Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Growth, Mind/Body Wellness, Podcast, Widowhood |
Laurie-Ann Murabito | An Eternal Optimist
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Being an eternal optimist means always looking on the bright side and having hope, no matter what obstacles might attempt to push you off your path.
Some people may not necessarily be eternal optimists. However, they’ve become incredibly good at reframing a challenging situation for the better.
I would say I am more of a “reframing” type. However, this week’s guest, Laurie-Ann, can remember being an eternal optimist since she was a little girl. And as I dug more deeply during our conversation, it was discovered that being the strong one for those around her was a behavior emulated by her mother as she grew up.
Laurie-Ann shares about the loss of her mother very recently to cancer and the death of her first husband, where she found herself a widow at age 36 before they even reached their first anniversary. She additionally shares a funny story about her father. A bike accident caused him to go blind in one eye. However, that did not deter her from offering her father a little perspective, probably when he needed it most.
We all have a story to tell. Laurie-Ann helps others tell their stories through authentic storytelling. Loss has shaped her as a speaking coach and how she shows up on stage and writes her speeches. But perhaps, her optimistic energy has helped her stay grounded in the one thing she knows how to do and what she does best – reframe the weave the worst of stories into a tapestry of gold.
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Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. Today, my guest is Laurie Ann Muirbito, She is a public speaker. But first, I wanna share if you listened last week that I was going to change how I was gonna run this podcast a little bit. Forgoing the whole format of focusing on nonprofits and things, And I’m just gonna go with the flow and share content that I feel is on my heart or mind for that week what I feel I wanna talk about, who I’m speaking with, just go with the flow. So that’s how I’m going to move forward with this podcast, and I’m excited to say that the first conversation for this newly decided format is with Lori Anne. And so I’m going to have her fully introduce herself, and thank you for being here.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Thank you. So I am a reformed painfully shy girl who couldn’t even make eye contact who accidentally became a professional speaker. Funny story there. And I spoke on leadership and corporate engagement and would help companies and worked with a lot of the Fortune five hundred and one thousand companies. And then I just got tired of hopping on airplanes. And it was all because of a text message that I took a little bit of a pivot to help entrepreneurs such as yourself, new coaches, Victoria, to start leveraging speaking opportunities to grow their audience and fill out their programs. Because there are so many opportunities for all of us to be sharing our story and our solution with more people.
Victoria Volk: And so thank you for being here. And before I forget, what was the text? You can’t throw that out there and not share what the text was.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: That’s true. The text message was Lori and Do you write speeches? The people. And the answer was no. But because I kinda knew her, I said, I’ll help you.
And We met for coffee, and she was, like, three years away from retiring from her government job. And at that point, you will stand on your head for three more years to finish out your time. But I helped her craft a presentation because she had a side hustle that was kind of going to become her retirement hustle, if you will. And she was a stylist a personal stylist. And she had been successfully losing money for five years. Her husband said, you can’t do this when you retire. And so I was like, oh, I’ll teach you how to get booked. I’ll teach you how to write a presentation that’s compelling. Captivating and most importantly converting. And after her very first presentation, she walked away with two referrals to two other places to speak and three full-paying clients. In my books, that was a home run, and I that I was like, wonder if other coaches and consultants would like to know what I do and how to leverage speaking opportunities. And that’s how I kinda, like, got into the spot.
Victoria Volk: It was kind of a happenstance conversation for me too. Someone said, well, you wrote a book about grief, didn’t you? And I was totally looking to assist business owners, entrepreneur, solo entrepreneur, in just, like, one off conversations of how to, like, where are they stuck? And that’s what I was working towards, and this and she said that to me and I’m like, well, yeah, I did. It didn’t even occur to me that grief was something that I knew inside out. And so I’m glad that I asked about that text because oftentimes people ask us for what they need, right, that they know that we can offer them And if you are have experienced a lot of grief in your life, you have knowledge, you have wisdom, you have hinds the gift of hindsight to reflect on your life. And so what and you often ask yourself, what do I really wanna do? And the hint may be in what people are asking of you.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Yes. You have to listen very carefully.
Victoria Volk: So thank you for sharing that story. You actually are my speaking coach and it was kind of a no-brainer the last time we spoke to have you on as on my podcast because you’ve had a lot of loss and recent loss, big losses. And what struck me is that I didn’t even know your mother had passed away. I knew she was sick, but when we got on her call, I didn’t know she had passed away because you were still showing up. You’re still showing up for me and the other people that are in our mastermind. And I had no idea. I was like, none the wiser. And people might from the outside might say, oh, you’re so strong and say all these myths about grief, and are you really okay? They’re expecting you to fall apart too. So can you just share, like, your reflection on the well, first of all, let’s let’s start yeah. We’ll just I’ll let you take this.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: I’ll just share that. I’m not the sort of person to oh, my mother just died and put that out on social media and make the big announcement. My husband kind of did so. He put it out and he was like he put my mother’s obituary out there. But I’m not that sort of person. Probably because I don’t feel that I needed to have all of these people say, oh, I’m so sorry for your loss, when it was actually a beautiful experience. So my mother was diagnosed on Victoria, you don’t know this. Well, you know part of this. My mother was diagnosed with leukemia and like, sometime around February, March, there was a lot of tests that were going on. And my mother lives in Ohio. So she lives about a 12-hour drive away from where me and two of my other sisters are. And she lives close to one of my sisters. Who was taking her to the doctor’s appointment. And so and literally, on March 23rd, they’ve got the final diagnosis. My sister in Ohio called to share the news. And that my mother was going to proceed with chemotherapy. So, and she did well on the chemo. Until she just started to get too tired and she was tired of being tired. She was tired of being weak. She was tired of, like, she couldn’t even go to the bathroom by herself. And it was at that point that she was, like I’m just I’m done. I’m done with the treatments. I’m done with the blood work. I’m done with the getting platelets. I mean, she was literally had to get blood transfusions probably twice a week. Wow. Yeah. So that’s a little too frequent. She just decided she was like, I’m just done. So it’s a death can actually be a beautiful experience. And I have experienced one death prior my life got it back in 2004, and it was my first husband. And we hadn’t even been married that long. But again, both of them were a form of cancer. So it wasn’t a car accident. It wasn’t something that was really sudden. I knew it was going to happen. So I think when it’s gonna happen, like one I could step into being the person that my mother needed me to be, which was somebody who was strong, somebody who was smiling. Like me and my sisters, like, we just weren’t sad. It was, like, I mean, yes, it’s a sad experience. But it can also be really, really beautiful. And I don’t know, like, where I’m going with this story now. But the funny thing is so my sister made that phone call on March twenty third, twenty twenty two. My mother passed away on March twenty third. Twenty twenty three. Wow. Exactly one year. And I actually and I personally love the date that you died on three Twenty three. Twenty three. Just like mom to make her mark. Mhmm. But it can be sad if you decide that it’s going to be sad and traumatic, but it can also be really beautiful. And I chose to see it as a beautiful experience. I mean, I wouldn’t have wanted to have gotten the phone call that said, mom passed away. Moms you know, Mom’s mom’s dead. I was there. Listening to her, take her final breaths. And I found so much comfort. I mean, we were playing music, like my mother’s was had a very strong faith. So we’re playing a lot of these Christian songs that we knew that she’d love. And I remember telling my sister, can you she just lower it? Because I just wanted to hear her breathe. Yeah. Because sooner or later, it was like she was going to like, it was gonna be that last breath.
Victoria Volk: Eyes are just swelling up.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Mine too.
Victoria Volk: As a trained end of life do a lot, that is the goal and the mission to help families foster and nurture that desire for their loved one to have a death that is honoring their wishes and a death with dignity and respect and however they want that to look like. So had she expressed. I mean, obviously, she had a sense of agency where she was like, I’m done with treatment. And some family can get really up set by that, like, why aren’t you fighting? Why aren’t you trying? Like that can cause a lot of conflict in families when someone chooses that for themselves. But every family dynamic is different and every relationship is different. But it seemed that she was exhibiting her sense of agency from the moment she felt she needed to.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Yeah. And we as her daughter’s really look at it. It was like, what do you want mom? So we were constantly trying to honor her wishes and I remember, like, the moment, like like, okay. Let’s bring in hospice and they will explain everything to us. We’re also very blessed that one of my sisters is a registered nurse and actually does infusion therapies for people that are really ill. She goes to their home and gives them medicine. So to have somebody like my sister just like constantly monitoring and looking at the numbers, and she just knew where my mom was even if mom didn’t know where she was, And when I and when I say it was, like, it’s not that she didn’t know, like, her surroundings, but I’m talking about, like, diagnostically, like, what like, blood count numbers, what that actually meant. And so, I mean, so, like, having my sister, it was almost like, the adviser in the family, like, everybody was constantly looking to her, but we didn’t still opt for hospice so that my sister, the nurse, could be her daughter, and not her nurse, not her caretaker. And we think we thought that we were gonna be at the hospice house a lot longer than we actually were. We’re only there for two and a half days. Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, when we when I tell you that, like, we packed snacks for days. For some reason, we thought we were gonna be there a while. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Wow. How was this loss different for you in a lot of ways from your husband’s passing?
Laurie-Ann Murabito: My husband’s passing was really the first major death that I’ve ever experienced. And I was thirty-six and found myself a widow. I think, again, I was able to just put myself into the person that he needed me to be and honoring his wishes. And I’ll tell you a funny story. Because music is very uplifting for me. And I must have gone out, and this was literally like the day before he passed, and he passed very fast. I had gone to the market for something listening to some very upbeat music. So I come in the house and I’m smiling and upbeat and bouncy if my husband says to me. He says, you’re awfully upbeat for a woman who’s about to lose her husband. And I went, Mm-mm. Yeah. So would you like and I constantly was doing this throughout our marriage. I was always giving him choices. So would you like me to be sad and crying? Or would you like me to be smiling and laughing? And he chose to be smiling and laughing, and I said, okay, you got it. So your wish is my commands, basically. And that’s how I would just be. I just felt like I had to be this because he was constantly looking at me for clues, for, like, where am I? Again, health-wise, should I be afraid? And I was always like if I showed, like, no fear, like, you’re doing great. Everything is going according to plan on, then he would react And then his family, his brother, and sister, and daughter would also react the same way too. Like, everybody’s just feeding off of each other’s energy. So I just stepped into just being like, like, you’re doing great. Like, and that’s how I was throughout his illness. And my family didn’t even know that he was as sick as he was because it was always like, how is Bob? And I’m like, who’s great? But then great turned into good. Good turned into okay until my sister, the nurse, called one day and said, how are you doing? And I said about as good as a woman can be when her husband’s dying. My sister was like, what? Like, it’s just not something that I talked about because he was still in the mode at that time of fighting. He felt that it was part of his responsibility to because he was also the older brother, to be around for his siblings, to be around for his daughter, to be that role model. So it wasn’t until he made the decision. He was like, I’m tired. I said, okay. Well, like, like, little hospices next. So I think because of having that experience and when he took his last breath, that’s when I kind of got this new belief about death that it is as beautiful as life. Now, I’ve never had children myself but me and aunt and seeing my sisters have children I saw how beautiful like this experience was. And to me, like, It was as beautiful that I could be there with him as he departed from this world. So having that experience, it was like, here I am, I’m 55 and just lost my mom. So I was able to kinda tap into that same energy. And that experience to use with my mom. And we had a good time in her final days. My mother was hilarious. Tried a great sense of humor.
Victoria Volk: Did you not let people see your fear? Did you not let people see like, in the quiet moments, like, when you’re sitting on the toilet or when you’re driving, like, is that when, like, you just let it out? Like, when did you let it out?
Laurie-Ann Murabito: In the shower.
Victoria Volk: In the shower.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: That’s when I would cry in the shower. I would cry when I was when I was driving. Yeah. When yeah. When people couldn’t see me. Because, again, I guess, like and I’m the oldest. So I feel like that sense of responsibility to be that role model. And like, four others. So if I can be strong they don’t have anything to, like, worry about. So there are pros and cons to that sort of behavior, certainly. And But it also makes me the eternal optimist.
Victoria Volk: I was gonna say you must have positivity in your top ten and your u map. Fire I had to take the assessment. I bet you have positivity up there.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Well, my dad had a major accident on his bicycle. And so this happened, like Bob passed away. It was after Bob had passed away like, several years. And had a massive head injury med flighted to Boston, that sort of injury. And so ended up being blind in his right eye. Even though he’s wearing a helmet, he just hit a rock just right underneath his helmet. So my dad’s blind in his right eye. But meaning the eternal optimism, I think I sent this to him, in the hospital, if not, shortly after I was like, I was like, dad, that’s why you got two eyes, two arms, two legs, two kidneys, several lungs, slopes. I was like, stop it. Stop complaining about that you’re blinding your right eye. You got another one. Again, internal optimist
Victoria Volk: Perspective. Right. It can accept I mean, it’s like being kept and obvious, but But it’s also, like, just to give someone perspective. Like, it — Mhmm. — it could be worse. Right? It yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: It could have been a whole lot worse. And if anything with my dad because the front part of your brain is where your personality is, His personality changed. My father is the typical engineer. And as a result of getting hit in the head, he’s way more talkative. Really? Maybe we’re to oh, yeah. Had my sisters and I known this? We’d hit them in the head a long time ago. And I use that story in my speaking. Yes.
Victoria Volk: Perfect segue. So how has your speaking transformed from, because you were a public speaker before your husband, Bob?
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Yes.
Victoria Volk: And so how has that shifted and changed and how have you grown as a public speak speaker since you’ve experienced a grief and loss that like you’d have.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: More authentic — Mhmm. — more urgency, because life is short. I think a lot of us know that, but we don’t really know that. We understand it, but we don’t actually put that understanding into action. So he was here and he was in my life and I was in his life for a reason. So what was I going to do now as a result of like, wow, like just seeing the evidence that life is so short. Because he did die really young. And I just had that sense of urgency, like, why am I hanging around? Why am I just waiting. Why am I playing small? What if I just went all out? Because like, what if I only had another six months to live? And my mother was very fortunate to live to almost 80. And in those final days and weeks and months, I mean, like, to have, like, some of these conversations that her night should have had a long time ago. And I remember her saying to me something about, like, we wasted so much time because we didn’t have this a particular conversation. And I said, that’s okay. We’re gonna live a lifetime of our relationship in a short period of time. That’s all. Like, here’s what we got. Again, the eternal optimist kind of came out then also. So in my speaking, like, I really do share deeper stories, not these superficial stories. I’ll share myself. I mean, I’ve spoken on days that one time in particular I spoke in Boston, on the anniversary that, well, that my husband and I would have shared our wedding anniversary. So I’ve shared about that because then people really get to know really get to know me that I’m not just some stick figure up there that’s like talking about leadership and but I get to be like a lot more honest. A lot more honest even like with my private clients also. It’s like, here’s who I am. Here’s some of my loss. Like, my life has not been peachy came. It’s like the social media. Everybody thinks that everybody’s life looks so perfect. And that’s what I should be striving for when it’s like, no. It’s full of tears and some hurts and some disappointment. Am I disappointed that my husband and I didn’t even make it to our first anniversary? Yeah. I was. But what I did was I made the best of the situation. And I’ll problem. Me and my sisters will do the same thing with my mom. And what I mean by that is so my husband and I were married on March 6. He passed away on November 1st. So when March 6 rolled around, I had a cocktail party at my house. Filled with some people that I that I chose. And it was just to, like, celebrate that him and I, like, we got married a year ago. And then on November 1st, again, I had another cocktail party in my house, and it was filled with the people who had supported me in that past year. And I remember that time people saying, somebody had said, because everybody always stands around in the kitchen. Like, Laurie-Ann, who are all these people? And I literally went around the room and I not only named who they were, but this is what you did. For me and supported me or Bob, like, in the past year. And just kinda I knew that I had to change the date. The meaning of the day. Mhmm. And so that’s why I had the cocktail party. So my mother’s birthday is August 14th, and I know that we will one sister is already gonna be out of town, but I’ll probably have coconut cake. That was my mother’s favorite. Nothing fancy. It’s a pepperidge farm or nothing. My mother had to have pepperidge farm coconut cake. And I will have coconut cake in my mother’s honor.
