EP3- Interconnection, Imperfection, and the Beautiful Struggle of Being Human

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What happens when a Southern Baptist single mom trades perfectionism for Maya wisdom?

Jan Capps discovered that the secret to a fulfilling life isn't found in climbing to the top; it's woven into the beautiful tapestry of community, creation, and embracing our gloriously imperfect humanity.

In this episode, Jan shares her transformative journey from small-town North Carolina to the highlands of Guatemala, where she spent decades working in healthcare and learning from Mayan culture.

Jan takes us through:

- How collaborative, imperfect gods gave Jan permission to embrace mistakes 

- Why Maya women weave multiple roles, businesses, and dreams into one integrated life

- How the concept of "Susto" (soul loss) offers profound insights into healing

- A revolutionary approach to values-based living

- Why "everyone has a roof" in Guatemala and what Americans can learn about true interconnectedness

And so much more!

Jan Capps has been a public health advocate for immigrants, farmworkers, domestic violence victims, and people of color in the US, Guatemala, and Mexico for over thirty years, focusing on building local capacity and health equity. 

During her two stints living in Guatemala, she organized and trained community health workers and midwives, managed a medical clinic, and studied the Maya Tz’utujil language. She has presented, trained, and written for national audiences. 

Her greatest joy and most humbling experiences have been being a mother and watching her glorious daughter grow and launch into the world. Jan splits her time between Seattle, Washington, and North Carolina.

Connect with Jan:

Website: www.jancapps.com

Check out her memoir: Bird's Eye View: A Tapestry of Maya Mythology, Motherhood, and Making Life Anew

Connect with Aimee:

Instagram: @aimeetakaya 

Facebook: Aimee Takaya 

Learn more about Aimee Takaya, Hanna Somatic Education, and The Radiance Program at⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠www.freeyoursoma.com⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠

LISTEN WHILE READING!

A: Hey there, listener, have you been striving to attain some level of perfection or get to the top? How does that hustle feel in your body? How is that working out for you? 

I'm speaking with Jan Capps today, author of Bird's Eye View, A Tapestry of Maya Mythology, Motherhood and Making Life Anew. We are going to explore another way, the interconnectedness of beings, and how the project of life is more about reveling in the joy of creation. So stay tuned. 

A: Every day, there is a forgetting, and every moment there is the possibility of remembering. Remembering who you truly are, awakening to your body, to the inner world, to the experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy, and here is where you free your Soma. I'm your host, Aimee Takaya. I'm here to help you move from pain to power, from tension to expansion, and ultimately from fear to love. 

A: Hi Jan, so nice to finally meet you. 

J: Hi, Aimee, thanks for having me. Nice to meet you as well. 

A: Yeah, yeah, for those of you who are watching on the YouTube video, there's this mysterious kind of like dark shape that's framing Jan, and she was just telling me that it's because her camera has a little crack in it. So if you're seeing that, we're just going to say that that adds to the mystery of this conversation today to have that little like slate shift in the way that her camera looks right now. 

J: Yeah, I do not have a looming ghost over my shoulder. 

A: Wonderful. Well, you know, I'm very excited for this conversation. You have such a rich background, not only in, you know, in Mayan culture, but also working ground level to build projects and health systems, health infrastructure for people in Guatemala. 

But you know, also the personal experiences and personal transformation that you've gone through, that I very much see is likely connected to this exploration of a different way of viewing things, a less dominant kind of paradigm than the one that most of us in Western nations grow up with. 

So then that's maybe the first thing that I'll ask here is, you know, as you started to explore or become exposed to Mayan culture, what things became very clear to you about the way that you were raised that weren't really fitting in with that worldview? 

J: Yeah. So just for those who don't know the way I was raised, I grew up in a small town in North Carolina, was raised as a typical Southern Baptist, which, probably compared to the rest of the country, is fairly conservative. And so the way I was raised, we were taught to believe that sort of the project of life is to become like Jesus and that Jesus is this ideal person who was without sin, who, you know, was perfect in every way. 

And so to be close to God is also being without sin because sin is what separates you from God. And so it is being, you know, striving to be perfect and thought indeed in your heart and your soul. And then when you add on to like what are the expectations of women of being, you know, perfect mothers, perfect in your career, perfect daughters, sisters, that's a lot of perfection to have to try to strive for. 

And I just felt like at every turn I was stumbling because I couldn't, you know, as a single mom, particularly living in another country, like I just couldn't get there. And I felt like, you know, asking for help or needing other people was me not being able to meet those perfect goals. 

A: Like a sign of weakness, right? It was a sign of weakness. 

J: Exactly. A sign of weakness that you can't do that. So when I got to Guatemala and just looked at what was around me and the way that the women lived, I saw how women were so interconnected either with each other and with their families and their communities. 

And then also that they had so many different things going on, so many different projects like they may be, you know, of course, taking care of their families as parents, but or where they might be weaving or selling food or selling art or doing some other activity where they could make money. And they're all interested in their own education and wanting to study and learn more about business or medicine or accounting or, you know, whatever. And then they're interested in their kids' education. 

So I could see how they were really pulling together these different strands or different threads to make a life. And I even remember a conversation I had with one of the nurses at the clinic, Josefa, who was talking about living with her family. And she had a she was also a single mom with a son. And I'm like, oh, so, you know, you live with your parents. 

