Mythic U
Join us to explore practices for discovering the stories that animate each of us. By understanding the meaningful stories that are your personal mythology you can choreograph your own unique way of attending to the needs of your soul. Hosted by Karen Foglesong and Erin Branham
Mythic U
Stories & Recovery: An Interview with Shannon Gaulding
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Erin Branham and Karen Foglesong interview Shannon Gaulding, a film and television producer, about her personal mythology. Shannon discusses the importance of self-created stories in defining one's identity and the role of mythology in entertainment. She shares her journey from a chaotic family background to finding self-love and spiritual growth through the 12-step program. Shannon emphasizes the need for self-awareness, acceptance, and action in shaping one's life narrative. She also highlights the significance of community and spiritual practices in overcoming personal challenges and creating a fulfilling life.
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Hello and welcome back to Mythic U. I'm Erin Branham
Karen Foglesong:and I'm Karen Foglesong. Thanks for joining us.
Erin Branham:Very excited today, we have our very first guest with us today. As you know, if you've been listening to us at Mythic U, we want to hear from you and from other people about how they have constructed their personal mythologies to feed the needs of their soul. And to that end, we're going to start interviewing people, yay, yay. And we are starting with the people we know very well. So we'll be introducing my sister, Shannon Gaulding.
Karen Foglesong:Yay!
Erin Branham:Shannon, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Shannon Gaulding:Hi, my name is Shannon Gaulding, and I am indeed Erin's sister. I'm super excited to be here. I am a film and television producer, so I talk a lot about stories, and I hear a lot of people talk about mythology and the importance of that in our culture and in entertainment. And I love what you guys are doing. I'm super thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me.
Erin Branham:Thank you. We've actually, when we started with Joseph Campbell, we've made mention of the fact that the monomyth, the heroic cycle, has become very active in Hollywood and in script writing, like that's something that people are actively taught to use as a model, as a way of telling stories. So it fits right in there very nicely. So as you know, Shannon, here at Mythic U, we explore how we as humans actively create mythologies in our lives to feed the needs of our souls. These can be religions or spiritualities, family stories, cultural or national stories, so long as they are a powerful part of your identity. If it's a story that makes you you, then we consider it a mythology. So what do you think when you hear that description? Do you have stories about yourself or the world that would fit that description?
Shannon Gaulding:I do. I love it the way you guys define that, and I think about how we tell ourselves stories about ourselves from our earliest days. You know, I'm smart, I'm fast, I'm loved, I'm unloved, I'm a hero, I'm a villain. And, you know, in the early days, I think those stories have to do with our families. And then as we grow up, we begin to define ourselves through the larger world. And that mythology that you create for yourself really defines in in many ways, the paths that you take. So I love the way you guys are interrogating that. You know, I looked up the definition of myth and I found one that I really liked, which I'm sure you guys have probably already shared, or shared a number of versions, but the one I liked was a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, typically involving supernatural beings or events. And I was like, Oh, I love that. Like, what a great way to frame your life, right? Yeah. And I love that it starts with your early days, like your pre cognitive years, the years when, you know, feelings are facts. And I love that it talks about supernatural beings and events, because I feel like those are elements that become spirituality as we age, and that sort of really bring yet another frame to how we, you know, define ourselves in the world. That was a lot. Sorry, I got excited.
Karen Foglesong:No, that's great. I think its wonderful. And even if we have defined mythology 10 times, to have another definition, helps to broaden the understanding of it, of the words and what we're talking about. And some people even believe that you start to absorb stories while you're in the womb, the stories that are around you. So we could even say it goes back further, if you want to.
Shannon Gaulding:It depends on if you're a Jungian, you know, because then, right? You know it was, it was there before you even, you know who, who is the what is it? The question that the Buddhist asked, Who were you before you had a face?
Karen Foglesong:Oh, yeah, that's a good one.