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: I don’t know if that.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: And then come March twenty-third, I’m sure me and my sisters will do something fun also. So I just think that grief gets to be what you want it to be. This is what you talk about all the time Victoria’s about. How to do grief differently. So let me share with you going to the funeral home. I remember my mother’s pretty funny. And me and my sisters all got her sense of humor. So we must have been giggling as we were walking up the steps. And it’s a Friday afternoon. Mom passed away on Thursday night. And he opens the door and just we go into his office, we sit at this table, this wooden table, it’s me and my sisters that are kind of in a semicircle and he’s on the other side and he says, this reminds me of growing up. Me and my four older sisters, not that you guys enrolled because I think I’m the oldest one, and that started it. We were in his office for ninety minutes. Laughing. The tissues that we had that he had on like, we weren’t crying. They were tears of joy or laughter. And he’s asking us questions about my about our mom, and we’re like, some of the questions, like, we actually didn’t know the answer. I remember hearing them, like, where did my mother go to when did you graduate high school? We were like, shit. I don’t know. I don’t know. So now we’re texting my aunt, her sister. Who’s her remaining the only remaining person in her family now. We’re texting her and I label it as, we’re doing funeral trivia. Funeral trivia. Okay? So these so so you sort of get a sense of what this was like, ninety minutes were laughing. So he was trying to ask all this information because he’s going to write the typical obituary. But my sister one of my sisters loves to write. And I’ve done a lot of copy classes. So we decided that we’re going to write it instead, and it was hilarious. It had lusilism and my mother loved Yazzi and some just some phrases that she constantly said, Well, my aunt, when she said when she read the obituary, she said, you guys are hired. You’re writing mine when I need one. But the funeral director he was expecting something like that because we send it to him, like, it’s not your typical obituary. He was, like, I wouldn’t spectatistical one from you for you girls. So he was just he really helped I love the fact that he was so he just mirrored us instead of, well, you’re supposed to be sad. Are you guys just avoiding this and, like, we weren’t avoiding anything? We knew that it was coming. And I think he also just made us feel that it was okay for us just to laugh. Now for anybody who’s listening, I mean, don’t think that we didn’t have our breakdowns. I certainly had my moments that I would say I’m not proud of. Just we’re not gonna get sad and said things that I like, in hindsight, it was just like, oh, god. Why didn’t I say that to that person? So there’s a lot of forgiveness. Forgiveness of ourselves. That’s something that I know that you talk about a lot.
Victoria Volk: I can see my siblings and I kind of doing a similar thing when we have the right obituary for my mom. Someday. She’s going to be 80, but she still works. And she’s a firecracker of a lady and she’s like the type of person you hear her before you see her. Gotcha. Yeah. She doesn’t know a stranger. Anywhere. Yeah. It just makes me reflect on how I can see us trying to I mean, it’s one last way to honor the person too, right, to kind of bring their personality into how you want them to be remembered and things like that. Yeah. So thank you for sharing that. And also that there is, like, you can be positive and you can try to support others in making light of the situation, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have your own moments. Right? And the and the privacy of your own heart, and there’s a lot of people like that. I’m like that. Like, I try to keep it to not to myself. Like, I let it out, but I like to let it out in private because — Yeah. — and were you like that as a kid too? Like, I they had to send search parties out for me. At one time they did because I was in the linen closet. When I was upset or sad or I was crying, I would go and hide to cry. Under the bed and I’d fall asleep wherever I laid, whether it was the kitchen cupboard and where the cereal was. Which was one time or in the linen closet or under my bed, which was
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Oh my gosh.
Victoria Volk: That’s but I think, too, And this is where I wanna talk about this aspect of it too. It’s the myths of grief, like one of two of them are, grief alone, and another is be strong. And so this stuff is taught to us as children. And so can I ask growing up? Was that how grief was mirrored for you or shown how you respond. How was grief taught to you? When you’re growing up.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: I think the short answer is I don’t know.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: But to answer the question, I think, watching my parents who are like growing up. You just think like that’s the way that life is. There’s so much that happens. In family dynamics that we don’t like, I wasn’t sort of person that question much. I observed I’m a really good observer. My father, the engineer, I remember a close uncle of his passing, and I did I do remember my father crying. As soon as he got off the phone, I was too young when his dad passed. To really remember that, but I do remember the uncle. And I do remember my mother bringing me to, like, wakes as a young girl. And I did think it was I thought it was weird. Like, I think the first one that my mother brought me to was a young girl who had was a somebody that she worked with, and their daughter, I think, had drowned. So it was a young person. Wow. So I don’t know if it was my mom’s way of just saying like, hey, like, this is just like what happens in life. But my mother was also the sort of person who didn’t deal well with any feelings that were other than happy and joyful. So she stuffed her feelings down. So maybe that’s where I learned that whole modeling thing, model your strength, and just be happy. So it wasn’t something that I don’t know how to answer that because I don’t
Victoria Volk: remember that I did. I think you guys did.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Thank you. Because of a coach and having gone through coaching, education and having coached a lot of people, like one the death of my first husband. So those were choices that I made. I decided. I decided that I didn’t wanna have any regrets.
I do remember that decision. I did not wanna have any regrets when he passed. So if that meant making the really fattening shrimp alfredo, which he absolutely loved, if it meant like having that like night after night, then that’s what I would do. If it meant having ice cream after a dock appointment instead of going and getting a decent lunch. Well, that’s what we did. I didn’t wanna have any regrets and that kind of meant, hey, what do you want? What do you wanna eat? What do you wanna do today? And just kind of making his final days and final moments joyful? And so I kinda did that with my mom too. She loved Arby’s especially during Lent. They had, like, the fish sandwich and and she loved their fries. So what do you think we did on Fridays? It was, like, We had to go get the fish sandwich. And it was really good, but just to see her enjoy eating it. Is it the healthiest thing? No. But who cares? Because the following day, it was like, mom, what do you wanna eat? I mean, she the woman was barely eating.
Mhmm. Just like I want a fish sandwich. Great. Texas Sifter. Pick up a fish sandwich.
I’m your way here.
Victoria Volk: So when she decided to stop treatment, did she start to feel like she could actually, like, live life a little bit?
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Because it was leukemia. I mean, she didn’t have a whole lot of time from the time that she decided. So it was literally like within seven days. We had a meeting on a Friday night knowing that come monday, mom, you gotta get platelets. Because it would give her a little bit of extra time. And actually, I might be getting my dates all messed up because I know she ended up in the hospital on Sunday night. So I remember it was just like, we’re gonna get you platelets before we, like, sign papers for that because it would give her a couple of days. And, I mean, leukemia can be a really an ugly death, and we are so fortunate that my mother she just stopped breathing. So it really wasn’t that much time. But she did end up in the hospital and she was like, I want it, I’m done. And so because she was in the hospital and she was saying, I’m done, she also can’t stay in the hospital because basically she was refusing care.
Victoria Volk: Right.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: So she got discharged to a hospice facility. And I gotta tell you, like, every step of the way, the people who picked her up in the ambulance, they were so amazing. This isn’t like this male and female, and they were kind of bickering back and forth. It was really kind of funny. I mean, it was just perfect for my mom. I was like, alright. And one of my sisters went with them and the hospice place was just absolutely it was a beautiful facility. Just a lovely room. It was just really nice just to be there with her.
Victoria Volk: I love that. I love that you had that experience with her and that you were able to, as a family, too,
Laurie-Ann Murabito: so many miracles happened. Oh, yeah. That’s
Victoria Volk: fair to share.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Yes. One of my sisters hadn’t seen or spoken to my dad in, I’m gonna say, fifteen years. This is the nurse’s sister. She also wasn’t even around for my mom for fifteen years, but when it came time that my mother needed that, my sister stepped right up to the point, she was there. Many sleepless nights, she stayed at, she just stayed at my mom’s house at her apartment. So in my mom’s passing, my sister and dad, I wouldn’t say that they I don’t know if they I don’t know what’s going on now, but I can say tell you that they were together looking at pictures and talking. And so that was beautiful. She brought all four of us together. It was nice that, like, we would, like, have relationships with this one and, like, that one and those two over there. But to bring us, like, all together. I mean, staying at my sister’s house, I was like, great. This is like a sorority house now. It was a lot of fun and it was a lot of laughs at the same time. So she’s done. In her passing, did some really amazing things. And we have now adopted our aunt, her sister, as our new mom, because she only had one daughter. So she’s like, now I got four more. Oh. Yeah. It was really it can be beautiful. So you are always talking about let’s do grief differently. People I just want you get to decide what it looks like. It doesn’t have to be what we’re taught, what we see on TV, that it’s this absolutely devastating thing. I mean, we just had Mother’s Day. I got a few people who sent me text messages concerned because it was the first mother’s day, but I didn’t my mother lived in Ohio. So I didn’t really see her on Mother’s Day, at least for the past six years, six or seven years. So it wasn’t that bad.
Victoria Volk: And I have a confession. I did not. I did not message you. And I know. And it didn’t even and, like, here I am. I’m, like, the grief specialist and I didn’t even message you. Like, I’m so sorry.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Don’t be.
Victoria Volk: I’m sure you didn’t think anything. I’m sure you didn’t think anything of it.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: No. But Two people who sent me messages that were just like, Oh, what? That’s nice. Oh. And I was just like, I’m doing well.
Thank you. Yeah. It can be a beautiful experience, but you gotta decide. How do you wanna look back on it?
Victoria Volk: How do you wanna look back on it? It’s almost like this foreshadowing. Like, you have to almost four and I have a friend that she kinda she says that a lot. Like, she almost lives her life with this foreshadowing perspective. Like, she kinda, like, plays out a scenario to the end.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Nice.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. And she, like, foreshadowed, like, okay. So how do I want the ending to be? How do I get the ending to be, how I want it to be? And part of that can be some control. Right? Like, you wanna control the outcome that, but at the same time, it’s like I think it’s just discerning for yourself and having some thoughtful contemplation, really. And some intention. Like, you’re bringing intention into how you move forward by playing out different scenarios. Playing it out to the end.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: So I think when it comes to death and dying, especially for people who know it’s coming. It doesn’t feel like a gift at the time, but it truly is. Because you have the gift of knowing that it’s coming. Whereas, like you said, if it’s a tragic accident or something that’s sudden. It’s like you get hit by a truck yourself, you could can feel that way. And then you have all these regrets because, oh, I never told them I love them. And actually, I was just talking to someone not that long ago. It was a family member actually. I was there in the morning and so the family members were leaving and the husband was going off to work and the sun to school and the wife was working from home that day and and and I was saying goodbye, love you to is my family members and my sister-in-law, she was like, oh, great. So now you’re gonna show me up. Like, because they don’t have that kind of dynamic. They don’t communicate that on a daily basis, whereas in my house, every day, we’re telling each other, we love each other, and goodbye, and good morning, and good night. Like, even my kids are gone, I’m texting them, can I love you? Or, so it’s almost a daily. And I just said, you don’t know if you’ll get a chance later.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: You don’t.
Victoria Volk: And we often just don’t think about that. We just we go about our day-to-day and we just think that tomorrow is guaranteed or that we can say it later or what have you. But I think if there’s any message here in this conversation today, it’s that you get to choose what today looks like.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: And what you do with today and you also get to choose on if you have your regret or not.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Yeah. Choice. We all have choice.
Victoria Volk: Yeah.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: And it can be just something so different.
Victoria Volk: And it does it have to take someone getting a cancer diagnosis or someone getting a terminal illness or someone having that tragic accident that’s unexpected for us to, like, reflect on our lives and how do I wanna show up now? And just how you said, circling back to when your husband passed away, it’s like, you ask yourself these big questions. Like, you were 36. Like, there wasn’t a where there are a lot of resources for a young widow even at that time. I mean, that’s I hear that now, like, young widows or it’s difficult being a young widow.
Victoria Volk: It was very difficult. I found one group, but there was something that the social worker who was running it said and it didn’t sit with me well. And I walked out and I had gone with a friend of mine because I actually had two friends who lost their husbands in their twenties. So I had two young friends who were also young widows. Sort of navigating life also. And I walked out and I remember, like, asking one of them, did she really say and she’s like, uh-huh. I was like, yeah, I’m never going back there. So I never found my husband was paralyzed from an operation. And brought him out to California for this operation for somebody because he was just he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. So we ended up being paralyzed And I mentioned something about that. And she made some sort of comment, like, you married him even though he was paralyzed. Yeah. Yeah. Like that look. They’re just like yeah.
It’s kinda like what happens when you really love somebody. Like, it didn’t matter to me. Yeah. He ended up in a wheelchair. It was the his last operation paralyzed him.
Victoria Volk: Wow.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Yeah. So that was why I didn’t go back. So I had to navigate it by myself because there’s a lot of grief groups with, like, you walk in and everybody’s, like, in their seventies. Mhmm. It’s like, oop. I don’t really fit here. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And it isn’t common that you had actually two friends that had experienced that.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Right.
Victoria Volk: what a blessing that was —
Laurie-Ann Murabito: It was a huge blessing. Yeah. Because they both kinda shared their experience with me and what they did and what not to do. Yes. I got a couple of whatnots to do afterwards. Yeah.
VictoriaVolk: What have you found or discovered about yourself in how you wanna move forward in speeches, in working with clients, like, now you it’s like you have all this just more experience, right, behind your belt and
Laurie-Ann Murabito: I think it’s too you have motivation to eliminate fear. Because like think back to some of those moments even just like ten years ago, if you’re listening to this, just reflect on something that you found fearful ten years ago, and you look back on it now. And you’re probably thinking to yourself because this is what I do at least. It’s like, what was I so afraid of? Let’s just take a difficult conversation. That fear of having that difficult conversation. And then you had it it’s just and then you have the conversation, and it’s so freeing. Mhmm. So I guess, like, my advice would be, like like, what would happen if you eliminated fear? So with my clients, like, they are telling their story. They are sharing their solutions so that they can grow their business have a bigger impact, help more people. But it’s always like, I know you’re afraid of being judged You’re afraid to hit that go live button. You’re afraid to send that email to that meeting planner. But what if we eliminate fear? Like, what would be possible if fear was not in the way? And fear shows up in many different colors. Shows up as procrastination. As the oh, this is hard. I’ll do it later. I don’t know how to do this. What if I’m judged? What will people think? Fear shows up in so many different colors and costumes, if you will. So what would happen if you recognize fear and just made friends with fear. Interested it anyways. So that’s part of my work is helping people tell their story. Helping people just get out there and share their story because it’s it all starts with your first story. Your first speech, your first video. What would happen if we didn’t compare ourselves to where we were, to where we think we should be? That’s how I would say that that’s how this has changed me. And I’m and I know that there’s lots of stories that I’m gonna have from my mother’s passing. Right now is not the time to be sharing them. Certain stories, I guess. But I’m sure, like, there’s a lot of lessons that have come from the experience. I got the phone call, and we literally thought my mother was dying, like, the next day. And when I saw her, like, my sisters and I, like, all flew out there. And when we saw her, I was just like, oh my god. My mother’s meeting her maker, like, in a matter of hours. They changed an antibioticer and she, like, turned around.
I was like, keep this crow, this is a there was a roller coaster ride that I wanted to get off. We all did. It’s an emotional rollercoaster ride, but that’s okay.
Victoria Volk: As many challenges in life are. Right?
Laurie-Ann Murabito: That’s right.
Victoria Volk: So once you get to the end, eventually, you get to the end of the roller coaster. That’s right. There’s dips and valleys and kinks and it’s all part of the experience.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Of life. Yes. And that’s why your work is so important so that this doesn’t become a weight that people carry in their backpack for the rest of their lives. You help them lighten the load unpack that backpack, if you will.
Victoria Volk: I do and is one of the most rewarding things. It’s my full circle moment, I guess, so to speak. I’m sure we all have those full-circle moments. Did you always expect as a child that you would be helping people tell their stories? Or did you wanna be a journalist?
Or did you see yourself on stages?
Laurie-Ann: God, No. Or painfully shy girl. No. I was in healthcare.
Victoria: And you were?
Laurie-Ann: Yeah. I come from a healthcare, doing cardiac and vascular ultrasound testing.
Victoria: Really?
Laurie-Ann: Yep. So just one on one work with people.
Victoria Volk: Wow. So what did you wanna be though when you were a child when you.
Laurie-Ann: I did wanna be an actress. So there is that sort of, like, limelight. But again, I was really shy as it is. And it’s so funny how it’s like, as a speaker, you are entertaining people. But I’m entertaining them while they are learning something. So there’s a little bit of that I wanted to be an actress. Yeah. Good question.
Victoria Volk: I love this conversation. Is there anything else that you would like to share you feel is important to share?
Laurie-Ann: I feel like I have shared a lot but I guess I will just reiterate that you always have choice. You always have a choice on how you wanna react to something and how you want something to look and feel. So whether you’re going through illness or lost like your mom, like like I did that you get to look at it and decide how you want to define it. If it’s a sudden death that you weren’t expecting, like, from an ax I think you still can do the same thing is to decide what does this get to look like? How will this change me? Do I want it to change me? Moving forward,
Victoria Volk: How do I want it to change me. I like that. I like that rephrase. Yeah.
Laurie-Ann: Thank you.
Victoria Volk: Where can people find you?
Laurie-Ann: They can find me at my website is speakandstandout.com. And I also have a podcast called Be in Demand. And you can find me over on Instagram and LinkedIn, but all of that is like if you just go right to my website, that will have everything.
Victoria Volk: And I will throw in a shameless plug because you are my speaking coach, and you did help me write a speech, which I’ve yet to present, but it is something that I do look forward to. And I have been working on getting some speaking opportunities. And I have had some and also yeah. And to get on podcast too, that’s part of it as well. That’s speaking too. So thank you for all the work that you’ve done with me and how you’ve supported me, and I just so appreciate you.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: My pleasure because you are helping so many people. Thank you.
Victoria Volk: And Likewise.
Laurie-Ann Murabito: Your work. Thank you.
