CC Ep #6
[00:00:44] Intro & Announcements
Samantha Young: Hello friends, we are back. I missed you. I missed this. If you're tuning in and thinking, "Wow, it's been a minute since the last episode," you are absolutely right. Life decided to throw [00:01:00] a few curve balls my way, some expected and some not so much. The usual stuff-- family illnesses, had to replace my entire computer setup, and I'm also having my own foray back into the world of the employed. Or at least, I'm trying to. My husband and I will be switching roles, and hopefully he will be able to be the one to stay at home and be a full time dad. But! All of that meant that I just had to hit pause for a little while, I lost my shit and then found it all again.
So now we're here, because pause doesn't mean stop. We're back in the swing of things. And let me say this: if there is one thing that this past stretch of time has reaffirmed for me, it's that unfortunately, true resilience is not always about [00:02:00] charging forward at full speed no matter what. And this is hard for me, but sometimes resilience really is saying, "You know what? I need a break." Adjust, regroup, come back when you're ready. Let the work continue in its own time.
That's really hard for me. And if you've been feeling like that in your own life, you're not alone. There's a lot going on right now that is wanting to spur us into action, and also at the same time, scare us into a freeze, into inaction, right? And we'll get into the astrology of all of that in just a minute, but I wanted to talk about today's episode and this conversation that I cannot wait for you to hear.
My guest today is somebody who, whether they know it or not, has been a big source of inspiration in how I think about shadow work, how I think about personal evolution, and just navigating growth in life and in [00:03:00] business. We're gonna talk about the real process of transformation. Not the polished, five step, fuckin Instagram infographic kind of change, but really messy, disorienting, deeply embarrassing, necessary work, which is shadow work. Real transformation does not always look cute. And I think shadow work perfectly encapsulates that idea.
In this episode, my guest, Nikki Vergakes and I are gonna get into what it looks like to actually do shadow work, what it means to embrace that process; to listen when your work tells you what it wants to be-- which can be harder than it sounds. When you think your work is one thing and then your work tells you, "Hey, I'm actually this. This is where your strengths are. This is where your power is," hoo! Scary. But, we're also going to be talking about building a life, building a business that actually aligns with [00:04:00] where you're going and not just where you have been.
If you don't know Nikki, she's also known as the Queer Shadow Work Witch, and she specializes in the art of cosmic self-discovery. The way that she does this is showcasing her skills through guided hypnosis, astrology readings, she has her own podcast called The Liminal Lounge. We've been colleagues for a few years at this point, like going on three years, I want to say, and Nikki has been someone I've been really honored to grow alongside, and I am just really thrilled to share this exchange with you.
Before we get into all of that, I do have something very exciting to share with you. I am pissing myself with excitement to share this with you. I will be speaking at the upcoming Business Magick summit 2025, and this summit is all about bringing together intuitive entrepreneurs, witches, healers, creatives, [00:05:00] just people who want to build businesses that are not only profitable, but also aligned with your values, ethical, and even fun. If you've ever felt like traditional business advice doesn't fit you, this is going to be your space.
Samantha Young: My session, my talk is going to be all about shame alchemy, which is a concept I've talked about for a couple of years now, but I've been working with more and more lately, personally and professionally. I've got a lot to share with you coming up about shame alchemy, specifically how it applies to business ownership and anti-capitalism, but I am going to talk about how shame is used by capitalism as a tool to keep us stuck, how it shows up in business and money, and also, most importantly, how to transmute it into something useful, because shame is heavy, but it's also fuel if you know how to work with it.
So the Business Magick summit will run March 17th through the 19th, and the best part is that it is [00:06:00] free and fully virtual. You can join from wherever you are. If you want to sign up, I will have all the details, everything you need to know, in the show notes. I would love to see you there.
And speaking of slowing down, this brings me to our Astro Mission Log for this episode, because as I've been sitting here with all of this, it's just really extremely clear that Mars retrograde in Cancer is embodying all this energy right now. Mars is so fucking slow, like stationing retrograde in Cancer right now. This is our action planet! This is our guy, our push forward energy, and Mars has been moving backwards in Cancer, where Mars does not do well. It's a really emotionally attuned, connective, home and hearth-centered sign.
So Mars retrograde, especially in Cancer, is not about applying more force. I cannot be more clear about this. It's not about applying more force. Even though we're getting towards [00:07:00] the end of this retrograde, Mars is about to station direct, there's still a long road ahead. this is still about recalibrating. It's about recognizing when your usual methods of pushing through are not cutting it. And maybe they're not supposed to. let's get into that.
[00:07:23] Astro Mission Log
Samantha Young: Mars stationing direct in Cancer after being retrograde for-fucking-ever. Let us rejoice. But also, let us clench our buttholes just a little bit tighter because, like I said, we're not out of the woods yet. And this final wrap up, this season finale, if you will, of Mars retrograde in Cancer, as Mars stations direct and begins to move forward in Cancer, does come with some disclaimers.
There are, as I'm looking at the chart now, [00:08:00] several planets moving through Pisces. We have the Sun, Mercury, and of course Saturn, and our guy Neptune, all hanging out in Pisces, and the North Node as well. But when Mercury is in Pisces, things get slippery. And a trine between Mercury in Pisces and Mars in Cancer-- a very, slow, very stationary Mars in Cancer-- to me, seems like a really good opportunity for a lot of passive aggressive bullshit in interpersonal communication. And the antidote to that is to wield-- as much as you can-- to wield Mars' knife to cut through the bullshit. I feel like maybe this will ease up a bit as we get further into the month of February.
The reason that it's important to cut through the bullshit now, early [00:09:00] on, is because next month, in March, when we get all these retrogrades that start happening in Aries, that passive aggression will just turn into regular aggression, and Venus is going to dip back into Pisces to let's say, check our work a little bit, especially in the realm of our relationships and how we've been connecting to people in this time. She's gonna come back to Pisces and say, "How did you guys treat each other while I was gone? How did you solve conflicts? How did you connect with each other?" Venus is exalted in Pisces. She's okay, let's do some fucking connecting.
And if we haven't been tending to the connections in our lives, and cutting through the bullshit, and nipping passive aggression in the bud before it has a chance to bloom, then you're gonna have a bad time when it comes to the retrogrades next month. So I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, because I will talk more about those in the next [00:10:00] episode as this gets closer, but February is a big period of just hunkering down in your relationships, getting on the same page as much as possible and as much as you can muster, having open and honest communication in order to avoid blow ups.
And of course, this is going to be easier said than done, because Mercury will also conjoin Saturn at some point. Mercury's already in Pisces, making it difficult to get your words across, to formulate your thoughts into verbal sentences, right? So Mercury's conjunction with Saturn might result in some more limitations around what you're able to express in conflict.
And we gotta, we really gotta work on that. We really gotta be. Proactive about that kind of stuff. that's my advice for you. That's our Astro [00:11:00] Mission Log for this episode. And now, without any further ado, let's talk to Nikki about her journey and how she got to where she is.
[00:11:10] Intro to Nikki
Nikki Vergakes: My journey... wow, I could truly do an hour on this, but--
Samantha Young: Right. Like, how do you go from one to the other? Because I have been following you for probably about three years now, and so we've both witnessed each other evolve and transform to where we are now. But I'm just so fascinated on how you ended up on shadow work as the main pillar, cause I know it was always something you talked about, but at one point I was like, "Oh damn, she is _really _talking about this now."
Nikki Vergakes: It's the first thing that I was like, this feels encompassing enough. If I were to like really have that be the main kind of goalpost for my branding, I wouldn't feel like there's something that's not represented. Like it's the first umbrella that I was satisfied with.
Samantha Young: Yeah. That makes sense. It's [00:12:00] like at the root of everything that you were doing or are doing.
