- Hey humans.
How's it going? Susan, Ruth here.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of Hey Human Podcast.
Before I get into introducing my guests,
I wanna take a moment to tell you I've created a Patreon.
I hope you check it out
and that you'll be a part of the hey human community.
I'm fostering there. I started, hey, human as a way
to shine a light on the day-to-Day.
People who are what I consider the
real heroes in this world.
The ones finding hope
and a way to keep going in spite
of whatever life is thrown at them,
and to remind us all that we're connected no matter what.
Because I'm desperate for humanity to thrive,
and I get that this planet feels lonely.
I'm one of the lonely, and I'm trying to remind us all
that we're more than what we present on the outside.
You know, the masks we wear,
that we are more same than we are different.
And that wherever there's darkness, there's a whole lot
of light, working hard to chase that darkness out.
There's a lot of really interesting, fascinating, lovely
people out there who are going through some
of the same stuff we're going through, you know, so
you can find it at patreon.com/susan Ruth,
which is S-U-S-A-N-R-U-T-H-I-S-M.
I'd like the Patreon page to be one of connection.
I'll host monthly check-ins and you can ask me questions
or share your own human story.
And I'll share mine too, wherever I am on my journey.
And thank you for being a part of this all for
nearly eight years.
Uh, I'd like to see it continue and doing the Patreon.
We'll definitely help make that a reality.
Alright, right now on with the show.
This is episode 4 0 3, and my guest is Mish Sayed.
Mish is an award-winning fashion
and interior designer specializing in creating
environments that heal.
She's an author of the bestselling book, purgatory
to Paradise, chronicling Her Breast
Cancer Journey to Healing.
She's a strong, engaging woman. She's got magic in her eyes.
She's such a fascinating lady.
I really enjoyed talking with her.
She and I definitely had so much in common
and I'm excited for you to hear this episode.
Check out hey human podcast.com for links.
And to learn more about my guests in the show,
check out Susan ruth.com.
To learn more about me and my other artistic endeavors,
follow Susan Ruth and hey, human podcast on social media.
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Thank you for listening. Be well, be kind, be love.
Here we go, ma said,
welcome to Hey human.
- Thank you so much for having me, Susan. Delighted, lovely
- To see you.
What is this necklace you're wearing?
It's beautiful. Thank you.
- It's a design of mine.
It's solid lapis
and it represents the divine feminine, which
I have an interesting story
to tell about this necklace if you're, if you're
so inclined to listen.
- I am. - I was asked to go back to my neck
of the woods in Pakistan.
Um, it was a, a mission.
Many organizations were involved, including the EU
and the Han Foundation,
and all the designers that they had enlisted to go
were too afraid to go.
So last minute I got called in
and they're like, a friend of mine said, would you like
to go over coffee?
I'm like, yeah, yeah, I would.
And so I went to meet with women from Gil area,
the up northwestern region,
and they drove 21 hours to meet with me.
And I basically assessed all the machinery.
Pakistan is the fifth larger exporter
of semi-precious gemstones and other gemstones.
And yet the people there weren't really availing themselves
of their natural resources.
And the designs that they had been given were far too
complex for their machinery.
So I walked in, of course, they didn't expect for me
to be one of them, and I assessed the machinery.
I assessed what they were able to make,
and I started sketching on the spot.
What's crazy is I picked this design, not only
for the symbolism, but there's a secret about the symbol.
This is, of course, everyone knows as the star
and crescent of Islam,
but Islam gets it from the Byzantine Empire,
and it predates even that to Greek mythology,
which comes full circle into what we're about to talk about,
which is a part of my book about celebrating the
goddess within all of us.
So this idea of women empowering themselves in that part
of the world, using a symbol of the divine feminine,
was something that I really enjoyed creating together.
- I love that. I'm excited to get into all that.
Is you, I want to start, as I start all of these episodes.
Tell me about you, how you grew up,
what shaped you as a person?
- I think one
of my fondest memories was sitting on the veranda floor
with my aunties.
And I called them, you know, my fairies
because I had seven of them.
I had four on my mom's side and three on my dad's side.
And I grew up with four generations under one roof.
So I learned how to be the divine feminine from them
and this idea of softness and laughter
and grace and reverence.
And then of course, textiles, which is a huge part of me.
Um, I grew up sewing
and, you know, like, uh, sleeping beauty who was, uh,
basically pricked by the spindle.
I was actually pricked by the needle, believe it
or not, in my grandmother's rotary singer.
But, um, the, the old cranky ones.
