Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan Ruth here.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of Hey Human podcast.
This is episode 449,
and my guest is doctor Jeri Iballa Rosa
Tonnell.
Jeri is a native Hawaiian. Her work is
rooted in the guiding principles of aloha,
ask, listen, observe, heart, adapt,
integrating cultural knowledge and contemporary leadership strategies to
support organizational and community development.
She holds her doctorate from the California Institute
of Integral Studies and Transformative
Studies and Consciousness.
She's the award winning author of Let's Live
Aloha, a children's book that introduces young readers
to the values of empathy,
adaptability,
and emotional intelligence.
And her mission is to provide a framework
for cultivating
meaningful connections and fostering a more compassionate world.
She's also the host of the evolution of
Aloha podcast.
I am hailing from my new digs. I
spent the last nine days moving little by
little.
And so the sound is probably a little
bit different than what everybody's used to, but
I will adapt and adjust and
took everything I had. I'm exhausted
to,
to do this edits
and get this out. I'm I'm hoping right
now, I'm my goal is to have it
out Thursday.
We'll see what happens. I'm so tired, and
I'm covered in bruises. Moving is not for
the faint of heart, I'll tell you that.
Anyway,
that being said, check out heyhumanpodcast.com
for links and to learn more about my
guests in the show. You can find Hey
Human Podcast on all the podcasty places for
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And I'm on social media under Susan Ruthism,
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podcast on Apple, iHeart, Spotify.
You know the drill.
And thank you for listening. Be well. Be
love.
Be aloha.
Here we go.
Doctor Jerry
Ibela Rosa Tonnell, how are you today? Welcome
to Hey Human.
I'm doing great. Thank you so much for
having me. Yes.
Absolutely.
And you are currently hailing from my home
state,
so shout out to Washington state.
Yep. Absolutely. It's a little bit cold today,
but, you know, it's like it is the
Pacific Northwest.
But I noticed that on the trees, the
buds are starting to come in. So springtime's
almost here. I think we have another three
weeks before we're officially in spring. So
you can start to see that the tree
is starting to
turn right now. It's starting to change colors
because the buds are coming out.
So
yeah, it makes me excited. It makes me
excited. Springtime always does something for me. It
reminds me
that change is happening, that there's rebirth, there's
growth, there's transformation.
We need all those things.
We do.
We do. Especially in today's world. Right? Yeah.
I read somewhere once, and I think I've
mentioned it a few times on this show,
but
that we think of winter as being the
dead time. But in fact, under under the
snow, under the leaves, under all the the
mulchy,
horusness of of the the Earth
that it's teeming. It's alive, and it's gearing
up. And that in fact, winter is
very exciting, a lifetime that we and we
don't think of it in that way.
Oh, I you know, it's like I
I living in you know, I was born
and raised in Hawaii, so I never really
experienced
the different,
the different weather patterns
and all the different seasons.
I love winter.
I mean, I love all the seasons. And
winter reminds me that it's a time for
rest.
It is time for us to prepare for
what's to come. And so, yeah, so what's
underneath that? It's so exciting to know that
there's new growth coming.
Yeah. The Colonels.
Yep. Let's talk about childhood.
Grew up in Hawaii.
Let's talk about that. So you are indigenous
to the land of Hawaii, to the island.
Yes. Tell me all about what that childhood
was like. The only thing that I can
comparing
to when I left Hawaii and, you know,
moving here to the Pacific Northwest. So growing
up in Hawaii, I am
I didn't know what layering was. Right? It's
like I didn't
understand what a layer was.
And so, you know, it's like we were
at the beach all the time. We were
camping.
We had either no clothes or just one
layer of clothes. So it was a lot
of fun. Fresh fruit was abundant. I grew
up and we had mangoes and we had
papayas. We had avocado. We had tangerines
and lemons and limes. And it was just
all around
that when I moved to the continent,
I was like, doesn't everybody have pineapples
and papayas growing in their backyard? So it
was really confusing
for me.
It was confusing
for me when I didn't know how to
layer up
and when the weather changed and everything, it
was like, what's happening? The first time I
saw
Okay. So the first time I thought I
saw snow,
I was living in Oak Harbor and
the frost just came in
and everything was white. And I was outside.
I went outside and I was like, Oh
my gosh, look at that. And I'm scraping
the frost off the window
of the car. And I
was trying to make a snowball like I
would see on the movies. And a friend
of mine, she comes out and she's like,
What are you doing? And I'm like, Oh
my gosh, look, it's snow.
