Marisa Franco Explores Unity in Nature and Community

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Lucas Root: Marisa, thank you so much for joining. I'm really excited to have this conversation. We've been chatting back and forth both online and we've had a couple of calls and I'm so filled with delight about what you're here to share today. But before we get to that, let's tell the audience at least a little bit about how I stumbled onto you and why we have such a what I would call a beautiful connection [00:01:00] now. I found you through Ryan and of course, Ryan was on the podcast, what a month ago now we had an amazing conversation, Ryan and I about the relationship with the community, but the wider community, which was probably the first time now, of course, there's a conversation I was well equipped to have, but I think it's the first time that I, publicly had a conversation like that, not for him, but for me, which was beautiful.

And the notion of bringing trees and, actually wild animals into your own personal community as a normal part of your relationship and the beings with whom you connect again, normal part of my life, but it was the first time I had a public conversation about that. And it was beautiful and at the end, of course we hit the stop button and I was like, Brian, this was amazing. And it was I connected with him twice since then. And I said, who do I have to talk to after [00:02:00] this? And you were at the top of his list, obviously. Um, I of course did a little cyber stalking. And I loved what I found.

Marisa Franco: Thank you. I'm glad I was number one because we are engaged to be married. So,

Lucas Root: As I said, of course.

Marisa Franco: And he has such a beautiful way of, I mean, that's the kin centric view. That's the most ancient view of life that I'm sure we'll get into, but he has such a beautiful way of describing it.

Lucas Root: Yeah. Yeah, it is a good thing you were first. It's like external validation, right?

Marisa Franco: Totally.

Lucas Root: You should be first, but you don't know until somebody says, Oh yeah, by the way, you were first.

Marisa Franco: Yeah. And you don't assume you're first and then it's a wonderful surprise when you are.

Lucas Root: Exactly. Could you take a minute and tell our audience a little bit about yourself?

Marisa Franco: Yeah. My name is Marisa Caroline Franco and [00:03:00] etymologically that has a really beautiful meaning. And what I've been told through some of my teachers is that your name is a part of your mission here on earth. So when I heard that I went down many rabbit holes and I put together. All the rabbit holes and I put together the meaning and the meaning means a strong free woman with a song of happiness to sing from the sea.

And that resonated with me because joy or happiness is one of the highest vibrations that I have experienced in my life. And that's when magnetism happens and when miracles happen and when you're in a place of gratitude and I'm incredibly connected to the ocean. When I'm not near the ocean, I'm like, oh my God.

and I'm, free. And what's so interesting about that is for so much of my life, I really thought that I was trapped and what I found was I was [00:04:00] actually just enslaved by myself and through unveiling who I really am, I found. That part of me that has always been free and that has been such a gift.

And it's, if anyone's into gene keys, one of my life purpose, gene keys is transcending enslavement into liberation. So when I found that out, I was like, Oh, that makes so much sense. So that's a big part of my journey and part of my journey is what I share here. So liberation and the way that I became liberated.

I mean, it's a whole process, but it was about relational healing, which is the main work that I do here and it comes in different modalities. But relational healing for me is about learning how to relate to all aspects of the life, similar to the concentric view. Because we're not separate from Earth, we're not living on Earth, we're living with Earth.

And all the healing, [00:05:00] thank you. And all of the healing modalities that truly nourish us, that have always been here are free. And that is relating to your water saying thank you with your water relating to the food. And I mean, that's a whole thing of learning how food grows or growing your own food and being in a place of gratitude and appreciation because when we are in a situation space of appreciation and gratitude.

It's like our cells are alive and happy and they're aware. And then we can, when we bring the food into our body, they know how to become us. And that's when our nourishment increases. And we can also relate in a really beautiful way to the trees and the grasses and the flowers. And this is my favorite modality for what we call healing because a lot of these elements, it's not that they're silent, but we can only know [00:06:00] how to listen.

And the message is always so unique for us because really everything around us is simply a mirror. And we just have to keep polishing that mirror until we can truly see ourselves. And once we do, it's like everything changes. Life becomes so beautiful. And we remember that it's a gift. It's truly a gift to be alive. So that's been a really big part of my journey and what I feel that I'm here to share is healing with joy and healing with, the earth around us.

Lucas Root: Yes, before we move on to that. Let's talk about gene keys real quick. For those of you who don't know the original language of really trying to deep dive into what are the different pieces of information that I can gather about myself? To understand myself better, to deep dive into who I am and who I'm supposed to be in the world today, and to understand why [00:07:00] things are happening in my life the way that they're happening, would be astrology.

Now, astrology is a weird and really complex language, and it's not for everybody but, everybody needs to have personal development, and they need to have a language inside which they can talk to themselves, about themselves, for themselves, and understand themselves. And so, 30 years ago the human design was invented and it pulled in a lot from astrology.

It was sort of a, it was intended to be a layer on top of astrology, although that's not the way it worked out. It worked out to be an entirely separate pillar inside which people can do self exploration. And human design's amazing. It pulls in some stuff from the vedics and some stuff from astrology and some of the sort of modern psychology that was put together by some of the really great psychologists of our day and age.

