If you're listening right now, I need you to know something first.
That feeling that you have, it's not in your head. The fatigue that's deeper than a good night's
sleep can fix. The quiet concern about who you can really truly rely on in your life.
The sense that you've built a life, but maybe not the community to sustain it through the decades to
come, you're not alone in this and you're not wrong for wanting something more solid.
But what if the more we need isn't something new to add? What if it's something ancient to return to?
Something women have always known how to do, but we've been pulled so far away from it,
we've forgotten about it. This episode is not about adding another obligation to your life.
It's about building your foundation, a foundation to support you for the rest of your life.
I'm giving you a practical step-by-step guide to create what I call a circle, a small intergenerational
structure of mutual care designed for reliability, not drama, built to last for decades for life,
not just for a season. This is how we move from isolated responsibility to a shared,
enduring strength, a community. Let's get into it.
You're listening to the Seoul Aligned Self-Care Podcast. I'm your host Tina Stinson and I had a
stroke at the age of 39 from stress and burnout that shook my world. Now I'm laying it all out.
The deep-level self-care practices and mindset shifts that I needed that kept me healthy, balanced,
and thriving. Join me in this intimate space as we explore healing, resilience, and a soul's journey
to alignment. This is where real conversations about deep-level self-care happen. Let's get into it.
Hey guys, welcome back to the Seoul Aligned Self-Care Podcast. I'm so happy to have you here with me
today. Today I'm doing something a little bit different. The way I usually do the podcast is
every week I write a blog post usually on Monday, Sunday or Monday. And whenever the blog post is
about, I kind of base the podcast on the same topic. And I've been doing that for a long time.
Every once in a while it's different, but most of the time that's what I do. Now I did sort of write
a blog post. I think it was, I actually wrote it last week or maybe it was Saturday or Sunday.
I can't remember exactly when I wrote it, but it's really not a typical blog post. It's more like an
outline. And I called it a new way to live. And it's a way to move forward and rebuild. It's kind of
like a blueprint. And I also included a PDF that you can download that has everything written out
exactly like the blog post. So you can go to my blog and you could read it. You could also
download it so you can keep it for yourself. Just makes it easier than copying and pasting and doing
all that kind of crap. So you could download this PDF. And it's basically a way, a new way to live,
basically what it says. It's a way to move forward. So I've been feeling the way a lot of people have
been feeling recently, very, very heavy between what's going on in the world with the administration
that is in charge, the terror that they are inflicting upon the American people,
watching people suffer every single day all over the world, including our own citizens of the United
States is very hard to bear. But the only other option there is is to pretend that it's not
happened, which a lot of people are doing. And I just can't do that. I need to bear witness. And I need
to know exactly what's going on. And when we do that, it's very heavy. It's very hard on your nervous
system. It's very hard to bear. Not as hard as some of the people in the communities that are
suffering right now. And always one of the things that I've been told over and over again by
many, many people is that when you feel this way, the best thing that you could do to help yourself
feel better is do something. But I've been for weeks, maybe even months, feeling like,
what can I do? Like besides calling politicians, which feels useless. They're just,
they're in the pockets of other people and they're not working for us anymore. And the systems
that are supposed to be the support systems of the United States aren't working anymore. And so
what do we do? What do we do? And so the most positive thing I can come up with is how do we rebuild?
Because whenever I want to feel hope or any type of inspiration about this country, I always feel
like we have to be, we have to start rebuilding. We're going to have to rebuild everything. It's
going to be, it's going to take so long. Am I even going to live long enough to see it rebuild? And
that's still a question. I don't know, but my thought process is really, I have to do this for my children,
you know? And what else can I do except sit and worry and suffer and stress and cry and feel
horrible all the time? And so I'd rather work towards something, even if I can't live to see it through,
I'd rather work towards it and bring us closer to that. And I just started doing some research and
thinking, well, how do we rebuild it? We don't want the same thing. I don't know about you, but
what we had wasn't really working anyway. So I feel like we need to rebuild it in a new way. And how
do we do that? How do I, someone that's not a politician, someone who's not rich and powerful?
