A Podcast Interview with Ruddy Turnstone

We’re so pleased to be launching Season 3 of Woods & Wilds: The Podcast. For this episode we sat down with climate activist Ruddy Turnstone.

Ruddy Turnstone (she/they): Based in Southeastern so-called Florida, Ruddy is on the Steering Committee for the Community Hotline for Incarcerated People (CHIP) which was founded in April of 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. CHIP is an all-volunteer abolitionist hotline that provides direct support and advocacy for people incarcerated locally and does not discriminate based on the charges/convictions people have been given. CHIP’s work has been vital in getting people connected to resources, loved ones and on occasion, getting released. When not doing hotline work, Ruddy provides direct action climb trainings for Earth First! and nonprofit organizations, participates in food sharings through Lake Worth Food Not Bombs, provides digital and in person direct action trainings, and dabbles in video editing and podcasting making. In varying degrees over the years, Ruddy has organized around environmental, climate justice, immigrants rights, indigenous sovereignty, and prison abolition for over 10 years.

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Read the full transcript of our interview with Ruddy Turnstone!

Full Transcript featuring Ruddy Turnstone:

Elizabeth:
All right. Hello everyone. I’m Elizabeth Lashay with SlayTheMic and I am so excited because, again, this is season three of the Woods & Wilds podcast. I am joined by my amazing co-host with the mostest. Take it away.

Kimala:
Thanks. I’m Kimala Luna with Dogwood Alliance and we are here today with Ruddy Turnstone. Ruddy is based in southeastern so-called Florida. Ruddy is on the steering committee for the Community Hotline for Incarcerated People, otherwise known as CHIP, which was founded in April of 2020 in response to [the] COVID-19 pandemic. CHIP is an all-volunteer abolitionist hotline, which provides direct support and advocacy for people incarcerated locally and does not discriminate based on the charges, [and] convictions, people have been given. CHIP’s work has been vital in getting people connected to resources, loved ones, and on occasion getting released. When not doing hotline work, Ruddy provides direct action climb trainings for Earth First and nonprofit organizations, participates in food sharings through Lake Worth Food Not Bombs, provides digital and in-person direct action trainings, and dabbles in video editing and podcast making. In varying degrees over the years, Ruddy has organized around environmental climate justice, immigrant rights, indigenous sovereignty, and prison abolition for over 10 years. Wow, wow, wow. Welcome, Ruddy.

Ruddy Turnstone:
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Kimala:
Something that’s been on my mind lately… And this is not super connected to forests, but I would like to hear about some of your immigrant right works that you’ve done in the past.

Ruddy Turnstone:
Yes. Well, in the past… I mean, it started getting arrested many years ago. If folks would remember… I can’t remember the exact date. I think it might have been 2008. There was an amnesty bill in Congress being proposed and we had known that there were… and we still know to this date. There’s tons of folks that die crossing the border from Mexico into the so-called United States. I was chalking up a bridge, trying to demonstrate to the counter-protestors. People that were against the amnesty bill and, after I interviewed a lot of them, were very anti-immigrant in general.
Just trying to demonstrate, essentially, when they would come back to protest again against the amnesty bill that they were essentially stepping on the chalk outlines of… When you see a murder scene, there’s that chalk outline that a lot of people see. That they would be stepping on all the people that have had to forcibly, almost always, migrate. Whether it’s from climate change issues or cartel issues or whatever else. Political instability that so often is impacted directly driven by the United States government. I got arrested for doing that. That was my first arrest.
And so, since then, it’s been on and off work, whether it’s particular actions in solidarity with folks that are in detention currently. Unsurprisingly, here in so-called South Florida, we’re extremely racially diverse and we have an extremely high immigrant population, undocumented and documented. I work with Immigrant Action Alliance and a bunch of other different immigrant groups. They actually directly work with us. One of the persons is on our steering committee with CHIP. And so we support with actions. Supporting individuals needing support. Yeah. I’ll leave it there for now.

Elizabeth:
Well, thank you. I know that we’re going to cover quite a bit when we’re talking to you, but I actually want to start at the very beginning of a younger version of you and when you first found your love for nature. Or it could have been like, yesterday, you found your love for nature. So either way, when did you fall in love with the outdoors?

