Arielle Estoria is a guest on the podcast again, sharing some of her latest works from her book Unfolding, as well as personal insight into the journey that led her to those poems. She opens up about her awakening, where she describes shedding what doesn’t serve us and become the fullest version of ourselves.
In this episode we discuss the three types of fear that usually come up for women who are not used to prioritizing themselves, why it is vital that you start to acknowledge your inner knowings, and how change can be a very good thing. Plus, Arielle shares the thing you can do daily to get started right now on your own path to unfolding.
About a few other things…
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TRANSCRIPT
Monica: Ariella Astoria. Welcome back to About Progress.
Arielle: Thank you so much for having me.
Monica: I’m so pumped to have you here. I am such a fan of your work, but also just you as a human and to be able to see how much you have grown in the last few years since we last talked is so inspiring to me because I didn’t even think you needed to.
So it’s like, Hey, we can all keep spiraling up. If Arielle’s doing we can too.
Arielle: I’m like, we all kind of probably need to, so Yes.
Monica: are right. Especially the last few years taught us, we all need to grow up a little bit.
Arielle: Most definitely.
Monica: And your, your kind of way of framing this for yourself was an unfolding. And you wrote a book recently of the same name, the Unfolding, and we’re gonna be borrowing from this book because it’s something I feel like.
The pressure cooker of the last few years for all the women who are listening, we can’t ignore it, and we have to stop running away from it. And part of that is changing in a way where we are unfolding into who we are meant to be instead of trying to keep shape shifting into the shapes we’re supposed to be.
And so I would like to start with what your definition is of unfolding and what it means to you and how it’s looked for you in your
Arielle: Yeah. So. So, I mean, really I give a lot of the credit of the unfolding to probably a lot of my plants. You know, in Covid we all kind of picked up our own different hobbies and different things that we did. One of mine was collecting plants, so we’re going on like 40, 50. I don’t know. I’m starting to
Monica: Amazing.
Arielle: but there’s lots of them and they’re all around me.
I’ll grab this one right here. So I know that most of you won’t be able to see this, but if you have a plant either around you or if you have one next to you or just have an image of a plant in your mind, and when you think about the idea of a plant usually starts in this budded space. So this really closed in until it starts to bloom.
But we don’t talk about how when we bloom, What we’re actually doing is some pedicles are, are peeling away and dying away in order for the blooming to happen. So, so much of my unfolding was being this little bud of a human. And this is actually a fun one because this this plant has a new leaf
Monica: Oh yeah.
Arielle: This little budded leaf that is not full and blooming as the other ones. But there’s still a core to an existence in that little budded And as it continues to find the light, as it continues to find, it’s rooting and it’s grounding, it starts to unfold literally. And so much of it for me was feeling like I was this budded core of a person.
And yeah, I was shedding these layers and peeling back these personalities, these, not even personalities, but more so mindsets, perspectives ideologies, you know, conditioning on what I think I need to be and who I think I am supposed to show up as this world. And just releasing all of those, shedding all of those, and peeling back and, and, and, and finding myself, finding this.
Like fullest version of Arielle Estoria Lita Wilburn Corfee that exists today and right now. And so that, that was the conversation around the unfolding that we would allow ourselves the permission to peel back to shed what doesn’t serve and, and to become the fullest versions of ourselves.
Monica: I love that image. It’s so helpful. I mean, I often think about it as the butterfly breaking from the cocoon too.
Arielle: Love that.
Monica: no matter what it, there’s some element of pain there that we, we kind of like to avoid and tell. Sometimes we’re kind of pushed into it. And for you, you kind of gotta push share a little bit of your story there of what the push was for you as you leaned into this unfolding.
And then the awakening part that we’re gonna talk about in particular.
Arielle: Yeah. So what you find in the book is just a few ripples, if you will. I call them like these little tiny ripples. And this accumulation of the unfolding was the wave, the book that you see is the wave. It wa- it’s not the ripple. I think there, there are so many stories that I could have put into this to lead up to the point, but because I was like living in one of the most pivotal ones I wrote from that experience, but there’s been so many different elements in my story and, and so much of it for me the biggest part of my unfolding and undoing was, you know, really expanding my ideas of faith and spirituality in terms of how I grew up and, and really figuring out like what that looks like, what’s that feels like, what that means for me.
