Jessica Schafer on Poetry and Self Care | Sacred Sundays

Ross Tayler: Hi, I'm Ross Tayler. Welcome to Sacred Sundays, a space to slow down, tune in, and return to what's sacred within and around you. Some weeks you'll hear a sound bath offering to open the space, other times we'll simply begin in conversation. However it unfolds, this is an invitation into presence, connection, and the beauty of the unseen. So pour a cup of tea, settle in, and let's begin.

[Opening offering: Jessica Schafer reads Mary Oliver's poem To Begin with, the Sweet Grass.]

Ross Tayler: The offering you just heard was Jessica Schafer sharing Mary Oliver's poem To Begin with, the Sweet Grass. Jessica is a poet, psychotherapist, and mother. She has been a listener her whole life and wholeheartedly believes in the power of compassionate presence, with ourselves and with others. Jessica has a master's in counseling psychology and a certificate in spiritual direction. She is the founder of My Inner Harbour, a community self care space in Nanaimo, BC. Her vision is to help others rest, reflect, and reconnect by providing a space for meaningful self care and community connections. Jessica's favorite spiritual practices are time at the beach, poetry, and being with friends. I'm honored to welcome Jessica to the Sacred Sundays podcast.

Jessica Schafer: Thanks, Ross. It's so good to be here.

Ross Tayler: I met Jessica in August of last year when I was visiting Nanaimo and deciding whether I wanted to move here. It was such a great experience to attend your self care workshop, and it was definitely a connection that I knew I wanted to follow up on when I arrived in Nanaimo, which I eventually chose to do. Since then I've really enjoyed doing some talks at My Inner Harbour, and I also host a men's group there.

Jessica Schafer: When I met you last year, I kind of kept my ear to the ground with our mutual friend about, is Ross coming? Is he not coming? Will this be happening? When you arrived, I knew that we definitely needed to connect, both to collaborate and also personally, just to be in touch.

Ross Tayler: Absolutely. Let's talk about that beautiful poem that you shared. Perhaps you could start by sharing what it is that speaks to you in that particular poem.

Jessica Schafer: I think there are so many threads that could be pulled out of this poem.

Ross Tayler: I would agree.

Jessica Schafer: The first time I read it, there were two couplets that really struck me. One was the line, look and look again, this world is not just a little thrill for the eyes. The other, a little further down in the poem, was, we do one thing or another, we stay the same or we change, and that line, congratulations if you have changed. I remember reading that and feeling this huge sense of relief, because for many different reasons in my life, change has not always been perceived by others as a good thing. To have that sense of external validation, congratulations if you've actually changed, it's like, thank you. Those would be the two big things.

Ross Tayler: That's big. I flagged some of those lines that you shared as well. One that stood out for me was the witchery of living. I thought that was really potent. And just the overall reflection of nature. I very much find nature to be a source of inspiration and wisdom and all sorts of things, so the overall theme of reflections from nature I found really nourishing as well.

Jessica Schafer: Yes. The blessing of the earth is this reliability, but also the finery. Both of those things bless us. One of the things about poetry, and why it's one of my favorite spiritual practices, and also why I think it lends itself to self care for me, is that it forces you to notice the little details. All the little details she brings up, like the specific mention of the wrist and its personal pulse. I would never normally just think about my wrist, but a poem makes you pause and say, yeah, look at that wrist and that little pulse that you can see sometimes beating. Or the scarlet trumpets with the hummingbirds. It forces you to slow down and really observe and notice what's around you, and that's where you get to see beauty and experience joy. If you haven't slowed down enough, you miss those things. You miss that beauty.

Ross Tayler: There were so many parts of the poem that sparked my visual sense. I would go off on these tangents of memories and places where I had experienced that before. I actually had to re-listen to the poem a few times to take it in, because I kept going off on these little inner journeys as I was listening.

Jessica Schafer: I think that's actually deliberate, in a sense. Some poems are very cohesive, where the whole poem is telling the same story, so you read it from start to finish and have a sense of completion. But poems like this take you on a million different tangents, and that is the whole point. There are a million different sparks that we can follow that could nourish us if we just stopped and paid attention. Even just pausing in the woods, going for a walk, you could see ten different things in that one little space that catch your eye and are beautiful, and then there's, which one am I going to follow? Is there something I want to pick up here?