She's like, That's frost. You can find that
in your
freezer.
That's hilarious.
So I had no idea about that. And
I would be at the beach all the
time. I love the ocean. I love just
having my feet just
in the sand or
just going deep into the ocean.
And And here in the Pacific Northwest, the
first time that I tried, I'm like, What
is this? What are all of these things
that's touching my lake?
It's like there's kelp everywhere.
A lot of kelp.
You can't see the bottom and the sand's
not like
the sand that I grew up with. So
it was like growing up in Hawaii, I
feel that it was such a blessing
to have been
born there. What an honor to be a
child of the land. And
you know, it's like understand what it means
to
be Hawaiian.
Now that I live in the diaspora,
right, it's like I live away from my
home and I'm up here.
It gets a little hard sometimes.
You know, I have I do have the
privilege and the opportunity to go home
a lot. Like last year, I went home
four times, which was really great.
And, you know, every time
whenever
I go back home to Hawaii and I
book
my ticket,
I deliberately
sit on the left hand side of the
plane when I'm heading to the island and
then I sit on the right hand side
of the plane when I'm leaving the island
because then I can see, right? I can
watch as the islands
are coming into view. And then when I'm
leaving,
I can see the islands just kind of
disappear behind of me. It's amazing to be
able
to go back home, but I miss it.
It's like I don't Being here,
I hardly ever see people that look like
me. I can't walk into the grocery store
and just
buy my food or hear my music or
anything like that. But I do my best.
I do my best to try to create
Hawaii around me. And no matter how far
away I'm from the island, I will always
have the spirit of Aloha with me because
that's what grounds me.
But yeah, I don't know if you could
see, but I have a humidifier
here.
And I have my heat on probably like
at 75 or 80. So in my office,
it's Hawaii.
You mentioned Oak Harbor as well as Hawaii.
So I'm wondering, are you from a military
family? My ex husband was in the military.
Okay. And so, yeah, we, we were stationed
over in Oak Harbor. I actually was in
the Navy as well, too. And so it's
like I was in the Navy for six
and a half years. When I joined the
Navy,
it
was back in the eighties. It was like
back in 1988
is when I joined the Navy.
And at that time, my ex husband just
got back from being gone for six months.
And him and his friends were like sitting
around and they were talking about where women
belong.
And I have two sons.
I have two sons. My sons are grown
now. But as they were talking about where
women belong,
I walked in and I was like, What
are you all talking about? And this one
guy, he says, There's only two places that
a woman belong. And I was like, Ed,
you're about to tell me.
So he did, right? He did. He said,
on her back or in the kitchen is
what he said.
So I, you know, I was like, oh,
my goodness. I it hit me, but I
didn't know what to do with that in
the beginning.
And then I looked over and I looked
at my two boys and they were probably
about
three and four years old. And I'm like,
oh, I am not raising boys. I'm raising
men.
And if they are to grow up thinking
this way about women,
I am responsible to whoever they end up
partnering up with.
So I ended up joining the Navy two
weeks later
because I wanted them to know that a
woman can do whatever she wants to do,
and she belongs wherever she feels like she
belongs. And so yeah. So I joined the
Navy and stayed in the Navy for six
and a half years. I appreciate your service.
Tell me something.
When we have the new
administration, somebody like Pete Hegspeth, who thinks that
women shouldn't serve in the military.
As someone with that experience as a woman
in the military,
how do you feel about that? And secondly,
do you
do you have
memories of what it was like as a
woman in going into the navy and your
fellow female
compadres, you know, how that all
was, how your experience was? Oh, yeah. It
definitely was a challenge.
It definitely was a challenge. I I remember
being treated as an object, right, is that,
you know, it's like even even when it
came to
to men that were in command, they were
in charge, You know, things that they would
say, the way that they would look at
me, the unwarranted and the unwelcomed,
you know, just touches when you walk by
and think, oh, it was just gross. Right?
It was just gross. Being in the Navy,
it it allowed me
to really understand what it was like to
be up against the patriarchy, be up against
men who feel that they're always in power.
So I needed to figure out how do
I stand on my own morals? How do
I stand in my strength? I'm very competitive.
