Everything Podcasts (00:00.184)
you
Everything Podcasts (00:04.878)
That dramatic gasp in the song Changes by David Bowie right before the chorus is one of the most iconic micro-moments in rock music. It doesn't whisper. It isn't sentimental. But it's like someone bracing themselves before stepping into the unknown. This song asks you to go back and retrieve some earlier version of yourself.
and then ask yourself, who are you now? It's not a reinvention, but an understanding that identity isn't fixed or static. It's developed, shaped and revised throughout our lived experience. Not in shame, not in self-help slogans, but in motion. It's not about standing still long enough to find yourself.
It's about recognizing that you are already in the process. Changes doesn't tell us to scrap who we were. It doesn't mock the past or glorify the future. It simply gives a name to what's happening anyway. You're changing. We are always changing. So pay attention. This episode of Boomer's Revolt lives in a couple of questions.
Not so much who you were or who you should become, but who are you now while you're still in motion?
Transformation isn't a dramatic reveal. It's a realization that it's happening while you're already moving ahead.
Everything Podcasts (01:57.972)
Every decade hands us a mirror and asks, are you still this person? And you have a choice. You can shrink to fit or you can redesign the frame. The boomer generation has been called many things, entitled, outdated, irrelevant. But what if we're simply unfinished? What if the most radical thing
a woman or man over 60 can do is refuse to stay who they were.
Everything Podcasts (02:37.846)
Cheryl Bichir. I'm 69, curious as hell and not done yet. After decades leading not-for-profit organizations and hopefully driving some real change, I retired and that lasted about five minutes. I've spent a lifetime asking hard questions of organizations, communities and some remarkable people. So this isn't a retirement project. It's my next chapter.
on my own terms. In each episode, we dig into real stories of rebellion, reinvention, and resilience, and what it actually means to grow older in a world obsessed with staying young. This is Boomer's Revolt.
Everything Podcasts (03:31.158)
Our guest today is an author, an ordained metaphysical minister, a yoga teacher, and a certified life cycle celebrant, which is someone who helps people mark the special moments when your life changes shape. Birth, marriage, loss, remembrance. These are the passages that ask us to pause and recognize what really matters.
She believes ceremony is one of the ways we answer what the Irish call anam cara, the ancient longing to be truly known, soul to soul.
It's work that asks you to listen deeply to the human heart and to help people weave their stories into something meaningful.
This makes her a pretty perfect guest for a conversation about change. So let's start at the beginning. Meg, how did your journey lead you to become a reverend, a life cycle celebrant, and someone who helps others through life's biggest transition? To speak to your questions, I find that I have
lived my life with a course of not necessarily going out and seeking something in particular that I think I want to grab onto. It's sort of like the opportunities come to me and I trust them and so I respond to them. So I became a life cycle celebrant with an invitation, a young man who was a friend of our children. He was standing in our kitchen in our summer cabin one day. He was newly engaged.
Everything Podcasts (05:18.208)
All three of our children had been married by this point. And he said, can you get anyone to marry you, Meg? And I said, well, what do you mean? And he said, well, can you get anyone to do your ceremony? So I said, do you have someone in mind? And he said, yes. And I said, do I know them? And he said, it's you. And so I was speechless, to which my firstborn looked at his friend and said, nobody renders my mother speechless, and you just did that.
And I was so moved by his request that I thought, how do I do this? So I took the course in order to marry him and his wife to perform the ceremony. And I fell in love with it so much. And I felt at home in that existence that I just continued to do it.
In British Columbia, in order to be a life cycle celebrant, you need to be connected with a certain, what would we say, religious body. And so that's how I became ordained as a minister. And in that ceremony of being ordained, I again felt, I felt at home. I felt I was doing
what I was meant to do in this life. And it really surprised me because I didn't set out in my life to do either of these. Yeah, I felt that way too when I took this similar path. So many people come into our lives and have an impact on where our lives go. I know you had a connection to your grandfather. When you think of your journey through life and your relationship with him, what did that relationship mean to you?
It had an impact, Cheryl, from that place of sitting in deep silence beside someone else who I felt very safe with, I felt seen by, I felt I mattered, and I felt loved for being just me, not for anything that I had ever done in my life or anything I had ever said.
Everything Podcasts (07:43.758)
I do feel Him around me. And that's a really beautiful gift.
Everything Podcasts (07:59.372)
It's that sense of really being seen and loved simply as the human being that we are. That's a powerful kind of connection.
It makes me think about the role certain people play in our lives. The ones who walk beside us through change. The ones who hold space for us. And sometimes the ones helping us to see ourselves more clearly.
When you think about friendship, the real kind, the soul to soul kind, what is it about those friendships that helps us become more fully ourselves? I agree it's important. Our friends are a support to us, but our friends
Our real true friends, they see into us in a way that we often don't see ourselves. And when they mirror that back to us, we become more fully ourselves than we were before.
Everything Podcasts (09:13.266)
And I don't believe that we have to have, I mean, it's a beautiful gift. If you have friends since you were four years old, like my husband does, like I marvel at that. And I think that's really precious.