Like, who is God? To me and how does God speak to me and not how am I spoken to or spoken through from other people? And really having to find that that grounding and that surrounding. And, and I, I know like I think I actually said this a few days ago. I was like, I guess in my, in my insecure mind, I.
The perspective from the book is that the unfolding, the changing, all that beautiful things occurred because of my husband. But I, someone actually told me like, no, I don’t, I didn’t see it that way at all. And I was like, good, because that’s not the case. He was the safe space for it. He was the permission to be it.
People are like, how did you know this was your person? And I was like, he woke something up in me that I didn’t, that I knew was sleeping. But I didn’t fully realize the extent of it until, until we met. And it was very kismet and very instant. And then that started to give me space for the questions I had about this, this idea of the table of God and divinity and it being so small and why is it so small and what if it’s actually bigger than we think?
And, and, and how do I have a faith and a spirituality that includes my body, my blackness, my femininity, my friend sexuality and their queerness. Like how do we make room for all. For all these different nuances of what makes us human and how we continue to unfold and what that looks like. And so for me it was like being the oldest child being the first to get married and kind of breaking a lot of those boundaries and kind of breaking a lot of those generational just ideologies about family units and enmeshment and all that fun stuff.
And then it was getting into the place of just like, I think the table. So much bigger. I think the story is so much bigger than we’ve been, you know to believe, especially as women. And I just wanna see and explore if, if that’s true, you know, if the reality of that is real in tangible. And that’s, that was my exploration of the en unfolding.
Yeah.
Monica: Oh, thank you for sharing that. And I, I, I sense the courage that required for me was immense and also happened in phases. Like, it wasn’t like, I am just gonna barrel through this. I’m gonna figure it out and everyone else can just come along for the ride or step off. Like there was a lot of give and take and, and pulled inner turmoil,
I mean, I connected to so much of your story, even though our lives are, are fairly different, but so much of what you shared, the heart of it, I’ve experienced almost like word for word in many
Arielle: Yeah. Yeah.
Monica: I think a lot of women are gonna have that experience.
But where I wanna focus our time, the rest of our time together today is this initial phase that you detail in the unfolding. And you talk about several phases that we need to go through to get to that final unfolding. But the first to me, is the one that I could see the women in my community
Arielle: Yeah.
Monica: sensing happening deep inside them.
And also trying to avoid because it’s scary and you, you talked about how your husband woke something up inside of you and for, for many of us that can be a podcast we listen to that just kind of spurs this idea or like an interaction with someone we really trusted that like makes us think a little differently about our whole past history or like a shift in identity.
There’s a lot of different sparks and regardless of what those are for the women, so. Let’s talk about the awakening and them recognizing that gap. Why do you think they avoid this phase of just, they just wanna be like, Nope, I’m gonna avoid it. I feel the spark, I feel the call. I feel like something’s waking up and I’m just gonna tap it down.
Why do we do that?
Arielle: I think it’s so, well, there’s a lot of layers to it, especially as women. You’re not given the permission, so. But we are given the condition to not think about ourselves. Our, our desires are once, our needs in a lot of ways are not made to be a priority. We’re not raised for it to be a priority. We’re instantly from the beginning condition to like, especially for oldest children, Make sure your sibling’s okay.
You know, like, watch out for your sibling, watch out for your or we just like naturally do that for our parents, you know, for whatever parental figure is in our life we have this natural, innate way of protecting. And then that natural innate way of protecting and guiding is then conditioned even further into being, I.
Ignore yourself, make yourself small. And so when we start to get these inklings, when we start to get, then we assume that they’re selfish, then we assume that they’re not for the greater good. Even though I think a lot of things that women have their hands in create ripples, not just for ourselves but for the world around us.
And we don’t realize that us taking care of ourselves, that us following. Our heart inklings is not just for ourselves, that’s for the home we’re trying to build. That’s for the people we’re trying to be. That’s for the, the children we’re trying to raise. That’s for the relationships we’re trying to sustain.
And, and in that same way, it’s kind of like twofold. It’s like, yeah, so much of who we are is for the greater good of other people. And yet while in that, It starts with choosing yourself. It starts with prioritizing ourselves. It starts with listening to ourself and listening to our bodies. And there’s also this level of, of safety and familiarity that comes from, like, I hear this thing roaring and hinging inside of me.