Um, but, uh, I feel like
I was initiated into a magical world.
And I grew up with mythology.
I grew up with folk tales
and family folk tales that were passed down from generation
to generation, which I also touch on in my book.
So for me, that level of finding
that magic in the everyday came from watching them
and sitting on their fragrant laps and smelling the jasmine
and the roses in my grandmother's garden.
And so I feel like everywhere I go, I try
to recreate that memory
- Growing up with, um, with
that strong matriarchal influence
and understanding the power of women within the confines
of the aunties and the generational aunties
and the worldwide aunties as well.
Yes. Uh, growing up with that understanding, was it,
was it weird to see that once you stepped outside of
that protective nest, that the world did not treat women
and aunties and girls in the same reverence
that it did within the, that confine?
- There is always that dichotomy,
but I honestly think there's, there's a lot of, and my mom
and I talk about this too, this, this, you know, way.
She says, you know, I have it hard twice being a woman in
the west having to perform and,
and be in my, in my masculine,
but also be in my feminine to have to do both.
And I think that just makes us tired.
Susan , yeah. Just
- Came into that sister - .
It's just tiring. It's just tiring.
So, I mean, I, I really believe that
we need both, and I talk about this also in terms of shadow
and light, speaking of the divine.
And in order to really own that divinity within us, we have
to embrace our shadow side too.
So you can't just parse it away and shove it away
and be like, no, you go over there.
I think embracing all those parts
is the way to our divinity.
- I wholeheartedly agree.
Did you have an understanding as a child, um,
being surrounded by the lush colors of your, of
where you grew up and as you mentioned textiles
and gemstones, did you think to yourself, this is
what I want to do with my life?
Or was that something that came a little later?
And how long were you there for?
Did you, did you come to the
United States as a young person?
- I came here when I was seven,
but we spent summers back home
and, um, have a very strong connection to my relatives.
English is my second language.
I grew up speaking Urdu in English
and then later French and Arabic.
But, um, I think, I feel that
that level of expression I took
for granted, I just thought everybody designed
their clothes when they were little.
I thought every, because we did our, you know,
we designed everything.
We had tailors to make our clothing.
So I started, I remember being in a Home X class when I was
like 13 years old, and I gave my teacher heart palpitations.
'cause I started cutting without a pattern
because I was told, I, I was taught how
to cut using like origami, like how to be able
to measure everything.
And I also used to drape directly on my body.
And weirdly enough, Susan, I,
when I had my dress up in New York, I did that.
I draped directly on my clients.
And you know, it was during that time
where everyone was following, I forget that show where,
you know, can you fit into the dress?
And you had to lose all the weight to fit into the dress.
And I always thought that was like, ask backwards
because the dress should fit you.
And, you know, creating what is the definition of beauty
is accepting where you're at, right.
Your curves. And there is not one standard of beauty.
And growing up, one of the things I must say,
to be too skinny was bad.
That meant like you didn't have enough money, .
So to be plump was the paragon of beauty
and also of wealth, a sign of wealth .
So I think it's so interesting culturally how
that affects someone.
And, you know, coming here
and seeing, you know, for the first time,
different hair colors and different eye colors
and all of that was, oh my gosh,
everybody from my storybooks came alive.
So it was, it was really great.
- There's a video that I've seen that is fascinating
to watch, and it's, uh, feminine cultural,
feminine beauty standards around the world.
And it shows just all the, the, the types
and the looks and all this.
And it's so interesting to see,
and I think we as a species,
I don't think this is just women, I just think as a species,
humans are stuck a lot
of times in a comparison loop that they can't get out of.
And I've mentioned, I think I've mentioned this on the show
before, is I remember one time
I was on the elliptical at the gym
and I was looking at the woman's butt in front
of me thinking, oh man, if I only had that butt,
I could rule the world, man, what a butt that, that, that's
what I'm aiming toward is that butt.
And I, I looked from her butt to her face
and I noticed that she was looking at the butt
of the woman in front of her.
And I thought, oh, interesting.
She's probably having the same thoughts I'm having about
her, she's having about the woman in front of her.
And that's vicious and I'm sure everybody does it.
It's this vicious cycle of com uh, comparison.
- Yeah. - The death of us.
- Yeah. Well, what's so fascinating about that level
of comparison is, you know, I am,
the work that I do is all about beauty.
And whether I was a stylist or a designer
or interior designer, I deal with beauty all the time.
And now I teach about beauty.
And what's interesting is that cancer introduced me
to my beauty, Susan.
