Grief, Grieving Voices Guest, Healing, Spirituality, Suicide |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
- On this episode of Grieving Voices, I welcomed David Chotka, founder and director of Spirit Equip Ministries. With four degrees and extensive experience as a pastor and conference speaker, David shares insights from his journey through grief personally and within his community.David discusses the challenges pastors face daily in dealing with grief within their congregations. He recounts his first funeral service—a daunting task for someone who had not yet experienced personal loss—and how that “baptism by fire” shaped his understanding of mourning.Our conversation turns to David opening up about a pivotal moment when he lost his brother to suicide. This tragedy occurred just as he was adopting a daughter, adding complex layers to an already emotional time. Despite having to maintain composure for important church services amidst this personal crisis, David candidly describes how the event left him grappling with questions about faith, forgiveness, life after death, and God’s mercy.
In a powerful account of healing in nature two years after his loss, David shares an epiphany that brought peace back into his soul regarding eternal destiny while walking through the Heartlake Conservation Area and reading Psalms 130.
The conversation also touches on navigating sudden losses like suicides within families—emphasizing compassion over judgment—and offers comfort to those wondering about loved ones’ fates after such actions.
Finally, David speaks on divine appointments—the idea that God orchestrates encounters where we can give or receive something significant—and gives listeners insight into finding meaning in seemingly random moments.
This heartfelt discussion provides solace for anyone grieving, highlighting the importance of spiritual guidance during one’s darkest hours.
RESOURCES:
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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Finding Peace and Understanding in the Midst of Grief: The Journey of David Chaka
Grief can be a bewildering labyrinth, often leaving us grappling with profound questions about faith, life’s purpose, and our own resilience. In this heartfelt episode of *Grieving Voices*, we were graced by the presence of David Chaka—a man whose personal journey through loss and his role as a spiritual guide offers both solace and insight into navigating the murky waters of sorrow.
David is not just any guest; he brings with him an extensive background as the founder of Spirit Equip Ministries, an authorship that spans five books on spirituality, decades spent pastoring souls seeking comfort, and a voice that has echoed internationally across podiums dedicated to faith. His tenure as chair for the Christian Missionary Alliance’s prayer team in Canada has shaped countless lives—including his own.
Personal Encounters with Grief
When grief knocks on one’s door personally, it carries a different weight. For David Chaka, losing his brother to suicide was such an encounter—one that shook his beliefs to their core yet also led him down a path where he found deeper roots within his faith. He shares how these moments have been pivotal in understanding salvation—not as a checklist but as an intimate relationship with God—a concept offering great comfort to those mourning loved ones lost under tragic circumstances.
Unplanned Moments Leading To Life-Changing Outcomes
In what could have been seen merely as logistical frustration—the no-show moving van—David found friendship and vulnerability while stranded in Elizabeth’s empty apartment. This unexpected delay blossomed into marriage—a reminder that sometimes life’s detours are divine appointments in disguise.
His education under Dr. Gordon Fee further exemplifies this theme—unexpected influences shaping one’s spiritual perspective profoundly. And when called upon to pray for healing against all odds for a fellow student facing deathly illness? The result was nothing short of miraculous—an affirmation reinforcing David’s belief in being open to divine guidance despite personal doubts or hesitations.
Faith Amidst Everyday Life
The stories shared by David resonate deeply because they mirror everyday experiences where faith intersects ordinary moments—like Peter, James John catching fish beyond their wildest dreams at Jesus’ bidding or like ‘Bible-thumper Bob’, whose cancer recovery showed glimpses of heaven before its eventual return grounded us back to earthly realities.
These narratives aren’t just tales; they’re testaments reminding us about responsiveness towards God’s call—even when it seems illogical—and maintaining hope amidst uncertainties inherent in human existence.
Healing Pathways & The Presence Of God
In discussing pathways outlined alongside Maxie Dunham regarding healing prayers—from instantaneous miracles to enduring suffering—it becomes evident that encountering God isn’t limited by specific outcomes but rather defined by walking alongside Him through various journeys toward healing or closure.
David emphasizes experiencing God not only through words but also through non-verbal communication—the peace and joy brought forth even during tribulations signifying His ever-present Holy Spirit guiding our steps towards righteousness irrespective of surrounding chaos.
Extending Love In A Troubled World
As listeners absorb these powerful insights from *Grieving Voices*, it reinforces the notion that living out our calling involves extending love amidst imperfections—not allowing negative church experiences or disillusionment obstruct access to what lies beyond hurt: unconditional love from our Creator capable transforming pain into purposeful engagement within His kingdom here on earth.
For those inspired by this conversation who yearn for more depth within their spiritual walk—you’re invited over at spiritequip.com where you’ll find resources bridging denominational divides while nurturing your inner self for an enriched communion with divinity.
We leave you pondering 1 John 3:2—the promise transformation upon truly seeing God—as we await future content including audiobook chapters promising continued nourishment for your soul-searching quests.
Indeed embracing oneself leads towards fulfillment—but let us remember it is often intertwined intricately with embracing faith even when faced with life’s inevitable grieving voices.
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of grieving voices. Today, my guest is David Chotka. He is the founder and director of Spirit Equip ministries, an organization devoted to developing training resources. Author of five books, a season pastor, and a conference speaker David has four earned degrees and travel has traveled and taught in countries to groups large and small. He has served as chair of alliance pray, the prayer equipping team of Christian missionary alliance in Canada for more than twenty years and is now committed to serving those who want to develop Their spiritual disciplines one small step at a time. David is married to Elizabeth and together they have two adult children and for fun he plays the piano. Thank you so much for being here.
David Chotka: Thank you, Victoria, for having me on your podcast. I it’s a delight to be here. And
Victoria Volk: I think you are the first pastor I’ve had on the podcast. I’m pretty sure.
David Chotka: Wow. On a topic like grieving, that’s really quite amazing.
Victoria Volk: I think so.
David Chotka: Well, because
Victoria Volk: meetings Two hundred episodes in.
David Chotka: So Wow. But listen, pastor, every day of the week, somebody’s grieving in their churches. Yeah. And they’re coming alongside people, you know, somebody’s died young, somebody’s died old, somebody’s died in between, and that grieving’s reality, left right and center for people like me.
Victoria Volk: I could be wrong. I’m approaching two hundred episodes, so that’s quite a few to go to remember up here and my memory isn’t as sharp as it used to be either. So just going off my memory, I think so. And I think, you know, initially, this podcast did start for grievers who are open to sharing their grief stories.
David Chotka: Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: And, of course, as a pastor and a minister, you have grief too.
David Chotka: I do. Yes.
Victoria Volk: And that’s really what is that what led you into the work that you were doing? Or What can
David Chotka: I What what led me into the work I’m doing was that’s there’s a remarkable call story that that didn’t actually I should tell you about my first experience of doing a funeral because I had had no losses? So my when I it was the call to the ministry was because I suddenly realized that that was what the Lord wanted me to do. And there’s a long and convoluted story attached to that that and some of that some of those details are just being written now into a little sample that I’m creating called the call. I wanted to put that out. But actually, I haven’t told this story in a podcast. So let me tell you about the first time I wind up doing a funeral. So the denomination I was in, you’re in the states, you’re American. Right? Okay. So it will be like being a night methods down the state. So I was and the in the trajectory there, we were sent to to churches that would have us over the summertime. We we go to school for eight months that we’d be under the tutelage of a pastor locally over the summer season. He’d take a little vacation. We’d spell him off. That kind of thing. But most of his time would be spent teaching in mentoring us. And so I got to my very first ever summer field. And the the pastor there had decided to take his vacation, and there was a methodist lay preacher from England in his congregation. And he said, look, if you’re in trouble, you can call up Ray over there. He’s he’s e stepping in for me all the time when there’s trouble. And so he said, but just in case, you need to walk down the street and there’s a lady there named Joyce. We haven’t had a funeral in this town. It’s a young town. We haven’t had a funeral list down in four years, but Joyce was the one who always does all the arrangements. And if something should happen, if there’s a car accident or something like this, You can always just call up Joyce and she’ll make sure everything’s good. So I went down the street, and I visited Joyce. And her and her husband were very cordial and very kind and nice to me. And we had a wonderful evening visit. And then then I I went to meet Ray, and I had a great chat with Ray. Ray took a one week vacation and enduring the one week vacation when the other passenger was on vacation, Joyce died. So I had to I had never had a loss. So my very first ever experience of doing a funeral was the lady who took care of doing funerals when both the pastor and the late preacher were weighed. So I wound up talking to one of the elders and there’s a lady in that church who was a leader in the congregation. And she worked like crazy to try and figure out what to do. And, you know, they call different pastors from all across the region. And in the end, you know, we figured this thing out and got it done. But, I mean, it was really hard for me because I’d never personally, at that point in the game, I’d never had to face death. It wasn’t until years later that I had a personal loss. But So it was a bit of a comedy of errors to get started like that. But that actually, there were four funerals in two weeks. Four funerals in two weeks. And they hadn’t had a funeral in that church in four years. And when the lead guy was away, the student minister got four funerals. So It was a crazy kind of a thing. Anyway, the day when the day was all said and done, I learned a lot from people who were on the other side of grieving, and that was, of course, my first experience. Of burying someone. I’d never done that before. And you can see the change in expression that there was a moment. And all four of those, and these are my no. Within two weeks, I watched this. Every time the body was lowered into the ground, that was the moment. Where the loss became real, just absolutely crystal clear clear real. And that for me was the moment when I realized that if you’re gonna extend care, that’s the time. You come along and you stand with somebody who’s in trouble when that when that casket goes down and they’re still there and they start to cry. Sometimes they want you there, sometimes they don’t want you there, sometimes you you touch their elbow gently. Sometimes you just hold off and wait until they want to say something. I agree. The way I describe it, you can is this an audio visual one or just visual is this just audio?
Victoria Volk: It’s both.
David Chotka: It’s both. Okay. So I’ll I’ll describe it for the audio people. It’s like you put your hand on their their waist and pull them close while you put your hand on their face and push them away. There’s this They don’t know if they want company or if they want to be alone. And sometimes in two seconds, their view changes. Right? Because grief is a weird animal life. I described it as a strange animal. Never know when it’s gonna purr where it’s gonna bite you. You’re just not sure. So that was that was my very first ever experience of dealing with death and my own my own personal loss came when my brother took his life. He was I I just adopted my daughter. We discovered that we could not my wife would be in danger if we had a second child. We had one born biologically.
And then it just became clear that it almost killed her. Just about killed him too, that both of them just about died. So I guess you could call that grief too because I realized we could not have another. And there was a long journey toward adopting that to happen in the middle of that. And, you know, and we actually vastly I’d be ready to adopt a she wouldn’t. And my wife would be ready to adopt and I wouldn’t. And it was this kind of up and down kinda crazy thing where we were navigating our own emotions, not quite sure what to do with this. And then in the course of time, We adopted her daughter. But just as we adopted her, my younger brother, who had been unsettled all of his days, we we were told in the adoption, what you have to do is you have to, you know, you know, how to say this. You close the doors to everybody except your nuclear family so that you can bond to the child for a good month, a month and a half. We adopted her when she was a year old and she had to rebound to us. And so we had there’s a whole bunch of adoption strategies that you do in order for that child not to feel abandoned by the foster family that they had, etcetera, etcetera. And we had to do that. And so we didn’t see anybody for a month. And then then the social worker told us that the best course of action after that is to introduce your new family member to your immediate family and my parents and my brother lived about an hour and a half away. So we got in the car, we drove down. And we had a beautiful magical, wonderful, glorious day with my brother who had been pretty troubled about lots of things. It was it looked like the the the page had turned and so on. And I was in a new church. I had been the pastor of that church from September right through to that time, which was March. It was the day before a good Friday. I don’t remember the number of day. I just remember the emotion of the event when my dad called and said that my brother had killed himself. Inside my parents home. Mhmm. And I had to get in the car and cancel my Thursday night service. It was gonna be my very first one in that congregation. I had to help my dad grieve while his dead body was in the house, and then they called the police. I had to call the police to make this thing happen. And I watched them take the body out of the home. And that oh, man. Then I had to do good Friday, then I had to do a resurrection Sunday because I didn’t have a capable associate to be able to handle those services, and then I hit the wall and just began to cry in. No pastor wanted to be a guest on Good Friday or you’re sending because they were all busy. Right? These are they’re all that’s the highlight of the church here. And I had to moner on through this kind of awful shock and did. I did what I had to do and thank the Lord. I had already prepared my messages and I simply had to work through whatever whatever was happened. I did tell my church, I just had been through this traumatic thing. If I get crazy here, if I do something odd, forgive me. I’m gonna molt I’m gonna get through these these two services. And then I’m gonna find somebody to take that service a week after, and I just need to stop. And to old man was it hard. It was just hard. But the the hard thing about that one was the suddenness. He was thirty nine. And he he played you know, I got a little son at that point, and he was picking up my son and wrestling with him and putting him in a tree and climbing a tree and walking along the fence tops. And We went to a baseball diamond and threw a ball back and forth with him while we were wheeling our new daughter up and down the the sidewalk as she was getting used to this beautiful spring day. It was a gorgeous lovely memory. Suddenly destroyed by this experience of somebody taking his life. And oh, and and then I and of course, in in the context that I’m in, I had no choice except to speak well and highly about, you know, about the the the the violation of Jesus on the cross and then the joy of the resurrection. While I’m in this anguish about what to do with my brother who’s who’s left a son behind and a wife and and he’s dead. And my parents who don’t know what to do. So that was my first significant loss. That was the first one that we I mean, I had friends who died and I had buddies who died and I had lots of parishioners who passed away and I had to bury a little two year old who died in a wounds tumor.
That was the first one that really hit my heart, but in terms of my personal life, that one. And, you know, it was like, I I I just and listen, I the last two funerals that I have done, and I’m a pastor and you do them every now and then, And the last two in a row were were her suicides. One of a guy, twenty nine years old, left his beautiful wife and son. And the the kid was, like, six months old. And the other was of this family that I knew from years ago, I was visiting Vancouver. And this funeral was gonna happen, and the widow asked if I do it because I had been significant in their lives back in the day. And both of them were, you know, it’s irrational when this kind of thing happens. It doesn’t make any kind of sense. So how do you navigate that? How do you how do you I’ll just tell you that with the with the suicide personally, it was like the sky was gray for the next two years.
Even if it was a beautiful warm, sunny, gorgeous day. And my home was about two blocks from a conservation area, it was kinda nice to be there. And I I started to do what I, you know, long walks and I started and I I don’t know what you do with with grief. For me, I have to speak. I can’t just sort of sit there and stuff it. I can stuff it for a week and then I explode with speech. That’s what happens to me. So I would go for these long walks and make sure that nobody was around that that I’d talk out loud while I was doing this walk in this conservation area. And for me, faith is is part of the answer, but it didn’t answer all my questions because, you know, I I said Is he gonna have it? Is he gonna have it? He took his life. That’ll shout not kill. Is that real? And what about it? Did he throw it away? Did, you know, did this is this is the stuff that goes through the brain with somebody who’s had a sudden loss like that. And, of course, if you’ve done two hundred podcasts, you know, people from all different stages and stages, whether they have faith or don’t have faith. They they wanna know what’s the destiny of the lost here. Is is there an afterlife? Is is it exists or is it just illusion? Is it real? Well, what about? Is there a god? What is this guy in the presence of that god? Or is there a devil?
