Whether or not we agree, our future will depend on the way we build connections and on something that we’re passionate about. At the moment, our society is male-oriented and we live inside patriarchy. The world is overheating from too much male energy. In today’s episode, Jon and Sand Symes speak with Matt Kelly about the role women have in creating a sustainable future for the human family here on earth. They stress the need for women to come into their fullness of expression and wisdom so that we may find a balanced way of meeting the challenges we’re facing worldwide at the moment, such as environmental degradation, pandemic, and social unrest, among others.

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Listen to the podcast here

The Role Of Women In Creating A Sustainable Future For The Human Family With Jon And Sand Symes

Thank you for taking the time to come on the show and share your experiences and your knowledge. I think the readers are going to learn a lot of cool interesting stuff. If you could each introduce yourselves, that’s the way I like to start. I’ll let you do that and we’ll pick up and have a conversation from there.

Thank you, Matt. It’s good to be with you and thank you for giving us this opportunity. We appreciate it. My name is Sand Symes. I hail from England in the UK. I’ve been here in America for many years. I am the Founder of a global women’s community called Rise As She, supporting women in their spiritual, economic, mindset growth and everything growth. It means voices on this Earth and following their purpose, mission and vision in life.

That is fantastic. Jon, please.

I’m Jon Symes. I’m also a Brit. Sand and I have been living here in California for many years and we moved over here. I have written a book called Your Planet Needs You. That book was picked up by an organization here in San Francisco that invited me to come and help lead the work that they were doing. I ended up traveling around the world with a message that says, “It’s time for us to find a new relationship in life at its broadest if we’re going to build a future that’s sustainable and peaceful for all of us.” I did that work for a lot of years and now I’m at work supporting Sand in what she’s doing.

Sand, if I could start with your Rises As She, I know your slogan is “Empowering Women to Find their Voice, Wisdom and Power.” If you could please tell me a little bit about your mission there because I know it has a deep personal growth mission for the women and also a spiritual element.

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I’ve been working with women for over three decades and I feel that Rise As She has all of my wisdom in all of those three decades poured into her. As the female partnership, I have felt her coming and birthing her for many years. What’s beautiful in how Jon and I worked together and want to nail this early on is when you get a man and the male holding and that masculine sensibility. What happened with me and Jon is I started to speak Rise As She. It sounded whirly and swirly. It was about feelings. It was about, “I can feel women wanting this. I can see them wanting this. I see where the blocks are and how can we birth this.” I was purging, a continuous in this long purge.

In the masculine and listening. He would say, “Sand, what I’ve heard is five things.” I was astounded. I thought, “I probably said 50,000 things. How do you hear all that and condense it into five things?” The five things that started from his listening and over the years, he said we came up with these five pillars that Rise As She stands on. Those pillars are for a woman to find her voice, the pillar of feminine wisdom, a woman is invited now at this time on our Earth to know herself in all of who she is as a woman on this Earth and what’s being called from her. We also talk about medicines. Women carry medicines, which are a deeper cut than the skill base and even the values that we were given are the medicines are a deeper cut on values that what you were born with and what you came here to express.

The fourth pillar is to work with sisterhood and knowing that it is there to support you. That sisterhood is key because as women, we haven’t always been coming to and supported each other. We’ve adopted a male-dominated approach in a lot of our ways of being in the world of competition. That is not the natural place where a woman finds herself and stands. The sisterhood has been desperately missing in our world. The fifth pillar is the unseen realms. I have been working with ancestors, past lives, spirit and spirituality for many years. They are the five powerful pillars that Rise As She is stood upon.

That’s exciting work. How rewarding is that to bring to many women and to get their mindset going in a direction that is positive and beneficial for them. Jon, as a speaker, a coach and a consultant, I’ve found and noted that you are an expert in results-oriented people. I also found a testimonial that was written on your behalf that said, “You radiate love, wisdom, compassion and creativity.” It’s interesting to me. How long have the two of you been together?

We’ve together for many years.

It’s such a gift that the two of you found each other because from the Rise As She theme, what Jon has done and then the feedback I could find from the people that have written testimonials to him, it seems like such an unbelievable marriage. Jon, it sounds like you’re more supporting Sand now in this endeavor when you were doing you were speaking. Can you elaborate on the results-oriented people and radiating love, wisdom, compassion and creativity?

