Following narrative threads with Finn Schubert from The Menstruant
In this episode Amy is joined by past Incubator member, Finn Schubert, all about following narrative threads in our life and business.
Topics we cover are:
Finding and following narrative threads - even when the narrative is wildly nonlinear
Knowing when to walk away and begin a new path
Being willing to listen to our intuitive guides, even when they don’t tell us what we want to hear
His writing practice and how he decides what stories are for sharing and what stories are for him alone
Breathwork as a tool for letting go
and much more!
Finn Schubert (he/him) is the author of Even the Cemeteries Have Space Here, an essay collection exploring his move from NYC to a small town to grieve his infertility. (In a weird twist, he got pregnant as soon as the book came out.) He is a Moth StorySlam-winning storyteller, and his writing has appeared in TheBody, Lit Star Review, and the anthologies Transcending: Trans Buddhist Voices and Places Like Home. He writes a weekly essays newsletter, titled "The Menstruant," exploring the question: What does it mean to be a gay man who loves having a uterus? (Right now: Pregnancy edition.)
Finn’s background is in public health and he most recently worked as the director of HIV services for a large community health center network in Brooklyn prior to transitioning to freelance consulting last year. He offers speaking and workshops regarding LGBTQ+ health, trans and nonbinary inclusion in workplaces and spiritual communities, and public health program design and evaluation. Finn currently lives in NYC and is at work on an essay collection.
Connect with Finn:
Subscribe to essays! finnschubert.substack.com
Purchase book: finnschubert.com
Links and resources:
Join the Breathe Into Business Patreon to get access to the community Discord server, live events like group coworking, plus the private podcast feed with interviews, breathwork recordings, and more.
Join us there for a daily breathwork challenge this holiday season AND for a year-ahead virtual retreat live event on Jan 2nd-3rd with breathwork, journaling, goal setting, business planning, tarot chats, somatic practices, and more!
Record a question for us to answer here on the podcast!
Find transcripts to all my episodes here.
To learn more about Amy, head to amykuretsky.com
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[0:04] Welcome to breathe into business a podcast for folks who want to hear what it's really like to run an intuitive lead business,
I'm your host Amy kuretsky a breath work facilitator who helps service providers.
Creators and artists tap into their own inner knowing so that they can run businesses from a place of trust and self-confidence.
I created this podcast to help folks like you.
Who are disillusioned with the / culture of online small business building to permission yourself to follow a different path.
In these episodes you'll hear conversations that are,
messy and even a little bit scary at times my biggest hope is that each of these episodes helps you feel even 10% more confident in leaning into what your intuition is sharing with you and doing business your own way.
[0:53] Let's take a breath and talk business.
[0:59] Hey y'all Amy here and I'm excited to share with you today our first interview of this new season of the podcast for this first season,
I've interviewed three amazing business owners and I can't wait to introduce you to all three of them each of them was a participant in the first round of incubator,
so
You know where as some of my solo episodes can really be easily fit into a pillar out of those six pillars I talked about on episode 2 these interviews.
I guess if you were going to fit them in a pillar we would fit them into that like embracing the mess pillar because,
when we're having conversations with real business owners talking about the.
[1:47] You know ecosystem of their full business it's inevitably going to feel a little bit messy at times and I really want to allow that nuance and that.
Complexity to be present in the interviews because I feel like there's a lot of permission giving that.
These interviews will then give you as a listener to have complexity and nuance and mess in your own businesses.
And you know just like that's kind of hard sometimes to interview people that you know well because,
you know if you're interviewing someone you don't know at all there's a lot of curiosity that naturally comes forward and you can kind of suss out who they are and what they do and I sometimes forget,
how much I know about all three of these people and so I hope that I'm able to in these interviews give you a really nice.
Kind of pull back view of what's going on with them and their business but also go
deep and detailed and really get into the nitty-gritty at times with different topics I think I did this hopefully you'll agree so in today's episode I talk to Finn Schubert
I'll give you his bio and just a minute but Finn is such an amazing writer I just want to.
[3:12] Really shout from the rooftops to everyone who is interested in Reading.
In-depth personal essays and is interested in that sort of writing or wants to become a writer themselves to sign up for Fins sub stack newsletter it's one of my favorites to read every.
