Cherie is mother of six, an author, international business owner, feminine leadership coach and host of the Women Seeking Wholeness podcast show.
369 Dealing with Anger
Cherie Burton
Were you taught to be a “good girl” who didn’t rock the boat?
Many women have been taught that to be peacemakers, we need to push down our normal feelings of anger. Yet, living in an unequal world, not valued fully leaves many of us with a “righteous anger.” And this suppressed anger leads to mental and physical health issues.
Dealing with Anger - Cherie Burton [369]
Read the Transcript 🡮
*This is an auto-generated transcript*
[00:00:00] Hunter: I had so much fun talking to you for your wonderful podcast, Women Seeking Coldness that I had to have you back on. And we happen to share some moments with this idea of anger, right? And like our and aggression. I shared with you my paintings of my ferocious, these women. Amazing and you had some thoughts about anger, which I was like, excited to talk to you about.
So the, that is that dear listener, is the reason why share and I are
[00:00:42] Cherie Burton: here today. Cause I just be like, you were one of my favorite guests. I just thought we commit we're just like boom bam. I feel like I get you .
[00:00:54] Hunter: Yeah. That's why I shared my paintings with you. I don't not like everybody.
[00:00:58] Cherie Burton: Like here, look at this
[00:01:03] Hunter: But you, So first I just want people to know you a little bit about you, and you have and. Amazing story with so many twists and turns and plot leaps that there's a lot there. But you te tell us about why you created the podcast. Women Seeking Wholeness. I think that might be a good place to start.
[00:01:23] Cherie Burton: Yeah, so I got I I thought it would be a journalist someday. , like I, I thought that was a career path I wanted to explore. But I loved psychology more so I actually chose psychology, but I'm a Gemini moon, which may not mean anything to the vast majority of your listeners that it's going right over my head.
So I love, I didn't know. I know I didn't put it together until two years ago. Oh, it's cuz I'm a Gemini moon. Anyway. I just love to talk and it so happened that in late 2018 I hit a major. The only thing that I can say is I started questioning everything in my life. And so for my fifth, I started it on right after my 50th birthday in 2019.
. And I just was like, if I don't get this out, I'm gonna implode If I don't. Therapize, if I don't, if I can't bounce what I'm feeling off of, these amazing people that I hunted down to interview. If I can't do that, I'm not, I'm going to be really sick. So that's just my way. And I love, I've been a public speaker and all those things and run a business and spoken on stages, so I don't have a fear of.
talking. It's the way that I move energy through my body. So a podcast just felt I might as well take everybody along with, with me on this journey of not knowing and questioning and crisis and trauma release.
[00:02:55] Hunter: And you write about, that was like the sort of normal channels of healing.
They weren't working for you and your family that you Exactly. That it wasn't actually bringing you the release, the healing, and the stuff that you needed.
[00:03:16] Cherie Burton: Yeah. It was actually creating more harm and more and more complex trauma. So we all awaken together as a family. Like my older children that are in their twenties, we all just awaken together to, that was my husband coming through the door.
He has no idea. I just Hey, what is really happening here? Why are we not healing certain things? Why are we not really breaking these family patterns and how do we feel? I raise my kids to be true seekers and they are ultimately the ones who. Who brought inquiry into my space of what about this mom?
And what about this that you raised me and taught me? And what about this? And at first I had that resistance and that cognitive dissonance. And then finally I was just like, You know what? I'm just going to deeply listen. And it was that was just bringing me inside. It's Wow, how does that feel in me?
How? And then I began my own very private wrestle People just saw me in public or listen to my podcast or, and then my husband and I were separating. It was the whole thing, 20, after 25 years of marriage and it was like I held it together just enough to run my business, take care of my kids.
It was really messy. But if you were to just see me, this is why everything you see online is like, because I probably looked like I had a measure of myself put together , and I did the bare minimums the rest of the time. I was in the deep void of that inquiry process and surrendering and it was super powerful, but it was dark.
It was hard. But also necessary. That dissent process, I believe is a right of passage into your soul path. , most people will not question their programming. You could stay there indoctrination. Not just in a religious context, but in multiple arenas. And I decided I'm a youngy and psychologists, that's how I lean.
And it's Oh gee, Carl Young really knew that you have to go into the shadow. In order to really know who you are. And that was uber painful, like suffering level, questioning and gut. Who am I?
