[00:00:00] Welcome to Elements of Community Podcast about discovering and exploring the elements of community.

 

and each week we talk with a community leader about what makes their community thrive and bring value to both the leaders and the members. Join me as we unpack the magic of the elements of community.

Lucas Root: And we’re live. Stella, thank you so much for joining. I’m delighted to finally hit the record button with you. You and I have been dancing around the record button for a while. Truly, we’ve had actually two different recordings scheduled, and both times we’ve decided not to hit the recording button for reasons that were awesome. Our conversation yesterday had me grinning [00:01:00] all day long. I just really like, you know, sometimes not hitting the record button is exactly right.

Stella Marie: Yeah,

Lucas Root: Would you like to tell our audience a little bit about yourself?

Stella Marie: I would be delighted. So, I’m Stella Marie, and I am from Wales, which is a country in Britain, and I am many different things, but at the moment, a lot of people know me from my Instagram page, where I am building a community for people who are wanting to connect to a spiritual and sacred aspect of the land here in Britain or people who have got ancestors from these Celtic lands.

So, I’m a bit like a bridge between people wanting to learn more about the sacred nature of the ancestors here, and also people who know a lot about it. So, I don’t have any kind of [00:02:00] specialty in just one thing, I’m a bit like a platform where I invite people to come in so we can share and talk about all of this.

I’m also a new mom, so I’ve got a little boy and he’s 16 months now and yeah, I’ve had a lot of different little communities, which is what we spoke about yesterday in our call. And I’m very grateful that you’ve invited me on to dive deeper into what community really means for me.

Lucas Root: So, you and I actually originally connected about an ancient Celtic book, Wentz’s book which was, that was such a fun post. And I think you said, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you said that was the first post where you really started to get a lot of traction.

Stella Marie: Yes. So, this post was an Instagram and a TikTok post where I was sharing about a man called Walter Evans Wentz. So, Walter Evans Wentz was American and he came over to study in [00:03:00] Britain, in Oxford in the early 1800s or 19, the early 1900s, sorry, and he was on a mission to learn about what the oldest people in this country thought about fairies, because there was a fairy faith and fairy law.

That is one of the oldest kind of religious understandings that we have of the ancient British people. And Walter Evans Wentz wrote a book about it where he’d explored Britain, mainly Wales, went to the furthest edges of Wales and asked people what their grandparents thought about fairies. Now, real fairies, not the pretty little fairies with wings, but the word fairy.

Actually kind of means mystical and weird. So, what kind of weird, unknown experiences did people have with the spirits of nature here in Britain? And when I’d [00:04:00] shared that post on Instagram and TikTok, it was one of my first posts that blew up because of the same reasons as to why people are currently coming to my page.

There’s not much information out there about indigenous spiritual traditions from Britain prior to Roman Christianity. And we’re really wanting to connect to something here, and people over there where you are in America are willing to connect to their ancestors and lineage. So, to be presented someone who has written a book about an old faith in fairies, a lot of people. Really excited about that.

Lucas Root: Yeah, I mean, it was pretty exciting to me and I’ve read his book and it was great to see you talking about it. I was like, yeah that’s a piece of my own cultural heritage, like my own personal, you know, I’ve been here in the Americas for a long time. Our family has but we come from there. Yeah, it was great.

And then so you, when we first connected, it was [00:05:00] what? More than a month ago and we’ve had a couple of conversations and one of the things that you were talking about was people showing up in your comments. And I love this aggressively. And your response to that has been to pop in and just say, listen we’re here for the same reason.

And you’re obviously a passionate person, that’s what you’re saying to them. You’re obviously a passionate person and I appreciate your passion and we’re here for the same reason and let’s find a way to use the passion together. I love that, I don’t see that a lot. I don’t see a lot of people out there talking like that.

How did that come to you?

Stella Marie: Well, no one. Not many people are in this world for conflict and argument and debate. But a lot of people are interested in debate.

Lucas Root: That’s so true.

And

Debate is fun. But yeah, you’re right. We’re mostly we’re not here to fight.

Stella Marie: And a lot of people are not taught how to debate, the same way in people are not taught how to research. So, [00:06:00] I was really interested in religious studies growing up. And I really took note in my religious studies lessons and debate was a thing within the religious studies and philosophy lessons.