You know? Why did this crazy guy do this crazy thing. And all those crazy thoughts, I’m sure you’ve heard them in two hundred podcasts. But I remember the moment, I was walking through the Heart Lake Conservation area, two blocks from my home. And I was reading the psalms, and I got to Psalm, I think it’s one hundred and thirty, and the the text of the psalm was this. Lord, if you should count sins, no one could stand. I thought to myself, absolutely right. You know, as I’m I’m walking and refreshed and and I’m trying to get two things. I’m trying to get my head cleared. I’m trying to get past my emotional fog.And the sky was still great even though it was a beautiful glorious day in early spring. And there was just traces of snow in in the parts of the of the woodland where the the leaves had covered the snow, that kind of thing. The day was brisk and sunny. And I remember I was reflecting on that verse from that song. And my foot broke a stick in the pathway, and it went snapped like that. And my brother died by hanging. And I know that he went snap like that too, and it was an instant death and that kind of crazy thought was going through my brain. And then suddenly as that thing went snap, I said, well, life is just like that. You don’t know if you’re gonna be living or dying. You could step in the street and get killed by a car accident in a second. You know, not even be aware this crazy things happen. And then that scripture popped back into my head. And I thought to myself, do you know? When my brother was an idiot. It would take me two weeks to forgive him. And so and and then but I know this about God. If you were in the middle of a crazy, ridiculous, and even awful action like aptic suicide and you realized that you were wrong as a help, in a second God hears. And then I realized, God’s hands were better than mine, much better than mine. And then I said, alright. I can commend his soul to you. And, like, you know, I was participating in his in his burial. I mean, I did the service with the pastor from my parents’ church. And I I mostly said, but I read the scripture and participated in that thing. And then I, you know, but I had not it would that that the issue wasn’t closed for me. It wasn’t done for me. Until the moment when that twigs snapped. Two years out, walking through a conservation area, I realized in my hard heart, that it’s the the rest of the verses this. If the Lord should count sins, who could stand? Nobody. But with you, there is mercy. That’s the next line. And I said, okay, Lord, I get this. He called himself a believer. He was a lousy believer, but he called us a believer. Right? And so and so listen. He believed in the same God I knew. I am I know this about you God. I know your nature. If in a second somebody says help and cries out, you do. You’re like a dog with a bone. If somebody cries out to you for mercy, your mercy gets sent in the next fraction of a second. That’s not true for me or for most humans. Most of us need time to forgive. Most of us need time to work through the reconciliation steps that are involved in that. Not so with the god I love. And so that was the moment when suddenly the peace turned back inside my soul. When I realized that I’m not God and I’m not the judge and he’s a whole lot better at it than I am. And now I will make a comment because I want people to hear me loud and clear about this suside thing and the thing that I just raised. People wonder if thou shalt not kill this violent and if that ruins somebody’s salvation of them. Let me say this as tenderly as I can. In the Christian faith, actually in Jewish faith too, I can’t speak for the other ones. I’ll just speak for the two that I know well. Your relationship with the God that you love is the basis of your salvation. Not whether you’ve been an idiot at the end of your life.
Alright? Now let me be as clear as I can. I think suicide is the wrong thing to do for lots and lots and lots of reasons. I have stood with families. I just I’m standing with two right now, who just did this. And the person who takes their life usually thinks they’re doing somebody in favor, It’s not true. The whole chaos just sort of explodes. All around the husband, the wife, the son, the daughter, the cousins, the uncles, the aunts, the parents, the friends, the workplace, everything. Just spins out of control for a very long time, varying degrees depending on how much you were attached to the person. But when the day is done, it is not the answer that you want to embrace. That being said, for all the listeners out there who have lost someone through their speech. It is not the fact that somebody makes a snap decision and chooses that or even if they make a plan when they’re in some sort of a weird state of mind. It is the relationship you have that you got, you serve. That determines your internal destiny. So I that for what it’s worth, I I put that in front of your audience because I know people who listen to this particular kind of podcast are trying to figure out how to make sense after a loss.
That’s what they’re doing. So
Victoria Volk: Very well said. Very well said.
David Chotka: Well, listen, I live through it. It’s it’s I live through it. If it’s yeah. So in the last two services that I did, where I did these two burials for and and actually because he was young, and because he was married, because he had a son. I could speak to that.
In fact, I just I had what I call a divine appointment yesterday. It’s funny because, you know, I have things to do, places to go people to see the world to win all that kind of thing. And I have done this general for this lady. Her name is Shentel. And she was a friend of a friend of a friend who called me to do a funeral because they thought it was the right thing to do. And I didn’t have proper contact information for her. And so I wanted to do a follow-up and I had not been able to because I couldn’t And so, actually, this is a crazy thing. On Friday, I said, God, I need to follow-up with this woman. Shentel needs pass through care after the after the thing. She I I’d be in touch with her.
How do I do that? Amen. And the next day, I went to a little free show that was being offered down at the event center down the street. And I walked in and I didn’t even wanna be there. My daughter wanted to go that thing. And I went because I had to go, you know, like I said, and I sit down and Shatjel sits down beside the high pastor, Dave. And that’s in a city of two hundred thousand. Wow. So I made the connection yesterday. One of the things I teach is I pray for a divided appointment today. I asked the Lord to shape my circumstances so that I walk into something that I could not and did not plan. Where God gets the glory or where something is needed that I can contribute to or where I need to receive what I cannot receive unless I have the divine point. Because I know this. God is at work everywhere, absolutely everywhere. And when we can see one or two things happening, God is doing millions. God. But if I could if I could see one thing that God is doing and enter Internet, I know that I’m on the right track. And so when COVID started, I I started to pray that, okay, God, I want one divine appointment a day, at least one. And sometimes I’ll get three and four. But I don’t feel the day is complete unless I’ve had one of those because I’ve prayed that prayer. So that was my divine appointment yesterday. That’s what happened yesterday.
Victoria Volk: I love that. I absolutely love that. You know what? And you might call it synchronicities or what have you. Right? We don’t we often have these things these moments like you said like you shared that happen throughout our lives and maybe in our days. And we maybe pass them off as insignificant or might think of but they’re not.
David Chotka: You know, just they’re not old. No. It’s true. It’s
Victoria Volk: Or you might not even give much thought in the moment, but then later, like, that’s really kinda cool if that happened, but we we don’t think about of it just being, like, this
David Chotka: Divine in nature. I’ll I’ll just say, yeah. Yeah. That’s right. That God did that. I’ll do that. That’s right. I can just say with you. Every significant thing I’ve done in life, every single significant thing that has happened was not my idea. And including the girl that I married. So here’s you’re gonna have with the girl I married. This this is the craziest thing. My heart was broke when the girl that I wanted to marry married somebody else. And I was in tremendous grief. That was another grief that happened there. And so I wound up saying, God, oh, God help me. I’m I’m in a mess here. And so So I wound up going to a a bible school called Regent College in Vancouver to you. It’s a graduate level of seminary. And it had a training component for people who were in careers that didn’t have theological education wanted to do a year out. And so, and I was a pastor and I had I had two degrees before this and I had my third degree there. Anyway, it looked like I was going to school because I wanted to improve my myself. But the real reason I was going there because it was a safe place to be a wreck. And as it turned out, when I was gonna move, I was living in Alberta, and the school was in British Columbia. And there was a good twelve hour drive from one place to the other.
And moving costs are expensive and students don’t have a lot of money, you know, that kind of thing. And I was a pastor and they didn’t pay much, you know, so it’ll just be blunt here. So I was looking for the cheap skateway to move that one of the things across the country. And there was a lady in my congregation who was also moving to the to a different school, but she was going to Vancouver. And she knew somebody in Edmonton that she was gonna be a roommate with because she was moving to Vancouver.
And we started asking about costs, you know? And how can we, you know, how can we pay this thing? And I I I did three or four quotes, and she got three or four quotes. And I said to this lady Ruth, why don’t you find out what it would cost if we put our two households together? I don’t have much. I could shove it in your garage. And it was the same price. And so that meant half price for both of us if we did this. And then she talked to the third person, and it was about ten percent more to move three than it was to move one. And so that’s a significant savings. Right? So I put all my stuff inside Ruth’s garage, and then Ruth had it moved down to Edmonton, and then we, you know, then we moved from Edmonton to. And I and I what I did. I got myself a tent and a sleeping bag. And, you know, and I I tented across British Columbia because it’s beautiful.
You know what? Then what that was it was a solo vacation, but it was great people. Oh, men’s. It’s a gorgeous province. Beautiful lakes and rivers and streams and mountains and trees and all gorgeous outside. So anyway, I get all the way to Vancouver. And the plan was I would show up on the day of the move at ten o’clock in the morning, and I would help the movers get stuff into their their their share department. And then I would direct the driver across town to help move in my stuff. And We save a lot of money and praise the Lord. You know? So I show up. Ruth isn’t there because she has to finish her her teaching issues you teach her up in that position. And she had to finish out this thing. She had a summer school course, she was teaching. But Elizabeth and her cousin were there cleaning the apartment out, getting her ready for the move.
And I show up, and I walk in, and we shoot the breeze, and we wait all day, and the moving van doesn’t come. And we’re hanging together. And, you know, in those days, there were no cell phones. Right? And they had in Vancouver, they didn’t have closed in phone booths. They had little round things that you put change in. And if you wanna do a long distance call, that was a lot of nickels and dimes and quarters. So so she calls from that phone. It gets her dad and said, dad, did you call the company? And he said, okay.
And they said they had he had a breakdown. He’d be there the next day at ten in the morning. And, okay. You forget one day. You know, and they’re gonna pay her hotel cost, and I have a room to stay in with my cafe stuff, so I’m fine. Come back the next day. There’s no moving van. Third day, no moving van. Fourth day. No moving. Yeah. Now we’re in the better business bureau after these guys, you know, trying to track down where this truck is. And so then her Elizabeth’s cousin had to go back to work. I mean, she had she had four days off and she took the four days. And I’m sitting in an empty apartment without so much as a tea bag. We’re saying, you know, there’s we’re there’s nothing to sit on. There’s a stairway in what we took turns sitting on that. I had a camper chair that I brought in. And I’d sit in the camper chair or on the step and we’d alternate this. And we spent all day a single man and a single lady inside this part. And my heart was broke because the girl I wanted to marry married somebody else, you know what? And after about three days of this, of course, we don’t know each other with strangers. And I said to her, look, just for the record, I’m a pastor. No, by the way, anything with a high voice and discouraged. I am not interested at all. I am no desire. My heart is broke. I just don’t wanna do this. And she heaped a big sigh of relief, and she said, well, for the record, I had an old boyfriend and he stalked me. And it was terrible. We had to get the police after him. I said, oh, brother. Well, look, I have two brothers. I had two brothers. That I no. I’m really my stolen. I have two brothers. And I don’t and my mom comes from a very conservative traditional Ukrainian household. She wears a head covering and walks behind my dad. Canadian girls aren’t interested in that. Neither American girls and most girls on Earth aren’t anyway. And so she said, I said, look, I don’t understand females at all. And she said, look, I have two sisters and my dad’s quiet. My mom ran the house and, you know, I don’t understand males at all. I said, look, I need a sister.
And she said, well, I need a brother. Thank you very much. And so we decided to become friends because we’re stuck in this apartment. We were there for ten consecutive days, ten days in that empty apartment. And finally, the guy showed up. And as it turned out, he had decided he was a casual driver who was hired by the moving company, and he put his son in the in the van to go through the BC interior. And he said, this is beautiful. I’m going fishing, and he took his son fishing for ten consecutive days with our stuff in the back of his And so I wound up meeting this lady and getting to know her. And, of course, by the time you get to day four or five, you start sharing deep things. See?
We have no choice. We’re stuck in that room. So in the course of time, I married the girl. But it’s that that’s how it started. It wasn’t even a planned thing. And every and listen, that’s the most important decision in life you can make who’s gonna be your life partner. And I I wasn’t my idea to be stuck in an empty apartment for ten days, you know, waiting for a moving bed. Being forced to have a conference when I was not I was still tender and broken over my own thing, you know, this this whole thing with this girl with married somebody else. And she was in the same as it turned out, this this whole thing turned into. First of all, who are you? To, oh, I guess we’re gonna be friends. Oh, let’s let’s get each other’s back while we’re in the middle of this. I actually prayed with the girl about girls I could take out when my heart started to saw. And then the course of time, she got mad when I gave him one of those names, and she picked dandelions out of the front yard for four hours while she realized she loved me. Then she told me, and then we got married and so on. But regardless of this, it was this it that and, actually, even the school that I wanted to go to, I didn’t so I wanted to go going there. And I had this desire to study your particular book of the bible where there’s a high concentration of holy spirit and unclean spirit language. And I discovered to my great surprise nobody had done the research on that. In all of scholarship, from, you know, five hundred years out, did nothing in French, German, or English. And I wound up going to that school because I like the school, but the guy who was assigned to me was writing the very first book in human history on that topic. And I didn’t choose the guy It was doctor Gordon Fee who wrote this anthology on the holy spirit in the Pauline literature. And I am in that book, but again, I didn’t know who the guy was I was looking for a competent scholar in a good school. That’s all I was doing. And the next thing, you know, I’m with the world’s finest, Paul and spirit scholar, best one on the planet. He’s gone to his reward now, but I will tell you his works are groundbreaking. We wind up being the head of the new international commentary series of the new testament. He wound up writing a huge anithology and holy spirit and a smaller one, they became standard reading in every seminary across the earth. And but I I didn’t try to do that. It was it wasn’t my idea. You know, anyway, the point I’m making here is that in the realm of faith, the intangible is always around us.
Always. You can cooperate with god’s movement, or you can fight it. Now, actually, the the helium prayer book that I wrote, I didn’t make up plan to write a book on healing prayer. It wasn’t me. In fact, the way I wind up doing my first ever healing prayer wasn’t my idea either. And so let me I’d love to tell you that story. Can I can I tell you that story? Sure. Okay. Well, here’s what happened. So I was a seminary student in my tradition. And and and my tradition was a mixed bag of people. There’s some who are what they call supernaturalists and some who are our cessationists believe those gifts of the spirit of cease. And some who said, oh, by the way, that was a pre scientific culture. And they didn’t know how else to describe it. So they attributed to God what was, in fact, a natural phenomena, that kind of thing. Yeah, these three streams going into the school. And I remember going into and we’re a new cohort, you know, and there’s a whole bunch of us that are all excited about going into the ministry and training. About thirty five of us who were swapping notes. And then after about two weeks to figure out who’s in which camp. Right? So, anyway, I I go into the class, and one of the props says this thing about Jesus walking on the water. He said, oh, as a pre scientific coach, and we know that Jesus didn’t actually walk on the water. And I said, wait a minute. I wanna just take a moment here and tell you, I really do believe that he did. It’s it’s I know it defies science and logic. And I’m a science guy, my best marks for science and physics and math and biology and so on. But I believe in the miraculous. And there was a guy in the class who was a first class jokester that the guy was hilarious. All you’d have to do is look at your sideways and the whole room would explode and laughter. And if he told a joke, then it was, how do I describe it? It’s like throwing a humor grenade into the room, waiting for the explosion to happen, and everybody would laugh so hard, it would hurt. You know? So I I say this thing about the miracle being true. And this guy cracks a joke, and everybody in the room starts to laugh. But the joke was at my expense. He was making fun of my believing that Jesus walked in water. Right? So anyway, whether you believe in that or not, this is beside the point for the sake of the story. So here we go.
So I go into one class after the class after the class. And whenever there’s one of these moments where the scripture is being said, it’s it’s not really true or it’s not historically accurate or this is primitive culture or whatever. I would defend scripture and the guy would tell joke. And this went on. It’s been on for months. Right? And I I then there came a defining moment and I said to myself, Yep. I’m never gonna be his friend. It’s not gonna happen. And I had a great class three times when we had to cross the class and was held at a different school. And one day, I was walking across this plaza, and there was a lovely classmate. And I called her Susie in the book. I’ve lost touch with her, but I I grew up in in I don’t have a permission to use it really, but she stops me and she says, David, how are you doing? And she and I’ll just tell you about this girl. She was a very sweet kind, other centered person. You know, that phrase do what others should have them do what to you. That was her write down to the toe nails. Always always others centered, always kind, always consider it. Always well mannered, always, you know, how do I say this?warmly caring. That’s the best way to describe it. Anyway, I’m walking across this class and I said, hey, Susan. How you doing? Said, I’m fine. I’m going to my Hebrew. I said, I’m going to my Greek. And she said, oh, okay. Hey, you know the class committee. I said, oh, yeah. I know. And she said, well, you see that hospital? Six blocks down. And I said, yeah. She said, well, he’s in there. And actually, I I just have to say this victory. I didn’t feel bad for about two minutes. So I had to abandon my stinking Ozzie attitude. Right? Now she didn’t see that, but it was going on exactly. Anyway, Finally, I looked at her. I said, oh, listen, what’s up? And she said he has phlebitis. I said, what’s that? And then she described it. She said, he’s got a clot in his arm. It’s in his vein. If the clot breaks free, it’ll travel to one or three places, the brain, the heart, or the lung. If it gets to any of those, you’re dead ninety five times out of a hundred. And I thought, oh, man, that’s bad. I said, I’m so sorry. Is he getting good care? You know, in Canada, healthcare is free. So I said, is he getting good care? He said, yeah, he’s in the hospital, now it’s university hospital. It’s a good one. I said, oh, okay. And I said, well, okay. Thanks for telling me. And she said, wait, I have something to say to you from him. Yeah. I went to see him and he asked me to ask you something. I said, oh, what do you ask? She said, he wants you to come and pray for it. I said, what? What kind of craziness is that? And so you know, and I said, I’m not going. And she said, why aren’t you going? I said, you have seen it. He’s been cruel. He’s mocked me in front of our peers on a regular basis. Every time I just say anything about the scripture being historically accurate, you know. And so and so she said, you know, he has been cruel. I said, yeah. Said, okay, I’ll talk to him. I said, well, I’m not going that way, I went to my class. And the next day, I see her in the coffee lounge in school.