[00:05:57] Hunter: And none of us actually am.
[00:05:59] Cherie Burton: Oh
[00:06:01] Hunter: yeah.
[00:06:02] Cherie Burton: Midlife crisis. I don't know what you
[00:06:04] Hunter: wanna call it, . No, I feel you.
I have thoughts about that now, like I'm 44 and I have thoughts about that are completely, But I love the, that idea, for me that brings up, that dissent you, you mentioned that, like for me, that brings up the idea of no mud, no lotus, and we're which is.
My teacher Han says, No mud, no lotus. And that's such a powerful, I love that thing, right? Like you need that muck. You need. The poop, the rotten vegetables and all that stuff. Like
[00:06:40] Cherie Burton: for the flour to blue, the caterpillar soup, for the butterfly to metamorph size. . Yeah. It's the
[00:06:46] Hunter: same concept.
Yeah. But we naturally avoid that. We don't want that. And we, and you mentioned also questioning our programming. That's all like scary stuff. And we're just like, we're told like, keep busy.
[00:07:01] Cherie Burton: It's a, I'll work out. God will work it. Yeah.
[00:07:07] Hunter: Yeah. And you, so you were raised Mormon, right?
You're, You'd write that you were a seventh generation? Seventh generation, seventh
[00:07:14] Cherie Burton: or eighth. I need to go back and look at my genealogy, but let's just say the very, very beginnings, some of my ancestors were one, One particular ancestor was friends with Joe Smith, the founder. Mormonism. Yes, the profit. Wow.
[00:07:26] Hunter: Wow. So your family was very deeply involved, embedded, and et cetera. And that. Produce some trauma that you had to heal from? My imagine. In some ways, or are you, I'm making a huge assumption there, which I apologize for, but are you still more.
[00:07:49] Cherie Burton: So you cannot take the Mormon anatomy.
It would be just like telling somebody who has raised Orthodox Jew you're not Jewish.
. It's
[00:07:58] Cherie Burton: that level of cultural, familial. Yeah, exactly. And I live in Utah and my, a lot of my family members so I haven't left the church cuz that's a phraseology that's just passed around we have left the church and a lot of people are just like, where's she?
I don't like to put myself in a box of being in or out or this or that, but I will say that, part of what put me in fetal position when I was turning 50 in that whole time was this researching and asking and questioning everything that my first seven years, your first seven years of life, you're highly program.
Like most adults, most young adults, I just say it, by age 30, all you are is walking around with programs and patterns that you've been handed. . So it isn't until later in life that you actually go, Wait, I'm not, all this dissonance is happening in you. And for me it was, I love the church, I love the people.
I love how I was raised in certain aspects of it. Mormon aren't supposed to drink or even, but there's weird things like don't drink coffee and tea. But you don't question that either cuz it came from the prophet, There's just a lot that, But for me, the smoking gun from the time I was a little girl and I heard the word polygamy.
. So early Mormon prophets and priesthood holder men, they practiced polygamy, which is, marrying more than one woman. Not only did they marry more than. , like dozens. So Joseph Smith had it's estimated over 30 wives, Brigham Young, the next private over 55 wives. And it just never sat right with me.
It in my feminine body as a nine year old, I remember I have a distinct memory of being told about it and I felt sick. I felt like somebody punched me and that never left. It kept being told God will work it out. That's why I was referencing that before, but , I just try to accept it on faith because, I love the church and I love the things and the people in the tribe and the community, and there's so many beautiful things.
That was just one huge smoking gun and red flag that I could never reconcile within myself, that I was always asking God and going and feeling really diminished as a woman. Yeah, I guess in my eternal identity, it just never made sense.
[00:10:35] Hunter: Yeah, if you're one of if you're, you're the idea that all these people in your culture hold you as one of many that can be almost like interchangeable or something, like this sense of I guess just your essential importance in some ways, that's diminished, right? And then the man's role is like the of importance is really held up. Like obviously like the men are in first place, the women are in second, third, fourth, and. 50th place. Yes.
[00:11:02] Cherie Burton: It is here's this priesthood man or this prophet, and he is the central eternal figure.