Many years ago, when I lived in the UK, I ran a consultancy business that worked for some of the biggest international companies in the world, supporting them and getting the most out of that people. I loved that work. I did it well working with large companies, but there was always something missing for me because if we simply support the success of large organizations without questioning the impact of those organizations in our world, we’re missing the bigger picture. The last several years of my life have been devoted to that bigger picture. That’s what had me write the book I referred. That’s what had us move. Sand and I moved to the states within nine months of having met each other and that’s what had me want to pour my energy into the question of how do we create a sustainable future for the human family here on Earth?

That took me into a deeper level of our humanity than making managers in organizations more effective. It took me to look inside people’s hearts. However, we show up in the world having a commonplace in our heart, which is a place that cares deeply about the future of this world. We might imagine the future of this world inhabited by our children, our grandchildren, or even their children. I started to see that it is a deep connecting piece in all of our lives. We all have that motivation if we know how to tap it. I’ve been blessed to be involved in conversations with people in extraordinary ways where we’re tapping. What is the wisdom that we can carry the love that we can find that connects us as human beings because out of that connection will come our future.

We’re teetering on the brink in all ways. We don’t go near the environment. We’re here in California, Matt, we’re breathing smoke at the moment from the local fire. People would say, “That’s a function of how human beings have treated the planet over the years since the industrial revolution.” Whether or not we agree with that, our future is going to depend on the way we build connections. Our future’s going to depend on something that you’re passionate about, which is how we unleash the fullest, deepest, richest contribution of women to our decision-making and our culture as humanity.

We’re male-oriented at the moment. We live inside patriarchy. Which one’s good? We’re overheating from too much male energy. I love what you’re pointing to which is the need for women to come into their fullness of expression and wisdom, which is different from that you and I carry, Matt, as men. We need that other piece. When should we allow and encourage it, but we need it to find a balanced way of meeting the challenges that we face worldwide at the moment, environmental, pandemic, social unrest, or whatever that might?

Men have been speaking their voices on this planet forever. Women haven't had a strong and long history of being heard. Share on X

I started for a couple of years thinking about it and observing. I’m much of an observer of things going on around. The head-scratching starts for me with where is that disconnect starting where it’s male-dominated and the women lose that confidence, voice, power, wisdom and that projecting all of that. When you take it on, it’s a simple person and you take it to the basics, we’re all born the same way. We all get raised by humans. We go through school from kindergarten up until whatever grade you want together. There are men and women as teachers all the way along. We’re all sharing homes, supermarkets and all the space that there is on the planet.

How is there this disconnect and it’s definitely present? I’ve known that in my research and going to different functions and learning on a large scale. My daughter, who’s a junior in high school, doesn’t see this yet. She is a full-on straight-A student, an incredibly competitive athlete and charging head-on into the world. She can’t wait to get her applications out for colleges and has her heart set on these top colleges and is like, “I want to achieve everything in the world.” At some point, there’s this disconnect that comes into a life where there’s more dominance on the man’s side than the woman’s side.

I’ve had a marriage with a strong career-oriented woman and it’s fantastic. I’ve got that perspective on being married to a gal like that. I see all the benefits of it and I love it. In my career, as a real estate agent for many years, men and women are completely equal. That’s why a couple of years ago, I started realizing outside of real estate, the different challenges that there are for women in different industries and careers, this and that. When you’re selling real estate, it’s all about your production and they don’t care man or woman. They don’t care about anything.

I’ll give you an example. We got a new CEO running our office here at Keller Williams in Park City, and I got the courtesy call from him, “Matt, I’m your new CEO. I’m hired on. I wanted to say hello.” The 2nd or 3rd question to me was, “Do you have any properties in escrow?” Right down to business and production. That question isn’t unique to me. Every agent, man or woman is going to get the same call from him. That’s how equal it is in my entire career. I’ve been oblivious for a long time to what’s going on. I realized this different stuff on the outside after Missy and I started our business CatTongue. She’s the CEO and she runs it. I go to these things with her. I feel these women’s challenges. I’m trying to get a conversation going and some enlightening on at what point does it go in that direction where the dominance is on one sex or one gender and not the other?

