In this engaging follow-up conversation, host Sam Kabert welcomes back Tracey Tee, the creator of Moms on Mushrooms, to dive deeper into the concept of toxic positivity—especially as it applies to motherhood, spirituality, and everyday life. They explore how wearing a perpetual “happy face” can mask real emotions that need to be acknowledged and healed. Tracey shares her insights on the three “buckets” of toxic positivity (religious, spiritual, and superwoman archetypes) and underscores the importance of reconciling fear, anger, and grief instead of pushing them away.
Their discussion spans topics such as cannabis use—whether as a mindful tool or for escapism—how microdosing can unearth hidden feelings, and why true self-care requires more than a quick fix or superficial pampering. Tracey emphasizes the need for mothers to carve out time and space to feel discomfort, grieve, or simply decompress, so they can authentically show up for themselves and their families.
Read Transcript
[00:00:00] Sam Kabert: Welcome to the Soul Seeker Podcast. I'm your host, Sam Kabert, and this year marks the 5th birthday of the Soul Seeker Podcast. I started this pod back in 2019, when I was taking my first steps on the path of remembering. And at the time, the tagline for the show was a journey of self discovery. A year later, it became a journey of remembering.
Yet, what I know now is back then, I was still seeking. And what I've come to know now is that it's the journey of seeking that brings us the silent, slow stillness of acceptance, and therein lies our own innate wisdom. It's my mission now to eradicate the glorification of hustle culture, as it was my drive in entrepreneurship that led to a greater whole.
And that's because I was outsourcing my sovereignty rather than looking within. So let this be your invitation to take a deep breath in and remember that at any time we can shift our thoughts and our feelings to create the outer world in which we wish to live. Soul seekers, it's time to grow. Let's go.
Here we are for another episode of the Soul Seeker Podcast, but before we dive in, as always, we'll just ground in with a few breaths. So well, if you're listening, I invite you to join in with us. Through breathing, but keeping your eyes open. If you feel more comfortable, depending on what you're doing, all that, those disclaimers as normal, Tracy, for you and myself, and any of the listeners that would like to close our eyes, we'll just begin.
Just closing down the eyes, shifting from the chaotic and busy outer world into our inner landscape, feeling our feet on the floor. Sitting up a bit straighter. And through the nose, inhaling all the way up. Sipping in a bit more air at the top. And audible sigh.
Big inhale all the way up, letting the belly expand. Sipping in a bit more air at the top. Holding the breath for a moment here, and audible sigh, letting it go, shoulders drop, let it go, and one last one, inhaling all the way up, sipping in a bit more air at the top, holding the breath here, continuing to just hold the breath, and exhale, soften, let it go,
just letting the breath return to its natural state and rhythm, and Flickering the eyes back open. Alright, so here we are back again with Tracy T from Moms on Mushrooms. I think the first time we did a podcast together was several months ago. I don't remember exactly when I should, but it's linked in the show notes.
So you guys can check it out. You guys definitely encourage you to check out the first episode or Tracy stories. If you're not already familiar with her amazing story of being a can't stand up comedian to now educating moms specifically in women in general, and. Being a pioneer in the psychedelic space for microdosing and maybe a little bit further with deeper medicine ceremonies as well.
So with that said, Tracy, welcome to the pod. You might be on mute. So yeah, there we
[00:04:02] Tracey Tee: go. Thank you. I thank you for having me back. I'm so flattered.
[00:04:06] Sam Kabert: Yeah, I'm excited to be here. And in the spirit of just transparency, it's so funny because we were scheduled to do a follow up interview podcast about a month ago.
And when we did the last podcast, for those of you guys that might remember that listened, or if you just listened to it, whatever. Towards the end, we got into some really good, juicy topics like toxic positivity and what other stuff like that. So when we went to record the last one, I was just yeah, I'm not feeling that great.
And it was funny because you were like, yeah, I'm not feeling that great either. And I think we both were like, okay, either we could push through. Yeah, we could power through it and have a very interesting conversation about like toxic positivity when we're not feeling our best, which, which would have been interesting.
But at the same time, I don't know if you resonate with this, but I know for me when I'm not feeling my best, like it just feels like I'm not clicking on all cylinders, yeah. Yeah.
[00:05:08] Tracey Tee: And I think, part of the fine line, but part of healing. And part of recognizing your own limitations and who you are and how you show up in the world also means you have to call an audible sometimes and shut it down.
And I think older versions, I'll speak for myself, older versions of myself would be like, Oh my gosh, you can't do that. Look, you're a failure or you're so weak and pathetic and self serving. And the new version of me is She doesn't feel good. It's probably not best for her to go on and talk publicly about something.
And of course there's limits with that. We have to be responsible and keep up with our obligations. And it's so beautiful to be in this space because there's people like you where we can gather and we're just like, Yeah, it's not great today. Let's just try it again some other time. And I think that's beautiful.
Cause then I just went back to bed. That's pretty sick. Yeah.
[00:06:03] Sam Kabert: Yeah. I appreciate that. It's interesting if we could all interact in this kind of way, because I think in, I think I know in business culture and just, collaborations as well albeit content creators or traditional corporate business environments, we typically are just.
Powering through it. But to what extent, for what purpose, does it actually make sense? And for me I'm spending a lot more time in like companies and business culture and being like, how can we change from the inside out?