I feel it very tangibly, but I don’t know where it’s taking me. I don’t know where it’s going, and I know. This right here. I know this familiarity, I know this safety net. I don’t, I don’t know where that’s gonna take me. So there’s risk, and again, it’s not just risk for ourselves a lot of times, but it’s risk for that involves other people and other relationships and other situations.
So there’s so much. At play and yet the biggest risk is not following it. The biggest risk is not listening to it because you genuinely don’t know what’s on the other side of, I don’t know, on the other I side of, I don’t know, could be freedom. Could be healing, could be generational chain breaking, could be transformative stuff.
And it’s just on the other side of, I don’t know, it’s just on the other side of I’m, I’m afraid. And there’s, there’s this other like author and speaker and podcaster who I just love and he’s so good at like talking about like, okay, acknowledge the fear. Acknowledge it. Be like, and, and treat it almost as this like fear is like this child that you kind of have to cuddle.
Like you’re right, that is kind of scary. Who knows? You know, like or, or, right. Yeah. We could fail. Will that be something, you know, like acknowledge the fear. Don’t ignore it. Don’t suppress it. Acknowledge it. Be like, I hear you. Fear. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna go and do it. You know, like, because nothing we do is really without the absence of it.
And I’m a huge believer, like as someone who performs, as someone who gets nervous quite a lot, it’s like, use that funnel that, you know. And so I think a lot of times it’s like we feel those inklings, we have those callings and we don’t pursue them because what we were afraid and then we just live a whole different life that doesn’t.
Equate to our fullness, into our wholeness, just because we were afraid. Just because we didn’t know. And you won’t know until you try it. You won’t know until you go,
Monica: I was hoping you would be up to reading a few poems for us, and I wanted to pull one up. To me, that really speaks to the fear piece. So loaded the fears. It’s Shapeshifter on page 42 of your book, if you don’t mind reading that for us. I’m so excited.
Arielle: When your voice begins to shift, do not be afraid in which way it moves. Do not be alarmed at the way it dives deeper into a core you did not know existed. Do not be alarmed. How it wakes up, shakes up the depth of you. How it allows you to find God even still in all the mess, in all the questions. How could we ever assume that God was not?
God missed the mess, the soul deep with us and the questions as if my God was afraid to get her hands a little dirty does not meet me in the wondering what if, who you are and who you were are competing for the whole of you. You cannot live on a balance beam of being two humans. You are allowed to change and grow as time allows.
You have permission to be who you want to be in all the shapes in which you will become. May you learn to embrace the rhythm of change. May you learn to shift with it. Sometimes the shifting feels like the breaking, but love breathe deeply. This is the shaping.
Monica: When we’re speaking to fear, I feel like from both your story and my experience and how they parallel together, I could identify that fear comes up, you know, in many ways. And like we said, it’s very layered, but to me, the three big categories where fear of change in general, just how painful that can be, and scary unknown, right?
But that fear of uncertainty, like leaving the certainty behind and then the fear of disappointing other people and them being along for the ride. I know that’s me just shoving the fear in our face and there’s a lot there. Of those three, what is one that you’re like, let’s talk about this one, cuz I see it coming up with.
It’s like in such both proximity with every woman I talk to, but also in intensity that let’s talk about this fear.
Arielle: Mm,
Monica: It’s probably
all of them.
Arielle: I, I mean, definitely all of them. I had attended a International Women’s Day for women at Google. And, and the women who attended were women who work for nasa, who work for not just Pinterest and Facebook, but for the backend analytics science of these platforms and of these things. So in this room with brilliant, brilliant women, and my job was to be there as a poet. I was hired because I had met the woman at a retreat and I processed the retreat through a poem. And she was like, can you come do that? At International Women’s Day, and I was like, sure.
So I, I went to the event. I, I talked to women, I went to different conferences, different, I made different part of the conference, different part of the event. And then by three o’clock that day I had to have a poem written for what I experienced. And one of the last exercises they did was they had this postcard that said, I am remarkable on it.
And they had to write down why they thought they were remarkable. And I watched these brilliant women not be able to write things down. And to hear these women talk about the tables that they exist in and not be able to feel like they were worthy enough to sit at them.