Weekend I'm someone who has signed up for a lot of newsletters over the years and I have unsubscribed from a lot of newsletters over the years,
and fins newsletter as one that I even though I haven't been on it for years and years because it's
still you know in it's somewhat fairly you know early toddler stage I really enjoy reading it and although it is not business related at all,
I'm constantly being able to like pull little threads from what he writes and see how they.
[4:06] Kind of reflect in my own experience or my business even though we have very different lived experiences in our lives so,
with that all being said it's probably not surprising that what we're going to be talking about today is narrative threads in business because Finn is a Storyteller and is a writer and that was,
a really natural progression for our conversation that I'm going to be sharing with you today.
So let me tell you a little bit more about Finn
Finn Schubert who uses he/him pronouns is the author of even the cemeteries have space here an essay collection exploring his move from New York City to a small town to grieve his infertility.
In a weird twist he got pregnant as soon as the book came out.
[4:55] He is a moth story Slam winning Storyteller and his writing has appeared in the body
lit star review and the anthologies transcending trans Buddhist voices and places like home
he writes a weekly essay newsletter titled the menstrual n't exploring the question what does it mean to be a gay man who loves having a uterus right now pregnancy Edition.
Since background is in public health and he most recently worked as the Director of an HIV services for a large community health center Network in Brooklyn prior to transitioning to freelance Consulting last year
he offers speaking and workshops regarding lgbtq plus health
trans and non-binary inclusion in the workplaces and spiritual communities and public health program design and evaluation
Finn currently lives in New York City and is at work on an essay collection,
I really hope that you find your own narrative thread as you listen to this interview today all right enjoy
alright I'm thrilled to be joined today by my friend and my Community member Finn Schubert Finn I've been kind of starting these conversations with a nice deep breath
should we take a bath together yes please okay so let's just.
[6:20] Breathe in as big as we can if that's what feels good for our bodies and then let out a big sigh.
[6:28] Letting my shoulders drop and.
I always feel comfortable in conversation with you and we have conversations all the time we just get to record this one so it's exciting.
Yeah so then do you wanna introduce yourself and tell folks you know who you are and what you do or who you help.
[6:48] Absolutely it's so I'm Finn I use he/him pronouns I'm calling in from the not pale and here in New York City and I like to say that I'm a writer a Storyteller and a consultant.
What that means for me right now is that I put out weekly essays to my subset community and that helps people redefine how they look at narratives or how they look at.
I think for different people gender pregnancy.
Queerness game and menstruation like a lot of stuff so I think I see that as sort of a service even though it's not a paid service.
And then in my paid professional work right now a lot of my Consulting focuses on helping people to.
No things in different ways so I do certain types of evaluation I do certain types of quality improvement and clarity.
But the way that they come together which I think.
[7:54] A lot of people kind of see a sort of one thing as being very like dry and one thing is being very.
You know narrative the way that they come together is kind of how do we put structures on what we know and how do we allow ourselves to have structures that
ground us in our Authority regardless of where that Authority comes from.
So that's what I'll start with oh that's just gives us so much to work with so I'm very excited to expand from here but so
you know I'm familiar with your work and your kind of trajectory over time but the folks listening aren't as familiar can you you know I know that you've been a writer.
Maybe you haven't held that identity fully as a writer for your whole life but you've been a writer you know your whole life and while
it wasn't always your professional work it's kind of moving in that direction in some ways you recently
published a book which is very exciting so can you tell us a little bit about that identity in that history and that,
trajectory over time.
[9:03] Absolutely so I've always loved to write but I felt like I had to do something else professionally.
So I went and got a master's degree in public health.
[9:16] And the reason that I did that is actually because I was interested in the narratives.
That we have around trans Health around abortion care and other types of the stigmatized healthcare.
And I was tired of people kind of pointing at data that clearly came from narratives that I felt in service or assumptions that I felt in service,
so even though I had not taken a math class since I was 16 years old,
I signed up to take essentially four semesters of graduate level biostatistics and I came about is your grave that is really Brave I don't think I could have done that
I'm proud of it and so I came out the other side and before.
Starting a business or before it kind of going out of my own I was most recently employed as a HIV program director and so I did that 2018 through 2021.
And.
[10:19] I loved that I loved building a community I love using data to really improve the public health of people in my neighborhood,
I love the way that we did Community engagement I love the type of care that we were providing and I was really proud of that but I was also getting burnt out.