But.
As it relates to toxic positivity, so just picking up exactly where we left off, we're speaking about the Barbie movie and how that was such a good illustration of toxic positivity in terms of her leaning into it.
I'll just hand it over to you to see what comes through and we'll just see where it takes us from there.
[00:06:55] Tracey Tee: Yeah, I think gosh, there's three buckets that I think about. That I've been thinking about since we talked about it. One is what we just, we just discussed, but from a female perspective, the toxic positivity of like always putting on a good face.
I'm fine. The kind of super woman. Super feminine ideology that I'm beautiful. I'm skinny. I'm healthy. I'm smart. I'm capable. I'm successful. I'm a great mom. I can do all the things. I never get tired that's one bucket. Then there's this spiritual psychedelic bucket that you and I intersect in that's the love and light, everything is fine.
Oh, just trust. I had a conversation about that recently, just trust the universe and this kind of can get a little bypassy of just everything is going to be fine. And while on some levels, I understand that, but there needs to be a groundedness. That allows you to actually show up as a human and do certain things.
And we can talk about that. And then the third one is, I think, actually deeply comes from religious connotations of and like the toxic positivity that can come In Christianity or Catholicism or other religions where everything is just it's the will of God or I have Jesus.
So therefore I can do this, and this. And and then inside that. You can go two ways. You can be this like lowly sinner, and then you're just always pathetic in the eyes of God and never able to be empowered by yourself or on the other side you're forgiven all your sins.
So therefore you just can be an asshole and not really be accountable. And I think all of those. Come into toxic positivity. What do you think?
[00:08:40] Sam Kabert: Yeah, I love those buckets I didn't go so far to create like buckets or archetypes I love that just come through after we spoke last time.
Yeah, I mean I've been playing with it for a while just like thinking about Yeah. I've been playing with it for a little while.
I would say the, we can work backwards and unpack them a bit. And the third being the religious, the will of God, Jesus is here, support me. And it can also get into a spiritual bypass type of way.
It is right. That is the one I'm least familiar with. Obviously I'm not a woman and I'm not a mom, but I'm very familiar with the first bucket. And the second bucket the third bucket in terms of the religious one, let's start backwards from here and work our way. To the first one you made, but the religious one are, did you grow up?
Were you religious? Is this something that you experienced firsthand? Yeah, I
[00:09:32] Tracey Tee: did. Yeah, I did. But I also, maybe I can like even broaden it a little bit more into saying that it can be almost like an identity that we gro glob onto that somehow, because I am X it justifies y and inside that I think that positivity comes, I think.
I think positivity is even interesting because it can show up in the form of not being accountable for your actions. And the positive part comes with I have, I'm this thing. I'm this identity. I'm this belief system. So therefore I can just say these things or do these things.
Does that make sense? Maybe I'm over complicating it.
[00:10:10] Sam Kabert: No, it makes total sense. If the delineation between buckets. Two and three seem like they're similar. The difference is your own belief systems. And the other is you're indoctrinated into a certain way of believing, and you're not necessarily thinking for yourself.
And that could be a projection. I grew up Jewish. And for me going to temple and religion and all that, it was, I always resonated with my, my heritage and it was nothing against Judaism, but I just didn't. Resonate with organized religion. So I, for me, that's the difference between religion and like spirituality,
[00:10:47] Tracey Tee: totally.
And spirituality, as we're seeing, can a lot of times turn into its own religion, that's how cults form. And these practices, like these rigid ways of doing things, you have to do it this way, or these repeated mantras, just using love and light as like the classic toxic positivity mantra.
They can become their own dog, religion is really just like. the application of dogma, right? Because there's a set of rules and if you don't follow these rules, you're not adhering to the projected outcome of said religion or dogma, right? You're not going to be enlightened.
You're not going to be saved. You're not going to go to heaven. And so they do definitely cross over. I just think it, whatever lived experience may it may resonate from one connotation versus the other
[00:11:33] Sam Kabert: for sure. And, I don't often get visuals, but us talking several times, I'm just having this flash of Ned Flanders come through from the Simpsons, if we were to like, this might be a fun little exercise, find a relatable, like character, we can obviously the first bucket we could say.
Not wonder woman. She's not a mom. We'll get there. We'll get there. I promise. But the third bucket Ned Flanders, right? He's always happy. He's preaching his stuff onto other people. And it's just you can feel like this isn't authentic. Does that feel yeah.
[00:12:05] Tracey Tee: Yeah. And I would say Barbie, that's how we got started.
Everything's fine. Oh my gosh, you're so pretty. Like it's not, there's no room for There's no room for dirt under your nails in those scenarios. Ned Flanders would never acknowledge, if he got a if he got a snag on his sweater and his sweater was unraveling in front of him, he wouldn't even allow himself to be like, Oh man, that was my favorite sweater, because it would totally derail the entire.
The thing that he's trying to maintain.
[00:12:39] Sam Kabert: I see a new Simpsons episode coming soon. Good thing. My homie, Alex Ruiz was on that production set, but not anymore. All right. So third religion, we got that to spiritual. We talked about the gray line a little bit in all his love and light. Now I'll share experience for me.