Erin Branham:Exactly, well, we're very into Jung over here. We talk about Jung a lot, but I like how your definition. I found another one that I really liked, which also says stories that are involved with origins. So that idea of the early part origins, or foundational concepts - I like that very much. Yeah. So what are some of the stories like? Did you actually think of that that function in that way in your
Unknown:Oh, my. I mean, I'm 58 so I've been through a lot of life? evolutions of my story. I just recently learned that I am a highly sensitive person, which is apparently a thing. So I have a very hyperactive imagination, and I'm very always over flowing
Shannon Gaulding:Very true. And I think that's exactly what with emotion, and I think the desire to figure out how to survive in the world with all that emotion and imagination like that, it triggers that part of our brain that wants to find meaning and to apply purpose to things like what to understand, to break the code. You know, I think that's a part of a big part of being a human being. What does this mean? What's called on, what is, what am I required to do? And so we just naturally shift into storytelling, because that breaks things down into a, you know, a beginning, a middle and an end. And for me and Erin may have alluded to this over time, in in the podcast, or may, in the future. You know, I come from a very Faulnerian family with all of these really big personalities, and we have a lot of I was raised in my family on these mythologies about kind of the fuckery of those who can't, can I say that, shenanigans of those who came before me, and so I always wanted to be a part of that. I, you know, my we have like a great grandmother who was being moved out of the family home, because there were four generations who lived there, and they were insisting on moving her into town, and she sat on this rocking chair on the front porch and said, I'll die before I go. She watched them load all her belongings into the truck, and when they went to go pick her up when they turned around and walked back to, you know, escort her to the truck she was dead. So these, oh, I mean, yeah, from the family stories, Hannah was quite a handful, and not so particularly pleasant to be around. But it made, it made me see myself inside the framework and context of a family that had big emotions and did - not big things, but stood for something even and also, it informed me from a very young age that self destructive behavior would be lauded and rewarded. And I think we we take all these things and we begin to create our own mythologies by repeating these patterns of those who came before us. And so I created a lot of patterns in myself about being, you know, I was a person who was dramatic. I was a person who would do dangerous things, because that's who my people were. And I think it just takes some, some growing up, to realize, to begin to say, are these the choice to make active choices about where you want your story to go. When do you begin to control the we're sort of looking at at here. How do you do that? How do mythology and shape the mythology, as opposed to kind of being very Greek about it, and following this pre determined course to tragedy. you make that switch? And because it's not easy, like there's actual there's a real quality of pushing out into the
Karen Foglesong:It is, and I think it's also our culture is unknown, right, when you do that, when you when you say, I'm not going to look to these stories that I was born into, right, the milieu I was born into, I'm going to take some activity and step out of that. It's a very scary, very brave evolving to allow that, instead of having to, you know, to be in the herd, we have moments where we can say, I'm not the herd right here. Because I don't think that 20 years ago, having this conversation would been as well received as it is now
Shannon Gaulding:Yeah, absolutely. And I think the culturally. things that we were allowed to do as women, you know, there's a cultural, mythological overlay that pre determines a lot of the doors that you think to open. And part of I think growing up and Erin to use your language and growing out is realizing that there are other doors and then deciding, do I want to open them? Who do I want to become? Does my method like I've now created a mythology for myself through experience and wisdom and spiritual reflection and choice, where I just can see the opportunity to do things and to choose things and to feel confidence and step into that version of myself in a way that I never could have before. But a part of my mythology is that I am a person who has weapons, who has skills, who has armor, who has kindness, who has kinship. Like I've taken all the gods - I fired the gods I didn't like, and I took all the gods that I did like, and I've brought all their assets with them, and they're all on my team now.
Karen Foglesong:That's fantastic.
Erin Branham:Definitley. Those are terrific metaphors. You're making me think of, I don't know how many people made it very far into HBO West world, very dense and difficult to understand. But there's a point at which, right, it has to do with all these androids. There's a point at which a character who you thought was human, you realize is an Android because he cannot see a door. He's been programmed not to just not perceive that. And that's how you know that he is. And it's that idea, like you're saying when you when you open up your mythology, doors that you could not see before are suddenly there, and you realize, oh, my God, they were there all along. I just couldn't see it indeed. So I thought that was a very nice a nice bit.
Karen Foglesong:I'm loving your metaphors, too. Yeah, these are great.
Erin Branham:So when you think about this, you're talking about this process, like, where do you think that began? Where do you think the moment was that you realized, oh, I can actively shape this.