Well, I beg to differ that I'm not powerful. I think we all are very powerful. I think we just don't
realize we're powerful, but I don't have that traditional power that comes with being wealthy,
right? So we don't have that. How does someone like me make change? And another thing that I've heard
many, many times is that change always comes from communities, from all the communities, from the,
it comes from community government, like changes always stem from that and move their way up. And so
how do we ourselves start to rebuild a new way to live in our communities? And that was my first
thought. Another thing coming from another angle is as a woman in the United States or person of color
in the United States, or so many other people. If you're not a white, straight man,
in the United States, you know, you have, you come from the perspective of being, having your rights
being taken away. I mean, everybody's rights are being taken away at this point, but even before
that started happening, women don't have bodily autonomy. We don't have equal rights as we move
through the United States of America. This is something that men have never experienced. And
on the, you know, the terrorist organization that we call our governments on their plans,
we see things like taking women's voting rights away, you know, if you're looking at project 25
or project Esther or whatever it is, you're looking at things where they don't want women to even
have bank accounts. They want to go back, you know, way back before the 50s, right? So I would encourage
all women to have their radar up. And if you think you're going to be protected because of some
reason, because you're a white woman or because you're a wealthy woman, you're not. You're just not.
And I never really understood why women think that for some reason they're going to be protected.
And they help along with this idea, this project Esther thing. Like I don't understand the women
that are working towards this because once they reach their goal, they're not going to have any rights,
right? I don't know how they think it's going to play out. It doesn't make any sense. Anyhow, coming from
a perspective, I can only come from my perspective, which is a white woman. And coming from my perspective,
I just see nothing but things being taken away from us, right? Things that have already been taken
away from other members of our community. And I feel like we have to all come together and start
to rebuild in a way where if, if we're not all free, then none of us are free. That's the way I look
out of it at it. And so today's podcast, that was a heavy intro, right? Today's podcast is about
how to do that. Okay? So to begin, I'm just going to go over basically what I wrote. And then you can go
to the blog, I'll put the links in the show notes and you, I'll put the link to the PDF if you want
you to just download the PDF, you don't even have to go to the blog. There's no paywall, there's no opt-in,
you just get it, okay? And I want this to be shared as much as possible. I don't need any credit,
I don't need anything, I just want it to be shared and implemented. And also on top of it being shared
and implemented, I would like it to be people to add to it. I'm not, I am no expert on community building.
I could say that with my full chest. And this is just some thoughts that I wrote down. And then I
edited it and edited it and edited it and tried to make it as good as I possibly could. But I know it's
far from perfect. And so I would like people to add to it. And if you want to put your name on it as
well, great, if you don't want to remain anonymous, great, I don't care. If you want to add to it, just
email me. And what I'll do is I'll add what you want to add to it to the blog post. And it'll just
be this shared document, this community effort. The only thing I want to add is I want it to be nonviolent
and I want it to be positive. I want this to be a way to rebuild in a new way that will work for
all. Just like I said earlier, if one of us isn't free, then none of us are free, okay? So we have to
make this work for all. So if you don't have that in your mind and in your heart, then don't bother
adding to it. So that's how I'm going to start. So this isn't like a movement or anything like that.
It's not a protest, right? It's not like a trend, right? It's a practical return to something
women have always done. Organize their life together in steady, reliable ways. There are many women
who do this already. There are many communities who do this already, but not every all women are doing
this. And some women don't even know, I would say younger women maybe don't even know that something
like this even exists if they've never even taken part of it. I was lucky enough to be part of a
woman's circle in where I used to live in Scoharri County. And I had the woman who facilitated this
woman's circle on the podcast. Her name was Beth Mowry and I will share our link to that podcast
episode also in this episode. But I just want to add that she has that given me any input on this
or this is not her shared vision. This is 100% me. I'm just sharing the podcast episode
to know, to show you what a beautiful person she is and all the good work that she does in the world.