I didn't feel truly beautiful until
after I was initiated to the darkest parts of me.
And so forget about trying to fit in, forget about that.
It was about self-acceptance.
And I have a story for you,
and it has to do with the Japanese, um, tradition
of Kintsugi.
And the, the idea, the metaphor is that, you know,
this hundreds of years of being able
to take broken pottery
and put it back together instead of throwing it away,
but putting value back into it by highlighting those cracks
with gold or silver.
But to guild those cracks.
And I find it's such a beautiful metaphor,
because those, that gold is your self-acceptance,
all your scars, your trials, your tribulations,
your heartbreaks, your disappointments, your despair, all
of those things are your gold.
And I think as a society, we hide it away. We're ashamed.
There's a stigma and there's
definitely a stigma with cancer.
There's definitely a stigma with, oh my gosh, it happens
to other people.
It doesn't happen to me.
And so this idea of the Scarlet letter
and then feeling like, oh,
and I had friends who they were allergic to, it's almost
as if they were gonna catch cooties or something.
Like, they were like, I can't be around that.
It's, people don't know how to deal with,
some people can't handle, they don't know what to say.
They don't know how to be.
And that, to me is interesting.
'cause I, I grew up in a culture that embraced the jiggle
that embraced all those parts of us
and said, Hey, this is welcome.
And also the elderly
where they're no longer rendered invisible and,
and put away in homes, but we're very much venerated
and taken care of.
I learned how to braid hair on my great grandmother's hair.
So I, I remember the smell of her talcum powder.
I remember the smell of her room.
Like she had this, you know, exalted position in the family.
And everybody came around her and we learned from her.
And I learned from my grandmother, my great-grandmother,
my aunties, which by the way were
between 21 and 12 when I was born.
So they were like big sisters too.
It was, it was a,
it was a fun time. It was a really fun time.
- It's my understanding that you were
diagnosed with breast cancer.
- Yes. - For someone who has spent a lifetime in
beauty and understanding what beauty standards are
and to have cancer attack the one
of the most feminine parts of you,
how did you wrap your head around that
and how did your family, uh, who venerated the women
and lifted the women up in their, in their chamber?
As I I I, I liken it to the chamber
because I think what happens in many families is there's a,
is a safety ball of the men, you know, do the men thing
and the women do the women thing,
and do you know what I mean?
- Yeah, sure. - So when something like
that happens, how do you talk about it?
How, how does the family rally round?
How do you rally around yourself as a woman?
- That's a great question. Interestingly enough,
I did not share my diagnosis that fast.
My aunt, my mom's younger sister had passed away from the
same diagnosis the summer prior, before mine.
And it devastated us, just def And I was too,
I was really scared to tell my own mother
because I thought this would just total her.
And she rose to the occasion.
But we decided to keep this very private.
And, you know, at the time I had my own firm, I thought,
you know, I'm a single mom who's gonna hire a sick woman.
Like I was very self-protective,
and I didn't tell many people at all.
As a matter of fact, Susan, I deprive myself of the support.
Looking back, I see that I deprived myself of that support
where I see other people rallying around
and, you know, doing, sending, making food
and, you know, doing all those types of things.
And I did everything on my own.
My mom flew in each time for my chemo, you know,
for my surgery looked, she would come in.
But for the most part, I was alone. And that was hard.
And I think because I went from one swing of the pendulum,
I decided to write about my story
and share it with the world.
And, and basically it was my way of healing myself.
And when my family did find out,
of course they rallied around.
They couldn't believe it. And they just are
so supportive and so loving.
But it's scary. And frankly, it's a taboo body part.
It's a taboo body part. People don't wanna talk about it.
It's something that on a cultural level, it's very hard
because there's a lot of stigma attached to it.
And yes, how do I, how did I find my beauty while going
through breast cancer by rooting into
what beauty meant for me?
And it wasn't external because I didn't look so great.
I mean, swollen face from the steroids, hair falling out,
I mean, burns all this, all this transformation.
But I, if you think about a butterfly, you know,
you become this mushy caterpillar
and you go into your chrysalis.
So I went into my chrysalis during cancer,
and then I rooted into my beauty.
Then I really figured out that my beauty existed
no matter what, whether I had hair
or didn't have hair, whether I had a partner
or I didn't have a partner.
My womanhood was self-defined.
And it was not external, it was internal.
And one of the things that I did do was go back to
something from my childhood.
The Goddess Persephone is so interesting.
I, I found her when I was nine years old,
and I started sketching my latest fashion on a goddess,
and I would put it in a frame on my desk
and change the, the frame the picture out every week
with the new goddess in a new design.
