An Interview with Sara Vetter & Lynne Twist

Part III: Acknowledgment

By: Torie White

Torie: A way that I’d love to end is to give you two the opportunity to acknowledge each other.

Lynne: Oh my goodness.

Sara: You’re gonna make me cry.

Lynne: Well we could go on for about an hour each. I’ll start by saying that for me, Sara is a light. She was born with this light and her light now shines ever more brightly and ever more powerfully in this work and with the Pachamama Alliance. She has the capacity to develop relationships, to express her love for people by listening deeply to who they are and having them be seen and received completely and deeply. Her productivity is really like five stars. There are few people that I know that are as constantly productive as she is. She’s ten times more productive than most people are ever gonna be. Her capacity to love is unlimited, unbounded. She’s a brilliant, brilliant communicator. She has a genius in reading people as she already said. Reading people’s energy. Figuring out how to open them and acknowledging the opening that’s already happening.

She’s a natural coach. She’s a natural teacher. And she does a lot of it through her very brilliant humor. Humor is such a huge opener. I make people cry; she makes people laugh. When people cry they’re vulnerable and their heart is open. and when people laugh, they’re vulnerable and their heart is open. All the armor goes down. 

One of our skills together is to generate fields of authenticity where people show up. And Sara’s being, and especially her humor is a huge, huge asset for creating a field of authenticity for people.

Sara is what I call a profound servant to the good. No matter what’s going on with her, she offers it up in full disclosure and transparency in service, and sometimes it’s in humor and sometimes it is deep and profound, like the revelation that comes with suffering. So she’s profoundly effective. But she’s not doing it for the sake of effectiveness; she’s doing it because it’s true for her.

And she’s gorgeous! She attracts people right away, but she doesn’t misuse it. Her beauty is often the door opener, and then when you get inside, you see the beauty that comes from her heart and soul.

Sara: I think something that really captures what I love about Lynne has to do with Oprah. When we had dinner with Oprah, Oprah shared that in 25 years she never missed a show. Five days a week in 25 years with 35,000 hours or more of shows, even if she was feeling terribly sick, she never missed a single one. Because she really got the impact that her presence had on every person that showed up to be in that room with her.

Hearing Oprah share that shook me to the core, because that’s who Lynne is too. She never misses a show. She doesn’t miss a meeting. She doesn’t miss a coaching call. Even when she’s strapped from minute to minute, she does each one of those connections with 150 percent of her effort, with extreme integrity, love, and commitment for that person on the other side of the conversation. Even if she’s cranky, she’s cranky “in love.” Even if she’s in a hard place herself. Even if she’s not feeling well, there’s something inexplicable about who she is to every generation, to every human being that she touches. I think the closest phrase is unconditional love. I really don’t know any other person on the planet who can be that unconditional love all the time in every minute of every day.

Her presence and her being is so mentoring and so “bigger than life” and so encompassing. Her generosity of being and of the words that come out of her mouth are consistent 100 percent of the time. It’s almost unimaginable. And it’s infectious! So, every single person she gets on the phone with or texts or speaks to in any capacity is so profoundly impacted by her presence. There’s nobody that misses the impact. There’s no one on the streets, in the grocery store, at the gas station that misses Lynne Twist’s impact. It’s real. It’s authentic. It transforms every person that’s in her presence all the time.

It shows up with her family and with the people that she barely even knows. I feel like there are a handful of people in the world that have that impact. Like Oprah or like Gandhi.  This is who Lynne is. Her soul came into this world to do it. It is the work she’s going to do until the day she dies. I keep thinking she’s going to stop as she ages, but she can’t not be this person and do this work. It is such an honor to be in her presence and be a partner with her in that. To help steward that and to let her fly, let her be Lynne.   ♦

This interview is the third part of a three part series. Read Part 1 and Read Part 2

Torie White served as the Archivist and Digital Marketing Manager for the Soul of Money Institute from 2016-2018. She lives in and works in Oakland, CA.