Shannon Gaulding:You know, I think it's coming into awareness as a person, you know, shedding the idea that you're defined by your parents or things are their fault. You know, I think it's a part of the natural evolution. You know, as William Blake talked about, the journey from innocence to experience for me, the thing that really, really brought dramatic change and allowed me, I think, to come into myself was I'm what's called a double winner. So I'm both a drug addict and someone who loves someone who was a drug addict. So I'm big into the 12 step community. And when I had someone very close to me struggle with an extremely serious drug addiction, I was sober at the time, but not yet recovered, which I have recently learned is quite a distinction. I was faced with really being forced to love myself, or maybe love or lose this person, and in my mythology, I was a person who loved themselves, but kind of in the way that you love a farting, three legged dog that wandered into your yard like I'm gonna take care of it because nobody else will. Oh, and it's got fleas and ringworm, like it wasn't the ferocious I didn't have the ferocious Love of self that I do, of say, Erin or my kids or my mom or my dear my family of choice, my friends. And when I realized that I had to show up in the way that would allow me to use all of my weapons, use all of my tools in a life or death moment, then I I really figured out how to love me, and that was a cataclysmic rebirth of a personal mythology, because now I'm much more connected to my maker, my spiritual guide, you know, and I feel her with me all the time, and I we're a lot more powerful, and we're also a lot more calm and confident, and that just kind of changed everything for me, I think for so many of it, you know, it's why we all want to watch Braveheart, because we won't ever, you know, have the be the decision maker of a country surviving or not surviving, but we want that cathartic experience and self knowledge. Do I have what it takes in a moment of great crisis to step forward and be the person I imagine myself being? When you get on the other side of that, then you're living the mythology that allows you to be the person that you imagine you're so - you are that person.
Erin Branham:That's interesting. I wonder if self love, fierce self love, like you're describing, is a necessary first step to really intentionally create one's own mythology.
Shannon Gaulding:I mean, some people are born with it, you know, some people are just confident and comfortable in their own skin. They may come from a different family. I think a lot of people, people who desire extreme experiences, probably like to dance to the edge. Maybe they, you know, they, they like testing themselves. They like being in that firemen, you know, EMT doctors, those women in the emergency room who are kind of constantly holding people's lives in their hands. I don't, I mean, I don't know it felt really foundational to me. I certainly feel like a different person on the other side of that experience. I mean, I think it, and maybe part of it is choosing your God. You know, I really valued fear my whole life. I worshiped fear that that was my God. He was my God, and he was really hungry and really angry, and I could never do enough. And that was my mythology - was scarcity and always being on the edge. There was no - constantly being tested and failing. That was the story I told myself. And so when I finally got up the nerve to fire that God and find a love that I could move a God that I could move towards, as opposed to move away from - my story, really, my the mythology of myself really changed. I was, like, you are a strong ass bitch, like I went through a lot. I really did, you know until you fish someone that you love out of a homeless encampment? You know you don't really know what you're made of, or whatever your version of that is. You know when we talk about, when we think about the myths of Hercules and the you know his his mighty tasks that he has assigned and you till you face your Nemean Lion, you know? And I probably said that incorrectly-
Erin Branham:You did not, actually.
Karen Foglesong:You did not.
Shannon Gaulding:Five cents goes to me, gold star, right? All those, all those years of carrying around my weight in books when I was 12 has finally paid off. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure. What do you think feel like that self love is a is a critical part of the first gate?
Karen Foglesong:I think it's a critical part. But I don't know like I'm still I still struggle. I wouldn't say that I have fierce self love yet. I'm on the way there. But I've been working this idea of mythological story and how it affects your life for a while, and it is bringing me to self love. So I think you can go, I think the awareness, maybe I'm noticing what you said, indicates that it's not necessarily an age or a chronological thing. It just happens when to use a Jungian word, when things constellate, that's when you're brought to the moment of you either dig for deeper understanding or there's some kind of imminent collapse.
