Show Notes
In this episode of “Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice,” Patricia and Nicole discuss the importance of rituals of connection in building and maintaining relationships. They share examples from their own lives, highlighting how deliberate and consistent efforts can strengthen bonds with partners, friends, and colleagues. Additionally, they make a significant Patreon announcement and, as always, emphasize the value of community and genuine connection.
Mentioned on the show (includes affiliate links):
- Bookshop Affiliate Storefront (links below are affiliate)
- Become a patron! Patreon.com/eedapod
- Subscribe to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice Newsletter
- Queer Time Capsule
- EEDA Newsletter “Thoughts on Queer Photography”
- Sarah Deragon Photography
- EEDA Pod Episode “Relationship Advice for All Types”
- Rituals of Connection (Gottman Institute | Mike & Susan Dawson)
Find the full show notes and official transcript on our website: eedapod.com
Become a patron! Patreon.com/eedapod
Follow the show on Instagram & find us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, & Spotify
Sound editing by Jen Zink
Transcript
Music: [00:00:00] [Intro Music]
Patricia: Hey there sweet tarts! Welcome to Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice, the podcast for folks who would rather curl into the fetal position than lean In. I’m your host, Patricia Elzie-Tuttle.
Nicole: And I want you to think of the Harry Potter franchise as the Tesla or cyber truck of the fandom world.
I’m Nicole Elzie-Tuttle. We’re recording this show on April 22nd, 2025
Patricia: Earth Day.
Nicole: Oh, is it Earth Day?
Patricia: It’s Earth Day, yeah.
Nicole: Oh,
Patricia: it was,
Nicole: is that like the Earth’s birthday or are we just like celebrating it because we don’t know it’s birthday.
Patricia: No, it’s not the Earth’s birthday. It’s the Save the Earth Day.
Nicole: Oh,
Patricia: it was a really big deal when I was in high school because I was the co-president of the environmental team.[00:01:00]
So
Nicole: y’all go hug the earth.
Patricia: It needs it. [Laughing]
We recently went to an art show opening
Nicole: We did!
Patricia: for a show called Queer Time Capsule.
Nicole: Yes.
Patricia: And the photographer is Sarah Deragon, and it’s actually part of a larger art project, again called Queer Time Capsule that we’re gonna link in the show notes. It’s kind of along the lines of something Nicole and I talk about a lot, which is preserving queer joy through photography and queer existence too.
Nicole: Yeah, it was really neat and our pictures were in it.
Patricia: Yeah, we have a picture in it.
Nicole: We have a picture in it.
Yeah. Not pictures of us plural. There was just one, but, uh, we are now in the time capsule.
Patricia: We are now in the time capsule and also on the wall at the Petaluma Art Gallery, or, or
Nicole: Yeah
Patricia: what have you.
Nicole: Yeah.
For those interested, Sarah was also the one who [00:02:00] took our picture that’s on our webpage of us.
Patricia: Yep.
Nicole: She does an amazing job and is really fun to work with as a photographer.
Patricia: Yeah, she’s really great and she does, if you’re in the Bay Area, she does like not boring business headshots and things like that.
She likes to play with color and texture, and
Nicole: she’s also occasionally not in the Bay Area, and will do pictures in other places.
Patricia: That too, we will link to her stuff in the show notes as well.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia.
Patricia: Yes, Nicole.
Nicole: In our last episode at the top, you alluded to something special coming our way. Are you ready to make this announcement?
Patricia: I am as ready as I’ll ever be.
Nicole: Go for it.
Patricia: I had a dream. No. Um
Nicole: oh, no!
Patricia: No.
We are announcing the top tier of our Patreon.
Nicole: This top tier is also really top-tier.
Patricia: It’s real. It’s a top-tier top tier.
Nicole: oohhhh.
Patricia: This is, you know, we have the Helpful Helpers at [00:03:00] $3.
Nicole: Yes.