Nikki Vergakes: Yeah, people started asking me about it. It was like, "So you do shadow work?" I was like, I guess I do.
Samantha Young: Love that. When the work tells you that it's your work, right?
Nikki Vergakes: Yup.
Samantha Young: Like people would just come up to you and they're like, "Hey, you do this," and you're like shit. Yes. I-- yes, I do.
Nikki Vergakes: Yeah, when it tells you, you listen.
Samantha Young: Yeah. But I love that too, because you do listen and you're not afraid to pivot and change and evolve. That's just a trait that I really admire in people, because to me, it's like a sign of a healthy relationship with the ego: "I'm going to do something different and I don't even have to put on a whole big show or explain why to everyone or to like, I don't have to over explain to myself or super defend this thing. Yeah. Okay. Just doing something else now." I really admire that.
Nikki Vergakes: The ego is what, when I was looking at these questions and especially the the listener, that was because that does come back [00:13:00] to the ego and not letting go of it, but having a good relationship. That came back a lot.
Samantha Young: I guess that is-- when I think about shadow work, I think about the ego, and I've always been really against the phrase "kill your ego" or get rid of it, because you can't, first of all. It's just not possible to get rid of it, and also it's not something that needs to be gotten rid of.
You can speak to this more, but I feel like shadow work, in a lot of senses, just is a lot of that getting in touch with the parts of the ego that people say we should kill or get rid of, but we can't, so you just turn and face them. Is that kind of what shadow work is?
Nikki Vergakes: Yeah, so not only do you not want to, or can you not get rid of the ego, but you don't fully want to. So yeah, as for starting shadow work, facing that, that is my experience of it. And how I describe it is not even necessarily just the ego, but whatever we [00:14:00] have the tendency or desire to hide from, to repress in ourselves, taking that opposite action. Doing what you feel up to and safe to.
And if people are coming to my work and coming to me, then that feels like something they want to do. Yeah, what if you actually looked at it? So let's say that for the ego, let's say that there's a part of ourselves that makes us... trying to think of a good example for a situation that makes us create distance between us and another person, of always keeping that at an arm's length.
Just that one part has so much possibility. There's motivations and desires and needs and wants of that part. There's reasons why we do that. I haven't taken the IFS [00:15:00] training, but the person who trained me in hypnosis was using that framework, and so I definitely am behind the idea, and as someone who is also literally tomorrow starting parts work therapy. So excited. I wanted to start it because when somebody was talking about their experience with it, I was like, oh, that's-- in a different way-- what I do with my clients: each of these parts has, is their own conscious...
Samantha Young: Yeah, like their own entity, basically.
Nikki Vergakes: An entity.
So then you can look at that part like, okay, instead of just sending it away or running away from it, let's explore it. Have a conversation with it. Let's poke it. Let's sit it up and see what's inside. I have this friend and we always talk about like the "colorful in-betweens," which connects to the liminal branding that is in my work. Whenever I'm saying the word "liminal," I'm talking about these like, colorful as opposed to [00:16:00] gray areas.
Samantha Young: Yeah.
Nikki Vergakes: Gray, colorful areas. But if you do that, then you could see that there's something useful in that part. Yes, it wants to create that distance between you and that person. That's the part that we're looking at in this example. It just needs to be, like, redirected. It wants to create that distance for whatever reason. It has its reasons.
Samantha Young: 100%.
Now this makes perfect sense, because I'm not currently doing it, but I did IFS therapy for about seven or eight months last year. It was great. And when you were talking about this, I was like, "I know exactly what she means," because for a personal example, I think this is what you're talking about.
I have this part that we located, this part for me is about 17 years old. So like my 17 year old self, and the thing that she leans into, creating distance between herself and others, is always [00:17:00] believing that she's right, no matter what. Because growing up, the experience was her reality was always questioned or denied or belittled, right? So over time, what she developed as a defense mechanism was like, "Fuck you, I'm always right. Don't question me. Don't push against anything I say, especially when it comes to my feelings."
And for a long time, that was when I was not really aware of that going on. It was something that created distance in my life. And before I could really identify where it came from and the way that I redirected her and the job that I've given her-- because we also identified that my 17 year old self really likes praise. She thrives on praise. I utilize that specific part to help me when I'm writing.
Because when I doubt an idea that I have, or I'm starting to question myself, she comes in and she helps me find the reasons why I'm right, basically. She's "no, actually," and so it helps me find [00:18:00] supporting evidence for the things that I say. And then she also gets the benefit of praise, right? Because I go to post what I write, and the likes and the comments, that's really great for her. She _loves _that stuff.
I totally get what you mean. And it's really It's a really simple example and the emotions of a 17 year old are sometimes in a way a bit more shallow. We work with them.
It's something that, yeah, for a while caused me shame and I wanted to turn away from, but now I'm like, no, she's great. She just has a job. When I'm having like an adult conversation with my husband or a disagreement, that's not when she gets to come out.
Nikki Vergakes: Yeah. Yeah. It's the redirection. This part that always wants to be right, it would be so not productive. And it also it gives us more shame. What, in my opinion, is an unproductive way to go about this kind of work, is when you identify these parts of yourself or if you're doing this work, and you're calling it a part of yourself, but if you're [00:19:00] like, noticing a habit and a behavior, if you're not doing it in the context of this work and you can't get a handle on it, it feels like it's happening _to _you.
But if you notice this habit, this behavior, and then you're able to slow down and really look at it, then it's not "oh god, I always have to be right, something just happens, and I just can't help it, and I have to get rid of the self," then you start to shame yourself and beat yourself up over it. If you're not looking at it and working with it in a way where there's an opportunity to turn it and redirect it-- give it another job-- if you're just looking at, "I am wrong for having this subconscious behavior. I am wrong," then basically you're just going to beat yourself up over it and shame is going to just continue to pile up. And shame is also a huge underscore of all [00:20:00] of this. I could call it "shame work," as well.
Samantha Young: Right.
Nikki Vergakes: This is where, also, it intersects with the world and the culture that we're in and capitalism, all of that. We really feel that if we admit a wrong, admit something quote unquote "wrong," or something that we've thought or done, and it feels so tied to our social capital, which is and feels so tied to our actual ability to survive. Then it literally feels like we will not be able to survive and sustain ourselves if we admit the tiniest wrong.
Samantha Young: Oh yeah. No, a hundred percent. I think a lot about this, especially in terms of like, leftist spaces on the internet, particularly those really insular spaces on the internet and how much performing goodness goes around, because it's all based out of this fear, cause if you've [00:21:00] witnessed the mob mentality of just a normal person, not a celebrity, somebody getting canceled, if you think it was a rightful cancellation or not, right? If you've witnessed that happen to a _not _rich and famous person, it will scare you because you realize that could happen to you, whether or not you actually did something quote unquote "wrong".
And yeah, what that turns into is like exactly what you said. That outcropping is like, I can't even admit when I have been wrong because I'm afraid of the backlash. And so then there's a lot of spaces that want to be about restorative justice and these types of things, but if we can't address our own shame, and the shame that we put on others, that's very basic.
I've gone through the same thing, cause early on in this work, I got a reading from another astrologer and they were like, "I feel you... not intentionally, but you bait and switch people with your work, where you tell them it's going to be about money and astrology and then it's really about shame." [00:22:00] And I was like, oh, you're right, but nobody's ever just laid it out to me like that.
That is what is happening here because yeah, capitalism, shame, it's a tool. And it all comes down to survival, and whether or not we logically have acknowledged that, your body will know too. The body can sense that there's a lack of safety in being seen being wrong, or just being seen trying, even, there's just so-- oh my god, so much shame going on everywhere, all the time.
