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I'm Darian Slayton Fleming and thank you for joining me on get what YOU need and FEEL GOOD about it. Do you find it difficult to ask for what you need? Do you frequently feel misunderstood? Do you have a problem or cause that you would like to learn to manage more effectively? What makes it so hard for us to tell each other how we feel and how do we speak up for ourselves so we get what we need and feel good about it? How do we do this respectfully so that we honor the needs and feelings of others? Together, we'll explore tips, strategies and resources that, when used mindfully and consistently, will improve our results and enrich our relationships.

Hello hello and welcome back to GET what YOU NEED and FEEL GOOD About It. I'm your hostess, Darian Slayton Fleming, and before we begin today's interview, I have a couple of announcements to make. You may have noticed that if you're following this podcast there was not an episode in February or March. In February I had planned to meet with our guest, but between the two of us communication was delayed, mostly because of me. And then I had a personal tragedy. My son passed away suddenly due to a drug overdose the day before Valentine's Day. And I am announcing that to explain the break in the episodes but also to tie in to our topic today. And I think that talking about that right now is appropriate to our topic because we are going to talk about self, love, loving ourselves. Also, I want to let you know just to remind you that I have a new website which is Embrace Happiness Me. I am offering a marketing and networking group that you can join anytime and the cost to join the group is only $49 for the rest of the year and we meet once a month on the fourth Thursday at 3pm Pacific time. So if you would like to know more about that, go to Embrace Happiness Me and look for the registration link. Now I want to introduce my guest. Today I am joined by Michelle Ballantine. Michelle grew up in Corvallis, Oregon and now she lives in Salem, Oregon. She is married and has nine children. Oh my goodness. She attended a really interesting program. It's run by Tom Brown Jr. And it is a Wilderness Awareness and Survival School which I have never heard of. I will be putting the link to that survival school in the show notes in case it is of interest to you. Michelle attended the Tracker School and found herself under all the layers she had built up around herself. She enjoys making art and writing and sharing her stories and her craft with others. She lives in a world full of contrasts her body sometimes hurts, yet her soul delights in her daily life. Now I just want to introduce Michelle Valentine. Thank you, Michelle, for joining us. Welcome.

Thank you for inviting me.

I am so excited to have you on here. I met Michelle last summer in Gresham, Oregon, at an art fair. And she produces some art that is visual, but it's actually tactile, too. It's felt work. And I'm going to ask her to describe that to us. So, Michelle, will you tell us a little bit about yourself and your workshops and your craft?

Sure, yeah. My about myself has a lot to do with my stories that I write. And I believe, Darian, you ended up picking up one of my small books at the art fair. And I write the stories that change. Most of the stories I write are those that made a big impact on me. And when I was. When I was in college taking art, I couldn't really understand how a person would be inspired to make certain kinds of art, even though, you know, I was very good at it. And I, you know, I had plenty of ideas come into my head, but nothing that really drove me to want to make my art and tell a story. I didn't feel a super strong purpose behind it. But now, after having lived 66 years and having gone through a lot of ups and downs, a lot of emotional trials, depression, discovering myself, all these different things, now I have something to say. And so I say it with my art and with my stories. And my art is. Most of the art that I make is done with felting. So I lay out fibers from sheep and other different fibers. They could be from an alpaca or from, you know, a silkworm or from, you know, trees. There's lots of different kinds of fibers that can be used. But then I. I lay them all out and create an image. And then I felt it all together through a process of covering it, holding it together while I wet it with soapy water and massage it and roll it and do all sorts of different agitation processes to just, you know, create a solid piece. So through that felting process, the fibers link together and. And bind together almost like you're creating a. A dreadlock or a matted piece of wool, and it ends up becoming a piece of fabric instead of individual fibers. So it's not weaving and it's not crocheting or anything like that. It's. It's simple felting.

As I mentioned earlier, this episode is about self love. Was going to do it in February, the month of Valentine's Day, and love, but self love is something that many of us struggle to be able to do. And I did pick up one of your books at art fair, actually my mom did. So you do these cool books where you have miniature versions of your felt works and you do full size wall hangings. And my mom picked up a book about happiness. And since that is what I'm all about, since I became a certified happiness trainer, I was really excited that Michelle had actually put together a book of basically quotes and thoughts and these felt productions. So Michelle, can you tell us more about your blog and your writing and what prompted you to write the stories to go along with your art?