Patricia: We have the Enthusiastic Encouragers
Nicole: I love them.
Patricia: in the mid-range at $8, and Nicole actually named this top tier.
Do you wanna tell everyone what folks in the top tier are called?
Nicole: I mean, we’ve said it on the show before. These are going to be our Dubious Advisors.
Patricia: Our Dubious Advisors. There are only going to be 10 slots
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: to start with.
Nicole: We only have space enough for 10 Dubious Advisors.
Patricia: Yeah.
The price tag’s gonna be 40 bucks a month.
And with this is another thing that we’ve been talking about a lot, which is a snail mail experience. We will, you know, just send a postcard or letter to anyone. But we were really inspired by a couple of things. First of all, there’s a book called Syme’s Letter Writer, which really kind of expanded the way we think of snail mail, and I’ll link to that book in the show notes.
And also, Jen Zink sent [00:04:00] us some amazing mail. It was a physical newsletter. It had washy tape, it had stickers, it had different kind of features in it. And so Nicole and I are working on something very zine like, but I’m envisioning a lot of pockets in the zine.
Nicole: Like a good dress.
Patricia: Like a good dress. It’s only going to come out once a month because that’s what we have the bandwidth for.
This is for people in the US only because of shipping costs, unfortunately. And yeah, we will send it out at the end of the month, like towards the end of the month. So right now, once you’re listening to this show, the tier will be open for people. You can sign up for the May EEDA Zine.
Nicole: Whoa.
Patricia: And also this tier, just so’s you know, you get what you get in the other [00:05:00] tiers too.
You also then get access to the Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter. Like I’ll sign you up for that for free. So you could get things that are behind a paywall there and all of the other paid stuff in Patreon, which there will also be more stuff there too.
Nicole: Oh gosh. It sounds like we’ve got a a lot to do over the next month.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: [Exhale]
Oh, I guess we mentioned a couple books. If you’re interested in obtaining a copy of the books we’ve mentioned on this show, either already in this episode or in past episodes, uh, we have a bookshop that we will link to in the show notes, yes?
Patricia: Yeah, we’ll link it in the show notes and it’s also accessible at the top of our homepage eedapod.com.
Nicole: And there you can order copies of physical books.
Patricia: Physical books. Well also bookshop.org now does eBooks.
Nicole: That’s right.
Patricia: So there is no reason to be buying books off Amazon.
Nicole: Yeah, [00:06:00] for realsies.
Patricia: But we get a little bit of an affiliate kickback through bookshop. Or you could also support other, like, Bookshop supports independent bookshops as well. So shopping there really helps out all the little guys.
Nicole: Yeah.
Music: [Transition Music]
Patricia: So, today we are going to talk about something that I really love talking about called rituals of connection.
Nicole: Is this some sort of like Lego Church situation?
Patricia: Lego Church?
Nicole: Yeah. ’cause you have to connect the bricks… and there’s rituals….
Patricia: Hmm. I mean, now I’m thinking of what Lego Church would be like.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: No, it’s secret handshakes.
Nicole: Oh!
Patricia: No, it’s not secret handshakes. Sorry.
Nicole: Oh.
We’ve talked a lot about finding community, but we haven’t talked a lot about maintaining relationships other than our [00:07:00] episode specifically on relationship advice titled Relationship Advice for All types that we put out almost exactly a year ago, like 364 days ago.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: So, one, it looks like we’re making a pattern of talking about relationship stuff when our wedding anniversary is coming up.
Patricia: I don’t hate it.
Nicole: But two, I still haven’t told you what this means, this rituals of connection thing, I don’t think it’s actually Lego Church, but sounds like a good place to go on a Sunday.
So let’s start with a couple of definitions. First, I think we’re using Merriam-Webster for the definition of ritual, which is an act or series of acts regularly repeated in a set precise manner.