And I was also kind of coming into a place in my spiritual and creative life where I started to trust myself in a different way and so there were some shifts in my spiritual life actually,
that led me to trust myself that you know my writing is important.
You know my writing doesn't just have to be something I do for fun or to indulge myself that you are writing,
in your other job right like you have academic your author done lots of academic journals studies and stuff like that aren't you,
oh absolutely yeah I have a lot of academic Publications on topics ranging from contraceptives to car crashes
and also of course I think my love for narrative really served me because
you know writing grants or running a program you have to enroll people in a narrative of what your program is doing and I think that was part of why I was very good at that job.
[11:35] Um
But it took a lot of Creative Energy and I wanted to focus on my writing even if that meant that I was going to kind of take a little bit of a backseat in this other area of my professional life.
And so I ask myself how can I do that and I had to do a lot of permissioning and I think that that is something that you,
talked a lot about and that you've helped me with at that time I had to really think like is it okay to give up this very stable career type job that I've essentially
work towards for 10 years in order to find a different way to support myself and to allow more creative energy for my writing
and so that was something that I was kind of making that shift about a year ago and fall 2021,
and that's a really big leap you know not only is a big leap
you know from an identity perspective but it's a big leap you know you were living in New York City like one of the most expensive cities in the world and so there is a lot of,
self permissioning a lot of trusting a lot of Leaping in all of those decisions that you're making.
[12:48] Yeah and I do feel like sometimes once you acknowledge that you want something things kind of help align,
so certain things that occurred during 2021 that seemed really bad at the time,
help me to lay the groundwork for that permissioning so I had this like issue with like ATM fraud that I was just like why did this happen to me but I was able to get the money back and it also led me to,
like take a better look at my finances and might be a little bit more clear about what my needs were so it was actually kind of touched off a necessary sort of pre step,
firmly to permission myself and then of course for me to leave this job I was going to have to give up this apartment that I loved which was really sad for me I was going to move out of the city you know and so.
[13:44] Conveniently I got like the world's worst downstairs neighbors.
So suddenly I didn't mind leaving as much as I thought that I would.
What a little synchronicity,
just like little Spirit like popping in little things to help nudge us along the way is usually like what I think of that yeah well okay so then you left New York City and then what happened.
[14:11] So I left New York City in January of this past year.
And at the time my goal was to create a business helping people to work on their career in a different way,
and looking back on this now I see how,
my general theme of wanting to look critically at narratives and shift them really played into it
so at the time you know I only had this other sort of corporate health care professional life to go on I said what do I really enjoy about my current job
I really enjoy providing coaching to my team members I really enjoy helping people too,
do professional development and I really enjoy talking to people about how they can strategically make change.
In a workplace environment that's disempowering I think that often sort of conventional.
Ways of looking at Power our that oh well if you don't have a certain title if you can't really get anything done
and I like to kind of flip that and say what's available to you in this situation what are your ingredients and who do you have to influence and how can you influence them and so.
You know kind of using that different framework it's it can be possible to get a lot of things done that don't look possible and so I wanted to really talk about that.
[15:40] So I got started with that but I think that.
[15:47] I ended up learning that I didn't want to do the amount of self-promotion it takes to have like a one-to-one client based business or to run sort of small groups or classes because I was really starting with no platform around them.
Sounds like a business-to-consumer sort of model was like not really what you were looking for at the time.
Yeah cuz I think that I just didn't understand what went into that.
And in terms of that it would take a lot of my Creative Energy to put things out to build my audience.
Before I could really draw an income from that kind of work yeah and meanwhile I had professional contacts from my previous career who were more than happy to hire me to do things related to that.
And in terms of like program design Consulting evaluation Consulting and all of that was perfectly interesting to me and also they very convenient and straightforward to do.
Um and but I felt kind of like oh this isn't what I set out to do and so that didn't feel very good.
And ultimately.
[17:01] What I had to do was essentially to think about like why was I even doing this and.
You know we can talk a little bit about the role that breathwork had in that but yes please well too.
[17:20] What ultimately so.