But I don't think that time, that linear time is a proponent of having an Anumkara, of having a special friend. Because that friend that shows up, that is your Anumkara, it's not about the length of time they've known you. It's about their ability to see into the depth of your being and to hold that with
deep reverence. I have recently moved neighborhoods and I find that when I walk down the street, part of my practice is to say hello to absolutely everybody and look them in the eye, whether they respond or not, because that gives me this connection.
And I feel really at home when I do that. I may not be going out and having dinner with all my new neighbors, but I feel that I have friends because we exchange something in that moment. And it's a seeing of one another.
What a beautiful perspective on the human connection. And yet as we move through life, those connections can sometimes become harder to find or hold on to. Looking back over the years as you've moved through your own changes, have you found yourself coming closer to your true self? Unquestionably so. I think it's a gift of, aging is a gift that
Everything Podcasts (11:22.538)
In our culture, we don't receive aging as a gift, I don't think. That's not been my experience. It's not been something to be celebrated. But it has brought me closer. In what way? I have more faith in myself. I have more confidence in myself. There is a...
Knowingness.
about the preciousness of time now, because time no longer feels infinite. And although no matter where we are in our life, we don't know what tomorrow is going to bring or if we are going to be given the gift of a tomorrow. But at this point in my life, it becomes one of the major lenses that I see life through.
So there's just that feeling that, you know, everything is preciousness, even the crap that we walk through, because that doesn't disappear. It keeps on showing up, right?
Everything Podcasts (12:48.248)
Have there been seasons when you felt disconnected from your soul or disconnected from your essence? Absolutely there are seasons. The joke is, Cheryl, think the moment we think, man, I've got it. I got this stuff figured out and now I can sit back and put my feet up. That's when the universe goes, no, honey.
I'm going to show you something else here. Right? It just does. So yeah, there have been many, many times in my life that I've experienced that. And I think one of the things that has helped me frame that in a way that I know I will walk through it and I will return is, you know, the teachings of someone like Joseph Campbell. right. The American writer whose famous book, The Hero's Journey.
covers a lot of aspects of the human experience. You know, that there is this place in life where all of a sudden we go down deep. And when we are in that quagmire, it's awful. It's painful. And that question is, can I ever get out of here? You know? But I think what I have experienced in that
as life has gone on and I've gotten older is to know that when I'm down in that quagmire, it's actually a holy space to listen deeply, to surrender, to stop all my doing, to quiet my mind, and just to trust that I will in divine timing find my own way out of this. And I will.
And so there's a faith that this is just another passage in life to take me more into the fullness of who I am when I return.
Everything Podcasts (14:57.069)
you
Everything Podcasts (15:01.344)
And in the work that we do as celebrants and in the ministering of spiritual guidance or spirituality or just maybe the sharing, not quite the ministering. What, at the end of someone's life, what are they reflecting on as they're moving into transition? My experience has been those questions of, has my life mattered?
Am I loved?
Have I loved deeply enough?
And can I leave this life?
feeling at peace.
Everything Podcasts (15:50.818)
I had a beautiful woman who was well into her 90s and she asked if she could tell me something and asked me if I would hold it in confidence. So we talked about the sacredness of sharing our stories with each other.
And she told me her story in little snippets between sort of nodding off and sleeping and then coming back again. And at the end, Cheryl, she said, thank you.
Now I can die and I don't have to carry that with me.
There's a line in David Bowie's song, Changes, about turning and facing the change. And in many ways, that's what life keeps asking of us, isn't it? Especially as we age. There's the changes we can't control and there's the ones that make us confront things we would have rather avoided. End of life is one of those moments. For many people, it's frightening, uncertain, and it's something we struggle to make peace with.
You spend a lot of time walking beside people in those final chapters. With all of those experiences you've witnessed, what have they taught you about yourself? It really hit home the importance of being able to be a witness.
Everything Podcasts (17:28.928)
And I say witness and not just, it's not witnessing as in observing, it's the witnessing of the beauty and the wholeness and the perfection of this human soul. That there is nothing to be corrected, there is no judgment.
It just needs to be held. And in that holding, therein there is a union of two souls that merge together. And that feeling that I don't have to do this alone. I am held. I am held by something greater than I. And all will be well.
Everything Podcasts (18:25.102)
For those who are afraid of death, we've sat on that side. What's your message to them? What's my message? I can't say, Cheryl, that I have a message that comes in words. It simply comes by holding the hand of another.
and letting them know that I'm not going anywhere. I'm here and they're not alone. Being present. Being very present and that has been a very deep practice. I don't think that we come from a culture that teaches that. Well, Anumkara, meaning soul friend.
How did you find that when you were going to name your business, Anum Chara, Ceremonies as a Celebrant? It's kind of a long story. It's actually a name that one of my most treasured writers, that's the name of his book, Anum Chara. His name is John O'Donoghue and he passed away suddenly. He was a theologian, Catholic priest, philosopher.
And I came across his book after I had traveled to Ireland following a reoccurring dream of mine. And it was a reoccurring dream that came quite rapidly after a while. And as I had said earlier, I haven't lived a life where I've said, you know, I'm going to be this, I'm going to study this. I have that plan laid out. I've just lived a life of sort of listening.
to what lands in my lap. So I went to Ireland and I fell in love with my experience there with the landscape, the rugged, rugged landscape, the beauty of it, the beauty of this Irish hospitality. And when people said to me, you're Irish, welcome home, Lassie. It was in this welcoming home.