She said, no, no, I live with all of my family. And her home compound actually took up like a whole city block because it was like entire extended family all lived together. And it wasn't she wasn't expected to be the only one taking care of her kid. And she, you know, she had this whole extended family who helped her. 

Plus, she helped her whole extended family. And I saw that, you know, weaving is so much part of people's lives, like literally weaving. And how women are in the process of when they are weaving connected to the back loom, and that's sort of the active creation. But it's also a figurative way of approaching life that all of these different pieces are coming together to build a life, and that that is a creative project. 

I so that was kind of the practical part of sort of seeing how people live their lives. And then more of the like spiritual part of reading the Popol Vuh, which is the sacred text of the Maya, Kiche, when they talk about their creation story, is basically there was a multitude of gods working together. And they were all working together in these different male and female pairs. 

So there were at least three different sets of gods that were working on creation. And they kept trying and messing up and then trying and messing up. And they had it was sort of in fits and starts. And then I kind of took a moment and thought about like the sort of Maya version of creation where they did three different attempts at human beings and three different attempts at, you know, all the other beings and compare that to the story in Genesis, where there was one God who made one act. 

And I thought about, you know, if the gods are struggling and they're having to work collaboratively and they make mistakes, then it is only natural that we do that as well. Like, of course, we're going to have to work in pairs and we're going to have to work with other sets and we're going to be making mistakes and we're going to throw things out and then start over again. 

And just that view of the constant act of destruction and regeneration and recreation, that it is not just one act, but it is a constant act. That kind of gave me permission to see my life also as this constant regeneration, too, that it's not just one thing I'm doing or one feat I have to accomplish, but it's, you know, it's generative and it is in concert with everybody else around me.  

A: Wow. 

J: Yes. 

A: That's so beautiful. I love this description. And as you're speaking, you know, I was thinking about even like, you know, the theory of evolution and how like, you know, characteristics like, you know, get developed by, you know, certain things like working out or not working out in that environment, you know, and that there's an evolution of like ourselves as people as we figure out, you know, what, how things work in the world and we make those mistakes and those errors and the things that don't work just kind of like slough off, right? 

Ideally, and become part of, you know, the waste matter that gets recycled again. But the way that it's getting recycled again is because we're learning from it. We're learning from what didn't work out. We're learning from what, you know, oh, that worked really well. Let me try it again. Oh, it didn't work as well this time. 

Why not? You know, and that experiential process. So I loved how you were describing this as, you know, as like, you know, and also with the tapestry, because here's the thing and I'd love to hear your point of view on this is that, you know, one kind of, I guess you could say criticism that I have heard from people who grow up in very, like very intensely family oriented, you know, situations where they're living with a lot of extended family. 

And I mean, you could probably even see this in like, you know, Christians who are very insular in the United States, right, where everybody's all kind of really close in and woven really close together is that sometimes there are, you know, unhealthy patterns and unhealthy behaviors that sort of, you know, a person gets kind of trapped in that world because of all of the interconnectedness, right. 

And so I think that in response to that, it's very natural for people. And maybe this is true of like, say people who, you know, immigrate to the United States away from those traditional cultures, that they want that independence, because they at some point had some kind of experience that it was limiting or that it wasn't safe for them to be part of that interconnected collective, right. 

And they don't know how to change it or shift it, except by removing themselves from it and going into that, you know, kind of classical Americanized, like hyper independent thing, right. And maybe as I'm saying this, like people can think about this as like a, I'm talking about it at a macro level, but I think it happens in us, you know, if someone has a marriage that doesn't work out, you know what I mean. 

And then they go the other direction, they're like, I don't need a man, I don't need anyone in my life, you know, and they go into that hyper independent mode as a response to something that, you know, a part of the tapestry or part of the fabric that wasn't really like sturdy, you know, that had, had fraying or had damage to it, right. 

And then, and this can be part of a larger cycle or maybe, you know, and maybe you can speak to, you know, the experiences you had with people there that stepping away from that interconnectedness to be singular, maybe allows us to look back on it with a different perspective and see how those, those fissures or those wounds in our collective experience can be repaired, perhaps, you know, or rectified, you know. 

J: Yeah, I mean, we are not meant to be alone. So yeah, I mean, we are designed to be part of a community, be part of a group. Yeah. 

A: Did you have an experience with people, you know, who felt like, or maybe, you know, family units or groups that like, you know, within the Mayan culture that sometimes you could see that maybe there were certain unhealthy dynamics, you know, like maybe with like addiction or things like this that, you know, that the family had to kind of come together to heal that, you know, or not. 

J: Yeah, I would say, I mean, just reflect, so I was there last week. So, just sort of reflecting more upon family dynamics I saw recently, what I see families struggling with is the, I mean, sadly, the brokenness of being separated. There's so many people who have left, who have gone to the states, right, or gone north. And in the past, the people were like birds that they traveled north and south, and that they migrated for work, and then they would come home. 

And I mean, in fact, the community that I lived in, the Suta Hill, were considered the people of the bird. And so they travel and now that there is a barrier preventing them from coming back home, that is probably the biggest issue I see in families there, that they have kids in the states, or in some cases, Canada, but mainly in the states who are not able to come home and aren't able to, you know, to be able to come home and go back to be able to travel back and forth like they used to be able to do. So the disruption of migratory problems, I would say is probably the biggest issue that I have seen. Yeah. 