Shannon Gaulding:Yeah, I definitely see all of that stuff, and it's always shifting. And I think, you know, having grown up on Greek myths and and the Old Testament, you know, I'm a I grew up in the in the south, and, you know, you're very, very enmeshed in sort of those Christian mythologies. And a lot of those stories are really dark. I mean, you could have a mythology where it's all gonna end terribly in a hail of gunfire and broken Jack Daniel's bottles. And I definitely had a period, you know, when I was a drug addict, that was my mythology. Nobody sees how much pain I'm in, and I'm just gonna go to the deepest, darkest, most unpleasant place that I can go and put myself in terrible danger wandering around at two o'clock in the morning, you know, downtown Los Angeles in a mini skirt. There were times when it did not go well, as one can expect, but I was the I think so much of it is about realizing that you're the author of the tale. You know, I'm not doing this because my parents mistreated me. I'm not doing this because my boyfriend or girlfriend is a is a controlling piece of shit. I think the other part is realizing that you were in the driver's seat. You know, it is your hand telling the story. And for so long, I always felt buffeted about by by all these other controlling forces. I don't know, Erin, what do you think?
Erin Branham:I'm with you 100% I think you're right. Maybe it's not the self love. It is definitely understanding that you are the author, or that you have at least. I guess maybe it's not even the understanding, it's the Inkling, right? That's what really let you go take that first step, is the inkling that maybe I could, like, she said, Maybe I'm not just being buffeted about maybe I really am making active choices. And if that's true, right then, well, what if I, like, really took control of that and did something with it that lets you start coming out of all of these things and taking control of
Shannon Gaulding:Yeah, we talk in AlAnon about the three A's, your own story. which is awareness, acceptance, action. So you can't change anything that you're unaware of, right? So when you begin to you become aware, like, I could do something differently here. You know, if my for a long time, my mythology was that I was controlled by my family forces, my my parents, I think for so many of us, you know, in our teens and 20s, that when I was with my mother, it was, you know, and there was a lot of dysfunctionality in our family. There's many generations of alcoholism, and things were going to go a certain way. And I remember the first time I was aware that I could make an active decision and not engage in histrionics of going to a restaurant where the food was more expensive than you know, somebody else wanted to. Others would not comfortable going. They wanted to always go to the cheapest place. And I was like, I don't have to do the dance. I can just sit on the other side of the table and talk to someone else. And it was like a nuclear bomb had gone off, you know. I was like, it worked. You know, no one took my head off with the machete or, you know, threw me into the street. So then you begin to realize that the choices that you have, and that's that's why role playing games are so much fun, right? Because you get to operate, you have main character energy when you realize you're the main character,
Karen Foglesong:That's great!
Erin Branham:For sure. We'd love to hear from you. You can email us at
Karen Foglesong:your mythic u@gmail.com so y o, u, r, m, y, t, h, i, c, u@gmail.com
Erin Branham:Yes, because we would love to hear from you any comments, suggestions, criticisms and your stories. Definitely want to hear your stories. So like said, rate and review us on Apple podcasts, or whatever your podcatcher of choice is, we'd love to hear from you your mythic you@gmail.com. So talk about this a little bit. I know you very well. I know you're someone who has constructed a lot of their own mythology. How do you see that active in your life now, right? What are the places? How is story active, playing out in your work, playing out in the things that you do in the world?
Shannon Gaulding:Yeah, I mean, I have a really interesting job and a very I'm a very blessed person that I get to sit around with storytellers all day and craft movies and television shows and talk about, what are the themes of the stories? What is the desire on the part of those creators to what do they want to imbue people with hope, desperation, you know, love. So we talk often about our personal life experiences and how that fits into, possibly into a character's story. So it's definitely something that I think a lot about, and I talk a lot about. I read a lot. I'm always looking for new material, new novels, new articles, new screenplays. So I'm always analyzing story and thinking about, is there, is there a story being told here in a new and unique way? Is it leading me to see something different about myself? And so there's the work component, which is really, I'm very lucky in that regard, and in my personal life, I just try not to be an asshole as much as I used to, like I was very on 11, because I did worship fear, and the story I told myself is that everybody was going to leave because of the trauma that I had with this loved one in my life, I was convinced that I told myself the story that everybody was going to die, and that is no way to go through life, and it's A difficult journey to ask other people to travel along with so I kind of had to do some work to rewrite the second half of the second act of that story, because it was kind of everybody was leaving the theater man like nobody wanted to watch that movie, including myself. So I really try to be much more thoughtful and circumspect about how I treat other people. I have a daily spiritual practice and dialog with myself. When I come into these moments of panic or fear, I really separate and and have a conversation with my my ego, my ego mask, and I'm like, What do you want here? I feel the fear, but we're not in a fearful situation. And I sort of have the sort of collection of myself at all these different ages, and I engage in conversations with them and let them know that we weren't strong enough then, but we're, we're strong now. We have what we need. We've got, you know, Athena's brains and, you know, Aphrodite's wiles and Mother Earth's energy and strength. And we just kind of are constantly in that conversation with myself and, you know, and I do a lot of- I'm very lucky that I live in Los Angeles and there are a lot of opportunities to engage with communities that are interested in this work and but haven't necessarily had the benefit of being able to have this much time to reflect. I work a lot with the post incarceration community. I'm really active a number of communities that I've been lucky enough to find who just want to talk about these things and hopefully reduce some of the trauma and stress and other people's lives as they seek to find their footing.