Patricia: I don’t remember where I had first heard the term rituals of connection, but looking back at my notes, it looks like it might be from The [00:08:00] Gottman Institute or MikeAndSusanDawson.com. Mike and Susan Dawson, whoever these fine people are, define rituals of connection as intentional times that partners spend together willingly, and they happen so ritualistically that we can predict when we can count on them from our spouse.
Nicole: Now Mike and Susan give some examples, like eating together without screens, and exercising together, and weekly date nights, which if these would work for you, cool!
Patricia: I think this definition, the idea of this has some really good bones, but as we do here at Enthusiastic encouragement and Dubious Advice let’s expand it to be more inclusive. We are going to queer rituals of connection because I don’t think that rituals of connection only apply to romantic relationships, nor should they.
Nicole: So let’s start out with sharing what some [00:09:00] of ours are because it’s low hanging fruit.
Patricia: What’d you call me?
Nicole: Uh, my, my ritual buddy?
Patricia: My low hanging fruit.
Nicole: You said it not me.
One of these that, like, plays out so much with us is we always use our manners with each other. What I mean is we say please and thank each other constantly and show gratitude.
Patricia: Yeah, I think I try to say please all the time because I never want you to feel like I’m ordering you around.
Nicole: And I am, I think I am really initiated the thank you in our relationship for anything you’ve ever done for me. Mostly because I don’t want you to think that I’m taking you for granted. And so this will even be things like you drive me to the subway station so I can go to work in the morning. I will thank you every morning, [00:10:00]
Patricia: I will,
Nicole: and when you come pick me up. Thank you for picking me up.
Patricia: Yeah.
And I thank you for doing the laundry all the time. Even though I know you’re gonna put on your audiobook and you’re gonna do it, but I never, I never want it to feel like that it’s just a given and that I deserve it or, or anything like that. Right? Like, I’m actually very grateful for you doing these things so that I could do other things.
Nicole: Yeah, of course.
Another ritual we have occurs before and after we each have therapy. Before each of our sessions, we will have a hug, a smooch, and we’ll say, have fun.
Patricia: [Laughing]
Nicole: And then when it’s over, the one who was not in therapy stops whatever they’re doing, and we hug again. Because therapy can be tough, it can be draining. And after we hug. We’ll go sit on the couch usually so the person who had therapy can decompress, share [00:11:00] anything they want to share, and in particular things that came up that they want the other person to know about because sometimes that happens in therapy.
Patricia: Sometimes, and sometimes, you know, we sit down and like, hey, is there anything that you want me to know about?
And sometimes the answer is not today. And sometimes
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: it’s just sitting and sharing space together.
Nicole: Yeah.
And just kind of having that quiet time together.
Patricia: We have so many little rituals and quirks, but my favorite used to happen during winter. You see, I always run hot. I am almost always just hot to the touch, and it’s not even perimenopause, I’ve been like this my whole life. And Nicole on the other hand, is almost always cold. And she spends most of the winter months shivering like a tiny dog. Sometimes I just have to go like, wrap my arms around you
Nicole: yeah
Patricia: because you’re so cold all the time.
Nicole: My internal furnace does not run hot.
Patricia: No. [00:12:00] My, I just flaming inside.
Um, and outside. Hello?
Uh, Before bed. I will brush my fangs and do my skincare, and then I climb into the bed during winter on Nicole’s side, and I lay there under the covers while she’s doing her bathroom ritual, which is, you know, about 15 to 20 minutes. Then when it’s time for her to hop into bed, I dash across to my side and she leaps into the bed in her now very warm side and pulls the cover up to her chin as she thaws.
Nicole: And by thawing I suck all the heat out of the bed and then the sheets are cold again.
Patricia: I am a little sad this no longer happens ’cause we got an electric blanket, but I also really love the electric blanket.
Nicole: Yeah. ’cause then I can turn it on high and my side is like a little oven.
Patricia: Yeah, I know.
Nicole: But you have to remind me to turn [00:13:00] off before we fall asleep.
