Candice Wu 0:00

In this episode, Mary Oliver and a poem by Mary Oliver, loving what it is that you love and being free to do so and using self-forgiveness to release some judgments and belief sets around being yourself versus pleasing others and other ways of being around niceness, and ways that we can embody being ourself fully. Also, a little bit about how immigration and my ancestry and past life experiences have conditioned me to please others.

Candice Wu 0:49

Hello, and welcome. You’re listening to the Embody Podcast, a show about remembering and embodying your true nature, inner wisdom, Embodied Healing, and self-love. My name is Candice Wu and I’m a holistic healing facilitator, intuitive coach, and artist sharing my personal journey of vulnerability, offering meditations and guided healing support and having co-creative conversations with healers and wellness practitioners from all over the world.

Candice Wu 1:24

This episode is sponsored by something that I love which is the Embodied Healing group that happens once a month. And if you want a little bit more soul support, body support, energetic support, if you want or need a compassionate space to do some healing work within a group that allows relating to one another and connection as well as working with me and in the many different ways that I do work with people, check the group out, it’s at CandiceWu.com/support.

Candice Wu 2:00

So I’m going to start off today with a poem by Mary Oliver and this poem is called Wild Geese. Many of you probably know this poem and I want to send a shout out to Kristen Donigan, who is a physician at the Raby Institute for sending me this link. It’s a SoundCloud link of David White, who’s another poet, reading Mary Oliver’s poetry and talking about it so passionately. And in her words, it’s devastatingly beautiful. So thank you, Kristen, for reminding me of Mary Oliver’s poetry and for bringing me such an important message right now that just really touches me and has also touched several of my clients, since I’ve received it and listen to it, which is only like, yesterday, well, yesterday at the time of this recording.

Candice Wu 2:56

So I’m sending my gratitude to you Kristen, thank you so much for listening to the podcast, for connecting with me and also sharing this awesome reading by David White and commentary by him of Mary Oliver’s poetry, which I’ll link in the show notes.

Candice Wu 3:13

So here is Mary’s poem, Wild Geese: “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”

Candice Wu 4:27

This is coming to me at a time where I’m noticing the next level of the subtle way in which I try to please people and I may make things sound prettier or try to make what I want to say, come out in a pretty way or in a way that is accessible to everybody, like I want everybody to like me, and it’s really not possible and by admitting that, it’s also admitting that there there are people that I don’t like or want to be around, not that I don’t respect them or maybe I don’t respect them, but it’s a reality that there are people we are attracted to and people we are not wanting to be near.

Candice Wu 5:14

And sometimes those are lessons to us that if we stay, we will learn something more or will discover something different. And other times it’s important to trust, what our body wisdom and what our intuition tells us about where we need to be and who we need to be around. And it gives us the freedom to not like everybody when we accept that not everyone likes us, and that’s okay.

Candice Wu 5:43

Well, of course, I logically know all that and there’s still parts of me that just have been conditioned over years and years and years, maybe even lifetimes and I see it in some people in my family system, in my ancestry, that act in certain ways so that others can like them.

Candice Wu 6:03

Particularly, I noticed that in my father that he can feel anxious and begin to make himself seem happy and charming to the world and make things sound nice and good. And yet, there’s a whole other part of him that he may be blocking off or denying or not acknowledging and feeling. And it seems hard for him at times to just settle into his body and be present without making everything feel good, and maybe a false good. And I want to just respect that right now because I think that’s part of what has made our family survive, and perhaps shows in ways how he survived his own experience and maybe people in my ancestry on his side of the family have survived life in general for different reasons.

Candice Wu 7:04

And what I mean is that, particularly with my father and mother, they both immigrated from Hong Kong to the United States when they were 17 and they met when they were 21. My mom’s English was not that great and my father’s was better. My father, in large part, became the interface between our family and America. So between his parents, and siblings, and the United States, because my grandparents didn’t speak English, and for my primary family, where he was the person that was out in the world, making more money and being an engineer, he did really well in terms of using his social skills, his language skills and making people feel good in a way like a salesperson, but someone that gives others confidence about his work and about what their projects are. He has succeeded so much at that.

Candice Wu 8:16

And like him and many other immigrant families, the generation that comes over to a new place, at least in those times where racism and being prejudiced and possibly hurt or imprisoned could be a reality and it still is possible now. It’s still happening in many places, including here, painfully so. But, when it was even more of a risk, that those people that made their journey into a new land had to learn to be like other people and to smile and to be what others wanted them to be to fit in and belong so that the family could survive.

Candice Wu 9:10

We may know that as a simulation and that experience can be passed down in the ancestry and I feel I’ve inherited some of that experience, where some part of me believes that I need to be a certain way and pleasing to others in order to fit in and belong and be accepted, be successful, be liked and of course, if you’ve been listening to the podcast, there are many ways that I’ve talked about my young life, my childhood experiences that also contribute to that. And tack on some past life experiences where I’ve been a witch and whipped and burned and my leg cut off, because of my gifts and the fears of other people about my gifts and having to do things to survive.