Right? And we’re shooting a braze about this type of thing. And she said, well, listen, I I went see the Canadian in the hospital. And he’s terribly sorry that he did what he did to you. Would you go and see him? I said, I’m not going. Because now, There were three reasons why I wasn’t going. Number one was the one I’ve made to you. He mocked me in front of our peers, and it it it hurt. It really did hurt. The second was that I had never met anybody healed by what the Bible calls the prayer faith. I didn’t know anybody. I’d seen the crazies on television, slapped people on the forehead, screaming. And throwing hankies in the air. But I think that was a helpful model. Now the third thing is, I did I had not been trained in this. I didn’t I received no training. I didn’t know and I didn’t know if it was for today or not. I just didn’t know. But, you know, so I I I just told her I’m not going. And the next day, I’m walking across the same three times a week Plaza. And there she is going to her class. And she said, oh, by the way, did you go and see our friend in the hospital? I said, I’m not going. Now, Victoria, have you ever been told off by your mother? This is what the girl looked like. You know what I’m saying that you you get the fire in your eyes and you get the anger. Coming out of your pores and, you know, this girl outside in front of a crowd of people who are walking by, yelled at me at the top of your life. So he stopped her foot. The fire came out of her, you know, her visits, you know, and she gave that meeting. She used my middle initial. She knew a middle initial. She said David, our shotgun. Aren’t you gonna no. Aren’t you going around this school saying that the Bible is the word of God that’s supposed to be obeyed? I said, yes. She said, well, how about this? I was sick and you visited me. That’s what the Bible says. That’s what Jesus says and I thought, oh, No. We’re gonna have to go and see the guy. I’ve fell below eleven in my center. And I thought, okay. I’ll go. But it says sick and visit.
It doesn’t say sick and prayed. She said, whether it’s visitor, whether it’s prayed, he asked for you to go. So go. So I finished my class. Then I walked to six blocks.
I got to the hospital many times. And he was in a bad way, just, you know, he had monitors on him and, you know, the the tubes were going into his arms and and the sound the beeping sounds of the monitors were happening every couple of, you know, couple of minutes and The nurse chargers walked in drop, so medication watched him take it, you know, in the short time I was there. Anyway, he’s why does it go? He’s obviously terrified. And, you know, he and he told me that the clot had not shrunk.
It was still large. And I so I talked to him about the weather. Because I didn’t know what to do. I’d never done it before. Greer than your average rookie, you know, just just did not a clue. So I did the visit thing. I I talked about the weather. Then I asked him about his coursework and he was keeping up. And I said, well, I visited you now. I can go.
And he stopped and he looked at me and he said, wait. Aren’t you? Aren’t you gonna pray? And I said before I even consider that question, I have to ask you one of my own, why? Every single time I’ve said anything about the miracles of Jesus and healing or about the Lord’s miraculous life or about the cross being serious about the resurrection or anything to do with the faith. You have made me a laughing stock. Why? Do you want me to pray for you? And he burst into tears and he began to weep and he said, I’m twenty seven years old, the clock is big in my arm. If that clock breaks free, I’m dead.
That I don’t want to die. Won’t you please pray? Let your god heal me. And I mean, what are you gonna do? I mean, it was obvious the guy really didn’t mean it. But I still had not a sweet clue. What to do? I’ve never been dragged. It’s only way. What I then I remember, oh, the Bible says Jesus put his hand on people. Right? They did that. So I said, well, look, can I come or can I put my hand over you? He said, yeah, you could do that. I said, which arm is it? He said left arm above the elbow. So I went around to his side, and I put my hand over his left arm. Right where that embolism was he said was located. And I put my other hand on his yet. And then I don’t know, honestly, to this day, I can’t remember what I prayed, Victoria. And I’m sure it was an honest prayer. But it was pretty pathetic. Oh, God helped something like that. And I but here’s what happened in the middle of that prayer. Well, I don’t remember the words, but I remember the defining moment. The room filled with presence That’s the only way I can describe it. It was like compassion, filled the air, married together with love and fire. And both of us looked because something had happened, you know. It’s it’s one thing to just have a little prayer and lead the robot. We both locked eyes and we knew something was happening. And then that fire filled my soul and I cried a hot tear in the corner of my right eye. And I felt this energy rising inside of me and focus. The only way I can describe this, total complete focus on him and on God’s love freedom and how the Lord wanted him to receive a miraculous healing. And so then I said, oh, God healed this, something like this. God healed this man, and while I had my hand on his arm, that energy float down my arm and went into his. He looked at me and he said, what is that fiery presence? I said, spirit of Jesus, he’s making you well. And I ran out of the room right after that. For a lot of reasons, never one and never my life felt anything like that. Never.
Secondly, I didn’t know if I was even supposed to pray that way. Because I’ve not resolved the issue theologically. I I just didn’t know. And thirdly, I was terrified he was gonna make be. And I didn’t know if he’s gonna be. I mean, all these reasons are floating in my head to run out of the room. The next day, I’m in the school. And so is he? I said, you’re here? He said, I am. I said, what happened? And and then he he he it it was a nineteenth century stone building and he shoved me in one of these stone corners behind the column, and he looked in every direction, you know. Therese the floor hard everything. And then he said, that prayer. Changed my life. I said, thank you, and I ran away because I still I I I had the time to process it, you know? And then I went to my next class that he was in, we had three classes in common. And I said something that defended the scripture and he stood up to tell the joke. And he made fun of not believing. And the whole class exploded in laughter but the laughter was at the expense of unbelief, not faith. And he did that in rig class. I was with him, and then I heard from classmates that he was doing that in other classes where I was not present. And I didn’t know. So that story that I just told you, that’s in the healing prayer book that that prompted the conversation between you and I get on the the podcast here. So anyway, we had the summerfield thing and he I had to go away for four months and he walks up to me, he passes me a piece of paper with his phone number on it. And he says, if you’re in trouble, you’re trouble. You call me. You call me. I said, whoa. Okay. So I went to wait to wait to interview. Had a marvelous time, because it’s one of those times where you’re you’re looking at the new thing and you’re learning all kinds of marvelous things. And I learned how to preach a sermon, I learned how to visit people. I did I participated in a wedding, you know. Then I had four funerals. I had those four funerals. But the pastor wasn’t there and I learned how to do that. And then, of course, he came back from vacation way unpacked all the learning I discovered how to do various things. Anyway, I get back to school. And he walks up to me and he says, you didn’t call me. I said, I didn’t have any trouble. And he said, if you’re in trouble, you call me, you know, it’s always a little okay. Anyway, a couple months in, there’s a party for the students. Right? And we’re all gathered together, and we’re talking this and that. We’re just shooting a breeze. About nothing because if you do it apart, you have a little laugh, you know what? I was standing with him and his wife and this girl who had asked me in the first place. Because that girl and this man’s wife were great bunnies. Anyway, the two girls look at him and begin to get me elbow. You know, you’re you’re gonna have to tell Chuck what happened. Tell Chuck. Tell Chuck. Tell Chuck. He said, oh, I don’t wanna tell Chuck to what happened. And then eventually, he did. And he said, right after you left, the charters walked in. And I said, I can go home now. My friend from the bible’s book, he’s come here. He’s prayed in Jesus’ hand. And the charge nurse says, we don’t do things like that around here. We gotta run tests. He said, well, run the test then. And so they did because it was it was actually due for them. Every trace of phlebotis was gone from his body. And it had been big the day before every trace was gone. His wife picked him up. He was discharged from the hospital after all the tests confirmed that he was well. He went home and, of course, he’s thankful. Right? I mean, we’re we’re talking and he could have died and he’s well. And he kneels down beside his bed and he thanks the Lord. They go to bed and he prays before he sleeps. And he has a dream and in the dream, he hears a voice. And the voice says, my servant David defends the integrity of my word, and no one defends him. I’m gonna cry when I tell you this, when he defends the integrity of my word. You defend him. And he did for three years, all through that theological education. Thirty years later, thirty years after that event, he we changed I changed the nominations. He’s still in the scene over, but he contacted me.
I lost touch with him. And he said thirty years ago, he prayed for Jesus to heal my arre. Thank you that you did. I’m well. Three kids. Happily married. Finish she enters now retirement. He finishes ministry. Anyway, I I just asked you. Healing prayer was not my idea. It was a kiss so the reason the book is called God’s idea because it wasn’t my idea. It wasn’t this is not something that I decided that I wanted to learn how to do. It was something that I tripped into together with every other major thing that I’ve ever done in life. And actually learning how to breathe for the die. Wasn’t my idea? That the four funerals were of the late first one with the lady who was supposed to organize this, you know. So mean, it’s hilarious when you stop and think about it, but it’s it’s to deal with what you call pathos, this kind of strange emotion where you know you’re in the middle of something bigger than you. Much bigger than you. So, yeah, that’s and so the design appointment a day is an extension of that same principle. I want to be in something that I have not ordained, not established, not built toward. I mean, I want to do that too. I want to have a successful trajectory in what doing, etcetera, terror. That’s just ordinary life. But I want to know God’s involved in something. And so I ask him for those divine appointments each day. And he sends them. So I do believe in the power of faith to heal the breathing heart. I do. And the way that I describe the way God speaks is that he speaks nonverbally by presence. And that heals the broken heart. Let me tell you what I mean by that. There’s a text in the book of Romans. That’s, by the way, that’s the famous book from the from the apostle Paul, everybody who’s any kind of Christian reads Romans. It’s the if they call it the capital, that’s what because it’s the one that everybody refers to for all kinds of teaching. That is standard procedure in every branch of the Lord’s Church, whether you’re protestant or orthodox or evangelical or charismatic. They all say the capital of Pittsburgh’s Romans fourteen says this. Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking. Because they were arguing about eating and drinking. The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy. In the holy spirit. And so the experience of knowing the lord through an encounter with the spirit produces three identity murders. Righteousness is a sweet walk with God, and peace is internal serenity despite external circumstance. And joy is internal celebration even when the world is flying apart. And when those three things wax large, and you find yourself in something you have not expected. That’s God talking. When you are praying find yourself in when those three things wacklired, and suddenly a stream of consciousness comes into your brain. To go and see so and so down the street. And you go when you discover there in a crisis moment. That’s God talking. When those three things diminish, that’s the hand of warning. Pay attention. And when they’re jarred, get out of the room. You’re about them correct. You’re about to walk into a disastrous business meeting. Get out of the room. This is God talking saying, this is big trouble right here. And I teach people how to pay attention to those three markers. And actually, to do more than just say, isn’t that a nice little coincidence? But to attribute that to God’s direct involvement in her lives. Because healing prayer is God’s idea. It’s not ours. Buraculous intervention is God’s idea, not ours. And it’s this is how scripture works. So, I mean, Can you imagine what it was like for Peter James and John and Xevity when they got called? I mean, they’re working in the boat. Jesus of Nazareth shows up there’s a miraculous catch of fish. You know, and let us I just wanna put I wanna illustrate that right in the sketch for you. They have found boats from that era owned by fishermen. That on average, they’re twenty seven feet long, they’re eight feet across and they’re four feet high. And two of those boats were sinking with the fish because they were filled to the brim. And so imagine you’re out there. You’ve worked hard all night. You’ve got nothing. You know you gotta pay your bills. You haven’t got enough money to pay the bills. And you’re washing your nets, repairing them because, you know, you gotta pay the bills. This is just not helpful. I know. So anyway, This guy shows up and says, throw your nets over there. Right? So they do and that they didn’t want to do that, but they did. And there were so many wrinkling tilapia in those two boats, then it touched their toes, it touched their ankles, it touched their knees, it touched it went up to four feet. I mean, I’m here. That much, and the boat is right at water level, and the other boat over there is doing the same thing. And then Jesus says, I want you to follow me. I mean, That was the Simon Peter’s idea. It actually says he throws himself down, but actually this is a tale of people who don’t know this. He has to throw himself down in the fish not on the shore because the boat had not yet come to shore. He throws himself down into a massive wriggling tilapia and he says to Jesus of Nazareth. I am not worthy of this. You are God, and I am not. And Jesus said to him, don’t be afraid you’re not gonna catch fish. You’re gonna haul in humans. That’s what you’re gonna do. Wasn’t his idea. Thank you very much. So that’s how that’s how I understand. Ministry. That’s how I understand care for people in grief.
Victoria Volk: I had a moment quite a few years ago there was a gentleman that died in my community. Okay. I think he was, I don’t know, late eighties, maybe even early nineties. A plumber by trade, new everybody, right, in the community.
David Chotka: Yep.
Victoria Volk: And I remember sometime before I passed away, we were sitting outside the bar.
David Chotka: I was
Victoria Volk: just sitting outside. It was a nice summer night evening or whatever, and I never really had a conversation with the guy before that.
David Chotka: Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: And he told me, I’m not even sure why, but he told me that the best thing he ever did was choosing to adopt his wife’s children as his
David Chotka: own. Okay.
Victoria Volk: Fast forward, I’m not sure how long after that, he passed away. Mhmm. But when he passed away, they had a celebration of life in the bar just, you know, everybody got together and things like that. And I just had this poll to go to the bar. I didn’t know who his kids were, didn’t know what they look like, to tell them what he said.
David Chotka: It changed their life. Right?
Victoria Volk: I don’t know. In the moment, I you know, I I did go and I did share what he shared with me.
David Chotka: Yeah. I
Victoria Volk: don’t know if they reflected on it after the fact or whatnot, but, you know, it was one of those things, like, it wouldn’t leave me alone. You know, like, I came home and
David Chotka: That’s him. That’s good. Yeah. Yeah. The fact that he should tell you in a happenstance, and that you that you should pass away shortly thereafter Mhmm.
And that you get commanded to go to that place, to say this, to a bunch of people you do not know.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
David Chotka: That’s him. Yeah. That’s hearing the voice. So you have heard the voice of Jesus. You’ve heard it.
Victoria Volk: I have several there I’ve had a lot of moments in my life. Even my marriage with my husband, like, we were friends for seven years. I was heartbroken and And I I’ve asked him, like, what made you, like, decide to pursue me? He really can’t answer that. Kind of funny because we hadn’t looked at each other, like, that way, you know, in a, like, in a the romantic way.
You know, we were friends for seven years.
David Chotka: Yep.
Victoria Volk: And and then all of a sudden, he was like this relentless consumer night and shining armor, you know. And I’d I’d I’d said one prayer. I just bring someone into my life who is good for me.
David Chotka: And the Lord heard you prayer.
Victoria Volk: And he heard my prayer. Yeah. Twenty plus years later, here we are. Three kids.
David Chotka: Well, so listen, though, the whole point of this podcast is to bring comfort to people who are distressed or in trouble. That’s the whole point of your podcast. I will say that the most important thing you can do is to straight up, some people have stroke trouble with faith, some people may break
Victoria Volk: down church. I did myself.
David Chotka: Yeah. Some people who had a bad experience in that catheter, some priest abused them or or maybe they’ve heard about that priest abusing their best friend and or they they were turned off by some bitter bibles number, you know, showing up pro bar in somebody. So nothing worse than that. Oh my heavens. Anyway, That the the point is it doesn’t matter where you are. The point is that don’t let a bad experience of some idiot. Get in the way of your accessing what is freely available to anyone who asks for it. One of my favorite scriptures is is found in the psalms. It says this God is near to the broken heart. So if you’re broken hearted, pray this very simple prayer. Okay? Your word says, so please send it. Please please come here. I’m Broken Heart. And the way that he shows up by presence is to manifest himself within, with this velvety smooth assurance of war, and behind your physical estate.