Ruddy Turnstone:
What I tell people about this region and this area… I had to move here. I didn’t want to live here. I was 10 years old when we moved here and I despised this place. I really didn’t like Florida. At all. I didn’t like anything about it. And then in my 20s, when I went to the Everglades, I submerged myself in the swamp. It was like… What is that called? It was like a wild baptism or something. Being immersed in swamp water, amongst alligators, and carrying… My friends just wanted full-on extreme experience. And so we’re carrying our packs above our heads, going through the swamp water, and we could see a gator over here, gator over here. It was so wild. You could just… It was like another planet. Being amongst the cypress with their knees jutting out of the water and the sand and there was wild grapefruit where we were. And so we were just… It was so powerful and humbling and that’s when I felt in love. This bioregion is so vibrant and humbling. Knowing that I’m not the top of the food chain, I’m not the apex predator, and that I’m a part of this ecosystem. It was a transformative experience that has stuck with me ever since. The wild is where I get a lot of healing and rejuvenation and humility.

Kimala:
When did you first get into activism?

Ruddy Turnstone:
I first got into activism with 9/11. When the Twin Towers fell down, I asked the question, what would make someone want to attack this country? What has the United States done? And that led me down a really strong path of understanding the neoliberal policies and imperialist policies that the United States government has carried all throughout the world and impacting and influencing a lot of different governments. From there, I went into anti-war movement. Yeah. I got into the anti-war movement. From there, into immigrant rights on occasion. And then got involved with Earth First. Tried to help wherever I could and build community and help community wherever I could.

Elizabeth:
I often bring this up during the podcast because it was something that I found out. I feel like I’m very much an activist. I’m wanting to point out the injustice when it comes to race and gender. But I didn’t know that I am also a climate environmental justice warrior because I didn’t see the connection until later on. How are all these movements and things interwoven, interconnected, to you? To what you want to see in the world?

Ruddy Turnstone:
I want to start with how they’re disconnected. I think that the disconnect has started with this disillusionment that so many White and predominantly male activists of the last few decades have taken the spotlight when it comes to environmentalism and creating this myth that you can just work on ecosystem protection and environmental protection and ignore everything else. The reality that people have been fighting to expose for a long time but I think is finally unfolding is that it’s actually the people most impacted that have been the most environmentally protective people. Indigenous people, for example, are the number one group of people that are the strongest protectors of the environment. Period. So many people of so many different races have to defend their homes and, so often, when you’re having to defend your home, it’s also very much tied to climate justice.
So, for me, I wanted to mention some of the immigrant rights. I’m half South Asian, half White. And so sometimes we also support South Asian immigrants here that are in detention. Predominantly folks that are in detention are Latinx and so not getting as much attention when it’s South Asian folks that were on hunger strike. And so, for me, it’s very close to home. I didn’t get connected to my birth father until I was 33 years old. I don’t know if you want me saying this publicly, but Kolkata is where my birth family lives. We’re Telugu, so they’re not from there, but that’s where they live. It’s one of the… It’s just documented. It’s one of the dirtiest cities in India. The air pollution’s really bad and it affects my family and other family’s health.
A lot of the immigrants that are coming here are from Bangladesh or that are South Asian. Some folks are having to move and migrate here because of climate reasons. Rising waters, the typhoons getting worse. Whether it’s South Asian, Asian-Pacific Islanders, or other Asians, not including everybody else… Like in addition to everyone else. Just specifying that because that’s where my mixed race background is. There’s so many people that are being displaced. And so, for me, there’s no disconnect. Social justice, climate justice, racial justice, and imperialism are all deeply interconnected as well as how gender-based violence and how equity pans out when we are having to deal with these real-life crises.

Kimala:
Can you talk a little bit about why abolition is so important as opposed to just reform?

Ruddy Turnstone:
I don’t know how well this example lands for folks, so let me know. One of the best examples that I can think of is that solitary confinement was a solution posed by the Quakers. We got the idea from the Quakers in so-called United States. It was an alternate to the prison system as it was. So, it was a reformist measure and, now, we understand that it is a complete and utter form of torture to so many different people. When I think about abolition versus reform is reform… and I think that, as an abolitionist, we’re stuck doing both. It isn’t just that abolition is the long goal. We have to keep it the abolition of the prison industrial complex, to be clear, and immigrant detention, all detentions, and child detention.
So the reform part is valuable in the immediate. For example, we have a very small mutual aid program and we got $150 to an inside organizer where we operated and he was able to provide warm clothes to people… it’s super cold in that unit that they’re in… and other necessities that people need. And so, for me, it’s mutual aid, but it’s also reformist because we know people need support right now. But what we need to do simultaneously is we need to do as much as we can to both keep people out of jails and prisons to get rid of those institutions. Simultaneously do as much transformative justice as possible because abolition is about love. Abolition is about alternative forms of healing. It’s so critical and important. Reform doesn’t provide healing. Abolition is a route to understanding that the current prison industrial complex as it is gets in the way of us being able to heal and move forward and takes that autonomy away. When we can do transformative justice, restorative justice, other ways to deal with really challenging, difficult situations, then the actual work and community building can be can begin.