[17:23] You know I signed up for your incubator program because I was really ready to double down on my career coaching business,
I was like I'm tired of kind of like doing a million different things with like
you know my former professional life and like why have I knock on this off the ground I probably just have like a mindset and visibility problem and Mycologist
you know like really invest in myself and in being with a cohort and being with you and that will like solve this for me
and I was excited to really make that commitment and I will never forget that,
part of that was the has breath works that we would do and one of them was around imagining envisioning and I remember I was like,
you know this is this is what I'm really going to get it together
and so I don't usually do this her breath work but I like I had like my stuffed animal and like my crystals and like all this stuff and I set up like this little
like nest and usually I really don't but I was like this is when it's all going to like download and I'm finally going to have this business and what downloaded instead.
Was that my you know my ancestor is kind of had told me years ago.
[18:42] When I was trying to get my life together a little bit.
Like I had this sort of dream or Journey where they had given me a feather and.
Stick and the feather was supposed to be like a quill like you're too right and the sick was supposed to be.
Claiming your spiritual power because that represented spiritual power in the tradition I was in at the time and so I had these two things.
[19:15] And during this breathwork I was like reminded of that and I was like,
yeah they were kind of like there's no career coaching in here you know you're supposed to claim your spiritual power and write like this could not have been any more clear and so here I am trying to invest all this creative energy into something that.
[19:35] I was only doing so that I could support my writing but I wasn't even making any money at it and it like was drawing down my Creative Energy so I had to be like this isn't actually what I set out to do.
And it was a little hard because I made this whole thing I would like this when I'm doing now,
I remember getting a message from you afterwards and there was like a little bit of like whoa that was intense yeah and I,
you know and I had just kind of signed up for this intensive sort of coaching
with the idea that I was going to build this one business but I feel that you know through breathwork and for working with you like I was just like I'm not going to deny that this is what,
I found out.
And so then I had to do a lot of work to permission myself to really send her my writing and to be okay that,
you know my paid work was a little bit.
You know like all over the place or you know not necessarily as concrete and packaged of the businesses I was maybe hoping to have.
[20:41] So like
the in all of this permissioning not only are you like permissioning to Center the thing that like has been kind of whispering on your shoulder for a long time to really have Center Stage but in doing so there's the also the permissioning of like.
Letting things fall back a little bit that had been so far forward and I bet that felt really scary and so,
you know tell me a little bit about how you work through some of that well I think that.
[21:16] One of the things that I think about in my work with narrative or how I think about narrative is that.
[21:24] Sometimes we think we're in one story and we're actually in a different story.
And conventionally like with these sort of hero's journey metaphor is when that happens it's like we're a failure but sometimes we needed to be in that story and it's just,
the overall narrative isn't the shape that we thought it was going to be
and so with this like I needed that idea that I was going to do career coaching to give myself permission to quit my job,
I did cuz like I couldn't it was too big of a leap to be like I'm going to quit my job and like literally focus on my writing and just take and kind of piecemeal paid work,
well there's not just like the narrative that we tell ourselves but it's also like the narrative that we tell other people so if like if other people are like oh you're leaving your job will what are you going to do instead you know like there's this narrative like we're leaving this to do this better thing and there's like
almost like it has to make,
cognitive sense to other people even if for us were like okay this doesn't fully make cognitive sense but I still know that it's the direction that I'm supposed to go and so like how do we explain that.
Absolutely you know a phrase that I heard over and over as I was quitting my job was I hope you're on to something bigger and better.
[22:40] And I really had that like that it kind of like makes your body be like oh like that's so much pressure.
I know it was so much pressure and you know I think.
[22:54] I think everyone thought that I wouldn't leave my job unless I was going to get more money and more Prestige elsewhere and I got really less of those things but that was what I wanted.
And you got so much else which like will get cheer like later but like there's so much else that did come forward for you absolutely.
[23:14] Okay I love that there's something that you wrote actually in one of your most recent sub stack articles if we didn't
I mentioned this already Finn has an amazing sub stack newsletter that you can subscribe to will have the link in the show notes there's a lot about narratives in there and one of the lines that you wrote recently I actually like put it in my little notes here because I loved it so much.
And it basically has to do with like how do I make sure to separate the stories that I tell from necessity like for advocacy reasons,
from those that feel most personal most true and most alive and so like how are you kind of like Discerning what narratives you're sharing publicly versus keeping private and letting that,
kind of move through you at its own Cadence.
[24:09] Yeah and I think that practicing being with my body is the most important thing in that.
So another little fact about me that we haven't gotten to is that.
An early 20:22 I was working on a series of essays and I ultimately published them in a book that was called.