And I’ve I’ve tried to put words around this. And if you can say this better than can’t I will lift your quote. I’ll give you credit, but I’ll tell I’ll use it. This is so the way that I feel to mind presence, there’s this cognitive thing where you choose it and you say, oh, yes. Is fine and you make the decision that isn’t that nice, but that’s not that doesn’t cover the ground. There comes this moment inside where the believer knows inside their door. That’s the only way to describe this. Mhmm. There’s this awareness and it is other than you And it is something that is separate and distinct from you, but intrinsic to who you are because you said yes to him. And you sense this rising sense of fiery gentle presence and it’s a velvety smooth It’s assurance, it’s grace, it’s love, it’s yearning for more of him, and it’s settled contentness in who he is. Even if your circumstances are terrible. With the peace of God, which passes understanding, keep guard over your hearts and minds, In the knowledge and love of Christ, Jesus, so says the apostle Paul in the book of Philippians when he was in jail of all things. He was in jail when he wrote that he had a Roman guard chained to his wrist while he’s writing this stuff. I wonder what that Roman guard thought about the fact that the Apostle was writing this of just this. And he didn’t know he’s an apartment. He thought he was some guy who was upfront charges, you know, that kind of thing. And he writes about this experience of the internal presence with peace Staying like like a guard keeping watch over your door of faith. It’s like a soldier, a century standing at your door, walking back and forth. Making sure that the prisoner inside that space is content. That’s what I would ask people to consider doing to. Open their hearts up to that. Now, if there’s an atheist out there, my dad was an atheist. He became an agnostic, and then he became a Christian believer. He became a Christian believer because Jesus of Nazareth appeared to him. It was the most amazing kind of thing. And he’d suffered much. He had he’d lost a lot of his eyesight because of the childhood thing. He had scoped cold bottles in glasses. He then was treated by friends and family. And he didn’t believe that it was possible that people out there were actually kind of a gentleman’s suite. And then I became a believer. I was the first one in my family. Again, that wasn’t my idea. That wasn’t my dad’s idea either. Right? It was my mom’s idea. And when it was all set and done, my face impacted his existence course because that’s your kid. You got what he can do with this. You know, what school of the ministry is. What’s this crazy kind of thing? Be a dentist, be a doctor mix a month, you know? Be a lawyer. That’s that’s the immigrant story. So what there’s a Jewish joke or what’s the difference between a tailor and psychiatrist? One generation.
Anyway, getting back to this. He he couldn’t believe. And I remember praying for him three years. And then there was one critical moment where suddenly this whole thing changed. And he banging his head on a on a on a beam in one of our storerooms area and east war to jeez, his name to date. And the Lord behind him said, yes. And he turned around and he was eyes to eyes with the risen Lord. In the doorway of that storeroom, And my dad had agreed three education. And since because his eyes were bad when he was a little kid, but as they locked his eyes together, I he’s telling me the story is towards what is she and hardly speak and said, dad, What was that like? He said it was like I was looking into wells of love. He never talked that way. Grade three education, you don’t read Edison for fun. You’re not a Shakespeare fixinato. You’re not reading, you know, lawn failure. You’re not reading the wallwood or anything.
You’re you’re not you’re
Victoria Volk: I mean, he was an atheist.
David Chotka: Yes. Well, at that point, probably an agnostic. At that point, he kinda thought because of growing things regardless. Didn’t believe in that. And So apparently, he was looking at the Lord and I I’m he’s telling me the story about a week after it happened, trying to give words to this. Physically shaking. And then he I said, dad, what did you say? So if I told Jesus that I loved my son and he met me because I was the pastor, you know. And then Jesus said, I know this. And then he said to the Lord, I’m a sinner. And Jesus said, I forgive you. And he vanished. That’s how my dad came to faith. Wasn’t his idea. He banged his head on a beam. Took the Lord’s name in vain and the Lord appeared to him. I haven’t had a crazy kind of thing. So I’m a supernatural I believe from the power of the Lord to intervene in the flow of history, but I’m also a horse stance guy. I don’t believe that everybody you pray for sealed. I do believe that people die young. I do believe that sometimes people make bad bad bad mistakes and do terrible things they shouldn’t do. I do believe that crazy people kill others and so on and so forth. And there’s this thing where I do believe in the scientific enterprise and I do believe in the power of God in your v. And they flow in different channels. And some some faith traditions say you can never put these two channels together, and I completely disagree with that. Science works inside the framework of a world that is created, and God established those rules of creation. And so we, scientific enterprise, is only uncovering what lies fallow under the surface of the soil, and they endeavor to discover a trajectory of a particular sickness or affliction they find a cure or they find an adaptive therapy, you should take the gift. And every now and then there’s a miraculous intervention. And sometimes the two of them overlap like this beautifully. And sometimes they separate out and run-in different pathways, but regardless of this.
What I teach in the book and the reason I wrote the book, it’s a co write by the way. Co writer is a million selling author by the name of Dr. Maxi Dunnham. Have I got his yeah. Here’s his book. This book is the one that trained me in Huddl. Ford quicker living prayer. Maxi wrote this. It’s a million seller. And it gives it the the structure of this book is inspired. It’s the structure is the thing that that was amazing. He would give a little bit of teaching, a little bit of scripture, a little bit of reflecting, recording, a little bit of a challenge. You do that for seven days in the week. He learned how to pray. It’s just this and you do it by praying, not just by reading about prayer. Well, I met him and he and I wrote wrote together this book called healing prayer, and then I’ve that I’m on your podcast to talk about. And, of course, it includes stories of people dying before their time and grieving. It includes stories of people who who who prayed one way and who ended up getting something else. And it includes miraculous accounts of divine intervention. So there’s five pathways made in this book. The first one is the instant heal, and I’ve told you a couple of those stories now, and rackets integrations. The second is a pathway to a remedy. Somebody does research, well, and you wind up meeting the person who’s got an adaptive therapy for what you’re discovering you need. Well, take it. They spent thirty years because their kids’ sister died in leukemia and they’ve studied cancer. Well, why would you resist taking the fruit of someone’s labor when their intention was to make this this cure possible. Take it. That’s from God too. Third is an ordinary healing. Now, I will tell you something about this. My wife was miraculously cured of muscular dystrophy. That stories in this in this book about halfway through. It was incredible to watch. Before she was cured. If she damaged a muscle, the muscle was damaged forever. After she was cured, if she damaged a muscle, the muscle healed. So natural healing is also part of the equation. Then there is suffering that we don’t understand. And for some reason, it’s there. We wait through it. We don’t understand it. Sometimes somebody dies young. And last is the miraculous crossing in the end of your life. All of us have a purpose and all of us completed. And all of us have to face our maker. All five of those are legitimate means by which God leads us in this journey called healing prayer. That’s God’s idea.
Victoria Volk: So what about that with your wife and your daughter? The polarity of
David Chotka: Yeah. I live between the two. Like, I I do. I live between the two. Now, before I go any further, I I do have a two o’clock coming up.
And it’s it’s one fifty one.
Victoria Volk: Well, would you briefly share that how because your daughter has
David Chotka: Yes. So the way I say it is this. My daughter has my tonic dystrophy. My wife was cured of curing FSH. She’s adopted.
My wife was was hesitant in her family life. Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: And
David Chotka: we’ve when we adopted the girl, we didn’t know. And so part of the miracle of providence. Is that she was adopted into a family that could accommodate her and muscular dystrophy, and we knew it. Now I hope that in my mind, that’s not enough. I want the rest. Thank you very much. And so for about twenty years, we would pray for her to be well. And now we pray for her to be a peace. That’s how we pray because the the answer hasn’t come. So the way I describe it in the book is God initiates and we respond. Not we initiate and God responds. It doesn’t work that way. Thank you very much. So I teach people how to pay attention to the mind leading in that. Howard Bauchner:
Victoria Volk: What I kind of want to touch on now then is what you kinda said was how people can feel like their prayers are not being heard. Like, prayers are not being answered and
David Chotka: Yes.
Victoria Volk: And I have this thought or belief within myself that yes, pray, but you also have to move your feet.
David Chotka: Actually, the bet I heard heard of this bet this way. If you pray for potatoes, put your hands in plow. Yeah. I’m listening to this little kid. Right?
And it’s actually really that’s an important principle. And when it’s all said and done, The the principle behind that is not what it called passively. You don’t sit in your button with for God to take care of everything. You are born to work. And the reason why Adam was given the assignment of the garden was because he wasn’t just supposed to sit there and watch the animals. He was supposed to tend soil. You are created in the image of God in order to be creative and to do enter into the acts that God would have you do. Now, what do you do with unanswered prayer? There is this I have a chapter in the book where I talk about medicine, miracle, and mystery. And how all three of them intertwine. And the thrust of the book is to say, we are not god. We are those who are in submission to the movement of God’s spirit. And we cannot manipulate the Lord to accomplish all that we want because we we only have a little three pound brain. And the best that you and I can do is to use the three pounds and train it. But you can’t tell it’s around the corner. In fact, this lady that I was just gonna see just canceled and I wasn’t expecting that. Alright? So I didn’t know that. I had organized my time since I’d be done according to your timetable and then pick up my coal. So I I can’t tell that, but now we have more time to be able to to navigate this because we’re in the middle of an important cover that isn’t completed. You can break this up into two episodes if you want to do that, which is what you might do. But regardless of that, God initiates and he leads us in paths that we do not understand or know. And when it is all said and done, we’re always left with holding history. There are seasons where we see miraculous breakthrough, and there are seasons where we see partial breakthrough. And there are scenes where we see no breakthrough at all. This one came to a head when I had a buddy who was in his fifties. And I was pastor in church forty five minutes from here. I was serving in Chad and Ontario, now serving in Windsor. But it’s but that church was a really solid place. My very first ever visit was to this guy. So I arrive in my office, and the secretary walks in and says to me, you gotta go on see Bob. He wants the new passenger to come and see him. So we’re talking The books are not out of the boxes yet. I mean, I put the books in the office. The bookshelves are being constructed. And I said, well, I guess I can go down the road and see this guy, so I get in the car and I do my first ever pass through a call in that church. I walk into this house. He’s on an oxygen oxygen mask. And he’s carrying this tube with him and he’s full of cancer. And his godly wife is caring for him and they’re sweet people, but I know his skin is the wrong color.
His eyes are the wrong color. And I have been around the block enough to know when somebody’s tied days your number. So I pray a prayer of comfort with him. That’s the way I prayed. And I get back in my car and I drive home, but it was the end of the day.
I said to my wife, look, I think I got a funeral coming up. It’s a guy named Bob. Apparently, he’s a godly fellow. I just met him. I was in his home. And I think I’m gonna do here. What I didn’t know was that the elders of the church had already booked in to see him that night and he didn’t tell me that. And the elders went to pray for him, obeying James chapter five where it says that the elders of the church and like the with the royal prayer phase, etcetera. And he went into a miraculous recovery. And three days later, he’s down in South Carolina at Myrtle Beach. Gulfy. Exactly. He’s had this astonishing recovery in the board chair, Hal Norton, and him, Bob Roberts, they’re out there down there. Galtham, because he had this amazing recovery, happened instantly in front of those elders. And so I had witnessed amazing. This is incredible. In the in the course of time, Bob became a friend. Bob and Marlene and and was one of a a group of four couples and we all got together and we should reason laugh. He was one of the fun he was a delightful guy and there was a guy named Bill and Bill and Bob would do these back and forth kind of hilarious things. And if you were in the middle of that that rep r t, you’d laugh until you were done. It was just this marvelous fun and whenever I wanted to blow off steam always with Bob. He became one of my elders, and I remembered having significant prayer times with him. There was one that happened just before he became my friend. He said, I wanna go to a a church in Toronto that has a reputation of of being one of these healing places. I said, that’s a three and a half hour drive, Bob.
You wanna go? He said, yeah. I wanna go. I booked my associate in preaching because that was my sermon prep day. And he and I together with our two wives drove down the highway and it took us four hours because the highway was busy. We pull up at this place, and we show up at this place, and nobody prays for him, nobody prays for me. It doesn’t happen. You know? And we’re at the door of the place. And I said, this is crazy, Bob. We’ve gone four hours. One way, we gotta go four hours back. You wanna pray now, but he said, well, we better. So I put my hand on him. His wife and my wife put their hand on hand. We started to pray. Bob started to laugh. Heart filled joyful laughter. It just bubbling from inside of him. It was it was honest joyful laughter. Hilarious. And so he didn’t stop laughing. What what we got in the car to drive back home. And for the four hour drive from Toronto to Chatham, he kept laughing. And I had you know, then he gets in his car and his wife, Marlene, had the drive home because he was still laughing. And from that point forward, the man that I knew was full of laugh the laughter subsided when he finally went to sleep. But he started to have a crazy hilarious sense of humor, and it became part of this for some couple of things where we’d always have fun. And he became an elder in my church and we did all kinds of amazing things together and he was what I called bible from where Bob. He was the guy who called the elders to account when they were being a pack of idiots. When they were when they weren’t gonna do something that was the right thing to do because it caused too much.
He pulled the bible out, and he’d tell us off. You know, and then he make a joke and everybody in the room would crack up laughing. And then we’d we’d adopt the expensive decision and do the right thing and the money would come. And he was that kind of a guy. And then the cancer returned. And four years later, I was in the hospital room when he died. His daughter was with him. I was in the room. It was two o’clock in the morning. I got called up because it was pretty, you know, severe, and I was holding his hand. And his daughter was holding his other hand. And he breathed his last. I did the funeral. And when I was doing this funeral, I did my very best to put best foot forward, but this was not just a parishioner. This was a very good friend and this was someone who had seen healing and it ended and he died. And I remember so I did this service. I don’t know. I did my best to present a positive take on this. I watched his body descend to the ground. I went back to the office. I closed the door. I put a cover over the window. I sat in the corner and I cried like a baby, because that was my friend. Three weeks later, I was with the other three couples plus the widow. And they were thanking me for doing a beautiful service. And I said, okay, thank you. I appreciate that. And they said, yeah, it was so amazing to see Bob healed. I said, healed. I just buried and he was fifty five. He died. What are you talking about? And they looked at me and they said, you didn’t know him before. Did you? I said, no. I moved here. My first visit was him. He was on an oxygen tank, and there was this amazing recovery, and and they said, well, He was clinically depressed for a dozen years. He hadn’t laughed in a dozen years. And you drove him to that church in Toronto and nobody prayed for him. And then you and Elizabeth and Marlene prayed for him and he started to laugh. And the clinical depression vanished. And they were given three and a half years of blissful married life. Before he died of the cancer in the last six months. Jesus healed them of clinical depression. Even though he died at fifty five young. So what I say in the book is there’s this thing called already, not yet. We’re already participants in the powers of the next age. We are not yet as we should be. And those two realities overlap just like that in every life, in every family. And so I saw my wife healed. I’ve actually been physically healed. I had a paralyzed face. I was told I’d never speak again when I was fifty three. And the Lord healed me, and that’s a long story as well. I don’t want to tell a long story. It was so remarkable. It got recorded by the Christian Broadcast Network and there’s been a hundred and twenty thousand views of that story. I had a face that the doctor told me would never heal, and I was completely healed in a process that was just absolutely filled and wonder. And my daughter’s not. So I’ve been healed. My wife’s been healed. My daughter’s not. And I live between two ages that overlap, the age of life and the age of death. And the victory is partial until Jesus returns at the end of time.
Than what God would have us do. It’s live between the times and celebrate his presence in this fallen and broken world. Do we people who extend love and grace to those who have none? And to walk with them through all their struggles and all their difficulties, trusting that God will intervene in their lives.
Victoria Volk: Amen. That is a beautiful place to end this podcast, actually.
David Chotka: Well, thank you. That’s it. Yeah. There’s a scripture that has both of those in it. I’ll I’ll just say it to you. I think that’s a good way for me to close the sentences. The loved now We are children of God. It does not yet appear we should be. But when he appears, we shall be like him. For we shall see him as he is. Now, not yet. First John chapter three verse two. That’s where the believer lives.
Victoria Volk: Thank you so much. For all of your stories, for making what you shared relatable to people who may be struggling with their faith. I know I did personally for many years
David Chotka: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And, you know, you you some people go many years blaming God for their circumstances and I think he lies in wait. Just waiting for us to awaken to his love for us, I suppose.