So when it came to any of our
training, our PT,
I would always try to
be up against
a man. So it's like I would run
right next to him and run faster. I
would do more sit ups. I would do
more pull ups. I would do whatever I
needed to do because I needed to I
not only prove to myself, but also for
the next generation. And it's unfortunate. And
I can't stand the fact that these words
are even coming out of my mouth that
we have to work harder in order to
prove ourselves because I don't think we need
to. So yeah, everything that is happening about
how
women shouldn't serve, it's
Fuck.
Sorry. No. I agree with you. Fuck is
a perfect word.
Yeah.
Yeah. Exactly. So yeah. So I I just
feel that
it's a bunch of bullshit.
To me, it just screams of a beta
male.
Yep. I think there's a there's a threat.
That's why. There is a threat. If the
male species were a little more confident in
themselves, they would know who they are. And
instead of instead of trying to compete
with
with a woman is stand next to a
woman.
Know that we we each have our
our strengths and that we should see that
and honor that in each other.
And I don't I don't I don't know
why there should be a competition
on, you know, feeling so threatened by
another person.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's weakness.
I It is. Mhmm. It definitely it definitely
is. Let's talk about
your identity as somebody from Hawaii, as someone
you spoke a little bit about what it's
like to have the abundance of the land
all around you.
But I'd like to dig in a little
bit to
the idea that
the people of Hawaii are incredibly and fiercely
protective
of their environment and their land, understandably, because
it is relatively
unspoiled
by the rest of the the Continental United
States because it is hard to get to
and hard to get to long enough to
mess it up. But it's not like
the Mainland doesn't try.
Do you know what I mean?
To mess it up. There certainly
talk about your sense of self
through the land aside from, yes, I can
eat really healthily. And by the way, I
used to hate papaya. And then I went
to Hawaii and had a papaya from there
fresh. And it's definitely my mind, it was
night and day. To me, papaya always tastes
like feet, but in Hawaii, it's
so good.
Yes. Yes. It's like if you haven't experienced
fresh fruit from the tree,
it's like when somebody tells me they don't
like certain things, I'm like,
well, first of all, how long did it
sit out before you even tried it? Or
did it get frozen and unfrozen? Doctor. Exactly.
How far did it travel to you?
Doctor. How insecticide
laden is it?
Yeah.
Exactly. All of those things. All of those
things come into play. But my connection
my connection to the land. So in Hawaii,
the word aina, a lot of time people
hear the word aina and, you know, it
was like at first it's like aina
means land,
but it means more than that. It's actually
the land which feeds. So
we are of the aina and we are
of the we are of the land. What
there's a there's a reciprocal relationship
between
us and the land, especially
the one that nurtures us. I am very
connected to it. There's three principles that I
live off of, aloha akua, aloha aina, and
aloha kanaka.
So Aloha Akua is the love and the
divine, like the connection
to the divine, the love and connection to
the divine.
And when we are in alignment with Akua,
we
understand,
aloha aina, the blessings that we have of
all of this that is around us, the
water, the food, the sky, everything is all
around us.
And when we are in connection with those
two,
then we can aloha kanaka, love and connection
to each other.
Because we understand that, you know, it's like
for me to have fresh water is for
you to have fresh water. I know what
it does for me, which means that I
should also
ensure that you have it too.
Unlike in
our society
where
poisoning the water
and the land is something that is
like people are okay with not knowing that
connection.
I'm greatly connected
to the land
because I want that for the next generation.
I know what it does for me. I
know what it feels like to walk out
and have fresh air.
And to not have that, it's like is
not in connection with the divine or with
Kanaka.
How can you love yourself and enjoy everything
without ensuring that everybody should have the same
thing too? That love and connection to Akua,
to Aina, to Kanaka.
That's my foundation
and that's how I am so connected to
it because I understand what it means on
a deeper level than it's not just where
we wake up and this is where we
are. This is a place that feeds us,
that where we breathe,
where we exist.
And so, yeah,
that's
my connection. Mary (3five forty three): How old
were you when you left? Alisha Auslin (3five
forty
four): I was young when I left.
I left Hawaii
when I was 17.
But I'm home all the time. I go
home all the time. Sometimes
just like with, you know, last year I
was home. I was home a lot. My
family were like, it's like you never left.
No matter
how
long
I'm away from home,
whenever I go back to Hawaii,
the first thing I need to do is
I need to get into the ocean.
My
body shakes where it's like, okay, it's time.
