Leadership and the Longing to Belong with Jerry Colonna

I’m speaking with co-founder of Reboot Jerry Colonna. Jerry is one of the most infamous executive coaches in the world — with a reputation for making CEOs cry and asking devastatingly poignant self-reflection questions.

In this conversation, we explore:

🕷️   Jerry's inner journey discovering his mythopoetic identity and how that has informed the coaching work he is so known for
🙇‍♂️   The idea that one measure of a leader is the numerous of people who feel safe enough to belong
🌍   The root causes of the global intimacy disorder that our culture is experiencing
❤️   The very human tension between longing and belonging that we all experience on some deep level.

I walked away from this conversation deeply moved by Jerry’s sincerity and hope that some of his wisdom is passed on through this audio artifact that we are miraculously able to partake in.

Official Links

📚  Jerry's latest book Reunion
🙋‍♂️  Executive Coaching Company Reboot

Connect + Follow Jonny:

🐦  Follow on Twitter/X @jonnym1ller
💌  Subscribe to the Curious Humans Newsletter
🫁  Learn more about Nervous System Mastery
🙋‍♂️  Join Five to Thrive — a zero-cost educational email series.
📝  Take the Nervous System Quotient (NSQ) Self-Assessment (totally free)

🫁 Episode Sponsor — Nervous System Mastery

This is my flagship 5-week bootcamp designed to equip you with evidence-backed protocols to cultivate calm and emotional regulation. Our sixth cohort will run in October 2024 ~ and applications are currently open. My sense is that if this conversation resonates with you, then you'd likely be a great fit for our upcoming cohort. This curriculum represents my attempt to distill everything I've learned in recent years about creating the conditions for our nervous system's flourishing.  It's run in an intensive cohort-based way since this is, in my experience, the most efficient way to embody and practice the protocols.

Previous students have shared how partaking improved their sleep and quality of relationships and tapped into deeper states of joy, clarity, and confidence in their lives. We've had over 1000 students have completed this training, and many have said that it has been the most impactful thing they've ever done for their personal growth — so if you're intrigued at all, you can find more details and apply to join this year's cohort over at nsmastery.com

Further Ways to Support the Podcast:

🎙️  I use Riverside to record all of my podcast conversations (it's so much better than zoom for podcasting!)
🎧  I also use Transistor to host this podcast, it's fricking awesome, and I would highly recommend.
😎  RaOptics make the world's best Blue Blockers – I wear these anytime I'm out of the house after dark, and it makes a huge difference!
🤖  I use AI wizardry from Castmagic to help with each episode show-notes + timestamps
📹  Want to create a Hollywood-quality home studio? Get in touch with Kevin Shen here & save $500 with code JONNYSENT500OFF

Creators & Guests

Host

Jonny Miller

Curious Human

Editor

Rob Johnson

What is Curious Humans with Jonny Miller?

Deep dive conversations that celebrate self-experimentation and ask what it means to cultivate embodied wisdom.

Jonny Miller [00:00:01]:
But it's curiosity as to where we.

Jerry Colonna [00:00:03]:
Are, what we are, that existence, the physical universe, is basically playful.

Jonny Miller [00:00:09]:
Welcome to the Curious Humans podcast. I'm your host Johnny Miller. Hello curious humans. In this episode, I'm speaking with co founder of Reboot and Jerry Colonna. Gerry is one of the most infamous executive coaches in the world with a reputation for making CEO's cry and asking devastatingly poignant self reflection questions. In this conversation, we explore his own inner journey, discovering his mythopoetic identity and how that's informed the coaching work. He's so known for his idea that one measure of a leader is the numerous number of people who feel safe enough to belong. What he sees as the root cause of global intimacy disorder, as well as the very human tension between longing and belonging that I think we all experience on some level.

Jonny Miller [00:01:00]:
I walked away from this conversation deeply moved by Jerry's sincerity and hope that some of his wisdom is passed on through this audio artifact. Okay, without further ado, please enjoy this tender and insight packed conversation with Mister Jerry Colonna. This episode is brought to you by the one and only nervous system mastery. This is my flagship five week course designed to equip you with evidence backed protocols to cultivate calm, rewire reactivity, and build emotional regulation in 45 days. Our 6th cohort will be kicking off on October 7, and we're currently accepting new students. My sense is that if the conversations in this podcast resonate with you, then you'd likely be a really good fit for this upcoming training. The nervous system mastery curriculum represents my attempt to distill everything that I've learned in recent years about how to create the conditions for our nervous system flourishing. It's run in an intensive, cohort based way, since in my experience, this is the most efficient way to not only learn the information, but also to embody the protocols into your everyday life.

Jonny Miller [00:02:14]:
Previous students have shared how partaking not only improved their sleep and quality of relationships, but also tap into deeper states of joy, clarity, and confidence in their lives. I wish I would have found this 20 years ago. Almost like the small moments matter most, I actually lean into it now with curiosity. Holy shit, did I just say that? And the more you practice, the better you get.

