Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

How can we love - people, life, the world - in a way that allows us to genuinely contribute? And how is that different from the kind of love that is really a strategy to have ourselves feel ok?  That second kind of love might be better understood as a way that we try to control life or other people - we’ll love just as long as we get back exactly what we hoped for.  The first kind of love is wilder and more surprising and, as author Maria Popova says, the great wonder is ‘how it continues to hold as it continues to change’. This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life Podcast04:23 Exploring the Source: Maria Popova's Poem06:17 The Nature of Love and Neediness12:45 Distinguishing Love from Control19:41 Loving Kindness as a Disposition27:47 The Essence of Lovingness31:31 Reflections on Love in Today's WorldThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.You can find our source for this week, as well as the video of this conversation, on our website here: www.turningtowards.life/home/love-is-always-wilder-than-you-supposePhoto by Bob Brewer on Unsplash‍    ---Join Us Live in 2026Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.You can hear us talk about the programme here:www.turningtowards.life/coachingAnd you can read more about it here:www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-courseTurning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

When we think of ourselves only as isolated, separate individuals, we lose sight of the vast life that came before us, which gave us birth, and the vast life which will come after us. Even though we will all, without exception, eventually be forgotten, there is no knowing how the gifts we bring flow on into the life we leave behind us. And there, perhaps, there is both solace and also inspiration - that what we do, and whose lives we touch, matter far beyond anything we can see or tell. This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Introduction and Context03:06 Exploring Parker Palmer's Wisdom11:56 The Nature of Existence and Relationships21:00 Essence and Contribution in Life26:47 Embracing the Mystery TogetherThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:The Great Weave of Nature and HumanitySooner or later, everything falls away.You, the work you’ve done, your successes,large and small, your failures, too. Thosemoments when you were light, alongsidethe times you became one with the night.The friends, the people you lovedwho loved you, those who might have wishedyou ill, none of this is forever. All of it issoon to go, or going, or long gone.Everything falls away, except the threadyou’ve followed, unknowing, all along.The thread that strings together all you’vebeen and done, the thread you didn’t knowyou were tracking until, toward the end,you see that the thread is what staysas everything else falls away.Follow that thread as far as you can andyou’ll find that it does not end, but weavesinto the unimaginable vastness of life. Yourlife never was the solo turn it seemed to be.It was always part of the great weave ofnature and humanity, an immensity wecome to know only as we follow our ownsmall threads to the place where theymerge with the boundless whole.Each of our threads runs its course, thenjoins in life together. This magnificent tapestry –this masterpiece in which we live forever.Parker PalmerPhoto by Bernd 📷 Dittrich on Unsplash---Join Us Live in 2026Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.You can hear us talk about the programme here:www.turningtowards.life/coachingAnd you can read more about it here:www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-courseTurning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

Crossing thresholds in life - birth, death, loss, love, discovery, confusion - is inevitable. How can we do this in a way that recognises the mystery of each of life's great transitions, and which honours how each changes us? And how can we be ones who are wise, compassionate and courageous as we witness and accompany others through those inevitable transitions, without turning away? We recorded this conversation in front of a live audience of Thirdspace alumni, at our March 2026 Retreat. This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Celebrating Togetherness and Community04:15 Exploring Thresholds: A Journey of Change08:33 Navigating Life's Unforeseen Transitions12:36 The Power of Connection in Times of Change16:33 Navigating Life's Thresholds19:07 The Importance of Rituals22:10 Community and Connection in Transition25:09 Grounding in Everyday Rituals27:55 Witnessing Each Other's Journeys31:02 Embracing Vulnerability and Seeking Help34:14 The Spirituality of Everyday LifeThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:Thresholds [Part 1]A threshold is not a simple boundary;    it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres.Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience    or a stage of life that it intensifies towards the end into a real frontier    that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up.At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive:    confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope.This is one reason why such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual.It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds:    to take your time, to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there,    to listen inwards with complete attention    until you hear the inner voice calling you forward.The time has come to cross.To acknowledge and cross a new threshold is always a challenge.It demands courage and also a sense of trust in whatever is emerging.This becomes essential when a threshold opens suddenly in front of you,    one for which you had no preparation.This could be illness, suffering or loss.Because we are so engaged with the world,    we usually forget how fragile life can be and how vulnerable we always are.It takes only a couple of seconds for a life to change irreversibly.Suddenly you stand on completely strange ground    and a new course of life has to be embraced. Especially at such times we desperately need blessing and protection.John O'DonohuePhoto by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash---Join Us Live in 2026Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.You can hear us talk about the programme here:www.turningtowards.life/coachingAnd you can read more about it here:www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-courseTurning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