Ross Tayler: I walk a lot in the forest, and I often walk in the same places, and I often wonder, does anybody else notice the feather that I just saw? Does anybody else notice the mushrooms growing in the corner of that tree? I had a funny experience this morning just before we met. The sun was shining through the back of a fairly large stump in such a way that from the front, through the opening, you could see the light inside the stump. Kind of magical. I actually had to go off the path to take some photos of it. A fellow was walking by and he said, do you know what that is? I immediately knew he wasn't seeing what I was seeing. He wanted to teach me about the notch in the tree where the springboard had been put in so that they could cut the tree down. I just thought it was so interesting. There I am taking this beautiful photo of the sun shining through, and this fellow noticed something completely different and maybe didn't even notice the light in the tree. That's one of the things that reflected for me in the poem, all these things we can bring attention to, and we all see something different.

Jessica Schafer: Yeah, it's that look and look again. You looked once and saw the light, and somebody else looked and saw this notch. If you looked again, you'd probably find a mushroom on the base of the tree, or the light would have shifted and suddenly something else would have been illuminated. So there's that constant invitation to pause and notice again, and not just be like, yep, saw that, all done.

Ross Tayler: Absolutely. Jessica, I think you've kind of alluded to it already, but say a little more about how poetry relates to your experience of engaging the sacred.

Jessica Schafer: That's a good question. So much of my childhood experience of the sacred was shaped by what I'll call nonfiction, or facts. I was taught facts. I feel like the poetry, or the mystical experience of something greater than ourselves, of the divine, maybe wasn't emphasized in how I was taught. When I started having some of these moments of awe, moments where I was just blown away by the world, like you talk about seeing the light in that stump, I remember vividly a very early morning drive. I was probably in my early teens, and it was probably 4:30 in springtime, with the light just barely starting, and there was fog, mist rising off the fields we were driving past. I was just so captivated by how beautiful it was, early morning, sunrise, this mist over farmers' fields, lonely, with not a lot of people around. That kind of experience of awe, of gratitude, of being so present to your surroundings, and also connecting that moment to something beyond yourself, wasn't something I had a lot of language for.

So I started writing poetry as a teen, trying to capture some of these moments, writing down how they looked or what was profound about them, and noticing that a very specific image, fog rising off the field, would take my brain into other places, like the metaphor that came from it, that sense of a broader truth or a broader spiritual experience that comes out of a very specific moment. That's something poetry does brilliantly. Poetry is so good at taking an image, like the hummingbirds drinking the sweetness, which we can see very clearly, hummingbird at a flower, and then relating it to a bigger truth, a grander experience that we can also relate to. So, being thrillingly gluttonous: what is it in my life that I drink up like a hummingbird? Maybe that's something I should think about. Poetry takes us from very minute, specific moments into reflective space, and there's so much possibility there. That's what I love. It also helped me see that, with all the facts I grew up with, there was room for a broader understanding of the sacred and the divine, and that there are many different ways to approach spiritual practice.

Ross Tayler: That's a beautiful description. I really love the connection to the divine and your spiritual connection with yourself as well as the world around you. Just before you said it, when you said thrillingly gluttonous, I was thinking of that very line, because it really is a powerful line. Hummingbirds are just so full of joy and wonder, and to see it in that lens is very unique. So how has poetry impacted the way that you show up? You mentioned a lot of what I would interpret as very left-brain ways of being when you were growing up, and then discovering these more right-brain, flowing moments, the complete opposite. How has that informed who you are in the world and how you work in the world?

Jessica Schafer: That's a great question. I think poetry has been really helpful for me to hold a both-and perspective. It's so easy to want to categorize and create binaries and have tidy categories for everything. As a mental health therapist for many years, there are a number of tools that we're given and taught that are very if X, then Y, A plus B plus C equals D. It was really helpful to have that balance, that everyone's personal experience is going to be unique and that has to be honored first. Maybe I can apply some of these strategies or tools I've been given, but only through their lens. Poetry helps you see that metaphors can be taken so many different ways. Everyone who reads a poem is going to pull out a different piece, and that flexibility is part of how I choose to show up in the world.

I try to be so aware that my own experience is my own experience and I can't extrapolate from me to anybody else. So I have to be really careful about listening, noticing, paying attention. What is somebody else telling me about themselves? What are they saying about who they are and how they want to be treated and what they need in this situation? How can I bring my perspective into that, or where is it appropriate and where is it not? What questions can I ask for clarification? Poetry gives you this stop, pause, pay attention, get really nitty-gritty. Find those little details. Notice how the stones underfoot shine. If you haven't really paid attention, you're not ready yet. So poetry makes me pay attention, and that's my first step anywhere.

Ross Tayler: I love what you said about flexibility and listening and noticing. It makes me think that your form of deep listening is very much rooted in all that you described. That form of deep listening is multifaceted and helps you uncover things, and helps your clients really benefit from it. Would you say that's true?