Like when I started down this path with spirituality I was never like, Oh, all is love and light. It just I've never, and even still to this day, being a male and coming from more of a meathead bro y type background or whatever, there's still a lot of conditioning and programming, in terms of feels and words and things like that.
I, yeah, I would say I was very much embodying more love and light versus talking in the flowery language, if that makes sense. How did you
[00:13:26] Tracey Tee: embody it?
[00:13:28] Sam Kabert: That is a great question. And now that you're asking that question, I think this leads to where I was going, where I was going with it.
And I think I thought I was embodying it, but I think what really what was happening what I mean by embodying is I was doing my best to. embody at the time with the tools I had and understanding of love and light and don't want the darkness. That said, I had this like dark shaman experience.
It was probably my third time doing ayahuasca or something. And that took a while to integrate. And it felt like the darkness came for me as a teacher because I was so blocked off to it because I was like, why would you ever want like intentionally go the darkness? I'm not talking about shadow work.
I'm talking about like the Dark forces type. So yeah, I can hear, I can feel you. Why you're chomping at the bit. Let's see what's coming through for you.
[00:14:23] Tracey Tee: Yeah, there are like, some of my teachers have taught about no wallace and like a shadow spirit animal and a darker spirit animal.
And I was just in Oaxaca and we did an entire exercise of acknowledging kind of our spirit animals because in the Zapotec lineage, it's very nature based. It's, pagan in just a different culture. And all of nature is a teacher, right? So we really looked at animals and earth elements as teachers and guides and how we how we go towards certain ones versus the other.
And then also What are the shadow teachers? What are the teachers that were scared of? What are the teachers that trigger us? What are the animal and what was the animal that triggered us? And I had to really think about it. And I was like what's the animal that triggers me? Cause I feel like you work enough with this medicine, especially if you are practicing the more shamanic medicine way, I'm like, I've made peace with all of nature, right?
Like I don't kill spiders anymore. I've had a lot of deep journeys involving snakes and come to terms with that. And what I realized is the big trigger for me was a rat like rats scare the shit out of me. And I feel like they're like spawns of Satan. And so I had to really, so I had to confront my fear of the rat.
And then what they offered is that in doing this exercise, when we eventually went and sat with the medicine, is that it's likely that both of these teachers would show up for you and you would make peace and understand what those teachers are. So going into that dark place is incredibly important and avoiding it at all costs.
Is like you're missing out on 50 percent of the equation. The other thing I just want to add really quick, so I'm curious what you think about what I said, but for women I think a lot of us, like we talk about goddess energy and we talk about ascension and we talk about filling and showing our light.
And I believe in all of that, like a thousand percent, but in some of the most transformational times I've had in medicine and even in contemplation and meditation by myself and with other. Women has been to embrace and acknowledge like the dark goddess and the underworld and all the power that's under there and that it's not that it's evil.
The dark means something different, but it's, it is, it's a polarity of who we are, of the light and both have to exist. And so how do you like make peace with it? And I'm not saying embrace demons or Satan or anything like that, but there's a fine line there and we've just forgotten.
All of that, I think, in Western culture.
[00:17:02] Sam Kabert: I'm so happy you brought that up, because, I'll just call it dark magic. Yeah. I think that's fair. I'm not very well educated or versed on this, and it's not something I, I talk about publicly a lot, mainly because I'm a man. And I want to be sensitive to that.
This was something that came up for me more a few years ago. It's not really in my awareness as much these days, but I remember feeling for sure triggered by some of the goddess stuff, and so the. All of this, like for anyone listening, understand most, the majority of my friends are women, and I'm very much all about like women's rights and all the things like I, the last podcast, we were talking about the Barbie movie, how it's one of my favorite movies, all the things, whatever.
So I just want to preface that because I don't want anything to be like taken out of context here, but sometimes when I've seen the goddess stuff in the past, it felt And I'm, it could be a projection, but how it felt for me was very showy, very expression, very dark. And there's other times when it feels authentic, and in that dark shaman experience that I was alluding or I mentioned, that was actually more of that, like dark arts, like goddessy type energy that we're talking about.
And like I said, I don't talk about it too much because it's not anything I feel like I'm really equipped to talk about it's things that I've talked about with women, friends, guy, friends, just whatever. And it's come up in the past and not to single out women. Men don't really have an equivalent to this that I'm aware of.
And I think in terms of the goddess it's really good that women have this outlet, and it's about empowerment, and I think there's, to your point, another side of that, where it is playing with the dark arts, and I think some of them don't know that, not to single women out, let's go back to that point the, all the tantric type stuff that happens where, regardless of your sex or your preference or any of that, like all of that, to me, I put under this category where I'm just like.
I don't know if that's resistance in me. And that's something I ought to be leaning into. And when I felt into that in the past, I'm like, I don't feel called to that. I'm sitting with the triggers that come up. I respect your model of the world, but it's just not, it's, I don't understand it. I'm not going to judge it.
I sit with the judgments that come up, but like where I'm at now sharing, it's just I think earlier on the path, it was a bigger thing. And now I'm just at a point of yeah, I respect your model, the world,
[00:19:41] Tracey Tee: yeah. Can I try to paraphrase some of that or contextualize it?
I think that there in the spiritual movement with regards to, we'll just stick with like specifically like this goddess and the kind of Tantra that's coming up and becoming more prevalent as well. Some of it can be very performative and I think one thing that women were beginning to unlearn.
