Kitchen Table Sessions: The Return

Selena Tatum: Hey. Hello. Welcome. Everyone. I am three days post surgery. My body still has iodine in it from Thursday. They mapped my veins and they saw the compression that I've been carrying for over forty years. They saw the roots, I actually saw them too, that my body built when the original path was crushed. How did I see them you ask? Cause your girl was awake. Heavily medicated and awake for the whole procedure. I saw collateral circulation, roots and branches that my body built. to create a system, the margins that she turned into a highway system to life. And I was supposed to record this episode in June. Then I pushed it to early July. And I kept not pressing record. Not because I didn't have the script or anything to say. 'Cause my room wasn't right yet. And the room is right now. Not because I'm healed, because I'm not. Because I'm actually inside the thing. I'm four days post surgery, coming off the eve of the Mercury Kazimi. I'm sitting on the precipice of Gupta Navaratri. For those of you that don't know, go look it up. Sacred Navaratri. I said I was gonna start recording my sessions from the kitchen table. And I'm gonna be honest with y'all, I'm sitting on my couch. And I'm sitting on my couch next to my dog with a body that is still processing what happened in that room on Thursday. And somewhere I decided this is the room. So let's get into it. Listen, I want to welcome you all back to the Empathy Lab. I am Tatum. This is season two, and this is what we're gonna call the kitchen table sessions. But right now I'm sitting on the couch, so we're gonna call it the couch sessions. Until until. Now in season one, we spent sixteen episodes together and I was talk teaching you and talking to you about a framework. I was talking about five patterns. They're called the clacias. And these patterns run underneath the shrinking, the gripping, the inherited scripts. I gave the language for them. I even in between everything dropped a microzine and I mapped which episodes correspond to which patterns. If you've been here with me, then y'all have the vocabulary. If you're just tuning in, learn along the way. Season two is different. This season is not about learning the framework. It is about sitting inside of it, using it on yourself in real fucking time. Today I'm gonna show you what that looks like. I built a diagnostic. It's twenty questions like how we used to read in Word Up magazine or Cosmo or Vibe. twenty questions across the five Klacias. Four questions per Klacia family designed to help you find yourself on this map. The full diagnostic will drop on Substack think Tuesday or Wednesday of this week. Today, I'm gonna walk through one family. I'm gonna walk through the one that I'm living inside of right now. Right now in this inevitable moment, I am in a vivinacea. That's A B H I N I V E S H A. Google it, it's fantastic. This is a survival script. I am literally clinging to life. I know it sounds very dramatic, and before you get your panties in a bunch, just hear me out. We got four questions. I'm gonna read each one to you, with you, and for you. Then I'm gonna answer it. Excuse me, I take a sip of my tea. I'm gonna answer it from inside the surgery, from inside the body, from inside of this grip. So if you got a couple minutes for me, pull up a chair. Join me at the couch, make believe table, brew your tea. All you need is four minutes for your tea bag to steep and you've got a perfect cup of tea. Let's get into it. Question one. What is the situation that makes your body respond as if you are in danger, even when you know intellectually that you are safe? Okay, it's question one. Thursday morning I walked into the hospital. My husband drove up because he had to go valet parking, so I jumped out. I had chosen to be there. There was no like, shit. No, I made that choice. I researched the procedure. I understood what this was we're gonna do. It's called a venogram. I knew what the iodine would do. Sidebar, I am allergic to contrast iodine. Intellectually, in my mind, I was prepared. I wanna shout out right here, everybody that gave me eight minutes of their time. leading up to this first procedure out of three. Talk to me. Dig through with me, compost with me, cry with me. I wanna thank every single individual that reached out vis a vis the interwebs, on the telephones, text, WhatsApping, Instagramming, snail mail. That was more than anybody knows. And in that, my husband and my not so little boy anymore being my anchor. So I want to take a moment of immense gratitude and appreciation. And as I said, I was prepared. I walked in, I immediately registered that the hospital was over air conditioned. And I figured that's why my hands were shaking before I reached the in tech desk. I looked down at my agenda eighty-five, eleven million times to make sure I knew the floor and the ward and where I was supposed to be. I practiced breath work. I had the voices of my teachers in my head, walking through various different practices. My throat closed, the back of my neck went rigid. And I realized as I was putting one foot in front of the other that my body was running a threat assessment that had nothing to do with the information my mind was holding. My body was responding to, hey girl, someone is about to put something inside you that you cannot control and can possibly kill you. That is danger. That is annihilation. Fucking run. Clearly I didn't run. But I'm being real with you that this is everything going on. I sat in the chair, I got up from the chair, introduced myself to the unbelievable nursing staff. They got me settled, they gave me the funky gown. Take off all your things. Here is your cot bed that I was like, I am five ten. This is very short. And I went into mode. It's what my really good friend, teacher, museum mentor, Tracy Stanley says is my operation mode. It's kind