So I will share that in the show notes. Okay, so the core principle really is that you're not fighting
against something. You're not fighting against the systems that are really breaking down right now.
You're withdrawing your dependents from those systems. They no longer support women well or almost
at all. And reinvesting your time and your care and your resources into that is a waste of time.
You need to invest these resources your time, your care, and your resources into each other. Right?
So power leaves quietly before anything collapses publicly.
So what are we building? We're building circles. If you don't like the word circle, just say community.
Okay. I don't know what the best word to use.
That was kind of the best word that I could come up with. For some reason, it's not my favorite word,
but I'm going to use that. I'm going to refer to it as a circle because I don't know what else to
refer to it as. So it is what it is is a small intergenerational group of women. I think the
intergenerational thing is really important. So having women of all ages, "Yeah, God, can I just tell
you it makes such a big difference? It makes such a big difference being around women of all
different ages." It's designed to last years, decades forever. Okay? And it's grounded in mutual aid
and shared responsibility, like family. And it's like a chosen family. And it's focused on practical
and emotional reliability. It's calm, it's lawful, it's low drama. And it's built to replicate, not
grow large. So what that means is we're not here to build a group of 20. It's to build a group of like
five or 10 women, maybe even, you know, maybe not even 10. And then once it gets that big to just
break off and make a whole nother group. And then some and then some and just keep going from there.
And what made me think of this before I move on is when I first started in coaching, I started as a
health coach. And one of the things that I became very, very intrigued with and loved was the Blue
Zones. So if you're not familiar with the Blue Zones, I would encourage you to go do some research on
it. It's very interesting. But basically, it's a bunch of places all over the world where people
live very healthy, healthily, I should say, vibrantly into their, you know, hundreds, okay? And so some of
these places are like Costa Rica, Japan, Greece, Italy. There's one in the United States,
Loma Linda, California. I think there's more now. But all of these communities have
nine powerful lifestyle habits in common, you know, they did the research. It was National Geographic
and Dan Butler. And I'm sure there were many other people involved. But they did the research to
figure out because these people lived really differently. And that's what I liked about it. There was no
one food that everybody was eating, right? There was no one way of living. These people were living very
differently, you know, somewhere living on the sea, you know, some, you know, some, they were just
living in different places, eating different things. But there were these commonalities, these nine
common things. So I'm going to go through them really quickly. One of them was moving more intentionally.
So you won't find people in the Blue Zones at the gym or running on a treadmill. It's kind of
incorporated into their life, like walking everywhere instead of driving, tend into the garden,
having an active career, like a fisherman or a farmer, they were deliberately more active throughout
the day, rather than dedicating a set amount of time to incorporate movement. They all had a purpose.
They all woke up and had something that gave them purpose in their life, something that really drove them.
Number three, they determined ways to relieve stress and prioritize them.
Chronic stress leads to chronic inflammation. And it's associated with every major age-related
disease that we have. So the Blue Zone inhabitants were, are immune to stress. They certainly know how
to handle it better than the rest of us. So after a stressful day at work, they don't sit in front of
the TV or continue to work until bedtime. They, you know, spend time with their family. They spend time
on spirituality. They sleep. They take a nap. They do a happy hour. They share meals together. So they
do all these things that relieve stress. They eat consciously and listen to their body. So
for longevity and a better quality of life, it's not just about what to eat, but how you eat.
Think about how they eat in some places in Europe, where they close everything down for, I think,
they call it siesta, right? And the people get off from work for this and they go home and they
have big meals with their family and they drink wine and, you know, like, I just, it's just a fantastic
way to live. But not only that, they're incorporating more plants into their diet. So you won't hear people
in the Blue Zones, referring to like trendy diet labels like vegan or plant-based, but you'll see
plenty of vegetables and whole foods incorporated into their diet. For example, beans is one of the
most prominent ingredients used in meals throughout all five of those regions that I mentioned.
But they rarely eat meat, having it only about five times a month maybe. It's not like at every meal.