And it created this whole new way of talking to, about, and for yourself inside. Self development and Richard Rudd was along for the [00:08:00] ride when human design was created and said. All right, I like what's done here, but I think we can go further. And so again, in sort of an effort to build a layer on top of a thing that was created that was beautiful.

Richard Rudd created Gene Keys that was supposed to be a layer on top of human design. And yet again, he pulled in different modalities that weren't pulled in, and he went deeper in some places and shallower in others. And instead of creating a layer on top, he created yet a third entirely separate language inside which people can do self exploration.

And it's a beautiful thing. All of the ways that you, the listener, and you and I Marisa can work to understand ourselves are beautiful things, and we should spend time on that.

Marisa Franco: Yeah. Thank you for describing that. It reminds me that when I was in Lake Atilan last year, which is the belly button of the earth. Ryan and I were together and I had this dream and I was shooting through the cosmos [00:09:00] and what was being described to me was every single star or constellation that we touch is what's curating our experience on earth.

And that's how we,

Lucas Root: Beautiful.

Marisa Franco: Personalities and different sort of guideposts in our life or moments in our life that are really big or big shifts that are happening. And that, for me, made so much sense because I was like, oh, that's how astrology gene keys, human design, all these ways of really reading the map of the stars is the map of the stars is actually inside of us.

And when we were journeying to Earth through the cosmos, we were just like a pinball machine, like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and just receiving everything we need did to live out our sole mission here. And I truly believe that every single person here matters. Every single person has a mission and it's. You know, this is the thing and like, it can be grand or it can [00:10:00] be small, but even in those terms it's so dualistic. It doesn't really matter.

Like, you could change 1 person's life or help 1 person and that could be your entire mission or you could make a huge change and disrupt. This algorithm that we're in right now, that's already slowly, you know, crumbling in a beautiful way. And then on top of that, it's not just about what we do here, it's how we are here.

And how we relate to our life and that for me is like a big part about. The mission or the purpose, because our purpose could also just simply be being alive and being here. It doesn't have to be this big thing, although sometimes they work hand in hand together, and we can't get wrapped up in feeling like we need to do something, because I think we're human beings, we're not human doers, and remembering how to be is actually how we can do.

Lucas Root: That's a beautiful thing to say. [00:11:00] Remembering how to be is how we can do. Wow. Do you want to talk more about food?

Marisa Franco: Yes I do. So food for me is the center of my life. And similar to a home, the kitchen, which another word to say kitchen is the hearth. And the hearth means the heart of the home. It is the original gathering space. It's a space where all people of all origins. Can come together and break bread metaphorically and also in real life we can break bread.

And when I was little, my mom tells me stories about how she wouldn't be able to find me, and then she'd go into the kitchen and I'd be standing on a chair on the counter, like flour everywhere, baking things like three years old, like configuring the oven. And of course, like my dad loves saying like, yeah, I [00:12:00] ate all your things, but until you're like six.

Everything was basically inedible, but I had that like. that passion for it. And it was the type of passion where you don't have to, feel it. It's just who you are. It moves you. And that's a really beautiful thing to remember as an adult too, because you, the, like the purpose, the mission, the passion that you have, it just comes naturally to you.

You just have to create this space for it. But as a child, you have so much spaciousness to explore that, and that's such a beautiful thing too about children. Like when you watch children, you can already sense who they are because they have the space to be who they are. And as adults, we just need a little bit of space to remember that and a lot of forgiveness and a lot of compassion for that.

So. Anyway, as a kid, I was really in love with that space. And I also would spend most of my time alone outside in the forest. [00:13:00] I would just know how to do things. I would know which flowers for what remedy. Like, my mom was going through menopause and I found a raspberry bush. And I would pick the red raspberry leaves and I'd make a tea from it.

And that's a wonderful concoction and remedy for menopausal symptoms. And I would find acorns and I would put them in the river and like, create a little like rock circle. So they wouldn't float away and I would let them sit there for a day. And then the next day I would come back and I would be able to eat them, which as a kid, I didn't know I had to remove the tenants, but I did know how to do that.

And so.

Lucas Root: You've just listened.

Marisa Franco: Exactly. And that's a big part about the relational healing too, is like you just learn how to listen. You just start opening up a little. And so I love food. I loved the forest. I loved this natural world. And then some things started to shift. I entered into. [00:14:00] What we call the matrix, even though we're always in the matrix, but I entered into this space and I started to try out a lot of different industries.

I was in tech. I was in finance. I was in the wellness industry as in digital media and every year. I would basically change careers and my family. It was like, what the hell are you doing? But some part of me just, like, knew that I'm an investigator. I have to learn through trial and error. And so I just kept flipping through, like, is it this?

No, it's not this. Is it this? No, it's not this. But simultaneously, they never felt like. Failures it truly felt like a success. One, because I was able to learn just a little bit of what I needed to support the space that I'm in now. And it also felt like a success because I was brave enough to say no more and change my life through changing different career paths or different cities that I was living in, et cetera.

Lucas Root: Fun.