Elizabeth:
When you are not busy working constantly on trying to shift our entire world, what are some things that you do to heal and replenish yourself in the midst of this work?

Ruddy Turnstone:
I don’t know what my diagnosis is currently. We’re working on chronic fatigue syndrome, but it’s not super sure that I have that. I plan ahead as much as I can. For example, I know that in the month of May, I’m going to be doing a lot of climbing and climb training. I’m going to acknowledge the privilege I have, but I’m just like… I know I’m going to work 70 plus hours a week for four weeks straight, so I am going to plan that I’m not going to schedule anything for the next week or two afterwards. My life is not… It’s not steady in the sense of 40 hours a week, every week. It’s on and off. If it was steady, I would have to build in downtime. The thing is, if I don’t build in downtime, I can’t function. My body physically shuts down.
I hang out with my dog. You can hear him in the background. We go on walks twice a day and I look up at the sky and I take that time to be present with the circumstances and the temperature and feel things. Feel things. And just feel the wind on my face. Feel the heat because it’s warm here a lot. For 10 plus years. I think I became… I don’t remember what they call it like an introvert-extrovert. Doing the organizing, doing all the things, but then just not hanging out. I’m like, I already did all that stuff, so I don’t want to hang out. And so really focusing on building friendships and relationships and keeping those connections and making sure I hang out with people that’s not organizing. Because Building relationship and building community is… I need that to survive. I just wouldn’t accept that for a while. And so accepting those things has been pretty critical. But yeah. I have to take herbs. I have to have a particular diet. There’s a variety of things I have to do for my healing. And it’s not just myself. It’s leaning on my community a lot.

Kimala:
I love this theme of healing. You mentioned your experience earlier with the Everglades, but do you have another specific example of when nature healed you?

Ruddy Turnstone:
Yes. I have an example. So it was, I think, three years ago. My mom had passed away on June 2nd. Yeah. So she passed away on June 2nd and I was offered to be on a research team to climb to the tops of sequoias just a month later. I wasn’t sure if I was emotionally up for it. I loved my mom very, very, very, very dearly and she loved me very much and I’m very grateful for that. Very blessed. She was a person that I could talk to about anything. Even if she didn’t agree with my opinions, I could still talk to her. And now, she’s not there. I decided to take the climb gig anyway and I brought a piece of her hair. It was a sunrise climb over 200 plus feet. Going to the top of the sequoias. Some of the tallest trees that we have in this continent. During sunrise, I released her hair and took a moment to remember her. Let her go a little bit. Heal a little bit. Honor her in a way that felt genuine to me.

Kimala:
Beautiful.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing. My next question is definitely one where… It’s like, if you could be anything in nature… a type of plant, the sunrise, like anything… What’s the first thing that comes to your mind that really represents who you are?

Ruddy Turnstone:
I don’t know about represents who I am. Maybe who I aspire to be. I’d like to aspire to be as powerful as the wood wide network. A fungus that transfers nutrients from tree to tree and makes trees a community and helps them each grow and share with each other. When you ask that, it isn’t necessarily representation, but I love resurrection ferns. They’re really powerful ferns. Do y’all know about them?

Elizabeth:
No, I want to know more.

Kimala:
Tell us.

Ruddy Turnstone:
So, it seems to me… I could be wrong… when an ecosystem has been around a while that they show up. They’re beautiful, tiny ferns that will grow on live oaks and other trees. And they grow in colonies. When it gets dry, they curl up and they protect all of what they have left and they look dead. But when the tiniest drop of water hits them, they just blossom back up to life. They just inspire me how powerful they are and so smart. How they can reserve so much to their resources for that and take advantage of that moment right when it comes. If I could ever be as inspiring and powerful as a resurrection fern, I would love to because it really knows how to reserve resources and take advantage of every opportunity.