Patricia: Yeah, yeah. Or else I just roast.
Nicole: Yeah. And then I’ll wake up too.
Let’s talk about what it means to queer rituals of connection. What we mean when we say queering in this context is taking it out of this nuclear family heteronormative context and applying it to other relationships to maintain and strengthen community.
Yes, we are absolutely obsessed with each other and also our relationships with other people are really important too.
Patricia: Yeah. I started thinking back to when I was a child. My mom and I would go back and forth with like, I love you. I love you more. I love you most. And at some point it became a race to see who could be the first to say I love you more [00:14:00] so upon my mother’s arrival home from work.
So anyone who knew my mother and knows me would not be surprised to hear that. Yes, it definitely devolved into me as a child looking out the window and as soon as I saw her truck coming around the corner, I’d run down the street like a maniac screaming at the top of my lungs. I love you more, which also just got shortened to more because you could say that faster.
And I remember at one point the neighborhood kids I would play with too, they didn’t know why I was doing that, but they knew when my mom was coming down the street we’d yell, screaming more. So suddenly there would be like 10 kids running down the street when mom would come home in her truck, just yelling more at her.
Nicole: That’s so good.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: When I was little, my whole family would all get together on [00:15:00] Friday night to watch Full House and Family Matters and Step by Step and any other shows that were part of the TGIF lineup.
Patricia: Yeah, when you had mentioned that when we were talking about the script, I hadn’t considered that as a ritual of connection, but so many of us in our age range. Some people did it with the Simpsons, right? I watched Jeopardy! with my grandfather every night, religiously. I also watched Golden Girls, which a lot of it went over my head, but I watched Golden Girls with my grandmother and just that time together.
Nicole: Yeah, I think this in particular that, and I don’t know, maybe I’m completely wrong here because we don’t have like children and other things in our household, but it doesn’t seem to happen a lot anymore because not only can everyone go watch in their own space, but even in a shared space, everyone can be watching something different on their own devices.
And I [00:16:00] say this because just spending time together doing the same thing can be its own ritual of connection. It’s about sharing the experience together.
Patricia: Yeah. I hear about it, especially some families with kiddos. It ends up being more of like a movie night, like a weekly movie night. But I, I don’t feel like that happens with like regular shows anymore. People marathon watch shows.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: And it’s not the same.
Nicole: It’s not the same.
Patricia: I am thinking about other ways that we kind of queer these rituals of connections and I am fortunate enough to work with folks that I truly, deeply, like in my day job and during our one-on-one meetings, we start with an honest check-in before we dive into work.
And this really happened once the pandemic hit and all the meetings were over Zoom and it is a very deliberate, like, [00:17:00] how are you? Where are you at today? We let each other know if we’re having a hard day or feel scattered or overwhelmed or even really excited about something completely unrelated to work.
Or it might be something like, hey, I have a sick kiddo at home right now, or, I’m worried my, my loved one is having a hard time, or there’s work going on, on my street, or I didn’t sleep last night, or, or something that may also signal that maybe we need to give each other a little extra grace today. Maybe a little extra compassion before diving into the grind.
Nicole: Now I wanna make sure, do not mistake this for just having small talk before a regular scheduled meeting. Like this is not, how are you doing? I’m fine. Is it sunny where you are too? Like that’s,
Patricia: Which is fine. I think small talk is very important and I will defend small talk to the [00:18:00] death, but this is not that.
Nicole: This is not that. This is something different and it involves a different level of connection.
Patricia: And I think vulnerability too. So I also recognize like some people may hear this and think this sounds like an absolute nightmare of a thing to do with the people you work with.
Nicole: Absolutely, yes.
Patricia: One of my best friends and I text each other every morning.
They text the word morning and I text mornin’ with the dropped G, and sometimes I text first and sometimes they text first. But we almost always start with those words. It’s very like coded like Chuck Jones, Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog. Like Morning Ralph. Morning Sam. Except we have no intention of trying to unlive each other. It’s just our little way of being like, hey, I’m awake. I exist. I’m here. I hope you’re here too.