Jessica Schafer: Yeah, I think so, because I try to listen first without an agenda. What we're taught is to listen without an agenda. Don't listen for the answer you're going to give. Listen for what's being said, pause, reflect on it, and then respond. When you do that with someone, whether it's a close friend, a family member or a client, you give them space to hear themselves, because they're not immediately having to deal with your response or thinking, she's just going to come right back and say this. When you just hold what's being said, they can hear themselves and clarify for themselves, and that gives you even more clarity. This is something I love for myself as well. When I sit with my spiritual director, so much of the session is about, what did I say? That came out of my mouth. I wonder what I meant by that. Her job is really just to continue to reflect back to me, you said this, tell me more about that. I did say that, didn't I? It's hugely beneficial to be able to hear ourselves. A lot of us, especially if we like to process verbally, can't really know how we feel about something until someone else has witnessed it. That witnessing piece is poetry all over again. Poetry witnesses the world.

Ross Tayler: It reminded me of a card reading that was recorded at some point. Because I had listened to it on my phone, it came up in my playlist, and as I was driving, the session came back up. It was two years old. As I listened, I realized the practitioner had a completely different interpretation of what I had said, and there was no checking for understanding, and the reading went in a direction based on a complete misunderstanding. It was only because I happened to listen to it two years later that I realized that.

Jessica Schafer: Wow. How did you feel at the time? Do you remember?

Ross Tayler: At the time, because I was really searching for answers, there was just this assumption of clarity. I found it fascinating. Everything you're describing is very much the opposite of what I just described.

Jessica Schafer: Yeah, and I've definitely had those moments in sessions where I think I understand what's being said, but then it's my job to check. I think this is what you're saying, is this right, or have I got it wrong? That gives someone so much permission to come back and say, no, that's not actually what I meant.

Ross Tayler: Exactly. You mentioned working with your spiritual director, and your bio says you have a certificate in spiritual direction. I'm curious, for myself and the listeners, what exactly is that? Can you say more about spiritual direction?

Jessica Schafer: Spiritual direction is essentially a companionship model for your spiritual journey. It grew out of traditional religious settings, where monks and nuns would have a spiritual director in their monastery, a mentor they would check in with about their own spiritual life. It has evolved into a practice that covers everything from religious to not religious but spiritually in tune, in a variety of ways. For me it's a monthly check-in. I sit with my spiritual director to process my life and look at it through a sacred lens. What is occurring for me? What do I need to pay attention to? Where do I sense divine movements or sacred moments that I want to honor or need to listen to? It's a very flexible practice. You can make it very structured, and there are very structured formats in the traditional Catholic realm, and then it goes all the way out to where I feel I'm positioned, in the spiritual but not religious community, if you want to call it that.

Ross Tayler: As you're speaking about it, it makes me think about how you relate to poetry as well, because poetry is very much about observing and noticing, as we talked about earlier. It feels like that's what you're being invited to do when you sit with your spiritual director as well, observing what's happening in your life and in the world around you. Would you agree?

Jessica Schafer: Yes, absolutely. It is about noticing, and it's about witnessing together.

Ross Tayler: Early on you used the phrase, when we slow down enough, which I love because I say it all the time. It's a reflection of everything you just said as well. When we slow down, we start to notice things that have always been there, but we just haven't seen them because we're going so quickly.

Jessica Schafer: Yeah. I always talk about how you can't actually do meaningful self care, or any kind of meaningful spiritual work, in our day-to-day mind, our task list mind. You actually have to pause and sink into a slightly lower level of consciousness where you're watching yourself a little bit more, where you're like, I feel stressed about that. Huh. Then you have a chance to say, do I want to explore this further? Why do I feel stressed about that? Or if I don't want to explore it further, how do I help myself in the moment right now? What do I need to care for this stress right here? If we don't slow down enough, we can't get to that question. We just skip it. We're just like, I'm stressed, go, go, go, go. Then we don't actually do the care or the reflection that would help us process whatever's happening.

Ross Tayler: So many of the answers actually come from inside of us, not outside of us.

Jessica Schafer: Absolutely.

Ross Tayler: You're making me think of a body of work called The Gene Keys. Richard Rudd, who channeled the Gene Keys, created a little book called The Art of Contemplation. It's a tiny book packed with a guide on how to do what you just described, mapping out the steps of contemplation. It's such an important part of growing and learning about ourselves, because if we can't stop long enough, we don't get to connect with the things that are asking and wanting to change. Even something as simple as when we're feeling anxiety. We can focus on trying to make the feeling go away and look at all the tactics to change it. But if we just be with the feeling, name the sensation, and see it, like, I'm feeling anxious, hello, anxiety, it often goes away that quickly, because it just wants to be seen.

Jessica Schafer: It just wants to be acknowledged. It just wants to be affirmed that it's okay that it's there. Yep, something came up that caused anxiety. I see you. Thanks for being there. You're working.