Jerry Colonna [00:02:38]:
The key for me is emotional fluidity, which I think really buys you more life.

Jonny Miller [00:02:44]:
Interoception has been so helpful, I didn't.

Jerry Colonna [00:02:46]:
Even realize all of the tightness internally that I had before.

Jonny Miller [00:02:51]:
At this point, we've had over a thousand students complete nervous system mastery. Many have said that it's been the most impactful thing they've ever done for their personal growth. So if you're intrigued at all, you can find out more details and join our next cohort [e-mail]. that's nsmastery.com. welcome to the Curious Humans podcast. Gerry, thank you.

Jerry Colonna [00:03:13]:
Thank you for having me. It's a delight to be here.

Jonny Miller [00:03:16]:
How are you feeling in this moment? In three words?

Jerry Colonna [00:03:20]:
I don't think I've ever been able to answer that question in three words.

Jonny Miller [00:03:25]:
Give it a shot.

Jerry Colonna [00:03:26]:
I feel happy, calm and curious.

Jonny Miller [00:03:32]:
A good segue, because the question I usually start these conversations with is, do you consider yourself to have been an exceptionally curious child growing up? And if so, could you tell me a story about something you were curious about?

Jerry Colonna [00:03:47]:
I would consider myself insatiably curious as a child, annoyingly curious as a child, and or at least annoying to other people. And probably the most clear demonstration of that was I have been a voracious reader. Yeah, this is nothing. This is the leftover stuff. He's looking at all the books here that I have been a voracious reader since I could read and probably the most. Well, tell you a funny story about this. I often will read on a kindle. And one of the challenges of reading a Kindle is the ability to highlight a word and look up on Wikipedia.

Jerry Colonna [00:04:48]:
So one night I'm in bed reading a book, and I follow a link. My wife is next to me and she's reading her book, and I follow a link, and I'm reading a passage passage in Wikipedia on the creation of beef Broth. And my wife says to me, what the heck are you doing? I was like, well, I'm curious. And so as I'm reading it, I say, oh, right, I've read this before. Yeah, I'm famous for reading plaques and reading little monument statements and things like that. And yeah, I consider it akin to being alive.

Jonny Miller [00:05:36]:
And it sounds like that has stayed.

Jerry Colonna [00:05:38]:
With you throughout your life entirely, and I expect to continue to stay that way for the rest of my life.

Jonny Miller [00:05:48]:
Beautiful. I feel like there's many places that we could begin this conversation, but one that felt a life for me. Washington, I interviewed Bill Plotkin on the podcast a couple of years ago, and I believe that you've done one of his animas vision quests.

Jerry Colonna [00:06:05]:
Yes, and I've done several workshops with.

Jonny Miller [00:06:09]:
Him, and I would love to hear both. What was your initial impetus for that very first vision quest that you did, and what was the impact that it had on your life?

Jerry Colonna [00:06:22]:
Well, the vision quest followed other workshops that I had done. So were you more interested in the quest or the first workshops?

Jonny Miller [00:06:32]:
I guess the broad arc and the mythopoetic identity, or it's his phrase for the image at the center of our life and the kind of our soul's blueprint was another wave describing or the name that we were given.

Jerry Colonna [00:06:51]:
So there's two stories I would tell. The first was something, and I don't often tell this story. The first was something that happened at the very first animus workshop I did, which was a soulcraft retreat. And to set the context, part of the experience was each of the participants found a, at the retreat center where we were, had found a place, if you will, that was in the woods. That was our place to be, and we had to follow our own inner compass to find that place. One night, we were doing what's called a trance dance, where we danced in a circle, clockwise and counterclockwise till we were exhausted, or to put it another way, until all of the defenses had kind of broken down. And I made my way back to my bed of drenched in sweat. And I had this intense dream that I was headed back to a home, a beachfront home with my then young children.

Jerry Colonna [00:08:23]:
And I drove to the house with a lot of foreboding. And when I got to the house, the kids were very, very excited to go to this beach house. And they ran inside, but I was scared. And as we walked through the house, the kids were all in the basement of the house, and they started crying. And I ran downstairs, and I realized that the floor was covered with mushrooms. And I was terrified. And I yelled at the children, get out, get out, get out. We have to leave.

Jerry Colonna [00:08:54]:
And we ran into the car, and we drove away. So the next morning, after this dream, after the trance dance, we're in circle, and I'm reporting this dream, and Bill looks at me, and he points out the door and he says, go. Leave. I was like, what? And he said, I want you to go to the woods. I want you to find those mushrooms, and I want you to ask them what it was that they were there to tell you. And so I left, and I started muttering to myself, what the hell am I doing? I'm, like, walking through the woods trying to find mushrooms that im going to talk to. And all of a sudden, I look down, and theres a patch of the mushrooms that looked exactly like the ones in my dream. And I was blown away.

