Roots of the Rise
Grounded wisdom for the journey inward and upward.
Roots of the Rise is a soul-centered podcast hosted by Sarah Hope—Ayurvedic health practitioner, spiritual mentor, meditation teacher, biodynamic craniosacral therapist, and energy healer. Drawing from thousands of hours of client work, group facilitation, and her own journey through childhood trauma, grief, and the profound rediscovery of love and joy, Sarah offers a grounded, heart-led space for inner transformation.
Short, daily episodes (10–20 minutes) offer bite-sized insights, ideas, and practices for inner growth and self-development. Whether you're seasoned on the path or just beginning to explore, this podcast gives you digestible nuggets to stay inspired—without overwhelm. It’s perfect for those who want to stay engaged in the work, curious newcomers feeling overloaded by long-form content, or anyone wanting to understand a loved one's journey from a broader, more accessible perspective.
Sarah’s intention is to expose you to a wide range of spiritual concepts, therapeutic tools, philosophies, and practices—all in service of helping you become the healthiest, happiest, most authentic version of yourself. The journey can be hard. It can feel lonely. But you’re not alone. Come walk this path with her—learning, healing, and rising, one grounded step at a time.
Roots of the Rise
Episode 34 - Choose Understanding Over Outrage: Why Cancel Culture Fails Us
Cancel culture has become a pervasive force in our society, but this episode challenges whether cutting people out of our lives over differing beliefs actually creates positive change or simply deepens our divisions.
Check out: The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling
Welcome to Roots of the Rise with me, sarah Hope Cancel. Culture has become a catchphrase we hear all the time, with good reason. It's everywhere In social media, in mainstream media, even in our homes, within families and friend groups that have been together for years. But is it valid? Should we be withdrawing support, even going so far as to shame people because they have said or done something considered offensive or objectionable? Let's talk about it. Or objectionable, let's talk about it.
Speaker 1:Things always seem to come in phases, and recently I've had a whole slew of both clients, friends, family members say something along the lines of needing to cut somebody out of their life because of belief they hold, a vote they made or an action they took, even if that action was 20 years ago. I understand it. I really do. There are things going on in this world that we all feel passionately about, so many wrongs coming to light, so many situations that really do feel life or death. There's a lot of chaos out there and, wonderfully, so many people striving to correct what they view to be injustice. There's a real determination to get rid of racism, sexism, hatred, bigotry all of which is great and what we need to do. My problem is that shame and exclusion has become almost an accepted practice. Not almost, it is an accepted, it's almost a required practice. If you don't reject someone because of their vote, for instance, there seems to be this sense of like. Well, you're not doing enough. If you tolerate someone who has a different viewpoint than you, then you are part of the problem.
Speaker 1:A few years back, patton Oswalt got into big trouble because he went and did a show with Dave Chappelle. It's kind of off the cuff. They were in the same town. Chappelle invited him to do a guest set and he got huge backlash for doing this. Some of the transgender community felt very betrayed and he posted a response that I want to read to you now. Quote 34 years we've been friends. He's refocused and refined ideas a lot of us took as settled about race and history and life on planet Earth and spun them around with a phrase or a punchline. We've done bad and good gigs, open mics, tv tapings. But we also 100% disagree about transgender rights and representation. I support trans people's rights, anyone's rights to live safely in the world as their fullest selves.
Speaker 1:For all the things he's helped me evolve on, I'll always disagree with where he stands now on transgender issues. But I also don't believe a seeker like him is done evolving learning. But I also don't believe a seeker like him is done evolving learning. You know someone that long see the struggles and changes. It's impossible to cut them off, impossible not to be hopeful and open and cheer them on. Also, I've been carrying a lot of guilt about friends I've cut off who had views with which I couldn't agree or changed in ways I couldn't live with. Sometimes I wonder did I and others cutting them off make them dig their heels in deeper, fuel their ignorance with a nitro boost of resentment and spite? I am an LGBTQ ally. I'm a loyal friend. There's friction in those traits that I need to reconcile myself and not let cause feelings of betrayal in anyone else. And I'm sorry, truly sorry, that I didn't consider the hurt this would cause or the depth of that hurt. He says a few other things and then he ends by saying so easy to think someone else needs growth and miss the need in yourself. Gonna keep trying, end quote. I love this.