Erin Branham:about - that one of the things about striking out to kind of create your own mythology is that it's lonely. You don't have, you don't have the community aspect that you get with a traditional religion. And then we, you know, we miss that. And actually, Shannon and I, at one point, when I first moved to LA, we went on a very fun and funny quest to find a spiritual community. And so we just like, started hitting really interesting alternative communities, and you know, like showing up for their services. And it was a hoot.
Shannon Gaulding:We found some very strange, lovely, small pockets of people who were always surprised to see us, and literally would chase us up the parking lot, like, Please join, you know, they're just these little, small, kind of lovely religious communities. But yeah, it is. It's very lonely, you know, like I indulge in some green witchery and some white witchery, and there's no you don't get to go hang with anybody. You have to take that part of your energy and find a different way to express it. I mean, the thing that I love is there's so many folks who are hungry to have the conversation, if you can just meet them where they are. Yes, you know,
Erin Branham:definitely, I think that's one of our goals, honestly, if we like, if we were to say in our most secret heart of hearts, Karen, is that there would be some way to create a community of people who are all doing this work. So you don't necessarily have the exact same spirituality, but you do have that commonality, yes, of doing the work, we could have, you know, a community of 1000 people, each with basically their own spirituality, their own their own individualized religion, and yet we can all be together, be a lovely Yes, right? If we could, we could conjure something into the world, yes, and it might look like that,
Karen Foglesong:to hopefully alleviate some of the loneliness that we all were on our paths, right? Just Yes. There's a hand here,
Shannon Gaulding:Yeah, and that, you know, Erin and I get together and do a winter solstice celebration that we've done now, on and off for years. And people love to come and, you know, just coming together in community. I think it's one thing for us to have these personal mythologies and to be with your friends and like, Oh, you're happier now. You're less of a pain in the ass. Or we don't seem quite so desperate. Or you gave me, you offered me really wonderful solace at a time of, you know, when I was in trouble, but being able to celebrate. And, you know, I think we think so often of these mythologies as helping us through the dark times. And like, you know, acceptance, big thing in 12 step, you know, acceptance, you know, I gotta accept that this person I love is a drug addict, and I have to accept that I didn't have the childhood that I wanted, and my mother was an alcoholic. And have to accept, you know, that my boss is a drug addict, and I'm going to have to leave that job that I love, but coming together communally would offer us also the acceptance of all the joyous parts of creating your own mythology. You know, I'm I'm strong, and I have people who love me, and the moon is full and the cycle continues, and spring has come, and, you know, those other really kind of lovely ways of measuring the changes we bring about in ourselves.
Erin Branham:Definitely. How important do you feel it is for individuals to have this kind of spiritual compass? I mean, as you're out walking around and working in the world, this is something I think a lot about, because we don't come from traditional religions. I think Karen and I have talked about it before. I know you and I, Shannon, have talked about the way that people can be a part of a religion and yet not be actively engaged with that mythology, even so, it's just like that idea of how important is it for people to be engaged in this work.