Candice Wu 10:07

So just looking at the ways in which I can still try to please people and how deeply that’s ingrained, and stepping into a next level of moving into a different paradigm, another paradigm where I’m just me, and there’s a deeper, fuller acceptance from within myself that asks less of other people around me to accept me in order to feel okay and I can hear it in my voice. You might hear it too, over time on the podcast that slowly happened. In the beginning, I was a little nervous and not sure how this was going to be received by myself and by other people. And over time, I’ve built more confidence and loving in myself that I accept myself more deeply.

Candice Wu 10:59

Luckily, I have a friend that went to grad school with me and she and I, we just meditate together, we tune in and sense what deeper beliefs are living in our experiences where we parallel each other, the themes that are coming up and what might be needed. And she said to me that there’s a way in which I share my work or do my work, especially like, in the way I present myself in the podcast or other things that are public that feel a bit heavy because I’m still trying to please everyone and be accessible to every single person, and the truth is that I’m just not.

Candice Wu 11:48

I am who I am, and what I share is not going to reach every person and that is okay, because if it touches who it needs to touch, then great and if I’m enjoying it that is truly what I want to drive my experience. If I’m deeply connected with what I’m doing, what I want, and as Mary Oliver says, just letting the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Candice Wu 12:24

What would your life be like if you did not have to be good or, you did not have to do something more, do something different, or hide something of yourself in order to be good enough, worthy, deserving, belonging?

Candice Wu 12:48

There’s a way that we can truly be at harmony in ourselves if we’re congruent from the inside out. And that lends itself to true harmony with each other, when there’s acceptance inside of who we are and what we are and all the things that are trying to come through us, then there’s a deeper acceptance of other people being in that freedom as well or there can be.

Candice Wu 13:24

How much of us are still in the way of being nice and polite or making peace and where the reality of that is actually deception, disingenuousness and not peace but keeping things underneath the surface, so that they just don’t show up, so that we protect ourselves?

Candice Wu 14:03

So yeah, I’m calling myself to the table on one hand, but calling myself to the table with more loving.

Candice Wu 14:13

How am I pleasing others still? Where am I doing that? What does it feel like in my body when I do that? What does it feel like when I’m just true to myself and say things just as they are, just as they want to come through? And what am I so afraid of if I actually just do that?

Candice Wu 14:39

Sometimes I afraid that my words will be too sharp, that I’ll come on too strong or I’ll be too much.

Candice Wu 14:49

There’s a dream worker I was working with and she offered the words: “You’re so much.” Instead of being too much or not enough you are so much, and I really liked that. And I think that’s true, and it’s a way to reframe it so that I can find this space that I can be more genuine and authentic to myself and to the world.

Candice Wu 15:20

So if I’m sharp, what’s going to happen? Someone’s not going to like me or like what I said, or someone will misunderstand me, these touch into all of my younger viewers, and it’s calling myself to the table to honor those and respect that way of being as a way that I’ve survived and as a way that has helped me in life and in past lives, and that is the way that has helped my ancestry and the people especially that came here to start a new life. And it’s safe now. It’s safe now to be myself and not do the pleasing as I did once before. It’s safe now that not everyone likes me, no one’s going to kill me, at least I hope. I mean that is still possible in the world, but not as likely.

Candice Wu 16:27

And if you look at yourself, are there ways that you are giving your energy away? Are there ways that you find that your power is outside of you in terms of needing someone else to validate you or give you something that you think is outside of you, some belonging and some worthiness or some love or achievement, rather than feeling deeper and cultivating your own power even more. And how do we do that? How do we embody that? It’s not just words, as this whole podcast is about. It’s about cultivating any sense of yourself that has felt like yourself.

Candice Wu 17:17

There are two experientials that I focus on that and one’s in the alignment podcast at Candicewu.com/ alignment. It’s resourcing a feeling and a way of being that you desire to be.

Candice Wu 17:34

And in the podcast at CandiceWu.com/overwhelm, where we tune into times that you felt like yourself, the more we can touch into those times and let our body feel aligned with them, resonate with them, and in that safety, the more that builds up, the more that our nervous system and body says, “Oh, I know how to do that and it’s safe to do that, and I can be in that space.”

Candice Wu 18:10

And also looking at the fears and releasing the fears. Releasing the beliefs that aren’t true.

Candice Wu 18:24

So here’s my self-forgiveness for today, and I’m just tuning into this now and seeing what words want to come through, it’s not prewritten this at all. So let’s tune in here together and you can also, if you want, tune into any beliefs or ways of being that you want self-forgiveness around and to release judgments around and let’s do that together.

Candice Wu 18:59

I forgive myself, for judging myself, for believing that I’m not good enough. I forgive myself, for judging myself, for believing that I need to be a certain way in order to be liked, loved, and accepted.

Candice Wu 19:24

I forgive myself, for judging myself, for believing that I need to say things in a nice way or else I’m selfish, rude or a bitch.