Everything Podcasts (20:45.9)
with a feeling I had never had before. It was a feeling of belonging in this land. And I had no stories of growing up. As far as I knew, I was Canadian as Canadian can be. I had no idea about family lineage or ancestors or anything. And so I found the work of John O'Donoghue and his book named Anum Kara.
And when I started to read about being a soul friend, it is this place of deep belonging that we all long for in this life.
and it's this place.
that I spoke about earlier that takes us to this inner terrain where the soul lives and that is what we see in one another. That's what we are connecting to, the wholeness, the infinite, the vastness of us.
Everything Podcasts (22:06.434)
This is something that we wrestle with throughout our whole life. As we grow, change, and move into what we now call boomerhood, we often find ourselves looking back and longing for that deep sense of belonging and connection. We know life shifts and people come and go. We lose friends, we lose family, and at times we can find ourselves feeling more alone than we ever expected.
As we move into this chapter of life, many of us find ourselves reflecting on what it really means to belong and where we find those connections now.
Everything Podcasts (22:53.09)
Looking back on your own journey through all of these changes, what message would you share with someone who might be searching for that same sense of connection?
I think we learn so much not by necessarily being told something. I think that this work.
This work, we connect through simply companioning one another. So well put, what would you tell young Meg? If I had the opportunity to sit with young Meg when she was 24 and simply to take her hand and to sit in stillness until young Meg said something.
and then to be able to ask with curiosity, what is that? How does that feel? What rises up in your body when you experience that? Then that's where we start to go. That's where we start to mix the juice. And it's challenging now with the busyness and the noisiness of the world.
And wanting to be distracted, to go into this interior landscape isn't a bed of roses, right?
Everything Podcasts (24:27.406)
It's not, it's a scary place. But if you look at ancient cultures, what did the elders do? The elders gathered around together and supported the journeys of the young people that were coming up. And so as an elder, I believe that it is part of our job
create these quiet, sacred spaces where they can come and just truly feel into who they are, to tap into what is going on, to know that they can say whatever they need to say without receiving advice or judgment, simply to be witnessed in the purity of their soul.
and to feel that love. And if we want, if we want to invite the invitation to be real.
and we need to provide that safe space. yeah. And we need to be authentic too, don't we? I mean, we have to sort of chance that vulnerability. Where did you feel the most vulnerable along your journey into where you are now? I think I feel vulnerable every day, Cheryl. But my relationship with vulnerability has changed.
I used to view vulnerability as a weakness, as something that I needed to strengthen in myself. I needed to protect myself.
Everything Podcasts (26:16.63)
And I now have a relationship with vulnerability where I see the grace in it. I see the reality of it, the truth of it. And I see it as so beautiful. And that's a lesson that other people have taught me.
definitely in hospice when I have seen their vulnerability.
And you just want to pick it up and wrap it up like a newborn child and to say, you're okay, you're not alone, you're safe here. That sounds like one of those moments when something suddenly clicks. Was there a moment in your journey where something just clicked, where you thought, okay, now I get it?
You know, sometimes I remember going through a period where I thought, okay, I'm waiting for the ultimate, aha, I'm waiting for that lightning bolt to come into my life and to crack it open and to say, this is what it's about Meg. And I thought, you know, why aren't I getting that huge lightning bolt? Like other people are getting the lightning bolt and I'm not. And then it occurred to me
that not everything comes in as a huge raging storm with a lightning bolt. That my experience in this life has to do with the quietness of it and being awake enough to hear what is being revealed, what is being whispered in the quietness of it. So
Everything Podcasts (28:15.104)
I, it feels to me it's not one aha moment. It's being able to reflect back on my life and to feel all those little tiny aha moments that have revealed to me what the heck I'm doing here and to have them
to have been able to trust them enough to feel safe enough with them, to follow them, where they have, it's like just taking that little tiny seed and it hasn't grown like this in one season. It's taken a lifetime of nurturing it and watering it and loving it in order to be where I am now and I really can't really say where I am right now.
I just am waiting for the next little whisper to come along to guide me. Sometimes those whispers grow into moments that change the course of our lives. Was there a whisper in your story that changed and truly reshaped who you are? Oh, it's a bit of a story. I was in my 40s, my early 40s.
And I was experiencing waves of deep sadness engulfing me. And I didn't know what that was all about. But I had this feeling that I was living someone else's life. I actually wasn't living my life.
And I had just a feeling that there was something, that this was an opening up into a spiritual journey, but I didn't know how to name it. I didn't know how to follow it. And so I was sitting on a beach one day and my husband and the three kids were out in the ocean having a great time. And I thought, you know, if an alien being came down and looked at the surface of my life, they'd say, man,
Everything Podcasts (30:27.244)
What she got to cry about, she's got it all. And on the exterior, it looked that way. But on the interior, it didn't feel that way at all. And then I heard a voice, and the voice was so strong, I couldn't argue with it. And the voice said, stop what you're doing and go back to school.
