Episode 139: Healing Our Crisis of Separation and Political Polarization with Love with Aaron Rose

When I read about the heartbreaking things going on around the world (the children in detention centers, the conflict in Sudan, the abortion ban, ICE raids, genetically modified food, police brutality, mass shootings, hate crimes, how seriously Mother Earth is suffering, and more) I often find myself freezing because it all feels so big and so terrible, and I feel very small in comparison to the depth of the problems plaguing our planet.

I used to deal with this by not paying attention to what was going on in the world, but I realized that was a privileged opt-out that wasn’t helping at all.

Now I deal with the enormity of looking at the world’s problems differently. I don’t scroll the news 24/7. I don’t ever watch it on TV. I get in, get the facts, then I get out.

And then I have real conversations with real human beings working to create real solutions to learn from them, see how I can support them, and to be reminded that for every atrocity around the world, there are thousands of good people with huge hearts who care deeply and are taking inspired, healing action.

I often find these people on social media, and then I do what I can to move the conversation off the internet because I’ve found that true healing happens eye to eye, and, when possible, heart to heart.

One of the beautiful souls I came across on Instagram (my favorite place to discover new people doing good work) is Aaron Rose.

I found Aaron captivating from the moment I started following his account, not only because he’s a beautiful writer about topics that are hard to talk about, but because despite having been through so much as a gay transgender man growing up in a devout Cathollic family, light and love shines out of his eyes in a way I can feel radiating out of my phone.

We invited him on the podcast to take the conversation out of the comments, so we could hear one another’s voices and go deeper.

During this conversation we talked about:

• Practical steps to build emotional resilience to keep going and do good work in a world where a lot of sh*t is going down on micro and macro levels

• Being a recovering Catholic and how to navigate loving people who think and believe very differently from you

• How to stay connected to love when you’ve been through really hard things

• What to do when you hear someone you don’t know saying prejudiced things in public and you want to say something but you don’t know how

• How to be part of the healing of our crisis of separation that’s truly the root cause of 99.9% of the problems we have, personally and globally

Once you’ve listened, Aaron, Mike, and I want to continue the conversation with you. Which one of Aaron’s tools for building resilience resonated with you the most? Which part of the conversation was the biggest a-ha for you? How can you take action on what you learned?

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Show notes and links for this episode can be found at http://www.katenorthrup.com/podcast.