David Chotka: Yeah. Now the love’s unmerited. We don’t deserve it. Absolutely don’t deserve it. It comes because it comes. And it isn’t our idea. It isn’t our idea. It’s it’s God’s idea to love us. We just got the your guy. He woke up and he pursued you.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. Wasn’t your idea? Wasn’t it? Yeah. Look, that’s why. Why did she do that? Oh, because I love you. I just he just did that. And you So it’s the same with with the love of God toward us. We don’t deserve it. They even know why he wants to bother, but he does. So if you can awaken to that, it becomes something beautiful. And that’s where we live.
Victoria Volk: I love that. Where can people find you?
David Chotka: I have a website that’s the easiest way spirit equip dot com. And I think you’ll I think I sent the links to you, if I’m not mistaken, I believe. Yeah. Anyway, it’s the the word spirit is the same as holy spirit, s p I r I t, and a word equip is the same as the beginning of equipment, EQU IP. Put the two things together, spiritequip.com.
That’s my website. And it has links to all my social media, so my Instagram thing is there, my YouTube channels there, my blogs are there, my Facebook page is there, and so on and so forth.
Victoria Volk: And my In your books?
David Chotka: My books are there too. And, yes, all the things that the the ability to book me, I do three day events in churches. And if people want me to come to their church, I’m more than able to do that. You just have to give me some lead time. Pay my hair fair and take up offerings. That’s what we do. It’s it’s not expensive to do. Find me a place to stay as long as it’s not some scsi dive. You know, find me a private room with Matthew. And then I’m more than happy to come into churches. I teach principles. I’ll tell you why I the the organization is called Spirit Equipment. Because nobody equipped me in the spiritual disciplines. I had to learn the hard way. And my goal is to make spiritual disciplines one small step at a time, simple for people so that they know what steps they can take, so that they can learn to enter into the things that God would have us learn. And so I have five books out. All of them are books that teach spiritual disciplines one small step at a time. And so spirit clip dot com is named after the activity that’s involved in my ministry. And and I do it all cross denominational line. I’m gonna be speaking to a bunch of methodists in a few months. I’m gonna speak to a pentecostal group after that. I’m I’m working with the Christian missionary alliance. I have preached him back to churches and men and night churches. I have spoken trans denominationally to Catholics and Africans and Baptist and Presbyterian and many Knights. You name it, they’re all there. Either my own denomination, sometimes they’ll let me speak in my own too. Anyway, I am an orthodox believer. I believe in, you know, the classic statements, the creed of the church, and so on. And I’m looking for really three things when I’m going into a church. I know that I can work with you. And number one, you have a high view of the bible as final. That you believe that Jesus is in fact God the sun and that you believe that that the new birth is essential. If those three things are there, I don’t care which background is I can work with you. And that those are the groups that I go to.
Victoria Volk: And so I will put your website in the show notes, and anything else you would like to pass along with me to add?
David Chotka: You know, right now, I’m trying to figure out some way to get the first chapter of the book and audiobook. Available. So I’m talking to my publisher. So God willing, I think it’s really important that you actually it’s it’s in my voice and in the voice of the other co writer. And so both of our voices are in the first chapter. And we both tell a story or two. And it’ll be I’m trying to get that done. So If I don’t get it done from my publisher, I’m gonna rerecord it myself and send it to you. I’d like to make that available to anybody who’d like to receive that.
Victoria Volk: Sounds good. And anything else you’d like to share that you don’t feel and you got to?
David Chotka: Oh, listen. We covered the ground here. We went long. We waxed long so that we could cover all the ground. So I think we did. There’s lots I could teach and talk about. I’ve written five books. I have a book on hearing the voice of Jesus. I have a book on dealing with the key phrases and words of the Lord’s prayer. I have this one on healing prayer. I’m writing I’m rewriting the Lord’s prayer book, and I have a book where I am where I’m teaching on the Holy Spirit, how Holy Spirit works. I’m a I’m a sessional lecturer in the Pathways School for Ministry on the Holy Spirit’s baptismal, what it looks like, how it works. So these are the areas of my expertise. And I’m more than happy to to talk. In this case, I believe with your podcast, your audience, the Healing Cray book was the best book to to put forward. It was the one that speaks to the constituency that you’re in.
Victoria Volk: I would agree. Yeah. And thank you so much for everything that you shared today and to my listeners and I enjoyed our conversation.
David Chotka: And likewise, it was been it’s been easy to have the conversation with you. Thank you, Victoria.
Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.
Grief, Grief Tips, Grieving Voices Podcast, Pespective, Pregnancy & Infant Loss |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
In a world where discussions about loss are often shrouded in silence, there’s a particular kind of grief that remains even more hidden—termination for medical reasons (TFMR).
Today on Grieving Voices, I had the honor of speaking with Sabrina Fletcher, a compassionate pregnancy loss doula who brings solace to parents facing the heart-wrenching decision of terminating a wanted pregnancy for medical reasons. Sabrina bravely shared her personal journey and how she’s turned her pain into purpose by supporting others through similar grief.
Key Points Discussed:
- The surprising prevalence of TFMR compared to stillbirths and the taboo surrounding it.
- The emotional turmoil and quick decisions forced upon parents facing unfavorable prenatal diagnoses.
- The grief journey taken by both Sabrina and her family following their loss, including how they each processed their emotions differently.
- Challenges within the healthcare system that fail to provide adequate support for those undergoing TFMR.
- Suggestions on improving medical care experiences during such sensitive times, including specialized bereavement care similar to practices in England.
TFMR is often shrouded in silence and taboo, but it’s more common than many realize. Sabrina advocates for open conversation and emotional support that upholds the dignity of those making these tough choices out of deep love for their children.
Our discussion also highlighted how even young children experience loss deeply and need acknowledgment in their grieving process—a powerful reminder not to underestimate our little ones’ emotional worlds.
Sabrina emphasizes breaking generational patterns by openly discussing grief rather than suppressing feelings – an approach shaped in contrast to what she experienced growing up, where losses were dealt with privately behind closed doors.
Remember: Transforming your grief doesn’t require grand gestures; small steps are just as significant.
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:
Navigating the Silent Sorrow: Understanding and Supporting Termination for Medical Reasons (TFMR)
In a world where discussions about loss are often shrouded in silence, there’s a particular kind of grief that remains even more hidden—termination for medical reasons (TFMR). Today, we delve into this sensitive topic with insights from Sabrina Fletcher, a pregnancy loss doula who has turned her personal pain into a beacon of support for others facing similar heartbreak.
The Unspoken Grief of TFMR
While stillbirth is recognized as an agonizing experience warranting sympathy and support, TFMR is three times more common yet seldom discussed. Parents making the excruciating decision to end a wanted pregnancy due to severe health risks face not only profound sorrow but also societal stigmatization. This lack of understanding can leave bereaved parents feeling isolated in their grief.
Sabrina Fletcher knows this all too well. Her journey through TFMR led her to become an advocate and guide for those walking this lonely path. Through peer support, one-on-one sessions, workshops—and now our conversation on Grieving Voices—Sabrina offers solace by helping parents honor their love for the child they lost while finding light amidst darkness.
From Personal Loss to Providing Support
The taboo surrounding TFMR means many do not receive the compassionate care they desperately need—a reality Sabrina experienced firsthand when she had to make that impossible choice between her own health and her pregnancy. However, instead of succumbing to despair, she channeled her anguish into action.
Recognizing the void in supportive services during such losses inspired Sabrina’s mission: creating spaces free from judgment where individuals could share their unique stories of grief whether it be from pregnancy loss or other life-altering experiences like suicide or long-term caregiving.
Adapting Grief Support in Times of Crisis
When COVID-19 struck, it compelled many services—including grief support—to transition online. Although initially unplanned, virtual platforms have proven invaluable by fostering international communities united by shared experiences without geographical boundaries.
On these platforms like Instagram and Facebook groups created by Sabrina herself; people found comfort knowing they were not alone regardless if they were seeking help after losing someone close or grappling with anticipatory grief—the emotional suffering felt before an impending loss occurs.
A Framework For Healing
During our discussion on Grieving Voices podcast episode featuring Victoria V. Sabrina shared a practical approach she uses with clients navigating their mourning process:
1. **Acknowledge:** First comes recognizing physical manifestations associated with bereavement without rushing to interpret them.
2. **Assign:** Once ready emotionally; pinpointing specific feelings linked with these bodily sensations allows individuals clarity regarding their internal state.
3. **Align:** Finally taking steps towards healing whether through acts self-care or external efforts such as advocacy based upon acknowledged emotions provides direction amidst confusion brought about by sorrowful events.
This framework isn’t just theory—it’s been lived out through actions like therapy sessions community engagement daily check-ins friends going through similar situations—all contributing toward managing complex emotions following another pregnancy post-loss period fraught fear joy alike intertwining unpredictably within expectant parents’ hearts minds alike.
Transformative Power Compassion Action
Perhaps most importantly what resonates throughout conversations resources provided via platforms like [thetfmrddoula. com](http://thetfmrddoula.com) is notion transformative power compassion action hold when dealing kinds tragedies. No gesture is too small nor any step insignificant When comes to transforming raw painful emotions something meaningful tangible both individual collective level. Every story every voice adds richness tapestry human resilience empathy growth In closing let us remember words echoed Victoria herself “Treat me gently you would any grieving parent” encapsulating core message extending kindness understanding everyone traversing difficult terrain loss Remember open your heart truly transform your life. Much love
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk
00:00:00 – 00:00:32
Thank you for tuning to grieving voices. I am your host, Victoria V. And today my guest is Sabrina Fletcher. She guides bereaved parents through the heartbreak of losing a wanted pregnancy to a termination for medical reasons or also known as TFMR with groups 1 on 1 and workshops. As a pregnancy loss doula who’s been there herself, She companions people as they find the light in their stories and self-expression and the deep love they carry for their babies.
Victoria Volk
00:00:32 – 00:01:25
Thank you so much for being open enough to share about this on my podcast today. I was excited to hear about this because I, you know, you even said that it’s, 3 times more common than stillbirth,
Sabrina Fletcher
00:00:40 – 00:00:40
uh-hummm..
Victoria Volk
00:00:40 – 00:01:18
which was a surprising statistic to me because, I mean, I’d heard that yes, people can, you know, terminate a pregnancy because of medical reasons, but I didn’t realize there was like, an acronym for it
Sabrina Fletcher
00:01:18 – 00:01:19
You’re right.
Victoria Volk
00:01:19 – 00:01:21
there was an underbelly or undercurrent of, like, taboo or, you know
Sabrina Fletcher
00:01:21 – 00:01:21
Mmm..
Victoria Volk
00:01:21 – 00:01:23
about it and this yeah. That so I’m I think it’s a loss that is not talked about, like you said, very much.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:01:23 – 00:01:23
Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:01:23 – 00:01:25
I haven’t heard it on I don’t listen to a ton of other grief podcasts just because I kinda wanna stay in my own lane. But
Sabrina Fletcher
00:01:25 – 00:01:25
Yeah. Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:01:25 – 00:01:42
I’m excited to share this with my listeners broaden our perspective of grief and, talk about it. So thank you so much for being open to sharing your journey, which brings us to 2018. And do you mind starting there?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:01:43 – 00:02:05
Sure. Thank you so much, Victoria. And thank you for having me on to talk about this piece of pregnancy loss that is silenced and shamed. And in some spaces, it’s becoming a little bit more openly spoken about, and I think that as more people speak about it, more people understand. Oh, okay.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:02:05 – 00:02:16
Yes. This is another type of pregnancy loss. That is what if they went through it themselves. That is what I really experienced. And like you said, I went through it myself in 2018.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:02:16 – 00:02:53
It was early 2018 and we had a bad ultrasound result where we could see and the doctor was showing us the different abnormalities and what was wrong with our baby. And one of the conditions there were various things that were showing up. One of the conditions was swelling in the head and the chest and the back of the neck. And since it was pretty much all over the body and the torso, he was calling it hydrops. So that’s just the name for fetal swelling.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:02:55 – 00:03:32
And that along with other things, you know, we went home and I was researching, and I also found out and he told me at that ultrasound. He said you know, if you decide to continue the pregnancy, this is now a high-risk pregnancy, but I didn’t really know the extent of that. I found out that high drops can cause similar swelling in the pregnant person and they call it mirror syndrome. So it could have caused harm to my organs as well. It’s just very devastating because this was a wanted baby.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:03:32 – 00:03:49
I took this whole fertility course. I was tracking my cycles. I knew my ovulation date. We wanted her in our family, but then when we found out she was sick and also the condition that she was carrying could have harmed my health. We did decide to terminate the pregnancy.
Victoria Volk
00:03:51 – 00:03:56
And you had another child. You have already had one child. Correct? Or did I read that?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:03:56 – 00:04:02
Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. So my oldest daughter was 4 years old at the time.
Victoria Volk
00:04:03 – 00:04:14
And so just a matter of, I mean, trying to put this in perspective for people listening, you still have to function on the day-to-day and care for a 4-year-old.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:04:15 – 00:04:15
Yeah. Function.
Victoria Volk
00:04:16 – 00:04:18
Right? After receiving this news.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:04:18 – 00:04:18
Mmm..
Victoria Volk
00:04:18 – 00:04:28
And how did you like? How do you what did those early days and weeks looked like? And then how long did it take you to come? Like, how long did you give yourself to
Sabrina Fletcher
00:04:29 – 00:04:30
Mmm
Victoria Volk
00:04:30 – 00:04:35
come to that decision? And was your husband also on board right off the right out of the gate too?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:04:35 – 00:04:35
Mmm
Victoria Volk
00:04:36 – 00:04:40
Because you were maybe sometimes that could be a conflict for some relationships.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:04:41 – 00:05:35
Oh, yeah. I mean, it wasn’t an easy decision. I mean, it ended up being clear after we did enough research and talked to the doctors and I was looking at different medical journals and all the research that I could get my hands on that wasn’t behind a paywall, you know, because I’m not a medical researcher myself. I don’t I don’t have all of those subscriptions. So what what I could find and what I could see, and also finding other people’s stories online, it led me to see that this is also a compassionate choice to decide to induce early really, and help her pass peacefully instead of coming to term, going to term, or possibly not even making it that far and would she die in utero, or would we have to have some crazy it’s not even a c section.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:05:35 – 00:06:09
It’s called a exit strategy where they, like, take everything out all at once. And, you know, it’s very hard on both the baby and the and the pregnant person and and she was already sick. So, you know, could she get through that kind of medical trauma to even then be, you know, with all the tubes and all the life support and everything, and then how long or you know, or would I hold her in my arms as she died? You know, there there’s really no right way to go about it because there are people in my community. I went on to become a pregnancy loss doula.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:06:10 – 00:06:39
I’ve always wanted to be a doula. But then when this happened to me, I realized, oh, this is the place in birth that I really want to focus on. I really want to support people who are going through this. And some of those families in one pregnancy, like, maybe they carried some sort of genetic something, disposition or disorder, whatever you would like to call it. And maybe some of their children do carry it or maybe they do bring some pregnancies to term and, you know, their babies die in their arms.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:06:39 – 00:07:06
And then in another pregnancy, they decide to terminate. There’s really there’s no there’s no right there’s no right way. It’s just whatever feels best for you and your family in that moment. And that’s how we made our decision. We just felt like that was the best for this baby, for my body, and the fact that we already had a living daughter that we were also taking care of.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:07:06 – 00:07:17
And there’s also another grief story in our family. My husband lost his mom when he was about 6 years old. And so he was like, woah. No. No.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:07:17 – 00:07:32
We cannot lose you. You have to be here for our older daughter. So that really became a big part of the decision as well. It wasn’t overnight. You know, it took us a few days, but we were also up against a crunch.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:07:32 – 00:08:00
So, with the restrictive laws to have an abortion, no questions asked, we had a week. So we didn’t really have that much time to decide. So we had to make this decision very quickly. I do feel like there are pieces of my decision that were taken from me. I wasn’t really given all of there wasn’t enough time to get all the information that I would have liked to get.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:08:01 – 00:08:19
You know, I would have liked to have an amniocentesis, but we were only 13 weeks along at that point. And you have to wait till 16, 18 weeks. And, I did ask the doctor, you know, when he was telling us all the bad news about an amniocentesis. It could have came back clear too. So that’s the thing.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:08:19 – 00:08:35
Like, we were already seeing how sick she was. But you know, it is good to know all of the medical information before making, you know, a drastic medical decision like this. So it’s really very very awful.
