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Hosts Kelly & Erin are friends from childhood, reconnected over their love for deep conversation and life. They'll cover topics like adult friendship, self-improvement, and raising kids.
I mean, there was something about the stillness of the water feeling incredibly small on this massive lake, and there just was this peace that was just so beautiful, and and it kind of captures that magic again. You know, we entered into a very present moment and everything around us kind of kind of faded.
Erin:Hello, friends. I'm Erin. I'm Kelly. And this is The Til.
Kelly:as toddlers. We grew up in Northern Mexico as daughters of career missionaries, where we formed a deep friendship as roommates in boarding school. And although our friendship was deep, we followed different paths into adulthood, moved across the country, built families, and lost touch. But now after 15 year hiatus, we've reunited and reconnected over the complexities of finding our way in a life that has no road map, and that has brought us to the Till.
Erin:We're convinced that the most beautiful life happens when we don't follow a script. We hope to inspire you to forge new paths just like we are. So let's get to work.
Erin:Okay, Kelly. It's been about 15 years, give or take, since we've spent significant amount of time together. We did
Erin:grow up together, and we recently came back together. We've reconnected around creativity and also spirituality. Because our forties are right around the corner, we've bonded over evaluating where we've come from and the fact that we want to be really intentional with what lies ahead. So we are inviting our audience to meet us here in this conversation, which started through talking about a a book, big magic. So Elizabeth Gilbert wrote this book.
Erin:If you're not familiar with Elizabeth Gilbert, please wrap up.
Kelly:Eat, pray, love.
Erin:Yes. Big magic starts off with a story about a naturally born poet in the 19 twenties named Jack Gilbert. Jack had all the talent, charisma, and success a person needs to reach fame and stardom. He found poetry at a young age and began receiving awards, Pulitzer nominations, and even landed himself on the cover of Vogue, which is, like, fascinating. But Jack wasn't after fame.
Erin:He found that his devotion and practice of poetry was at odds with demands of stardom, and he politely declined. Instead, he headed to the countryside in Europe and lived a fairly solitary life, releasing astounding poetry every 20 years or so that immediately captured the world's attention. It wasn't until his late years as a professor, after he had returned to the United States, that Jack's secrets to life were uncovered, thanks to the astuteness of his students. Students described professor Gilbert as an almost otherworldly man, as if he lived untouched by modern life's constraints and stressors, which kind of cracks me up because we're literally talking about, what, like, the 19 thirties. Life was a lot simpler almost a 100 years ago.
Erin:But in any case, this is what he asked of his students, to live in uninterrupted marvel and write poetry as the antidote to life's all consuming demands. To put it in his own words, he told his students, they must live their most creative lives as a means of fighting back against the ruthless furnace of this world. And this is where that phrase came from, was from what he said, and it's just so it's so good. Okay. Yeah.
Erin:You take it you take it from here, Kelly.
Kelly:Yeah. It is so good. I think there's a real magic that kind of gets lost in the drudgery of being an adult, and it's a magic that I think both of us remember grasping from time to time in our childhoods, especially in the wild mountains of Northern Mexico where we grew up. There was something just so untamed about our childhood.
Erin:For sure.
Kelly:And not not that not that we wanna recreate that, but the aliveness that existed, I find that I'm constantly chasing that now in my life now, to fight back against the ruthless furnace of the world. I mean, I feel that deeply. You know, to just fight back against monotony, boredom, busyness, Yeah. I I'm chasing after that. And a memory that I that I hold on to from my childhood, it's something I actually think about often.
Kelly:It and because it's because I want to remember that feeling of living in absolute magic. Mhmm. And and it's a story about the first time I visited my neighbor's ranch. We mentioned earlier that Erin and I grew up with parents who were career missionaries in Mexico, and both our families worked with indigenous tribes who lived deep in the mountains of Mexico. In my case, my parents lived in a small town.
Kelly:That was about a 5 hour drive from the closest hospital. Our town had no electricity, no real running water. My house was plumbed, but we drove to a spring every day and filled up buckets of water and brought it back to our house, to fill a tank. So imagine basically stepping back into the Wild West in the 18 100. That's about as close of a picture as you'll get Yeah.
Kelly:To to what our upbringing
Erin:looks like. Weird conveniences. Like, you may have a TV. We had a TV. I don't know if you did.