Our 440th episode considers what it is for each of us to dare to bring our unique form of expression to the world. How we might take the ways we've learned to belong in our lives - which may have supported us and constrained us - and give enough space around them that we can be our own voice, rather than an echo; what ways of supporting one another are called for, so we can help one another do this; the kind of openness, curiosity, sensitivity, welcome and daring it can take to encourage others to be a voice of their own; and how welcoming in this way might be a way to learn and at the same time an act of deep service to life.This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Introduction and Listener Engagement02:54 Exploring the Poem 'The Artist' by Bobby Morrow06:00 The Process of Letting Go and Transformation09:04 Art as a Reflection of Truth and Identity11:46 The Role of Belonging in Personal Growth14:42 Radical Amazement and Curiosity in Relationships17:47 Creating Safe Spaces for Expression20:57 The Necessity of Community and Connection23:37 Conclusion and Reflections on the JourneyThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:The ArtistBreathing life into the artist Is a deadly mission.It will cost you this version of yourself,perfect and all knowing.As you die, tell mewhat’s it to cry with curiosity?To write with your frightening tears?To feel fully?This is what it is to breathe life into your words.Becoming the artist is a deadly mission.To roll the stone away and be alive in your truth takes an everydayness.We practice and build,We fall and find our feet,We create masterpieces,We wash them away.I know you worked so hardon this sense making,Those sensible makings have carried you.But still I ask.What is this world without your art?How do you love without your truth?Bobby MorrowPhoto by Simi Iluyomade on Unsplash---Join Us Live in 2026Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.You can hear us talk about the programme here:www.turningtowards.life/coachingAnd you can read more about it here:www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-courseTurning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

A conversation about the qualities that seem absent in us, that we long for so greatly, and the way they are already present in us because that is what humans are. How we  find our courage, or integrity, or creativity or love not so much by trying to fill the absence from outside but by walking our way, patiently, into them in our everyday way of moving through life. All inspired by a wonderful poem 'Keeping Things Whole' by Mark StrandThis week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Celebrating Community and Connection06:05 Exploring the Poem: Keeping Things Whole11:56 Understanding Presence and Absence18:07 Longing and Movement in Life23:53 Cultivating Inner Qualities29:52 Finding Wholeness in Everyday LifeThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:Keeping Things WholeIn a fieldI am the absenceof field.This isalways the case.Wherever I amI am what is missing.When I walkI part the airand alwaysthe air moves into fill the spaceswhere my body’s been.We all have reasonsfor moving.I moveto keep things whole.Mark StrandPhoto by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash---Join Us Live in 2026Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.You can hear us talk about the programme here:www.turningtowards.life/coachingAnd you can read more about it here:www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-courseTurning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