And the teacher would be the mediator there because ultimately we’re going to be passionate about these questions around life and death and the sacred and religion, ultimately arguments are going to come from that if there isn’t a mediator there to calm people down and remind people that we’re just having a chat in the comment section about the history of Britain, people are just going to go at each other.

So for me, it came about from my experience of mediators in philosophical debates, and I kind of like to be that person in my comment section.

Lucas Root: There used to be understanding.

Stella Marie: Yes, that is something actually you’ve reminded me that in our religious and philosophical debates, that was something we had to do. Actually, it was to not only respond to what someone had said to us, but to relay what we believe [00:07:00] that they’re saying and then respond. And what I get a lot in my comment section.

So, people argue in my comment section about history, religion and personal beliefs, which are all things that we should all constantly be talking about, actually, for those of us who are passionate about it.

Lucas Root: Yeah.

Stella Marie: They will immediately skip past the intention behind the post, skip past the context, which is around my page.

You should never really look at one Instagram post and react there and then, and they just, I call it the beast in the comment section, I feel like there is this underlying other world that we have created that is always here, right now, where people are arguing with each other, or loving each other and appreciating each other, but there are beasts within us all as human beings that are waiting to be triggered and the comment section is a perfect place for that and I see that a lot.

But the intention that people have at the [00:08:00] baseline is they care for people, they want community, they want to belong with the land, they want to understand why they feel lost in the first place. And that’s just what I tried to remind people. It’s okay, man. I feel the same.

Lucas Root: Yeah, I love it. I’ve noticed that in other places too. So, there’s the saying, you never really know somebody until you see them with a mask off. But I think it’s actually the opposite, I think that saying kind of is old. There’s a much more modern version of that saying I think that would be more appropriate to say you don’t really know someone until you see them with a mask on.

And what I mean by that is think about how different people are from their personality when they’re driving. Because that’s a mask on, right? That’s a really significant physical separation between me and all others, right? So, it creates otherness. So it’s a mask, the car is actually a mask.

People get in the car and they start driving and you’re like, holy crap, who are you? And then there’s social media and you’re talking about the way people are showing up in comments. [00:09:00] Well, that’s another mask, and you know, say on Facebook, like, I’m still Lucas Root on Facebook.

And so there’s, it’s a little mask, like it’s, that’s the Facebook me, but it’s just a little mask. But then you can go to places like Instagram, where you don’t actually have to be Lucas Root. You can put whatever name you want, now I have a brand, you have a brand, so we’re using our names, but you can put any name you want in Instagram.

And now all of a sudden, that little mask of Facebook goes to this giant mask of Instagram, where I can be whoever I want, and the mask is really thick. It’s really opaque, you cannot see through it.

And now all of a sudden, that mask gives somebody the opportunity to bring out the demon, the beast, as you’re talking about, that they’ve been hiding within them. In a similar way, and perhaps even more extreme than the car does.

Stella Marie: Yeah. Think you’ve made a good point there with the mask of Instagram is very hard to see through. And this is the kind of, it goes into the ethics of how we teach children and ourselves [00:10:00] because we’re only really now understanding social media, but how we children teach children that is a mask and how we teach the youth that the people they’re looking at that might be a brand or a character that they’ve created and to just reflect on how different is your life every single day, how you know and to teach the children this because if we kind of grew up with social media not understanding and now we know that they are masks, it’s important for the kids to know that too.

Lucas Root: Yeah. And it’s not so much that masks are a bad thing because like, except with my wife, maybe, and with myself, maybe, but maybe even not those, there isn’t really any such thing as the authentic Lucas. Like, each and every single one of us is far too big an individual for us to be able to show up fully and wholly as the entire me in any particular interaction.

So, it’s always a small facet of me that shows up, and that could be looked at like a mask, right? [00:11:00] So, the notion that I am focused in an interaction on who it is that I want to show up as inside that interaction, and that’s a mask, because it is, that is a mask, isn’t bad.

But we should be aware of it, we should be thoughtful of it and we should be in control of that. Like, when we show up, we should show up with intention. So, that as our passion comes out, like it does in your comments, it comes out in a way that is building the world that we want to live in.