That same friend and I go on weekly walks. [00:19:00] They’re not extravagant. I do a lot of huffing and puffing, but we tend to do it every week unless we have like meetings or something else going on.
Nicole: We also have an Instagram friend chat where we just send cute animal videos with a friend or a couple different friends.
This is literally like just 98% cute animal videos.
Patricia: Yeah. And the other 2% is like anti-capitalism.
Nicole: Yeah. Yeah.
Patricia: But then we have another friend chat where we titled it Eating and Crying, and we just mostly send food videos back and forth.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: With this one friend. And I think these two are rituals of connection.
Nicole: Yeah.
Because they, they’re around a specific purpose with a specific friend in mind.
Patricia: Right.
One of my friends and I text each other on the New Moon and Full Moon, and we just have those check-ins every, what is that, about two weeks or so. And sometimes we talk [00:20:00] about if we’re setting an intention or if we’re setting an intention to release something or what we want for the next cycle.
And sometimes the text is just like, I am barely alive. I didn’t even know it was this time of the month.
Nicole: Rituals of connection don’t need to be extravagant or costly or even necessarily time consuming. While, you can certainly be deliberate about things like a weekly walk or a recurring date night.
Ooh, a date night with your friends.
Patricia: Yeah! Friend date night.
Nicole: Sometimes rituals of connection start just by doing something that promotes connection. Can be a text, a postcard, and then just continuing to do it on a regular basis.
Patricia: Yeah. Very few of my rituals of connection started as super deliberate or targeted.
Nicole: We never sat down and said, okay, before and after every therapy session, [00:21:00] we’re gonna hug.
Patricia: Yeah. Ready, break!
We haven’t yet talked about why rituals of connection are important. We should probably do that.
Nicole: You may have heard people say things like, relationships are work. This is some of that work. And I don’t necessarily think that work means something difficult or unpleasant, but these rituals of connection are a part of relationship maintenance.
Any relationship, and this is not just like romantic relationship. This is your friendships. This can be professional relationships, this can be familial relationships.
Patricia: Maybe rather than relationships are work, I think you and I align more with the phrase relationships take effort.
Nicole: Yeah. Yeah.
Also, you probably already have a whole bunch of these rituals of connection in your existing [00:22:00] relationships that are so routine you don’t even notice them. Before saying OMG, I need more. It might help to think about your current relationships, especially like your really solid ones, and consider the rituals of connection you have in those contexts,
Patricia: and then you can think about the relationships you want to strengthen and see where you can do that through a little ritual.
A good morning text. A weekly Monday how was your weekend text. A monthly dinner. A voice note. I’m really into the voice notes lately. Weekly phone calls can also be rituals of connections, especially with elders.
Nicole: I was just thinking these can also be like regular get togethers.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Like our annual cherry picking friend group adventure.
Patricia: I think of that as more of a tradition. ‘Cause it only kind of happens once a year.
Nicole: Once a year.
Patricia: Like kind of [00:23:00] holidays and stuff like that.
Nicole: But maybe the monthly friend get together?
Patricia: But maybe the monthly friend get together.
Nicole: Mmm.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Are traditions, though not in some ways, rituals?
Patricia: You know what? I think maybe one encompasses the other.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Well, we just went off script on a tangent there.
Patricia: As we do.
Music: [Transition Music]
Nicole: Patricia, what do you, what do you wanna make sure people take away from this?
Patricia: I want people to recognize that relationships, these individual relationships, or small group relationships are the building blocks of community and they require effort.
Nicole: Mm-hmm.
Patricia: Nicole, what do you want people to take away?
Nicole: I wanna make sure you understand, y’all walk away from here with the idea of not being afraid to build on your friendships or other non-romantic relationships the [00:24:00] same way you would build on those romantic relationships.