Victoria Volk
00:08:36 – 00:08:40
I’m just thinking about like someone who’s having to go through this and make this decision or decides to make this decision. And yet, you know when you often think about when we hear the word abortion, right?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:08:40 – 00:08:40
Mmm
Victoria Volk
00:08:41 – 00:09:10
we hear the child does not they don’t want the child. Right? It’s for whatever reason, whatever the circumstances, like they choose that they’re, they’re not, it’s not a good time for them for whatever reason. We don’t think that someone who’s sitting in the waiting room is there because they really want the baby
Sabrina Fletcher
00:09:10 – 00:09:10
Uhumm..
Victoria Volk
00:09:10 – 00:09:12
and there’s a medical reason why they’re there or, you know,
Sabrina Fletcher
00:09:12 – 00:09:12
Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:09:12 – 00:09:13
a circumstance like yourself.
Victoria Volk
00:09:13 – 00:09:25
And I think that’s a really miscarriage. That’s a miscarriage of grief. And it also is for the person who is choosing that for themselves, because I mean like it or not, there is going to be grief there involved.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:09:25 – 00:09:25
Uhumm..
Victoria Volk
00:09:2 – 00:09:40
You know? Even if it’s not, you know, felt the full weight of it in the moment, even years later, I have no doubts that there are women that experienced grief for many years later.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:09:40 – 00:10:05
Mhmm. But Yeah. I definitely agree. And after going through this experience myself and having an abortion for reasons that were just so filled with love and compassion, And I never been through what I guess we could call a a lifestyle abortion but I kind of had those misconceptions too. It’s like, oh, it just means they just they don’t want this baby.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:10:05 – 00:10:23
Like, this isn’t a wanted baby. But I realized, I think all of those decisions are made with the greatest amount of love and respect as well. It’s like, I don’t want this life for this child. There’s still so much love in that decision. Or like, I can’t do this to a child right now.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:10:23 – 00:10:38
Like, that’s so much love. So, so much love. And, yes, you’re right. Of course, there will be grief there. Many people do experience grief with these decisions, whether it’s for medical reasons, whether it’s for lifestyle reasons.
Victoria Volk
00:10:39 – 00:10:51
What do you wish would have been different about that experience and what do you think needs to change in how women are supported
Sabrina Fletcher
00:10:48 – 00:10:48
Mmm
Victoria Volk
00:10:49 – 00:10:51
In the medical setting in particular.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:10:51 – 00:11:19
Yeah. Yeah. So there are some people who I like to look to England. They have a pretty good system set up when it’s going to be an abortion for medical reasons, for fetal anomaly, or the pregnant person’s health, they’re earmarked in a certain direction, and they end up going with bereavement midwives. So these are midwives who are grief-informed, hopefully, trauma informed.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:11:20 – 00:11:59
They, you know, they see the family. They see the baby as a baby. They see it as palliative hospice care, which it really is. It’s it’s end-of-life care for that baby and for or to help the the mother or the pregnant person, you know not die. And they help people to get footprints or like, make a scrapbook or you know, they’ll bring in a chaplain or they’ll help you with the funeral arrangements.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:12:00 – 00:12:18
You know, it’s a it’s a death of a family member. And I think it’s that piece that was missing in my experience. Because of the laws, I ended up going to an abortion clinic, which put me in the box of lifestyle abortion. My husband was there with me, and we had so many tears and we asked for a private room. They said, oh, no.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:12:18 – 00:12:39
We don’t do that thing. We were asking for these things that other people get in some places. And in some hospitals worldwide, they will do this sort of bereavement care where they have a special room that’s on another floor, so you don’t hear the laboring women and then babies crying. We didn’t have that. We didn’t have a special extra room.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:12:39 – 00:13:03
We didn’t have a bereavement midwife. We didn’t have someone informed in grief. We didn’t have anyone saying, I’m sorry for your loss. They’re really very simple, compassionate things that I wish I would have had. The doctor who helped us, did understand our whole situation, and he did say, I’m, you know, I’m so sorry for your loss.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:13:03 – 00:13:37
So that meant so much. You know? It’s just those few words, like really seeing us as bereaved parents. And I asked for footprints and he was able to get them. So some pieces of my story do have some respect and honor and reverence in it, but a lot of it I mean, the counselor that they had on hand, I kept talking about grief and, like, asking for grief resources, and she was like, I don’t really know.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:13:40 – 00:13:59
And I thought, oh, you know, I thought, like, I can’t be the only one who’s coming here because their baby is sick and they’re grieving and they’re having to end a wanted pregnancy. But I guess maybe I was or I don’t know. So those are the things that I wish would have been different in my story.
Victoria Volk
00:13:59 – 00:14:00
Well, you know now that you weren’t because it’s more common than
Sabrina Fletcher
00:14:00 – 00:14:00
Yes
Victoria Volk
00:14:01 – 00:14:06
3 times more common than stillbirth and
Sabrina Fletcher
00:14:06 – 00:14:08
Amazing.
Speaker 1
00:14:08 – 00:14:13
And I’m sure do you have a statistic, like a more recent recent statistic as far as how common this is overall?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:14:15 – 00:14:35
Oh, that’s that’s the most recent one. So that’s some research that came out of Europe, I think, combined with England because they do earmark these cases. They do have, like, specific categories. So they’re they are able to see, okay, this termination is a early induction. This termination is a pregnancy loss.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:14:37 – 00:15:00
And that research, yeah, came out of Europe a a few years ago. And they found that with the numbers that they have in Europe and England, these countries combined, the number of stillbirths are so many, and then the number of TFMR pregnancy loss, are 3 times as many as that number.
Victoria Volk
00:15:01 – 00:15:12
Do you know of any places in the United States that are implementing some sort of like what you just described for women going through this?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:15:13 – 00:15:40
Yes. Some of the better stories that I hear are coming out of some places in the US. I’ve heard some really good stories out of Washington DC and then other big hospitals across the nation. But they’re the bigger the bigger hospitals maybe who see more of these cases, and I think it’s really prior patients like me
Victoria Volk
00:15:41 – 00:15:41
Mhmm.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:15:41 – 00:15:46
Writing in or calling in or speaking up after and saying, why didn’t this happen?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:15:46 – 00:15:55
Or I read this story, and they got this kind of care. And why didn’t we have that? And I really believe that that’s why they get better care now.
Victoria Volk
00:15:56 – 00:16:20
There’s an organization called death with dignity, dying with dignity, 1 or the other. And, but their whole goal is to push legislation across the country in the United States for basically to die with for people to have the ability to die with dignity. And there’s a whole lot of things that go into that. But, I can see something like that being applied in this manner
Sabrina Fletcher
00:16:20 – 00:16:20
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
00:16:21 – 00:16:40
for the situation, like for legislation to be put into place that requires hospitals and medical care staff and maybe even perhaps, you know, and I think it’s almost gonna take 1 like, lone ranger to blaze the trail and create some sort of independent facility. And then you know how it can kind of snowball from there
Sabrina Fletcher
00:16:41 – 00:16:41
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
00:16:42 – 00:16:59
where women feel, more supported in that decision with all the things that you said that you wish would have been there for you.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:17:00 – 00:17:00
Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:17:00 – 00:17:20
And on that note, I mean, grief is the loss of hopes, dreams, and expectations, and anything that we wish would have been different, better, or more. And so how did you and your husband together and independently kind of work through that loss? And your daughter. I mean
Sabrina Fletcher
00:17:21 – 00:17:22
Mmm. My daughter.
Victoria Volk
00:17:22 – 00:17:24
Or she had an awareness of you know, by the age of 3, we’ve already learned how to respond to most of life
Sabrina Fletcher
00:17:25 – 00:17:25
Mmm.
Victoria Volk
00:17:25 – 00:17:26
already by 3.
Victoria Volk
00:17:26 – 00:17:28
So can you speak to that a little bit?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:17:29 – 00:18:08
So as a family and her my husband, and myself, we all went on our unique grief journeys. Some of it was together. We had a memorial service for her, and my daughter was there. I wanted her to take part. I wanted there to be, you know, some sort of symbolic recognition that, yes, a family member died in our family and, you know, this was your sibling and it’s okay to talk about it.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:18:08 – 00:18:19
It’s okay to bring it up. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to make art about it. It’s okay to you know, like, she would draw. I don’t even know where this came from.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:18:19 – 00:18:39
Like, instinctively, she made these, like, stone funeral Karnes. I think that’s how you say it, where they, like, make these stone mounds, but they’re and her so my husband’s father died 2 weeks before our baby did
Victoria Volk
00:18:39 – 00:18:40
Oh, wow.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:18:40 – 00:19:01
As well. So there was there was a lot of grief and death awareness happening for her that month and in the months to follow. So I remember she said, this is for a. This is for grandfather. And she had made this stone, corn.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:19:01 – 00:19:25
And then she said, and this is for my sister. This is for Clara. And she had made kind of a smaller stone and brick structure. And she had placed them like right in front of both sides of our front door.
Victoria Volk
00:19:25 – 00:19:25
Mmm.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:19:26 – 00:19:28
My husband, I saw him really throw himself into work, so he chose the, like stay busy.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:19:28 – 00:19:53
And, also, life is really short, so I really wanna provide for my family. I really want us to be okay. I see my wife really sub me, you know, really suffering physically and going through all this. So he would work late hours. He would he would listen to me when I wanted to talk about it, but not as much talking maybe more of just needing to stay busy.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:19:54 – 00:20:27
And for me, I think I did pretty much anything I could get my hands on. So I remember looking for a postpartum doula, looking for a grief or some sort of pregnancy loss practitioner to help me through. I did some emails with one of them. I did hire a postpartum doula. They urged me to do all of my creative things or new creative things, so drawing, painting.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:20:27 – 00:21:14
Well, some of those came later, maybe like a year or 2 later. But I did do some photography or even just like, mindless distracting things, like puzzles or little phone games and watching lighthearted TV to help with you know, those moments where it’s just like, oh, I’ve been thinking about this all day and just going over and over and over and over in my head about it. And no thoughts are going to fix these emotions. No thoughts are going to bring her back or help us go back in time and make sure that the egg and the sperm were the perfect quality, and then she wasn’t sick for whatever reason. You know?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:21:14 – 00:21:38
I couldn’t go back in time to fix those things. I had to feel just a little bit more okay in that moment. I did a lot of sitting in the grass with my shoes off, my feet in the grass. So grounding just and I would just sit there. And then sometimes I would I would do, like, meditative walking, but I was so angry.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:21:38 – 00:22:04
You know, I remember walking around my garden, and I live in Mexico, and the flowers bloom all year around here. And there was this amazing, like, huge red like, bigger than my head, red flower. And I would walk by it, and I would just get so angry. Like, why are you blooming and my baby isn’t here? Like, I’m walking by this beautiful flower, and it’s just in my face, and yet I knew, well, I just need to walk.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:22:04 – 00:22:13
I need to walk by it. I need to feel this anger. I need to sit with it. But then it would be like, okay. Time to go pick up my daughter.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:22:14 – 00:22:23
So it was hard to manage, you know, all the time and space that grief asks along with daily tasks.
Victoria Volk
00:22:24 – 00:22:28
Yeah. It’s like the stoneward spiral thought wheel was like you know,
Sabrina Fletcher
00:22:29 – 00:22:29
Mmm.
Victoria Volk
00:22:29 – 00:22:58
It’s like a tornado of thoughts, and I can just I was imagining it as you were walking around this flower and just I can feel from you. It’s just so important for people to hear that in those moments like you were you how you were able to just allow yourself to feel the anger. And I think so many people just don’t allow themselves to feel the anger because growing up, you’re taught that anger is wrong. It’s bad.
Victoria Volk
00:22:58 – 00:22:58
And
Sabrina Fletcher
00:22:58 – 00:23:02
Yeah. Even grief too. Like, push it down. Go to work.
Victoria Volk
00:23:02 – 00:23:06
But it is an element of grief. Anger is grief. Really.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:23:06 – 00:23:06
It is.
Victoria Volk
00:23:07 – 00:23:12
Did you like for your husband, you know, I meant not talking about it.
Victoria Volk
00:23:12 – 00:23:26
And you said he kept himself very busy. Did he, did you see him? Did you view it as a stuffing down or did he find, did he eventually, did he start talking about it more or how did that change for him over time?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:23:28 – 00:23:48
Mmmm. He would have to come on and share his whole story because it’s pretty intense the way things ended up showing up for him quite later. But I guess I could say, eventually, he had some therapy, and I think that helped. So he was able to talk.
Victoria Volk
00:23:48 – 00:23:48
Mhmm.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:23:49- 00:23:54
And he’s also, a sweat lodge.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:23:55 – 00:23:58
He runs a sweat lodge,
Victoria Volk
00:23:58 – 00:23:58
Oh
Sabrina Fletcher
00:23:59 – 00:24:09
He runs a sweat lodge,
and he has a spa. And so he works with crystals and massage. And so he so his work, I think even going to work and helping others
Victoria Volk
00:24:09 – 00:24:09
Mhmm.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:24:10 – 00:24:14
Or sometimes they’ll, like, trade massage. So he was also working through things at work.
Victoria Volk
00:24:14 – 00:24:15
Yeah. I can see that.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:24:15 – 00:24:23
And he would go and he would go in the sweat lodge. He also sings. So he has his outlets. They’re just different than mine. Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
00:24:24 – 00:24:28
Mhmm. And honoring that for each other. Right?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:24:28 – 00:24:28
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
00:24:28 – 00:24:28
But like you said, he was able to he would listen to you and that’s sometimes all you need really is someone to just
Sabrina Fletcher
00:24:30 – 00:24:30
Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:24:31 – 00:24:43
try and fix, just listen. And so I’m glad he was in that line of work because that probably actually is what helped him find his way eventually to therapy.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:24:43 – 00:24:45
Yeah. Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:24:45 – 00:25:27
I was gonna ask too the question I had thought of earlier and then forgot. So growing up, what was, what were the messages? Because I how you articulated when your daughter was going through this, when you lost your baby, and then you’re talking about how it was important for you, for her, that she recognized grief and you had a lot of grief going on at the time, but how to allow her to channel it and honor her feelings and things like that. So what were what was your experience with grief growing up in the beliefs that you had about loss and like because in, you know, especially in my area, like German
Sabrina Fletcher
00:25:28 – 00:25:30
Right.
Victoria Volk
00:25:30 – 00:25:34
Like or talk about our grief and what happens in the house?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:25:34 – 00:25:47
Yeah, stiff upper lip and all that and like, You know, pick yourself up by the bootstraps and carry on. No. That’s definitely my lineage as well.
Victoria Volk
00:25:48 – 00:25:48
Okay.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:25:50 – 00:26:31
And I understand more now about what I experienced with grief than when it was actually going on. There really weren’t any close deaths until my grandmother died when I was yeah, I was already in my twenties. But she had a brother who died in World War 2. And, I mean, that would have been so many years ago, but my mother told me that on certain days you know, I don’t know what days. Now I imagine, oh, it was probably his birthday.
Victoria Volk
00:25:26 – 00:26:31
Mhmm.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:26:31 – 00:26:52
Or it could have been some milestone that her children were reaching and her brother wasn’t there to see it. Maybe it was even her own birthday. You know, the passing of time is really hard, especially since he would have died so young, like a very young man. And then here she was, like, living a full long life, and he’s not there.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:26:52 – 00:27:22
Well, my mom would say you know, she would go in her room and cry. So in a way, you know, behind closed doors That’s my grief legacy. So why I decided to be so open and why I felt like it was so important? I don’t know. Maybe it’s a reaction to that like, seeing how it was so closed and not really talked about and like, get on with your life and just move along.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:27:23 – 00:27:30
I felt like it was important to talk about it and be open about it. And I saw my daughter hurting. I didn’t I didn’t want to just say, oh, just go to school. That didn’t feel right to me.
Victoria Volk
00:27:30 – 00:27:30
Mhmm.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:27:31 – 00:27:37
You know, just get back to school.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:27:37 – 00:27:48
Just throw yourself into your schoolwork. I never said anything like that to her. So maybe it’s a reaction to what I grew up with and felt like it wasn’t enough.