Erin:But
Kelly:We we did. We ran it on a generator Right. Exactly. Every once in a while. Yeah.
Kelly:Yeah. Yeah. So so that gives you a little bit of context of where I was living. And, this one summer, our neighbor who wildly happened to be, the drug lord of all of northwest Mexico. Mhmm.
Kelly:He but he was a good family friends of ours, still a very close family friend, although that is not his profession anymore. He invited us out to his ranch. And so, we went out for a weekend, and while we were already in an extremely remote location, his ranch was even farther off the grid. We drove from our town about an hour an hour away until there was no more road, And we parked our cars under trees and packed our food and clothes onto horses and maybe a few donkeys, And we set out for about I think it was like a 6 hour hike. I have no no idea how many mountains we scaled or descended.
Kelly:It it was just, like, constant up and down. I know there was a massive river we had to cross, and someone brought horses, and we all crossed on horseback.
Erin:Oh my gosh. That does actually just literally remind me of, I was just reading recently, little little house in the big woods. Is that what it's called? Yeah. The Laura and miss Wilder series.
Erin:I've identified with that series so much, but I was just reading it with my daughter. And, yeah, they cross they cross the river, and it's, like, rushing water anyway. So Yes. Yeah.
Kelly:Yes. Actually, on this trip, it was rainy season, and we got stuck because we couldn't cross the river going back and had to wait a few days. Wait till the river went down so we could, you know, get back home. Anyways, so as as we are hiking 6 hours in into this hike, we're summiting this mountain, and the view is just incredible. The air is crisp and clean.
Kelly:All I can see is mountains in every direction. And I round this corner, and on this small plateau that's almost I mean, it wasn't man made, but carved into the mountainside is this little mud brick house. And it just was stunning. Like, it just was stunning. I felt like I had walked into a movie scene.
Kelly:It truly felt otherworldly, and and I was feeling this as a kid. Right? Like, this impression I was I was taken aback as a child. It almost felt, you know, like Lucy stepping into Narnia, from the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. You know?
Kelly:Just like How old were you? Stepped into magic. I don't I don't really remember. I would say early early teens, maybe a preteen would be my guess. So maybe not a child.
Kelly:Maybe, you know, but, yeah, early teens. But, yeah, the whole time we spent there, it it felt like that, that it was like almost like that's how we were made to live, like an add on to nature. There was there was nothing to entertain us, like, absolutely nothing to do, other than maybe ride a horse again. But we hiked out to forts that had been, built, like, a century earlier by the Apache tribe that used to live out there. We picked tea from wild plants, and it just was incredible.
Kelly:Like, it it tasted incredible. And the the the whole experience, it just left such an impression on me that from then on, I always even imagined that if I could, I would choose to have my wedding there because I couldn't imagine anything being more magical and meaningful. You know, when it comes to, like, I want the most romantic place for my wedding, that that honestly was location. That would have been my dream. Obviously, it wasn't accessible to anyone, but I hold that feeling of utter awe and magic, of uninterrupted marvel as Jack Gilbert put it, and I find that that's that's what I want.
Kelly:I don't wanna recreate that exactly, but I want to find that feeling in my life now, and I and I want to feel that alive.
Erin:Mhmm. Yeah. That's amazing. I love that story. And I love what you said at the very end specifically about how, like, you don't necessarily want to recreate that specific thing, but it's a feeling.
Erin:Yeah. And, I also love that you had and we've talked about this several times. Like, you were a lot more aware of things than I was in a lot of ways. I should say you I think that you had a lot more self awareness than I did, at that time. And, or, like, I guess, as kids in general.
Erin:And so I don't know that I could tell a story quite like that from my childhood. And, also, I think I just interpret that phrase, uninterrupted marvel, a little bit differently than you do. And I think it's partially because I am a quite an I've become quite an anxious person, and I was not an anxious person as, like, as a kid. And as a teenager, I wouldn't say that I was anxious. It's just as, I actually think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that we kind of, in many, in many ways, had to kind of live, like, moment to moment.
Erin:You know, we we grew up in a place where, like, we didn't have a lot of like, you talked about going to this very remote remote location. But, like, most people, just to visit where you grew up, where I grew up up to clarify, we didn't grow up in exactly the same place, but same region and same, like, sort of lifestyle. And, even for someone to visit one of those places would feel like this is insanity. Why would someone live here? I mean, maybe you wouldn't think it was insane.