Nikki Vergakes: Yeah, everything that you said. So first, it's healing for me to-- I actually haven't logged on to Threads. I'm just taking a big old break from the Internet, really trying for a couple of days. But I love when I see you respond to someone, "Hey, you actually, don't need to like, be so like black and white about this."
Because my message is something that's really important to me personally, and then, I work with a lot of people that have, in their [00:23:00] own way, these things, a part that just is, "Am I a good person? Am I doing the right thing?"
Samantha Young: Yeah.
Nikki Vergakes: And being in other online spaces, just being an 11th house sun, I've witnessed a lot of of those normal people cancellations. Subconsciously, and then now I am aware of it consciously, and I think I even have talked about it publicly. I've really begun to work on that part of myself, but yes, that is a big subconscious... it's on my mind when interacting and being in spaces.
Now, in the last year, becoming aware of specific ways that it shows up. Wow. These subconscious beliefs that we're working with, when I'm talking to people that aren't versed in how subconscious work works, one of the things I say is, "It's going to be a thing that you really want to do, but you just can't bring yourself to do it. It feels like there's this invisible [00:24:00] wall up." And so it's a salve, truly, to see people actually, finally have these conversations, and yeah, that we don't need to be so black and white about everything. And also, by the way, that's a tenet of white supremacy and a tool.
Samantha Young: Right.
Nikki Vergakes: Reading the-- which I did in 2020, 2021, Tema Okun, the white supremacy outline, yeah. Oh my God. I was like, oh, so this is like, our culture. This is our culture.
Samantha Young: It's literally-- yeah.
Nikki Vergakes: And realizing that was a relief. Like wow, okay. So this is not like actually the rule book to follow. It feels so unnatural because it is.
Also, that's really interesting what you said of the astrologer being like, "I think you unintentionally bait switch people," because realizing that for me helped me. It took me a long time. I can go through [00:25:00] the journey in a more official way, but I started off, 2019, from a social media manager, and just kept peeling back the layers, ending up here as a shadow work witch, but going from manager to consultant and coach to business coach and then authentic business coach and life and business coach and then life coach. And then now here we are.
I had the PR degree and I had those skills, and that's really all I knew, all I thought I could do, so I thought I had to be in that world, but I never got clients that were coming to me for the reason that they would go to any other business coach in that space, 2019 to 2021 kind of time: they were stuck and unhappy in their business, so they thought, "Oh, I just need to figure this out and then I'll make more money," but they [00:26:00] always created a completely different business or ended up quitting and going into a career or discovering a whole different part of themselves. So I was really doing like identity and authenticity and shadow work. And then I had some guilt at the time, like, why aren't my results ever like, "this person made a million bajillion dollars?"
But I was able to eventually realize, these are very powerful transformations. I'm helping them discover their true self. And then once they did, I think that's when Shadow Work really came online. Once they discovered their true self, there would be some panic of Oh, so now I have to live in the world as this person. And there's a lot of internal and external shame and opinions about this. Yeah.
Samantha Young: I would imagine that it's also quite startling for [00:27:00] you. Like being on the practitioner end of that, for you to also think that you're for so long that you're doing one thing and then suddenly realize that you're actually doing something entirely different.
I went through that as well. Cause at first, I wanted the same thing: I wanted people who worked with me to get the results of, "I made my money, or my business, or this or whatever," because of my like, astrology genius. And I realized, I'm not an expert in teaching people how to make money. That's never something I set out to do, cause I'm not an expert in that, but also, most everybody could benefit from more money. That's a blanket solution to many problems. But most of the people who come came to me, I was like, "so you would actually just benefit from not beating yourself up so much about the way that you are existing within capitalism."
It's like you said in the beginning, nuance became so important to me because I would have people-- like I had somebody come to me who was like, "'I [00:28:00] just inherited a house from my grandmother and I'm disabled and unable to work, so I'm thinking about renting out the upstairs unit," being a landlord, essentially. And they were like, "I know that's so terrible of me," but I was like whoa. We've got to hang on a second. I was like, we've got to really back it up here and talk about where's that coming from one, like the shame.
Yeah, you've been online. You've seen people talking about landlords. I've even contributed to that, because I have my own resentment about corporate landlords. But at the end of the day, when we actually are talking person to person, and we're bringing nuance into the conversation and we're addressing shame, no, you're not a automatically a bad person if you're a landlord.
And if that means if you are unable to work and you've suddenly come upon a house you weren't expecting to come upon and you're going to live in part of it and rent out the other part to give yourself some money because you cannot work, why would that make you a bad person? But they were just so steeped in shame about it that they had absorbed and we had really had to sit and talk about [00:29:00] like, where's that shame coming from? Where are you hearing these things? Because if you think landlords are XYZ, they're exploitative, they're abusive, whatever, but you're not exploitative or abusive, there's disconnect. What's going on here? How did these ideas become linked? How did we get here?
And the thing that I also came around to a lot with people is like, shame is a tool, and it's a tool specifically of capitalism as well, because that keeps you in line. That lack of nuance keeps you from trying new things or being seen doing something that somebody might not agree with, it's become so black and white, and that's why I have to rail against it so hard, because it actually has legitimate and negative impacts on people's lives.
Nikki Vergakes: So, thinking of that example of the person, the landlord, there were moments with myself-- when I think about this generally, yeah; you observe the conversations online and stuff like that. [00:30:00] But when you're in a situation like this person, where you're considering what to do, and the reason to not do it is a voice, a presence from people who don't know who you are and aren't making decisions to appease people who aren't involved in the situation at all.
Samantha Young: Exactly.
Nikki Vergakes: Shame is inner policing. So people who are anti, who are abolitionists, framing it as: yep, so actually, our shame is a way that we've internalized this carceral culture that we live in. And then zooming out, the work that I do with clients, the reframes I want to give through my content of zooming in, zooming out-- and in training we called it chunking up and chunking down-- that's a zoom out moment, because you're really in that [00:31:00] moment where you're like, "Yeah, I want to be a landlord. What if one person online finds out that, and then they don't have all of the context of my life and then they're going to yell at me."
Zoom out and be like, okay, so what's actually happening? I need to, I want to, I have this opportunity and I'm living with these disabilities and I want to support myself and live a good life. And I know also that I have intentions and values of, how do you treat people? Do you treat people badly? No, you don't.
Also, having those realizations leads into doing stuff like parts work, shadow work, all of that, because you're acknowledging voices and perspectives that you're operating from, but that are not your own. So then it's also very, easy to transition to something like shadow work from there.
[00:31:57] Nuance As A Response To White Supremacy
Samantha Young: Yeah. I'll share this in the show notes too, [00:32:00] but I have a PDF of all of these characteristics that I put in the very beginning of my course, my Anti-Capitalist Astrology course, as part of the preliminary information.
So I was like, you need to understand: what we're going to be talking about, everything's basically going to come back to these things and illustrating the way that capitalism and white supremacy culture are besties, and why they work together.
Yeah either/or thinking is right up here at the top, and that's the thing that, I don't know. It just sets something off. Maybe it's like the Libra in me, but I'm just like, I can't do it. I can't. One I think about a lot is the right to comfort, and how much that shows up. I live like deep in the suburbs of-- it's an affluent neighborhood. I'm in an apartment complex, so we're not the richest people in this neighborhood clearly, but there's lots of lawns. There's a fucking golf course that cuts through the middle of everything. And I think about what it means to be in [00:33:00] these kind of insulated communities and the right to comfort shows up so strongly in like the suburban setting in this country.