Jerry Colonna [00:09:42]:
And so I fell to my knees and I started crying. And I asked the mushrooms, what was it that I was too afraid to know. And they said to me, you worry too much. Go to your place. So now im really like, what the hell am I supposed to do, right? And so I make my way to the woods to find my place, this spot in the woods that was mine to be at. And I look off to the side and theres this gorgeous spider web, and of course, theres a spider crawling on it. And at this point, I'm like, whatever. So I said to the spider, okay, what are you here to tell me? And the spider says, you worry too much about your children.

Jerry Colonna [00:10:33]:
They're going to be okay. And I burst into tears. And that was the first animus experience that I had. And so when I chose to go on the vision quest, which was in 2008, Bill was not leading that. Two folks who have become very, very close friends of mine, Jim Marsden, who actually coaches within reboot now, and Jade Scheer were the facilitators on that. But when they, that's what led me to go on that experience.

Jonny Miller [00:11:10]:
Wow. And how have you found the images or the, the insights that have emerged from this animus work, from this Silcroft work to have shaped the work that you're doing today with reboot and with your writing?

Jerry Colonna [00:11:28]:
Well, the most important and most succinct way to understand what happened to me with that is the name I came out of the desert with. And in a quest like that, part of the experience is a water, only fast. And when I was in the desert, I had a lot of encounters with different entities, different beings, each of whom were speaking to me. But the most significant was when you were setting up camp. You were counseled to seek permission from the land as to whether or not you can borrow the space, if you will. And there was this very old Ponderosa pine that was overseeing the area that I was taking shelter in. And every time I passed the pine, I would hear this name or I would hear this phrase, which I then took as a name. And that phrase was holder of stories of the heart.

Jerry Colonna [00:12:39]:
And when I finished the fast experience and re entered the circle, I was holder. And that was, as I say, 2008. And if you really want to understand who I am and how I approach everything that I do, it's on holder. This is my job. This is what I do as a coach. This is what I do as a reader, as a writer. My job is to open my heart and hold, not fix, not make better, not worry about my children, but to just hold. So that's me.

Jonny Miller [00:13:28]:
Yeah. I mean, that tracks with my experience, at least of your reputation of breaking open the hearts of CEO's founders and eliciting tears when it wasn't obvious that there were tears there to be shared. So with that as context, I'd love to hear what was the inception for this new book reunion, which is sitting in front of us on the table here. And perhaps more specifically, what was the moment that you knew you had a second book in you to birth? And perhaps how did it, if it did, how did it follow the arc of your journey from writing reboot?

Jerry Colonna [00:14:10]:
The impetus for the book began in the summer of 2020, and I don't know that we'll ever forget, but that summer we were in the midst of the pandemic. And in late May, George Floyd was murdered. And like so many people, my daughter Emma, who is now 31, took to the streets to protest. And for context, Emma is sharp and fierce and loving and puts up with no bullshit from her father. She's the kind of person who, as I write in the book, when I might be ego aggrandizing and talk about what a good, progressive person I am. And she'd look at me and she'd say, dad, it's not enough to be an ally. You have to be a co conspirator. One night, she, with about 5000 other people, were crossing a bridge from Brooklyn into Manhattan.

Jerry Colonna [00:15:24]:
The Manhattan bridge. They had started protesting outside the Barclays center and they were headed to the police headquarters in lower Manhattan. And she started texting me because the police had come up behind them from the Brooklyn side and from the Manhattan side and it sort of closed ranks. And so this 5000 people were sort of being squeezed in the middle. She started texting me about being pepper sprayed. And in that moment, my very fierce daughter was doing something that I was not. I was safe. I am white, cisgender, straight male, wealthy, privileged, living in a farm outside of Boulder, Colorado.

Jerry Colonna [00:16:18]:
And my daughter was putting her body on the line for a world that I would tell myself I believe needs to exist. And what began? Not so much as I knew that there was a book that needed to be birth Johnny. What I needed to do was what was my work to do? You see, the animating question in reboot is how have I been complicit and creating the conditions in my life? I say, I don't want? I first formulated that question 25 years ago as a result of my psychoanalysis, in effect, my therapist saying to me, what the hell are you up to? Holding me to task. And that became an essential part of the position that I take as a coach the position that we at reboot take, which is that better humans make better leaders. And what I began to explore was, how have I been complicit in and benefited from a world I say I do not want to see? Because none of us feel directly responsible for the world as it exists. And yet can we really deny a benefit that can accrue to us, especially if you walk around in a body like mine? And so I began to look at this question of what is a leader's responsibility? Or more broadly speaking, what is the responsibility of someone who holds power to create the world they say they want to see? And the corollary question is, what am I willing to give up that I love in order to see that world come into being? For example, ive written a book about what it costs us to be at odds with one another. What does it cost us to live in a world of separation and systemic othering? And im writing from the vantage point of privilege, knowing full well that someone might say to me, what right do you have to speak about these things? And my answer to that is, what right do I have not to speak of these things? So I embarked on a journey to try to come up with something that would be contribution to a dialogue that is much bigger than I'm capable of holding, but I still have a responsibility to participate in. And we're sitting here at a moment in time, or I have never lived through the kind of divisiveness that we're living with right now.