Erin:The end
Kelly:the ends of the earth.
Erin:Literally the ends of the earth. People in these tribes do not even speak Spanish sometimes. They only speak the tribal language. So I think I lived fairly present as a kid. But then as life got busier, I was less I'm I'm less able to do that.
Erin:The way that I interpret uninterrupted marvel is to be fully present in the moment right here. So that magic for me is really about being fully present and not having, like, the I shouldn't call them voices. Like, I don't think it's, like, actual voices, but not hearing the noise. And, I am, like, super committed to spend 1,000 hours outside with my kids. And I've been listening to this podcast, 1 1000 Hours Outside.
Erin:And, Ginny Jurich is I think she's, like, the lady that founded 1000 Hours Outside. In her podcast, she was interviewing John Deloney, I believe, is his name. Yeah. That sounds right. And he talked about how our bodies are actually functioning like they are supposed to.
Erin:We are anxious, and we can't rest because we aren't giving ourselves time enough during the day to process what's happening, because our lives are so full and there's so much noise. So we've got social media. We've got, busy jobs. We've got, like, even just the fact that, like, we spend so much time in our cars taking our kids from one place to the next or whatever, we're not we're not at rest very often. And so then when we finally do stop to rest, our brain just kind of, like, goes haywire.
Erin:And that's actually, like, an appropriate response because that is kind of, like, needed. It's necessary for our for our bodies to process what's happening in our lives, but it's just not we're not leaving time for it. And, so that's really kind of, like, what I'm working toward now. It's I I made a huge change in my life very recently. So just in the last few weeks, I went from working a very stressful job to staying at home with my kids.
Erin:So the most important part of all of this is that it's giving me an opportunity to really slow down and to really, like, come back to the basics, cleaning, snuggling my kids, like, just, you know, doing the basic stuff. I'm trying very hard not to build in a whole bunch of other stuff even when it feels uncomfortable, and maybe specifically when it feels uncomfortable because I want to experience that uninterrupted marvel. So that kind of just takes me to another moment where we kind of experience that together. I think maybe you should tell this story about the paddle boards. Do you wanna tell it?
Erin:I can Okay. You should totally tell it. Okay. I was going to, but I've been talking for a bit. So
Kelly:Not yet. I love hearing your voice. But, yeah. So so we connected over Marco Polo and talked for about a year. Mhmm.
Kelly:And then kind of spontaneously decided to do a camping trip together. Yeah. So We live the glory days. Yeah. We can't we so a little bit more to our story.
Kelly:We we ended up being roommates in a boarding school and camped all the time. Our school camped. Our dorms camped. And I think so I think we probably ended up on about 4 camping trips together a year, something like that in middle school and high school.
Erin:Yeah.
Kelly:While Erin and I were camping this summer, we captured this moment. We were out on the lake on our paddleboards. We've been paddleboarding for maybe an hour, and we ended up just both sitting, kinda laying down on the paddleboards in the middle of the lake, and and we just talked. And we had this beautiful conversation, just catching up about friends, about where we're at in life, about how we're how we're really doing. And it was a conversation I don't think would have happened maybe anywhere else.
Kelly:I mean, there was something about, again, being in nature, the stillness of the water, feeling incredibly small on this massive lake. The sun was setting. You know, the waves, you know, the rhythm of the waves were moving our boards, and, and there just was this peace of of being able to, like, open up and and check-in and reconnect. That was just so beautiful, and and it kinda captures that magic again. You know, we entered into a very present moment, and everything around us kind of kind of faded for for about that hour that we talked.
Erin:Yeah. That's, when I know I am fully present is typically when I'm not when I have no idea what time it is, and I'm not aware of, like, when a conversation started or, like, when when the moment started or when that presence when that sense of presence started and when it, when it ended and, like, how much time has gone by, that's when I usually know that that's when I'm living in the moment and experiencing that under uninterrupted marvel.
Kelly:That's when you've arrived. Yeah.
Erin:That's when I've arrived. Love that. It doesn't happen frequently. But
Kelly:No. And it well and especially, you know, with kids. I mean, we're talking about a poet who lived on the countryside. I don't believe he had a family. He didn't have kids.