Nikki Vergakes: And yeah, truly in the mindset like that. So like I grew up in not a Boston suburb, but just an hour from there, and still suburban Massachusetts and just like, white Irish Catholic-- like literally Catholic school-- and then having time away from that, and then now I'm living in that environment again and returning to it and just really seeing how many arguments against a lot of things, most commonly things like, taxes or just, funding social services in general, or student loans. "I work so hard and, I deserve this, but these other people [00:34:00] don't," or "because I paid a lot in student loans or because I paid my child to go to college or whatever, then these other people don't inherently deserve to not be hundreds of thousand dollars in debt," or whatever it is.
Samantha Young: I suffered, so they have to suffer. We all have to suffer.
Nikki Vergakes: And I have asked people in my life that I'm talking about these topics with, straight up, "So do you believe that people just inherently no matter what, just from existing, deserve stability and comfort and all of that? And I do get "no"s.
Samantha Young: Mmhmm. Which is wild to me.
Nikki Vergakes: Yeah.
Samantha Young: That's so disturbing to me sometimes because I'm like, okay, I try to find something that I could fundamentally agree upon with someone like this. I'm talking about in person conversations. I always try to find a place where we can start from a fundamental agreement. If we can't meet there, it's so [00:35:00] hard. What are we supposed to do with that? That's really where I come up against a wall a lot of the time.
[00:35:06] The Influence of The Internet
Samantha Young: And the internet is like a cesspool. It's funny cause we're both Libra risings and you have an 11th house sun. I have an 11th house moon, and we're both very online people. I've been online my whole life, pretty much, and I've known this for a long time and I've experienced it myself in different ways, but when you spend too much time online-- which I've definitely done in my life-- when you spend too much time there, too much of your day-to-day time there, you start to think that the way people are online is just the way that people are.
And that's really tough, and that's why it's important to spend time not on the internet. As much as I even love it so much, I have to give myself boundaries. And I think that's also a lot of where the shame comes from, too. You start to think that's how everybody thinks, and you have to realize that the internet is full of the loudest and angriest people. So that's [00:36:00] where they're going to go. And Threads is just Twitter with Facebook people on it, so you're going to get the worst.
Yeah, I've seen in my comments people being like, "If you can't work 40 hours a week, you don't deserve a house to live in," and I'm like, but you say that from a faceless account. Like, you're probably typing that on your break at your job that you hate. If anything, I just feel bad, but you have to remember that's not how people are. That's how the loudest and angriest amongst us are thinking,
Nikki Vergakes: Yes, because I've actually had that thought over the last year. I'm not in a relationship right now and my whole-- besides now, I live with my parents, and that's great-- but the most important relationships in my life are my friends, and I have a couple of different friend groups and stuff, and it's also a wide variety.
So I have like my queer friends, my chronically online friends, and a lot of time that overlaps. And then also, I have friends who are not a lot online, some friends who are still going to some [00:37:00] sort of religion-- or going to Catholic Church, for example-- some friends who are doing all of that and also are like married and whatever and...
Samantha Young: They're straight up too busy.
Nikki Vergakes: So then yeah, trying to have conversations with those people and then they're like, "What's that? Didn't hear about that," if I talk about something I saw online. And I think I did internalize it, and then the shadow work opportunity of feeling shame for, "Am I naive? Am I like, whatever, for the biggest thing on my mind being this discourse, or this trend, or whatever that I saw online?"
Then that turns into "No, this is actually an interesting realization, and it's helpful." Then once I was able to like, approach from a shadow worker perspective, I was like, "No, this is actually an opportunity to cut myself some slack. My real, day-to-day, in-person life does not have to have as much of the urgency of everything that I see [00:38:00] online." That's good to have all of these perspectives.
Samantha Young: It's good to have a variety of perspectives. I used to have this neighbor and he's moved out now, and it was always so refreshing to talk to him because we would cross paths. He lived across the hallway from me, but we would cross paths at the smoke spot. So he would stand there, smoke his cigarettes, and I would stand there and smoke my weed, and we would talk.
And he was just like the opposite of everything I am. He was just like this pro-second amendment-- they call themselves Oregunians, like these people in Oregon who are really into their gun rights. He drove this big old stupid truck and he had this huge "we the people" sticker on the back of it, very obviously voted for Trump twice, and so many things that I-- based on whatever my ideology or my alignment is-- I'm supposed to hate.
I'm supposed to hate all these things, but he was just the most normal person. Like obviously we had views that we disagreed on, [00:39:00] but he was like, so normal, and sometimes he would bring home these like weird little vending machine toys from his job and be like, "I got this for your son."
And this isn't a "white man discovers empathy" thing. That's not what I'm going through, but it was just always like a refreshing reminder that like pretty much anytime I wanted, I could put my phone down, I could go outside in the fresh air and smoke some weed and talk to Tom. And it would just ground me in like the nuance of humans.
And there were times when he one time he was drunk. He was so drunk, he was out there having a drunk cigarette. God bless him. And he started opening up to me about how he never had kids of his own because he was beaten as a child and I was like, see? Inside every single person is just a sad little drunk child. And I don't know, I think about that a lot. He did other things that irritated me and pissed me off, just as a neighbor. But like in general, Tom, you keep me young.
Nikki Vergakes: Yeah, like some of these friends that I just talked about, there are definitely some things that, yeah, we [00:40:00] wouldn't agree on and vote the same and whatever. And also we have real conversations about it and I'm fully myself with them. They know everything about me and they don't reject me. They don't think I don't deserve rights, and it's very grounding.
Because in the height of the ways I've internalized this from living online so much, we could even, stop ourselves from having these relationships and talking to these people because what if someone finds out that I humored-- that means I am whatever.
Samantha Young: And that's literally a thing that people say, too, cause I've said "Hey, maybe you should get to know your neighbors. Like, even if they did vote for Trump, you should maybe just get to know them as people," and people are like, "You're just appeasing the system. You're just being nice to your oppressors," and I'm like, my neighbor is not my oppressor. He works 40 hours a week. Like, that's not my oppressor.
Nikki Vergakes: We all have a common enemy, which is our actual [00:41:00] oppressors, and yeah, a lot of these people's politics is based on maybe thinking it's either /or. It's not either/or, but it's often "Yep, I can rise up to that someday," or, "I'm okay with some things happening if I get to whatever, if I get this benefit," but we all, at the end of the day, have the same common enemy and it's a lot to have these conversations with people who are at that level of class consciousness.
There's usually some subject we can all agree on and very often healthcare. So yeah, for example, my dad's 67 and voted for Trump twice, so therefore of that age, he's, on some of these public health plans and stuff, and has had a lot of trouble getting care at times. And he agrees with me, and that's something that we can always come back [00:42:00] to because what you said of, everyone inside is an abused child or whatever.
[00:42:06] Exposing The Wounded Inner Child
Nikki Vergakes: So one thing that really brought me to, in my business, the place of shadow work is seeing that part of myself, and admitting when it affects my day-to-day life from 2021 up until now-- and now I'm seeing many other times before-- but it was just unavoidable: things that happened in my life, a lot of financial stuff, a lot of debt stuff, and just being in places financially, therefore being in places in my life, that I quote unquote "never thought I would be in," and that I thought I would lose every social standing or self-confidence or relationship or lose [00:43:00] everything if I was there, and then those things happened to me, and when I was able to do shadow work and able to be honest about it, just met with love and support. And now, the only time I haven't received support is if I'm the one blocking it, if I'm not being honest or whatever.
Prior to that, it was like my ED healing and body image journey, and then it was my business, the vehicles for me to actually break down my own walls. But prior to that I didn't know that I was operating in a way of like, keeping up facades in a way, which it also takes shadow work to admit that.
So now I know what has happened to me in the past and my youth and currently, and since really admitting that, it does sometimes feel like I'm walking around as [00:44:00] that inner, hurt child. It is an interesting experience to walk around as that version of yourself, but also perceive the world as that, because then I can see how everyone else is as well. I can see that in other people.