And all of the women evolve, revolve like planets around this central figure and they're silent and they don't have authority, at least in, in ministerial offices or priesthood. The ability, let's just say to heal or anything official, to act in the name of God, women do not have the authority to do.
So a lot of women in Utah, let's just say, and a lot of women they want that. They wanna have some power, they wanna heal and help people. But because they aren't able to do that at church necessarily, we, you can hold positions and te as a teacher, but you never lead men. You never lead men.
You only lead other women and children. And even then priesthood holder presides over you as you do so even in the home. For me, it was like I can, I started to see, like in the late nineties, early two thousands in Utah where I live, a lot of LDS or Mormon women would go out and learn healing arts like Reiki or EFT or just all these things so that they could feel that they had something hands on, if you will.
The modality that would give them the ability and the fulfillment, if you will, and the purpose that they wanted to fulfill to help humanity. Mormon theology is very specific in its handbooks administration that only male priesthood holders have. And I think they even said medical doctors, the right to heal someone, that it should only be a male priesthood holder that has the authority.
And it's there's billions of people on the earth. And there's probably only, I don't know, I'm guessing conservatively, maybe half a million active righteous que priesthood holding men in the Mormon church cuz their numbers are dwindling a bit. That have, How are, how is that gonna. How are we gonna heal the world?
[00:13:03] Hunter: Yeah. That doesn't that's logically impossible. But I'm, I would find that, I would find that infuriating. I, yeah. I guess for myself Yeah.
[00:13:16] Cherie Burton: Yeah. I was mad. I'm a feisty person, but I'm also a nice, soft person, and so I would just smile and inside I'm like, seething, right?
, all these health issues started to develop, and I could see the injustice cuz I run retweet, read retweets, . I run re retreats for women I have for many years. And I could see these women coming to me who are super depressed. Utah leads the nation in antidepressant usage. And I actually lost a sister to suicide.
That's a whole other story. In nine, at 2005, she left behind five children. Oh, okay. At the time I didn't put a lot of these pieces together, but she was very, Espoused and deep in the dogma aspects of their religion because of her mental illness. I think she had a hard time, seeing herself as worthy, which many of us do anyway, take religion out of it.
We still see ourselves as unworthy. But she, the last two years of her journal, even though she was out really doing all the church things when we got ahold of her journals for two years, she just stopped praying cause she didn't feel worthy. And She wasn't doing anything major. She did have a painkiller addiction, but she went into treatment for it, and then that's ultimately how she took her life.
She didn't overdose our relapse on her drug addiction, her prescription drug addiction. She took a drug that was managed used to manage her bipolar, called C, and she overdosed on that. Part of my unraveling, to be honest with you, Hunter, and my questioning, my deep grief, unprocessed grief around these kinds of things.
Cuz I also lost an aunt to suicide. With my sister Shauna. It was like, oh my goodness. How many other women, My sister was like the poster child of the extreme end of the spectrum of this. And how many other Mormon women, And I know this cuz I self-published a book. I talked to Utah sociologist. I was on the board of nami, I was on the state Suicide Prevention Council.
The attorney Utah Attorney General asked me to be on it. Like I could see it that all of this perfectionism. Unworthiness cycle. , women not allowed to be angry or advocate for their own rights and authority. I could see how that diminishment of personal power was contributing to depression, and I didn't dare, like I, I may have written it in my journal, but I didn't dare outwardly.
Speak of it because I wanted to stay faithful. I wanted to stay. I love, I'm a devote by nature. I'm a very devoted person to God, but I also not, You know what kind of woke me up to the fierceness of my feminine power with this is when I attached to learning about the divine feminine mother. Mother, God, goddess history that has been excised from Christian theology, the STIC text, Mary Magdalene.
These are the things that were contributors to my awakening, and I could see how this was completely absent in my church of origin as it is in most. Yeah. As it is in most, and it just gave rise to this. Again, like I told you, why'd you start your podcast? I would implode. I would've like I had to talk about these things in a respectful way.
Albeit sometimes what comes outta me does not sound very conscious. But I'm not about fighting from a place of unwarranted anger, cuz fighting doesn't change anything. Inviting and collaborating is that's what's gonna lead to our e. Yeah.
[00:16:49] Hunter: Yeah. And opening up these stories and the awareness of this, these policies or these, these habits, these traditions, they have effects, right?
