PODCAST Episode 001: VALORIZE: Feeling Seen
Published 30 September 2025

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TRANSCRIPT

Intro

If the purpose of your work is not about adding more to what is, but about creating what could be, then typical career ladders, market fit, and industry norms. We'll always devalue. What is transformative or unprecedented about your work for the value of your work to be seen. You first have to see the value of it despite having interacted with systems that didn't see you.

This calls you into an emancipated relationship to your own resources, your energy, your time, your focus, your unique insights and gifts, your relationships and your sense of self. Where the future impact of your work dictates the terms and your desired standard for how resourced you feel in doing that [00:01:00] work in your way is what makes that impact possible.

Hi, I'm Louisa Shaeri, and I'm on a mission to help you see the value of what you have to offer so that you can make your work recognized, sought after, and highly valued in the world. I call this valorize to valorize is to determine the value system by which unprecedented or transformative value can be recognized.

This is the underlying methodology used by visionaries, artists, facilitators, culture workers, creatives, change makers, people who successfully realized unprecedented culture shifting work. While being well-resourced in this podcast, I am showing you what it takes, how this journey feels, some of the common pitfalls along the way, and how you can move past them so that you can replicate this road less traveled, and our world gets to be transformed by your work.

[00:02:00]

If there is a motivation behind your work that is more than just earning a living, there's some aspect of it that you are choosing to give yourself to, because there is something about the way that you do it that is a unique point of view.

There's an insight. You have a way of seeing or because in doing that, there are parts of you that get to feel more seen then making visible and knowable and recognizable.

That aspect of that work, what makes [00:03:00] it different? What is that unique point of view becomes really important and it requires things of you that are emotionally difficult to do, right? That is you having to stand out, having to make a claim for something and to believe in what you are doing and why it matters,

enough to be misunderstood. Enough to challenge other people's models or worldview and invite them into a journey into something different.

And often the people who you are inviting into that are actually not the people who would disagree or misunderstand it, but there is a very human need to belong, to be part of the group that is challenged in you in order to offer it to those people who can recognize the value, who do want what you do and would benefit from it.

And so there's a very [00:04:00] specific... And so there's a level of what I call courageous contagious conviction that you are called to embody. That is also part of what will make your work valued and recognized.

And there is an energetic or emotional resonance that you might experience when you encounter people in the world who are doing that, who are having that courageous conviction expressed in such a way that it's contagious to you, right?

It excites you, it makes you want more of it. You have curiosity for it and for how are they able to be that bold? And it's this sense of boldness that I have always been attracted to. That I've always been seeking out, whether I knew it or not, as a model, as a way of doing things.

So I want to speak to that in my own journey and also in the [00:05:00] origin story of this notion of valorize as a way of being and how it's been forged in very specific struggle of mine, but also.

A desire of mine to feel seen, to have parts of me that didn't fit also be something that I could bring to the table that I didn't have to leave behind. But this has also been informed by the people that were inspiration to me, that were instruction to me, both public figures, historical figures, thinkers, artists.

But also mentors, coaches, writers, people who have been willing to deviate from consensus to stick out, to be visible, not necessarily legible, not necessarily understandable by everyone, but understandable to me, recognizable to me in such a way that I was able to receive the instruction of who they were being.[00:06:00]

As something that I could learn, that I could model, and that I could apply in my own way, and I want to give one example. There are so many.

And so as I speak to the origin story of Valorize, I want to also invite you to consider who has been that for you, who has been a model, an example, like a beacon, a lighthouse that has helped you navigate in the dark and figure out your own way, a possibility that didn't previously seem available and made it available through their example.

Who have been that for you? One example for me is the late Mel Baggs. Mel Baggs was a disabled, autistic, queer advocate writing a blog on the internet at the time when I was newly self recognized as autistic, and trying to figure out what does that even mean? A lot of what they were sharing spoke to

[00:07:00] me, but there was a particular blog post that valorized a way of perceiving that felt like the first time I'd ever had what my experience of being in the world was and having it be reflected my hyper visual attunement and that having been accompanied by

A disappearance of self where I would go into the visual and no longer sense my own edges, where that self lacked the epistemic boundaries, like the thinking to say, you exist this way of. Existing is real and it offered a model to me that was not only valorizing what felt like my particular flavor of perceiving and knowing, but also valorized something that was objected outside of the human.

Seen as undesirable, categorize as subhuman or abnormal could also be [00:08:00] something potent and real and meaningful and have value. I'd come to recognize myself in this way through offering art workshops. I was working as an artist and. In the early days offering workshops in which I had license to design these workshops in whatever way I wanted, funded by the public funding system in the UK and working in galleries where they had.

Artworks on the walls, and they would have visiting groups usually from schools. And it was in those workshops that I honed a way of thinking about the imagination as utilizing an absence as a space through which new imaginary things can be invoked. But those imaginary things can be experienced as if they are real to a degree that they have material effects.