Samantha Young: Yeah, absolutely. It's like that "it gets worse before it gets better" kind of thing. Not that it's getting worse to walk around like that, it's just you're suddenly so much more painfully aware of everything. And I think that's obviously probably a lot of-- besides just the fact that shadow work is, by nature, scary to people; like it's obviously the things we don't want to confront and you're going to confront them. So that's scary in and of itself. But I think the other part, too, is like, when you do open up that acknowledgement, it usually opens up a lot of other things, usually the floodgates for all kinds of emotional processing. [00:45:00] And yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
[00:45:03] Anti-Capitalism As Shadow Work?
Samantha Young: I guess what I'm curious about for you personally, do you feel like somebody could do true, effective shadow work, especially as a business owner, without also addressing capitalism? Do you think it's like a natural evolution for that to just lead somebody towards being anti-capitalist? Is that something you've witnessed?
Nikki Vergakes: That is a really interesting question. That is definitely something that I've witnessed, and obviously, it's led me here, so I don't think I could do that, be on that journey without getting to an anti-capitalist place because I really see it as layers.
So the more layers that you uncover and poke, what a subconscious session will look like with me, or doing this work in myself, is just continually asking [00:46:00] why? Why? Why? Like a toddler.
Then if you just keep asking enough of the whys, I think that if you're doing it personally, you can get to a certain point, like, why do I push people away? Because I'm afraid of X, Y, Z. Why are you afraid of X, Y, Z? Maybe then you connect it back to a certain event in your life. And for me that's great.
That is effective, and if you want to do this in a whole other level, then it's also so much more effective to not only get to the bottom of that, the end of that thread, not just with yourself, but then you yourself as a part of the whole ecosystem and world and society that we live in.
A lot of these [00:47:00] fears and feelings that we have, it's our own personal feelings and events that have happened to us, but we have these beliefs and judgements in the context of the society that we live in.
Samantha Young: We do exist in the context, we do.
Nikki Vergakes: She really ate with that.
We gotta consider the context, because that is truly a core of this work.
Samantha Young: So is.
Nikki Vergakes: I'm never gonna escape that phrase.
Samantha Young: No, you're not. But it's so true.
I guess I feel like what you're saying is, once you get to a certain point in that line of questioning, it goes past the individual, because I feel like it's that thing: you can't heal in isolation. You can't get to the end of the line of questioning and the shadow work without eventually considering the context in which you exist and all that came before [00:48:00] you. because it does matter. And also just like, where you are now, and capitalism is such a huge part of everybody's context.
Nikki Vergakes: So actually, this is an example that I use often. When I really started having experiences where I was walking around the earth as just this exposed-- wow, I would be with friends or we would be getting ready to go somewhere or something like that, and they'd be like, "Should I wear this shirt or this shirt? And should I wear these shoes? Obviously I can't wear these shoes because..." and then that's just whatever x, y, z, social and aesthetic judgment or belief that is had.
But I started to be like, I actually don't know what's implied here. Like, why can't you? But if we didn't live in the society that we do, we wouldn't be having that question. It just would be a shoe.
So these beliefs and thoughts that we have are formed because of these social [00:49:00] beliefs that we all are in the society we live in.
Samantha Young: Yeah, it's like for those of us who have, femme appearing bodies and we like to dress slutty, it's hard because we live in a patriarchal society in particular. So when we step outside, just wanting to dress slutty for ourselves, it's perceived as being slutty for the patriarchy or for the male gaze, and then all these assumptions follow. And you're like, I just wanted some fresh air on my butt cheeks. I got to deal with the consequences of the society I live in. If it was a different type, if it wasn't so patriarchal, it maybe wouldn't be such a big deal to have my ass out in public.
But, here we are.
Nikki Vergakes: Here we are.
Samantha Young: This is just a stupid example, but this is the first thing that came to my mind, because I'm like yeah, I would totally dress differently if I lived in a different society, or just maybe a society where fashion choices weren't even something that we correlated to a person, right? We're maybe a society that has a much more [00:50:00] utilitarian approach to clothing. Those wouldn't even be a thought. Like you said, it would just be a shoe. It would just be the shoe for the occasion. It would be like what kind of shoe do you need? Are you going hiking? Are you going dancing? That would be my view on a more utilitarian way.
I think the difference between context and individual-- because you can treat your clothing choices as such. You can say, I'm going to be very utilitarian, and to me, it's just going to be a shoe, but as soon as you step outside, you're now in a society. Unfortunately.
Nikki Vergakes: Yeah, and when I was saying that people came to me thinking they were going to learn how to like, do better strategy and sales and stuff, and they thought that they had to do that specific business or that specific strategy that they were doing because of all of these unspoken contexts-- maybe it was that they needed to or wanted to support their family or whatever, and they have been told that [00:51:00] whatever business they were doing was more profitable. They looked around and they had a more creative or spiritual interest, but in their world, they didn't have any examples or it was talked down on. They didn't have any examples of success of what they actually wanted to do.
There was like an overlap of me getting trained in hypnotherapy and astrology and doing business, a little bit of an overlap there. Then when I started to do that subconscious work and now this happens in the context of the work I do now, but yeah, it actually was to reprogram, retrain their subconscious to not put as much value or to not [00:52:00] see their current business and what they were taught that is the only kind of business that's going to work, not to see that as the only thing that's going to be profitable, to be able to support themselves, and then to see what they _actually _want to do as possible.
And I've had to do that when I switched into shadow work, and it took a long time for me to let go of any sort of like, social media and business spin to "I help people." And then I had to re-show myself that this work is really important, the context of what is believed to be an acceptable business and not, and so many things to my beliefs.
[00:52:47] The Battle for Authenticity
Samantha Young: Yeah, absolutely. I was thinking when you were talking about this idea that to embrace the authenticity, the people you're working with and the business owners thinking that business has to be done a certain way, or that it even has to [00:53:00] be a certain type of business. Cause I've talked before-- maybe on this podcast, or maybe I've written about it somewhere-- but something about being anti-capitalist is really just about failing at capitalism expectations.
If you think of capitalism as a set of expectations about your behavior, about how your life should progress and unfold, whatever it is, right? If you think of it like that, then, you would have to then fail the expectations of capitalism, which is what is hard for people who aren't used to failing expectations placed upon them. It's hard for people like that, but it's also just hard in general, because, like you said, there's a social aspect to it. There's family and friends. There are literal voices in your life, maybe that can say, "It needs to be done this way," or "This one, this business is just so much more profitable, therefore you have to do that one, right? Because it's the one that makes you more money. And so the first step that you even have to take there is to fail the expectations of those closest to you. And that's like, the scariest thing [00:54:00] to do and that's really hard. That's, I think, even bigger and harder and scarier than failing capitalism.
Even though your survival is tied to capitalism, failing the expectations of those who are closest to you is so scary, but it's I feel like it's a necessary step. I've been noticing this recurring theme a lot in my conversations about anti-capitalism being not even like a reaction or a response to capitalism, but just a rational conclusion. It's just the place you would naturally land at the end of many different lines of thinking.
And that's what I feel like it is here, because shadow work is addressing shame, it's addressing the ego, and then to address shame, you obviously have to address capitalism. So it's a tool that capitalism uses to keep us in line and to keep us producing shame and fear. And so then the rational conclusion to break free of all that is yeah, you're like, I have to be outside of this system so I have to find a way to-- I don't know. Do you feel that way? Do you feel like it's a rational thing? At least for your [00:55:00] line of work, do you feel like it's a rational conclusion?