Victoria Volk: Thank you. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Grieving Voices Podcast, Growth, Healing, Mental Health, Mind/Body Wellness, Podcast, solo episode |
Tough Love | I Don’t Have Time To Work On Myself
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
May is Mental Health Awareness Month!
Taking mental health seriously and prioritizing it is the job of the individual. Even if you find yourself in a situation where you are forced to prioritize your mental health, that doesn’t necessarily equate to successful results. The effort you make, along with your intention, will create positive outcomes.
We can allow ourselves to become bogged down by grief in our lives, or we can take small, actionable steps every day that move us forward and create momentum for healing. This is precisely what we do through my program, Do Grief Differently.
There are ripples created from grief, which are often not pleasant. But there can also be really positive ripples that come from healing as well. When we are hungry, we eat. When we are thirsty, we drink. No matter what we are doing, we will make the time to eat or drink when our bodies need nourishment.
How is your body giving signals that it needs the support of the mind and spirit?
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
_______
NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters.
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of grieving voices. If you’ve been here before and if this is your first time listening, thank you for being here. Typically, this would be a guest feature episode of a nonprofit, which is what the theme was to be for 2023. However, I’ve run into some snags in getting some nonprofits scheduled. There is one nonprofit. I’m really excited to get on the podcast, but they are busy at this time. With legislative work, very important work. So I’ll just have to be patient, but it just brought to my mind, why am I putting myself in a box with this podcast? Why am I thinking I need to stick to some sort of theme or whatnot?
And so just yesterday, actually I was on a call with Mastermind I am in for public speaking. And it just occurred to me “Why don’t I just do what I want?” When I want, however, I want. So it seems like a no-brainer but I think I was trying to stick to some sort of process or some sort of regiment or something so that I maybe could stay focused but truthfully, that’s not really how my mind works. I personally love variety. I love surprises and not necessarily knowing what’s coming next. And so if you’re my people listening to this, you might be the same. And if you aren’t, I’m sorry. Sorry, not sorry.
So I think moving forward, not I think. I am moving forward with this podcast. Just putting out content that I feel inspired to share it. It might be “Q and A episode”. It might be like today’s episode, which is a brand-new type of episode. It might be “Where are they now episode” which I do have someone scheduled that later this month. I’m excited about that. It might be a nonprofit or a foundation organization. I am in the works on getting some of those scheduled, so be on the lookout for those. And I’m thinking I will reconnect with I had a lot of applications last year for this year’s podcast. But because I had changed the format, I had to let them know that I was changing the format. So I think I will reach out to those individuals as well and bring back some guest interviews. I get a lot of author submissions. And so I don’t necessarily need more author submissions but if you have a nonprofit organization or foundation or you’re just the person next door, you don’t have anything to sell, you don’t have anything special to put out in the world but you want to share your story. I really want to hear the stories of grievers who are like most of us we’re just the person next door.
And so I really encourage you to reach out to me. Fill out the form on my website. I am going to be updating it. So it’s not just about nonprofits. Yeah so look forward to maybe more of a variety show, grieving voices variety show, which what won’t change is that we’ll be talking about grief because no matter what the topic is, business or parenting or our health, grief is an aspect of it and plays a role in our lives and in all areas of our lives it affects all areas of our lives, financial, spiritual, you name it.
What Is Taking Priority In Your Life?
So this brings me to today’s episode which I’m calling Tough Love. Where people might say I don’t have time to work on myself. I actually had a conversation with someone not that long ago where this was you can say a valid reason. The person traveled a lot. They just were on the road a lot. They traveled. So how do you find the time amidst travel to work on yourself? You have a work day and then your jet setting, flying here and there and everywhere. And there aren’t I don’t know if there aren’t a lot of us who fly a lot for our careers or our jobs, but no matter if that’s you or not, I hear this a lot from people. I don’t have time to work on myself. I’ve got one, two, three, four, five kids. I’ve got a full-time job and a lot of moms who work outside of the house called. They come home and they do what’s called the second shift. Like I get it. I have three kids. They’re all teenagers. They weren’t always teenagers. They used they require a lot more of my time. And in fact, they were much younger when I had a full-time business. And they weren’t all in school.
And I think you just have to make it a priority. It’s like saying you don’t have time to eat or drink. You’re hungry but you don’t have time to eat. Well, you’re still gonna eat. And if you’re thirsty, you’re gonna get something to drink. Because if you don’t eat or you don’t drink, you’ll shrivel away. You will collapse. And so like saying you don’t have time to work on yourself is like saying you don’t have time to eat. And I just want you to think about that because we prioritize nourishing our bodies. But how many of us prioritize nourishing our hearts, nourishing our minds, and nourishing our spirits? I want you to think about that. This is like I said, this is my tough love episode. I won’t call it out as an excuse but you can draw your own conclusion. If you feel like it’s an excuse, I don’t know you. I don’t know your situation, people in particular, listening to this. And everyone’s situation is different. But we prioritize what is important to us and often we put ourselves last. We put our mental health last. We put our hearts last. We put our spiritual well-being last. And so what is taking priority in your life? What has become more important in your life? Think about that. Because if I had not done the work that I started doing five years before I actually did the really difficult work. I don’t think I would have even gotten to the point of doing the really difficult work.
The Work That I Do
It took me five years to slowly slowly, very slowly, rip off the band-aid. I really took my time with it. And in hindsight, I wish I would have known in 2014 what I learned in 2019 because had I known in 2014, what I found out in 2019, I wouldn’t have waited. I would have just ripped off the band-aid in 2014.
Because I was so much better at it. I was healthier in mind, body, and spirit for it. Of really doing the deep difficult hard inner work. I had a client say to me, “You know hear all the time people say you have to do the work”. And I was just frustrated with what’s the work? Nobody would really explain it. She said, “What is the work?” And after going through my program, Do Grief Differently, She’s like, “It clicked.” This is the work. This is the work. The work that we do in Do Grief Differently is the work. So if you’re ready to do the work and need some support and ripping off the band-aid in and loving supportive, handheld way, I encourage you to reach out to me and inquire about Do Grief Differently, the one-on-one program. Or I also offer a group program which is available also online. But sometimes we just need some tough love.
And I love challenging people and pushing people beyond what they think they’re capable of because I will tell you that you are capable of so much more and your life can feel so much more fulfilling and meaningful once you clear out the cobwebs like get rid of all the yuck and the stuff that’s boggling you down in your life and in your heart and in your spirit and in your mind. So you can see more clearly, so you can discern for yourself more effectively, so you can make healthier choices and decisions for yourself. You can trust yourself more, build your confidence, create boundaries that maybe you’ve never had or never knew you needed. There’s so many byproducts and benefits of doing the work and taking the time to work on yourself. Think of it as life or death, and you might make a different choice for yourself. That’s today’s episode in a nutshell.
P.S. And if you found it helpful which I hope you did, maybe insightful and maybe like a kick in the tooth to just look at your life and maybe make a change. Do something differently, do grief differently. I’m here to support you. Either through this podcast. If you’re not quite ready to dig deep or through many of the resources on my website there are a lot of free resources. And there’s always help and support out there if you look for it. May is mental health awareness month and make it a priority because it’s probably not just your life depending on it. You may have a spouse, you may have children, grandchildren, you may be a daughter, maybe a mother, or a friend. There are ripples that are created from grief. But there can also be really positive ripples that come from healing as well. So thank you so much for tuning in. If you like my new idea for this podcast of just making it a variety show, doing whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like and however I feel like, please share your thoughts. I’m doing this podcast for you my listeners. It’s not for my health, although I get so much joy out of it. So maybe it’s partially for my mental health too. Because I get great joy from feeling like someone listening to this is truly being helped and feeling supported. Again thank you for listening and until next time. Remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.
Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Growth, Healing, Mental Health, Mind/Body Wellness, Podcast, Suicide, Where Are They Now? |
Quandell Wright | Where Are They Now?
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Quandell’s first episode was Ep. 28 | The Scars of Abuse, Poverty, and Shame, recorded in October 2020 and went live on January 5th, 2021.
Listening to Quandell’s first episode is recommended to appreciate where Quandell was and how far he’s come in his life.
He asks one question in this episode: “How do you grieve?” It’s a question we all would benefit from reflecting upon and recognizing where we may need additional support or accountability for moving forward.
Personal development and life transformation is a marathon, not a sprint. In this first “Where Are They Now” episode, Quandell shares how his life has changed in the two and a half years since we first spoke.
In the words of Quandell: “You never know if the best is yet to come. What if you looked at life this way?”
Just breathe…
RESOURCES:
CONNECT :
_______
NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
This episode is sponsored by Do Grief Differently™️i. My 12-week in-person or online program helps Grievers who have suffered any type of loss to feel better, and Do Grief Differently™️. You learn new tools, education, and a method you can utilize the rest of your life. In this program. And with my guidance, you remove the pain of grief, the sadness will always be there because even in complicated relationships we love but it’s the pain of grief that keeps us stuck. Are you ready to do grief differently? Check out my website wwwtheunleashedheart.com to learn more.
Victoria Volk 0:00
Welcome to grieving voices today is a Where are they now episode and I would like to reintroduce you to an old friend of mine, who I’ve been following ever since we first talked and I’m excited to share where he’s been, because this is me learning for the first time to just what his updates are. But I’ve been following him online. And I know he’s been doing some amazing things. So I’m excited for him to share more about that. But first, Q Quandell I call you Q. Please reintroduce yourself to those who may be listening to this for the first time. Just tell us who you are.
Quandell Wright 0:45
Okay, cool. Hey, how you doing? My name is Quandell Wright I’m a I’m the founder, fashion designer of William Palmer. I’m based out of Detroit, Michigan. So that’s why.
Victoria Volk 0:55
I love it. And we first talked I actually looked it up just to make sure I get it right, because your first episode is episode 28. And it was published January 5 2021. So here we are, over two years later. Isn’t that crazy?
Quandell Wright 1:00
I know. Right?
Victoria Volk 1:04
And but we initially talked October 22 2020. And at the time you had been going through, or you had just finished something like that. It was around that time you were working with me in Grief Recovery. Yeah. And I imagine a lot has changed for me in that time. But I imagine so much has changed for you too. And yeah. So I suggest for those who haven’t listened to Episode 28, start there, because this one will make it’ll just be the icing on the cake. This episode is like that. Yeah. So listen to that one first, come back to this one. So please, share with me, what’s all changed for you since then?
Quandell Wright 2:06
Oh, a lot. Um, I mean, my, my spirit, you know, definitely, you know, start from there. I had a rough that was a rough year for me, every level you could probably think of, um, but, you know, my, my brand, like my career and everything that I’m doing a lot of things is elevated. And so it’s been it’s been a journey for sure. It’s been a journey. So from that time to now it’s been a lot of like recovery, a lot of growth. A lot of, you know, of course ups, you know, ups and downs, you know, that that comes with life. But overall, like, it’s been, it’s been great. It’s been an experience, you know, I want to kind of day ranch in 2020. That was a Yeah. So fast forward to now with that information, I’m actually kind of connected with the guy that designed Kanye footwear. So yeah, so that’s, that’s really, really dope, collaborating with Baron Davis, the former former former NBA player, and I’ve been working with Gary Payton as well. It’s been really nice. It’s been nice. It’s been nice. So but other than that, like my spirit, just the way that I look at life from a different perspective, controlling my emotions and know how to get out of certain spaces when I need to take in my time grieving when I need to knowing how to grieve, you know, because life still carry on and things still happen. You know, I lost a couple more people throughout the years and things like that. So just kind of learn it and just, you know, learn it from what you taught me about about grieving and everything like that helped me a lot with it, and helped me help others with the grieving process as well. So it’s been a journey and it’s been great. So that’s for now I am. I am happy.
Victoria Volk 4:03
I’m loving hearing that. Absolutely. Especially how you mentioned your spirit, like you feel healthier and your spirit.
Quandell Wright 4:11
Definitely feel healthy and my spirit and, and physically, I’ve been going to the gym like crazy. I lost about overall I lost almost about 20 pounds. So I’m 16 pounds away from my go. Yes, thank you and I’m a gym rat now like, I have to be in there. I’m in there almost every day of the week. If it’s not then you know, too heavy. I’m doing something like but I made sure I get in gym and I get into Gemini. I release you know, I release stress, whatever and it really helps you know, eating better. Intermittent fasting has been great for me. You know, I’ve been able to clear my mind and yeah, it’s been good. It’s been good. So far, so good. It’s been good.
Victoria Volk 4:55
And so at the time to you, we’re just really getting going on Disney shirt designs and things like that out of your garage. Right? And so how has that changed? Like what are you doing now in that line of business there since that’s been the huge biggest shift elevation?
Quandell Wright 5:13
Yeah, exactly. Um you know I’m still into like the apparel of course, but now I kind of shift a shifted more towards accessory so are we least like this handbag, the pyramid handbag and that kind of like just took me off like not a just like, oh, you’re a purse guy. Like they don’t even remember the polls at all. Yeah. But it’s great. It’s great. Just been in the public eye. People taking selfies with me getting invited to places is really though, is a huge change. Yeah, so I’m getting.
Victoria Volk 5:47
I want to celebrate you for a minute too, because I was looking through your Instagram. And there was a Grammy winner. Yeah, correct. Yes. Who sported your purse? Yeah. Can you share about that?
Quandell Wright 6:01
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, Mr. Ryan, he’s actually a writer for oh, what is the name of that show? I forgot. Last is it last week? Last week, last week. Thursday is a show but he’s, he’s a writer for I think his name is John Oliver. I think he wrote for him for that show. He was a co writer. And a friend of mine is actually she is her name is Stephanie. She is the fashion coordinator for William Palmer. The style is of Mr. Ryan contacted her because she knew that she was affiliated with me somehow. And she contact me like, hey, this style is need to talk to you. They want to pull a few bags. And I’m like, sure, you know, and the stylists came over. We got connected. She came over and she was like, Yeah, you heard John Oliver. I was like, Yeah, you know that. She was like, Yeah, well, you know, Mr. Ryan, you know, he right with him. And he would like to wear your bag on the red carpet. I didn’t. He’s like what? And I had all these. Luckily, I had some bags here in my studio. And I was like, well, whatever you like, whatever you can do take. They took a few bags, they ended up you know, sending me a payment. I wasn’t even expecting to get paid for it. I would just assign it to have someone just sport it, you know, but he paid for their bag. He paid for the bag and I still ended up gifting one to him or whatever. And um, the next thing I know he wore it I think they had like a preemies it’s like it’s like me like red carpet before the actual Emmys but he were both bags for both days. And I was just really excited about it. And it was just a great experience to be put in that space and knowing like yo like I’m actually more out there than I think I am because I still just walk around like a normal person and people like oh, you will your bomber your him you know what I say him? You’re him. You’re the purse guy. Like Yeah, can I get a selfie? Can I get so it’s a great experience is really no I love it. But that was a that was really good though. That was really though, and I appreciate Mr. Ryan for that. So he’s still where he posts a picture with you know, one of his bags and one of his outfits. I love it. I love to see that so,
Victoria Volk 8:18
I just wanted to celebrate you for a moment there because that is so exciting. I’m just I think back to so many of those early conversations and and how low that we can feel in our lives you know you feel like you’re at rock bottom and I know your backstory and to just see you flourish now just these are the stories I love it’s it the Triumph stories right the comeback kid the you know you’re kidding me of someone who just kept with it and just stuck with it and never gave up on your dreams and your goals and and how is the shift with shifted things with your family?
Quandell Wright 9:01
Um, it’s you know, I’ve learned to how I want to put this I learned to like just be okay with certain things we can’t control everything family I mean everybody is well you know we we functioning better you know, I will say that we okay but um you know, I’m working I’m just learning how to stay in my space stay respectful try my best to keep peace and the same as on you know, her side as well. We try to understand and things like that but other than that the kids is great. The situation is a little bit better. You know, we could kind of like bump heads here and there. But you know, for the most part is way better than what it was before. So, as time go on, I believe that it can become better. I believe that but in the meantime, you know I’m working. I’m in my space she’s wearing gives us the airspace, the kids, they do and everything and sports and, you know, relationship, there’s all types of stuff going on with them. But you know, we are supportive, we are a great supportive family for one another. And, you know, we’re just doing our best we’re doing the best we possibly can. But it’s way better. It is is way better. So that’s a good thing.
Victoria Volk 10:21
Well, and like you said, you only have control over yourself. And so drawing a circle around your feet and focusing on becoming better for for yourself, you in turn become better for your family, too. And so, I love that things have improved in that area as well of your life. How would you describe the queue that you talked that talk to me? Two plus years ago? And how would you describe yourself today.
