Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, season 5 |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
D Paul Fleming, a retired Navy veteran and spiritual healer, shares his lifelong journey from trauma to healing. His story is a testament to resilience, as he recounts overcoming severe childhood abuse detailed in his book “2,442 Steps To Crazy.”
Through writing and sharing his experiences, Fleming found therapeutic relief while inspiring fellow veterans facing similar challenges. D Paul and I discuss the systemic issues within the Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare system. Despite its flaws—such as inconsistent care and bureaucratic hurdles—our conversation highlights the need for holistic support addressing physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual pain.
Fleming’s narrative underscores the power of storytelling in healing processes and advocates for creating safe spaces where veterans can freely express their vulnerabilities without judgment. He emphasizes unity among veterans regardless of their roles or experiences during service. Reflecting on personal anecdotes about confronting suicide temptations due to VA shortcomings further illustrates these struggles’ complexity.
Ultimately, Fleming inspires hope by urging others to share and listen deeply—a call to action reminding us that through collective understanding comes strength and healing beyond individual battles faced alone.
RESOURCES:
- Book, 2,442 Steps to Crazy
- Book, A Date with Suicide
- Donald Dunn – Hero Stock
- Operation Deep Dive
- Gretchen Smith | Code of Vets
- Grief Recovery Method
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 Storytelling – A Veteran’s Journey
In a recent episode of the podcast “Grieving Voices,” I had the great conversation with D Paul Fleming, an individual whose life story is as compelling as it is poignant. As a retired and disabled US Navy veteran, his narrative weaves through personal trauma, spiritual awakening, and relentless advocacy for fellow veterans. The episode offers profound insights into the challenges faced by veterans while simultaneously providing hope and inspiration.
Unveiling Childhood Trauma
Fleming’s journey begins with his difficult upbringing—a childhood marred by extreme abuse at the hands of a stepfather he refers to as “Crazy.” His book 2,442 Steps TO Crazy serves not just as a memoir but also as an act of catharsis. It was only after sharing this deeply personal account that Fleming realized its impact; other veterans have credited his work with saving their lives. In writing about physical injuries such as broken bones alongside more insidious verbal abuse, Fleming opens up about psychological scars that can often feel invisible yet profound.
Spiritual Awakening Amidst Turmoil
Despite such adversity, Fleming found solace in faith—a guiding force throughout his tumultuous journey. He speaks candidly about moments where he felt watched over by something greater than himself—an awareness that spurred him on even when despair loomed large. This spiritual connection aligns closely with both his Native American heritage and Irish Catholic upbringing—two worlds merging into one path toward healing.
A significant portion of this dialogue critiques systemic issues within the Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare system—a quagmire rather than sanctuary according to many narratives shared during discussions like these ones held between host & guest alike! From inconsistent care plagued by bureaucratic obstacles downplayed mental health concerns especially around suicide prevention summits attended mainly non-veterans themselves lacking firsthand understanding military life experiences altogether!
Fleming recounts how systemic failures forced him towards private healthcare solutions ultimately yielding better diagnoses long-standing medical issues highlighting inadequacies inherent VA structure itself which fails address integrative needs encompassing physical emotional spiritual realms simultaneously necessary comprehensive treatment plans tailored specifically each individual’s unique circumstances histories backgrounds etcetera…
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Oh, friends. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Greeting Voices. If this is your first time listening, thank you for being here. And if you are returning, thank you for coming back. Today, my guest is D Paul Fleming, he is a retired and disabled US Navy veteran, life coach, business consultant, public speaker, and published author. In alignment with his native American heritage and spiritual gifts, he is also a seasoned holy man. Spiritual adviser and healer. And today, we are going to be talking about your work and what you’re doing for veteran suicide. And so I’m very honored to have you as a guest.
I am also a veteran. My husband is a veteran. I come from a long line of veterans. And so thank you for sharing your story today and for bringing this awareness to my podcast.
D Paul Fleming: Well, I’m grateful to be on your show. Thank you so much for having me.
Victoria Volk: Often people do the work that they’re doing because they often have a personal story and there’s something that led them to take that path of being a healer, being a spiritual adviser, in your work, doing the work that you’re doing with veterans and suicide. But I wanna start back in your early life and what were the messages and lessons that you’ve experienced in grief and trauma or anything in childhood. Because what I have found is that especially people who have had a lot of grief or trauma in their childhood and they go into the military, it can be compounded. And I really firmly believe that there’s a larger conversation there as in terms of when it comes to aces, like adverse childhood experiences and with veterans. So I’d wanna dig deeper into that later in the conversation, so we’ll put a pin in that. But let’s start first with your origin story, if you don’t mind.
D Paul Fleming: Yeah. That’s a that’s a big topic to cover. I actually put it out in the very first book that I ever wrote, two thousand four hundred and forty two steps to crazy. And it kinda takes you from my first memory, which is being tossed through the air and in the corner of a couch and breaking a couple of bones through the my last day with the stepfather, which I call crazy for for good reason. The part that kind of dovetails into a veteran’s life is everything I wrote in that book I never talked about. I’ve been married for, as I like to say, fifty years Right? And never said anything to my wife and certainly never said anything to my kids. So when I wrote the first book of my childhood and handed it to my wife and published form, was the first time she knew anything about it. It took her a few days to kinda come around to to talk to me. And, you know, when she did, you know, the first things out of her mouth was you weren’t abused. You were tortured. You know, you kind of kind of made me draw back and say, you know, I never really looked at it that way, you know. From my experience, abused children kind of blamed themselves for everything. Right? So whether you whether you really believe it’s your fault or not, that’s kind of the overall feeling that you’re left with that that life of, you know, being told from first memories to you know, when you finally get out of those situations that you’re you’re nothing. You’re never gonna amount anything. You’re terrible. You’re you’re relying on this and that and and so on. You know, the verbal abuse is probably the most destructive, you know, the physical abuse, the broken bones, the, you know, the concussions, the, you know, all the things that I had to survive through, you know, are are not as memorable as the as the verbal abuse. That that sticks with me to this day. And it’s very very difficult to to overcome. Very difficult.
Victoria Volk: What does that look like for you?
D Paul Fleming: You
Victoria Volk: know overcoming it? I mean, I imagine that it was very therapeutic to write the book, but what how did you get to that point where you were even able to put it into words on paper?
D Paul Fleming: Yeah. I I do my best to try and keep these answers not long winded, but the but to really answer that is a very, very long conversation. So let me see if I can kinda cliff note it. As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a deep, deep faith. And it, you know, a couple of points in my life I got pretty pissed off and started blaming God and so on as many of us do that live through top stuff. Right? But my faith is what kinda kept me upright. And in the end, it was my faith that kind of time. My faith is is kind of my cornerstone. And even in the darkest times when I was, you know, terrified and terrorized and brutalized, I always had in the back of my head somewhere that feeling, that sense, that something was there watching over me and kinda fast forward through life, if you will. It started coming to me that I need to I need to write this book, I need to start telling these stories. And I had an argument with myself, the baby Jesus, God, every spirit known to man forever. I’m not writing a book, I’m not telling a story. Who the hell wants to hear my crap? Right? I nobody’s gonna read this. Nobody. Well, I finally had to give up and and say, alright. Fine. If if the baby Jesus is gonna leave me alone, I better write this book. So I sat down and wrote the book, and that was brutal. It was absolutely brutal. It took me, you know, year and a half to to write it. But I wrote it four or five times, threw it out, started over. It was it was difficult. But once I got through remembering and then my wife reading the book, the relief that started coming along. And again, it didn’t all happen at once. It kinda happened as I was writing it. But the relief that came along was transforming. I mean, it really was. It was it was, like, spring cleaning or or emptying your closet, you know, getting all the crap out of there and, you know, turning a light on. You know, I could see what was what had happened to me. You know? And I still blame myself, of course. Right? You know, I can’t undo that piece, but I don’t feel the burden of self blame. You know? And then, of course, when I start talking to other people who start telling their stories, you know, I’m like, jeez. You know, I’m I’m dumbfounded at how many people had, you know, abusive childhoods or relationships and how many people have come to me and said that this book has helped them. And between this and some of my other stuff that I’ve written, I’ve had people, especially veterans, come to me and say, quote, your book saved my life, unquote. So that’s kinda where, you know, that’s kind of the cliff notes that that got me to write the books and tell the story. And then after you do a couple hundred podcasts, you kinda start getting I don’t wanna say numb to it, but, you know, it’s it’s a lot easier to talk about it.
Victoria Volk: May I ask what happened? Where was your father, your biological father, and your mother Oh,
D Paul Fleming: you’re not my father?
Victoria Volk: Yep. Your biological
D Paul Fleming: father. And Yeah. I I didn’t know. I don’t know. I have no idea.
My my mother had first my myself and my brother, you know, out of wedlock and never met him. My brother’s never met his father. And then my mother hooked up with crazy and had a couple kids but I I I don’t know. My my lineage goes through my mother, to my grandfather, it was a full blooded native American junked reservation and the Carlisle schools, if you will. Joined the navy, claimed he was white, and rose to the ranks of being an enlisted man riding submarines in world war two to retiring in nineteen sixty five as a lieutenant. I’m still disowning his Native American heritage because, again, back then, you, you know, you’re a a cook or a, you know, a Boson’s bank. Right? If you’re a black Native American, you know, so That’s kind of the extent of my lineage. You know, I know that I I know from my mother, I know pieces of who the guy was, but, you know, never met him.
Victoria Volk: And as far as the relationship with your mother, because I imagine she’s, you know, brought this gentleman into your home and was there it was I imagine it was just a home of chaos, but what did you Were you able to have a relationship with her?
D Paul Fleming: No.
Victoria Volk: Okay.
D Paul Fleming: No. No. I I to this day, I still can’t understand how a mother can, you know, let somebody abuse her child. You know? I mean, I just don’t I don’t understand how people can hit women. I just don’t. It’s it’s something I’ve I’ve screamed about my whole life. You just don’t hit women. Period. Period. You just don’t do it. And you don’t hit kids. You know what I mean? I I got six kids, but I gotta tell you, I’d love to smack a few of them around. Right? Not some Jesus. Right? But it’s just not it’s not what you do. Again, I’m not telling people you can’t smack your kid on the ass and, you know, crack them in a mouth for custiny or something. I’m not I’m not telling you how to raise your kid. What I’m telling you is, you know, there’s a there’s a pretty significant difference between smacking a kid on the button and, you know, breaking his arm. Or the scar on my nose is from waking up with a a waking up on, you know, I had something thrown at me in the middle of the night from crazy and, you know, I’m clustered and blood and, you know, no idea what the hell is going on. That’s abuse. I mean, that’s just brutal brutal abuse. Right? So no. There was there was never a relationship. You know, I don’t really talk to my mother much. She’s in her eighties now. I’ve seen her once in the last I don’t know a year, but I probably only seen her two or three times in the last five or ten years, you know.
So
Victoria Volk: Sometimes in cases of abuse, there’s one child that kind of gets the brunt of everything, but sometimes
D Paul Fleming: winter baby. Winter, I was the one.
Victoria Volk: So you were the were you the only one that then were all was all were all the children have used to some degree? Or was it were was it pretty much just you? Like Yeah.
D Paul Fleming: I might my brother would get smacked around and I had two younger sisters, they never got touched, you know. But I was, you know, like the like the dog in the pound. Right? I’d step in between them. Mhmm. K? And I would defend my mother. I’d defend my my siblings. I would even instigate to get his attention on me so that he wouldn’t, you know, start beating on the other ones. You know? But my brother has a completely different outlook on all of it. You know? You know, we we don’t talk about it. When I told him I was writing this book, he he he got pretty upset. You know? I mean, bent out of shape, you know. But he doesn’t judge me. I don’t judge him. You know? So kind of we’re we’re still good friends. Right? You know, but just some subject to don’t talk about. He sees he sees our mother, you know, I I wanna say every day, but, you know, he’s constantly constantly whether or around her. No.