Even I'm holding areas have space here I'm holding it up right now I love it I have a signed copy it's great and a lot of that was about my move out of the city to grieve my infertility,
I had tried to have a baby several years ago and I wasn't able to and part of my choices that we've talked about was because I thought I'm not going to have a child so let me see what else.
I can sort of do with the the energy and other resources that that makes available to me even though I'm very sad about it.
[25:12] So I came out with that book and then I found out I was pregnant,
- why is super exciting narrative twist a narrative twist super exciting and super confusing
but mostly happy and exciting
and so because I identify as a trans man this is an area where I can invited into a lot of different narratives like oh this is so unusual this is so interesting you must
really be feeling a certain kind of way about that and.
[25:48] So I have to make sure that I understand what's actually interesting to me what do I think is interesting about my pregnancy
and if that has to do with my gender then maybe it does and if it doesn't have to do with my gender then maybe it doesn't and just because someone else may think that the gendered aspect of my pregnancy is
the most interesting doesn't mean I have to think that way and so I have to really remember which stories.
Are helpful to me and which story is are helpful to some other purpose like advocacy or something like that so that I don't get confused.
And so as this is kind of playing out for you I mean you're.
[26:36] Your essays your newsletter your you know real practice and ritual because you
are really great at sharing consistently and we'll talk about kind of consistency and writing practices and what not in a minute but you know that all originated for you.
Like I know that you share them publicly but they were very like intimate essays that as a reader they felt like they were
for your own healing but that you are gifting them to us to share them like publicly so that we could witness them and so then I can imagine that as
these narratives are changing and through your pregnancy in these the way you're talking about things and what narratives
feel necessary to share in a more advocacy way like how does that change
what you're sharing you know is it still for you or is it turning more to be for the
reader now that there are so many more readers because your readership has grown over this time like you've you've grown your Writing Practice you've birthed a book you are going to be birthing a baby soon you have you know expanded in so many different ways so I'm curious about how that
maybe intention has stayed the same or shifted at all.
[27:53] Well I think so these assays started in January and I just started writing these little things about my move and posting them on Facebook and I started getting.
You know feedback like people were resonating they had thoughts about it and so then I made the sub stack so I could share it a little bit more widely
and in a sense they're very personal because they are about me and I'm usually sort of processing something that feels very present for me
and usually in the act of writing I get more insight about it but at the same time it's.
Not in the sense that I only put out work when it's at a place when it feels like an offering,
when I feel that it has something to offer to someone else and there's a lot of personal topics that I don't write about very much at all
and so as I have kind of prioritized growing this newsletter and writing in a more public way I have to remember that the writing I put in public isn't all the writing I want to do.
[29:03] And that there are topics that I don't put in public but then I might want to write about.
And so that's a that's a new area for me because again there's this narrative like oh you're writing is so personal it's so vulnerable which it is but I need to not hear that and think that,
what I put out is all of my sort of writing or creative life if that makes sense.
Yeah I think what was it maybe like burn a brown talks about this or something like the difference between what's personal and what's private or something like that and that sounds kind of like what you're speaking to.
[29:41] Yeah yeah and so I think what I put out is always intended as an offering,
and I only put things out when I feel that they have something to offer someone else but I need space for my like Brands I need space to write about things that.
I do feel to cringing a personal and so making sure that I set aside writing time just for that has been a new part of my Writing Practice,
so let's talk about your Writing Practice it's something that I've always really admired about you.
Is I don't want to like put any pressure on your shoulders for this because I know that like we all have our our gaps in our own rituals or our practices and that there is no problem with that whatsoever like we all get to take the space that we need
in that but I've always been really impressed by your.
Commitment to your writing practice so is that something you've always had or like what scum what's the evolution of that.
[30:44] The biggest lesson for me this year is that I don't do,
okay keeping with my writing anymore so before I made this commitment to myself to put on an essay every week I used to spend months
writing a single essay writing like two thousand words
and then I would you know send it to for feedback I would workshop at I'd send it to a lint mag and then you know three months later I get a rejection and I was just like oh I guess my work isn't good enough yet.
And when I started just putting my work out there I realized that the goal is to connect with readers and,
you know it may not be perfect but it's good enough that there are people who resonate with it who want to read it who want to recommend it to their friends and discuss it with their friends and that's what's important to me and so I didn't realize that.