I just have to go drop my things
off and I have to get into the
water. Even if it's at night, if I
just have I just have to touch the
water. Right? There's just something and I'm like,
oh my gosh. What's going on?
In September, I had the opportunity to go
and sit with one of our kupuna, one
of our elders.
And I was telling him about, you know,
this feeling that I have. I said, you
know, I can come home, you know,
every other month, and every time I come
home, I just have to get into the
water. I have to touch it. I have
to see it. I have to smell it.
I have to be in it.
And, you know, I said, I don't know
what it is. And he was like,
that's your makua hine. And I was like,
it's my mother.
He goes, you are coming back to your
makua hine. You're coming back to the amniotic
fluid of your mother.
That is why you wanna get into the
water because it is where you feel
safe, where you feel like you belong, where
you feel welcomed.
And I'm like,
yes,
that's
that's it. That's it. That
that unconditional
love of being held
in in the water, in the ocean of
Hawaii. So
Having
been away from Hawaii and then starting to
develop your personhood as an adult,
how did you decide to to facilitate that
connection into your life's work?
What brought that about?
Oh,
that's a that's a good one. Because you
know, I mean, there's there's all
chapters of my life and experiences
that I had to go through in order
to get to where I am today.
And I always tell people, I said, Okay,
so what I'm saying right now may differ.
So just know that I speak in draft.
And it's because my experience and when deeper
learning comes into play,
then my thoughts, my perspectives,
everything shifts. I said, so it's not inconsistency,
it's evolution. So what I say now may
change.
When I first left Hawaii, I went from
Hawaii to Los Angeles.
Living in LA,
it was the first time. I was 17
and
never left Hawaii
and decided to go to
Los Angeles.
And when I went there, everything was just
so big. Right? It's like, I remember
coming into LA, and as we were landing,
I was like, where do all these lights
go? They just keep going and going and
going, and it doesn't stop.
And so the gentleman sitting next to me,
he says, well, you can actually go across
The United States.
And to me, I was like, wait. What?
What do you mean? He's like, you can
drive across The United States. And I was
like, this is amazing. Right?
And everything was so big
and everything was so different.
And it was the first time in my
life
that I was faced with the question of
what are you
in regards to what I look like.
And I didn't understand that because in Hawaii,
we never did talk about
race. We talked about nationality.
We talked about place.
So, you know, it's like I was young.
I was working at Jack in a Box.
A woman comes up and she orders in
Spanish.
And I tell her that, you know, I
don't speak Spanish.
And she was she looks at me and
she's like, what?
And I'm like, I don't I don't speak
Spanish. And she's like she talks to her
friend and she's like, well, what do you
think she is? As if I'm not there.
Right? What do you think she is? And
I'm like, excuse me? And she's like, well,
you're not if you're not Mexican, she goes,
you're definitely not white and you're not black,
so what are you?
And that was the first time that I
was ever asked that question, and I was
like,
human.
Mhmm. I'm human. And she's like, No, no,
no, no, no. What are you? Where are
you from?
And she
was a little rude. And so I told
her, I was like, Well, I'm from Hawaii.
And as soon as I told her I
was from Hawaii, I noticed that there was
this shift in her personality,
where she's like, Oh my God, I love
Hawaii. I own a condo in Mahui.
And I was like, What is this? What
just
happened?
Right? So that
was my first experience
with my identity
on the way that I showed up in
the world.
And then when I moved from Los Angeles
to
Oak Harbor and I went into a military,
you know, it's a every everybody there was
military.
And so I met people from all over
the world.
And that's when I realized that, wow,
Hawaii is so small and it's so contained.
And the only information that we receive from
what is happening out in the continent is
what's coming over
the television, is that the news, that's the
only thing that I would understand. I didn't
know what snow was. I didn't realize that
there were so many Christmas trees around
and all of these things. And so
that kind of shifted my identity of place
because then I started
to meet other people
from different areas across the world and started
to learn about these different experiences.
I was married for eighteen years with my
first marriage, ended up getting a divorce
and then finding myself
alone.
That was that that's when I started to
understand
who am I? Because I went from
my mom and dad
to a husband and then I had two
children. I became a mother and then I
divorced and then I found
myself by myself.