A: And that's a big deal because, as you said, if that was part of their culture to be migratory like birds, you know, but birds also travel usually in a flock, right? Yes. And they stick together, right? 

J : Yeah. Yeah. And so the fact that, you know, pieces of the, their family or community are gone and aren't able to be present with them, it has been hard for people like women who, young women who are in the states who have their kids left behind with grandparents or other men who have their kids left behind or aren't able to see their families for years and years and years, that I would say is the biggest issue in families now. 

I also see folks who, well, I mean, I know a number of people who have kids with like developmental disabilities or, you know, learning disabilities or other disabilities where they're not able to get the same kind of, you know, supportive services that we get in the states necessarily, but that the family rallies around and tries to find a place for them. 

So I would say, I mean, there's a place for everybody and whether it be like, let's just figure out where that person can fit in, you know, is it like, maybe they can't run the business, but they can help in the coffee shop or other ways that, so there's, I would say that there's just, there's a place for everyone and everyone has a place. Also, just being in a community that where there's so much poverty, everyone has a roof. 

There's no one who sleeps in the street. And I think about, you know, in this, well, I live in Seattle and the epidemic of homeless was, homelessness we have here is just, it's unbelievable. And it's unbelievable how much money we spend on trying to house people. Yet there's still people living in tents and living on the streets. And how did we get to be to a place where there's so many people that don't have a roof? And in the place where I lived in Guatemala, like you may not have much, but everyone has a roof. And it's unconscious that people would be sleeping in the street. 

A: Yeah. Well, and it also sounds like this is a culture that takes a lot of like, responsibility and maybe, and maybe this links back to what you were saying about creation, doesn't stigmatize people for their errors and their mistakes. Would you go into a little bit about, like, what you, you know, what you understood about, say, the way that people view, you know, making a mistake or making an error. Is it different, you know, in, in that culture? 

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J: I don't know. I don't know if I would say it that way. I think so the other part of it, there's another thing which is a con, I call it Pena, P-E-N-A and it literally means pain. 

It can also mean shame. And this is something different that I think has to do with like the history of Guatemala. When you're in, in other Spanish-speaking country, well in Guatemala, they just use that phrase a lot. No hay pena, no tenga pena, me da pena, like constantly, you know, I'm, don't worry, don't have any shame, don't worry about it, don't feel bad or I feel bad. And it, it's like there's this layer of guilt or shame over things that I don't hear those phrases in other Spanish-speaking countries as much. And I wonder, when I was there, I was just wondering, why is that word so ubiquitous? Why is there so much shame? Why is there so much pena? 

Why is there so much pain in people's conversations? And I, I think that also has to do, this is just my theory, but the time in which they had the, what they call the armed conflict or the civil war, which was from the early 60s to 1996, this is when the peace records were signed. But there's still a lot, there's still conflict even after that, that during that time there was really, you know, I'm going to say brother against brother, but neighbor against neighbor, where people were turning on each other and the army and the military were trying to break up these bonds of communities that had been together for hundreds of years in part to take people's land. 

And people would be forced into the military or recruited and then sent to other villages around the country to engage in genocide and, and break up communities. And there's so much shame around that time and so much shame in the, the breaking of bonds, like a communities that were built around trust and interconnectedness and being forced to break those bonds, that there is still a layer, a huge layer of shame on top of it. 

A: Interesting that you, yes, because I mean, you're, you're describing that it's presented there's daily speaking and in their conversation. Yeah. Yeah. The way they speak about them, you know, their experience on a daily basis. And, you know, I think that when you have a conflict like that, that is so fresh, you know, timeline wise, so fresh in the timeline, you know, you're working with generations of people who are still alive, who lived through that experience, right? 

You have that freshly in their, their physical physiological memory, cellular memory, right? It's not just a story, because I think that if you look at other Spanish speaking countries or even at our, at our country in the United States, like there's a history of civil war, there's a history of genocidal acts, there's a history of pain and suffering, but it's far enough back on our timeline now that people aren't speaking to it. 

There's, it's not to say that the shame and the pain isn't there. You know, you talk to a lot of people, you find that a lot of people are experiencing shame and pain, even though from the outside they might look like perfectly happy, healthy, normal people. It's like, yeah, what people are experiencing. But what you're saying is that it's showing up in the way they're expressing and in what they're talking in their daily speech. Yeah. Yeah. 

J : And even the fact that the culture and communities are, the core value is trust. And actually, when I was running the clinic, we, we did this exercise around values. I don't know if you've ever done this and sort of a, you know, a lot of nonprofits do this, or maybe even businesses do this sort of exercise where you talk about what are your core values? And then everybody lists stuff on a flip chart. And then you go around and vote on like the values that are important to you. 

And so there were three of us that were from North America, from the US and from Canada. And our core values for the organization were efficiency, quality and effectiveness. And I looked at the values that the local staff had, the student health staff had, and their top value was confianza, confidence, trust. And then after that was humanity and compassion. 

That was their three core values. So if your core, if the core value of your culture is trust, is confianza, and your culture is engaged, or is forced upon to break that trust, to break your core value through genocide. And so this genocide wasn't just, you one ethnic group against, it was internal. And it was forced. That breaks the, it's the core value of your being. And that takes, that's going to be many generations to work through. Wow. 