Sure, yeah. The three little books I've written so far. One is called Life, Adversity and Bliss. And you know, in that book I, I'm wanting to portray how our life is full of contrasts and we, we go through times of pain and difficulty, but we also get to experience bliss and happiness. And in my artwork, I, for that book in in particular I would have the beautiful felted parts that, that look like fluffy and pretty, but then I would have also something like barbed wire in it or, or BlackBerry thorns or something like that. Because it's like when we get hurt and we are in those moments of difficulty, sometimes it's hard to remember that we can be happy. But you know, my art is trying to encourage us to remember that it's, it's 50 50. I mean it's not ever going to stay one way. It's going to have both. And that's part of living and growing and learning and to not be discouraged when we're in the difficult part and just to remember and hold on to the blissful happy times and don't forget about them. Another one that I wrote is called Gems I Hold Dear. And those are a lot of little stories and a lot of art that have to do with experiences in my life that kind of blew my mind really. Things that, that surprised me. And you know, when we go through different experiences and stories in our life, you know, a lot of times we come away with a gem of understanding or wisdom. And when I went to Tracker School, I usually came away from each class with at least one gem. Something that opened my eyes or, or opened my understanding to something. And, and those were like gems that I hold dear. And then the other one is called the other little book that I've written so far. It's called Explore. And that was all about kind of exploring within myself. When I first started making art, I had the message of explore within yourself because there's so much that's hidden that we have forgotten about or we have tucked away or even locked away that are necessary in our lives. And so this one is. This other book was about explore and, you know, finding those places within us. And some of the stories that I'll tell in. In our little interview today will be some of the stories that are in that book too. But an example of one of the things that I wrote about in the Gems I Hold Dear is this little story. And it's just. To me, it's the most beautiful experience because it awakened my ideas about what's possible. And the story is about this little spider that was in my windowsill when I was a teenager and my sister. Sister and I were cleaning our room and we were going to really thoroughly clean it and vacuum and wipe the window sills and everything. And there was a spider in his little funnel web. And I didn't want to vacuum it up. I didn't want to, like, kill it. I wanted to take it outside and let it go. But I wasn't sure how to do that. And so I decided I was going to try something that, you know, I had heard about when I was a kid in Sunday school about, you know, how, you know, how Christ could make things happen just by, you know, talking to it. And so I thought, well, I'm going to try to talk to this spider and see if it will listen to me and save its life. And so I started talking to the spider and telling it I would. I held a piece of paper up and I asked it to get up on the paper so I could take it outside. And I didn't want to hurt it. And I promised I wouldn't hurt it. And I. I don't know if I talked to it for a long time or if it happened pretty quickly. I can't remember that part. But what I do remember is, you know, promising it that I wouldn't hurt it. And it came out onto that piece of paper and it held real still while I took it outside and let it go. And that just blew my mind, you know, I didn't know if that would work, but it was like I decided to try it, you know, and it did work. So a lot of things are that are in that book are things that I've done or experienced that, you know, either surprised me or became a gem to me that I'll, you know, carry with me in my life. And. And it becomes a story that I can share because then somebody else might think, hey, I might want to try that or it just opens up possibilities.

This reminds me of a couple things that have come up in what I'm learning about happiness and what I teach my clients in my therapy practice and what I am now teaching, sharing in my happiness presentations. A couple of things that come to mind is happiness is not always about big things. In fact, if we look at the big picture, sometimes we get so overwhelmed or feel like where do I start? Or I can't possibly accomplish that goal because it feels so big to me. And there in, in the story that Michelle just told, that was about a present moment, it might have felt like a big moment to you and the spider, but it was a moment in time that was a little bit sized moment. And I've been realizing that happiness actually can be accessed through those little small present moments, especially if we savor those moments. In order to savor a moment. If you just sit in that moment, rest in that moment and access it through your different senses and name it, notice what you're noticing and name through your senses what you see, what you hear, what you touch, maybe something you smell or even something you're tasting. You can savor a flavor when you're eating a really delicious meal. And Michelle, you had a wonderful, beautiful small moment that made a big impression on you enough so that you wrote about it. So do you want to say more about that?