And I thought, that is really weird because I had this sense that this was an inner journey and academia was not a spiritual place in my experience. But it was so strong. And as I said, I felt like I was living somebody else's life. I just thought, okay, let's see where this one leads me. So I saw a prof one day and I just got this hit. I have to have a conversation with him.
I didn't know who he was, what he taught. So I boldly bought two cups of coffee and knocked on his office door and he said, do I know you? And I said, no, but I want to have a conversation with you. And he asked me what I was doing at the university. And I thought, I need to, I just need to show up. I just need to tell the truth. So I said, I don't know, but I heard a voice on the beach and it said, back to school.
So that's why I'm here. So he blessed me with not throwing me out of his office. He was curious. So we talked about curiosity at some point, Cheryl, right? He was curious about this. So he asked me what I wanted to study and I said, I don't know. So he said, okay, take a couple of courses that you're interested in.
But he said, your main job is to go write. He said, just write absolutely every single morning. Write for 30, 60 minutes. And then don't reread it. Don't edit it. Because in your writing, something will be revealed to you, and you will know why you're here.
Everything Podcasts (32:49.772)
So I trusted him and I did that.
And he saw something in me. He was an Anumkara to me. He saw something in me that I did not see in myself. And he opened up the doorways for me to radically live my life, not someone else's life. What a beautiful story, If we're lucky,
Somewhere along the way we find a guide or an inner compass that helps us navigate these crazy twists and turns of life. I think that without a guide or guidance, it's easy to feel restless, unsettled, and always searching for that something that brings us back to ourselves. I know I've been on that search myself. Last summer, I signed up for a yoga retreat in Italy, and I don't do yoga.
It turned out to be one of the most incredible experiences of my life. You now teach yoga nidra, a guided meditation practice known for bringing people into deep relaxation. How did that path open up for you? I came to the practice of yoga nidra when I was really restless in my yoga practice. And I realized I wasn't restless from the fact that I wanted to be able to do a better handstand, but I wanted to know more.
I wanted to know more about the depth of yoga. And knowing that there are eight limbs of yoga and the physical practice of it is only one of them. So I was Googling because I was restless and I was a workshop junkie. And I came across this thing called Yoga Nidra. I didn't know what it was, but it was at a local studio. didn't have to go travel somewhere to get to it. So I signed up for it. And
Everything Podcasts (34:49.676)
Right out of the gate, without a lot of discussion about what it was, we were asked to lay down our bodies to become super comfortable. And we were taken through a yoga nidra. And it took me to this place.
where it was like the form became formless and I was infinite. So I was hooked. So after I did my training, I started to see people one-on-one in my home studio. So I think drawing back on my story about my grandfather, it has been always so important to me to create a safe place for people. So...
I thought, I'm going to give this a try. I'm going to take it online.
and simply create a safe container where people don't have to put their cameras on. You don't have to say hello. You can come and not have had a shower for five days. I don't care. What matters is that you show up.
And so that's how it got started. I think that that human need is alive in each and every one of us. And if we know that there is some place that we can go to and take off all our hats and simply show up and rest.
Everything Podcasts (36:24.916)
and attune ourselves to a community of people.
That's... That's... That's the magic of this stage of life, isn't it? I think as things shift and evolve, real connection starts to look different. It might be a yoga class, a pickleball game, or even writing a book. I think becoming involved in different communities and experiences will help bring people together in new ways.
We need connection now more than ever. Maybe we'll find it in unexpected places. I'm curious, what do you feel connected to at this stage in your life? My spiritual practice. It is, it's what I wake up with. It's the lens that I see life through.
And it's how I close my eyes at night with gratitude for this infinite existence, knowing that I really don't know anything. It's just really, it's that whole gift of a lifetime of experience and knowing that in this moment, we're okay. This moment. I don't know what's gonna happen when we stop this, Cheryl, but in this moment, it's all okay.
Absolutely. It's all okay. So to live in that awareness and with that presence is the ground that I walk on at this point in my life. And I'm really thankful for that. I'm really thankful for you. So thank you. Thank you very much for the invitation just to spend this time with you. It's been a blessing. Thanks.
Everything Podcasts (38:20.49)
As we close, let's come back to that restless beat at the heart of the song, Changes by David Bowie. Change isn't an event. It's not a dramatic pivot or a polished reveal. It's a rhythm. It's happening while you're answering emails, raising children, starting over, staying put, speaking up, staying quiet.
It's happening in the middle of your precious life. If you grew up watching the moon landing, cruising in your car, listening to vinyl records, or adjusting the rabbit ears on your black and white TV, you have seen more changes in one lifetime than any generation before you. We've come from the rotary phone to the smartphone, from drive-ins to streaming.
And we've adapted, we've led, and we keep moving forward. I hope today's conversation gave you something meaningful to reflect on and maybe something to share with an old friend over coffee or bring up at your next book club or discuss with your kids and grandkids. Stay curious, stay connected, because experience isn't just about history. It's wisdom in motion.
This is Boomer's Revolt. I'm Cheryl Bichir. Until next time, keep evolving no matter what age and stage you're at. Life is a journey to the end, so keep living it.