A call to our imaginative capacities when we are caught in conflict with one another... our capacity to uncover new stories and new ways of understanding that bring us into a different kind of relationship with ourselves, with each other, and with the something we seem to be in conflict about. Imagination as a path to choice, invention, discovery and as a counter to our familiar ways of keeping ourselves safe, habitual and automatic. All inspired by a luminous poem by Joy Harjo.In our conversation we talk specifically about Turning Towards Life - Live - Season 2, which begins in March 2026.This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life04:01 Exploring Joy Harjo's Work08:28 Navigating Conflict and Self-Discovery13:59 The Nature of Conflict and Imagination25:09 The Sacredness of Everyday Experiences30:34 Redefining Forgiveness in ContextThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings Part 4REDUCE DEFENSIVENESS AND BREAK THE DEFENSIVENESS CHAIN:I could hear the light beings as they entered every cell. Every cell is a house of the god of light, they said. I could hear the spirits who love us stomp dancing. They were dancing as if they were here, and then another level of here, and then another, until the whole earth and sky was dancing.We are here dancing, they said. There was no there.There was no  "I"  or "you."There was us; there was "we."There we were as if we were the music.You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries——Or poetry, or art, or anything that is of value or matters in this world, and the next worlds.This is about getting to know each other.We will wind up back at the blues standing on the edge of the flatted fifth about to jump into a fierce understanding together.Part 6AND, USE WHAT YOU LEARN TO RESOLVE YOUR OWN CONFLICTS AND TO MEDIATE OTHERS' CONFLICTS:When we made it back home, back over those curved roadsthat wind through the city of peace, we stopped at thedoorway of dusk as it opened to our homelands.We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the storybecause it was by the light of those challenges we knewourselves—We asked for forgiveness.We laid down our burdens next to each other.Joy HarjoPhoto by Alexey Demidov on Unsplash---Join Us Live in 2026Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.You can hear us talk about the programme here:www.turningtowards.life/coachingAnd you can read more about it here:www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-courseTurning Towards Life Live Season 2, from 4 March 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

When we make mistakes or take a wrong turn, it's understandable that our first move might be to blame others, or try to defend ourselves, or do all we can to avoid the feelings of shame or disappointment that come our way. What those responses do, though, is close us off to our human capacity to learn and to be creative in the midst of our difficulties. So what does it take to turn towards the 'holes we fall into' with a kinder, more expansive spirit, and to grow ourselves a little bit bigger so we can respond? And, perhaps most importantly, what does it take to do this not on our own, but together with others?In our conversation we talk specifically about Turning Towards Life - Live - Season 2, which begins in March 2026.This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life03:01 On Reflection and Learning05:46 Exploring Portia Nelson's Poem09:11 Personal Reflections on Mistakes and Relationships11:58 The Importance of Responsibility and Kindness15:07 Navigating Relational Patterns and Habits17:56 The Power of Choice and Agency20:53 Understanding the Dynamics of Relationships23:50 Finding Purpose in Conversations26:46 The Role of Community in Growth29:54 Conclusion and Invitation to Join the JourneyThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:Autobiography In Five ChaptersII walk down the street.There is a deep hole in the sidewalkI fall in.I am lost … I am helpless.It isn’t my fault.It takes me forever to find a way out.III walk down the same street.There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.I pretend I don’t see it.I fall in again.I can’t believe I am in the same placebut, it isn’t my fault.It still takes a long time to get out.IIII walk down the same street.There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.I see it is there.I still fall in … it’s a habit.my eyes are openI know where I am.It is my fault.I get out immediately.IVI walk down the same street.There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.I walk around it.VI walk down another street.by Portia Nelson---Join Us Live in 2026Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.You can hear us talk about the programme here:www.turningtowards.life/coachingAnd you can read more about it here:www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-courseTurning Towards Life Live Season 2, from 4 March 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

A conversation which begins with a beautiful and stirring song from MaMuse [a link to the song is in the show-notes]. How might we imagine light inside darkness, and call to the light in ourselves and in one another, even as we feel grief and worry and sadness? And how might we bring our imaginative capacities to invite one another into relationships of mutual care, for each other and for the world, especially in a time which often wants to teach us to fear one another instead?In our conversation we talk specifically about Turning Towards Life - Live - Season 2, which begins in March 2026.This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Introduction to Intentional Practice02:56 Exploring the Source: 'I Am Home in the Holy'05:52 The Power of Mutual Care09:05 The Invitation of Community11:46 Navigating Grief and Tenderness14:51 The Role of Language in Connection18:02 Cultivating Joy and Playfulness20:55 The Ground Holding Us23:46 The Importance of Togetherness27:08 Closing Reflections and InvitationsThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:Home in the HolyI am home in the holyI’m stepping in fullyTo the shiftTo the changeTo the groundThat’s holding me. I’m alive to the midnight, Wide eyed in the twilightGiving upGiving inGiving over to the mysteryMay my life be an offeringTo serve our mutual flourishingWe are in the care of one anotherI keep my inner fires burningFuel the passion and the yearningTo give these giftsTo keep on learningWithout endMaMuseMusicVideo of the full song is herePhoto by zenad nabil on Unsplash---Join Us Live in 2026Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.You can hear us talk about the programme here:www.turningtowards.life/coachingAnd you can read more about it here:www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-courseTurning Towards Life Live Season 2, from 4 March 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