Like they have consequences. They have incredible hard consequences in people's lives. That's heartbreaking. It's so interesting, Sherry, cuz I was like brought up in this such a different upbringing, like agnostic. Like my fam, my hippie parents were super irreverent. Like I was like little Punky Brewster kid, just like full of my own empowerment, and it's something I've really discovered as. Just I think for me it was like a shock to realize Oh, the world is not like this. Like women aren't equal in the world like this. What I thought things were is not what they were. And it was this kind of shock to me and to see how many women I encounter all the time who have that deep thread of feeling unworthy.
That for my parents, they, they've got incredible, like good seeds. They passed on and in some incredible flaws they passed on as they're human, and sometimes I just wanna say this to the listener because sometimes they talk about my father's anger and how that was passed on to me.
But I wanna say he also passed on to me this deep sense of of empowerment that at least when I was little yeah. He pushed back against that empowerment as it came out as a teenager, but a deep sense of empowerment and seeing that so many in the world don't have this. Oh, I'm so sorry about your sister.
I'm so sorry about that suffering and that, because. You knew her value, if you could have only given that sense of her value and if you could just give that to somebody else. Didn't the wall
[00:19:05] Cherie Burton: I couldn't get, In fact, that's, this is crazy. But yesterday I found a letter that I wrote to her six months before she took her life, begging her to stay.
Telling her how much she was loved, like how talented she was. Super talented musically, everything super loving. And that was really, and I called my mom and read it to her over the phone. And cuz it's been, I don't know how many years, 17 years. It's been a while, but it's still hard. It's still hurts.
She's only two years younger than me. Our kids were best friends, like they still are. Like, it's very jolting to me. That, I can't just pick up the phone and call her that even after 17 years, and I shot a very larger than life personality. And to be honest, I feel like she's urging me.
Cause I am writing a book about my experiences and my, it's been mar based and about how we awaken to specifically the Magdalene. Which is a whole archetype. She was a historical figure, but she's also an archetype for our day, which is divine co-creation, male, female, balanced, egalitarian leadership and authority.
And so I feel like she would be all over this, right? My sister. It's what she needed to become empowered within our faith construct. That was not, . And so I feel her urging me on, I feel her riding with me sometimes and it's ugh. It's been like writing. This has been , ugh, I can't even it's been so therapeutic for me.
And it's also been probably the hardest thing cuz then I'm climbing right back in to the trauma and the questions and living into the mystery of things and. Hopefully when I get this done, it will feel like a love letter to the world via the lens also of my sister, what she would say now.
[00:21:18] Hunter: Wow. I think that's very brave.
Thank you this is all like ties in because as women, like as you mentioned, like your upbringing, right? Like we were, or at least AQ, or I was encouraged to be feisty and most of us were encouraged to be peacekeepers, right? To stay silent, to be good, to be kind, to be, not to be gentle.
And I get, and I get that enormously because that idea for me, like we mentioned the beginning, like the paintings that, I'll to put one in the show notes, dear listener. But there just the idea of like aggression and anger that I dealt with is So frowned upon in our society, right?
That it was like I had to paint my own therapy for this for six years, right? And to explore this, to get to a place of, in some ways acceptance of this. But this, but you write about this anger is like a real righteous anger. Talk to me about this idea that we are not supposed to feel our anger and what this does to us.
[00:22:42] Cherie Burton: Yeah, it's one of my favorite things. So there's a phrase, righteous indignation, which I don't even really love the phrase, the term righteous, but all that really means to me now is warranted. . So like Christ, when he changed over the, there were money changes in front of the temple and it says in a new testimony he basically got really ticked off and he threw over the, You don't think of Christ.
The pictures of Jesus are all like, he's very docile and like powerful, but not that powerful or mad that he would do. But he was making a statement flipping those tables over. And then he said, and he spoke out, Make not my father's house, the house of merchandise. Now I'm like, make not my mother's house.
The house of merchandise. And it's the, it's this idea that and. I've spoken about this at length with sacred rage. , where we have been bottling up, Parenting up these emotions that need to be expressed and we are not giving ourselves permission until health crisis hits. And even then we're going to the doctor and trying to drug it away or mask.
when in fact it wants to be felt. It wants to be seen, it wants to be acknowledged. So when we're just sitting at church, with a happy face, we're not getting to the heart of polygamy. I'll just use Mormonism here as a reference for that. , we're not asking the questions of how it feels in our bodies.