Marisa Franco: [00:15:00] Through that space. I always loved cooking and then in 2019 I quit my job. I was so sick. I was sick on so many levels. I was sick emotionally, physically, spiritually. I felt like my soul was so far away and I knew that I needed to make a big change in my life and it was really scary. I remember feeling like I want to know all the answers, but I don't have any of them.

And the time is now to make a decision. And so I made the decision to quit my job, sell all of my stuff and just choose a place to go. And at that moment, it was just Costa Rica. I was like I'm just gonna go there, which is a really great place to choose. Right? Good job, Marisa.

Lucas Root: Yeah. Yeah.

Marisa Franco: And, you know, the way that.

Lucas Root: Can say your name.

Marisa Franco: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Lucas Root: They have a hard time with my name.

Marisa Franco: Oh, gosh. [00:16:00] Yeah. So the way that the mystery works is that it's not always as it seems. And even if you make these great grand plans, it might not go. Exactly how you want, but in my experience, my prayers are always answered. It just comes in different forms and I was praying for adventure and something new and within a week is when I met my fiance Ryan, who had been traveling for eight years at that time.

And he is my adventure of,

Lucas Root: Continues to travel.

Marisa Franco: Continues to travel. Yep. Right now he's in Brazil and we're meeting each other in Peru in two days. for Christmas. So I met Ryan, who's like the most epic travel guide ever, and I went through this thing where I was imagining myself to be this independent female traveler, do it myself, like carve my own path, you know?

I [00:17:00] guess what you would consider like a boss bitch, which is a ridiculous term, and, but that was like the space I was in at the time, and I was really humbled. By meeting Ryan and then the love that we shared together, because it just happened so quickly within 1 month of meeting him. We were in Vietnam and then we started traveling for 1 year, 2 year, 3 year.

And we've had so many amazing adventures and the way that the adventures happened for me is I had to keep saying yes. And I was almost always uncomfortable during these years because I was going through a huge transformation, which I called in because I didn't want the status quo life. I wanted a life of mystery. I wanted a life of adventure, and I wanted to do something different than the people that I was around at that time. And so that's exactly what happened.

Lucas Root: You know, keep going. But first it's so [00:18:00] easy for us to look around at the people around us and be like, I don't want that. And I don't want that. And I don't want that. And I don't want that. And I don't want that. And then just sit back and just be like, I don't want any of that. And I'm not satisfied with the life I'm living right alongside all of the things that I see that I don't want. And also I'm not willing to make a change.

Marisa Franco: Yeah.

Lucas Root: And I applaud you. Marisa for being willing to make a change.

Marisa Franco: Thank you. Yeah. There's that saying it's more important to know what you don't want than what you do want. And that really resonated with me because how would I know what I wanted if I never tasted it? And so then throughout the travels, I started to taste different styles of life. We were living off grid jungle or like everywhere.

And it was really nourishing for me. Throughout those years, even though it was. intensely uncomfortable and so much is changing, I was starting to feel like me when [00:19:00] I was a child. And during that time, it was when I started to bring food back into my life, like wanting to use that to be with food in a way that I could share how much I love life and how much I love this earth and food.

Lucas Root: I have an uncle who literally says, I eat to fuel the fire. And I go, I waffle on this, like, some days I'm like, yeah, that's amazing, like, I love how he says that, and some days I'm like, I never want to feel that way about my food ever. Like, ever.

Marisa Franco: Yeah.

Lucas Root: Most days are more like on the right hand, where like, I never want to feel that way about my food, because, eating can be worship, it can be a beautiful experience where I am celebrating the path that arrived at, yes, I'm [00:20:00] fueling the fire but the entire path matters.

And I, don't want it to be transparent. I don't want to miss the details of that path. I don't want to anymore at this point in my life, I don't want to not know the farmer that raised the cows that I'm eating. I don't want to not meet the cow like I've met the cow that I eat and I spend time with that cow and I put love into very literally what ends up feeding me

And I don't sometimes it's hard and it's a little bit exhausting and it takes mental energy and it takes emotional energy and I have to get in the car and go to the farm and like sometimes I just don't want to do that.

I want to sit on the couch and watch TV and I get that. But I never, take a bite of that steak and regret the amount of work that I put in to make sure that what I'm receiving when I eat that steak is such an extraordinary experience.

Marisa Franco: Yeah. That's really well said. You know, food is the original sacred item on any altar with [00:21:00] any peoples around the world. And when we start to look at how this monoculture is treating food. It's like everything is backwards, but what's so cool with things that are backwards is all we have to do is flip it.

Lucas Root: Yeah.

Marisa Franco: And

Lucas Root: Yeah.

Marisa Franco: And food, any sort of commoditization of these sacred items. We can make a very simple switch by bringing in gratitude by relating to our food by tending to that relationship, whether it's the food. The animal, the farmer, the plant, whatever it may be, because now, like, you've had the experience where you can feel the texture difference of knowing where your food comes from. And

Lucas Root: Amazing. So, um, in 2013, I was actually a professional chef back then. And I had my parents come visit me at my house, I don't remember, maybe it was Christmas or something, so they're coming over, and I was just then in the [00:22:00] process, a decade ago, of really paying attention to the difference between grocery store food and premium grocery store food. Like you know, the discount rack beef that's been sitting there for a while and there's nothing special about it at all versus like the grass fed you know, certified black angus grass fed, like top shelf stuff that's over here with all the green signs on it.