It's so complicated because on one hand, it's like we don't have to show up full hair and makeup. We don't have to put on all the accoutrement to prove ourselves accoutrement to prove ourselves or to be to receive value. Okay, so we don't have to be. We don't have to look like a goddess to be a goddess, but there's still an urge to show up in that way to claim like worth and even from an egoic place, like to get to receive attention.
And if you can pass through that and this is something I've really been playing with on the other side of that, is this like delicious. Very embodied personal expression where you're like, I actually finally think I'm beautiful. I think everyone is beautiful and I can find beauty in everyone. And there is something to be said about adorning yourself and embodying that archetype because it allows you to step into the energy a little bit more, but it's a really tricky, thin line.
In the middle. And then on the other hand, it's easy to glob on and Tantra can become dogmatic to actually Tantra can be very dogmatic. Like it's easy to glob on to one thing. And that's where you go back into your identity. And you're like, Oh, I'm this sexually empowered woman. And I'm all of these things.
And it becomes your entire narrative. And you actually aren't potentially not being like a whole woman. But I think what Tantra, the essence of it, really asks for, and I think the essence of all of if we're just speaking about like goddess energy and like the dark thing is all of it comes with what we need to do, which is reconcile our fear of death, and when you can do that, then you are like, then you can hold death in your hand. This is Kali, right? God is Kali. Who's been demonized. Like we just watched with our daughter, we just watched Indiana Jones and the temple of doom. The other night and I didn't realize that like the whole section where they pull the heart out, like the big, like they're saying Kali Ma, and it's all to Kali.
And I was turning, like her fricking crunchy mom, my daughter. And I was like, okay, so here's the deal. Kali is not evil. Like she's a, she is a vengeful. She has rage in one hand and empowerment on the other. She is avenging the deaths that of the wrongful deaths of her beloved. While she is like offering enlightenment because she holds both in her hand.
My Evie's just just please watch her support. But we have to, I don't know. I'm, I think we have to understand that someone who can embrace death isn't evil, but has actually reconciled their fear of it. And that is what the underworld archetypes and all the mythology comes from. But from that, you can actually go further and further away from it by just being.
Like performing in this mindset. But you're not actually getting to the core of it. I hope that made sense.
[00:23:16] Sam Kabert: That makes total sense. Indiana Jones movie, which one was it?
[00:23:20] Tracey Tee: The Temple of Doom.
[00:23:21] Sam Kabert: The Temple of Doom. The second one.
[00:23:22] Tracey Tee: Oh my gosh, it's so good. Have you seen it?
[00:23:25] Sam Kabert: Years ago I'll, I'm writing it down.
So I'll rewatch it. I love movies and looking for these themes. That's fun. I recently was at Disneyland in LA, Disneyland for a conference and we went to Disneyland and went on the Indiana Jones ride. So I think
[00:23:41] Tracey Tee: it's based on that movie because they're going through a mine and everything.
They're running from these, yeah. There's all sorts of art. There's like child slavery and child sacrifice and blood. There's all sorts of stuff in there. I was just like holding my mouth, but I had to speak up about Kali.
[00:23:57] Sam Kabert: Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. All right. Not to get sidetracked there.
So everything you were saying, yeah, that totally makes sense. And the reconciliation, the fear of death, It's interesting because I find personally with myself and a lot of people I work with the deeper we go with plant and earth medicines, especially ceremonies versus micro dosing, like that fear of death, just is gone.
Yeah. What's fascinating about this conversation is we came in to talk about like toxic positivity and Really what we're talking about isn't if I've been doing NLP, right? So if we chunk up like bird and bird's eye view on this and go above Positivity, but what we're talking about is the toxicity of wearing masks and however that may Manifest,
[00:24:45] Tracey Tee: Yep.
I feel that deeply. I think that's, I think you nailed it. That's what it is. It's masks, whether it's identity whether it's your outward appearance, whether it's your political affiliation or religious, it's a mask and it's somehow it separates you from actual connection and it keeps you Ned Flanders style, like a robot, just repeating the same thing over and over.
And you justify to yourself that that's enough.
[00:25:13] Sam Kabert: I did some absolutely 100%. I did some research on this about a year and a half ago for a specific reason. And when like a lot of us, a lot of people listening, at least my listeners, and I'm sure if some people are coming from your audience, they would know about this as well.
Like the body keeps the score, right? And how we. We hold on to our traumas and our emotions that aren't processed and all those sorts of things. And when we wear these masks, it can manifest into dis ease. So the research I was doing last year led me To find this thing called CSS, central sensitivation syndrome.
And many people that are like in physical therapy and spirituality, like mind, body connection type that are coming from a more body type background. I've ran this by them. They're like, yeah, I haven't heard of that. I, it's a rare thing, but I was researching fibromyalgia, not for me, but just, I was just thinking about
[00:26:12] Tracey Tee: that actually, when you said that, yeah, that's, yeah.
He's
[00:26:15] Sam Kabert: yeah. So basically not to get into that story, but I was doing some research and then that's where I stumbled on CSS. essential sensitivation syndrome and one of the things that manifests as is fibromyalgia and fibromyalgia is that pain in the body that, a lot of people think is made up and doctors and medical people don't really have a good answer for.
