need a woman like that who can actually host, listen. Deliver the message of nature. Lorraine, I’m gonna ask you just a direct question here, which is when I attune to you your. Mantle that you’re carrying in the world. What I feel is such boldness and courage.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: Yeah.
Tami Simon: That’s what I feel, and I’d like to know more about that from you and on the inside, how you find that boldness and courage.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: This,
Tami Simon: Now you’re showing, you’re showing us
Lorena Saavedra Smith: this is a,
Tami Simon: that has
Lorena Saavedra Smith: yeah,
Tami Simon: has this been knitted or how has
Lorena Saavedra Smith: yeah. This has been knitted by my, one of my grandmothers, so. The boldness and the courage that I I carry doesn’t come from me only and alone. And today I didn’t braid my hair. But normally when I have, uh, when, when I, when I go to places, when I know that I, I have to bring the, the future, the present, and the past together, I braid my hair.
So when I’m braiding my hair, I also braiding. The, the sorrows and the pains of my grandmothers because their life was not easy. And so I’m standing in my feet today living a very, um, privileged life
due to the efforts that they did, so I don’t come by myself. I come with them and there are moments where I feel terrified of doing this stuff like this because, you know, I have been accused to being at this a rebel and to to be a, a disruptor, which in the beginning it was like, I wanna just do a, I wanna be a follower, but I my own, my home.
My inner nature doesn’t allow me to be that, that way. So when I, when I accepted that responsibility. Um, my grandmothers are always walking with me. Not only them, you know, the other women in my life who have had a, a, an intense and very difficult life. So that courage that you, that you see or you feeling is, is just a mirror of those who are walking with me today, but the human eye cannot see.
Tami Simon: I’ve been speaking with Lorena Saavedra Smith. She is the author of the beautiful new book, Awaken Your Roots—Reclaim your ancestry and sovereignty by heating the Jaguar’s call. Maybe we can end in a similar way that we began. Lorena, you mentioned that from your perspective, a ceremony is a type of sacred contract, and I wonder this notion of making a sacred contract, what question? You could ask each of us right now that might bring forth in a ceremonial way our own sacred contract that we can make right now furthered by this conversation.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: I will say, how are you? Are extending in the cycle of nature right now, and in the place that is hosting you, whatever the, uh, the, the, the territory might be. Have you done your work of connecting with the elements of that place, with the story of that place, with the, the. The life, the joy and the sorrow of those who were before you in that place.
How are you moving forward in your modern life without leaving or with nature next to you? Are the, have you listened to the, to the wind in, uh, through the, through the trees? Have you listened to the sound of the ocean? Have you connected? With the earth and with all the beans that are in that area where you are living right now.
That to me, is the first step to make this sacred contract, not only with nature, but with this, the place of us that we feel we can feel, but we cannot see.
Tami Simon: Thank you so much. Lorena Saavedra Smith, Awaken Your Roots. Thank you for being here with us and bringing your voice, your wind, your water. All of you. All of you, so beautifully. Thank you.
Lorena Saavedra Smith: You are very welcome.