Quandell Wright 10:57
Um, the cute two years ago was very, was very, like, hurt, in dealing with past hurt and present hurt. So that’s a lot of hurt at that time. Very hitting, you know, per se, just trying to stay out of the way. angry, very angry. felt misunderstood. And then understand a lot of things. So it was just a lot of this trying to figure out how to handle things, you know, I’m saying because we think life is this way, but then you get this curveball, but life is actually this way. But how can I make life this way? So is this you know, it just always this and what I had to realize is that life dude, throw curveballs here and there. And it’s actually lessons, you know, so the cue now is more understanding more something. Very, very, um, I listened more now, you know, I was more defensive than and I can be a little defensive steal a little bit, but I’m learning to just like just hush and just receive the information. And then now, you know, with that, I can, you know, put out the information I want to put out, you know, because sometimes if we just sit there and receive the information clearly, and really comprehend it, it might not the situation might not even be about you for one, or you know, I’m saying whatever the case might be, but you have to listen to understand what’s going on. And what I had to understand is that a lot of people paying is not really paying, they have flipped it on you, it already has nothing to do with you at all, it just a lot of just, I want to put it like this. A lady might bump you in a grocery store, and you might blow up at her, right? That frustration wasn’t really for her. But she was the one that kind of shut the bottle to make you explode. Everything else, they had nothing to do with her. But it would just that moment, they just trigger that emotion. Like, that was the last little thing that just helped you like just release and just blow up at her. And she looking like whoa, this lady hate people. But it’s not that it’s just that you’ve been bottling, so much pain from your past, and situations in your present time. And you’re trying to just keep this bad day or keep this capsule as hard as possible. But this lady, this bumped you just a little bit with her basket. And now you just like, because that was like just everything right? So I had to understand that a lot of stuff that people throw at you is not really meant for you in the first place. It just at that moment, you just trigger a nerve, you just trigger some type of circuit emotional circuit that they you know, we all have, and I’m just that person that they see at that moment. But a lot of pain is not for you. So I had to learn that. And I do accept that. Because sometimes some people don’t understand that I like but okay, that’s not meant for me. I know that you had a lot of stuff going on. And that’s stuff that you have to grieve about and learn how to like, kind of like, fix that yourself. So I know that’s not meant for me. So I can’t take that. You know, I’m saying and be like, Oh, that was for me. And now I’m doing the same to you because it never stops. If that keeps happening. You’re not fixing anything, you’re not fixing the problem. You’re not coming up with a solution and you’re not fixing ourselves. So it’s just toxic. You know, I’m saying like energy all day long. But the reality is, you didn’t cause the pain that I have. Anyway, you know, I’m saying like, so I had to learn it. I had to learn it. So she’s getting better with self expression or so too. And I am too in a way so yeah, listening is key.
Victoria Volk 15:00
Well, it sounds like you’re listening to hear not listening to respond. And that is the difference, right? It’s called active listening. Yeah. And it brings me back to what I talk about because you speak in my language with the tea kettle, the analogy we use in Grief Recovery is you know, the tea kettle, we either implode or explode. Remember that
Quandell Wright 15:20
Exactly, exactly what you’re describing, as Yeah, remember that? Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. grieving and like grieving is easier said than done. Honestly, and I’m listening to, to not respond. is easier said than done. That is a very hard task for someone to sit there and let someone just express how they feel about nobody likes to hear like the raw feelings about their selves, because you already think want you already think stuff about yourself anyway, I don’t care who you are, you already have some self. Some self thoughts about you, like, Oh, I feel this way. And I’m overweight and stuff like so somebody’s telling you like, yeah, I have a problem that you’ve been overweight, you’re gonna get upset, like what I am trying, I am walking like you’re not let them you know, you’re not you’re defensive. Now, you know, in this lesson, because the next sentence may be like, No, you’re overweight. But I do see you trying, you will never hear that part. Because you already just jumped the gun because you hurt. I don’t like how you’re overweight. And you’re like, hey, look, I’ve been trying, I’ve been walking, you see me getting up, you see, whoop. And this person, like, I don’t even want to talk anymore, because you can’t even let me talk. And I was the whole. No, I was not you picking not? You know, now you like, Well, when I was trying to talk, you know, and it never stops. But you don’t know that that next sentence possibly was agreeing with you like, No, I don’t like how you’re, you know, you overweight a little bit. But I do see you trying. And I love that. And I have a few solutions, but we never get to the good part, because we hear the bad part. And we blow up and begin ffensive. So listening, and not responding is very good. It does. Yeah, it’s very good. Um, I’m not perfect, but it’s good.
Victoria Volk 17:09
It’s almost like when you have purchases that are sitting in your cart, or you know, shopping is one of the STERBS, right, the short term energy relieving behaviors. And so the recommendation, I’ve heard this not that long ago, wait five days, just wait five days, have it in your cart, and just wait five days. And after five days, if you still think you can’t live without it, at least you’ve let five days pass and you’ve sat with it, right? It’s almost like maybe wait five hours before you respond after someone shares something with you. And it’s okay to say, Hey, I just need to walk away. And I need to think about this. And I don’t want to say something that I will regret later, I want to really give a thoughtful response. And so, you know, can we put a pin in this conversation and come back to it when I’m not emotional? Right? Right. That’s part of emotional regulation is knowing when we’ve met our, our capacity to, to articulate ourselves clearly and to also hear clearly as well to write. Alright, let me ask you this, what is something that you would tell somebody who may be you two years ago? And are listening to you today? Like what do you think has been, maybe it’s been multiple things, what has helped you the most to, like, maintain, and to keep on this track of growth and development and
Quandell Wright 18:40
I’m brief, brief, I had to like sit down one day, like in a quiet space, and just breathe and look at the reality of a lot of things like life is really what we make it, a lot of the situations that we are in, is because of decisions that we made. And if you make important decisions, you get poor results. So I had to sit back and just look like okay, I’m behind on bills, because because of me because I actually pay for something else and thought I was able to come back and pay for that. But I should have just paid my bill first, I will never shut off simple decisions like that will fix a lot of stuff in our lives. Like okay, this bill come in, I’m gonna take care of that right now. I’m gonna just get it out of the way. So whatever else that I want. I could get that whenever I want. But take care of this bill first, I can’t afford anything to get shot off. You know, so I feel like we cause a lot of disrupt like disruption in our lives with our decision making, just breathe and just kind of just look at life from a different perspective. You know, I’m saying is really is really easier than we think it is. Life is really easier than we think it is. It’s really based off what we do and how we handle situations. I mean, like, I mean things happen, because that’s the life that just one happens. But I think we have a little bit more control than anybody say that we do. I really believe that like, if I go outside and throw rocks at cars, I’m going to jail like it’s, you know, like, I can’t like that was an important decision. But if I go outside and help somebody that was in a car accident or something like that, I mean, a good word might come out of it there or later on in life, or just, it might not never come, but you did a good deed, you made a good decision. And good things happen when you do good things. And bad things happen when you do bad things. I’m all about energy and frequency as well. I feel like if you, you have a chance to change, you know, a guy that robbed like 17 banks, he probably would have got away at a 16 bank robbery if he really stopped, but he didn’t. So he got arrested on the 17th one, and he like, ah, oh, my God, I shouldn’t. But I mean, you know, like your frequency have to change. If you if your fingers see the same, you want to get the same results, you want to get the outcome that you’re not going to like or you can’t handle. So people have time to change, you do have time to change your frequency is a lot of people in the world as walking around that we can only imagine what they’ve done in a life, they probably don’t know worst of the worst that we could ever imagine. Right? But they frequency change. And they live in life. Now they knew when to stop. And I know like when I say this to certain people they by Well, I mean eventually karma. And I’m like, Well, I believe the universe is neutral. And I do believe a karma and as such, but if you’re Frank or sea change, you won’t have to worry about that type of karma in a sense. So yeah, it only the bad results only happens if you keep going. You know, I’m saying so if you always depressed, that’s what I’ll say I don’t. I said I’m depressed. I stopped saying that a long time. I’d be like, Look, I’m fine. I’m going to be okay. I’m okay. This would be the storm will pass. Because of you the subconscious mind. I know the difference. So if you I’m depressed, I’m upset. I’m sad. You’re building that space for yourself. And that’s how you’re going to feel you’re going to be more low every day, low vibrations every day. But even through bad situations, I’d be like, I’m fine. I figured out not dying. You know, I’m gonna be okay. If it don’t work out the way that I think it should. It’s okay, how do they want to come I can’t the whale and live in that space at this moment. It’d be Oh,
Victoria Volk 22:43
I remember when we first talked you kind of you were just dabbling in talk started, you know, or you’re just kind of dabbling into metal you were dabbling into meditation. And you’re you were thinking more along those lines of frequency and energy. And, and I at that time, I was I had just, I was a Reiki Master. But I’ve since added biofield tuning, which uses tuning forks and addresses our energy field that’s outside our body and I’ve added stuff to my energy healing work too. And, and so when you speak to that stuff, I get really excited because
Quandell Wright 23:17
Because it’s real. Yeah. It’s real is real for anybody that’s listening, please. I know. Dr. Joe Dispenza. Dispenza Yep. The guy’s top tier. The becoming supernatural was like my favorite book. It’s very deep, get chills reading it, real testimonies. And he showed his show you how to channel your energy and chuck is just so deep he is. He is a great guy. I would love to go one of his his workshops. I’m trying to get the money because it’s expensive, but it’s very, very worth it. I really want to go but I mean, the guy’s amazing. Just kind of follow him on Instagram and seeing the work that he put in he he’s definitely like a great, a great person, I can tell that but please anybody that’s like really interested in becoming more spiritual. Please check him out. Dr. Joe Dispenza is a great great, a great author, great doctor, like he’s, he’s phenomenal. Like, I recommend that book to anybody that’s going through and you don’t even have to be a spiritual, you know, Christian or whatever. Religion is still a great read because we all have to, we all have energy, we all have aura, so is very great. It’s not about religion, or anything like that. It’s really about self. So it’s really a great book is really a great read.
Victoria Volk 24:38
And for anyone who doesn’t know Dr. Joe Dispenza was actually told he would never walk again after he broke his back during a bicycling accident. And with the power of his own mind and his own thoughts, he helped to heal himself. Yeah. And so that’s what his work is based on. He’s actually doing a lot of research at his During his workshops, is week long workshops, he’s conducting research on meditation and how long to meditate and, you know, like, they’re doing research right now during their workshops. And so
Quandell Wright 25:14
Just check into that. Make sure
Victoria Volk 25:20
I saw you was going to be in Tulum, Mexico, I actually just got his workshop notification for Tulum, Mexico, but you’ll get there. I’ve no doubt you’ll get there. Put that forward.
Quandell Wright 25:31
Yeah, we definitely have to go. I think that’s, that’d be a great experiment is well, like, I love his book, I listened to the YouTube minute, you know, the meditations that he had the guidance, great guy, great guy. But yeah, we all make a human. If we tap in, we can heal ourselves. We can. The testimonies in that book are phenomenal. I mean, people heal on a cell from cancer, I mean, Zima, like, whatever, they really just happening with their inner self, their higher self, and really like figuring out the body, the body already held us up automatically, when we really, really tap into it, you can really get some stuff done. Ms. V is right, he did heal his self, he discharges. So from the hospital, he hid this stuff at home. So he’s amazing.
Victoria Volk 26:19
Speaking of good deeds, which you mentioned earlier, I’m curious myself, but at the time when we first started talking, you are inviting young men into your home. Yeah, almost a weekly basis just for moms, giving them a space that you could create community and have a safe space for them to talk about their feelings. Yeah, and all of that, or is that something you have come back to? Are you still doing that? Is it something you want to do? Again?
Quandell Wright 26:50
Yeah, yeah, I want to do it. Again, I’m trying to make it a nonprofit organization. And it’s actually called us, us men. So it’s on Instagram is us_mensociety. I don’t have a lot of push right now. Because my brand is like going crazy. But I am trying to, like, get back into that. And that was a really, really dope experience. Like, it wasn’t really like, I didn’t have it to where it was like a, like AAA meetings or anything like that, you know, we had the TV go on video games at FIU. It was just no phones, some beers. And we thought it would just regular conversation. And people share stories, you know, and I always say, like, you don’t have to share the deepest, we’re not here for that. We just really want people to feel like this is a safe space, even if you don’t say none that all along because you know, it feel like real good energy around you. And it’s people that you can talk to whenever you want to, you know, that’s more than enough. And people really, like it’s a lot of men out here that have to heal, like we don’t know where to go, there’s no know where to start. So I want to start it back up, for sure. I will love like, I would love to like rent out spaces or to have a bigger, you know, bigger space and have more men come and we could just converse and just talk about our feelings and testimonies or whatever the case might be for that, you know, so yeah, please call us man, I will be like, selling T shirts and all that, you know, selling to raise money. So we can so I can be able to have resources and brain resources to them as well. Because I know it’s not a lot of programs for men out here, or mental health, for that matter for anybody. Because everybody think medicine fix everything is not, you know, medicine don’t fix everything. It’s just a band aid. But we really need some like internal healing, you know, and sometimes it might just take a hug or like, No, I do care for you. You are enough. You know, you want to be okay, I’m here for you. That can be the cure. Some people have people out here who don’t care about the more they feel that way. But they need to hear that sometimes. And you don’t take the time to actually do that with people. So yeah, I just thought about all types are like great ideas like that for mental health for men and for everybody, for that matter. But um, yeah, I feel like a lot of men black and white man, he actually has, we have I believe you have the highest suicide rate right now as well. So, yeah, a lot of man feel feel alone, you know, because there’s so much teittleman in, like, man supposed to do this. And man, you know, we get that a lot, a lot a lot. And it’s like, Yo, I’m human, I just want to just be human for a day. You know, like, you know, like, what’s going on? Like, why we just watch us all the time. Like, can I just be I’d be pampered for once can I be a human today? Can I you know, I’m sad because I have feelings too. I do love I do care. You know, and I want people to do that for me, like love me and care for me as well. So, you know, to the men out there like there are a safe space. There are people that you can contact and talk to all the time and you’re not forgotten. You’re not You’re not overlooked. You know, it’s just society. Just got things twisted up, we’re gonna fix that we’re gonna figure it out.
Victoria Volk 30:04
And for anyone listening, men, white, black, whatever ethnicity you are. Q is obviously a wonderful inspiration. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing about that in the work that you are hoping to do and hope to bring to your community. And yeah, just I love you. I love you. I love you.
Quandell Wright 30:27
I love you too. Happy. Yeah.
Victoria Volk 30:30
So looking forward to this conversation with you. Let me ask you this. And I’m biased, of course, because I’m love Grief Recovery. And I know that how it’s changed many people’s lives. But had you never done that? Have you ever thought about that, like, in the last two years? Like had you never experienced that or learned what you learned through that? The new tools and the new knowledge? Yeah. Have you ever reflected on that? Like, had you not had that experience?
Quandell Wright 31:00
Of course, of course. Um, yeah, it was definitely a huge impact for like, for where I’m at now. And I tell people about you all the time, you know, so I don’t know. Because so I thought I thought I was better, Dan, you know, because I come from a dark place before that time. And I’m like, I’m back here again. You know, it’s something I’m missing. But I just had to just, I had to realize, like, his life is life, like, you don’t matter, like how better we get life happens. And whatever that is, it just, it just happens. It just, I don’t know, a person that just went through life and nothing happened, like negative like, you know, it just doesn’t work that way. But the tools that you had gave me, it quit, you know, helped me quit was, is I still use to this day, like, because it’s true. And it’s real and been able to like, look at different light, just like Dr. Joe, you know, just been able to research and find people like him. And it’s another guy. He’s an artist, his name is line jurrell. He’s an artist. He’s like, so positive rap artists. And he’s very, very, very good. I’m gonna share some stuff with you. He have like, meditation, a playlist, like a meditation, like pay playlists, like from it’s a meditation for each for each chakra.
Victoria Volk 32:18
Chakra okay, yeah, I would love that.