And Persephone was somebody I just really loved.
Don't ask me how, but I ended up doing dress designs
that were inspired by persephone's descent
into the underworld.
And I divided the collection
between Meadow when she was like collecting crocuses
and lilies and ens.
And, and then when she goes down into Hades,
and that's like rich jewel tones, like lapis and rubies
and emeralds and deep, deep colors.
And this idea of that light and dark, innocent
and initiated right love
and pain, right despair
and joy, all of those kind of things are within us.
And I think when I was going through cancer, I realized
I had become Persephone.
- Hmm. That's beautiful.
Did you have a sense when you were diagnosed,
did you know on a, on a molecular level
that you were going to be okay?
- I made a decision. My son was nine years old.
I I just made a decision that it was gonna be okay,
that I would be around for him.
And I just accepted nothing less.
And I wanna mention, you know, the typical drama triangle
where, you know, woe is me, I'm the victim,
the doctor's my hero, my savior,
and my cancer is the villain.
That level of drama triangle I divested myself from.
I was the hero. I was co-creating my healing
with my doctor team, which I love my team, I'm still friends
with everyone, they're awesome.
And I'm not against allopathic medicine.
What I am is for creating a bridge between
the ancient wisdom that I grew up with
and the modern medicine that I also availed myself of.
So bringing those two things together, I realized
that I had the ability to change.
And here's the key,
and this is very important for anyone listening to this.
Most cancers over two thirds
of cancers are epigenetic, which means
they are the result of your lifestyle
of and your environment.
So when my test came back negative for a genetic marker,
I went, wait a second, why is that?
I just didn't take it.
And just accept, okay, cancer happens, you know,
bad things happen to good people.
Oh, well, no, I started investigating.
I thought, okay, what causes this? What can cause this?
I was in a toxic relationship.
I was, you know, I had Teflon pants.
I started auditing my home, I started looking around.
I'm a materials consultant for architectural firms. Anyway.
So now I started looking at the materials in my home
through the lens of cancer, through the lens of illness.
I got my certification in quantum biology
and circadian rhythm.
I am now looking at
and assessing spaces through the lens of your health on
every single level.
And bringing in design from a soul level.
So bringing again, all those threads together
to create a beautiful tapestry.
When you do that, when you like mix
colors, I know you're a painter.
When you're mixing those colors,
you arrive at this beautiful color
that you didn't even realize existed.
But until you do, you won't know.
So I encourage everyone to really be curious
and just explore, because the answers are there.
- I do wanna talk about the home
that we place ourselves in.
I wanna first finish up on this other question.
Your son, uh, nine years old son, correct? Yes. Yes. Son.
Nine years old. Uh, how do you have as a mom,
how do you have that conversation with, with a child?
I think a lot of people would love to hear
how you went about talking to him about your diagnosis.
- Thank you. Yeah, I, that's actually a part of my book is
how to be a parent during Cancer.
Right? And I took him
to the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden on Lilac Hill in the
Bronx Botanical Gardens.
It's our happy place.
We've been going there since he was in a baby carrier.
We always picnic over there and I set the blanket down.
But he knew immediately from my face that I was serious.
And I was honest with him.
I told him, I said the C word.
And the reason why is
because it's so much better for us to frame
this thing that's happening for them than
to hear it from somebody else, number one.
Number two, it showed him that I was in control
of my fate and that I was gonna handle it.
And he was watching my face, he was watching my expression,
and I told him, and I was wearing my grandmother's
ring, I'm not wearing it now.
I was wearing my grandmother's ring
and had a little diamond in it.
And I said, you know, mama's body's like a garden,
like this garden that's beautiful.
And it's a very fertile garden.
And sometimes some weeds grow in that garden
and there's a little weed and we have to just prune it out.
You know, we prune things in our garden.
And so he asked me, he said, how big is it?
And so I pointed to the little, so he's very visual like me.
I pointed to the diamond and I said, it's this tiny little,
just tiny little piece like this.
And he said, okay, okay. You're strong, mama. You're strong.
And he just, he had so much wisdom, Susan,
and throughout this, he was a part of the process.
When I finished my radiation, it was a holiday,
it was Veteran's Day.
And I asked them, I'm like, oh my God,
I don't have childcare.
Um, what, what can I do? And they're like, bring him in.
He can hang out with in the office space.
And, you know, there was a, the head, um,
radiologist, she was a mom.
So she's like, bring him over.