I think that it was, it was kind of like a revelation to me that, of things that are possible and you know, things that we might never have considered as being possible. And. Well, I mean, as I've grown through the years and as I've discovered more and a lot I've discovered through Tracker school about our connection and how, you know, how much our beingness or our, our energy overlaps, you know, and, and connects with everything around us. The more I understand, you know, how maybe that little spider could have felt my intention, you know, it's like a lot of things that I've done, you know, can refer me back to the little moments that you mentioned. The little moments that like I was going around a corner when I was driving as a teenager. I was going around this real tight corner and I just felt like getting into the other lane. You know, it was nighttime and hardly anybody was on the road, but I just felt like getting into the other lane. So I did. As I go around the corner, there's a big bale of hay in the middle of the road that I would have hit. You know, things like that, you know, that you just, you know, you, you're Connected. Something is warning you, right? Something is. Is. Is somehow letting you know something you don't know why necessarily. You know, there's so many times when I leave the house and I'm. I'm walking by something and I think, oh, I should take that with me. And if I don't take it with me, I find that there was something I needed it for. It's so funny, but, you know, you just get these little, little in prompts, you could say, you know, of doing something, and then if you do it, you realize, oh, that was smart. And if you didn't do it, you're like, shoot, I should have listened, you know, But I just know, like, I. I just tend to go off in all different directions with my thoughts. But I know that we're not alone. I know that we're connected with everything. And it's a real comforting feeling to me to know that.

You talked about. In. In the quote you're going to share later, you talked about your body and your soul. And in the happiness Happy for no reason model, there's a metaphor of. It's called our Inner Home for Happiness. And it has seven pillars, and they are the foundation, which, if we can create a solid foundation, everything can rest on it. And the four pillars are like the walls of our house, and they are our mind, our heart, our body, and our soul. And then we have a roof of our house, and that's living into our purpose. And I feel like the soul and the roof, living into our purpose are so interconnected, but we are most whole when we can bring all of that online together. Our mind, our heart, our body, and our soul. And it helps us consider our purpose. And finally, we have a garden. And that garden is described as nurturing our relationships. And Michelle, in that moment, you had a little relationship with that spider. And there's just so many spiritual connections if we're open to considering those moments. So you've been on a journey that after your marriages or your divorce and then your second marriage, and suddenly you decided, I'm going to see if I can combine my art and my writing to express how I experience my world from a spiritual point of view. So what was the hardest thing that you have had to experience going through? Learning how to love yourself?

Okay, yeah, that's a. A really interesting question, because I had. I had an experience that really surprised me. I found when, like, there was this point in time and I'd been. I had been going to tracker school for a while, and our teacher Tom had taught us to ask He. He called them the sacred questions. And the. He said, the only failure when it comes to the sacred questions is the failure to ask them. So I was sitting on my back porch angry. I was angry at my husband for something I was. And I had. I had discovered my anger by then, which I hadn't connected with for decades, but by this time, I had connected with it so I could feel it. But I was feeling like I was surrounded by this dark rage. And I. As I was sitting there, I thought, you know, what is this? Is this like, a demon? Is this something trying to influence me to have bad thoughts or to, you know, be angry? Because, you know, I was still a little bit under the impression that to be angry might not be good, might be bad, you know, because I was kind of raised to not allow myself to be angry. But as I'm sitting there feeling angry, I decided to ask this dark presence some questions. And so I said, why are you here? And it said, I'm here to protect you. And I said. I was very surprised. And I said, okay, aside from that, why else are you here? And it said, I make you feel strong. And I said, okay, aside from that, why else are you here? And it said, I make you feel powerful. And I said, okay, you know, like, patiently, let's go through all these questions so I can understand what's going on here. And I said, okay, aside from those things, why are you here? And it said, I'm here to protect you because you won't protect yourself. And I was shocked. And I said, what? I said, how can I heal this? And. And I got an image of pink flowers. And I said, okay, how else can I heal this? And I got an image of an alligator. Some of these things don't make a whole lot of sense, but, you know, this is just what came up. And I said, okay, how else can I heal this? And I got. I said. I got the answer that was understand me. And I said, okay, you know, how else can I heal this? And I got the answer. Understand me and love me. And I. And I said, okay. And then I thought about, you know, how it said it was here to protect me because I won't protect myself? And so I said, what if I do protect myself? And the darkness dissipated. It just disappeared, and it left just a pure, clean energy without any darkness or anger to it, but just a powerful, almost a supportive energy. So that was the hardest thing that I had to learn about loving myself, was that the parts of myself that I thought were bad were actually important. And Good. And, and as I learned more about anger, I also found out that and this is something a different teacher, Tom Franks helped me understand was that when I'm angry with my, with somebody else, I'm actually angry at myself because I didn't take care of myself or protect myself. There was something that was my part that made me angry, but I was putting it on the other person because I wasn't seeing how, you know, it was, you know, it was also my doing.

