Relationships, Recovery, and Ritual Served in “I Miss You” Podcast

“I had a series of fever dreams, and this sort of came to me; I woke up the next day and said, ‘I’m going to do it.’ I didn’t second guess anything, knowing that I would also be making myself vulnerable to whatever failures might come along with riding the train,” explains John Moletress (they/them).

As an artist, musician, and writer, Moletress has experienced many journeys on the creativity train, and they also know that it doesn’t always produce fruitful results. This project, however, felt like something they could really sink their teeth into, and find a space that combined not only interest, but exceptional talent amid a time where we’ve all felt a bit disconnected.

“I was in the midst of working on another podcast, and while that didn’t come to fruition for a number of reasons, and so I had this knowledge already going. Although there have been some adaptations, some changes, and fluidity through the process, I’m still on the ride,” they say.

That ride began in late January 2021 as the I Miss You podcast, a weekly show about reconnecting during the pandemic. Reaching out to people who have impacted their life, including friends, ex-lovers, teachers, mentors, neighbors, chosen family, and even biological family, Moletress has chosen to find the answer to the question, “I wonder what ever happened to so-and-so?”

I consider myself a connoisseur of podcast: an avid and eager listener of conversation. To be a fly on the wall and stretch outside my universe and materialize into someone else’s has always been of interest to me. While listening to I Miss You, I found myself satiated with not only the diversity in guests that Moletress reconnects with, but the depth of the conversations and how each episode is both authentic and intrinsically unique.

“I had one rule, and my rule was that I wasn’t going to be exploitative, and I wasn’t going to be sensational. I wasn’t going to bring people on and then try to trap them into some weird, sensational discovery thing, and because of that, I’ve kept the container of the conversation really open,” they explain. “I came up with two questions as bookends: the first was, ‘How is your pandemic going?,’ and the final question of the conversation towards the end was, ‘What is one thing that you hope for in 2021?’”

Deciding that they weren’t going to guide the conversation, instead, they would be very intentional about listening. To their surprise, conversations naturally went to a deep, genuine, and vulnerable place. It was also in these conversations that Moletress realized that some topics may require a bit more background information and detailed explanation, which is where they came up with the idea of bonus episodes.

“There’s a series with friends of mine, and we all find ourselves a part of the radical faerie community; I realized that a majority of people will probably have no idea what that is, and it comes up in four different conversations because they’re all connected in some way to this group. I’m like, ‘I need to do a bonus episode that gives a sort of fast and loose history, or some type of description, of what the radical faerie movement and community are,’” they explain.

In addition to providing some backstory and education about a particular part of the conversation, another bonus of the bonus episodes is it becomes a space where Moletress pulls the curtain back to their own thoughts, feelings, and reflections after the conversation with guests has ended.

“What happens now that the cat’s already out of the bag? What happens now that I’m in a vulnerable state? Because being able to dive into conversations with friends and chat about some things that might have gone unsaid before doesn’t make anything easier, and it doesn’t make the relationship easier. What it does is surfaces all of this other stuff around the issues that then once we hang up the phone, I have to then carry with me to the gym and to the grocery store,” Moletress says. 

“I had one rule, and my rule was that I wasn’t going to be exploitative, and I wasn’t going to be sensational.”

Season One unfolded before Moletress as a survey of people who have come through their life; friends from junior high and high school to people who have been significant in the last few years. Additionally, they have spoken with people whom they have never met, such as Queen Co. Meadows, Haitian Vodou Spiritual Worker and Harry Gay, a London-based activist, DJ, and founder of Queer House Party. Plans for the next season of the show could take a stark left turn from reflection into learning.

“Where I would like this to go is, just in the past two years, I came to find my biological siblings and biological mother. I’ve had a conversation with my biological sister, but there are many other people in that lineage who I don’t really know. So, I want to start off charting of my biological family and other lineage,” they say. 

What makes Moletress and the I Miss You podcast uniquely interesting is the fact that they are a student at heart, a being that is tapped into not only the art of listening, but in the craft of observation, fluidity, and movement. They acquired an MFA in dance at George Washington University in D.C., and after teaching for a time, decided to utilize their movement background and migrated into a therapeutic direction of Somatic Psychotherapy. Unlike talk therapy, Somatic Psychotherapy is a holistic, therapeutic approach which incorporates a person’s mind, body, spirit, and emotions in the healing process. 

