You’re Not Being Buried, You’re Being Planted with Dr. Pardis Mahdavi

<p>In this deeply personal and wide-ranging episode of the SuperSelf Podcast Series, Pete Ferrari sits down with medical anthropologist, author, educator, and strategist Dr. Pardis Mahdavi for a conversation about trust, identity, resilience, self-awareness, relationships, culture, spirituality, and what happens when the systems we have been taught to trust stop making sense.</p><p>Pardis has spent decades studying people, institutions, migration, culture, health, human relationships, and the spaces where science, spirituality, and lived experience collide. But this conversation quickly moves beyond academics.</p><p>Together, Pete and Pardis explore a simple but powerful idea:</p><p>Sometimes you are not being buried. You are being planted.</p><p>Pete and Pardis also unpack the difference between making decisions from a suffering state versus a beautiful state, why meditation and self-awareness can create space between emotion and action, how parents unknowingly “splatter” their internal state onto their children, and why learning to love yourself may be one of the least selfish things you can do.</p><p>They go deep into relationships, intuition, the danger of ignoring red flags, the “tyranny of the should,” intergenerational trauma and strength, and why Pardis believes horses became some of her greatest teachers.</p><p>This episode is not about avoiding hardship.</p><p>It is about learning how to recognize the valley, harvest what it has to teach you, and use what you find there to become more aligned with who you actually are.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Episode Highlights:</strong></p><p>06:54 – The difference between being buried and being planted</p><p>18:38 – “Relational awakening” and why other people can sharpen your self-awareness</p><p>25:31 – Parenting is “caught, not taught”</p><p>36:31 – Why love does not automatically mean someone is the right partner for you</p><p>44:39 – Why taking care of yourself can also be an act of taking care of your children</p><p>54:39 – Intergenerational trauma versus intergenerational strength</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Key Takeaways:</strong></p><ul><li><p>Success feels good, but the top of the mountain is not always where the deepest learning happens.</p></li><li><p>Being planted implies that something new may still grow from what is happening.</p></li><li><p>Growth does not require pretending suffering feels good.</p></li><li><p>Trust does not disappear when institutions fail, it migrates.</p></li><li><p>Community b