You can create something from nothing. You can create value from perceived lack, [00:09:00] and it was in one of these art workshops that I first met a group of autistic teenagers. Saw myself in them, and them in me, and their individual ways of knowing and learning, being respected and accounted for by the adults who are with them from that specific school and how they interacted with each other in my workshop, and how much it was a reflection of what I'd been.

Trying to articulate as how the hypothetical parallel conjuring space of art can give rise to ways of knowing that don't have validity elsewhere. So in exploring this idea of being autistic, I didn't like how autism is defined from an external established way of knowing and categorizing people who don't fit with that in comparison to a norm that's already centered.

Recognizing my own experiences within the frame of being autistic was [00:10:00] helpful. It legitimized what had been hard. It allowed what had been a source of shame to be something that I was able to claim as who I was. But one of the most beneficial inquiries for me in that journey was reading about and witnessing different liberation struggles.

That were more established, anti-racist, decolonial, black feminist writing, cultural movements, hip hop, ballroom, crip, and disability. Deaf culture. Queer culture. Not just as models for how social frontiers might move forward, but also the act of determining that a life has infinite worth. But also that an embodied location and set of experiences in spite of an oppressive force, also as a form of value.

Pedagogy of the oppressed, the external gaze, double consciousness, third consciousness, the right to [00:11:00] opacity. The sense of self narration, of reclaiming, of self-determining, of resisting, of refusal. The notion of interdependence, the lies of isms. The uncatchable nature of being something or knowing something that can't be read through a universal lens or a consensus lens and yet holds value, and that value can emerge directly from wherever you are as whoever you are, often as an inconvenient truth, that if you act on with conviction through connection in relationship, that that's what makes it so.

Years ago I read an article of how bioluminescent creatures in a relatively short space of time across many multiple species at once suddenly developed this ability to generate light. And so I began to think of this as a [00:12:00] model. To consider what else is seeded in the dark? What else emerges out of not knowing some form of absence or some kind of invisibility, like life can exist, even if it's systemically eclipsed.

A sun can emit solar flares, sun frequencies that disrupt communication systems on earth with a different frequency. You don't have to be seen to have an impact. You don't have to make sense to everyone to make sense to your people. And so this question of what is visible, what is legible? What else is seeded in the dark?

This idea of being a lighthouse all became themes that I was working with and thinking about as an artist. Also because I'm a very future focused person, my [00:13:00] worst days in life were bearable because I had the sense that there was going to be a future in which I would have agency to make different choices.

So the future is this other absence space out of which we can invoke and conjure hypothetical possibilities. I published a book, lossy Ecology, which. Was this idea of autistic ways of knowing might be sources of entire worlds of meaning, of possibility, of ways of being. And more recently came across the framework of cognitive justice, which speaks to the necessity of knowledges that are not just the western universalist scientific way of knowing, but knowledges that are situated in a particular.

Location, geography, relationship, culture, a way of living that are enabling of that way of [00:14:00] living, of livelihood and of life chances. And so there was this growing sense in me that there was an autistic way of being that could be a source of livelihood. And after a decade of working in the visual art world in London as an artist and getting my foot in.

The door at the upper echelons of that art world. So in 2016 or 17, I was. Invited to have a studio visit with the person who was at the time, number one on the art Review Power 100 list, and this sense of, I've made it, I've got my foot in the door in the higher ups, and had this studio visit with this international jet setting curator who could potentially give me opportunities that would change the trajectory of my life as it was.

And it was in that studio visit at the [00:15:00] end when they were leaving and they said, surprise us. And the way they said it, that something landed in my belly as, oh shit, everything that I am working on that I want to valorize with my work. I'm having to be someone I'm not in order to advance it. And there was something about the other possibility that potentially I could create my own model that would make the value that I saw in my work real in the world rather than part of that gallery system.

And it was like my body suddenly withdrew energy for that art world. My heart was no longer in it. And so I ended up creating my own financial model based on an internet business and a coaching model for exploring these ideas and possibilities with other people, other [00:16:00] people who also wanted to explore them.

And so in 2020, I founded Sola Systems after two years of thinking about it, not having the guts confronting and working through a lot of what are the time made doing that feel. Near impossible. I had no training, no experience, no credentials, no track record, no invitation, nothing to suggest. It was a good idea, and I had a very difficult relationship with everything that was Zoom, being on camera speaking, being recorded.

I'd had a lot of feedback that the way I spoke was not right, too quiet. I was convinced that there was something shameful about the way I presented, which is what trying to fit in with peers had left me with the idea that I must be doing or saying something the wrong way, or not saying the right thing.