A: Yeah. And just acknowledging that it's coming up in their daily speech. And this is another way that like, when we make an error, when we make a mistake, and obviously, genocide is like a huge, huge mistake. And as you said, like breaking the fiber of our being, with this distrust and creating a sense of lack of safety, right? It can, and it sounds like it possibly will, reorient people back to what's really important. Kind of going back to people not sleeping outside there and that everybody has a roof, right? 

Like there is a kind of heartlessness that you sometimes will hear or see from people when they see someone who's homeless, there's an assumption in the United States from some groups that they deserve that they must have done something, they must be like a, you know, and you can see this in other cultures too. It's not just American culture, the caste system in India definitely had like a lot of this going on where, you know, they obviously have done something to deserve that, right? 

Maybe in like the Christian nomenclature would be like, they're a sinner, you know, and so they've done this thing to deserve this, this hellish experience that they're having versus the kind of compassionate state of having just freshly made huge errors, as you're describing in this culture, might lend itself to a certain level of compassion for other people who have made errors, who have done wrong because they understand the pain of doing that, you know, and have more compassion potentially for people, right? 

J : Yeah, and I think the reason I sort of pause when you talk about doing wrong, I think the concept of what is wrong might be a little different. I would say if there is such a thing as sin in a Maya worldview, it is pride. So pride is what is, that is what is most, and I don't mean to be like proud of your accomplishments, proud of your work, but hubris. So hubris is the thing that people may find most objectionable, feeling like you're above other people. 

A: Yeah, that kind of pride, yeah, that egotism that divides you and another person and says, you're over there and I'm over here. 

J : That kind of pride. But so the, you know, the error of, you know, getting drunk or passing out on the street, like that, you know, it's not that that's like a great thing to do, but I wouldn't say that that's like considered an error. I mean, yeah, in the same way that pride is. Right, right, well, above other people. 

A: And I almost feel like within American culture, like we don't even think about pride in that way. 

J : I mean, it's a good thing in our culture. It is. And you know, it's funny because we go to other cultures even say I traveled in Australia when I was younger and in Australia, they have this kind of way of, and they call it like tall poppy syndrome where like if you're sticking your head up a little too much, they're going to cut you down to size. People sort of diminish their like value and, you know, say things like, oh yeah, you know, it's not that great. Like if you compliment someone, they're going to like downplay it. 

They're going to like push themselves down a little bit. And I stuck out like an American, you know, a lot because, you know, I would talk about the things that I was excited about or things that I was into and they would they would hear it as being like, oh, wow, you're really full of yourself. And I'm like, no, I'm just really excited about the thing you're just animating about something. 

A: Yeah. 

J: And I'm like, and I don't feel bad about myself. And that was confrontational to some of them because they're like used to functioning from a place of like trying to make sure they don't sound like they think they're too good. You know what I'm saying? So like culturally, there's these funny things that we have around, you know, pride and ways that people kind of like diminish themselves that I think Americans are the opposite. 

We can kind of come off as boastful to other people in other countries because we don't have that same like thing keeping us in check about that kind of stuff. Yeah. And I would say so like, for example, these cofreadillas, which are sort of like brotherhoods or associations, they have this tradition of like somebody who is like for holy week, the person who may be the wealthiest person in town, they sponsor parties. And basically they spend all their excess money on a party. 

And then it's gone. And it's like not having, you know, one person have so much more wealth than everybody else. If you if there's a lot of money there, then you're going to spend it and you're going to spend it on like something for everybody. So everybody gets to participate. And rather than just one person feeling like they need to hoard for themselves. So that's shifting. 

And I would say part of it is like, you know, if somebody has family in the States who can send dollars, then they have they're on a different scale than the people who are who don't. Yeah. Yeah. 

A: So kind of going back to some of this conversation about like motherhood and your own experience with women there, you know, what do you feel is, you know, part of Mayan culture and mythology around motherhood that helped you shift your perspective? I mean, you mentioned kind of the collaborative living piece of it, but also this distinction that like a woman is a mother and she also has other things and other aspirations to what she's up to. 

J : Yeah. And I, you know, I didn't know, and maybe it was the work I did, I never met a woman who was only a mother. Like they all are so many different things. And they are, they all work, even if they're not having a job, like where you go to an office, nine to five, they all have hustles. They are all, like I said, you know, weaving or growing something or making medicinal plants or making food to sell or they have a little store or they, they all have a hustle and maybe the men have jobs or they're working in the field or doing stuff. 

But like that's a little insularity to what the women are doing. So yeah. So the, yeah. So the women are ones really running the house and they're running like the family and sort of the entire enterprise of the family. 

A: Right. And then you said, as you describe it as these hustles, how would you describe their work-life balance in terms of like, you know, a lot of people when they hear the word hustle in the United States, they think of like, they're working a full-time job and they're doing a multi-level marketing. You know what I mean? And they're busy, busy, busy running. But maybe it means something different in their culture. Maybe it seems to me like they might have, you know, a project or things going on, right? 

J : Well, I would say there's no such thing like work-life balance. That's not a concept. I mean, it's just life. Like there is no work-life. It's like you have your life and you have your work. No, this is your life. 