Oh my goodness. So many things are going through my mind right now and that is just so insightful. Talking about how anger was something is something we don't understand. But what one thing I do know about anger, and I think Michelle, you discovered this, is that anger. Anger is a real and normal part of our emotional experience. It's how we manage it that can make a difference in our lives. And we can actually use that anger by asking those questions and learning from it. And we can actually use that anger to move towards healing and growth if we don't get stuck. And that anger, and that's one thing that I hope to help people discover as I offer my happiness workshops to people. Could you tell us about the Tracker school? Tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, absolutely. Don't get me started. No, I love talking about Tracker School. It's just, it was such an amazing place. Tom Brown Jr. Is the, is the tracker School. You could say he, he passed away this last year. So we really miss him as a teacher but it's being carried on by his children, his other, you know, his instructors that he's taught. So Tracker school is still there and it still offers the classes. Tracker School has like several different spokes, you could say as far as what he would teach in, in the tracker school there was the tracking because he is, he's a famous tracker. He's tracked all over the world, you know, even for military and he's taught military and he's taught lots of different classes for different groups of people including special ops and things. But when I went to tracker school there's, it's just a mix of people. You know, you've got your military, you've got doctors, you've got lawyers, you've got 18 year olds that are just, you know, becoming adults and you know, just the whole gamut. They've got grandmothers, you know, mothers, housewives, they've got everybody showing up there at Tracker School that are felt, felt called to learn those things. So there was the, the tracking aspect. You could go that route, you could go the route of the scout, which is, you know, the protector of the tribe. You can go the route of philosophy, which is going more into the spiritual side of things. You could go the route of just survival. You know, they. They teach you about how to, you know, trap and snare animals, how to prepare them to eat, and, you know, all the different aspects that you can think of for survival. Um, and the thing that I tended to focus the most on was the philosophy side of things, because I had had experiences in my life that were spiritual and I had had attacks that were spiritual. And I wanted to understand that side better. And it overlapped really well with everything I had learned previously as far as, you know, the existence of the spiritual side of things. And. And so that is where I spent most of my time in classes, although I did take Scout and Advanced Scout and Ancient Scout. And all the classes are just amazing and fun and, you know, if it's. If it's up your alley, you know, you'll just. Just hunger for it like I did. But the, the things that I learned at tracker school or how to meditate. And he. In a philosophy class, he wants to immerse us in the spiritual side of things, you know, take us down the path of our subconscious, take us down the, you know, through the. The force which the subconscious is part of. The force, as in life force, and then into the spirit, the spirit world, the spirit realm, and help us to find ourselves in these different places and understand ourselves on levels and have experiences there. That's where a lot of that communication comes from, that we don't see, you know, that unseen, the eternal that exists all around us. Communication comes from there. And when we're born into this physical world, we tend to be focused so much on the physical. And even as children, you know, we might. We might have an experience that's spiritual, but because it's not seen and touched, you know, our parents might say, oh, that's, that's just your imagination, or that's nothing. And so we, we learn to discard everything that we're receiving on that spiritual level as not real. So what he does is he. He dips us real thoroughly for that first week in philosophy. You know, we're just meditating all the time. We're laying on the ground. You know, everybody's laying out like a big slumber party. And we're were learning how to go to these places and how to move around in them and how to learn from those places. And so that's kind of where I focused most of my Attention at tracker school. But I was also really, really interested in knowing how to survive in the wilderness.