So I'd love to hear what's coming up for you there.
[00:26:40] Tracey Tee: It's interesting. I've had two conversations with really powerful medicine women in the last couple of weeks about. Fibromyalgia specifically, and then pain in the body. And again, from a more earth based embodied earth wisdom perspective.
People feel very strongly that fibromyalgia specifically is the culmination of trauma that's locked in the body and that it is, it's just, It's pain body. Eckhart Tolle calls it our pain body. It's but it's trauma that was has not been resolved and it locks itself in the body and causes pain.
And that when you make friends with the pain or you acknowledge the pain and you work through the pain goes away. And you can, there's another like trigeminal trigeminal neuralgia same kind of thing. And then there's other, another conversation I had recently was just, which is very pervasive again and more of the earth based like healing practices is that most pain, like 80 percent of pain.
can be resolved by acknowledging the trauma that you can relate to it. If you give yourself a chance to actually lean into it and think about it, not from an acute, there's pain in my side, but okay, what does that mean? Like you will, your body will supply a memory for you to deal with. And then about 20 percent of it is like actual pain.
And it's not to say that there's not things that go wrong in our bodies, but a lot of it is. Can't you know, it's posited to be trauma that we haven't released
[00:28:18] Sam Kabert: a hundred percent. Yeah I couldn't agree more and part of this was doing more research around breath work, and my new book I have a breath process, which is very similar to what you mentioned like the breath acronym the ee And the acronym is energy to reveal and that stage is the shadow work.
It's okay. What is this energy revealing to me? What's the story? What's lesson to your point when we get curious? Then we can start to accept it and surrender to it. Then we can alchemize it into positivity. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:28:48] Tracey Tee: I just want to say one thing, cause it just made me think of something so obvious from a mother perspective.
So when in 2021, my family's in like really bad car accident, we were hit by a drunk driver. And my daughter was in the car. She was nine, nine years old at the time. And so it's 2021. So we're barely coming out of COVID insanity and just don't even get me started on how that jacked up our kids.
And then, my family gets hit by this car accident. And in the months that followed, my daughter had debilitating stomach issues, debilitating and it would, her stomach just hurt. And when she would go to school and it would be a particularly crazy day at school, she would come home with a stomach ache.
She wouldn't want to eat. And we pretty quickly identified it as we called it like stress stomach. Finally. I'm like, is it cheese stomach? Or is it trust? Did you just eat too much dairy or is it something else? And I think most parents are actually totally fine with identifying pain in kids. That is emotionally informed, right?
I have a headache. I have a time, kids, their tummies hurt when they're upset. And everybody is fine with that for a child, but somewhere between childhood. And adolescence, we like, let it go completely and just stopped listening to that and then just decided that like, all pain is, needs like medical treatment or just needs to be ignored.
And I just think it's really interesting because actually most people would agree that kids have pain that's emotionally caused, but we don't agree when it's adults.
[00:30:29] Sam Kabert: That is fascinating. Yeah, that's it. So that's something you've been feeling into recently?
[00:30:33] Tracey Tee: No, I just thought of it right now. Yeah, when you were talking about like the CSS and stuff, I was like, Oh,
[00:30:39] Sam Kabert: Yeah, that's, I'm not a parent.
But that's a wonderful thing about being a parent because you can see so much. And I've been around a lot of kids recently, I would say, and especially like the young ones, like around five to seven age, I really love Talking with them and just there's, they're just tapped in, and to your point, the conditioning and programming of societies.
And I think the more awareness we put around this, cause science proves this to Dr. Joe puts out amazing body of work talking about how the brain develops and gets into all the science of what we're talking about, but then. I feel like we're, what we're talking about is more like culturally the conditioning and programming that just happens over time.
It's yeah, that stuff is going on in their brain and the hormones and development, but also now we're teaching them different and they're interacting different,
[00:31:30] Tracey Tee: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, but we at some point we all collectively agreed that can happen, that you can get a tummy ache when you're nervous or scared or sad.
So it's in us still, we just don't want to.
[00:31:48] Sam Kabert: Yeah, it helps me more than anything and I share this every opportunity I get. So if I'll put it in the show notes, I'll make a note right now to put it in the show notes. But on Amazon, I have a refrigerator magnet that I bought. I've had it for over a year now.
And it's made for kids. And it has a bunch of different emotions and feelings. And then it has a Slider on top of it that says I feel so and you just slide where you feel like, literally I talk about this all the time. It's as adults, we need this. It's made for kids, but I use that thing and I'm washing the dishes.
I glance over and I'm like, how am I feeling? Or I've been working through emotional and binge eating. And before I open the fridge and just like numb and distract what I'm feeling, it's wait, let me check in first. Am I actually hungry or am I avoiding something and trying to just, eat my feelings?
[00:32:41] Tracey Tee: Gosh.
Yeah. I love that. Yeah.
[00:32:45] Sam Kabert: Simple things.
[00:32:46] Tracey Tee: And then, to bring it back to like toxic positivity, our culture, like there's a. You even had to preface it, right? Like I use it all the time, it's made for kids. Like, why is it made for kids? And like this idea that we're not allowed or that it's somehow silly to stop and actually be present for a minute.