And so it kind of makes you question all the rhetoric that is fed to us about having meat as that
protein. Like if these are the healthiest people in the world living healthily and actively into
their hundreds and they're not eating meat, it makes you question that. And that was one of the things
I liked about this study. And that's not to say that you should be completely plant-based or vegan
or whatever. It's about being mindful about what you're eating really.
I think one of the things I liked the most was that they drink a glass of wine regularly.
But I have to say they have wine that isn't
you know, a full of like sulfates and all kinds of shit for lack of better words, okay? They're
making their own wine. Practice some form of spirituality was in there. So having knowing something
that is something bigger than yourself, okay? And then putting your family in loved ones first. This is
the part that really was prominent to me because at the time when I was looking into this, I did not
have a good support system. I was recently divorced. I had three children. My family lived two hours
away. I just didn't have the greatest support system. I had some people that were very
supportive, but not the way these communities are. The communities raise their children together.
Their families are close by or if not, they're living with all the members of their family,
including their parents. And so they're raising these children all together. It's just a better
way to live. And one of the things that I found really, really cool was in Japan,
Okinawa, Japan. They had these things called, it's called a moai. And it was a tradition. And it's one
of the reasons why the Okinawan, I don't know if I'm saying that correctly, people live better and
longer. It's a group of lifelong friends. It's a social support group that forms in order to provide
varying support from social, financial, health, and spiritual interests. And it's from when they're
little kids until like when they're older, like forever. And it's just this group and they support
each other unconditionally. And I just thought, how beautiful is that? You know? So you could
read more about it. All you have to do is Google Blue Zones and look into it or maybe don't use
Google and use something else. Just look into the blue zones and they have cookbooks and everything.
It's really cool. But that's where my thought process came from, from that small group, the moais,
ok? So moving on though, what these are supposed to create is long-term belonging,
real support that you can count on, a continuing throughout all your life stages. So it's always there,
it's not something that ends. Why this matters now? Okay, women are told independence means doing
everything alone. In reality, many women are, many women are feeling burned out, overwhelmed,
isolated, carrying care responsibilities without any backup, without any help, even from their partners,
aging without a community, financially and emotionally overextended. Okay? Especially if you're
a single parent, this is like, I can just tell you it's brutal because I was a single parent with
three kids, with no financial support besides that I got child support. But can I just tell you that
I'm always amazed by women who do this without child support because the support, the child support,
the money isn't the biggest issue, having the family support, the decision making support,
just that community support, not having that is really, really hard. Okay? Historically, women
survived and thrived through small dependable circles that last across seasons of life. Those
structures quietly disappeared and we're all feeling the absence of that now. So this isn't about
doing something new, this is about returning to our roots and rebuilding now is not radical,
it's responsible. This is how we rebuild everything and we can start rebuilding it now as other
things are collapsing around us. It works best before the crisis arrives. So step one, start with one
circle, ideally like five to eight, ten women tops, maximum 12, okay? And then you split it off and
start a new group. A circle is not like a meetup or like a casual gathering, although it's supposed
to be fun and happy and you know, it's more of a like a commitment container. So small circles
are good, the reason why to keep them small. You can build trust quickly, you can handle conflict
easily and cleanly. You can prevent any type of power hoarding and it cannot be like centralised
or controlled by any one person. Okay? We're trying to avoid doing things that way. Step two, invite
people through because of like reliability, not personality, okay? People who you know are going to
show up consistently, they can self-regulate themselves emotionally. They listen without hijacking
and they respect boundaries of everybody in the group. They contribute practically and they're
not dependent on drama or attention. So these are people that are emotionally kind of level.
Avoid inviting people that you feel you must manage all the time or chronic victims who aren't
going to like step into the group. Those who confuse healing with chaos and people who kind of
disappear when life becomes inconvenient. So if your body feels braced around that person, trust the
signal that you're getting. All right? I'm starting to lose my voice. So I'm drinking my cold coffee.
Oh my goodness. Step three, name the intention clearly. Say this plainly at the beginning, all right?