So we brought in cupcakes and,
and goodies for everyone for the last day
and a card and everything.
So it was very celebratory.
So, you know, everyone in the waiting room was like,
wait, what's he doing here?
'cause everyone is like, you know,
and described us in my book,
but, oh my God, Susan, we walked in
and they embraced him
and they took him into that room
where I was getting treatment
and showed him and gave him a tour.
But then one of the technicians gave him the control
and said, okay, here, press this button.
You can see this move.
And so he was able to see it move and adjust.
And I saw his eyes light up,
and I thought to myself, this is that seminal memory
for him, the way those seminal memories were
for me in my grandmother's garden.
Right? And think about it, he may grow up
to invent something
or to help ameliorate someone going through cancer
or any other illness because he sees that he has agency
even at his age.
He's a part of that story of renewal,
of rebirth and revivification.
So I think it's important to involve your children
and obviously frame things in a way
that they can palate, right.
But I do believe that they have the ability to give us
so much wisdom and so much grace,
and allow us to heal
even better than without their knowledge.
- I agree with you completely.
Children are incredibly empathic
and perceptive and intelligent.
They're thinkers and they know how to think beyond the box.
They haven't lost that.
- Yeah. Yet - That imagination yet, it's, it's lovely.
I'm glad that you included him in your journey
and you're cancer free now.
- Yes. Thank you. - Lovely. Congratulations,
- . Thanks so much.
- You're welcome. Let's talk about the home.
- Your home is your living ecosystem, just like your body.
So there's a communication that's happening
between your cells, which are divinely intelligent,
and your home, which is quite alive.
And from a practical point of view, the materials
that we ingest, I'm not even talking about food.
It's what we breathe the nanoparticles of dust
in our air, right?
Or the volatile organic compounds that are, um,
being released from your synthetic carpets.
I did a real recently where I'm like,
your body is a solar panel .
We are solar panels.
We have photoreceptors all over our body
and not just on in our eyes.
And we are able to still be in touch
with the light spectrum.
And as modern as we try to be.
And as you know, this modern lifestyle
that is literally killing us, um, it tries to make things
so much more convenient.
We are inexorably tied to our biology
for millennia.
And for millennia, the sun was our clock,
and we ourselves have a clock.
And so this idea, if you start looking at cancers
and all the precipitating fa factors of cancers, a lot
of them are the result of circadian disruption.
And what that means is getting the wrong
light at the wrong time.
So from a designer's perspective, how can I design windows
that let more light in?
'cause a lot of the windows have laminations
that prevent vital UV proportion of the spectrum
to go in to save energy.
But a lot of things that are marketed
to save your environment are actually killing your body.
- Interesting. - Yeah. So looking at your home from
a practical standpoint of what you can remove,
what things are toxic,
and then what you can add
to enhance your health is something
I'm utterly obsessed with.
- What do you find is some
of the biggest mistakes people make in their homes,
aside from we all know Teflon not great.
It causes brain damage, brain Alzheimer's, things like that.
A a whole host of things.
End endocrine disruptors, uh, candles,
smelly candles, certainly.
What other sorts of things do you see?
- The hidden killer in most homes is your carpet.
And here's what synthetic carpet
or anything that's touted as washable, pet-friendly,
stain resistant is code for bad, bad for your body.
And most people don't realize that synthetic,
I'm talking polypropylene, nylon, visco, all
of those materials, they release VOCs.
But not only that, the dust
that you're breathing in your home,
carpets are emitting nanoparticles
that you are literally eating.
And that is really toxic.
So number one, carpets should be
wool bios sustainable.
It's been around and guys, it's so cleanable,
it don't be afraid of wool.
Don't be afraid of ju cotton linen
or simple flat leaves.
I mean, you don't have to go crazy
and it doesn't have to be expensive.
What you pay for with your health is far more costly than
that initial outlay from your pocketbook.
So that's one. And the other, as I mentioned, light.
Now opening your windows is good
for two basic reasons.
One, sunlight is not polarized.
So I use designer's tricks to be able
to bounce the sunlight into a space.
And since you can open your window, you're actually able
to absorb that light spectrum
that starts your circadian cascade, which keeps you all
of your other systems functioning.
Number one, number two, air circulation.
I call, you know, the spaces, especially during winter
sarcophaga, because , it's like you're,
you're encapsulated in this recycle situation,
which is so toxic.
Indoor air is far more polluted than outdoor air.
So to open your window, you're getting the added benefit
of releasing those VOCs, getting that fresh air inside
and that light on your skin.