Victoria Volk: And there’s grief in that. Right? Like, the the loss of hope streams and expectations of what a family unit could have been and what what could have been, I imagine that Maybe you maybe Yeah. I’m through at some point.
D Paul Fleming: Yeah. I I was never able to identify fairly what I wanted for a family. And when I when I hooked up with my wife, she had two kids, and we had four together. You know? So from day one, I felt lost. You know, I didn’t I didn’t know how to be a father. Right? So I would do as much digging as I could to find out the how to do things. And I, you know, couldn’t tell you if I was a good father or bad father. You know, I just know that I did everything I could to the best of my ability. You know, they never went hungry. They never went without paid for their colleges, you know, paid for cars, did it all, you know. But, you know, I’m I’m not a classic father of the sense who I never missed any of the kids sporting events from you know, for decades. Right? You know, I was always there. But, again, I’m kind of a, you know I mean, a veteran by itself is a is an outcast to a degree. Right? You know, we don’t really fit in tomorrow. And I and I kind of preach the veterans. Stop. Stop trying to fit in as a civilian. We’re not civilians. Let’s accept who we are. Right? And be us. Right? We don’t have to fit in anywhere. So and I’m very good at not fitting in. Right? You know?
Victoria Volk: You know, one of the things that came up for me as I was listening to you is sometimes what happens is too, like, children will I mean, they run away a lot. In the case of abuse, they’ll just they’ll run away. Is that, like, did you run away? And
D Paul Fleming: So how funny is that? Along the lines of running away. I In book two of David’s, I don’t know, two thousand four hundred and forty two steps to crazy. That’s that’s about my personal life. Right? In book two, I start talking about this family, Frankie Pilaries, old Italian family. Right? And I mean, old Italian parents didn’t speak English. Right? Wine in the in the shed scrapes all of it. Okay? Well, it was a number of months ago. I I haven’t seen Franki Polari in fifty years. Right? Okay. But he used to have he used to have two or three of the most beautiful sisters on the planet. Again, when you’re ten years old, right? You know, any woman that puts her hand on your shoulder, like, oh my god. Right? I’m in love. Okay. Well, my wife and I are at this farm shop, not not far from our house. I haven’t been there in forever. And this girl’s looking at me and she’s looking at me and finally says, are you dog fleming? And I’m like, yeah. Why? She goes, I’m Frank Pulary’s sister. I’m like, you gotta be kidding me. Right? Why why am I saying that? Well, I think I ran away to Frank Pulary’s shed three or four times. I don’t remember, but she bought the book and she was she was unbelievably shocked at the level of abuse. Because they they had seen it. You know, I I used to run there and run away there and eat and hide until they kinda turn me back over, like like the Gestapo. Right? But, yeah, I’d I’d ran away I I don’t know how many times. I mean, I’d ran away so many times. I’ve never really counted them, you know, And then the final time, the ending of the book, you know, why do you read that? I mean, that was the the ending of steps to crazy. Okay? You wanna talk about something that’s gonna make you think about anything and everything that’s happened in your life? Because I sat there on the razor’s edge. K? Was I going to be murdered or was I going to commit murder? Right? Which was it? Was it self defense? Okay? Because it was one hell of a brawl the last time I was under crazies roof. Right? And all the Right. Last time the cops broke fourteen. Thirteen or fourteen? And that was it. I I I was on I’ve been on my own ever since. So I left Where
Victoria Volk: did you go?
D Paul Fleming: So I I lived on the street for a while. My my first hiding place with a cemetery, but that didn’t work out real well because turns out more homeless people hang out in the cemeteries and you can shake a stick at and, again, this is back fifty years ago. Right? So now I I lived in a cemetery, but I had had strategically placed in different chunks of woods, you know, survival gear. Because I when I couldn’t take it anymore, I would I would leave and, you know, hide in the woods for a few days and, you know, finally it gets so cold, so tired. So I saw much you could do. You know? But yeah. So he used to live in the woods, and then in and out of state, shit for a while, and that that was horrible. That was horrific.
And I mean, horrific. So I was determined never to go back to the state care. And then again, if you kind of if you have faith folks that have a belief in, you know, the supernatural god and so on. You know, you you kinda know that you go through things. And then right when you think it’s all over, right, something walks in and kinda helps you out. Well, for me, there was two people two families that kinda took me in. And as I as I like to say, I would be their debtor and present if it wasn’t for them. So if you’re thinking about being a foster parent or helping out, you know, some young bunk on the street, and I’m here to tell you, you can you can you can change lives. You can change history.
Victoria Volk: My husband and I have talked about it actually.
D Paul Fleming: Now, even even temporary. Now, even even temporary. Right? You know, holidays are just even to this day, holidays to me or a nightmare. Now, I can’t stand absolutely can’t stand. Hate Christmas. Hate my birthday. Right? I don’t want anything to do with it. Right? You know, but but why? Because my memories of those events are horrific. Right? I don’t mean horrific as in, you know, you didn’t get presents right there. I mean, you know, holidays are stressful enough when you’re young raising kids. Right? Now, stressful paying bills. Right? Now, mix crazy into that mess. Into that mess. Okay? And I do mean crazy. Right? No.
Victoria Volk: What happened to him? Was he ever arrested? Was he ever I mean, was your mom married him long after you were he left? And
D Paul Fleming: Yep. You’re you’re ready you’re ready to throw up? He died at the age of seventy three, and my family asked me to to read his ulogy. And to God, I did.
Victoria Volk: You did?
D Paul Fleming: Oh, I I did. Okay? Again, I when I say I I would do anything for my family, I have. Okay? Some of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life have been done because, you know, my family has asked me to do something. Right? Again, my wife said to me, if you don’t read it, nobody’s gonna read it. You know? So say, what do you think? She goes, I think you should read it or she didn’t know anything about it. Right? Because the book only came out.
Victoria Volk: Read your story at the time?
D Paul Fleming: No. No. Nobody did. Oh, we did. So we were supposed to be down in Florida at a wrestling event for three of my kids who were in high school. But, you know, we had to put that off to the side and that left me with, you know, the two oldest and and my youngest who was probably, I don’t know, seven or eight. So I’m up there in Saint Joseph’s Church. I’ve got some great stories about Saint Joseph, by the way. It’s pretty cool place. Anyway, and I mean, I’m struggling. I’m struggling internally. I’m having a a a fist fight of how in god’s name can I be standing here doing this? Right? The other side of my brain is saying, you know, listen, just suck it up, get it done. Right? You know what? A veteran military approach. Right? Just get just get it over. Just get it done. Get it done. Get it done. Get it done. And then I got stock. Okay. And I mean stock. All of a sudden, I see my youngest kid hop out of the pew and comes bounding down the aisle, up onto the center stage of the church and grabs my hand and looks at me and goes, you got it. I was like, okay. Alright. So I I then understood the importance of doing things, especially things you don’t, you really don’t wanna do. I wasn’t there for him, and I certainly wasn’t there for me. I was there for what funerals are meant to be, for those who are living. Right? So, of course, I didn’t say any of the bad stuff. I just kinda, you know, fluttered in a few things that, you know, certain people would pick up on. Right? But others wouldn’t No. Let me dovetail that into another short quick story. Anybody that believes in the afterlife and paranormal, okay, if you’ve gone through any form of trauma, abuse or even a life and death situation. Okay? I always say you get a peek behind the veil. Okay? You get so close to Jesus when you’re in those moments that you can actually see on the other side of the veil. Okay? One of the things that used to drive crazy crazy was that I could see things that nobody else could. So I could see what was around him and the amount of darkness in our evil that was around him is staggering. Okay? So I would point things out as a as a gift. And it would make him go crazy. Okay? Or crazier. Right? So here I am sitting in this church knowing these things and knowing how evil he was. And it kinda hit me as my youngest son, Dakota, is holding my finger. Right? Just hold on. It was kinda got his head up against my thigh. And I’m saying, alright. So that’s the life he led Now I understand why he was so terrified to die because now judgment’s coming into play. Okay? And I survived all of that, and I spent my life helping people. Even even back as a kid, I’d I’d help people. Right? And it kinda dawned on me. It’s like, I just keep keep living as clean of life as you can. And again, I’m not a I’m no angel. Trust me on that. Right? But he was so terrified of dying that he did everything he could right to his last breath. And I’m sitting there saying, listen, man, but he’s a good day to die. Right? I’ve got no regrets. Right? I’ve done the best that I can. I’m happy to go see the baby Jesus. I’m sure I’ve got some things to answer for, I will, but nothing like he has to. Right? How’s that, grabbed you?
Victoria Volk: It’s a perspective, I think, that people don’t think about in peep you know, as far as, like, people in our lives, who maybe didn’t live the most loving of a life, who might be holding on and afraid like you said, it’s a different perspective. So thank you for sharing that.
D Paul Fleming: Yeah. So all all our fellow vets out there, you know. Remember, I’m not advocating, you know, that today is a good day to die. What I am telling you is that if you’ve lived your life every day to the best of your ability, then and and don’t be afraid to die. Okay?
There’s good stuff on the other side. Okay? But that doesn’t give you permission or or my consent to commit suicide. It’s not happening. Okay? You do that and you you know, I don’t wanna I don’t wanna say it. I’m gonna say it this way, but it’s not really how I mean it. Okay? If you commit suicide, you give up all that good stuff that you did. Right? Suck it up, let’s keep moving forward. Okay? And, you know, when you whenever you do get into the the part about talking about suicide, listen, I I lived it. All the anxiety, all the pain. I I get it.
Okay? But you you you gotta you gotta look at everything you suffered through, everything you’re dealing with, and say, you can you can keep dealing with it one more day. And tomorrow is gonna be another day and it will get better. I guarantee it. It’s gotta get better. It’s gotta
Victoria Volk: You have to have hope.
D Paul Fleming: Faith. Right?
Victoria Volk: Faith. Yeah.
D Paul Fleming: Right? You gotta have faith. You gotta have faith in something. Okay? And What
Victoria Volk: what do you think kept you? Because you’re sitting here. Right? And you’re talking about suicide. I imagine you came close.
D Paul Fleming: Yes.
Victoria Volk: He attempted.
D Paul Fleming: Yeah. As I write in my in my book, a David suicide, the first two paragraphs call it out. You know, I sat there with the opportunity and the means. Okay? Not just once.
Right? But why why didn’t I finish what I started?
Victoria Volk: Aldria.
D Paul Fleming: The first time? Mhmm. You know, I sat there? I would I would mid twenties. Mid twenties. But as I said, I was I was a keynote speaker in North Carolina American Legion Galla for suicide awareness. And Laurie Mhmm. Writes the who has the Christmas trees with suicide veterans photos on them coming in from all over the country. It’s a great she’s doing a great thing for all veterans. Anyway, I point out that everything I went through including the military. I never thought a suicide until I left the VA for the first time in my life. And when I walked out of the VA and that’s in one of these chapters in here. Okay? I remember saying, I’ll kill myself before I get caught in that nightmare in this mess. Okay? And it didn’t really dawn on me until I sat down and wrote the book a date with suicide, and I had I had the answer to my own question. When did I first when did I first say it? When did I first think about killing myself? And then I think about all the shit I did, you know, up until I was fourteen and how I survived all that? And then the military, right? I I never I never thought of killing myself until I got in the quagmire of the VA. So when I say the VA is PTSD, the VA is suicide, listen, I’m living proof. And I I can’t tell you how many veterans I talked to. Let’s say the exact same thing. Okay? The the backstop, the net, if you will, that’s supposed to be there for us. Just just simply isn’t. It just simply isn’t. So expectations of the VA are like therest of expectations in our lives. Right? Expectations, the mother of all let down. Right? So if you don’t have hope and purpose, if you don’t have faith, you what what what is your net? What’s the net that’s carrying it?
