Jungian Coaching Room Podcast S2EP1 – Nature Symbols and Solidarity
Written by Dana Kabaila
In this In this episode, I speak with Christina Schmidt (she/her), who is an AuDHD, African-American-Australian, who provides neuro-affirming care in her practice, Free to Be Me Speech. She is also a racial, cultural and disability advocate and educator.
As I read Christina’s bio back to her, we dive into meta-analysis – how a professional bio can remind us of our “why” for the work we do without expecting it to encompass all facets of our prismatic selves and lives. Christina responds to the analogy prism – describing how only when fractured in becomes beautiful colours. Space for nuance and discomfort. Then we zoom out further to examine how Christina’s bio stimulated other associations to bounce between us. She pictures casting a net to then connect and weave webs of meaning and connection. One term for this is “orthogonal thinking”, which can be non-linear and lead to unexpected discoveries.
When we call up memories of nature magic in childhood, Christina shares her experience of joining a group of rock collectors with her mother and brother. In this cross-generational group, where Christina and her brother were the only kids, they enjoyed watching adults experiencing and sharing joy and taking the honoured role of imparting knowledge. This mutual exchange allowed them to see the wonders of rocks through the eyes of a beginner. Christina took these learnings back to her local context of searching with her best friend in a laneway near their house. In their own process, they would search for shiny or coloured rocks, set them aside and show each other. An ancient ritual of collecting is an important part of children’s culture and neurodivergent culture (as seen in the term penguin pebbling). The aspect of focus alongside discovery and novelty. From the sensory feel of a rock to learning the science and story of how it formed – materials, temperature and pressure. The power of how they are formed and the reverie they hold as mythical items.
Christina pulls this thread into her adult life, hiking Haleakala (House of the Sun) volcano in Maui with her husband last year. She describes the awe of feeling like it was another planet with plants found only there and native Nēnē (geese). Alongside this awe is the honouring and respecting the power of nature, especially in an unfamiliar land. Not expected a benign nature and not forgetting practicalities and risk navigation, but always open to mystery. In a beautiful synchronicity, Christina raised her arms as a gesture of receiving the light of the sun and giving thanks. She felt welcome, and one she did not want to take for granted. We talk about the importance of greeting a place on arrival, on vowing solidarity and listening for its animated story and myth. Christina’s husband, Ambrose, took the photo below which unexpectedly caught a rainbow showering onto Christina in a shape like a triangular prism.
In pondering nature solidarity, we seek to disrupt the metropole idea of human at the top of a hierarchy in the natural world. This takes active focus to resist being separate. Christina takes wisdom for the margins that shows a receptivity to a world we are sharing with other beings. Even with the playful example of taking spiders out of her house, stating “just because I am bigger or more powerful does not mean I have to take their life”. Perhaps to calm them or perhaps reassure herself (likely both), she might pose the question to Ambrose, “Can you escort our friend outside?” I describe this as offering dignity across species. She also describes a particular spider familiar – an elderly fellow who Ambrose has named Herbert and who lives in the kitchen window, next to sink. Sometimes Christina will wet her fingers at the tap and drip them onto Herbert’s web for a drink, retirement – old and still, happy there behind colour bottles. Exist in an ecosystem if humans weren’t separate, present and mindful, magical, own specific housemate. Rideshare spider – eats at night, I drive in day, shared arrangement.
I have a giggle at a spider I am ridesharing my car with. She takes the night shift to catch and eat bugs, and I drive around doing human things during the day. A shared cohabitation. I also recall two occasions of swarms of bees entering my son’s room and how I responded to this, both practically (fly wire out of the window and turn on the ceiling fan) and mythically. Bees are incredibly sacred in Lithuanian culture. My ancestors revered bees and saw them as connected to the divine, as messengers of the gods. In this way, I felt honoured to be chosen for this visitation. Frith Luton also has a lecture (featured in the previous podcast I hosted) called Circumambulating the Centre – The Symbolism of the Bees, the Honey, and the Hive. This talk and her book explore many symbolic elements, including the tension of opposites in love and war, sweetness and bitterness, individuality and multiplicity, and regeneration and death.
Around the same time as Christina discovered rock collection (three years of age – with 3 being a significant number for Christina), she discovered giraffes. How wild to be developing episodic memory at the same time you encounter a giraffe at the zoo. This conjures a school memory of skipping steps with her own long legs, only to have a teacher reprimand her and instruct her to go back to the bottom of the steps. Even then, Christina experienced this as hierarchical nonsense of power dynamics, where she was causing no harm and felt her own Persistent Drive for Autonomy (PDA) activated. We deconstruct which dominant discourses may have fed into that power differential (beyond adult/child, teacher/student). The misogyny of long strides being unladylike? The racism of trying to make Blak folks take up less space? The ableist neuro-normative performance of a “right way” to walk?
In adolescence, people would often comment on Christina’s height, and this made no sense to her – such an obvious thing that she already knew. As a teen, she didn’t want attention on her body or to be perceived by a normalising gaze. By late adolescence, Christina discovered ways to embrace her body and reclaim her height which was now equal to a baby giraffe (6’2’’). The other thing Christina is drawn to with giraffes is how they use their tongue to reach for the best leaves. Symbolically, we connect this to ideas of not limiting yourself, being open to possibilities and following ideas. The journey of stepping into herself more, honouring who she is, including finding her voice. The liberation and thrill of sharing her knowledge and experience in ways her ancestors would have been punished for. That they had to hide their knowledge, skills and values to survive slavery and discrimination. In fugitive pedagogy, they were creative – passing on images through song and storytelling. Christina is a living legacy to her ancestors and a testimony to their survival. By sharing her passion for letting different be different, she challenges false ideas about people needing to be “broken” and in need of “fixing”.
Christina’s resources from Free to Be Me Speech (https://www.freetobemespeech.com.au/ – newsletter sign up at the bottom of the page):
- Bridge Model and Cultural Competency (https://www.freetobemespeech.com.au/shop)
- Links to conference presentations and other podcast interviews (https://linktr.ee/FreetoBeMe.speech)
If you would like to listen to the episode, you can do so here.
Please share, like and subscribe. I invite you to email me with any questions or reflections at dana.kabaila@iajcc.org.
ABOUT DANA KABAILA
Dana Kabaila is a Counsellor and Jungian Coach (registered with ACCA & IAJCC) in Naarm (Melbourne) and online. She is passionate about depth, meaning, authentic expression, and well-being. Her specialty areas include high masking, late-identified neurodivergent individuals, transgenerational trauma, wounded healers, and wounded high achievers.
Dana is also an allied health mentor and speech pathologist with 14 years of clinical experience. She also holds a Graduate Diploma in Infant Mental Health and is completing her Masters of Narrative Therapy & Community Work (Dulwich Centre).
A lifelong word enthusiast, Dana is fascinated by the evolving meanings of words and the exploration of symbols. She enjoys reading, writing, dancing, painting, surfing, practicing yoga, and spending time in nature. Deeply connected to her ancestry, she has a strong appreciation for Lithuanian folklore and mythology.