of like a dry humor. kind of funky hippie, unexpected. So I'm noticing things and I'm saying things. And for those of you that know me, you know exactly what that is. He got me prepared. I left to put my IV in. I breathed. They talked to me some more. They came out with the okay, we're gonna start prepping your body. I breathed. And I want to say that the grip did not release because I was breathing. The breathing let me see the grip while it was running. And this is why I can say two things can be true at once. We can actually hold two things simultaneously and look at That is the difference. I wasn't releasing the fear. I was seeing the fear while choosing to stay exactly where I was. While choosing to get involved in various conversations and explaining over and over what I was there for. And then someone saying, I thought you were here for Mary Turner's surgery or Mary Turner syndrome. I'm still heavily medicated, so I will mess up this podcast. And I was like, No, I've got nutcracker and this. And she immediately did a little dance. That might have seemed inappropriate for someone else, but I think we felt that that could happen. And I watched myself still hold on while being pleasant and humorous and interacting. I was like, whoa, I am holding on. I should put this down so I can really be in this moment with this brand new human being that's gonna be taking care of. Question two. What would you do differently if you were not afraid of being rejected, abandoned, or erased? Keeping it 100, if I were not afraid of being erased, I would have pressed record in June. I would have published my novel that is complete without sitting on it. Shout out to those that are reading it right now. I would have named this nutcracker left renal vein entrapment publicly a year ago instead of holding it privately while writing to y'all about holding and managing and processing. For other people. If I were not running the survival script that I've been running, allowing the Klaish to Clache, I would have charged full price for my consulting work from the beginning. I would have submitted the grant applications without agonizing over whether I deserved it. I would have told folks I worked with about the medical situation without framing it as a request. The survival script Abinatia says If you're too visible, you will be erased. If you take up too much space, you will be abandoned. If you name the full version of what's happening, you will be rejected. That script was written by people who love me unconditionally, and they wrote those scripts in rooms where those consequences were real. The script isn't wrong about the past. It is wrong about the room I'm standing in right now. And I'm standing in a room we call the Bardo. We'll get to the Bardo. In the meantime, go and look it up. So you know exactly where your girl is standing. Question three. When you resist change, even change you want, what is the part of you that says if I change this, I will not survive this? And this is a real kicker because as I work through it, it surfaces the identity as survival construction. It's the groove that equates the current shape with existence itself. Let me break it down. I wanted that surgery, the first one. I chose it, I researched it. Why I didn't choose it. I didn't ha I I can't be out here like I want that one. Like it's not like buying a car, you know. When I say chose it, the universe conspired. After much advocating, researching, stepping in the direction, navigating a very frustrating Quebec medical system for over a year to get to that table, I say I wanted the surgery. So I want life. I want to run around after my son, get old of my husband. And the night before, this is Wednesday night, not trying to do the laundry, because I was not trying to do that, something in me said What if the body you know how to live in, the one that manages a 7.5 to 9.5 skip pain scale on a daily, the one that builded the collateral veins, the one that figured out how to function inside of the compression, what if that is the only body you know how to be? Stop me in my motherfucking trucks. And it almost broke my medulla. What if the version on the other side of this surgery requires a version of you that hasn't been fully built yet, Selena? What the fuck, Tatum? Selena Tatum Isles, what the fuck? Honestly, and I wrote about my journal. Those of you that see me walk around, you see me walk around with no less than three notebooks. My agenda, a black book, that's my journal, and another book, and probably my Kindle. So I always have, I'm always writing. Now that question, what if the version on the other side of the surgery requires a version of you that has not been built yet? That is abivenatia at its most precise. Not the fear of the surgery. The fear of who am I after this? Fucked up. I've been gripping with this so long. Who am I gonna be if I don't have it anymore? This thing that I have to manage every day. What if I don't have it, who am I gonna be? And it was crazy because the identity that was built around surviving compression does not know how to exist without compression. And that, as I said, almost broke my medulla. The survival scripts that I've been running starts to equate suffering with the self. Like the only way you can exist is if you suffer in silence. Because like my very transparent article that I wrote, I look fine on the outside. I'm quick with the next joke. The dry remark, the micro-TED talk. And the question I had to ask myself is if the suffering changes, the self has to change. And that moment felt like annihilation, even when it was my first taste of freedom. And I thought back to when I was awake when they were operating my heart and I I ha I think the funky thing is I'm like, yo, girl, you you have done this. Like you literally forgot you were awake on the table while they operated on your heart and you got up and then they