And boy, does it cost a whole lot more. And I was loving the experience of seeing, and now I was still going to the grocery store to get my beef, but I was loving the experience of really feeling the difference between the discount rack beef and the certified grass fed stuff. And my parents are coming over and I did a, I did two I was a professional chef.

I had four different crock pots in my house at the time. So I did two crock pots with two roasts. And one of them had the discount rack beef and the other one had the premium beef. My parents got there and everything else was otherwise the same. My parents got there and I fed them the discount rack beef and they were like, Oh my God, this is amazing.

And then I [00:23:00] fed them the premium, it's still a grocery store, but the premium stuff. And they were like, what happened? What did you do differently? What, how is this recipe different? How do I do this? I want that. It was amazing. And I was still in the grocery store at the time. Like I hadn't graduated from the grocery store yet. The experience now is that much more different even then the premium stuff on the grocery store rack.

Marisa Franco: You know, the thing with food is there's this whole thing about how we can't afford healthy food. And I agree to some extent, like not many people can go to Whole Foods every day and buy top shelf, et cetera, et cetera, but what many people can do is grow their own food, even in rural or in urban cities, there's [00:24:00] so many community gardens, but it requires a lot of effort.

And I think that's the thing that stops a lot of people. But when you start putting in that effort, you see how all the effort and all the love and care and attention that you put out comes back to you tenfold because the food that you get to know is really what is nourishing you on a dimensional level and that's why your food from the farm tastes so good. It has two secret ingredients, love and spaciousness, and the cows have spaciousness and they're doing their thing the way.

Lucas Root: Not just any love. It is actually my love.

Marisa Franco: Yeah. And so your food gets to know you and you can do that with cucumbers. You can do that with like whatever it is. Food from your garden will always taste so much better. And then like you're saying, like, once you graduate, you start getting heirloom seeds and then you start seed saving. And then you're starting to nourish yourself [00:25:00] and you feel this sort of like gratification of being reliant on yourself.

And once you become a pillar in your own life, you can support an entire community. And I mean that in every level possible, not just with food, but since we're on food, let's bring it to that. You have a garden where you can grow for yourself and your family, and then you bring it out to your community and then you can start bartering.

And that's what we've been doing for I mean, who knows how long we've always bartered as humans and I really want to bring that back in. And when I was living in Hawaii in 2020. That was a huge part of my day because I lived on a farm and I would have like buckets and buckets of starfruit. And then I would go to a farmer's market and go to the jelly man and be like, Hey, you want some starfruit?

And he's like, yeah, what do you need? Like I need some honey and then he knew and so like it was just this beautiful system that just [00:26:00] kept feeding itself. It's like the over a snake, right? It's like, it's just, it all works together in a cohesive way and getting to know your food, growing your own food or going to the farm.

It's really important. And we can peel back a lot of what we consume and what we think matters because so many people they have, like, let's say they have two cars and they have to buy new jeans or like new sneakers, like all these things. Right? But once we start to see, actually, what's really important in our life and what truly feeds us, not a quick fix, not a dopamine hit, but what truly feeds us in the long run. Then we start to see that, like, we don't need a lot of the stuff that we have in our life.

And actually, it's taking up a lot of prime real estate in our space, in our consciousness, in our mind. And we can kind of just do some spring cleaning and really focus on what matters in our life.

Lucas Root: Oh, I love it. Interesting food for [00:27:00] thought since we're on food. So, contrary to most people in sort of modern American food culture to the extent that there is one, I will not eat chicken. And, you know, you go look at what the newspapers and magazines tell you, they tell you to eat only chicken, like, you know, replace all of your red meat with chicken.

Here's what's interesting about that. Chickens, when you go to the grocery store and you look at, you know, a grocery store chicken, it'll say all vegetarian fed. Now, I have a question for you, you, the listener, you, Marisa. What does the early bird get?

Marisa Franco: The worm.

Lucas Root: That is right. The reason I won't touch chickens is because the early bird gets the worm. And I'm as interested in a vegan chicken about as, I mean, nevermind. We'll not finish that thought. Like I have no interest in a vegan chicken, like the early bird gets the worm. And [00:28:00] I want to eat healthy animals that were fed their healthy, natural diet.

In a place where they are loved and cared for with the love that you would give to somebody you're feeding their healthy natural diet. The early bird gets the worm and I'm going to eat a chicken. It needs to have lots of bugs available to it. Now, most people have a backyard. And in your backyard, you could very easily put one, two, three chickens.

Why would I bring that up? Every single animal on a traditional farm, like when you conjure up the image of a farm, every single animal plays two roles. Not just one, but two. Chickens aren't just for laying eggs and turning into chicken meat. Chickens are, have a very specific and very important role on the farm and in your backyard.