Everything Podcasts (40:07.936)
another Everything Podcast production. Visit everythingpodcast.com, a division of Patterson Media. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
you
Everything Podcasts (00:04.878)
That dramatic gasp in the song Changes by David Bowie right before the chorus is one of the most iconic micro-moments in rock music. It doesn't whisper. It isn't sentimental. But it's like someone bracing themselves before stepping into the unknown. This song asks you to go back and retrieve some earlier version of yourself.
and then ask yourself, who are you now? It's not a reinvention, but an understanding that identity isn't fixed or static. It's developed, shaped and revised throughout our lived experience. Not in shame, not in self-help slogans, but in motion. It's not about standing still long enough to find yourself.
It's about recognizing that you are already in the process. Changes doesn't tell us to scrap who we were. It doesn't mock the past or glorify the future. It simply gives a name to what's happening anyway. You're changing. We are always changing. So pay attention. This episode of Boomer's Revolt lives in a couple of questions.
Not so much who you were or who you should become, but who are you now while you're still in motion?
Transformation isn't a dramatic reveal. It's a realization that it's happening while you're already moving ahead.
Everything Podcasts (01:57.972)
Every decade hands us a mirror and asks, are you still this person? And you have a choice. You can shrink to fit or you can redesign the frame. The boomer generation has been called many things, entitled, outdated, irrelevant. But what if we're simply unfinished? What if the most radical thing
a woman or man over 60 can do is refuse to stay who they were.
Everything Podcasts (02:37.846)
Cheryl Bichir. I'm 69, curious as hell and not done yet. After decades leading not-for-profit organizations and hopefully driving some real change, I retired and that lasted about five minutes. I've spent a lifetime asking hard questions of organizations, communities and some remarkable people. So this isn't a retirement project. It's my next chapter.
on my own terms. In each episode, we dig into real stories of rebellion, reinvention, and resilience, and what it actually means to grow older in a world obsessed with staying young. This is Boomer's Revolt.
Everything Podcasts (03:31.158)
Our guest today is an author, an ordained metaphysical minister, a yoga teacher, and a certified life cycle celebrant, which is someone who helps people mark the special moments when your life changes shape. Birth, marriage, loss, remembrance. These are the passages that ask us to pause and recognize what really matters.
She believes ceremony is one of the ways we answer what the Irish call anam cara, the ancient longing to be truly known, soul to soul.
It's work that asks you to listen deeply to the human heart and to help people weave their stories into something meaningful.
This makes her a pretty perfect guest for a conversation about change. So let's start at the beginning. Meg, how did your journey lead you to become a reverend, a life cycle celebrant, and someone who helps others through life's biggest transition? To speak to your questions, I find that I have
lived my life with a course of not necessarily going out and seeking something in particular that I think I want to grab onto. It's sort of like the opportunities come to me and I trust them and so I respond to them. So I became a life cycle celebrant with an invitation, a young man who was a friend of our children. He was standing in our kitchen in our summer cabin one day. He was newly engaged.
Everything Podcasts (05:18.208)
All three of our children had been married by this point. And he said, can you get anyone to marry you, Meg? And I said, well, what do you mean? And he said, well, can you get anyone to do your ceremony? So I said, do you have someone in mind? And he said, yes. And I said, do I know them? And he said, it's you. And so I was speechless, to which my firstborn looked at his friend and said, nobody renders my mother speechless, and you just did that.
And I was so moved by his request that I thought, how do I do this? So I took the course in order to marry him and his wife to perform the ceremony. And I fell in love with it so much. And I felt at home in that existence that I just continued to do it.
In British Columbia, in order to be a life cycle celebrant, you need to be connected with a certain, what would we say, religious body. And so that's how I became ordained as a minister. And in that ceremony of being ordained, I again felt, I felt at home. I felt I was doing
what I was meant to do in this life. And it really surprised me because I didn't set out in my life to do either of these. Yeah, I felt that way too when I took this similar path. So many people come into our lives and have an impact on where our lives go. I know you had a connection to your grandfather. When you think of your journey through life and your relationship with him, what did that relationship mean to you?
It had an impact, Cheryl, from that place of sitting in deep silence beside someone else who I felt very safe with, I felt seen by, I felt I mattered, and I felt loved for being just me, not for anything that I had ever done in my life or anything I had ever said.
Everything Podcasts (07:43.758)
I do feel Him around me. And that's a really beautiful gift.
Everything Podcasts (07:59.372)
It's that sense of really being seen and loved simply as the human being that we are. That's a powerful kind of connection.
It makes me think about the role certain people play in our lives. The ones who walk beside us through change. The ones who hold space for us. And sometimes the ones helping us to see ourselves more clearly.
When you think about friendship, the real kind, the soul to soul kind, what is it about those friendships that helps us become more fully ourselves? I agree it's important. Our friends are a support to us, but our friends
Our real true friends, they see into us in a way that we often don't see ourselves. And when they mirror that back to us, we become more fully ourselves than we were before.
Everything Podcasts (09:13.266)
And I don't believe that we have to have, I mean, it's a beautiful gift. If you have friends since you were four years old, like my husband does, like I marvel at that. And I think that's really precious.