Shannon Gaulding:I think it's kind of everything I have a lot of sorrow in America that we've moved so far away from any kind of spirituality. I think people tend to frame it as religiosity. And I think these are kind of different things. I'm really happy that in a post COVID world, people are talking a lot about mental health. But I mean, I, I'm a much more grounded, happy and pleasant to be around, I hope, person now than I was before. And it when you do the work, you know, it allows you to become, hopefully, a servant and a servant leader, you know, somebody who's done the work, who's walking ahead of you, who's like, you can be an integrated person, if you are fearless enough and have enough resources to put towards really interrogating yourself and asking these kinds of questions. And you know, it's helpful to do it with guidance. That's like, the great thing about the 12 step program, whether that's Overeaters Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous or Al Anon, is there's the 12 Steps kind of walk you through the it's all the same stuff that we're talking about. Who am I? Where have I been? What do I want to be? Why do I act the way that I want to act? What is my spiritual compass? What do I value? You know, and Erin and I have talked about this, you know, things that we value are free and eternal, and they're very different from the things that we want, which are temporary and have a cost to them. And when we think about what we value in this world, that's so hectic, and everything's being fed to you, and you're on Instagram, and we all ordered those beautiful shirts that come from China and are terrible, and you can't even watch them once, and you can't get a refund. You have to get back to them in seven days, and you can't get a piece of mail to China in seven days. And you're like, Ah, you're just running into traffic. You know? It's so exhausting. So I think the ability to try to turn away from the consumer oriented society is becoming more and more difficult, and it is that is somebody else's mythology. Yes, you know that is not your own mythology, but it's so loud that it's very, very hard to escape it. And I think when we're developing a movie or a television show, there are a number of times where you will say, I love this character. She's amazing. She's not driving any story. It's not her movie anymore, and no one is going to make it because you have a main character who's being acted upon, as opposed to leading the action. And I so identify with that, because that was my life. For such a long time, I was acted upon. I was in somebody else's story. It's like when you're talking about Erin, like wresting the narrative, deciding to be the person in the driver's seat that in itself. Now it is your mythology. It's not somebody else's it's not your cultures. It's your own personal story made up of your own experiences. That's a big change. That's what you gotta bring about. Ladies, get it done,
Karen Foglesong:right? And I think that that's possible to have, even if you're a member of one of the so called great religions of the world, you still have to individuate enough to know your relationship with that religion,
Shannon Gaulding:yeah, and what is your higher power call upon you to do? I'm I'm not Christian, but I'm reading the New Testament again, and you know, Jesus is down with all of this, like a lot of you know, don't do what everybody's doing. Find your own way, be your own person,
Erin Branham:Leave your family behind. Come with me. Let's figure this out. You're right. It's very much a story of, yeah, separation, moving out into the unknown.
Shannon Gaulding:And question, question, question, everything. I mean, Jesus was like, you know, Jesus was not accepting the status quo. Jesus would walk around and look at this capitalist society, and there would be a lot of tables being flipped
Karen Foglesong:over, tumped over, yes.
Shannon Gaulding:Can you imagine? Walk around LA, see the you know, the homelessness, and say, as you do to the least of them, so you do to me, you know, and all the wealth that's here. So I think, and it is cataclysmic, this idea of like creating your own mythology, there are moments when you have to have the you know come face to face with the realization that I'm not where I want to be. My choices haven't paid off in the way I want them to pay off. Am I brave enough? Who am I? Who am I? And then that's when you start realizing, is my conception of myself big enough? Is my god big enough to carry me through to getting a divorce, quitting the job, or just speaking the truth in your own family or with your primary relationships, these are difficult, challenging things to do, and if we haven't told ourselves the story that we're capable of those things, if that interior monolog is that you must always sacrifice for others, like that was big. Part of my story, for a long time, was I was a martyr. I mean, I was pain in the ass martyr. Well, just I won't eat me dinner. Let me just make sure the kids are fed. I mean, oh my god, the fact that, you know, I wasn't thrown into the street, it's not so nice. But I really believed that was this space that I was designed to take up. We do what we tell ourselves. Who was it? There's some, one of those famous Greeks who said, You are what you repetitively do.
Erin Branham:Absolutely, you are those habits that you see yourself acting out over and over and over again. I think what you're talking about is what Jung referred to as like your relationship to the infinite that humans really cannot survive well, if they do not have some relationship to the infinite, which the 12 step would be called the higher power, what Christian would call God. What is there? Not just who am I, but how is what I am related to everything else, right? What else exists in the world, and even some of these things you're talking about, making these changes the way that a mythology, like you said, until the story changes, you can't really make the change. You have to. You have to have the, at least the story in your head say, I can ask this question before you can ask the question, yes,
Karen Foglesong:yeah, yeah.