When I'm done with this, you're going to want to Google something and I'll tell you what it is. When I'm done with this, you're going to want to Google the prevalence of Lyme disease here in the United [00:29:00] States. Now when you have a farm, you have a whole bunch of animals that are eating a whole bunch of food and you have some humans that are eating some food and throwing some stuff away.

So the result of this sort of beautiful miasma of animals and humans coexisting is that there's going to be a whole bunch of animal shit and human food waste and, you know, stinky things that encourage bugs to come and congregate around all of this stuff that's happened. We want the bugs. The bugs do good things and also we don't want the bugs because they're icky and they get in our face and they bite us and we don't want that.

And so, you actually need a pest control. And back before pesticides were invented as a thing that you could spray that would poison absolutely everything they touch, including yourself by the way, we needed to have pest control back then too and that's what chickens did.

The early bird gets the worm. When you have a whole bunch of chickens that congregate around the house and the barn, they're going to eat all of those bugs that show up. [00:30:00] It makes them happy. It fills their bellies. It makes for a very healthy chicken. It also keeps you, the human, healthy. If more backyards had more chickens, we would have way less of a problem with Lyme disease, and I would eat chickens.

Marisa Franco: Yep. When I was living on a farm in Hawaii, we had actually free range chickens. Like, they were just wild chickens that would come onto the property. And I can't tell you how many times I would walk up to one and there was a lizard hanging out of its mouth.

Lucas Root: Yes.

Marisa Franco: So then going into the store and seeing like vegetarian fed like it was some amazing thing like you live on a farm. You're like, oh my god, this is another backwards thing. And I mean, that's a whole.

Lucas Root: To do is flip it.

Marisa Franco: Exactly. And that's a big thing because when you go out into the world or like you're on your computer, there's so much misinformation and even like [00:31:00] brands that you want to trust, like you really, it feels as if the era that we're in is learning how to trust ourselves.

And not going out of ourselves to be reliant on something else. That's the whole thing with this like system that is not working for us anymore. Like we need the system to work for us, not us working system. Yes. And even going to the grocery store. I mean, this is why I love relational healing because food is just a metaphor and a metaphor is just another way for us to understand the meaning of life.

Meaning of our life, the meaning of X, Y, and Z. And we really need to remember how to trust our gut and similar to your experience with eating the grass fed steak and the farm and the cow that you knew, like your body knew that was good for you and your body that now that you had the taste of what was true nourishment [00:32:00] and what was love, you can't really go back to what is like not loved anymore.

And it's similar to what we said earlier, too. Like you don't know what you want until you get it or you taste it. And then you can start making moves. Like that's why trying out different things is so vital for us. I mean, we're having a human experiment, not just a human experience. And in order to have an experiment, we need to have trial and error.

And the compass is inside of us. We, you know, just getting clear on what our voice, what the song in our heart sounds like will help us move freely in this world. Even in, thank you.

Lucas Root: Wow. So what does relational healing mean to you?

Marisa Franco: Relational healing is about relating to all aspects of our life, in our life [00:33:00] and around us. So my journey with healing, which really is like just my journey with life, because we're always healing, even when we're not thinking about it. Like that's, or we're degrading, but I'm choosing healing by saying yes to things that nourish me, I guess that's the difference.

But the biggest moments of my journey have been in this sort of isolation that I felt was really a disconnection that I had to the natural world. And I had that connection as a child. I think many children do. And then you get disconnected because you, you're an adult and you forget and then you start to remember a little bit and then you forget again.

And then when you come back into the space and you start reconnecting the reconnection for me, it happened with the rivers and the trees and the flowers and the food and the people around me and being able to see [00:34:00] myself. through such clear mirrors. I mean, earth is the clearest mirror that we can have to see ourselves.

And if we can learn how to sit under a tree and listen, like a lot of people don't know that trees speak and it's not some weird spiritual thing. It's, but they don't speak in a human language. They speak by communicating with us either on a physical dimension, let's say you're sitting there and you're thinking and then an acorn drops on your head, like, what were you thinking about that matter.

Lucas Root: hmm

Marisa Franco: It comes as an intuitive thought that you think might be yours, but nothing is really yours, you know, my one of my teachers and holy. She,

Lucas Root: Hold on, hold on. So, I, I haven't there, here's another thing I've never shared. I have a golden acorn theory. And here's what I mean by that. So, I live in California. You spend quite a lot of time, I don't know if you actually live there, but you spend a lot of time in Texas. So [00:35:00] very similar in that we have big, huge, vast rolling hills, and then lots and lots of oak trees in these big, vast rolling hills, and most of the year.

The oaks can't seed. So I'm driving through the valleys out here looking at the trees communing with them and wondering to myself. And of course, this question was prompted somehow. I don't know how right. The way the trees talk to us wondering to myself how do they propagate. Like, how does an oak seedling happen?

Because I'm, you know, here I am in California looking at huge, vast oak forests where clearly seedlings are happening. But, 10 months out of the year, it's not possible for the tree to survive. And so even if it manages to just explode in growth for those first two months, it's still not gonna make it.