Victoria Volk: Can you share a little bit more about that just because I’m personally curious because on the flip side of that coin, I’ve had a really wonderful experience with the VA, so it was my husband. So it could be your location to be fair. And so what was it that there were just weren’t the services there? Or there was a delay? Or there wasn’t enough help?
D Paul Fleming: Yeah. So I’m gonna spin that around on you. The reality is there’s a handful of VAs that are doing well, and I mean a small handful. There’s a facility done in Fort Myers Florida that I’ve heard great things about, but it’s a small place. Okay? And for the most part, the VA system, if you can find a a a functioning group, inside that VA. So let’s just say you’re, you know, you’re having, you know, you just need check up. You just need basic healthcare. And you get into a VA that has a good doctor in there. Right? Most people have great experience from them. I’ve seen one or two vets that have said to me, you know, they treat me like a king in here. It’s great. And I hear him saying this as we’re walking out or others are walking out ready to kill themselves. Right? So I think it has a lot to do with, yeah, location. Okay? But what are the limits of the issues of the veterans who say, you know, they’ve they’ve had a good experience with VA? When I listened to the director of the American Legion say that he’s talking with veterans all over the country and he’s and he says, and he brags about this. The one thing I haven’t heard is anybody complain about the healthcare they get at the VA.
Okay? I mean, that draws me so far back that I I’ve I’ve I’ve I’ve stopped getting my bet on my Legion magazine because that is so misleading it’s sick. Right? When you sit here and you when you watch the hearing last week where the VA was called before Congress, then a Navy Seal congressman looks at these arrogant bastards and the VA rep says, well, in the last two years, statistically, veterans who call the nine eight eight number are ten times more likely to commit suicide within the next twelve months. Again, don’t believe me, just Google it. Okay? It’s an open hearing in Congress. Right? Then he has your audacity to say, but our numbers are thirty percent down on suicide. Again, that’s just a bold faced lie.
That’s just an absolute abstract lie. Okay? So folks that have a good experience in the VA, tend to have a primary doctor somewhere in there. That’s kind of overseeing what’s going on. Okay? But I guarantee you, you pull that doctor out, the whole thing collapses. It’s everyone I’ve talked to can relate to one person or one department, so to speak. Right? I personally have been in the system for about forty years. Right? Plus or minus? I have had somewhere north of thirty different primary doctors. Wow. Okay. Well, let me correct that.
Half of them are doctors. Right? They had one doctor who was his license was taken away. Okay? The best doctor that I had, flat out said to me, She says, I can’t take this anymore.
I’m leaving. The best mental health therapist that I had left. Right? So the inconsistency, the inability to have trust and confidence in the VA is a key factor. Now when you take someone like me, I’m already walking into a fight. Right? That’s just the way it’s been for me for over forty years. When you see somebody new coming off the street and they go to the VA, and they have an initial great experience. Okay? Well, what are the issues? What are you going to the VA for? Are you going to solve physical pain, mental pain, emotional pain, spiritual pain? What are you going to solve? The VA does some things very well, like, limbs. Right?
But what do they do for spinal cord injuries? They’re horrible unless you get into a couple of the niche places that have high end doctors that are affiliated with universities. In Connecticut, Yale University is affiliated with the VA. But if you read the history of the VA in Yale New Haven, in nineteen eighty six, they got caught by the OIG for injecting patients with experimental crap that was killing dozens and dozens of veterans. That’s widespread throughout the VA. Again, I’m gonna step down off my VA bashing box, if you will. And tell you when I first went to the VA was in Boston. Now I’ve been in VA’s up and down the East Coast. Right? I had to go to the seventh floor and the short version is when I got off the elevator and I write about extensively in the book, When I got off the elevator, the hallways were lined with veterans. There was feces and urine everywhere. It’s stumped to high hell. There were veterans of their arms out begging to help. Please help me. Help me.
Help me. Okay? I’m in my early twenties going, what the fuck did I just walk into? Right? I was discharged from Navy at the end of my four year active hitch to VA because I got hurt, physically got hurt. Okay. A couple of times. So I’m there for I don’t know why. My assumption was that to solve the problem of why am I in so much pain? What happened? Okay? Right. Next thing I know I’m in a closet with a mop and a bucket, and a guy in a white jacket who says he’s a doctor. Spend five minutes with him and he says, we’ll have a decision to you soon. That was it. That was my experience with the VA. It took all day I got there at seven o’clock in the morning and at three thirty in the afternoon. That’s when I saw the doctor. Okay? And I write about it extensively in the book. For the next ten years, that’s how the system operated. Okay? Until I got up until they finally medically retired me. Now, fast forward to twenty eighteen when they signed the Choice Act. Okay? And I went to private care after thirty years, forty years, I finally got answers by going to the Yukon Health getting into Yukon Health. Right? Not only did I get answers, they solved problems. They solved problems, the VA couldn’t even imagine. Okay? My shoulder, the last time I was at the VA was roughly two thousand ten for any form of treatment physical treatment. I was going in for a steroid injection. Right? Or I’m saying steroid. Right? I think it’s not steroid, but injection. Porges. Porges. Okay. So the lady pulls my shirt up. It’s a doctor. He pulls my shirt up, drabs the needle and squeezes. Okay? I start screaming. Again, I never go to VA without somebody, normally my wife. Okay? This thing hurt for weeks on end. Right? Now fast forward eight, nine years. When I went to private care, they say, yeah, you yeah. Cortisol injection would help. They pull out this paranoid. Right? They pull out all this hardware and they’re scoping it and everything else and they direct this needle into this spot and the pain of of the needle hurt. But once they took that out, the relief that I got in my shoulder was night and day. Right? So when you wanna talk about veterans who commit suicide or on that path, mental pain is one of the was one of the forefront reasons for suicide. Just can’t take it anymore. Physical pain we can deal with. But when you start adding or decreasing physical pain, it affects you mentally. Affect you emotionally, affect you spiritually. Right? So all of a sudden, I’m in private care and I’m starting to get answers. They solved the problem of my lower spine where the VA for, you know, the twenty, thirty years said there’s nothing wrong with you. Okay? Well, it turns out there’s a little bone chip in there that there was something wrong with me and it’s gotten my fecal sac. Okay? Now next thirty years in the VA, two appointments at private care and we solved the problem. Okay? And I can run down the list of things that private care took of took care of that VA said, either I was crazy, it doesn’t exist, or they had no logic for it. And I’ve got all of my every record ever. I’ve got my MRIs. I’ve got my x rays. All my medical record. Okay? Anyway, when you look at the VA and people like me who are struggling to figure out what’s wrong with me and the VA doesn’t give you answers. Okay? What’s left? So aside?
Victoria Volk: Yeah, I can totally understand that. Totally see that. And the Choice Act was probably the best thing they’ve ever done just to handle the influx of the veterans that are needing care that aren’t getting it. And so even for my husband and I, like that was a huge positive for us as well, I can say from my standpoint of I facilitate a program called the grief recovery method, And I tried for the first two years when I got certified in early twenty nineteen and I attended a mental health summit for veterans that was put on by the VA. And topic of suicide. And never once was the I mean, they had social it was a roomful of social workers, psychologists, therapists, whatever. Not once did they use the word grief, not at once. They didn’t even mention trauma, not once. So afterwards, I go up to this psychologist and I talk to her a little bit and I share with her what I’ve been trying to do because I had meetings with local VA, I had meetings with our seabock, yeah, the seabock, the local VA, and then also the veterans, which is it called, I can’t like, it escapes my brain right now, but they facilitate services for in the community. It’s outside of the VA, but it’s affiliated with the VA, of course. Of course, ran by social workers and things. Talk to them about the program because the grief recovery institute has been trying to get this program onto military one source for years. It changes lives. So that hasn’t been happening. So what they’ve been doing is the institute has been training chaplains and social workers within the system and anybody who’s willing to get certified with who are already in the system. But it’s like for the military to say that this is an approved service has been so much bureaucratic red tape I gave up after two years. I was just like, I wasn’t getting anywhere. Doors slammed on my face, but we already have our thing. We already do a certain thing. They didn’t wanna hear it. And it’s like, I’m telling you, as a veteran myself, this changed my life. It’s changing people’s lives. They didn’t wanna hear it.
D Paul Fleming: So in that group of college boys, as I as I love to call them, how many of them talked about the with with the topic of suicide, how many talk to about mental pain?
Victoria Volk: All of them. I mean, there were people that share there were soldiers that shared their stories.
D Paul Fleming: Okay. How many talk about emotional pain?
Victoria Volk: All of them.
D Paul Fleming: How many talk about spiritual pain?
Victoria Volk: I think one guy even, to your point, like, he was home ended up homeless for a time. And, of course, that would he didn’t say the word spiritual, that his spirituality suffered, but that’s what happens. That even happens just with anybody in grief often. You know, we we struggle with, like, answering those questions, like, why me? And God did this to me? And of course, that’s gonna translate into having someone to blame. Right? And so who do you blame? You blame God? I did. I had my own traumas and stuff in childhood. I mean, that’s what happens. So yeah,
D Paul Fleming: I So how many of the VA employees? K? Talk about the four corners of what leads to suicide. Physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional pain or trauma.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. That’s like they didn’t they didn’t I mean, granted this was maybe they do now, but at their summits or whatever, but this was six years ago, five years ago?
D Paul Fleming: Nope. When this when I when this came out, I I was shocked at the number of professionals that responded and posted reviews. One lady said she was a VA trauma nurse for thirty years, going in the mental health industry. I think she was in Coatesville. Right? Pennsylvania. She said she wrote a review saying after thirty years of dealing with this, you’re the first veteran who actually told the story. She’s been trying to get veterans to tell their story what happened to them for thirty years, and nobody would. Right? Now, I know the reason why. Reason is nobody trusts the VA, so you’re not gonna tell them stuff. When you wanna talk about suicide and the VA solving the problem, listen, oil and water. It’s not happening. Okay? First and foremost, because what they do is, like you said, they surround themselves with social workers and how many of those people are veterans?
Victoria Volk: Yep. And they’re misinformed about grief, which is why I started this podcast.
D Paul Fleming: Okay. How many how many of those people had that and that seminars that with the college degrees and the social working experiences? How many of them are veterans?
Victoria Volk: I don’t I couldn’t tell you, but I’m pretty sure probably very few.
D Paul Fleming: I agree. Coming out of world war two, what did they say at the VA? World war two veterans forced the VA employees to be world war two veterans. Period. Period.
So you had world war two veterans dealing with and relating to one or two veterans. Right? The shift came when the when the VA started unionizing, okay, and putting all these requirements out of what you have to be to work at the VA. Okay? That happened in what?
Fifties and sixties. Right? And then Vietnam. So you go to Vietnam and you watch the number of veterans drop from work at VA to this day. You’ll have people that say, I’m a veteran and you ask them, well, what did you do? Unfortunately, far too many of them are already in the VA type system somewhere in the military. Okay? Very few of them are SandBox vets. Right? Very few of them are submarine vets. Very few of them are aircraft carrier vets. So how is a veteran who’s dealing with physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional pain supposed to be able to communicate, trust, and relate to somebody who’s never been there? This is why the veteran community, things like you’re doing, are so highly successful because people like me are willing to open up with people like you. I’ve talked to my wife for fifty years about my childhood.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. The the grief recovery method was actually founded by Vietnam veteran. It’s near and dear to my heart, but Did
D Paul Fleming: you get all your answers from my childhood? Did you wanna kinda go back there? I’m happy I’m happy to talk about it.
Victoria Volk: No. I think it shapes who you become. It shapes who you are, of course. And I guess well, let’s go from you deciding and choosing the military and particularly the navy.
D Paul Fleming: Yeah. I as long as I can remember, I knew I was going in the military. Right?
Victoria Volk: As an escape? Because many people choose it as an escape.
D Paul Fleming: No. No. No. I you know how you just know certain things? K?
I I just knew, but I knew it. I knew it from a very young age. And then, of course, you know, between fourteen and seventeen, you know, I’m working full time. I’m trying to get through high school. So on and so on. And I wasn’t always a I wasn’t always a good kid. Right? So the the final straw was was in front of a gentleman who had a very, you know, well done tie and black robe and he sat up on a bench elevated above the rest of us, you know. Until till the to my left was a a really pissed off guy in another suit and was telling a judge what he thought. Right? So the judge wanted to see my enlistment papers, you know, I wanted to go into marines I was seventeen, so I needed a parent to sign for me. So I had to go see my mother. Right? So she wouldn’t sign for the Marines, but she agreed to sign for the Navy because her father was in the Navy. So that’s kinda that’s kinda how I ended up in the military, but it goes back to the fact that I I always knew. I knew I knew my path from as far back as I can remember was was was gonna be going through the military.
Victoria Volk: What did you do after I mean, so while you were in service and training and things like that, did it bring up anything from your past?
D Paul Fleming: Yeah. So you never you never you never you never far from it. Yeah. Right? I mean, it’s always right next to you, right behind you. You know, it’s a wet blanket that’ll snuggle up to you for far too many times and you can’t remember. Right? You just you you can’t shake it. You can you can get past things. You can you can accept things and you can they can stop bothering you for the most part. But they’re they’re always right there. But one of the things that it did for me was it taught me that you you you have to kill me to beat me because I won’t quit. I just won’t quit. Right? You know, when that, you know, all growing up in a nasty, abusive childhood, you know, you either quit or take the beatings or you never quit and take the beatings. Right? I I never quit. I never backed down. I never bent the knee. Every time you knock me down, I stood back up. Well, not every time it was times they took me out in ambulance. But, you know, so my focus in the military was Listen, you I don’t care how bad you this is gonna get. I ain’t quitting. And then, ironically, when I went to boot camp, I was bored. It was the worst thing that happened was you gotta yell at? You know? I mean, like, I was like, jeez. This is it. This is boot camp.
Victoria Volk: You became
D Paul Fleming: you know, you didn’t cuss that. Oh my god. Perming. But when I wrote the book, a date with suicide, and I draw on my transition, like you said, from seventeen to like, going to boot camp, if you will. Well, halfway through boot camp, it it had pointed me massive arms. I wasn’t charged everybody inside the barracks. So remember, you’re getting no sleep. Right? Boom camp is boom camp. K? So you have cherish your four hours of sleep. Anyway, two o’clock in the morning, I get shaken out of my rack, my roving watch. He goes guys killing himself. Jesus. So I go see this kid, tough kid from the Bronx. Right? Sitting there, blood everywhere. You had busted open his back, taken the razor and slashing his wrists and everything else. That was blood everywhere. And I remember saying, you have to be effing kidding me. I’m gonna lose sleep because you wanna kill yourself to get out of boot camp Okay? No empathy. No sympathy. I was pissed. And I it didn’t dawn on me until I sat down and wrote the book a date with suicide. That even though the trauma of being yelled at him, bootcamp meant nothing to me. You know, it was it was a joke. It was so so so traumatic for this kid that he had to go the path of getting out of the military by attempted suicide. Right. Did you
Victoria Volk: know his story though, his background and his childhood?
D Paul Fleming: You know, again, you know, seventeen, eight year old kids, eighty of them in a barracks. Right? You tend to get to know each other, but Right? How how well do you get to know him? So no. I mean, he was a a kid from the Bronx. K? Yeah. He wasn’t he wasn’t a squid is a a skittish kid. He was a tough kid. He was a tough kid. Right? But when I when I wrote it in the story, it made me lean back and realize, and it kind of solidified this statement for me. You can never judge somebody else’s trauma because what doesn’t seem traumatic So you or me could be devastating to somebody else. So you you can’t judge their trauma. Only the person dealing with trauma can judge their trauma. I don’t care if you’re I don’t care if you have ten college degrees. You can’t judge somebody else’s trauma. That trauma is so connected to the four corners of our existence, our physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional bodies. That when a trauma happens and we think it’s physical. Right? You get shot. You get you you fall out of a helicopter. You get run over by a submarine. Right?
Whatever it is. That’s physical. But so few of us realize how spiritual, emotional, and mental physical trauma really is. Now take any one of those four parts and just keep mixing them. Think about it. When when you’re in your when you’re young in the love, right, a puppy love, your first love ever. And then she breaks up with you and your heart breaks. Which is it? Is it physical pain or is it emotional pain? Well, it’s kind of both, isn’t it? Because it does physically hurt. So just a girlfriend breaking up with you can send you into a traumatic fit that stays with you the rest of your life because every one of us can think back and say, I remember my first love. Right? But over time, the pain of that breakup kind of fades. You don’t remember why? Okay. So the physical part kind of takes care of itself all by itself, but the emotional part stays there and you never heal it. So one thing the VA one thing the VA or the military never introduced, keeling. Right? Until I sat down and started writing these books and and got very deep deep into my own personal on voyage on faith. Right? I didn’t think about healing because I thought it was poo poo. Right? What is this healing crap? Is this? Wait. Where are you supposed to heal from? How does this work? And then the more I studied, the more I dug in the years and years of research and practice. And I realized how critical healing is. But again, you know, you take the psychologists. They wanna focus on what? Why we’ve gotta deal with the mental? What about the physical or the spiritual? So if you’re not dealing with all four, you’re not solving the problem of what? Grief. Because grief encapsulates the four elements of who we are, period, full stop. In order to solve Grief, you have to address the four corners of your existence.
Victoria Volk: And you have to look at the past and address
D Paul Fleming: the
Victoria Volk: past as people will say, I don’t have to look at the past. The past is in the past. It’s under the rug. I don’t wanna look at it. I don’t need to look at it. I can’t change it. It is what it is. That’s what a lot of
D Paul Fleming: people. Tell me why.
Victoria Volk: Why did they do that?
D Paul Fleming: Why do we need to look at the past?
Victoria Volk: Our past is what informs every decision and where we are in the present. And it will influence our future unless we bring it to our awareness and look at it.
D Paul Fleming: That’s probably the best answer I’ve ever heard.
Victoria Volk: Good.
D Paul Fleming: I really hope you cut that clip out of this of this video and you replay that on in on whatever meetings you’ve got. Nonstop. That is the best description I’ve ever heard. Okay? Only follow-up with it.
Victoria Volk: I also can I just add to that know we’ve talked a lot about physical abuse and and a lot about physical abuse because that’s your story? But I just want listeners to be also consider and veterans listening to this also consider that neglect in a home, this indifference of you existing, a veteran that doesn’t even feel like they exist, that don’t feel love or experience love, know what love is. Right? And that’s true for maybe a child too that is being physically abused, but neglect is also trauma. So I just want to clarify that too. Howard Bauchner:
D Paul Fleming: I absolutely agree with you. The the the two keys to neglect abandonment. Mhmm. When you’re neglected, you are left feeling abandoned. K? And anybody that’s dealing with childhoods like mine or older in life and you’re in an abusive relationship. You feel abandoned. So when you go looking for help, right, the cops maybe, and they don’t do anything, you’re not only neglected. You’re abandoned. And then you go to the VA who you have a contract with that swears on the Bible that they’re going to take care of you, And then they do the same things that you do that did they did to you when you were a child. Mhmm. Right? K? You’re you’re not only neglected, but you’re abandoned. And once that car is its path deep enough into your spiritual emotional and yes physical bodies. It is next to impossible to get it back out. So I agree with you. You have to go into your past. And tell your story. Okay? It is next to impossible to kill yourself while you’re telling your story to a veteran who needs to hear your story.
Victoria Volk: Several years ago, there was this art exhibit that was kind of being trans like shared amongst seabox around the country. It was like a traveling museum of sorts or exhibit, art exhibit. And what it was, was veterans who the project was to paint a mask. They take the make a plaster of their face, and they paint the mask that they’ve been wearing. It’s like take what you feel in this mask that you wear and paint it onto this canvas, this plaster of your face. And little snippets of their story were included with those masks and I was standing there reading it and just like sobbing. There were so many masks and so many stories. And it’s just a just a it’s just a little small handful but it was a way for them to share their story. And so I just want listeners to know, veterans listening that it doesn’t have to be a written story. It could be some sort of art project or you talk about your native American heritage. I imagine that there are so many different outlets of creativity that you could probably create a group of veterans that you know to come in and and share their story in that sort of fashion and a creative and arts sort of fashion. Just ideas that are just flowing through me, I just wanted to share. But it doesn’t have to be a written story is kind of why I’m sharing that.
D Paul Fleming: Telling your story is the key behind it. The mask is the same thing. You’re telling your story by taking that mask and putting it down and saying that’s my story. For me, it’s helped in a in a in one way I do something similar is, look, we have a fire. Okay?
We take all of that crap or just one piece of it. Write it on a chunk of cedar. Write it on a piece of paper and burn it. Okay? Now it’s two parts that some people look at that and go, well, you’re just kinda burning the piece of paper. My belief is that you’re burning that piece which used to reside in you and and control you. And you’ve taken that piece out and you sent it and you’ve purified it. So it is it is no longer.
Victoria Volk: Words of energy?
D Paul Fleming: Right.
Victoria Volk: Words are energy, and so I’m glad we’re getting into this healing piece because I would love to hear more about that. As far as what your healing did look like. And one of the things too is I’ve had people on this podcast before talking about their suicide attempts and experience with suicide. And one of the things that I’ve learned is that connection is the antidote to suicide. And so what in what ways did you find connection healing for you? And what did your healing look like?
D Paul Fleming: Yeah. So my healing is a, you know, ten, twenty year process right now. K. But my focus is on my time with my wife. And spirit. Those are the two things that I love being around. My wife’s my best friend, absolutely adore. In every chance I get, I tell the world she’s an absolute saint. Okay? Not because she’s walking around with, you know, a couple of wings on her back. But to me, she is the same. The caretakers that provide for people like me are not just the salt of the earth, but god coded those folks with a piece of his own soul because that’s what it takes to deal with folks like me. And there’s far too many of us out there. Okay? The greatest people out there are the caretakers that take care of veterans. The wives, the spouses. K? The siblings. That said, my path had to come back to finding I I live in two worlds. I live in my Native American world. My wife’s Irish, Catholic, and I have a deep faith in the baby Jesus. Okay? So I I kinda step in I play in both of those worlds. Reconnecting with both pieces of that have brought my soul back to life. Learning how to clear, learning how to get rid of the dark energy that’s in me, around me, near me, trying to creep up on me. Right? And facing things that some people will look at and go, man, that’s witchcraft and crazy. Like, well, we’ll see. So once I learned and accepted things like meditation, because I swore from here to hell, there’s no way I’m gonna meditate. Okay? Listen, I meditate almost every single day. In one form or another, whether it’s a five minute break or whether it’s an hour long, kumbaya leave me the hell alone moment. But the the journey of picking up those pieces that fit me, not everybody else. That fit me. I don’t tell people to meditate. I encourage them to take a look at quieting your mind. Because once you can quiet your mind, the physical, the spiritual, and the emotional bodies follow. But your mind, like a computer, needs to reboot. And the only way to do that when you’re dealing with anxiety, when you’re dealing with racing thoughts when you can’t get a grip on yourselves and you can’t slow down, you have to figure out a way to turn your brain off. For me, the first time I said, I gotta I gotta do something in that voice. Said, fine. I put my head back in my chair, turned on some native American drumming, and I said, alright. What the hell am I supposed to do now? Breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth and concentrate on my breathing. That’s it. Just concentrate on my this is stupid. Right? So after the mental argument for a couple of minutes and then all of a sudden, I’ve realized I’m someplace else. And then as I started thinking again, I said, oh my god. It’s quiet in here. And then boom. Right back into my world. But for that briefest moment, I was at peace. And I said, whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Wait a minute. That Bob wired barley nastiness that was flown around in my gut that college boys call anxiety, the one that runs up to your throat and down to your bowels, it just rips you to shreds. It was gone. Gone. I was only gone for five or ten seconds, but it was enough to make a believer out of me. So when did I start healing? Listen, I think all of these pieces are healing. Right? For me, I was waiting for this. Let’s pour the gravy on this and that’s healing. The gravy’s a healing. Right? Do some work, gravy it up. We’re good to go. No. It’s little pieces of all of it. That that first time that five minute. Because the next time I did it nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I couldn’t quiet my mind and say my life. But then the next time after that. Okay? And then I was hooked. Because when you live with anxiety and I mean brutal anxiety, and for the darkness moment it’s gone. It’s a whole another world. Then it dawned on me. Wait a minute. That’s what it feels like when I have my second beer. That’s why I sucked down two beers as fast as I can for however many decades I drank. I I quit drinking already. And I mean, I got them quite. I just said enough for the drinking and stop drinking. Right? But, right, you know, beforehand, and it but then it clicked on me that, why did I drink? I drank to get rid of the anxiety, self medicating. Right? But it was those aha moments of doing one, of telling my story. Now again, this is one version of tell your story. The other version of me telling my story is me having that conversation with myself. What happened? And then before I released this book or before I wrote the the first book, I went and saw my sister. And I said, listen, tell me if I’m crazy. Did I really get beaten like this? And man, her tears just started flowing? Okay? She’s like, I don’t know how many times you he was gonna kill you. I swore you were dead four, five times. Okay? We couldn’t wake you up. We couldn’t get you back. Okay? So she gave me confirmation. That I wasn’t crazy in imagining these things. And I fear that that’s what far too many of us veterans do. You know, we go through boot camp, we go through the military world and what warriors? What warriors? Right? Well, one percent we’ve been taught trained and rough backed through. Suck it up. Get that thought out of your mind. Right? Don’t be a coward. Right? So I’m thinking how much of this crap am I making up and how much of it’s real. And then I can’t talk about But getting confirmation from my sister was another piece of healing because when she said it to this day, I can feel the whole shift inside of me drop down one notch. It was like, see, it did happen. You did survive that. You are a good person. It’s like, well, how did that would come from? All of a sudden, good comments start filtering in once you start healing. So for me, when people ask me about how’s the healing? You know, many of us look at things linear. Right? Listen, it’s pop marked with little pieces everywhere that say, this was a good piece to add to that healing process. Okay? Mine’s ongoing. I’ve got a ton of healing to do. I I work on it. You know, I I love I love to say daily daily, but, you know, I I would I would say I I don’t. Right? I definitely work on it. Not too many days ago, I’m not aggressively working on my path forward.
Victoria Volk: And that’s what it takes. It’s and it’s being open to receiving these intuitive messages like editing, you know, and following those bread crumbs and having the courage to follow that wherever it takes you. What are some other practices that you have incorporated other than meditation that have served you well?
D Paul Fleming: Well, one of the biggest things that know, I’m trying to promote especially to my fellow veterans and their, you know, their family, spouse isn’t solid. You gotta learn to clear yourself. Right? What does that mean? Do what what does it mean to you to when I say clear yourself?
Victoria Volk: You know, I’ve had I’ve been having this conversation lately with people that because, of course, when you’re in relationship with people, there’s conflict bound to be conflict at some point. Right? And what I have noticed in how I know that I am have done a lot of work on myself is when someone can say something and I feel something I feel certain way about it. I feel activated by it. I won’t say triggered because that’s I mean, you can be activated or triggered, but when I’m feeling activated by something, I can step back and be like, okay, why is this why is the why is why am I feeling this way about this? And, you know, and I can also hear things and it go in one year and out the other and not stick to me because I have done my I’ve swept my own doorstep. That’s how I know that I’ve come a long way because I used to take things so personally. I used to think there was something wrong with me and, you know, it’s been a really long journey. It’s been a ten year journey for me in my healing. And so I wanna hear what you were going to say. So
D Paul Fleming: earlier you had mentioned energy. Right? Mhmm. Energy is everywhere.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
D Paul Fleming: And as scientists have proven, right, the good side of college boys, I imagine. Right? Energy never never disappears. It just changes its form. Mhmm. Okay? So where does all that anger go? That we veterans have, goes out into the universe, or does it stick to us, or does it do both? So I’m sitting there watching my wife going up and down the aisle every Sunday to get the communion. Right? I’m like, you know, why did they do this? Why? The body of Christ? The blood of Christ. What are they doing? Again, I’m kinda condensing a lot until a very short and I’m looking at my Native American is not on. And I’m starting as never before. And when warriors would come back from a battle, shaman, the medicine man, the holy man, would hold him outside the village, and he would sage him, sweet grass, cedar, tobacco, he would clear them. Why? Because he wanted to get all the dark energy off and out of them so they didn’t infect the village. I’ll infect the village by a little strong word. Right? Okay? So I’m I’m studying this and I’m saying, okay. So for me, I started saying, where’s all this dark energy going? Where’s all this darkness? Right? Every time we get mad, you can feel it, and it takes so much work to release it. To clear yourself. So I found myself after walking this path doing exactly what you did, where I used to get mad when somebody would say something, it’s starting to go out one. Okay? And it doesn’t register. Unless I’m starting to get backed up. I’m starting to get blocked. I’m starting to have too much of other people’s energy around me. Okay? So again, I had to learn What is it to clear? What what am I doing? We need to get the darkness out of us. Okay? Again, physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional. If we’re physically in pain, is it radiating energy? Of course it is. So is our spirit? So is all the energy around us? And when somebody comes at you with eight or you for me walking into the VA, that place is just vile. You’re picking up and absorbing all of that energy. So what I did was I I focused heavily on the Catholic. I focused heavily on my Native American and I watched. And I studied what the community is. Well, the greatest way to to to draw that piece together is with father Amos. He died a little while ago. He was the he was the Vatican’s chief exercise. Okay? And he wrote, I’ve read almost every one of his books. Great, phenomenal guy. He wrote that I do hundreds of exercises every single day. And I’m like, what the fuck is this? I’m thinking peace soup and all that. Right? He goes, no. These people come and they line up at my door so they can get the body of Christ so that they can get the blood of Christ. So that he can put their hand on him and invoke God’s will and light to come through them and to clear all that doesn’t belong inside of you, to clear the darkness. And people wind up every day to go do this. They go every Sunday and what are they doing? They’re renewing their connection to what they believe in in the Catholics, the baby Jesus, the light of Christ, and so on. Native Americans. Same thing, different approach. You watch the Catholics use a wafer or a jug of oil or a jug of wine. Right? Oil. Right? For baptism. Right? Merriages. Right? And this smoke for burials. Right? What do Native Americans do? Sage, cedar, sweet grass, and tobacco. Now listen, if you mix all four, you’re neutralizing all the darkness around you and all the darkness in you by doing the same things the Catholics do. Getting exercised or cleared.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
D Paul Fleming: Once I started going down his path, I could start feeling the darkness other people’s anger coming at me. Okay? So I said, how do I how do I protect against this? So I learned how to protect against this. And then I went from being, you know, on the wrong side of things to being on the positive side of things. Right? Now I’m doing it daily daily. Okay? Claireing people, Claireing houses, getting rid of darkness. I’m doing this often.
Okay? So when I say when you asked what, you know, kind of, what do I do? So that’s why I I love being around my wife and I love doing spiritual work. Okay. To me, this this is all part of his spirit to work. How how do you like that one for an answer?
Victoria Volk: No. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much. I actually am Catholic and to hear you share your perspective of that, and I wasn’t always. I’m a convert. So to hear your perspective. And and to be fair, I mean, that was a huge part of my healing as well was finding something I believed in again to find my faith, which, you know, thanks to my husband at the time. But It wasn’t pressured on me. It wasn’t forced on me. I had to come to that myself. And I think we naturally do when we start to open ourselves up to more, that more is possible. And I think when we’re talking about suicide, I mean, I’m I’m imagine you would agree is that you don’t feel like that more is possible, like more goodness. Like goodness is possible.
D Paul Fleming: Yeah. You’ve you’ve given up on all of it. You’ve absolutely given up. There is no more. Okay? The reason I wrote the reason the title is a date with suicide is what I’ve what I learned from talking to many veterans was that, you know, we’re so anal that we’d line everything else up. K? And then the last thing we do is set a date. Now, veterans that have attempted suicide almost to a man or a woman tell me the same thing. Okay? Few with few exceptions. Someone will say, well, I thought of a date, but I need to put everything in line before I set the date. So we’ve got to get the veterans before they set that date. Because once they set that date, the the the week after my last book came out of date with suicide, a guy who served with forty years ago committed suicide. For me. K? I couldn’t believe it. Guys, served with a reaches out and says, I’m reading your book and I’m playing back, you know. Just buried blah blah, who committed suicide. I’m like, okay. Statistically, if you look at what the VA says, whether it’s seventeen or twenty two, it’s a it is a miscarriage of fact to be to be a nice k? The VA take is aware of about twenty percent of the veterans, but they’ll claim they claim they’re engaged with thirty five percent of veterans. So let’s use their number thirty five percent. In two thousand fourteen through two thousand eighteen, the VA redid a study and came back in eighteen and said we’ve decreased the number to seventeen veterans suicide a day, and they were all proud of themselves. Right? Okay. Operation deep dive picked up from there. And for the last seven or eight years through a couple of different universities, including Duke University now. They they focused on eight states and it’s now going national. It’s called Operation DeepDive. If you if you guys are all familiar with Navy Carmen, Christine Walker, she’s the chief editor of Eddie’s Magazine, Jones it. She puts an article for Operation DeepDive in her magazine every time every quarter comes out. Okay? Operation DeepDive is a great piece of literature to read and and look at the research. And it’s two page conclusion, it says that the VA used bogus numbers to come up with their seventeen per day. But even based on their seventeen per day, the reality is it’s two point four times higher than the suicide rate, which puts it in the forties. So their position is it’s in the forties. My position is if it’s seventeen a day and you’re only seeing a third of the veterans, why can’t we just do the math and say, well, that’s fifty plus. So that’s kind of the conclusion of where I come from fifty veterans a day or committing suicide. I believe the reality is so much more than that. Okay? Because so many of our veterans, especially our young veterans, I’ve and I’ve handheld quite a few of them to try to get them into the system and it’s a it’s a nightmare. How many or more are we losing when they bang on the front door or the VA? They need mental help. Right? And they get turned away. Alvea will say they don’t turn you away. That’s bullshit. Okay? If you don’t have a rating, the only thing you can do is walk into the day clinic and sit there for as long as it takes in that spot until somebody can see you, if they can see you. In the last in the hearing last week, I watched this guy say that, well, we’re only having two veterans commit suicide on our property. And the congressman retired Navy Seal, lost it. And he says, that’s bullshit. There’s twenty different facilities that have reported at least two, so that’s forty. And his response was while most of those are off VA grounds. Okay? Well, why? Because a lot of VAs have certain places, and then the parking lots are on private land or state owned land. Okay? Gotta won’t jump back on that soapbox. Okay. But, anyway, I kinda lost where we were going with this, so they kinda widened that topic up. Sorry.
Victoria Volk: No. I’m glad we brought it back to the suicide topic. And thank you for mentioning Operation Deep Dive. I I I wasn’t in my awareness. Before Yeah.
D Paul Fleming: Do you wanna give a read to that?
Victoria Volk: In your life experience, the grief trauma, what what has grief taught you? And what is the message that you would like to share with veterans listening to this, who may be struggling today?
D Paul Fleming: The second part is easy. The first part is difficult to answer. It’s not difficult to answer because I’m reluctant. It’s difficult to answer because I’m a I’m a very odd duck. Alright? I have a I have a deep faith in the baby jeans, and I have a deep faith in my native americanism, but I also believe in reincarnation. I believe in we’re here for a reason. Okay. My first suicide was Randy Smith. Can a guy I served with? That’s starting right in the book. Right? That’s why I kinda coined the phrase, who’s your Randy? Meaning, who’s your first suicide? So for me, I look back at this now that I’ve, you know, kind of spent over a decade digging into and learning about my spiritual faith, I see all of this happening so that I can write the book. I see everything that I went through so that I would I would grow my soul and be able to relate to people more have empathy for, to learn something that I never thought I would even have the conversation with, like, you can never judge somebody else’s trauma. I never would have drawn that conclusion and I not gone through boot camp, dealt with what I dealt with, and then sat down and wrote wrote the book. Right? So I have a I view this from a a very limited way where most people don’t. K? For my fellow veterans. Listen, there’s so much more that we’re supposed to do. So I’m gonna guelter here a little bit and tell you that the civilian suicide rate is exploding. And I’m gonna tell you that we all know that what we do as veterans, civilians follow. So a little bit of a guilt trip here, we’ve got to stop killing ourselves to save civilians lives. Because they’re looking at us saying, well, if they can’t deal with it, then it’s then it’s easy for them to say, I can kill myself. Right? I personally think the civilian suicide rate is north of a couple hundred a day, and I think it’s exploding. Anyway, tell your story. If you’re not familiar with Don are you familiar with Donald Dunn out of Missouri? Mhmm. He wrote a book that is this thick. Okay? I mean, it’s it’s literally that thick. Okay? Donald Dunn. Phenomenal book. Right? I usually have it with me to show on these podcast. Alright? He tells it I I swear if it I think he wrote this with a crayon, and then somebody typed it Okay? It is that down home. It is straight to the point and it tells all the same stories I tell except I spent forever writing it in long form long form. Okay But he really comes out and lays it out of how close he came to suicide. And to a man when people have come to me and said, okay, your book stopped me from committing suicide. My next question is, why? And they said, I read in there things that I didn’t know I didn’t have. One, a purpose. Two, I didn’t know other veterans were dealing with transitioning out of the military like I was. Okay? I was shocked that people are shocked that veterans saying, how many of us realize that we were abandoned when we’d left the military again. It it the system is what it is, but that feeling of abandonment jumps right back at us when the gate hits us in the backside, especially if you’ve gone through childhood trauma. If not, then it’s your first real feeling of abandonment, and it’s hard to refine yourself. So you’ve gotta find yourself and find a purpose. Well, what is your purpose right now? Well, I’m giving you one. Tell your story. So if you don’t think you have a purpose, reach out to me. And I’m gonna help you understand that you have a purpose. If you tell your story one time, you have no idea the pebble and the pond effect that can have in helping others. But to bring it back to Don Don’s book, he didn’t tell his wife anything about what was going on. Wait a minute. Didn’t I already say this? No. That was me. I said I didn’t tell my wife for fifty years. Until I handed to the book. Well, Don Don didn’t tell his family anything until they read the book. Are we seeing a trend line here? K. So we’re keeping all of this inside of us. Because we think we’re helping our friends, our family, our loved ones by not burning burning them with our story. Well, listen, I’m telling you. Your loved ones need to hear your story. We all need to hear your story. The more of us that come forward and tell the story, the easier it’s gonna be for the rest of us to keep telling our story and to help others take a step up and tell their story. You gotta tell your story. Read other people’s story and just sit down and write it. You don’t have to print it. You don’t have to you just just write it right up on all the longest email to yourself you’ve ever done. And then burn it. Tell your story.
Victoria Volk: It’s good advice. Thank you for sharing all of that. There’s one thing I wanna say and it’s about the word committed you know, when we say this person committed suicide. The Great Recovery Institute helped me reframe that and shared a different perspective of that word because when we say committed, you know, when it’s like someone committing murder, that’s a crime. So when we say committed, it’s like they’re committing a crime. So the grief recovery institute actually has helped me realize the importance of words. And so instead, I say completed suicide or died by suicide because it takes off that it feeling like a crime. Because there’s a lot of shame in that that families feel, the people that are left behind. Right? You know?
D Paul Fleming: Yes. I do. I do. I’m in a fist fight, if you will, over getting people to stop hiding suicide. Mhmm. K? It’s like, listen. K? Get them. It’s gonna take me a while to not say committed, but okay. Your loved one killed himself. K? If you think that reflects on you, then you’re not helping the rest of us.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
D Paul Fleming: Because the it seems to me like the last taboo subject in this world is suicide. Everything else we can talk about. Right? Well well, why? Why? Why is it? Why is it so taboo? Well, the Bible frowns on suicide. Right? Says you commit suicide, you’re it’s a mortal sin. You’re going to hell forever. Do I buy that? Nope. Not at all. K? Do I tell people that they should buy it? Listen. You gotta figure out your own path. K? It’s not my place to tell you what to think or to believe. You figure that out. Right? To me, it isn’t. I’ve had to forgive everyone that I know that’s committed suicide because it’s not mine to keep. It’s not mine to take. And more importantly, I survived the physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional pain that brought me to that point. The pain is so overwhelming. How can anybody that loves a person want them to continue to live with that kind of pain? A razor blade tumbling constantly in your gut, your mind refusing to shut off, your body and so much physical pain, you can’t take it. There’s no end. And you’ve lost your faith so your entire existence getting absorbed by darkness, evil thoughts. How can you hold it against somebody? I just can’t take it anymore. I can’t. I’m not advocating for suicide. I’m advocating for those of us who have survived. And those of us who have to live, you know, with the memory of those who killed themselves. Right? You gotta think along these lines. When the pain got so severe, it took its toll. Okay? Few people talk about what it took to get to that point of suicide. And I’m here to say, telling you, look at it. And and again, like the mental health professionals that are reading my book are saying, They’ve never I’ve never heard any of them approach it from the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual standpoint of you have to attack all four. At the same time, pick one and get moving and the rest will follow. Then you need to learn to keep the faith and keep moving forward. So at the end, a veteran is still a veteran. Suck it up, find a path forward. We can do this. Reach out. We’re all here. We’re all suffering the same crap. Different levels You’re no different than us. You’re not alone. We get it. Your stories are no worse than everybody else’s. It’s no better than everybody else’s. We’re all the same. We’re one percent. We’re veterans. We got issues. We got stories. And we need to be telling them to ourselves. And the last thing I was saying, any veteran out there that maligns another veteran? You know, like saying something like, well, what makes you think you’re a veteran? You weren’t in combat? Right? Like, why would you say that? Or well, I did all these things and you didn’t. You know, why would you say that? Why would you say that? I went to boot camp with a kid who tried to kill himself because he couldn’t take the yelling. When I was in a school, I watched the e two shaking like a leaf because he had two captains and an admiral around him. Kid couldn’t function. And that’s when I swore I don’t ever be in one of these scenarios. I wonder what happened to that kid. All I know is he was so terrified around two captains at an admiral, he couldn’t function. Another kid would chain smoke outside like there was no tomorrow. Why? And he was never in combat, but something happened to him because he signed the line join the military, successfully move through boot camps, successfully move through the next things, and something snapped. Something happened. Combination of life, girlfriend leaving them, wife, kids, what? Don’t know. It’s not our story to tell. But don’t judge somebody else’s trauma and don’t harm another veteran by, you know, downplaying what they did. I’ll close that little soapbox with this. One guy I talked to, never left the United States. In fact, went to Maryland, spent eight years there. At the eight year point, the end of his enlistment, he was doing one of two things. He was getting out and or killing himself.
I couldn’t decide which one was gonna be first. He didn’t kill himself, but it was close. When I asked him, what what what’s your story? What because I couldn’t take it anymore. What? His job was to be in perfect uniform and carry fellow dead soldiers off of the planes flying into Maryland or Delaware. Right? Andrews, were they were they flying in? That was his job. Oh, he did. For eight years, boot camp school got picked up for this thing and stayed there. The stress and trauma of carrying dead servicemen took its toll on him to the point of becoming like the rest of us who are, you know, chasing a date with suicide. Right? Doesn’t matter what we did in the service. It doesn’t matter either line cook or front line infantry. Doesn’t matter whether you were a navy seal because they are killing themselves too. Or if you were just a Boson’s meat painting the battleships. Right? Battleships. You don’t have any of those doing? Aircraft carriers. K? Everyone’s just as important and we have to suck it up and stick together. Can’t be maligning. We can’t be maligning each other.
Howard Bauchner:
Victoria Volk: It’s a great way to end, but I wanna ask, is there anything else that you think of that you didn’t get to share that you want to?
D Paul Fleming: Oh, no. I think you got a great format. I think you do a great job of of getting the message out to veterans. They’re easy to talk with, so I encourage all of that to reach out and get on your show or listen to your show. And, you know, thank you for all the things that you’re doing. You know, it’s it’s very helpful. To have the wide breadth of conversation that we’re having. Howard Bauchner:
Victoria Volk: And thank you for sharing that. I appreciate you and your time today and the work that you are doing, because it does, like you said, it takes all of us. Yeah. Just so much gratitude for you. So thank you so much. Where can people reach you or find you? Where are you on socials? If they wanna reach out to you and connect?
D Paul Fleming: Or you can you can find me on Facebook at D-Paul-Fleming. If you wanna find me on Twitter, same thing, DPaulFleming, but I also have a a big account that’s that wellness. Okay? If you don’t wanna get engaged in the politics, don’t reach out to me on that one. Right? But if you wanna just do vet stuff, DPaulFleming, you can email me or, you know, my my contact information out there. Yeah. dpaulfleming.com. Okay.
Victoria Volk: You know You
D Paul Fleming: know, go ahead. Buy a book and pass it on to a to a veteran. Alright? And tell you a story.
Victoria Volk: And I will put the links to those where people can find you in the show notes. And Thank you again for everything. 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.
Childhood Grief, Divorce, Educational, Grieving Voices Podcast, Parenting, Podcast, solo episode |
Part II | Supporting Children Through Divorce and The Holidays
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
This episode is a follow-up to the last one to bring awareness to Children’s Grief Awareness Day on November 16th, 2023.
In this episode, I dive into supporting children through divorce and their challenges during the holidays. We must recognize that children experience various forms of grief and that parents play a crucial role in helping them cope with loss. Parents who receive early education on loss are better prepared to support their children effectively.
The impact of divorce on children is explored, highlighting the multiple losses they experience and the difficulties they face in understanding love and commitment. It can’t be stated enough that parents face many challenges in being present and acknowledging their children’s feelings during a challenging time, such as navigating all of the changes that occur as a result of a divorce (or separation), particularly when the parents are grieving themselves.
This episode implores all adults to empathize with children struggling, particularly during holidays and challenging family situations. As a society, we must break the cycle of inadequate support by providing better guidance to the next generation.
I encourage all listeners to engage with the episode and provide feedback to help shape future discussions on supporting children through divorce and the holidays. We adults must raise awareness about children’s grief, advocate for improved support systems, and empower all parents to navigate challenging situations with sensitivity and understanding. Future generations depend on what we adults choose to do or not do in response to children’s grief.
RESOURCES:
_______
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:
Victoria Volk: Hello friend. Thank you for tuning in to this episode. And it is a follow-up episode to the one before last week, Children’s Grief Awareness. And I said in that episode that I would bring in part two where I’d be talking more about supporting children through divorce and through the holidays as it relates to grief and divorce in general.
Victoria Volk: And I wanna share that, the first episode, Children’s Grief Awareness part one, has not been a very popular episode, and I just want to share how sad that kind of makes me not kind of, it does make me sad. And I suppose, I’m not sure exactly who you are listening to this. Do you not have children? Do most people who listen to this podcast not have children? Are you older? And maybe your children are older? And don’t have young children anymore, that could be. I would love to know why that episode isn’t resonating or if it did, please share that too.
Victoria Volk: And I would just love to know like who’s really on the other side listening to my voice. Are you listening in the car? Are you listening while you wash dishes? Are you listening on your commute? Or when you’re walking, I would love to know. So please share your feedback on the podcast directly please email me. Consider this like you supporting me in research. Because I’m really am curious. Please email me at [email protected] or find me on social media, Instagram is usually where I like to is my go to @theunleashedheart, and on Facebook, you can message me, Victoria The Unleashed Heart.
Victoria Volk: Anyway, I’m sure you can find me. Links are in the show notes too. If you are interested in helping me do that research. I would love to know who you are listening because I really am curious why that episode isn’t so popular, but regardless because I’m so passionate about children’s grief and the child grievers out there because I was one and I grew up as one. I’m still going to record a part two even though that last episode may not have been as popular because I feel like it is such an important topic because even if your children are older, they’re teenagers this still applies to you if your children are adults, who may be are starting their own families. Please share this with them too. I guarantee you that you probably know or have a child in your life, and this is just great information to have in your back pocket or to share with someone you know.
Victoria Volk: So, piggybacking on what I shared last week. There are some points I want to drill home. Point one is that children learn how to deal with loss at a very early age. That’s something I didn’t talk about in the last episode, but the vast majority of parents don’t realize that children, by the age of three, have learned or developed seventy-five percent of the skills that they will use for the rest of their lives to deal with issues that face them. Most parents rarely know or think about this when they are dealing with the daily issues related to their children. I’ve been there so many times, I can’t even tell you. Parents are very much in the moment when they’re talking to their children and likely they don’t even take into consideration how their children store things in their personal belief system.
Victoria Volk: While the vast majority of the information that parents pass on is of value. Like, we all, we are the teachers. Right? Mixed in with all of that good information can be also misinformation on how to deal with loss. And I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but when your back is up against the wall and you have a grief experience, you’re gonna resort to what you know. And even when your children are faced with a grieving experience, you as a parent are gonna resort to what you know and likely what you were taught as a child is what you will pass on to your child. Unconsciously or consciously, some things, we don’t even really think about it. We just respond. Right? We just react. And that’s what we tend to do is respond in a knee-jerk reaction.
Victoria Volk: Point two I wanna make is that grief is more than an emotional response to death. I’ve talked about this so many times, but again, it bears repeating when it comes to childhood grief too. Because it’s not just about death, and children don’t need to be dealing with a death to experience grief. Comes in a lot of forms. Many losses that impact a child may seem insignificant to you as the adult for like example, let’s say, their favorite toy, and they can’t find it. They lost it. Where another child broke it. It seems insignificant to use the adult or the parent. But to us, it’s like, I can just buy go buy another one. I mean, there’s a million in one soccer balls or whatever it is. But to the young child that lost that toy or that whatever it is, it can be overwhelming. Especially if maybe it was a gift or something like that. Likewise, as adults, we become accustomed to friends saying things to us that we might find upsetting. And we might take offense. And in the moment, but we often are able to look at that comment if we take a step back, look at it from a broader perspective, and based on our relationship, not let that statement have a long-lasting emotional impact on us.
Victoria Volk: However, adolescents and teens do not have an adult’s perspective. And can find one negative comment or a breach of confidentiality emotionally devastating. In both situations, children are dealing with a very real grief grieving experience. And without realizing it, the way parents respond to these early grieving experience can establish a pattern for how the child learns to deal with loss for the rest of their lives. Even though as parents, we don’t see these early issues as being related to grief. They have nonetheless set a reactive response to loss in the child’s belief system. And it’s not like we’re trying to pass on bad information to our children. It’s just something that happens. A child is the most complex thing we ever bring home and they do not have detailed cautionary information stamped on the bottom of them. Right? They don’t come with a manual.
Victoria Volk: Point three, early education on loss for parents helps prepare children. The children in their life Grief Education is prevention. This is prevention. Most parents never think about helping their children deal with personal emotional loss until there is a crisis of some kind. It may be the death of a family member, a friend, or a pet that forces them to act. And it might be a divorce or some other major life event. Rarely do parents realize that they have already inadvertently given children in ineffective tools to deal with loss, even with previous minor issues their children may have experienced. And when parents face a crisis, they equally find themselves lost, like, as anyone would. Right? Like grief devastating loss just flips your entire world upside down. So your first thought might be to send your child to a professional for assistance. But the problem with that is that the children may see the professionals as advice as being in conflict with what they have already learned. A complicating factor, no matter the value of what this professional tries to teach them, can be conflicting information if the parents are not on the same page as that professional. And so mixed information or interactions with the child can just all it does is create more confusion. Taking all of that into account alone, should have you running to the bookstore or going on to Amazon and ordering the book when children grieve just based on what I just said. Or finding a support group program, like someone like me who facilitates the Helping Children with Loss program. Rather than waiting to for you to recognize that your child is struggling, you can help though with an overwhelming loss in advance, why wait for there to be a devastating loss or an issue to surface before we decide to help our children. Doesn’t it make more sense to teach parents the things they need to know to help their child feel safe to express their sadness during those first three years of life? And again, this is when these children aren’t just starting to develop the belief system that they will use for the rest of their lives. That is why Helping Children with Loss, When Children Grieve The Handbook is prevention. This information is prevention.
Victoria Volk: Now that I’ve gotten these three points out, I wanna start talking about divorce in the holidays as it relates to children in their grief experience. And it might surprise you that we actually divide divorce into two different categories, long-term or sudden. And the difference with divorce is that there is often one partner who has been struggling for a long time. While the other partner has been unaware, that things are not right. And so when the later gets served with divorce papers, it can have the impact of a sudden death, and some children are very aware of a problem in their household. I would say most are aware because children are sponges. They take in information in all kinds of ways and their eyes and ears are always listening and hearing and seeing and watching. So they have often seen and been subjected to arguments between their parents over an extended period of time. And for those children, the announcement of a divorce will fall under the heading of a long-term condition. And on the other hand, some parents manage to conceal from their children, their personal difficulties with each other. And when children who were not aware of any major problems are informed of an impending divorce, their reaction is also as if a sudden death has happened. The impact can be overwhelming to a child. And there’s a high probability that a child may begin to participate in a variety of short-term energy-relieving behaviors in response to the sudden news of their parents’ divorce. It could be said that a divorce is a family matter. And even though there is truth in that comment, the bottom line is that the couple is getting the divorce and the children are in the line of fire. The collateral damage to the children can be monumental.
Victoria Volk: The children caught in a divorce are experiencing multiple losses. What loss or losses are they experiencing? Well, look at the conflicting feelings caused by a change or an end in a familiar pattern of behavior. So some examples of losses that children may experience while their parents are going through divorce is a loss of patient that this family would be together. The loss of trust, loss of familiarity and routines, loss of safety, loss of childhood, loss of residence, and or the change to dual residences. Any one of these losses is enough to break a child’s heart. Not to mention, feel overwhelming.
Victoria Volk: So let’s look at each of these in a little bit more detail. Looking at the loss of expectation that the family would be together, children are taught about love and honor and trust and loyalty by their parents. They learn how to be loving and considerate how to resolve conflicts and how to get along with others. And from literature and films and religious institutions, children also learn that the vows exchanged in the marriage ceremony pledge a commitment to those virtues. And whether or not you’ve experienced this, think about how can fusing and disturbing it must be to children when their parents cannot maintain that pledge to each other. Also, take loss of trust. Imagine the conflicting feelings children must experience as a divorce scenario unfolds, or explodes before their eyes. What reference point do they have to deal with those feelings? It is very difficult teach your children about love and simultaneously teach them about divorce. Given that implicit promise that the family will always be together, the divorce itself represents a major breach of trust.
Victoria Volk: Moving on to loss of familiarity and routines, this is difficult all by itself, and it’s often greatly intensified by the fact that children may be undergoing other major transitions as they move from childhood to adulthood. We know all too well that the stresses and strains of those transitions can have powerful consequences. And those transitions can be happening in every age bracket.
Victoria Volk: Next, loss of safety. Familiarity in routines build safety in a sense of well-being. The patterns established within a family are usually dismantled by divorce. Children flailing around and the emotional aftermath of a divorce often do not feel very safe. Safety and familiarity go hand in hand, so it is a good idea to limit the amount of additional changes.
Victoria Volk: Loss of childhood. The instinct for survival can take many forms. For the most part, survival actions are beneficial. Sometimes they backfire. The scenario in which children take care of a parent is one example of such a backfire. It is understandable that children who would instinctively try to protect the very person or people who are supposed to protect them. It’s the child’s way of trying to guarantee their own survival. But this impulse to care take puts them in conflict with their own nature. Divorce tends to turn children into amateur psychologists. It spurs them to analyze and figure things out. It forces them to grow up before their time and to take on attitudes and actions that are not appropriate to their time of life.
Victoria Volk: And I can say this specifically for myself that that holds a lot of truth just for my own experience of my dad passing when I was eight years old, my parents didn’t divorce. He died, but like I said earlier, divorce can be this long-term experience where it can be this like a sudden death. And so that’s where there’s similarities that can be expressed in divorce, as well as a death of a parent.
Victoria Volk: And talking about loss of residence or change to dual residences, everything that I’ve talked about has been magnified when the move is the result of a divorce. The moves or changes caused by the divorce carrying emotional weight which is added to the fact that moving in and of itself changes everything that is familiar and routine for a child. Think about it. If you change your job, you’re going to a new you might move across to a different state, you’re going to have new coworkers, new neighbors, new friends. You’re leaving old friends and colleagues behind. The same goes for children. But it’s on a scale that taking all these other things into consideration and what I’ve already shared you can see why this would have probably long-term effects on the well-being of a child.
Victoria Volk: And here’s what I’ll say to all of this. When as parents, we work on our own grief and work to resolve what is emotionally complete for ourselves and the losses that we’ve experienced in our life, whether it’s loss of trust or loss of safety or loss of our spouse or parent. We learn how to simply be present with a child in our life. Regardless of their age. You can simply be and not have to do anything. You don’t have to fix your child. You don’t have to give advice. You don’t have to jump in or change a subject. You can just listen and acknowledge. And this is what builds trust with children. And I will go on to say to starting first, going first, speaking to how you had expectations for your life with your significant other that didn’t work out, but that doesn’t mean that that child has loved any less. It doesn’t mean that you care about that, the other parent, any less. You might, but to not use that time that you have with your child to bad mouth or talk about the other parent, but instead use the time that you have with your child to. Let them share. Let them express. Let them give voice to what they’re feeling, to what they’re thinking. That is what builds trust with children.
Victoria Volk: And this is where grief recovery is the most helpful because you can simply learn how to connect with your child at an emotional level. And not take away the feelings of the child. That’s not the goal. It’s not the goal to fix just to be and listen. And so as we’re navigating the holidays coming up and the changes of homes or sharing the holiday with a significant other or your now ex-spouse, or ex-significant other. Think about that. Think about what that child put yourself in the shoes of the child. What will they be experiencing? What would how are they feeling about especially if this is the first holiday the first Thanksgiving or the first Christmas where the child is feeling torn between two homes. Feeling torn from their mother, being feeling torn from their father, or whatever the situation is. It could even be a grandparent and a parent. Right? I mean, there are so many different scenarios to what a family looks like these days that I just my point is though is to think about the child put yourself attempt to put yourself in that child’s shoes. And your child may say, well, you might ask, well, how are you doing? I’m fine. Children might appear to be fine. They might appear unscathed. But I guarantee you all of the change and disruption to their life, especially if it was I would say regardless if it was like this long-term thing that they saw issues, they knew that there were issues versus feeling like it was a sudden death. Either way, there is gonna be changes that the entire family will have to navigate and adapt to.