We're not getting into embodiment practices that allow us to access our own inner wisdom that might conflict with persisting or existing theology. So sacred rage to me is Own it. This is what I was saying about the shadow work I was doing. I was finally gave myself permission after almost five decades of just bowing my head and basically saying, Okay, I'll have faith.
It was like my body was like a no, huh? It's not working for you and. I had a great upbringing. My parents are amazing. My mother is the most full of faith person I know. This is a different time. , and, I'm Generation X. My kids are millennials and Gen Zers and they get it.
They're leading us into this really space of equality, validation. Tolerance. Yeah. And basically leveling the playing field that we're all in it together. And hierarchies don't like that. They don't like that. No. But your bot, So to answer your question, this was all brewing in me and I recognize I had thyroid issues.
I had so many, like off the, Hashi motive, all these things that I didn't link. I was pent up emotion and anger. And so as I started to feel these things and I started going into my own incubation, my own cocooning, my own deep inner work, and I did have guides and I did have people helping me, thank goodness who were telling me, You're not crazy.
Sure you're not crazy. It's you're, this is healthy. I'm like it doesn't feel healthy. And it's this is what they want you to not do and this is how they can come back and say, See, you've lost the spirit. You're deceived. Satan's got ahold of. And that is so damaging to someone who's truly, honestly questioning to tell them that if they go into their shadows and they feel their feelings, that they're somehow on Satan's team
You know that's how black and white it can be for the dogma. So now I just give permission to women, children, and men because the feminine and men is just as wounded, if not more than the feminine. And women, the whole consciousness is suffering with unexpressed emotion and bottling things up, and not expressing healthy anger and not advocating for ourselves in ways that are healthy.
So yeah, so the cost is, you could smile through your whole life. You could be the most pleasant Christ-like loving person, and you could never access the pieces of you that could lead to an absolutely powerful awakening to who you actually are with, let's just say, to use that same belief.
Christ. To become at one with Christ means you go into the valley of the shadow of death. You merge with your darkness. You. And yeah, you can give some of it over so you don't have to feel all of it, but at the same time you become real , not fake. You become the opposite of fake when you do this work.
And so that was a whole revelation to me. When I got on the other side of it, I was like, Oh my word. I feel so much lighter. I feel like all these virgins were just lifted off my back. I feel clear. I feel more love than I've ever felt for humanity. I'm not making it us and them anymore. I'm I can feel all my feelings and not completely judge them.
And I can still have bad days, but I'm just like, the awareness is there now.
[00:28:29] Hunter: You can feel more. Oh my God. That's the whole idea that you're supposed to just put a mask on. You're not supposed to have feelings. It's so crazy to me it's just bananas. If you listen to our episode, Dear Listener with Lisa, Dr.
Lisa Feldman Barrett, the neuroscientist, she talks about how the human brain evolved and how we are a, we evolve to be a feeling organism and we think. We think to help survive and protect ourselves. And to like we are feeling first and thinking second. And yeah, we should, there should be a, an indignation.
This is fascinating, this idea of pent up anger leading to health issues. Cuz that makes a lot of sense to me. Maybe not in every case, in every health issue, dear listener, the idea. Like your anger is a physical energy in your body. It's like a real physical energy.
It's cells moving. It's heat, it's tension. It's all that stuff like Yeah, like the tension, right?
[00:29:40] Cherie Burton: Yeah. It's a heated response. Literally, that's why women have evolved are having hot flashes in midlife because we're so pissed off. Oh. It's a collective, like going back to Yogi and stuff like this is a collective issue.
Even though you weren't raised with religious dogma or you weren't indoctrinated about you're not worthy or whatever to God or whatever that is for, most people raised in varying religions depending on their level ACT activity, like you still hold the collective that we're all holding this wound.
[00:30:15] Hunter: And well the idea of being second place, for any woman anywhere, right? Like that you are constantly in second place. Your whole life is so frustrating. Like that idea that you are, you're acting like a girl, like you're too sensitive, your bossy rather than have leadership potential, right?
[00:30:41] Cherie Burton: You are screwed,
you're shrill, you're.