Stella Marie: Yeah, for sure. That is what I’m trying to do with my comments with my posts and it does stir things up. But that is necessary that the way that I kind of visualize it when I’m sharing on Instagram is you can kind of imagine a tavern.

The best representation of this is probably the Vikings only because of they have lots of kind of like media about them, but you’ve got kind of like a leader of the pack, the leader of the group and they’re there with their flag in a [00:12:00] veil or whatever it is and they’re saying we need to make the world better, we need to change this, we need to help our women, we need to help society and they’re angry and they’re passionate and someone will stand up and disagree and then they’ll all be like, but ultimately, they’ve come to have that conversation.

They’ve come into that tavern to have that conversation and that is a part of my mask of my page. Where are you intentionally placing your attention on my page? Because you have the same intention that I do. It’s not necessarily a page for entertainment, it’s a page so that we can talk about things, debate about things that are important.

Because we have been divided physically, we don’t have that space. A lot of people don’t want to come together in person, social media, for me, is kind of like that place.

Lucas Root: Yeah, well, it’s not necessarily even that we don’t want to, we just can’t. Like, without social media, Stella, I would never have met you. Maybe I would have but the scenario is more contrived.

Stella Marie: And also, what you said about authenticity, it really strung something in me. [00:13:00] There’s a lot of, especially within the spiritual circles online, that there is a massive push to be your authentic self at all times. And I feel like that is telling people to try to be their authentic self, which takes away from the authenticity because the authenticity is an in the moment thing, which changes, as you said, all the time.

But you get it everywhere, be your authentic self, or like I saw a course the other day by someone, take this course to learn how to be your authentic self. And I think that can be done, but perhaps it’s quite an empowering course. But yeah, as you’ve said, our authentic self is constantly changing, it’s not something that we can share online.

Lucas Root: Not even because we don’t want to, it’s just too big. Like, I’m with you, I see somebody, you know, being their authentic self. And the thought in the back of my mind, and I’m not trying to be judgmental, but let’s be honest, we judge like it’s part of what humans do. The thought in my back of my mind is I really hope that you are not that unidimensional.

Stella Marie: Yeah.

Lucas Root: [00:14:00] Now with you, I know that’s true. You are not.

Stella Marie: Oh yeah, when I’m in the kitchen and I’m making scrambled eggs for my son, I’m very different to when I do a meditation talk at a community circle, and I’m taking people into the other world, in a mystical experience. I’m not that Stella when I’m making scrambled eggs in the morning, you know.

Lucas Root: Both of them, are you being authentic?

Stella Marie: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think there is a lot of expectation when it comes to content creators and influencers to constantly be one person, because you can kind of have an expression or a mask. And I’ve thought about this before like if I’ve got this expression on social media and I’ve met people and they’ve said you’re nothing like you are in that post that I saw. And I felt well, yeah like, are we expecting everyone that we see on instagram to be like that all the time?

And then I think people then feel like they have to fit into that box that they’ve created for themselves and they can’t change because they’re constantly trying to [00:15:00] be something that they were.

Lucas Root: That sounds exhausting. I’m, just saying

Stella Marie: It does. I’ve been on social media for quite a while, I really don’t care if I make a huge mistake, like my diet for me, the way that I used to approach diet was very different. I used to speak about veganism and I used to speak about fasting and I used to be very strict within that.

And as soon as I changed my mind about it, I was like, well, I’m actually not going to talk about that online because my mind could change again. And I don’t want to influence people with something I’m not sure on, but I don’t care that I’m changing my mind and you can see that. I don’t like it’s important to show people that we make mistakes and that we don’t know everything.

That’s so, especially as a content creator, it’s really important for me to do that.

Lucas Root: So, my wife, actually, it was amazing. I’m sitting on the computer having a conversation with ChatGPT, which is a thing I do from time to time, about Celtic mythology. And why wouldn’t you, right? If it [00:16:00] has that information built into it, why wouldn’t I use that as one of the tools that I work with?

She walked in and looked over my shoulder, and she said just flippantly and I love her dearly, she said flippantly, does it bother you that you take shortcuts? And I let that settle in for a second, because you know, the rules of debate, you have to really let the idea settle in and understand it before you respond to it.