It runs deeply, Matt. It is an invisible eye to the male, but it’s not invisible to the female. From an early age, I used to work in schools with 13, 14 years old as a career guidance counselor. I would be talking to them about the choices, what you want to be when you leave school or which direction you want to go in. We started with this process, “What did you get as a child, as a little girl, or a little boy for birthday presents, Christmas or bar mitzvahs? What did you get as a gift?” The girls got dolls, prams and the washing machines. It was household appliances and skipping ropes. The guys got the footballs, bikes, and stuff.

 

To give you an idea of how deep it runs, if you look at it from a way of how even energy moves, boys are an external force. They’re penetrator. The masculine field is about penetration and getting out there. It’s all about, “I’m going to be productive. I’m out there. I’m playing out on my bike and I’m moving fast. I’m going to score goals with my football, soccer ball, basketball or baseball and we’re out. We’re achieving from an early age, they are outside.” The girls are internal. The way that the feminine energy moves are more internal. It’s like, “I’ll play with my dolls. I’ll play with my prams. I’ll be inside the home, helping mom make the cookies and the cakes.”

Don’t get me wrong. I know I’m making huge global statements here and I’m sure that there are many of your readers that will be sending emails. That wasn’t my reality. I got a bicycle, a gun and I’m called Pauline or whatever. It is not identified in every single situation, but a broad sweep across the board. It starts in the home from even with that. If you look at the age group like my parents. My mom was internal. She stayed at home looking after the children. My dad was external. He went out to work to get the money and bring back into the home. If we start looking at it, even in that framework, we can get some real a-has in that like, “Wow.”

It’s in our sexual energy and our essential sensual energy. It’s how we move. It’s how we dance on the dance floor. We make food. It’s thick in the fabric of our movement how a man, boy, masculine energy moves and how a woman, child, a little girl moves in the world. Even from that basic and the girls are being given subtle messages about this, “Stay at home. Little girls like to do this.” It takes some time to have the girls be encouraged as your beautiful daughter has been encouraged with you and your wife. The world is your oyster, you can do anything. That’s her internal messaging inside of the home.

Wait until she starts to go out into the world. She starts to pick up her own masculine energy of going out into the world. She’s going to face sadly on many times in her life of, “You’re a woman. You can have this salary, but you can’t have this salary. You can have this job, but you can’t have this job. You can go to this school, but you’ll have to work twice as hard as the guys because of your gender and all that.” If we can understand that even in the home and bring that into our children’s infrastructure, where that started from in history and that’s where Jon is going to take us next. If we can get our arms around this and say, “When did inequality first start? How did a woman become lesser than men? How did we women become lesser in economics and property?”

Somebody said this to me and I’d known this for many years working with women. It came to me in such a powerful way and it was, “A woman in her internal fabric through her mother, grandmother, great grandmother, in her ancestral line as only known herself as property to be owned by men. That’s in the fabric of our generations.” She’s only known herself to own her own property in a short space of time. Your realtor, Matt, and I thought, “I want to bring that to the interview.” That’s a startling moment of a wake up of, “In my blood, my DNA, my self, my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother and my great-great-grandmother may have known themselves as a piece of property to be owned by men.” It’s only in my generation and my daughter’s generation that we have known ourselves as a woman to own our own property and not be owned as property. Is it powerful?

We never find ourselves in spaces where the dominant conversation is led by the feminine. Share on X

There’s a lot there. It sounds like what you’re saying is that evolution is taking place. Women are not feeling or not being raised to think that they will be property or compliment a man and more have their own voice. There is a ton of progress that has taken place and thank God for that.

The point I’m making here is it’s not fully achieved for women. Men have been speaking their voices on this planet forever. When a man has a thought, he has no problem bringing that voice into the conversation, politics, the economy, work and into his home. He’s got a strong history of being heard. Women haven’t had a strong and long history of being heard. One of our most powerful pillars in Rise As She is a woman finding a voice. It’s messy, tearful and loud. We are clumsy. We are not finding our voice in a clean, gracious way often because it comes from a place of emotion and feeling of not being heard for so long. We’re angry and underneath that anger, we’re in a lot of pain. It’s been painful and still is for a lot of women on this Earth that are not heard because they’re not treated as equal at all. The place when a woman finds her feelings and starts to move through her feelings does sound clumsy, snotty, tearful, angry, loud and not cohesive. It’s all of those things.