pumped you full of all this stuff just to do that, to keep you awake and get your heart to do the fucked up thing it was doing. And now three years later that fucked up thing is no longer happening and you're a completely different person. Like you yeah, you out here. functional strength training, you're on your bicycle, like you're on Tour de France, you're you know, gardening, landscaping, j the whole nine yards. And then we find out about the compression and you fold yourself back into, man Who am I if this fucked up thing isn't happening to me? And what's really very much the same about all of us is we're all holding a fucked up thing. It it doesn't necessarily have to be medical or what it's it could be as tiny as who am I without being that friend that will just pop off at any moment in time, right? And in that question, who am I if or just who am I, that first inhale of freedom, that first taste of freedom, we see it as annihilation and you're like, Question four. What would it feel like to trust that you could lose everything you are holding on to and still be here? And I preempted that answer with walking you back to April twenty twenty three, then fast forwarding to now. What would it feel like to trust you could lose everything you're holding on to and still be here? Y'all, April twenty twenty three house going to heart surgery. I turned to my husband and I asked him to don't promise me this, give me your word, you're gonna do this for me. I won't tell you guys what I'm asking. Because that's that's our thing. That's our Scorpio thing. And the fascinating thing about it is that each of us has lost everything on more than one occasion, and we've forgotten that we've lost that thing. Because the afterwards of losing it, that freedom replaced whatever we thought was annihilation, and we went on to being this other amazing version of ourselves. And then we could lose that version back down in that cycle again. And I don't Have a clean answer to this one. And I want to be honest about that right now. I don't have a clean answer because when I go back, I'm like, you know, whoop-thoop whoop whoop, and then we're back here again asking the questions, doing the research on the self. What I have is evidence, my friends. I have small accumulated specific evidence that the self survives what the survival script. Says will end what abovanatia says will end, you're over. I have evidence that the self survives. And before someone comes at me with the who are you self, not self, rah, rah, ray, ray, high end philosophy, I want to remind you all that four days out of surgery, very heavily medicated. I'm out here. And I'm not negating what you're saying, or what you wanna say, or what you might leave in my comments. What I am saying is that I have s specific evidence that the self, Tatum, the plant, hot dog, however you wanna call it. Survive. And thrives. And that's how we get in our own way. Again, I'm writing a whole doctoral thesis about it, okay? The answers you may or may not want to share with me in the sub stack that's about to drop Tuesday or Wednesday. Help us all figure out the answers and help us all have and archive small accumulations of evidence that we are still out here. Even in the I wrote about my necklace disappearing. And I was still here. The legal battle that I had been in or legal challenge battle, whatever whoop the whoop you want to call it, ended. And I was still here. The power went in and out all winter on one particular occasion for twenty eight flippin' hours. And I was still here. First surgery of three happened on Thursday last and I am still here sitting on my couch recording this episode in pain, medicated, raw, whoop-de-whoop still here. Whoop-de-whoop is now like my favorite thing. I'll tell you all, go on my Instagram, you'll figure out why. If I send it to you, you know why. The body keeps building even when the path is crushed. I keep saying that. It's probably the closest I can get to an answer right Not trust that I would survive losing everything. Evidence that the body does not wait for trust. She builds, she finds the margins, she roots the blood. Maybe trust is not a prerequisite. Maybe the evidence is. So we looked at one family, looked at abivinacea together. Four questions. I gave you my answers from inside the surgery, inside where I'm sitting right now, the bardo, inside this grip. Full diagnostic, 20 questions across the five klashs, drops on Substack as I keep saying this week, as Gupta Navaratri begins. Nine nights, twenty questions. You do not have to answer them all. You do not have to answer any. There is no highfalutin wellness language in these. Sit with the ones that make you want to skip them. I'm gonna say the ones that make you wanna skip them, that's actually the raw data that you can get. Not extracting from yourself. That's the raw data that yourself is willing to give you. My season one taught you the language. The quarry zine gave you the map. This diagnostic helps you find yourself on the map. Like, where the fuck am I, y'all? Season two, which we started together today, kitchen table sessions is what happens after you find yourself. The sitting with it, the Bardo spaces, the moving towards it, the staying in the goddamn chair. Waiting till the mud and everything settles so you can see clearly. The practices do not make it better. I need you to hear that. They give you sight. They allow you to see what it is you can't see because you're already seeing it. I am four days post surgery one. And I can see more clearly now than I have in months. This is not the medication talking before you come at me with that. That is practice working. This has been the Empathy Lab. Season two started today. Kitchen table sessions, but this one we're on the couch. I am Tatum. Thank you for listening. Stay hydrated. Take care of yourself. Stay anchored. We'll see you next week. Peace.