What was the most enlightening thing about learning to love yourself, or the most enlightening thing you learned even at tracker school? And what is easy about being able to love yourself?

Okay. Yeah. One of them was when I was at tracker school and he sent us. Tom sent us out to do this particular exercise. It's called the focusing. It's called focusing. And there's actually a book out called focusing that describes this to some degree. But Tom takes it a lot further, and there's a lot of applications that go with it that the book that whoever wrote the book didn't touch on. But it's basically. He had us go out, you know, to our sit area, which is an area that was in the. In the wild somewhere. I mean, it's not really wild, but it's out in the. In the wilderness area that we were studying in. And where you'd be away from everybody else and not being influenced by their energies overlapping too much. And then we'd ask ourselves, how am I feeling? And then we'd surrender to whatever came up. And, you know, I can't remember what order mine came up with, but it was like, you know, maybe something came up, like, excited. And I. Then you say to yourself, oh, that's. That's good to know. And every question is done with love and understanding and no judgment. And so then you set that aside. Well, you say. You can say, why am I feeling this way? And then surrender to the answer. And then you say, you know, that's good to know. And you set it aside. And then you say to yourself, aside from that, how am I feeling? And you surrender to the next feeling that comes up and. And why am I feeling this? And you surrender to the answer, and it might be anger. And then you set that aside, and then you say, okay, that's so good to know. Aside from those, how am I feeling? And it's a process of. Of moving one layer after another up and off to the side so that you can discover the next layer. And we would write down what we'd find. And then afterwards, after we'd gone through a lot of these layers, then we would look at the different things that we're feeling, and we'd ask ourselves, which one is the most, you know, relevant to me? And circle it and put a one by it. Which one's. Aside from that, which one's the most relevant? And it's a way of teasing out all of these different feelings that. That have created this mishmash of feelings that are hard to sift through. So that's the exercise, but what I did, because, you know, pay a lot of money to go to classes and travel. And so I'm like, I want to get everything I can out of it. And the deeper I got, the more I'd forget what I was doing. But I kept forcing myself to ask again and to go further. And the thing that happened was I. I'm not sure how I got to it, but I. I got to a place where, like, all the layers were gone. And I. I could see myself as a pure column of light with, like, sparkling particles moving up and down through this column of light in my center, going up above me, beyond me, and down below me, beyond me. And in that. In that image that I was seeing, there were these logs hanging off of me that were, like these old, silvered, thick, dead logs. And there were three of them. And when I asked, what are these? One of them was all of my. All the things that I had done, and one of them was all the things that I had done at church, and the other one was all the things that I had done with my family. So it was like, there's these three different categories almost. And it was really interesting to me to note that those were not me, but they were kind of like hanging off of me like dead wood, which was really surprising to me, because to me, I thought those were, like, the most important things about me, but they were actually not me. But I was. I could. I almost could see myself and feel myself being this extremely powerful warrior who was not afraid of anything, who was absolutely. It's hard to describe, but. But other than just powerful and supreme. And supreme doesn't quite feel right, because I have this. This preconceived idea of what that means, but it kind of felt that way. So that blew my mind. And I started crying so hard because I had no idea that I was powerful like that. And I. I. I think the. The exercise lasted 45 minutes, and I think the last 10 minutes, I was crying and got back into class, and I couldn't stop crying. That was so. That was this huge discovery for me who lived in fear. I lived in fear. And I think a lot of my life was based on being careful and being fearful. So that, like, really surprised me to see myself being so powerful. And then there was another time that I did a similar exercise. It was later, and I began going through that focusing process of peeling back the layers, and this was At Tracker school, too. But there was this moment. For one split second, I had a memory of coming to be born, to be physical. And in my memory, I. It was so. I had to really work hard to hold on to it because it would have slipped away. But it was a split second of remembering that I was so confident, I felt so powerful. When I was coming to experience the physical, I had no fear. I had absolute certainty that I was going to be amazing, which is so funny because that's not how I lived my life typically. And. And I think that, you know, once I got to the physical, I have actually had some real, real early memories. And I remember my foot getting cut, my heel getting cut, and having myself be afraid to stretch my foot out. And I realized that that was probably when they took that PKU test when I was first born, because I couldn't, you know, I. I did. I was so used to stretching my legs out and feeling really good. But then when I stretched my foot out and I got cut, it scared me. And that was my first fear. And it's like, okay. It just seems like fears have been adding on to me ever since. And it was hard to. Hard. I didn't remember the powerful side of myself until I had learned how to, like, dig deep and find it.