[31:40] Before you know I assumed that at some point I would like level up and.
Then I would be like some kind of real writer and that that would be given to me by having my work accepted somewhere like I don't even know exactly what I imagined.
Kind of like I
it's almost feels like you there was that more traditional publishing sort of trajectory that you thought that that's what you had to go on
and then something clicked for you and you're like oh wait it doesn't have to be that way I can do this differently.
Yes exactly because I realized what I most wanted was to connect with an audience and have people who wanted to read what I had to say.
And that's something that I have now I know you have a piece I can't remember what the name is it off the top of my head but that's like the gift of
of claiming your identity as a writer what's that piece again do you want to tell us about it because that's like one of my favorite and I think it's probably one of your most popular ones I know a bunch of people have shared it around.
[32:48] Yeah I'm being a real writer.
That was about this very thing and how I came to that and I remember I started that piece I think saying
you know I spent so much time worrying about being a man without a cock that I haven't spent any time worrying about not being a real writer which isn't exactly true but I do think that.
My experience around my gender where I had to just be like I get to decide what feels real for me.
Has helped me and other areas to be able to offer myself that same permission a little bit more easily.
And later in that piece I do talk about my experience of going to naked events for gay men
which I have another piece all about as well but basically that the first time I went to one of these events,
you know one guy was like oh you know I feel sorry for you it must be so hard for you to have anyone to be with and another guy like got my number.
And so that was just a reminder to me that you know we're just not for everyone and but,
we don't have to be and we get to decide like which of those were going to put more weight on.
[34:06] And I mean that's like narratives right there like the narrative that we want to believe in that moment.
Exactly exactly and that can change moment-to-moment the other thing I will say is that I came.
I remember coming to one of your quarterly planning events that you would do.
[34:29] And I have recently written that piece and somebody is like message me about how much they appreciated him.
And then it was time for breathwork and I realized how much shame I had held about not being a real business owner.
And that even though I had permission myself in so many other ways I felt like this was an area that I wasn't real,
and so I think over the next several months I was able to kind of work on that as well.
[34:57] That's beautiful and I know that thanks for sharing that right now.
I mean you are definitely a real business owner I mean I mean let's just look at tax time when you do your taxes here like this is the money I brought in like look at me I'm a business owner there's some concrete evidence right here yeah but it is.
It is interesting like how we can hold these stories are these narratives of like what it means to be quote-unquote real
and then insert whatever whatever you want to insert there whether it's a business owner or a man or a woman or a writer or like any sort of descriptor there so
I know that when you got pregnant it really.
It really did something to your own concept of your narrative and so if you feel comfortable sharing you know how that,
how that affected your own view of narratives and how you like worked through that I think that would be really interesting to hear.
Absolutely I think.
[36:09] Just to kind of really set the scene here when I found out I was pregnant I had just signed a lease and moved.
To a new place and I walked in the door of that place and I was like this is where I will write my book
and I had significant work done on a book proposal that was about
combining my infertility and my relationships with like we're ancestors who died of AIDS and those were like the two main themes of this book that was about like.
Sort of grief and loss and being.
[36:45] Wound together in my own trans body and this is a book that separate than the one we just talked about what the collection of essays like this was going to be the next book yeah
yes that's what's going to be the next step this was going to be the big book I've really built on the work that I had already done and expanded it.
And so I just had a very clear sense of like finally I have arrived I have a new place I'm going to write this book and that's when I found out that I was pregnant.
And I was really excited because I literally did not think that I could get pregnant.
And I still wanted to have a baby and my partner and I were excited we were long distance because I was wanting to have some space for this book
but it also meant that I had to say goodbye to this other dream that I had spent a long time living my way into and maybe,
you know one could look at and be like well that was your second choice dream you went to been there if you thought you could have got pregnant or whatever but still I had a lot invested in it well time and emotionally and I feel like.
[37:55] In general with infertility narratives they attend to.
[38:01] Be problematic and a lot of ways like you know suddenly if you are able to have a baby in whatever way it's supposed to like erase everything or at least mostly payoff and late that wasn't how I felt.
And I did feel some grief and also just like regular stress about the changes that I was going to have to make.
To my life and so that felt very difficult.
And I didn't feel that there was necessarily a lot of space to acknowledge them.
[38:35] And so how how did you like move through that and like you know under with the understanding that narratives.