I'm not even a minute, like five seconds and just check in and say, What am I doing right now? How am I feeling? Like how am I showing up in this world? And from what motivation does it come? Food is just a really beautiful example. Then you can go into wine, you can go into drugs and what, why is this in my hands?
And just asking yourself that question, let alone like, how am I feeling?
[00:33:28] Sam Kabert: Yeah, exactly. And that's something I've been working through with everything you mentioned the two big ones for me have been food and cannabis a lot of times being like, am I checking out with canvas or am I using it as a tool to dive in and check in a little bit more?
Cause I'll tell you last year when my life imploded and it was challenging. I've never used Canvas like I did last year, I thought I did, but to just go in and then lay in my bed and then just put on binaural beats or nothing at all and just ask the tough questions, like that, it's an amazing tool.
[00:34:04] Tracey Tee: Yeah, cannabis. Yeah, she will. She'll rock your boat. If you ask, if you're willing to ask the questions Sarah Hope, like a really dear sister of mine and teacher, she always says that can also match you where you're at. If you want to Cannabis will show up and party.
If you want to go in and you want to really get and work through some stuff, like she will meet you there and she will dig it up and out. And I've absolutely experienced that with cannabis. And if you don't know what the hell you want from cannabis and you're just doing it to numb out, like she will just be like, okay, bye.
And she will only just give you that thing. And it really is interesting how it can turn. And that's when I think people become like dependent on it because you're not actually being asked to opt into it, into the experience.
[00:34:48] Sam Kabert: Absolutely. Would you agree that it's how did you frame it?
What was the word you use? Like
[00:34:54] Tracey Tee: she'll match your energy yeah, what
[00:34:56] Sam Kabert: you're, what I've been saying recently is it's an amplifier. Would you agree with that?
[00:35:02] Tracey Tee: Yeah, I think I would. I'm trying to think what I, if I could, if mushrooms are still cyber is like a nonspecific amplifier.
[00:35:10] Sam Kabert: I guess they all are, I'm just using one, basically, my dad's been getting into cannabis for arthritis and it's really interesting smoking weed now with my dad after him catching my brother and I in high school and putting us in rehab for just smoking
[00:35:24] Tracey Tee: pot.
[00:35:24] Sam Kabert: Oh my gosh, I don't mean to
[00:35:27] Tracey Tee: laugh, that must have been awful.
[00:35:28] Sam Kabert: No yeah, I am laughing about it. What's the line from dude? Where's my car? Oh, I used to say it all the time. It was like reefers. No, that's sublime song. But it's it's like stoners or something. I don't know, but they're making fun of them anyway. Yeah, my dad's grown some weed and I have a bunch of weed from a buddy as well.
And we're just like trying different strains and this and that. And he's like, how does that one feel? Or this one feels that one. And I'm like, it always feels like it just amplifies the mood. I'm already in. So now I never really looked at it before until these conversations and just. Like a week ago or something, I was feeling down and depressed and whatever.
And I was like I'm just going to smoke some weed, and I knew I was like checking out and then it got so much worse. And so I remember texting my dad, just being like, all right, I just had the same weed a couple of days ago. I was laughing. I felt great. And I was also in a good mood before.
And this time I was in a bad mood. So that's what I mean by amplifier,
[00:36:24] Tracey Tee: yeah.
[00:36:25] Sam Kabert: Matches your energy. You said the same thing. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:36:27] Tracey Tee: I am. I'm trying to think. I really, it's so funny. The more I work. with medicines, like the less I use it all recreationally. So like the, my last endeavors with cannabis have been very intentional, like in ceremony combined with breath work a lot of the times.
And I absolutely know why I am working with it. So does it amplify that? Yeah. But I am not like, Oh, I'm just gonna smoke some weed. I don't, I, and I see, I like, I don't have any issue with that. I do I do enjoy. All these delta nine drinks that are coming out and like the micro dose or the micro dose like breeze.
Have you tried that?
[00:37:05] Sam Kabert: Wait. It's a drink. Okay.
[00:37:07] Tracey Tee: Delta nine. Delta nine. I don't know. It's like some form of THC That is some it's apparently hemp derived so it's gone through this loophole so you can sell it nationally. And it's put in a lot of like cannabis drinks now, but there's this one company and it's only 2.
5 milligrams of cannabis. Yeah. And it can, so that's way enough for me, but for some reason it doesn't have the same like full body. And it's also combined with lion's mane, which is nice. And so it's just like a better glass of wine. And so I've really been enjoying that. And I can't say that it's.
Amplifying anything. I'm just that's like a nice treat.
[00:37:49] Sam Kabert: Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
[00:37:51] Tracey Tee: Versus like smoking some weed and really getting stoned.
[00:37:55] Sam Kabert: Yeah. I don't know. That's funny. Cause I typically have worked with the two milligram weed mints. I'm like, I just like very like a micro doses of weed,
[00:38:04] Tracey Tee: right?
I hate. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:38:07] Sam Kabert: But then my buddy this guy comes to my men's room and good guy, totally good guy. And he was like, Hey, I don't know if you are into weed, but my buddy has gave me a whole bag of weed. Cause whatever reason, and I'm like, Oh, flower, you still there, Tracy thing, cut out for a moment.
[00:38:25] Tracey Tee: Oh, sorry. My dog was barking.