And here I am. I’m like, my name tag says poet. Everyone else’s name tag says like, you know, data analytics, nasa. I’m just like, what do you mean you don’t think you’re worthy? Like I’m here having this internal crisis sitting in this room with all of you what are you mean? You don’t think you’re worthy.
And so I think that’s, That thing that the fear that hinders us the most is, is feeling that fear of like, yes, I don’t know what’s on the other side of that, but also when I get on the other side of that, am I enough to experience it to to, to have it, to call it mine to sit at that table and know who I am confidently.
And the answer is yes. I think every single time it’s like I hear women who are like, oh, well, I’m not creative or, or, I don’t really do that, or I’m not this or I’m not that. And it always comes down to like, we tell people they’re worthy and we have to get people to actually, to know it, to feel it in their bodies, to feel it in their bones.
And, and that’s something that I’ve always been so adamant about because I’ve just watched so many women exist in their smallest form of themselves. And it does nobody justice. It does nobody a favor and, and so I think the biggest fear that we really, truly have to overcome, Is that the tables we sit at, that the doors that open are not for us, and that they’re, that, that they’re not meant for us and that we’re not worthy enough to sit at them.
But that would not be true. That door opened for a reason. That seat has your name on it for a reason. That opportunity is yours and was given to you for a reason. That in itself is proof that you are worth it, that you are more than qualified and capable. It’s about knowing it, it’s about feeling it in your spine and using that to walk you through those doors.
Monica: I’m thinking the wild within would be another great read to pair
Shared on page 46. And let me just say preemptively, I think the reason why is because what you’re describing is sometimes when we’re not, sometimes I think every woman who experiences an awakening of sorts realizes that there’s parts of herself that she hasn’t uncovered yet, or that she has pushed down or repressed somehow inside of her and.
In order to find that seat at the table, they need to go in and find those parts and bring them up to the surface. They need to lean into them, and that can be scary. So if you will, the wild within this is our answer to that, I think, or your answer.
Arielle: do not be afraid of your wild. Because if it were not for the untamed parts of us, we would never know really what it means to be free only, no beauty as something to be caged, poked at and perfected and not seamless and already part of your existence. Do not be afraid of your wild, of the stallion that lives inside of you, of the parts of you that do not fit within society’s perspective of acceptable.
Do not hush your wild. Do not tell her that she does not belong because one day while everyone scrambles to find who they are again, she will bring you back to the song of your truth, to the wild in your step and the rhythm of your heart that only your soul knows the beat you. She will be the one to whisper.
Keep dancing even when no one else hears the music.
Monica: I know a lot of women long for that. Inner voice to like really be able to hear that in themselves and answer it better. And I like how this poem calls it The song of Your Of Your Truth,
Arielle: Mm
Monica: of your truth. Wow.
Arielle: mm.
Monica: When you were figuring out for yourself, when you were trying to bring up that song of your truth and, and honor it better, can we just talk about the mess of that a little bit?
Because
Arielle: Gosh. Yeah.
Monica: when you follow someone else’s story and it’s told we can do it in a way that’s really helpful and really real. By the way, I think you did what I’m about to ask you to do on the, on the podcast in the book. So just so people know, but a lot of times people skip over like, the, I didn’t know where I was going with this, or I had a lot of turmoil inside.
I, I questioned myself. I wasn’t sure I got confused. What did that look like for you to come to that song of your Truth, the Messy Side?
Arielle: There’s another poem in there. And I don’t know, I don’t know where it is, but it, it’s it says they can say all they want, they can shout all their fears. They can do doubts in a pool of uncertainty, but good thing I know who I am. That was actually, that’s actually a song. And it’s a song that I, I had to sing to myself while I was hearing so many other voices.
And I could not hear my own. That was something I had to, that was my song. That was literally the song of the Truth is like what I was referring to is, is this, that that song of like, they can say all they want, they can shout all their fears, they can throw doubts in a pool of uncertainty. But good thing I know who I am.
Good thing I know who I am. Good thing I know who I am. Literally telling ourselves like I know myself and oftentimes we’re made to be like, you’re crazy, you’re different. You don’t know. You 100% know. I think the intuition of a woman, the intuition of a female identifying person is probably one of the most powerful forces, and of course, we’re conditioned to not trust it.