Victoria Volk
00:27:49 – 00:27:57
After all the people I’ve talked to, the 4 plus years I’ve been doing this podcast, I am like almost 190 episodes. Not all.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:27:57 – 00:27:57
Yeah
Victoria Volk
00:27:58 – 00:28:18
So not all not all interviews, but I think there’s 2 camps of people. And like you just said, I think there’s people that grow up and learn these things about grief that are unhelpful and hurtful and self-sabotaging. And they see that contrast when they’re met with something in their lives.
Victoria Volk
00:28:18 – 00:28:29
And they remember that contrast of that experience. Like, we didn’t talk about it. And I felt shamed for or you know, if you have feel shame for bringing up the person’s name
Sabrina Fletcher
00:28:29 – 00:28:29
Mmm
Victoria Volk
00:28:30 – 00:28:40
because, you know, it makes other people uncomfortable or angry or sad or whatever it is. So there’s no room for your feelings. You know, you can grow up that way with no, there’s no room.
Victoria Volk
00:28:40 – 00:28:54
So then you step down and you don’t talk about it. Right? And then that continues through generations. And that’s what happens. But sometimes there’s camps of people, though, the other camp that sees that contrast and breaks that cycle.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:28:55 – 00:28:55
Mmm.
Victoria Volk
00:28:56 – 00:29:17
So congratulations on doing that because you teach your daughter how to respond to grief by how you respond to grief. And I think that’s the message that I want to get across and why I started this podcast is because I’m a child griever.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:29:17 – 00:29:17
Mmm.
Victoria Volk
00:29:18 – 00:29:21
My dad died when I was young, and there was like,
Sabrina Fletcher
00:29:23 – 00:29:27
yeah, it’s like resources. No talking about it.
Victoria Volk
00:29:27 – 00:29:30
Yep. Or well, in my case,
Victoria Volk
00:29:30 – 00:29:35
it was there was a lot of talking about it from my mother. Of course, she lost her husband, but just no room for me.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:29:35 – 00:29:35
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
00:29:36 – 00:29:48
That’s what I was getting at is that even though it is talked about yet, it’s not where you feel you can share. Like, you can’t share.
Victoria Volk
00:29:49 – 00:29:57
There’s no open sharing. And that’s there’s all kinds of family dynamics and how that plays out and different scenarios and circumstances. And we could sit here all day long about all of those. But
Sabrina Fletcher
00:29:57 – 00:30:02
Oh, yeah. I’ve been the stories about that too. Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:30:03 – 00:30:16
Condenses down to either you learn these things and you continue that pattern onto your kids or you break that cycle because you see the importance of what you would have wanted for yourself and then create that
Sabrina Fletcher
00:30:16 – 00:30:17
Mmm
Victoria Volk
00:30:17 – 00:30:17
for your children
Victoria Volk
00:30:17 – 00:30:32
for the legacy that follows behind. So that’s I think that’s a very important takeaway for people listening to this, who have children who are going through grieving experiences too, because like you said, it’s she lost her sister too, even though she was 4
Sabrina Fletcher
00:30:32 – 00:30:32
Yeah
Victoria Volk
00:30:32 – 00:30:43
years old. And it’s very easy for parents to assume that, oh, they’re so little. They don’t understand. Anyway, I was 8 and people were saying that I see 8 year olds now. And I’m like, wow.
Victoria Volk
00:30:43 – 00:30:52
Like, I don’t know if I was that articulate or that I was that smart, but I would hope I was., Like, 8 year olds understand. Come on. Like, really?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:30:52 – 00:30:53
Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:30:53 – 00:31:54
And so do 4 year olds. So
Sabrina Fletcher
00:30:55 – 00:30:55
Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:30:55 – 00:31:02
Thank you for sharing in that as much as you did because I think it’s important for people to hear. No matter the loss.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:31:03 – 00:31:30
Thank you. Thank you, Victoria. Yeah. I even said to my daughter a couple days ago, I just said, I really appreciate how you opened up to me and what you shared about, you know, your sadness. And, you know, when Clara we named her Clara when Clara died and how we went through that together.
Victoria Volk
00:31:31 – 00:31:35
And in the work that you’re doing today, you can share that experience with people too.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:31:35 – 00:31:35
Mmm
Victoria Volk
00:31:35 – 00:31:54
If they have other children that are experiencing that loss as the fam, you know, with along with the family unit. And so, or when did you start doing the work that you’re doing? Because the loss happened in 2018, but when did you finally feel ready to, support others?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:31:56 – 00:31:59
Mmm. So, symbolically, I feel like I started while I was in the recovery chair.
Victoria Volk
00:31:59 – 00:32:01
Mmm. Like many people do.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:32:01 – 00:32:19
You know, after I had had my I guess we could call it a d and c, And I was like, where’s my doula? Like, there’s no one here saying, how are you feeling? Or I’m sitting here beside you.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:32:19 – 00:32:32
Can I hold your hand? Would you like water? Something like that. You know, just those simple, caring things that we need, especially in very early grief. And with pregnancy loss, it’s a grief through your body.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:32:32 – 00:33:00
So there’s, like, the physical recovery that needs to happen. So I was thinking, where is she? And then I realized I’m going to be her. That’s what I wanna do. And then I also realized, and I need to go through my own healing process first so that I can fully show up for other people from a healed place.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:33:02 – 00:33:40
So it was mid 2020, the fall of 2020. By the time I created an Instagram account, the TFMR doula, and just started bringing people together. And we would, you know, talk in stories or in the comments and making connections with other pregnancy loss spaces. And then I created a Facebook group for us to go a little bit deeper and have more conversations in a place where no one else is coming in and being like, well, I wouldn’t have made that choice. It’s like, thank you.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:33:40 – 00:33:41
That’s unhelpful.
Victoria Volk
00:33:41 – 00:33:42
Mmm.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:33:42 – 00:34:18
You know, just like people who their loved one has died by suicide, you know, they deserve to have a special space there because there’s certain layers that only they will be going through. Or if they’ve been a long-term caregiver for Alzheimer’s or cancer or something, and then their loved loved one dies. You know? They have all that anticipatory grief years to to talk about and being in groups where where people just understand, you know, the hardships and the things that other people say to you when you’re going through all of this.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:34:18 – 00:34:34
It’s good to have those specific places for people who have been through it with other people who have been through. I mean, I can’t say exactly. All of our cases are unique, but, yeah, exactly that type of loss.
Victoria Volk
00:34:34 – 00:34:34
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
00:34:35 – 00:34:37
And that was, like, during COVID started
Sabrina Fletcher
00:34:37 – 00:34:39
It was.
Victoria Volk
00:34:39 – 00:34:40
So how did that, like I mean, there’s grief in that too. Like, you just
Sabrina Fletcher
00:34:40 – 00:34:40
Oh,
Victoria Volk
00:34:41 – 00:34:7
so much. Thing. I know. I started my business doing grief work and stuff 2019,
Sabrina Fletcher
00:34:47 – 00:34:47
Mmm.
Victoria Volk
00:34:48 – 00:34:49
early 2019.
Victoria Volk
00:34:49 – 00:35:14
And I gained so much momentum. And I was doing in person talks and things like that and doing in person groups. And then COVID hit, and it’s like but that’s when I took, you know, the opportunity to just get a lot more training and certifications online and just build my toolbox. And so that’s what I did during that time. But what it how did you kind of deal with that?
Victoria Volk
00:35:14 – 00:35:24
Because there’s this thing here. You just birthed out, and then it’s like, oh, I mean, no pun intended. That was a terrible pun. Like, that I’m sorry.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:35:25 – 00:35:25
Oh, gosh.
Victoria Volk
00:35:25 – 00:35:26
I just thought that
Sabrina Fletcher
00:35:26 – 00:35:28
But yeah. No. But it’s a birth. Right? It is.
Speaker 2
00:35:28 – 00:35:31
It’s a Mother. Yeah. It’s birth from love. Right? Because you you birthed
Victoria Volk
00:35:31 – 00:35:33
it out of your experience.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:35:33 – 00:35:35
So It is. It is.
Victoria Volk
00:35:36 – 00:35:36
Yeah.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:35:36 – 00:35:45
It is. And so I was unable to do the in person pregnancy loss doula work that I wanted to.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:35:45 – 00:36:19
You know, I really wanted to be the sit by your side in that recovery chair and hold your hand and say, yeah. It’s okay to cry because you’re a bereaved mother and all the things that I needed to hear. And I also knew that I wanted to do the bulk of my support services online, So I already knew that I wanted most of it to be virtual. Like, the big community aspect of it, I always had in mind that it was going to be virtual. So whenever when everything went virtual, it helped in a way because then other people were open to receiving support in virtual ways.
Victoria Volk
00:36:21 – 00:36:24
That’s true. Yeah. That’s a good point.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:36:25 – 00:36:35
But that was that was my specific situation where I always knew I wanted, you know, most of it to be virtual so that we can meet internationally. Right.
Victoria Volk
00:36:35 – 00:36:39
It’s more accessible. Right?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:36:39 – 00:36:39
Mmm.
Victoria Volk
00:36:40 – 00:37:01
And that’s the thing I think that came out of COVID is that so many of these resources that exist today are because the virtual and people are more open to that because that is the way of the world now.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:36:58 – 00:36:58
Mmm.
Victoria Volk
00:36:58 – 00:37:01
So there’s more availability, but there’s also, like you said, more buy in where people are more apt to give it a chance and see if it’ll work for them.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:37:01 – 00:37:12
Yeah. So when I started doing live workshops or like little support groups and it was on Zoom, I knew that people already had that program at least.
Victoria Volk
00:37:12 – 00:37:12
Mhmm.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:37:13 – 00:37:16
They were familiar with it, so I could just say Zoom. I didn’t need to explain what it was.
Victoria Volk
00:37:16 – 00:37:16
Right.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:37:16 – 00:37:53
Because before 2020, anything that was online, if you weren’t already like an online entrepreneur or something, you didn’t know all of these programs and the terms and the things. But now, we’ve all been educated on doing it all online, which it can get exhausting too in some sense. And now that, you know, COVID is not at its height, we do wanna do in-person annual retreats as well because it is important to meet. It is important to get those hugs.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:37:53 – 00:38:18
It is important to, you know, see people face to face. And I wanna have those experiences too, where we can really see I’m really not alone in this. Here’s another flesh and blood person who has made this choice, who loves their baby deeply, who is grieving just as deeply as I am. And here we are sitting together.
Victoria Volk
00:38:19 – 00:38:20
And in Mexico. I mean
Sabrina Fletcher
00:38:20 – 00:38:28
Yes. I mean, great. So come and come and get some sun. Come and spray. Yeah.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:38:28 – 00:38:34
We we may end up doing the next one in in the US, though, because a lot of my community members are in the US.
Victoria Volk
00:38:36 – 00:38:53
So what were some of the ways I mean, I know that there was a lot that wasn’t there for you, but what were some of the ways that other people supported you that you found helpful, most helpful during that time and either for your daughter or for your husband or for yourself or as a family? Like, what would you share with people?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:38:54 – 00:39:13
For myself, the biggest resource, the most helpful resource was a another Facebook group. And they were the inspiration for me creating my own as well. And they and they’re still functioning. They’re a great community. They’re called ending a wanted pregnancy.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:39:14 – 00:39:41
I think it’s just ending a wanted pregnancy dot com. And you go through this application process, and then you’re in the Facebook group with only other people who have been through it or their immediate partners. You know, there are no health professionals who just wanna know how to help other people. There are no grandparents or siblings who you know, wanna like, look in.
Victoria Volk
00:39:42 – 00:39:42
Mmm.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:39:42 – 00:39:44
It’s completely closed.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:39:44 – 00:40:08
And so because I knew that that community was so highly screened and closed and I think even secret. So at that time, Facebook had secret groups. They’ve changed their settings. It’s something else. I mean, it still kind of exists in that way where no one else on your friend on your friend list can see that you’re in this group.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:40:08 – 00:40:23
No one else can even, like, search for it and see, like, who the members are. It’s unsearchable. It’s secret. So I knew this was a safe place. I was able to bring all of these emotions and feelings that I couldn’t talk to anybody else.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:40:23 – 00:40:59
I had a place to bring it to, and I could read what other people were feeling and thinking and going through and struggling with and ways that they were honoring their babies and you know, how they were taking part in broad pregnancy loss spaces as well. And I remember thinking, oh, I can do that. Oh, I can help myself in that way too. Oh, I can honor my baby in that way. So that was a really beautiful experience finding that group and taking part.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:40:59 – 00:41:15
You know, I’ve made amazing friendships through people in that group. And like I said, they inspired me to open another Facebook group. And since then, we have more. There are more. I mean, not that many, maybe like a dozen.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:41:15 – 00:41:34
But more than at the time when I went through it, it was basically just that group and maybe some anonymous forum that was visible to the public on baby center at that time. Now people tend to go to Reddit for that sort of anonymous experience, which has its place too.
Victoria Volk
00:41:36 – 00:41:42
Would you mind sharing your Facebook page, what it’s called? Can is it searchable, or is yours also private and
Sabrina Fletcher
00:41:42 – 00:41:59
Well, it my mine is searchable, but it’s closed. No one can see that you’re in it. But I do also do a application process. So it’s on my website, thetfmrdoula.com/facebookgroup. All one word.
Victoria Volk
00:42:01 – 00:42:04
And I will put the link to that in the show notes as well.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:42:04 – 00:42:13
Thank you. Yeah. It’s it’s a a wonderful space. And it’s a community space. You know, I started it.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:42:13 – 00:42:34
I run it. I facilitate. I facilitate the space for people to come and share their stories and give and get support and ask the questions that they can’t ask anywhere else because other people just say, oh, well, just be grateful that you have 2 other living kids
Victoria Volk
00:42:35 – 00:42:35
Mmm.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:42:35 – 00:42:39
Or like, you’ll get pregnant again. It’s like, what? Like, can you imagine?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:42:39 – 00:42:47
Well, you’ll get married again. Or, like, you still have your mom. You don’t need your dad. Like, okay. The things that people say.
Victoria Volk
00:42:49 – 00:43:55
Without thinking. Really. I mean, like, if you say it back to them like, did you I mean, just let me say that back to you out loud so you can hear it.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:42:56 – 00:42:56
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
00:42:56 – 00:43:00
Does that sound okay?
Victoria Volk
00:43:01 – 00:43:09
I mean, what’s what about that sounds okay? It’s almost like, you know, I’m I, I just developed a pet loss program.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:42:10 – 00:42:10
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
00:43:10 – 00:43:17
And, it’s not launched yet, but it’s it’s like people so commonly especially with pets, like, you can just get another pet. And it’s like, okay. So
Sabrina Fletcher
00:43:17 – 00:43:20
Well, yeah, you can, and it’s not that pet that you
Victoria Volk
00:43:21 – 00:43:25
Right. It’s like people don’t say that too, like, when your grand when your mom dies.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:43:25 – 00:43:25
Right.
Victoria Volk
00:43:26 – 00:43:28
Well, you can just get a mom. Just get another mom. I mean
Sabrina Fletcher
00:43:28 – 00:43:31
Just get another one.
Victoria Volk
00:43:31 – 00:43:32
It’s, yeah, it’s one of the myths
Victoria Volk
00:43:32 – 00:43:33
of grief is replace the loss and,
Sabrina Fletcher
00:43:34 – 00:43:34
Mmm
Victoria Volk
00:43:34 – 00:43:42
You know, it’s one of those things we all learn to do. Right? We learn how to acquire things and people, not what to do when we lose them. You know?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:43:42 – 00:43:45
Oh, that’s a really good quote, Victoria.
Victoria Volk
00:43:45 – 00:43:50
It is. It is. There was something on you I was gonna ask you.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:43:50 – 00:43:51
Sure.
Victoria Volk
00:43:51 – 00:43:56
What advice to other grievers desiring to create meaning from their grief?
Victoria Volk
00:43:56 – 00:44:12
And, you know, when I say create meaning that can that kind of rubs some people the wrong way. Like you have to create meaning, you have to do something big, but you don’t. It it’s I think it, I think a part of creating meaning or finding meaning, not that everything happens for a reason. Like, sometimes
Sabrina Fletcher
00:44:12 – 00:44:12
Yeah
Victoria Volk
00:44:13 – 00:44:17
that can ruffle people’s feathers too. Rightfully so.