Jerry Colonna [00:19:09]:
And this is my small effort to make a difference in a world where we are literally at each other's throats and I'm going to curse again. So, warning, fucking babies are dying because we're so frightened of each other. And there are malignant forces at work that want to weaponize fear and suffering to turn us into killers. And I owe it to my children and my grandchildren and my great grandchildren to do my best. Anyway, that's a long winded response to your question. So it's more than just another book waiting to be born. Its something I was tasked with doing.

Jonny Miller [00:20:01]:
Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, theres almost a sense of, from what I read of your book, it had a different tone, more of a sense of that you had to do this and that it wasnt maybe written from a different place or to a different audience than reboot from what I.

Jerry Colonna [00:20:17]:
Saw, yeah, I mean, look, reboot. Both books start with the inner journey. Both books start with, okay, what's actually going on inside of me? Everything that I write whatever I write now and into the future will always be grounded in that inner journey. But in this case, there's a sharp turn that occurs in the book, midway in the book, which is from the inner to the outer, because those of us who have power, who don't make the connection between the inner and the outer, are likely to do damage to those around them.

Jonny Miller [00:20:59]:
There's a phrase that came up, as you were speaking that there's a guy that I really admire called Daniel Schmattenberger, and his diagnosis of what we're seeing in the world is global intimacy disorder, which strikes me as being a, a mirror to what youre highlighting in a lot of this book. And im wondering, what do you see as maybe not the root, but some of the root causes of this global intimacy disorder that we are living through?

Jerry Colonna [00:21:31]:
Well, I only have a cursory understanding of global intimacy disorder. I do like the phrase, id be curious to know more about it. Last week, I was in a therapy session. I go to therapy twice a week, and my therapist and I were talking about the experience that I'm going through right now with this book. And he made the observation. He said, jerry, you always turn towards the causes and conditions of suffering. And I think that that's true. I think that for whatever reason, my life has evolved to the point where I am drawn to that, because I don't see any possibility of transformation unless we are drawn to the causes and conditions of suffering.

Jerry Colonna [00:22:18]:
So if we're talking about global intimacy disorder as an expression of that suffering, I think that there are two phenomena that are going on. One is we have this quite human fear of anyone or anything that is different. We fear the other experiences, we fear the other's identity. We fear the other. And that fear, I think, is rooted in a disconnection with our own self, a disconnection. I write about this in reunion, a lack of union, if you will, with our ancestors, with our true origins stories, with the experiences of, say, the way they may have been othered and the way they may have participated in the othering of other people. Othering being a term that John A. Powell, that I first came across in the work of John A.

Jerry Colonna [00:23:26]:
Powell. And so that's an important theme. Part of that is also the way we disconnect or dismember the parts of ourselves that we do not want to be cognizant of. And that gives us this unsteady ground on our own sense of belonging. And so that's one aspect. The other aspect is that there are malignant forces that, for their own aggrandizement, for their own power seeking, will weaponize peoples suffering and take advantage of the pain and turn someone who is, whose heart has been broken by the world against someone else. And so there are these twin forces at play. The polish journalist Richard Washinsky, I think was his last name, speaks about three plagues that are upon the earth, and they're the plagues of fundamentalism, the plague of nationalism, a plague of popularism, which basically always results in the dehumanization and depersonalization of the other.

Jerry Colonna [00:24:52]:
And so when we are disconnected from ourselves, when we are disconnected from the true stories of our ancestors, ancestors, we are susceptible to being manipulated and turned into an active participant in the pain and suffering of other people. This is not a primordial state. This is not how we are organized as a species. Our primordial state, I really believe, is compassion, empathy. But our fears are manipulated so that we put aside our natural state and we turn against each other. Now, I don't know if that qualifies as global intimacy disorder, but I think that's what we're dealing with right now.

Jonny Miller [00:25:43]:
Yeah, it strikes me as, or at least like, my perception of what you're speaking to here. Is that, or perhaps better said, my interpretation is that when we, like you said in the beginning, disown a part of ourselves, then we. We project that disowned part onto other people, and we then other them. And in my worldview, that dehumanization is only possible when we've dehumanized that same part in ourselves.