Candice Wu 19:47

I forgive myself, for judging myself, for believing that what I share needs to reach everybody and be accessible to everybody.

Candice Wu 20:11

So I’m just letting those move through my body. They’re not very intense right now and sometimes it means for me that I’m not hitting the right spot and sometimes it’s just, I’ve worked on it and it’s cleared through my body energetically and emotionally.

Candice Wu 20:28

So I just did that with you so that you could feel into my process a little bit. Sometimes the words are not, “I forgive myself for judging myself for believing”, but there, I forgive myself, for judging myself for forgetting and have a few there. I forgive myself for judging myself for forgetting that it’s safe to be me and that it’s safe to say things just as they are. That it’s safe to love just as I love.

Candice Wu 21:03

Thank you, Mary Oliver, and also thank you to Charmayne Kilcup who initially taught me the phrases around forgiveness of the judgments and she was taught by her teacher, Robert Waterman.

Candice Wu 21:22

You can also phrase things in terms of, I forgive myself, for judging myself, for all the times and places that I and fill in the blank, that I was not myself or that I pretended to be somebody else or that I sugar-coated and glossed what I wanted to say or changed what I had to say for someone else.

Candice Wu 21:48

Whatever those ways of being or that you would like to shine some light on, so it’s not that we’re changing our habits, even though that’s part of what I am doing, it’s not the pressure to change, it’s the forgiveness, that you have judgment around the way you’ve been, around the belief sets that you have, and have had. That’s what gives the safety for something different to arise, that’s what brings that belief set into the light and out of the unconscious place in us, that just lives it out, unknowingly. Or, lives that out because it hasn’t been looked at fully and embraced and taken into our hearts. Candice Wu 22:37

So when I do this forgiveness work, I stay with the feelings and allow them to move all the way through or work with the feelings and parts of me that show up. That’s for another podcast, but you can also tune into the Parts Work podcast if you want a little bit of support with working with parts. That’s @ CandiceWu.com/partswork.

Candice Wu 23:03

And let those emotions and energies move all the way through the system and that’s what creates a lasting change. That’s one way that I work with the body and the beliefs.

Candice Wu 23:19

So as I come back to Mary Oliver, you do not have to be good and you do not have to walk on your knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting. This is my favorite line: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

Candice Wu 23:39

It’s so easy. It’s so simple. Love what you love, and that’s in terms of people, that’s in terms of your experience.

Candice Wu 23:53

So much of the time I can be clouded by what I feel I should do, what I feel or think I should do, what think I should do that usually comes from what I should do or what I have been doing, or what something in my ancestry tells me that I need to do or some way of protecting. But if we let these words sink into our bodies, in our hearts, you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. It’s like giving the deepest permission to be yourself and that’s exactly what I believe is needed in the world.

Candice Wu 24:33

There are all sorts of ways that things can be helpful. But when they’re really resonant with the energy of loving what one loves, we feel it, like, I can feel that in Mary Oliver’s poetry. There’s a deep resonance that vibrates through my resonance, which is like the universal energy that’s in all of us. It’s in you and me. It’s that remembering, coming back to the wholeness, and that wholeness can save lives, that wholeness can show someone else that there’s a way to just love what you love and be you, and that is incredible harmony. We won’t need war if we can just be ourselves.

Candice Wu 25:42

Sometimes they think about this in terms of horses and I think what would a horse do?

Candice Wu 25:49

If a horse doesn’t like being around this other horse, are they going to try to are they just going to find a distance that feels right for them? Are they going to find another horse to be around?

Candice Wu 26:02

Sure, there are ways that horses have trauma and could be resourced, could be led by other horses or people or other experiences to learn and heal and renegotiate that trauma. But by and large, what they do is they will be congruent with what they feel. What they feel they need, they will instinctually do without a thought. They don’t think about, oh, should I walk away or should I stay? They are just doing it.

Candice Wu 26:38

And while that’s not applicable in every situation, that’s something that we can feel into and use in our own energy.

Candice Wu 26:50

How can we make our lives simple and just love what we love?

Candice Wu 26:54

Do what we love to do and cut through the fears whatever ways that we think we should be and just shatter them to the ground.

Candice Wu 27:11

So I want to leave today’s podcast with the idea that we are not limited. We are just one possibility of the infinite amount of possibilities that we could be, the ways that we could be. And yet, there is a way that is so deeply aligned with who we are and so specifically eccentric to ourselves.

Candice Wu 27:40

In the podcast with Nick Werber recently, at CandiceWu.com/nickpart2, a friend of mine and fellow healer and integrative coach and constellations facilitator. He and I talked about being black sheep or not, and wherein our being is the black sheep. And those are the places where we feel like we don’t belong. And those are the parts that we can bring forward and that are really essential to who we are usually, and essential to us feeling whole.

Candice Wu 28:20

So while we are infinite possibility, I do believe that there’s a unique signature of who we are that wants to reveal itself and that can be a great relief because all we need to do is witness ourselves and as Mary Oliver says, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

Candice Wu 28:52

Thanks for joining me today and may you love what you love.