It's a win-win. Mm-Hmm. , what about plants?
Oh, you found my favorite subject. How did you know?
Um, is that a plant whore ?
Oh my God, I gotta see, I, we have
to have a whole other conversation.
Yes, I have a list.
You know, NASA has a list
of the top 20 air filtering plants.
I mean, they've been doing this for millions of years.
Um, they're way better at it than we are.
But I actually went through my own list of what goes in
what room and why, and why you need some in your bedroom.
And, uh, which ones are good,
especially in different late locations, which are good in
that airless office that has no
windows and things like that.
Biophilia is the science of nature
and its effect on your biology.
And I'm a designer who practices
biophilic spaces
and uses biophilia to enhance your health and your vitality.
And I just wanna express beauty.
Real beauty, how I define it
is cellular alignment.
It's your divine design.
Your body actually wants to heal
and wants to go into that homeostasis.
We are the ones who f it up.
So I have to kind of step back
and say, nature is intrinsically linked
to our biology and therefore our beauty,
and it's beautiful on its own.
You know, when you look at leaves,
you actually affect your brainwaves.
There's a neurological effect on you
when you look at leaves.
And if you think about it, does nature have right angle?
Susan, have you seen like nature's ha Like,
are there like total perfect squares in nature?
Not really. Maybe some crystals, maybe some, uh, well,
I'll give some crystals that do that.
But for the most part, it's all curves. It's all curves.
And there is something that happens to your eyes
when you're able to focus on the multiplicity
of those leaves and those curves that affects you,
and it brings you into your parasympathetic state.
So why not?
And I wanna add, during the pandemic, there were studies
that were done, you know, this epidemic
of loneliness, right?
People are so isolated, taking care of plants
helped alleviate anxiety and depression as well.
So I think it's a win-win.
- I talk to my plants every day
and at night, you know, I'll reach up
and shake one of its leaves and say goodnight .
Which is, I mean, don't mind think that's crazy,
but I swear they know what I'm leaving town
and they look to me, they feel excited when I come home
and people think I'm a little off. But
- I love the fact that you're touching your plants.
That's awesome. Oh
- Yeah. We're we're buddies.
- That's great. I, um,
when I introduce a new specimen into the family,
I'm always talking like, hello, welcome,
welcome to your new call.
And these are your sisters and these are your brothers.
Yeah. And like, basically like, you know,
and they're a community.
They, they have their place. They know who they're with.
What's next to them? Grounding is really important.
The reason why is modern life wifi
and our electrified life in general robs us
of our electrons.
So in order to again, keep our electrical body
in harmony, grounding is so important.
So bare feet on the ground, if you can't,
if it's 50 degrees,
or sorry, if it's like 15 degrees, 50 degrees,
you can handle, I can definitely handle barefoot.
But if it's too cold for you
and you're wearing shoes outside touching a tree,
which I always do anyway, did you know like tree hugging,
hugging a tree, touching a tree with your bare skin
helps ground you because its roots are grounded
and it conducts that electrical charge to you.
- I'm I'm gonna sound even weirder.
Um, firstly, I am a big tree hugger.
I grew up climbing trees. I love trees.
I think they're incredible. I like to touch their bark.
I say hello to them. I have trees in my neighborhood that,
you know, I'll, I'll run and show people visiting.
This is my favorite tree.
Look at this tree, look at that tree.
But I have come upon trees.
I always ask permission before I hug them.
I say, may I hug you?
And I have had, there was one tree,
usually they're fine with it.
I know that sounds crazy,
but I had one tree once was not having it.
Did not wanna be hugged or touched.
And I said, okay, I appreciate that.
Um, I'm not gonna do that.
- Oh my gosh, that's amazing.
- But it was so visceral.
I felt it that this tree does not wanna be
hugged . Wow.
- Wow. - That's not weird. It's so weird.
But I swear it was very real.
- Do you know what's so interesting?
We define intelligence based on ourselves, which is
so crazy and subjective.
You know, the secret life of trees, that book, I mean,
there's mycelium and all the mycelial networks
and how these trees take care of each other
and communicate, you know?
Mm-Hmm. through that underground network.
It's like, oh, there were smart all along.
No, we were the dumb ones.
They've always been doing this for millions of years.
We're the ones who are finally figuring their language out.
Yeah. You know, we're, we're late to the game.
Like, we're really late to the game.
So I think I love hearing you say that
'cause you're trusting your intuition, Susan.
You're trusting what you're feeling.
And, and I think there's a lot of wisdom
in being able to trust your wisdom.