But I don't think that time, that linear time is a proponent of having an Anumkara, of having a special friend. Because that friend that shows up, that is your Anumkara, it's not about the length of time they've known you. It's about their ability to see into the depth of your being and to hold that with
deep reverence. I have recently moved neighborhoods and I find that when I walk down the street, part of my practice is to say hello to absolutely everybody and look them in the eye, whether they respond or not, because that gives me this connection.
And I feel really at home when I do that. I may not be going out and having dinner with all my new neighbors, but I feel that I have friends because we exchange something in that moment. And it's a seeing of one another.
What a beautiful perspective on the human connection. And yet as we move through life, those connections can sometimes become harder to find or hold on to. Looking back over the years as you've moved through your own changes, have you found yourself coming closer to your true self? Unquestionably so. I think it's a gift of, aging is a gift that
Everything Podcasts (11:22.538)
In our culture, we don't receive aging as a gift, I don't think. That's not been my experience. It's not been something to be celebrated. But it has brought me closer. In what way? I have more faith in myself. I have more confidence in myself. There is a...
Knowingness.
about the preciousness of time now, because time no longer feels infinite. And although no matter where we are in our life, we don't know what tomorrow is going to bring or if we are going to be given the gift of a tomorrow. But at this point in my life, it becomes one of the major lenses that I see life through.
So there's just that feeling that, you know, everything is preciousness, even the crap that we walk through, because that doesn't disappear. It keeps on showing up, right?
Everything Podcasts (12:48.248)
Have there been seasons when you felt disconnected from your soul or disconnected from your essence? Absolutely there are seasons. The joke is, Cheryl, think the moment we think, man, I've got it. I got this stuff figured out and now I can sit back and put my feet up. That's when the universe goes, no, honey.
I'm going to show you something else here. Right? It just does. So yeah, there have been many, many times in my life that I've experienced that. And I think one of the things that has helped me frame that in a way that I know I will walk through it and I will return is, you know, the teachings of someone like Joseph Campbell. right. The American writer whose famous book, The Hero's Journey.
covers a lot of aspects of the human experience. You know, that there is this place in life where all of a sudden we go down deep. And when we are in that quagmire, it's awful. It's painful. And that question is, can I ever get out of here? You know? But I think what I have experienced in that
as life has gone on and I've gotten older is to know that when I'm down in that quagmire, it's actually a holy space to listen deeply, to surrender, to stop all my doing, to quiet my mind, and just to trust that I will in divine timing find my own way out of this. And I will.
And so there's a faith that this is just another passage in life to take me more into the fullness of who I am when I return.
Everything Podcasts (14:57.069)
you
Everything Podcasts (15:01.344)
And in the work that we do as celebrants and in the ministering of spiritual guidance or spirituality or just maybe the sharing, not quite the ministering. What, at the end of someone's life, what are they reflecting on as they're moving into transition? My experience has been those questions of, has my life mattered?
Am I loved?
Have I loved deeply enough?
And can I leave this life?
feeling at peace.
Everything Podcasts (15:50.818)
I had a beautiful woman who was well into her 90s and she asked if she could tell me something and asked me if I would hold it in confidence. So we talked about the sacredness of sharing our stories with each other.
And she told me her story in little snippets between sort of nodding off and sleeping and then coming back again. And at the end, Cheryl, she said, thank you.
Now I can die and I don't have to carry that with me.
There's a line in David Bowie's song, Changes, about turning and facing the change. And in many ways, that's what life keeps asking of us, isn't it? Especially as we age. There's the changes we can't control and there's the ones that make us confront things we would have rather avoided. End of life is one of those moments. For many people, it's frightening, uncertain, and it's something we struggle to make peace with.
You spend a lot of time walking beside people in those final chapters. With all of those experiences you've witnessed, what have they taught you about yourself? It really hit home the importance of being able to be a witness.
Everything Podcasts (17:28.928)
And I say witness and not just, it's not witnessing as in observing, it's the witnessing of the beauty and the wholeness and the perfection of this human soul. That there is nothing to be corrected, there is no judgment.
It just needs to be held. And in that holding, therein there is a union of two souls that merge together. And that feeling that I don't have to do this alone. I am held. I am held by something greater than I. And all will be well.
Everything Podcasts (18:25.102)
For those who are afraid of death, we've sat on that side. What's your message to them? What's my message? I can't say, Cheryl, that I have a message that comes in words. It simply comes by holding the hand of another.
and letting them know that I'm not going anywhere. I'm here and they're not alone. Being present. Being very present and that has been a very deep practice. I don't think that we come from a culture that teaches that. Well, Anumkara, meaning soul friend.
How did you find that when you were going to name your business, Anum Chara, Ceremonies as a Celebrant? It's kind of a long story. It's actually a name that one of my most treasured writers, that's the name of his book, Anum Chara. His name is John O'Donoghue and he passed away suddenly. He was a theologian, Catholic priest, philosopher.
And I came across his book after I had traveled to Ireland following a reoccurring dream of mine. And it was a reoccurring dream that came quite rapidly after a while. And as I had said earlier, I haven't lived a life where I've said, you know, I'm going to be this, I'm going to study this. I have that plan laid out. I've just lived a life of sort of listening.
to what lands in my lap. So I went to Ireland and I fell in love with my experience there with the landscape, the rugged, rugged landscape, the beauty of it, the beauty of this Irish hospitality. And when people said to me, you're Irish, welcome home, Lassie. It was in this welcoming home.