[38:43] You know narratives sometimes in like a book form have a start a middle and an end but like narratives In Our Lifetime are like,
keep going until we die or keep going if we are you know you know famous and they talk about us for Millennia what not but so like how is that working for you right now.
[39:04] Well I think I just had to be very comfortable with the idea that.
[39:10] I was having an experience that maybe I wasn't seeing represented or that needed to be private for a while I didn't really write publicly over the summer because it was just too much to process,
and now I am very interested in other narrative shapes,
so there's my essay against the linear Narrative of pregnancy because I got so tired of this idea like
you know my baby's the size Montagna now is the size of a mango and then like I'm going to give birth and
it's just like I really felt like a male orgasm like I felt like oh like you really bigger and bigger and then you like explode and I was just like I don't,
I feel like this is a shape that I want this story to have and I was kind of saying like it's like with a flower,
it would be like if you took the flower from when it came out of the ground to when it was in full bloom but that's not the life cycle of a plant.
So how can I make the lens wider or how can I suggest that the narrative has other shapes you know,
I love staying Allison's book Meander spiral explode I love some of Ariel Gore's work about narrative patterns.
[40:29] And so they allowed me to think what else could this be how else could I look at that and I don't think I have an answer to that.
But they allowed me to have more spaciousness in terms of how it was holding my experience.
[40:44] Yeah and then I am going to make an assumption here feel free to correct me but I'm guessing that
the permission to change the shape of the narrative in your fertility Journey also has given you permission to change the shape of the narrative in your
business journey of like what that looks like how you work in business like where you show up publicly visually all those things and because I know that like you're your
business and your expertise and how you've chosen to show up in a more visible way like as a writer you know they're they're separate but there's also overlap there and so kind of you know how has that.
How is that working for you right now.
[41:30] You know I think it's kind of like a muscle so this is like an area that I've essentially been working on all year.
And so when I practice it a little bit in one area then I have a little more capacity and all the other areas.
[41:48] And I think that that's helpful for me to think of also because.
I have had some challenges around my gender and my pregnancy I'm in a fairly significant issue where my insurance is not paying for things because I'm legally nail and that's very stressful.
But like I transitioned over 10 years ago so.
[42:14] I remind myself like I have built up some self-advocacy muscles are on this
and I'm able to reflect you know I was able to successfully have this conversation in 2015 or whatever and so I think it's very important to.
Just feel like each of these things draws on each of the other things.
Yeah I mean I know you're familiar with like my
kind of underlying philosophy that you know work in life are inextricably tied in ways that we don't always understand and I think that that's true in even broader context of than just saying work in life you know there we can find all of these threads that connect
different parts of our lives or different parts of ourselves to each other and it sounds like that's what you're doing right now like really calling upon certain parts of one part of your life to support you and other parts of your life or in your work.
Yeah yeah I love that.
[43:15] As we get close to our time here I would just love to hear maybe like
one really reflection that you have about like breath work and you know that you shared the story before about the imagining envisioning breath work that you did and the
the really big downloads that came through for that but you know
what was your like initial experience trying breath Rogue like how did you respond to it the first time or like what's a another kind of surprising story that you have around breathwork.
[43:49] Yeah I think.
[43:53] So for many years over a decade I had a fairly rigorous meditation practice.
And that was in the Zen tradition so it was about being very still.
And that's served me well for a while until it didn't and so at the time that I found breathwork I was really wanting
have a practice spiritually that was more based in self-trust and that was going to help me be in a closer relationship with my body and my intuition.
And I went to a.
Early in the pandemic I went to an online breathwork session with someone else and I found it very intense and my hands like cramped up completely.
And you know people say that that's normal but they are not necessarily said it like currently sitting alone in their living room and their hands are not functioning and so.
I really felt like oh I'm intrigued by this practice I think there's something here but also like this does not feel,
like a good container for me this feels a little overwhelming and so.
[45:09] When I encountered your work and you had sort of a breathwork series that could be done daily and it was like less than 10 minutes that felt like a much,
better,
more accessible entry point for me because I was like I can do 10 minutes and I don't have to choose the playlist and so you know I felt that you were able to kind of create this bridge for me to engage this practice in a.
You know eventually I got around to doing longer sessions again but in a way that felt much more inviting and safe.