[00:30:45] Hunter: Yeah. And your appearance is the most important thing, right? Like how, that's deep in us, right? That's deep in so many of us. Like that idea of, like losing our appearance and growing old and losing our value and all of that stuff. Yeah, we should be f and pissed
I may think we should there's some reasons to be
[00:31:11] Cherie Burton: so warrior your. And that's where the inner warrior comes out and she's Okay, like I could stand before any, This is where I'm at right now. Like I could literally stand before anyone in any kind of hierarchical patriarchy, anything, and totally stand in what I know in my body and die for it.
Like it's that level of knowing, and me now, like I'm not gonna be intimidated, I'm not gonna be told what I should or should not believe. There are many things that I still espouse, that I was raised with religiously, and there's many things that I don't feel right about. I don't see them as healthy policy wise or doctrine wise, and I reserve the rights.
It's my birthright as a child of the divine, a child of God, to be able to do that and to have that direct connection. So historically speaking, and a lot of my research is focused on this, there's always been two. In the world of people on the spiritual path, and let's just even say religion. There's Nosis, G N O S I S. No. Which means knowing, So that's where you get the term agnostic and you use the term agnostic means, I don't know, we've put such a negative connotation on it. What do you. What do we actually no. So Nasic though is I know what I know in my body right now.
I know how I'm connected to my crater. I know that I have that right. Whereas the Orthodox is on the other camp going no, there's a system to this. There are rules. You have to go through these other leaders and you have to do these rituals and you have to, and then maybe you might. Then maybe you might have, companionship of God's spirit with you, however you wanna call it.
Then you might be worthy if you do all these things we tell you to do and you pay ties and you do all kinds of offerings and everything. In Mormonism it's considered like a high, what they call a high demand religion, which means we pay tide, we devote, we covenant actually in sacred places to give everything just about everything to the building.
Of this. Wait, you
[00:33:31] Hunter: use the word church. We covenant as in we covenant as a verb. And that's not like in my everyday vocabulary. I mean it I understand, but can you define for Yeah, I have some question marks, so I'm sure there's a listener does too. You promise?
[00:33:47] Cherie Burton: Okay. Yeah. So it's just this, they call it like a covenant path and I understand it's sacred.
Yeah. From the time you're born all the way until you die, there's certain covenants and rituals you do. , and I don't wanna dismiss this for anyone that's on this path. I'm just saying some of it I held a sacred and took with me as beautiful. , and some of it I realized was very compulsory.
It was uninformed consent. I didn't know what I was really getting into. I was so young. , like I said, the first seven years of my life, I was, everything was laid out for me. and it was like, choose, It's like the equivalent of choosing your lifelong career by age seven as you prepare to get baptized at age eight, because that's part of the path, that's part of the covenant path to always do these things and you keep affirming it every week through ordinance of sacrament.
And so I went and I asked mother, I asked my higher self. I asked, God, help me go deeper with what's the higher way for me? To be of service and to be of devotion without all the exteriors and the outwards. And I was taken right to that place in an testament where Christ said, The kingdom of God is within you.
It doesn't come by observation. It's not out here. It's not something you can look at. It's not through a person place of seeing or a system, or an institution, or a set of ideologies. It's within you. The kingdom of God is in. I call it the queen Dumb now. But all of that just came together for me as these deep wisdom teachings of Nosis Christ was teaching wisdom teachings.
He wasn't teaching the prevailing religious philosophies of his time. He was born into it, but he went out in the wilderness and did his thing and taught, out to the people of every, everyone. And so for me it's yeah, I wanna do that. I reserve the right
[00:35:41] Hunter: to. Yeah, that's beautiful.
I appreciate that. I, and from what I'm not no religious scholar, but from what I understand, all the various churches of the world, right? Like the various forms of Christianity and et cetera. Have there's a lot of, there's a lot of ritual, there's a lot of steps, there's a lot of institution, right?
And from what I've read from. The teachings of Jesus. It's not it's in a lot of ways anti-institutional. It's feed the poor. And he was also teaching to women. And you're right you talked about like the Magdalene archetype for our day, and that was something I remember.
Learning at some point years ago that Yeah, actually there was a, the, this was, embedded in a patriarchal culture, right? Like a lot of the great religions of the world are embedded in a patriarchal culture. And so there's this teasing apart, we have to understand and see like how these.