It's not gonna make it. There's no chance and so, I started paying attention, like. Listening to [00:36:00] the trees and listening to nature and like really, really looking with my heart and my soul and also trying to match my eyes to what I was hearing. And I finally saw it. This is where the golden acorn theory comes from.

I went by a mother oak and I saw the little baby oak right next to it. And I could look up into the canopy of the oak the mother. And I saw that pieces around the baby had died off and fallen. Literally, the mother was making space for the baby to get the sun. And I was like, okay, like that's a piece of it.

That's how you allow it to sort of get the sun. But this still isn't enough. This is not going to get this oak through 10 months of dry season. For the next, you know, 15 years, while it develops a root system strong enough for it to be able to survive on its own. This doesn't do it. I still don't understand.

And so, what, as above so below, we've all heard this, like, it hit me right there in that moment, that [00:37:00] while the tree was killing off its own branches, it was self pruning to make space for its baby. It was growing roots underneath the baby so that the mother can literally nurse its young. It was the most amazing thing that ever, like, it hit me so hard.

I was like, oh my god, like, these oak trees are effectively mammals. They have to nurse their young, and not for a couple of months, but for years, maybe even decades, before the baby is strong enough, deep enough connected enough to be able to survive on its own without its mother. Well, if that's true, if the mother is actually growing a nest, a marsupial pouch, to collect the baby and make it possible for that mother's baby to survive in that spot.

Then [00:38:00] you know, a mature oak tree is dropping 40,000 acorns every single year, but if in order for that mother to be able to successfully reproduce, she needs to actually grow a marsupial pouch right there in the land to collect that baby and keep it alive, then she knows exactly which one of her acorns is going to fall in that spot and if she knows she probably also decides. Like this is a kind of leap that i'm taking It was a prompted leap all the rest of this stuff is sort of helped pushed observation.

It's stuff that I can see the crown of the tree dying back to make space for the baby as above. So below I could I will not. There's no way I'm doing that. But I could actually dig down and examine the roots under the ground and see that she's going over there. And you know, she's got her own little root system of [00:39:00] marsupial pouch to serve to support this baby, her baby.

So I could go actually observe that. But if she's doing that, she knows which of those acorns is the one acorn that she wants to fall in that one spot to make sure that's the one that sprouts and survives and opens her family up to the next generation. So that's golden acorn. Now, when you mention if you're sitting under the tree and an acorn drops on you, what were you thinking?

Like, that really is not just coincidence. These mother oaks have the capacity to literally grow a marsupial pouch and drop an acorn into it. Yes, when an acorn falls on your head, maybe it's because Augusta Wynne dropped it off, but probably it's because she decided to drop it.

Marisa Franco: Yeah. And also maybe the wind is participating. I mean, if you want to live in [00:40:00] magic, you can't just choose when you see magic it's happening all the time. And I'm really glad that you mentioned that story. It's a, such a beautiful story. And also really amazing that you had the wherewithal to stop and be with that experience.

And really investigate, like, how is this happening and to see the mystery and the magic in it. And I'm also glad you mentioned this because that's a huge aspect of the relational healing that I offer is you go out into nature and you observe. And you bring back a story because that story is sharing where you're at right now in your life and I sense that when you went to this tree and you were looking at how aspects of the tree had to die for this new seedling to come forth.

Was that during a time in your life where that was actually happening to you where you were clearing the clutter and you're making space for something new to emerge.

Lucas Root: Well, yeah, [00:41:00] of course.

Marisa Franco: And that's the mirror of the earth. You know, it's so beautiful because we have everything that we need. We have all of the answers and you seeing the tree was also you seeing yourself and the more that we can love. The earth or the environment, the more that we can love ourself. And the more we love ourself, the more that we can love the earth. They're not separate. That's why I shared at the beginning is we are healing with earth.

Lucas Root: They shouldn't be separate.

Marisa Franco: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we can try to separate them, but then that's where we see the disconnection happening. And the disconnection is this sort of like. Soul isolation, and that's for me, not where healing can happen at all.

And this is bringing us into a segue of what we spoke at earlier is healing is just the first phase of our journey. Like, so many people get [00:42:00] addicted to healing and then they're not really celebrating life and then we talk about ancestral healing, which is a really big kind of thing that's occurring right now.

And it's beautiful. And it's coming this trendy thing where a lot of the sacredness of the true quote unquote work that we're doing, which is just naturally occurring is kind of, it's losing its vibrancy. And so what I want to offer here is to look at ancestral healing, move and evolve it into ancestral celebration, starting to celebrate your life instead of focusing on just the healing, because where we focus our thoughts, where we focus our energy is how we create our life.

And if you want a life of celebration and joy. Well, you're going to have to reroute a little bit if that's not where you're at right now, or you're thinking about thoughts of suffering and healing, et cetera, et cetera. And this is a caveat here, because when we are in a space, let's say [00:43:00] a difficult experience comes to us and you want to be joyful.