Nikki Vergakes: Yes. I also love what you said there, like for capitalism. Yes, if you start to pull one part the thread, if you just keep pulling then it's a rational conclusion because yeah, what you do realize is, for some people it's going from, "I'm going to beat this game," and then you realize, oh, there's no... there's no the game.
And yeah, really, in this context, in this conversation... On my side, it's shame from disconnecting from keeping up this perfect image, facade; or hiding or not being your true self; and then the other side, it's capitalism.
So if you start, which was my journey and business and identity and life and body image and everything, once I started to pull the thread a little bit, first it was like, okay. I don't need to like [00:56:00] have this specific kind of body. I can have the body that's natural to me and that I have when I'm healthy and nourished. And sure, I face quote unquote "consequences," but I also don't really care what someone walking by on the street thinks of my body.
And then it was like, okay, maybe I don't need to be an assistant account executive and then account executive and then account manager at the PR firm in Boston for my career. First it was freelancing, and then I kept pulling that thread and here we are. But the more that you do that-- _alright,__ I don't have to be in this career, look this way, I don't have to constantly appease and please the people around me, I don't have to not have any boundaries, I don't have to listen to the same kind of music as everyone, I don't have to hide _[00:57:00] _my gender and sexuality identity_-- keep pulling those threads, which is like pulling away what you thought you had to be, and then stepping into and finding who you are... Yes, it's a conclusion that makes sense: if I want to be truly satisfied with my life, then I can't like, be hiding any part of myself to appease this system that I'm in.
Samantha Young: Yeah, like it's incompatible with your authenticity.
Nikki Vergakes: Yeah.
Samantha Young: It's incompatible with so many things,
Nikki Vergakes: I think we're even conditioned to think this way, that betraying your authenticity is just what you have to do, but the radical conclusion is, I shouldn't betray my authenticity. I don't have to do that. It'll be harder in this world we live in, but it's worth, that's worth it.
Samantha Young: Yeah, [00:58:00] if it asks me to betray my authenticity, then it's probably not worth it.
Nikki Vergakes: Thank you.
Samantha Young: That's something I had to accept when I was in MLM that I was in, because it wasn't that doing business in that way was really incompatible with me. At the time, I was okay with going out and recruiting people, but it was really just funny because now I have a lot of different reasons why it didn't work. But the thing that actually got broke the spell for me was the incompatibility culture-wise, because I always just had to put aside who I was in those spaces, even though these people are really genuine and person to person, my upline or whatever, like they're all really genuine, sweet people and I don't think they had ill intent in their hearts or anything like that, but I just could never be myself in those spaces, couldn't be my full queer, weirdo self.
It was very much dominated by Christians, even though their stance was like, "We're not an organization for Christians," it was like, [00:59:00] 98 percent of you are, though. And they would say things like, "Oh anybody can be successful in this business. Anybody can," but then how come everybody I see who's advancing, who's walking across stages, is always like able bodied, beautiful people who don't have developmental disabilities or they're-- it's not to say that they didn't have anything working against them, but I was just like, you're telling me that this is for everybody, and you're telling me that anyone could do this, but there's a very limited amount of people who _are _here and doing this. And they all have some certain characteristics that I don't have. So it was a culture that really broke the spell for me. But that entire culture also is very compatible with capitalism. They work together.
[00:59:39] Embracing Failure
Samantha Young: So it makes sense that if you did identify that way, it would be easier for you to fall in line in something like that and to be successful, because it doesn't question your authenticity. So in a way, yeah, anybody who's disabled, chronically ill, even if you're queer, to some extent you already know about failure in capitalism's eyes, right?
You already know, you've already experienced it, you've already [01:00:00] been doing it, just on the basis of, you're not as able bodied as whatever the norm is. You're already failing. So I like to offer that to people sometimes, too. When we talk about that fear of failure, I'm like, you are already failing. So embrace that. Don't be like, "Oh, I'm so scared, I'm going to fail." Welcome. Because that's what's required, I think.
Nikki Vergakes: This is something that you want to fail. That part reminded me of pondering these questions, the notes that you gave me. I wrote, connecting to humans is in being inconvenient to the system and yeah, failing in the system.
What I was describing of just walking around feeling really exposed, it was like, the first time that I was... You know, if my true authentic self was failing in these systems, but I knew that I had no choice but to embrace that, then that also [01:01:00] means if I'm going to embrace that and be honest and not mask as something else, then I'm walking around, interacting with the world, as a failure of the system. And then realizing the strongest negative feelings, painful feelings that I had about that again, were not coming from others, and there was compassion coming from others, in terms of like friends and people who really know that the most painful things were coming from my self talk and the shame and projections and those parts of myself that were shame.
What you were saying of the experience of being in an MLM that made you feel that way, that's really how I felt at my time in corporate PR and [01:02:00] in marketing jobs, especially the culture of my 1st job. They were really nice people, but of course it's still the corporate world. It was a PR agency. Some of that happened with our clients, but the people were nice. What I had was in a very corporate culture, but it was a health care nonprofit. Sometimes I feel like the direct care health care culture can be a bit more accepting, but I was in the PR, marketing, admin side of it, so it had that culture..
This random thing just really stuck out to me. First of all, didn't have a Christmas break. Had to literally work Christmas Eve. But then I took time off because had a family trip planned. So coming back from that, they were asking me how it was and how my Christmas was, and I was like, "I made mashed potatoes from scratch," and I was excited about that. And then one of these people's response was like, "What? You don't do that every [01:03:00] year?"
And the context of that in my head was like, this was one of the last years that we had with my Nana who had like late-stage dementia and we really wanted to enjoy our last-- or who knows could be, you know, last holidays with her-- and there was stuff going on with the nursing home and getting her to our home and if you have had to deal with that kind of whole system, if that doesn't radicalize you, I don't know what.
Samantha Young: Oh my god, yeah.
Nikki Vergakes: And just emotions of like, people in my family who are caregivers and just all of that.
And so it's wow, I can't even say at least a summarized version of "the little things are really important to us because we're often trying to coordinate getting my grandmother here and it's really emotional for all of us, so it actually it was a nice, big deal," I can't say that because of [01:04:00] this culture, and then you shame me for using boxed mashed potatoes in the past?
[01:04:05] Listener Submission
Samantha Young: No, absolutely. I had to pull up a couple of listener submissions for this one, but what you were just saying was really pertinent to the second one that I've written down, which was, "How much longer until we as a collective care for one another? Repression is not a permanent solution, so how do we get people to meet themselves and show up with love?" And when I first saw this question, I was like, brother, you're asking me? That's what I'm saying! Like, how do we get people to meet themselves and show up with love if we can't get basic things down? Yeah, "I really enjoyed making potatoes with my grandma." A normal response to that would be, "That sounds lovely."
Nikki Vergakes: Yeah, right.
Samantha Young: "I'm glad you enjoyed that." I don't know, but I feel like what you were saying points to this question in a sense, and also what you've just been saying in general about shadow work. I think shadow work is obviously one very potent way to get people to meet themselves, [01:05:00] but from your perspective, how do you think we make that kind of work more widely accessible or widely appealing to people? What do you think about the importance of shadow work in terms of these, late-stage capitalism times?
Nikki Vergakes: I love that question-- the one you asked and also the submitted-- and when I saw that, I had a similar thought. I was like, "Yeah, how do we?" I haven't had that thought before this, but in the last 6 months, I actually have had that thought of, what is it going to take? It's like, how long until? It's really hard going on as it is, right? The culture that we have right now. Damn, how much longer of this?
Now that I've officially niched down-- let's quote unquote "niche down" on shadow work for a year-- but it's like a living, breathing rebrand and I'm like getting the schedule and also the messaging, I'm still like trial and erroring it. And I think with my work, I'm trying to find that answer [01:06:00] myself right now. But I know from experience, for me and clients-- obviously this is not an answer to this-- but for me, there was an event, or many events, a time period, whatever, in life that put you in a position that you never thought you'd be in, and you have a choice.
