Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, season 5 |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Today’s guest, Carolina Sotomayor, is a renowned fertility Reiki womb healer who shares how Reiki helped her conceive her son. We also dive deeper into her childhood stories and the emotional wounds that created what Carolina believes were the energetic blocks to conceiving.
Carolina’s Path to Healing 🧘♀️
- Personal Struggles: Initially struggling with conception despite no medical issues, Carolina turned to Reiki after suggestions from her grief therapist and a psychic.
- Journey Through Adversity: Her pregnancy was filled with challenges, including anxiety, surgeries, and postpartum depression. Reiki played a pivotal role in her recovery.
The Power of Energy Healing 💫
- Reiki Success Stories: With experience in four different lineages and over 100 successful “Reiki babies,” Carolina’s practice connects mothers-to-be with their spirit babies.
- Make A Baby Membership: Offers live sessions, guided meditations, prerecorded modules, and masterclasses for women on their fertility journeys.
Embracing Self-Care 🎗️
- Cultural Reflections: Highlights how societal conditioning often undervalues self-care leading to involuntary life pauses such as illnesses or accidents.
- Nonnegotiable Self-Care: Stresses make self-care nonnegotiable in releasing trapped emotions and preventing physical ailments and emotional blockages.
Overcoming Childhood Trauma 🛤️
- Tumultuous Upbringing: Raised by a single mother struggling with alcoholism and anger issues, she faced neglect from both parents post-divorce.
- Resilience & Boundaries: Shares insights on generational pain while emphasizing the importance of setting boundaries for emotional well-being.
Transformative Insights 🌺
- Recognizes that ignoring personal healing can lead to profound crises.
- Advocates for prioritizing oneself as central to breaking cycles of trauma.
Carolina’s experiences underscore the transformative power of confronting unresolved emotions. She passionately advocates recognizing self-worth while creating supportive communities worldwide to help women achieve their motherhood dreams.
Let this episode inspire you to embrace your journey toward healing and hope! 💖
RESOURCES:
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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
The Healing Power of Reiki in Fertility and Personal Growth
In the latest episode of “Grieving Voices,” I delve into a profound conversation with Carolina Sotomayor, a fertility Reiki womb healer. Carolina’s journey from personal struggles to becoming a beacon of hope for women on their fertility journeys is nothing short of inspiring.
A Journey Rooted in Personal Experience
Carolina’s path to motherhood was fraught with challenges. Despite having no medical issues, she struggled to conceive. Her grief therapist suggested exploring Reiki or antidepressants due to unresolved sadness. This advice was echoed by a psychic who identified blockages in her throat and sacral plexus chakras.
After sustaining a concussion, Carolina decided to delve deeper into Reiki healing—a decision that changed her life forever. Shortly after beginning her practice, she conceived her son Ollie.
Overcoming Adversities Through Energy Healing
Carolina’s pregnancy brought its own set of complications—anxiety, medical surgeries, and ultimately a traumatic birth leading to Ollie’s NICU stay and severe postpartum anxiety and depression. It took 18 months for Carolina to recover fully through the combination of traditional therapy and Reiki healing.
Her experience profoundly transformed her understanding of energy healing’s potential, motivating her mission to help other women facing similar struggles.
The Cultural Undervaluation of Self-Care
One significant insight Carolina shares is the cultural undervaluation of self-care. She emphasizes how ignoring personal healing can lead to involuntary pauses like illnesses or accidents that force us to slow down and address our unresolved emotions.
Carolina recounts “God smack moments” where life forced her into reflection—moments crucial for releasing trapped emotions that could otherwise manifest as physical ailments or emotional blockages hindering fertility.
Societal Conditioning Against Emotional Expression
The discussion also touches upon societal conditioning discouraging emotional expression. Unresolved grief often manifests physically if not addressed properly—a point where practices like Reiki become invaluable in releasing these pent-up emotions.
Breaking Cycles Through Generational Pain
Raised by an alcoholic single mother amidst emotional neglect compounded by an abusive father post-divorce shaped much of Carolina’s resilience today. Through extensive therapy combined with support systems including friends & family alongside reiki practices allowed overcoming such adversities while setting healthy boundaries ensuring better mental health well-being now being passed onto future generations within families breaking cycles trauma altogether!
Practical Applications And Recommendations:
1) Prioritize Self-Care: Make time every day dedicated solely towards yourself whether it be meditation yoga etc., ensuring overall wellness both mentally physically spiritually alike! 2) Explore Alternative Therapies: Consider incorporating alternative therapies such as reiki acupuncture aromatherapy among others aiding holistic approaches addressing root causes rather than just symptoms alone! 3) Set Healthy Boundaries: Learn importance saying ‘no’ when necessary avoiding burnout maintaining healthier relationships around you too!
By sharing stories like Carolinas’, we hope inspire readers take proactive steps nurturing themselves fostering balanced lives benefiting everyone involved! For more insights connect directly via Instagram handle @thecarolinasotomayor website www.carolinasotomayor.com joining community supporting each other throughout various stages life’s beautiful yet challenging journey together!
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of grieving Voices. Today, my guest is Carolina Sotomayor. She is a fertility, rapey, womb healer, serving women who are trying to conceive. She’s the founder of Make A Baby membership, a monthly membership providing monthly live Reiki healing Zoom calls, Reiki guided meditations, prerecorded healing modules and master classes. Carolina has personally coached and helped women all over the world with over a hundred Reiki Babies into bringing over a hundred Reiki Babies into the world. She has a tune to four different lineages of Reiki and has a proven medium connecting mom to their spirit babies. After conceiving her own son with Reiki, Carolina has been on a mission to help women conceive with energy healing and heal through pregnancy and postpartum. I’m so excited to have you here because this is a unique line of work. And reiki isn’t unique, but I love how you’ve adapted it and have wielded its power for good and positive in your own life, but also in the lives of other So thank you for the work that you’re doing, bringing motherhood and parenthood to over a hundred people now.
Carolina Sotomayor: It’s been exciting. Thank you so much for having me. I it was I believe in divine timing, intervention happening. And for me, Reiki was when it was happening to me and offered to me, I didn’t know it would end up here. So for me, I was struggling to conceive, and I was a newly wed, very much a struggling newly wed, married to the best man I had ever known and still heavily married too.
But we were not getting pregnant. There was nothing wrong with me. They said, you’re just really sad. So I started grief therapy. Still not getting pregnant.
And then I plateaued in my healing journey with her, and she’s like, you need to either do Reiki or get on an anti antidepressant because I was still the sad girl. Also, at that same time, I had fallen off my horse and it was put on medical leave. That conversation of, like, you need to do reiki or get try antidepressants because the trauma wasn’t leaving my body. I was still sad after her going for her for over a year and a half. Sometimes twice a week, it was definitely weekly. And essentially, she wanted me to get reiki because one I was introducing, I was like, I I’m purifying my body and birth control, like, I don’t wanna put anything else on my body. And that’s just a personal decision. I support anyone that if you do what’s best for you and your medical team. So that same week because I had suffered a concussion from falling off my horse. I went to my favorite psychic town where I was taking workshops, and she had offered she’s I she’s, like, your throat and your sacral plexus shockers are blocked. You need Reiki. You don’t need any crystals for your concussion. And it’s, like, I don’t know. I’m not ready yet, but then this then the therapist that same week had recommended and they’re two separate sources, not related to each other. So I was like, wait a minute. What is this? So I went with because I was still, like, I was still very medically inclined at that point. And I went and got Reiki the next week. And then the next month, we were testing positive with our son, Oli, who’s now almost eight. He’s seven. Second grader. And I continued to get ricky through my pregnancy, and it helped me with my anxiety. I had prenatal anxiety. I had my gallbladder removed. I had totaled my car.
And Henry Gold Butter removed within a week of each other. Ollie, very much, is a miracle baby, had a really traumatic birth, because of the birth trauma and just the way that the hospital handled everything. Allie ended up with NICU. I had a nasty infection. Allie had an infection from a prolonged labor. My Reiki master sent me Reiki during that time. My postpartum was very tumultuous with just a lot of irrational thoughts, and I just got diagnosed with severe PPA and PPD, which is postpartum depression and anxiety. And through by postpartum, I really leaned into the talk therapy and the Reiki as a combination. And it took me about eighteen months to fully come out of it, but because of the consistent support, of both together. That helps me come out of the darkness is what I like to say.
It allowed me to function. I stayed home with him for four months. I had six months postpartum. I got certified in Reiki one and two, Levels one and two, which gives you the ability to give yourself Reiki and others. And I started to give Reiki to myself and my son. He suffered from chronic ear infections. I suffered I had mastitis several several times, so I would give Reiki to myself, and I would in support of my breast milk supply because it’s all heart chakra based. And I was still I I became sad again. I was sad because I had not gotten the birth that I wanted to. We knew we only had one child and I had lost mine shot. I was grieving the loss of that positive birth and everything I had worked for. And when people say, well, you just have a healthy baby. Wasn’t it worth it? I was like, no. That’s that’s bullshit.
Like, I I got this is a one time, right of passage moments for a woman. And I did not get what I had painted or I had written down in my size nine font birth plan, and my birth plan had gone sideways. So I had spent I spent a big majority of my time reliving my birth in that eighteen months and that’s what plagued me and my darkness. And I was fine taking care of baby. I was happy to climb as long as I was with him, but I’d just be these moments of things that went wrong with my birth that plagued me. And you know, ups like, just certain things that were very violent in my birth that were unexpected and just really shook me. And it took me a long time to come out of, but it was because of the ragey that I learned how to heal myself I learned about energetics truly in my postpartum of, like, things that erupted from my childhood that because I was so sleep deprived and I was so tired and I was just really at my most raw, your mind can can sometimes unlock things that you were not prepared to face again or remember or remember even that they occurred at all the first time. So in my postpartum, I felt like my childhood abuse and my trauma has just kind of exploded. And my wound healing really started was as the postpartum. I had an abortion in my twenties.
I had been raped in my twenties. My and that really plagued a lot with my birth trauma and combined was really, really messy and really dark along with a lot of, like, worth issues in my dad’s death, like, really missing him and really trying to, like, have this baby and my favorite person died. And I really wish he was here, the one person that I was so close to. How can I exist in a world where I have this beautiful baby and I don’t have him to share it with? Was a lot.
But with Ricky and being able to heal myself, it was more about moment by moment as those things came up because it didn’t all happen at once. It was riding the wave and understanding that It’s okay to feel what you feel, but it’s about releasing it and understanding, okay, what do I need to do to get back to what’s really important and putting boundaries around my grief I learned that was there there’s it’s okay for me to put a pause on things so I can still be a working mom and be present or I need to be present, but then also create space. In time where I get to feel those feelings, honor them, and release them because I was still working a manufacturing job. I was in pharmaceutical manufacturing. It was a very demanding job, breastfeeding, pumping, and taking him picking up up from day care. And that was a very real thing, breadwinner of the family. I still had to be a person, so that was the main thing is that I would Reiki would allow me to be grounded enough to function but also I could go deeper when I needed to. And that’s really the gist of it, you know, that was long.
Victoria Volk: What do you say to those people listening that say, well, I don’t have time. I don’t have time. To for energy healing work. We are in this Western society that’s going to go go go. So, I I mean, I know the answer. Like, we just have to make our self care non negotiable, but how did you how did you do that? Like, what did that look like? Like, what how did you decide
Carolina Sotomayor: on that? I have chills. It’s very easy. Either you make the time and you prioritize yourself or whatever you believe in will make you life will make it happen for you or the universe or God whatever is your belief. There was a term I once heard and say, God’s smack God will smack you if you don’t do it first.
Like, he’ll show you signs of what you need to do, or the universe will send you hints. If you don’t take care of it yourself, they’ll put you in an adult time out is what I was calling it. When I fell off my horse, that was the first time I was forced physically to sit still in my entire life. I did not know it at the time, but I was in fight or flight. And it was the first time that I had to sit still. Couldn’t be on a phone. I couldn’t drive. I had depth of perception, like, with my vision, like, my foot would miss the curb because of my concussion. I had fell in a ditch off my horse and the con and I had memory problems. So I couldn’t drive can be in the iPad, I couldn’t read, my eyes couldn’t focus on a page, I would get dizzy, and I couldn’t remember the the numbers. They would say, okay, here’s a series of numbers, say them backwards, and I couldn’t do it. So I was out of work for eight weeks. And that is when Ricky was introduced to me. And I wasn’t I lived in a one floor apartment, so it was very safe for me. But basically, I just sat there and I would welcome anyone that would come and sit with me I couldn’t do anything else, but often the time people were busy, so it’s during that eight weeks that I got to sit alone with myself and learn to really be okay with that because there’s really nothing else to do.
And that was my opinion, god saying, hey, you’ve been running and you can’t run away from your feelings anymore. Your dad died. Your horse died. And you’re married. What if you wanna have a baby, you need to fill your stuff. And that was the first time that I was open to really making a shift of when she had the conversation with me. And the Ricky was offered to me. And then I had the Ricky session and I and my husband, he had to drive me and pick me up. And I came out, I felt like I was floating. I had remembered I was like, it was the first time that I had a huge shift in my energy. I felt like this fifty pound boulder ever since my dad had died had been lifted from my chest. And that was something that changed for me. So for me, it’s my opinion, what I tell my clients is pay attention to the patterns and the signs. Either take care of it yourself or something will happen where it will cause you to. And sometimes that looks different from me. I was able to recover from my concussion and I went back to work and I went back to work and I was pregnant. Mhmm. So or some people get sick. Physical illness is a manifestation of something of a stuck emotion in your body. And we’re not we are conditioned to stuff our emotions and not release them. Our emotions last for ninety seconds, but we have to be consciously trained? Like, we have to be trained? We have to consciously be mindful of do I wanna keep this? Am I ready to release this? Or are we gonna release it? And I think that I mean, that’s something I’m constantly reminding my son up. I’m like, okay. Breath work. We’re gonna release this. Are you ready to release it? No, I’m still mad. Okay. Let’s hold on to it a little bit longer. Check-in, are you ready to release this? And like, this is me breaking that cycle with him. You don’t have to hold on to it. So that prevents disease and him. That prevents you know, infertility issues in him and them getting stuck in his home because men have wounds too. And our emotions can get stored anywhere in our body, but the most commonly concentrated a concentrated area are our wounds is that particular chakra. And infertility is just a really stuffed emotional reservoir that needs to be released is what I find. So either take care of it yourself or I think you will be made too. I do know that from all of my work, there is a pattern. When people say, oh, I just don’t have time to heal, obviously, it’s not a priority for them. Well, we have to look at a couple of things why it’s not. Either they’re putting other people before themselves or they’re too scared to do it at the moment.
Both both are that is just a valid Those are things that people do. However, I ask you is who is more important than you? And who is going to save you when you do have that life moment when you’re in hospital or you fall off your horse? Or you have that car crash or you are whatever. He was going to fix your body in that moment. They might be able to bring you soup. They might be able to take your kids to the park. They might be able to do some grocery shopping for you to help you out a little bit. But you are the most important person in your life, and I really believe that in your relationship with yourself, and it and when people don’t prioritize themselves, it’s a lack of worthiness. For me? it is the root causes? Like, you don’t feel worthy to prioritize yourself or they have to prove or earn their worthiness to put themselves for, like so if they do need to have a break or they need to have energy healing, well, I have to do this entire to do list before I actually earn that time out or that that relief. And for me is that is that’s an indicative thing of, like, you learned something in your childhood where you had to earn, rest. You had to earn healing, and that is not correct. I will battle anyone for that.
Healing is your birthright. Rest is your birthright. You are born worthy of being happy and your life is not meant to suffer. Will we suffer? Yes. But it does and how we move through that is really a choice in my opinion. So for me is, like, where where are you prior who are you prioritizing? And for me as a mom I had to learn because I burnt myself several times out is the more that I put myself first and I am pouring from a full cup, the happier my son is the better my marriage is, the happier my partner is, the calmer and more emotionally regulated my house is. Because for us, I’m the heartbeat of the house. So if I’m on if I’m dysregulated, if I’m angry, if I’m super upset, if I’m depressed, all shit’s going haywire.
So that’s that’s my when I put it in non frame, it’s, like, everyone else is gonna thrive when you thrive. When you are and when they see you actively caring for yourself and prioritizing yourself, that is teaching them that they need to do the same. Like, my little says, I need a loan time. I I’ve had enough of you. I need I need a loan time, please. And he goes in his room or he goes in his reading corner. Legit, bro, that’s good. Like, that is, like, that’s generational breaking actively. So I it’s not just, like, you’re not gonna get rewarded for burning yourself out or putting yourself last. Actually, you’re going to condition people to know that’s how you want to be treated.
Victoria Volk: And then you’ll end up in the hospital or in an accident or
Carolina Sotomayor: Yeah. All of these things. That’s just my lived life experience. I’m forty one, so I still think I’m twenty. But I mean, I’ve I’ve lived a little at this point and seen a lot and and human design, if you’re into that, I’m a projector.
So I am to guide. But as a healer, regardless of your human design projector or not, as a healer, and you take on that occupation or that hat in a in a lifetime, you have to live through some things so that you can be at least one or two steps ahead to provide enough wisdom or insight for the people that are going to go through the same things you did. Which means you have to live, fall down, crash, and burn, have your heart broken. You stab it a couple of times emotionally. Right.
I’m a three five.
Victoria Volk: Three five. That was my second that was my second. I’m a
Carolina Sotomayor: three five point. I teach human design in my membership to use to help manifest better for your babies. Okay. So Yeah. It’s pretty simple.
It’s just the arrow at the top. It’s the point left or point right. And then looking at your defined centers, but that’s how I think about it. It’s like it’s like the what’s asked, like, okay. So I don’t have time, but where are you putting your time?
As an entrepreneur, I over the past year, I have looked at sales, I’ve looked at revenue and things like that. And I was, like, where am I really spent? Where am I why do I, you know, have time to do the things that do make money? I had identified the things that didn’t make money. And what was I doing?
I had to perform an audit. I the things that don’t make me money are not important. The things that do make me money and create impact on my audience, those are the things I’m gonna spend eighty percent of my time on. The other things don’t matter. They don’t even I don’t even do them anymore.
So where are you spending your time? Who’s consuming it? And how much of it do you have left over as a current state? And why are these people more important than you and your well-being?
Victoria Volk: I love that because energy is currency. Right? Is oh, yes. And I
Carolina Sotomayor: like to put it as the word as attention. Who has your attention?
Victoria Volk: Do a self audit. Right?
Carolina Sotomayor: Self audit. Do an inventory. It’ll be a surprise.
Victoria Volk: I just wanna touch on too something that you said that, you know, how physical things manifest. And that is completely true. Like, in the work that I do is in grief recovery and what I’ve learned about grief and my own story and the story Right. People that I’ve been in my podcast and that I’ve worked with. When we look at our lives like, okay, fender benders, blowing up horse, accidents, missteps, if you’re kind of known to be the clumsy person or and physical manifestations, right, migraines or body pain that has no explanation, like, fibromyalgia, you know, things like this.
Like, this is grief. Friends. This is grief. What is it that you are holding on to? That you are unwilling to let go of?
Or that your body is screaming to you? To be energetically released. And so you touched on it growing up, but you what can we dive deeper into what you said?
Carolina Sotomayor: Up in book, go for it. I love having these deep conversations.
Victoria Volk: So growing up, you haven’t mentioned your mom
Carolina Sotomayor: Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: And sometimes the mother wounds. Can you attach to the mom? Can you elaborate what your childhood was like,
Carolina Sotomayor: oh, sure. It’s funny. We talk about the ones that are ruined a lot in fertility, father wound too. Mhmm. I have recently put a lot of effort into my mother wound because I spent a lot of, like, the past decade. Telling my father wouldn’t. My childhood was I was it was very tumultuous. It was very chaotic. Full of different people. My parents got separated when my dad gave my mom an ultimatum and he didn’t want a third child. I was the third child. She chose to keep me and they got divorced. Formally when I was eleven months old and she moved from Florida to Pennsylvania and she was a single mom that eventually just stopped to stopped growing at that point. Emotionally. And from what I have learned from my healing with a lot of therapy, hypnosis, and a shaman, Anne Rieke is my mom was ill equipped to be a single mom of three children, that had had a magnitude of issues individually. And she is an active functioning alcoholic with anger issues and the most unhealed person I’ve ever met but I have learned that and what I have grown to deeply appreciate and love for her is she’s the ultimate survivor. And what I have identified her life purpose was to endure and survive so that I could launch from there. And appreciating and seeing her as a person has allowed me to see her more as my mom instead of I used to call her I won’t share her name, but I used to call her by her first name. And that was because it was easier for me to just use that. It was really hard because of all of the things that had been done said and it was really difficult for me to use the word mom. So I would call her by her first name. She actually kind of coming to visit next week, but my childhood was with her and then my brother and sister both My brother graduated high school, went into the military, my sister decided to go in to live with my dad at age fourteen, and I was young, I was kindergarten, first grade when all this happened, and they dipped. And I was alone. So I was her I was an only child from early elementary age. And then I left her at age fifteen to Intellate with my dad.
And I graduated high school and did college in Florida, and then I moved to Nebraska when I was in my when I was twenty nine. So that’s pretty much my span. But when I went from a single mom household to a single dad, it was not without abuse. My dad never hit me, but I didn’t know what an emotional abuse was or mental abuse or or financial abuse. I just didn’t know any of those things.
Until probably I got married, and I started with a different therapist. And I didn’t know he was a narcissist. But he was I felt safe with him because he didn’t he didn’t hit me. So I identified abuse as physical abuse, as like he didn’t hit me. Oh, this is what safety is. At least it’s calmer. He doesn’t yell. But it it was it was very controlling. He was very he would wait in my parking lot. I’d soccer practice.
He would wait during prom. He drove me there waiting in the hotel parking lot, picked me up. It was very there was no independence. Wanted to pick my college classes for a semester, I mean, just very controlling Latino dad but, like, beyond normal. So I went from being abused and trying to avoid conflict and being trying to be perfect straight a student to you have to be perfect straight a student.
This is what you have to live up to. This is what your sister did. You’re the only child here in the house again, and he hadn’t been a parent for a long time because my sister had been out of the house. My sister and my brother are, like, ten and twelve years older than me. And and that is really significant for me because I it was it was again feeling unwanted, hearing the story of, like, you’ve never been wanted by him.
I chose to keep you, but then you’re not, like, very loving or wanted, and then going to, well, you’re only here because there is nowhere else to put you. And you and your mom, obviously, you’re not getting along. That was an understatement. So it was a lot to work through and feel very much a man abandoned and neglected emotionally. Even physically, we run food stamps. My mom, we were the when I live with my mom, we were the family that went to the pantry, and I remember getting, like, this large thing of baloney. And cheese. And I learned to slice the baloney at a really young age to make baloney sandwiches. I learned how to make my own, like I knew how to use the stove and She was gone a lot. She we lived in a trailer on some land next to her sister and her husband. And her husband was really nice, but he made it very clear that, you know, we were visitors. Perfect. And we lived there from one to fifteen. But you I could you I could kick you guys out at any time. So there was not an there was not a strong feeling of being wanted anywhere. And that was something I really struggled when it affected my self esteem. I felt very ugly, got bullied a lot. It was not a very easy time in my life for sure. But what I do take away from all of those things was what not to do. I knew for a long time, like, during my teenage years, early twenties.
I was like, I don’t wanna be a parent. I don’t wanna get married. But then I matured. I healed. I got into the European college. I took advantage of those services. And and I just learned, like, some of the shit that happened to me was really fucked up. And it wasn’t my fault because I got blamed for everything. This is the youngest. You’re the one who broke up the family and that’s a huge reason like I just don’t get along with my siblings. They’re both toxic. They think I’m toxic and that’s okay. You know, I haven’t seen them since we settled my dad’s estate and that’s okay. I wish them well and I didn’t used to. I wish them well. I don’t know anything about their lives. They never been to my wedding. They didn’t know anything about my husband or his son. And that’s okay. Like, I have peace in neutrality about that decision. I am now I’m not emotionally charged where I’m like, I hate you. No. Go do you and I appreciate you. Balnges are set for a reason. You don’t want me.
I don’t want you. It is for valid reasons. I feel like they find me threatening because I still talk to my mom, and they are no contact with her. And they blame her for a lot. But they had very different life experiences. They grew up with them as a married couple with two parents in a home for part of their lives. I have no memory of them being married. I have no memory or life experiences other than two people who created a trial that they accidentally made and they both equally hated each other. My brother and sister grew up in a home where My mom was a state home mom a state home mom and they had barbecues with my grandpa and visits with with my dad’s parents from Ecuador and my mom cooking and birthday parties in the backyard. I mean, it was the same house I lived in with him, but very different life experiences, and I respect that. So they have a very different emotional feeling in regard for my mom, but I did learn about emotional availability because of my siblings. I learned what it’s like to not be emotionally available to people And I was like, well, that’s exactly what I mean. I don’t want to be shut off from people. I want to be united with people. So that was a key thing that I learned at a very young age was I want to be emotionally available. I want to be vulnerable. I want to be accessible so I can connect with people. I don’t want to feel cold. And that’s essentially what I took away from that. But I I think that It was not it was not an easy childhood that’s for sure.
Victoria Volk: And this is a perfect example of how growing up in the same home. You have a very different perspective and a different lens of how you look at life and Mhmm. Because all relationships are unique, even if you would have all grown up in the at the same in the same time frame, in the same home, you still would have had your own perspectives, your own experiences because your relationships would have been unique. The word that comes up for me in as I was hearing you share was was shame.
Carolina Sotomayor: A lot of shame. I’d still something I struggle with. I feel I feel like I apologize a lot or So there’s guilt and shame still, like, shame that I went through the shame that I I don’t talk to them. That’s still something I have not fully healed or even, like, that’s a new one for me. I just discovered that probably.
I saw a TikTok maybe eight months ago, less than a year ago, and it was like, shame. I was like, that’s an emotion I haven’t danced with yet.
Victoria Volk: And it’s insidious.
Carolina Sotomayor: Right. So it is that would be probably next year of healing that I would need to do, but definitely a lot of shame because there was a lot of embarrassment. There was a lot of things that shouldn’t have happened. That did happen and that we’re real and that we’re hidden. A lot of secrets
Victoria Volk: and secrets really are what keep people separate. Barry, thank you for sharing.
Carolina Sotomayor: Always welcome.
Victoria Volk: And all of that being said, with your father passing and your siblings kind of creating this unpleasant environment because you said they sued the estate. Mhmm. At the same time you’re trying to conceive a child, would you agree? And what would you say to or add to this idea that grief is often like, what blocks us from greatness in our lives.
Carolina Sotomayor: A hundred percent grief was the number one thing that blocked me from conceiving. And once I started to feel safe, after he had passed is what was the result of that one rapey session? I was able to conceive because what I associated my dad with at that point in my life, not anymore. But at that point, I had related safety with my dad because there was an abandonment wound there from him and little girls want their daddy’s for particularly for me, I wanted to be a daddy’s girl. And once we reconnected, I had to work really hard to keep his attention. And once he died, I was like, I don’t have that safety anymore. Because when I did have his attention and when we were good and we were in speaking terms, I felt safe. I felt whole. I felt like I had everything I needed. And then and I feel like death is very bizarre. Like, a person that would call me every day or would pick up every day and send me an email and the emails were dear little girl. I stopped. And it was so weird because the people I had lost prior to that, they didn’t have consistent communication. They weren’t active in my life the way my father was up till his death. And having to write the check for his cremation, it was all very surreal. Like, it’s just so weird that they go from existing and talking to, like, they weren’t here at all, except some things. So
Victoria Volk: was it unexpected?
Carolina Sotomayor: He had colon cancer and he had stopped going to the doctor. He had a large mass on the side of his belly and never would go to the doctor. So what happened was I was in Nebraska. He was in Florida. He took a taxi to the hospital, checked himself into the emergency room. They admitted him. I got an accidental call. From a person, from his cell phone, and she was speaking Spanish. And I said, who is this? I was working in my cubicle. And the lady said, this is your dad’s nurse. He’s in the hospital. And then she hung up. And then my dad called back and I was like, my dad had never been with another woman since my mom. So I was like, who is this? I mean, it was a very strange occurrence. Like, my dad was always alone or he was like, he had never been with another person. So for another person to have possession or even to speak on his cell phone was very alarming. So And he goes, I’m fine. I’m like, where are you? He goes, I’m fine. I was like, where are you? And he and he was like, I’m in the hospital. I’m like, tell me everything. And it took a couple of phone calls of me harassing because he hung up on me. And I called back, and he was like, I’m in the hospital. I flew out the next morning, and he was very sick. And I had seen him two months prior, and I he did not look well. And he said, we should go to the doctor. You know, He was a very independent, strong minded person that could not be influenced by anyone.
So he slowly declined over the next three weeks from there. He got a colonoscopy in it. The colon cancer hadn’t metastatized to his liver. And all over in it, and he passed away. He went into hospice. And I was in a cart next to him the night he had passed. The ladies came in at six AM to check on him. I sat up, and then they said he’s taking his last breath. And then that was it. And it was, like, six AM on April sixth. My god to stay in it was a Catholic hospital. It was really beautiful. And I said, that’s that’s all he wanted was for me, like, he had stopped talking, but he knew. He’s like, I know this is gonna happen. He’s like, I just want us to be in a space where we can be together. He didn’t want me staying in a hotel. I’ve been seeing him with friends in our hotel, and he goes, I just want you with me. He’s so worried about money. And I was, like, just stay with me. And I was, like, okay.
But it took me a while to get him in out of the hospital into a private hospice. So we were able to do that the last two days, but the the last night, I was able to finally get a caught and I sat next to him and I sat next to his bed and it was so nice. And I just remember them coming in, and it was, like, so fast. And I just set up, and I was, like, stunned. And I just started making phone calls at that point.
This really, like, texted my brother. He’s like, you need to come. He’s gone. And then, like, texting, like, my I call her my fairy godmother, like, she used to be my old boss. And I was like, Rosa, you need to come. And my friends my best friend’s dad was incredible support. So he was like, I need to come. And they came and then I had to handle the cremation and just having people that didn’t have to be there that were just really looking out for me because as a thirty year old, I didn’t know what to do. No one tells you, like, my best friend’s dad, he taught me how to drive. And he was like, come with me. You can’t see him be bagged. Come with me. We’re gonna go we’re gonna go to another four. I was like, I just need to be with him. I need to be with him to the end. He goes, he’s already gone. You can’t unsee those things. And this is not your place. He this I’m being your dad. And I’m just like,
Victoria Volk: And I
Carolina Sotomayor: was like, okay. Because nobody you can’t unsee those things. Like, I had changed his diaper and I had fed him and I was making all of his phone calls and all of his demands and running all of his errands during the time that he was awake. And it was very messy and it was very angry. I’m so grateful that I didn’t see that because, like, I feel like during those moments, I was so blessed by these two caring people who were really looking out for me. So when there was so much against me with my siblings and I was a naive, thirty year old who was just trying to take care of her dad who had no idea what the hell she was doing. So I think a
Victoria Volk: lot of this experience taught you how you needed to be loved.
Carolina Sotomayor: Oh, yeah. It is a huge reason why it’s a huge reason of why I live my life now. Like, I live intentionally slower. We live a very simple life because it allows us to have a more regulated nervous system. When I’m more when your my nervous system is more regulated, I have more capacity or emotions and to be careful and mindful of how I want to love myself and others. Because that takes effort because it’s very easy for me to default to angry, controlling, yelling. I think it takes more effort to not do those things when you are ingrained DNA coded trauma lived to resist those responses until those responses are no longer an urge or the reactiveness. It I may spend the rest of my life resisting those urges or even, like, you know, hitting, wanting to hit. You know, I that not like, because I was hit. Like, that’s you don’t know until you’re in those situations, like, when you’re treated, you take so much effort to undo. And because my husband comes from such a different background, it’s a lot of conversation. So I have learned, like, what are my triggers? And what that allows me? What do I need to stay in this embodiment of a life that I want? What are the absolute non negotiables that I must have to exist so that I can love myself. I can live in a state of being. And it’s taken a lot of, like, trial and error and a lot of discussions and a lot of commitment to I am worth this. I am worth the effort. So it’s not just like, I’m gonna choose to be happy. I’m gonna choose not gonna be angry. No. It’s also like decluttering their house and making sure their systems and that I have a ritual in place. Like, so when I am triggered, I we have safe words and safe words are, you know, for a place where my kiddo has one and that that’s, like, and immediate. Okay. Let’s go have a talk. Do you wanna leave? And it’s just, like and then it’s, like, they’re my husband and I have a say, there’s the reason why there’s two of us. I’m, like, I can’t type out. I’m tapped out. And they’re, like, we have words for that to, like so it’s just an immediate, like, attention grabber and and it’s because I love myself enough that I don’t have to suffer and I don’t have to endure. And that I can my life can be full of love and I can’t give my son that different life.
Victoria Volk: What I hear you saying is that communication
Carolina Sotomayor: is huge. We overcommunicate We I think over communication in our marriage has been very good. Very It’s been really helpful. I think I’ve undiagnosed ADHD. So he reminds me of a lot of things we put things in a family calendar. I think that active listening and over communication has been really healing too because it’s being because I feel like that means you can be feel seen, heard, appreciated, valued. When I feel hurt, I feel safe. It creates a lot of peace knowing what to expect when he’s gonna go into the office or when I need to boot pick up or when he has flag football or soccer or when I’m gonna be doing a Ricky call. I have find a lot of safety in my marriage, and it’s been really I think when I think if I have helped lived over many lifetimes, it’s probably one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to me.
Victoria Volk: I’m happy for you.
Carolina Sotomayor: Thank you. He is he’s made me feel safe at the very beginning of her marriage. I think the first thing was I felt safe to be myself fully with him and that’s been the launching pad from there.
Victoria Volk: And that’s a great mention too. And I think, you know, aside from all of the things you just said about over communication and boundaries and safe words and systems, it’s a self awareness of of who you are Mhmm. And what you need. Yes. But more so who you are at the core of who you are? Like, who so many of us, I think, we walk through our life, like, who am I? And we can search our entire lifetimes, go to our deathbeds, not really be asking that.
Carolina Sotomayor: I feel like my dad did that. He didn’t know. I I it’s what I feel. Anything that’s I think I relate that to emotional availability and vulnerability is, like, their any resistance to that is a lack of is also a resistance to know or have awareness. Because if you can’t feel what are you telling clients, if you can’t know what you’re feeling, You can’t tell me what you need for your next step. I don’t care what you want. I need to know what you need first before we get to the want. Can’t run before we we can’t crawl or walk. Like, if you can’t tell me I because it’s different energy versus, like, I think I need this versus I feel I need because then those are two different parts of your body and two different depths. Versus, like, first layers, I think I need a hug or I feel I need you to to hug me and hold me.
It’s two different things. And then the receipt of that is gonna be different. If you were to receive what you asked for. The impact will be different. In my opinion,
Victoria Volk: I was listening to a podcast the other day, and It was it was about, like, manifestation and energy and and money and things like that. But you can apply, again, energy is a currency. Right? And everything is energy. Everything is energy. And it’s like this what comes to my mind now as we’re talking and having this conversation is, what do you have the capacity? What do you have the energetic? What can you energetically hold in your tank? Because we can have this you know, if we’re at an energetic place in our lives where we it’s like one thing after another, like this snowball effect of this this relationship going bad or credit card debt. It’s like so many things happen simultaneously in all areas or various areas of our lives and we don’t connect the dots that we are the common denominator. And it’s like, if you only have again, it comes back to the energy. If your energy is currency and you you’re putting it in all these unhealthy or unsupported whip things, that’s what you have energetic currency for. You’re not gonna have room to let anything else in if it’s all going out. And I think that relates to healing too. It’s like if if you’re looking at your life energetically.
Like, it’s just I’m just gonna suffer. It’s just I have a life. I’m just meant for a life of suffering because I believe that at one time in my life.
Carolina Sotomayor: Which is this the way life is? That’s what I’m saying. You’re gonna see the way they’re
Victoria Volk: suffering. Yeah.
Carolina Sotomayor: And they she really believes that.
Victoria Volk: You That’s that that is the energy you walk the world with that you’re walking life with, and you’re bringing that to everything.
Carolina Sotomayor: And she goes, you’re so lucky. She said, no, I have made choices. And she goes, I don’t get that. I said, she goes, you’re so lucky to have a man like Ryan, or my husband’s hiding in him consciously. So lucky to have a husband like yours. Your dad x y z and like stop. He’s dead. You’ve been divorced my entire life. When is the dead horse gonna be beaten enough? Like like I need a choice to marry a healthy man based on our healthy relationship. He’s a whole person. He’s not he’s not an abuser. I made that choice. Yes, am I blessed to to have this, but I made that choice consciously. You know? I don’t know. I I don’t I get That’s for it. Yeah. I did the work. Like, I was the happiest at that point in my life I had ever been when I met him. And he also said that he knew that when by dating me and marrying me his life would ever be boring.
Victoria Volk: That’s what I say about my husband.
Carolina Sotomayor: And I tell everyone if the a member, his mom asked me he could she goes, why do you want to marry? Him. And I said, is that you know that no one’s ever gonna love me any better than him. He is everything. And I there’s not enough time I never there’s I never have enough time with him. I soak up I still love going on dates with him. Like, they’d say it’s the best. Like, I same Steven says that she goes, I love how good or friends you are. You generally enjoy your husband’s company, never called my husband a man child, or he’s my first child, and I would have never married him. But I never get enough time with him.
And I had dated and engaged before. I’ve never married before, but that’s how I knew. Like, this one’s the one for me. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: You had said, on your website, you have a a part that says, your dad’s death in reference to your dad’s death, that it changed me, and it woke me up. In what way, do you feel like it changed you? And were you asleep in your life? Like, the the Carolina before and the Carolina after his death, how would you sum those two people up? Because death does change us.
Carolina Sotomayor: I I’ve thought about this before, and deep deep reflection are a couple of things. My dad’s dad’s death was a hundred percent the start of my spiritual awakening. I had been a faith girl. I had been a Christian girl. I had been a churchgoer. But because of his death, I was spiritually curious. I had believed in I have seen ghost. I have expelled I I even felt ghost in an energy in his house where, like, this stereo, if I fell asleep on the couch, it would turn on in blast static sound. It was awful. So his house was definitely haunted. My mom’s trailer had was haunted. So I had already had the basis of feeling like there was more after you die. I definitely believed in the afterlife in the spiritual realm. I’d never I’m into a cup in in Miami, you can go to Santa Yeah. It’s very real. So which is like, are are very prevalent. You can find them. I have been to a witch before. Usually, if you’re in a Cuban neighborhood, so you if you need They call it a bad news. Like, if you need a bath or, like, a spell, everyone’s at least gone once. So when you’re, like, early twenties or in your teenagers, you do stuff. So I had been to and I was, like, oh, shit’s real. So I had a little bit of a curiosity with that. So when he died, I was very curious to know what happened to them. And I was like, he can’t just not exist anymore. My love for him so strong. His love for me just does not exist. I don’t believe that. Because I’ve had dreams, like, of my Ebola who had died. And I was like, this can’t be the end. Like, my dad believed ashes to ashes, dirt to dirt. Like, he really believed nothing. And I was like, I was like, okay. Like, he didn’t really care where his ashes ended up. Like, his ashes are at my feet. They’re under they’re in his arm. Like, I keep it under my desk. I I move it around. Anyway, I started taking classes with the psychic, the local psychic, she offered like spirit guides, aliens, she would teach about Guardian angels, how to talk to people who have passed, Oracle cards. And I was starting to take these classes. And then I got a reading from her right before her wedding. I got my dad died in April. We got engaged in September. We got married in December. Of that year. So from the time that he proposed to the time we got married, it was very fast. It was ninety days. Just because we we wanted to be married. And right before our wedding, I got the reading. It was Thanksgiving time frame. And she she just said there would be certain things that would happen on our wedding day because my biggest my biggest sadness going into the wedding or my biggest grief was that he wasn’t gonna walk me down the aisle. And the wedding wedding was beautiful and there were certain things that happened that day that we that she said his presence would be known and there’s still things that happen that we don’t know. Like, there was a medallion placed that several people commented on on this table on the beach where we had poured the sand and the fishy and stood in the passers stood in front of. I didn’t see it. It’s not in any of the photos. But several guests had plummeted on it. My cousin goes, did you see that medallion that was on there? Did you where did that come from? And was like, are you talking? I never saw it.
It’s not in any of the pictures. For several people, Anodeon are like, what was that medallion? What was that was that a coin? I was like, I have no idea, but that was on the table in front of everyone. And there was only, like, twenty five thirty people at the the ceremony. So that was one thing. The sky was perfectly blue. And with white clouds and we got married in front of the lighthouse, he used to take us all too. He took them when he was married and then he took me. So this is a special place for us and we got married there in a way to honor him.
But my spiritual weight keying was just so that I could talk to him. So all this exploration, all these workshops, all of these psychic readings, was for me continued to hear from him. Didn’t I a hard time coping not talking to him? So I thought if I became a spiritual medium and I believed when someone said, like, everyone’s a psychic, you just turn it off. I was like, well, okay, let me start taking this seriously and it was I started to have experiences with him. Like, I would feel I I would have certain moments that this is before the horse fall, and this is before I had two horses. This is before the first horse died. I would go to the barn and I would cry on her. And it was during usually these drives on these gravel roads that I would have these experiences. I remember my right leg my right thigh got very cold, and I was sobbing. I know I’d play different songs to make me think of him. And I was just like, I just miss you. I just I don’t understand why this is my life now without you. And I would just go to the barn and I would cry. I would just stand and cry in my horse. She was everything to me and it was through that connection that idea experiences, little things like that. And then I started to smell him climbing up my apartment stairs. And I took a workshop on clear abilities and which is like clear cognizant. Clear sentence, clear audience, like, you can hear things, vision, you can see things, symbols. I started learning about angel numbers, and it started playing weird things like my girl was our song. And it would be I’d be walking through the office, and then I would just hear my girl playing. And it would just be, like, just little things that he would send me and was, like, okay, there’s something to this. So then I started getting repeated. I would hear that often and in rain in place because my girls are very specific. Mhmm. Song would hear it at Walmart on the speaker or it’d be somebody’s ring tone or it would play on my on my radio in the car. My new this is twenty twelve. So this is this is twenty fourteen. So it’s a very different time than, like, I I still listen to the radio and stuff versus, like, Spotify now. But then I I started to I got Reiki Attuned. And with every Reiki Attunement, my mediumship, my ability to channel got deeper and stronger. And when I started to use Oracle cards, I could start to channel with him. I started intuitively journaling, and he would show up in every medium I would try. So it wasn’t just straight senses of clear abilities and symbols. It was also using, like, my dad had a very specific b o. So, like, it was old spice and old man smell. Mhmm. So, like, when I smelled that, I was climbing up the apartment stairs that I had just moved into, and it was just, like, And I was like in the light flickered. I was like, okay. So now I have learned to believe occurrences. So and I can feel him when he’s around and when he’s not around. He’s not always around. So that my dad’s death led me to stretch me to believe that I was possible to I did a desire to wanna communicate with them, which meant I need to become a medium, which then let me to channel spirit babies I am doing now. I believe that because of his my desire to continue to talk to him, is what led me into my ability to channel. Because then when I started to channel professionally in paid sessions, I could talk to other loved ones. I could and then it and then I was in Ricky Sessions. I was working with moms who’ve lost babies. And they were grieving the losses of stillborn or medically terminated or a topic or a chemical pregnancy or a failed fertility treatment or an embryo transfer that didn’t work out. Connecting to those babies was the end result. Mhmm. What what Carolina was before my dad’s death? She was a she was a she was a lot more carefree. She was a lot she was a lot lighter, meaning, like, or a a blue yes. A lot more care free. I was a less healed, less considerate. I was very caring, but I was not as careful as I am. I’m very not self aware as I am now, obviously. But I also didn’t have a relationship with healing other than talk therapy And I was very much stuck in a dysregulated nervous system seeking everyone else’s approval to get validated. And had no self love and no self confidence. Everything was if I work hard, I’ll work harder, and then that’s how I got stuff. There was no there was not much self relationship other than work hard. Do what people tell you. Honestly, we’ll get you far, Ray. And try to have some fun sprinkled in. So I I I think I’m probably cutting myself short a little bit, but now it’s it’s a lot more I feel like just it’s just lightened day. I’m I can generally say I’m happy most of the time. And I love who I am. I love the life I’m living versus before I took a job because it was my first big girl job after graduating. I graduated twenty nine and got jobs early after, moved from Florida to Nebraska, didn’t know anyone. And it was because I wanted to start over, but I think she was strong.
But just didn’t have a lot of self awareness or a lot of love for herself.
Victoria Volk: I think what sums up what you just shared is if you wanna heal, Get to know yourself.
Carolina Sotomayor: It’s true. Yourself.
Victoria Volk: Right?
Carolina Sotomayor: I’m sorry. That was pretty long winded.
Victoria Volk: No. It’s beautiful. That’s what I hear in what all that you shared. And even just my personal experience, it’s like, if we give ourselves the time and attention, like, really, it’s our inner child. Right?
Carolina Sotomayor: It’s yes. As an inner child, when I moved to Omaha, I didn’t know anyone. So I was like, I I was so lonely, and they didn’t wanna I’m not much of a drinker and all my coworkers, they drink because that’s what you do in the Midwest. Mhmm. And that’s where you meet people. Like, where do you get a boyfriend? Go to a bar. I can’t hold my liquor. I’m such a lightweight. So I started making a bucket list and playing visitor in my city, and Omaha is a great city.
I love it so much. And I was like, I had ahead disposable income for the first time. And I was like, what am I gonna do with a little money? So I went on Craigslist. And I said, what is the thing that I always wanted to do? I was like, this is my guest season because I was so lonely. Like, I didn’t know what to do because I was like, I wanna have some fun. So I found a trainer that was doing twenty five dollar horse lessons. And I would go because I wanted I always wanted a horse Like, I dreamt of horses. I would look up before I left Miami would look up how much horses cost?
How much could they how much does it cost to board? And I was like, that’s a nonsense. I can’t afford that. So then I I was like, and four twenty five dollar horse lessons. Well, three months in, I bought the horse less I bought the lesson horse.
And and she was the greatest thing that I had ever loved and the joke was the I love the horse more than my husband when we got married. It’s my husband’s still jokes because if she was still around, she would still outrank me. She was my hard horse. I knew it was Cheyenne. And that horse cared me for years, like, from, gosh, twenty twelve to twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen.
I loved her so much. She was amazing. And my inner child wanted a pony, wanted a horse so much. And I bought her. And she was in my engagement photos, like, and so lying about it. Like, the vet became a good friend to my husband and I, and he goes, I’m sorry to tell you this. It was kinda hurtful. He goes, I think you killed your horse. And I was like, I didn’t I don’t know what you’re talking about. He goes, you cried so much on her. Her she ended up having asthma and she couldn’t eat and breathe. At this like, she couldn’t eat and breathe at the same time in no matter for several months of steroids and treatment, her quality of life wasn’t very good anymore, and we just couldn’t and her cough was so bad. We the vets said the most humane thing was to put her down. So that was the hardest thing ever, but she so grieving her that the first two years of her marriage were shitty. And we I was I don’t remember a lot other than those moments. Like, my dad died. We got engaged. We got married. We settled the state. My horse died.
That was the order in which things happen. And we were trying to help, baby. And, you know, things, you know, you
Victoria Volk: didn’t have the energetic capacity for a baby.
Carolina Sotomayor: No, I didn’t. No. But with my horse dying, I think that was even harder. I think the I have it when I think about the grief, the grief from the court case of this this date settlement was harder than actually losing my dad, fighting with them. But the grief of losing my horse oh, god. Because she carried me, and it was it was my it was like a child to me. And having a relationship with a horse and riding them and training them and caring for them, especially if they’re sick and it’s your first horse. An animal that large, it’s and I have dogs now and I’ve had cats. It’s very different than relationship with dogs because it’s it’s very dangerous sport. It’s a lot of trust building, a lot of there’s a lot of energy that goes into a horse person relationship.
So, greeting her was really hard.
Victoria Volk: They say that emotionally, horses are the most similar to humans, emotionally.
Carolina Sotomayor: I quit horses. I I still had the second horse, but he was a butthole, and he was too much horse for me. And whereas the first horse, she made me overly confident, but she really was such a good horse he made up for my incompetence. And so the second one, we had a love hate relationship. But he ended up hurting his leg and he had to be put down too in twenty seventeen.
Yeah. So he had him for a while, but he was so old. I couldn’t he just became a lawn ornament. So I gave him treats. He was he was so ornury. I loved him, but I hated him. He was it wasn’t the same. And I was kinda resentful after she died. I was like, I’m stuck with you. So isn’t it like
Victoria Volk: seeing how you described your dad? You didn’t say the word ornery, but you said stubborn.
Carolina Sotomayor: Does that No. It’s transcribing my horse.
Victoria Volk: Right? But that’s how you described your dad. Like, not ordinary, but you meant describe
Carolina Sotomayor: Oh, my dad was ordinary.
Victoria Volk: Oh, my
Carolina Sotomayor: dad was stubborn. Yeah. But this horse was, like, he was, like, the one of my bad boyfriends. Like, he was so good looking. Like, he was so gorgeous that as soon as you’re about to get over him, he’ll do something really nice. But then, like, a little bit later, he’ll turn around and do something really shitty. So, like, he would do things like bite me or, like, I’m grooming him or I’m I’m cinching up the the saddle to ride. He’d come around and try to bite me and or he would nip me. Like, he just loved to bite me. And I was like, why you?
Or, like, he’d push me and I’d fall down. He was sixteen hands high. He was huge.
Victoria Volk: Maybe he was never taught how to be gentle. You know what I mean?
Carolina Sotomayor: He picked on me. He was perfect for other people.
Victoria Volk: The bully. Oh.
Carolina Sotomayor: Other people would write them that were more like, I was a novice and that were, like, good writers and are born. They’re, like, oh my god, he’s such a good boy, or he would fake trip to, like, scare me while we were trail riding. And then he would just, like, look at me. Like, he hated my husband, so he stepped on my husband’s foot, and he looked at me while he was doing it and pricing his foot down. I yeah. No. Like, his name was Bucks Mosipi, and you. Absolutely.
Victoria Volk: Well, you know, we meet assholes in our in our human relationships. I guess we meet them in the animal world too. Right?
Carolina Sotomayor: Yes. It was like but he loves treats.
Victoria Volk: My youngest, we just watched a video just the other day of her. She must have been maybe three. I say around three years old, three or four. And my I had asked her on the video. I said, what do you wanna view when you grow up?
And she said, a vet. Wait. I wanna be a cow girl. And she has wanted a horse and dreamt of horses and horse, horse, horse, horse, horse, since she was eighty bitty. And so I imagine one day she’ll be just like you and have her own horse, and she’s actually planning to go to vet school. So she’s a sophomore in high school and she wants to be a vet, and she’s still pursued. She’s going to pursue that. So
Carolina Sotomayor: good for her. I think,
Victoria Volk: doubt she’ll have a horse.
Carolina Sotomayor: I would if I if I could have the first horse again, I would do horses again. Yeah. But because because of gotten the garter questions, like, you’re gonna get another horse? No. Nebraska winners could be brutal.
And we boarded they have a shelter, but they’re best if they’re in a herd. So not like stalled. So our horses would have a barn that they could fully go into as a herd, and then they would also have free access to go out. Like, but having I had older horses, they required extra care and not just, like, shots and floating their teeth and all that. Like, they need to be blindkicked. That’s very controversial. But, like, to keep weight on, to keep all those things. And in Nebraska, you can have three or four seasons on a day. And, like, depending on our winners, you can we’ve had winners where it would snow, but then it would get really warm. And if they sweat underneath their blanket, it’s bad. Like, and it could ruin their code and all of these things. So, like, to go out there, put the blanket on, take it off again, and it and it’d be in cold and, like, also be are you close enough to the barn? I just don’t wanna do that anymore. But if we had the first horse, guarantee you would be still a poor girl. But if it was for the second, the second one ruined me. And then this finally had one kid. Like, I was like, this this pregnancy, this birth, this is for is is was really rough. I don’t wanna do this again. And we we pretick, we had talked about only having one kid, but I was like, if it’s anything like the horses, I don’t wanna gamble this, bro. I don’t I we’re good. We’re good. We have three dogs. We’re good. I have three dogs.
Victoria Volk: Brings up a question for me. I’m glad you mentioned that because you essentially grew up as an only child.
Carolina Sotomayor: Oh, yeah.
Victoria Volk: So, what does that bring up for you as your son being an only child?
Carolina Sotomayor: Oh, god. He would give anything to have a sibling. He asked he asked if we could adopt, if we could foster, we talked about those. We were very open, and I was like, listen. The fact I literally I literally said it was, like, my ability to have a baby, this factory is closed. Was very difficult to achieve you. And he goes, why can’t you just go save a baby? I was like, it doesn’t work that way. I was like, we had to to talk about, like, you know, that it costs a lot of money to adopt, to foster. And I was like, we really like the way our family is now.
And then I was like, so, like, really trying to understand his need for a sibling. Essentially, he wants to belong. He wants someone that’s like him. He wants So what we have done to mitigate that is we’ve made extra efforts to my husband has a brother and we do I will move mountains to even it’s first for a day, we live in different states. So, aren’t my in laws live in Kansas now that used to live here?
So, they live in Wichita and my brother-in-law lives in Fort Worth. So, if there I will move efforts so that he can have cousin time, visits to to to get that sibling time that’s as close as possible. But my husband, he was very adamant coming into our marriage, so he only wanted child. And I was like, I think I would want one or two. Let’s see how it goes with one. And then as we had went through everything, he very much wanted to only have one child. And he’s like, you’ve had a really bad child experience like sibling experiences. He has his own he had a very good childhood, but he has his own feelings about certain topics. So for his purpose, like, we discussed, and he’s, like, we both decided collectively just one child, but I am in strong opinion. Our son will probably have, like, seven or eight children.
He loves babies. He he’s already told me he wants to be a dad and he goes, when I I have a family, he’s already thinking about it. I think it’s because we talk about babies all the time and people having babies because of what I do. We got another Ricky baby. They’re and and I had to describe, like, IVF is they have to have surgery sometimes to have the baby. Babies are made different ways. And he’s like, well, when I’m seventeen, I’m gonna have a family. I’m gonna be a dad. I was like, let’s wait a little bit longer. He told me that two days ago, because when I said it to you, he wants to be a dad. Do you have college to be a dad? No. No.
Victoria Volk: You go through college as you’re being a dad. I swear to say good. That’s about diversity you never get out of.
Carolina Sotomayor: But I think I I am actively working on being more I think I have a good I think as an adult, sometimes it can be really hard to be a kid again, but I think as a parent of an intentionally only child, you have to be their plainly at times. And I watched a creator in TikTok say that he was an only child in the consequences and how lonely it was. So I only became aware of this because he is now older. I mean, he’s still very young, but I am actively trying my like, over the past month, I realized, like, he he told me he at the end of summer, he was on pretty lonely, jam packing, late dates, grading community, community was really important to us, but, like, having regular play dates with the same people, so there’s more of a kinship there. I think it’s gonna be the best I can do.
We have three dogs. I hope that I hope that helps him.
Victoria Volk: And to help him, you know, we need a community, right, as adults. Like, we
Carolina Sotomayor: Right.
Victoria Volk: Driving community, and kids are no different. So it’s helping him find his people.
Carolina Sotomayor: Yeah. I I noticed that we tried Yeah. We tried soccer for the first time in the spring as an invitation from a preschool friend and to continue that relationship. And I was like, oh my gosh. Look how much more productive we are in a Saturday. Look, we made I made a friend who doesn’t even speak English, should we share the same name? She’s from Ukraine. And I learned to use Google translate, and our world exploded in the best ways with, like, new connection. So I think understanding the need for him to feel like he belongs somewhere is what I think it is and that he is he has a connection with someone. So me actively working on that part. Mhmm. I think will kind of
Victoria Volk: enrich his life.
Carolina Sotomayor: Yeah. In a so we may not be able to do this, but I am like, he may not understand the emotional you need is. You wanna feel connected. You wanna feel like you belong. You wanna feel like you have something with someone.
And I’m creating that in different spots. So it’s not all in one pot too. That’s very strategic. So if, like, something goes south with school friends, he still has sport friends and he still has plate eight friends that are all not in the same bucket.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. My youngest too, she just had someone some a family moved here and now they’re they’re all about the horses together and, you know, they share the same interest and she’s phoned. You know, she was struggling, I think, for a while there to try and find somebody that had the same similar interest, you know, as her and
Carolina Sotomayor: They can do wonders. He’s relating to Pokemon. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. Even coming out of their shell more so.
Carolina Sotomayor: Yeah. We have he made a friend in his class, and he’s also into Pokemon. And he has a special he needs special attention throughout the day. And Ollie has sought him out, and he goes, I like being his friend because he needs me. And he also likes Pokemon. And as So we’ve done play dates with this kid, and he is so so sweet. And I’ve seen Ollie just light up, oh, my turn on scene dates, but I’ve seen my son light up so much because of the shared interest and the depth of, like, Do you have this card? Do you have do you have the evolve form so much? I know so much about Pokemon. But, you know, and it’s just I they just light up different than another like, is it something that they really care about?
Victoria Volk: Well, I’m gonna tell you something. My son would probably hate me for mentioning this on a podcast, but he’s into Pokemon. Helly. He’s nineteen.
Carolina Sotomayor: You be surprised. I looked up there’s a lot of grown adults who do it post a month ago. And we’re learning to battle. I’m not really sure. I’m I’m trying to get people to answer my questions on, like, how to build a deck so he can go to one of the tournaments. And their their website doesn’t work. Oh, goodness. I’m in a Facebook group with grown men. Really?
Victoria Volk: But I mean, it’s like and he’s been collecting these since he was a kid. So he’s nineteen. So
Carolina Sotomayor: It’s like,
Victoria Volk: well, like, plus years, ten years. For sure, ten plus years, he’s got a lot of cards. And he’ll show me the ones he’s really proud of and what they’re he’s been looking up, how much they’re worth, and so he’s you know, he’s got quite the collection.
Carolina Sotomayor: He goes to trading events as far as we’ve gotten, but we have three binders, and I’ve organized them by Yuval formed with him. And down the street, he had a there was a little bully down the street. And he kept saying how much he has, like, these v stars. And I’m like, what’s a v star Ollie? What is that? He goes, oh, so and so says that he have ten and I only have two. And I was like and he said it’s a mean things to me. I was like, Let’s go on eBay. And I’m a spiteful human. And I I bought I was like, is this one good?
I was like, we can’t spend, like, twenty dollars on a card, but we can spend a couple dollars on a card. And I ordered I ordered like I’m not kidding you. Fourteen or fifteen. I ordered so many VStar’s so that the next time they battled, he had just two pages full of v stars. And I was like, you go to show that little kid.
How many v stars you have? But it was not my finest parenting moment, but I was like, you you wanted like, in my instance, like, you’re taking this a little too far. I was like, no. It keeps going down. All you came home crying and I was like, no.
Victoria Volk: Not having this.
Carolina Sotomayor: Not having this. We will we will be victorious every day because they came for anyway, drive, like, in these little white envelopes. So excited to go get the mail. Yes.
Victoria Volk: My son loves it too, getting the mystery packs. Oh. It’s like Christmas. You know, you never know.
Carolina Sotomayor: Have you watched a livestream of those?
Victoria Volk: I’m sure he has. He’s like the
Carolina Sotomayor: only guy we have. We’ve gone in TikTok and we’ve watched these people unbox stuff. Wild.
Victoria Volk: It’s yeah. There’s you know, just like Ricky, you know, it’s like kind of feel like unicorn sometimes when you’re into the energy work and especially probably in the Midwest. You know, that’s I’m glad, you know, we kinda talked about that. But being in the Midwest, it’s not something we’re not as, like, progressive. Right? So do you did you ever feel like you know, like, it’s, like, grown man adults who love Pokemon. They’re probably kind of in the closet a little bit. It’s, like, didn’t you ever feel like that? Like, when you first, like, really got a little awkward. You were
Carolina Sotomayor: especially when I was still working corporate. I quit corporate about three years ago, three and a half years ago. So I did I’ve done I’ve been doing Ricky for seven years, and it was something I was really proud of, but also, like, really skurdish because I had also lost a lot of people who told me I was doing the devil’s work. Mhmm. So I was really kind of, like, in the closet about it because of how people reacted. But now there’s, like, a huge move movement. There’s a lot of spiritual practitioners in Omaha that are very open, and now it’s, like, fun to manifest. But it wasn’t like that in twenty seventeen. Like, if you use the pendulum, we were gonna hell. And I I my best friend, actually, last August, we went to visit her last July. So last August, she said, I’m really scared for your soul. You’re going straight to hell. I’m like, dude, this is not new. Like, you know, I’ve been doing this forever. But I was like, okay.
And she’s like, well, you’re not gonna you’re gonna stop it? Or do you wanna be my best friend? So it’s like, bro, even I don’t know I’m used since I was twenty. If you’re not into this, that’s okay. I’ll love you from afar, but we don’t, you know, I’m not I don’t believe in hell. I just believe in the other side. But if you think that’s what’s happening to me, then you don’t have to be a part of this show. You don’t have to be part of this party. And we parted. So for me, now I it took me a long time to really be, like, yeah, I’m a psychic medium. But it took, I think, time. It took years for me to be, like, get over those losses and, like, for me to stand strong. I’m like like, this is my life purpose. And I think I just needed proven evidence over time and time and time again, you know, when and to make like, to have, I think, the more legitimate I’ve I’ve really proven myself as into, like, my branding, my marketing, like, just it made me feel more legitimate. Mhmm. And when I switched from in person to online right before COVID happened, I quit seeing people in person. I I got more confident. I was like, Omaha is too small for me. I think that’s also why I went online. Was this like, there’s only so many people who are open to this and I feel like if I go online, I’ll find more people I’m meant for the world. That’s what I told myself. And essentially, that’s essentially what’s happened. I started the podcast and I’ve met so many people. And I we have eighteen thousand followers on TikTok, and we’re globally ranked every day with our podcast that make me be behind a podcast. So I don’t hide anymore. Like, either you like me, and I’m not gonna convince you, either I’m like, here here’s a FAQ question. If you wanna go look what it is, great. But I don’t convince anyone that they should do this. If you’re curious, I’ll talk to you. But that’s not my mission to convince you to do this.
And if you’re curious, I’ll I’ll have a conversation with you, but I’m not gonna convince you to do anything. That’s not my problem. It’s not my job, not my circus, not my monkeys. It’s certainly not gonna own that problem.
Victoria Volk: And if you are curious, it’s probably the universe, like, knocking you on the head. Yeah.
Carolina Sotomayor: I looked curious.
Victoria Volk: Called me too. Like, I kept hearing rapey, rapey, rapey, you know. What’s this rapey? I bought in the night. Went through rapey one and two and then I got my rapey master and then I went through corona, holy fireakey, and so that’s What do you
Carolina Sotomayor: think of holy fire corona? I love that that one changed my life, the corona. Mhmm. I like that one. And I did I did I want him to I was I was like a needle jut. I mean, the professional certification. So I took it with a licensed Yeah. I see our t teacher. I need that certificate. That level of certificate.
I couldn’t be, like, regular person.
Victoria Volk: Oh, I didn’t go through the licensing, but I was trained, like, my racking master teacher was one of thirty licensed rate emails. Yeah.
Carolina Sotomayor: No. That’s who you went like, so you can get, like, this special certificate. That’s what I really, really wanted. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. It was my Reiki I think it was my Reiki too. I had a really profound experience and that kind of, like, solidified the deal for me for my healing personal healing.
Carolina Sotomayor: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Then I went into biofuel tuning. So now I use tuning force.
Carolina Sotomayor: Really? Oh, I’ve never played with tuning forks.
Victoria Volk: My friend, that is for me, personally, in my opinion, it’s more bang for your buck.
Carolina Sotomayor: It Oh. Tell me more.
Victoria Volk: It is it it is really deep. It’s it really matches the energy work that I want to be doing with people to help people really move through stuff because it’s it yeah. Biofil tuning.
Carolina Sotomayor: Oh, we’re gonna have to check after this. Yes. I
Victoria Volk: would love to. But, yeah, it’s that has been
Carolina Sotomayor: you should come in my podcast.
Victoria Volk: I would love to. I would love to. Jazzy. Good. So, yeah, it’s enabled me to do the work that I do with Grievers and, you know, I know what’s not mine?
You know? And I didn’t know that in the beginning, especially, and I’m maybe
Carolina Sotomayor: really hard to decipher.
Victoria Volk: It is. It’s like, oh,
Carolina Sotomayor: what am I feeling as this comes up? Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. And I was like, wait a minute. I’m not I got a clear my stuff
Carolina Sotomayor: a hundred percent.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm. Yeah. It’s energy work has enabled me to do the work that I do with with grief and talking to Grievers and, you know, because people
Carolina Sotomayor: move it out
Victoria Volk: of pressing. That’s so depressing.
Carolina Sotomayor: And I’m
Victoria Volk: like, grief is my jam. Like, it I could talk about it all the live long day. I never lived part of it.
Carolina Sotomayor: Yeah. I hear stories of loss. I worked with a person yesterday who did a termination at twenty five weeks, which is really difficult to go for a person to go through. My husband’s like, are you okay? I’m like, yeah.
Just gonna make my decaf. And I was like, it it just becomes I was like, I can hold space for a lot because I’ve gone through a lot, but I also can appreciate her pain. Mhmm. I can see, like, I can hold space for it because but it’s not my story. I’ve done, like, enough it’s I’ve had enough practice to hold it apart from me and also no big grounded going into it and then cleanse after. Understand what I’m feeling is enough practice of know who’s talking to me when I’m in the session. Mhmm. I have a question. Have you I have you ever gotten a tune to another lineage of Ricky or only Holy Fire?
Victoria Volk: Only Holy Fire.
Carolina Sotomayor: I got a tune to Crystal Ricky, and then I got certified in Ricky for childbirth.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
Carolina Sotomayor: And then I when I what I’ve settled on, it was kundalini Ricky. I found this woman and corporate
Victoria Volk: I’m sorry, what? Does she she incorporates breath work?
Carolina Sotomayor: No. It’s just basically there’s a few different symbols with the kundalini Reiki. It’s more potent and it’s easier from, like, with my practice with I have traditional use to eat, reiki chris o Reiki, the Holy Fire, one two Ricky Master in Corona, and then I got and I did childbirth in there, and then I did Kundalini last. I did this two years ago. She does she doesn’t teach, like, chakras, doesn’t teach anything about cord cutting. She gives you the ultimate and gives you a packet. And it’s was fifty bucks for every achievement, for the three achievements. And she does everything virtually over Zoom. And I found her in TikTok. And I had seen a video about Kundalini, and I became very interested in mother earth, like obsessed with her. And then the Kundalini awakening And I started to dive into I had a student and also a dear friend who I was training in Holy Fire Ricky Master. Mhmm. And And I and and then showing Charlie went on to Corona. And I was like, she’s she was studying Sandskrit, and she was discussing, like, the true meanings of some of the words. And I was like and she’s like, I don’t feel very settled by this. And when we’re having this discussion, I was like, well, I’ve been playing with Cunalini. Do you want didn’t come over to my side? Do you want this? And we played with that together. And I just find it more organic. It’s less like, I can get more done in a short amount of time. Like, I can do, like, a ten minute session and it feels like as if I done with corona for thirty. Mhmm. So it feels also just if Corona felt feminine and I still love corona, but if this feels like the most feminine for me, and it’s just very, very simple. It doesn’t have all the symbols, but it does have some symbols. But and it has different, like, DNA diving. It has this all these other things on the Reiki master, but that’s what I mainly practice now. And it’s I don’t know. It feels sparkly. It feels it’s it’s just flows easier for me. It feels lighter when I’m done with the session too. Like, when I have when I have to, like, tense myself after a session and I feel lighter. It’s not, like, it’s easier for me to move through sessions if I have to do a start role a day. I’m less tired at the end of the day.
Victoria Volk: Sounds interesting.
Carolina Sotomayor: You should play together. Yeah. Sounds like forks. I’ll tell you, like, clearly. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: We’ll have to yeah. We’ll have to connect after. And it’s what’s funny is that before we even started recording. We joked about this not being a two hour guest. It’s
Carolina Sotomayor: a big two hours.
Victoria Volk: And here we are an hour and fifty seven minutes
Carolina Sotomayor: set up. That’s funny.
Victoria Volk: So You are Oh, goodness. It’s one o’clock, the longest podcast. And I’ve enjoyed every minute of
Carolina Sotomayor: it too.
Victoria Volk: I think it was we went to a lot of different places, and I you know, there’s a lot of stuff on here. I haven’t asked, but I think in a lot of ways, you answered for me. I mean, you kinda went into the medium and how you kinda came. Yeah. I think you answered all the questions I had.
And that switches to Zaro.
Carolina Sotomayor: It’s not in my world.
Victoria Volk: But on the end with this, what gives you hope for the future?
Carolina Sotomayor: Or by future or just future in general.
Victoria Volk: It gives you hope for, I don’t know, the collective however you wanna answer that, however you interpret that,
Carolina Sotomayor: that you can redeem yourself at any time. You can start over at any time. Last night, I I I let a circle a a boom activation inside a membership. And somebody and I said, what is the most fearless, most fertile version of you? What is she like? And somebody said that they smiled knowingly that they were having the redemptive pregnancy in birth. And I that word was so powerful for me for me, I cried and I got goosebumps. And I love that how many times I can always start over and that gives me hope that I have that and I like that I can always redeem myself because I love myself enough and I love unconditionally the people around me and I’ve learned to love unconditionally. And because of that, I can always apologize and start over. I could always forgive myself and I could always start over and do better and try again. Anything that has allowed me to have hope that if I make a mistake, I’ll do better. I won’t repeat it. And that gives me hope. And because that means I can always be better and without mistakes, I will not grow. And I have a firm belief that whatever I am, my dad taught me this because whatever you are is the baseline of what your children will be. He goes, so make sure you’re really great. And I feel like I am doing what I was meant to do in this lifetime. And I hope if that is true that my son sees that, then I can only imagine what he’s going to set intentions for to make the world a better place because he can always start over. Because he loves himself enough that he can forgive himself. If he has to forgive, he can grow and expand, he can redeem himself again. And you think starting over, it also feels very fresh and that’s exciting. So when she like, and she I don’t know if I would have answered that before yesterday. I think just being loved probably would have been being loved by my husband and my son would have been my answer before yesterday.
Victoria Volk: I can tell you what your answer was before yesterday.
Carolina Sotomayor: Oh, shit. Are you serious?
Victoria Volk: Yeah. Because I asked it on my form.
Carolina Sotomayor: Oh my god. It’s so exciting.
Victoria Volk: If I can find it. When I think what would they really want for me in the the x situation, then I sit with that and proceed. It makes it easier to be fearless and go live the life I want. I think there’s more, but your answer today was perfect. It was beautiful. And it sounds like the antidote for shame too.
Carolina Sotomayor: Yeah. Yeah. You’d always start over. I I didn’t think a lot of people put like, if you have to start over, like, it’s a like, it you don’t have to start over all the way at a point x, you’re just starting over where you’re right now. Mhmm. So it’s it’s easier because you’re you’re at you’re evolved. You’re not starting over at the very beginning. You’re starting evolved from a further point. I think people underrate how, how good it can be just start over. You can start over just by a new day or the first of the month or the first of the year.
I mean, that’s why everyone does New Year’s resolutions. Right?
Victoria Volk: Yes.
Carolina Sotomayor: You can start over mid afternoon or at one:thirteen in the afternoon. I love the thing that’s really helpful.
Victoria Volk: Where can people reach you if they’d like to connect with you?
Carolina Sotomayor: I think Instagram is the easiest. My handle is the Carolina, like North and South, search my org, s o t o m a y o r. Or my website, caroline is it to my org dot com, or you can I think messaging and dimming me on Instagram is either you can follow me on TikTok and YouTube? We’re pretty active on YouTube too. We’re active on these things. Oh, my podcast. Yeah. Listen to the podcast. So forget about that one. Make a baby. Make a baby podcast. We are into making babies. We make babies with Reiki as our tagline. We’re two years old, and we’re close two. We’re a little over six thousand downloads. So we’re slow and steady. We’re we would love for you to take a listen. We come out weekly at minimum. Sometimes, like, this week, we’re doing in prompt two. We’re gonna post every day. Because we’re doing a healing challenge inside the membership. But, yeah, come and join us. Yeah. If you’re with listers once, I can give you the link. They can try the membership out for three days for free if they want to come and join us.
You can try it out before deciding if they wanna stay or not.
Victoria Volk: Tesla on the link. I’ll put that Yeah.
Carolina Sotomayor: I’ll email it to you right away.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. Along with your contact information and
Carolina Sotomayor: Absolutely.
Victoria Volk: Thank you so much. I feel like this was a really I say it’s a lot, but when this is what’s so important to me with this podcast is to be able to give people the time in the space to Go Deep, to really share the story. To develop for me to develop a connection with you so that my listeners feel a connection with you. And I think that’s so that’s so important to me. And so thank you for coming to my podcast and True Ireland. And allowing me to sit with you through your stories.
Carolina Sotomayor: Thank you so much for for listening and having me.
Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, season 5 |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
In the quiet rustle of leaves and the gentle caress of a mountain breeze, Tiff Carson found an unexpected sanctuary. A portable chair became her throne as she nestled amidst nature’s embrace—mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans—in Victoria and Vancouver to weave tales not just with words but with her soul.
The waves whispered secrets and memories to Tiff; they took away bits of sorrow each time they retreated back into the ocean’s depths. It was here that she learned writing could be more than a craft—it was therapy.
“Give yourself grace,” an advice once enigmatic now resonated deeply within her being. On some days, grief clung like morning dew on grass blades – heavy and visible; on others, it receded quietly into shadowed corners of her mind. Through this oscillation between pain and peace, self-compassion became Tiff’s mantra.
Her voice rose above the stigma often shrouding mental health discussions as she advocated for open dialogue about generational trauma while highlighting how critical parental apologies are in healing old wounds.
Takeaways on this episode:
- Sibling grief is often overlooked but carries profound significance throughout one’s life.
- Early traumatic events can set individuals onto difficult paths; understanding these origins is crucial for empathy and support.
- Transparent communication about emotional pain within families is essential for collective healing.
Join me as we delve into these poignant topics that remind us all that while our journeys may be hard at times, they are also filled with beauty when approached with openness and vulnerability.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
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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.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
The Echoes of Sibling Grief and the Power of Voice
Grief is a universal experience, yet it remains one of the most isolating journeys we can embark on. Tiff Carson, an Alberta-based author, podcast host, and speaker, understands this dichotomy all too well. Through her personal narrative involving sibling grief, trauma, and mental health challenges, Tiff sheds light on how our earliest experiences with loss shape us in profound ways.
Childhood Trauma: A Silent Specter
Tiff’s first encounter with grief was not through the passing of a family member but rather through a beloved pet dog named Mitzi who met an untimely death due to poisoning by a neighbor. This event was more than just a childhood tragedy; it became the inception point for Tiff and her brother’s journey through sorrow—a path that would diverge wildly as they grew older.
In many families like Tiff’s, discussing emotions is often seen as taboo—especially for men. This cultural norm meant suppressing feelings became second nature to them. But emotional suppression has long-term effects; it doesn’t erase pain but instead allows it to fester unacknowledged.
Adulthood: Struggles With Emotional Expression
Transitioning into adulthood brought new awareness for Tiff about these ingrained habits. She recounts her struggle to stop apologizing for showing emotions—a habit rooted deep in her upbringing where vulnerability equated weakness.
Her brother Corey took another route entirely; his gentle nature clashed against their culture of emotional stoicism. His story serves as a cautionary tale about what happens when unresolved traumas are left unchecked—he turned towards addiction at an early age because he didn’t have healthier outlets or support systems available.
Uncovering Hidden Pain
A move during their childhood isolated them further from others which eventually led to Corey enduring violent episodes with their father—an incident that remained hidden until years later. These traumatic events had far-reaching consequences leading Corey down a path marred by addiction struggles and legal issues before tragically losing his life to a fentanyl overdose in 2021.
The violence inflicted upon him by their father wasn’t just physical—it was verbal too—words that acted like daggers shaping Corey’s self-perception negatively throughout his life.
Healing Through Vulnerability
Through confronting these painful memories and dynamics within her own family unit—including learning about Corey’s buried traumas only after she faced mental health struggles herself—Tiff emphasizes the importance of addressing conflicts openly and expressing emotions without shame or guilt.
She advocates strongly for parental apologies as catalysts for healing hurtful interactions between parents and children—the act itself demonstrating vulnerability that strengthens relationships while teaching valuable lessons about accountability.
Even amid estrangement caused by differing views on accountability within families—as shown by her father’s refusal to acknowledge his role in Cory’s trauma—Tiff holds out hope for reconciliation through open dialogue underpinned by understanding each other’s vulnerabilities; essential steps toward mending generational wounds.
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever time it is, you’re listening to this episode. Thank you for being here. My guest today is Tiff Carson. She is a passionate and inspiring author, podcast host and speaker based in Alberta, Canada. She has the unique perspective of having lived through her own complex journey of sibling grief, trauma, and mental health issues. Tiff believes when you use your voice, you create positive change for yourself and the world around you. Tiff’s goal is to inspire others by showing how she used her voice to heal. As a devoted mother of three children, TIFF is an advocate for breaking cycles of generational pain so that future generations can live healthier lives. She reminds us all that no matter what our journey looks like, it can be hard but also beautiful. Thank you so much for being here.
Tiff Carson: Thank you for having me
Victoria Volk: and for being open to sharing your story on my podcast because I know you have a podcast which is called
Tiff Carson: hard beautiful journey. And you’ve written a book called dancing in the rain,
Victoria Volk: which is not even in your bio.
Tiff Carson: Book title anyway.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. So I just wanted to pop that in here at the beginning here, and we’ll come we’ll circle back to that where people can find you and all of that at the end. But in your information that you shared with me, you you talk about the memoir and your a lot of your focus about the grief story that you wanted to share was about your brother. But what I know about grief personally and just all the stories that people have shared with me is that our grief tends to start pretty early on in our lives, in childhood. And you haven’t shared really any of that so much.
I mean, I’m sure your brother’s story has a little bit to do with that. I mean, if there’s an age gap, things like that.
Tiff Carson: But Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: What was your experience with grief as a child?
Tiff Carson: Well, the the ones that stick out for me, for sure, are my grandparents. That is Actually, before that, I lost a dog that was very, very, very big part of our family. And it was actually poisoned by one of our neighbors that absolutely despised dogs And so we were my brother and I are eighteen months apart, and then we have a younger sister that’s six years younger than me. So my brother and I were about seven and eight years old approximately, and it was our job to let our dog out. In the morning before school and to feed her. Her name was Mitsi. And and just do all the things with the dog. If we were gonna have this dog, we were responsible for it and which we loved. And so one morning, my brother let her out, took her outside, but then he came back in to finish getting ready for school. And then when he went to call her in, she was walking really really slow into the house.
And he was, like, calling for me and my mom and And so we went and right in our very back porch. She walked in the door and she literally collapsed and just died, like, right in front of our eyes. And so that was the first real like, what the heck happened and just the devastation of losing our little girl. And that was yeah, I can’t even describe how devastating it was for my brother too. Like, he was super, super close to her. He always was close with all of the dogs that he’s sewn in his life. So that was I would say that was our first big grief moment and trauma that we experienced. And then of course losing our grandparents and and seeing them deteriorate over the years and not really be themselves like some of them ended up with dementia or a form of dementia and so seeing them go from, you know, your grandparents like you knew them to not really being that was was definitely a difficult thing for us to experience. So, yeah, those were were the ones growing up for sure.
Victoria Volk: I was told to growing up that. I was too little to remember, but we had a dog that was supposedly had been poisoned too.
Tiff Carson: Oh, really? Yeah. It’s awful. It was it wasn’t just our dog. Like, it was they actually ended up having to call the police this family, this couple because they they were doing it to numerous dogs in the neighborhood. And ours was one of them. And then my parents went and got, this is crazy. So before that police were called, my parents, we waited they waited a few months for us to, you know, get used to, like, just go through the grief and stuff, and then they ended up getting another dog for us. We named her ginger. And same thing happened. But we got her to the vet before, and we brought her home, and she ran away. She was like, yeah, no. I’m not staying here. I’m not dealing with that. So, yeah, it was losing the dog and then getting another one and then her running away. And after that, we didn’t get another dog for a while. So I laugh now, but at the time it was like, this is not very good. This is sad.
Victoria Volk: So how was grief talked about in your home as growing up?
Tiff Carson: It wasn’t. Like ever. Ever. I saw my mom cry a lot growing up. But never my dad, never ever. I never saw my grandparents cry or show grief of any kind. The first time I saw my grandma cry and Joe Grieve was actually at my uncle, her son’s funeral. He passed away tragically. In a farming accident, and that was the first time I saw her outwardly grieve. And I was probably about twenty five years old then. So, like, it was it was just not shown whatsoever. It was sniff upper lip and hold it all in and be tough and that’s it. The the boys, the men were definitely held to that standard a lot more than the girls. I noticed that and I wrote about it in my book is be tough, suck it up, beat your your boy, your man. You know, those kind of words were were said. But I also saw it from the women. So it was definitely not as open to talk about the hard things as as it is now.
Victoria Volk: What impact did that have on you as you went into adulthood and experience more grief as we do in life? And and how did you see that? Maybe your brother handled it differently or did things differently from you? Like, how did you see that dynamic play out? Learning not learning about courage, right, and not talking about it, the impact that that had on each of you?
Tiff Carson: My brother was very I call him a gentle giant. He was always very open with his feelings towards certain people. And showed his emotions. Same with me. Like, I I definitely showed my emotions, but when it came to grief and I actually still catch myself doing it sometimes where I’ll start to cry and I’ll say, sorry, Sorry.
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. You know, and I don’t know how many times in the last even week where I’ll cry and I’ll start to say that. And then I’m like, no, I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry. And it’s taken I’m almost fifty. And it’s taken almost fifty years for me to stop apologizing for showing emotion and being okay with it. So it it’s definitely been a difficult thing to just get past the I don’t know if it’s embarrassment or or the shame of being vulnerable. I don’t know. But in the last two years, definitely since my brother passed away, I’m learning to just say screw it. Like, I’m I’m okay. With you seeing this. And I am not a pretty cryer whatsoever. And I’m definitely okay with people seeing the real me and what I’m going through and what I’m experiencing because it’s giving them the freedom, I guess, the courage to do the same thing.
Victoria Volk: What’s your brother’s name? Corey, he talked about, you know, his struggle with addiction and things like that in your in the information you shared with me. When did those things start to come to light? How old were you? And I recognized you’re only eighteen months apart. My oldest two my oldest is a son and then I have a daughter and they’re eighteen months apart. Mhmm. And I I’m reading this book right now. The author will be coming on the podcast. It’s called always a sibling, and she talks about her brother passing. But what I never really connected or thought about until reading her book was that the relationship that we have with our siblings is the longest relationship we will have with anybody. Even if that person is not in your life, it’s still there’s still an emotional bond there. Of some sort, whether it be healthier or unhealthy, there’s still that connection. And it’s the longest connection. And I personally, I think sometimes your siblings, they know more about you than anybody else because they’ve seen you through your entire life. Right? Really into the music. Yeah. So feel free to share what you wanna share about that. And
Tiff Carson: well, the tears are already starting. So It’s okay. Wow. So, yeah, he was eighteen months older than me. I wrote about that in my book as well about the sibling relationship and sibling grief just in general. That it’s under recognized. Everybody definitely reverts to the parents first, which absolutely understand that as a mom. Absolutely understand that. And then if it’s, you know, an older person, like they revert to the wife and the kids of that person. But there’s very, very few people that actually ask how you’re doing as the sibling of somebody who’s passed away and they were the closest person to you growing up for many years.
Right? And there’s lots of times where you have many siblings. So it just compounds. Right? So I definitely wanted to bring that to late in my book.
So he was eighteen months older than me, and we literally literally were attached at the hip. Growing up. Like, there’s this many pictures, but there’s this one picture. We had, like, white white white hair big blue eyes and, like, if you saw one, there was the other one right beside. And we just we lived in a small town We went everywhere together. We did everything together. And he was my best buddy. And then my sister was born when he was seven and I was six. And so she was like our little baby doll and it was just awesome having a new little sibling and but we were still connected, like super connected. We did lip synch concerts together.
We we did everything. And then we moved a few times. My dad is a musician, was a musician. And so wherever he was playing the most, in his band, we would kinda like move into that area. So we moved a few times. Usually between two locations, And the one move the one last move before everything changed was very, very hard on him and I, my brother and I, because we moved to a farm. And we were not farmers at all. And it was very isolating for us. And we we were very social kids, like we in the house the neighborhood we lived in before, moving to the farm, we were Like, there was just the neighborhood gang. Like, you know what I mean?
Like, the big neighborhood gang of kids, we would just play hide and seek and we wouldn’t we wouldn’t come home till, like, ten at night and just we would be with our friends all the time, and then we were on a farm. And it was like, what where are we? Why are we here? And it was it was a really big adjustment for us in a lot of ways. And something happened when my brother was thirteen living on that farm that I didn’t know about until three years before he died. And but something happened to me around the same time from my brother. My brother beat me up. To uphold in our kitchen on the farm. And I had no idea why, like zero idea. It just came out of nowhere and because him and I were super close. And then all of a sudden, he beat me up. And I was terrified of him after that, and I didn’t know what happened. And then, what happened after that? He used to be or that happened. He was a very talented hockey player, very good athlete. Like, he was being looked at by lots of people because he was just so good, so fast, the goal score. And then all of a sudden, like that, it just changed. And he we call it I call it in my book. He started running. He just he was he just didn’t want to be anywhere near us, nowhere near our family. He was getting into trouble. He was doing DNEs. He was getting into fights. He was he got some assault charges and it literally from thirteen till he was twenty seven. He was in and out of jail, he was constantly in trouble with the law. And that’s when he started getting addicted to drugs and alcohol. And so him beating me up and then going the direction that he was I didn’t understand why he was doing that and why that happened. And it just made this huge wedge between us. And I was so angry at him for doing what I thought he was doing to my parents and like just not just not being a good kid and like, why are you doing this? So he went one direction and I literally went the other.
And I was like, because around town in this small community that we lived in, our last name is Carson. So he would they would say, oh, that Carson kid. Oh, that Carson kid. Just like his dad, that carson kid. Right? And so, like, that was what I heard around town and I made it my mission to not be another Carson kid. I was gonna be a different Carson kid. And so he went that direction and I went to the overachiever. Like, I am going to show you all that I am not like him, and that has literally moved in to my life in so many ways. Like, it just I’m an overachiever still to this day. And so Yeah. That that’s how the the addiction came around was at that time of his life, and it it continued on for the rest of his life until he passed away and he passed away of a of a fentanyl overdose in twenty twenty one.
Victoria Volk: One change. Right?
Tiff Carson: Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: We never know what’s gonna change the trajectory of our lives. Yep. We’re just, you know, in the the ripples of the decisions that we make as parents. Right? And the impact that that has. And cause and effect has been something that’s really come up a lot for me lately. We learn that concept as young children, you know, you touch the burner, the hot burner on the stove, you’re gonna get burned. Right? Nope. There’s a cause and effect. No. Now I’m not gonna touch the burner because I’m gonna get my hand burned. But we never really why that same principle to our lives really. We don’t think about the impact of our words. We don’t think about, you know, the cause and effect. Of our words and our actions and our choices and our decisions and how that affects everybody else in our lives. Mhmm. Are you open to sharing? What what it was that he was projecting so much of his anger out? On you and the rest of the family and
Tiff Carson: Yeah. It’s I wrote about it in a book and And it’s amazing how when these things happen, how it is a learning lesson for me now as a parent and how it’s changed by parenting. It was something that happened between my dad and my brother. So my sister and I and my mom had gone out of town for a few days. And my brother stayed home with my dad to help him around the farm and my dad was playing in the band in the town that we lived in, and he asked my brother to stay home and not go out. But my brother, like I said, he hated the farm. He hated the isolation. He hated it with a passion. And So he got on his bike, and he rode his bike to a nearby community where some of his friends live. And he got a ride home from some people with his bike, and the lights were off when he got home. So he thought he got home before my dad did. And when he went in the house, the lights came on. That’s my dad’s m l’s sitting in the dark because that’s what his parents did. And the lights came on and my dad was there and From what my brother has told me and my mom and a trauma therapist, he pummeled him. He beat him into oblivion where he could hardly even walk up the stairs to his bedroom. And when he got up the next morning, he said that my dad didn’t even bat an eye when he saw his black eyes. And he said that my dad said if you’re not going to respect what I have to say and listen to me, then you can just leave. I’ll pay you and you can just leave. And, yeah, when I it looks like So I’ve done this so three years before he died from my mom. And literally as she was telling me this story. At first, I was like, there’s no way my dad did that. There’s no way. Like I I just instantly went to denial. But in my soul, it was like she was handing the puzzle piece. Like, here you go. Because not long after that happened to my brother, my brother beat me up. And he was so angry at me and my little sister for not getting the same treatment as him. And literally, that’s when he started running. He was like, hey, he doesn’t want me here, so I’m just gonna go. I’m gonna go. I’m gonna run. He told me to leave. So that’s what happened. There was another incident couple years actually before that that he actually got severely beaten by my grandpa in front of all of us. So a lot of a lot of physical violence where he felt like he wasn’t loved by the male, influences in his life, and that’s very, very devastating to the foundation of a boy. But why I say that’s a lesson for me now is parenting is so hard. All three of my kids were IVF, babies. It took ten years to get them. Ten very long years to get them, and all three of them were diagnosed with ADHD and ODD. Oppositional defiant disorder. And so they have been a very difficult parenting journey, very difficult. So I get the the difficulty of parenting to my core. Like, I get it. And even with the difficulties and things that are said or done in the heat of a moment when you’re angry, when you’re upset, all of that. The thing that I’ve learned from all of this from my brother’s journey is that how you handle the after. How you handle when you’ve done or said something that could have hurt somebody else, like your children, Take the time you need. First, take the time you need to decompress and or walk away or breathe or something. But then come back and actually have a conversation with them. And I have done that so many times since I’ve learned about my brother’s drama. And I know it is making a difference with my kids and my relationship with them. Because I I, like, I wrote about it in a book. There was one morning where my boys were just so so disrespectful for to me, we are on our way to a doctor’s appointment for for one of them and They weren’t listening, they weren’t talking back. It was just it was a horrible morning. And I said the same things my dad did. I said, if you’re not gonna listen to me, then you’re not gonna live here. Get out of my house. I said the same words my dad did. And I went into my room to get ready, and I was so mad at myself. I was so mad that I chose those words to say to my kids, but I also gave myself grace that you know, this is hard. And I came out of the room and they were balling, like getting on their backpacks and trying to get their shoes on, and they were crying. And one of my boys said, you’re the worst mom ever who tells their kids to leave And the other one was looking at me with, like, literally tears streaming down his face. He’s like, where are we supposed to go? I don’t know where we’re supposed to go. And like just balling. And we get in the car.
And before I started driving, I just turned they were sitting in the back and I turned around and I just said, I am so sorry for what I said to you. I didn’t mean what I said. But I want you to know why I said it and why I got to that point because this was going on. And I said, but I never should have send those words to you, and I hope that you forgive me. And both of them were just like, we’re so sorry, mom.
Like, we know what we were doing was not Right? And and one of my boys said, you know, mom, it’s okay if people cry. Like, I know it is, buddy. And it’s okay if you cry right now too, and he started crying again. And then my other boy, their twins.
He said, yeah, who cares if people see it and say anything? So I was just like, good for you, like, good for recognizing that. There is nothing wrong with showing vulnerability. And since that day, I that’s what I do. If there’s something that has come up and there’s something that was hurtful, I address it sooner than later because all my dad had to do all he had to do was say, sorry, That’s it.
That is it. And it would have changed their whole relationship. So all it takes is I’m sorry. We were both Ryan.
Victoria Volk: How old are your children?
Tiff Carson: Fifteen year old daughter and eleven year old twin boys.
Victoria Volk: I recently listened to a meditation that has you imagining your inner child? That’s hard. Mhmm. Mhmm. Like, what would you say to your younger self, you know? Mhmm. And I, like, feel this, like, for your brother, like this, sadness of not feeling wanted It’s that indifference. I think that’s almost I don’t know if it’s worse. They say in psychology, they say it’s worse. Like, Yeah.
Tiff Carson: Yeah. So when I learned about his trauma, Well, in all of these things, but there’s even more, but those are the that’s the big ones or some of the big ones. But it it it was I literally because I was going through my own mental health challenges with my, like, going through in in fertility and our kids and I I had a complete mental breakdown. And it was around the same time where I learned about this. And I was walking on a beach in North Carolina. I went to a mom’s retreat, and I was walking on a beach in North Carolina, and I just walking by myself and I was like, k. If I can give myself grace and love myself with all of this stuff that I’m going through, I absolutely can give my brother that same, and because he’s experienced way more than me. And I wrote this in the book. I chose to love him through it. Everything that he was going through, everything that he was still experiencing with his addictions, which had not gone away.
They were getting worse. And for those who have known an addict, had a family member that’s an addict, it is a very difficult relationship. Very and so me choosing to love him through it. Was a huge step. It was huge just based on everything that had happened over the years. But when I tell you, it’s quite good. When I made that decision, he could feel it. He could actually feel the change. He could feel it in how I looked at him, how I talked to him, how I just sat with him, how everything everything changed when I made that decision, to love him through it. And our relationship was immediately back to when we were little kids. Immediately because he could feel it, I could feel it, and then it’s, like, I need to be there for you. I’m gonna be there for you, and I’m never gonna leave you. And, yeah, I’m just I’m so grateful that he chose to use his voice. He was the one who told my mom about what happened to him because none of us knew. None of us knew what happened to him and why his life went that way. And he chose to tell my mom, and then my mom chose to tell me. And if he wouldn’t have done that, we wouldn’t have gotten to where we were before he died. And so he he gave me the biggest gift. All of us the biggest gift by sharing what what happened to him and being vulnerable. I have no regrets now with how our relationship was when he passed away because it was beautiful.
Victoria Volk: Where is your dad and all of those?
Tiff Carson: My dad just read the book recently. During the three years when I found out about what happened, I had a hard time understanding him. I didn’t and still have never stopped loving my dad because he’s my dad. And like I said, I understand the challenges of parenting and I I give him grace and all of that. Right? But but I still have a really hard time with him not accepting and admitting and acknowledging the pain and the trauma that changed my brother’s life. My dad will not acknowledge it. And he will go to his grave with not fully acknowledging what was done, what was said, and that’s heartbreaking. His stance. I just talked to him two weeks ago about it because he was very angry at me for the book even though I asked him repeatedly for his side of the story repeatedly asked him for his side. Because there is always two sides. And he just says it’s the way that they were raised, and he my brother was not behaving was not listening. And my brother was out of control and all of this kind of stuff. And I can’t change his mind. I can’t make him acknowledge anything, and I I have to come to peace with that. Or I won’t have a relationship with my dad either. But I am very okay with me sitting in the hard and talking things out and just saying, okay, this is where we’re at. I know your mat like, I went and saw them two weeks ago, and you could tell he was very angry at me, very and he was just gonna I call it sweeping it under the rug. He was just gonna sleep it under the rug, like nothing. Not talking about it. And he was sitting on one of their swings. Like, it’s a two seater. And I just said, so may I come and sit beside you? And he’s like, sure. So I went and sat beside him and and I just I was vulnerable and I just said, okay.
Let’s talk about it. You’re obviously upset with me for what I wrote, so let’s let’s talk. And so he wasn’t going to it first, and then he did, and he was upset with what I wrote and wish that he would’ve I would’ve given I would’ve asked him his side of the story. I’m like, pretty sure I did many times. And that I didn’t talk about my mom’s side of the family in the book? Just his side? And I was trying to explain to him that that none of the things that happened to me and my brother happened at the hands of my mom’s family. So talking about my mom’s family’s issues, wouldn’t have related to my brother and I in our journey. So yeah, I understand that I talked about the Carson side, but that’s because stuff happened with the Carson side. That changed our relationship and changed people’s lives. And when I talk about I didn’t wanna be a Carson kid, I went through a divorce two years ago. It was just made official in May of this year. And I have been working tirelessly to get my name back. To be a Carson. And I told him, I wouldn’t be doing this. If I didn’t love the cars to pick me because it’s not easy. To go back to your maid and maid here in Canada anyways. And I said that’s how much I love the Carson family. I just don’t love some of the things that happened in the Carson family. So that’s kind of where our relationship is at right now. It’s strained, but I’m okay with that. Because It took a year and a half to write this book. And there was many times where I almost stopped writing. And I kept hearing no. Keep going. Keep going. Put it all in. Put it all in. And I know. How many people that’s helping already, and that’s worth it to me.
Victoria Volk: Comes back to the cause and effect. And perhaps maybe you don’t see yet how this may unlock something for your father. Credit. You know, it’s again, you you kinda touched on it on the information you shared, but this generational trauma, the generational belief systems, and the generational patterns, and we, I think, subconsciously, pass on to our kids unintentionally.
Tiff Carson: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And clearly, there is something your dad is holding on to.
Tiff Carson: Oh, yes. And it’s in the book as well. The things that my dad experienced.
Victoria Volk: Oh, so you know?
Tiff Carson: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Okay.
Tiff Carson: It’s in the book as well. Not in great detail, but it was more so at the hands of his mom than his dad. He actually went to live with his grandparents because it was such a bad relationship. He says it was also because they didn’t have enough room. There were all of the kids. There were six kids. It was a small house. His grandparents lived across the street. He’s like, I’m just gonna go live there. But there was times where he lived or stayed at the church with the nuns. It was yeah. He he had a very very hard upper need as well. This violence and and, like I said, sweeping things under the rug. We’re not talking about it. We are not talking about it. We are not dealing with this. Nothing happened. My grandma, my dad’s mom, had many mental health challenges. There was many times where she wouldn’t come out of her room. And they had to fend for themselves. So a lot of stuff and he’s just choosing to not go there. And and that’s his choice. And I I cannot that’s what I’ve come to realize is I cannot force anybody to do their own work, but I can do my own. And I’m going to continue doing my own and showing other people how I’m doing the work on myself and if it inspires them to do the same, fantastic. But I I cannot force anybody anymore. All I can do is my own thing, my own work.
Victoria Volk: You shared how you decided that you were going to love your brother. Through it. Have you given any thought to what that would look like if you chose to do that with your father?
Tiff Carson: I have chosen to load him through it. Actually, when I found out that he had read it, and that he was angry at me. At first, my initial reaction, knee jerk reaction was, like, Well, screw you. Like, you you know, like, I was just angry back at him. And that was that only last maybe a day. And but I was very angry at him for some of the things that he was saying to me and then I actually heard I I hear my brother often, his spirit. And I I heard him say, Love them through it. Love them through it. And I made the decision two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago. I’m gonna love them through it because I kid. He was a little boy too. That experience and really hard things. And that’s my generational trauma is hard. And But my my whole goal, my whole purpose, I know, is to shine a light on it. And do like, what I’m doing with my kids is let’s talk about this stuff let’s work through it. Let’s stop sweeping stuff under the rug. Let’s get to a place where Your heart is okay. Before we move on. Because I’ve seen what it’s done to my dad, and I’ve seen what it’s done to my brother. And I don’t want that for my kids. I don’t want that for your kids. I don’t want that for anybody’s kids because I lived with it. And I wouldn’t want anybody’s life to play out the way that my brothers did in some respects. He did have many good moments in his life. But the hard parts, I wouldn’t want that for anybody. Because it was very, very, very difficult for him.
Victoria Volk: There is this thought that I think in psychology that young girls, women tend to marry someone like their father. That can be good or bad. Right? Had you married someone who had those qualities like your father?
Tiff Carson: That’s a interesting question. In some respects, yes, and then some no. My ex husband, who’s a very good father in terms of, like, always wanting to do stuff with them and is very active in their lives. And but he’s also a non talker. Let’s see. There is nothing to see here, folks. That’s not, like, what? You wanna talk? Oh, no. Okay. So, like, those kind of similarities are definitely there. And that was hard for me, especially over the last ten, eight, to ten years as I was, like, starting to, like, you know, I need to talk about this stuff or I’m gonna neither this is not gonna end well. And I wasn’t getting any any of it back and returned. And that was very difficult on our marriage for sure.
Victoria Volk: With the diagnosis of the children. I imagine that that brought up a lot of feelings from the past. Of the anger that you witnessed in the home. Did so did you have this I mean, did you have this United Front with your spouse to work through those struggles? Or do you feel like those were some of the things that your marriage just couldn’t. Where you couldn’t come together?
Tiff Carson: No. The so we we tried for five years before we ended up finally getting our daughter after we were married. But we started the fertility process one year after we were married because you have to wait the year here in Canada. If it’s not working. And he was very supportive in that whole journey to the point where my body actually was they they said that it was I was thirty How old was I thirty one ish at thirty thirty one when I started the fertility program, and my body was acting like mid forties. It just was not. It wasn’t doing what they thought it was going to do. I was on the highest dose possible of in fertility of IVF drugs. And I was still not producing follicles like I should have been there was one point where there was so much blood work and so many ultrasound that my husband ended up not going to all of them just because there were so many. But on this one particular day, he decided to come. He said, no, I’m gonna come with you. And if he didn’t come that day, we wouldn’t have our daughter. Because they did their normal blood work and ultrasound, and then they they normally you just go home and go back a couple days later. But this day, they said, Kate, we need you to meet across the room in that boardroom. And I knew it was not good. And the doctors came in and nurses and they said, so it’s not looking good for this cycle. You’re not producing enough molecules at this point where you should be, and you either can stop the cycle now and wait about three months because you have to wait for your system to get back to a little bit of normalcy. Or we keep going and we try for the best and see if there’s any changes in the next couple of days. And I was so exhausted because this was our second second attempt at In vitro. And we had already done all of the other stuff, like IUI’s intrauterine and semination stuff.
We had already done all of those. And I was gonna just say no more. I’m done. And James, my ex husband said, no, we’re going. We’re gonna keep going.
And I just I know it’s gonna work. We’re gonna keep going. And we got three follicles and we got enough embryos and my daughter. It happened. We got our daughter. So he was definitely a rock for me during all of that. When we got when we had her, it was, like, the biggest blessing in the world. And then but we didn’t have any more embryos left. And so if we were gonna do it again, we’d have to start all over again. And it’s very expensive. And we just we’re happy with having her daughter. And I don’t know what about when she was three years old, we started talking again and said, do you wanna try it again? And his parents loaned us the money, and we started again. And this time, I don’t know if, like, things cleared up down there or what, but it went better than the first time. And we ended up with Twin Boys. And so it was but it was hard. It was ten years. So there’s four and a half years between our daughter and our sons. And but it’s very hard on a marriage. In the respect that you you have the expectation that your bodies are supposed to do these things. Naturally, that your failure if you don’t. And him and I are both extreme high achievers my overachiever tendency came flying through, and it was just very hard to wrap my head around the back that I couldn’t become a mom the natural way. And it was for him too. Like, there was many times where he would say something off the cuff, like, Yeah. Well, like, I’m not able to have a kid normally, like, everybody else and and, like, a man going in and doing that thing and in a fertility clinic is not romantic for one thing. What’s leverage? So, yeah, it’s very hard on marriages, very difficult on marriages. And them to go through that journey of just trying to get them here. And then to have the parenting struggles that we’ve had with them, that’s when I I had my my mental breakdown. I was just so so angry as God. I remember hiding behind the clothes in my closet, hiding from my kids, because I was so done. I was just done with everything. And I just said, why why? Did it take ten years to get them for us to not enjoy, be able to do them? Because it was not enjoyable whatsoever. And while I was saved in that closet, I saw a fork, like a fork in the road. In my mind, I saw it for it. And it was checkout. I completely checkout. I’m like, as in not be here anymore or get help because I was that far gone. And I sat in there for a very long time and cried and was very angry. And when I finally came out of there, I phoned my mom And I said, I need you to come and help you. And she did. Right away that night. And I went to my therapist And I took three months off of work, and I took care of myself.
And in that therapy session, one of them, my therapist said, you know you’re supposed to do something with this pain. Right? You’re supposed to do something with your journey. And I didn’t know what she meant by that. But it’s stuck in my brain. And then it came to me over time. And I was like, I’m supposed to talk about this. Supposed to talk about this. Alright. And so that’s how my podcast came to me. Hard beautiful journey is sharing our story. That’s how it started. Was sharing our journey through infertility and our parenting struggles with kids with ADHD and OCD and everything that goes into that. And I honestly thought that before I did it, I sat down with James, my ex, and I I had written everything out and I read it to him. But I said, are you okay? If I do this, if we share this, and he was completely on board, completely. And I had the thought if I share all of this and that’s all that happens is I share that and nobody listens or nobody cares. Cool. It’s out there. And that isn’t what happened. Everybody was like, oh my lord. Thank you for sharing that. And I’m now at ninety episodes and still going. And I’m I’m talking with other people who are sharing their hard beautiful dirty and who are sharing their stories and being vulnerable in helping one other person in the world by doing so. So that’s how that all came to be.
Victoria Volk: And now you’re on my podcast.
Tiff Carson: And now I’m here. So I’m on a break from my podcast right now for this emerge. And the reason why is because I wanted to share my story on other people’s podcasts and be a guest for once. So I have been enjoying being on this side of the microphone and being asked the questions in a different way to also make me think about different parts my story because it’s an ongoing healing journey every day. And so, like, you bringing up these questions to me is helping me heal more. And even though I’m crying, I see those tears since healing tears. Not anything to be ashamed of.
Victoria Volk: How long ago was that time in the closet?
Tiff Carson: Twenty eighteen. It was no. Sorry. Twenty seventeen. Twenty seventeen, and it was twenty eighteen that I found out about my brother and his stuff. So twenty seventeen, I was going through a lot of therapy. Really working on my own healing journey, and that when and then into early twenty eighteen is when I went to that mom’s retreat in North Carolina. And and I had just found out about my brother’s stuff as well. So it was a lot I was processing a lot of that stuff with my brother and my dad through therapy as well because it did bring him up. What happened between me and my brother that helped me understand our journey. So, yeah, that two year period was pretty, pretty difficult. But it’s it’s just gotten it’s an interesting thing because it it was it’s gotten easier, but also hard because of the grief of losing him and then my marriage ending. But it’s because of the work that I’m doing on myself that I know that’s why I’m getting through these things. Otherwise, I would not be here like at all because it was so difficult before I started getting therapy and talking with people and just being vulnerable. And hearing other people’s stories and sharing experiences and knowing I’m not alone in all of those things have helped me get through these grief journeys because if I would have kept it to myself and just sat here and did nothing, It would have been not a good good situation.
Victoria Volk: Where are things at now with your ex husband and the kids and the dynamics of all of that? Like, how how have you navigated all of that?
Tiff Carson: Well, that is a very good question. Well, Trying to decide how much to share. So there was a lot of rejection that I faced in our marriage from my ex husband. A lot of rejections intimately and connection lines. And there was a point when my daughter was one years old that I almost left him because it had been eleven years of it. And I I know someone that stems from the infertility and, like, the failure side of it and but it would it just wasn’t getting any better. And finally in when my brother passed away. Things hadn’t been really good for about a year before he passed away. But when my brother passed away, James gave me a couple of big hugs to comfort me. And I realized I hadn’t been in his arms like that.
For many years. And I I was like, well, why did it take losing my brother for this to happen. So that after he died, I was just like, what? Why. You know? And that’s when I my brother dying was a wake up call for me. It’s like life is too short. Life is too short. And I don’t think our kids ever saw us hug. Kiss, hold hands, maybe hold hands, maybe once. And that’s it. We were roommates. Taking care of their kids quite literally. And I tried numerous times over the twenty years that we were together to get us to a place where we could be intimate and connect connected and all of it. I don’t know how many times, countless times. And things would get good for a couple weeks and be kind of like, hey, let’s just shut her up. Let’s satisfy her. You know? And then then it stopped. And it was just as a cycle and it just kept happening over and over and over again. And then my brother died and I was like, no, I need more from this. And so I asked for a trial separation. And him and I went to marriage counseling. And we went separately. We went together. And our therapist said, in this three month trial, let’s try it for three months, I need you to focus on yourself, only yourself. And nobody else, no there’s no third parties, nothing. And he chose not to do that. So that was really hard. Again with the rejection. And so but I also made it. I wanted my kids to not deal with any of that. I wanted them to have parents that weren’t fighting, that weren’t you know, mad at each other. And so I I that’s where I did shove stuff. And I I was I said, k. I’m gonna be I’m gonna be friends with them at least. And that was working for a bit, but then I realized that it was actually harming my healing process. And just recently over the last couple months, I put in some pretty firm boundaries that no. I no. You have your new life, and I have mine And the only thing that we need to talk about is our kids. And that’s it. And maybe one day, we’ll get back to that place where we’re friends, but not right now. And that’s very, very hard for me because It’s really hard for people to understand this much. The one thing that we did have at our marriage was a friendship. We had a really good friendship, and now I don’t have that, and that’s what I miss the most. So a lot of grief. A lot, a lot of grief over the last three years. A lot of tears. A lot of guttural crying like where I’m like, you know, the type crying where it’s like, an animal was coming out of you. But a lot of really good days too. A lot of really good days. And so when I’m having the low moments? I know I call it my roller co I have the craziest rollercoaster. I swear to God. It’s God. So many twists and turns and ups and downs. And I’m also going to prepare a bed and pause, so there’s a head too. But I know that when I’m hitting that low on my roller coaster, I know I’m coming out of it a lot sooner, a lot quicker than I used to. And I can feel that. I’m not stained in those little moments as long as I was before, and it’s because I’m talking. And if I need to and I’m writing a lot and I’m breathing, I’ve started doing breath work. And I would meditate as well, but the breath work has really, really helped me. I am walking like I have never walked in my life. Like, it is crazy how much walking I am doing. And it is helping my moods, my mindset. I cry when I walk. I smile when I walk. You name it. I do it all. I listened to music. And, yeah, it’s It’s been a crazy three years.
Victoria Volk: How are the kids doing?
Tiff Carson: They I like I said, I talked to them all the time. All the time. And At first, it was very difficult for them. But I am proud of James and I or that period of time in the initial separation and and all of that where we did have the United front where we were both there for them. And being friends because it it was an easier transition for them and easier change for them in some regards. In some instances, I think it also confused them. And when I knew and felt that they were confused, I talked to them. Because I can see and feel the confusion. And I am not even exaggerating. I talk to them all the time. If I feel like they’re having a hard day, with something or when they’re moving between his house and my house. Like, I give them on the day that it happens and they’re coming back to me, I give them so much grace if there’s something that they’re, you know, in a bad mood or because what happened actually when we separated is we we were so amicable that we bought a condo together for him and I to move in and out of. Every week and our kids would stay home in the family home until we sold it or until we made the decision that it was going to happen. We are gonna get a divorce. And so him and I were moving back and forth or six months. And so we got that experience of moving. And I’m so grateful for that. Because it gave me so much compassion and empathy for that aspect of my kid’s life now that you don’t really get settled. And I yeah, it it’s not not easy for them to do that. Right? And so when they come back to me, when they go back to him, when they come back to me anyway, I give them that time to adjust, and then I check-in with them and, yeah, this very open communication with them.
Victoria Volk: Since that experience of you moving back and forth, informed you of how hard that can be. What kind of decision did you come to together then as far as joint custody and visitation on that.
Tiff Carson: We have fifty-fifty. So we switch every week. Yeah. We have them for one week at a time and we’re very, very, very good co parents. That is even with the boundaries that I’ve put in place and the distancing myself from him in the friendship way, we are really good co parents.
Victoria Volk: It’s great to hear. Really good and
Tiff Carson: I hope to god that never changes. Ever because I just know and seen when it isn’t that way, and I I also know why it can’t be that way if some of the people in the relationship are not cooperative or just narcissists or whatever. Right? There’s a variety of reasons why it can’t be that way. If anything out of our infertility journey and our parenting struggles in it, those moments where I was, like, mad at God for this, I’m grateful that we have this parenting, co parenting.
Relationship. I’m grateful for that because those times where There’s maybe only been three times in the last couple of years where I was just so angry about him. For something that he did or said, and then I didn’t talk to him for a week. Try parenting and organizing three kids schedules with sports and schools and all of it, and you’re not talking with them. It’s impossible. And So, yeah, I just I made the decision and I told him everything is for the kids. And I will strive to be the best co parent with you because they deserve it. And we deserve it after how hard we work to get them here.
Victoria Volk: You mentioned how you were angry with God a couple of times. Where do you sit with that now?
Tiff Carson: I’m at a place of peace with it and understanding. And it was literally from what my therapist said, when she said, you know, you’re supposed to do something with this. There’s a purpose behind it. And when I finally understood that, that I was supposed to help other people with this stuff, and that everything is a lesson and that we’re meant to help each other. I’m not supposed to keep all of this to myself and just suffer in silence. I was meant to help somebody else with my story. And when I finally understood that, I was like, okay, I got it. Got it. God. Alright, but I could use about five minutes off now. Give me a break and then talk to anybody. Just give me a break from the grief for a while. And I think he has for a while. Oh, yeah. That’s growing up.
Victoria Volk: I think we’re on the same mission, and my story kinda came to be too because you know, it’s one thing to to hold it in. And then once you start using your voice, like you said, it’s healing to hear other people’s stories and to share parts of your own with others. And so I might podcast is called craving voices. Mhmm. You know, people can come on and use their voice because I’ve personally learned that that is a way to heal. Mhmm. And process and, like, as we’re talking about it, we’re kind of we’re processing it. There’s always something else to discover and we don’t connect those dots and we don’t recognize those things when Our lips are sealed.
Tiff Carson: Nope. Absolutely.
Victoria Volk: Then it’s our mind and our ego. That’s just run-in
Tiff Carson: the show. Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: We’re not connecting with our hearts. So
Tiff Carson: Yeah. Soon as you connect with your heart, it all changes.
Victoria Volk: And it’s game on. That’s really hard.
Tiff Carson: It’s game on and it’s like, okay. Here we go. But it’s worth it in my opinion.
Victoria Volk: So what has your grief taught you?
Tiff Carson: It has taught me that I am. I don’t wanna use the word strong. I am really, I’m strong, but I am love. That’s what it’s taught me. Is that I know how to load.
Victoria Volk: Even when it’s hard. Even when it’s tough. Tell me the significance of
Tiff Carson: four forty four. My brother. The moment he died has been showing me four, four, four, four, in the most craziest places. I believe in angel numbers and angel signs and Yeah. From the moment he died, I have been seen four, four, four, four. And Not long after he died, after his funeral, I went to Texas for a work conference. And I was driving on the interstate. My Corpus Christi in this billboard. One of those electronic ones, and all seven, four, four came up on the mailboard. That’s it. I’m, like and then on the radio, his songs came on just, like, right away. Like and that’s when I was, like, So at first, I I didn’t understand the four four four, like, when he first passed. But then when that happened, I was like, oh, that’s your sign for me. Okay. Alright. Fine. And now it’s like everywhere. Like, I actually have screenshots on my phone when I wake up. And I checked my phone and it’s four four four license plates. On the yeah.
Everywhere. Everywhere.
Victoria Volk: I am there’s a website I I I believe in that stuff too. And there’s a website that I I looked it up. And you probably have two, I’m sure. Yes. But what I looked up and what it right says is that angel number four four four brings a message that all as well. Trust that you are on your correct life path and are doing a great job.
Tiff Carson: He is with me, guided me through this whole thing. He was when I was writing the book too. I felt him with me every everywhere when I wrote. Like, I would actually take my I write if I tried to write in my house or No. No.
No way. And I things would distract me. I’d have laundry to do. You name it. Right?
I No. A good show was on. So I would grab this chair of mine, like a beach chair kind of thing. And I would take it out to the mountains and I would sit in the mountains, buy a river, or buy a lake, and I would write. And he was always with me. Always. Like, I can feel him with me. And I would write by I went out to the ocean. I went out to Victoria and Vancouver, and I wrote by the ocean. And how I would describe my writing at some point was the waves when they were coming in were bringing stories to me. They were bringing memories and they were bringing, like, all of our childhood stuff. And, like, it was, like, I was typing and they were, like, bringing them in. And then when they were going out, it was taking all the sadness and all of the pain. And it was just kinda like this in and out. And I have goosebumps right now because that’s how it was working for me. So if I ever couldn’t if I was having a writer’s block or couldn’t get through a part of the book. I would grab my laptop and my my chair and I would head out to the mountains and Yeah. It just came and water and nature was so healing for me. In my writing journey. And when I write my next book? Because I know I’m meant to write another one. I will definitely do the same thing because that’s what worked for me.
Victoria Volk: I love that. Thank you for sharing that. What is the best piece of advice you had received other than, you know, you have to do something with this pain. Mhmm. What was the best piece of advice you received while you were going through all this? And he lost a friendship too, but is that aside from your x?
Tiff Carson: Yes. And that one I’m not quite ready to talk about yet. That one will be definitely in the second bucket. But the best piece of advice, I think, I got was honestly, it was give yourself grace. And First, I didn’t know what that meant.
And I was just like, what does that mean? Give myself grace. And now I find myself saying that took third people, and I actually just made a post about it the other day. It was give yourself grace, and then give yourself more grace, and then give yourself more grace. Because life can be really, really hard, really, really hard.
And you I got up. I got out out of bed and I had a shower and I brushed my teeth and some days, I don’t feel like doing any of that because I’m I would be in a ball crying. Right? Give yourself greats that you’re doing the best that you can. Some days are harder than others. And not to beat yourself up if you’re having a low day. If you don’t feel like walking or or sizing or eating well, or any of the things where you feel you’re feeling? Just give yourself grace and get up and try again.
Victoria Volk: I feel like you shared a lot that I think will resonate with my listeners. But is there anything that you feel you didn’t get to talk about or something you didn’t get to say that you would like to share here at the end?
Tiff Carson: I think I think the thing that I would always wanna say is that no matter what you go through and things that could hurt you or as long as there’s love in your heart or yourself first and foremost, that is what will get you through these hard times. You can love other people, and and I do. I love everybody, including my dad, including my ex, I have love for them. I love them. But if I don’t love myself, it is a much harder journey. And I am absolutely falling in love with me. So
Victoria Volk: I’d say that’s also another thing that grief has taught you. Yes. How to do?
Tiff Carson: Yes. It has taught me how to fall in love with myself. And I’m very grateful for that. And what gives you hope for the future. I have a lot of hope for that future. Like I said, there’s days where I was in the fetal position and just guttural crying. Right? And then there’s days where I’m like, really, really, really excited or what’s to come? Like, I I I have so much that I wanna do and so many people that I wanna talk to and so many places that I wanna see. That’s what gives me hope is that I have that excitement. I have that desire to want to do those things. And if I didn’t have that excitement and that desire, I think I would be a lot more, like, I don’t know, sad, depressed, and all of those kind of but I do I have a lot of excitement for my future. For me, for my kids, for all of it.
Victoria Volk: That’s wonderful. I love that. You know that that for you? I love that for your kids. Yes. Because if you don’t have hope, where’s theirs? Exactly.
Tiff Carson: And I know I used to put them before anything. Anything. And especially with the challenges that we faced with them with schools and doctors and everything. And I literally put them first. And I stopped doing that.
And I put myself first. And I’m taking care of myself first and my well-being and my mental health. And it is helping them because I am getting better. I am tapier. I am more energetic now. I am like all of the things. And by taking care of my cell first, it’s benefiting them.
Victoria Volk: Would you say that that is your advice to parents who are raising children with ADHD and ODD? Absolutely. Because the way that I was doing it before
Tiff Carson: it put me behind the clothes in my closet. And
Victoria Volk: breaking you.
Tiff Carson: Looking for a way out. And I was completely broken completely broken. And it’s when I decided to get help from my self and take care of myself first. That’s when it all started to change. So highly recommend. I understand it’s hard to think that you have time to take care of yourself first when you’re dealing with those kind of things. I’ve been there. I have three of them. Who all of them were challenging are still challenging some days, and I didn’t think I would survive. I quite literally didn’t think I would survive parenting them. And it’s when I made that choice to Take care of me is when it all it all started to get better slowly. Very slowly. But I could see the light. And it gave me hope and I just kept going and going and going.
Victoria Volk: Comes back to cause and effect.
Tiff Carson: Mhmm. Mhmm. Absolutely nuts.
Victoria Volk: Where can people find you if they would like to connect with you and find your book and all the things?
Tiff Carson: I am on social media, so Instagram and Facebook at I m tip carson. And my website is tip carson dot com. And my book dancing and rain is on Amazon, and my podcast is hard, beautiful journey, and you could find that anywhere, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, you need it. It’s on all of them.
Victoria Volk: Thank you so much for sharing. So openly and vulnerability as you did, And I have no doubts that anyone listening to this. There’s a part of your story that will resonate with them.
Tiff Carson: Thank you so much for having me and allowing me to process some my healing, some my grief again.
Victoria Volk: Thank you. Thank you. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, season 5 |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
This week’s guest, Becky Ellis, recounts how her father’s concealed World War II experiences shaped their family life, culminating in her powerful memoir Little Avalanches. Join us as we explore themes of secrecy, resilience, and reconciliation.
Key Highlights:
- Discover how Becky navigated through the silence surrounding her father’s wartime past.
- Understand the challenges she faced while balancing reverence for his heroism against the shadows it cast over their family dynamics.
- Learn about Becky’s decade-long journey to penning Little Avalanches and its role in mending the fractured relationship with her father.
Deep Dive Into Emotional Legacies:
- Grasp how children process trauma differently and why giving them a voice is crucial.
- Witness Becky’s transformation as she listens to her inner child and adult self during writing.
- Feel moved by the harrowing tale of the fateful day at the Mark River, which left indelible scars on her father and all involved.
Becky exemplifies resilience through storytelling, illustrating how unearthing past pains can lead to profound personal transformation and provide voices for those whose narratives are seldom heard. Her life story emphasizes empathy as the key to truly understanding others’ struggles while coping with grief, both inherited and experienced firsthand.
This isn’t just another war story; this is an invitation—to see beyond medals and accolades and into hearts haunted by battlefields far removed from sight and yet ever-present. It’s an exploration of what happens when we confront grief head-on instead of shying away—an acknowledgment that sometimes joy is found not despite sorrow but because we’ve dared to embrace it fully.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
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NEED HELP?
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If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available
Support the Show.
This episode is sponsored by Do Grief Differently™️, my twelve-week, one-on-one, in-person/online program for grievers who have suffered any type of loss to feel better. Click here to learn new tools, grief education, and the only evidence-based method for moving beyond the pain of grief.
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Uncovering the Silent Battles: A Daughter’s Memoir of War and Its Aftermath
In a deeply personal account, Becky Ellis shares her journey of writing Little Avalanches, a memoir that traces her father’s harrowing experiences in World War II and its ripple effects on her family. As the daughter of a combat sergeant who bore his scars in silence, Becky steps into the light to narrate not only his story but also hers—how living with unspoken trauma shaped their lives.
From Silence to Revelation: The Weight of Hidden Stories
For decades, Becky’s father encapsulated the stoic soldier stereotype, keeping his war-induced traumas locked away. It was this fortress of silence that cast long shadows over Becky’s childhood. Like many veterans, he carried invisible wounds that manifested through alcoholism and unpredictable behavior—a common yet under-discussed legacy affecting countless military families.
The act of uncovering these secrets did more than just bring them into the open; it became an integral part of healing for both father and daughter. By sharing stories once buried by time and fear, they began peeling back layers of grief and misunderstanding.
Writing as Catharsis: Penning Little Avalanches
Becky embarked on what would become a decade-long project to pen down Little Avalanches. Despite her extensive background in publishing, confronting her own narrative proved daunting when juxtaposed against her father’s dramatic wartime saga. Yet she persisted, learning to give voice to both tales with equal gravity.
Her memoir is not merely about recounting past events; it is an exploration into how children process trauma differently from adults—often silently—and how crucial it is for them (and their adult selves) to be heard.
Echoes from History: Understanding Generational Trauma
As she delved deeper into storytelling, historical context came sharply into focus—the brutal realities faced by soldiers like her father contrasted starkly with contemporary efforts towards preserving humanity even amidst conflict. Through understanding this evolution in military ethos over time, we gain insight into why certain coping mechanisms were adopted by those who served during earlier wars.
Becky recounts one particularly chilling episode where during the crossing at Mark River under relentless enemy fire led to tragic losses among comrades—a moment etched forever in her father’s memory.
Navigating Family Dynamics Amidst Chaos
The impact didn’t end with him; it rippled outwards affecting familial relationships too complex for any child or sibling dynamic chart could capture accurately enough—from divorce battles between parents to strained ties amongst siblings due largely because each member processed pain differently within such tumultuous setting created by lingering war aftereffects at home front lines alike!
Embracing Grief as Part Of Life’s Tapestry
One key revelation emerges loud clear throughout our conversation—it isn’t about overcoming grief but rather embracing it wholly which allows us truly live fully enriched lives capable joy despite—or perhaps even because —our deepest sorrows pains endured along way…
This poignant realization extends beyond herself touching upon roles played other family members especially mother whose support often went unnoticed until now finally receiving recognition deserved through written word spoken aloud together bringing forth collective catharsis shared universally across generations irrespective backgrounds cultures borders alike…
In conclusion,Grieving Voices offers raw authentic glimpse inside world marked silent battles fought behind closed doors revealing untold stories waiting patiently be told… And so does Little Avalanches, beckoning readers join reflective odyssey understanding profound human costs concealed beneath surface glorified narratives surrounding warfare itself!
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Hello. Hello. Thank you for joining me on grieving voices with my guests today, Becky Ellis. She is a timber wolf pup. The daughter of a highly decorated World War two combat surgeon, she is a veteran of a war fought at home. Sharon to bachelor’s in English literature at UC Berkeley and has over twenty years of experience in the publishing industry. She teaches writing in Portland, Oregon where she lives, plays, and has raised three daughters. Little avalanches, mister Dayview, memoir, and recently won the Ruberry Book Award for non fiction. Thank you so much for being my guests today, and To be honest, I had to look up timber Wolf pup. I had no idea what that was, and just reading through your website, there was one line that really jumped out at me and really resonated with me. And that’s really where I wanna start today. Because I think it’s
Becky Ellis: it’s could be a billboard.
Victoria Volk: It could be a billboard quote. But you say on your website We are profoundly shaped by the secrets we keep and forever changed by the stories we share. I mean, that says it all, really. It says a lot about grief. It says a lot about trauma. It says I mean, there’s a lot packed into those what is that? Seventeen words? Seventeen words. Yeah.
Becky Ellis: Well, thank you so much for having me here, Victoria. I really appreciate being here. And that is the message that inspired me to even write a book to talk about the things I write about because I learned later in my father’s life, all the secrets that he was keeping and realized how much they’d shaped our family. And once he started sharing his story, it it profoundly changed everything about my process, my healing process, my grieving process, who I am, who I’m becoming, and it had a profound impact on me. So Let’s put a
Victoria Volk: pin in that. Sorry.
Becky Ellis: Yeah. Yeah. No. Go ahead.
Victoria Volk: Let’s put a pin in that because I wanna rewind the clock because you’ve been in publishing for many years, what were you writing about before this memoir came out?
Becky Ellis: I wasn’t writing before this memoir. I was I worked for a publisher that specialized in cookbooks and gardening books. And I worked for time in co entertainment, which the brands there are sunset and southern living and cooking light, and I did sales and marketing for those brands. And I’d also worked for a book distributor as a book buyer and a couple of different things in publishing. I love books, And after I graduated from college, I wanted to work with books.
I always thought I wanted to write, but I didn’t know what to write about. And I found something that I needed to write about. So I started learning to write and becoming a writer. I’ve written some essays and a couple of pieces of short fiction, but for the most part, the memoir is my largest body of work.
Victoria Volk: How many years did it take you to write it?
Becky Ellis: Four months? Well, I sort of start the clock when my father started telling me his story. And from that point until it was published a few months ago was a ten year process. So I wasn’t writing that entire time, but I would say ten years from beginning to end.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. So it’s do you find do you look back now and do you find it interesting, curious? Fascinating maybe all of those things that you didn’t know what to write about and yet now that you know what your body of work has created, what you’ve created in little avalanches, like, what is that introspection What did you believe? And what story were you telling you yourself that you didn’t have anything to write about and yet you had lived this life in the shadow of your father’s PTSD as we’ll get to.
Becky Ellis: So one of the things that I learned in the process of writing and processing my childhood and processing our family dynamic and family system and all of that. Is that I always felt like my story was irrelevant compared to my father’s. And although I didn’t have any understanding of what he went through as a combat sergeant in World War two because he wouldn’t talk about it, when I was young, he would fire out he was an alcoholic and he would fire out bits and pieces of really scary story when he was drunk and he would quickly stop himself. And I kind of described that as machine gun fire stories. They were piercing.
They hurt. They were horrible. And I don’t think he wanted to share them, but they came out sometimes, and then he’d stop himself. And I always felt that he was such a decorated war hero even though he never talked about that either. It’s just something that we knew. And I felt the weight of the wound that he carried always. And I felt insignificant compared to that. I felt like I could never have a story as important as his story. So I didn’t even consider my story. In fact, it was one of the greatest challenges in writing a memoir was that my story and my voice needed to be more important or as important as his. And by writing mentor at one time said to me, where are you in this store? Where are you on the page? And I laid out all the pages of the book on my living room floor, and I put a letter on which page my father owned and which page I owned. And it was true. He owns seventy five percent of the story. And that was a huge shift in my process of all of it was just owning my own story and feeling my own story. And what I ended up with is understanding that children’s voices are not very often heard. Children are supposed to act okay, especially when things are not okay. And it’s really hard to allow children to speak. It’s really hard for children to speak because we’re very adaptive. We know when it’s safe and when it isn’t. And it’s also it’s taboo for children to speak. And so I often get a little not a little bit. I often get super scared when I start sharing my story because it still feels taboo for children to speak. But I think to get children a voice in the narrative of even more trauma or any kind of trauma is really important because they aren’t often heard and they don’t have voices and we don’t really consider what they’re thinking and feeling because adults are sort of I know adults really care. I care so deeply. I have to be children three girls of my own. And I care very deeply about what they’re experiencing in a moment of trauma, but it’s really hard to manage. So I think we care and we try. But to actually give them space to voice, I think is is rare. So that that was something that I really wanted to do was make space and give voice, and it was a huge growth process for me. To sort of own my own voice. So my story starts with me as a five year old. And the whole first part of my book is from the voice of a child.
Victoria Volk: What do you tell your five year old self now, your child, your inner child now. Like, before you wrote this book or before this book was coming out and pouring out of you, the you before and the you now? What is the difference? And and and how you show up in the world, but also how you how you show yourself that care and compassion within that you didn’t maybe receive as a child.
Becky Ellis: Right. I’ll start with the dialogue I have with my five year old self, and I still have it a lot, which is I listen to her now. I don’t tell her anything except I I’m listening. And I listen to what she has to say. And I you know, when I was five year old, a five year old and a seven year old and a ten year old, I used to talk to my future self and say, we’re never gonna let this happen. Again, and we’re getting out of here, and we’re gonna move to another continent. You know? Like, we’re not doing this anymore. And I listen to that, and I listen to the promises that she made to us, and I value that. And I think that’s what I do is I pull her into my lap and I say, okay, what do you have to say to me now? Like, where are we? So I think I I have that’s a different relationship that I have with her now. And as far as how I am in the world, I think the process that I went through with hearing my father’s story and sharing mine with him allowed me to find a much deeper place of compassion and empathy for who he is and who I am. I what he ended up doing, and it took several years, but he told me a lot of his combat trauma, a lot of his combat story. And after not talking about it for seventy years, like, he refused to speak about it.
Wouldn’t talk he wouldn’t talk about anything about the past. Not fifty years ago, not five years ago, not five minutes ago. He was a man that moved forward. And did nothing else. But, nope, we’re going forward. We’re not processing the past. We’re not talking about it. We’re on the move. And that was how we survived the war. And that’s how we were surviving life. And so when we slowed down and we had these conversations, he got to a point in his story that was so unimaginable to me and so horrible that for the first time I saw him for who he was, not who I wanted him to be as a father or a grandparent or who I needed him to be as a child, but for who he really was. And in that moment, I was flooded with compassion for him. And I think it’s really rare that we see our parents or our partners or even our children. For who they are and not who we want them to be or who we need them to be. And so dropping my expectations and desires for him gave me I think I think empathy was not a feeling I really had for him before, to be honest, because he was tough. And I was just flooded with empathy. And I began to see the connections from his experience to my experience and what how my childhood was shaped. And I now try to see other people for their reasons and their own experience. Apart from my experience, people have their own experience. And it’s different from it’s different from ours. And so I think it has changed me in that way. It’s really hearing people’s deeper stories I think we can see them for who they are apart from ourselves.
Victoria Volk: Do you have siblings?
Becky Ellis: I do. Yeah. My father had eight children. Had four wives and eight children. So I have one whole brother, my brother Martin who’s a year older than I am and I have a younger sister, Sheena, who comes from my father’s wife after my mother. And the three of us are very close because we were kind of raised together. Then I have two brothers that came with his fourth wife And I have and and I know them well and I’m close with them. And I have three siblings, half siblings from his first marriage who he abandoned those children. So I don’t know them well.
Victoria Volk: So were your your parents, did they end up divorcing?
Becky Ellis: Yes. They were married about,
Victoria Volk: is your mom still living? She is
Becky Ellis: we celebrated her ninety fourth birthday last week. Wow. You go.
Victoria Volk: And your father.
Becky Ellis: My father passed away three years ago at the age of ninety six. Wow.
Victoria Volk: Nice. Isn’t that amazing? Like, I feel like it’s amazing that despite so much grief and trauma, that he lived in ninety six. And I just I imagine your mother too. Like, she was living in the same household. Like, she was going through that same similar experience, not same. Of course, it’s going to be different for her being the spouse. So after the divorce, did you continue to live with your mother then? Or did you live with your father? Or
Becky Ellis: Yeah. There was a huge custody battle. For my brother and I between my parents because my father had abandoned his first three children. He drove away and just never saw him again. And his youngest was nine months old and his oldest was six years old. And well, my mother has told me my father tried to contact them several times when after he he wasn’t successful. And I think he really regretted that. And so he wasn’t gonna make the same mistake with my brother and I. So there was a really big traumatic custody battle And we’re in, you know, my brother and I were pulled into court, and the judge asked us who we wanted to live with, which is a horrible thing to ask a child. But we ended up my mother had primary custody, although they had joint custody. So we spent we we technically lived with my mother. Every other weekend, we went to my father’s. And we spent half our summers in every other holiday with my father, so we were back and forth constantly. And my mother constantly moved around the state of California. She wasn’t allowed to live California. Leave California. So we moved around she moved around California trying to get away from him.
Victoria Volk: So during your visitation, was it, like, this environment that you just couldn’t wait to get out of? Yes.
Becky Ellis: It was. He married Judy, who was my stepmother. And while she was super fun. It was, I think, nineteen or twenty when they met and married shortly after that. So she was pretty much a child too, and my dad was about fifty at the time.
There are forty late forties. She was hippie from the sixties. Your archetypal hippy. She smoked pot. She did drugs. She was fun. But she was also inappropriate. And My dad was an alcoholic, and so it was really scary and unstable and unpredictable what was going to happen when we went to my dad’s. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: So I read in your website your dad became a doctor. Yeah. So amongst kind of the chaos that was ensuing in his internal life, he somehow managed to get his doctorate, PhD, MD, whatever he got.
Becky Ellis: MD. Yeah. He so he came back from the war in nineteen forty five. In January, early January. Within a couple weeks, he enrolled in college He was went to Case Western Reserve University. He got his bachelor’s in two years and he got his doctor his MD in four years after that. So within six years, he got his bachelor’s that came in MD, married and had three children. He married a couple months after he got home. He married his high school sweetheart and began having children right away. That’s what he did. And he talked to me a lot about how he became an alcoholic because the nightmares were so horrible. He could not sleep. And so he would drink until he passed out so that he could even fall asleep because he was afraid of sleep and that was his method of getting to sleep. And he would get up the next day and do the whole thing again. He went to school, he studied, he drank, he woke up, He went to school. He studied he drank. I’m sure he tried to take standards or maybe any standards wasn’t an optimal father figure. Yeah, at that time.
Victoria Volk: It’s almost like he had this, you know, like we say in grief recovery, like workaholism, can be a distraction and a disturb, short term energy relief behavior for people to avoid the pain and avoid the grief and the trauma and all of that. And it sounds like that he became a professional at that. And Yes. Outwardly, it would look like, oh, he’s an overachiever. He’s you know, successful and, you know, it’s like these outward appearances only tell a fraction of the story.
Very little of
Becky Ellis: the stats that I really which is true for all of us in our everyday lives. We’re not well known, I don’t think.
Victoria Volk: That’s a good that’s a true statement. That feels like a true statement.
Becky Ellis: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: So you mentioned the nightmares and the dreams and things like that and I don’t know for you as a child growing up as a child grieber, but I remember distinctly my dreams and nightmares being in my dreams I was this giant. I was a giant. And I would imagine being able to just pick things up and move things at my will and be able like, it was like I was bigger than life. And I remember watching William Neeson was in a movie called a monster calls. I think I cried during that whole movie. Because it’s about this little boy whose mom dies of cancer. And his it’s like his dream comes to life and in the dream he meets this big monster. And it was like seeing my dreams come to life on this in this movie. I think it’s based on a book too, and I highly recommend it for adults who are child who are child reavers because I think there’s a part of that story that you would probably deeply resonate with, but what were your dreams growing up? Do you remember?
Becky Ellis: Yeah, it’s interesting. I have one that I remember, super clearly, that was a reoccurring dream. And I I pay really close attention to my dreams. Now, I’ve been in, young, analysis for over a decade now. So we do a lot of dream work in that, my therapist and I. Because I think the dreams are an a message to the conscious mind. And I read somewhere in an open dream just like, leaving a unopened letter from your subconscious mind, like leaving a letter unopened if you don’t really examine them. So I don’t always do it, but it’s a method. And from my childhood, my reoccurring dream is that I it’s so personal. It’s so weird.
But I was in a station wagon with my siblings. And there were wolves trying to get us, right, nipping at the tailgates down and they’re trying to jump in and trying to devour us. And they’re nipping at the, you know, the back fender, those silver fenders that Old Station Wagons used to have. So it was always kind of trying to get away from the bad guys, which makes a whole lot of sense to me now. And it didn’t make any sense to me then. But you mentioned at the introduction, you didn’t know what a timber Wolf pop is. And for your listeners, at timber Wolf, is sort of the call name for the hundred and fourth infantry division. Every division has its own sort of nickname or a nickname and they were the timberwolves. And their logo is a their patch is a it’s green with a wool oh, kind of silver Wolf head with its jaws open and bearing its teeth. That is their logo. And their motto is nothing in hell can stop the timber wolves. And while a lot of timber wolves were stopped because my father’s infantry division, his unit, had a three hundred percent casualty rate though he saw so much death and experienced, I’m sure, so much grief. That it’s unimaginable to me how a person could go through that much grief. And my father told me, I think it was their thirteenth day of battle. There was just a huge massacre and he lost most of his men in this battle. And he said after that point, he stopped remembering men’s names. He didn’t wanna know them anymore. He didn’t wanna know he could he said he couldn’t handle the grief. And he always stood by men were not friends. If we were friends, we could not have survived the grief of the war. So we needed each other. We absolutely depended on each other, but we could not warm friendships because we we couldn’t have survived the grief.
Victoria Volk: And it’s so different today in the military. You know, it’s still different today. Fortunately, you know, now it’s like no man left behind or woman left behind and But you know that
Becky Ellis: I think they had that spirit as well, but they were in a situation where they they couldn’t they couldn’t do that. They my father has also shared with me that, you know, the training in the military is to dehumanize the soldier. And you cannot run into machine gun fire, and you cannot go to war unless you’re dehumanize. He said it’s absolutely horrible, but it’s utterly necessary. And I feel like the the same spirit what’s there then is don’t leave anyone behind, but you also sometimes don’t have a choice. You know? I’m sure there are times now when they also don’t have a choice.
Victoria Volk: Well, and what happens to is what what you really leave behind is the essence of who you are. Yeah. You know, he left behind himself who he was before.
Becky Ellis: Right. And your humanity.
Victoria Volk: What was his do you mind sharing? One of the stories that touched you the most? That he shared with you?
Becky Ellis: There are so many that are so horrific.
Victoria Volk: Maybe one that gave you a glimpse into a side of him that you never saw but that expressed maybe the humanity that existed amongst the timber wolves maybe.
Becky Ellis: So what’s coming to me right now is a story that that thirteenth day that I talked to you about was the crossing of the Mark River. And he my father thought in the European theater. And the chaplain came out to the men’s holes the night before. My father, the timberwolves, I’ll just say, a little bit of background. They were at battle for one hundred and ninety five consecutive days, which is more than six months time. And it’s longer than any other infantry division in World War two. And on the thirteenth day, which understand. These are eighteen and nineteen year olds, twenty year olds, his thirteenth day in battle. They crossed the Mark River. Which for anybody that was there could never forget it because it was so horrific. They were trying to cross the river. Where the Germans were on the other side, and they were going through Belgium and trying to try and deliberate Belgium. And the Germans were occupying the other bank. And they were just the night before the chaplain came to their holes. They pretty much slept in mud for the entire time they were on the battlefield. They didn’t sleep in beds or anything like that. And they the chaplain came to their holes and let them read them their last rites the night before this battle because they knew. They were they were going into pretty much a massacre. And so my father made it to the other side of the river, and all of his men were or most of his men were taken out very, very quickly. And I I kinda go into detail in the book about it, about some of the things that happened in that in those couple of hours that they were over there.
But one of the things that struck me so deeply about this humanity that we’re talking about is that my father said he used to swear and yell and call his men every bad name in the book to get him to move to, like, shock him out of shock. And to yell at him. And at one point, my father decided to abandon the mission, which he said to hell with what the general wants. I’m getting these boys out of here. So he founded it, he ran into it, started running back to the river, and he kept yelling at this one guy to get up, get up, run, run, run. And one of the men had died and the other the friend of that man, their names were Jack and Jimmy. And I believe it was Jack that had Jimmy that had died and Jack threw himself over Jimmy’s body and his face was half gone and half of his body was gone, but Jack Jack was not going to leave. And my father said, I couldn’t get him to budge. So they kept going. He had to get his guys out of there. And because they’re under fire, this horrible fire. And so my father ended up down at the Bank of the River. And he told his guys to just start swimming, even though they’re still under a tremendous amount of fire. And the guys some of the guys wouldn’t get in the water because they didn’t know how to swim. And so my dad got in the saw a boat on the other side, gotten the water swam over to get it, brought it back, some guy started jumping in the boat. He’s like, don’t get in the boat. Starts yell. I’m not gonna use all the profanity that he shared with me on his podcast. Yelling at them don’t get into the boat. They they held onto the boat with just their eyes out of the water and got to the other side of the river. But and then there’s some things that happened on the other side of the river that were profoundly disturbing because everybody’s nerves are raw. He said they were so frozen cold. There were ice there was ice in the river also, and so many men had been lost in the river. It was full of bodies and this whole thing. But they got to the other side of the river and were so frozen and exhausted. They had to crawl up the river bank. But when they were able to get back across the river two days later when they were finally able to the the whole division was able to cross. They came across Jack and Jimmy. And Jack was still Jack had died. And there were my dad said there was not a scratch on him. And he said he thinks he died of grief. That he just lay over his friend and and died. And it it almost brings me to tears just that the tragedy that these boys went through. So that’s one small little story. When my dad told me his story, I started taking notes on a yellow piece of paper. And then after a few weeks of hearing him. I started recording him, and I have hours and hours of his recording. But Oh, what was I gonna tell you about that? I can’t remember. Just lost my trade of thought thinking about documenting his story. Oh, it ended up. This is what I was gonna say. Thank you for giving me a moment to recall. His story I wanted to get it right, and I when I wrote it all out, got the timeline all straightened out. It was over three hundred pages long. And I don’t think that we can handle that much grief and horror. So I reduced it down to about thirty two pages. Sort of like a fine bezomic reduction. And so it’s enough to really give an idea of what war without glory is and what really happens on the battlefield within one soldier’s psyche and amongst the amongst the men amongst the boys and men who were fighting that the dynamics of that as well. And that’s once what the story I just told you is probably the longest day that I go into because I go into that. Story in detail. One reason is that my father earned a silver star for that going over and getting the boat and coming back but he would never talk about it’s one of the first questions I asked him when I started talking is, please tell me about your silver star. Because he had a plaque of it on his wall, but over his desk, his home office desk, he always had it framed. And he would say he wouldn’t talk about it, but he would say he didn’t do anything different that day than any other soldier did every single day. It was no different than anything anyone else did. And he doesn’t know why he got it, but he kept it in the memory of all of them and what they did.
Victoria Volk: Thank you for sharing and for writing his story and documenting his story because It’s those stories of that generation that so many have been lost, I think. Not documented. Again, I think it’s absolutely somewhat of a miracle that he live to age ninety four. Right? Ninety four?
Becky Ellis: Ninety six. Ninety six. Ninety six. Yeah. Yeah.
That’s just he was tough, my dad. You know? And I I talked to him a lot about survival and surviving and the things we survived. And he said to me, you know, Becky, the human will to survive is astounding. He said, it is there there is such a strong will to survive inside the human spirit. And I think that’s what kept him alive that whole time. That and a lot of good luck. You know?
Victoria Volk: Did he spend a lot? Oh, go ahead.
Becky Ellis: Well, he also took really good care of himself, I would say, physically, emotionally, and mentally. It’s a whole another story. You know, you mentioned about him being a doctor and he was a doctor and back in the fifties when he became a doctor, everyone was a GP. So he was a surgeon and an OB and he was all with things. And my mom says, he was one of the best diagnosticians that she ever met. She was a nurse for her whole career. And I think that he he read constantly in the, you know, the medical journals and he was always up on different things. And when he developed prostate cancer, given the man with such a strong well power, he completely changed his diet. And he had no problem doing things like that. And when I was four thirteen, he stopped drinking. And one day, he just stopped. And that was the end of it. And he never drank again after that. He had one small relapse. His his wife at the time Actually, I give her a lot of credit because she said, this is it. I’m leaving if you don’t stop drinking. And so he stopped. And he had one tiny relapse I don’t know, within that year, but then that was the end of it, for the next, what, fifty years he never drank again. Through the very strong well power as well.
Victoria Volk: So even though I stopped drinking, that didn’t change, like that anger, that seat with her. What was it that was still being expressed from him? That, like, how did he show up then? In his life after he stopped drinking?
Becky Ellis: Well, he felt much more safe to me after he stopped drinking. But he was still combating PTSD. The war never left my father. He left the war, but it never left him. And he was still unpredictable. He was he still put us in dangerous situations. And when I asked him, when he was eighty nine is when he started talking to me. He came to my home in Portland, Oregon where I live. And he asked me if we had any issues to clear up. I know. I think he thought that I was gonna say we’re fine. Look around. I have a beautiful home. I have great kids. I go on great make it look around. Everything’s wonderful. But I thought this is my chance. I wanna know about the war. I wanna know about all this trauma we’ve been through. And so that’s when he started talking to me about it. So he was still in his later years unpredictable. I didn’t really know how he was gonna show up sometimes. And when we started talking, we talked, you know, for until until his the last year of his life, and we talked constantly about he would say, oh, there’s one more thing I forgot to tell you. It’s really important you need to know this or you need to know that. And I had the opportunity during that time to talk to him about my childhood and process a lot of that with him. And one of the things that I had asked him was Why did you do some of the things with us? If I put your grandchildren, my daughters, and that those situations, you would be curious with me. And he explained that he put himself in dangerous situations after the war to continue to prove to himself that he could survive. And he put the people he loved in those situations too to continue to prove to himself that we would survive. Because he was constantly in fear of our survival. So he would, you know, try to make us as tough as we could possibly be. He did things like, had me get my teeth drilled without Novocaine as a child. So I would be tough so I could handle things. And stuff like that. It was the survival mechanism. And I think his will to survive was incredibly strong.
Victoria Volk: I once read that, like, children who experience trauma and and things and probably even adults if they’ve experienced trauma you know, you can kinda get attracted to trauma or scary situations or put yourself in those situations in order to it’s almost to, like, not relive, but hone those skills of survival or hone those skills of of, yeah, I think survival. And so when you say that, that’s not that doesn’t sound unusual to me. Just knowing what are you thinking about grief and trauma?
Becky Ellis: Right. I think that’s I think we practice things that we think we need to know. Where I wish we were practicing compassion and grieving instead. And and I know we are now, and I know I am now. And I’m glad I’ve kind of gotten over that hump of being attracted to trauma, being attracted to adventure. I mean, when I was in college, I went to UC Berkeley and was on the ski team, and I had no problem jumping off of cornices. I wouldn’t do that now. You know, and I see the I see the risk taker in me that I was. I was also careful. You know, I was a very calculated risk taker. I said, I can see that.
Victoria Volk: You mentioned your dad started to talk to you and he kind of initiated this opening up at age eighty nine, was that before or after his diagnosis of prostate cancer?
Becky Ellis: It was about ten years after.
Victoria Volk: Okay.
Becky Ellis: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: So it’s almost as if he had, like, this premonition of, well, I suppose he’s eighty nine, like, how much time do I have left? Like, he he I think he just you know, do you think he really just wanted to unburden himself and maybe give you what he felt you needed to?
Becky Ellis: Well, I asked him what he was doing. I said, what are you doing, dad? Are you making the rounds? Are you trying to clear up old business? And he I and I reminded him, I said, don’t forget. You promised you were gonna outlive all of us because that he would always say that. No. Don’t worry about me. I’m an outlive ball. You. And I think my father’s mortality was always with him. I don’t think you can go to war and not be confronted with your mortality constantly. But I also think that he didn’t really believe in his mortality because he had survived so long. And I think that finally caught up with him. I’m not sure. I don’t know exactly. People ask me that a lot, and it’s funny that I don’t have a factual answer because that’s a question I didn’t ask. I didn’t say why now, really. I kind of did. I kind of asked, but I didn’t really dig into the depths of that. Why now? I think I felt so grateful that he was finally talking. I didn’t want I it didn’t occur to me as why now. It just felt like the right time, I think. I it felt like he was ready. And it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy to get him to start talking. He told me when I said I wanna know about the war. He said, all you need to know about the war is my feet were frozen for a hundred and seventy two days. And I said, I’m sure there’s more dad. And back and forth we went, and I think that these conversations are really hard to get started. And these deeper conversations of sharing our deeper selves, they’re they’re hard to get started. And they take time and they take drawing out And we went back and forth for a couple hours at my kitchen table while we ate our tuna sandwich, and he finally started to talk. So I do think I do think patience is really required when we want to. Process with someone else or understand someone else more deeply.
And persistence. Patients and persistence.
Victoria Volk: The parent that you were before these conversations versus the parent after? How do you think that shifted things for you?
Becky Ellis: That’s a great question. I mentioned that I I thought my dad said or or I I said that I thought my dad would think everything was fine, and I would say we don’t have any issues. We’re fine. Look around. I thought that I had escaped my childhood. And I realized in the process that I had been hiding from it, that I hadn’t really escaped it at all, that I had carefully curated this life. As an escape from it, but it was really like a bunker and I was hiding from my life. And I have a lot of regret about role modeling that for my daughters. My father raised me in his likeness they say veteran father warrior daughter. And I think in a lot of ways, that’s true. And I can be very competent strident, capable, and assertive. And knowing that about me, you wouldn’t think that I didn’t have a voice because I can perform as a very strong woman, but I really wasn’t voicing that person you asked me about at the beginning, that five year old inside me, she had no voice in my life. And while there were times when I’d go to model in in domestic issues, I didn’t really have my voice who I was I was hiding from myself, and I have a lot of regret about role modeling that for my children. And after going through the process. And my process included talking with my father and writing my memoir, and there was so much grief that was processed in those in that time. I feel like sometimes I even grieve the person I was before that whole process started. Because she gets her life sometimes more easily, not more joyfully or more fully, but more easily than I do now sometimes. Right? I mean, once we process everything. I think we’re much deeper feelers and deeper thinkers and all of that. And and we I speak for myself and living my life much more fully and not hiding from it, but it’s scary. You know? I talk about living an openhearted life, and that takes work. That takes work every single day. And it’s hard and it takes courage and all of those things. So sometimes I grieve who I was before this whole process began for me. And I think my children absolutely have seen a shift and my relationship with them has changed. And I’ve learned how to have the deep messy complicated conversations where we can understand each other. And they can see me for my experience and understand me better for the parent I am. And I can see them for their experience and understand them better for the childhood they had and not the one that I had. Because I think for a while I was putting my own childhood experience on them, but they didn’t have my childhood experience. They don’t know what it’s like to get your teeth drilled without Nova King. You know, thank goodness they don’t know. So I was kind of mothering from a place of that they had experienced some of the trauma I had when they hadn’t. So we’re able to have those complicated conversations now and I feel like I I see them for for who they are.
Not for how I was. That makes sense?
Victoria Volk: No. It does, completely. I resonate with that too.
Becky Ellis: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: You had talked about you mentioned the word regret and did your dad ever share any of, like, what his greatest regret was? Or I imagine he had probably many, but any of that he shared outright with you?
Becky Ellis: Was it really a man that talked about that, to be honest? I can’t I think he had so much deep regret and grief for the things that he couldn’t control. And I don’t think he looked at life as regrets. And one of the last things he said to me was, We all did the best we could. I I think he really believed that. I believe that. I believe that we’re all doing the best that we can do with the tools and the skills and the situations we’ve been given. And I think because he really believed that, that he wasn’t really filled with too much regret.
Victoria Volk: One of my recent episodes. It was episode two zero two with Yvonne Caputo. Her dad was a World War II vet and she had talked about how her dad opening up to her about his experiences in the war and things. It was the catalyst for them to really have these deeper conversations and and particularly for him his end of life. Was that the same experience for you?
Becky Ellis: Absolutely. It was. Because I was so guarded toward him, you know, I I think every little girl and every woman wants their father’s love so deeply. And so I felt like I had a loving relationship with my father and I I fought for that probably every day of my life, but I was so guarded against him that when we started talking And when we started talking, it was not we didn’t go deep fast. It was, you know, he rattled off. DAF Sergeant, First battalion company, see four hundred fifteenth regiment, a hundred and fourth infantry division. But he said it hard and fast like he had said it at thousand times before. And then I had to stop right there and say, wait a second. I don’t even know what you just said. I don’t know what that means.
And so we talked about kind of the surface level stuff of how armies are divided, and how many men were really in his unit. And when he told me his mortality rate, I was like, hang on, do the math for me. I don’t understand what how you get to three hundred percent if you’re alive and all that kind of stuff. And then we started going after a time into the deeper places. And it would be a curiosity of mine and wanting to know more about a person or experience and trying to fully understand it. But I wasn’t sharing my experience at all with him. I was just taking and listening and holding space. But then after he started getting into some of the deeper things, I started dropping my guard, and I started sharing my deeper self with him. And so him opening up was definitely the catalyst for me being able to share my deeper stories and my deeper questions with him because I was not going to when he said, do we have any issues? I was not going to start with, yes, I have this issue because I expected And and honestly, I received when I first would bring things up. He would say things like, oh, come on. You weren’t neglect. Did. You you you know, you had the most fun of anybody, you know. And this was his narrative.
Like, so not really. Like, let’s let’s talk about this. Like, this was my experience, you know. And and he defended against that, you know. You know, oh, you kids have the run of the house kind of a thing. You tore around the basement, you know, that kind of stuff. And and we did get to the deeper places. I think he did have an understanding of my me and my story in the end.
Victoria Volk: Did he exit this life as he wanted? No.
Becky Ellis: I was with my father when he passed away, and I had the privilege to be with another friend when she passed away. So I’ve been with two people. And I’ve had other friends pass away. And someone once said to me, we die the way we live. And I believe that is the case with my father. I believe that he exited the way he lived, hanging on to the very end, fighting it all the way. Fighting for his life until his last prep. I don’t know if that’s how he wanted it. The the setup for how he passed away, which was at home. Is what he definitely insisted on. It wasn’t about my father wanted. It’s what my father got. What my father wanted he got. That’s the way things went. He refused to go into any kind of assisted care of any kind and he he passed away in his home and that is what he wanted. But as far as that deeper place of surrender, I don’t know. I don’t know if he talked there. See if I said talking in the last couple days of his life. He entered that phase of death where he stopped talking. And I hope he found some peace in that.
Victoria Volk: How has this changed? How you’re approaching the relationship? How is the writing experience? And subsequent passing of your father changed how you approach the relationship with your mother?
Becky Ellis: My mother’s been super supportive of my writing all along. I think she’s read every draft of my story. And her of my book. And I wanted her to be a part of it, and she’s definitely a primary character in it. While she wasn’t for a while, I was given advice from an editor that said Even when one parent has passed away, they are still a part of the story and you have to make them a central figure in your story because they are a central figure in your life even when they’re gone.
And so she became a significant part of my story. And I think that he is a person who is sort of a supportive person to many people. She was a nurse. And she played the role of nurse in her life also. Kind of that very important person, but that doesn’t get a lot of credit. For how strong she had to be to endure what she endured because my father really went to battle with her And I think that having her story be read now is exposing her in ways that she didn’t anticipate. And those ways are that people are seeing her now. Her family, there’s so many things she never even told her. Family. And I think she’s being seen now for what she went through, and I think she’s feeling the compassion of others. I she came to a book reading I did in the San Francisco area in Oakland. And reader went up to her and said, you are the hero of this story. And I wanna thank you for that. And it was so deeply touching to me. So I think she’s coming around to realizing what an important person she really was. In my life. I’m sure she felt like she was, but she had was in a really hard position, and I think she’s being acknowledged for that. Now, and I think that’s probably deeply meaningful to her. I feel like there’s there’s something that I have learned that we all wanna be seen and heard. So I think my mother feels seen and heard now, but even more than being seen and heard, I think we wanna be felt. And the experience with my father, you know, it’s that I feel you, feeling me, when we are felt, when we can feel someone feeling us, I think that is where the magic happens and that is where healing truly happens. It’s not just being seen and heard. That’s one thing. But being felt is something completely different. And I think my mother feels felt now. I think her experience feels felt by others. To her. And I think that is healing.
Victoria Volk: It’s that well of compassion and empathy that pours out.
Becky Ellis: Mhmm. Did
Victoria Volk: she ever go on to find love again?
Becky Ellis: She did. She’s been married for, I don’t know, over forty years now. Yeah. She didn’t marry someone that much unlike my father. Oh, that’s a little interesting, but she’s married. Yes. Maybe another book. Maybe.
Victoria Volk: Different kind of book. So out of all of this experience. And, I mean, we didn’t even get to the other grief experiences you’ve experienced in your life because what I know about grief is it’s like luggage. If it stacks up and we drag it with us, And if you’re open to sharing it, you know, those other experiences, please do. But, oh, go ahead.
Becky Ellis: Well, there’s so much, you know, grieving is such a central part of the human experience. And we feel like it’s so intimate and so unique and personal. That I think we try to do it alone. And I think it’s so much more healing and powerful when we can share it with others, which is why I appreciate the work that that you’re doing so much. And I feel like there’s so much to creep in life, you know. I feel like, you know, the paradox of there is no light without darkness. And there is no joy without grief. And the more grief you feel, I feel like, the more joy you can so feel. And so when I say there’s so much to grieve in life, it’s not that oh, life is sad and horrible and everything’s darkness. There is so much light and joy and life too. And holding both of those, I think is is where I wanna be. And that I think is mental health is when you can hold both of those. But there’s so much degree even about the loss of my childhood. And the, you know, I grew up way too fast. So many of us grow up way too fast. And the idea of grieving that, I think is important. You know, like, I think grief is so important to do and feel so that you can feel the joy on the other end of that grief. And I often grieve like the woman and person I could have become if only. You know, and then fill in the blank. If only I had a father who, this or that, if only I had a supportive child If only I had the opportunity for these things as a child, you know, there’s so many if only as I could go in and I often grieve like I wonder who I could have become if I didn’t have all this trauma in my childhood. That’s one that I still work with, you know. Because there are a lot of trauma triggers out there. But but, you know, those are some that I think about about this in terms of grief and and what? And I feel like, you know, I feel like our culture doesn’t doesn’t address grief or death very well because grief is really the death of anything. Right? It’s the death of the childhood or the opportunity for to be this kind of person or whatever. And a a friend of mine once taught me, she said, you know, Becky Flowers or a deaf practice. I said, oh, say more about that. She said, well, when you receive flowers, they’re going to die. And what kind of person are you? Are you the kind of person that throws out the whole book pay when a couple start wilting? Or do you take them out one by one as they die? And what do you do with them? You know? You just toss the whole bunch in the trash. And I’m like, wow. Like, that’s kind of amazing. So now whenever I get flowers, I use it as a duck practice in a beautiful way. You know? I don’t cry over them and spend days mourning the death of the flowers, but I acknowledge that this is the process, death is human experience. And it’s something that we’re all going to get to experience at some point. And it’s an opportunity, I think. I think we need these opportunities to practice.
Victoria Volk: What’s interesting that you bring that up? The flowers when I was going through my when I first started my grief processing journey, I started to collect plants. I’m now a hoarder of plants. Why? Because plants don’t die? Plants don’t die. I mean, they can. I mean, if you’re not gonna care for and nurture them. Right? But it’s something to nurture and care for. And I think that can also be a practice in giving love to something that maybe you’re struggling to give in other aspects of your life. So I think that was that’s the significance of plants for me.
Becky Ellis: That’s beautiful. Some of my plants die. In fact, I’d love to garden. And sometimes I get the plant that’s not supposed to survive in my climate, but I’m determined, but I’m gonna keep it alive anyway, and I don’t. And so it’s a reminder though that we need nurturing and care and the right environment to survive.
Right? We can’t survive in all environments. We just can’t.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. We’re not built to. You know, there there is going to be these environmental things that will challenge our ability to thrive, right, just like plants.
Becky Ellis: Yeah. Yeah. There are environmental things that challenge her ability to survive. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: You kind of alluded to it already, what grief has taught you, but is there anything else you would like to elaborate on that?
Becky Ellis: I think grief has taught me to embrace it, to embrace the depth of it, and and to go to the places that it takes me and to be open to what it’s going to teach me. To embrace it and feel it fully. It’s not something I think we I think we move through it. I don’t think we ever moved beyond it. And I I did say I think it’s part of the human condition. And I think a lot of us try to look away from that, look away from you know, the darker parts of the human condition. And I think that’s avoidant. And I think it blocks us from feeling some of the best parts and experiencing some of the best parts of the human condition too. My my effort is to live it all fully.
Victoria Volk: On that note, what’s next for you? What are you looking forward to?
Becky Ellis: You know, every day, I look forward to the conversations I can have where we share our deeper stories. And what’s next is me sharing some of that with an an ongoing format. I mean, sharing some of that with the people in my community. I’m I’m starting a newsletter authors are told to do this, but I thought I don’t even know what to say to people. Honestly, I know it sounds a little bit loudicrist, but sometimes I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what people want to know from me. I don’t know what I know, you know. And so it’s the thing that readers keep asking me about is how did you have this conversation walk us through it? Because I really wanna talk to my mom and the only thing she’s gonna talk to me about is the broken furnace or I really wanna talk to my dad or my brother and he won’t stop talking about football. And so I’ve been in those situations and plenty of them. And so I’ve done a lot of research and done a lot of exploring and discovering on how do we get to those deeper places with our neighbors and our friends and the people who we’re not well known to, but we’re around all the time. How do we do that? And so I’ve started a newsletter where I’m gonna share the deep conversations that I’m having. And one of them is one I had with my mom on her ninety fourth birthday. And there’s a that’s what’s immediately next for me.
Yeah.
Victoria Volk: When you were talking about, you know, see if I can recall my thought that I had that escaped my brain and as I was listening to you. But on kind of the the threat of regret. Is there a part of you that wishes that you could have had that conversation and maybe open yourself sooner to trust me, I believe that things happen in divine timing. And but at the same time, that doesn’t change how we feel. Right? And do you have any regret or wishing that those conversations would have happened sooner with your dad that
Becky Ellis: There are a few things that I’m absolutely certain about, but this is one of them. And the answer is yes. I wish I could have. I I end the first part of my book, my childhood with when I come back I studied abroad when I was a sophomore in college and after my study abroad in London, I traveled through Europe. And while my father said, don’t you step foot in Germany, it’s not safe there. I, of course, went to Germany. And I guess it’s gonna do what I wanted as a twenty year old. And when I was in Germany, I met an SS officer and talk about divine timing. And It was such a profound experience, but I was with two girlfriends, and he came to our table and sat down with us in a German Brewhouse, and he wanted to talk to us. And he cried. It’s almost like he was flash forwarding for me what I was gonna get to do with my dad fifty or not fifty, whatever, thirty years later. And he confessed his his he talked about his regret. He confessed his not the acts that he did, but the his participation in the war. And he suggested that we go to docile. And so the next day, my girlfriends and I went to docile. And anyone who’s been to a concentration camp museum. Well, it’s a very moving experience. And when I was there, I thought, oh, god, this is why my dad wouldn’t talk about it. This is what? How could he talk about this? How can anybody talk it? It’s so horrible. It’s so hard to process and feel and talk about. But when I came back, I had a determination that I was going to find out if this is why he wouldn’t talk about it. And I thought this is my opening to talk about it. Like, now I have an understanding. Right? As a twenty year old, I thought, oh, now I get it. Because my father’s division did liberate Nordhuizen concentration camps. So while it wasn’t doco, it was a horrible experience for anybody that was there. And I thought, oh, this is this is my opening. I can I can talk to him now? But within seconds, So I tried. You know, I walked in the door, I haven’t seen him in months, and, you know, this is what I wanted to do, and I had this agenda, and I thought this is what I was gonna do. And I really wanted it, but he shut me down absolutely and immediately. In the way that he could shut someone down, which was, are you trying to ruin this beautiful day? You know? And that piercing look and that steely cold. I’d say he my father is like a glacier that I was trying to crack open with a pick xerist. Teaspoon or something, you know. But but I wish that we could have had the conversation back then. I wish I could have gone through this process back then. That’s one of the things, like, I wonder who I would have been if only. I wonder how I would have spent the last thirty years. And I also believe in divine timing like you do. And so I accept the fact that it happened when it was supposed to happen. And I appreciate that.
Victoria Volk: I’ve been to taco
Becky Ellis: to Cadia. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Thank you so much for sharing. This has been a lovely conversation. Much of it I resonate with and and I wish I would have read your book before we chatted. Is there anything that you feel like you didn’t get to share that you think that is on your heart or that you feel would be beneficial to listeners.
Becky Ellis: I don’t think so. I just encourage people to out the conversation, say the thing that they’re not saying. I think most people have something that they’re not saying, a deeper part of themselves that they’re not sharing. And I think it’s important that we start doing that with each other in safe places.
Victoria Volk: It’s like we can hold the fear of how the person will respond, but we can also have the courage that if they don’t respond how we wish, Now it’s releasing the expectations. Right?
Becky Ellis: Right.
Victoria Volk: So it does take two to have a deep conversation, and it might just be that one person isn’t ready. And like you said, to accept that when it will happen is is perfectly when it will happen is perfect timing, right, of when it will happen and to accept that
Becky Ellis: patience and persistence. Patients and persistence. Yeah. Yeah. Where
Victoria Volk: can people find you if they would like to connect with you? And where can they find your book? All those things?
Becky Ellis: I think the easiest place is probably on my website, which is becky ellis dot net. And that’s kind of a portal for all the social media stuff and my book can be found where at bookstores and e retailers Amazon bookshop dot org, those kinds of places. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Well, I will link to that in the show notes. And thank you again for being my guest.
Becky Ellis: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I loved our conversation. I really do appreciate the work you’re doing.
Victoria Volk: And thank you for writing Little Avalanches.
Becky Ellis: Thank you.
Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Grief, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, season 5 |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
We encounter moments that shape our journey in profound ways. Ann Hince’s story is a testament to such transformation—a narrative woven with threads of grief, self-awareness, and, ultimately, healing.
In this week’s episode, I had the privilege of hearing from Ann Hince, an inspiring author, speaker, and spiritual guide. She opened up about her path to healing after enduring profound trauma and grief.
Key Points Discussed:
- Ann’s Transformation: After releasing deep-seated grief from childhood traumas—including finding her mother dead—Ann experienced physical changes in her body.
- Childhood Trauma: Ann opens up about the multiple layers of grief stemming from being born with a physical condition, given up for adoption into a family already dealing with loss, experiencing a house fire, attending boarding school under challenging circumstances, dealing with alcoholic parents, and ultimately losing her mother at age 19.
- Discovery Journey: The pivotal moment came when Ann realized that past traumas were affecting her present life. This epiphany occurred during an altercation, leaving her mind spinning uncontrollably for three days.
- Healing Techniques:
- Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT): Introduced by a holistic physician who helped reduce stress associated with traumatic memories.
- Feeling Your Feelings: A method where Ann learned to focus on physical sensations related to emotions until they released.
- Spirituality & Self-Awareness:
- Developing self-awareness through healing practices contributed to exploring spirituality.
- The realization that we are not our bodies and that there is a distinction between body and soul/spirit sparked further interest in spiritual texts.
The connection between inner tranquility and physical health couldn’t be more evident in Ann’s experience: releasing emotional tension nurtured mental well-being. It led to astonishing physical changes—including growing taller!
Her story underscores how self-awareness can catalyze healing across all dimensions—emotional freedom isn’t just about feeling better mentally; it can manifest physically, too.
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.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
The Healing Power of Emotional Freedom: Ann Hince Journey from Trauma to Transformation
The Unseen Scars: When we speak of scars, it’s often the visible ones that come to mind. But what about the scars on our psyche? The emotional wounds that shape our lives in ways we can scarcely imagine? Ann Hince, an author and spiritual teacher, knows these all too well. Her life began with a physical deformity and continued through a maze of grief, instability, and trauma.
A Pivotal Discovery: It wasn’t until she faced intense emotions triggered by a business altercation that Anne realized her reactions were rooted in childhood events. This epiphany set her on a path toward healing—a journey she recently shared with Grieving Voices.
Emotional Release Through EFT: One powerful tool in her arsenal was the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). By dedicating just an hour daily to this practice, Ann started addressing deeply buried emotional memories. Imagine facing your fears head-on every day for sixty minutes—daunting but transformative.
From Reactive to Peaceful: Through consistent use of EFT, something remarkable happened; not only did Anne’s emotional state improve significantly—she became less reactive and more peaceful—but this tranquility rippled outwards into her family life as well.
Growing… Literally!: What’s fascinating is how inner peace translated into physical changes for Anne. She reported growing three-quarters of an inch taller as she released tension held within her body!
Applications for You:
- Start Small: If you’re looking to address past traumas or simply want better control over your emotions, consider starting small with practices like EFT.
- Consistency is Key: Just as it did for Anne, dedicating time each day can lead to profound improvements.
- Mind-Body Connection: Remember that our mental states have tangible effects on our bodies—seeking peace within might be reflected outwardly!
Ann Hince shows us that while trauma may begin early in life—and its impact may seem insurmountable—with dedication and self-awareness tools like EFT at hand, transformation isn’t just possible; it’s achievable.
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Hello. Hello. Welcome to Grieving Voices. Today, my guest is Ann Hince, she is an author, a public speaker, and a spiritual teacher. She shares the story of how she has shifted her skull bones and grown three quarters of an inch as a result of her search for inner peace. And she wants you to know that if she has done it, you can too. Thank you so much for being here. I’m definitely intrigued about your bio, and I’m sure anyone listening is kinda tilted their head to the side and probably as curious themselves. So let’s dig right into the meat and potatoes of what brings you to grieving voices.
Ann Hince: Okay. Thanks for having me, Victoria. It’s great to be here. Yes, I think I would be surprised if I heard that too, like, twenty years ago because I didn’t know what I could do now was possible. But it started by releasing the trauma and releasing the grief from all my childhood traumas, including finding my mother dead on the bathroom floor when I was nineteen. So that’s where it started, but I just my my self awareness deepened as I went through the process of releasing all that trauma all that burden that I’ve been carrying and I just kept going deeper and deeper to a place where now I can put my awareness inside the connective tissue, inside my goal and I can release tension stored in there and I can actually hear and feel the release, you know, sounds It’s like a chiropractor making adjustments or it sounds like old fabric ripping that I’m releasing the tension in the connective tissue. So it’s allowed me to kind of adjust my body or realign my body. I just didn’t know this was something that was possible. And it all started with the grief.
Victoria Volk: Let’s rewind the clock to your childhood before you found your mother what were the grief experiences that kind of made that loss of your mother the pinnacle?
Ann Hince: Well, there were multiple. I mean, it started off with actually my birth because I was born with my right foot up against my right chin. So I had Oh. Kind of physical therapy for the first six weeks of my life and after to that, after my foot was back to normal, somewhat, I was handed over for adoption. And I was handed over for adoption into a family that had already suffered a loss because they had well multiple losses actually. But they had adopted a little boy, so they had, you know, my adopted brother who was two years older than me. But then they adopted another little girl. And they had her for quite a while. I don’t know how long, but in back in England at that point, the birth mother could change her mind up to six months. And the birth mother did change her mind.
So they had to hand that little girl back to her mother, and I was the replacement in the family for that loss. So Like
Victoria Volk: like, we often replace puppies. Right? When we lose when, you know, a dog dies, well, we’ll just go get get a new one. Right? So you were the Right placement.
Ann Hince: Yeah. And I think, you know, after a loss like that, you know, as a mother, I think you don’t tend to get as connected to the replacement child just in case the birth mother does that again. Right? So again after six months, my birth mother did not change her mind, so they kept me. And then we started traveling around the world because my dad worked for an international company.
So we moved to Barbados and then to Sierra Leone in West Africa. And while we were there, we had a house fire. And I was the one who woke up and found the flames coming through my veteran Law, so I was one alerted everyone. And as part of the process, I actually went to the top of the stairs. I was about three or four maybe.
Victoria Volk: Oh my gosh.
Ann Hince: To the top of the stairs and called down to my dad who was in the kitchen and I said there’s a fire in my bedroom. And my dad said, no, I don’t believe you or there can’t be. No, there can’t be. You know, which which as a child, you know, as an adult, it sounds like, well, that’s kind of a reasonable thing to say. But as a child, that starts you not believing yourself. Right? Something I said which was clearly true. Right? No child would make something like that up. Was disbelieved by someone who’s supposed to be the person who protects you. So, you know, that started its whole. You know, roll a case for it its own. But then, you know, life carried on. So we moved from there. We moved to Hong Kong. And when I was in Hong Kong, at the age of nine, I was sent to boarding school in England. And I was sent to my brother’s boarding school, which was a boys boarding school. So for my first year, I was the only girlboarder at this boys boarding school.
Victoria Volk: And they allowed it? Like, that was allowed?
Ann Hince: They did. They had Day Girls who would come, you know, for lessons during the day and then go home. And my bedroom was in Stick Bay. That was my my bedroom. And I was teased mercilessly by those boys.
It was it was horrific. It was so so so bad. So, you know, that was that was a big part of that trauma. And then in my teenage years, both my parents became alcoholics. So life at home was hell in my mind.
That’s what I call it. It’s like it’s just hell. And then my mother got cancer. We didn’t talk about it. We talked about it one time.
When we found out she had cancer, we found out it was too late to do anything. So we never talked about it again, which is looking back, it’s very odd, but that is the way my family behaved. We just didn’t talk about anything deep at all. And then I woke up one morning when I was nineteen and found her dead on the bathroom floor. So at that point, I was the only one in the house, my brother, who was two years old at twenty one was at his girlfriend’s house, and my dad was working in Saudi Arabia, and we were back in England.
So I was the only one in the house and I had to tell everyone else what had happened and it was, yeah, it was pretty bad.
Victoria Volk: You know, in all the years, I’ve been doing this podcast and all of the examples of grief that I’ve had. There have been house fires mentioned, and But it’s like, let this be a reminder to you listening of The grief that people experience is so vast and you just never know what people have experienced in their lives at first glance. And it just sounds like your entire childhood was just a cesspool of grief and trauma. And so I’m so sorry for you that that was your experience. And I don’t say that to, like, poor you pity as pity, but it’s, like, I firmly believe because my childhood wasn’t the best either, but, you know, I’m not comparing and we don’t wanna compare. But I think those experience are what create who we who we become. And we have a lot of say and choice in that. And so I commend you for sitting here and having this conversation with me to getting to this place. That you have despite all of those experiences of
Ann Hince: Yeah. I mean, the only thing right? If people hear my like, the outside of my childhood, oh, I lived in Barbados, and my staff worker, and Hong Kong, and it sounds exciting, it sounds it sounds amazing. But once you, you know, you open the lid and you go underneath, it’s like, yeah, there’s a lot of things that really weren’t that great. So, absolutely, it made me who I am today, but I didn’t realize until I was in my late thirties. That it was affecting me, right, until I had two young boys. Mhmm. And the boys who were growing up right, and they were coming towards that age that those boys at my boarding school were. I was scared of boys at the age of nine three thirty seen because of what they had done to me, and I didn’t want to be afraid of my sons. So I knew I knew I had to change because it was getting too close.
Victoria Volk: Well, until our children have a way of kind of opening up our wounds and insecurities and all of those things that we’ve suppressed.
Ann Hince: Absolutely. Yes. That’s part of the benefits of parenthood for sure. Yes, they they trigger us in so many ways.
Victoria Volk: What was your experience? Because I’m curious of because I imagine growing up, did you how did you know that you were adopted from a very young age?
Ann Hince: I didn’t know until I was thirteen.
Victoria Volk: Oh my gosh. At boarding school.
Ann Hince: And I met my mother when I was seventeen. My birth mother, she’s still alive actually in New Zealand, and my adopted mother died when I was nineteen. So, yes, it was kind of like this two year overlap where I had two mothers and then kind of reverted back to my birth month. It was a very strange story.
Victoria Volk: Okay. So can you share a little bit about how that experience went of finding out that you were adopted?
Ann Hince: It was pretty wild. My mind my mind just started to play with all these different possibilities. You know, what could have life be like? Because it was not very much fun in that moment, Mario, as hell. And I just just imagining all these different possibilities. It it was yeah. It was it was difficult because I wanted to know more. And and thankfully, I didn’t have to wait that long. I only had to wait four years to find out that actually my birth mother was pretty normal, which is really nice to know. So, yeah, it was tricky. It was tricky for both of us because my brother didn’t know either, and he was fifteen at the time.
Victoria Volk: How did you find out? Like, I’m curious, like, did you ask questions?
Ann Hince: No. We were moving back to the same place that we had lived like a little tiny village that we had lived when we’d been adopted, and my mother was afraid that someone would say something. Mhmm. So, yeah, it makes you wonder if that hadn’t happened when or whether they would have told us at all because, you know, we didn’t didn’t look that like, but we didn’t look that different. We all had kind of the same color here, you know.
So it wasn’t it wasn’t totally obvious.
Victoria Volk: That wasn’t something you had questioned, you know, like
Ann Hince: I had
Victoria Volk: Did you
Ann Hince: get a little bit only because I was pretty nosy and it looked through a lot of my mother’s papers. And I thought I had found something that said my brother was adopted. So then I thought, okay. Well, he’s adopted, but I’m not. So did he count? I think he had seen the same paper, so he had questioned it. Yes. And we were so I mean, physically, we didn’t look that different, but, you know, emotionally, intellectually, we were very different.
Victoria Volk: And knowing then at such a influential age. Right? Thirteen. It’s preteen. And having been at boarding school and all of your wife experience up to that point, which I imagine and moving so much. Right? Like, it’s really difficult to create connections with people. And then to find out you’re adopted and it’s like, does that make you question your connection with your parents, and then you’re half, you know, your brother. And so what role did connection play as you went into your young adulthood and eventually meeting someone and having your own children, I’m just curious how that path kind of evolved.
Ann Hince: Yeah. There wasn’t a lot of collect connection, and you’re right, when you move so much, especially back in those days without cell phones and social media, Right? You’d make friends in one place and then you’d move to another place and and they were gone and you had to start all over again. So I I did not have much connection with my parents. My dad is now what she’d call a narcissist. I mean, it was all about him. He was always right. She couldn’t question him. And then he was an alcoholic. He would just drink all the time. So there was no connection there and and not really with my mother either. So yeah, there wasn’t really much connection with anyone. For some reason, I kinda lucked on my husband, I it was some connection that just happened. I kind of knew that he was for me and and That’s when I was eighteen, he actually met my mother before she died, so and we’re still together. So, yeah, I’m not quite sure how that connection happened and how it stayed? I think it was kind of meant to be.
Victoria Volk: What was your spiritual life like at that point?
Ann Hince: It wasn’t any. There there was nothing. I mean, I questioned things. You know, I’d been brought up in the church. She’d been like, I hate it. It was part of the boarding school life. Right? You had to go to church on the weekends. So religion was out. I actually I hated it. And you know, I I questioned spirituality. I I thought about things possibly deeper than some other people that I know, but it was just it was not really a part of my life. I was a software engineer, you know. I wear a look at ballet. Yes. But I was an also also an artist. I kind of had more of a balance, I think, than a lot of people. But Yeah. Nothing really hit home until my late thirties. I think I was just supposed to go through all that and and just be scared all the time and have PTSD and and just had to go through that until I had this experience that kind of woke me up. Do you remember the moment? Yeah. It was kind of a three day moment. It was it was what I call a business altercation with two other mothers at my boys and these mothers were not like me, but I was the scared mother on the inside always and they were self confident, self assured authority type women in my mind So in some senses a little bit like my dad, but they told me I’d done something wrong, and I could not stop my mind spinning. It just went over and over and over. Like, everything I’d said, everything I’d done, everything Ned said, all the things I could have done differently, just all these different permutations and I couldn’t sleep for three days. And it was the end of that period of time that I realized, okay, first of all, this is not normal. Most people would not react of this intensely to something that really wasn’t a big deal. I also realized it felt a little bit like how I would react in childhood when my dad would tell me I’d done something wrong. So that was the first little opening, little inkling that maybe something for my childhood was still affecting me. And so that that was the beginning. That’s what made me start looking.
Victoria Volk: What was the first thing you uncovered for yourself?
Ann Hince: Well, I didn’t really know what to do. Right? I knew I had to do something, but I didn’t know what. So I happened to go to a doctor’s appointment in that time frame. I don’t remember why I went to him. It was nothing to do with emotions or memories or anything like that. But he recognized I was more stressed than I should. Have been. And he was a holistic physician. Right? So he had more tools in his toolbox than most doctors do. And he recognized it was mine. I was more stressed, so he asked me on a scale of zero three what my stress level was. Right? Thinking it shouldn’t be that high because I was a stay at home mother with two healthy young boys. You know? Parenthood, it’s difficult but it shouldn’t have been that stressful. And I said it was an eight out of ten, and then he asked me why. And it was that question that made me realize oh, it was finally my mother dead on the bathroom floor when I was nineteen because the tears from that event were still just under the surface all these years later because I had not dealt with it. So he happened to know this technique that’s called EFT. Short for emotional freedom technique. It’s also called tapping. Are you familiar with it?
Victoria Volk: I am.
Ann Hince: Okay. So he tapped with me. In that office there for about fifteen minutes talking through finding my mother on the bathroom floor and and not having talked about the cancer and all those different aspects. And I walked away from that appointment being able to tell the story in her in my mind for the first time ever. Without the emotions there, And that’s when I realized, oh, we just hold those emotions and those memories physically in our body. And we can let them go and that was that was eye opening for me and that was that was the first step on my journey. So
Victoria Volk: What was the next step?
Ann Hince: Well, I went home that day and I went online and I learned everything I could about EFT. Because as I said, I was a software engineer, I like to know things worked before I spent a lot of time invested in it. And it was really nice to know the guy who developed it, Gary Craig. He was a chemical engineer, so that gave me more confidence. And and he gave it away for free. So anyone could go online and learn about it, and that was that was just amazing to me. So I learned everything I could about it, but I wanted to try it out. I didn’t necessarily believe that that fifteen minutes with this doctor was really, you know, maybe it was a fluke. I wanted to know for sure that it worked. So at the time, I had a seventeen year old cat at home. His kidneys were starting to fail. And we’ve been told we had to give them a daily saline shot, like an injection of saline solution, and our hated needles. I’d had so many from living all over the world. I just was petrified of them. So the first time I gave them that shot, my hand was shaking so badly. I didn’t wanna have to do it every day. It’s just it it wasn’t happen. So I thought, okay. Well, let me try out this technique. I’ve learned about it. Let me actually put in an action. So I did. I tapped about every aspect of it, which is something you do with the f t. So I tapped about my hand shaking. I tapped about my fear of hurting the cat. And I talked about all the memories from all the injections I’d had in different places around the world, you know, ones in boarding school in the different countries. And the next day, when I gave him the shot, the needle just slid right in. All that fear that it’d be living inside of me the day before had totally disappeared. And that’s when I realized, that’s the freedom I want. I I wanna get beyond all of those emotions and I wanna just feel that piece that I felt at that moment. Mhmm. So that’s when I started using EFT every day. I started noticing when I was emotional during the day. And then I would tap and bring myself back to peace. And, you know, the days went by and I started to notice that I was feeling more peaceful. But I wanted it to go faster. I wanted it more and I wanted it faster. So what I did is I wrote down every emotional memory I could think of from my childhood. Like, so all the traumas, the big traumas, the little traumas, the stings, my dad would say, you know, like, you know, the the one we they used back in those days, you know, stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
Ann Hince: Or
Victoria Volk: my aunt still used that.
Ann Hince: Oh, shame. My aunt used to say shame on you. You know, that was one of her favorite sayings. And so I would I tap through all of those one each night for about an hour to an hour and a half each night, so because I was determined to change. And just things started changing more rapidly.
I was just becoming less reactionary, which was really nice. So I was more peaceful And when I was more peaceful, my household was more peaceful, which was really, really nice. So that that’s kind of the first step on my journey.
Victoria Volk: I can see that there was ripples in what you were learning and uncovering for yourself and just how you were changing, your environment was changing, how did that evolve over time then?
Ann Hince: Well, we hear that phrasing, you know, you gotta change yourself and when yourself when you change yourself, your world changes. So, I mean, that is absolutely true. So as as time went by, my boys became more peaceful than they hadn’t been totally not peaceful before, but But because I was so reactionary, right, I would react to them, and then they would react to me reacting. Right? So if I’m peaceful, and I don’t react to something that happens, then they don’t have to react to that. So they can feel free to be their true selves. And it it just changes the whole dynamic of the family and it’s really nice to experience. But, you know, talk to people sometimes, they don’t believe that that’s the case. So you actually have to walk down that path somewhat. Right? So you have to realize, you have to be able to look back and see where you came from. To see where you are now. So you have some perspective. And then you could realize that it’s true, that it’s really the case So if you haven’t done any inner work before, you might not believe that things change. You actually have to do some of the work to to really believe that it does work.
Victoria Volk: How did that experience and learning EFT change your spirituality then? Because where you had none and you didn’t really have a faith practice and things like that, what how did that start to change?
Ann Hince: That kind of grew over time. As I what I realized the Feet is doing is opening up the subconscious mind, which is really our body. It’s stored in our body. And as our subconscious mind opens, it’s kind of one in the same thing. Our self awareness deepens. So when I started this journey, I had so many barriers around me like emotional barriers, protective barriers, shields, that I really didn’t know how I felt. I didn’t have any self awareness. And as I did more, more tapping, more, more eFT, I became aware of my emotions, right, because I’d been checking on myself multiple times a day. And underneath that, the next layer of self awareness is the physical sensations underneath the emotions. So for example, if we’re feeling frustration, right, that’s just the words. But what we’re really describing is tension that we’re holding in our body in a certain place. That we give the name frustration to. Right? So this is kind of reversing that process. So when I’m feeling frustrated rated, I can feel tension in in the bottom of my ribcades in the in the solar plexus area. So I became aware at that level And then I started to use a different technique. I call it feeling your feelings, but I could only do it because I was aware of those sensations. And I had honed my ability to focus so I could focus on those sensations and just keep my focus there until it released. And so this is kind of the word I talk about as the second step on my journey. It’s it’s just a deeper level of self awareness. And and I will get back to the spirituality as this is a this is a process. As I said, I had I have this engineering mind, so you know, I had to experience it myself myself first in order to put words to it and really understand what was happening. So I would do that more and more instead of doing EFT. If I felt myself feeling some kind of emotion, I would just stop and feel those emotions. Feel those sensations and allow them to release. It felt actually really good. And so I would lay on the sofa and I would bring, at this point, collective from us to mine because I’d worked through my childhood. So I’d bring things like nine eleven to my right. We all had our own individual experience of that collective trauma. So I would feel all those sensations and allow them to release. And at some point, I became able to put my awareness inside my body after the tension had released. So imagine if you have a toothache or stomachache. Right? You can feel where that coming from. Right? You can tell where the pain is coming from. Well, once the pain has released, right, once the toothache or the stomachache gets gone, you can’t put your awareness back on it. Because there’s nothing calling your attention to it anymore. I could. I could feel inside my body. And what I realized I was doing eventually was, how do I put it? Well, it’s what I think of it is the original meaning of the term insight. Right? It’s inward sight or inside sight. And It was not me. Right? There were two parts of me at that point. There was my body and there was part of me that was looking inside. So I couldn’t be my body if I could also be focusing at one particular place inside my body. Right? So that’s when I realized we are two separate entities with the body and the soul. And there’s something we tune into as well, which I believe is you know, spirit. It’s whatever we want to call it, but we’re tuning into something using our instrument of the body. So that’s when I really started to become more interested in, you know, the spirituality aspect of it because I knew without a doubt that I was not my body, you know, which is something you hear a lot. But when you actually know it, you know, you really know it because it can’t be anything else, then, you know, becomes more interesting. So I started, you know, I started reading more spiritual texts, trying to relate my experience with what some of those spiritual texts to talk about. And I found that I could relate to some of it. So, yeah, it’s been an interesting journey.
Victoria Volk: And what that brings to my mind is the thought of consciousness and the controversy or the not controversy. I don’t even know how to say it. But, like, there’s
Ann Hince: I think they call it heart problem?
Victoria Volk: Well, there’s people that believe that, you know, either you believe that consciousness continues after you die, after you are no longer. In the body. Right? Like your soul is not in the body. And that’s what it comes that’s what comes to mind when you when I hear you talking is that it’s you’re connecting with your higher consciousness. It’s a connection of yeah. It it’s being an observer a neutral observer of the body. Right.
Ann Hince: So let me go a little further into this third step. The third step is when I was put my put my awareness inside my body. And it it was really wild when it started happening because I I knew it felt different. I knew it was different from what I was doing before, but I’d also never heard anyone talk about it. So it was just an louratory investigation for me. It was kind of fun, actually. And so I would put my focus inside my body and I would feel I would move my awareness around and I would find a place with tension, which I could tell was different from a place with no tension. So I find a place with tension I’d focus on it and allow it to release, which is exactly the same thing I was doing with the feeling the feelings. Right? I was feeling the sensation and allowing them to release. And even with EFT, we’re feeling what the words bring up as we tap. And we’re focusing on it and we’re allowing to release. So I’m just working at a deeper level of self awareness. So I would do this in my torso and it took me many, many months and then I was able to put my awareness inside my head, which for me was eye opening because the pain and the tension inside my left cheek was almost unbearable. I could only focus on it for like a second at a time because it was just so intense. And what I realized, it had been there my whole life. And it was attached through the connective tissue to my right foot, which had been up against my chin when I was born. Right? So the fascia or the connective tissue had not been released. The tension in it had not been released, and it was still tense all the way up through my right leg, over to the left side of my body, into my left cheek. And through tension in my the right of my neck. So I realized at that point how everything is so connected. Our body is so connected.
Victoria Volk: And for and for people listening because they might be confused now because you talked about your left foot, but then or your right foot, but then it was the left side. So Just explain that a little bit. I know what it means, but can you just elaborate for people who who may be hearing that and be like, well, how does that? You would think it’d be on the same side. So can you just explain that a little bit.
Ann Hince: Right. Well, the the connective tissue, you know, if you look online, the connective tissue just is connected throughout a whole body and kind of through sheets. If you think of pulling the skin off a piece of chicken breast. It’s that that kind of watery slimy tissue between that holds the two together. We have that tissue throughout our bodies. It’s all connected. That’s why it’s called connected tissue. So it’s connected throughout our body. So from my left cheek, it’s connected all the way across my body, down through my right leg. But it but it could potentially also be my left leg all the way up through my my left cheek.
It it just depends where that tension has been held in the body and how it’s been held. So so it’s really I mean, it was really interesting, right, to know that, okay, if I’m working on my right foot, I don’t actually necessarily have to work on my right foot. Right? Working on this pain in my left cheek is also working on my right foot because it’s releasing the tension all the way through the body. So I started doing that. I started focusing on that pain in my left cheek. Just longer and longer periods of time, just holding my awareness on it, allowing it to release over and over again, and that’s why one day I actually heard and felt this this release of the the connective tissue. It was actually kinda scary at the time because it it felt like something ripping. And that she’s thought what I was doing because I was afraid I was hurting myself. I had to do some research and realize, okay, it’s just a connection in the and it’s an adhesion in the connected tissue, and it’s okay.
So I kept doing that and over and over again. I feel releases in different places and and actually actually felt my skull bones relaxed at some point. Now I hadn’t known they weren’t relaxed. Until they relax. Right? Then I could feel, okay, they clearly had been tense before, and they needed to relax. And that’s when I had x rays taken two years ago, and I should see the changes that had happened, that my eye sockets had aligned, my jaw had aligned, my neck was straighter than it had ever been in my life. But I also at that point, because I was working in my head, I worked out, well, if I’m looking at somewhere inside my head, where am I looking from? Right? Because I could tell I was looking from somewhere to somewhere else.
Like, I try to work it out. Like, you know, my eyes above or below where I’m looking from, you know, where that doesn’t feel like it’s in the middle of my head. So I I kinda worked out the general area and it’s kind of between my eyes. Right? If you’re looking from the front, it’s between my eyes kind of in the between the eyebrows, maybe a little bit lower than that.
Victoria Volk: Third eye chakra?
Ann Hince: Maybe the crown chakra, maybe a little bit lower. It’s not it’s not the pineal gland. It’s not that far back. So what I think it is, and this is based on looking at a lot of symbology in different places. But I believe it is the sphenoid bone, the body of the sphenoid bone. That I’m looking from and that I can relate that to many different things that I’ve read in in different spiritual texts. And and so that’s why I believe the soul resides So that’s when I think, like, during your deaf experiences and such when you go through a dark tunnel, I think you’re coming out of the the sphenoid sinus effect in effect through the through the nose and out through, you know, through the body. But I haven’t been able to really determine that. I’ve I’ve talked to some people who’ve had near death experiences and some people who’ve been on Ayahuasca and such things to try and relate that ex my belief with their experience and some kind of relate to that and some don’t necessarily. So, yeah, it’s it’s interesting.
Victoria Volk: Well, I would say it is what you believe it is.
Ann Hince: Well, maybe, but I I’m not you know, that’s another part of this journey. It’s like some people I’m gonna talk to some people. They they think I’m going into my imagination to experience this. I’m not I’m out of my thinking mind. I’m in my feeling right. So I’m actually feeling things inside I’m feeling inside my bones. I’m feeling inside, you know, my palate, inside my neck, bones, inside my tooth roots. I can actually feel them move. Right? So I’m not it’s not what I believe it is.
It’s it’s what it actually is. Right? That’s and that’s hard for me to say because I know people don’t necessarily believe that, but it’s a very different experience to actually know versus believe.
Victoria Volk: Versus Our beliefs create a reality.
Ann Hince: Right. But I’m not sure I ever believed, you know, in in my
Victoria Volk: Oh, I get what you’re saying. Six years. I get what you’re saying.
Ann Hince: Believe where it’s coming from.
Victoria Volk: True. I get what you’re saying. It sounds like, too, what you’re experiencing is something that people could experience. I’ve I’ve experience really deep, profound meditations, visualizations, meditations, and I think we can have that a similar experience if we allow ourselves to completely relax to that place of where we connect to our higher consciousness and let our higher consciousness give us whatever it is that we are needing to receive messages or visions or insights. Right? To allow our third eye to really open and receive. And how I’ve personally seen my third eye in visualizations or meditations. It’s almost like I’m, like, in a UFO, in a way where it’s And I’m seeing my life and seeing me on, like, a TV screen, except it’s like, it it’s an all white in glass front. And it’s almost like, I’m just like on this observation deck or, you know, like, as, you know, you can see, like, air traffic controllers, you know, kind of like that, you know, where you’re just observing yourself in that our minds can take us to incredible places and are very powerful. And I think as as our minds and brains change with trauma.
Right? We can create those new connections and new experiences within the mind that can transform and transcend the experiences we feel within our bodies. And that really sounds like that’s it’s almost like you’ve little by little have incrementally leveled up on a cellular level.
Ann Hince: Yeah. Well, Kundalini with energy was part of that journey too. So, yeah, definitely think myself’s changed. So what you’re talking about there is is kind of it is kind of in the mind. Right? You’re talking about going into deep. Meditational visualizations where you’re kind of seeing things in the minds. Yeah. It’s really hard to put these things in word. Right? I don’t do that anymore. I go into the body. So I’m not creating things. In my thinking mind or even another part of the mind that does visualization. I’m actually going into the body and sensing tension.
Victoria Volk: No. But we can do that. That’s what I’m saying. Like, we can we can become so relaxed that we can almost and I think that experience would be different in need for every individual, but how I would feel how I would see myself or how how I’ve done that myself is like, seeing myself as like this miniature version of myself going into the body. Right? Like, that’s what I mean. It’s like you’re And then it’s like you’re seeing with your third eye in this visualization, you’re seeing what the body wants to communicate to I I think there’s so many ways we can do this. You know what I mean?
Ann Hince: I’m saying that this is different from that. Yeah. Right? Because I I’ve experienced that before. You’re still creating an image.
This is sensing. Right? If you put your awareness on your right knee right now. Right? And just feel how does your right knee feel. When you do that and the moment you do that, you’re sensing. You’re not putting a picture to it, so you might put words to it eventually, but before you do that, there’s a moment where you’re just feeling it. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And that’s why I’m saying I think I’m fast forwarding this the the real a little bit because I think it’s how you get there. Right? It’s like how you can get to that deep sensing. And if you have to use visualization to get you can use visualization or deep meditation to get to that deep sensing. If there’s, you know, like, He broke his back.
Ann Hince: Joe Despenza.
Victoria Volk: Yes. Thank you. Joe Despenza. You know, I’ve I’ve used his meditations and is deep sensing, but there’s also visualization that’s incorporated into that. And that’s what I’m saying. Like, to get the a lot of people need help getting to deep to get to the point where they’re deeply relaxed. I still don’t
Ann Hince: do it until I had released a lot of the outer layers of trauma, right, the outer emotions.
Victoria Volk: And that’s where you’re saying EFT was a huge
Ann Hince: Right. That was the first part. It took all those big layers away, all those emotions that allowed me to sense deeper. And then feeling the feelings just allowed me to sense deeper. So I think what Joe Despensa, your your focusing on one particular place and not necessarily clearing everything else out around it.
Right? It’s kind of a different way. I mean, if I don’t know if this is the right thing to say, but, you know, I’ve met him before And if you experience him, he doesn’t feel like he’s a particularly happy, light person. He still kind of feels heavy. So I would say that is because he’s he’s definitely done a lot of inner work.
Right? He’s focused deeply in certain areas, but I don’t think the the whole of it’s been cleared out. Just I can only say that, you know, because I’ve experienced it, you know, I used to feel really heavy I used to feel, you know, just so burdened all the time. And I’ve experienced the different. Right? I’m not I’m not like that anymore. I I feel to me, I feel lighter, I feel happier, more peace. Right? And I’ve cleared out you know, many layers all the way through my body, not just in in certain specific places. Right? So I would say that’s that’s the difference that’s allowed me to get inside and move around it will rather than just go into one particular place. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: You mentioned the Cundalini too. Uh-huh. And I I had a session with a Cundalini practitioner, Kunduehne yoga, and she walked me through this breath work experience. And it’s like, I have never experienced anything like it. Like, where every cell in my entire body just felt like it was vibrating. It’s anyone listening? You wanna feel alive? Like, whoa. That was it was quite an experience.
Ann Hince: Yeah. It’s a massive energy. I mean, in my experience, it was just a massive energy. It felt like other people around me should no. Why why aren’t they? Feeling it too because it was just so big. Mhmm. But for me, it happens just as part of the process. Right? I’d released enough energy myself it kind of it took over almost what I feel is it took over to allow the rest of my body to catch up.
With the parts that had released enough tension. So it went on for months on and off. I could kind of move it up and down my body at will. I could stop it whenever I want it. I just have to relax sufficiently and then it would start up again. And I would relax more up into my spine and it would move up it it was kind of fun actually. But at some point, it got to the place where, you know, I had released enough or it had burnt through enough of remaining tension. That it it just kind of faded away. And it was actually at that point that I was able to put my awareness inside my body, so I think that was part of the process.
Victoria Volk: Did you get to the third part?
Ann Hince: Yeah. That third part was putting my awareness inside my body.
Victoria Volk: So how it has your life changed since.
Ann Hince: Oh, it’s lovely. I’m really very peaceful. You know, when I started this journey, I used to love seeing peaceful parents at school. It was so nice, you know. I wanted to be one of them. And one day, a few years into this process, I had another mother come up to me and say, I want to be as peaceful as you are. You know? And for me, that was a big moment that I had shifted enough that other people could notice that that I myself was peaceful. So it’s really nice. I actually go out of my way now to find things that I react to. So for many years, I didn’t watch the news because it was too much. Now I want to watch the news because I want to feel what’s going on inside. I want to find deeper healing still. So that’s really nice. There’s also a huge depth to life that I had no idea existed when I started this journey. I didn’t know that you could actually hear things in your body not just through your ears. You could feel music. Just just throughout your body. I mean, it makes the experience of listening to music so much nicer. But it also means like when you’re listening to a conversation, you’re able to pick up more than just the sound of their voice. Right? You’re picking up nuances in them. In their facial expressions, in their body movements. Because if you can recognize it within yourself, if you can feel it, if you have that depth of self awareness in yourself, you can see it in other people as well, right, which makes having conversations much more enjoyable, satisfying, Also, I’ve really so much tension in my skull now, which is our echo chamber for our voice. So my voice has changed. I can actually sing a note that I could not sing before because I’ve released that tension holding my skull in a particular position. Right? It’s now much more malleable, much more flexible. So there’s that too.
Victoria Volk: What was your health like before that pivotal moment when you realize that something needed to change and how has your health changed since?
Ann Hince: I used to have a lot of digestive issues. And tried many, many different diets, all sorts of things. But it was really associated with all that stress that I was holding inside. So that has released not fully because part of the journey is a deeper level of self awareness. Right? So oftentimes during this journey, I’ll think, okay, I can feel something now that I couldn’t feel before. And it’s not because it’s a new you know, when you paint or whatever, it’s just something that was hidden before that I’ve now become aware of. So that’s been a, you know, a little bit of a mind thing to get used to along this journey. So I’m just working at a deeper level. But I’ve also grown three quarters of an inch in my fifties, you know, that that doesn’t happen very often. You know, I’m taller than they’ve ever been in my life before and most of us start to shrink because we’re holding so much tension inside. And we tend to think the same thoughts over and over, which, you know, adds tension to those already tense neural pathways inside of us. So as we release that burden, we’re actually just becoming more of our natural blueprint. Right? So I don’t know what high time going to end up as, but I know my neck is continuing to release every day. So I would not be surprised if I grow a little bit more.
Victoria Volk: So if people are watching this on YouTube, they’ll see. I’m kind of I am kind of hunched forward. My shoulders are kind of in. My posture absolutely sucks at this moment. And so I’m at and what I know is and I’ve been feeling some stuff lately. Like, my I have so much tension throughout my shoulders and my neck. And I I know emotionally I’m going I’m feeling some things these past few days. I can recognize that. Right? I may try EFT after a week and off this.
Or a really deep meditation because I it’s been a long while since I’ve meditated. I just wanna highlight for people in that when you’ve worked on the grief, because you you say stress a lot, but I wanna reiterate that what brought you to this podcast is grief. And what does grief do? It causes a stress in the body. It physically stresses the body and not to mention the daily life that we have, can be stressful. Right? It’s But I think we label things as stressful. So how has that shifted for you? In because I was just reading something yesterday that kind of made me think about this word stressful and stress And it’s like we are such a stressed society, but as it’s at the same time, it’s maintaining It was talking about, like, our personal management, like, our management of ourselves. Like, we can’t and you might be a manager of other people and especially if you’re parent, mother, you’re managing other people. Right? You’re managing a household. But what about your personal management? How are you managing the self? And I recognize that when I’m not managing the self, I feel more stress. I feel more stressed in the body, my posture sucks, like all of these things. Right? Like and so What do you have to say to that?
Ann Hince: Well, a lot of people, when they use the word managing, right, they also think of the word controlling.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm. And I
Ann Hince: think a lot of even there’s, you know, different spiritual methods. Also talk about controlling or controlling the mind or controlling the thoughts. My whole journey has been about noticing and allowing and releasing. So, you know, in some sense, it could be called controlling or managing. But in terms of the modern day use of those words, it’s really not that. So yes, we want to notice. We want to notice how we’re feeling during the day. A lot of us suppress. We suppress or we bypass. Right? We’ll have a drink or we’ll I don’t know. People some people take drugs or some people exercise to try and avoid feeling those thoughts and the feelings and the emotions that are coming up. But when we do that, we’re just keeping that energy, that emotion, that stress, that grief suppressed inside the body. Because it it doesn’t go anywhere. It needs it needs noticing, it needs acknowledging, it needs feeling, it needs being met, right, if we’re if we’re If there’s something we want to share with someone else and the person we’re talking to doesn’t really listen. Right? If we don’t feel like we’ve been listened to, that feeling of needing to share that information stays inside of us until someone really meets us, really listens and hears us. That’s what we need to do with the emotion inside of us. Once we really hear it, we really feel it, we allow it to be felt, to be released, it will. It will relax and let go. So it’s not really about, right, managing or controlling. It’s about noticing being aware. And just allowing ourselves to feel those feelings that are living inside of us rather than forgetting them and move on, which most of us are programmed to do. Right? That’s that’s so common and that’s what needs to change. I think even in childhood, in schools. Right? If we learn history and we allow the children to talk about and to feel the emotions that are brought up, while hearing about that history, I think that’s how we change the projection or the direction of the world actually.
Victoria Volk: That phrase, self management, personal management, it was actually used by yoga guru. Sand Sandguru. I think it’s how you say his name? I’m probably saying it wrong.
Ann Hince: I don’t know.
Victoria Volk: I’ll send you a link. But, yeah, he’s a mystic and a teacher and thought leader and Yeah. I mean, he’s got what’s his program called? Inner inner something. I’m it’s case in my mind right now. I’ll share I’ll put it in show notes if anybody’s interested.
Ann Hince: I think I know who you’re talking about. Yeah. Yeah. And I you know, even him, you know, I have to be careful with my words because who am I, but I don’t know anyone else who’s developed this inability that I have. So I listen to their words. I listen to the way they talk about things. And I don’t believe he has developed this ability. So I don’t necessarily listen to what he says.
Victoria Volk: I’m just saying that’s where the phrase came from, what I was listening to
Ann Hince: a banding number. But but maybe it’s just not the best way. I mean, that’s what I’ve looked at a lot of these different spiritual methods. And I think originally, they were probably correct, but they’ve been mistranslated through the years. And, you know, people tend to think that we have to have to control ourselves. And really, it’s kind of almost the opposite of that. Well, I
Victoria Volk: think it’s not See, I hear self management and I don’t hear control. I don’t get a sense of control in that way. Like, So I think it’s a matter of perspective as well. Like and we’re all going to perceive yeah. It’s yeah. We’re all going to perceive what we see and what we hear and what we think or what we feel differently.
Ann Hince: But even Buddhism, when you look at Buddhism, it’s it’s and even yoga, like the, you know, spiritual aspect of yoga. It’s very much about controlling thoughts, controlling things you eat. You know, just all sorts of control in there. Mhmm. And I think originally, they have the right idea, but it’s just been twisted over the years. And I don’t think it’s going to get people where they think it’s going to get them.
Victoria Volk: I totally hear where you’re coming from. I mean, for me, I I feel like like, a sense of self like, I desire a sense of self mastery in a in a sense of whatever is going on in the world. To be able to feel that piece. Right?
Ann Hince: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: You can put
Ann Hince: down the ability.
Victoria Volk: Are you are you familiar with human design?
Ann Hince: I’ve heard of it. I don’t know much about it.
Victoria Volk: I’m a manifestor type, and and that’s a label or whatever, but it helps me make sense It helped me make sense of a lot of things in my life, but the not self theme of a manifestor’s anger and the the opposite of that is right right is peace. And so I know I’m feeling aligned in what I’m doing, what I’m saying, what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, when I’m at peace. So I’ve been able I’m starting to recognize and I’ve been in my experiment with human design and in learning these things about myself. For it’s been a couple years, but it’s really helped me to open my eyes to have own awareness. Right? Of of when I’m what what not feeling peace feels like in my body, like the tension in my neck and my slouching and my turning inward because this is what we do when we are I see so many people with their your shoulders go up like this. You’re not relaxed. Right? You’re in the grocery store line, whatever. You you can just see people’s posture how they carry themselves. It’s written all over them.
Ann Hince: Yeah. They’re not aware of it. I mean, most of us Yeah. Most of us are not aware of it. There is so much hidden in our subconscious mind that we are just not aware of and that’s that’s why you have to go down this road a little bit
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
Ann Hince: To start realizing some things that have been hidden in your a conscious mind and then you start to realize, oh my goodness, there’s so much more, let me keep going and then covering what’s in there. So yeah.
Victoria Volk: Yeah, I think grief is just in stress, is just written all over us. You know, you can see it another I see it clearly in other people, and I I can recognize it. Within myself. And so how has like, what’s life like now? Like, on the daily Are you still doing EFT? Are you still, like, how much time have you devoted to this practice? Are you teaching other people? Teaching you and we touch your kids, like all the questions.
Ann Hince: Well, I used it on my kids when they were young. My my youngest son used to have nightmares and I go and tap on him. Didn’t need any words because the emotions were already in his body. So I just tap on him and then I’d say, okay, mom, I can go back to sleep now and I would just you know, leave the room and you’d go back to sleep. So they know that it was. They just have a lot of resistance because, you know, children often do. So I’m hoping one day they’ll come back to it or or at least do some kind of shadow work to, you know, because I didn’t I didn’t change until they were you know, six and ten something like that. So they have traumas inside of them from those early years for sure. I do still use EFT not as much because I I have these other things I can use. I mean, I feel inside multiple times a day, like, many, many times a day. Fifty, a hundred times a day. And that many times, I will have something release in my my neck or my my head. So it’s almost automatic. To me for me now, it just first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is like, okay, where’s my neck gonna crack? And I will just move and allow it to crack. So it’s it’s very much a part of me now and it it wasn’t in those early years. I I just I started doing it more and more because it felt so good, you know, this tension has been stalled inside of us for, you know, for me, for decades and it felt good to release it. So I just kept doing it. Let’s see. I do, I mean, I do share the information. I have a YouTube channel that has different videos and I’ve got If you go to my website and hints dot com, I’ve got a PDF download of my cheat sheet, my two page PDF with, you know, all the basics of EFT, so anyone could learn to do it. And let’s see. What were the other questions there?
Victoria Volk: You answer with the kids, how it’s, like, physically I’m curious too, like, with food.
Ann Hince: Right? You asked about my day, like, how I feel different. And my days. My days are peaceful. I enjoy my days now.
It doesn’t matter what I’m doing. I can always find peace. And that was not the case before at all. So I’m happy wherever I go, whatever I’m doing, you know, some people will sometimes say, you know, are we looking forward to going on this trip that, you know, you’re gonna go on? It’s like, well, you know, that’s two weeks in the future. I’m not thinking about that. I’m peaceful right now. So kind of time has shifted as well. I think of it differently. Feel it differently. So that’s really nice. I mean, my goal was in a piece. So, you know, I’m not fully there yet because I know there’s a lot more tension still and I won’t feel total feet piece on the inside. Until my I think until my body is totally aligned, and I’ve got a long way to go yet on that. So but I know I know I know what I’m working on. Know what I’m working towards. So that’s and then you mentioned food. I did lots of different diets along my way before I found the EFT. I mean, all sorts, life food, vegan, macrobiotic, vegetarian, just all sorts and I let go of all my beliefs around that, not all of them. I still eat organic. Whenever I can. And I cook my own food mostly. But I’ve let go of so much tension and all those beliefs around that should have this or I shouldn’t have this or if I have this, I’m not gonna feel right. You know, I’d let go of all of that so I can pretty much eat whatever I want. Now, which is really nice. And I have some discussions online, you know, with people who think you should be vegan, you know, that that’s so adamant about it. And it’s that being adamant. It’s that tension. It’s that judgment of other people. That’s what’s holding dysys inside of their body. And I know because I was there too. I was vegan for many years. And I remember having that that judgment. And that’s tension. That’s dis ease inside of ourselves. And when we’re judging someone else, we’re hurting ourselves. So go find that judgment. Notice it. Feel it. Allow it and let it release.
And that actually releases the disease from inside of us.
Victoria Volk: Part of my intention is just having this experience lately where I had signed up for this program and, you know, the the fad right now is protein, protein, protein, and you need seen amount of protein. And what I found though is my and I this is not like, this has been going on about five months now, like and I’ve just, you know, switched a different program and still trying to maintain, like, the tracking and and, you know, the weights and but what I’m what I found, like, just in just in the last couple days, truly. Like, over the weekend. So this is very new, and this is why this tension has actually enlightened today, to be honest. Like, this is true story. I felt I was feeling heavy. I was feeling so heavy. And I was feeling like, my body is screaming at me. Like, this is not for me right now. And I was so adamant of this is what I need, this is I need this person to tell me what, you know, how much I’m supposed to be eating and I need to do these workouts and do diesel regimented. And that is so against my body type, like my body as, like, even as a manifestor. This is where this is where human design has helped me too and realizing that my desires are gonna change depending on my energetic where I am energetically, and I’m more of like in this rest cycle right now, which has corresponded to this program I’m working on, which I’ve lately just, like, I put it on the table and I haven’t looked at it. Like, I just I put it down and I haven’t looked at it in, like, over a week. Two weeks actually, probably. And I’m like, oh my god, this is what’s happening. I’m in this rush cycle. I’m not why am I pushing myself to do this program? I need to listen to my body. I need to honor my body. And as soon as I’ve done that, As of yesterday afternoon, I feel so much better today. It is crazy. How our bot like, you know what I mean? Like, it’s a perfect example of what we’re talking about of how our bodies are always communicating with us. We just you know, the judgment or the the self criticism or, you know, I should be doing this and I should be doing that or, like you said, of other people too,
Ann Hince: Yeah. And we forget that we’re so connected. Right? That was part of my journey. I realized how it’s all connected, so you could access that tension in your shoulders, in your neck. Through words, right, through through memories, through beliefs. Right? I believe that I should be doing something or controlling or giving someone else control over my body.
Victoria Volk: Yes. That agency and last my sense of agency.
Ann Hince: Yes. So that is connected to the tension in your shoulders. Or you could tap or if you’re using EFT, you could tap directly on I have tension in my shoulders. Right? You could feel the tension in your shoulders. It doesn’t matter which way you access it, right, whether it’s through words, emotions, or through physical tension itself. It’s still accessing the tension in your shoulders because it’s all connected. I know a lot of people are concerned like doctor will say, well, it’s all in your head. Right? And some people get offended by that. But if we take that to be true, okay. So what is it I’m thinking or feeling? And if we know that those thoughts and feelings are connected to the physical, then we can work with those words and with those memories and with those emotions. And that’s what EFT did for me. It’s kind of those outer layers. Okay. I’ll let me let me go through the memories of those traumas and talk through them and tap through them. And what I didn’t realize when I started to do that, that I was affecting the physical because I didn’t have that depth of self self awareness. I have that depth now, so I know that it’s all connected. So even if you don’t know that you’re affecting the physical, I can tell you, if you’re doing EFT, even on words and memories, you are affecting the physical.
Victoria Volk: I had a question. Do you have a meditation that guides people through that process of interconnecting.
Ann Hince: Not as such. I mean, I have videos on YouTube about the different steps about the feeling the feelings.
Victoria Volk: Okay.
Ann Hince: I’m feeling feeling this one about going inside. It tapes work to go inside though. So I’m not sure anyone could do that right off, but they could feel a feeling. So, like, empaths are very good at picking up and sensing their feelings inside their bodies. So that they could do that. So, yes, that’s a I do have a video series that that takes people deeper into relaxation and where they can actually notice their depth of awareness. Because I find that people don’t know. Right? We don’t know what we don’t know. So we don’t know how far we can go beyond where we are right now. So as I’ve gone through this journey, I’ve realized there’s different things that have changed in me. Right? Like being able to feel music within the body. Right, rather than hear it with just your ears. So I’ve recognized some different things that change, and so I I’ve like, take people through those, right, to notice. I mean, even just simply noticing how reactionary you are. Right? If you’re still reaction if you’re still triggered by things, or easily triggered by things, if people say you’re highly strung, then you don’t have a great depth of awareness. I’m sorry. That’s just the way it is. But it means there’s so much more you can find, so much more depth to life that you can find by doing this inner work.
Victoria Volk: And I think what people don’t realize is the deeper goal of this work, doing the work, and looking into yourself, and connecting with the self is that I think so many of us come into this life and we leave this life, not ever realizing our own potential because of it.
Ann Hince: Absolutely. My brother my brother died a few years ago. You know, he was adopted too. Right? So he had a different story from me.
He was adopted from a different family. But he Whereas I went one direction, he went into the way my parents were so he drank and he smoked his whole life and I actually tapped with him a couple of months before he died. I went to his hospital room, and he and I tapped through some of our collective childhood traumas And it was really interesting to talk through some of those things that were being through together. And to have him experience EFT. I I had to tap on him because he didn’t have the energy to tap. But but after a few minutes of tapping on on one thing in particular when we were at boarding school, when we left him the first term at boarding we drove away and we were heading to Hong Kong from England. It’s a long way away. We left him screaming in the driveway. He was just screaming for us to stay. And he remembered that. It was so clear to him, and and we tapped on it. And he said it had kind of receded more in his mind through this, those couple of minutes of tapping. So, you know, I I think if he had wanted to, do this work. He could have totally changed his life, but it wasn’t on his path. It wasn’t something he was ready to do. So, you know, some of us Some of us don’t, and some of us do.
Victoria Volk: Do you have a relationship relationship now with your birth mother?
Ann Hince: I do. I went to see here at Christmas time. Yes. Yeah. But even
Victoria Volk: though times.
Ann Hince: No. I’ve met her. I mean, I’ve met her when I was seventeen for the first time. And then then on our honeymoon, when I was twenty four. She came over when my first son was born and a couple of other times.
So, yeah, I’ve I’ve seen her less than ten times in my life, but but it’s been nice. And we have technology now, so I call her once a month. So yeah. And and she came over one time and we actually tagged together on my birth on her on her giving me up. So I think that was healing for both of us.
Victoria Volk: Did she ever tell you why?
Ann Hince: Yes. She was twenty six. She just she’d been engaged to my father and they had this one time event after she told him that she was leaving, it was that night. And she left the next morning. She got on a boat from New Zealand to head back to England, and she found that she was pregnant on the way. So, yeah, she was a single mother and she just thought that I would be better off within a a complete family.
Victoria Volk: Do you have any other siblings? Half siblings?
Ann Hince: I do. I have two half siblings from her, and I just found out who my birth father was a couple of years ago through ancestry, and he never knew I existed, and he died a few years ago. So I have a house sibling, a half sister through him. So I was finally met her. I met her at Christmas time to you the first time ever.
Victoria Volk: Was that healing for you to you know, it’s like you find out your dot and I don’t know what this is like, but So if you can elaborate, that would be wonderful. But, like, did you almost feel like like you didn’t know a half of you? You know what I mean? Like,
Ann Hince: Yes. You know, absolutely. Yeah. There was there was a palpable relief when I first met my best mother. I mean, I and again, it was tension that I had not known that I was holding probably since I was thirteen. Right? But I didn’t know it was there until I could feel it really when I met her at seventeen. And the same thing about finding out about my birthdays, I didn’t know I was I was missing something. Right? Until there was some relief when I found out, and and that felt really good.
Victoria Volk: Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. I’ve had my own ahas as I’ve heard you speak and you know, thank you for letting me share a little bit of my own personal experience throughout this
Ann Hince: day. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: I will put links to your cheat sheet, the YouTube, your website, and the show notes. But where can let me ask you this first. Is there anything that you want to share that you didn’t get a chance to?
Ann Hince: I don’t think so. We covered all sorts of things. Yeah. I mean, thing I love to share at the end is the depths of life because there’s so many people who are depressed these days or considering suicide. And and I did too as a teenager, but there was just so much you don’t know yet if that’s what you’re thinking.
So I encourage people to go down this journey and realize the depth to life, right, so that you can enjoy life more. There’s just so much enjoyment that you have not yet found, so I encourage you to do that.
Victoria Volk: I do wanna share to and ask the art. So anyone that’s not is only listening to this and not seeing it there’s some artwork on your wall beside you. Is that your artwork?
Ann Hince: It is. Yes. Wow. So so recent artwork. That’s, again, that’s been a journey.
Right? I started out doing pencil portraits. And, you know, black and white, I I drew in black and white for years.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm. Interesting.
Ann Hince: Then I became able to feel into colors. And I started using colors more and and started going less detailed rate and more just what felt right. And, yeah, I can feel into colors more now that I mean, I had no idea that that was possible before. But, I mean, I wear blue now all the time because just blue feels so peaceful full to me. And I feel a a repulsion from white. It’s like it reflects. It’s it pushes energy away from it, which I find really interesting given that people tend to think of it as a spiritual color. Mhmm. I don’t I I kind of almost don’t see white cars. I mean, I know they’re a car. I know they’re there. Don’t worry. I drive safely. But if I I have a friend who has a a white car and I I just don’t see her. I’ll see the colored cars. I’ll see blues and reds and yellows and but it’s it’s that’s been an interesting part of this journey too. You know, I say many just read changes.
Victoria Volk: Well, I just wanna highlight that you your wall is purple. You have a lot of purple in your artwork and the third eye chakra is purple.
Ann Hince: Yeah. This is a colorful room. I’ve also got a green roof with yellow highlights and three different colored lights there. There’s a a red, blue, and green. Yeah. I try and keep white out of this room. So yeah. So people I do have my artwork I have a little shop on my websites with Okay. Products from my artwork. If anyone wants to go and have a look. They’re very colorful.
Victoria Volk: Just some of the bottom on there.
Ann Hince: Thank you. If someone wants to find me, you can you can contact me on my website. And hence dot com or I’m very active on Facebook. So you can you can interact with me there. I try and post something every day, and I’m trying to explain you know, my story through other people’s quotes and and that kind of thing. I try and, you know, add an explanation to things. And also, I’m starting I’m learning how to put on retreats. So our first retreat, a friend and I are gonna put on retreats that’s called liberation beyond loss. Which is gonna be specifically for women who’ve lost a mother. Right? We’re gonna do this work, this inner work, the tapping, and the trauma release work around that loss and that grief. So if someone wants to to check that out too. That’ll be next year.
Victoria Volk: So amazing. And I’ll put links, like I said, in the show notes. Where people can connect with you and find all the goodness that you offer.
Ann Hince: Thank you.
Victoria Volk: And thank you so much for being here today and for sharing your story, and I think a lot of examples of all kinds of different grief in your story. And so thank you for sharing.
Ann Hince: Thank you. Thanks for the great conversation.
Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.
Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, season 5 |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Uncover the Power of Healing and Transformation
In the latest episode of Grieving Voices, I had the pleasure to chat with Dawn Michele Jackson, a multifaceted professional and best-selling author who is passionate about guiding people from pain to joy after loss.
Dawn opened up about her personal journey through grief following a tough divorce at 30. She shared how she discovered the grief recovery method that revolutionized her life, allowing her to view past events not as setbacks but as stepping stones towards self-discovery and growth.
She delved into how unresolved grief can create barriers in all relationships and discussed how these tools helped her become more present for herself and her children. Dawn also recounted leaving nursing during the pandemic to focus on emotional healing, which led to writing books and facilitating retreats aimed at helping others heal their hearts.
For those feeling stuck in their grieving process or curious about transformative personal development opportunities – this episode is a must-listen!
Tune in now for an inspiring story of resilience, hope, and finding joy amidst life’s challenges. Don’t forget – your heart holds the key to unlocking a fulfilling life beyond grief!
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Welcome. Welcome to another episode of grieving voices. Thank you for tuning in. Today, my guest is Dawn Michele Jackson. She is an advanced grief recovery method specialist, an infinite possibilities trainer, women’s retreat facilitator, nurse, and an Amazon best selling author. And her primary focus is to guide individuals through healing their hearts transforming their lives and rediscovering joy. She is driven by her profound mission and is dedicated to helping individuals uncover their inner light and shift from surviving to thriving. With her nurturing approach, she skillfully supports her clients in healing their hearts and achieving mind, body, and spirit wellness. Thank you so much for being my guests today, and It’s nice to have a fellow advanced brief recovery method specialist on my podcast. It’s been a while.
Dawn Jackson: Thank you, Victoria. I’m happy to be here this morning.
Victoria Volk: Both of us have the same mission, helping people heal their hearts, that we know it’s possible regardless of what you’ve been through. And today, you’re here to share your personal story of going through a divorce. But there’s always more than that. Right? Because grief is cumulative and cumulatively negative as you and I both know.
But let’s start there. What brought you to grief recovery?
Dawn Jackson: So what brought me to grief recovery is I had done after my divorce at the age of thirty. My world kind of fell apart. You know, I had that white picket fence dream, and it was shattered. And I had a three and a half year old son. I didn’t really know how to move forward. So I realized that I could choose two things. I could continue to be angry about my husband decided he wanted a divorce or I could choose to heal and move forward. So I had done all kinds of workshops and retreats, you know, to try and heal the things that were hurting me. And not all of them provided a little bit of relief. None of them helped me feel completely better to the point of moving forward in a direction that I felt like I was thriving. And then I came across the grief recovery method. My mom had done the program and become a specialist and she referred me and my significant other to the method and he actually signed me up And at the time he did, I said to him. And I always laugh about this. I don’t have any grief. Because in my mind, grief was about death. Right? And I had lost a grandparent, but I didn’t have anybody else really close that had died. So that’s kind of the joke because I quickly learned within the first hour of the training that I was suffering a great deal of grief from things that it happened for my entire life. So my divorce is one of the first relationship I decided to work on and heal because I knew that to be, you know, an effective parent, I needed to you know, let go of some of the pain that was keeping me stuck.
Victoria Volk: And did you say your significant your husband at the time signed you up?
Dawn Jackson: No. My said no. So my husband I were divorced, but my son Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Okay. And how has that relationship changed and shifted since you’ve gone through this method because you share a child, right? You still have to have some communication, I imagine, and
Dawn Jackson: So our son is now an adult and he’s twenty six years old. So I guess what changed for me is that I began to see our divorce is really a gift in my life because when we got divorced, I didn’t know who I was. I was a mom, I was a nurse, and I was a wife, but I had put so much focus on all of those that I didn’t really even know what I like to do, you know, for, you know, extracurricular activities. So for me, It helped me find myself again. My husband leaving was my catalyst for healing finding my authentic self, being able to create the life that I wanted. And at some point, I was able to go back to him and just be instead of angry, I found this peace inside and actually so much gratitude for him, for our marriage, for our child having a child together and for the divorce. And so I think that it’s allowed us to have a healthy relationship and I see that he also has a lot of gratitude for me. So I think that me changing, me healing, you know, has made it comfortable circle so that we can have a good relationship. And while we rarely talk to each other since our child is now an adult, during those years when he was growing up, it really helped us navigate our relationship smoother.
Victoria Volk: For those listening that this might be the first episode they stumble upon and maybe you’re hearing about grief recovery for the first time because I try and talk about it a lot through my episodes, but can you just share a little bit about what grief recovery is in your perspective? And, yeah, Yeah.
Dawn Jackson: So a great recovery is it’s an evidence based tool to help people move from a place of pain and just barely surviving to actually some recovery, which means being able to while you still have the memories associated with some type of loss in your life, you can move forward with the good memories versus having the pain in your heart that you continue to carry forward in everything you do because all the pain leaves us at a disadvantage in all of our relationships because we bring it forward. It’s kind of like if we can all think about our first love way back when probably we were a teenager. And our heart was completely open with that person. And then we got because most of us are not with our first love. So you get hurt. And then the next relationship you go into, your heart is a little less open. So that a closed heart creates problems in the relationship because we don’t show up in the same way. And then we have another person who’s had past relationships and their hearts a little bit close too. So by going through the act and the tools of the grief recovery method, we’re able to let go of some of that stuff that we’re holding on to that keeps us from being able to have the types of relationships and really the life that we dream about.
Victoria Volk: I say too, like for me personally going through grief recovery myself, it really made me a much more present and emotionally evolved parent I would say, like, I a better version of myself as a parent, I think, came as a result of going through grief recovery, would you agree that that was your experience too?
Dawn Jackson: Oh, I would totally agree. Because there was so much stuff that was kind of keeping me stuck, holding me back from being the best version of myself. That once I was able to do so much healing, I was able to show up in different ways for my child that I hadn’t been able to in the past. I mean, I remember right after my divorce for, like, months. I had a hard time just getting through each day. It was like, I knew I had to get up. I knew I had to take care of my child. But I was always looking forward to when do I get to go to sleep. I know I had nothing to do with my child. I just was so stuck in the grief of I failed marriage and feeling like I was a failure that I didn’t know how to navigate you know, being a single parent and I thought that he wasn’t in the picture. He was always in the picture. But just, you know, day to day not having him in the house anymore. And just navigating, you know, everything with my child without another person, you know, around was very difficult for me. So it took quite some time for me to figure out how to take steps in my life. To move forward and how to find that happiness again.
Victoria Volk: When you’re first going through the divorce in your relationship with your spouse at the time? Did you have a lot of your own friendships outside of the marriage? Like, girlfriends and things? Or was it where most of your friends, like, shared friends with him? And I what I hear a lot from women who have experienced divorce that come on my podcast, it’s, you know, it’s like you have your your together friends. And then when that relationship falls, you know, comes apart and you divorce, you lose a lot of people. In your list because of it? And was that your experience as well?
Dawn Jackson: So our closest friends were a couple that we hung out with all the time. So that was very, very difficult. And in fact, she was the one that I talked to almost every night, you know, crying wishing that something would change, wishing that he would change his mind, that we could stay together. And I know that was very difficult for her as well because we couldn’t do all those couple things together. So it was a loss for all four of us. Right? And then later they ended up divorced as well. So, you know, it was heartbreaking really because we were also close. We’d go on trips together and spend weekends together or kids were the same age, so they grew up together. So yes, I can relate to that. Luckily, since I was a nurse, I had lots of friends at work, and they really picked me up. And I remember they said, okay, well, we’re gonna go hiking this weekend, and I said, oh, I can’t do that. How long how far are you gonna go? Oh, five miles? Oh, I can’t do that. And the joke is we decided to go on the hike. I agreed And, like, I was way ahead of them on the trail, and so they remind me of that to this day, but it was really those friends that were able to help me get through the time because they could see how sad I was and, you know, that I just didn’t know what to do with my life, having lost. One of the most important people in my life.
Victoria Volk: You’d mentioned that your mom had gone through the method herself did she become certified as well?
Dawn Jackson: She did. Mainly, she did it for herself. She didn’t end up, you know, working with clients or anything, but she definitely gained a lot from the experience. So she was the one, the proponent of, you know, me going and checking out the program, seeing how it would help me because it had created such a change in her life.
Victoria Volk: And what drew her to to the method?
Dawn Jackson: I think, you know, just stuff from her past, from her childhood, that she and I don’t remember how she found it, but she just wanted to feel different. She just wanted to feel better. And you know, she I always grew up with dogs, two golden retrievers, and she’d lost so many of them, you know, by the time I became an adult. And that was just heartbreaking for her. So I think that was another reason that attracted her to the grief recovery method because she just wanted to find some peace and ability to move forward because it weighed so heavily on her heart.
Victoria Volk: Had she also been with your father when he had passed? Like, were they still together? No.
Dawn Jackson: They were no longer together. So they got divorced about the same age as my husband I got divorced. Like, my son was about three and a half, and I was about three and a half when my parents divorced as well.
Victoria Volk: Okay. So not only are you going through your own divorce, but it’s compounded by the divorce of your parents.
Dawn Jackson: Correct.
Victoria Volk: Yes. And you’re an adult at this point. And that can be You know what I mean? Like, it’s one thing to once you’re an adult in your parents divorce, I think there’s a whole different it’s so many different layers to that. Can you speak to that a little bit? How that maybe influenced how you felt about your divorce or what that was like, experiencing that from the perspective of a child? Mhmm. And as the person going through it.
Dawn Jackson: So I think, you know, probably a lot of people think this way, you know, when their parents divorce, when their young children, they think about their future and their partner, and they never want to go through a divorce. Right? Because they’ve experienced it and it doesn’t feel good. And while it worked out best for my mom and my dad, there was just part of me that always had wished they had stayed together, you know, that it had worked out in some way. So for me, you know, I had wanted so badly for my marriage to stay intact and then it didn’t. So that was pretty heartbreaking. I yeah. I definitely think that that added to my grief.
Victoria Volk: And maybe how you looked at your son. Right? And because you’re grieving I mean, am am I wrong to say that you were a grieving child, an adult child?
Dawn Jackson: Correct. Yeah. No. I would definitely say that I was. There were so many things, you know, about my childhood. I mean, you know, my mother was wonderful. She was always there for me. But there was just things about it like my parents divorce and, you know, both of them remarried and those things while they did provide a lot of happiness. There was also sadness because it wasn’t the intact family that I had hoped for. And then when I couldn’t give that to my son.
You know, I felt like failure.
Victoria Volk: Since you went through grief recovery and you’ve been working with clients, what are some of the things in going through the divorce that you share from your experience with the people that you work with.
Dawn Jackson: You know, I always share with people really how I felt right when it happened because what I notice is so many people don’t talk about it. You know, how devastated they are and how much their life feels like it’s been turned upside down and those days of not wanting to get out of bed and, you know, just wishing the hours away. I always share that with people because it’s I usually get a response, oh my gosh, like, I’ve felt that way before. Like, I just didn’t know how to know how to move on. Because unfortunately in society, you know, we’re just expected to keep moving forward. Keep busy, you know, one of the myths. And it’s kinda like when we go through a death. Right? We get usually the one or two days off of work and that’s it and we’re expected to come back and just be normal again. Well, it’s really no difference with divorce. I mean, divorce is a death too. Right? But a couple days, we don’t just feel better. You know, it’s just a reminder every single day when we wake up and we’re alone. That our marriage didn’t work out. And so I always share my personal stories about, you know, the way that I felt after my divorce and, you know, navigating being a mom as well, a single mom and the difficulties behind that.
Victoria Volk: Before we started to record you had shared about your father passing. And at that point, you had already been a certified grief specialist, advanced specialist. Is that correct?
Dawn Jackson: Yeah. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: So how having the tools now in your toolbox versus not having them before until you did. How was that experience? Did you find that that was your ability to cope and move through that? Grief different now that you had the tools?
Dawn Jackson: You know, when I went through my divorce, I really didn’t have any tools. I mean, I had some. Right? But I hadn’t really started my healing journey. So all I knew was I was angry, I was sad, I didn’t know how to move forward. I thought I would never feel better. And you know, when I lost my dad, while I still had some of the same emotions, I knew that I had some tools that when I chose to use them would help me move forward and feel better. So there was hope. Right? Because I knew that I wasn’t stuck forever. And, you know, like, I always remind my clients because we do the work when we’re ready. Right? It’s not like something happens in the next day, we do the healing work. It usually takes a little bit of time before we’re ready. And I always remind people that when it’s the right time, you know, you will do the work, but just make sure that you’re still willing to do it. Right? Because you know you have these tools. So you need to step into them when you’re ready. So like I said, it gave me hope. You know, after I lost my dad because that was pretty devastating to me as well. But I knew that I had a way out of the pain. So I was grateful that I had learned the grief recovery method before he died.
Victoria Volk: I think it’s one thing to have someone in our life who we look up to and value their opinions, such as our mother who suggests something that you know, and we and when we witness it changing their life. Right? It’s I think it’s easier to buy in to Right. Something. Right? So it was easier for you to buy into the grief recovery method because you had seen how it helped your mother and changed her life. Mhmm. So for those listening who have or hearing about Great Recovery for the first time who, you know, when we say, yes, you need to be ready to do the work. It also takes courage. You might not be ready. You know, you might not be ready, but you don’t get ready by not putting your shoes on. And taking action to do the work. Yes. You get ready by getting ready. You know?
Dawn Jackson: Right. No. Yeah. You totally have to have the courage. You have to make the decision to step through the fear. I mean, like, I have a great example that’s going on in my life today. So When I left my nursing job two years ago, I decided one of the things I wanted to do was try backpacking because my son has been going backpacking since he was a teenager. And so I decided to go on a backpacking trip with them. So fast forward, I haven’t gone on one since twenty twenty two. And so he called me up last week and said, hey, you wanna go on five day backpacking trip with me. And so, you know, he sends me some information about it, and I’m looking, oh my goodness, the elevation and, you know, the miles we’re gonna do and everything. So I’m super excited. And then, you know, the last couple days, I’m, like, have this fear. Like, oh, boy, can I do this? Like, I’m two years older, and it’s a lot of miles and how’s my back gonna feel? And, you know, so it’s a reminder of those things like, we have to choose to step through that fear. We have to choose to have that courage even though we don’t know how it’s gonna turn out. And I always, you know, ask my clients to have the courage because it is scary to try something new. You know, even if it is something that we think might work to help us heal the pain that we’re experiencing. And I noticed like after a few sessions. It’s probably halfway through. All of a sudden, I see on people’s faces when I’m working with them online. They just look more peaceful. It’s amazing. It happens every single time because they’re
Victoria Volk: so great.
Dawn Jackson: They’re so scared because they don’t know what it’s going to involve. They don’t know what’s going to come up. And the work is not easy and I always tell people that but I wouldn’t ask you to do something I never did. So I love that reminder that we have to continue even when we have fear to step through that and move forward. Take the steps that we need to take, have the courage so that we can feel better.
Victoria Volk: I often have to remind myself like I don’t grow in my comfort zone.
Dawn Jackson: That is so true.
Victoria Volk: Step out of my comfort zone. You know, speaking in front of people, so much fear. Right? Like, there’s so much fear speaking in front of people. Like, am I gonna forget what I’m gonna say? I’m gonna stumble over my words. Am I gonna embarrass myself? Like, all these things. Right? But you just you don’t grow, you don’t get better, you don’t it’s not practice make makes perfect. It’s practice helps you grow. And It does. And you have to practice that courage. Mhmm.
Dawn Jackson: Sorry to get a trip. I am. Yeah. We’re leaving happy to be nice.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. Because here’s the thing. You know, we we raise our kids for eighteen years. Right? We hope that we’ve done our job and they leave at eighteen and they start to go on their own adventures and finding themselves and all of this and that and To be asked, I just wanna say this, to be asked by your twenty six year old son. I have a nineteen year old son. But to be asked by your twenty six year old son, mom, Do you want to take this backpacking trip with me for five days? He’s asking you, do you want to spend time with me for five days? Mhmm. This I wanna spend time with you for five days. That’s what I hear. And I just wanna cry for joy with you. I just wanna cry with joy for you because I would do it just because of that.
Dawn Jackson: Oh, and even if I
Victoria Volk: had zero trading, like, just sign me up. If my son asked me, I would be, like, heck, yes. You might have to pick me up a few times, but heck, yes.
Dawn Jackson: Right. And that’s why I do it because for me, like, we since he was a little boy, I was hiking with him. You know, I used to live in about an hour from the Columbia Gorge in Oregon, so we had beautiful waterfalls and hiking trails and I took him hiking all the time. I have tons of pictures, you know. He would be like, how how much farther? And I so I’d have to have all these tree bags. To keep him occupied and he talked the whole time. It was so funny. And so then he grew up and has a love for the wilderness and it he likes to be out as far as he possibly can where there’s nobody. Right? And it’s a connection that we have. So when I get asked to do something like that, you’re exactly right. I’m doing it because I wanna spend time with him. Yeah. It’s such a great opportunity
Victoria Volk: because we aren’t promised tomorrow.
Dawn Jackson: No. We aren’t.
Victoria Volk: And I
Dawn Jackson: mean, the last few years, you know, COVID and everything. I think most of us realize that. And that’s another reason why I left my job that I really wasn’t happy at because I wanted to help people in a different way. And I wanted to have the time with the people I love to be able to, you know, do the things I wanted to do and, you know, not wait until retirement because I have lost multiple friends. They retired. And then within a few months, they were no longer with us. And so I just decided it’s time to live life now, not in ten years from now.
Victoria Volk: It’s a great segue. So let’s talk more about that because you were a nurse for thirty years. Right? Thirty years. Yes. What was the catalyst for that decision. Like, what made you just hit the word go?
Dawn Jackson: To the
Victoria Volk: safe health. Yeah.
Dawn Jackson: To the safe nursing? Yeah. So I used to live in Portland, Oregon, and that’s where most of my nursing was. And the last few years of living there, I just I felt miserable. I mean, I made really good money so I could do most of the things I wanted to do. But there was something missing. Like, once I began my healing journey after my divorce, I realized that there was so much like healing that most people needed that wasn’t physical. And what I saw was that the emotional pain was causing physical pain. In my patients. And there’s a lack of mental health resources really available to people. It’s like, well, we can send you to a therapist, but not everybody wants a therapist. A lot of people want other modalities and insurance doesn’t pay for it. And so I became more and more frustrated because I just didn’t feel like I was making a difference I wanted to make. So I thought it was the actual job. So when I moved a few hours away, I had a different nursing job. And what I noticed was I didn’t feel any better because I was still doing the same thing. I was still telling people we’re gonna put you on a new medication. And I wasn’t helping them address all the emotional stuff, right, that they’d experienced during their whole life. And it’s time I was working with veterans. So veterans are really, you know, specific population, and they’ve gone through so many things that anybody who’s not a veteran really doesn’t understand. There’s a lot of pain. Yeah. There’s a lot of emotions there’s a lot of experiences that they don’t share with anybody except for their fellow veterans and sometimes they don’t even do that. So COVID hit And we were short staffed even more. People were quitting left and right. And we were asked to do more with less. And I was noticing that I kept getting sick I just emotionally wasn’t in a good place. I was never sleeping. And my intuition, because I use it quite a bit, was telling me if you don’t leave, then you’re gonna get sick, like, really sick. And that’s gonna be the end of, you know, being able to do the job that you’re doing. And so I just sat with it and sat with it and, you know, the universe kept giving me these, like, signs. Like, you need to do this, you need to leave. You need to do something different. You need to follow your passion. And so finally, I just had it. And it was really hard to get to that spot, especially because I was raised that you have the good job, you have the good benefits, you know, and you’re super responsible. And so for me to leave, what I was doing, it felt super scary. But it just got to the point where it was too hard to not leave. And so the day I turned in my resignation, I can’t even tell you how different I felt. Like my life felt completely changed. I felt a weight lift off of my shoulders. I felt probably physically better than I had in a long time. You know, and of course, they said to me, well, how about we let you go part time? And I said, you know, I’ve asked for the last year and a half to go part time. And you’ve denied it. So no. Well, can you stay for a few more weeks? And I said, no. And I said, well, why not? I said because I’m going back back in with my son, well, can’t you put that off? And I said, no. So for me, it was like too little, too late. Like, it was time for me to take care of me. I’ve spent my life taking care of other people. You know, nurses, moms, women were caregivers. And so for me to choose me was difficult and yet it was the best choice I’ve ever made in my life.
Victoria Volk: What did you go to after you signed put in your resignation?
Dawn Jackson: So then I spent three months not doing anything except for taking care of me, and I would sleep till like ten or eleven, which I can’t do that now. I always wake up at, like, seven thirty just my body does, but I was so tired. That’s how exhausted I was. Emotionally, depleted, physically depleted. I felt like my soul had just dried up. So that’s what I did for the first three months. I went back back in with my son. To cure me. And then at the end of the year, I started figuring out what I was gonna do. So I decided to get my advanced brief recovery method certification. So that I could do the work online. And then I started planning some retreats, so I do women’s retreats as well. And I finished writing my first book. So it’s yeah. It’s my life has just turned around in so many ways. I’m I feel so full of joy now every single day. Versus it used to be just drudgery going to work because I didn’t feel like I was making the difference that I wanted to make.
Victoria Volk: I love that for you. And I what I wanna share with listeners is that, on par with what you said, my life changed when and I it sounds like for you too, like, grief recovery was the catalyst for you coming into yourself for you to become empowered in your decisions and your path forward, I feel the same way, like, everything that I’ve accomplished, like, you know, certifications and different trainings and working with grievers and energy healing work. Like, all of it was after I went through grief recovery Mhmm. Than the past going on six years. So it’s a catalyst for change. It’s not just to feel better for a short period of time, like we often resort to alcohol or drugs or relationships or shopping or gambling, you know, these herbs that you and I know about short term energy relieving behaviors. Speaking of which, What were your nerves while you were going through? What sounds like to me was burnout in your nursing career? How were you coping with that?
Dawn Jackson: I would say, well, during COVID, I mean, I think a lot of people can relate to this, like, you know, we thought the world was ending in an we didn’t know what to expect. So, you know, it was, oh, have that glass of wine every night. You know, and after a while, I was like, okay, this isn’t good. You know, I because I don’t typically drink like that, but that was one of them. And you know, it was coming on from work and having that glass of wine, keeping busy, I would say, you know, social media, like scrolling the news feed, Those were my big ones. I’m trying to think back. Yeah. Those were I would say my two big ones. I was, you know, I was so tired from work that I felt like I didn’t have time to do any of the things that I really wanted to do as just exhausted. So, like, you know, where I had moved a few years ago to some place that’s beautiful. It’s like in the mountains. We have so many trees and rivers and lakes. I’d love to hike. I wasn’t doing any of that. I wasn’t exercising. So probably food a little bit too. Because when I quit my job, I weighed, like, probably ten pounds more than I’ve ever weighed, and I’m a pretty short person. So you know, for me to gain that much weight, typically, I don’t really gain weight easily so that I knew that yeah, I wasn’t in a good space emotionally.
Victoria Volk: And it sounds like I think a lot of people go through this especially after you’ve been doing something for so many years, you know, it’s like a depression. Right? It’s you’re you’re depressed.
Dawn Jackson: Yeah. One of the things that I’ll share this, the grief recovery method helped me with was, you know, although I left my job And I was happy about that. There was a really painful few weeks months because all those coworkers have become my friends. You know, they were my tribe. They got me through COVID and all the difficulties that came along with that. I mean, every time we walked into work, there was oh, we have to change this protocol, we have to change that, and so to leave all those people and knowing I was leaving them, even shorter staffed was really difficult for me, but the grief recovery method helped me with being able to make sure that I was complete in all those relationships. So Like, I went around and talked to all the people I was close to before I even put my notice in. And I told them why I was leaving. I told them what they meant to me. How important our relationship had been. How grateful I was for them. And you know not one person said to me, I can’t believe you’re quitting. Everybody said, I’m so glad that you’re taking care of yourself. Because I told them why I was doing it. It wasn’t that I just really dislike this job. It was that I needed to take care of me. That was most important to me at this time, that time. And so it helped me leave that job and not feel like there were all these loose ends because I was able to communicate with all the people that were important to me.
Victoria Volk: What I also hear is that your why for quitting was much stronger than your fear.
Dawn Jackson: Yes. It was. Because I knew that I was getting the point I didn’t have a choice because the universe kept giving me these signs. And the fact that I kept getting sick and I couldn’t sleep and, you know, I just did not feel like I was surviving were big enough for me. It was what I noticed now too is, you know, I used to just get these really nice paychecks And while they meant something to me, not like my pay today, you know, when I’m working with a client, you know, a hundred dollars means more than thousand dollars she used to because I feel like I’m really making a difference. I noticed the transformation in people’s lives.
Victoria Volk: So what do you say to people who just doubtful that grief recovery can help them?
Dawn Jackson: So, you know, we always talk about what they’ve tried and, you know, I always tell them my stories. About how it’s helped me move forward. I’ve talked to them about their reservations. You know, oftentimes it’s money. But I also thank a lot of it’s fear. Like, they don’t know that this is gonna work. And so, you know, I always remind them that they deserve to live a better life than what they’re experiencing at the time. And that unless they, you know, take a step to move forward and to heal their heart, they’re gonna stay stuck in that same place. But I’m also very aware of, like we talked about earlier, that someone also needs to be ready. They need to choose to step into something. And so, you know, I give them a lot of space. You know, and I have people tell me, oh, I’ve been following you for like a year. And I’ve been reading your stuff and I keep clicking on your calendar link for a discovery call. And then they finally get to the point. They finally have that courage to do it because I want them to have that courage versus feeling like they’re being pushed into something. Because I as you know, we want them to show up fully. Because that’s the only way they’re gonna really heal.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. You can’t you can’t half ass this.
Dawn Jackson: No. You cannot.
Victoria Volk: You can’t. You can’t.
Dawn Jackson: No. It doesn’t work.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. Because, you know, as you know, it’s like you get into, like, weeks four to five, you know, it you know, they even tell us, like, you know, especially if you do in person work or groups or whatever, hey, you know, you warn them, like, you’re gonna wanna not put your shoes on and walk out that door. But, you know, that’s the time you need to. Dig within yourself and Mhmm. Find that courage to push through.
Dawn Jackson: Yeah. It’s hard. I mean, In some ways, I’m grateful I did it in the certification training, right, versus, like, seven weeks. Same? Because I wasn’t going to be leaving the certification training because that’s dummy. If I start something, I’m going to finish it. Right? So it, like, forced me to continue going through the process, which was really painful at the time, but you know, I wish I could I wish that there was some way to relay to people, like, yes, going through the process can be difficult, but when you get to the other end, the feeling is amazing. Like, not always right away, but you start noticing how your life is changing, how you feel differently. And there’s such a freedom to that.
Victoria Volk: I would like us to share our own personal experiences of going through this method, which is possible in the two day workshop, which Yes. Neither of us are trained to do. Correct? Correct. Yep. So we went through the certification, and that’s a four day process. So, basically, we’re kinda going through the two day workshop that’s available only from certain trainers through Discovery Institute. But can you please share your personal experience of going through the training and the program itself?
Dawn Jackson: So like I said, when I first ended up at the training, I didn’t think I had any grief. And within about an hour, I realized that there were a lot of things in my life that were grieving events. So first, it was difficult to look at that. I mean, it wasn’t that I never thought about those things I did, but when you think about them all together, one day, you know, it’s like, wow, I’ve been through a lot. And I think most people realize that. We’re not born and then we don’t have any of these grieving experiences. We all have them. There’s, you know, people always think about death. There’s deaths. There’s the time that you went to school when, you know, maybe your best friend was mean to you. They bullied you. You know, even those little things, those stick with us because they create some of our belief systems we have about ourselves, you know, even happy things like having a child that can be a grievance experience as well because it completely changes our life. Like, you know, you’re happy. You’re having a child, but then you go home and you’re like, oh my gosh. I can’t even go to the store, right, by myself. So all those things, you know, came up for me you know, the experiences in my life, the relationships that I had that were less than what I’d hoped for, and all the hopes dreams and expectations that I’d had that didn’t happen in my life. So it was overwhelming at first, but I think as the days went by, I just realized I am in the right place to heel, and this is such a supportive environment. And I’m gonna come out on the other side. Like, I started to realize Like, this is going to change my life. This is amazing work. So that was kind of my experience. And then, you know, for a while after I became certified it didn’t really do anything with it except I did do my own work. I mean, I think, to this day, I’ve done, like, twenty different relationships in my life. And I notice every time I do one, like, how significantly my life changes and I notice it in my relationships too because we all know relationships aren’t easy. Any type of relationship, they can be a struggle at times. But doing this work keeps me in a space where I can continue to learn and to grow and work together with someone versus wanting to just walk away.
Victoria Volk: I physically got sick. At my at my training. Like so I went down I flew down to Texas for mine. Okay. So it’s like, I think of it as the version of me that was on that plane going down there was not the same me that came back. And like, I’ve it was, you know, thirty plus years of grief that I had none you know, had stuff down and pushed down and so much anger and resentment and all this stuff was coming up. But I physically, like, both ends And and I came to that class. I was bound and determined and good for me that I had actually read the book before even going. Because yeah. I not because I’d actually tried to DIY this before I went to that certification, like,
Dawn Jackson: yeah.
Victoria Volk: I can learn this. I don’t need somebody to walk me through this. I don’t yeah. I’m gonna I’m gonna help people. Like, that’s why I’m doing this. I wanna help other people. Like, I don’t need this. Other people need this. And so I was reading the book and then I’m like, oh, yeah, I think I need this. And had another loss, actually, that came about at the same time. And I was like, yeah, I definitely need this. Mhmm. And Yeah. I was so sick. I Susan was my trainer and she ended up going and getting me drama mean and I was laying on the floor listening to her instruction. And yeah. And it turned out to be training experience for her that she she’ll probably never ever have again just the dynamics of the group, which was Mhmm. Really crazy. But, yeah, it was a very is very life changing, just that experience for me. Sandy Derby was there too at the at the same time, and she
Dawn Jackson: was Right.
Victoria Volk: Yeah, she was my ended up being my partner and yeah. It it was an amazing experience for me, but tell you what, if stuff was per it was like the purge before the purge, you know. And so it can I mean, our bodies speak to us?
Dawn Jackson: They do. I hear that story a lot that people get sick. It was, yeah, we’re trying to get rid of this stuff, but there’s part of us that’s, like, Is it safe to get rid of it? No.
Victoria Volk: And a different mechanism for me? Yeah. Can I tell you what? I couldn’t just hop on the plane and go I could have gone back home. But like you said, had that, I think, been in a group setting or having, you know, had to go somewhere? I you know, I can see where people would have a hard time sticking it out, but that is where the courage needs to come in and Mhmm. And our responsibility too as the as the specialist and the facilitator to hold people’s hands and meet them where they’re at and continue to show them the improvement that is happening. Because I think it’s hard to see it when you’re in it too. Right? Like, oh, I’m a mess. I’m not progressing. Like, this isn’t helping, but that Right. That is the work. Exactly. I had a client even say to me. She’s like, you know, people always say, you gotta do the work. You gotta do the work. And after she went through this program with me, she was like, I understand now. Mhmm. What the work is. This program is the work. Mhmm. That’s what I just
Dawn Jackson: yeah. I love how the certification, like, you you can become certified unless you do your own work because you’re right. Like, so many people think, well, this is for somebody else. I mean, I get people to reach out to me all the time and say, oh, my sister really needs this. My mom really needs this.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
Dawn Jackson: And, you know, it’s really hard because everybody needs this. We’re all griefers. We talk about that all the time. Right? Because we’ve all had grieving events in our life. It’s like, we can’t even sit down and watch a movie or show at night without seeing all the grief. Because once you know something, you can’t unknow it. And I feel sad that there just aren’t more programs like this that can really help people move forward, not temporarily, but permanently. You know? And I love this tool because you can use it for anything that’s happened in the past and for anything that happens in the future.
Victoria Volk: I’ve applied this to my relationship with money alcohol, my inner child. Mhmm. You can apply it to your relationship with food. Like, I’ve applied this in a lot of different ways and aspects of my life, and it’s remarkable what comes up.
Dawn Jackson: Oh, yeah. It definitely is. I always know when there’s some work I need to do, when some just keeps coming up. It keeps coming up. It keeps coming up. It’s like the universe knocking at my door. Hello. When you’re gonna do the work, But we know we always have those tools, and that’s why I love giving people. It’s like, you know, I’m gonna work with you for, you know, seven weeks, but then you’re gonna have this tool for the rest of your life and you don’t have to come back to me unless you want to, which, you know, from one of my personal stories is I went to a therapist for years after my divorce. And while there were things that helped me with, I don’t feel like I ever got any type of the resolution that I’ve gotten with the grief recovery method. It was like I just kept going back and talking about the same thing over and over and over again. So I love that this program this tool, this method doesn’t keep people stuck, you know, continuing to talk about the same thing, like, we’re helping you. Get to the point where you don’t have to keep talking about all the negative things because we’re gonna help you feel better. These tools are gonna help you feel better.
Victoria Volk: And it’s like algebra. You know, every lesson builds upon it self, the building on the week before, and towards the end, I think it, you know, starts to click. I mean
Dawn Jackson: Alright. Great.
Victoria Volk: But Hey, algebra. But might not be the best analogy, but it’s yeah. That’s I think that’s how this is so brilliantly made is that it you’re always taking just a little bit more of a step forward for the process. I always ask that option. Yeah.
Dawn Jackson: I would agree.
Victoria Volk: And we’re empowering people. And I would ask I always ask people like, What has it been costing you to not feel empowered? Yes. What is that costing you?
Dawn Jackson: Yeah, there is so much to helping people feel empowered. Because when people don’t feel empowered, they stay small. They seem to call us. Yeah. Exactly.
And they don’t put themselves out there, the gifts that they came here to share with others. So, you know, I always think because I’m all about grief and joy and how those go together, for me is, like, If we can heal the grief, we get to the joy. That’s exactly what happened in my life. I wouldn’t really find that joy because I was so stuck in all the things that had happened that broke my heart. And once I was able to work through that using the grid recovery method, now I’m able to find the joy every day. I mean, every day might not be wonderful but I can always find something that’s wonderful in every day.
Victoria Volk: Well, and then you can recognize what it is that, you know, if you start going down this slope of, oh, I’m starting to, you know, be a workaholic or Mhmm. I’m starting to want to drink that glass of wine at the end of the day, like
Dawn Jackson: Right.
Victoria Volk: We’re able to recognize that within ourselves. And like you said, you can’t unknow it. So You see it in other people.
Dawn Jackson: Oh, yes.
Victoria Volk: You see how people are coping with life. And, yeah, it’s grief is all around us.
Dawn Jackson: Hold ends. Yeah. I’m I’m very grateful for the grief recovery lesson. What it allows us to do how it allows us to move forward in life,
Victoria Volk: and it allowed you to write your your book
Dawn Jackson: Yeah. No. I wrote two
Victoria Volk: notes here.
Dawn Jackson: Your book. Yeah. Which I don’t have that. So I’d wanted to write a book for years. I have a friend that’s a publisher. She helps people self publish books. And she coaches authors, writers. And I’d done a few things for her, some projects but I really wanted to do my own book. And so when I started thinking about leaving my nursing career, I started writing a book, and it’s called Journey to Peace and Healing. So I finished it after I left my job and then got it published, but it’s really about how to, you know, return to that state of peacefulness of joy of love So I talk about grief. There’s a whole chapter in there about grief. It’s really reflective journal, so I have each chapter is kind of structured. There’s writing, and then there’s reflective questions in journaling space. Because I really wanted it to be something that an individual picked up and didn’t just read like they looked at their own life. They chose to take steps. To move forward instead of staying stuck where they are. So I was pretty excited when that was published because that was one of my lifelong dreams as well.
Victoria Volk: When I self published mine in twenty seventeen, it’s So when you hold the book in your hands, there’s just no feeling like it is there.
Dawn Jackson: No. There isn’t. It’s pretty awesome. We we got.
Victoria Volk: So what does your grief taught you?
Dawn Jackson: I would say my grief has taught me my strength. You know, my ability to overcome to change my life, to be more authentic. Stop me that there’s more than just surviving and that I can thrive, that I can have the life that I truly desire to live
Victoria Volk: and that you can do hard things. Yes. Like a five day hike with your son. Right.
Dawn Jackson: Yeah. That’s true. And, you know, really that I wanna make the most of each moment. I think for years, I just lived day to day, you know, through the drudgery, I didn’t really look forward to much. I didn’t see how important it was to make the most of each day, and I feel differently now. You know, I try to make the time for the people I love even if it means I’m not working today. I try to tell people what they mean to me because like you said, life is short. So, yeah, it’s taught me a lot. I’m very grateful. I wouldn’t be who I am today without all that different events that I’ve been through that caused me grief.
But now I can see the gifts and the grief.
Victoria Volk: You know, I’ve been doing this podcast for I’ll be starting my fifth year here at the end of the month, and all the conversations that is the theme is that there’s gifts in it. And when you’re in it and you’re listening to you know, podcast episodes like this or people are sharing their stories and you might say, oh, well, I didn’t go through something that hard. Like, my grief isn’t that difficult or I didn’t experience it that I didn’t have it that bad or, you know, if we kind of place our grief on a chart, you know, against other people’s grief and there is no hierarchy because grief has felt that a hundred percent regardless of who you are and what you’ve been through and you can’t say that one thing is traumatic for this person and it’s not for another. It’s it’s so individual and that’s what I think I love about What I think people might see grief recovery as is like this cookie cutter approach. Right?
And it it’s not it’s couldn’t be more it couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s because grief is so individual, Yes. And this method honors the individuality of your grief. And that’s what I love about it. It yeah, it’s just it allows your individual grief to be expressed.
Dawn Jackson: Right. And it doesn’t compare. I always Yeah. Tell my clients, you know, even if you and I shared the same parent, like say we lost our mom, I don’t know how you feel and you don’t know how I feel because we had different relationships with her and we’re different individuals. We’re unique. Our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, are completely unique from one another. So I was trying to remind people that because, yeah, it really bothers me when people compare because they might have you know, had one loss, but they, you know, we’re talking to someone who they feel has had a more significant loss. But you’re right. Everybody experiences their grief at a hundred percent. So it’s really important to recognize that
Victoria Volk: And even too, like like you to your point growing up in the same home and having, you know, the the relationships are individual. And so it’s I’ve seen so many times in the work that I’ve done with clients, but even people who come on my podcast, it’s like, you know, there’s so much turmoil within the families because there’s this expectation of, well, I feel this way, you should feel this way, Right. That’s the same we have the same relate we have the same parent or we have the same father or whatever it was, but the lived experience is so different, you know. And that’s Yes. Because the relationship is different. You know, you can be closer to one parent than the other parent and the in fighting that can happen because we just don’t accept that all relationships are unique in individual. Mhmm. And that’s what this program helps each of us honor within our own lives. And that’s what I love about it.
Dawn Jackson: Oh, I would totally agree. I always when I’m working with my clients, you know, not only do I take them through the method, but I also try and provide some education as the program does about how we approach people who are grieving. You know, if we’re on the other end of that. And you know, everybody says, wow, I’ve said some of those unhelpful things. Like, I know how you feel. I’ve lost my father. And so I always remind people, be gentle with yourself. But one of the best things you can say to someone is, I can’t imagine how you feel. Because grievers often don’t feel heard. They often feel like we’re giving them advice or we’re comparing our losses or we’re judging And so I just think it’s such a great reminder that we never know how somebody else feels. And by saying that, it gives them an opening to express what’s going on in their heart without feeling shut down.
Victoria Volk: Is there anything else that you would like to share that you don’t feel like you got to?
Dawn Jackson: No, I feel like this has been a great conversation with you. I really appreciate spending this time together.
Victoria Volk: Likewise. And where can people find you if they would like to connect with you?
Dawn Jackson: So my website is don michelle jackson dot com. And then I’m also on Facebook, I’m on LinkedIn. But, yeah, domichel jackson dot com is my URL.
Victoria Volk: One l, by the way? Yes. One l.
Dawn Jackson: Thank you.
Victoria Volk: I figured that out. Really quick. Yeah. And I’ll put the link for that in the show notes. But when do you have another retreat coming up?
Dawn Jackson: It looks like October. I’m working on that right now. Securing a house to do it in in central Oregon. So they’re usually fairly small, like, up to ten people, ten women because, you know, we lodged together. We spent a few days together. It creates great connection and healing. I used to go to retreats myself, and I just they were so important for me in my process and to have that connection with other women and working on ourselves and empowering each other, so that’s why I offer these retreats to other women.
Victoria Volk: And do you bring other modalities into the retreats, or can you share a little how you like, what is offered during these trades?
Dawn Jackson: So we usually look at things like our belief systems. I always talk about grief. Although they don’t offer the method because that’s something that has to be done over, you know, several weeks. But I do talk about grief. And then, you know, we kind of look at where people are stuck, where they’re stuck now and where they want to be in their life and help them create a vision for the future. I usually bring in an another person to help me because it’s really fun to have two different perspectives on things. So I changed that up a little bit each time. So I haven’t quite planned it, but it’s gonna be announced hopefully in the next couple weeks.
Victoria Volk: And you can find all that information on your website as well. Correct?
Dawn Jackson: Correct.
Victoria Volk: Yep. And your book, also the link to your book is on your website.
Dawn Jackson: Both of my books are on my website, and they’re also on Amazon. The paper back and the digital version.
Victoria Volk: And on social, you are in social media as well. Yep. Well, thank you so much for sharing in your grief recovery experience with me and my listeners. I always love having other specialists on that you know, we can kind of talk shop a little bit, but also share personal experiences because I have seen this method not only work through the lives of my clients. But when I have people that come on my podcast who have also experienced it, it it’s like you just have to experience it. It’s kind of hard to describe and explain in a nutshell even. It’s I guess in in one word, it’d be transformative.
Dawn Jackson: I would agree.
Victoria Volk: You know, that would that would be the easiest way, I guess, to explain it, but it’s such a it’s such a big word too. Right? Like, can it really be transformative? Well, yes, it can. Yes.
When you do that
Dawn Jackson: work, Yeah. And the more work you do, the more transformative it is.
Victoria Volk: Exactly. It’s you know, I mean, when you continue to, like I said, you know, applied it to my relationship with money and alcohol and various aspects of my life. It’s it’s amazing what you can uncover and discover about yourself. So
Dawn Jackson: yeah. Well, thank you for having me and really enjoyed this time together, Victoria.
Victoria Volk: My pleasure, and thank you for being my guest. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.
Childhood Grief, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Mental Health, Murder, Parent Loss, Podcast |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
In this week’s episode, I am honored to host Susan Snow, a beacon of hope for anyone navigating the treacherous waters of trauma and loss.
Susan is an inspiring figure as an author, international speaker, and resiliency coach. Susan bravely opened up about her experience following the tragic death of her father, an LA police detective. Her candid discussion on coping with PTSD before it was widely recognized sheds light on the silent battles many face.
In this raw conversation:
- Susan shares her firsthand experience dealing with PTSD following the violent loss of her father at age 17.
- She discusses how the lack of mental health awareness in the ’80s left her struggling alone with grief.
- We delve into how witnessing gun violence impacted Susan, leading to sleep deprivation and suicidal ideation.
- The podcast touches upon how trauma can affect familial relationships, highlighting Susan’s strained dynamic with her mother post-tragedy.
- We learn about Susan’s path to resilience: from wearing an “emotional mask” to eventually finding a therapist who understood severe trauma.
- A pivotal moment occurs during our discussion when she recounts watching coverage of the Columbine High School shootings in 1999, which triggered flashbacks — illustrating how PTSD symptoms can persist over time without proper help.
Susan’s tale teaches us something vital: In sharing our stories openly without fear or shame, we permit others to do the same. We foster conversations that might be someone else’s lifeline or inspire them towards help they’ve been reluctant to seek out themselves.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
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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.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Healing Through Trauma: The Journey of Resilience
In the labyrinth of life’s challenges, few experiences cut as deeply as trauma and loss. For Susan Snow, this journey began on a fateful Halloween night in 1985 when her world was shattered by the loss of her father, an event that would shape her understanding of grief and resilience for years to come.
Susan’s story is not just one of heartache; it’s a beacon for those navigating the murky waters of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), mental health struggles, and personal growth. As we unpack Susan’s narrative, we find invaluable lessons embedded within—lessons about vulnerability, self-care, and the transformative power of therapy.
The Silent Battle Within
Imagine carrying a weight so heavy that even your closest loved ones can’t see it. This was Susan’s reality following the traumatic death of her father. In an era where conversations around mental health were scarce at best, she found herself isolated with emotions like guilt and shame while dealing with PTSD—a term barely recognized at the time.
For many like Susan who have faced similar battles silently amidst family dynamics fraught with complexities such as narcissism or addiction issues—the path to healing can seem dauntingly out-of-reach.
A Trigger Point Towards Recovery
It wasn’t until another tragedy struck—the Columbine High School shooting—that Susan’s suppressed traumas resurfaced intensely enough to push her towards seeking help. It highlights how external events can trigger deep-seated emotional responses from past traumas—an important reminder that our journeys are ongoing rather than neatly concluded chapters.
Her husband played a pivotal role in advocating for therapy—a step which led Susan to eventually connect with a therapist specializing in severe trauma. This partnership became foundational in validating her experience and providing hope during what seemed like insurmountable times.
Breathing Life into Healing
One practical tool that emerged from therapy was box breathing—a technique that helped regulate Susan’s nervous system during anxiety spikes. She emphasizes allowing oneself to feel anxious moments instead of resisting them; employing controlled breathing as both an anchor and compass through tumultuous emotions serves as practical advice for anyone grappling with anxiety or stress-related disorders.
Box breathing represents more than just breath control—it signifies taking command over one’s internal state amidst external chaos.
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Welcome to another episode of Greeting Voices. If this is your first time listening, thank you for being here. And if you’ve listened before, thank you for coming back. Today, my guest is Susan Snow, she is an author, international speaker, and resiliency coach. Her message of hope and healing through trauma and loss comes from her vulnerability, which allows others a safe space to tell their own story of trauma and loss. And thank you so much for your time and being here today and sharing your story.
Susan Snow: Thanks for having me.
Victoria Volk: And your book title is very to the point Can you share that story, please? But also, I have a quest a follow-up question to the book title.
Susan Snow: So Sure. Absolutely. Well, the book came out and that title was specific because I am the daughter of a Los Angeles police detective who was ambushed while picking up my then six year old brother on Halloween of nineteen eighty five. And my mom and I were called to the school and witnessed his body in the aftermath. So the other side of the gun It was my side. It was my side of what gun violence, you know, takes away from you. Without getting political, you know, it was more on the mental health side.
Victoria Volk: And when you when this happened, you were seventeen on the gas of adulthood. And you’re old enough to recognize that what happened. Right? And process what happened to some to some degree?
Susan Snow: I really struggled. You know, this was the eighties. It was mid eighties. There was no talk of mental health back then. And there definitely was very little known about PTSD. What I witnessed was horrific. And I didn’t know how to process. And unfortunately, that night was so chaotic. There was just so much going on. And when we showed up, there was so much going on, but we still didn’t know until we actually saw this scene. All I saw were officers coming towards me with tears in their eyes. And I didn’t know what that meant. I mean, even when I’m the one that received the call at home, I was getting ready to go a Halloween party or hoping to go to a Halloween party, and it was a week night. So my dad had already said, nope. Not doing it. But I was bound to determine being seventeen, and I got that call from a woman from my brother’s school. And all she said was there was a drive by shooting, and my dad was involved. So even at that point, I didn’t know what to expect when we arrived at the school. And even that night, after I witnessed what I witnessed to the officers, you know, my mom was screaming and Iwas focused on an ambulance that was did still in the street, and I couldn’t understand why they weren’t helping my dad. I just it was not processing at all. That what I was seeing was that he was gone. It was it was a a very surreal kind of feeling like an auto body experience kind of And then when we got into the school, we went into a office. And I sat down and my mom was kind of ushered out of the room. I believe was some detectives. I didn’t know where my brother was.
I didn’t know if he was hurt. If he was at the hospital, like, I knew nothing. And as I was sitting there, there were two ladies that were talking. And the one said to the other, yes, unfortunately, mister Williams is deceased, and that’s when it hit me and my world cracked. And I just wanted to run out of there. You know? I talked to a lot of people who have had loss. And this seems to be kind of a feeling of I just wanna run away from this nightmare, especially when it’s something that happens. And occurs quickly, but you just wanna run. And I wanted to run and run and run and run and not stop. But my legs were like cement. I couldn’t move. Physically, could not move. And my mom came back into the room and she said, I’m sending you with a neighbor. And even though I wanted To leave, I wanted to run, the seventeen year old girl needed my family. I needed to be in a space where I felt like I wasn’t alone. And instead, I got sent to the neighbor, and I don’t blame her. I mean, there was a lot of chaos, like I said, going on. And people handle things differently in chaos. But that night really impacted me because I felt like I was not important in this family unit situation and all the focus and so be it was on my brother because my dad’s last thing that he did on earth was to save his life and tell him to duck down in the truck because he knew what was coming. So, you know, for me, I was having to go to this neighbor and this poor neighbor had known my parents forever. So she was trying to wrap her head around what was happening. And my environment changed because my quiet street now was covered in media vans and police cars, and we had helicopters we could hear over the house. And it was crazy, you know. So I didn’t get to grief. By my like, I had no privacy on the grieving process at all. Like, There was always people around. People I didn’t know. And you know, I had my boyfriend at the time who I’m now married to. And he was nineteen. So we were both children, you know, and we’re trying to figure these things out. Like, how do you navigate this? So Yeah. It was it was a huge pivotal pivotal time in my life. And Yeah.
I
Victoria Volk: did I wanna backpedal to my statement about that you can process it to some degree. And what I meant was when I said that because I’m a child of loss. My father died when I was a kid and
Susan Snow: You get that. Do that.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. So I get that. And when people say, oh, children are resilient, they’ll bounce back. Like, that drives me crazy.
Susan Snow: Me too.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. So what I meant when I said that and I should have said it differently was as opposed to like a younger child. Right?
Susan Snow: Oh, yeah.
Victoria Volk: You have a greater understanding
Susan Snow: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Of the weight
Susan Snow: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Of what’s happening. Yeah. Right? I still really under like, a child mean, like, I understood when my dad was dying of cancer. Like, Iand when he died, I knew he died.
Like, Iunderstood that. Like, he was gone forever. Right? But to understand, like, the impact that that was gonna have, the rest of my life, that I couldn’t even run my head around. Right?
Susan Snow: Right.
Victoria Volk: But as a seventeen year old and you know you’re going into adulthood and you you have an understanding of this is changing everything for me. Right? And that’s that’s the weight of the trauma and what you witnessed and all of that. Did your brother survive?
Susan Snow: He did. He survived. I didn’t see him until the next day. What I was told was that he was in he was questioned by police immediately. So he was still at the school when I got sent away. But I didn’t get to see him. I could hear him crying. In his room, but there was nothing left of me. To be able to go and console him. And I just assumed my mom would be there and do it. And he would be surrounded with people because he was so little. So I really didn’t see my brother until the next day and I was able to hug him. And, you know, just let him know that I was there for him and I love him and you know, dad loved him and, you know, so but it was it was a hard time. It was, you know, I My relationship with my mom was not a hundred percent when this happened. We had a strained relationship for many years.
And I didn’t realize that until I started to write my book. You know? So when all this happened, my dad was always like the go between the mediator. The voice of reason, and now he’s gone. And so not only was I processing the fact that my dad was gone, but then I was processing the fact that how was I going to manage that relationship with my mom?
So it was just a lot. It was a lot for me and, you know, I was living, as you well know, with grief, you live in a fog. I was living in a fog. I couldn’t sleep. I was total sleep deprivation.
And I ambeknownst to me, I had suicidal ideation. I wanted to be with my dad and I didn’t know how that would happen. But I longed to be with my dad. And I had days where I just couldn’t get out of bed, so the depression hit me. My sense of security was gone because they didn’t catch the men. So the men who were involved in this in my dad’s murder. My dad was a detective. So he had testified that day in one of his criminal court cases, and the guy who was the defendant was out on bail. And it gave him an opportunity. But it didn’t it took them six days to find them. So for six days, we had police presence all over our house, front yard, backyard, everything. I had bodyguards. So anywhere I went, I had bodyguards. And it was just crazy, like a whole different world. I had a pretty normal teenage life before all of this. And that was gone. And I had to grow up very, very quickly. So it was just it was a lot to process a lot. And I didn’t have the tools, you know. Ijust I didn’t have the tools at the time to manage my anxiety.
So I always felt like I was I even though I wanted to be with my dad, I was always, like, I felt like, you know, I’m having a heart attack because the panic attacks and and the feelings of it. And I would have to just try to squash him most of the time Iwould just talk myself out of it. But now I know not to do that because it just extends the attack. But it went on for a while. And I you know, and my mom now that I realized my mom has a narcissistic personality, And so her focus was totally her. And you know, we all process trauma and grief differently. And she chose to drink. And so that felt alienating to me as well. But that was her coping skill, and I’m not, you know, like I said, everybody deals with trauma and loss differently.
Victoria Volk: That’s another level of grief. Right? And then your younger brother is growing up in that environment too.
Susan Snow: Mhmm. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, it’s a it did take them about a month. I was at the point where if you pointed me in a direction, that’s the direction I would go. You know, Ihad no advocacy for myself. Ididn’t know how to verbalize. Ididn’t even tell anybody what was going on in my head, and I didn’t know how. I had guilt and shame and felt like if I put more on someone else, it was too much, so I just kinda just dealt with it. You know? And My mom came to me about a month after my dad was killed, and he she said that the Los Angeles police department the advocate said that they wanted to put us in therapy. And I didn’t know anything about therapy. In fact, in the 80s, I thought if you went to a therapist, You were crazy. But being, you know, subservient, I was like, Okay. Because that’s that’s the direction that you’re gonna push me. That’s the direction I’ll go. And I met with this therapist. I had this feeling like, oh my gosh, this is gonna be the adult. This is gonna be the one that’s gonna help me, that’s gonna make me feel better. Right? But unfortunately, I think that the trauma that I experienced was too much for him, he wasn’t, what I call, trauma competent. And he didn’t wanna ask the questions, and he didn’t. For an entire year, Ali talked about every single session was my relationship with my mother, my relationship with my brother, my boyfriend in school. And that was it.
Victoria Volk: And in the room.
Susan Snow: Nothing. And people like when I tell people that they go, What? And I said, yeah, because I think, honestly, he was afraid to ask the questions. Right? Because, you know, maybe he didn’t have the answers or he didn’t know what to do.
So
Victoria Volk: So have you ever even asked you, are you having thoughts of harming yourself or others? Not at once.
Susan Snow: Not once. And every session I’d be like before the session, I was like, today’s the day. Today’s the day. He’s gonna figure it out because Iwas a mess. Like, I was a mess, but I just didn’t know how to verbalize. Most seventeen year olds back then didn’t know how to verbalize our feelings. And most of the time, you know, at Gen X, we were we were told to, you know,
Victoria Volk: suck it up buttercup.
Susan Snow: Buck it up buttercup. Yeah. Exactly. It wasn’t it wasn’t an open conversation. So an entire year went by, and the last day that I saw him, he looked at me and said, Susan, you’re a well rounded young lady, and you’re gonna be fine for the rest of your life, and I don’t need to see you anymore. So that was that. And I walked out of that last session thinking, okay, I am so I’ve cracked I’ve cracked. I’m I’m crazy. I I’m just gonna have to live with this pain for the rest of my life. Even a professional can’t help me, and that was my mindset.
You know, I lived in fight or flight from then on? It was just that’s how it was. And, you know, and and and my my boyfriend, he didn’t He didn’t know what to do either. So I just I struggled a lot. And then on top of that, you know, as the years went on, you know, the the time with my mom and living with my mom became very unbearable. I couldn’t do it anymore because I watched her spiraling and couldn’t do anything about it. And I had this feeling of, like, I’m the oldest, and this is my responsibility. And I just had to, like I think even back then, I knew a little bit about boundaries without knowing about boundaries. And I just drew a line in the sand and said, that’s it. At eighteen, I’m moving out. I can’t do this. And I did it. I moved out.
Victoria Volk: What did your early twenties your life look like after that into your early twenties?
Susan Snow: I you know, I had some peace being out on my own even though my mom told the local police department, so they were constantly driving by my apartment. Which, you know, you just can’t get away from it. But I married my boyfriend when I was twenty one. And in hindsight, you know, both of us agree that we were too young to get married. But because we had been together for so many years and we’d lived with each other for a little bit, that that was the next step. But even you know, all these years, like, I was living in fight or flight. So is he? He may not have witnessed what I saw that night, but from the moment I told him that night when he came because the the neighbor called him and told him to come to her house. The minute I told him, that was trauma. He’d only known my dad for three months. We’d only been dating three months. Three months and this nineteen year old guy, most guys would have been like, bye bye. This is too much. Too much. But he stuck it out. And I think he stuck it out because he knew my mom was going to do what she did, which is kind of turtle within herself. And I needed a friend. I needed some sort of support. And I’m grateful for that. You know, but it was, you know, it was it’s our journey too, you know, and it’s I don’t think I would be here if my husband wasn’t. In my life, especially at that point. You know? So but, you know, we’ve we’ve been together almost thirty nine years now, and it’s just nuts to me. I mean, we’ve had our we we it’s it’s if you read it in the book. If you read it in the book, there was a divorce in the middle, but we are together. And married in for the second time. But yeah. I mean, it it’s just you know, grief is is a crazy thing because it you know, it it comes and it goes. And the nice thing about having my husband is that he now knows my triggers. I hate that word, but he knows he knows and he knows when that’s gonna send me into the grief. You know, so it’s helpful. I have the tools now, but he he does too. Through watching me through the years. And that’s really important.
Victoria Volk: When I think you raise a good point in that the ripples of grief, it’s the impact it has on you, but also I mean, the people around you, when you don’t have the tools, right, and you can combust at any moment or, you know, explode into a fit of rage or anger. The people around you feel like they’re living and walking on egg shells.
Susan Snow: Yep.
Victoria Volk: That’s the ripples of getting And so when people think, oh, it’s not affecting me. I’m dealing with it. I’m just sweeping it under the rug. I’m not gonna talk about it. If you are getting angry about someone not replacing the toilet paper roll or, you know, refilling the salt shaker, whatever it is. Right? Like these silly things that can make us angry when we are just like you said, walking in a fog. Well, and yet it’s like these a thousand paper cuts. Right?
Susan Snow: Exactly. Well, I will tell you I got really good, and I talk about this all the time. Igot really good with wearing my emotional mask. And what that is is, you know, when I was young, after it happened, people would say things like you’re strong. You’re brave.
You’re gonna be fine. And that’s what I wore. So anytime anything came up, I was like, put on the mask, I’m fine. I’m strong. I’m this. Right? But underneath, I was a mess. But what I put out outwardly was something that was different. And so that’s why I call it the mass. Because nobody can see what all the turmoil is inside. My husband had a way of knowing when that mask was coming on, and that was the difference. But it took me many, many years to get rid of that mask. Many, many years. And you know, fourteen to be exact. We we were married. We got we had two children. We had two children. We decided we were gonna leave Southern California. I always lived with this safety issue. Because it was my dad’s death was a planning of his death for months. Before he died, before they killed him. I always looked behind my shoulder all the time. Nighttime was extremely stressful for me because my dad was killed at night at the night at the, you know, like, five forty And when we got an opportunity to move to Denver, Colorado, that’s we jumped on it. And we moved in ninety seven and then I was working as a hairdresser at the time. And I was working at a salon that was close to Littleton, Colorado. And I on April twentieth of nineteen ninety nine, I was working and I took a break, I went into the backroom and turned on the TV, and all the coverage of the Columbine high school shootings. Were happening. And as I sat and I watched it, obviously, my colleagues were having a reaction to it. Shock you know, sadness, all that. But for me, I saw the school. I saw the kids that were my own age. I saw the ambulances. The police cars and I started to have flashbacks. I turned pale white. What is a ghost? Started getting clammy. I could feel my fingers tingling. I knew it was happening. I was having a panic attack. And I did not tell my colleagues my story so they had no idea why I was having this visceral reaction, and I didn’t either. Because I was told I was gonna be fine for the rest of my life, and that stuck with me. So as this was all going on, I tried to calm myself down and then I did what I always did and I put that emotional mask gone. And I went out and I did my clients and everybody was obviously very upset. But I went about my day like it didn’t affect me. The minute I walked through those doors, though, to drive home.
All of those emotions came flooding back. And I was I spiraled. I was terrified now because now I’m a mom of two small kids. And I wanted to leave this planet. Part of me did. The other part of me was terrified to leave my children. And this happened for two days. And when I got home one day, my husband met me at door and he said, you have two choices because he knew it was a slippery slope. He knew it. He said either you get help today or I’m putting you in a hospital. And I threw up the white flag and I said, okay, I’ll I’ll go to the doctor. And I went to the doctor, and a regular physician, and he immediately put me on antidepressants because that’s what they do.
Victoria Volk: Of course, they do. They’re not trained psychologists or therapists.
Susan Snow: No. And then he handed me a card. And he said, I want you to make an appointment for this therapist. And I literally laughed at him in his face. And I said, I did this fourteen years ago. And it didn’t help me then? What makes you think this is gonna help me now? And he looked me and he said, you have no choice. You have no choice. So I said, okay, fine. And I made the appointment, and I’m so grateful I did because this therapist specialized in severe trauma, and she knew all about PTSD. So in five minutes, of having a conversation with her. She looked at me and she said and I described everything I went through at seventeen and everything that I was currently dealing with. And she said, Susan, she said everything you’ve gone through since you were seventeen years old. Is a hundred percent normal because you have PTSD. And I kind of like sat back in my chair because I was confused. I went, wait a minute. I’m not in the military. I didn’t go to war. And she said, well, She said anyone who has gone through trauma can experience PTSD. But what you what you need to know is that PTSD isn’t something that goes away. It’s something you learn to manage. And those words were like, Oh my goodness. I always describe it as the sky opening up and rainbow shot shooting out of him because I felt like I wasn’t crazy, and I had hope, and I had it. An adult that was gonna guide me in this journey and help me heal. And I just I felt so grateful in that moment. But she had her work cut out for her. Definitely.
Victoria Volk: Thank you for sharing that. And I think one thing that came to my mind as I was hearing you talk about your experience with the PTSD and stuff is and let me ask you this from what you’ve learned about PTSD. Is it kind of like the pendulum can swing where you’re maybe it’s like all the cells in your body are just like all at once, like like you’re it’s almost like you’re how do I wanna explain this? Like, your energy is really amped up or the pendulum can swing the other way where you’re completely detached. Yes.
So Pete, I just want to
Susan Snow: Answer is yes.
Victoria Volk: I just want to clarify for people listening who are unfamiliar with the symptoms of PTSD. It doesn’t just look like your experience.
Susan Snow: Oh, yeah. And everybody like PTSD is not a one size fits all. Right? So everybody has different reactions for different things. So for me, for example, anytime there was like a shooting of some sort, It would take me right back to that day and all the feelings I had. So the anxiety, I would be extremely anxious and then extremely sad. Right? Some people just get very anxious or on edge. Some people just go into a deep depression. Some people become suicidal. There’s just a a very variance of things that happen to you. And so for myself, when I say she had her work cut out for me, is she decided that it was going to be beneficial to start out small. And not overwhelm me. So the one thing that I was struggling with at that very moment is sleep. And if you don’t have sleep and you have PTSD, It just exacerbates everything. So she really wanted me to get rest. But I told her nighttime was the worst because and I’m sure there’s people out there that are, like, Yep. When you start to rest, your brain just turns on. My brain would turn on, it would go straight to the darkness. So I would be terrified to shut my eyes. Because I thought I was going to be enveloped in the darkness and would not be able to come out of it. So she said, okay, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to journal at night. And I kinda looked at her funny because I’m like, that sounds a little dumb. Like, Really simple too. Right? Right. Yeah. Like, really, this is gonna make a big difference for me. And she’s like, you know what?
Just give it a week. I’m gonna give you a couple of prompts to write. If you wanna write, you can do it through music. You can do it through art. I don’t care how you do it, but just get all that stuff out of your head before you go to sleep. And I said, okay. So for a week, I had a little a little tablet next to my bed. And I would write down all the stuff that was swirling around in there on the paper. And at first, I was like, oh, but my spelling was wrong, and my You were judging it. Yeah. And, you know, when I called her, she’s like, Susan. This isn’t a lesson of like English. You just have to write. Right? Just like write it. It doesn’t matter. If it’s spelled right, it doesn’t even it doesn’t matter. Just get it on a paper. I said, okay. Fine.
So for an entire week, I did that. And And the crazy thing that happened is I fell asleep. I started to sleep. Because I was no longer anxious, I was no longer in that, you know, darkness when I slept. And I thought, oh, this stuff works.
Victoria Volk: And typing it I’ll say this too. I’ll just add this for people listening. Handwriting is the key.
Susan Snow: Yep.
Victoria Volk: Not typing on a laptop or anything like that. Yeah. Right? That’s what connects the brain to your heart.
Susan Snow: Absolutely. Yep. And yeah. So I physically wrote it. I physically wrote it.
But like I said, you know, some people people can do art. They can draw pictures. They can pick up a guitar and start writing a you know, like, just singing it out, like, whatever you have to do to get it out. And like I said, there’s no one’s size fits all. And so that was the first thing that she started me on.
And as we started attacking every single symptom, My next symptom that I dealt with was anxiety, and I had dealt with this forever And, you know, and I told her, I said, it’s exhausting, physically exhausting to my body. To continue to have a panic attack after panic attack after panic attack. So she started to teach me breath work. And breathing techniques. And the first the very first breathing technique that I learned was called box breathing. And I still do it to today. You know, I actually teach it. So, you know, it was changing my nervous system and it was changing my state, you know, state the state of my my being. And so I started to learn as I felt the triggers of anxiety, I would know. Okay.First, I gotta let it happen. I can’t fight it. Because when you fight it, it doesn’t go away or it’ll stop and then it’ll start and then it’ll stop and it’ll start. So I’ve got to just tell myself, I’m okay. You know, this is gonna be alright. I’m gonna live through this. And then so that I don’t go into another one then start the box breathing and really change the state of mind. And so she just each thing, she just kept attacking each thing that I was dealing with. And it was unbelievable. But here’s the really important thing that is over and above all it is the most important thing in the lesson that I learned. Was I had to be able to one trust her because I had to be the most vulnerable that I could be in order to do this work. And if I didn’t feel that, I wouldn’t have healed in the way that I did. And that’s really important for people to understand is that if you go to a therapist, when They need to be trauma competent. They need to understand your type of trauma and know how to help you heal through it. But you have to have that feeling of safety, of you can be a hundred percent vulnerable and go there with those people. And know that they are going to respect you, that they are going to guide you in a way that you need to be guided. So because I hear a lot, people say, oh, therapy didn’t work for me. Well, it’s because you didn’t find the right therapist. Because when you do and the work is done, that’s that’s when you see the real healing.
Victoria Volk: Well, in the distinction too, and look at the contrast of the first therapist versus the second therapist. The second therapist was giving you like homework. Right? Yep. You had action to take. Yep. That’s the difference. That’s why support groups, if you’re not taking action, they don’t work. Yeah, it make you feel better for a short period of time, but it’s not long lasting. It’s not moving you forward in a positive way in your life. Like therapy, like talk therapy, continually talking about the same things as you shared, it makes you feel better for the short period of time. Right? But then the next time you’re talking about the same things again. Right? But I think the difference is this action. Taking action.
Susan Snow: Yeah. Actually, yeah. Because she would give me something to do And then ask me, like, how did that affect you? What it you know, how did you feel after that? You know?
Did you feel relief? Did you not? Like, do we need to tweak something? You know? And it was and that’s why I tell people it’s not a one size fits all. What happened for me and what I used worked for me. It may not work for you. There’s so many modalities out there right now. You know, and you just have to find what works for you. And don’t be a soul
Victoria Volk: resonates with you. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Susan Snow: Yep. Absolutely. So and I tell people, like, you will know in the first five minutes of meeting someone. Especially a therapist if you feel comfortable. If you don’t, find another one.
You know? This your healing, and your journey is your journey. It’s not theirs. And so it’s important for you to be your own advocate. And if you feel like you’re not getting the right help or you’re frustrated because you’re not going in the right direction, then find another therapist. It’s okay. Everybody has to find their right fit.
Victoria Volk: I’m a certified grief specialist and what I learned in my training is that and me personally my story is that and maybe you resonate with this. Is that trauma Trauma happens, but grief is what’s left.
Susan Snow: Yep.
Victoria Volk: The grief that’s left.
Susan Snow: Yep. And you’re grieving a lot of different things. Like a lot of different things. I mean, for me, I was not just grieving my dad. I was grieving my life. I was grieving my relationship. I was grieving my childhood. I was grieving not having a mom in the way that I need it, you know, the support system. I was grieving watching my both of my, you know, my mom and my brother took a different road than I did. Now my brother is doing amazing now. But when he was younger, he took, you know, a rough road, and I was grieving that. You know, I was grieving not being able to be the sister that he needed because I had to put boundaries down. You know, and so there was just the grief evolves actually, you know, as time goes on, you’re grieving for different things. And so things will come up, you know. And I, at this point, I have no contact with my mother. And it’s okay. Because what I realized was that that relationship was very toxic. And I spent a lot of time in shame and guilt because I was healing and she was not. And I felt like as the oldest and as the daughter that it was my responsibility, to help her heal. But what I had to realize and my book actually helped me realize is that It’s not my responsibility. Everybody is their own individual person. And so even though she’s my mother, it’s still her own responsibility for her own life. And the choices that she makes. So when I wrote the book, I figured, you know, I was doing this to heal myself, but also in the process of it because I had so much fear. It was terrifying to be this raw and this vulnerable with strangers. I’m putting it out there, but I had fear of safety, repercussions, you know, because I’m putting myself out there. Are these men gonna find me kind of thing? I had fear about, you know, is this going to somehow blow up my marriage again because I talk about some very serious things that we went through. In the book because it was traumatic. And the relationship with my mom Is it going to open a conversation, or is it going to completely destroy whatever is left of the relationship? And it did the latter. But in all of that fear, I had to find a purpose Why was I writing this book? Who was it going to benefit? And that’s who I put in front of me. The faces of the people that need to hear my message to know that they’re not alone and that other people go through things and they find resiliency through it. Brief doesn’t go away. It comes back in weird ways. But when you have the tools to move through it, and you know the people to look forward to help you support you, it makes a huge difference. And so that was what I did is I just focused on the people that were out there in the world. That needed to hear, hope. And I, you know and so with it having this effect on my relationship with my mom, I actually feel at peace and I feel okay. And sometimes that is the best thing. And I tell people, you know, if you’re in my situation, if you’re in that situation, sometimes best thing for you is to find your peace and protect it.
Victoria Volk: Well, and make peace with the choice that you made. Right? It’s making peace with the choice that you made.
Susan Snow: Yep. Chaz two. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: This relationship and I’m going to make peace with that.
Susan Snow: Yeah. And actually, she’s the one that severed it.
Victoria Volk: Oh. Is that Is the last with your mother, is that the other loss that you were describing on your website?
Susan Snow: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s It’s hard because that night, I felt, and even my brother says the same thing, that we lost both parents. Because we lost our dad, but my mom lost her identity. And she She just turdled. She just she to this day, if you meet her, she’ll tell you in the first five minutes who she is. That she’s the widow of my father because that’s her end all be all. Right? That’s that’s her identity. And that’s fine, and that’s the choice that she makes. But I feel like watching that both of us watching that all these years has been hard because it’s like we always wanted my mom to be happy. We always wanted my mom to have this beautiful life, finding love again, finding happiness again, and and we watched her. Exactly. And, I mean, she has no relationship with my kids.
Victoria Volk: And that’s another layer of grief.
Susan Snow: Mhmm. So that’s, you know and what let’s and I say, like grief comes up in different ways throughout your life. And so now I literally, last year, realized that my mom was a narcissist and that, you know, narcissistic abuse is very difficult. To heal from, but it’s something that I’m doing right now. And I’m the helping my brother as well just have he still has a relationship with her, but I’m trying to help my brother to be because he always wants to fight her over me. And I’m like, no. You protect your peace. I’m protecting my peace. So, you know, it it it took me I’m fifty five. It took me fifty four years to figure this out and writing my own book and reading my own book and seeing the patterns throughout my life where my mom had opportunities to step up and be a mom and give me the support that I needed. And it didn’t happen. And so instead of living my life like having this fantasy, that one day my mom is gonna wake up and be some hallmark holiday mom, I had to let go of that and that is another grief. Of letting go of that fantasy. So yeah. I mean, brief is not something that you you heal from it at one point and then it goes away. Because there’s always gonna be things throughout your life. That you’re gonna grieve over always. It’s just a matter of how you wanna do it. So I choose to learn from my experiences. And in learning, I find the resiliency.
Victoria Volk: And even if that takes thirty plus years, Absolutely. Did you and me?
Susan Snow: Absolutely. It’s not too late. There is no timeline. There literally is no timeline. I think the the craziest thing that drives me bananas and it probably does you too being grief counselors. When people say, oh, it’s been x amount of time, get over it, or you should just move on Right? Why is it still bothering you? Mhmm. Well, because you didn’t have the relationship with that person that I did, That’s just like when someone loses some when someone dies, I never say I know how you feel. Ever because I don’t. I didn’t have the same relationship with that person. As the one that’s grieving. So Same. Even your brother. Even my brother relationship. I tell my brother that all the time. I don’t know what it felt like for you. You had a whole different experience than I did. And I would not pretend to know what that feels like. I just know how it felt fermi. You know, and and the experiences I went through, which is what I wrote in the book. These were my experiences. And, you know, and and, you know, everybody just everybody goes the other The other thing is is, oh, your trauma is worse than mine. Really? No, it’s not. I mean, the the story, the, you know, the actual situation, yeah, not everybody goes through that. I get that. But everybody’s trauma is different. Does it mean that it’s not important?
Victoria Volk: There’s no hierarchy?
Susan Snow: Or there’s no hierarchy exactly. There’s no you know, well, my dad was murdered and you’re, you know, you’re just dealing with whatever, you know. No. Well, and
Victoria Volk: what people are doing when they do that is they’re minimizing their own gap briefing trauma.
Susan Snow: Absolutely. And it’s crazy because I’ve had conversations with people that here’s the other side of that is that I’ve had conversations with people who have gone through trauma, but because it was an everyday event or an environment that they lived in constantly, they felt like everybody, you know, everybody’s family was like that. And so it wasn’t it wasn’t traumatic what they went through. It wasn’t abuse that they went through. And when I bring it to light, I had a woman who I was driving for Lyft for a little while last year because I’m a real estate agent now and real estate was a little funky last year, so first time in fourteen years, I had to have a side gig. So I went out and was driving, and I had my book in my car her one of my riders who was, like, why isn’t your book in your car? So I had a yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I had my book in my car and I picked up this woman and she pulled out my book and started to kind of read it. And she says, oh my gosh, you went through so much trauma and this and that. And I’ve never had trauma in my life, but she was going into rehab the next day. And I said, really? And so we started talking about her sobriety. And I said, well, what? You know, first of all, we talked about the fact that this was her third time in rehab. And that she had three kids, and that this time she wanted to do it for herself, the other time she did it for her kids, but failed. And in talking more with her, she said, well, I haven’t had trauma like you have had trauma. And then you said, well, you know, everybody’s life is different and maybe you did and you don’t recognize it. She said, well, you know, when I was I lived with my mom, my mom raised me and my brother, and my mom was abusive you know, she yelled and screamed at me and whatever, but she said she had these boy this one boyfriend and, you know, he he would touch me from the age of three to seven. And I was like, touch you, and then she started to elaborate. And this woman was sexually assaulted and molested. From the age of three to the age of seven, she was made to have relations with her brother, and this was ongoing. And so for her, it was normal Like, this this was how you showed love. This is, you know, but then the mom would be jealous when the boyfriend would give more attention. To the child. Right? And I almost crashed my car at this point because I was like, you don’t think this is trauma? I said, here’s what I’m gonna tell you. What happened to you wasn’t your fault? That was his fault. That was her mother’s fault. You had adults that did not protect you. As a child, did not protect your brother as a child, you one hundred percent went through trauma. And I said, and I don’t know how or why, but stuff flies out of my mouth and I go, where did that come from?
But what I said, was this. I said, if you really want to get sober, that is what you need to attack. Because what you went through was severe trauma. And I said, you have been To rehab, three times. Have you ever in those three times told any of your counselors? This story. And she said no. And I said, this is why it’s your fourth. So here’s what I’m gonna tell you. When you go to rehab tomorrow, and by this time she’s, like, in tears, like, in tears.
She’s sobbing. And I said, listen to me carefully. When you go to therapy or when you go to rehab tomorrow, Please tell your story. Tell your story. Because when you do they’re gonna get you the right people. They’re gonna align you with the right people. Because if you don’t attack this, now S sobriety is gonna be so much harder. And she was just like, oh my god. I can’t believe I’m this lift and this is what I was yeah. But it just it it opened my eyes. It really gave me an aha that there are people that are walking around on this earth. Who have had experiences that it was so common that they don’t even realize that it was traumatic. And
Victoria Volk: Or no one ever even asks, what are you trying to cope from? Right? Like, what happened to you? Right?
Susan Snow: That’s a very simple question. Even physicians and doctors offices don’t ask that. What happened to you? Right? And, you know, and and it again, it shocked me that she said she wants to rehab three dives and she said all they did was talk about the sobriety.
Staying sober not feeling guilty for, you know, whatever. I get all that, but unless you really attack the true whether it’s abuse or whatever it was, it’s harder to get sobriety because Down deep, that is what you’re hiding from. Mhmm. I watched my mother do it. For years.
That’s what she was she was hiding from was the reality, you know? And hurt people, hurt people, whether it’s themselves or the people around them. So I told her, I said, look, with me healing for myself, the ripple effect is it’s helped my kids. It’s helped my husband. It’s helped my brother. Right? The people that are open, but you have to work on you first. You know, you have to be the priority.
Victoria Volk: And Remember your follow-up?
Susan Snow: I didn’t. And it kills me because I would really love. I center with my book. I said, read my book while you’re in rehab. Maybe it’ll give you some hope and maybe some some kind of healing. She didn’t wanna get out of my car, but you know, I’ve met many people like that, and I feel like I’m living in my purpose. You probably feel the same way, being a grief counselor. Iknow I’ve made a difference in people’s lives. I’ve seen it from other riders that I have gotten a follow-up with. But with her, you know, she is always on my mind. Maybe one day, you know, we’ll run into each other again. But I really hope that she’s able to heal all the terrible things that happened to her. And how it’s affected her mindset all these years, not believing in herself and not, you know, feeling like that’s the only way that you can show love with a man in making the making wrong choices with men. That kind of thing. But, yeah, I mean, it’s it’s important to make yourself the priority.
Victoria Volk: So what has your grief taught you?
Susan Snow: Oh my goodness. My grief taught me to learn from what I’m grieving about. There are lessons in grief if you pay attention. So when I feel like I’m grieving something, Ilook at it a little bit differently and say, why am I feeling this way? What is it that triggered me to feel this way? And what can I learn from it? Because the other side of grief too is that It’s the universe trying to teach you something. You you gained something out of it.
Victoria Volk: That’s a really hard thing to hear. You know, at first. I know
Susan Snow: it is. It
Victoria Volk: is. Listening to that or, like, oh, I didn’t ask for this lesson. Right?
Susan Snow: Right. But again So
Victoria Volk: it’s a
Susan Snow: It’s all timing. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Well, and and it it’s all part of our own evolution.
Susan Snow: Absolutely. And it’s it it is. It’s all in timing. It’s it’s, you know, what is that that saying, you know, when the when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
Susan Snow: Yeah. I mean, that is a hundred percent real. And, yeah, in the beginning, it is it is hard. It it is. And I think in the beginning of grief, like, the best thing you can do is take care of yourself, just the littlest things. Just making sure that you’re that you’re remembering to to give yourself love in your in your self support. And that’s, you know, that’s something I had to learn to do really early on, is I had to figure out, okay, how do I love myself? Since I didn’t have adults around me that were giving me the support I needed at the time. So I had to learn to do the things. And as a kid, you know, what is that? Oh, well, that’s getting my nails done. You know, feeling pretty, getting my hair done, you know, spending time with my friends just like sometimes it was forcing myself to spend time with my friends because all I wanted to do is sit in my room. As a kid, you don’t know what you’re you don’t know what you’re doing anyway. So I was just like, I’m just going to envelope myself with friends and my boyfriend and, you know, the things that I know that even though they walked on egg shells around me, they still I could find a little bit of joy in spending time. With them. But, you know, as an adult, when I tell people and they’re going through grief is, I know it’s hard sometimes, but find something that makes you feel better even if it’s for five minutes. Whether that’s just a good cup of coffee, or a tea or just sitting outside and feeling the breeze on your face and the sunshine. You know, taking a bath, listening to your favorite music, just something. That gives you a little bit of comfort.
Victoria Volk: Very good. Very
Susan Snow: good. Yeah. Scream into your pillow. Cry your eyes out. And I think people get really scared. Like, oh my god. If I cry, I’m gonna cry for days. Like, I’m never gonna stop crying. I’m I’m just it’s just not gonna happen. You know? And so I know women who are like, I allow myself to have ten minute cry and then that’s it. I’m like, really? I think you should just go for it. Just just let it all out. And it’s okay. Actually, it’s a positive. It’s not a negative. But, you know, I still think that there’s that little, like, that little myth in the back where people think if I cry. I’m weak I’m showing weakness, and it’s the total opposite. It is so the opposite.
Victoria Volk: Well, you can get outward attention from your anger, or you can get outward attention from your tears. And which would you for it to be.
Susan Snow: Exactly. Would you like to go to jail or because I’ve had those days too where I was like, Oh, man. I, you know, I have to rain it in a little bit, find other ways.
Victoria Volk: And speaking of that, as a mother, dealing with all of this. Like, your children, how old were well, I have two questions. What’s sparked the idea for the book? Was it the therapy? That kind of helped you get to that point? And then also, like, just, you know, the mother you were before you started to do this work in the mother that they have now?
Susan Snow: Well, the book, when I turned fifty, I was mentally at a place where I knew that telling my story when things came up I would have the tools to help me get through it. So that’s why the book came around because I was like, oh god, I’m fifty. I gotta get this done. And I honestly feel like it was my dad kicking me in the rear end. Because he knows what my work is. You know? And my purpose isn’t is through him. And I had this like I drew a line in the sand that was like, that’s it. I’m fifty years old. I’m getting this book done. It took me four and a half years to write it. And it’s because I did. I had to dive and relive and, you know, I had repressed memories come up. All kinds of things happened. It was a journey in itself.
As I was writing the book, I feel like as my kids have gotten bigger, and now they’re adults. I won’t tell you how old they are because it makes me feel old. But they’re all adults, and I have three now. And you know, I think they see the resiliency. They see that I’ve had these days where I’ve been so sad. They’ve seen my sadness. I never hid it from them. I never, you know, think the only time I hit any of my emotions is when my husband and I were divorcing. And there was a you know, there was just a lot. And I was really trying to be the supportive parent through that. And I felt like they needed they needed to see a strong mom. They needed to see a supportive mom. And so my closet saw all my tears and heard all the bad words. You name it. Right? And but, you know, my husband as as well was very No. Very loving or, you know, tried to be as loving as possible through everything with them. He was going through his own stuff, his own mental stuff. But as they’ve seen me progress and they’ve seen me heal, My kids struggle with their own mental health things, and they have a mom that can help them through their own struggle. They have a mom that was a big proponent of them getting therapy. And finding the right therapist. So I was able to utilize my own experiences even with my own kids. And making sure that they were going to be okay, no matter what. So you know, I think that was the biggest thing. I wanted to leave a legacy for my kids of you can go through horrific things in your life. And you can choose to be a victim or you can choose to rise up and be a survivor. And my hope is that I’m teaching my kids to be survivors.
Victoria Volk: You had mentioned that you gave your clause at all your tears and you wanted to be the strong mom. And I imagine that comes from your own personal experience of with your own mom. Right?
Susan Snow: Yep.
Victoria Volk: One thing I wanna highlight for listeners is that I think there’s a distinction that needs to be made. There’s a difference between being strong, but also allowing yourself to grieve with your children and showing them how to grieve. Mhmm. Because again, that goes back to what you shared, like you learned to, like, put your mask on. And what happens is, as children learn that, writing, we learn that.
Susan Snow: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Either and it can go the pendulum can swing both ways. Right? I had a similar experience. There wasn’t room for my emotion because there was so much from my mom. Same for you. Like, there was like, Iagree that My mom died the day my dad died. Right? Like Mhmm. So there wasn’t room for my emotion. So I had to be strong. To I didn’t wanna rock the boat. I didn’t wanna upset her. Right? And so I think you can learn. You can be in a situation like that where you either learn to put the mask on or you learn how to grieve in a healthy way. And a part of that involves showing vulnerability, showing tears. Yep. Talking about what you’re experiencing. Yeah. Having space and room for everyone’s feelings and emotions.
Susan Snow: Yep. Well, I tell you
Victoria Volk: What would you do differently now? Right?
Susan Snow: Yeah. I mean, I think the funniest story for me was I was speaking. My kids had never they’ve never really heard my story from my perspective before. And I invited them in twenty nineteen. I spoke. I was a keynote speaker. And I wanted to have my kids there. So they came to watch me speak. And I had asked my middle son to video me. And so I did my I did my talk and I came off the stage and my kids were just like blown away. And they were like, I’ve never heard yours I’ve never heard it like that before. I I’ve never, like, Oh my gosh. Like, they didn’t know what to say, but my middle son said I said, did you get did you get anything on, you know, an ego’s mom? I got so caught up in your story that Iforgot to record you. I’m so so sorry. I was like, it’s fine. Because for me, it was like, okay. That sucks. But you know what? It was so much more important for my kids to be a part of that experience.
And to hear my story from their own mother, from my own lips, and to see where I was and where how far I’ve come because I felt like that was a really important lesson for them to learn. As young adults. And they have been on this journey with me, and Ithink I have such a close relationship with my children and even my I have a I have a stepson. I have a really great relationship with him. He is my kid. A woman another woman just had her had him. I’ve been blessed to be able to have this experience with my children and teach them exactly how to grieve, and that it’s okay to grieve, and it’s okay to to show your emotions. And you know, it’s not a weakness, and I’m here for you, and your dad is here for you. And we have always been very very much about showing support for our kids, not only our kids, but my friends make fun of me because they say I collect children, not in a weird way. But generally, kids who have challenging home lives themselves, who don’t find the support system themselves. Have found my husband and I as secondary parents. And I feel like that’s all coming and stemming from my own experiences. And making sure that other kids have the support that they need. And so now those kids are getting married and they’re having children, which is giving me grandchildren, non biological grandchildren, but You know, they see me as a positive person in my in their lives, and I am so grateful for that. So grateful for that, that they too have read my book and said, Wow. Like, when you say to me that you’re gonna get through this, or when you say to me those times where you say just let it go or if you’re feeling, you know, depressed, here’s Here’s some things that maybe might help or whatever. You get it. You literally get it. I said, yeah, I’m not just pulling this out of the sky folks. Like, I’m taking my own, you know, my own experiences and my own lessons learned and and just helping you, like, almost like giving you you know, they don’t even know what this is, but cliff notes. But most kids are like cliff notes. What are cliff notes? I don’t wanna talk to you anymore. If if you were around in the eighties, you know what a cliff note is. So yeah. I mean, that’s and I think that you know, as adults, and adults who have gone through things or have felt things sort of, you know, I feel like it’s important for us to impart our wisdom, our positive wisdom on to the younger generations because I feel like they have personally, I feel like they have a lot more. On their plate than even we did. The differences is that there is talk of mental health. And there is a lot known about PTSD, and there is a lot of conversation around trauma. And create
Victoria Volk: new free tools
Susan Snow: and loss. Yes. Absolutely.
Victoria Volk: It’s so much more accessible.
Susan Snow: It is accessible. It’s just you know, people still need that little nudge. You know?
Victoria Volk: Yeah. You don’t wanna DIY your trauma and
Susan Snow: No. No. You still need the nudge.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. It’s you know, you’re only like you said earlier, you know, we I think and I did it too. Like, you you’re only extending the suffering by not bringing in the support that you need to move forward. And you know, we don’t know we don’t know. And Exactly.
People that know a little bit more and are a little bit further along. And those are the people you want to seek out. So
Susan Snow: Yep.
Victoria Volk: Thank you so much for sharing all that you’ve shared. Is there anything that you didn’t feel like you got to share?
Susan Snow: Oh my goodness. No. I think this was great. I mean, I hope I hope I’m putting it out there. I’m I’m throwing that energy out there that there’s someone listening who I just want you to know that you’re not alone. You’re not, and that there are people out there that care about you. And that, you know, there are resources available to you. And, you know, I’m I’m out there. You know, I’m accessible. I am open to talking to anyone heck, you know?
Who knows? If you’re sitting in my left ride what you’re gonna get. But, you know, Ijust hope that someone out there is able to resonate or connect with with this conversation, and it just shows them that there is hope and there is healing. That can happen.
Victoria Volk: Yes. Mhmm. Iwould love to dove into the divorce and the reconnection. Oh. When I say it’s hard. A self and everyone else would just have to read the book because I’m assuming that’s in the book?
Susan Snow: Yep. Okay.
Victoria Volk: Pick up the book if you wanna know more on that. We’re so about all our other podcasts. Interviews maybe?
Susan Snow: Yeah. Yeah. No. Italked about it more in the book than anything else, you know. Because the divorce is the divorce. The lessons out of it is is what’s important.
Victoria Volk: Right? Mhmm. Well, thank you so much again. And I will put links to the book, the your website, Instagram, and the show notes. I’ll also find a really good box breathing YouTube that I can add in there.
Susan Snow: Yeah. Absolutely.
Victoria Volk: Yep. And
Susan Snow: Yeah. Thank you. Wonderful. And did you say the name of the book? I don’t know remember if you did or not.
Victoria Volk: I believe you did. The other side of the gun.
Susan Snow: Yeah. The other side of the gun, my journey from trauma to resiliency. Yep.
Victoria Volk: Yep. I’ll put the link in the show notes for that.
Susan Snow: Perfect. Yeah. Awesome.
Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