Victoria Volk
00:44:17 – 00:44:42
Acceptance is a huge part of creating meaning. Personally, I think that you know, once you get to that place of acceptance of like, you can’t change the past, right? You can’t, but you can, you have a choice in how you transmute the emotions and the feelings that you experienced and move forward. And you’ve done that in a very beautiful way and enough service to others. And not everybody has to, you know, take on something like that.
Victoria Volk
00:44:42 – 00:44:42
Right.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:44:42 – 00:44:43
Mmm.
Victoria Volk
00:44:43 – 00:44:45
And not everybody is capable of that.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:44:45 – 00:44:45
Mmm.
Victoria Volk
00:44:46 – 00:44:59
Like, you know, it’s a it’s not a burden. And that’s the thing I think where people shy away from seeking help to is they don’t want to be a burden to other people. And that’s a lot of what keeps people isolated in their grief.
Victoria Volk
00:44:59 – 00:45:13
But I’ll get to the question here. But what advice would you give to others who desire to do something like you have done? And maybe a different way, but just do something with their grief.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:45:14 – 00:45:32
Mmm. Yeah. I like to talk about not thinking of it as, like, look for the what do we call it in the cloud? The silver lining. You know, we’re not looking for you know, there’s no silver lining in my baby dying in such a horrendous taboo way. There’s no silver lining there.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:45:33 – 00:46:21
There just isn’t. And I like to think of well, I have this little mini framework that I share with my clients and that I need to share with my community on a whole. It’s like this cycle of holding and honoring our emotions. And I think this can help people get to this place where they’re even doing tiny things that can help. And it may help them, you know, create meaning, find meaning, or it may help them, you know, just that day feel a little bit closer or feel more connected to their baby or even feel more connected to themselves or feel just a little bit more calm in the storm of grief.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:46:22 – 00:46:28
There are 3 steps, but they go around and around. You know? Just like grief is a cycle. Right?
Victoria Volk
00:46:28 – 00:46:30
Just like you did a lot of meditation around the flower. Right?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:46:30 – 00:46:42
Yeah. Yeah. We just go around. We go around, and then we come back to the same place, but we have a little bit more knowledge this time, and we’re gonna go a little bit deeper. It might be even more like a spiral too.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:46:42 – 00:46:46
Although, you know, I don’t want you to spiral out. Not that sort of spiral.
Victoria Volk
00:46:46 – 00:46:47
In a good way.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:46:48 – 00:47:19
Yeah. Spiraling deeper into the meaning or the love or the connection. So I start with acknowledge, just acknowledging that you’re having this body sensation instead of pushing it away. And also being very very gentle with this stage because I would say, with early grief, it’s very intense. And early grief can be a year, 2 years for people.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:47:20 – 00:47:35
So we just take, you know, like, one little sensation like my heart. You know? It’s tight. Just noticing that sensation. And even trying to notice without putting any labels on it yet.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:47:36 – 00:47:55
Even without saying it’s my heart or it’s this sensation or it’s this name of the thing. We don’t even have to put a label on it. So just acknowledging that it’s there. And I stayed in this place for a really long time. All of those things that I was talking about, like, with my with my feet in the grass, it would just be like, I’m just feeling.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:47:56 – 00:48:26
I’m just feeling, and I’m just you know, it’s just like flowing down into the earth, or I’m I’m walking, and I’m just feeling all of these sensations. And, like, my brain can’t even put a label on it yet, and that’s fine. It’s okay to stay in this acknowledging place for as long as you need to. And then if you feel ready, you can move to the part of the cycle that I like to think of, as a sign. So then you can begin to assign it an emotion name.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:48:26 – 00:49:02
So like I said, like anger, you know, is feeling so angry at the world and life and you know, even mother nature for screwing up my, you know, somewhere in the genetics or the creation or the, you know, the way that she was forming or maybe, you know, there’s something wrong with my own uterus or whatever. I was just so angry at all of those things and just, like, feeling the anger. And it and it’s okay to label it, like anger. You know? I’m feeling the anger.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:49:02 – 00:49:22
I’m actually feeling this emotion. And then and then if that feels okay, if you’d like to move to the next part of the cycle, I think of this part as a, oh, so we went or assign. Now we’re at align. And you can align in different ways. This is gonna be unique.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:49:22 – 00:50:01
This is gonna be your own self-care that works for you, whatever you need in that moment or maybe the first tiny step for something bigger that you want to do. You know, a lot of people do advocacy in TFMR. Like, they want to write a letter to their representative and tell their story and say, you know, the laws really hurt me and my family and my baby in this way, and this is what I went through. So maybe when you get to a line, maybe it’s like, okay. I’m gonna take out a piece of paper, or I’m gonna open a blank document on my computer and give it a name, letter to my representative.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:50:02 – 00:50:31
That could be your align. So it’s doing something for the sensations and the emotions that you’re having, and then we’re gonna transform, transmute. I like to think of transmutation and transformation more than finding meaning because we’re taking these sensations and emotions, and then you can do something with them. Emotion, e motion, it’s movement. It’s it wants to move.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:50:31 – 00:51:03
It wants to move through you. It wants to move through and even out of you. But we were never taught how. I, at least, I was never taught how. I had to, you know, figure it out on my own through doing it and through, you know, being in a relationship with my husband and like, seeing my own daughter’s grief and then being in these grief communities and being in these TFMR communities and talking to other pregnancy loss parents and seeing the ways that they were aligning.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:51:03 – 00:51:22
You know? Sometimes I would only see that part of their cycle because that can’t be outward. It can’t be inward. So maybe I was seeing how they were, aligning in a way in their life. And then once we align a little bit, then maybe new sensations come about in the body.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:51:23 – 00:51:44
And so that’s why it’s a cycle. So then you can begin to acknowledge those sensations or those feelings as well. And you can go through the cycle as, you know, we’ll go through it an infinite amount of times in our lifetime if we’re lucky, if we get the time, if we get the chance to do it.
Victoria Volk
00:51:44 – 00:51:57
And the key thing you said there is connecting with ourselves and our emotions are in our body, because it is what you went through and what other women go through in this experience is very much a body experience.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:51:58 – 00:51:59
Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:51:59 – 00:52:04
So it’s connecting back to the body to heal the body from within out.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:52:04 – 00:52:04
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
00:51:59 – 00:52:28
I’m curious if because the work your husband does, if you utilize some of those things and have considered or maybe you’ve already done this where you’ve had brought in women who have experienced this into his place of where he works and to experience these tools that he has to help women connect with themselves in that way.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:52:28 – 00:52:31
Oh, it’s definitely going to be a part of the live retreats.
Victoria Volk
00:52:31 – 00:52:32
That’s for sure.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:52:32 – 00:52:41
For sure. For sure. And I’ve been thinking about well, since I set everything up virtually, I just continue to do everything virtually.
Victoria Volk
00:52:41 – 00:52:41
Right.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:52:41 – 00:53:19
I don’t have a local group yet, but, there is a midwife in town who would like me to run a group and I would definitely invite them, you know, after, you know, 6 weeks or after a few months of coming to these circles. Maybe we’ll do, you know, a quarterly sweat lodge experience. And my husband actually gets a lot of people who come to him, maybe not right after a loss, but in that time, you’ll understand the time period. About 3 or 4 months out or, like, a year out.
Victoria Volk
00:53:19 – 00:53:19
Mhmm. Yeah.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:53:20 – 00:53:39
With a big loss or life transitions, and then they go and they want to really mark that transition with a ritual, which is something that the sweat lodge can help you do or take partaking in a sweat.
Victoria Volk
00:53:41 – 00:53:51
Very cool. I think you’ve got a lot of amazing things brewing and I’m excited to see what, what comes of it for you.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:53:52 – 00:53:52
Yeah
Victoria Volk
00:53:52- 00:53:55
I am curious. Did you have any more children?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:53:55 – 00:53:55
Yes.
Victoria Volk
00:53:55- 00:53:56
Okay.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:53:56 – 00:54:23
I was able to get pregnant again after my loss. And I would say that pregnancy is really was the second hardest thing that I’ve done in my life after you know, going through the termination, after going through losing my baby.
Victoria Volk
00:54:23 – 00:54:36
That’s why I asked because, it’s like when people wanna replace a dog. Right? It’s like, how do you know you’re ready? And people often just don’t even think about that. They just replace the dog and you’re not replacing the loss by having another child. That’s not what I’m saying. Although people can have that perception.
Victoria Volk
00:54:36 – 00:54:42
Right? Like, you wanna feel better, so you just you can just have another child. Right?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:54:42 – 00:54:45
That’s what people say. Yeah. The people say that.
Victoria Volk
00:54:45 – 00:54:46
People say that. You can have more kids.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:54:47 – 00:54:48
Not everyone can.
Victoria Volk
00:54:49 – 00:54:50
Right? Exactly.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:54:50 – 00:54:52
Exactly. And then
Victoria Volk
00:54:52 – 00:54:55
so the when they say that, they’re making the assumption that, yes, you can too.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:54:56 – 00:54:56
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
00:54:56 – 00:54:57
Can you speak to that a little bit?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:54:59 – 00:54:59
Mmm.
Victoria Volk
00:54:59 – 00:55:02
Like, howdid you know? Like or how did you come to that? And
Sabrina Fletcher
00:55:02 – 00:55:27
Well, I think of my the loss of my baby as the primary loss, the primary death.
Victoria Volk
00:55:12 – 00:55:12
Mhmm.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:55:13 – 00:55:27
There are also other things that were lost. So I lost this vision of having 2 children in my family. I lost this, you know, the hopes and desires to have my oldest daughter not be a only child.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:55:28 – 00:55:55
I wanted to have, you know, more than one kid. I wanted to have 2 or 3. I guess I do have 3 now in a way. But 2 living and then the one that died. And I knew that it was going to be hard, and the desire to have another child was stronger than the fear.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:55:56 – 00:56:27
That was when I knew that I was ready to really go back into battle. Most people who go through a termination for medical reasons do develop, like, full-blown PTSD. You know, it’s like going to war. And so if you think of it like we’re warriors who have been to this battle or war and lost. Now we’re being asked to go right back to the same battlefield.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:56:29 – 00:56:55
You know, it’s the same sensations. Maybe you pull out the same, you know, pregnancy pants. Maybe it’s even, like, the same season. Some people, you know, just the dates, like, all line-up and they’re going to their 12-week scan on March 12th again the next year. So they’re very crazy feelings that you that you go through.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:56:56 – 00:57:14
Because you’re going through it again. And then the anger too, you feel very I remember being very angry throughout the 1st trimester and thinking, you know, I feel so tired. I feel like crap. You know, I feel like I’m gonna throw up all the time. I already went through this.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:57:15 – 00:57:53
You know? Why do I have to go through this again? And of course, I was so thrilled to be pregnant again and to hopefully, you know, have a baby, have a have another sibling and to hopefully have those experiences that I was dreaming of you know, to have 2 kids or more than 2 kids and to have, like, a bigger family. I mean, it’s not a big family to have 2 kids, but, bigger than 1, bigger than just parenting 1. And I mean, I had EMDR therapist.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:57:53 – 00:58:23
I had my acupuncturist. I had different doctors. I had the high-risk doctor that I was going to. I had the same doula that I my postpartum doula then became my doula through that pregnancy. In the pregnancy loss spaces, I found, like, specific monthly threads or places where people were talking about being pregnant again after loss or even more specifically being pregnant again after TFMR.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:58:25 – 00:58:43
I had a really good friend who we would check-in every day. We were like, I don’t know. Our dates, like, lined up we were already in contact, and then we were both trying to conceive, and then we, like both got pregnant probably on, like, the same day. And so, you know, it’s like, here we are in week 1. Now we’re in week 2.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:58:43 – 00:58:59
We checked in every single day with each other, and it would just be in the morning, I’d be like, oh my gosh. I’m so scared. And I would open, you know, my Messenger app or whatever, and there’s her message saying the same thing. So I didn’t feel so alone.
Victoria Volk
00:58:59 – 00:58:59
Mhmm.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:59:01 – 00:59:03
That was how I got through that pregnancy.
Victoria Volk
00:59:04 – 00:59:06
With a lot of support, it sounds like.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:59:06 – 00:59:15
A lot. I needed a lot of support. I needed all of it, and I really pulled on all of it. And it was really hard on my husband too. You know?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:59:15 – 00:59:19
We were scared every single day that we would lose her too.
Victoria Volk
00:59:20 – 00:59:21
And what’s her name?
Sabrina Fletcher
00:59:21 – 00:59:23
Her name is Aya.
Victoria Volk
00:59:23 – 00:59:25
Oh, that’s beautiful.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:59:25 – 00:59:27
Thank you.
Victoria Volk
00:59:27 – 00:59:37
It’s like the, what you said, it’s holding on to the both and
Sabrina Fletcher
00:59:32 – 00:59:32
Uh-huh
Victoria Volk
00:59:32 – 00:59:37
it’s the feelings of fear and an excitement at the same time, enjoy,
Sabrina Fletcher
00:59:37 – 00:59:37
right
Victoria Volk
00:59:37 – 00:59:42
It’s the both and like, it’s like holding the feelings and the reality at the same time.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:59:43 – 00:59:43
Mmm.
Victoria Volk
00:59:43 – 00:59:53
And that’s a tricky thing to do. And so I thank you for sharing that aspect of your story, because I think it’ll be helpful for people who are going through that.
Sabrina Fletcher
00:59:53 – 01:00:03
Yeah. And I have a monthly thread in my Facebook group too, and I started a monthly live Zoom for us as well.
Victoria Volk
01:00:03 – 01:00:05
Awesome.
Sabrina Fletcher
01:00:05 – 01:00:19
Mhmm. Because I remember how hard it was. I mean, she’s 4 now, and still even around, even around her birthday I start thinking about you know, everything that we went through just to get to that point.
Victoria Volk
01:00:20 – 01:00:34
On your form, there’s a question I ask. I don’t know if you remember what you answered, but I wanna share it if you don’t remember. But it’s what would you like to scream to the world in the past or recently in which people knew about your grief?
Sabrina Fletcher
01:00:35 – 01:00:40
Did I write TFMR is pregnancy loss?
Victoria Volk
01:00:38 – 01:00:38
Yes
Sabrina Fletcher
01:00:38 – 01:00:40
TFMR is pregnancy yeah.
Victoria Volk
01:00:40 – 01:00:45
Yes. And then you added something else. You said treat me gently
Sabrina Fletcher
01:00:45 – 01:00:47
I don’t read it. Can you read it?
Victoria Volk
01:00:47 – 01:00:50
Yeah. Treat me gently as you would any grieving parent.
Sabrina Fletcher
01:00:52 – 01:00:55
That’s it. That’s the one.
Victoria Volk
01:00:56 – 01:01:10
I thought that was beautiful. And so I think it’s a great place to tie this episode up with a bow for people.
Sabrina Fletcher
01:01:06 – 01:01:06
Mmm.
Victoria Volk
01:01:07 – 01:01:10
Grief is grief, no matter the circumstance. And we all agree that 100%. So treat each other gently.
Sabrina Fletcher
01:01:11 – 01:01:11
Wonderful.
Victoria Volk
01:01:11 – 01:01:16
Thank you so much for sharing. Is there anything else you would like to share though that you didn’t get to?
Sabrina Fletcher
01:01:18 – 01:02:09
I think I shared what was on my heart today. And maybe one more thing, just if you’re going through this or if you’ve been through this and you’re and you’re just finding the acronym and you’re just finding these places or you’re still looking for support around this type of pregnancy loss, just know that it is out there. And I know it’s really hard, like the onus is on the grieving person to go out and find support in a time where you’re just so exhausted. And it’s so worth it. It’s so worth it to keep searching until you find the space and the people who can really support you because it will make all of the difference in the world.
Victoria Volk
01:02:10 – 01:02:14
And if you’re a helper, sometimes helpers need help too.
Sabrina Fletcher
01:02:14 – 01:02:15
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
01:02:16 – 01:02:18
That’s what I’ve found even personally.
Sabrina Fletcher
01:02:19 – 01:02:27
Mmm. Oh, yeah. No. I have a lot of therapists, teachers, nurses in my community.
Victoria Volk
01:02:27 – 01:02:27
Mhmm.
Sabrina Fletcher
01:02:27 – 01:02:27
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
01:02:28 – 01:02:52
Well, thank you so much for all that you shared today. And, I look forward to sharing this episode and I will put all the links to what you shared in the show notes for people to quickly and easily find support if they’re needing it. And thank you for listening today. And remember when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