[00:38:26] Sam Kabert: Oh, we're good. Cool. So long story short he offered to give me some flour. I'm like I'm all right. I don't really, I just do weed mints. And then he's just in case you could roll a joint or something. I'm like, dude, I don't even know how to roll a joint.
We had now when I tell people that they're like, how do you not know how to roll a joint? You're stoner. You're you were stoner. I'm like, yeah. Other people would roll join your pipes or bongs, there's other ways. So he put on a joint rolling class for myself and another guy in our men's group.
And then I just started practicing rolling joints. So then that guy, then it turned into a habit I guess I need to smoke it. So that'll get you into trouble. Yeah, but it's not, I don't have a long history, a recent history of smoking as much. And even though it is harsher on the throat, everything else, I do like the joint because it is like that microdose.
It comes on quicker and then it fades away quicker as well. It's cool. So anyways, just to tie a bow on all this, the original archetype we have is moms or just yeah, moms that are wearing this mask. It could be toxic positivity or something else showing up in the way they think and feel and have been conditioned to, to show up in the world.
Since you lead moms, mom on mushrooms, I'd love to hear from you To unpack that a little bit more.
[00:39:49] Tracey Tee: Yeah, I think it's becoming a lot more pervasive as we grow as a community. But what I'm really seeing is this resistance to being uncomfortable. And and a resistance to to being uncomfortable.
And then a negative connotation to feeling your feelings if those feelings aren't. love and light and rainbows and unicorns and like euphoria. So a lot of times we'll get women who come in and they're very excited to start microdosing and have a lot of expectations around, hold, please. I'm sorry.
My dog is,
[00:40:31] Sam Kabert: I'm
[00:40:31] Tracey Tee: so sorry. Tiny Chihuahua in the forest. She, they come in and they have all these expectations for how and what they want microdosing to do. And as we were talking about amplifiers, non specific amplifiers what I think is missing and what I try really hard to do when I talk about why mom is around and what we offer is that you can't feel those euphoria and the love and light and all of the good things.
If you don't work through the darkness, if you don't work through the shadow, if you don't acknowledge that is part of who you are and you don't try to like. Release it. And I was having this conversation with someone the other day, and we were talking about how sometimes safety can actually feel like anger or sadness or depression.
That might feel eventually after repeatedness, like that might feel like your safe place is to be sad and depressed. And so what I'm noticing is that there's a lot of shame and anger towards having quote unquote negative feelings, whether it's sadness or rage or just low or even dark thoughts.
And women, mothers judge themselves for those thoughts. And they think either a, the medicine's not working. Microdose isn't working. I'm, I have, I'm feeling all this grief. I'm feeling all this anger. I'm feeling all the sadness or B. There's something wrong with me. And that's the thing. That's the mask that's the scariest to me, is that you are fine wearing a mask of the shadow.
And when you take it off and you notice that it's a mask, you actually think there's something wrong with you that you even had it in the first place. And I think that is, that's going to be our great unlearning, collectively for all people, but for mothers especially, to say, and this is why it's, it's very triggering when, I used to say this in our comedy show sometimes It sucks being a mom.
And it doesn't mean I don't love being a mother. It means that sometimes it sucks just like everything in life sometimes sucks, but we're so afraid to admit that. And we're so afraid to say today is a hard day, or I'm just, I'm not feeling the parenting thing. I'm over touched. I'm overstimulated. I'm exhausted and I don't like it right now.
And. And not judge yourself for saying that somehow that also means that you don't like being a mother, like both things can be true, but that comes back to our reconciliation of our fear of death, right? If we don't reconcile our fear and hatred of the darkness, then we can never allow ourselves to feel that and you're just going to be in a mask for the rest of your life.
[00:43:17] Sam Kabert: I, I have so much respect for moms whether you're in a partnership, single mom, anything like that at all. Cause there, there's so many struggles that we all face, but I think something that we've all been looking at more as a collective recently is women. And not even to get into some of the politics, cause some thoughts are bouncing through my head and I'm like, no, I don't want to pull out that one, but stay on track here.
But the point being like, I understand and I appreciate. All the responsibilities, the obligations, the pressures, the stressors, as it relates to being a mother. And my question for you is like, when you're working with these women, they're beginning to do the shadow work and they don't really have an experience of that before.
And they're feeling like there's something wrong with them, or they don't know how to sit with these emotions, given that they're. Are there is so much pressure in their life. Like, how can they practically go about feeling these emotions so they can move through them?
[00:44:23] Tracey Tee: Yeah. A lot of it just comes down to good old fashion time management, right?
Like we actually have to have space in our day to feel our feelings. And just like you and I were saying at the very beginning, I was thinking about this when we were talking about like laughing, how we both logged on and then logged off when we were first supposed to have this conversation, you have to come to a place where you value.
You value the toll that being human takes on you on any given day and you have to recognize what is like gross self indulgence or avoidance and what is just saying, you know what? Today, I just can't and that's okay. And that is dismantling the superhero toxic positivity archetype and just, and admitting that you actually just are human and we're not always on 24 hours a day or even five days a week.
And being able to communicate it in a way to other people who understand that, like that's where kind of healing happens. So from a mother's standpoint, you know what the truth is that when you have the flu, And your kids have to go to school and I've done it and you wake up with 104 degree temperature.