We lean into our man deeply at that point saying, “Please let me be on this journey to find my voice because it’s taken thousands of years to get here. Can you hold a space for me to find my gnarly, angry, tearful, judgmental, clumsy and snotty? Can you hold a space for me as I move through all of these emotions, so I then can meet you in the field at a point of a gracious and graceful voice that I don’t have to find and feel the deep feelings that have been suppressed inside my body of anger, resentment, or frustration for so long? Can you hold space while I go on this journey with you, so I can find that equanimity, an equal balance of a true voice in our marriage, relationship and our field?”

That’s one of the things that got me going on this is you touched on it perfectly. I got a sense that although women and men love each other in a marriage and relationship, there’s this uniform undertone of resentment or anger from women about the dominance of the men in their lives as a whole and society. There are individuals that the woman does love, but even those individuals, there’s this undertone of all of you collectively, men. If you would give us a chance to express ourselves, be who we are, have that job that we want, let us put our best foot forward, let us walk side by side with you through every single door that’s open, let us knock down doors that are closed together and it’ll work out better for all of us.

That’s what I’m convinced of in my head is that with the divorce rate at 50% or whatever plus forever and always has been, it’s not working. What’s going on with the mindset and the gender bias that we continually see and it doesn’t seem like it should be that difficult. Turn it around and allow these women that do want to have a place in the work spot. Do want to have a prominent position, and do want to earn themselves their own, living, career and everything else. Give them that equal opportunity to do that. It’s better for everybody, man, woman, children and everybody on the planet. It’s the only way that we’re going to co-exist and have the harmony that we should have together.

 

Matt, I’m walking in every pulpit in every church, temple, home, the news feed on the planet as a man to get behind that. I know Jon, you want to say something about this from a man’s perspective of a woman, but we need you as women need you guys. Here’s why. If we’re not stood alongside the men and the men saying what you’ve said eloquently and passionately, Matt, then here’s what we’re left with. We’re left with this. Every woman that will read to this show will resonate with this. If we don’t have your voice in the field and with us, then here’s what we’ll get from society out there, “You’re a bunch of angry and frustrated women. You are men haters. You want to take over the world. You want to bash us over the head. You want to have a whole women-dominated world and we’re not going to let you do that.

When a woman is moving through all of these fields of deep emotions and feelings that she’s had and sometimes she doesn’t understand them. She doesn’t even know she carries that inside until she starts to find more freedom in her voice. She’s then met with this flooding of the emotion of this deep resentment and this deep-seated anger inside and the cry is this, “It’s not fair.” That’s all she’s trying to say. It’s unjust. She doesn’t even know she carries that to the degree that she does. We do have to hold a space for women to navigate those deep dark waters with zero judgment and bucket loads of compassion so she can find her clear voice.

Knowing Sand, I can tell how moved she is to hear you say you’ve come to that realization that women are responding to what has been centuries of oppression. The question you and I and men generally have to ask ourselves is what is that invisible norm that we were raised in which is wrong that I think you, Matt, and hopefully I, Jon emerging from. As we emerge from the unquestioned way things were done that you and I grew into as young boys where they have established ways of doing things. I grew up in the UK and there was quite a lot of courtesy. There would be the opening of doors for a woman. There would be allowing a woman to walk through a door first but the underpinning was clear who was in control. The man in the family was in control.

In my parents’ generation, they were emerging from that idea that there would be a woman at home looking after their kids, into my mom working as a teacher. It was a male-oriented world. I say that because you and I grew up in this country, men and other countries but in similar ways of the essential principles that were embedded in that. We as men have to learn to see what that invisible norm is and how it’s advantaged us. You talked about working in real estate. That’s interesting and how everybody’s interested in productivity. I suspect if you ask the women that you work with, they’ve become very good at operating in a world that’s focused on productivity and telling the CEO how much property they’ve got an escrow within five minutes of meeting him. Given another opportunity, they’d be sat with a cup of tea talking and making connections with each other.

You and me, not only amongst women but making connections that allowed us to know and trust each other more fully out of which enduring lifetime trusting relationships would come, which would advantage the world of real estate and enrich the lives of everybody involved. Those women would say, “We’ve become good at operating in a male world and fair play to them. It’s like somebody who can speak two languages.” If you can be a top realtor, you’re having to do that inside a male world, you’re embodying feminine and energies as a woman, you are fair play, you’re bilingual. We have to be bilingual because we never find ourselves in spaces where the dominant conversation is led by the feminine.