Ross Tayler: Actually, yesterday I was feeling a little bit of anxiety, and I thought, wait a second, what's going on? What is this trying to inform me of? Because seemingly everything was fine. All I did was acknowledge it, just like you said, and allow it to be there, because it's not a bad part of me. Yes, it can be uncomfortable, but it's as much of a valuable sign as anything.

Jessica Schafer: Yeah, it's that understanding that emotions are information. You can do what you want with the information, but in and of itself it's almost a neutral thing. It's just there. It's just giving you data. When you look at it, you're like, okay, thanks, instead of, no, the data's there, run away, and then it's like, no, no, I still need you to know this stuff.

Ross Tayler: I experienced My Inner Harbour. I think you've curated a beautiful space that allows people to experience self care in meaningful ways. Perhaps you could say a little about how that came to be.

Jessica Schafer: As a therapist, especially in the last few years of my practice, I'm not currently practicing, I found myself working a lot with clients who fully understood the concept of self care, knew what they wanted to do for self care, really wished they could follow through on it more often, and just found that they couldn't. It was hard to get out the watercolors and actually sit there and paint. The journal sat on the bedside table collecting dust. It felt like, why can't I do this? As we dug deeper, we kept being curious, why is this so hard? What's really getting in the way here? So often it turned out to be logistics. Doing things at home, while it's comfortable and your own space, is sometimes also distracting, because there's laundry that has to be folded and dishes that need to be put away. Our busy minds, because we don't slow down enough, go to, I should just finish that quickly. Or if we have dependents at home, if we're caregiving for an elder or for children, there are really legitimate needs that might supersede our own. Mommy, I need this. You're in the middle of trying to journal and now you have to put it down.

So I started thinking, what if there was a place we could go, similar to a gym, where you can pop in, do your workout, and leave again, with none of those distractions of being at home? You can just focus, sink into that second level of consciousness, pause, listen to yourself and say, okay, what do I need today? That was the inspiration for My Inner Harbour, which is intended to be a calm, soothing, welcoming space where you can come in and do a variety of self care practices on your own time and then go home again, not have to clean up after yourself, and have all the materials provided. We have several rooms set up. There's a body room, where you can do breathing and mindfulness, and a mind room that's more cognitive, for working with values or journal prompts or reading. We have a spirit room for the intuitive, artistic, creative practices like collage, watercolor and coloring. And we do have the community room as well, because that was the second piece that really stuck out to me post-COVID, how lonely we are, how much we need human connection, how much we crave in-person community, and how hard it is to find community that feels purposeful or meaningful. So part of the intention was, what if we did our self care together, and you have that sense that there are other people who are working on themselves, investing time in themselves, and they're supporting me by doing their own work? What if we had that? That's the hope and the intention behind it. It's still very brand new. We just started, so I'm still feeling my way and hoping that it will become something that resonates further.

Ross Tayler: I know that I've certainly enjoyed the experience. I remember one day going into the spirit room and doing a collage. One of the things I really appreciated was that everything I needed was right there. I could really focus on the creative aspect and be free to create that collage. It took all the thinking part out of it, which was great. I've also really enjoyed the community room, both for hosting the men's group and for the different talks and speakers that you have. There's a real energy of connecting with like-minded people as well.

Jessica Schafer: Yeah, I have so enjoyed and appreciated your help with facilitating a number of different events that have sparked so much interest and conversation. People are so fed and nourished by a good, meaningful conversation, and that's delightful to see.

Ross Tayler: It's so true. We're at the end part where we need to wrap up, and I always like to close by asking a question. The question I want to ask you is, what is one simple way someone could connect with the sacred today?

Jessica Schafer: Well, I had twenty-five things pop into my head. I'm going to echo so many other mystics and spiritual beings over time and just say breath. Just taking a deep breath, preferably outside. A deep breath of fresh air.

Ross Tayler: I love the simplicity of that. Thank you.

Jessica Schafer: You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me, Ross.

Ross Tayler: You're welcome. For people who want to stay connected or explore more of your work, where's the best place for them to find you?

Jessica Schafer: We're on Instagram and Facebook at My Inner Harbour. Those would be the best places to connect.

Ross Tayler: Excellent, and we'll share those in the show notes. Thank you, Jessica. It was so great to have you here. And to everyone listening, thank you for tuning in. Until next time, take good care.

Jessica Schafer: Thanks, Ross.

Ross Tayler: Thank you for joining us here on Sacred Sundays. I hope something in today's offering spoke to your spirit, stirred something true, or simply gave you a moment to breathe. Feel free to share this episode with someone who might need it. Until next time, may your Sunday be slow and sacred. Bye for now.