Quandell Wright 32:21
And his music is beautiful. And I’m like, see, this is the music that needs to be on the radio positive energy, this is the music that need to be in your subconscious mind on a daily basis. So, you know, so without, without you definitely I would have it would have been worse for me for sure. And I really do appreciate you all, you know, for giving me your time and really taking the time to listen and really did a great assessment, you know, because anybody can just hear you. But everybody don’t listen to you. And that’s just that’s a difference. And you really didn’t listen to me. Give me a lot of tools. I still kind of journal to this day here and there. And that works. You know it do it works. Rip it up. Boom. You know, I know I was listening to Oh, Lon jurrell He was like, everything that’s making you feel upset or angry the press just think of it, like a balloon or a glass cup and just break it like release it mentally, like release it and you have to and we get some points. I still go through things I still get upset. I still you’re supposed to you’re human. That’s I know that I’m still alive. Like if you’re walking around here, like do I’m happy every day like nothing happened. Like no, no, it’s okay to be upset. It’s okay to be mad. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to be. It’s okay. But don’t live there. Don’t live there. Brief. If you could come up with a solution. Try it’s okay to try to make turn things in try to see like, Okay, let me see if I can control the ball. We all try this. Try it. But the ball is this if it’s this, if it’s just too strong and it’s just a you know that you lose it. It’s okay. More bulls account for you to control more. It’s okay. Just let that one go. It’s alright, you fail that one. You got beat up cool. You didn’t die. So you got another chance we could figure it out. It might take weeks but we have figured it out. So I appreciate you a lot. I do. And I do tell people about you all the time. So this is this is great. And I’m I be able to share this and people are like oh, that’s what he was talking about. My yes follower. Your program. You know, I’m saying like sign up for programs and stuff like that because you are a very, very important person to the community. You know, to the cultures, different cultures and things like that. And people need to hear this because Grief Recovery that’s not been talked about a lot still to this day. People might try to get you to do your We’ll go meditation and that’s fine. But how do you agree? How do you agree? You know, and they don’t know how they don’t know. Some people I don’t, I don’t care too, I’ll just move on, like you came. That’s just pain that just another, it’s like, it’s like another arrow in your back. You just, you’re gonna carry that around like Nah, man, just take that arrow out and just gotta fix it. You gotta grieve, you gotta let go. So thank you for that for them tubes and everything for it. And helping my kids. Yeah, helping my kids and my teenagers. I let them express themselves, and I’ll be honest, I’m like, hey, look, if you got to cuss a little bit, don’t get crazy. But express yourself because I want them to know, like, I’m your parent. And I’m your friend to because you can be both, you know, just know your boundaries. But I want you to tell me how you feel. I want to hear everything. You know, I’m saying I want to understand you I want to know how I can help you. So I do, you know, say I do allow that to let them express I do let them you know do things like that. And that helps. It helps. Yeah, they write their own notes and stuff like that. And I got the little one she listened to affirmation for kids on YouTube every morning. Yeah, she just she so she the happy person. She don’t She’s sick. So she I love myself. I only know I only love me. I love Oh, oh, okay, your love. Okay, you take any real deep Yes, you know I only love but does she know her were so that’s that’s good. And I love when she do that. And even when we walk to school as you I love myself I’m brave and beautiful and smart. And just telling my kids that you are you are in control of your day. So when you get up you structure your day because the moment you don’t do that and you walk out this door and somebody say something to you now your structure is all over the place. You’re not who you need to be that day. No, you get up and looking at mirror like hey, look, you don’t want I love you You look good. You look handsome. You look beautiful. You cute you file again, this is I’m gonna one I’m gonna be this I’m not a you don’t think when you leave the door you are you like this and anything that’s negative that’s trying to break through that barrier, it’s gonna be hard to because you already solidify your your worth, you know who you are. So anybody say something negative. Okay, cool. You think that I know who I am. I’m good. Just don’t touch me. But we good you know his hand like, have a great day understand you. Because we don’t have to battle with everybody. Some people and I ain’t worth it. They don’t even understand their worth. They don’t know what’s going on all they didn’t structure their day, they upset they energy everywhere. Let them be that get away from the situation and still carry on with your day because people are going to think what they want. People want to say what they want. But as long as you know who you are and what your purpose is, and you walk in that purpose. You will be just fine no matter what. And I’ll tell people as I said, I just want to be happy no matter what and people say that but you have to understand this when you say I want to be happy no matter what that means you have to be happy during divorce, separation, losing someone somebody firing you if the kids is you know, especially for moms and stuff like kids you know, no home and audit things get crazy bills, you have to be careful what you ask for because things happen. Keep your structure keep your energy is one to be okay. You will figure it out and some things are meant to happen let it happen. The unknown is not as scary as you think. You know, we learn in it because we so we so comfortable with okay, everything this is nice and soon as some get dark and we’re gonna hold on I don’t like change. Things are changing. I don’t like that. I don’t like how we don’t like that, you know? But it’s okay. It’s okay. So thank you for for teaching me that. And thank you, you know for like sticking it out with me and still being accessible today. I just been like crazy busy. And I definitely still want to send you a handbag. But you’re on my list. Yeah, yeah. But I just been crazy busy. I’m just everywhere. I’ve been like California back and you know, I’m just like this. But yeah, yeah, I do appreciate you a lot.
Victoria Volk 39:18
And I love hearing the ripples of that work that you did. It’s an it continues and that to us? Yeah, just like there’s ripples in grief. There’s ripples and healing, too. So thanks. Thank you for sharing.
Quandell Wright 39:33
Yeah, we human. It’s okay.
Victoria Volk 39:34
I could seriously be your future TED talk.
Quandell Wright 39:38
I know. Right.
Victoria Volk 39:40
Thank you for that riff. I absolutely love it. Yeah,
Quandell Wright 39:43
Yeah. You definitely belong on TED talk. I can’t wait.
Victoria Volk 39:46
Tell you. That whole that whole riff you just did. Yeah,
Quandell Wright 39:50
I’m actually done. I’m actually doing I had a I had a meeting with the Detroit Pistons so I am doing a charity basketball game July. We live from two to 5:30pm at the Detroit Pistons practice facility, that’s somewhere like MIG tau, I would love to see you every station, if you would like to come, I can send you like a pass or something like that. I’m, I’m doing like a panel, I’m doing a panel from like three to four. And then we joined the basketball game. So I want to race. This is actually though this might actually work out. So I’ve been looking for someone that practices like that, you know, that’s in the mental health field that actually put in the work to actually help people. So my minimum, I’m trying to donate $500 to that organization, and $500 or organization for, for stop for stop the violence type of you know, program. So I do have that. I do love what you are doing. Um, so if we can somehow like donate that money to you. So you can carry on with what you’re doing? I would love to do that. So
Victoria Volk 41:04
You could actually sponsor someone for a Grief Recovery Program?
Quandell Wright 41:09
Yeah, that would be cool. That’d be cool. But I would love to donate that money to you. So you can continue your practice in what you’re doing. Because you’re like, so, so helpful. And we were sitting here and I’m like, I don’t know anyone would and how I was thinking about it. I’m like, Who is? Where are the nonprofit organization like mental health by organizations, I couldn’t think of none. And I was just like, You know what, we have figured it out. So I’m talking to you. And it’s exactly what you do, like you actually put in the work, you actually help people. So if we can raise the $500, I would love to give that check to you. And you can use that money to get books, or just maybe that might pay for somebody section, or whatever the case might be. I would love to donate to you. So we do we got a pitch deck, I think it should be completed today. You can send me your logo, we can put it in a pitch deck and your information. Let me see information like your company, when it started, what you do, we put into a pitch deck. And if you have like a paper or whatever it might be, we could put that in there too. So people could donate throughout the last the next couple of months. You know when we send the pitch deck out, and we will send you the pitch deck today. So you can send out to share it. Yeah, you can share it, and people could donate to you or whatever. And then we raised the money. Hopefully we do. But we raised the money. And we can give you you know, we can give me a check to you on top of whatever you got for your donations. We don’t have nothing to do with that. But I would just love to help you out with your journey as well. Because you helped me out a lot. So yeah, that’ll work. Yeah, so July 11. If you can’t come, it’d be great.
Victoria Volk 42:57
It would be amazing.
Quandell Wright 42:59
It’d be beautiful for you to come. I sent you two passes. Have you wanted to kids or someone? I would love to come and check it out. Have a great time. You definitely can. And we can show you around Detroit, you kind of get you know, yeah. Yeah. Beautiful downtown is beautiful. Like Dan Gilbert, just, he just reinvented everything. He just took over everything and made it beautiful. So
Victoria Volk 43:20
For me, it’s nice.
Quandell Wright 43:23
It’s nice. So yeah, definitely keep in touch. And I do have assistant and she is like very, very great. Because I respond very late because I got 1000 People call me inbox me and they want stuff so but I do have a great assistant. So I’ll definitely give you her information and you if whatever link that you have like your pay pal, if you GoFundMe, whatever link you want to create the center with a bio we want to start promoting on Instagram so people could donate to you and your work and we still want to you know, write you a check on top of whatever you earn so they can help you out. So it was well.
Victoria Volk 44:00
You’re amazing. And all the way.
Quandell Wright 44:02
You’re amazing. You’re amazing. Yeah,
Victoria Volk 44:06
I’m so glad we reconnected again and that you are my first Where are they now episode and I saw something in you back in October 2020 I saw something in you and I was spot on. I was spying on you. So thank you. That’s awesome to see you thrive. So thank you for sharing your time with me today. Is there anything else you would like to share?
Quandell Wright 44:29
Just be you be us everybody that’s listening is willing to be watching us be you love you care for you. You know learn you learn who you are walking your purpose and brief and it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay, so we’re going to be fine. Yeah, we’re gonna be fine. So
Victoria Volk 44:49
Beautiful. Message. Thank you so much. Thank you. I will put all the links to how people can reach out to you how you prefer they reach out to you Okay, in the shownotes and where can people find you now? Social media and stuff?
Quandell Wright 45:05
Oh, yeah that’s the ground. The QX William Palmer. Facebook Quandell H Wright For Name, Email. That’s as long but it’s cute right at yeah [email protected]. So people can email me there find me on Facebook Quandell H Wright, W R I G H T or Instagram to QX William Palmer. So, I do look at my DMs I do take a day and be like, Okay, let me see what’s going on. So I do it. I do respond to people and people get very, very excited. And I’d be like, okay, hold on. I’m just a regular person. But they but you responded to me. Oh my god. So it’s, it’s nice. I love that though. I really do. I love making people really, really happy. And that’s really cool. I love it. The sweet.
Victoria Volk 45:54
Humble Q. Yeah, Humble Q. I love it. So I will put the links for all that in the show notes. And in the meantime, remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, LGBTQ+, Mental Health, Mind/Body Wellness, Podcast, Spirituality |
Christian de la Huerta | Awakening the Soul of Power
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Christian is one of nine children born and raised in Cuba during turbulent times and in the Catholic faith.
His parents instilled in him the importance of excelling and reading. These early lessons laid a foundation. However, those lessons also set the stage for a desire to escape and not be seen.
Introversion and depression plagued his adolescence, as was his knowledge of being gay. With courage, he came out to his family. Christian speaks about this challenging time in his life and the ones that came to be in the future, including the recent (and unexpected) decline of his mother’s cognitive health.
Through his breath and deep, internal work, Christian paved a path to personal empowerment and now leads others in doing the same. Through the lens of 30+ years of experience, he shares two of the biggest hurdles others have to personal freedom and empowerment.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
________
NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Victoria Volk 0:00
Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. Today my guest is Christian de la Huerta. He has 30 years experience and is a sought after spiritual teacher, personal transformation coach and leading voice in the breathwork community. He has traveled the world offering inspiring and transformational retreats combining psychological and spiritual teachings with lasting and life changing effects, and award winning critically acclaimed author he has spoken at numerous universities and conferences and on the TEDx stage. His new book, awakening the soul of power has described by multiple Grammy Award winner Gloria Estefan as a balm for the soul of anyone searching for truth and answers to life’s difficult questions, and has received a novelist Book Award and a nonfiction book award. So thank you so much for being here. And we are gonna go deep today.
Christian de la Huerta 0:52
Thank you so much, Victoria. I’m so happy to be here with you.
Victoria Volk 0:56
I actually really want to start, because I know you’ve done a lot of these podcast episodes, interviews, and then on the stage and things like that. But I really want to get to know you as a child, because I think our childhood really shapes our adulthood because adulthood is childhood reenactments. I say a lot. So I’m interested in learning about you as a child. So would you describe yourself as a child and your life? What it was like, for you?
Christian de la Huerta 1:24
Yeah, that’s, that’s interesting. I was I was born in Cuba. And so lived in a communist regime for the first 10 years of my life. And I’m one part of a large family of one of nine kids and only 12 years between the oldest and the youngest, and my mom was pretty much pregnant the whole time. Which I can’t even imagine having any kids, I’m happy if I don’t kill my plants when I travel. The scene so it was it was a beautiful and challenging in different ways. Childhood, I’m really appreciative of the fact that we grew up without watching TV, we had a TV, but there was nothing worth watching, really. So we grew up reading and I’m really grateful for that. We grew up creating, inventing our games and our pastimes and spending a lot of time out outside. So you know, when I see some of my kids in my life, you know, just like with their nose to the to the screen, just lost in there’s, it’s, it saddens me a bit. To see that. I was, you know, it was interesting, because my parents were involved in counter revolutionary activity. So they were conspiring against the revolution, or the Communist revolution, there was this kind of interesting push pull between, like an implicit, wanting to be seen and wanting to excel, like there was sort of sort of a family message like most of us were, like, really good students. I think we all were, and then because of their cattle revolute with the right kind of revolutionary activities, there was an innate, another message not to be seen too much. So So I see that, that, you know, I’m basically introverted, which, which means that you know, that I that I process internally that I need time off, if I don’t have time alone, that’s when I’m liable to lose my center. And so this was an interesting childhood me surrounded by kids and then having this also introverted streak like looking fighting for I was looking for my own space. And what I think your your, your audience might relate to also is that my adolescence, if you don’t, going forward a little bit, was one long depression with suicidal fantasies, like, I don’t think I know, I wouldn’t have done anything about it. But I did have thoughts about not not being alive and sort of like that escape fantasy, and and what’s important for your audience, because another another depth of the work that you do is that flash forward now, no matter what the details, or the circumstances are in my life, whether a relationship works out where it doesn’t, whether a project succeeds or it fails in quotes. I never, ever, ever questioned my sense of self, my level of self love self acceptance, are established, and unshakable and so that I know that that we can all break out of that stuff, the traumatic the difficult stuff, the self esteem, stuff from from childhood that all that stuff can be healed and transcended.
Victoria Volk 4:47
In your TED talk, you spoke a lot about this fight, flight or freeze and would you express that that was your adolescence, like was it like a, like a lack of stupid ability or security, like what was the? What was the grief? Of of your experience, then?
Christian de la Huerta 5:07
Yeah, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t say that I was in that. Maybe No, I didn’t know that I would say that it was in the fight flight or freeze mode. I think it was just numbed out. And for me, it was an existential struggle. You know, I knew at a young age that I was gay. And I was raised in a very Catholic, very Catholic environment. So trying to reconcile, you know, those two parts of who I am, there was a part of me that that’s always had a spiritual sense, sense of mission sets of helping humanity making a difference in other people’s lives, with serving the sacred that’s interpreted that in different points in my life. So there was a huge part of me, and this other part of me that was told by the religion in which I was raised, that I was, you know, another I’m an abomination in the eyes of God, that I was gonna burn in hell for eternity. So that was the struggle, which, you know, looking back on it, I’m grateful for that now, for several reasons. But one of the reasons is that it forced me to struggle with those tough, existential questions of, you know, who am I? What am I here for? What’s life about? What, why do we do the things we do at a younger age that most of us have to struggle with. And so, for that, I’m grateful. And it also gives me an ability and an ability to deeply empathize with another person’s pain or their grief, you know, the details might be different, but the experience is similar, for most of us, so so I’m grateful for all of that.
Victoria Volk 6:43
Where you accepted your loved ones?
Christian de la Huerta 6:48
Eventually, yes, I mean, my siblings immediately, my parents, you know, it took a little bit longer for it to, you know, for my mom to get to the place of, I just want my kids to be happy, which, you know, which that foundation was always there, so that I know that I’m blessed in that area that many other people don’t have, which was that I knew that the love was there. And no matter what, even though I spent years, you know, with with that deep, dark secret, not telling them, but once I finally did come out to them, you know, it’s it took some navigating for sure. And my father was a psychiatrist. So there were other layers around that of, you know, his philosophy about that, but but I knew that deep down inside the love, was there always.
Victoria Volk 7:43
Can I ask for those listening? Who might get a sense that their child may be gay? Or be struggling with their sexual identity? What is one piece of advice that you would give them? Is it to confront it, and just start the conversation or allow the child to express it in their own time?
Christian de la Huerta 8:11
You know, it’s hard to make a blanket choice about that, or suggestion about that? I think it depends. My inclination, my initial inclination would be to let it let it come out in the child, but I’ve also heard stories where the father, the father, or the mother, just opening up the space and, you know, creating an environment which, in which the kid feel safe, and you know, kind of setting them up, to be able to come out to them, but that’s also very helpful. Here’s the thing that I think will be helpful, because I know that the reason that all of us you know, but especially parents, you know, struggle with that, how can I accept this in my child, when my religion may be telling you that this is wrong, or that it’s sinful, or whatever. So it’s going to take work, right? It’s gonna, it’s, for me, it was it took years to get to that point of self accepting and reconciling my sexuality and my spirituality. But But here’s what’s really key is that a lot, there’s about six, and I’m going to go immediately to the majority religion and in this country, and the West, which is Christianity. There are basically six biblical texts that are interpreted, and I would say misinterpreted, to condemn homosexuality. And the thing to remember about about this is that they’ve been taken out of their cultural and historical context, and they’re very selectively interpreted. What allowed me to get through this into healers and myself is that I started doing a lot of research and discovered and realized that before the patriarchal times and cultures and religions, people that we today would call gay or lesbian or LGBT, or Q or whatever. We’re not only spiritually inclined, but wherever actually honored, respected, in some cases revered for the roles of spiritual service and spiritual leadership that they played all over the world. So my first book was called coming out spiritually, and dives deeply into that, because there are examples of that all over the world and all inhabited continent. And so that begins, like, once we’re able to reconcile that for ourselves as parents, then it becomes easier to arrive at that point is like, you know what, all right, well, I don’t know about this stuff, and where these teachings come from, but I know the love I have for my child, no matter what, and I help them to arrive to a place of inner peace with that.
Victoria Volk 10:43
Isn’t that the goal? Just to find inner peace with it on both sides? Right? Yes, yes. It’s better than creating, destroying the bridge between that relationship, there’s ripple effects in that for sure.