You have a choice to either continue trying to hide, trying to cover up, make it seem like you're not in that hard time, or that you're not who you are; or you can lean into it and be honest and then it's from there.
Obviously I'm not being like, "Have a life changing event," but also we are living through many, so this is like the perspective shift of: we have to actually see the world we're living in for what it is, and not from conversations with people who think differently from me, who think [01:07:00] that this is all okay. Obviously these are people who have lots of privilege protecting them slash don't even realize how they're going to be negatively affected and are already negatively affected.
And I think shifting the perspective away from "that'll never happen to me," to maybe entertaining-- take care of your nervous system, don't fully put yourself into that-- what is my quote unquote "rock bottom," and then if I did that, what options do I have? What could I do? What could come from that?
Whenever I see beliefs that, "Oh, that'll never happen to me," whatever the fear is, I just see it as, it's like you're standing on something that's wobbly and it could so easily just flick it And then it'll all fall. Do you wanna live, do you wanna be on that wobbly surface of your life?
Samantha Young: Yeah, something I wrote down while you're talking was shifting it from, "That'll never happen to me." It's just, "It [01:08:00] could happen to me," and not even that it _will_; what if we just change it to "it _could_"? There's a lot of people experiencing things every single day related to collapse and capitalism that they never thought would happen to them. So it could happen to you.
And yeah, the point is not to spiral about that, but to really think rationally about what that means and how you want to move around the world with that knowledge. Cause I think about that all the time. There's so many things. Like, being grateful for the little things in my life has shifted for me from a practice that's just about, "Oh, I'm going to cultivate gratitude because abundance," it's not really that for me and that never really worked for me. What works for me is, I have gratitude for all of the things because I now see, and I have witnessed many times, how quickly they can be taken away. And maybe that's dark, but we're here talking about shadow work.
I'm like, that's what it is. The collapse part of it really [01:09:00] centers me in a way because I'm like, every time I turn on my faucet and clean water comes out, I'm like, god, this could end at any time, and I know people think it wouldn't happen. I know Richmond, Virginia recently had a whole water thing, didn't have potable water for days. And that's like one of those things you think, "Oh, it won't happen to me." It could happen to you. One day, you could just not have running water.
It's been making me think of E. T. Shipley, Erin Shipley, who was actually the astrologer who gave me that reading who said that I was baiting & switching people, they call themselves a "collapse astrologer," like collapse conscious. That's part of their whole thing, so when you're talking about it, I was like, oh my gosh, Erin keeps coming up in my brain, so I'm just going to talk about them.
Nikki Vergakes: Gotta follow.
Samantha Young: Yeah, E. T. Shipley, they have a really great workshop on the third house and the sixth house in astrology about places of being places of care work and disability justice. It's foundational to my work, that workshop, and so they come up a lot. But [01:10:00] this idea of collapse is big and scary, and we want to think it couldn't happen to us, but I think maybe that's also-- this person is asking a question about the collective: how much longer till we as a collective care for another?
And I think about, what is the collective shadow work to be done here? What is that? And I do think that's maybe part of it: it could happen to me. That's like the shadow work that I do, talking on the big global sense, right? The zoomed out version of that. That's the shadow that I approach and poke at a lot: what does happen when collapse arrives at my doorstep? If and when, basically.
Nikki Vergakes: Yeah. And that last part that you said reminded me of whatever's in the air on TikTok. Because social media, yes, it's like such a cesspool, and then also, TikTok didn't begin in 2020, but a lot of people got on there, and then the shutdown was a moment of collective collapse and things that a lot of people didn't think would happen happened, not only collectively, but also in their [01:11:00] lives, health, and also job wise. And for many people, the 2016 election was a similar thing, and there's lots of things over time, but those are 2 big things.
There's something to that moment of the sheer amount of people getting on TikTok and sharing resources and stories and coming together when this moment of collapse happened, and then there's been many moments of collapse that have been recorded and discussed on that app and on the internet ever since.
You have to have both the personal and the collective, and even what I was just saying there of that moment, that time on TikTok: it was collective, but it was also a bunch of individual interactions. Even though one person making a video and then a million people viewing and commenting is more of a parasocial interaction, but those million people viewing it, it [01:12:00] felt like a personal interaction to them. Something tells me that we're going to have stuff like that over the next four years.
[01:12:08] Venus Retrograde in Aries
Nikki Vergakes: Also was thinking about, I think this was The Astrology Podcast year-ahead when they were saying right now, or like the upcoming the next Venus retrograde, was the same exact one as 2016. A new version of the Women's March or whatever, some sort of movement like that will come up.
I think capitalizing on that more by not just having the mindset of "this is happening over there," or "this is happening collectively," but actually taking that and trying to implement it into practice, into every part of their life-- not all at once, that's a lot, but starting with different parts of like your interpersonal, your friendships, your relationships, how you view your job.
So being a part of a collective movement, but [01:13:00] also how does that collective movement change how I interact with people in my life every day, how I view myself and the world. Yeah.
Samantha Young: Yeah, there's definitely a balance, because I was thinking about what's different between now and 2016, the last time we had Venus retrograde in Aries, is that this time we will also have Saturn in Aries. We didn't have that last time. So there is, and I've been thinking about this a lot, cause a couple of days ago, we had Venus-Saturn conjunct in Pisces, and I was thinking a lot about, if you really boil them down to one word each, Venus is connection and Saturn is limitations. So it's not the way that Mars is severing connection, because that would be much more personal. It's definitely limitations being placed on our ability to connect by larger outside structures, right? Cause that's what Saturn represents.
So I definitely sense that the collective has to be considered within the [01:14:00] personal I think now more than ever, because we are seeing that the power structures in place are catching on to the ways that we connect with each other, right? And the ways that we organize them and educate each other. And they're obviously catching on.
They're also doing things to protect their own financial interests, because all these platforms are owned by billionaires. I don't know anything about TikTok owners. The alternative being the Meta platforms, right? Because there will be limitations placed on our ability to connect, we then have to push even harder, right? We have to maintain that line of connection and to not give into the severance, because even though Mars is not present here, Aries is still ruled by Mars and it's going to be in Cancer, still, during this time.
So it's going to be really tense. And I feel like that's also the thing I've been saying, ever since the election day, this last election day: just man, I feel a lot of the same things that everybody else is feeling in terms of stress and hopelessness, but I also just felt this really strong urge to lean in even more now to [01:15:00] people I disagree with. That's definitely the Martian aspect here.
And then again, when people aren't ready to hear things, they're not ready to hear things. So I say that yeah, you need to lean in, and they're like, "I'm not going to be friendly to my MAGA neighbors." I'm like, okay that might work for you now. That might help. That may make you feel good right now, but I've been trying to think long term. That's what Saturn's trying to do. Saturn's trying to think long term, and long term I don't think it's going to help us, the urge to disconnect.
We are obviously being told very much to disconnect from each other. We're being told that from the powers that be, so the response has to be obviously the opposite: connect even more. It's just going to be difficult and it's gonna be a very Aries time, to get a lot of people on board with the fact that connection is that antidote.
That's the hard part I think, because it's very easy to lean into that anger and that Martial aspect and want to label everyone as good or bad or an enemy or a friend or whatever. It's more nuanced than that, and at the same time it's so much more simple than that, because it really is billionaires versus us, so [01:16:00] anyone who's not a billionaire, you should probably try to work on connecting with.