When a woman is truly seen and held by her partner, the amount of love available to flow back is immense. Share on X

I do think it’s other industries more like a big office or corporate, where you’re climbing the corporate ladder. You need to get recognized for promotions and that type of stuff and in that environment, that is where the most challenges are. Real estate goes under the category of being an entrepreneur. A lot of women become entrepreneurs with their own business along with doing real estate but their own business because they don’t have to climb that corporate ladder. They don’t have to get recognized and do like that. It’s a simple sink or swim on your own. There’s a tremendous amount of entrepreneurs with businesses that are women and are successful even though for venture capital money funding for businesses, such as that mom-and-pop type of businesses getting going, only 4% of women on businesses get funded. With us, we are women on business with Missy running CatTongue Grips, and that’s where we’ve gone to these thousands of gals’ conferences.

I’ve tagged along and it’s unbelievable to me that there isn’t more money available for these women on businesses because they are doing a phenomenal job. I don’t see the difference. They are like real estate. The women are feminine. They come as they are because we’re dealing mostly with men, women, couples, families and working with houses with them and this and that. There isn’t that gender anything. It’s a big pile of who do you want to work with? Who do you think is good? Who has got the resume, the experience in the market? That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman. That’s why I’ve been eye-opened over these last number of years as we’ve gone to these conferences. In real estate, it is entrepreneurial. We all have our own business. We have our own clientele. We take care of them and all of that.

Equality is something special I have learned and realized as I have learned what’s happening in other industries. There is this one gal who is a TEDx speaker and an award-winning author. She wrote this to me and she said, “I believe men need to be sold on the direct benefits to themselves. Most journeys of transformation are fully egocentric. He needs to understand what he gets out of it otherwise he’s not likely to do it. In the case of my marriage, we don’t have a typical household that someone would have envisioned from the 1970s. I am 100% the driver of most things and unfortunately, most things revolve around me and my needs. They need to. Does that sound appealing to a man? No, until you scratch the surface, then it’s appealing.”

To you and me as guys, the question of equality can sound like a game in which you and I only lose. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, and whether we could put it into words or not, we somehow know or suspect that a woman’s true equality is going to cost us the top dog position, the privilege that goes with it and it looks like a big loss to us. What she’s pointing to in her comments, and what you and I need to explore in our own lives and maybe men more generally is we have to be able to look and see what have we already lost that we could perhaps win back if we were to embrace the full expression of the women that we live as partners or that we work with so that we co-inhabit the world with.

Most of us aren’t aware of the degree to which we’ve sacrificed our own feelings, fluidity, creativity or expression, because you and I are trying to fit into a box where we also get approved by the patriarchy. It might seem as if we’re talking about a dynamic Jon and Sand, but there’s a much larger dynamic. I’m trying to fit into a pattern of behavior that supports my status in the world. It costs me a great deal to chew up like this man. I’ve already sacrificed a whole aspect of my own self and expression.

 

If I can dare take the next step and put myself in full and authentic support of Sand’s expression in the world, what I’m going to get back is twice as much as I could have imagined. The space that comes back when a woman is truly seen and held by her partner, the amount of love that it’s available to flow back to me is immense. I don’t know if it’s a secret or it’s visible to us. We don’t understand that until we’re lucky enough to be in the space of a woman who is prepared to take that step with us. There’s a tremendous win that will be available in a situation that to most of us looks like a loss. Does that make sense?

It makes as much sense as it can. I think, Jon, you and I are on the same page. I’ve been married to Missy for many years and she’s a strong go-getter type of gal. I couldn’t imagine having it any other way. There are many benefits and that is going to be difficult to change. It has to be accepted. Some people are dominant and have a personality, whether it’s a man or a woman, and whoever they’re around with, they want to take control and drive the shift in that thing. Hopefully, that personality matches up when they are in their courtship and prior to marriage with the personality that is good with that and that’s what they’re looking for also. Those two people would be harmonious, they will be fine and they can live a beautiful life together. It seems so often that those two personalities don’t match up equally and the dominance factor comes through. The one person in the relationship, usually it’s the female ends up hanging in there.

In that analogy of dominance, if we have somebody who’s dominant, if we’re looking at opposites then it has to be somebody who’s subservient. Where I’m seeing the conversation with women is moving to is to have nobody as a dominant anything but to understand the beauty, grace and the power of having equality that is fair and within the relationship and here’s why. You might have somebody who’s a dominant personality, but then they get sick or they’re in the hospital for a while or then we start to get old together.