How do we counter the stories in ourselves that render our lives flat, meaningless and mechanical? And how might we find sources of life inside ourselves and around us that support our participation, relationship and contribution, especially when we are feeling afraid or disoriented? A conversation about the everyday, about a radical appreciation of the sacredness of everything, and about breathing ourselves bigger to meet the one life that is offered to us.In our conversation we talk specifically about Turning Towards Life - Live - Season 2, which begins in March 2026. This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Introduction and Connection02:12 Exploring Creative Processes and Literature03:21 Introduction and Overview of Turning Towards Life06:26 Exploring the Improbable Nature of Existence09:50 The Illusion of Control and the Power of Wonder14:12 Finding Sacredness in the Ordinary19:44 Engaging with Life's Complexity and Meaning24:27 The Invitation to Expand Beyond Habitual Responses28:26 Reflections on Time and Choices in Life31:45 Closing Thoughts and Future ConversationsThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:On the Calculation of VolumeIt seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences. That we wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for these curious twists of fate. That there are human beings on what we call our planet, that we can move around on a rotating sphere in a vast universe full of inconceivably large bodies comprised of elements so small that the mind simply cannot comprehend how small and how many they are. That in this unfathom-able vastness, these infinitesimal elements are still able to hold themselves together. That we manage to stay afloat. That we exist at all. That each of us has come into being as only one of untold possibilities. The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable, we have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences.Anyone would think that this knowledge would equip us in some small way to face the improbable. But the opposite appears to be the case. We have grown accustomed to living with that knowledge without feeling dizzy every morning, and instead of moving around warily and tentatively, in constant amazement, we behave as if nothing has happened, take the strangeness of it all for granted and get dizzy if life shows itself as it truly is: improbable, unpredictable, remarkable.Solvej Balle, from ‘On the Calculation of Volume’, Vol 1Photo by Mario Losereit on Unsplash---Join Us Live in 2026Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.You can hear us talk about the programme here:www.turningtowards.life/coachingAnd you can read more about it here:www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-courseTurning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

There's a certain kind of faithfulness in ourselves and in one another that is required if we are to address both the joys and the real difficulties of our lives. It's something beyond mere appreciation or even love, but a kind of fierce commitment to the sacredness of being a human. It allows us to be loving, to be tender, to say what's true, to recognise what is, to name suffering, to call on one another's capacities to respond. It requires us neither to diminish (ourselves or others) nor to inflate (others or ourselves), but to relate to one another with actual hope. It's a faithful attending to the aliveness and sheer awe-inspiring unlikeliness of being here that allows us to meet life and one another with deep respect and deep care. And it's embodied beautifully by our source, which in this episode comes from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.In our conversation we talk specifically about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course, which next begins July 2026. You can hear all our other conversations about this programme at www.turningtowards.life/coaching This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Welcome and Introduction to Turning Towards Life02:42 Exploring the Poem: 'In Case You Don't Know Already'05:52 The Significance of Self-Recognition08:52 The Power of Faith and Luminosity11:41 Navigating Shadows and Clouds14:44 The Role of Connection and Tethering17:44 Faith in the Face of Darkness20:48 The Depth of Human Experience23:52 Faithfulness in Relationships27:01 Conclusion and ReflectionThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:In Case You Don't Know Already One day you will wakeand discover you are a sun,radiant, fueled by your own core,capable of luminosity so greatyou blaze through lightyears of darkness.You will know your own powerand it will never occur to younot to trust it, not to share it.You will not be able to forgetyour own magnitude.Nor will such glory be a burden.You will simply shinebecause that is who you are.No need to apologize.No reason to be jealousof any other sun,of any other star.On that day,you will see how it isyou have always been a sun,even in the darkest days.Then, you were also the cloudsand the great shadowthat made you stopbelieving in your light.You are, in fact,what makes the day itself—you are that integral,that crucial,that bright.Rosemerry Wahtola Trommerwww.wordwoman.comPhoto by Braňo on Unsplash---Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, OnlineOur two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coachingProfessional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.You can hear us talk about the programme here:www.turningtowards.life/coachingAnd you can read more about it here:www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-courseTurning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