Like your life is all of these things, all of these things. And so this woman I know, Lesbia, who's she's a midwife and works at a she helped start a local like house for women to give birth rather than giving birth at home, they can give birth at this cost of maternal. And when I visit her at home and we're just hanging out chatting, she's sitting there weaving. And so she's got her loom tied to a post in her house. And she said it's just relaxing for her to just sit there and weave. And so she her family is running all around. 

She's weaving. And then like, she may sell that. And her oldest daughter actually finished college and she got a degree in PE. And she is a soccer coach, not a soccer, a soccer referee. She just got her FIFA certification. 

So she's going to be a young, young, indigenous woman, going to be a referee in international soccer tournaments. But she has a little store too, where she sells candles and notebooks and just odds and ends. And, and then Kana, her younger daughter helps take care of the primary school, like after school program teacher. 

And her husband has a bike store. And like, they all have these different things happening in their life. And so this idea of like, Oh, I'm just on one path with one career, one thing to do. 

A: Right. And I'm on a linear direction that like has an end or something like that that I need to get to, right? 

J : No, they're just all doing multiple things. And so there is no work life. It's just, just life, you know, and work is with people you care about. And you are doing that with your family. Yeah. So I would say there's just not that the delineation we have here. 

A: Right. And maybe not as much compartmentalized, because I 

J : think that, you know, compartmentalized, 

A: I, I've found that when I was traveling in other countries, like, there would be like a little family restaurant that's actually in somebody's house, right? And like, and there would be kids running around and the restaurants and outside the restaurant that were, you know, the family's kids. And then, you know, the grandmothers would be making you the food and bringing it out. 

And, you know, in like, I don't know, a more, I guess, Western, you know, we wouldn't, we wouldn't see that even with like, say, like a company or franchise, it would be so unprofessional to have your kids running around the restaurant while people are trying to eat. Like someone would be like complaining about that, you know, or if, or if you went to go see, you know, like a, you know, a midwife or a professional, and they were like doing a handicraft while talking to you, someone might be like insulted by that. 

They're like, you're not giving your full attention. How unprofessional, you know, but I know that those lines don't like, you know, exist in other cultures, because I experienced that I experienced that in rural Vietnam, that those lines didn't exist. And there was more, you know, like, comfort with all that life is and not trying to kind of like section everything off into these little, you compartments of your life. Yes. 

Yes. So that's very interesting that you bring in that perspective. And, you know, how do you feel that that has shifted you and the way that you operate in your life? 

J : I mean, I work in Seattle. So there's still some context in which like I have to work in the paradigms of this culture. I would say so one, not that per se, but what did shift for me 25 years ago when I first started working in Guatemala, I worked for an American organization, a very small non-governmental organization that did have its ties in actually in liberation theology and sort of the, I'm not Catholic, but it was involved in a very progressive Catholic movement. 

And the idea, the philosophy within that organization and work was about this concept of bringing heaven on earth. And what does it, what does heaven on earth look like? What it's a life of dignity for people. And what is a life of dignity? It's that everyone has access to education and healthcare and land rights and small business opportunities and gender equality. 

And how do we make that happen? And so the person who was my director at the time said, the way we work is the work. And it just stuck with me. And I would say that phrase has changed the way I see the work. And so the way we work is the work. So it's not necessarily about just accomplishing certain tasks and goals, but how we are in community with each other, how we treat our partners, how we treat our colleagues, the respect and dignity that we show is itself the work of creating a better society. So yeah, so I would say that is the thing that has made the biggest impact on me. 

So when I look at my work, and I just think like, Oh, I want to get through my list. I think, Okay, how am I trading people with respect? How am I showing trust? How am I being trustworthy? What am I doing to make in my actions and in my relationships to make heaven on earth to make a better and more just society? Right. 

A: Well, and if you go back to that conversation that you had about the values that were written down by, you know, your team and, and then the values that were written down, right, like trust and compassion, right, confidence and humanity, right. 

And then think about like, if you're oriented to a project or to an activity, right, and you're carrying those as your values, you know, how does that feel? How does it feel to show up with, you know, wanting to create more trust and more confidence, not only, you know, in your employees, but maybe in your client base or right, like, how does it feel to show up in that way? Versus how does it feel to show up where you're most concerned about things like efficiency, right? 

It doesn't feel quite the same way in one's body. It doesn't really foster, you know, those, those questions of what are the core values. And I love what you've said about, you know, the way that we do the work is the work, right? Because it's kind of taught, it's in a way, it's like, are you practicing what you preach? If you say that you want to improve, you know, life for, you know, these people, but then you're focused mostly on like the output and productivity and the numbers, right? Like, how is that really going to make the change that you're saying you want to see? 

J : Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, and I still, I mean, I'm still an American. So it is hard for me to dispel some of those things because, you know, the stuff around efficiency and effectiveness, like, I, I still think those things are important. And I still want to be able to serve a certain number of people. And I still want to be able to provide a certain level of service. 

And I, you know, I still have those things in me. But like, for example, the woman that I was just talking about, Lesbia, who was a midwife that I worked with, she, you know, would also help people with family planning. And, you know, of course, like, especially after women have a baby, like if they need a method that they can start using right away, you know, she would help them with injections or just getting, you know, the kind of birth control family planning that they needed. And so I remember at the clinic one day, we had a long line of patients that needed to be seen. And there's a long line of prenatal, of women waiting for their prenatal care. 