Kimala:
You’ve been fighting so long for this world that you want to see and, in a lot of ways, you are already embodying it. Can you talk a little bit about the world that you are working towards, that you want to see someday, and also some of the ways that it’s already happening in your life?

Ruddy Turnstone:
The world I would like to see is a world that is thriving. Where we’re supporting each other and lifting each other up and not stuck in a system that forces us to step on each other. A world where capitalism isn’t the driving factor and we found another way that mutually benefits our communities to… We found sustainable economies that’s not capitalism. That I can exist in this world as the gender that I identify as and we can accept people’s gender diversity no matter what it is they’re telling us. That white supremacy is a historical construct and no longer a present reality. And a world where people that are fighting for their lands get their land back and keep the land that they have. Indigenous folks all over getting land back. And a world of abolition. A world where we don’t have these walls between us making it so we can’t do our own healing. Each community, each group of people, has their own ways of dealing with conflict and all those ways are suppressed by the one dominant way of the prison industrial complex. So in a world where communities, differences, are celebrated and our power, our collective power, is acknowledged and actualized.
In CHIP, we have to deal with a lot of different issues all at once. We don’t really get to nitpick. We are an abolitionist group, but we might have to deal with gender issues or we might have to have a real conversation about consent or different forms of justice or racial issues. There’s just so many different things on our phone calls alone that we have to address. With the committee that I’m on, I just feel like we try to lift each other up and support each other. We try to model what we want to see. Whenever volunteers can’t do something or whenever a committee member has to step back because they need to rejuvenate themselves, we say, okay, this is where our capacity is and we try to adjust as we can instead of shaming and bullying people into pushing harder and wearing themselves out further. And, also, try to address conflict. I feel like we try to work through conflict a little more because that is what the prison industrial complex thrives off. That’s what it profits off of is just us not being allowed to address our conflict, but not addressing our conflicts.
So I feel like we’re, in the tiniest, tiniest ways, trying to actualize that. I drive through the streets or I’m in a crowd and I have just really been noticing how much more… No matter how politically divisive things feel and seem, I’ve just really been noticing how actually, even if we don’t know each other, that people try to work together more than I’ve accepted and realized just existing in this society. And that’s really been… I wouldn’t let that into my brain for a long time. Now that I’ve been seeing it, see how we actually do try to cooperate with each other a lot more, it’s just giving me hope that we’re actually not built for fighting each other. That we are actually built to try and cooperate and lift each other up.

Elizabeth:
One thing that I have noticed is music can really nourish the soul and be used in a healing, powerful way. My question is what is a song that you really love to listen to, that inspires you, that uplifts you, or makes you just want to dance and feel happy?

Ruddy Turnstone:
It’s hard to pick just one. I’m Telugu and my partner is Tamil and our ethnicities are in relation to each other. Telugu people come from Tamil people. There is a song… I believe it’s titled [foreign language 00:24:09]. It’s a celebratory song about nature and returning back to your roots. It’s an absolutely beautiful song. It’s pretty popular in Tamil Nadu. I could share with you a video of it or something if you all want to see it. It’s got English translations, but yeah. That’s a song that’s really uplifting to me.

Kimala:
First, I wanted to talk about these climbing trainings. Please tell me about those. Their impact, the experience you saw, all of that.

Ruddy Turnstone:
Before Stories Happen in Forests, I got to be co-producer for The Story of a Forest. It’s a 30-minute documentary about our, gosh, eight, 10 plus year-long fight to try and save the Briger forest. Earth First is a radical environmental aboveground movement that has been doing climbing to protect forests for over 30 years. Starting in the Northwest. The Briger forest is only about a 20-minute drive from where I live, so I knew that… I was already an Earth First-er and I knew that we had those skills and I wanted to access them to defend the forest. So I spent nine months to a year doing different trainings through Earth First. My first climb action didn’t even work. I couldn’t do it. And that made me even more determined to make sure that the rest happened. And then we did the first coordinated, long-term tree sit in so-called South Florida. We’re six weeks long and we have a lot of different people helping make that happen.
We also have some not great stories in Earth First. I was a part of the Earth First Climbers Guild. We’re now the Earth First Climbers Network that was created to keep people safer. There has been some severe accidents that have happened in the ’90s while people were doing these really serious actions. At least one death. Someone falling out of a tree. Gypsy chain. Having a tree fall on top of that person. As a result, the Earth First Climbers Guild was born. I wanted to continue that legacy of making climbing safer for people and more accessible. So I gained more skills through… And this is all free. Just had to show up. And so I gained those skills through Earth First and then Greenpeace. I try to help train as much as I can, both unpaid and for paid, depending on the group’s resources. I continue training to this day. It’s a really important vital resource that has been the deal breaker in winning campaigns a variety of times throughout not just the country but the world.