Of course, we’re made to believe that we can’t use that as a guide and as a knowing, because we 100% can, and when we do it’s powerful. When we do, it’s transformational, and again, not just for ourselves, but for the world around us. But first it starts here. It starts with hand on chest. I know who I am. I can trust myself and, and I had to tell myself that so many times and.
All these interventions I was having and being told, you know, all these things of like, you’re not this anymore or you’re not, you’re far from here. You’re doing this. I had to come back to that good thing. I know who I am. Yeah.
Monica: A big part of the mess, I think, too is just those outside voices that counteract that song of truth inside you and that phrase of people being like, you’ve changed and the way they say it, it just cuts to the heart.
Right.
Arielle: Mm-hmm.
Monica: Can you talk about that a little bit, about your experience with that and also like what you’d advise women to do through that?
Arielle: Oh my gosh. This is a fun one because in the, in, in the last few months of writing this and this coming out, I’ve had so many moments where people have talked about this. One of them being Dr. Nedra Tawwab. I actually like have her book Next to me. She has set boundaries, find, be peace. And I think her first book was just called Boundaries.
And it’s been a really cool experience of like seeing a black woman talk about boundaries because within our, within just minority culture is just like boundary. What are you talking about? There’s no such thing as boundaries, but there is. And so really having to like refigure that, but she talked about at her book launch. You know when people are like, you changed. And her response being like, I know.
Monica: Hmm.
Arielle: And what if we just left that? I know. Thanks for noticing. I know. Isn’t that great? Oh, I’m so glad I’m not bound to the change that I was bound to before. Isn’t that lovely? And it’s just so hard and it’s, that’s only coming up because when they’re saying your change, what they’re saying is you’re less accessible to me.
What they’re saying is, you’re not familiar to me. But that doesn’t mean we’re not familiar to ourselves, and that doesn’t mean we’re not accessible to ourselves and the things that we value and the things that are important to us. So when we’re hearing you’re, you’ve changed. Let that just be a statement.
Let that not be a derogatory thing. Let that not be a, a thing to stray you. Otherwise, let it be like, oh, thank you. Thanks for noticing. Janelle Monnet has a song called Float and she says, “I went up and gotten and changed. No, I’m not the same.”
I’m not, I’m not the same. And I don’t know why we, why that initial response is to be like, no, I’m, I am the same. Why do we need to defend that we’re not? We’re, we’re a hundred percent not. And I think I fell into a lot of that at the beginning of my unfolding, trying to convince those around me I’m still, me and I, and I genuinely do feel like I’m, I am still, I’m still fully Arielle. I still care just as much as I care. I still overextend. I still, people please, I still do all those things, but I’m also learning boundaries. But I’m also learning expansiveness, but I’m also learning how to take care of myself better.
But I’m also learning, I could say the word no,
Monica: Hmm.
Arielle: but I’m still, I’m still me. But yeah, I have changed a little. Thanks for noticing. And what if we just left it at that
Monica: That’s a big shift, isn’t it? Because I would do the defensive route too, like I’m still the same person,
Arielle: I’m still the same person. And who does that serve being the same person?
Monica: And, and in the same breath too, like, I like that you’re like, there’s parts of me that are still the same now. We’re always there. So it’s not like we have to just start over. We have to leave it all behind.
The past just has to be washed, clean from the slate. It’s not that, it’s, again, it’s an awakening to the parts of yourself that have been in there and waiting to
Arielle: yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And it’s like, if we think back to that bud, I do think there’s a core to, to who we are. I do think there’s a core that exists always. I think that core might be the the little, the little girls in us, the little people in us who still have these hopes and desires and dreams and things we want in life.
I think that core still exists. And then, then again, you start shedding. Some other things around it, but I do think there is a core of, of who we are that does stay consistent. While so much of our exterior does evolve and does change. In our interior too. I don’t think we can operate. Can you imagine if we operated in our 20 plus, 30, 40, however old we are, bodies in the same way we operated in our 17 or 18 year old bodies.
Like if we really think about that, that’s not sustainable. That’s not, you can’t function as an adult as a 17 year old because you’re not an adult, you know? And so why would we not. Have that same permission and same grace for as we continue to get older and we start to shed some spaces and some places and some people that we need to, and, and such is life.