Christian de la Huerta 10:57
Oh, my God, and it’s so unnecessary. And so unnecessary. By the way, it’s important to remember to that because the more I think about this, the more that I realized that homophobia and misogyny are two sides of the same coin. And the more that I think about it, I think misogyny is really the deeper one. Because if you look at any culture, any religion, that persecute homosexuality, or you know, LGBTQ people, 100% correlation, they are the same ones, where women do not have equal status. And so, you know, taking one of those, you know, what are called the holy text of terrorists, those six biblical injunction injunctions that are used to condemn same sex behavior. One of them is like, you know, you should not lie with a man as you do with a woman. But what about two women together? You know, that, that doesn’t even come up? And why is that? Because at that time, in that culture, you know, women weren’t even human. Women were property. And so am I going to base my my choices about what’s right, and what’s wrong on stuff that was written, you know, 1000s of years ago, that was translated and re translated and mistranslated, stuff was taken out stuff was put into those those those, you know, sacred texts that were written by humans. And so I’m personally not, you know, and even if we, if we flash forward to today, you know, for, you know, like, the many examples of homophobic, straight men, you tell him, Oh, two women, or you show him a movie with two women, it’s like, Ooh, I want some of that. But how different two men together, it’s like, wow, you know, either either, you got to shoot them, you got to kill them, get rid of them, or the yuck factor comes out. So why is that? And I think is because of two women together. We’re not a threat to the status quo. Right? Because again, they weren’t seemed to hold the same kind of amount of power in the world and still don’t, which connects to the book that, you know, that I just published last year, whereas two men in their mind, I think they believe that one of them is willingly forfeiting giving up their superior male status, and that is a threat to the status quo.
Victoria Volk 13:19
Do you think that if men, just straight men in general got more in touch with their femininity, their feminine side? You know, the yin and yang, equally balanced? Do you think that would change things?
Christian de la Huerta 13:39
Of course it would. And, and, you know, because we’re part of the cosmos, the cosmos is equally balanced between masculine and feminine energies. So that means that those masculine and feminine energies course through every one of us, no matter what kind of body we’re in, and for some reason, you know, at the rise of the patriarchy, the feminine was made, was turned us into weakness into something less than, and whereas, whereas, you know, from my perspective, if you want to talk, strength and power and resilience and courage, let’s talk about the power of creation that lies in a female body and to lighten things up a little bit, you know, read about an interview of Betty White Pass to not long ago, the one and only inimitable Betty White, but apparently she was in one of those group interviews and somebody said something about having balls and she goes, Wait a minute, I don’t know where we got this connection between having balls and encouraging strength and strength you thumped those little things in the guy collapses bends over in pain. You want to talk courage and strength, let’s talk vaginas. Those things take a pounding.
Victoria Volk 14:56
You know, just yesterday, my soul i you actually mentioned her in your TED Talk Joan of Arc. And so my daughter, she’s going to be confirmed. I’m actually a convert to Catholicism. But I, you know, I struggled spiritually and religiously for many years because my dad died when I was a child, and I was sexually assaulted and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I wrote off God, I was angry at God, and I didn’t, you know, that relationship, I cut it off. And so I struggled for a long time, but I found something I could set a foundation of faith in. And it’s still evolving, it’s always going to evolve. And I think that’s where we kind of get stuck in our thought process. And then in our, we get stuck in our ways. Like, this is how it is, this is how it’s always gonna be. But I feel like I’m more spiritual now than I would say, I’m religious, you know, and that took a long time to get there. Anyway. Sure. My daughter, my daughter chose Joan of Arc, though as her patron saint. So anyway, I just said to her, I said to her yesterday, she has to do this paper on her and I just said, you know, well, you know, she was she’s like, she’s a badass. She, I don’t know how, how I will describe her. But I did say she has lady ball. That she had lady balls, you know, when you mentioned that, it’s like, oh, my gosh, my language, right. Like it is. It is in so this is my question, because I wasn’t gonna go here. But I feel like it’s, it’s just coming up. So currently, there’s this all this talk about gender neutral clothing, and I haven’t even seen the story I it was just shared with me and, and my thought is let the kids wear what they want to wear. Just let them wear what they want to wear. Let them express themselves. You know, here it’s us as parents and society, that places these places, children in a box, well, let’s just give them gender neutral, because they look male, and they they see male, so let’s just put blue clothes on him. But as adults, we were all kinds of colors. I’m wearing blue today. That make me male. You know what I mean? Like, it’s not a big deal as adults. It’s ridiculous. Why do we make it a big deal? I think we as a society, we make mountains out of molehills, where there doesn’t need to be just compassion, and kindness and free freedom of expression. Right? I have a picture of my child sheet my youngest girl, she, I don’t know, one time, it’s one of my favorite pictures. But she was dressed literally like a clown. Like just mismatched, and stripes and solids and all kinds of it. And she looked silly, ridiculous. And she had like a wellness check that day, I let her dress like that. I don’t care. Like what, you know, people get so afraid of what it what it says about them. You know? So I think that’s yeah, anyway, that’s my schpeel. What are your thoughts on that?
Christian de la Huerta 18:01
I think you’re absolutely right. It’s ridiculous and tragic. How much power we give away to others, and how much weight we give to what other people think how many choices we make, based on what we think they think. Right? So it’s all made up in our minds, and based on whether other people are gonna like it or not. And to me, it goes back to self esteem, right, the stronger our sense of self, the deeper that our level of self acceptance, the less and less and less that we care what anybody else thinks. And, and we get to that place of freedom, which I think is what we all have, we’re all longing for freedom just to be who we are, wherever we are. Because we spent so much time like with, you know, with masks, and being this way at work, and this other way, with, with our friends this other way with our family this other way with, with our lovers, it’s exhausting. It’s right, what if we were just able to, to be who we are, right, of course, selectively, unconsciously and intelligently. We don’t have to share every part of who we are with everybody in our lives. But it’s such a relief, we spend so much energy, worried about what other people think and then presenting ourselves in a way that we think they’re going to like exhausting.
Victoria Volk 19:21
Exactly. You mentioned in your TED Talk, too, which I’ll put that in the show notes link to that. But you mentioned you’re speaking the language of Grief Recovery. When you were talking about are you familiar with grief recovery method at all?
Christian de la Huerta 19:36
Not the method method specifically my degrees in psychology so and from personal experience I’ve also dealt with you know with grief, but I don’t know that particular methodology Grief Recovery, recover.
Victoria Volk 19:46
Okay. It Well, it’s based on the Grief Recovery handbook. But you were talking about particularly there was a spot where you’re talking about drugs and alcohol and shopping and gambling like all these ways that we call opened to distract ourselves from what we’re feeling. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, she’s speaking the language of Grief Recovery. Because in Grief Recovery, we call those stirpes short term energy relieving behaviors. And so as a teenager, when you are going through all of this struggle with self self acceptance, and you know, this tog, and what were some of the ways you were coping with that.
Christian de la Huerta 20:24
Yeah, you know, that’s, that’s a good, great conversation too, because we all do that, right? We, like most of us, I’m gonna say most of us, like, have become really adept at running away from numbing out or emotions. So and there’s so many creative ways in which we do that, right, that we numb out and not to not feel to not remember whether it’s substances, drugs, alcohol, food, whether it’s behaviors, exercise, social media, shopping, work, workaholism. Yeah, yeah, and not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with any of those. It’s how we do it, how we a relationship to all those things, TV, and, you know, all of them have potential to be have good or negative effects not so good effect. I think for me, I definitely hit at my books. And I love you know, the fantasies science fiction, it was it was easy for me just get lost in these worlds, whether it was Lord of the Rings are the foundation series are so many other series like that, that I could just go get lost in book after book after book after book for your Pisces, no, I’m a Gemini.
Victoria Volk 21:42
Oh my son’s a Gemini, but just how you’re describing getting lost in the fantasy. I’m like, okay, that’s, that’s like me.
Christian de la Huerta 21:48
And you know, and it’s understandable, it’s easier to go through it with, you know, to not want to feel stuff that wasn’t pleasant, or to remember stuff that, you know, may not have been great experience. So it’s understandable that we want to run away from that stuff, but the price we pay, the reason that it’s not an effective strategy, as you know, is that that stuff doesn’t go away, just because we don’t want to deal with it. So we stuffed it in we stuff our emotions, and you know, what used to be spiritual teaching that everything is energy. Now we know from quantum physics, that everything is energy. And we know that energy cannot be destroyed. And by everything, I mean everything like this cherub sitting on the table, or the computer, the body, the emotion, even though it might feel solid, it’s just energy, just vibration. And so whenever we stuff those emotions, whenever we numb out and run away from them, it doesn’t go away. It gets it gets lodged in the tissues of the body. And after years, and decades of doing that, we walk around with layers upon layers upon even more layers of repressed emotional crap, and unhealed past situations. And here we are trying to have a relationship in the present moment. And all of it is getting filtered through that lifetime of unhealed trauma, and repressed emotions like Yikes, how any relationship can work is it boggles my mind, because we haven’t been taught how to hold on how to approach them. And we certainly haven’t been taught how to clear ourselves of that cauldron of repressed emotion, because what happens is we suppress, suppress, suppress, and then the next unfortunate one just says something to us the wrong the wrong way and boom, volcanic eruption. And because our, to our relationships, sometimes irreparably, or suppress, suppress, suppress, suppress, that energy has to come out, and it begins to start seeping out of the body and showing up as physical symptoms, like cancer, heart attacks, ulcers, so we’ve got to get this we’ve got to get a relationship to our emotions and accept that they’re not weakness. Emotions are not good. They’re not bad. They’re not strength, they’re not weakness. They’re just energies coursing through our bodies, we get into trouble with them when we when we suffer, because what happens when we stuff sadness, as you know, it congeals it turns into grief. And when we stuff anger, it turns into rage and we walk around like a raging cauldrons. So better to nip it in the bud and learn how to first identify what we’re feeling because most of us are clueless about our emotions, including my psychiatrist, that including myself up until I started doing this conscious work 20 years 30 years ago, I had no idea no clue as to what I was feeling. I couldn’t tell you what I was feeling because I had no idea and so we can talk about processes, you know, like simple techniques to become more emotionally intelligent to increase our EQ and then learn how to communicate them responsibly like owning their our emotions, so that nobody can make us feel any anything, unless there’s some little button there that they’re triggering. But it’s here, right? So we’ve got to own that stuff. And then learning how to communicate them responsibly not not courageously, because it takes courage for sure, responsibly just not having a tantrum like a two year old and in a way that they can be heard that they can be received. And so, so level of mastery, so it’s the opposite of weakness, it’s a level of mastery.
Victoria Volk 25:27
I love that. You said so much that we talk about in Grief Recovery to just you know, the implode or explode, that’s we either implode or we explode. We either suffer from disease and illness and you know, all these symptoms, these physical symptoms, or we explode and have these dherbs Right, these behaviors and angers in anger can be a sturb I was very angry as a child and I grew up. I was very angry as an adult too. And if solidly I yeah, I would argue that at the root of grief and sadness and, and fear and anxiety is grief, like all of those emotions. It just is the embodiment of grief. And I always say to like grief was our pandemic long before COVID-19, long before your teenage years. And growing up, that was just the start of your experience with grief. But there’s more to your story. And I would like to get there. So you had shared in your information with me that your brother, you had lost your brother when he was 26? you mind sharing that story with us?
Christian de la Huerta 26:31
Yeah, of course. And I want to say to that there’s that it’s important for us to realize that there is there is an end to suffering. Right? Like there is an end to that. Not so much for sadness, like there’s always going to be stuff in life, that’s going to be sad, that’s going to evoke those emotions in US people are gonna come people are gonna go crazy traumatic stuff, crisis level stuff is going to happen in the world, as we’re witnessing right now. And global pandemic wars, the things that humans do to other humans, it’s just like boggle the mind. So what once we get to the level where we can feel our emotions, we are no longer running away from them, or numbing them out or stuffing them? Well, we can just let them course through us, then we can get to that place of freedom, where we just allow those energies to course through us and we don’t get stuck in and and so yes, you know that what happened with my brother and my nephew? Later, it’s just stuff that shouldn’t happen. You know, my brother was 26. And he drowned in a kind of freaky boat accident, riverboat accident and attempts in London. And I can’t even imagine, of course, we’re all impacted. But I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like for a parent to lose a child. I don’t have any kids myself, have many kids in my life. But no, none that are mine, so to speak, because and then I witnessed that again with my sister, my nephew was also around 2627. He was 27 incredible. I mean, both of them really creative and smart. My my nephew shown because he had these amazing leadership qualities. He his passion was being a DMT. He was a firefighter DMT gave up a scholarship to Harvard because of his grades, because that was what he really wanted to do. And at 27, he, his wife was seven months pregnant with their first child, which they never met. He got this really aggressive form of brain cancer. And within weeks, like four or five weeks, it was gone to everybody’s Chuck. And again, like how do what does one do with that, of course, it’s sad, of course, takes the parents years degree that stuff, some of that lingering grief doesn’t ever really leave you we heal it for sure. But there are layers of the sadness and the missing somebody like that. And I guess I guess what I’m saying is that the more work that I did on myself, the more that I was able to get to that place of feeling these incredibly sad emotions and not be stuck with them. Either we can we can weave it into the fabric of our lives and realize that one thing we know for sure, is that life is going to continue throwing curveballs our way, whether it’s a global pandemic or a 26 year old getting brain cancer or an an unexpected drowning like there is not one thing that any of us can do about that. So we can that can help us add you know the to the feeling of grievous grief and sadness, it can add a layer of feeling helpless, and even some people feel victimized by life. Like I got such a horrible deck of cards this lifetime. And if only this hadn’t happened or that had happened if I had only been born in a different place a different time, a different culture. You finally You know, the system was set up differently. As long as we’re doing that, if only and feeling victimized by life, we’re giving our power away. And sometimes even to the perpetrators, as you know, as long as we’re holding them responsible for our emotions for our state of being. And it’s not to minimize any of that, or to excuse anything. If we want to be free, we’ve got to get to that place of healing and acceptance. And one thing that helps to reframe that is knowing that no matter what happens going forward, no matter what new curveballs come our way, no matter what happened in the past, we always, always get to choose how we show up in response and that element of choice, just remembering that and knowing that it’s liberating, and it’s empowering.
Victoria Volk 30:49
And I just had a thought to it when you are someone who isn’t there yet, in their heart and their mind, because forgiveness, too, can be very, very difficult for people. Again, like you said, it always comes down to choice you can you can have grief in the back seat, you can, because it’s going to follow you, right? You take you everywhere you go. But you have a choice, if you’re going to continue to look in the rearview mirror at it. That’s where you can look forward to but what if what if you’re stuck looking at the rearview mirror, I think that’s where finding support in someone who is a little further along than you, who maybe is an example of of where you’d like to be in your life. So when you were going through these losses, had you already been at this place in your life with the breath work and on your spiritual journey and things like that, like had you because we never fully arrived? Right? But had you already started.
Christian de la Huerta 31:46
In this in the case of my brother’s death, it was synchronous, it’s right around that time, is when I did breathwork for the first time and were in when I started to, to reclaim my spirituality, right, because like many people and like you were referring to, I threw the baby out with a baptismal water, I didn’t know that there was a difference between religion and spirituality. And I didn’t know that spirituality is just an inherent part of who we are. That is just as ludicrous for you to for me to have tried to repress and reject and run away from my sexuality, as it was to ignore it and repress it in in with my spirituality. It’s just part of who we are as humans. So yeah, I did have much better tools in those situations. And I want to go back to something I want to highlight something you just said, which I think is really important, because we just hit on the two biggest hurdles on the on the on the journey to freedom and personal empowerment. One is that victimization, you know, poor me, woe is me relationship to life. The other one that you mentioned is forgiveness. Because we know we’ve heard this, we’ve heard that forgiveness is really for us. But how do we forgive? You know, the what feels unforgivable? How do we do that, because if we think about it, as long as we’re holding someone, right, looking in that rearview mirror, where we’re holding somebody over the fire for what they did, or failed to do, our hand is also getting burned or hand is in the fire. So, so it helps us to understand the necessity for forgiveness. Another way to convey that visual, if you think of the heart center, not the organ or the chakra, the energy center, it opens and closes in the same way that like the shutter of a camera, or the iris of the eye. If I shut my heart to my sexual abuser, or to my father who left or to mom who did who was emotionally abusive, or to the teacher, or the minister, or society, or sexism or misogyny or racism, or homophobia, I can’t close it selectively just to that, or to the boss who fired me or the ex who cheated on me, right? We I can’t close it just to them. If I close it, I close it. So it’s not even about them. Because in closing it we’re giving our power away again. So this is between me and my heart. This is a bit in my heart and love between my heart and life. And so how do we do that? How do we even begin to forgive the unforgivable and this is something that I picked up along the way from a teacher that begins to open the door to the possibility of forgiveness. And it’s forgive two syllables, flip them around, give for what we do, when we forgive, we’re giving others and ourselves which is often even more difficult to do. We’re giving them the space to be human, to make mistakes, to fall short of the mark to to make a royal mess of things like to really if things up.