Cultures suppress women, but there's like these, there are these beautiful wisdom pieces embedded, but embedded in the passed down with the wisdom is all this like patriarchal suppression and culture. And so imagine that teasing that apart for yourself was a fascinating and rewarding and incredibly interesting journey.
And I imagine you've got some pushback. Imagine you got some pushback
[00:37:20] Cherie Burton: in your culture. I think that, yeah the hardest part is like disappointing my parents, and I, I was raised with, even though she maybe wouldn't identify as a feminist, my mother is definitely a feminist. She's always advocated for us to go out in the world and do things and not just be the typical.
Subservient housewife, if you will, or whatever. It's I can't wait to see what you guys create. I, three sisters and three brothers and yeah. So really for me it was unplugging from people pleasing because there's women, That's what we are trained to do cuz we care so much. There's a whole matrix of unplugging from that is full of actual.
Pain to, and I'm still it's still a process for me. Like in saying that I'm not trying to people please, that doesn't mean that I don't wanna serve people and help them and love them. But there can be this shadow aspect to that where it's I will put myself second, like you mentioned, I will continuously put myself second and second and second until my soul is like, This is not good for you.
Wake up. So I know that there's a whole movement in Christianity of being second to God, so I don't wanna undermine that. . At the same time, I believe the Divine wants us to be in full partnership, in shared authority. It's like Christ was trying to teach. Better things that I've done, you can do a thing like, I want you all to do this.
I want you all to be, you know who you are. I want you to all recognize you are the I am. And for some reason that's so threatening to our establishments to have a lot of people waking up to their own power, to own their voice, to give themselves permission to feel what they feel and question and poke the traditions a little.
That's so threatening, and that for me was one thing that let me know I was on the right track because if something is true and good and full of light, it should stand up to scrutiny. It should stand up to every question. It shouldn't evade it or shame the questioner. It should embrace and let me love you back into here's what we know and here's what we don't know.
Versus you're defying doctrine, you're doing this, you're disappointing, you're going down Satan path, whatever. And I'm in a couple spaces where I just observe like X Ex-Mormons. I don't fully participate. I just look at what they're dealing with and they are all. I shouldn't say all that. It's a huge blank statement, but the vast majority of them are suffering with this ostracization and shame.
And they had to be true to themselves. They had to do what they felt was right in their soul, and you can't, and they can't get through to any of their believing family and friends. And that's creating more and more trauma for them. And I don't see this just in Mormonism, like this is a pervasive issue of disappointing.
The norm disrupt being a disruptor of the way we do things around here, if you will, and family systems, academia, religion, government. When you become, when you wake up and you're like the black sheep, it's usually the black sheep of the family is usually one who's most awake. . You just might be manifesting it in ways that aren't accepted at a culture bit.
, usually the black sheep is the one. It's I don't feel so good here. This is not my jam. But no one listens to. And
[00:41:10] Hunter: it's toxic for them. I think about like my daughter who's gay and her friends who are, queer and non-binary and trans, and they're. Saying This is toxic to me, this culture.
Like they're the black sheep in the larger culture of saying this is toxic to me. Yes. And that's so threatening. It's so threatening to the larger culture that change is happening so fast. I guess it's so threatening cuz it's if you've bought in so to speak, if you are like, I'm I'm submitting to what was said before. Again and again throughout my life. It's that it goes back to that pain You talked about that pain of being like, Oh, there are
[00:42:00] Cherie Burton: questioning terms of policies that have been put in place, and I'll just use the LGBTQ plus ia. I don't know the whole string of acronyms.
Yeah. That It's like there's real pain there. Yeah. And it's so dismissive of religious hierarchies and administration. To say God said this and you're doing this, and therefore you can't really be with us. You can attend, but you can't really be a full participant and you're gonna be denied these blessings in the afterlife because you are choosing into this.
Now we know through critical thinking and, decades of sociological ontological developmental psychology and research that this is. This identity issue is a real thing. It's been there all this time throughout history, but nobody's been talking about it. And now they're all coming out like it's so healthy, I think.
And they're just trying to find out who they are. And they're wanting to go to community. They wanted to be fed, they wanna be affirmed and they're just not welcome in the doors of the churches unless they absolutely conform to God's standards. And that was one of the things for my older children, they're like that.