So, I let it settle in and I looked at her and I said, you know, I don’t think there’s any such thing as a shortcut. There’s just the path that I’m taking and if the path that I’m taking starts this way and it looks this way and then it curves and it goes this way and it looks this way for a while and then it curves in again and goes this way for a while, like that’s just the path that I’m taking.

And to me, I’m always moving forward on that path. And it doesn’t really matter to me what shoes I’m wearing while I’m walking.

Stella Marie: Yeah. Interesting ’cause I use Dali, so Dali is the AI app on ChatGPT and I wouldn’t associate it with the same [00:17:00] artistic creations that I will create based on my own creations. I think they’re very different things. So, I completely understand why people get peed off by it, but I think we need to separate them.

But I have found that when using AI art as a tool to show me what the Celtic Druids might have looked like. It is unbiased in comparison to the art that we have today, created by people who were trying to represent the Druids in a certain way. So an example, is the first paintings and the first illustrations that we have of the Druids were by people who,

Lucas Root: This yesterday.

Stella Marie: Yeah, we were, but the first illustrations and paintings that we have of the Druids were by people who had an agenda and there was a reason as to why they were portraying them in that way.

Whereas if I ask AI art, can you please use all of the accounts you have ever been given from every single [00:18:00] source? Ever in history to create what the Druids might have looked like in Wales. It’s an unbiased, fully formed visual representation based on all of the history.

And that is a shortcut because you don’t often get artists today who are going to look at all of the history and then create a masterpiece to show me what my sacred ancestors might have looked like.

So, for me, it’s actually been quite a beautiful journey into seeing what they might have looked like, even though it’s not the sacred shoe someone might like to use it. That’s just me and I have no shame in that but it is something that I have been kind of stepping around sharing on social media so much because of the judgment. I will be honest.

Lucas Root: Yeah, I mean, I’m not out there necessarily saying I’m using chatGPT alongside all of my other information sources but again, why wouldn’t you? And it’s not a shortcut in the sense that’s just the path I’m taking.

It’s just the path I’m taking, [00:19:00] like, I’m gonna take a path and that’s the path I’m taking.

Stella Marie: Yeah, I think it’s great if it’s alongside other ways of using the mind, but it’s the same with if you use a phone or the internet or a computer, if you use anything technological to find your way to out.

Lucas Root: And it’s absolutely shortcut.

Stella Marie: It’s doing it for you. Whether ChatGPT is doing it or not, you’re not using the same parts of the brain as it, and if you were to read and learn about it and then write with your hands within a research process, that is the best way to integrate information if you’re using ChatGPT or Google, it’s the brain takes it in the same way.

Lucas Root: Yeah, and speak it and listen to it, and teach it, and debate about it.

Yeah, well, that’s part of what I loved about our chat yesterday, you and I got to debate a little bit, it was awesome.

Can we switch gears a little bit and talk a little bit about community?

Stella Marie: Yes. Yeah, let’s go in.

Lucas Root: First, are you starting to create a community out of your Instagram following?

Stella Marie: I am, it’s in the process of of blossoming, I [00:20:00] guess, it’s the seed was kind of planted a long time before the community came to me. And I feel it’s blossoming at the moment and it’s really exciting to watch it.

Lucas Root: It is. So, the same sort of people are showing up with passion and they’re looking forward to it when you respond to them and it’s turning into a conversation, not just somebody firing a comment off.

Stella Marie: Yeah. So, I actually asked my audience on social media the other day, why were they here? And I said, like, don’t beat around the bush, tell me exactly why you’re on my page. Because I wanna give.

Lucas Root: That is a bold invitation.

Stella Marie: It was, and I’d never had a bigger response in my life. The amount of people that just let go, there was some really deep and, like, I feel very grateful to have had that people trusting me, knowing some things about them.

Some of them were just quite just like your page, but others were very deep and quite personal. And the main reason that people are [00:21:00] within this community is because if they have a sense of belonging to something that they were introduced to when I created my page.

So, there’s a word called hiraeth in Welsh and it cannot be translated outside of the Welsh language, and it means a longing for Wales. So, it is only applicable if you’re talking about Wales in particular, but there are words in other languages that are for that particular place.