It starts to shapeshift into something else. I see a marriage relationship between man-woman, man-man or woman-woman, in all our relationships and to embrace all our sexuality and diversity here is if there is a dominant, then have that dominance be in a place of, “I see what your skills are. I see what values that you carry. I see the medicines that you carry. I see that you’re amazing at this, so go to it. That’s amazing. That’s your full expression in the world.”

Over here, we’ve got another partner in the relationship who has these different qualities and medicines inside. Between both of them, we have this equanimity and equality. It’s never going to be balanced 50/50 every single day. That’s impossible. We don’t live like that. Life doesn’t work like that. Over a period of time, if there is this balance between both parties and people, then that’s where there is harmony. Sometimes even the dominant one in this conversation, there’s a part of me that’s like, “I want to get off the wheel for a while. Can I get off the wheel and can I have a rest? Can I do this in a different way?”

Balance in a relationship comes from the support of each partner. Share on X

At different times in our life through age, when children come along and when we’re facing elderly parents and there are more loved ones that are passing over and dying. If we put all of the life experience into somebody’s life, there is an ebb and flow in every single individual. To me, I don’t want to be dominant. I want a sense of, “This is what I see you’re good at, you love, you excel in and you’re thriving on. Please have that in your life and thrive and be fully expressed, heard, seen and valued. That’s what I see as the balance in a relationship.

That comes to the support of each partner. It is for the partner to always know that the person that you have a relationship with was also going through this life for their one chance at it. If they are thinking they want to do this or they want to do that, whatever it is, support it. Let them have their experiences and go in the direction they want to go. Your relationship is going to be better. Everybody benefits. We’ll call it dreams. When people’s dreams, they’re not always realized but at least they get a full-hearted supportive shot at it.

I’m jumping up and down saying, “Yay.” It sounds simple. For your readers, it’s simple but not easy with these deeply ingrained patterns from our history or for the women, our herstory. Matt, for some women on this Earth, for a woman to even know that she has needs is alien to her. She doesn’t even know that she has needs. When that starts to be awakened inside of her, “I have needs. They’re my legitimate needs. They are my desires, wants and dreams, but nobody has asked me ever.” As we start to awaken as women and have those needs start to bubble up to the surface, along with that is a journey.

She has then to ask. She could go to the grave or lose a leg on her body rather than ask for help because she’s never been taught. It’s never been role modeled in a clear, clean and gracious way that a woman has got needs. You can express these needs. You can ask for help because for many women, that so alien to her. It’s to keep coming to the table with this almost being re-educated especially for our men and women of where this oppression and suppression comes from and how thick it’s still in our genetic field, economy, laws of the land and everything. It’s in a fabric of life, that imbalance.

I want to offer this as well when you were speaking and we’re talking about people moving together. You and Missy have been together for many years, which is mazel tov, hallelujah, amen and all those wonderful things. The journey isn’t easy. There’s a real gem and a key here as a takeaway. If we can re-choose continually in our relationship, then I feel that it is such a fundamental ingredient that is missing because we either take it for granted or we can’t just chug along in a relationship and the woman stays because it tends to be, “I’ll stay for the kids because I gave up my career 35 years ago and now I’m 55. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know how to start again. I’ll stay in this relationship because at least I have a home, a quality of life that I’ve grown accustomed to.”

 

Underneath it is, “I am terrified of going alone at this time in my life, and at my age, who’s going to take me seriously? I haven’t got the qualifications, education and experience. I’m a woman. Who’s going to take me on with the lack of all of that in this world that is heavily dominated by the masculine?” I wanted to offer that but if that marriage was going along and re-choosing, that woman could have voiced to her partner when the children were still babies, I’d like to go to a university, go and get a degree, do an online course, and I’d like to do this. Re-choosing and keep asking what do you want?

Does this relationship as it currently stands? Does this still work for you? Do you have any needs? Do you have any express desires? Where are your dreams now? Let’s re-choose and keep coming back. When we re-choose, it gives us an opportunity of being open to like, “I don’t want to re-choose this anymore. I want to look for something different. Will you support me in that?” We can’t force each other into that. It gives the space in a relationship to grow, expand and bring differences to the relationship when you start to face them and those desires that you didn’t even know you had come to the surface. You get a chance to say, “I choose not to be a stay-at-home mom anymore. I want to re-choose something here. This is what I want to re-choose.” It would be far less on the planet if we could get the option of re-choosing.