And this woman came in and wanted to speak with me directly. And she said that, so she's Catholic. And in her family, believed that birth control was a sin. 

But she was using birth control because Lesbia had helped her after she had her baby. And she did not want anyone in her family to know. And she said her sister in law had found out that she was using birth control and was going to tell her husband. And she was really upset about it and angry. 

And I mean, she was shaking, she was visibly really upset. And she thought Lesbia had told her sister that. And so as soon as Lesbia walked in for to see the long line of women that were waiting for her, I told her what had happened and that this woman came in and told me about she thought that Lesbia had told the sister in law. And and Lesbia's like, no, no, no, of course, I didn't tell her I would have never betrayed my patient's confidence. And then I said, Well, this woman's really upset. 

So we need to deal with this now. So Lesbia left and went to the woman's house and talked to the sister in law about what had happened. And so even though we had 10 women in the waiting room waiting to see her for prenatal care, like that had to be dealt with right then. Because that was the betrayal of confidence or the fear of betrayal, confidence was more pressing, addressing that, than making sure that these 10 women had their urine checked or whatever. 

So it's kind of like, I don't know, I mean, honestly, I don't know if I would do that here. But there that that is what the priority was at the moment. 

A: It makes sense. Like in within the context of that culture, right? And the people who are standing in line, if they had to know why they weren't getting seen right away. And it was at all like explained, they would probably be a little more understanding than the people in this country would be, you know, like the cultural difference, right? And I think that that's interesting, also kind of reorienting to like, you know, when we're operating from a connection to our values. 

And in this case, it was again, humanity and trust, right, that was being functioned from, you know, how does that kind of like reorient our actions and the things that we're doing in response to what happens to us in life. Right. Yeah. 

So, you know, in terms of this idea of because you've worked for a long time in healthcare, would you describe a little bit about like, what are some of the core differences between the way health is perceived in my own culture versus the way health is perceived in our modern, you know, Western American culture? 

J : Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would say it's more like, I feel like Western culture is catching up to the multicultural, not even as differences, but like we're playing a little bit of catch up. So I remember when I worked 25 years ago, there was this concept of susto everywhere. Susto literally means fear in Spanish. And like somebody would catch susto, like you catch fear, like what? 

Like, when does it, you know, somebody comes up, you goes, boo, you're scared, now you get sick. That doesn't make sense to me. But it's before we had the idea of trauma that we now have. So I, when I was hearing about susto years ago, it was without the lens of trauma informed care that, like I said, that we are now developing in our culture or in our country. 

But I heard about, so the idea of susto is that there is some shock that happened. So it could be a car crash or a death, or somebody really comes up and scares you, or does something horrible to you, or horrible happen to you, and somehow your soul leaves your body. And then to help that person, you have to help them bring their soul back into their body. And that is how that person is cured. And again, this was years ago before we had the same concept of trauma informed care here. But, but I heard a couple of examples. 

So one was I went out to this village and we were trying, I was with a Guatemalan community health worker, and we were trying to recruit people to be part of our program. And I heard about this 12 year old girl who had been in bed for a month. And she wasn't speaking, she wasn't getting out of bed, nobody knew why, what was going on with her. And the local doctor had come by and sort of the cure all for everything was to give somebody a B12 shot. So she'd gotten a vitamin B shot that didn't do anything for nothing was working, she couldn't get out of bed and nobody knew what. 

And it was just a mystery. And so I talked to the mom a little bit more like, so you know, tell me what's going on. And she's like, yeah, it's just, well, you know, it happened right after she had that miscarriage. And I was like, Oh, and so the Guatemalan, the community health worker and I looked at each other like, why is a 12 year old girl having a miscarriage? 

And then, oh my gosh, you know, this poor girl has gone through something really awful. And so I stay outside the house with the mom, and just sort of chat small talk with the mom. And then the community health worker I'm with, Lillian goes inside and she brings her some tea, and just has a heart to heart. 

And I don't know the details of what that conversation were. But the girl got up and came out afterwards. And so Lillian understood that there was something that that wasn't just physiological, something had happened to this girl, this 12 year old girl who, you know, was presumably raped, got pregnant and lost a baby. And nobody talked about that about why was the girl pregnant in the first place, or the fact that the sudden bout of susto happened. But basically, Lillian helped her find her soul again, and helped her bring her soul back. And I saw that happen in other cases too. There's this woman I work with, Gloria, who does Bach flora, flora is a batch or Bach flowers. 

A: Bach flower, okay. And I don't know the degree to which that actually works. When I looked at sort of the data behind that, 

J : like, but I saw what Gloria did. And so she speaks in Suta Hill, which is a Maya dialect. And I don't speak, I speak only a few words of that. But I asked if I could just observe one of her sessions just to see like how that worked. 

And it's, and because I don't speak that language, like there was no breaking of confidentiality. And I saw her like a woman come in who was basically like, Thai, tense, it was like a ball of nerves. And Gloria just opened her folder and gently asked her what was going on. And I could see as this woman talked, like her body loosened, her hands opened, and like tears were coming down. And I could tell just by her gestures and her tone, that she'd been through something really horrible. 