What kind of God would not open the doors to everyone as a full participant? And why do we have these policies in place against lgbtq? Why, why are all these why all this racial disparity in the early, doctrinal formation of the church? There's so much there that everyone just wants to quiet be like us, do what we tell you.
Give us, tithes and we'll build more buildings and temples and we'll, it's like I just keep going back to when Christ said, Feed my sheep. Who are the sheep? But black sheep are the sheep. .
[00:43:55] Hunter: All right, All Sheri, I love talking to you about this and I'm gonna hopefully beg a few more minutes of your time cause.
Explored so much here, and I hope that, I know, dear listener, you're getting a lot out of this as I am, but so we have to feel it. It's what I'm getting, right? Like there it comes back to that you feel it to heal it, right? Like we have to feel it to heal it. Yeah. What do we, for someone who's Oh yeah, you're.
I got some rage in me. I got some sacred rage in me. I've got some righteous indignation for whatever it is in your life. Any words of where to go with that? Like where to start, what
[00:44:42] Cherie Burton: to do? Good question. So I'm, I actually had a conversation with a dear friend who went through one of my programs about, she'd just woken up that her marriage is super toxic and her husband's a narcissist and she's been married to him for 15 years or something like that.
And that was her same question what you just asked me. When you wake up to, I'm being oppressed, I'm being suppressed. The natural outgrowth of that is depress. So many people wanna treat the depression, but they don't wanna treat what's causing the oppression and suppression.
So the first thing I tell people is Don't judge your feelings. They're very valid. They're very, validating. It's validating to bounce them off someone. I had to not think that I'm crazy. I had to ground myself into people that I respect, who see me from me. Who don't see me as a conformist, who don't see me as somebody who's just going along with the program.
As that as my identity, but they truly love me for me, not my choices, not my beliefs, but they love me. So you have to find those people. You can find a therapist like that or an energy facilitator, energy healing facilitator. You can find communities online who are going to be affirming of your dark. I call it the dark night.
So I'm not the only one that calls it that, but we're. Massive amounts of people. Now it's almost mass consciousness that we're going to be all going through this dark, neither soul. So this is a good time to go through it now instead of when it hits pandemonium level, like people being like, We've been lied to, we've been this, we've been that.
So attached to people who see you for you that you can actually bounce these things off of. I had to go to people outside of the bubble that I was raised in, and they were like astounded at what I was. Led to believe as truth, and that was affirming to me. Not because they felt like they were heretics that were trying to take me off the path, but like they just honored me in the questioning of things and the unraveling of my identity that I'd built all these decades and trying to do this perfect, Mormon woman, perfect daughter of God, and.
Yeah, so find those people. Listen to podcasts that are doing that for you, and just line up with people who affirm who you actually. Yeah.
[00:47:19] Hunter: Yeah, I love that. I think that idea of don't judge your feelings is so huge like that l what Sheri is saying is loving acceptance, right? That's a practice.
That's a really deep practice, like loving acceptance that you can start, it can feel weird and uncomfortable, and you can start it and find the people who see you and. That's exactly what we need. And don't keep going. Persistence. Lots of persistence to your listener. Yeah. Sheri, obviously we talked for three hours, I think.
Where can people find out more about what you're doing?
[00:48:00] Cherie Burton: Yeah, so if you go to stand speak shine.com, stan speak shine.com, that's I do have shere burton.com. But stan speak shine.com has like freebies. I have a new wisdom kit for women. It helps them get into stillness, all kinds of programs and forever your needs are.
But you can also find my podcast there, Women Seeking Wholeness. I'm always I'm always trying to be a resource and a guide. Someone who hands people a set of deliverable things to believe.
[00:48:32] Hunter: Amen. Amen. Amen to the questioners. Yes. , yes. This has been so wonderful and fascinating. Thank you Shari, so much for sharing your time and for sharing your story here.
I think that, I know that it's gonna have some ripple effects that we'll never even know, but but I appreciate your presence so much.
[00:48:56] Cherie Burton: Thank you, Hunter, and I appreciate yours as well. Thank you for having me.
[00:49:00] Hunter: Catch new episodes of the Mindful Mama podcast and other free resources, including the Mindful Mom Guide at Mindful Mama mentor.com.
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