Jerry Colonna [00:26:13]:
Sure, it's a classic projection of that which we have placed in the shadow. And it's a lack of acceptance of the reality of our own experience. I have a friend who grew up in the south, and he grew up in a community that the phrase that they would use is veneration of the lost cause. The war of northern aggression is the way they might define the civil war. And as part of that veneration of the lost cause, they disconnected and disassociated themselves from their own participation in the post civil war, reconstruction era attacks on black Americans. And one day he's going through some microfilm recordings of the local newspaper, and he comes across a photograph of family members at a picnic at the base of a tree where a black man had been lynched. And this is not something that the family wanted to talk about and gets lost. It's like you spoke about the disowned parts of ourselves, the parts of ourselves put in the shadow, being projected onto others.

Jerry Colonna [00:27:39]:
We'll expand that notion to include communities doing that, the collective disownment of the parts of ourselves that are unacceptable, and then projecting that as a community, as a collective, onto another collective of people. And so there's a psychological disorder that people can experience on an individual basis that I think has now metastasized into a psychological disorder being experienced at a collective level. And so its not just me dehumanizing you, its us dehumanizing them, which makes.

Jonny Miller [00:28:23]:
It socially acceptable to do so, and.

Jerry Colonna [00:28:25]:
It makes it even more dangerous.

Jonny Miller [00:28:27]:
Yeah, sure.

Jerry Colonna [00:28:29]:
Because it puts an AK 47 into the hands of a mentally unstable man who then goes into a supermarket and shoots people because he believes the lies of some sort of replacement theory going on.

Jonny Miller [00:28:46]:
Yeah. You mentioned the word ancestors a few times, and I know it's a big theme of this book. And I've currently been reading a book by an author called Malodoma, some who writes that from the daggera tribe where he grew up in if a young male washing without a grandfather, they would experience a frustration of grandfatherlessness that has no cure. And I found that line particularly striking. And for him, the connection to the grandfather is basically the connection to the ancestors, and that's how they receive the wisdom and they receive that connection. And so how have your own explorations of your ancestry reveals things for you? How has, I think there was a phrase you wrote, writing about my ancestors lit my brain on fire. What have you discovered from exploring your ancestral origins?

Jerry Colonna [00:29:41]:
Well, first, I'll put some context, and I like the description that you've shared. It reminds me of Richard Warr's concept of father hunger. And to make it more accessible, I think what we're really talking about is elder hunger, is that the loss of the wise elders. And so one of the phenomena that I tried to address in myself, but that I see so much, is that there is in this disconnection and dismemberment of the reality of our own ancestors. We have cut ourselves off from the wisdom of elders. And there's this notion that unremembered ancestors, those who came before us, are kind of like ghosts who inhabit our world but remain unremembered, and that the process of turning them into ancestors and therefore being able to access their elder wisdom is a process that enables us to take our own seat as the adults that we were born to be. Now, you specifically asked about my own journey. And again, just for context, I dont ask anybody to do something that I myself am not willing to do.

Jerry Colonna [00:31:14]:
And that is a big part of this book is, well, who the heck did I belong to? And what was their experience like? And one angle in was to look at the relationships. Look at my father, who passed away 31 years ago. And one of the things that I spent a lot of time exploring, we always knew that my father had been adopted, but we actually never talked about it. And in fact, when, after he had passed away and two of my older siblings researched and came up with the birth records for my father, I actively chose not to look at the paperwork. I did not want to know because at the time, it would have disrupted the view of my ancestors that I wanted to have. I wanted to see my ancestors as reaching all the way back to Italy in a small town called Palo de Col. But the truth of my father's experience was that he was born. His birth mother was a young 20 year old irish immigrant to New York who was working as a maid.

Jerry Colonna [00:32:32]:
And for the first 18 months of his life, he was William Michael Heffernan. And I stress the 18 months because he bonded with that woman. And then at 18 months, he was given up for adoption. And he was adopted by the people that I knew as my grandparents. And he became Jerome Vito Colonna. And so I refer to him as the boy with two names as part of the reconnection with my ancestors. I went deep in trying to imagine what my father's life was like. What did he really feel like inside? And began to understand why perhaps he became an alcoholic and why perhaps he kind of gave up at a relatively young age of 67 and died.

Jerry Colonna [00:33:27]:
But more importantly, I tried to understand who his mother was. And part of that understanding was I went to Ireland. I went to her grave site, and I left flowers for her, and I yelled at her and I cried with her. And I communed with the dead generations of my past. And I reached back inside just to imagine what her childhood was like and where did they go and where did they come from? And I could imagine the famine of the 19th century and how that marked the family. This was not fun. This was really painful. But I sit here today.

Jerry Colonna [00:34:12]:
My first book, reboot, was written from a retrospective perspective, meaning this is what happened to me. Reunion is written from a contemporary. Contemporary. I can't even. Contemporary, yeah, whatever the word is. Contemporaneous experience, where I'm describing what's happening to me in that regard, I'm describing the experience of who were my ancestors. Not just a story, not just a story of resilience, not just a story of overcoming hardship, but who were they really? Now, the truth is, I still don't know, but I am far more open to who they were so that I can then turn around and hold the stories of belonging of other people. And I can do that with an open heart, even if the heart is broken at the same time.