You still got to get your ass in the car and drive kids to school and do things that you don't necessarily want to do from time to time. That is part of being a mom. You have to roll up your sleeves and you got to do the stuff, right? Kids need to eat. You may not feeling like cooking dinner. You still got to do it.
And inside that mapping out your day and making choices that still allow you to fill up your cup and take care of yourself. And I don't want to talk about self care. I want to say are you actually nourishing yourself? Are you eating enough? Do you value sleep or have you bought into the martyr narrative that says somehow you're not supposed to have sleep for 15 years of your life.
That's you buying into programming that is false. And you're putting on that mask and you're using sleep deprivation as an excuse for adverse behavior when you don't value what it can do for you. Are you not taking your vitamins? Are you not going to see the doctor or a nutritionist? Or are you not going outside?
Those are things that you're avoiding because it's actually allowing you to feel better. And we have to make time for that as mothers, we have to value that just as much as we value showing up for kid conferences and going to doctor's appointments and all the other things you have to value yourself as like a human woman.
And I think from that place you start to have space. To feel your feelings and that's when micro dosing starts to work and that's when medicine starts to work because you're not cramming it in micro seconds in between phone calls and car line.
[00:47:04] Sam Kabert: Yeah, if you have a micro dosing product.
Call you could take the time to, say a prayer, draw some Oracle cards, whatever your thing is, and do a little bit of breathwork meditation and know Hey, I'm creating the space to drop in intentionally have my journal here. I'm going journal. And that is self care. You read my mind. I was going to ask about self care and, so we're going to wrap up here in a moment and maybe this will be something we get into a third podcast with, right?
But self care is an interesting one because there seems to be a movement now where there are advocates. for women advocates for moms, talking about self care. That very much includes mental, emotional, spiritual health, but for the traditional way we think of self care, especially like I'm a guy, right?
What do I think of self care when it relates to women? I'm like, bubble bath, why?
[00:48:00] Tracey Tee: Manny petty? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:48:02] Sam Kabert: Yeah. Yeah. And this is the thing here, you got to make time for both, right? Because you need the time to unplug in a lot of ways that still processing your mental and emotional health. You may not be going into it intentionally and it, but this is, we don't really have time to unpack this, but for me speaking from, for myself, if I'm going to be binging Netflix.
And eating ice cream and laying on the couch. I'm going to do that. And I'm going to release the shame and guilt on that. And that is the difference between numbing and distracting and avoidance. It's like I have the awareness around this. This is what I'm doing right now. And I will move forward. But I'm not even though I'm avoiding it's a temporary or temporarily avoiding it.
So anyways, rant over.
[00:48:53] Tracey Tee: Yeah, no, I love that. My family, we like Friday night movie night is like church for the three of us. We have very low social batteries. My husband and I give it our all in service all week long. We're both entrepreneurs. My daughter is an introvert and a very soulful person.
And by Friday, the teas are fried and it is pizza and movie and ice cream on the couch, legs draped over each other. Jammy's on at 5 p. m. and that I know our why for that is healing, so I love that you it's all about knowing your why okay, I'm gonna and we're supposed like humans are supposed to feel pleasure, right?
Like we are here. We're not dear like we get we created ice cream and Netflix and we should enjoy it. Just make good choices, like no, no one you're doing it. And I will say and then wrap this up like. It goes back to the goddess and overthinking it, right? Like we actually write into our foundational course at Moms on Mushrooms, part of the coursework is to take a bath and I'm not talking about a bath that needs like rose petals and the perfect bath, whatever tray and this whole setup and eucalyptus leaves, like I'm just saying put warm water with some Epsom salt that you get from Costco.
into a bathtub and lay in it, lock the door. You're at home. No, one's going to die and stay in there. Don't bring your iPad and watch a movie, relax and let the water do the work and give yourself a moment to breathe. And I, that I would say. Myself prioritizing baths was probably step one on my spiritual journey.
Like taking baths changed my life. It took me 10 years as a mother to allow myself to take a bath. And it took many weeks of my family walking in on me when I was meditating or just being like, mom, like what do I, and until they finally learned that. Everyone's gonna live while I'm in the bathtub and it's changed everything for me.
It's my reset. It's easy. It's affordable and it's not self care. It's priority. It's like I'm a better mom when I take a bath and that's what I think we try to teach a mom and I think that's the difference of mask wearing for even You
[00:51:20] Sam Kabert: 100%. And I love that so much, especially the piece of not bringing your phone in.
So rapid fire real quick here. So pizza night and ice cream, favorite pizza, go to pizza and go to ice cream.
[00:51:33] Tracey Tee: Always margarita pizza and mint chocolate chip for life.
[00:51:36] Sam Kabert: There we go. Tracy, this has been so much fun. Thank you again for making the time to come on soul seeker podcasts. I appreciate how you're showing up in the world.
It's great to collaborate with you and we'll keep it going. And thank you so much. Listeners go to the show notes and you can find all the ways to connect with Tracy and the previous episode as well. If you want to check that one out.
[00:51:57] Tracey Tee: Thank you, Sam. Appreciate you
[00:51:59] Sam Kabert: guys. Thanks, Tracy.
[00:52:00] Tracey Tee: Bye.