Find the ways of connecting and building that. And strengthening those.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Well, Patricia, it has been a couple weeks since our last episode.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: What’s been filling your cup?
Patricia: Oh, so many things, but I think at the top of mind right now is that I finally curled out of my cave, and I am chipping away at my massive backlog of snail mail and it feels so good.
And Deb, if you’re listening, I finally popped something back into the mail to you. Deb is an amazing listener who has sent us some beautiful mail, and I’ve been meaning to write back and I’m so happy for you to, for you to get what we sent you.
Nicole, what’s filling your cup?
Nicole: My orchid cactus finally bloomed.
This is a plant I have had for years.
Patricia: Probably at least a decade now.
Nicole: Yeah. [00:25:00]
My uncle gave it to me after my mom passed away, and it was a cutting from a cactus that was at their childhood home. Which now is probably gone. It probably burned
Patricia: In Altadena
Nicole: in the Altadena fires.
Patricia: Mmm.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Mm-hmm.
Nicole: It came as a cutting, it was just a single like piece of cactus stuck in the dirt. I have had it this whole time through moving up here from Pasadena, living at our old one bedroom apartment, and now in this, this house. And this kind of last year, I really started trying to take care of it more. Trying to figure out like what its light needs are.
Patricia: Well, for the longest time we didn’t even know what kind of plant it was.
Nicole: Yeah.
I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of plant this has been for years. Shout out to my cousin who figured it out because she got a cutting also. And this year, after taking more care of it [00:26:00] and devoting time to it, it has produced two flowers.
And these flowers are like the size of our fists.
Patricia: Yeah. This flower is huge. We should post one online on our Instagrams.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Or on the eedapod, uh, blue sky too. We could,
Nicole: yeah
Patricia: put a picture.
Nicole: I’ll put a picture up.
It’s a, it’s a massive flower. It’s bright red. And it just, it’s making me so happy, ’cause I’ve had it all this time and yeah.
There’s, there’s a lot of feelings behind it.
Patricia: Yeah. And the rest of the plant looks kind of scraggly.
Nicole: Yeah. It, it just kind of sent out tentacles with little spikes on it, and they just kind of go every whichy way. And this year, I guess things were finally right for it to be really happy. And a couple of those put out some flowers.
Patricia: Yeah.
Well, and I think it connects to today’s show too, with the rituals of connection because you really started being deliberate about feeding it and giving it consistent attention.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: [00:27:00] And you know, you cleaned it up a bit and we have it in a good window and it has good light. And again, it returns to effort.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s right.
Patricia: You’ve, yeah, you’ve been putting in consistent effort and it’s paid off. Those flowers are gorgeous.
Nicole: Yeah. Yeah.
Patricia: Well, that’s our show for today. We’d like to thank our awesome audio editor, gen Zinc. You can find her at loopdilou.com, and we’ll leave a link to that in our show notes.
Nicole: You can find the full show notes and transcript at eedapod.com. That’s E-E-D-A-P-O-D dot com. There you can also find a link to our Patreon, our Bookshop link, and a link to the ongoing, Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter. You can also find us on Instagram and Blue Sky at eedapod. And email at eedapod@gmail.com.
Patricia: We are nothing if not consistent.
Nicole: We would also appreciate it so much if you would subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts that allow ratings.
It [00:28:00] really goes far in helping other people find us.
Patricia: We would also appreciate anyone who can subscribe to us on Patreon, especially grabbing one of those new Dubious Advisor top tier spots. Support is going to help us keep this show going, especially without ads. You can find us patreon.com/eedapod.
In the meantime, we hope you find ways to be kind to yourself, drink some water and read a book. We’ll be talking to you soon.
Nicole: I know I usually say something silly, but talking about that plant got me a little choked up.
Patricia: Aw, it’s gonna be hug time after this.
Nicole: Oh yeah. I could use a good hug.