Shannon Gaulding:I mean, it's, it's that, I think the truth is, as you grow up, you realize that the Buddhists had it right. You know, there's just, there's just pain, and there is always going to be pain. The question is, like, pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. And I used to really believe that I was a person who was going to suffer and you guys were going to watch me. That was important. It was important. I needed an audience. You know, this was not a play that was being put on just for the entertainment of one person, you are going to be forced to watch it too. And in deciding that you want to tell a different story and be a different person, then all of that stuff around you is able to shift. And you know, people want to stay on the station for a little bit longer, which is nice, because we are herd animals. We're stuck with one another, that desire for connection. We need that connection to one another. And like you're saying, Erin, we need that connection to something larger than ourself, where it's hard to bear the idea that there will always be pain. You know, your parents are going to die, the people you love are going to die. We're all terminal. And I found that that sense of a higher power kind of gave me comfort and just allowed me to soften into that and again accept it. The you know, the pain always comes from the resistance, the things that you can accept, they're just not such a hurdle anymore, you know, but you have to have a belief in a spiritual being larger than yourself that will not let you hit the ground.
Erin Branham:Absolutely.
Karen Foglesong:I would just like to ask Shannon, at this point in her journey, if she has any specific advice for someone who's just starting out.
Shannon Gaulding:I don't know. I mean, I can't, like, I said, I came to it through Al Anon, but I think there are a lot of ways to interrogate kind of where you are. Make a list of the things that you value and write a definition for those things. Like, I think we all are like, I value freedom, and I value family. And then I tried to write down what all that stuff
Erin Branham:That's very good. meant. And it was very complicated, and I had to look it up and think about, you know, are you actually moving towards those things in your life and and why not? And you have to journal, you have to meditate, you actually have to kind of put some work towards it. You know, I realized that old saying, Faith without work is dead. And I sort of, I don't know that I really ever knew what that meant. And then I was like, oh, Faith without like work, like you have to work. This is going to be like a job that you have to do for an hour or two a week. But read, read the great philosophers. And there are some really wonderful ones right now, Annie Lamod and the Buddhist monk Pema Chodron and the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr. There are a lot of a lot of questions in there. I don't really have great, a great solution, great advice that's directional. I feel like I'm kind of being an asshole right now.
Karen Foglesong:No, I think those are great. Yes, Faith without work is dead. I've never heard that, and it is beautiful. Absolutely, that's what I'm wanting from my fellow faithful is to do some work on it.
Shannon Gaulding:Even, like I said, even if you're not in Alanon or any of any of those things, you don't have a drug problem that that program, the 12 step program, takes like Buddhism and Christianity and things from just all the great world religion. In every short chapter, there's like 20 questions that they ask, and if you write out the answers to those questions, you will realize a lot of places where you are bringing about sorrow and unhappiness in your own life through reinforcing these mythologies that you have believed about yourself. And it will allow you to be able to see yourself in a different way, and then that empowers you, I think, to realize that you are the author of your own story and that you can change that story, or at least see them and say, Do I like this and want to keep it, or do I really want to make a different choice in the way that I interact In the world, and just stick with it.
Karen Foglesong:Thank you. Stick with it. That's good, yeah.
Erin Branham:And I think you're right. The 12 step program is good because it sort of starts with the assumption that you can change, if you want to, and you're willing to do the work you can change.
Shannon Gaulding:Yeah. The first question is, can I agree that my life is unmanageable. So if you're in a moment in your life where you're like, everything feels like a shit show. So you have to accept that, because as long as you're resisting it, there's going to be pain. You're not going to make a change that actually you embrace and that you put into practice. So then you know, the second step is, do I believe that there's a power larger than myself that can help me with my problems? And then the third one is like, Am I willing to accept the help of a spiritual, higher power? So, you know, you kind of enter it through that spiritual realm. And if you want to believe in a doorknob. Believe in a doorknob like nobody cares. It's just the quiet self reflection and being really honest with yourself that will lead you to some even if you just get a journal and write out some of those answers, you can find them online. To those questions in the 12 step books, you will discover some surprising things about yourself, and then you can decide whether or not you want to act on them and live a different you know, live a different story, believe in a different mythology.