Jonny Miller [00:35:12]:
Yeah. And in your mind is the process of. I love this image of, like, turning a ghost into an ancestor. Is that reclaiming the shadow sides of the stories of your ancestors that have been held and welcoming them back into a sense of wholeness?

Jerry Colonna [00:35:32]:
That's right. Right. You know, I talk about hungry ghost leadership, and hungry ghosts are, in buddhist folklore, are wraith like creatures who could never be satisfied. They just haunt the world. And I talk about hungry ghost leaders, those who have power, who kind of haunt us. And in my experience, those hungry ghosts are born in the negative space of unremembered, disconnected ancestors because we reject who they were, because we may have been rejected by them in our life because of that disconnection. There's a hole, there's an ache, there's an emptiness. And that emptiness gets filled by people who have power, who can't help but do damage to the world.

Jonny Miller [00:36:30]:
Yeah. Yeah. They're projecting their pain out onto the world. And so if you were to flip that and you were to picture, I'm sure you know many, but a leader who has the innate capacity to, through their presence, create a sense or create the conditions of love, safety, and belonging, what is it about that leader and their internal state which allows them to do that, as opposed to the reverse of this hungry ghost leadership?

Jerry Colonna [00:37:01]:
I mean, to put it simply, they've done their work. They have reconnected with their own sense of self. They've welcomed in the disowned parts of themselves. They take responsibility for their feelings stake. They don't externalize onto other people their emotional existence. In the parlayance of my first book, they've grown up. They're adults.

Jonny Miller [00:37:32]:
What does early stage adolescence?

Jerry Colonna [00:37:34]:
As Bill Plotkin, maybe when I talk about better humans, they're fully actualized adults.

Jonny Miller [00:37:41]:
And on the path to becoming elders, presumably.

Jerry Colonna [00:37:43]:
That's right.

Jonny Miller [00:37:44]:
Beautiful. So one other, and this really does relate, I think. But my wife and I recently made the decision to start trying for kids next year, and I'm wondering, as a father yourself, how has fatherhood kind of shaped your own journey of reunion? And the question I'd love to ask is, after writing this book, what does it mean to you to strive to be a good ancestor?

Jerry Colonna [00:38:13]:
Well, to be clear, striving to be a good father, is the most important job ive ever done. And in the end, I think im okay. I think im a good father who can make mistakes. I have three children. The oldest is 33. My daughter, whom I spoke about before, is 31, and my youngest is 26. So they're pretty close to fully fledged adults. And I think that because, look, people will often say that being a parent is like wearing your heart outside your ribcage.

Jerry Colonna [00:38:53]:
Nothing challenges you more. Nothing. And the benefit of that is that it has forced me to become a better humanity. And in responding to the challenge from my daughter in writing reunion, what I did try to do was become, as I say in the book, the descendant my ancestors deserve, but to also be the ancestor my descendants deserve. And I think that that framing, for me at least, motivates me. It means I dont get to rest on my laurels. It means until my last breath in this body, I am committed to growing. And I take that commitment not from a sense of inadequacy about where I am, but from a responsibility from who I would like to become.

Jerry Colonna [00:39:58]:
Just like being holder animates everything that I do. Being a father, being the best father I can be, animates everything that I can do.

Jonny Miller [00:40:08]:
I imagine the two are very overlapped.

Jerry Colonna [00:40:10]:
They are. They are very much overlap. You know, just accepting that calling to beholder means. Can I give you a little bit of paternalistic advice as you lean into this possibility?

Jonny Miller [00:40:24]:
Absolutely.

Jerry Colonna [00:40:27]:
Because being a parent is like wearing your heart outside your rib cage. We typically have two responses. The first is to snowplow and to make it all easy for them, because we hold that bundle of human being in our hands, and in that moment, we cannot imagine any harm, allowing any harm to come to them. So our first impulse is to make it as easy as possible. The second impulse might be to stand behind them and push them in particular directions, to do what Carl Jung would caution against, which is to ask them to complete the work that we ourselves, that is ours to do.

Jonny Miller [00:41:11]:
So brutal.

Jerry Colonna [00:41:12]:
And neither one of those paths is the right stance. The right stance is shoulder to shoulder. To be clear, if you're dealing with a munchkin who's one years old, you don't want them sticking a fork in the electrical outlet. You will jump in and you will keep them safe. But as they become their own people, the hardest stance to take is the stance that accepts them as whole human beings unto themselves. And I think that creates the conditions where you hold and don't fix and don't snow, plow, and don't push, but share a little bit of your wisdom.