Everything Podcasts (20:45.9)
with a feeling I had never had before. It was a feeling of belonging in this land. And I had no stories of growing up. As far as I knew, I was Canadian as Canadian can be. I had no idea about family lineage or ancestors or anything. And so I found the work of John O'Donoghue and his book named Anum Kara.
And when I started to read about being a soul friend, it is this place of deep belonging that we all long for in this life.
and it's this place.
that I spoke about earlier that takes us to this inner terrain where the soul lives and that is what we see in one another. That's what we are connecting to, the wholeness, the infinite, the vastness of us.
Everything Podcasts (22:06.434)
This is something that we wrestle with throughout our whole life. As we grow, change, and move into what we now call boomerhood, we often find ourselves looking back and longing for that deep sense of belonging and connection. We know life shifts and people come and go. We lose friends, we lose family, and at times we can find ourselves feeling more alone than we ever expected.
As we move into this chapter of life, many of us find ourselves reflecting on what it really means to belong and where we find those connections now.
Everything Podcasts (22:53.09)
Looking back on your own journey through all of these changes, what message would you share with someone who might be searching for that same sense of connection?
I think we learn so much not by necessarily being told something. I think that this work.
This work, we connect through simply companioning one another. So well put, what would you tell young Meg? If I had the opportunity to sit with young Meg when she was 24 and simply to take her hand and to sit in stillness until young Meg said something.
and then to be able to ask with curiosity, what is that? How does that feel? What rises up in your body when you experience that? Then that's where we start to go. That's where we start to mix the juice. And it's challenging now with the busyness and the noisiness of the world.
And wanting to be distracted, to go into this interior landscape isn't a bed of roses, right?
Everything Podcasts (24:27.406)
It's not, it's a scary place. But if you look at ancient cultures, what did the elders do? The elders gathered around together and supported the journeys of the young people that were coming up. And so as an elder, I believe that it is part of our job
create these quiet, sacred spaces where they can come and just truly feel into who they are, to tap into what is going on, to know that they can say whatever they need to say without receiving advice or judgment, simply to be witnessed in the purity of their soul.
and to feel that love. And if we want, if we want to invite the invitation to be real.
and we need to provide that safe space. yeah. And we need to be authentic too, don't we? I mean, we have to sort of chance that vulnerability. Where did you feel the most vulnerable along your journey into where you are now? I think I feel vulnerable every day, Cheryl. But my relationship with vulnerability has changed.
I used to view vulnerability as a weakness, as something that I needed to strengthen in myself. I needed to protect myself.
Everything Podcasts (26:16.63)
And I now have a relationship with vulnerability where I see the grace in it. I see the reality of it, the truth of it. And I see it as so beautiful. And that's a lesson that other people have taught me.
definitely in hospice when I have seen their vulnerability.
And you just want to pick it up and wrap it up like a newborn child and to say, you're okay, you're not alone, you're safe here. That sounds like one of those moments when something suddenly clicks. Was there a moment in your journey where something just clicked, where you thought, okay, now I get it?
You know, sometimes I remember going through a period where I thought, okay, I'm waiting for the ultimate, aha, I'm waiting for that lightning bolt to come into my life and to crack it open and to say, this is what it's about Meg. And I thought, you know, why aren't I getting that huge lightning bolt? Like other people are getting the lightning bolt and I'm not. And then it occurred to me
that not everything comes in as a huge raging storm with a lightning bolt. That my experience in this life has to do with the quietness of it and being awake enough to hear what is being revealed, what is being whispered in the quietness of it. So
Everything Podcasts (28:15.104)
I, it feels to me it's not one aha moment. It's being able to reflect back on my life and to feel all those little tiny aha moments that have revealed to me what the heck I'm doing here and to have them
to have been able to trust them enough to feel safe enough with them, to follow them, where they have, it's like just taking that little tiny seed and it hasn't grown like this in one season. It's taken a lifetime of nurturing it and watering it and loving it in order to be where I am now and I really can't really say where I am right now.
I just am waiting for the next little whisper to come along to guide me. Sometimes those whispers grow into moments that change the course of our lives. Was there a whisper in your story that changed and truly reshaped who you are? Oh, it's a bit of a story. I was in my 40s, my early 40s.
And I was experiencing waves of deep sadness engulfing me. And I didn't know what that was all about. But I had this feeling that I was living someone else's life. I actually wasn't living my life.
And I had just a feeling that there was something, that this was an opening up into a spiritual journey, but I didn't know how to name it. I didn't know how to follow it. And so I was sitting on a beach one day and my husband and the three kids were out in the ocean having a great time. And I thought, you know, if an alien being came down and looked at the surface of my life, they'd say, man,
Everything Podcasts (30:27.244)
What she got to cry about, she's got it all. And on the exterior, it looked that way. But on the interior, it didn't feel that way at all. And then I heard a voice, and the voice was so strong, I couldn't argue with it. And the voice said, stop what you're doing and go back to school.