“I’m still discovering things as I go along, because there are so many aspects of the therapeutic field to navigate and find your way around. This actually comes up in the podcast: I’ve been doing this deep dive into transgenerational and intergenerational, ancestral trauma, collective trauma,” Moletress says. “Yes we’re here, we’re all individuals, and Americans all live in these radical, individual bubbles; but we are connected. We’re connected from things, events, experiences that happened, generations ago.” 

Things from our ancestral past still have a profound effect on our nervous systems, they explain, and digging into that history can really allow us to ourselves to deep healing. As Americans, we are taught to “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” and “figure things out for ourselves,” and oftentimes, we aren’t recognizing that issues and problems aren’t solely of our own making. Moletress wants to help others by guiding them through the process of understanding that we can be more gentle with ourselves by accepting that there are a lot of environmental and ancestral things that are outside of our control. By gaining an understanding in how we work intrinsically, fundamentally, and elementally, folks can feel more empowered. 

As a way of honoring the ancestral and elemental influence, Moletress taps into magic and witchcraft as a way of making an intentional, ritual-based connection to the Earth, and to themselves.

“Ritual, for me, really is about stopping and being in the liminal space for a moment to give gratitude where gratitude is due. To tune into what it means to be living on the Earth and being in relationship with things,” they explain. “Also, it helps to slow down that inner self-critic, and too is the idea that I have a choice. I have an opportunity to shape my life and my experiences in a certain way, and I don’t need to walk around every day with crippling anxiety, with a sense of dread, and not knowing where I’m going from day to day. I can just focus my energy in a way to really benefit from all of the great things that are going on around me.”

“Making an intentional decision to stop drinking was one thing, but it wasn’t a magic eraser.”

Through ritual, Moletress was also able to let go of something that was no longer serving them: the use of alcohol. In I Miss You, Moletress does not skirt the fact they are an addict in recovery. Performing a ceremony on the beach of Cape Cod in December 2019, they used this as a chance to listen to their inner voice and let go of the hurt and suffering. They explain the details of what led to that day, and what ritual ceremony provided them in the end: 

“Drinking, for me, was ongoing because it was a way to not deal with all of these trauma fragments which were running the game for a really long time. I don’t really think there was something that happened where I was like, ‘I need to quit now or I’m going to die,’ but I got to the point where I was like, ‘I need to heal; this is exhausting; I’m sort of over it. I need to stop just numbing out everything and deal with it.’ I knew that I wanted to go to Cape Cod, to Provincetown, over New Years to see some friends, so I came up with this idea to do this ritual on the beach and ask the sea to take these aspects of suffering away from me, so I could begin again with the new year without all of the fear and sickness that came with the ways in which I was numbing everything so I didn’t have to feel it.”

They continue, “It was very Tempest-like; a huge storm came through, and I found this wooden staff on the beach. I picked up the staff, drew a line in the sand, and said what I wanted to leave behind. I crossed that line, going closer to the ocean, and eventually, I just went into the ocean. The tide was coming in, and the idea was that the tide would come in and would wash away those things out to sea. And it’s worked. I really give gratitude to whatever powers that be that it worked.”

While Moletress didn’t notice an immediate impact to their creativity after getting sober, the pandemic has played a big part in allowing them the time to focus that creative energy, and in turn, continue that inner self-work.

“Doing the ritual was one thing, and making an intentional decision to stop drinking was one thing, but it wasn’t a magic eraser. I had to reshape my entire thinking around what that aspect was in my life; what it was doing and what it was not doing for me. The way in which I did that is a very personal psychology, and other people might not agree with me in the way that I think,” they say. “It wasn’t my intention to turn this into a podcast about addiction, but it keeps coming up in some way.”

Speaking honestly about their struggles with alcohol and the way in which they find healing from addiction is just another example of the raw and authentic conversations that I Miss You features. From reconnection, to ritual, to recovery, there is no stone that is left unturned. What started as a fever dream, that transformed into an idea, that then created a podcast that brings hope, humility, and humor to listeners around the world has found a home nestled in a medium which honors truth, tragedy, and triumph. 

*photos by Julius Garrido