Kelly:And so, yeah, he got to live in uninterrupted marvel. You know, for myself, I'm chasing moments. I'm not Right. I'm not about even a lifestyle, I would say, at this point. But, man, if I can grasp moments of that, I'm I'm happy.
Kelly:And for me, I think a lot of that is centered around creativity. I think that actually is my drive to stay in the creative space. I've I've been a stay at home mom for the last 12 years, and I and that is what was centering to me, to be able to not be overwhelmed, to not not lose myself, honestly. It I found creativity to be that, and it's been multiple things over the years. But the last 7 years, it's it's been writing and poetry.
Kelly:Mhmm. A little photography and very, very recently, pottery, which I have fallen in love with. But, there's something about the creative act that you have to be fully present to, and, you know, we talk about inspiration or when that muse hits, and there's nothing like that. That that feels like magic to me. That feels like I'm entering into something outside myself that I can't get enough of.
Kelly:And it and it's not always you know, the the creative life is not always inspiration and and easy, but but that's what I chase. You know? That that's what that's where I find that magic in in the mundaneness of doing dishes and laundry and, you know, picking up my kids from school.
Erin:Yeah. I love that. I think, that is something that I've I would say for me, it that it comes out in other things, like, music has always been that way for me. Like, you know, if I'm singing or, playing an instrument, not okay. If my mom hears this, she's gonna laugh because she's gonna be like, what are you talking about?
Erin:You don't play any instruments. Okay. Fair. Fair. But, you know, like, even just doing goofy things with my kids, dancing around.
Erin:And at this point in my life, like I mentioned, I'm kind of, like, just coming into a new phase. So I'm, like, trying to figure out exactly what it looks like to build, creative practice into my life, but I'm a very creative person. In my job, I did a I tried to do as much, like, graphic design kind of stuff as I could. And, and so that was often where my creativity kinda went, but also puzzle solving. I don't know if that can count as create no.
Erin:No. It it's creative. It's like creative solutions. You know? You know?
Erin:For sure. Devising creative solutions. So I have to, like, figure out where that fits in my in my new life. But, I'm getting lots of opportunity to really just notice and take an inspiration right now, which I'm, I'm counting as my creative, practice. It's just like Absolutely.
Erin:I have bird feeders outside. We have tons of snow right now, and so the birds are not on my bird feeders because, there's, like, nowhere else for them to go. And so I just have, like, woodpeckers and cardinals and nut hatches and, I don't know, like, everything. It's just showing up at the feeder, and so I've just been enjoying watching that. Anyway so, I could go on and on about this stuff.
Erin:But
Kelly:No. I love it.
Erin:What you said. Finding it. Absolutely right. I'm finding it. Yes.
Erin:And, yeah, just finding those moments where you can just, like where everything else just kind of, like, becomes gray, and you're just focused on this one, you know, thing that is right in front of you, and you're not hearing all the outside noise. And that's a beautiful, beautiful thing. And that is what the till is all about. Right?
Kelly:Absolutely.
Erin:So we're here to intentionally uncover all these things that life still holds for us as we're approaching 40. We all have skills that we haven't developed and passions that we've, you know, put to the side while we're building our families, while we're figuring out who we wanna be when we grow up, or maybe even, like, careers that we just, you know, haven't started yet. There's so much more that we can step into, and maybe we got lost along the way as we stumbled our way, you know, to where we are today. So we're here to reflect, to explore, to set intentions and to take action. We hope you, our audience, will join us on this journey and add to the conversations that we're having.
Erin:Well, thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you, Kelly, for an amazing conversation. We're looking forward to seeing you on the next episode.
Kelly:Thank you, Erin. I'm excited for
Erin:Lexicon. Anything we talked about today will be linked in the show notes. So check that out for further information on our resources for today's episode. Please subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening. Follow us on Instagram at the till podcast.
Erin:Message us on Instagram or email us at podcast the till at g mail dot com, all one word. We're eager to hear from our listeners to help shape the future of what the Till is to become. The Till needs you. Yes, you. To take part in the community we are creating.
Erin:Create the podcast and the app you're using to listen and share it with your friends on social media. That'll bring others like you our way, which would be so helpful to us. See you next week.