This circle is a long term mutual support group. It's meant to last and grow with us. It's not a
therapy group. It's not it's not a venting space. It's not a social club. It's about shared
responsibility. It's like a family, steadiness, showing up. Clarity prevents confusion later.
And it's not to say that you can't have a lot of fun while you're doing it. It's just the basis of
the group. Step four, mixed ages are essential. This is very important. A strong circle includes
women of different ages. Younger women bring adaptability and a fresh perspective. Mid-life women
often like anchor the logistics and the continuity. Older women bring steadiness, pattern
recognition and wisdom. The wisdom is key here. It's very important. Age diversity stabilizes power
and prevents emotional group think. Okay? This is how matriarchal systems mature. Step five, set simple
agreements. Keep these short and revisit them like annually. So like agreements could look like
you addressed issues directly and privately. You pay attention to like patterns, not just intentions.
You don't gossip or publicly shame people or members. You contribute practically not only
emotionally. You prioritize circle health over individual comfort and the circle is designed to last.
These are the intentions. Okay? And write them down. Like create your own agreements within your
circle. There's no, like you don't have to do things a certain way. This is just a start and point.
Step six, circle meeting structure. So a meeting could look like it's like 16 and 90 minutes long.
Once again, I just want to reiterate the fact that you can create these things the way you want them
to be created. This is just like an outline, so to speak. But consistency matters more than
intensity. Okay? So being consistent with whatever you decide on is what's really important because
that's what people are going to expect. And so you could do things like when everybody comes you could
spend time greeting each other, grounding maybe you want to sit in a circle. You could do some
breath work. You could do a meditation. I would definitely encourage phones off unless you have some
kind of emergency situations brewing. But it's not about performance or like any long practices. It's
about, you know, just check it in with each other. And I would say you could talk about different
topics decide on the topics that you're going to talk about. You could talk about what's been
steady for everybody. You could talk about what's taking more energy out of your life than it should.
You could talk about where you need support and you could actually talk about what's going well.
So you could see what's going on within the group and then decide as a group what you want to talk
about. You could decide who needs help. You could decide who needs to offer a what. You know,
this could look like making meals for each other. Childcare rides, check-in, skills that you could use
and support each other with funds. You know, like maybe you have a nurse in the group. You have a lawyer.
You have somebody who knows how to fix cars yet. Somebody that gardens like you have all these
different skills, these shared, these shared, shared skills. And it's also about supporting each
other financially. Okay. So you could have like a topic on each different like group gathering or
get together. So you could talk about and decide how to handle different things. How are you going to
support each other as we age? How are you going to support each other money-wise? Money can be like a
really crazy subject, right? Some people might be really, really tight about talking about money.
But there could be a very easy way to do this that can be openly shared. You could talk about health,
how you go into support each other with health. Like maybe there's, you know, a health coach in the
group. Maybe there's a personal trainer in the group. Maybe there's a yoga instructor or a
breathwork instructor. Like how can you support each other and each other's health? How could you,
you could share meals, you know, you could do meal prepping together. There's so many different ways
you could do this. Caregiving, how can we help take care of each other? Maybe somebody has surgery. We're
all going to take care of that person. Maybe somebody can't drive for a couple weeks. They're cars
being fixed and we're going to all help that person. That's what this is about. I can't tell you how many
times I see people looking for support online through different like service mechanisms where they're
having surgery and all they need is like a ride home and these people literally have nobody.
That's what these groups are for. We need to support each other as a community.
We could support each other through work transitions, retirement, somebody going to school.
We could talk about how we need to set boundaries. We could help people move through grief. We could
share our joys. No lectures, no monopolizing, just shared experience. There's always going to have
to be like accountability and boundaries as needed. So maybe you could all agree to always remain calm
and be direct with each other and honest and specific and very private. Everything that is
discussed in the group stays in the group kind of deal because when we don't talk about these things
openly, it kind of like starts to erode trust. Clarity strengthens it. So when you're closing a
meeting, it's just about talking about how you're moving forward and what you talked about. So
what are you taking with you from this group? What can you offer before everybody meets again?