And then that's when a lot of I
feel
the deeper transformation
came through is when I started to figure
out, like, what does it mean to be
a woman? What does it mean to be
a woman who served in the military,
to be a woman of color,
to be indigenous,
to be a mother? And all of these
different
identities
started to
pop up and I had to sit with
it and look at it. I learned a
lot during that time about
who I was, how much fear I could
endure
because I didn't know how to live on
my own. I didn't
you know, and then also the excitement
of living on my own. It's like I
bought this fork with my own money.
That's a big deal though,
when you've always been under the care. Yeah.
Yes. I, and that's it. The care. I
started to, I learned how to care for
myself. Mhmm.
And, you know, it's like I also
learned about
being too confident
as well too.
Confident became more cocky, and it's like I
can do it. And it was all about
this this independence,
this strong independence
where I forgot
what it was like to be,
not codependent, but interdependent.
How to exist with another human being
on a level where we would inspire and
encourage each other to be our better selves
instead of, you know, either caring for or
or taking in or whatever it is. And
so, you know, it's like a lot of
things changed and shifted
in a time when I was divorced and
then remarried.
And then
here, it's like nineteen years later. So my
actually, actually tomorrow will be nineteen years that
my husband and I have been married.
So Congratulations.
Thank you. Yeah. So, and you know, that's
and how that all played into
the work that I do today.
Someone asked me a couple of weeks ago,
you know, it's like, doctor G, what is
what's your career like? And I'm like, well,
first of all, it's like my career is
to share the spirit of aloha.
And I realized that aloha
is something that you share.
It's something that shows each the other person
that you're in relationship with
that
we bring the humanity out in in each
other. We bring the best out in in
each other. Is it like namaste?
I don't know. Maybe.
I would say so. Namaste meaning I honor
your soul. Yes. Yes. Exactly. So a lot
of times when people when people hear the
word
aloha,
right, they're like, you know, aloha means hello
and it means goodbye. It just means a
simple greeting. But if you look at aloha,
aloha means love, it means compassion, it means
grace, it means empathy.
Now if we look at aloha,
aloha
is presence,
forward facing front,
and
is the breath of life.
And so when we engage
in conversations
with each other in the presence of one
another,
we are exchanging
the breath of life. So it's like, I
would say it would probably be similar to
Namaste.
My ancestors knew the depth of what aloha
meant.
And when it, you know, I mean, we
never had, we never did,
write things down, right? It we're we're orators,
we're storytellers. That's how we share knowledge with
each other.
So until it became something that was written
down,
the interpretation
probably changed. And I feel that aloha does
mean
that we are in the presence of another
life. And so
I would say that's what it is. Everything
that I do
is is around Aloha.
And you know, I mean, it's like sometimes
it's really hard to share that Aloha in
a world that doesn't know how to give
Aloha back.
And you know, again, it's not something that,
I expect in return,
but sometimes it would be nice to see
that and to feel that. There's a conflict
of reciprocity.
It is sometimes hard to
maneuver in a world that feels like it
could give up flying,
you know, what about your existence
and at the same time
trying to lead by example or lead with
love.
But it's a complicated
space to to live in and I don't
know that any of us are able to
maintain it
all the time. Certainly,
we may try,
some of us, not everyone obviously, but and
then the the coupled with other human emotions,
as you mentioned, ego or guilt
or sacrifice
or martyrdom,
all these things
that are woven into
that
presence.
And it is. It's complicated.
Sometimes I have to pause and I have
to ask myself,
man,
it's so hard to
to try to
live aloha
when we are challenged
in so many different ways.
And I feel that I think that's where,
grace comes in, is that we are, you
know, we are human
and we do have our own flaws.
And I think when we are aware of
them, then we're able to, with self regulation
and self awareness
and
self reflection, we're able to
own that,
that part of us that sometimes we can
feel embarrassed about. I always talk about, gracious
anger
because
I tell people I'm angry. I'm fucking angry
all the time.
Sure.
I'm angry all the time. And
we have every right to be angry right
now,
but if we come into
the work with this
uncontrolled,
this untamed kind of anger,
then what will happen is that we will
end up
becoming
the very systems that
we are wanting to dismantle
and will end up hurting people.
And in our wake of justice,
in our wake of activism, in our wake
of all of this,
we will find more people being hurt
And hurt people hurt people. And as long
as we keep perpetuating
that hurt, we're never going to
get where we really want to be.
So
it's like, yeah, be angry, you know, but
have some grace, especially if there are people
who are still learning
and understanding
who we are and understand that
being human is complicated.