Victoria Volk: And I think if the child is brought into the fold of that experience and not shut out or, I mean, if you might think that you’re protecting them, but if protecting them is not letting them talk about their feelings or not letting them share or not having them have a voice that is not helping them. And so I just wanted to encourage you if you find yourself in this situation or someone who is or if it was a death, let’s say it was a death of a parent, all of these things can still apply that I just talked about. There’s still going to be a lot of change. There’s still going to be a lot of uncertainty and by keeping those points in mind that I started out this episode with, you can be a soft space. And a place for a child to turn to not to be fixed, but to be heard.
Victoria Volk: And I guess that’s my whole point in sharing this episode. These two episodes is to bring awareness to childhood grief because it is a thing. Even though child children may appear fine, they may appear like they’re not being affected. I guarantee you they are on some level. They could just be expressing what they’ve learned from you. They could be emulating what they’ve learned from you. And so take that into consideration like how have you shown up in your grief and express that to your child regardless of what their age is because you can look back in hindsight and you’re always a parent. You’re forever a parent. That never changes. So whether it is an adult child or whether it is a young child, this is an episode where you can reflect on the past and think about the lessons that you passed out to your children and maybe share this episode with them and have a conversation. Maybe some things that you would have liked to have done differently or that you wish would have gone differently. That’s grief too. Grief is a loss of hope, dreams, and expectations. Anything that we wish would have been or could be different, better, or more.
Victoria Volk: And that’s what I gotta say about that. This is for the children out there, the grievers, the most vulnerable among us, and you grow up one day. I know you’re a child. You’re not as a child, you’re not probably listening to this. But as an adult, if you were a child who experienced a lot of grief and you grew up with grief. I see you. I hear you. I know you because I am you. And this is why I’m so passionate about sharing this information today in this episode and the last episode. And I do hope that the downloads go up because there are a whole lot of children suffering in this world and there are a whole lot of adults who grew up as children who felt as though they were suffering.
Victoria Volk: And if you are now a parent like me and you were a child griever, you can break the cycle. You can break those patterns and those things that you learned that were misinformation and unhelpful to you you can learn new knowledge and new tools to support your children and to break that cycle moving forward. That’s all I gotta say today on this topic. I hope you found it helpful. Please share it with a parent that you know or love or use it as a tool for yourself to become a better version of yourself as a parent to children that you are raising. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Childhood Grief, Grieving Voices Podcast, Parenting, Podcast, solo episode |
Part I | Children’s Grief Awareness
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
In light of November 16th being Children’s Grief Awareness Day, I recount my experience as a child griever in today’s episode.
Back in the ’80s, and still very much today, the topic of grief was uncomfortable and not something people openly shared their feelings about. Not to mention, the resources that exist today did not exist back then, leaving society to fend for itself and perpetuate the myths of grief I so often talk about: Don’t Feel Bad, Replace the Loss, Grieve Alone, Be Strong, Keep Busy, and Time Heals.
Growing up with grief poses many challenges for children, particularly with the loss of parents, safety, and security. The myths of grief have been ingrained in our society, and grieving children of the past, like myself, grow up passing those same myths down to their children. Hence, the cycle of grief misinformation continues. This is why I am so passionate about talking about grief because the cycle must be broken.
The more people who recognize they’re not forever broken or destined for a life of grief and instead learn new information and tools, the better off future generations will be – the better off our world will be.
I encourage all listeners to empathize with grieving children during this Children’s Grief Awareness Day. Reflect on the role you play in the life of a grieving child you know. If you want a child to feel safe in sharing, as an adult, you often have to go first in sharing.
Through this episode, you will also learn children’s common reactions to grief and more. In Part II, I will focus on an experience many children have today – divorced parents and navigating the holidays, especially if this is the first holiday without a loved one.
RESOURCES:
_______
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:
Victoria Volk: Hello, hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever time it is that you are listening to this thank you for being here. If this is your first time listening, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you find it helpful, I hope you share it or leave a five-star review if you feel like it’s beneficial information and if you walked away learning something, and if this is not your first time listening, thank you for tuning in again. And if you have not left a review yet for the podcast, I would greatly appreciate it.
Victoria Volk: Today, I wanna talk more about child grief because Thursday, November sixteenth is Children’s Grief Awareness Day. And I felt it was important just to share a little bit more on this topic for children’s grief awareness because I think, let’s say, if you lose your spouse or you lose your parent, right, if the child loses their grandparent, it can be really easy to kinda get wrapped up in your own emotions and your own feelings and thoughts and sadness. Right? And I certainly experienced this for myself as a child griever where there really wasn’t a lot of communication with me asking me as an eight-year-old how I felt about my dad’s passing or how I felt about not seeing him or essentially growing up without him.
Victoria Volk: There really wasn’t a whole lot of conversation directed at me and about how I was dealing with that devastating loss. He had been sick for several years colon cancer. I am currently the age that my dad was when he passed away. I’m forty-four years old. And I cannot imagine. He was sick for about two years before he passed. And by the time they caught it, it was or founded it was too late, but he hung on. And he put up the good fight, but I did have a lot of difficulty with that loss, both getting into my twenties, certainly as a teenager it’s not an easy time anyway, but my mother had I’ll say quickly because to me, as a kid, it’s seemed quick. Within two years, my mom was remarried and this new guy was in our life and he treated me well. There was no issue there. He wasn’t there a lot because he was a long-haul trucker.
Victoria Volk: And my childhood was just a really, like, full of extremes. Right? It was these really high highs and these really low lows. But there was more lows than there were highs because they didn’t have the best relationship. And of course, it’s really difficult to be married to someone who isn’t there a whole lot just in general. So anyway, my childhood and my teen years were just a really difficult time, and that was the best I could, and I found myself really trying to emotionally care take others I was often the emotional caretaker for my mom and for a lot of friends, like I was the shoulder that friends cried on, and I was happy to be the supportive friend, to be the friend that was there for everyone.
Victoria Volk: I’d been through a lot at that by my teen years, I had been through a lot and experienced a lot more than maybe some people I know that are my age now. And so I had to grow up fast I did. I had to grow up fast. And so I really don’t feel like I had much of a carefree childhood that children really do deserve. And so that’s really why I wanted to highlight this topic today because for me, Children Grief Awareness Day is all about the kids. So I just want you to listen and set aside whatever you’re experiencing, whatever sadness and grief and whatever you’re feeling about a loss that you’ve recently had, and you have a child that’s experiencing it alongside you. I want you to just set aside whatever you’re feeling and attempt to put yourself in the shoes of this child that you know or love. No end love. Maybe it’s your own child. Maybe it’s your grandchild. Maybe it is maybe you’re an older sibling and it’s a younger child in the family, that’s still at home because maybe you’re in your twenties and your sibling is like fifteen I don’t know, but I’m just the focus today, let’s put it on the children. And so as you’re listening to this episode, it is my hope that you walk away from this episode learning something.
Victoria Volk: So many of the normal and natural signs of grief are fairly obvious. And most of those signs would be the same for a child’s reaction to a death, divorce or some other type of loss. But let’s just say we’re talking about news about a death. Often, the immediate response learning of a death is a sense of, like, this numbness, which can last a different amount of time for each child. What usually lasts longer and is even more universe is a reduced ability to concentrate. And I can say that for me, as a child, if I would have gone to a therapist or a psychologist or what had you, which was not the case. My mom would have probably been told that I had ADHD. So other common reactions include major changes in eating and sleeping patterns. These patterns can alternate from one extreme to the other. Also typical is a roller coaster of emotional highs and lows. And these are not stages. They’re simply just some of the normal ways in which the body and the mind and especially the emotions respond to the overwhelmingly painful information that something out of the ordinary has occurred.
Victoria Volk: So going back to my personal experience as a child griever, and within the year of my dad’s passing, I know I mentioned this on the podcast before, but if you’ve never listened to an episode, I was molested and in going into my teen years. So when I say that my childhood was you know, not much of a childhood. I’m this is the context in which I’m speaking to that. So there was a lot of change and a lot of trauma in my early life. And I can tell you that I slept a lot. Most of the pictures I have of myself as a child are of me sleeping, sleeping in the middle of the living room, floor midday or before actually bedtime, falling asleep on my bed before a birthday party, which I completely miss because my mother felt the need to take a picture but not wake me up for the birthday party. And I was a tardy a lot with school. And I would always get an elementary school. It was like an n for needs improvement. I would always have an n for listens to and follows directions.
Victoria Volk: So again, comes back to this change in sleep patterns or inability to concentrate. And just really fidgety. Like, I just recall being very just very much in, like, my own la la land. But these reactions to a death are normal and typical. And even if there has been a long-term illness, like in the case of my dad, which may have included substantial time and opportunity to so unquote unquote prepare for that which would inevitably happen. We cannot repair ourselves or our children in advance for the emotional reaction to a death because we don’t understand the finality. We can’t even wrap our heads around the finality of that moment until it actually occurs.
Victoria Volk: If you’ve listened to any previous episodes, you’ve heard me say that grief isn’t just about physical death. There’s a much broader definition that encompasses all losses experiences, which I’ve shared before on this podcast. But if this is your first time listening, grief is the conflicting feelings caused by a change or an end in a familiar pattern of behavior. So, if you’re thinking about like these list of losses that include death of a pet, death of a grandparent, moving, divorce, divorce of a child’s parents, and death of a parent. Each of these losses represents a massive change or end from everything familiar. With death, the person or path that has always been. There is no longer there. With moving, the familiar place and surroundings are different. Divorce alters all of the routines in a child’s life. It often includes changes in living situations and separation from extended family, members and friends. All of these losses mentioned carry with them the obvious emotional impact that we can all imagine would affect children.
Victoria Volk: But our definition of grief includes the idea that there are conflicting feelings. If you’ve ever had a loved one who struggled for a long time with the terminal illness, you may have had some feelings of relief when that person died. The relief usually stems from the idea that your loved one is no longer in pain. At the same time, your heart may have felt broken because he or she was no longer here. So the conflicting feelings are relief and sadness. Moving also sets up conflicting feelings. We may miss some of the familiar things that we liked about the old house or the neighborhood. And at the same time really like some of the things about the new place.
Victoria Volk: Children are particularly affected by changes in locations, routines, and physical familiarity, death, divorce, and even moving or obvious losses, unless the parent or loss is having to do with health issues, a major change in the physical or mental health of a child or a parent can have dramatic impact on a child’s life. And even though children are not usually involved with financial matters, they can also be affected by major financial changes, positive or negative within their family. Society has identified more than forty life experiences that produce feelings of grief. And at the Grief Recovery Institute, they’ve expanded that list to include many of the loss experiences that are less concrete and difficult to measure such as loss of trust, loss of safety, and loss of control are the most prominent of the intangible but life altering experiences that affect children’s lives.
Victoria Volk: Intangible losses tend to be hidden and often do not surface until later in life through therapy and other self-examinations. I can tell you that that was certainly true for myself. I hope that this initial information is a good foundation that it helps you gain a better understanding of how grief just doesn’t impact you, but it impacts the children in your life in a lot of similar ways, but in a lot of different ways too.
Victoria Volk: I’m gonna make this a two-part series. Next week, I’m going to record and focus on children with divorce, experiencing their parents with divorce. Because we’re going into Thanksgiving and the holidays and things and with it being Children’s Grief Awareness Day. I’m just gonna make this a two-part and hopefully you can find some resources and support in moving into the holidays through these couple episodes. That’s the episode for today. I laid the foundation. Come back next week for where we’re gonna talk about divorce. And that impact on children and navigating all of that with the holidays. So I hope to have you back next week. And in the meantime, remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.