We’re coming to the end of our time here. I knew this was going to be amazing. I thank you both for your time, your insight, what you’ve shared from your life experiences and the knowledge that you’ve gained along the way. I always like to wrap up with one question and it’s the one that I sent over to you so you got a chance to think about it. I learned that there is a bit of a discrepancy in memorializing men and women in the US with statues and approximately 5,000 statues around our country for men and 400 for women. I’m sure there are more than 400 women that have made an impression on this country over time. Would each of you please let me know a woman from any period of history that you would say deserves a statue and why?

Dearly and departed Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was the Associate Justice in the Supreme Court. Her absolute driving life force in perhaps the number one most difficult demeanor I could imagine a woman being in and the successful career that she had and how she fought for gender discrimination. I would love to have a statue of her on the Supreme Court steps off. When she passed away, they sadly closed the Supreme Court steps off and people were laying flowers at the bottom of the steps. I would love a statue there right in the middle of the Supreme Court steps on a huge plinth of marble to give her the statue that she deserved. Anybody that was walking up and down those steps in something called a Supreme Court knew that there was a woman and sometime in our history, that gave her life for gender equality from the moment that she stepped into the office until the moment that she took her last breath.

I couldn’t agree more.

I reflect on what it takes to do something which is outside the norm. You open up a pathway for other people. I had no idea what it took to sit at the front of the bus back in Montgomery in 1955. I might have the date wrong but Rosa Parks and the physical threat would have been immediately evident to her. The long-term threat and risk she exposed herself, her family and many other people to out of the deep determination for justice and unwillingness to put up with what no longer serves. Each of us is confronted with similar challenges. These amazing times we live in are confronting us with all sorts of challenges to start to identify what we can no longer support, what’s unjust and what’s unsustainable. Rosa Parks is the best example of that to me. I would love her to be honored more widely than she already is.

Thank you for both of those names, stories and for your time. This is going to be beneficial for a lot of people to read. I thank you for the lives you’re living and for the time you spent with us on the show.

We’re thrilled to be here and we want to thank you for the work you’re doing. You’re opening up conversations that haven’t been had and that is incredibly valuable work. We’re grateful that we’ve been able to be a small part of it. We’re most grateful to you that you’re doing this.

I appreciate that. Enjoy the rest of your day.

 Important Links:

• Rise As She
• Jon Symes
• Your Planet Needs You
• CatTongue Grips

About Jon And Sand Symes

As a thought leader and speaker . . .

. . . I’m aiming to bring inspiration, encourage exploration and craft space for transformation. These are three of the most powerful compounds in the alchemical process of creating new possibilities. Sometimes this comes out as poetry.

Working with men . . .

. . . we’re liberating ourselves from the grip of patriarchal culture and learning to step into healthy masculine expression. We explore the timeless role of men in protecting life and the very timely need for us to make space for our women to rise up and bring the feminine wisdom they uniquely holds.

“
our hopes and dreams roll back the gloom
to expose possibilities once obscured by ignorance and folly
What we have in common . . .

. . . is in the challenge of meeting the moment. This moment which can be overwhelming and more than a bit scary (at least for me). This moment which has chosen us to be its human expression. This moment suspended between what is familiar-but-insufficient and the not-yet-seen. This moment which calls for our best selves and deepest hearts.

But how to remain resourceful and optimistic every day? Deal with what-is and dream about what-could-be? Where even to start making a difference? Maybe you have some of the same conversation with yourself. A shared inquiry . . .

. . . how will we meet this moment?

“
it may just be that the great dream of evolving creation is that we come reverent and wise enough to offer our planet home to the ascension of the next spiral

About Sand Symes

Hello dear one, I’m Sand
modern medicine woman, coach, spiritual teacher, shamanic practitioner, and intuitive healing guide. It has been my honor and privilege to have supported women for over three incredible decades. To be their guide, mentor, teacher, cheerleader and sacred mirror as they move through old patterns, karmic ties, shadows of the past, childhood trauma, relationship break ups, health issues and lack of self-worth – and transform these old patterns of behaviors into becoming the Truth of who they really are: powerful, radiant Women Rising.