And I thought, that is really weird because I had this sense that this was an inner journey and academia was not a spiritual place in my experience. But it was so strong. And as I said, I felt like I was living somebody else's life. I just thought, okay, let's see where this one leads me. So I saw a prof one day and I just got this hit. I have to have a conversation with him.
I didn't know who he was, what he taught. So I boldly bought two cups of coffee and knocked on his office door and he said, do I know you? And I said, no, but I want to have a conversation with you. And he asked me what I was doing at the university. And I thought, I need to, I just need to show up. I just need to tell the truth. So I said, I don't know, but I heard a voice on the beach and it said, back to school.
So that's why I'm here. So he blessed me with not throwing me out of his office. He was curious. So we talked about curiosity at some point, Cheryl, right? He was curious about this. So he asked me what I wanted to study and I said, I don't know. So he said, okay, take a couple of courses that you're interested in.
But he said, your main job is to go write. He said, just write absolutely every single morning. Write for 30, 60 minutes. And then don't reread it. Don't edit it. Because in your writing, something will be revealed to you, and you will know why you're here.
Everything Podcasts (32:49.772)
So I trusted him and I did that.
And he saw something in me. He was an Anumkara to me. He saw something in me that I did not see in myself. And he opened up the doorways for me to radically live my life, not someone else's life. What a beautiful story, If we're lucky,
Somewhere along the way we find a guide or an inner compass that helps us navigate these crazy twists and turns of life. I think that without a guide or guidance, it's easy to feel restless, unsettled, and always searching for that something that brings us back to ourselves. I know I've been on that search myself. Last summer, I signed up for a yoga retreat in Italy, and I don't do yoga.
It turned out to be one of the most incredible experiences of my life. You now teach yoga nidra, a guided meditation practice known for bringing people into deep relaxation. How did that path open up for you? I came to the practice of yoga nidra when I was really restless in my yoga practice. And I realized I wasn't restless from the fact that I wanted to be able to do a better handstand, but I wanted to know more.
I wanted to know more about the depth of yoga. And knowing that there are eight limbs of yoga and the physical practice of it is only one of them. So I was Googling because I was restless and I was a workshop junkie. And I came across this thing called Yoga Nidra. I didn't know what it was, but it was at a local studio. didn't have to go travel somewhere to get to it. So I signed up for it. And
Everything Podcasts (34:49.676)
Right out of the gate, without a lot of discussion about what it was, we were asked to lay down our bodies to become super comfortable. And we were taken through a yoga nidra. And it took me to this place.
where it was like the form became formless and I was infinite. So I was hooked. So after I did my training, I started to see people one-on-one in my home studio. So I think drawing back on my story about my grandfather, it has been always so important to me to create a safe place for people. So...
I thought, I'm going to give this a try. I'm going to take it online.
and simply create a safe container where people don't have to put their cameras on. You don't have to say hello. You can come and not have had a shower for five days. I don't care. What matters is that you show up.
And so that's how it got started. I think that that human need is alive in each and every one of us. And if we know that there is some place that we can go to and take off all our hats and simply show up and rest.
Everything Podcasts (36:24.916)
and attune ourselves to a community of people.
That's... That's... That's the magic of this stage of life, isn't it? I think as things shift and evolve, real connection starts to look different. It might be a yoga class, a pickleball game, or even writing a book. I think becoming involved in different communities and experiences will help bring people together in new ways.
We need connection now more than ever. Maybe we'll find it in unexpected places. I'm curious, what do you feel connected to at this stage in your life? My spiritual practice. It is, it's what I wake up with. It's the lens that I see life through.
And it's how I close my eyes at night with gratitude for this infinite existence, knowing that I really don't know anything. It's just really, it's that whole gift of a lifetime of experience and knowing that in this moment, we're okay. This moment. I don't know what's gonna happen when we stop this, Cheryl, but in this moment, it's all okay.
Absolutely. It's all okay. So to live in that awareness and with that presence is the ground that I walk on at this point in my life. And I'm really thankful for that. I'm really thankful for you. So thank you. Thank you very much for the invitation just to spend this time with you. It's been a blessing. Thanks.
Everything Podcasts (38:20.49)
As we close, let's come back to that restless beat at the heart of the song, Changes by David Bowie. Change isn't an event. It's not a dramatic pivot or a polished reveal. It's a rhythm. It's happening while you're answering emails, raising children, starting over, staying put, speaking up, staying quiet.
It's happening in the middle of your precious life. If you grew up watching the moon landing, cruising in your car, listening to vinyl records, or adjusting the rabbit ears on your black and white TV, you have seen more changes in one lifetime than any generation before you. We've come from the rotary phone to the smartphone, from drive-ins to streaming.
And we've adapted, we've led, and we keep moving forward. I hope today's conversation gave you something meaningful to reflect on and maybe something to share with an old friend over coffee or bring up at your next book club or discuss with your kids and grandkids. Stay curious, stay connected, because experience isn't just about history. It's wisdom in motion.
This is Boomer's Revolt. I'm Cheryl Bichir. Until next time, keep evolving no matter what age and stage you're at. Life is a journey to the end, so keep living it.
Everything Podcasts (40:07.936)
another Everything Podcast production. Visit everythingpodcast.com, a division of Patterson Media. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