And what a beautiful and messy and glorious thing.
Monica: This has given me definitely the push to keep reexamining that core of myself and, and what I need to shed both to get back to that core, but also to expand what’s there
and just waiting to blossom in ways that I’ve been afraid of. And it’s okay to, to lean in and, and to nourish that part of myself and let the other things fall away.
Your story, your, your book, your poetry, Has really done that for me, so thank you. I have one final question for you and then one final poem I would like you to read, if that’s okay. We are a community that can get easily overwhelmed, so we always end with what is one small way we can work on the things we’ve discussed today.
Arielle: Mm
Monica: What do you think that could be for the women who are listening?
Arielle: mm I think it’s a daily practice. A daily practice of coming home to ourselves, a daily practice of, of understanding and knowing ourselves. A daily practice of getting out of our own heads, getting into our bodies, whatever that means, and whatever that looks like. A daily practice of setting boundaries, a daily practice of putting in the work that we’re trying to put in and, and become, and, and you know, there’s like that.
That trendy Pinterest quote from years ago that was like, you know, do something today that your, that your future self will thank you for. And I think there’s a lot of truth to that. You know what, if we think about how we’re operating today is not for the person we are today, that’s for the person we’re trying to be.
So what attitudes, what mindsets, what practices can we start? Putting into habit to become those people. And give yourself time for that.
So keep putting in that investment, keep putting in that work. Make it a daily habit to meet the version of yourself that exists in every moment and be kind to them. Yeah.
Monica: And I know from you just by watching you and, and what you do, I feel like for you, that’s a lot of yoga poetry, creativity
Arielle: of creativity, a lot of yoga, a lot of being outta the beach, a lot of being outside with my husband. A lot of really trying to like unplug when I can because I’m such a sponge of a human. Yeah. But I think moving my body has been a huge, a huge, huge one for me physically being in my body.
It’s something that I, is a daily practice for me. Yeah.
Monica: Arielle, before we have you share this final poem I wanna end on like your, like words resonating through our bodies. So let’s tell them where they should go if they are like, Hey, I want to, I want to be in her community.
Arielle: Hmm. Well, you can go to Instagram, you can find me there. I respond to my dms and I know that’s very weird for people, but I, I think I will do that forever. It’s still me. I wasn’t, I didn’t set out to be a brand or a page. I am a person. So. Find me on there. I will respond. Yeah, if the book is resonating with you, there’s an audio book and a physical book.
And then on Spotify and iTunes you can find some other poems from past experiences. But also I’m working on a spoken word album for the unfolding as well. So it’ll be called the Art of the Unfolding. And it’ll be this continuation conversation. And so I’m really excited to put out to put those out.
So look forward to those on, on Spotify and iTunes.
Monica: Okay. Do you have any idea when we should look for the art of the unfolding?
Arielle: Hopefully by the end of the year is like the goal. I should actually, my producer and I are chatting today, so hopefully a lot of it is already recorded and things like that. And so yeah, hopefully by the end of the year that comes out. Yeah.
Monica: Okay, I’ll look for that and I’ll make sure to celebrate
that.
Arielle: Thank you.
Monica: So let’s end with the poem undone. on page 110.
Arielle: Transformation is not always loud. Sometimes it approaches quietly beckons you to return to where you once were reflecting every step on the way back that you are not the same as when you first left. Sometimes transformation quietly erupts inside of you. Sometimes it unfolds like lava, slow and thick from the inside out.
Sometimes change doesn’t always appear visible to the human eye. It can be subtle. A slow unraveling of a blossom at the first sight of sunshine, the hint of moisture from the morning dew on the edge of a new leaf. It is when you notice the change. The transformation, the process begins the realization of, oh my, I am not who I once was.
Something has changed me. I am undone in the best way. Rejoicing begins and declaration takes shape on our tongues. I am not who I once was. Something has changed me. I am undone.
Monica: It’s been a gift to have you here. Thank you for being so generous with your time, but also your, your talents and the, the talents that have been hard earned, I would say, and hard worked at. That’s it. Just thank you. I appreciate you.
Arielle: Thank you. Appreciate you.