Confirm your next meeting and communicate in between meetings. However, you decide to communicate.
But like I said, this is building practical support. Things that you could do almost
immediately is meal support, child care swaps, emergency fund, skill sharing,
elder support, housing or land exploration. What about like buying land? This turns like into almost
like a living trust, so to speak. Okay. Now there's always different ways to handle conflict.
But in this document, it talks about how to handle it the matriarchal way,
addressing harm directly with the person involved, focus on repeated patterns, not apologies,
name expectations clearly and if behavior does not change, just remove access calmly. It doesn't
have to be drama. It's quiet, respectful and final. No spectacle, no public shaming, nothing like that.
But what I think what's important about all of this is to keep circles quiet but connected. So it's
like invite only like just from shared experiences, talking to people. It's referral based,
minimal social media, you meet in homes, library studios are on the land and when a circle grows
too large, you just split it into two. And then one woman will stay lightly connected between
circles. So the circles will remain connected, but just like between like two of the people
in the circles. So you scale by replication, not by expansion, right?
So another thing that can be discussed or talked about, well, how are you going to sport each other
through the decades? So as we turn 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 through illness, grief, transition,
talking about how you're going to handle all those things is really important.
Now you might say, well, how do I start one of these grapes? How do I, how do I get started? And so
in the document, there is a, like an invitation that you could use. It's like a little script. And it says,
I'm forming a small long term circle for women, more of a mutual support than a social circle.
It's meant to be steady, practical and last over time. I thought of you because you're grounded
and you're reliable, would you want to hear more about it? And it's not about persuading someone,
it's about just inviting them. Now I think I would, I think this is, this is a, this is a very basic
with the word. I don't, this invitation is okay. I would, I would warm it up a bit, like if it was me,
but I just wanted something really, really basic that everybody could use, but obviously do it in your
own way, right? For me, it would be warmer than that. You know, I wouldn't say it's more mutual support
than social. Of course, it's going to be social. That's part of it. That's part of it. So the larger truth,
this is, God, this is so important because when women organize their lives around each other,
care stops being outsourced, outsourced to the wrong people, right? Burn out eases, overwhelm eases,
aging becomes less frightening. Resources, resources, circle, oh my God, I can't talk. Your resources
circulate locally within each other. So you're like, you're not putting the resources to outside
people, people that, oh, we all know, don't care, right? We're circulating within each other and power
decentralized is naturally. So there's no like this one person in charge. This is how matriarchal systems
return, not through force or spectacle, but through quiet, competent, enduring connection.
You're not starting a movement, you're building invisible infrastructure that we need right now.
And that is how real change will last and it will grow. So go grab your PDF, okay? And like I said,
if you see something that's missing and you want to add to this outline, then just, you know,
email me and the email is in the PDF. You can go there and add to it. And like I said, you could put
your name on it or you could remain anonymous. And like I said, it needs to be peaceful. It needs to be
positive. It needs to be inclusive. And so if you don't have that in your heart, then don't bother
adding to it. And that is today's podcast, a way to move forward, a new way to live, something you
could do, a way that you could direct your rage, your feminine rage that you have right now.
I know I have a lot of rage and it's a good way to direct it in a positive way to create a change
that will support everyone, okay? And I think one of the questions I might hear is, why is this only
women? Why is this women and not men? Now, I think it's, I mean, my reasoning behind it is because
I think that's the way it has to start a matriarchal system. And it doesn't mean that the women in
charge and the men have to be subservient. That's not what a matriarchal system is. But I think the way
to lead us into this type of system, the women need to lead. And so we have to start creating these
groups in order to be able to lead everyone into this new way of living. So any questions, comments,
email me, download the PDF, share it if it's something that resonates with you, and take that
very powerful feminine rage and place it somewhere where you can make change and make a difference.
Okay guys, I love you and I'll see you next week.