Thirdspace turns 21 years old today, and so we take this opportunity to reflect together on one of our central commitments: learning to respond ever more to the world with wisdom, creativity, and compassion. We talk about what it is to be an integral development coach, and what it is to learn to coach with these commitments in mind, especially during these times. And we reflect on the joys and opportunities of being intentionally of service to others and to the world around us.In our conversation we talk specifically about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course, which next begins July 2026, and the Foundations of Coaching 2-day programme on February 9-10 and May 11-12.This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Introduction to the Year-Long Coaching Programme04:31 Understanding Integral Development Coaching11:47 The Importance of Community in Coaching18:29 The Role of Service in Coaching26:04 Awe and Wonder in Coaching Relationships32:09 Conclusion and Invitation to Join the ProgrammeThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:"Despair is the covering of our love for our world, and we crack it open by speaking it so that our love can act. So the key is not being afraid of our pain for the world." "This is the story of the transition from the Industrial Growth Society to a Life-Sustaining Society... More and more people come to see how interwoven we are as peoples and recognize that solidarity with one another is a way through these crises. So we join together to act for the sake of life on Earth." "When we open our eyes to what is happening, even when it breaks our hearts, we discover our true size; for our heart, when it breaks open, can hold the whole universe."Joanna Macywww.joannamacy.net/workPhoto by Justin Wise---Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, OnlineOur two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coachingProfessional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-courseTurning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

Perhaps we are so afraid of grief because we have forgotten how vast we humans are and can be. When we forget this, we mistake ourselves for a tiny receptacle, unable to imagine that we can meet life as it is. And then how little we let in, and how frightened we get of feeling the immensity both of our sadness and of the wonder of being here. In this episode we consider what it is to let ourselves widen, to relax our defendedness and our clinging-on so we can find ourselves in the sacredness that is both love and grief together, and meet one another - and life - there.This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Introduction and Overview02:20 The Source of Inspiration: Mark Nepo's Poem06:47 Exploring Love and Grief12:31 The Interconnection of Emotions18:41 The Holiness of Life and Death24:57 Embracing the Fragility of Existence30:29 The Invitation to Expand Our Hearts37:47 Conclusion and ReflectionThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:AdriftEverything is beautiful and I am so sad.This is how the heart makes a duet ofwonder and grief. The light sprayingthrough the lace of the fern is as delicateas the fibers of memory forming their webaround the knot in my throat. The breezemakes the birds move from branch to branchas this ache makes me look for those I've lostin the next room, in the next song, in the laughof the next stranger. In the very center, underit all, what we have that no one can takeaway and all that we've lost face each other.It is there that I'm adrift, feeling puncturedby a holiness that exists inside everything.I am so sad and everything is beautiful.Mark NepoPhoto by Phil Botha on Unsplash---Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, OnlineOur two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coachingTurning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