Speaker 1:If we spend our lives cutting out the people who don't agree with us, we are diminishing both our capacity for understanding and compassion and we're diminishing their ability to grow and learn. When you walk away from someone, you're saying to them I don't think you have the capacity to change and I'm not. It's something that we do only once we reach adulthood. Think of a three to five year old. They are some of the most selfish, self-involved, violent creatures on the planet. But we love them through those years because we recognize that they have the capacity to change. They have the capacity to grow, to welcome in new thoughts and new ways of doing things. But at some point we've bought into this belief that old dogs can't learn new tricks, that once someone reaches a certain age, once they believe one thing, they will never, ever, ever change their mind.
Speaker 1:And look, cutting them out of our lives. That's a choice, and also there is some truth here. There are people out here who are not going to grow, who are never going to change, who are completely uninterested in having a conversation in which they try to understand your side. They just want to prove how right they are and how wrong you are. So there's some truth to that that some people are never going to change or grow and there's validity to no longer associating with them.
Speaker 1:But there's also a large number of people who do change their minds, even about really polarizing topics. There's people who spend the first 30 years of their lives deeply invested in a religious practice, for instance, and then realize that they don't actually resonate with those beliefs, and the converse. There are people who spend, you know, a good part of their lives not believing in any religion and then have an awakening and become devout. There are people out there who are going to say that they're both going in the wrong direction. I'm not here to argue the veracity of religious beliefs, but it's an illustration of how people can change fundamental core belief systems that they have. And yet, how many relationships have fractured in recent years because of political beliefs or COVID? How many people have written someone out of their life because of the way they voted? I saw it so many times. I see it so often on Facebook. If you voted for Biden-Harris unfriend me because I want nothing to do with you.
Speaker 1:Brief tangent here. If you haven't listened to the podcast the Witch Trials of JK Rowling, do it, no matter what your opinion is of her or the controversy surrounding her. Listen to that podcast. I'll link it below. It's narrated by Megan Phelps Roper, a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church, who began to doubt her beliefs and question what she had been taught when she started interacting with people online who they kind of lovingly helped her see the discrepancies and the contradictions in the doctrine she had been brought up with. I haven't read it yet, but she's written a memoir called Unfollow A Journey from Hatred to Hope, and woven through the documentary on JK Rawlings are bits of Megan's story how she came to change her thinking due to people having conversations with her, not yelling at her, not berating her. Having conversations with her, not yelling at her, not berating her, simply talking with her. They believed there was something good in her, that there was hope. They didn't look at her and only see a member of Westboro Baptist, but a person who is more than just one belief system, one choice.
Speaker 1:The Witch Trials of JK Rowling is about cancel culture. It's about the problem of maligning someone for just a single choice or belief that they have. What you're essentially saying is that the only thing that matters about this person is this one small piece of them. It doesn't matter how many other good works they do, how much they volunteer, how much charity they give, how loyal they are to their friends and family. If they make this one choice, you're done. It doesn't matter that maybe this person has been in your life for decades, five years or even just really one solid year and have proven themselves to be a wonderful support system for you in other ways. What if they've proven that, proven their love and support for you in a million ways, but just can't come with you in this one topic? They're dead to you forever? Then it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You can't stand on one side of a line and say everyone on the other side is abusive, antagonistic and idiots. What are you? How are you showing up If all you focus on is the bad in people? That's all you'll see.
Speaker 1:We've become so polarized in this country that we can't even for one second admit that maybe the other side has some good in it. Maybe they have some valid points. We need to get back to a world where we can have discussions about difficult topics without immediately assigning the other side to moral deficit. We have lost our ability to have effective, useful discourse on difficult things. Did you grow up being told don't bring up politics or religion? It's the opposite of what we should have been saying.
Speaker 1:We need to be encouraging, talking about this stuff in a way that is useful instead of oppositional, a way in which we listen, to understand, not to reply or, worse, to name call Hate and anger and fear. They don't help. To name call Hate and anger and fear they don't help. They don't make things change for the better. Hate begets hate, anger begets anger, fear begets fear. They merely multiply themselves.
Speaker 1:This world does not need more of this. It does not need more people yelling at each other, more friendships disintegrating, more fear-based knee-jerk reactions. What we need is love, compassion, understanding, acceptance. We can have those principles and still believe that things need to change. We're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and it's got to stop. The hate has got to stop. The refusal to recognize reality for what it is has got to stop, and the reality is that this world is full of gray, full of good, full of bad and full of everything in between. It's full of people trying to do the right thing as they see it.