Elizabeth:
So if I were to want… If I wanted to get started, what are some things that I need to be mindful of? Because I feel like my upper body strength is not there. I’m just going through my checklist right now. Am I qualified? What does that look like?

Ruddy Turnstone:
So what I like to let folks know is that climbing is actually a lot more about balance and leg strength than it is about arm strength. There is some involved, but it is about positioning and getting comfortable standing in your gear. Especially with Greenpeace, we’ve worked to make it accessible to a variety of body shapes and sizes. Tree Climbers International, who I also got training through for recreational tree climbing… They were able to get a person who was paraplegic up. There are a variety of different ways to make essentially anybody who wants to climb, climb, but it is really important that you find groups that are willing to… that know that.
This term isn’t used, but I’ve been bro’d at least once or twice in my life in really life threatening ways, where this white guy comes up and changes everything and then I start climbing and, 50 feet in the air, I realize that my whole system is wrong and it’s because of this guy. That culture is so toxic and we’ve been fighting it ever… Sometimes I’m just always fighting it and, luckily, almost all the groups I work with also try to fight it. And so we try to diversify not just gender but race. Acknowledging that different people are going to have different access to this based on your economic status. Not everybody can take off work or keep their kid home. So trying to work with what people’s schedules so it can be more accessible based on a variety of issues.

Kimala:
You are somebody who’s going to leave behind such a beautiful legacy already. You have built such… You have truly embodied being a mycelial network in the forest of our species and really channeling… Just showing up as your full self and continuing to evolve. Continuing to grow. What is a legacy that you hope other people will try to leave behind? If you could pass on any wisdom or advice for others listening in.

Ruddy Turnstone:
I don’t know what to say that isn’t cliche. I think it’s really valuable to follow your heart but to do it in a way that isn’t necessarily just individualistic. Keep an eye out for community, who you’re leaving behind, when you’re doing that work and try and bring people with you and lift people up as you are getting to the goals that you’re trying to achieve and getting to be the person that you’re trying to be. And just to give ourselves grace. To forgive ourselves when we know we’ve messed up and to be brave. To acknowledge when we’ve made mistakes. And when we’re called in, to listen, hold space, accept it, and try and move forward with the gift that you were just given of how you can be a better person.

Kimala:
I love that.

Elizabeth:
I do too. And I think that we don’t think about how important it is to hold space. Feeling that defensiveness when there might be a suggestion or a comment being made. And that intertwines the healing and community. How we can work together to make this world one where we’re not surviving. Where we’re thriving. I mean, oof.

Ruddy Turnstone:
There were two things that I just wanted to mention regarding CHIP. I just wanted to mention that one of the things that we are really striving for and working on right now is trying to get justice for Kevin Desir. He’s a Black Haitian man who was murdered by BSO, Broward Sheriff’s Office, while in custody on a marijuana possession charge. They have refused to release the tapes of the beatings that led to his ultimate death. They also won’t release a coroner’s report and they haven’t fired the people that are responsible for killing him. They’re still working at BSO. So we’re having some events to demand justice for Kevin Desir coming up in may. We really want people to know that this happened and to help support the family and support getting justice for him. So that was the first thing and, if you have any follow up questions, let me know.

Kimala:
Where can people go to find out more?

Ruddy Turnstone:
I would say, right now, probably going to our sister organization, chainlesschange.org to get most plugged in. We work with Chainless Change through the Decarcerate Coalition. We work very closely with them, but they are leading the charge for the fight for Kevin this year. So I would say going to Chainless Change’s website. I would double-check if it’s chainlesschange.org. Yeah. I just realized. I was like, is that it? Actually, I’m not sure because we’re still building all of our infrastructure. And then chipsouthfl.org is our website. The only other thing is we’re calling for volunteers. We can always use volunteers and we can use them from anywhere, anywhere, because so much of our work, our hotline shifts, are virtual. And so people can plug in anywhere to take a call.