What if we mistake ourselves for the stories we've been told - that life is about our happiness, that we should wrestle control from circumstance, that we're separate from the world around us? A conversation about discovering that we didn't parachute into nature but grew from it, like apple blossoms on a vast tree of generations of living things. We ask: what becomes possible when we allow ourselves to feel the fullness of being human, grief and joy and all the rest, rather than contracting around our preferences? Could recognising ourselves as nature's response, rather than isolated egos demanding certainty, reveal what we're here to do?This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Welcome to Turning Towards Life02:45 Creating Conversations That Matter04:35 The Irony of Pursuing Happiness08:21 The Metaphor of Apple Blossoms13:28 Rethinking Happiness18:10 The Complexity of Human Experience22:46 Engaging with Life's Uncertainty26:32 Responding to Life as Nature30:29 The Practice of Consciousness32:31 Closing ReflectionsThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:Your Life is Not About YouOne of the cruelest ironies of Western life is that, today, the key, unquestioned, seemingly self-evident axiom of the Western wellbeing and self-help industry is precisely that our life is about us; that we have to wrestle the reins of our life from mere happenstance and circumstance and determine its course ourselves; that we have to proactively pursue our agenda and project meaning onto it; and - perhaps cruelest of all - that our life is about our being happy. All of this is unnatural and unjustified to the point of being grotesque... Is the life of an apple blossom about the apple blossom? If not, then for precisely the same reason ours cannot be about us. And this is the great discovery of the second half of life: our life isn't, has never been, and can't ever be about us. Why would it? We are part of nature; why would our life be about us and not nature as a whole? … Nature is, of course, impersonal. It's agenda is universal and holistic, not restricted to the petty egoic tastes and preferences of a person. It is naïve to expect a human being to be able to comprehend the … universal agenda, just as it is naïve to expect an apple blossom to comprehend what its role is in the grand scheme of apple trees and life on Earth. We are segments of nature, not mere witnesses; we didn't parachute into nature, but grew out of it. Therefore, we are nature, as expressed in a particular volume of spacetime.Bernardo Kastrup - The Daimon and the Soul of the WestPhoto by Anastasiya Romanova on Unsplash---Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, OnlineOur two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coachingTurning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

We tend to divide our experience into two parts, which we usually name ‘good’ and ‘bad’. And we do so for good reason - to belong in our family systems and communities, to keep a particular image or identity going, because we are afraid of who and what we will be if we let love, or joy, or anger, or longing touch us. But the cost is high - in realness, in our capacity to bringing our gifts to the world, in our fully taking up the possibilities of this one precious life. So how might we welcome and re-include that which has been split off? And how might we do so in a way that is life-giving, mature, and responsive to our cares, concerns and commitments?This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Welcoming 2026: A New Beginning02:45 Exploring the Soul: Care and Reclamation05:37 The Complexity of Anger: Embracing Our Emotions08:53 Curiosity and Connection: Tending to Our Souls11:46 The Journey to Wholeness: Integrating Rejected Parts14:43 Realness in Relationships: The Value of Authenticity17:53 The Power of Curiosity: Transforming Reactions into Growth20:55 Nurturing Wholeness: The Role of Care in Soul Work23:39 The Gift of Realness: Embracing Our True SelvesThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:Undividing OurselvesWe all tend to divide experience into two parts, usually the good and the bad. But there may be all kinds of suspicious things going on in this splitting. We may simply have never considered the value in certain things we reject. Or by branding certain experiences as negative, we may be protecting ourselves from some unknown fears. We are all filled with biases and ideas that have snuck into us without our knowing it. Much soul can be lost in such splitting, so that care of the soul can go a long way simply by recovering some of this material that has been cut off.From ‘Care of the Soul’ by Thomas MorePhoto by Mario Gogh on Unsplash---Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, OnlineOur two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coachingTurning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

Life presents itself to us in all its strangeness and beauty, but given the kind of beings we humans are, we might find ourselves tuning out or looking away. And that is so easy to do. But what if we started to see life as a question that is being asked of us, a call to pay attention and to receive the world, and to respond in the light of that? What aliveness might come? What possibilities for actually living our lives? And what generosity might we find towards this one life we are given? This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to the Conversation 01:31 Connecting this conversation to Integral Development Coaching 05:32 Exploring Mary Oliver's 'The Swan' 08:07 Awakening to Life's Beauty 12:26 The Interplay of Beauty and Heart 16:28 The Call to Receive Life 22:13 Understanding Affordance in Life 29:50 Shifting Perspectives: What Life Asks of Us This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: The Swan Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air – An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies, Biting the air with its black beak? Did you hear it, fluting and whistling A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall Knifing down the black ledges? And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds – A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river? And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life? Mary Oliver  Photo by Timothy Abraham on Unsplash --- Join Us Live in 2026 Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'. www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026 Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live ---- About Turning Towards Life Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

