Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee, All the Best. A couple of months ago, I did an Instagram live with Bergen Hyde of Lume Circle. And Bergen mentioned that in deconstructing our internal patriarchy, which is something that I think a lot about. There was some work in that process that's done with the head. It's rational,

intellectual work. And when she said that I envisioned kind of being out in the sunlight,

kind of above ground, and then she said, and there's different work that's done more with the

heart and the gut, emotional soul work.

And when she said that, I envisioned being down deep underground, like in a cave or in the bowels of the earth.

And I realized that most of the work that I've done over the past year on this podcast has been headwork, like above ground in the sun, defining terms and tracing historical patterns

and analyzing books and analyzing laws. I feel like I have also done a lot of emotional work.

I have felt a lot along the way, too. Listeners know by now that I do not shy away from a laugh or a

cry. So it hasn't all just been

completely rational and void of emotion. But I have told Bergen before, we met for lunch before

we did our Instagram Live. And I told her that I have not really felt ready to go into the belly

of the earth and have my own personal

reckoning with this stuff.

Kind of to give myself credit, I have felt personally called to do an intellectual

academic project.

And it's been a critically important part of my personal life and something that I felt

that I wanted to offer to the world.

But there's a part of me that knows that I need to do a journey down and a journey in.

It reminds me of what the Greeks call a katabasis, which is a journey down into the underworld

or a cave, but I'm kind of scared of what I might find down there. And I don't know

if I'm up for it right now. I don't know if I'm up for the anger and the grief that I might

feel if I did that soul work. So I'm thinking about that when I did that Instagram live with

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