Speaker 1:If we could all just stop for one second and talk to each other again, instead of shouting to see who's the loudest, prove who's most right, maybe we would be able to find peace, and that peace has to start from within. We have to show up with peace in our hearts, with compassion for others. We have to try to understand where our neighbors are coming from, not jump into judging them for what we see as their mistaken beliefs, and we also have to be willing to admit that we might be wrong. Look, of course I believe that I'm right on the choices that I've made regarding the COVID vaccine, vaccines in general, the presidency, vaccines in general, the presidency. Of course I think I'm right when it comes to my opinions on abortion, religion, the death penalty, transgender rights, but I also have the humility to admit that I might be wrong. I'm completely open to someone proving me wrong, but not if they call me a horrible, stupid person for believing what I believe.
Speaker 1:Now, people don't change, they don't grow. They don't change their ideas. They don't shift perspective when we call them stupid or a racist or a bully or a bad person. That's not what inspires growth. People grow best when they are loved, when they are held in safety as they explore difficult topics. If it's not safe to ask questions to try to understand another side, another perspective, then how are we ever going to work together towards making this world the best version of itself possible? Can we at least agree that that's the common goal? Unless it starts to be okay to ask questions, to be uncertain, to maybe not agree completely 100% of the time on everything, we're just going to become more and more stuck in our own way of thinking, drowning in confirmation bias, surrounded only by the people who think exactly as we do or are too scared to express a different opinion.
Speaker 1:And so I ask that you hit pause for a moment on your own beliefs, pick a person or a topic that's troubling you, that confuses you, where you just can't understand how someone could think this way, and truly try to see it from the other side. I don't mean play lip service to this, like try to argue it from the other side, as though you're on a debate team and will win a million dollars if you prove the point from the other perspective. I'm not asking you to change your beliefs, but to seek understanding. Is there someone in your world that you know of who believes something differently that you do, who you can go to and have an actual discussion with, asking questions like well, why do you believe that? What really matters to you in this situation? What is it in your upbringing that's led you to have this belief? What is it about your current situation, your current life circumstances that are driving your thought process?
Speaker 1:Instead of looking for all the bad, instead of jumping to conclusions, listening to what the media tells you about what the other side thinks or feels or believes, look for a nugget of good, a nugget of truth for that person. Pick different topics, different, different people, different situations you're struggling with, and just take one minute of time to seek compassion for the other side every day. This is our task now to fill ourselves with light instead of the dark. You know, all it takes is a candle to light up a room. Enough to see a little bit better. What do you want more? To be right, to be righteous or to be loving and bring more tolerance to this world?
Speaker 1:It is possible for you to fight for what you believe in, to hold your truths as a priority and also leave room for greater growth and understanding on your end and not shame or exclude or deride the other people. If your goal is to help this world be a better place, is to help this world heal, then maybe take a step back and, instead of walking away from people, see if you can love them a little bit more exactly where they are, for who they are. See, if you can leave room for people to feel like it's okay for them to change their perspective. The difference between making a request and a demand is the difference between saying, if you don't change your mind on this topic, I think you're a horrible person, and saying it's okay that you don't believe what I believe right now, because I recognize your capacity to change. And even if you don't, I still see the other parts of you that created the foundation of our relationship. I still see the good in you and we want this to be a request, a request to consider a different side, because when people feel a demand is being made of them, they resist it. They reject it. They become less inclined to make the shift we would love for them to make.
Speaker 1:Yes, there are exceptions, yes, there are caveats to this idea of keeping people with different opinions in your life, but there's also a really big gray zone, and that's why it's so hard. There is an in-between, a place, not at the extremes, where abandonment is not going to be the answer. Love is. Let me know your thoughts. You can click the text me button or contact button, depending on what platform you're listening on, or you can email me directly at rootsoftherise at gmailcom. Make sure you like or share this episode if you found it thought provoking.
Speaker 1:I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and remember, know who you are, love who you've been and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be. I am an Ayurvedic health practitioner, spiritual counselor, meditation teacher, energy healer and biodynamic craniosacral therapist, with thousands of hours of training in these modalities and more. I'm here to help you discover as many different ideas, therapies, philosophies, spiritual concepts and inner development tools as possible in order to help you become the healthiest, happiest, most authentic version of yourself possible. I'm excited to be on this journey with you. It can be hard at times and there are moments you may feel stuck and very alone. I'm here to tell you you're not. Come with me. Let's learn and grow together.