Yes, it's work, isn't it, to find the power within us, to live into that empowerment. And I know I had an experience a few years ago, and one of my friends said, you have so much power, you are so powerful, and you're just giving it away. And my anger was the way I was giving it away, because I know there's parts of me that are strong and powerful and I do make a difference, but there are times when we don't feel that way, and. And accessing our spiritual self is. Is really powerful and really healing. Do you have any parting words for our listeners, Michelle? Any words of encouragement that they might take away from what you have shared today?

Yeah, and actually, there was one more story I wanted to tell you about an easy part about learning about myself. And that kind of ties in with my parting words. So I was actually at a women's retreat that was run by the wife of one of my teachers at Tracker School. And she was. She would have us do kundalini yoga every morning for a couple hours, and then we go on to do other activities. But this one, it was like the last day, and it. It was Friday, and we had laid down on the. On the floor in the room that we were using, and she asked Us to shut our eyes and to think about different parts of our body as we would say, I bless myself, I am, I am. And there was a part of me that was hesitant because, you know, of my previous teachings with the scriptures and you know, anybody who said I am was blasphemous. But I thought, well, you know, I'm going to do this and I'm going to see, you know, how it goes. And so I did. I participated. And as I would focus on different parts of my body, I would say, I bless myself, I am, I am. And I was at my right elbow and I had this vision open up. And I saw, and I was told I could see that our bodies are made of countless universes of entities that have come together out of love to give us this experience. And I realized it was like. It was. That was another one when I just couldn't stop crying because it was so beautiful. And I realized that every molecule, every, every particle, every bit of us is aware and it's participating in a loving way to give us this experience. And it totally blew my mind. And so my parting words are that if our bodies are made of this, basically universes of energy, little energetic parts that are aware, well, wouldn't everything else be made of that too? I would think it would. And it's just such a beautiful knowing my. I don't look at my body in the same way that I used to. Every bit of my body loves me and it just helps me to feel love for my body. And when I consider that if my body's made of this, then wouldn't everything physical be made of this? And in that case, it just creates so much love between me and everything and everybody. There are things that, that come around that are making that we feel bad, we can feel depressed, things like that, but there is a base of love there all around us all the time. And those feelings of darkness or depression or those things that make us feel less than love, less than connected, I think those are. Are maybe things of energy. I know that I've experienced, you know, feeling depressed and wondering if I could shift my awareness to a different place around me, would it change? And it did. And it surprised me that I could move my awareness from that, that depression bubble to a place of excitement and happiness. That's a beautiful thing that, that helps me always to feel delight in my life no matter what's going on. Also something that I didn't mention yet is that I am writing a more a longer book that kind of details my journey and that's that's in my blog on my website, if anybody cares to receive that. I'm writing and sending out a chapter each week to those who've subscribed to my email. Our bodies are made of countless universes of entities that have come together out of love to give us this experience.

So beautiful. Thank you for being with us today, Michelle, and check the show notes for Michelle's contact information and links to her blogs and her stories. And I am so thankful to be back with you. I am publishing this episode on April 27th and on this day it marks two full years. I'll be beginning my third year of producing this podcast and I'm looking forward to sharing more with you, so come back again in May. Thank you everyone. Take care.

Thank you, Darian. Bye.

Thank you for joining me today on get what you need and feel good about it. Remember, when you speak up for yourself assertively, you will get what you need and feel good about it. You will also be showing respect for yourself and for the other people in your life who are important to you. Until next time, try thinking about it like Stephanie Lahart says it say what you mean, mean what you say, but don't say it.

This is with hope, not hate. Yes, the only way to do this is with hope, not hate.