Jonny Miller [00:42:00]:
I have this image of the closed fists kind of opening up and just holding. And as you were sharing that, I can imagine, and maybe this is what you were speaking to. I can imagine the impulse of protecting them from. From heartbreak, from suffering from the inevitable challenges of life. And when I reflect back on my own experience, it has been the heartbreaks. It's been those moments which, if I was a protective figure, I would actually wanted to shield myself from. But they've been the experiences that have actually broken me open, and I've experienced the most growth from. And so I imagine that must be a really challenging tension or just a line to walk between loving them but without shielding them from certain experiences.

Jerry Colonna [00:42:48]:
Yeah. And you will keep them physically safe. You know, that is part of the responsibility, but it's probably the most important practice that one can go through. The only thing that's corollary to that would be the practice of being in romantic relationship, because the impulses are very similar. And, you know, to behold her in those moments is a real challenge.

Jonny Miller [00:43:15]:
The pretend safety was something I'd love to talk to you about as well. And there was a line that really moved me where I think you told the story of Lily and how she was questioning her worthiness that you wrote was so firmly held that it felt like part of her nervous system. And that, to me, feels like it is like a core question to live into, in the sense of, how can this. This generational separation be dislodged from our nervous systems? Knowing that words almost only open up the doorway, how do you think about dislodging it from part of our being? And is that a different process from just the intellectual inquiry?

Jerry Colonna [00:43:54]:
I think it's an additional process to the intellectual inquiry. I often will say that cognitive awareness does not create transformation. Cognitive awareness is a necessary condition for transformation. But as you well know, the somatic experience is an extremely important component of that transformation. What we're really talking about, and in the case of Lilly, what we're talking about is the intergenerational trauma of her ancestors having been enslaved, and the way that that lives on in her experience today. What she named was questioning her own worthiness as an expression of that. And I can imagine empathetically, all sorts of ways in which that trauma stays resident in her body. And again, as you well know, how we process intergenerational trauma at the body level, you can focus on the nervous system, you can focus on whatever part of the body that you want to express.

Jerry Colonna [00:45:09]:
But clearly, what we're talking about is the nervous system as a processing zone, if you will, dislodging. In my experience, I don't know that dislodge is the term I would use.

Jonny Miller [00:45:22]:
Yeah. Integrate or alchemize.

Jerry Colonna [00:45:24]:
Yeah, I like alchemize too, because part of a step is that integration to remember that which has been dismembered so that it can be reframed and re experienced by the body, so that the mind and the heart can be at ease. All of our experiences, all of our wounding, there is a possibility of that kind of reintegration. Theres the possibility of that alchemy. Its one of the gifts of being human, is that we have that capacity.

Jonny Miller [00:46:04]:
Yeah. And as Bill says, that can become the sacred wound from which our own medicine emerges or our own gift that we get to contribute.

Jerry Colonna [00:46:15]:
Yeah. I mean, our species and the stories that we tell each other as a species from archetypes and myths, reiterate this lesson over and over again. We still struggle to hold onto it as knowledge, but that's okay. That's part of the experience.

Jonny Miller [00:46:35]:
Yeah. And you quoted the man of myth himself, Joseph Campbell, at the end with a really striking quote that I'd actually love to reread here, because it really hit me. The quote is, where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a goddess. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outwards, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. And how do those words land in your system? And how do you feel like they are resonant with the.

Jerry Colonna [00:47:11]:
Well, I listen to you quoting me, quoting Joseph, and all I can feel in this moment is prayer. Profound admiration for Joseph Campbell, because what a mindfuck he is to just turn around and be able to sort of, to name it. Isn't that in a sense, there's so much fascination with the hero's journey, but to me, what he says in that, and I was quoting it there to talk about the process of the journey that I was on, where I ended up finding the God, if you will, of reunion, of reconnection. Isn't he, in a sense, laying out a path for that alchemy that you were just describing, where we are tasked with the possibility of deep and profound healing? And I particularly like the fact that he notes, in a sense, the fear that we have. Right. And even the aggression where we thought to slay the other, we end up slaying ourselves, and not in a kind of guilt ridden way, but what we're slaying is the constructed sense of self, of who it is that we're supposed to be. So that that which can emerge, that which needs to emerge, is able to emerge at that point. How did that quote strike you? I mean, you pulled it up.

Jerry Colonna [00:48:48]:
I think it's in the author's note.

Jonny Miller [00:48:50]:
Yeah, I mean, I think the piece around both where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a God. I really resonated with reading the wizard of Earthsea growing up as a kid and empathizing with Sparrow hawk or GED, the main character. And in the. Sorry to ruin this for listeners if you haven't already read it, but that's all right.

Jerry Colonna [00:49:09]:
If you haven't read it.