It's a lot of people will have an experience and want to be joyful. And then they'll bypass the experience that's happening, not realizing that difficult experience is actually the food for joy to emerge. And if we bypass it, then we can't go into joy. And the best thing that we can do and experiences that are really challenging or heartbreaking or transforming, and we don't know what's happening is to just be completely present in that moment.

And not bypass, but be with it and have the aim of joy, knowing that we are in the center of our life and joy is the circle around us and everything that comes into the center is feeding the circle. That's how we celebrate life.

Lucas Root: Ah, beautiful. Wow.

Marisa Franco: I have a lot of passion about this because I've [00:44:00] experienced it. The only things that I feel I can share at this point in my life is what I've experienced and I really connected so much to suffering. It was like this martyr chapter of my life. And I see how it supported me now, because now I know what I don't want again, and moving into an era where I see how fleeting life is.

I see the beauty and the miracle of even the most challenging moments and I know that all of those moments are really just food for me to alchemize into the most beautiful life possible and I believe that every single person here has that ability to do it.

Lucas Root: Yeah. Yeah. Looking at the challenge as food is it's a freeing thought. And it's funny because when [00:45:00] we experience difficulty it feels like the end of the world. And it feels like we're alone and nobody can relate. And there's, there isn't going to be a way through, but what's funny is, you know, I don't know, I don't know about you, but I've listened to a lot of the inspiration.

And transformational speakers out there, almost all of them have a very specific and almost identical premise, and that is the suffering and the trauma made it possible for me to move into the next phase. Like it wouldn't have happened, maybe it could have, but it wouldn't have happened without the challenge that he she went through.

Marisa Franco: Yeah, absolutely. And that's, I think Ram Dass says suffering is grace. And once you go into that space, which is why we can't, I mean, we can, but it would behoove us to not bypass suffering. Just don't [00:46:00] attach to it. That's a big part of attach to it.

Yeah, just allow the things to happen because even on a quantum level, we are vibrating energy and things cannot be held in our field or in our body unless we keep it with our mind. And I mean, that's a whole nother thing. Like karma only exists in the mind.

So when we can free the mind and just know that we're constantly vibrating and to keep our space as open and neutral as possible, like beautiful things are always happening and the suffering can be present, but we're not attaching to it because when we attach to it, that's when we co create with it. Attachment is a form of the co creation. And so we have to be very careful about what we quote unquote, attach to.

Lucas Root: That's amazing. Thinking about attachment as the choice to co create with that experience. That is simultaneously the most enclosing jail cell that I've [00:47:00] ever looked at and the most freeing I've ever been.

Marisa Franco: Yeah. That's duality for you.

Lucas Root: Yeah, wow, that, you know what, I'm going to be thinking about that for a while. Thank you, yeah, the 90s R&B song, Free Your Mind. It seems like they had it right, huh?

Marisa Franco: I think so.

Lucas Root: Wow. Marisa, thank you. I like to wrap up my interviews with three questions. You've heard them now because you listened to Ryan's episode but hopefully they'll still be somewhat surprising to you.

Marisa Franco: They'll be fresh.

Lucas Root: They'll be fresh. Yes, well said. First one is for the people who have been inspired by you, and my hope is that it's everyone who hears this episode.

Where can they find you?

Marisa Franco: My website, MarisaFranco.com, [00:48:00] so it's M A R I S S A F R A N C O. com, and, well, I was gonna say the way you can work with me. Is that your second question?

Lucas Root: You're welcome to continue forward, but no, that's not the second question.

Marisa Franco: Okay, great. So I'll continue. So website. And then the way you can work with me is I have one, three and six month containers for the relational healing. And I have an apothecary. I have a substack that you can subscribe to for free or paid. That space is really about deep inquiry and actually a lot of the topics that we talk about here.

And soon I'll be hosting a few retreats, probably in early 2024.

Lucas Root: Congratulations.

Marisa Franco: Thank you.

Lucas Root: Second question is intended to be a curve ball. So good thing you're sitting down. If there was one question you wish I had asked you, but I have not, what would it be?

Marisa Franco: That question would [00:49:00] be, what is the most beautiful future that you can imagine?

Lucas Root: Oh. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Marisa Franco: Do I get to answer it?

Lucas Root: Please do.

Marisa Franco: The most beautiful future than I can imagine is bridging the ancient traditions of being alive and human with the new technologies where the new technologies are supporting us living the most beautiful life. And there's harmony around the world and humans have realized that war is absolutely ridiculous and we can actually share and the amount of resources that we need are not as many as we're extracting.

And we remember that the trees and the plants and the flowers and the animals and the winged ones are all of our relatives and our brothers and sisters that we can learn from. And in fact, our elders, because they are so much older than us. And every single person on [00:50:00] earth has exactly what they need, and they're able to live their own unique path, and all of the artists and the poets and the creators are celebrated and honored, and women are at the center of every single community because they know that when women are at the center. Then life is blossoming because women are the life creators on earth.

And our womb is connected to the cosmos and the core of the earth. And when we are at the center, then everyone thrives. That is the future that I imagine.

Lucas Root: I love it. I'm gonna do a little monologue on that. You've inspired me.