And, and Gloria, I could see like was basically reaching and helping her find her soul, and helping bring that back to her. There were so many cases, you know, of that I saw in that. And then I come back and in this culture, then we learned when Seattle, they're talking about ACEs now, these adverse childhood experiences and how they impact your health. And so I think we're finally, in our culture, getting to this understanding of how trauma affects people. And, you know, somatically, spiritually, your health and other ways that they understood, they've understood stood for a long time. Right. 

A: Well, and I've heard of this term in shamanism of like soul retrieval, right, which is this again, this idea of we get fragmented when something happens. And if we're going to take it like to a really just like neuro physiological place, where we're imagining like neural pathways, when someone goes through a traumatic experience, they can get kind of stuck in a certain neural network in their brain, right, that comes with a physical posture that comes with, you know, certain hormones being released, right, like a fear pattern where like maybe they're amygdala is like really active and really hyper responsive to their environment, right. 

And in that, that trauma response of those neural pathways, there are other parts of who they are, there are other possible neuro pathways that usually maybe in the earlier part of their life or at some other time in their life, were active. And we're running, you know, that they had another way of viewing and being aware and being present in their body that's just not online right now. And we could refer to that as like, you know, part of their soul, part of their beingness that they don't get access to right now, because they're locked into this, you know, what was the word for fear that you said, they're locked into the susto. 

And so they can't, they can't access the wholeness of who they are. And so much of healing work, I think in general, whether it's through, you know, like a vibrational medicine like flower remedies. And it's interesting that I had a woman on the podcast last, last year who talks about that, you should check out that episode, it's the somas of plants and talking about the way that plant bodies, right. And that's what flower remedies are, like have wisdom in their, in their soma, in their beingness. And when we, we can learn from them by communing with them through these vibrational medicines, very out, you know, data, data speaking is out there. 

But I feel like eventually maybe the science will catch up to explaining like why these things work, right. But that like, bringing our bringing our soul, so to speak, or bringing all of like our self that is possible to experience back online is, it's a process of making it safe. And that's what you described with this woman, you know, opening her folder and Gloria's spaciousness in letting this woman unload what was really happening, what had gone on, right. And also with this young woman who was laying in bed, obviously, at some point, she had gotten the message that it wasn't safe to express or talk or share about what had happened to her. And that keeps us in our trauma pattern when it's not safe. 

Right. And so in so many ways, like a lot of it's about coming back into that safety, you know, coming, coming into the kind of bringing these two sides of the conversation together, you know, in this kind of more holistic or woven tapestry of living that you're describing here, right. There's, there seems to be like, you know, in that tapestry, more of a sense of safety in being like human. 

That's kind of like something I'm picking up on here is that, like, that having your kids running around or doing a little project while you're having a meeting with someone, that these are things that people feel safe to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's beautiful. 

So, you know, this, this, I guess you could say vocation and career has gone on a long time for you. And, you know, you spend some of the year in Guatemala and then some of the year in the United States, you know, what do you wish that Americans knew about the way that people live their life in other countries, maybe specifically Guatemala? What would you like want people on the street in Seattle to know is happening in other places in the world? 

J: This may be a little different than a different framing than you're asking. As I think, particular where this country has been, is going right now and where we sit the path we seem to have started or continue to be on in the past couple of months. I think what I would like Americans to understand more is that we are not different from the rest of the world. That other countries, Guatemala and other countries have had to fight for their democracy and for their rights for centuries and that we in this country need to do the same as well. 

So, I think we need to take a cue from other countries who have been in struggle and to understand that that is the time in which we are living. Right. And that we are in a time now when we should be, and I would say, you know, when I was just in Guatemala last week and the events of last week and I looked in the newspaper in the Prinsa to see, oh, who is going to be in our cabinet? I had a lot of Guatemalans just pat me on the shoulder and say, yeah, welcome. Yeah. 

A: So, I think that's a, I think that that is a little, you know, you're inviting people to kind of question, you know, because we've lived under this assumption that we've got it made in this country and we've got this great democracy and this thing that we've like figured out and what you're saying is, oh, no, like, we actually need to remember the fight for our... 

J : Yeah. So, what I would say is not, I mean, I don't know if it was the way the framing of the question is not that, oh, they are like us, you know, oh, they have hopes and dreams like us. 

No, no, no, no. We are like them. And I think we need to understand, we are like the rest of the world. And this is what the world is. 

The world is people who are struggling to get by, people who are trying to make the best life for themselves and their children and their families, and people who are searching for dignity. And we are that too. Yeah. Right. 

A: And I like that you say we are that too, because here, like kind of in the beginning of this conversation, there was this conversation about like, you know, striving to attain perfection, right, getting to the top. And you're saying that it's a tapestry of all of our humanity. This is our life. And these things that are, you know, a struggle, this struggle for our democracy and for our rights and for our independence, it's part of our human experience. 