Jonny Miller [00:49:10]:
Yeah, it's a great book. You still read it. But towards the end, he turns around from this shadow that he unleashed, that he's been running away from, and he confronts it, and he names it by his name, Ged, and in doing so, integrates it back into himself. And that's in some ways it feels like it mirrors the journey that I've been on in the last five or ten years and the traveling outwards to then coming back into the center for an existence. I like you, I was very curious and I was obsessed with traveling. We started a travel startup and it felt like I've directed this curiosity inwards and have been exploring my own inner world, and through that have found a center from which to stand on and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. Yeah. I think it speaks to, again, this tension between separation and interbeing, or remembering and forgetting, or dismembering and remember.

Jonny Miller [00:50:15]:
It's all part of the same theme and tension of being human, which I think you quote Donogonohue as well in the book around this tension between longing and belonging. And it's like sitting, holding that tension for me without collapsing onto one of either side or grasping onto either side, I think is the piece that feels so hard, but also feels like the work of being human. And. Yeah, so it just strongly resonated with. And it's just. I mean, it's beautifully worded as well. It's like, damn, that's a good quote. Well, this feels like a beautiful place to begin to wrap up, but I have five rapid fire questions for you, if you have the time and inclination.

Jonny Miller [00:50:59]:
The first question is, what do you see as the most significant barrier in people's lives to their experiencing love, safety and belonging.

Jerry Colonna [00:51:12]:
I think it was Pascal who said, all of our troubles stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room by ourselves. And I think that the necessary condition to create love, safety and belonging within ourselves and for ourselves begins with being able to sit still and be with ourselves.

Jonny Miller [00:51:35]:
If you were to describe the work of reunion to a curious twelve year old, what might you say?

Jerry Colonna [00:51:42]:
I would say the work is about getting back to the point where you can really see your friends as friends. Valerie Kaur has this brilliant book called see no strangers, and that's really what it's about. It's about realizing that there are, in fact, no strangers.

Jonny Miller [00:52:04]:
Wow. I felt some emotions. You said that. That's beautiful. What is the cost in our lives of living as orphans from our ancestors and their inheritance?

Jerry Colonna [00:52:15]:
Well, it's that emptiness, right, that we spoke of before. The negative space in which hungry ghosts grow and the people who pay them the highest cost are those with the least amount of power and privilege in the world.

Jonny Miller [00:52:30]:
What is one journal prompt that you might share with a listener who is curious to embark on this journey of radical self inquiry?

Jerry Colonna [00:52:38]:
Well, my most famous question before I formulated the phrase radical self inquiry, which was an attempt to describe what the heck was it that I was doing? The most famous question was, how have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want? But I think that there's even more fundamentally important question, which is, what am I not saying that I need to say? And if we look deeply within our own hearts, there's an overwhelming amount of things that we're not saying that we need to say, at a minimum to ourselves, if not to others?

Jonny Miller [00:53:17]:
And finally, what is your heart's greatest aspiration or vision that you have for this new book and your work in the world in the decades to come?

Jerry Colonna [00:53:28]:
It sounds simplistic, but to be of service, the world is hurting. And the good Lord gave me the ability to string two words together in a way that people listen. I feel a responsibility to use that to do what I can to make a difference.

Jonny Miller [00:53:45]:
Beautiful. And yeah, I mean, this has been phenomenal. Where can listeners find out about your book, about the podcast about where would you like to direct them to if they're interested, to learn more?

Jerry Colonna [00:53:58]:
Well, reunion reboot IO is the best place to learn both about the book. We've also launched a short limited series, podcast on reunion, and we are encouraging people through a variety of means. We've got a study guide that we've produced for the book through a variety of means to write their own stories of belonging and therefore share those out in the world. So that's the hope. The hope is that we will lean into each other's stories and learn from those so that we can feel that sense of beloved community together.

Jonny Miller [00:54:40]:
Well, all of those links will be in the show. Notes I'd like to close with a line from real K. He said, try to love the questions themselves and live them now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer. And with that in mind, what is the question that is most alive in your consciousness? And what question might you leave our listeners with?

Jerry Colonna [00:55:04]:
For me personally, the question is, what kind of world do I want to leave? Because while I don't want to consider it, there is a time when I will leave this world. And the second question, or the question I would ask people to consider, is, what kind of ancestor do you want to be to your descendants? Because you have a choice right now. What do you want to do? The world is hurting and there is a need for those of us who know how to respond, to suffering, to respond. Lean in. Be kind and lean in. So maybe less of a question than an exhortation of my own.

Jonny Miller [00:55:48]:
Beautiful. Thank you so much Jerry.

Jerry Colonna [00:55:50]:
Thanks for having me.

Jonny Miller [00:55:51]:
This was a pleasure. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. It would mean a lot to me if you could take a few seconds to open up your podcast app and give curious humans a shiny five star rating. This not only helps more people to find it, but it will help me to get more awesome guests in the future. And if you're not already subscribed, then the curious humans newsletter is where I share monthly morsels of interestingness and podcast updates. You can sign up for that at Johnny life. That's j o n y life. Thanks for listening.