Nikki Vergakes: So like literally yesterday, I was like, wow. On the eve of Inauguration Day, I was at a drag king and burlesque show that my friend did their debut in, and it was so awesome. It was so important and so awesome, and I'm so happy that now that they're gonna be doing shows, I'll be connected to that community more, and yes, also, I'm in Massachusetts. Nowhere is truly safe. One place catches a cold, and one place catches a, whatever, a big disease, and every other state catches a cold.
But also, there's places that are such that drag is literally banned and stuff like that, but still we have these awesome groups and queer and drag communities, and then literally outside of the bar in Back Bay, there could be a guy calling someone the F word on the streets of [01:17:00] Boston. So it was like, really nice to be there.
In 2016, I was just really unlearning and unpacking and waking up to a lot of things. So it felt very urgent, and I felt like I need to get to a protest. I needed to. "What do I do?" Now it feels okay, don't let them stop. You can contribute to mutual aid and just build more and more of these communities and grow them and help friends who are in other states.
The day after the election, my friend held a gathering that she always holds every month that's like art and poetry, but it's very much revolutionary. This was in response to that, and people can like, hang out and do self care, but they can also share resources. Someone was talking about already-- it was like November 7th-- they were calling it something like underground gender affirming or trans...
Samantha Young: getting hormones to people and stuff like that. [01:18:00] Yeah.
Nikki Vergakes: Yeah, so with Saturn being in Aries that also feels very much, "I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to do it." Aries is like the baby. It's like, "Why? Why can't we? Why can't we?" So doing it anyway. But then Saturn is, "Let's also be practical, strategic."
And then the second part, the clear words came to me for this around the the whiplash that people were getting about Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni and seeing people say, "Wow, this has really made me second-guess how I react to things," and I'm like, yes. We really need to see that everyone is innocent and guilty in everything all the time.
Samantha Young: Yeah. It's about who's pulling focus where, you know? That's something that I talk about a lot in my course too. Every single piece of media that's put in front of you is intentional. Every second of it is intentional to make you feel a certain way. And I think, yeah, that [01:19:00] situation, I don't like that it happened, but I think it was a really good opportunity for a lot of people. I saw a lot of think pieces about it on Substack being like, "Oh my god, I can't believe that I fell for it," whatever. I'm like, I _can _believe.
I remember even just scrolling by it when it was first happening and all that stuff was coming out about Blake Lively and just being like, "Oh yeah, that sounds plausible," and I just kept scrolling, but I did not question it. I didn't question the source. I just was like, yeah, sure, she was a jerk on set. Not the first time a woman's been a jerk on set. But there's another good point for people to start being really more skeptical of the information because yeah, the other thing is, when they control the information that we're able to share with each other, then the information that's shared with us is also extremely intentional.
That's my level of skepticism about media is just, I'm always just questioning. I obviously need to question more, because I fell for that thing too, that whole campaign, but questioning, where's this coming from? Who? Follow the money. Get to the root of it.
[01:19:57] Wrapping Up with Nikki
Samantha Young: You have anything you want to [01:20:00] plug, anything coming up? I know that you have your own podcast, but do you have anything coming up or anything going on you want to shout out?
Nikki Vergakes: Yeah, so this is an interesting time where I've been, like, building in public and all of that, but now I do feel like I'm really leaning into my Virgo placements lately and really loving it. They are in the 12th house. So I'll just say I have the platforms and stuff where you can find me and follow me, and the actual structure of when I'll be putting stuff out is to come.
I'm putting things out as I go now. I have my Substack, and that was born from this podcast that I started that I did the fall of 2023, which was my first time honing the shadow work stuff, so that's the Liminal Lounge. It's a mixture of podcasts and essays on Substack and it's cosmic self-discovery, which is astrology reprogramming and shadow [01:21:00] work. I'm also on Instagram and Threads and I'm on TikTok. It's back. The podcast is also on YouTube. I love YouTube. I'm here because of YouTube. I've been on YouTube since like literally 2008, making little videos.
So YouTube, Instagram, Threads, Substack, and then my readings will be back. You can either do astrology or a hypnosis session, and then I have a vault of my offerings of subconscious tracks. So offerings will continue to grow, but that's where you can find me.
Samantha Young: Love that. I love how much you do. I know you said you have a niche down, but I love that you still have a variety of expressions, because again, 11th house people. I'm like, yeah, I'm just going to be online. I'll be online until they turn off the internet.
Nikki Vergakes: And my moon's in the 10th house. Yeah, I'll be online until they drag me away.
[01:21:53] Outro
Samantha Young: I will be online until the cows come home, that's for sure. I hope you got a lot out of [01:22:00] this conversation, I know I did. I feel like anti-capitalism is just ongoing shadow work. Interacting with capitalism is an ongoing practice in shadow work, so I hope that this provided you some more personal insight into what shadow work actually means and looks like, as opposed to being some nebulous term just tossed around in the healing space, and I hope that it brought you some clarity and some bravery to maybe try some of these practices on your own.
I love being online, and in the last month I have made some changes to where you can find me online, some very intentional changes. I am disconnecting slowly, mostly, from Meta apps. I am no longer posting on Threads. I have moved my main social media over to Bluesky, and you can still find me there as [01:23:00] @TheFinancialWitch. I have also moved my writing and newsletter over from Substack. I made a post about this on my Substack, about why I was leaving, and I don't need to rehash that here. I just wanted to let you guys know what I'm really excited about, which is the new platform I'm posting on, Ghost.
Ghost is very similar to Substack where I post things, you get them in your email inbox, but it also functions as an online blog. There are tiers that you can subscribe to on Ghost, and instead of just one blanket tier for support I decided to split it into two to make it a bit more accessible.
So the first tier you can subscribe to, which would get you all of my emails, everything that I post publicly to your inbox, including some things that I don't post publicly, some things that are strictly for the mailing list and don't end up on the public blog. Everything that I post is sent to your inbox, that also includes new podcast episodes, and that's three dollars a month.
That's just a baseline to help [01:24:00] me keep this platform going. I really don't want to bring ads into this podcast. I really don't. And I know that the podcasting industry is an ad-based industry, and if I wanted to monetize in that way to cover my costs of running this podcast, I could, but it just really does not align with my values. What makes more sense to me is having the direct support of my community to allow me to pay the fees for the software and the platforms to keep this work going, the hours put into it, so that I don't have to paywall anything. I don't want to bring ads into this and I don't want to have to bring paywalls into any of my content. I want to keep it available for everybody. But, there are costs associated with that. Three dollars a month, if you have it, you can chip in. Help me keep this thing going.
There's also the second tier, which is a six dollar a month tier. It's the same price I had for my Substack, but this is the top level [01:25:00] tier that just gets you access to a private Discord channel within our Discord server.
If you haven't joined the Cosmic Co-Op Discord server, by the way, the link will be in the show notes. I highly encourage it. We have such great conversations in there, and I truly adore the community that we are currently growing in there. It is just full of some incredible minds, some incredible thinkers, creatives, mystics. Anyway.
Joining the six dollar tier on Ghost will get you access to a private channel within our Discord server, which is for more communal support with other business owners. In the future, I'm going to begin hosting virtual meetups for support for anti-capitalist business owners, and being in that group chat will be a way to continue that support in between those meetups and just to have the opportunity to network with other business owners [01:26:00] who you know have similar values as yours, who are invested in dismantling capitalism as we currently experience it.
So, lots of change going on here. I'm very excited to be back. I really hope you got a lot out of this episode, and I hope that you continue to find not just the shadows, but also the bright spots as we do this very important work, as things become more and more chaotic outside of our homes every single day. I hope that you are able to get something from this podcast that really helps you go on, to give you some juice, to keep fighting the good fight. That's really what I'm here for. As always, take care of yourselves and take care of each other. I will see you next time.
[01:27:00]