So, here life is only applicable if you’re talking about Wales, because if it is associated with, it’s a longing for Wales, but when I shared a post about that, people from all over said that they had a word similar to that from their language, and a lot of people said that they really feel that, and a lot of them were people who’ve got ancestors from these lands, and they were like, that hits the spot, you know, that hits the spot, because even though today Wales is just this little part of Britain before the invasions, the all [00:22:00] of Britain was Bryphonic and Welsh, basically.

And, yeah, this creation of this community that is happening right now is all because people are wanting to belong somewhere. And I seem to be yeah, bringing people together in as you said, the comment sections.

But now my next step is how to bring us together so we can speak like me and you are right now, how to actually have conversations with each other, how to tell each other’s stories, how to sing with each other, dance with each other from across the globe.

Yeah, that’s the kind of, that’s the blossoming of it right now. How can we do this together? Really together?

Lucas Root: I love it. I read recently, not recently. It was a while ago, that the name for a people in their own language always means, it always translates to just the people.

So, you know, the Inuit, the word Inuit is the people. My guess is Welsh. The word Welsh is just the people.

Stella Marie: Not quite.

So, if you found, [00:23:00] somewhat isn’t, so we’ve got the word Cymru, which originally was Cymruc and the thing that’s confusing about Wales and Welsh is, originally, the people of Britain as a whole, they were different tribes that had a common language, Brythonic, and then over the conquering by other people coming in.

So, the Romans and the Saxons and whatnot pushed the people of Britain onto the outsides.

So, what we now know as Wales. Wales means foreigner, actually.

Lucas Root: Oh.

Stella Marie: Yeah,

Lucas Root: Cool.

Stella Marie: So, when it comes to names and Wales, and whether we’re looking at the river names, or we’re looking at the names of towns, it’s different whether you’re in South Wales compared to North Wales, because I was saying to you yesterday about how, where I’m from, in the capital city, Cardiff, it’s on the Astries, so it’s where people were coming in on the flat land and here there isn’t much, you know, if [00:24:00] you’re in the capital city, it’s very much industrial like London. It’s different whereas if you go up to North Wales, it’s very Welsh.

So, even when talking about Wales as a country, we’re talking about different parts of Wales and then when and why, and it’s just mysterious., It’s very mysterious. And I think that’s where the kind of mystery of wizards and magic and Lord of the Rings and all of this mysterious nature comes in because of it’s such a mysterious history.

Lucas Root: That’s fun. How fun, I enjoy it. I did not expect that. Yeah. And in the process of starting to pull these people together, your audience into people that are showing up regularly and excited about showing up and passionate, not just to fire off a comment, but to have meaningful conversations right there in the comments. Are you noticing?

So you and I, we talked about the elements of community.

Are you noticing some of the elements of community popping up that people are starting to create like, [00:25:00] the language of the Stella community.

Stella Marie: Yes. Language is one of the most controversial things in my life right now and my page is. And we are looking to create common words and language. So, you were saying about how one of the elements that you’ve seen in community is that common language, is the common names.

And as I was just saying, the history here is quite messy and mysterious. Different people will associate different names. Yeah, people will associate different names with this, whatever this is based on their interpretation, based on what history they’ve learned in particular and we’re trying to come up with a word that can describe Ancient Britain that isn’t Britain because Britain is a colonial term and some people have Irish and Welsh heritage and the Irish and the British. The history just isn’t very nice, colonial wise, they shouldn’t be associated with each other.

So, it’s [00:26:00] like, how can we use a word to describe ancient Britain that makes everyone feel comfortable? Because most people don’t feel comfortable with the word Celtic, or the word Britain, or the word UK.

A lot of people outside of the UK think that the UK is a culture. And that word, it kind of could be, but it’s not really,

Lucas Root: That’s kind of like saying the Americas is a culture.

Stella Marie: Like American culture. It’s, yeah, or the America’s culture is, it’s not, there’s so many different aspects to it and so many different cultures. But one of the words that’s really interesting that has come around recently is the word Pritani.

And the word Pritani is a very old word and one of the first words used to describe Britain, it’s where the word Britain comes from, and this is a word that a lot of people in my comment sections seem to like.

So, there is a word, birthing within the community, that’s creating the community. It’s almost as if the [00:27:00] words are one of the first foundations for creating the community.

Lucas Root: How cool is that? How are people using it? How is this turning into sort of the call sign of the community?

Stella Marie: So, I shared the word Pritani in a descriptive post. It was just, this is what this word means. I then had a podcast with a lady called Sam, who is kind of the pioneer of this word Pritani. A lot of people watched that podcast, and since then, people have been referring to the land of just Britain as Britannia.

So, I’ve seen the shift in the language people are using. And it’s really cool. Like I’m unsure on the word I like want to describe because my main message is that the natural world is the natural world. Earth is earth. You know, there are no borders in reality to separate these places.

Lucas Root: Put up that post at exact post a week ago.

Stella Marie: Which one was that? The border.

Lucas Root: There’s no no borders.

Stella Marie: There’s no [00:28:00] borders. Yeah, I did and I was talking about I had this visualization while all of these people were arguing about the different words and terms and missing my intention. I just had this visualization of a beach tree leaf falling off of a tree, floating over the English and Welsh border and just silence, it doesn’t matter.

The words don’t matter when we’re talking about the earth and that’s kind of the message I’m getting across and it doesn’t take away from the politics. I think some people feel that I’m trying to ignore politics when I’m trying to ignore politics because it is a political conversation.

But the land here is what people are wanting to belong to again and connect to again. And if we, try to use all these different words and names for the particular places, it takes away from that connection to the land, which is why Pritani has been a popular one, because it does just describe the land here in Britain, not Britain and Ireland, just Britain. Ireland has it’s own [00:29:00] thing, it’s own complete thing going on over there. Which is different, which I’ve actually learned to not really speak on or touch because it’s not my culture.

Lucas Root: A fascinating culture though, yeah.

Stella Marie: Yeah, maybe.

Lucas Root: Yeah, what other communities are you interested in talking about today?

We’ve talked about a couple of different communities. You have a music community, you’ve had a diet community and some responses to you and to your life as you changed your diet community. And now you’ve got a local community. And then the one, and I don’t know if this is where we’re going to go, but the one that really excited me the most when we’ve been talking over the last several weeks is you’re building your own little familial community where you’re bringing in your elders and, yeah.

Stella Marie: Yeah, so that’s the community that first comes to mind is my in person community and my family and yeah, my son, my nan, my partner’s parents who are my son’s grandparents, and even my own parents and so my own parents aren’t here with us anymore.

I’m 27 [00:30:00] now and my father died when I was 16 and my mum died when I was 25 in 2020. But ancestrally, they are still like, a huge part of my life obviously and my family community has massively and drastically changed through their passing.

And I’ve really noticed how important family is, especially, as you said, the elders. So, within my online, pagan community, there’s a lot of talk about wanting to connect to elders and that we’re missing elders in this country, in Britain, we don’t have the elders to teach us the spiritual ways of the land, which is true, but we live in a different world now, and we live in a world where the elders that can teach us about this world are here.

They are our grandparents., They were born through walls that we can’t even begin to imagine. They have so much wisdom and so much knowledge on how to share, how to care with each other, how to [00:31:00] deal with extremely traumatic instances. They might not be the best at it, but that’s because of how much pressure was put on them.

So, yeah, for me, my family community at the moment is to really honor and respect what my Nana, who’s 96, has to say, what advice she has to say. She’s a lovely lady, luckily she is. You know, some elderly people are just, you know, some people don’t get on with their grandparents, and that’s fine.

But, if you do get on with your grandparents , ask them questions, ask them what it was like when they were teenagers, ask how sharing was, ask how they cleaned their house, with what materials they cleaned their house with, because if they cleaned their house, just fine.

So, why do we have to have all of these cleaning products? That’s something I’m really interested in with my Nana.

Lucas Root: She’s 96. She did something right.

Stella Marie: I was very deep in that world, we were like the doctors of veganism in our village. And my Nana’s 96. She walks to the shop still to this day, [00:32:00] and she’s not been you know, she’s just eaten what, kind of, what she’s wanted throughout her life, and I started to analyze that, and I started to think, I’ve got her genetics, I’m very similar to her by appearance, like, I just know that I’ve got a lot of her genes, so it’s probably wise to, like, follow her footsteps if I want a long life.

And I looked at what she ate, and I asked her about it, and You know, just beef and potatoes and carrots and soups and cheese and milk. Just the kind of basic foods that I know of as basic foods, not too complex or anything. And yeah, I’ve gone into my nana. I’ve kind of come away from the community a bit, but I’m really digging up my nana.

Lucas Root: Love it, yeah, let’s connect more with ours. None of my grandparents are still with us but I did appreciate them to the extent that I could while I had them.

Stella Marie: Yeah. And I bet, you know, if you want to, and you do interview people who have got experience, who are the older [00:33:00] people for the same reasons that I want to interview my Nana and I ask her all of these things.

Lucas Root: Absolutely. Yeah I go out of my way to bring some of our elders onto the podcast to tell their stories and to help people hear, you know, what bits of wisdom come up for them during the conversation.

And we’ll continue to, I think we need to hear the stories of the elders. Even if we can’t hear the stories of my own personal elders.

Stella Marie: Yeah. And I remember us talking about this when, on our first call about how I don’t know if it’s the same. Well, it must be the same over there, but you said that it’s like we put the elderly in two homes and they’re a bit like prisons and over here it’s, we really try hard to keep them out of homes for as long as possible because of the decline in health and mentality that happens there because they’re not within their community, really.

It’s like we force people into a community, like, I don’t know if you could even call it a community, but we force the elderly into these communities that [00:34:00] are not beneficial for them. So, here we’ve got sheltered housing, my nana is in what we call sheltered housing, which is a community, and there is a community hall there where once a week they all come together and they do crafts together.

They all know about each other’s pasts and struggles. So, the ones that are more agile and aware will go to look after and look on the ones that aren’t. So it’s not a home, it’s not like a nursing home prison sort of thing. It’s an intentionally built community for the elderly.

But it costs a lot of money, you know, it costs a lot of money. You need to have a lot of money when you’re older to be in a safe community, and it’s just messed up.

Lucas Root: That’s true here too. And it’s a lot of money. and I agree, it’s messed up, like, it’s not just that they had already given their lives to make sure that ours was the best that it could be, but also they’re not done. You just said ask your grandparents about what they cleaned their house with like, they’re not done. They still have wisdom and their wisdom is still [00:35:00] relevant.

I saw a community, not a community. I saw a comedian recently who joked about young people trying new things and he said, you know, yes try new things, but also there’s a reason why we don’t have the toilet in the kitchen sink and there are some things that probably you should listen to us about not trying. And that you know, I just can’t help but remember that because like, that’s right, there’s a reason why we don’t put the toilet in the kitchen sink.

But it’s not funny because. you know, if I didn’t have an older person telling me, I might have tried something like that.

Stella Marie: Yeah, but as you said, you have to go through the process of making the mistakes to really figure out why they’re saying that.

Lucas Root: Yeah, well, at this point in my life, I appreciate them a lot more.

Stella, this has been beautiful. I like to wrap up my interviews with three questions. The first one and the third one are pretty normal questions. The second one is kind of a curveball.

The first question is, for everyone who loves what they’ve heard, and I hope everyone who’s listening does love what they’ve [00:36:00] heard, because I really enjoy what you do when you show up on Instagram.

What’s the best way for them to find you?

Stella Marie: Yeah, through Instagram at the moment. It is StellaMarieHere on Instagram. But if you want to have a chat with me Email me, for sure. That’s the best way to start a thread where we’re going to keep the conversation going.

Lucas Root: StellaMarieHere on Instagram, love it. And that, of course, will show up in the show notes. Here’s the curveball question. It’s a good thing you’re already sitting down. What is the one question you wish I had asked you, but I have not?

Stella Marie: That you asked someone else on one of your podcasts. And it is What does my name mean? Because I would like other people to question that as well. So, it’s not just because I love to share what my name means, but that is such an interesting thing. And as you said, about community and language and names earlier, I have found out a lot about [00:37:00] myself and through my name and understanding what it means.

Lucas Root: Oh, lovely. Yeah. And you and I have actually talked about names several times in our conversation. The most recent time I asked that question for those of you who are listening was on the Marisa Franco interview, which was just several episodes before now. Stella, what does your name mean?

Stella Marie: When I meet people actually here in the UK, a lot of the time they will say, Stella Artis and make fun of my name because it is a name of a famous alcoholic beverage of a beer or a lager. And I’ve always had, I’ve actually been made fun of my whole life.

Oh, Stella the beer. And I’ve been like, oh. But then I meet people from like, Spain or different parts of Europe. And the word Stella means star. So, when I meet someone, I have a judge on character based on, like, what you think about my name.

So, Stella means star. My full name is Stella Marie Shepherd. And Marie means of the sea. Like, Mary. Mary and Joseph.

And [00:38:00] Shepherd is Shepherd. So, it’s very weirdly biblical, unintentional, but my name means the shepherd that followed the star of the sea.

This is what, when I was doing my kind of, looking into what my name means. Because if the shepherd is after the star, and the C is in the middle. And that is when I found that out, it was very connected to my studies at the time, which were with water wisdom.

And I would like to say this one big part of my communities that I’m not really that involved in right now, but it’s water wisdom and water studies and connecting to the sacred waters.

So, yeah, like, when I found that out about my name, it was because someone else had looked into their name.

So, my invitation for anyone here listening to this podcast is to look into your name, the placement of it. Not why you were named it by your parents, but like, that as well, but also like, what are the roots of your name?

The root that the roots. We talked about names yesterday. Your name, Lucas Root. [00:39:00] I’d like to know what your name means, if you have any idea.

Where does the word Lucas come from?

Lucas Root: I do Lucas is the is the Americanized version of Luke, which is the bringer of light or the healer and root means the grounding of a tree. So I am the grounded light bringer.

Stella Marie: Some names are just ruthless in origin, and I’m sorry if you find that out about your name. But, it is what it is.

Lucas Root: Well, it could also be an invitation, you know, maybe that’s an opportunity for you to bring up a piece of yourself and turn it into something that’s more powerful and more present and in the moment or it might be an opportunity for you to maybe heal that a little bit in the world.

Stella Marie: Yeah, very true.

Lucas Root: It could be, yeah, it could be an invitation to step forward. Yeah, as we wrap up, the final question is, do you have anything you’d like to add or close with?

Stella Marie: Yes, and just as the water was brought up, I would like to touch on how for anyone wanting to for a deeper relationship with and the natural world, but are [00:40:00] unable to leave perhaps the home or the city you know, some people are unable to leave the home at all. The water runs through our homes and feeds us constantly.

So, for me, something that’s been quite profound in my water journey has been to recognize that every now and again. And when I’m pouring myself a glass of water, to be grateful for that source that is feeding me. It’s just because it’s not from a holy spring, perhaps it is still just as holy and deems respect, really.

And that is the, yeah, that’s what’s come to mind is to respect the water in your pipes.

Lucas Root: That’s lovely.. Yeah. And I’d like to add you’re in the process of being involved with the rooted community. Would you like to say a thing or two about that real quick?

Stella Marie: Yeah, the Rooted Healing Co.

Lucas Root: Yep.

Stella Marie: Oh, right. Yes. So, I am a part of a community that is worldwide, [00:41:00] but it is birthed by a lady called Veronica from Pembrokeshire in Wales. And it is called Rooted Healing, and there is a project at the moment called Deepen Your Roots. And it is all about re inhabiting to space and land.

So, it’s about no matter where you are in the world to reinhabit to the natural world around you, which comes in the form of recognizing how the plants are changing throughout the year, looking at the folklore behind the plants around you, looking at where the local water source is, noticing which birds are coming in and out of your garden just being aware of where you are situated in your local ecology.

This is what this whole community that I’ve recently been invited into is about, which was just a perfect alignment. And yeah, If anyone wants to look into that, perhaps you could put it in the show notes or come [00:42:00] onto my page and just talk, yeah, have a chat about it.

Lucas Root: Thank you very much, Stella. I appreciate you coming on. I loved our conversation. Each and every one that we’ve had and especially this one. Thank you. Yeah. Yes, thank you.

Stella Marie: Au revoir. Bye

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

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