We carry other people inside us, when we're with them and when we are apart from them. After all, where does my experience of you live, apart from inside me? And your experience of me, apart from inside you? In this conversation we explore what it is to hold others in us in this way, and how our imaginative capacities might allow us to receive the sacredness of others while they are alive alongside us - with all the gifts and compassion that can bring - and when they are no longer alive. A conversation about loving fiercely, receiving one another, and grieving well so that we can live well. This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: Love Letter from the After Life My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets … Andrea Gibson Dec 21 2023 You can read and hear the full poem at Andrea Gibson’s Website https://substack.com/@andreagibson/p-139965380 Photo by Naoki Suzuki on Unsplash Photo by Naoki Suzuki on Unsplash --- Join Us Live in 2026 Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'. www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026 Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live ---- About Turning Towards Life Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

We’re so good, we humans, at telling stories about ourselves, other people, our lives. Sometimes our stories bring us close in to the ground of what is - they remind us of our humanity, our dignity, our care, our vulnerability, and the brief span of our existence alongside one another on this planet. Other times our stories serve to take us away, to numb us, or make ourselves feel safe - perhaps at the expense of others, or to judge ourselves and others harshly for our shared human complexity and fallibility. So what would it be to have practices of speaking, looking, naming, writing that bring us back close to the ground of what is most unarguably true, and then pay attention to the stories we build on top of that so we have a greater chance to spread our wings and be the ones we long to be? Stories that recognise the sacredness of being human? Stories recognise how often we’ll fail, and what we can yet create, and call on us to include both? We begin this week with a luminous piece by our friend Joy Reichart, whose work you can find at soulwriting.orgThis week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.Here's our source for this week:What I know to be trueWhat I know to be true is that I needed to zoom this google doc to 125% to comfortably see the words I’m typing. I need to hold packages and bottles far from my face, under lamps and near windows, to read the instructions. What I know to be true is that I didn’t take a certain way home last night, driving in the dark, because I could not say for sure where exactly to enter the intersection. What I know to be true is that there is a light gray streak in my hair, and I love it. And that I bought two pairs of reading glasses at the dollar store but never use them—not out of vanity, but simply because it still works to hold the thing under the light, or far away from my face, or to zoom in on the text (if zooming is an option).What I know to be true is that no matter how enlightened we become we are still in human bodies, and now I get what the Buddhists talk about when they chant, over and over again, that we are going to get sick, and die, and lose everything. Add to that list mistakes: we are going to make them. Even after learning the lessons. We’re going to, as a dear friend puts it, “step in it,” again and again. We’re going to watch ourselves with disbelief. How on earth did it happen again? Especially given how much I know, given how much it hurts? Add to that list disharmony, unfinished business. Add to that list hatred and greed and all those very human tendencies that none of us—no matter who we are—are above. Add to that list fear: the root of everything we don’t like about ourselves, of all that goes wrong.I am human, I will fear. I may not be consumed by it every day. In fact in most moments I actually may get bigger than it; may attach myself to the love, to the joy, that I know is the actual truth. Still, it will sneak out from behind corners in the evening hours. It will stalk me when I am dehydrated, or overcommitted. It will brush me with its little fingers of worry, pelt me with tiny flashes of terror. It’ll make me want to solve things using my little human mind: the one that thinks it can singlehandedly battle fear, instead of reaching for a truer, realer source.What I know to be true is that I will not escape any of this. Five decades on this earth in this meat suit, this bone ship, have made that abundantly clear. What I also know, though, is that there is endless room for my soul to spread out here, and get bigger, and understand more, and giggle when I do the human things, and greet it all with equanimity, and accept the mission I assigned myself in the time before memory, in the time of clear sight, way back before my vision started to blur. Nov 17, 2025Written by Joy Reichartwww.soulwriting.orgPhoto by Naoki Suzuki on Unsplash---Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, OnlineOur two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coachingTurning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