Kimala:
Sweet. Any other ways people can get involved or support or help?

Ruddy Turnstone:
I just wanted to share. This work is really hard. This work is really emotional. It’s a small, small victory and I just feel like I need to celebrate all of them because, if I don’t, I’d just turn into a puddle of misery. But we just… Through a lot of coordination, working with the family and working with the place that they’re transitioning into, Robert Adams was released today from jail. I’m just really excited that we got one more person out.

Kimala:
Yay! Good job.

Ruddy Turnstone:
Yeah, thanks.

Elizabeth:
Thank you for bringing that up and thank you for sharing that. I think it’s really important on this journey of whatever journey activism looks like for everyone to know that there is a starting point, that it is hard, and then there are these moments where we should celebrate. I think this also sparks another question is, when we’re talking to young people, what advice or guidance when they’re looking around and like, I want to get involved, but I don’t know how to get involved, I don’t know what I like… All of the questions of life. What would you say to someone that is thinking about honing their power? Living in their power?
I love you putting it that way. Honing their power and living in their power. Start in community. Look what’s going on in your community and within yourself. What are the issues that you’re facing right now? Because more than likely, somebody else is facing those issues too. And then from there, see if there’s already groups that are organizing. If there aren’t, organize yourself. Make it happen. Always remember that we’re not alone. And that can be if it’s not a social justice issue, if it’s not something that directly affects you. If you see that there’s animal abuse going on, if you see that there’s a project that’s really going to be destructive, same formula. Build as much as you can and build with grace and try not to push out as many people. Not to push away people, but to try to build, but also build smartly and build with a plan. Make your plan. Because we don’t let everybody work with us and that’s okay, but we do want to build community and we want to build community with people most impacted by the prison industrial complex specific to CHIP. But we also never want to forget that we are so connected to so many different issues.

Ruddy Turnstone:
I just wanted to mention that The Intercept, for example, they did a climate injustice report where Broward jails… They’re really bad for heat and flooding. The one other thing I just wanted to mention is that jails build walls. They don’t just build these physical walls that we’re very aware of, but they build these really intense social walls where we make all these presumptions about someone and we just allow and accept that that’s their circumstance. It builds all these stereotypes. And so to remember that people that are incarcerated are both our community and will be returning to community. And that’s both on like a COVID level. We need to keep people safe in jails because, when they come out, they might be infected. All these other things. Our communities are completely intertwined and that’s what we also try to work on is tearing down those walls. Those social walls and those constructs that we are separate. That we are separated. I didn’t say that exactly how I wanted to, but I think you understand.

Kimala:
Definitely hear you. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Ruddy. Is there anything else that you feel like you want to put here in this space?

Ruddy Turnstone:
Honestly, I just wanted to hear what y’all’s answers were regarding what do you say to youth… or what would you say to youth in terms of how to build? How to get started?

Elizabeth:
I’m co-teaching a course called IDEAS and it’s identity, diversity, equity, and social action. It is really wonderful to see young people look internally, reflect, and find their passion. Think that they are… Create this empowerment and upliftment to say, now, you can go and create change. The reflection piece is so important because, if you’re not reflecting on what you have done and what you can do and who you are and how you have your own biases or your own privileges or your own fill in the blank, then you don’t really have a roadmap on where to even go to guide you. So I think, for me, it’s that reflection piece and then just being like, yeah, I really am passionate about this and I am very passionate about all of these things.

Kimala:
Yeah. My answer is pretty similar. I try to encourage collaboration as much as possible. But also, all the young people that I’ve met have a really clear idea of who they want to be in the world, so I over the past couple of years have really been thinking about leadership and redefining what leadership means and encouraging them to also redefine that for themselves. Because when we see the best in each other, we generally bring that out. A lot of the work that I do with young people is really encouraging them to encourage others because that’s really where the good stuff starts to happen. When people feel comfortable and safe and seen and understood. We all have that innate desire.

Ruddy Turnstone:
I love it. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Elizabeth:
Well, I know that we’re coming to a close of this episode, but I am so impacted by what you bring and what you have done and what you will continue to do. I hope that you take some time after your 70 hours and you have some time in the outdoors to just feel what you have been cultivating. What you’ve been growing.

Ruddy Turnstone:
Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you both so much.