And we're not separate from that. You know, and I've been reframing this for myself on a regular basis too, about like, when I was younger, I had a real fear of responsibility, you know, like responsibility for like other people and like, oh, taking on more responsibility. And I've come to a place now where I think I'm more except that I am a responsible person. And in being a responsible person, I have responsibilities. And instead of it feeling like a burden, it's just part of my life now, you know, but it's taking out that like feeling of, yeah, of, and maybe it's due to that some of that compartmentalization and rather than seeing it as like, this is life. And this is life that is this 

J : broad, this spiritual thing. And other people are responsible for you. Yes, yes. And it's all interconnected, right? Instead, we have been, you know, like trained to kind of look at things in this compartmentalized way in our society, you know, and what you're offering here is much like a broader way of viewing that in, and I love that, you know, again, like seeing that we are like the people in Guatemala, right, we are like them. And not, you know, not thinking that somehow because we live in this more compartmentalized war efficient way or whatever, that they, you know, have something to learn from us, maybe we have something to learn from them. Absolutely. 

Absolutely. And I mean, we are a bigger country. We have, we have more people, we have more money. But we have the same struggles. Yes. Just on a bigger scale. But we have the same struggles too. Yeah. Yeah. That's more of understanding that we are like them. 

A: Beautifully said. Yeah. Wow. And so, you know, where, you know, you've put this book out, this is a memoir, right? Can you tell us a little bit about that process of writing and publishing this memoir, you know, and what that means to you and your career and your, your life's work? Yeah. 

J: So the, the book, it focuses on the year that I spent running the medical clinic and like I did long, but also flashes back to periods 25 years ago. And it's my experience living there with my daughter who was 10 at the time. I think what kind of what's unique about it is that it was about 60 chapters, but every chapter is a little bit of my story, but adds an element of Guatemalan culture or history or my mythology to each of the chapters. 

So my story is really interwoven with, you know, the myth, but also the stories of the women, like I've talked about lesbian, Gloria, you know, and like they're in the book as well under pseudonyms, but, you know, their stories and the stories of many other women are in the book too. So the process of writing it was, I had basically a collection of vignettes, like here's like these, you know, random things that happen or like different stories. 

And I didn't know if they would really hold together as a book. And so I hired an editor to help me with that process. And we talked about like needing an arc, a narrative arc. And I'm like, well, what is the arc? What is that story? 

And I'd heard about, you know, Joseph Campbell, I'd read about Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that. Yeah. 

Okay. So for those of you, you know, your listeners who are not familiar, it's just this idea that there's over thousands of years and across many cultures, this sort of arc of how of stories of The Hero's Journey that there's a young man who receives a call and kind of goes out, leaves his community and goes out on a quest and is faced by challenges and has triumphs. 

And in the end, triumphs and gets the chalice or gets the prize and brings that back to the community. So I thought, well, sort of, but that doesn't really fit me. I don't know. Like, is that my story? And didn't quite feel right. And I read an interview with Joseph Campbell. And in that interview, they asked him, well, what about women? And what about, you know, a women's journey? Because you're describing The Hero. And he's like, and he said, well, women don't have a hero's journey. Women are the destination in the man's journey. 

So either in the destination, or they're part of the Passage, they're part of the landscape of the man's journey. And you're, hmm, is a lot more casual than my, what the? 

A: Is that so? Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, man of a certain generation, tell me about it. 

J : A man who taught at a woman's college, really? So then there was another woman, Maureen Murdoch, who actually made a counter point. She wrote a book called The Heroine's Journey. And she came up with a different arc of, again, you know, someone, a woman who receives a call, kind of goes out, but, but is really is tested, but also supported by sages. 

And the destination of her journey is not to get, is not to find the chalice, but is to find herself. And so what the prize that she gets in the end is her, and is kind of connecting with other parts of herself that she had not been connected with. And I'm not giving probably an adequate summary of that, but that really resonated with me and my own story. And it's, I don't feel like, again, you know, the project of life for me has not been about going and winning the prize. 

That's something external, but that that prize is here already, and is finding that in me. And that just clicked. And then I had the arc. And so that's, that's sort of the skeleton shape that the book is built around. 

A: Oh, wow. Yeah. And that's, I'm thinking of it again, like you say, a tapestry or a woven cloth, right, that the prize here in life is connectedness, connected just to ourselves and parts of ourselves that we maybe weren't connected to before growing and developing parts of ourselves through our education, through our vocations, through our passions, right, through our family, and like that beautiful kind of weaving and branching out, right, versus, you know, point A to point B, get there, get it done as fast as possible. It's a different way. Exactly. Yeah. 

Beautiful. Yeah. And I think that even within that tapestry, that efficiency, that, you know, point A to point B still exists. It's part of it. It's just not the whole picture, right? Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, this has been such a beautiful conversation. Thank you so much for sharing all of your stories and your wisdom. 

For those who've been listening, check out a bird's eye view tapestry of Maya mythology, motherhood, and making life anew to hear more of Jan's amazing stories from her time in Guatemala, from working with women in the healthcare environment of Guatemala. Thank you so much for coming on the show. 

J: Oh, absolutely. Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

A: Yeah, my pleasure. 

A: Hey there, friends. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I would love to hear your thoughts. Follow me on Instagram @AimeeTakaya and send me a DM about this episode. I'd like to thank you for being part of this somatic revolution. 

And if you'd like to support the podcast and help more people learn about somatics, consider leaving a review or a rating. And finally, if you'd like to have the experience of relief in your tight hips or back and learn to understand what your body is really saying to you, visit youcanfreeyoursoma.com. I can't wait to share with you what is truly possible. Bye for now.