Karen Foglesong:Excellent.
Erin Branham:100% That's what we're saying. It's all about being able to take an inventory and say, does this work for me? Is this where I actually am at? Does this match my values? If yes, keep it. Yay, absolutely. If not, toss it. Try to find something that does. It just occurred to me in the midst of talking that it might be fun to end with. I was an inveterate fan of Inside the Actor's Studio. Sadly, you can barely find anymore, and I don't know if anybody ever saw that had this great host who just looked like a cartoon character, practically, and he was brilliant. Anyway, he always ended his interviews with a series of questions, as that, he would say, was created by Bernard Pivot, which is lovely and French and pretentious sounding, but it's a series of questions that I thought this might be a fun way to end. So gonna give it a shot. All right. You ready?
Shannon Gaulding:I love it.
Erin Branham:What is your favorite word?
Shannon Gaulding:Idiosyncratic.
Erin Branham:Lovely. What is your least favorite word?
Shannon Gaulding:Dookie.
Erin Branham:What turnsyou on, creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
Shannon Gaulding:Authenticity.
Erin Branham:Nice, what turns you off?
Shannon Gaulding:Oh, Kabuki, falsehood.
Erin Branham:Very good.
Shannon Gaulding:Really makes, makes my skin crawl.
Erin Branham:What is your favorite curse word?
Shannon Gaulding:Cunt is my favorite curse word, but I don't say it very often because it's still so shocking, and I find it wields much power.
Erin Branham:Absolutely,
Shannon Gaulding:um, motherfucker!
Erin Branham:Absolutely, at least in America, right? I had the, I had a hilarious conversation with a British colleague about cunt - it was very funny.
Shannon Gaulding:You will remember, we were at dinner with Mark Tonerai one night, and he said it. And I was like, Mark, you can't say that here. And he was like, well, it doesn't mean anything. And I was like, Oh, my God, I will go years without hearing that in America.
Erin Branham:It's so true, right? Very funny. What sound or noise do you love?
Shannon Gaulding:A children's voice.
Erin Branham:What sound or noise do you hate?
Shannon Gaulding:Gunshots and police sirens.
Erin Branham:There you go. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Shannon Gaulding:I always wanted to be a park ranger.
Erin Branham:What profession would you not like to do?
Shannon Gaulding:Supreme Court justice.
Erin Branham:(laughs) Apparently, there's a lot of money in it.
Shannon Gaulding:Lot of nice vacations I hear.
Erin Branham:Okay, now I'm going to rephrase this, because then it's an original form. It is, if heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gate? So I'm going to say, Should you ever have a chance to talk to your infinite your higher power- What would you want her to say?
Shannon Gaulding:I would just want her to say you're here. Very nice.
Erin Branham:And that is the end of the questionnaire.
Shannon Gaulding:Thank you guys for having me. I love what you're doing. It feels so important and timely. And I just love the easy way that you talk about story. And I just think it is so deeply human, and it's just lovely the way that you guys are making it feel very easy and approachable. You know, you're just kind of stating this thing that's so a part of everybody's life, but in a way that feels really fresh. Well, thank you.
Erin Branham:We hope that it is approachable, that I think that's a big goal of ours. So thank you so much for coming. We really appreciate it.
Shannon Gaulding:Thank you for having me. This is my first podcast interview
Erin Branham:right on we'd love to hear from you. You can email us at
Karen Foglesong:your mythic u@gmail.com so y, o, u, r, m, y, t, h, i, c, u@gmail.com
Erin Branham:Yes, because we would love to hear from you any comments, suggestions, criticisms and your stories. Definitely want to hear your stories. So like I said, rate and review us on Apple podcasts, or whatever your podcast or of choice is, we'd love to hear from you your mythic u@gmail.com thank you for joining us at mythic u, we want to hear from you please visit our website at mythic u.buzzsprout.com, that's m, y, t, h, i, c, u.buzzsprout.com, for more great information on choreographing your own spirituality, leave us a comment and donate. If you have the means and the interest. If you'd like to support our work more regularly, please visit our Patreon and become a member of mythic you, depending on the level at which you join, members receive early access to new episodes, bonus episodes and free mythic you, gifts you.