Earlier this week we ran a workshop for our Thirdspace coaching graduates on ‘supervision’ - the practice of supporting one another in being of service to others. Our source this week comes from one of the participants in that day, and asks what it is to ‘become a place’… in which we stand stable without dissolving, in which we hold a field of possibility and relationship without being claimed by it, in which we can be both ‘flame’ and ‘vessel’. We know what good ‘places’ can be in human life. At their best and most resonant they are affordances for us to find our courage, love, presence, realness, generosity. When a place is made with care and attention it can awaken in us awe, wonder, a sense of home, belonging. They can turn us towards one another in genuine reciprocity. And so, we ask in this conversation, what is it to cultivate our capacity to ‘be a place’? And what might that make possible? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how 'inclusivity' starts with us and between us, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: I bring my small universe with me, the part that simmers, the part that stews, the part that grows roots in uncertainty, and still feels everything. And yet, I remain my own. Autonomous. Upright. Or lying down Always a quiet spine of presence in the storm-light of relation This is the work: to stand stable without hardening to share without dissolving to hold the field without being claimed by it to become a place I remember myself as both flame and vessel. Ella Dessington Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash --- Join Us Live in 2026 Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'. www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026 Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live ---- About Turning Towards Life Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

We are glad to bring you a repeat of our most popular ever episode "Always Be Vulnerable to All That You Are) from October 2021. We were unexpectedly interrupted for this week's live recording but will be back next week. When we learn to include more and more of ourselves, we also become more able to include more and more of one another. Being able to do this - to welcome that in us that's fearful, ashamed or lonely, as well as what's joyful, grateful and love-filled - is greatly helped by finding the bigger-something that we are... the something of us that's wide and deep, curious and compassionate and which is, essentially, welcome. And that's something we can also help one another with. This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how 'inclusivity' starts with us and between us, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: VULNERABLE Always be vulnerable To your pain, your fear, your loneliness, To your pleasure too, and your joy, To all that travels through you. Don’t close the doors To these pilgrims from a far-off land, But welcome them all --- One a wild, restless spirit Secretly longing to be tamed,  Another a lover on a long, sweet night, Who only wants to melt in your embrace. For this is how you grow --- By including everything. Always, always be vulnerable  To all that you are. From “Poems of Love and Awakening” by John Welwood Photo by Erika Fletcher on Unsplash --- Join Us Live in 2026 Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'. www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026 Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live ---- About Turning Towards Life Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

On the astonishing power of metaphors to reframe our sense of who we are, what’s possible, and how we might hear and speak with one another… and on the ocean’s vastness and depth as a invitation for us to contain multitudes, especially when in the midst of our most challenging conversations. This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Context Setting 03:05 Exploring the Poem: 'Until I Thought of Myself as the Sea' 05:58 The Ocean Metaphor: Embracing Complexity 09:05 The Power of Metaphor in Self-Understanding 11:47 Widening Perspectives: The Ocean as a Shared Experience 14:52 Navigating Difficult Conversations with Oceanic Awareness 17:50 Truth and Multiplicity: The Ocean of Perspectives 20:59 Systems Thinking: The Ocean of Relationships 24:02 Conclusion and Reflection Here’s our source for this week: Until I thought of myself as the sea I used to separate good days from bad until  I thought of myself as an ocean. I used to  split times I felt strong from when I felt weak  until I imagined myself as the sea. Calm and  rocky, wild and soft, still and powerful and vast  and more than any one thing. In the ocean it's  hard to divorce one mood from another, one wave  from the next. Now, on my worst days, I think  of how good life is too, how I still can greet joy  while swimming through grief. How fragile  strength feels. How I'm not any one thing in any  one moment on any one day. I'm all of it and  all of it is me. Hannah Rosenberg @hannahrowrites Photo by Sean Oulashin on Unsplash --- Join Us Live in 2026 Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'. www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026 Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live ---- About Turning Towards Life Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife