Welcome to THE IDEALISTS. rewind.
Can you imagine we are at 64 episodes of THE IDEALISTS.? It’s a dream of a show to produce and host, and as we inch our way to 100 episodes, our team has been going through our podcast archives, dusting off the episodes we love the most. Every week for the next four weeks, we’ll be bringing you our favorite rewind episodes to celebrate how far we’ve come!
This week’s rewind is Elise Loehnen. Elise is the former chief content officer of goop, the lifestyle, and e-commerce company established by Gwyneth Paltrow in 2008. You may have also seen and heard Elise co-host The goop Podcast and The goop Lab on Netflix.
I chose this episode because Elise brings so much juicy ideology and depth to the topic of divine femininity. She begins the conversation by sharing her own personal thesis— that it’s easy for women to claim women should rise in the world, but in actuality, there are real historical impediments to doing so.
Most interesting is her take on the trauma of witch-hunting and the millions of women killed during the hunts. One of the mechanisms of witch-hunting was getting friends to turn on friends and daughters to turn on mothers, which Elise describes as having left women with a collective sense of scarcity and fear carried over from generation to generation.
During our conversation, I ask Elise, “If intergenerational trauma includes the fear of being disconnected from one's deepest sense of power, how can women trust each other if we do not even trust ourselves?”
Elise answers by explaining the role of the crone, the third archetypal stage of a woman's life. The crone is an initiator and healer as well as the representation of life and death. She explains without the crone, young women are now going at it alone and suffering loss and disconnection.
Most importantly though, is what has replaced the crone…and the ramifications for our political, economic, and social structures.
Like I said… so, so juicy.
I loved this conversation a year ago and to be honest, I love it even more today.
You can listen to the episode here.
With gratitude,