It
is so Yeah. And there's something to be
said for channeling
and using it for good in a in
a weird twisty kind of way that the
anger
that it cannot consume or it can consume,
but to try and not let it consume
and to channel it forward. This is why
the metaphor of Hawaii is so interesting to
me because
it's got great wind and the trees
move with the wind and do not break.
It's got
vast ocean. It's got
flowing volcano
of fire that is constantly
refiguring itself
and
hardening and softening and hardening and burning and,
the rains that come and wash everything in
these giant deluge
systems,
which cleans it all again.
It's quite interesting, really, that
that she exists
as
a
as
a embodiment of breathing, living
being in and of herself.
Yes.
Separate
by lots of islands yet connected.
It's fascinating, right? They said they
the Hawaii in general, they think everything that
she represents
is is very power. It's powerful.
Yes. Yes. And, you know, it's like Susan
is so the way that you said it
was just was so beautifully
said
because that's exactly what
Hawaii is.
And yes, we are apart but still connected.
We
destroyed but yet we still create.
It's all of this. And and I feel
that we lose we lose the
the depth and the beauty
of the destruction and the creation,
the grace and the anger, the fire and
everything else that can coexist
in this space simultaneously.
And when we're able to
embody that and see that I think that
is when we can really grow
and transcend
beyond everything that we have right here,
right now.
And if we do it with kuleana, you
know, kuleana is the responsibility,
the stewardship, the mission of our life. It
is our deep sacred responsibility
is kuleana.
And
same with creation
and destruction. You can't have one without the
other. Right? You do it and you do
it with responsibility
to extend, to expand for the next generations
to come. And you do this
by being in balance, understanding
that they can coexist simultaneously
with each other,
in harmony, in Lukahi, so then that way
you can have these
this deeper
connection with everything else, when you can be
in full connection
with
aloha akua, aloha aina, and aloha kanaka.
And so, yeah, it is.
You
just made me realize and just made me
think about how deep I am Hawaii. Right?
It exists within me.
Exists within me. Yeah.
It's powerful.
I've been told before, you know, because I
speak in metaphors.
Same.
I speak in metaphors
and I'm always talking about love. I'm always
talking about Aloha. I'm always talking about you
know, co creating communities. I'm always talking about
that. The people always like, oh my gosh,
Jerry, you're so woo woo. And I'm like
thinking, you know what? That's the problem with
the world. Maybe we need a little bit
more woo in our lives
Because it's like that that deep connection, that
deep care for one another,
you know, being able to see another human
being
and genuinely caring for that individual.
That's what's missing.
And we don't have that. And it and
it hurts to really
see what is going on, especially for our
marginalized
communities.
I was, having a conversation with my husband
and I was telling him, I said,
I don't want to live in this place
of fear.
I really don't.
I said, but I carry my passport around.
I carry my passport around because
someone
could be out there
and
all they see is this,
without asking me questions, without knowing my story,
without knowing who I am,
their bias, their ideas
exist by what they see.
So they look at me and phenotypically they
already have a narrative about who I am.
And if they react on that impulse that
they've been given and fed through all of
the social medias and everything that's happening,
I could have people at my door wanting
to take me away. It is scary.
And I have sons and I have grandchildren,
and I worry about them as
well too. And, you know, it's like, I
don't feel that anybody should have to live
in this kind
of place of such
fear.
And it it hurts. It hurts my heart
to to see that and to know
what is
happening
in in our society.
And I want to do all I can.
And, you
know, it's like, I I also know
that if
if I walk in and I want to
like change things and I'm just like walking
in with grenades and you know, sticks and
ready to beat people up or whatever it
is,
I am going to be met with the
same force or even more. And
so, you know, it's like, okay, well, we
have energy, right? It's like the way that
our words have energy, our words have power,
our existence, our presence
has energy.
So how we show up is gonna depend
on the energy that we put forth. And
I'm like, alright. I'm gonna just put I'm
like, my husband called me a care bear,
the the the love a lot bear
because he says you I think that he
said, you give a lot of love. You
give, you get a give a lot of
love, and you really, really care for people.
And I'm like, I do.
I genuinely do. And if that is my
superpower,
then be it. Right?
Sure. But you can have those two thoughts
simultaneously.
You can pair four people and be full
of rage.
Yes. You can. In fact, I presented at
the Northwest Regional Equity Conference a, just, just
last week.
And I was talking about gracious anger.