Christian de la Huerta 34:50
And it’s it getting off the self righteous stance of the ego. Like we don’t have time to dive into what the ego construct is here. But it’s really important To understand what the ego is, I spent the first quarter of the book, maybe even the third talking about the ego mind, and and how it keeps us in a self made prison of fear and lack and limitation and self doubt, and reactivity and the victim and defended victim mindset and defensiveness. So really, really important. If we want to be free, if we want to step into our power, if we want to have relationships that have a chance of working, that we understand that how the ego is and how it works, so that we can get ourselves out of it out of its self made prison because nobody else can. So the ego one of the aspects of it is it’s very self righteous, again, knows, it went to law school and appoints itself a judge, jury prosecutor, it knows exactly what the other person did that was wrong, what the punishment should be and delivers the punishment. So forgiving means getting off, like stepping off that self righteous stance, I know I’m right, I would never do anything like right, because that closes the heart. And again, a highlight it again, it’s not about making it okay about denying what happened about rationalizing. It is not about any of that. It’s not about minimizing, or making Okay, whatever they did or didn’t do, but it’s not about them. This is about us, and how do we free ourselves from that. And so when we forgive we make we give the other and ourselves the room to make all those mistakes, to to forgive to get off that self righteous stance, and say maybe right, all it takes is that question mark MIDI, I can’t see it, I cannot even begin to imagine that I would ever do that. But maybe if they had been raised in their situation with their parents, their culture, their time, in whatever way their parents raised them and their parents before them, raise them. Who knows what was going on in their brain cut biochemistry? Who know what, who knows what happened in their own past? Who know what traumas they had, because we know trauma is the gift that keeps on giving, especially in sexual abuse and that kind of stuff. And right and again, not minimizing it not making it okay. We don’t have to hang out with them. We don’t have to be friends with them. We don’t have to ever see them again. But that question marks like maybe, maybe I might have done that. I might have I might have done that. And here’s like an extreme way to be able to do that a terrorist like it’s really hard for us to otherwise them we because we can’t imagine like anybody listening to this for sure. Watching this cannot have Woods is not about to wrap their bodies in explosives of walk into a crowded mall and detonate ourselves. So it’s really difficult for us to understand that standard is easy to say I would never do that. And have we ever terrorized others emotionally? Have we ever terrorized ourselves emotionally and that I know every single one of us has done. So we have an inner terrorist inside me that inside of each one of us, the details are different. But we have that potential. So it’s again not to make it okay not to minimize it. It just begins to soften that harsh separation of I wouldn’t ever do that, because that’s what makes forgiveness difficult. Like when we soften that then it begins to to free ourselves from carrying that weight and being stuck in the past.
Victoria Volk 38:19
I can bring a visual to this that can lighten things up. Because when you were talking about emotions, and how like what came up for me is like yeah, we’re just all walking around a little bit emotionally constipated some more than others. Right? And I when you were saying how we terrorized others emotionally. It’s like if we think of that emotional constipation, right? It’s gotta go somewhere. So either it’s gonna, we’re just gonna have, we’re gonna let it come out of us, or we’re going to just throw it at people, right?
Christian de la Huerta 38:50
Yes. You know, it’s so funny because I called breathwork. Virtual Drano. Oh, cool. Yeah, emotional and spiritual drain, and we get rid of all that crap that we’ve been carrying inside of us. Quickly, and it works fast. Well, that’s so profoundly at so many levels. It’s just a really amazing and for lack of another word, miraculous.
Victoria Volk 39:12
That’s a great segue. So I do want to talk about that. What is I had a personal experience, a friend of mine, she does Kundalini yoga, and she’s in a training right now to become a practitioner in that. But she does breath work. She does breath work practice every day, and she walked me through this breathwork practice was about 30 minutes, but I tell you what, I learned the power of our breath. In that one session that blew my mind. I felt I’m a Reiki Master, but I had my hands were vibrating to the extent of nothing a comparison like my hands are starting to tingle just thinking about it. I felt so alive. Like the Most alive that I had felt in a long time after experiencing that it was so powerful for me, can you give our listeners something that they can do today, if they are in a moment of panic, fight flight or freeze, grief, whatever they’re experiencing right now can you share some a technique with them.
Christian de la Huerta 40:20
Of course, and you know, breathwork is a, it’s a really broad umbrella, there’s a lot of breathing practices, a lot of breathing techniques, yoga, practice yogic practices, pranayama, it’s called in that yoga tradition, you know, whether it’s Kundalini yoga, or any other kind of yoga. And so the breath is at the core of all those practices, and at the core of every meditation practice at the core of every spiritual tradition. And so the particular breathwork that I do, it’s longer, it’s about an hour, an hour and a half, there’s different modalities, it’s you. So you can use breathing techniques. for different purposes. If you’re if you’re stressed out, if you’re stuck in traffic, if you’re, like, stressed out or nervous about right before a difficult conversation, or an important meeting, you can do take slow, deep breaths, to calm yourself down and the body has to slow down. Like there’s Swamis in India have that much control over their body, they can tell their hearts to slow down. And they do you know, they can, some of them can mimic states that are really, really hard to distinguish from death, they can slow down the body that much, most of us are not gonna be able to aren’t there. And I’m probably not going to learn how to do that kind of stuff. But anybody can slow down the breath, anyone can slow down the breath. When we do that, the heart has no choice, the heart has to slow down. And and when the heart slows down, the nervous system begins to quiet down, the body begins to relax. Right? So it’s, it’s slowly and under breath. It’s like it’s your best friend, your most effective practice. There are also breathing techniques that you can use, like in place or the afternoon slump, you know, a cup of coffee, you know, there’s the faster, more energizing more focusing practices, the type of breathwork that I do, it’s a different model, it’s more of a, to me, it’s part of my psycho spiritual therapy, you know, approach to healing. I was on a trip my father was a psychiatrist. As I said, my my degrees in psychology, I was on a track to get a PhD. When I discovered breathwork, this modality that I that I practice, I jumped tracks, I never went for the PhD because it works so fast and heal so profoundly at so many levels, including, by the way, I don’t know anything more effective that healing past traumas, including sexual abuse, including, you know, just violent stuff that people have have experienced, that I’ve worked with over the years, and it gets healed. And so not only that, which will be hard enough to believe, but it heals spiritually, mentally, even physically. And yes, you know, even like more than 30 years saying this or talking about this, I know to my mind, it still sounds hard to believe, to my logical, more scientific, more skeptical mind. But I can’t argue with the result. It works with permanent effects. And you know, they haven’t studied it yet. They’re starting to do more research now about what’s happening in the body scientifically. But even that, it doesn’t explain it to me, like, like the stuff that happens. Because you can also have incredibly ecstatic moments like moments of oneness, moments of feeling connectedness to to everyone and everything to all of creation. And so just from breathing, but here’s what ultimately helps me understand that the way that I can understand if you look at any religion, any culture, some even languages, in many of them the same word, one word, can mean breath, or spirit, depending on the context. So for example, from Numa, from that Greek word Numa, from which we get pneumonia, that word meant or it meant soul, and lung, from the Latin root speed at A, we get both respiration and inspiration or exploration. So that breath spirit connection is is available, like I said, most spiritual traditions and even several sets of regular languages. And that’s what ultimately helps me understand that is when we breathe in this conscious, intentional way, that the effects of which are undeniable like you felt your body was you will beginning to notice your body more as vibration. So you popped out of that limited perspective of separateness as like I’m just over here, this is this description as Victoria which is what the ego is that artificials you know, sense of of separate separateness, and you began to experience yourself beyond the confines of your body as a physical thing, and that that’s what that vibration was, and that we can access Not only profound healing, but ecstatic states, which by the word, that’s what the word ecstasy means means out of ourselves. And that’s what that breathing practices and breathing practices help us to do. So that we can pop behind the illusion of separation of the ego, and reconnect with our, no our ultimate nature.
Victoria Volk 45:20
There was a conversation one time about psychedelics, and she’s like, you don’t need to take a psychedelic to have that experience, you can find that through your breath. And I totally, totally agree. I actually had written down just before you said it, I wrote the soul is in the gut and grief is in the lungs. So isn’t that just really ironic in a way that the breath connects us to? Both right is part of both, essentially. So I’m curious. Is it was it just breathwork? Because, you know, I’ve dabbled in different healing modalities. I’m currently actually learning biofield tuning, which addresses the energy field that’s around us the stuck energy that’s outside of us, you know that, because our bodies are a mirror of what’s out here, stuck in this energy field, and that extends five to six feet beyond us. So was it just breathwork? Or have? Were you kind of dabbling in a lot of different things? And breathwork? Is what stuck? Or was it always breathwork. And that’s just kind of been your thing?
Christian de la Huerta 46:28
I think the combination I mean, there’s so many tools to help us heal and help free. The ones that I include in every single retreat for over 30 years. No matter whether the retreat is on conscious relationships, and having relationships that can actually work, whether it’s stepping into our personal power, and reconciling the conflicted, ambivalent relationship we have to power? And how do we step into power in a way that’s not about hierarchy and control, and fear and force and domination? How do we do it in a way that’s a match for who we are? Whether it’s about life purpose, and what are we really, really doing here? And how do we stop selling out for that illusion of security of a biweekly paycheck, because we sell ourselves so cheaply for that illusion, as many have had to discover the hard way during this pandemic, but no matter what the theme of the retreat the to constant, or the breath work, because I’ve yet to come across any tool that heals as quickly and as profoundly. And in many ways, the other one is understanding that you go, because it’s to me, there’s that’s step one, understanding the mind and why we do the things we do and our patterns, why do we get triggered what? Well, the same behavior would have could have a completely different response in you. And yet, it’s got me just out of control and got my goat. So why is that? Understanding our patterns? Like, why do we do the things we do? Why do we attract certain people into our lives? Why do we have certain what are we recreate patterns and situations? What? Why do we keep creating patterns of relationships that sometimes feel like it’s the same boring movie, different actor different co lead, but the same crap? Same argument, same patterns? Why is that? Right? So it’s so again, a lot easier to go through life numbing out and running away from these questions. But then we get stuck in a there’s no way to this, we’re just going to recreate and recreating, and keep creating the same stuff. What we’re talking about is like having the courage to face our grief, to face our memories to do whatever it is that we need to do to heal ourselves and declare ourselves that is nothing less than heroic. That’s why there’s no book awakening this whole power is the first of a series of three, which is the tide the series is titled Calling All Heroes, what does it mean to live heroically in the 21st century? And so yes, you know, I honor you for the work that you’ve done to not only heal your past trauma, but to now use that to make a difference in other people’s lives. And I honor anybody who has stuck with this conversation thus far. It’s, you know, this stuff is not easy. It’s not for the faint of heart. This is And speaking of heart, you know, that’s courage comes from that root, the same root core which a Latin means heart, courage, courage, and in French, the big heart, take this word takes big heart, big courage. Nothing short of heroic. incredibly rewarding, like freedom, empowerment.
Victoria Volk 49:40
Empowerment. Yes. That’s huge. Yes, absolutely.
Christian de la Huerta 49:44
Like you were telling me when we were connecting right before we started recording like this podcast is like, the best thing you ever did. Like wow, and you using your own? Like that’s what he lives there, right. We use our own stuff to bring healing to others for On lived experience, not just stuff that we read in a book, and we all have access to that.
Victoria Volk 50:05
You actually mentioned that your mother’s presence is diminishing slowly is is that did you? Do you mean cognitively? Yes. Okay. And I asked that because a friend of mine mentioned this, you can have cancer and you can have disease and things like that, which is really difficult for the person going through it. Right? They have to reconcile their life right when you’re faced with this is what’s happening to me, whether it’s, you know, MS, or muscular dystrophy, or, or any kind of debilitating progressive disease, cancer, anything like that. It’s really difficult on the person experiencing, and of course, the family and people watching it happen. But when it’s someone that’s going through a cognitive decline, they aren’t necessarily aware of it. And so that’s really more impactful on the family and the loved ones. And that struck me because I hadn’t really thought about that. But what do you say? How is that different? for loved ones? In your, in your experience? You’ve had both experiences, right? You’re your nephew, and now your mother.
Christian de la Huerta 51:12
Yeah I think this one’s even more difficult. Because what I’ve realized is that I’ve been preparing I’ve been preparing for the for the inevitable, which is my mother’s passing for years, she’s not in good health, physical, like she, you know, nine kids is take a toll on my body, She’s diabetic, she’s overweight, from that generation that never took care of her bodies of her body. And, and that dealt with everything. Like from the perspective of Western medicine, my dad being addicted to it just medicated it, rather than addressing the symptom, I mean, the addressing the symptom rather than addressing the source. And so I never thought for a moment that my mom, my mom’s body would outlive her mind. And so I didn’t see that coming. That one I was not prepared for it. caught me off guard. And, and it’s, it’s, it’s difficult to experience not only to see her and this beautiful, vibrant, brilliant, loving woman to be like a shell of who she was, to be caught in, in fear, which, which it’s heartbreaking. And there’s nothing, nothing that as a family we can do except no lover and create, you know, like, try to improve the quality of our life as best we can. And, and be one thing to connect to everything else. We’ve been talking about the importance of doing the heroic work of, of self discovery and, and healing ourselves. What I’m beginning to see is that is her undone work. Like sometimes when she goes into these places of fear that, you know, she’s living or reliving something that we can’t see. And beginning to feel that as she’s recreating, like, there’s this one kind of actor that keeps coming back into her her her moment. And it’s, it’s beginning to realize it’s a young woman, like a teenage girl, and my mom calls her all sorts of names, like stuff that she would never say in real life. Like now it’s like, unleashed. And so what I’ve what I’m beginning to put together is that when she was in high school, there was a moment where they were put into they were taken to boarding school and Cuba, my aunt and my sister and her aunt Amy. And her sister, my aunt, and I think she had to, you know, just piecing together stories, there was a there was a group of girls, you know, I mean, girls that were kind of bullies and they were rich, the rich girls in the school. And I think because she never really worked with with her feeling, I’m projecting I’m making it up in my own mind that a feeling rejected or feeling unloved because she was put away were taken away to a boarding school and then having to deal with this bullying, that she never really worked through that and so now when the filters are off, it’s coming back up. And so important for us than to do this kind of work whether we’re using traditional therapy whether we’re using breathwork you know, it’s really important to do or your your energy work, whatever whatever it is that were guided to do. To to have that courage to to clear to face and clear or inner demons.
Victoria Volk 54:23
I just got chills as I heard you talking about that, because it’s like the same. It’s almost like reliving a nightmare over and over and over that you can’t just push stop on.
Christian de la Huerta 54:34
I know it’s it to me, that’s hell, she’s still going to Hell yeah, weaving it back to the religion and it’s, you know, that it gets tragic to me, that in her end, the end of her life, that the religion to which she devoted her entire life is not a source of love and support and support and inner peace, that because of the teachings about hell, which, you know, I personally don’t believe like there’s a physical place that you go to When you die, I don’t believe in a punitive micromanaging didi. But don’t take away my mother effer to, to fear that she might go to hell, like why? It’s nothing that she could have ever done. And it to me, I found that tragic that that fear was put into her head, which to me is not even real.
Victoria Volk 55:19
I had a medium expressed to me once, it was a teenager experience, spirit that had come through and she just her experience was that what she’s learned through her work was that it’s even someone who’s done not great things are good things, you know, good deeds, who have maybe done some bad things, right? It’s, they’re going through school. They’re just they’re going through school, and they’re having to learn these lessons. And they’re kind of in school until they can graduate, I suppose in a way to, to be with the good spirits. I don’t know how to explain that, you know, but that’s kind of how she said it. How, you know, because the mother was so worried that he because he died by suicide, she was so worried that he was in hell. And that brought so much peace to her. But you know, how the Son explained, he’s like, No, I’m in school. I’m having to learn these lessons that I never was open to learning on the physical plane. Yeah, I just thought that was beautiful.
Christian de la Huerta 56:23
I think it is beautiful, and very, very liberating. And to me, you know, from my current perspective, heaven, and hell are not places that we go to after we that I think their states of being heaven, and hell can be right here right now. It’s not your truth. Yeah. And, and it’s a state of mind. And I think that even if we’re going to, you know, stick with a Christian frame of belief, philosophy, mythology, whatever you want to call it, teachings, Jesus said, You know, these greater things you will do. And so, that comes from that state of mind, which he had access to, and to which he never claimed exclusivity. He never had never really did.
Victoria Volk 57:08
And I think there’s just so much we don’t know, that we’ll never know. And even when it comes to healing to the forgiveness piece that we talked about earlier, and, you know, trauma and stuff, it’s, or we feel like we were a victim in our own stories, we just we don’t know what we don’t know. Yeah, if I want to learn this method of breathwork, especially as a Griever, where do I go to learn that.