And that inner, I call it your inner GPS,
because for so long I overrode that inner GPS,
which I do believe led to my cancer.
And I think now I'm much more careful and rooted into,
and sometimes those are small little tiny whispers.
They're not loud. You have to kind
of quiet your mind in order to listen to that.
Mm-Hmm. But if you build that practice in to your,
your life, designing an authentic life, designing a life
where you're experiencing beauty every single day,
you're experiencing the sacredness of life every single day
and creating these rituals,
I call them my rituals of reverence.
When you do that, then that's your paradise.
- I love that. Have you seen those YouTube videos
of the people that attach the little wires to plants
and they play music and mushrooms course and all that?
Oh, is that not the coolest
- ?
Of course of Yes. Yes.
And you know, they also respond to music. It's yeah.
Documented that classical music helps them grow.
There is so much wisdom to the kind of life we live.
And I design using my five senses.
And I think, you know,
it's counterintuitive when you're going through an illness.
Most people think of wanting to escape.
But for me it was actually bringing myself into my body
and rooting down into my senses.
And so by designing rituals
and designing spaces, using my senses
to layer in music, to layer in touch, the way you touch
that leaf, to layer in sight, to see something
that makes you happy and,
and makes you feel centered, it's so important to curate
to what I call declutter.
Yes, we can declutter,
but to curate your spaces, I consider every tabletop
your altar, your coffee table is your altar.
Your dresser is your altar. Your end table is your altar.
What you place there should have reverence for you
and only things that are sacred
and give you joy, whatever those things are.
So to create a home that is your living sanctuary.
Now what does that even look like?
If you follow, what do I like to smell?
What do I like to taste?
What do I like to touch against my skin?
What do I like to look at? What colors give me joy?
And a lot of times, you know, I have clients
who are too scared to pick the color that they,
I could see they really like it,
but they're like, Ugh, I don't know if I can make
that big of a commitment.
A pillow on your sofa is like
that scarf on your little black dress.
You can change the accessory.
You can even, and I was, I was, I just did a workshop today
with other cancer survivors
and I said, you know, even if you wanna shop in your house
and you don't wanna buy a pillow cover, take a scarf
from your closet, some scarf that feels good, silk, moher,
whatever it is that really feels great,
and wrap your pillow in it.
Have that color, have that ability to create,
people feel like they have
to stay in the waiting room of life.
The purgatory. Right.
Of, of like not investing in art
or not putting a hole in the wall because it's a rental.
Why? Why, why should I invest? 'cause I don't own it.
Well, guess what? You own your day.
That's the only thing you truly own. Hmm.
You're not taking anything with you.
So that day that you can create that paradise,
that's why you should create that paradise
and own that paradise.
And that's why I have my course called Claim Your Paradise.
Because cancer made me realize
there may be no tomorrow. Right.
- Well, there isn't. We never get
to tomorrow. It doesn't exist.
- Right. Yeah.
I, I wrote in my book, whoever wrote good things come
to those who wait was a master manipulator,
- . Let's talk about the book.
- Sure. When I made the commitment to write my book
Purgatory to Paradise, how
an helped me design an Authentic Life.
And I basically decided, um, spring
of 2022 to write it.
And I knew my birthday that fall was coming up.
And I said, that's it. That's my deadline.
It's gonna be published. That's it.
And I reverse engineered everything.
And the book that I wanted to write, purgatory
to Paradise is basically an entree into these subjects
that I will write a little bit more
and expound a little bit more on tomorrow.
No, in the future, .
But it's about setting the stage
of bringing all these threads together.
Mythology, science, heartbreak, right?
Epigenetics, illness, motherhood culture.
I mean, it was, it was crazy
'cause it hit number one in health and spirituality.
Women in Islam, sacred sexuality,
neuropsychology, Pakistan history.
And I'm forgetting a few others,
but it was, it was like a, oh, paint and wall covering.
'cause that's who I am. You know, I'm all these things
that we are all these things, right?
Why pick one? So it's the idea of bringing that, being
that bridge builder and creating,
really putting my heart out there
and saying, this is my story.
This is it. This is my truth
and this is how I make sense of what happened to me.
And hopefully it can be your survival guide.
- Mm-Hmm. , what were some
of the hiccups along the way of being so honest
with yourself and seeing yourself
through the lens of a author?
- What's interesting, this has been a very interesting, um,
result is since I published,
not everyone's happy for me.
- Fascinating. - Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. Yeah.
I think it triggered a lot of people like those who know me
know exactly what I was talking about.