Yeah well I can imagine you know one of the things I think breathwork does so well is it helps us let go
you know we're letting go emotionally we're letting go energetically were maybe Letting Go verbally and audibly and with like physical releases
and I think when you found breathwork it was around this time that you were
being invited to like let go of a lot of things you know the identity the apartment you know the job all of these things and so I can see how breathwork what felt like a really appropriate tool at the time as part of this Letting Go process.
Yeah yeah absolutely.
[46:26] Well one question that I'm asking everybody here is what does running a spirit or like intuitive lead business mean to you.
[46:40] I think we discussed that a lot through examples but I guess I'll say that.
It has to do with how I make decisions and what feels important to me so I will tell you for sure when I quit my job I was like I got to have some metrics here,
you know em for a while like I did because that was the only framework that I had,
you know I was like I got to spend this money hours working and I got to make like this many dollars and you know otherwise it's a failure and
so as I learned a greater level of self trust and learn to engage more of an intuitive business
I felt comfortable to let decisions be guided by other things.
By how things felt in my body I felt comfortable to try things that were not going to immediately sort of payoff and whatever metrics I had said and I just felt more open that,
the overall story of my business was going to be bigger and wilder than what I could imagine for myself.
[47:53] That hard to let go of like the data being a data guy I mean in so much of your academic work is really based in so much data and analytics and what not.
[48:04] So here's the thing I do feel that.
In my previous professional life people were very surprised to hear that I also had an active spiritual life and in my previous spiritual Community people were a little surprised about what I did for work
and it all comes down to ways of knowing and being in our Authority so.
Actually one of my favorite things I ever did in my previous professional life was I got this small Grant to teach research methods to hospital chaplains.
And I would sit down with them on the first day and I would ask them what they thought about research and they'd say.
[48:47] You know you can lie with numbers like stories are the way to go I don't really want to be here you know and I would say you're right.
And I actually had this handout that I got somewhere that had like different ways of knowing laid out with their pros and cons.
And I would say you know you can lie with numbers but also it's easier to talk to someone about numbers you know intuitive experiences in some ways more trustworthy and it could be harder to talk about or could be you could be mistaken for anxiety or whatever.
And so realizing that there are all these ways of knowing available and they all have pluses and minuses and feeling like I can draw on all of those tools has been really important to me.
Mmm I love that.
I love thinking about like all the varied ways of knowing because there are so many ways and we don't have to only ever rely on just one of them.
[49:48] Yeah that's beautiful thank you then can you tell folks where they can find you.
[49:56] Yes my favorite thing that I love to share is my sub stack which is just thin Schubert dotsub stack.com.
[50:06] Schubert SC h u v ER t i publish essays every Saturday I'm also on Instagram at Finish Uber rights.
So those are the main places and I would love I love it when people.
Read my essay is and let me know what they think so we have a pretty active comment section 2 which is great.
Yeah I will wholeheartedly endorse your sub stack I get to read it every weekend I like to like cozy up with a cup of tea and read it and you know
for those of you who are loving fins writing I also want to really highly endorse the collected essays
buck that even the cemeteries have space here because it's a beautiful read and it's one that feels when I read it it just feels.
It's funny because like it has the word space in the name but it feels spacious and I think that's really intentional and so in this hectic
modern overwhelming life that most of us live it can be really nice to have even small things that make us feel a little bit more spacious so thank you for that Fenn.
[51:20] Thank you for that the book is available for purchase on my website finish uber.com and my illustrator and I
spent a lot of time making the book feel spacious that's what we wanted and it feels so good when people say it felt that way and so one of the reasons the book shines is the illustrations from Jay and the Catskills.
Yeah amazing well thank you so much for being here today it was a pleasure getting to record this conversation with you.
Yes likewise thank you.
[51:55] Thanks so much for listening today if you liked this episode or even if it just got you to think about your business a little bit differently.
I'd love for you to subscribe to the show and share it with a business bestie or a few of them.
And if you're interested in giving yourself a bit more permission to get messy in your own business.
Head on over to the show notes to download my free coaching module on embracing the mess,
in it I share my thoughts invite you to write and reflect and offer some actions you can take to start embracing and loving the Messier parts of yourself and your business.
[52:32] Breathe into business is recorded on the ancestral lands of the Dakota and anishinabe peoples.
It's created by me Amy kuretsky with the production help from softer sounds Studios thanks again for listening and breathing into your business with me today.