And, you know, as I was sharing that
anger
and grace are not opposites,
right? It's like,
I was saying that they are the fuel
and foundation. So hold the
fire of righteous
indignation without letting it burn our bridges.
And then let grace guide our power so
that our activism
heals
as fiercely as it disrupts.
Mhmm. That's some hard thing to do. Mhmm.
Because we can get stuck in one or
the other. And I've been there before
when I'm in this place of disruption
and I just want to just
burn the shutdown
and then I ended up getting burned.
Right. Then I look back and it's like,
oh my gosh, I ended up hurting people
as well too.
And it's,
yeah, it's a lot.
Yeah. What is CO3?
Doctor. Co3?
Doctor. Co3 is for co creating
cohesive communities.
So co creating
the three co's. When co creating cohesive communities
came out
fifteen years ago, came through a dream.
It was a dream.
Let me tell you really quick. So Auntie
Palahi Pake,
she passed
away a few, not a few,
she passed away a long time
ago. But back in 1986,
she went to legislature and she pretty much
told legislature that the
spirit of Aloha needs to be law.
Meaning that the way that people from Hawaii
would conduct themselves would be in this place
of aloha.
And she took aloha and she broke it
down,
acronymically.
So,
kindness to be expressed with tenderness,
lokahi
unity to be expressed with harmony,
olu olu agreeable to be expressed with pleasantness,
haa haa, humility to express with modesty, and
ahunui,
patience to be expressed with perseverance.
She was at this, this conference. It was
called Hawaii two thousand, and this was back
in 1970.
They were talking about
the state
of Hawaii
and, there was just a lot of tension
because this was during the Vietnam War and
everyone was just like upset with each other
and there was just all these things going
on. And
she was in the back of the room
and she stood up and she started to
talk about Aloha.
And she was like,
the world will come to Hawaii in search
for world peace because Hawaii has the key
and that key is Aloha.
And she talked about how Aloha is about
this love, this compassion, this empathy, this being
able to
conduct ourselves in a way that is not
going
to cause any harm.
And so
as I was going through, I was working
on my bachelor's degree. I was
figuring out who I am and you know,
what what is my purpose in this world
and where am I gonna do, you know,
what am I doing with all of this
stuff?
Aloha came about,
and it came to me
in a dream
because I started to realize that the conversations
that we were having with each other, and
I should say with myself,
wasn't resulting to the outcomes that I really
wanted.
Back
then, my husband
and I, you know, we were in this
place of,
I was in this place of decolonization.
And I started to look at him and
he's a six two blonde hair, blue eyed
guy. And I started to look at him
as the colonizer.
And I started to tell him that he
was occupying my space.
And it's like I would call him, you
know,
the the white guy and
haole and all of these derogatory things
that we actually slapped in separate rooms for
over a year as I was going through
this process. Right? I would say these things
about him and I pretty much would tell
him that, man, you are you are everything
that I wanna dismantle
in this world.
You
are the representation
of everything that is wrong in this world.
That's pretty heavy. And it was it was
heavy. And you can't help how he was
born either. Exactly.
Exactly.
And as I were going through this and
we slept in separate rooms, you know, it
was like our grandson who is,
he's 16 now, but he was only eight
was,
was hearing all of this. I didn't know
that he was hearing it. Right? It's like
I wasn't aware that he was often another
place, but he was hearing the words that
his JIMO was saying.
Moana came out and I was talking about
my people and that it's like I was
telling you, I'm like, Lyric, these are your
ancestors.
Your ancestors were warriors and they traveled across
the Pacific North,
the Pacific. They understood the stars and the
moon and the ocean, and they were in
connection with everything. So he's like, Wow, these
are my people. And he's getting all excited.
And so my husband is flipping
through HBO. He comes across Vikings. Yeah. I
was just gonna say the Vikings did pretty
damn good
with the same thing.
Comes across the Vikings. Exactly. And he starts
talking about Vikings and everything that Vikings have
done. Yeah. And so our grandson was like,
Jima,
if
Moana is your people and I'm your grandson,
then that makes Moana my people.
And I was like, that's right. And then
he goes,
papa,
if Vikings are your people and I'm your
grandson,
then Vikings are my people.
And I was like, no.
But I was like, yes, yes, it is.
And so he goes, he's eight. He goes,
you know, back to his parents. He comes
back the next, the next week or so.
And all of a sudden he's afraid of
me.