Christian de la Huerta 57:31
I mean, if anybody’s interested, they can email me, or, you know, just go to my website, soulfulpower.com. And I can either try to help them find somebody local, where they can do it, there’s some people that do it virtually now, I do it virtually very selectively, because it’s really powerful, that the modality that I teach is very powerful. And you never know what’s underneath the surface of somebody’s psyche, what’s going to what’s going to come up. And as you know, so many of us have memories that we suppressed. So like in person in live, I have no hesitation, like, I know that I can handle anything that comes up. And I’ve had some really traumatic stuff come up for people virtually, not so much, right? There’s because there’s my what I’m able to do to support intervene, to, to hold space for them is limited by and all they have to do is click, and then there’s nothing I can do to help. So I do it only with people that you know who have come to my retreats, people I know, people that that are part of my year long coaching program, and that I don’t even start with breathwork that’s only like halfway through once I get a sense of who’s in the group and what kind of stuff they’re dealing with. Or if it’s somebody maybe who has a support system. So sometimes therapists refer people to maybe therapists, you know, where they’ve been with a client for some time, and they’re plateaued, they’re stuck, they’re stagnant. Even one breathwork session can can change your life it did for me, my first session, I knew that I’d never be the same. And I wasn’t. And I knew that I had to do it again, I didn’t care where I had to go what it cost, and I knew that I had to make it available to others. It was just the most amazing thing that I’ve ever experienced. And by the way, you mentioned psychedelics in a different, like branch of breathwork, which is called Holotropic. To more, it’s longer you do for like three, four hours, kind of very similar technique, but longer. And there are other differences, but the founder of that modality. Stan Grof, was a psychiatrist from the Czech Republic. When he was over there, he was researching LSD. And what he realized, you know, once he came to the States, he couldn’t, you know, continue that research. But somewhere along the way, he discovered because when once people attain certain levels of pain, through the chemical substances are the sacred plant medicines that so many people are working with these days. The breath that kind of breathing pattern sometimes gets triggered automatically. spontaneously. And so he realized, by just using the breath, you can access the same levels of non ordinary beings or states of being. So yeah, and I hear that constantly from people who come to breathe with me, it’s like, yeah, I got to the same place that I did with on an Ayahuasca journey or, or whatever, mushrooms, whatever they were doing, it got to that same place, that same ability to perceive myself from from a different perspectives. And that sense of oneness of connecting with all of it. Because here’s a great metaphor for that for the ego goes back to the ego, right? If, if you think of the ego as a baseball, it’s a part of who we are, that’s a very limited experience of who we are. It’s like a tiny, tiny, tiny part of who we are. Yet we think it’s all who we are. And we make really important consequential choices in our lives from its very limited small and always fear based perspective, once who we are. So imagine the ego in a center of a stadium, that’s the the baseball in the center of a stadium, that’s the ego, who we are, is actually the stadium. And we’ve allowed this tiny, tiny part of us to think and then to make choices from its from its small perspective. So part of what happens in breathwork. And with sacred plant medicine work is, you know, we experience ourselves, we pop out of the, the false limitation of the ego, that false sense of separation. And we reconnect with our essence with our interconnectedness with everything with all of it.
Victoria Volk 1:01:32
Is just hanging on your every word there.
Christian de la Huerta 1:01:34
And it’s accessible to all of us like it’s our breath, it’s just in the beginning, we and you can be taught how to do it yourself in the beginning, that’s the first 510 sessions, it’s important to do it, somebody who knows what they’re doing somebody who has been trained that can hold space, and so that the ego can feel safe enough to release a lot of stuff that’s been suppressing and allow it to come up to consciousness and call you and by the way, the psychologist said that the process of enlightenment is making the unconscious conscious, and breathwork is really speeds up that process.
Victoria Volk 1:02:07
Love it, love this conversation. And we could go so many other directions, too. I want to be respectful of your time. But is there is there anything else that you would like to share that you didn’t get a chance to address?
Christian de la Huerta 1:02:21
Well, I just give a brief overview about the book on empowerment, because as I started to say, most of us have an ambivalent conflict, the relationship to power, we part of us wants it part of us is afraid of it. And I think what we fear the more that I work with people around this issue, what we fear is that if we really stepped into our power, if we really stepped into all of who we are, that other people wouldn’t be able to handle it and that we might end up rejected that alone, and who wants that? We also fear that we might abuse it. And no wonder like how many abuses of power have you on I experience and have all of us experience? Like all we got to do is turn on the news any day, any given day to witness at least one abuse of power. So and then on top of that we’ve been in court, it’s been ingrained in us that power is bad, that power is negative, you know, with quotes, like power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Who wants to be corrupted. But what they didn’t tell us is that Lord Acton who said those words, were speaking specifically about political power, not personal power. And so, add to that mix, what we were talking about the emotions, we’ve turned the emotions into weakness, you know, we hate conflict, we avoid confrontation. And so what happens when you put all that together, we we end up giving our power away our power that nobody can give to us, nobody can take away. We are the only ones who can give it away. And the sad part, the tragic part is that we give it away for the lamest of reasons. Like we say yes, when inside we really feel no inside, it’s really not okay with us. But in order to maintain that illusion of peace do not rock the boat too much. We override our desires or preferences or dreams. And we say yes, when inside we feel no we stuffed ourselves into tiny little packages that the you know that not gonna rock anybody’s boat. So we limit ourselves we play small for an illusion of security for a false sense of acceptance. And for crumbs, we settle for morsels of pseudo love. So it’s not a good strategy. It’s a really good strategy in life. And so what the this book walks the reader through in a very doable way I know how crazy busy and overscheduled everybody is. So designed the book and with very readable, doable short chapters with power practices. Do you have to rush through the book one chapter a week Do the practices because those practices are designed to integrate and apply the teachings to our lives. So they don’t stay at the level of information, we don’t need more information. We’ve got information overload, what we need is transformation. And that only comes from taking on the stuff and really living it. And so so the, if they will do that, it’ll begin to transform the relationship to power and began to discover ways that we can step into and express our power. And we’re in the in the wet in the world in a way that’s not about fear, hierarchy, force, control, domination, that kind of power that that requires that we step on, somebody push them down. In order for us to feel powerful. There’s a different way to do this.
Victoria Volk 1:05:48
I recently, there’s so much so many synchronicities. And what you say is because just the other day, I shared a quote on my social media about it was in a podcasting email of all things, and it just it hit me it’s, it’s stuck out. So I created a quote, for knowledge isn’t power. It’s the application of knowledge. That gives you power. Exactly. Right. So it’s the application of the knowledge. And that’s just what came to my mind as I was hearing you sharing that? Yeah, that’s a great quote, for sure. So where can people reach you, I know you have your website, just share all the things.
Christian de la Huerta 1:06:25
Yeah, I think the best way to reach me, well, the book is available anywhere where books are sold, you can get it at your local bookstore, you can order it there, if you want to support them. You can also get it on Amazon. In terms of reaching me probably the best way is my my website soulfulpower.com, and by any for anybody who of your audience who signs up goes to soulfulpower.com, and get to my email list. And we all know how easy it is to click unsubscribe down the road if it doesn’t work for you. And I’m not going to take it personally. That’s one of the benefits of doing this kind of self love and self acceptance work is like you don’t take stuff personally anymore. And so anybody who signs up for my email list will send them a sample chapter from the book, and it’s one that talks about what it means to live heroically. In the 21st century, we’ll share some of the power practices we were talking about, and a guided meditation. And it’s on trust that I created last year, with a year before in the midst of the pandemic. And so how do we find a place of inner peace and trust? How do we become that eye of the storm? In a world in a time of chaos and fear and uncertainty? How do we move into trust?
Victoria Volk 1:07:42
It’s a big word. Trust, right?
Christian de la Huerta 1:07:44
It’s a big word.
Victoria Volk 1:07:46
Thank you so much for this conversation today. I could talk even longer about energy and all of that more about the ego. Maybe around two,
Christian de la Huerta 1:07:56
Maybe around two. Yeah, it’s clear that you and I would not run out of stuff to talk about.
Victoria Volk 1:08:01
Never. No, I don’t think so either. Maybe after I get a chance to read your book. Okay, well, thank you so much for being here today.
Christian de la Huerta 1:08:11
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on the show and for having the show.
Victoria Volk 1:08:15
And remember, when you unleash your heart you unleash your life. Much love.
Child Loss, Educational, Grief Tips, Mental Health, Mind/Body Wellness, Resources |
Suppose you have been dealing with mental health issues or been going through an emotionally challenging time lately. In that case, you may have thought about or even been recommended to go to therapy or counseling. If your first reaction is to deny or deflect this thought, you wouldn’t be the first person. Counseling can seem intimidating to some, but this fear often isn’t rational and might hinder your ability to live a healthy future. Here, we’ll examine what you can do to overcome this fear.
Self-Inflicted Stigma
Many of us have an inner voice, and those of us experiencing depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues that can affect our self-esteem might find this voice can be our biggest critic. It can introduce worries about stigma and labels that can be applied to us if we go to counseling or therapy. We might want to think of ourselves well enough not to need it and also judge ourselves for needing that help in the first place. It’s essential to address that these subjective qualities that we attribute on our own (with some help from society) are different from objective facts.
Research Counselors/Therapists
When you’re looking for a therapist or a counselor, you might think that you don’t have much of an idea of what you need, which can introduce a bit of choice paralysis. How do you choose the right one? Some people will get recommendations from a doctor or another trusted individual. Still, you can also research services using the five qualities you should be looking for: qualifications, specialism, listening skills, a passion for helping others, and reliability. You can ease worries about your counseling experience by making sure you’re choosing the right help for you.
Help Doesn’t Have to Be Face-to-Face
Counseling has become much more accessible, thanks to the internet (and as a result of Covid-19). This can, in turn, make it a lot easier to arrange an appointment. Some people can feel a better sense of security when they’re in the comfort of their homes receiving virtual counselling, whether in Canada or the United States. You don’t have to be in an unfamiliar space, nor do you have to worry about the logistics of how you reach your appointment if that would typically be a concern. And, for those that don’t know, I also work with clients online and specifically on the topic of grief. I currently have a program called, Do Grief Differently™️, and in late November, I will launch an online grief recovery group program. If you’d like to keep up to date when registration becomes available, sign up for my newsletter, The Unleashed Letters, below this post.
Afraid to Tell Others
You might want to tell your friends and family about your choice to seek counseling because you want the people important to you to know or because you would like their support, one way or another. Having that conversation alone can be intimidating, but there are scripts that you can follow that can help make it easier to explain your situation. That way, you can ensure you’re effectively putting your side across.
Some trepidation as you go to counseling is to be expected, but many people find that this fades away quickly when they start going. Hopefully, the tips above can help you feel more confident as you make a new choice for yourself and your future.
Educational, Grief Tips, Growth, Mental Health, Mind/Body Wellness, Pespective, Resources |
If you are struggling with anxiety, depression, grief, or another mental health challenge, it might be appropriate to seek the support of a therapist.
You don’t always have to be going through something to get therapy. There are a plethora of benefits to seeking therapy. However, therapy can allow you to open up about it and speak to someone when you are struggling. Ignoring or repressing your emotions is unhealthy and often leads to unhealthy behaviors. The sooner problem areas are addressed, the sooner one can pivot, make necessary changes, and gain positive momentum.
Seeking therapy will help you in the short term by providing someone to air your problems with while gaining valuable insights and tools to help you manage your emotions and struggles. And usually, but not always, family and those closest to you, aren’t the best options because they are too close; they have “skin in your game.” Meaning, that if you realize that you need to make necessary changes in your life, it is likely those changes may have an impact on friends and family, too. And change, by human nature, isn’t something we’re always comfortable with within our lives. By using discernment in who you choose to be your “heart with ears,” you will likely find yourself more open and honest.
Therapy will also help you in the long run, as issues often persist over time. As you develop tools to deal with your struggles, you will learn how to utilize them in everyday life and properly deal with any other curve balls thrown your way. Information and tools are great, but if you’re not integrating them into your life and taking action, information is just information. A therapist can assist you in maintaining an onward and upward momentum toward the life you desire.
We don’t get to the place in our lives where we finally seek help overnight. Therefore, we can’t expect one session to take away all the pain and hurt. Accountability with a trusted therapist is a wonderful investment in you and your future.
All this to say, therapy can only be as effective as it can be if the therapist possesses the qualities that align with you and make a great therapist. Your therapist needs the qualifications and experience to help you with your struggles and the compassion and listening skills to make you feel comfortable enough to open up. But also important is that they bring comfort to the room and you.
A therapist who is burned out will not be the best match because they are bringing that energy to you and your life, too. And, if they’ve managed to compartmentalize the problems in their own life and aren’t addressing their struggles with therapy themselves (if needed) and self-care, then you’re not receiving the best therapy possible either. This is often not talked about, but I think it’s important. In doing the work I do with grievers, either in a counseling-like session or in energy healing, I have become keenly aware of my mental health, self-care, and the importance of managing my energy. If I’m not tending to my needs first, I am no good to anyone else.
Five Qualities to Look for in a Therapist
Here are some top qualities you should look for if you are looking for a therapist.
#1 Qualifications
You must hire a therapist who has the qualifications to be able to work with you. Therapy deals with sensitive issues, so you want to make sure you are in safe and capable hands. Therapy is supposed to help you, not make you feel worse. Don’t be afraid to ask for your therapist’s qualifications and skills; check that they are a regulatory body member.
As an Advanced Certified Grief Recovery Specialist, I have been trained and certified to work with individuals (and groups) both online and in-person in the area of grief specifically. People are surprised to learn that traditional textbook study programs do not prioritize grief. It’s not studied much at all. So many therapeutic studies, from my understanding, focus on everything but grief. This is great if you are looking for a diagnosis that will end up in a prescription. However, if you are depressed, it’s likely because, as a child, your anger was repressed. And, in grief recovery, you learn how anger is important and a valid emotion that needs to be honored and expressed.
#2 Specialism
If you are struggling with something like drug or alcohol addiction, it can be helpful to find a therapist specializing in this area, for example, Pathways Real Life Recovery. This approach is because a specialist will have skills beyond a typical therapist and invest time and money into learning more about your particular issue. A specialist can help you develop and progress in therapy and tailor the sessions to your needs.
This also applies to grief. If you know that the emotional pain and suffering you’re experiencing is due to grief, that’s where someone like me can offer an evidence-based approach to address it and not with years of talk therapy. Rather, in 8-12 sessions (depending if you choose to work with me one-on-one or in a group), you will have addressed the most painful relationship(s) of your life.
#3 Good Listening Skills
Listening skills are key when it comes to finding a good therapist. When you speak to a friend or family member, you may find that they have something to say or provide unsolicited advice. And, advice, I might add, is based on what they value.
A good therapist will not try to tell you what to do. Instead, they should have been trained to listen to what you have to say carefully and reflect and paraphrase what you have said back to them. They should strive to understand what you are saying, ask you plenty of good questions to deepen their understanding, help you see what you are going through from a different perspective, and help you draw your conclusions. A good therapist can also hear the things you don’t say, connecting the dots that, for most of us, are difficult to see ourselves.
We are so deeply tied to our stories, and by the time we get to the point where we seek therapy, we have likely repeated our story more than a hundred times. Or, perhaps have never spoken it before because there wasn’t anyone with which we felt safe to do so.
A “heart with ears” will never criticize, analyze, or judge. If you feel this way leaving a session, they are not the therapist for you (and probably shouldn’t be practicing).
#4 Passion for Helping Others
The role of a therapist is to help a person struggling with something. Most people will enter the profession because they have a passion for helping others, and this should be obvious during the sessions as they work with you to resolve your issue. You will be able to tell straight away if they lack the passion or enthusiasm to help you, as you will find it difficult to open up to them, you won’t be able to relax, and you will be able to sense it.
When a therapist is burned out, that passion will also dwindle. This is where it’s important to listen to your body’s cues. Your body may tense up. You may make yourself small in your seat rather than opening your shoulders and sitting straight. There might be physical symptoms; headache, upset stomach, and emotional shifts. These body cues may also respond to what is being discussed or fear of discussing difficult topics, too, so it’s important to discern between what is a response to the therapist and the topics of discussion.
It’s best to pay close attention at your initial meeting; before any parts of your story come up and feel into the vibe of the therapist. If you feel a sense of support, comfort, and openness, you may have found a great therapist for you.
#5 Reliable
Therapy is an ongoing thing. It is not something you do once, and you are fixed. This is why it is important to find a reliable therapist. A reliable therapist is an important part of your journey, as you need to be able to work with someone long enough to trust them, and you need to work with someone consistently to make progress on the things you are struggling with. If you work with a therapist who doesn’t feel fulfilled in their work, they may suddenly become disengaged in conversation, be difficult to reach, or lack empathy in their approach, their reliability will show itself.
Finding a good therapist is vital if you want to progress in your life. Follow these top tips to help you find a therapist with the right qualities. And, if you know that grief is holding you back, please reach out to me; I am here to support you – you are not alone.
P.S. I will announce an online group program soon, at this writing (Sept. 2022). If you’d like to be kept “in the know,” you may find it helpful to join my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters. My newsletter is where I share personal aspects of my life, content not shared anywhere else, and business news. If you know you’re ready to move forward and get beyond the emotional pain of grief (due to any of the 40+ losses), click the link to learn more about my one-on-one program, Do Grief Differently™️.