[00:17:00] Or my face is doing the wrong things, and so doing Zoom calls and recording them didn't feel like an option, and my coach at the time helped me with two things, practice and this idea of being of service, that people feel it when you are connected to why it matters for them. When you are connected to why does it matter beyond you, it will pull you past all your own internal barriers.

And then I would add one, which is desire. I wanted it so badly. I wanted badly to feel seen by my life and my work. I had the desire to know that what I felt I possibly had to give. What I felt could be a liberatory perspective, a permissive space for other people to experience self-trust and self-determination.

I [00:18:00] had the desire to move in that direction and try it though with that desire and the connection to why it matters, and knowing I was going to have to get over myself and learn on the job and. Also make this work so that I could earn my way to pay for training. And then with the last nudge I needed was the pandemic hit, and it was now or never.

I leapt. I offered a six week thing on Zoom for free. 12 people signed up, six people came. Then I offered a bigger thing, and that first offering made £8,000, and it blew my mind. Here I was valorizing a way of being, valorizing my way of being, despite how I had felt shame around it and valorizing the, the space to explore it.

And here were these other people who were valuing it too. So here [00:19:00] I was in the pandemic, homeschooling our two kids who were two and five and trying to set this up. I had no time, no childcare, and then every other Saturday I would borrow my husband's workspace and go and do the calls. And then my own coach was based in Australia, so I was getting up at 3:00 AM to be on those calls to get coached and helped into believing I could do this.

Since then, I have focused on coaching autistic RDHD, cognitively and culturally divergent creative people into an aligned way of being, of living and livelihood that has them feeling seen. And in doing that work, the salient. Obvious pattern. The number one biggest factor that made the difference of those I've coached and worked with has been knowing the value of what they had to offer, as in being connected to why that [00:20:00] matters, the potential impact of it.

Why put time and energy and focus and risk. Into something that had previously maybe not been validated as valuable. Your way of thinking, your way of being, your pace, your approach, your unique insights, the way that you communicate, the way that you express when you know the value of what you have to offer and you act on it because of the impact that you could be having.

There is an emancipatory journey that you take in relationship to your time, your energy, your sense of self, and this is what makes you and your work being well-resourced possible. But it's also what makes the parts of you that don't feel seen and the things that you see in a unique way also possible.

And in recognizing that pattern in late 2024, I evolved my work. I made a new leap into creating a process and a space and a [00:21:00] way of thinking that I'm now calling Valorize. The space that I do this work with people is called Flare House Solar Flares, and it's specifically for people who do transformative or visionary or creative or change making work.

Because that work so often comes from knowledges that arise in you, in your body, in your sensitivity for what doesn't work, or valorizes things that are unseen, devalued, or comes from a future lens from what could be and takes people into new possibilities. When you know the value of what you have to offer and you valorize it, you make the value seen and recognized.

You then get to do more of that work, you get to raise the level at which you are doing that work, and then our world gets to [00:22:00] be moved by that work. And there's an inner outer congruence that creating that in your life creates for you. Where your energy is yours, your sense of self is yours. Your belief system is one that you direct and shape instead of being shaped by what is.

Your skills are honed around the exact thing that your best place to offer that is uniquely yours, that you have claimed to a degree that others can affirm it, and there is an emotional and mental muscle and model that you gain whereby you can survey the scene of what is. And you don't take it for granted as if it has to be that way.

Your sense of agency is electric, it's bioluminescent. You know how to create what didn't exist before. You don't accept bullshit. You hold a high standard. You design your life on your terms, and most of all, you know how to have a [00:23:00] desire and trust yourself to move directly towards it and realize it. And so it's that.

State of being. It's that emotional muscle. It's that way of thinking. It's that approach that I'm valorizing with valorize. It doesn't mean you don't have bad days or problems. It means you don't get stuck. It means you are connected to a bigger reason why, to do the hard things, and you have to be willing to be bold.

To have the audacity to give yourself permission to lead and to show another way, to offer a new model, to be a model for other people, like those who are a model for you, were for you. And so this is a journey for people who maybe have a high level of dissatisfaction or discomfort, but also a high level of desire for what could be and who you would become in creating it.

You already know you have something you need to give. And maybe you're just not [00:24:00] fully all in it because it requires things of you that aren't required of other people because it's not commonly modelled because it's not resource and explained as a journey that is different from a typical career path.

And so you need different examples, different instruction, different relationships with people who can see that. There isn't someone else giving you the answers, but rather you being able to trust your own and being reflected in that you have to have an aptitude and an attitude to doing it your way and you maybe just haven't had the social context or the mentoring to be that self and to go bigger.

So I hope in sharing some of the origin story of Valorize, you can feel the emotional. Character muscle that I'm speaking to. As the ingredient for taking what you already know in your [00:25:00] body holds value and valorizing it to a degree that it becomes undeniably real, recognized and valued.