He doesn't want to hug me. He's very
distant from me every time, you know, it's
like I, I go and hug him, he
kind of like, I could feel his entire
body stiffen up.
And
so I asked him, I said, grandson, what's
going on? You know,
what's happening?
And he's really sad. And he goes, Jima,
you say that Moana is my people because
that's your people. And I'm like, yep. And
he goes, and Viking is my people because
it's papa people. And I'm like, yes.
And he goes, so Jima, which part of
me do you not love?
Oh,
from the mouths of babes.
Which
part which part of me do you not
love?
And it was at that moment when I
realized that I was like, oh my gosh.
What am I doing? Mhmm. What am I
doing? I cannot be asking
my grandson
to dissect himself
because if I kept if I if we
never had this conversation,
that part of him, he will hide.
That part of him he will hate.
Mhmm. And he will hate part of that
part of himself because Jima does not love
that part of him. And I'm like, no.
I cannot do this. This is not aloha.
This is not aloha.
So in my dream,
the guiding principles of aloha was born.
And so A is to ask questions and
inquire to avoid making unnecessary assumptions.
Listen deeply to understand what is being said
without any judgment.
And if you're going to ask questions and
you're going to listen,
you need to observe, always to observe your
body, observe the somatic response that is happening
in yourself and what is happening with the
heart focused
is
the place where
love and compassion and empathy and all of
Aloha resides.
So that way we could adapt,
adapt
and acknowledge that we come from different places
with different ideas, with different
perspectives,
and that when we are able to adapt
our mind frame
and the way that we think, we can
learn more, which can expand
our horizon, can expand our understanding of the
world.
And Aloha was born
because my grandson who was eight years old
at that time
asked me which part of me
do I not love.
Mhmm. Powerful.
The innocence of a child
Right. Who has not yet been taught to
hate and is just starting to learn what
that word even means.
Yes.
Yes. Exactly.
Exactly. And now he's 16.
And oh my gosh. It's
it's so amazing because
we went to have lunch,
yesterday,
and
he's talking about,
he wants to go back home. Right? He's
like, Jima, he would, I wanna go I
wanna go to Hawaii. And I was like,
okay. I'm like, let's go. And he goes,
I'm like, but it may be a while,
you know, before,
you know, because he had, he plays soccer
and he's in school. I said, you know,
he goes, let's just go to Hawaii for
the weekend. And I'm like, you can't go
to Hawaii just for the weekend. We're not
gonna fly five and a half hours and
stay for the weekend. And he's like he's
like, alright, Jima. He goes, it's okay because
you know what? Hawaii lives in me. And
I looked at him. I'm like, what?
Like, he's so proud. He is so proud
of of who he is. You know, on
his mom's side, his dad, his grandfather's from
The Philippines.
Mhmm. And so he's got that culture, that
deep culture of being Filipino.
And so it's like when he's in spaces,
I can see on how
he has learned how to navigate those spaces
where he embodies everything that is around him
because of who he is. And so he
code switches.
Yeah. I was just going to ask about
that. Yeah.
He code switches and he code switches in
a way that
the people around him are just really they
they see him and they're like, wow.
He knows how to live his whole. Mhmm.
And the only reason is because of the
people that surrounds him
and that, you know, it's like he learned
with us and we've learned with him,
and we've been in challenging situations
where we were able
to
aloha each other. We were able to
ask these hard questions and truly listen with
our whole selves,
right, and just observe what is happening. And
so the guiding principles of Aloha
taught me how to
engage
in these
complex conversations
because I have to live it myself. It's
not easy.
It's a process. We are in a continual
growth until the day we take our last
breath, and then
I'm in my belief system, it doesn't end
there. So
Right. How might people find you?
Well, they can find me at,
co three consulting. So it's c o, the
number three, consulting dot net is my website.
Aloha Doctor G on Instagram is where they
can find me, on Facebook as well too,
doctor Jerry Baloroza Tunnell on LinkedIn. So they
can find me they can find me pretty
much on the social medias and on my
website and on your podcast.
That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
Jerry, thank you so much for being on
the show. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for
having me. Thank you for having me. This
has been a pleasure.
Yeah. I loved our conversation.
I I like that it
got deep and philosophical
rapidly.
Those are my favorite kinds.
Oh, I know. Me too. I could have
these conversations forever.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Thank
you. And thank you for listening, everybody.
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