Marisa Franco: Nice.

Lucas Root: Okay, so first racism is so ridiculous. Anybody who has it needs to free themselves from that first. Whether, regardless of what you believe in, every single one of us has descended from one single woman. If you are a modern day Christian, then that one single woman was 5,000 years ago.

If [00:51:00] you're more focused on the science of the world, then that one single woman, it still is one single woman, was more like 170,000 years ago. But in either case, we are every single one of us related, and when you have racism, it's against your cousin. Let that sink in. Let's expand that a little bit.

Modern technology is amazing. Any of you who don't know what a deepfake is, alongside googling what is happening with the Lyme epidemic in the United States, go google a deepfake. Here's why the deepfake is the most exciting thing I have ever bumped into. It's the reason why I think AI is like the answer to all of our questions right now.

It's not because it's going to solve our problems. It's because the deepfake is starting to make it impossible for you to be externally manipulated. Here's why. It's a beautiful thing. Here's why. As soon as anybody can [00:52:00] use simple, easy to get technology that's available to every single one of us to appear on your computer screen, the device that you use to manage all of your communication right there in front of you as your mother, your cousin, your son, in all ways that are meaningful.

All of a sudden, this tool that we use to manage all of our communication, which is also an amazingly powerful tool that I love a lot, the tool that is used to manipulate you all the time. This tool, the computer, the tool that you and I are talking to each other on right now, this tool is no longer a source of truth to you, because anybody can appear like your mother, your cousin, your son, at any time.

Deepfakes are beautiful, and if this cannot be the source of truth anymore, then all of a sudden, your source of [00:53:00] truth must be within must be in your direct, physical, one on one relationships with yourself first and the people you love second.

Marisa Franco: Wow.

Lucas Root: Those are a beautiful thing. So, racism, get rid of it. Deepfakes are amazing, they're wonderful, they're a gift because they make it so that this tool can't be trusted for anything. And if it can't be trusted for anything, the only place that I can turn is to the people that I love. And have direct connection with right now.

And the next step beyond that is exactly what you described, Marisa. The next step beyond that is that this tool becomes nothing other than a tool that we use to build ourselves up and support ourselves. And we have to return to community humanity.

Marisa Franco: Wow. That's actually a really beautiful flip too.

Lucas Root: I love it. When I saw that [00:54:00] I was like, it was Tracy Morgan. Coming out of 2016, it was Tracy Morgan as Barack Obama, was the first like real deep fake that hit me like, like a two by four to the back of the head where I was like, Oh my God, this is going to change things. And of course, just like everybody else, the first notion that I thought was it's going to give people the capacity to lie to everyone and that's going to be terrible.

And over the last seven years, since 2016, when Tracy Morgan appeared on people's screens as Barack Obama looked like him, sounded like him, there was no way you could tell it was Tracy Morgan until at the end when he let the deepfake go, and his face and his mannerisms replaced Barack Obama's you're sitting there watching Tracy Morgan address the nation as Barack Obama and this is going to make it possible for everybody to be manipulated all the time.

What's going to happen? The world's going to go to shit. And I was like, wait a minute. No, we're not that dumb. Maybe for a little while we'll be that [00:55:00] dumb, but we as a species, we're not that dumb. And if we start getting routinely manipulated in that way, and I'm, this is exactly what Tracy Morgan was hoping to do with that deepfake.

If we are routinely manipulated in that way, we're gonna stop listening to this manipulation box. It's not a source of truth anymore. It cannot be. If anyone can lie to me as my mother, at any time, then I can't trust anything that this thing brings me. And the only place I can turn is to the people that I love. So much that a deepfake couldn't fake me.

Marisa Franco: You know, that's kind of the beauty of duality as well as the deep fake is emerging, the desire for community is emerging simultaneously. And we're right in the center and we can then choose which course we want to go. And they're growing at the same time. It's [00:56:00] really beautiful actually.

Lucas Root: I love that we're here now. I love to be a part of this and to get to witness it and play with it and be in it.

Marisa Franco: Me too.

Lucas Root: The third question is much more mundane. Do you have any parting thoughts?

Marisa Franco: I would say that my parting thought is just for all of the listeners here to know that healing is not some far away thing it's just happening already. And I wish for every single person to just feel their own love first and their own beauty and that ripples out into their world and to know that when they can start to call in and pray or ask for the miracles in their life that all they need to do is to sit back and witness it because it happens so quickly and life is so fleeting and the best thing that we can do is truly be present to [00:57:00] whatever is arising for us because we are the creators of our own reality and we can change our reality at any given point.

So, if we ever feel stuck, just make a different choice. And if we ever feel that we are in a space of beauty, give thanks. So then that beauty keeps coming back. And if your cup is over filling. Bring that water to another relative or to a tree or to a sister or brother, whatever it is. So that way our whole planet is just enveloped with hands holding each other.

And that for me is the way that we're going to move into the most beautiful future possible.

Lucas Root: Oh, yes.

Marisa Franco: Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

Lucas Root: Thank you, Marisa.

Narrator: Thanks for joining us this week on Elements of Community.

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