And I really did put everything out there
and including vulnerable parts of
my cancer journey, which isn't easy.
And certainly I have friends who went
through the same breast cancer diagnosis
who don't tell anybody about it.
It's part of the past that door shut. No one needs to know.
And not that it's my identity, it was my way
of coping and healing.
And what I learned along the way, Susan, I'm like,
I can't keep this to myself.
How am I gonna just continue doing the same old, same old?
Yeah. I can make your living room look really
great, but is it good for you?
What else? Let's, let's create something different here.
And I really truly believe that everyone deserves beauty.
Especially when you're going through something
as catastrophic as cancer or any illness
or any chronic illness.
That's when you need beauty the most.
And I believe that beauty is a very
powerful healing modality.
The kind of beauty that I'm talking about,
that cellular alignment, that ability to create it.
And you know, this newfangled word neuroaesthetics,
which is great, you know?
Oh yeah. Art makes you happy
and it's a good thing for your body.
Sure. , it's been around for a while.
Let's, you know, let's validate some
of this intuition that we've had.
So like art neuroaesthetics, the idea that beauty has
a physiological and a psychological effect on you
has been documented.
And I believe we need to employ it in pragmatic ways.
And you don't need a million dollar budget
to create that beauty, that healing oasis in your home.
You just need education.
- I stuck a yam in my window, sill in my kitchen.
It's exploding with plant life. It's so wonderful.
And I've been documenting it on my Instagram stories
and people are like, oh my God, , oh my look,
the littlest thing Sticks.
Sticks. Yeah. Put it in a jar, water it daily,
watch it explode with leaves
and personality that brings joy.
If something so little as a window
yam . Mm-Hmm. can do that.
- I love it. I love it. I think being a gardener,
that's my church.
That's, that's really where I pray gardening is my prayer.
And I realize in that regard,
there is a greater force than me at play when I watch
something unfurl and bloom
and just out of these tiny little seeds, a life erupts.
And I love using the gardening analogy even in terms
of our lives because death
and decay are teeming with life
and all that life that organic matter that we're growing in.
If we can dig our hands into that soil
and accept that soil
and love that soil, then we can accept the deepest,
darkest part of ourselves too.
- Yeah, absolutely.
And this is gardening, these conversations,
plant seeds and others.
- Yes. I love that.
Oh my God, I love talking with you. This is great
- .
Tell people I love talking with you as well.
Tell everybody where they might find you and your work and,
and all the things.
- Thank you. Claim your paradise.com.
You can see a lot of things there.
And for your, um, for your listeners, I have a gift.
It is, um, my top three things you can have today
that I have vetted and I explain the scientific reasons why.
And that's at claim your paradise.com/podcast,
um, where you can download that today
and you can find me on Instagram at moish
ed under designs.
- And that's M-A-H-W-I-S-H.
- Yes. SYED designs.
- SYED. Yes. Yes, yes.
It's been so lovely speaking with you.
- Likewise. - I'm
so glad you're out there doing your thing.
And I think it's so important to have these conversations
because many of us run around on autopilot
or even when we are incredibly present,
we can slip back into old patterns.
And these sorts of conversations are such a lovely reminder
that it's not just about what we ourselves do,
but in everything that we surround ourselves with as well,
the things we put in our body visually, through our mouth,
through our nose, through our ears, it's, it's all a part
of it through our feet when we walk on the grass, all of it.
- Yes. Yes. I love that. Exactly.
We speak the same language. .
So nice to meet you. So nice to know you.
- It's so lovely to meet and know you as well.
Congrats on being cancer free.
I know that that's one hell of a journey.
So, and you, you said it yourself,
although if you had an I would have about that, we all have
to go through these dark, not just one in our lifetime,
but so many dark nights of the soul
and, you know, we have to go to the underworld.
It's, it's a requirement, I think, to live this life.
And I think a lot of people are afraid
of the underworld, understandably.
But it's such an incredibly important part of our being
and our shadow.
Everything wants to be heard, even the darkest depth
of ourselves, you know?
- Exactly. I tell my son, you know,
the boogie man is scarier when you can't see him.
- I agree. I agree.
And even the boogeyman just wants to have a conversation.
- Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Oh my gosh, you're so wise. Love it,
- .
Well, you too. All right. Take care. Have a lovely day.
Take care. And thank you.
- Absolutely. Thank you. - And thank you
for listening everybody.
Bye Bye. Great review
and subscribe to Hey, human Podcast on iTunes
or wherever you get your podcast.
Thanks. Bye.